There’s more news from the increasingly controversial U.S. military campaign against alleged drug boats. The Trump administration’s strikes on those vessels could be sparking a significant rift with one of its key allies.

Washington Times Reporter Vaughn Cockayne has more on reports that the U.K. stopped sharing intelligence with the U.S. about alleged drug-trafficking boats in the Caribbean over concerns the Pentagon’s strikes on the vessels may be illegal. CNN first reported the development.

This could be a major new twist to the story and could indicate that key U.S. allies are now moving to pressure the administration to rethink its approach. The U.K. for years shared intelligence with U.S. forces to combat terrorism and drug trafficking in the region. Britain has its own significant military presence in the Caribbean, including in the Cayman and the Turks and Caicos islands.

Typically, the U.K. would share intelligence with the Joint Interagency Task Force South, based in Florida as part of U.S. Southern Command, which would pass along relevant information to the U.S. Coast Guard so it could apprehend suspected drug-trafficking vessels. 

The Department of Homeland Security closed out the fiscal year with its best border numbers in 50 years, showing major drops in every significant category but one — the number of terrorism suspects detected crossing. That figure shot up nearly 30-fold this year, hitting more than 950 suspected terrorists in September alone.

The Times’ Stephen Dinan has an exclusive report on why the administration says that’s actually good news for U.S. national security. There aren’t more terrorism suspects coming, but because of the administration’s decision to classify Mexico’s biggest smuggling cartels and several international gangs as terrorist organizations, their people are now being flagged in the Terrorist Screening Data Set, better known as the terrorism watchlist, when they do cross the border.

Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Rodney Scott told The Times that the new figures are “the result of properly identifying the dangerous actors who were always there.”

The Russian military is making gains in Ukraine in what could be one of the biggest battlefield shifts in recent months. The Russian army overran three settlements in the southern Zaporizhzhia region of Ukraine, military commanders in Kyiv acknowledged. The Kremlin boasted that it “liberated” those towns and killed more than 1,000 Ukrainian troops in the process, but those figures were not independently confirmed.

Separately, there are fierce battles raging in the besieged Ukrainian city of Pokrovsk, in the eastern Donetsk region. Russian troops — some riding motorcycles — have used dense fog to help them advance into the town, which analysts fear is on the verge of falling entirely under Russian control.

Analysts say the rate of the Russian advance remains relatively slow. But the gains still could be viewed by Russian President Vladimir Putin as proof that his forces have the upper hand. The Kremlin is indicating it’s prepared to restart peace talks with Ukraine, perhaps with the belief that battlefield gains have given it more leverage at the negotiating table.

Its nuclear program was set back significantly by U.S. airstrikes in June. Its proxy network across the Middle East has been devastated. Its economy is deeply fragile. But could all of those factors actually make Iran even more dangerous?

Yossi Kuperwasser, a retired Israeli brigadier general and current head of the Jerusalem Institute for Strategy and Security, explores that possibility in a new column for The Times and argues that Iran’s leadership could decide to take an aggressive tack, rather than be viewed as weak. It could, among other things, attack Israel or attempt to close the Strait of Hormuz, a key global shipping route.

“The regime is resisting the path of compromise because it doesn’t want to appear weak, either to the world or its own people. Hard-liners could instead move the regime toward increased aggression as a way out of its paralysis,” Mr. Kuperwasser writes. “Time is running out for the ayatollah to decide which path to pursue, and that means things could come to a head in mere months.”

Former Veterans Affairs Secretary Robert Wilkie writes in The Times that “America risks its soul and security by doing nothing” in response to the deaths of Christians in Ethiopia’s Tigray region, where more than 1 million people have been slaughtered since 2020.

Mr. Wilkie argues that the dire situation unfolding there goes far beyond a civil conflict. Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed’s regime, he says, is backed by China, Iran and Russia as it wages its campaign against Tigray.

“If we lose Ethiopia, we lose one of Christianity’s oldest strongholds and a vital partner for the West in a region already teetering between tyranny and terrorism,” he writes, calling on the Trump administration to formally label the situation in Tigray a genocide, impose sanctions on the Ethiopian regime and begin delivering humanitarian aid to the region.

“The people of Tigray are not asking for American soldiers,” Mr. Wilkie writes. “They are asking for America’s voice. We should raise it now before one of the oldest Christian civilizations on earth vanishes, and with it a cornerstone of faith and freedom.”

• Nov. 12 — Space Force Association Washington Fall Social, SFA D.C. Chapter

• Nov. 13 — 10 Years of Arms Trade Treaty Transparency, Stimson Center

• Nov. 13 — U.S. Policy and the Path to Democracy in Venezuela after Maduro, Atlantic Council

• Nov. 13 — The Fourth Intelligence Revolution: Anthony Vinci on Artificial Intelligence, Geopolitics and the Future of Espionage, Hudson Institute

• Nov. 13 — Meeting the U.S. Defense Imperative: Challenges and Opportunities in the Development of the Defense Industrial Base Workforce, Center for Strategic & International Studies

• Nov. 17 — Power Under Pressure: The Fight to Protect Taiwan’s Energy Lifelines from Beijing’s Aggression, Foundation for Defense of Democracies

• Nov. 19-21 — Defense TechConnect Innovation Summit & Expo

• Nov. 20 — Prepared, Not Paralyzed: Managing AI Risks to Drive American Leadership, Center for a New American Security