Threat Status for Wednesday, January 28, 2026. Share this daily newsletter with your friends, who can sign up here. Send tips to National Security Editor Guy Taylor.
President Trump says “time is running out” for Iran to make a deal on its nuclear ambitions and that a U.S. armada is ready to make Tehran pay if it does not come to the negotiating table.
… Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates — two of America’s main Mideast allies — say they won’t assist in potential U.S. military action against Iran.
… Secretary of State Marco Rubio is testifying today to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee about what’s next in Venezuela.
… South Korea’s defense minister said Wednesday that Seoul is committed to retaking wartime operational control of South Korean troops from the United States by 2030.
… Interim Syrian President Ahmad al-Sharaa is in Moscow for a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin, as the Kremlin seeks to secure the future of its military bases in Syria.
… Europe says shadow fleet tankers under multiple flags can be seized as stateless vessels.
… Quantum computing company D-Wave announced a three-way partnership with Davidson Technologies and Anduril Industries to “develop quantum-classical hybrid applications for complex U.S. air and missile defense planning challenges.”
… A WB-57 plane used by NASA for high-altitude research landed on its belly with its landing gear up in Houston Tuesday, catching fire as a result. No one was injured.
… And construction on Mr. Trump’s signature wall along the U.S.-Mexico border is moving slower during the president’s second term than it did in his first.
Mr. Trump threatened Iran’s authoritarian regime on Wednesday that he has dispatched a larger U.S. military fleet — led by the USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier strike group — to the Middle East than the one he sent to Venezuela to oust the South American country’s dictator.
“Like with Venezuela, it is, ready, willing, and able to rapidly fulfill its mission, with speed and violence, if necessary,” Mr. Trump wrote on Truth Social. “Hopefully Iran will quickly ‘Come to the Table’ and negotiate a fair and equitable deal — NO NUCLEAR WEAPONS — one that is good for all parties. Time is running out, it is truly of the essence!”
The statement comes in the wake of the Iranian regime’s massacre of thousands of protesters in recent weeks. The situation has sent tensions soaring in the Middle East, where two of America’s main regional allies, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, are signaling they won’t assist in any U.S. military action against Iran.
New questions are swirling around Mr. Trump’s security policy toward Nigeria, weeks after a U.S. military cargo aircraft touched down in the oil-rich West African nation on Jan. 13, delivering equipment meant to strengthen the Nigerian government’s fight against jihadi-linked terrorism.
Five days after the delivery, armed Fulani terrorists stormed three churches in Kurmin Wali, a farming community, and abducted 166 Christian worshippers during Sunday services. In the same week, four civilians were seized along a nearby highway and six other residents were abducted in another Sunday attack. The timing has sharpened scrutiny in Washington and the Nigerian capital of Abuja. Will more weapons disrupt Nigeria’s terrorist networks or reinforce a system that experts say profits from denial and delay?
U.S. Africa Command says the new approach is about pressure and capability. “We’ve gotten a lot more aggressive and are working with partners to target, kinetically, the threats, mainly ISIS,” Army Lt. Gen. John Brennan, deputy commander of U.S. Africa Command, recently told Agence France-Presse, referring to the Islamic State. He said Washington is expanding intelligence sharing and easing restrictions on military equipment to enable Nigerian forces to act faster.
Toward the end of his first term, Mr. Trump was erecting his border wall at a rate of more than a mile a day as he rushed to fulfill one of his marquee promises from the 2016 campaign. But construction is moving much more slowly in his second term.
Washington Times reporters Stephen Dinan and Alex Swoyer examine the situation, reporting that as of Jan. 21, or a year and a day after Mr. Trump returned to the White House, his administration had completed just slightly more than 27 miles of new barrier. That’s a rate of about two-tenths of a mile per day.
Nearly 7 of those miles were completed by the Defense Department. That means Customs and Border Protection, the Homeland Security Department agency that oversees the boundaries, has finished only about 20 miles despite expansive legal powers to waive environmental laws and a massive infusion of cash in this summer’s budget bill.
Mr. Trump understands that the Arctic island of Greenland “is essential to America’s national security and to Europe’s as well,” writes Clifford D. May, founder and president of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and an opinion contributor to Threat Status, who notes that “the shortest routes for long‑range Russian or Chinese missiles targeting the U.S. pass over the polar region.
“Because Greenland is a self-governing territory of Denmark, an American ally, and because Mr. Trump is the world’s greatest dealmaker, it seemed to me from the start that if any international dispute could be solved with a deal, it’s this one,” writes Mr. May. “Nevertheless, there were some fraught days when Mr. Trump was threatening to use a big stick — tariffs or even military force — to take Greenland away from the melancholy Danes. Could that have just been a nice-and-rough negotiating tactic? Demand the stars, settle for the moon?
“Maybe,” he writes. “But to my relief — and that of the stock market — Mark Rutte, the extraordinarily capable secretary-general of NATO, came up with a ‘framework’ in Davos last week for a long-term agreement that appealed to Mr. Trump.”
Joseph R. DeTrani writes that one of South Korean President Lee Jae-myung’s top challenges is that of “balancing relations between the U.S. and China while taking on greater responsibility for the deterrence of North Korea.”
It’s a situation that comes as the Pentagon’s National Defense Strategy foresees a “‘more limited’ U.S. role in deterring North Korea, with South Korea taking primary responsibility for its defense,” writes Mr. DeTrani, a former associate director of national intelligence and opinion contributor to Threat Status. “Indeed, South Korea has increased its defense budget and is moving to assume wartime operational control of the joint U.S.-ROK command.”
At the same time, Mr. DeTrani writes, “over the past nine years, North Korea has exponentially increased its nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles to deliver these nuclear weapons. The Korea Institute for Defense Analysis reported that North Korea had up to 150 nuclear weapons and would have 200 in 2030.”
• Feb. 2 — The Results and Implications of Myanmar’s Elections, Stimson Center
• Feb. 3 — STARTing Over? Russo-American Arms Control at a Crossroads, Stimson Center
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