Threat Status for Friday, March 20, 2026. Share this daily newsletter with your friends, who can sign up here. Send tips to National Security Editor Guy Taylor.
Russian President Vladimir Putin is likely to go on the offensive in Ukraine while the war in the Middle East puts U.S.-brokered Ukraine peace talks on hold.
… National Security Correspondent Bill Gertz examines what the U.S. intelligence community’s annual threat assessment has to say about China’s plan for taking over Taiwan.
… The assessment notably elevates artificial intelligence as a top global threat.
… Unidentified drones spotted over Fort McNair in Washington mark the latest in strange sightings near military sites worldwide.
… The FBI has opened an investigation into Joe Kent, who resigned as National Counterterrorism Center director over opposition to the Iran war.
… Commentary Editor Kelly Sadler digs into the Kent case, writing that President Trump faces internal sabotage as the war exposes disloyalty.
… Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi said on the sidelines of her meeting with Mr. Trump that she would like to engage with North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un.
… Russian officials accused Israel of disrupting Moscow’s trade with Tehran after the Israel Defense Forces targeted dozens of vessels at a major Caspian Sea port in northern Iran.
… And Israel says it launched strikes against Syrian military positions to defend Druze civilians against alleged attacks by Damascus.
For Iran’s divided opposition groups, many based outside the country, the decisive struggle over the future of the nation centers on whether the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, which acts as the primary enforcer of the ruling theocratic regime, can be dislodged from power.
Threat Status Special Correspondent Joseph Hammond analyzes the situation, writing that the IRGC, which acts as a “state within a state,” has already lost key commanders in the war, so loyalties and priorities may be in flux for Iran’s most ruthless military force.
Various Iranian opposition groups — from the Mojahedin-e-Khalq (MEK) to the monarchists, republicans and ethnic movements — are all positioning themselves for a post-Islamist future in Tehran. The catch is that the opposition remains fragmented, divided by ideology and, in some cases, acrimonious rivalries that date back decades.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth says Iran has miscalculated by attacking civilian and energy infrastructure in the region with strikes that have essentially drawn the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia more closely into the U.S. security orbit. He appears to be correct.
Qatar expelled Iran’s military and security attaches this week after Iranian missiles struck Ras Laffan Industrial City, a gas processing and export complex on Qatar’s northern Persian Gulf coast. Ras Laffan handles roughly 20% of the world’s liquefied natural gas supply.
The Saudis, meanwhile, are outraged. “What little trust there was [between Riyadh and Tehran] has completely been shattered,” Prince Faisal bin Farhan said Thursday after Iranian missiles targeted the city. As for the UAE, Iranian drones struck the Shah gas field operated by Abu Dhabi National Oil Co. on Monday, targeting infrastructure the UAE has spent billions on to keep the oil flowing if the Strait of Hormuz ever closed.
China’s Communist government is continuing to work toward the annexation of Taiwan and hopes to complete unification with the self-ruled island democracy without resorting to force, according to the U.S. intelligence community’s annual threat assessment.
“China, despite its threat to use force to compel unification if necessary and to counter what it sees as a U.S. attempt to use Taiwan to undermine China’s rise, prefers to achieve unification without the use of force, if possible,” states the assessment published this week.
The document adds, however, that the People’s Liberation Army is taking steps to develop military plans and forces that can be used to take Taiwan if directed to do so. It also maintains that conflict between Washington and Beijing over Taiwan would cause a major disruption of U.S. access to trade and semiconductor technology, and trigger significant Chinese cyberattacks.
On a separate front, the assessment warns that missile threats to the U.S. homeland are escalating as China, Russia, North Korea, Iran and Pakistan develop an array of novel, advanced or traditional missile delivery systems with nuclear and conventional payloads.
South Korea imports 70% of its oil from the Persian Gulf and is highly vulnerable to global economic troubles. As a net energy importer, the country is especially exposed to oil shocks such as those being caused by Iran’s effective blockade of the Strait of Hormuz.
Asia Editor Andrew Salmon reports from Seoul that South Korea’s economic backbone is a heavy industry export machine churning out chips, ships, autos, displays, devices and petrochemicals — and the assembly line stops without a steady supply of oil.
The trade-dependent country weathered the COVID-19 and Ukraine war crises, but last year, national economic growth was just 1%. This year, with chipmakers benefiting from a bullish upward cycle, growth is anticipated to hit 2%. The Middle East crisis looks likely to slash that.
Joseph R. DeTrani writes in The Washington Times that “since 1979, this is the Iran we have been dealing with: a state sponsor of terrorism that has killed hundreds of Americans (and others) and thousands of Iranians.
“In February 2026, over 30,000 Iranians were reportedly killed calling for an end to clerical rule in Iran, driven by a severe economic collapse – inflation and currency devaluation — and widespread state repression,” writes Mr. DeTrani, a former associate director of national intelligence and opinion contributor to Threat Status.
In addition to citing that internal repression and ticking off from the list of “prominent cases of terrorism perpetrated against the U.S. by the government of Iran,” Mr. DeTrani writes that “war as a tragic necessity could have been declared after any of [them], to check Iran’s savagery and suffering of the innocent.”
• March 25 — Next Steps for U.S.-Japan Military Shipbuilding, Repair and Maintenance, Stimson Center
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