Threat Status for Monday, March 2, 2026. Share this daily newsletter with your friends, who can sign up here. Send tips to National Security Editor Guy Taylor.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth sought Monday to downplay the prospect of the U.S. military being sucked into a spiraling Middle Eastern war.
… Global energy markets opened in flux, with Qatar pausing production of liquefied natural gas at facilities attacked by Iranian missiles.
… National Security Correspondent Bill Gertz examines how China and Russia — both strategic partners of Tehran — are reacting.
… Three U.S. F-15E Strike Eagle fighter jets were mistakenly shot down by Kuwaiti air defenses in a friendly fire incident late Sunday.
… U.S. Central Command has dismissed Iran’s assertion that it carried out a successful missile strike on the USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier, saying “the missiles launched didn’t even come close.”
… The killing of Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has triggered a succession crisis in the Islamic republic.
… A fourth U.S. service member has died as a result of the campaign.
… And Pakistan carried out airstrikes inside Afghanistan over the weekend, asserting that it is engaged in “open war.”
The defense secretary said Monday morning the U.S.-Israeli strikes on Iran are not akin to the American invasion of Iraq more than two decades ago. “This is not endless,” Mr. Hegseth told reporters, as he and Air Force Gen. Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, held the Trump administration’s first news briefing since Saturday’s strikes on Iran.
Mr. Hegseth said the operation has a “clear, devastating, decisive mission” to “destroy the missile threat” from Iran, destroy the country’s navy and guarantee that Tehran has “no nukes.” At the same time, Mr. Hegseth said the U.S. military is operating with the mindset of “no stupid rules of engagement, no nation-building quagmire, no democracy building exercise, no politically correct wars.”
Despite President Trump’s video message over the weekend calling on Iranians to overthrow their government, Mr. Hegseth suggested Monday that the U.S. is not seeking to totally change the Iranian regime with the killing of the ayatollah. “This is not a so-called regime change war, but the regime sure did change and the world is better off for it,” the defense secretary said.
Use of the expendable unmanned aerial vehicles, which are designed to fly into a target and detonate on impact, marked a milestone for the American military during the Iran mission over the weekend. U.S. Central Command said in a statement that its Middle East-based “Task Force Scorpion Strike employed low-cost one-way attack drones for the first time in combat.”
Small, cheap attack drones have proved to be an effective battlefield tool during the Russia-Ukraine war. Mr. Hegseth’s Pentagon has made it a top priority to buy and field small drones by the thousands.
The “Low-cost Unmanned Combat Attack System” — or LUCAS drones — used in the Iran mission were reverse-engineered after the Iranian Shahed-136. Military Times reports the drones were built by the Arizona-based SpektreWorks and can be launched via catapults, rocket-assisted takeoff and mobile ground systems.
The U.S. attack on Iran makes clear that the commander in chief is no longer the presidential candidate who consistently criticized the use of American military force to oust threatening foreign regimes.
During his 2016 campaign, Mr. Trump positioned himself as an anti-interventionist who would avoid the “failed policy of nation-building.” The first indication that he had altered his long-held opposition to regime change appeared on June 22, the day U.S. bombers and ships blasted nuclear sites in Iran. “It’s not politically correct to use the term, ‘Regime Change,’ but if the current Iranian Regime is unable to MAKE IRAN GREAT AGAIN, why wouldn’t there be a Regime Change??? MIGA!!!” Mr. Trump said on Truth Social.
A significant element of Mr. Trump’s MAGA movement remains isolationist and against the Iran operations. Right-wing commentator Jack Posobiec has argued the conflict could hinder Republican prospects for holding a majority in Congress after the midterm elections. Yet Laura Loomer, a conservative and strong backer of the president, supports the Iran strikes. “Iran has been attacking the US for over 47 years. And now, the 47th President of the United States is ending their reign of terror,” she posted on X.
Japanese Defense Minister Shinjiro Koizumi criticized China on Friday while doubling down on Tokyo’s determination to upgrade its military capabilities. “China appears to have been waging a propaganda campaign against us, as if Japan is becoming militaristic,” Mr. Koizumi told reporters in Tokyo. “In the current security situation, it is essential for us to develop our own defense capabilities without counting on a particular country.”
China-Japan tensions have soared since November, when Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi indicated that a Chinese attack on Taiwan would force Tokyo to activate Japan’s Self Defense Force. Asia Editor Andrew Salmon reports from the region that the big question now is whether the Takaichi administration will pursue the holy grail of Japanese defense: Revising the nation’s pacifist constitution.
Article 9 includes the lines, “The Japanese people forever renounce war as a sovereign right of the nation and the threat or use of force as means of settling international disputes.” Any revision requires a two-thirds majority in both houses of the Diet, plus a majority in a national referendum. Those are high hurdles: No revision has taken place since the constitution was adopted, under Allied occupation, in 1947.
Mr. Trump “needs to do a much better job of explaining why and how he decided to take us to war with the ayatollah’s regime,” writes Jed Babbin, who asserts that while “the anti-Trump media are already building a case against the war,” it’s “more than that.
“If Mr. Trump wants people to follow him, then he needs to lead. The way a president does that is by speaking directly to the people,” writes Mr. Babbin, a national security and foreign affairs columnist for The Washington Times.
“Mr. Trump should now take a page from the playbook of the late, great President Reagan, the ‘Great Communicator.’ Our commander in chief should give an Oval Office speech addressing the American people the way Reagan used to,” Mr. Babbin writes in a Times op-ed. “We need to hear about his goal of government change in Tehran, why it’s entirely appropriate to overthrow the regime (which has American blood on its hands) and what he believes a new government in Iran should look like.”
• March 4 — Securing America’s Critical Mineral Supply Chain: A Conversation with Rep. Rob Wittman, Virginia Republican, Hudson Institute
• March 5 — U.S.–Israel Strikes on Iran: What Next for the Middle East? Chatham House
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