SPECIAL REPORT — In a turbulent year, one of the biggest national security stories came in the form of a document.

The administration’s National Security Strategy (NSS), released earlier this month, upends longstanding U.S. policy toward allies and adversaries alike. It ranks drug trafficking and illegal immigration as top threats to U.S. security, places a heavy emphasis on the Western Hemisphere, criticizes Europe and downplays security challenges from China and Russia.

Eight years ago, Trump's first NSS said that “China and Russia challenge American power, influence, and interests, attempting to erode American security and prosperity.” The new NSS doesn’t name Russia as a threat to the U.S. – stating instead that “strategic stability with Russia” is a goal of American policy. Europe is presented as a bigger challenge; the U.S. should “help Europe correct its current trajectory,” which the NSS says has been damaged by immigration and a risk of “civilizational erasure.”

As for China, the document focuses on economic competition – trade, infrastructure, and technology. References to Taiwan and the South China Sea come later, and they include warnings that other Asian nations must carry a greater burden; “the American military cannot, and should not have to, do this alone.”

“The north star of great-power competition with China and Russia—around which the first Trump administration built bipartisan consensus—is gone,” Rebecca Lissner, Senior Fellow for U.S. foreign policy at the Council on Foreign Relations, wrote of the new NSS. The objective now, she said, is a “mutually advantageous economic relationship with Beijing.”

Not surprisingly, European leaders were furious about the pivot to a more Russia-friendly posture, and what the European Council President called “political interference” in the affairs of Europe.

Glenn Corn, a former CIA Senior Executive, called the document’s treatment of Europe a “shock.”

“Europeans are not the enemy,” Corn told The Cipher Brief. “And I doubt the Russians will stand side by side with us on the battlefield and support us the way that our European partners have done.”

The new NSS won praise from at least one global capital. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said its emphasis on restoring strategic stability with Moscow “correspond in many ways” to Russia’s own vision.

Infographic with a map of the Americas showing the areas where the United States has carried out attacks against alleged drug trafficking boats in the Caribbean Sea and the Pacific Ocean since September 2, 2025, as well as the number of people killed in these attacks, as of December 16 (Graphic by AFP via Getty Images)

Missiles on the Water

While the focus on narcotrafficking was clear from the early days of Trump’s second term, the heavy U.S. military deployments and air strikes in the Caribbean took experts by surprise. The aerial campaign began with a September missile attack on a small boat that killed 11 people; a second strike that day took the lives of two survivors who were clinging to the upturned vessel. The follow-on strike sparked criticism in Congress – including from Republicans – and charges that it might have violated maritime laws.

As of mid-December, at least 25 strikes had followed, including some in the Pacific, resulting in the deaths of more than 90 people alleged to have been smuggling drugs on the water. The Trump administration justified the attacks as necessary to stem a flow of fentanyl – which Trump labeled “a weapon of mass destruction” that has killed tens of thousands of Americans. Legal experts questioned whether passengers in these boats — even if they were found to have been carrying narcotics — could be considered enemy combatants. Others noted that fentanyl and its precursors are sourced primarily from China and Mexico — not Venezuela.

A separate question loomed, as the year wound down: were the strikes a prelude to military action against Venezuela, and its president, Nicolas Maduro?

Beyond the U.S. military buildup, there were several signs in December that a move against Venezuela may be in the offing: reports that the U.S. was exploring “day-after” scenarios in the event of Maduro’s ouster; the seizure of a Venezuelan tanker that was said to be transporting sanctioned oil to Iran; and President Trump’s December 16 announcement of a naval blockade of sanctioned oil tankers from Venezuela.

“Maduro has become the epicenter for a range of activities the U.S. is determined to roll back,” Ambassador Patrick Duddy, Former U.S. Ambassador to Venezuela, told The Cipher Brief. “Seizure of the oil tanker signals that the U.S. has decided to take more active measures to achieve its goals.

Infographic with a map showing the location of strikes carried by Israel against Iran since June 13, 2025, according to data reported by the ISW (Graphic by AFP) (Graphic by VALENTINA BRESCHI,SYLVIE HUSSON,OLIVIA BUGAULT/AFP via Getty Images)

The U.S. and Israel Attack Iran

It would have been unthinkable only two years ago: a U.S.-Israeli war against Iran that provoked almost no meaningful response.

The attacks came in June – Israeli strikes on Iran’s nuclear sites and military infrastructure that were followed by American airstrikes on three nuclear installations. Iran fired missiles at a U.S. base in Qatar but its overall retaliation was minimal, a consequence of earlier Israeli campaigns that weakened Iranian air defenses and its various militias in the Middle East. The 12-day war damaged elements of Iran’s nuclear program and laid bare a tectonic shift in the region: Iran and its “axis of resistance” had been badly weakened.

For decades, war-gaming scenarios had warned that any attack against Iran would carry risks of a conflagration, given the likelihood of a coordinated response from Iran, Hezbollah, Hamas and the Houthi militia in Yemen. Now the paradigm has shifted.

“The U.S. joined Israel in military operations and people thought that had been a red line in the past,” Norman Roule, a former National Intelligence Manager for Iran at ODNI, told The Cipher Brief. “For the nuclear negotiations and other talks going forward, Iran now has to deal with a new world where there is this precedent.”

As the year ended, Iran remained a shell of what it had been, and reports suggested its leaders were conflicted about the way forward. Would the country recognize its weaknesses and move towards a rapprochement with the West — a move that might bring sanctions relief and usher in a new security dynamic in the region? Or would hardliners carry the day, resorting to one of the last levers Iran has – its nuclear program?

“If you're in Iran, you have to make a strategic decision,” Roule said. “‘If we restart the program, will the United States and Israel attack?’ They've got to ask, ‘If we do this, will we survive?’”

U.S. President Donald Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky meet in the Oval Office at the White House on February 28, 2025 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Andrew Harnik/Getty Images)

Zelensky’s Oval Office Blowup – and the Rollercoaster that Followed

For Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky, 2025 brought wild swings of fortune, on the battlefield and in the global halls of power.

An Oval Office meeting on February 28 marked the low point – the encounter during which President Trump and Vice President JD Vance berated Zelensky for what they saw as insufficient gratitude towards the U.S. and – in Trump’s words – a failure to understand that Ukraine “has no cards” in the war against Russia.

The meeting “was a horrible disappointment and almost a shock to the system,” former NATO Supreme Allied Commander General Philip Breedlove told us that day. “There was only one winner…and that is Vladimir Putin.”

But fortune’s wheel took turns in Zelensky’s favor. Trump’s subsequent meetings with Zelensky – at the Vatican in April and the June NATO summit – warmed the relationship; the NATO summit itself saw Trump pivot back toward the alliance and its support for Ukraine; and then – in a startling outburst – Trump in July turned his ire towards Russian President Vladimir Putin. “We get a lot of bull**** thrown at us by Putin,” Trump said.

Alas for Zelensky, at year’s end the pendulum looked to have swung back once more. Trump’s envoys were again pushing Russia-friendly peace proposals, which included the surrender of territory beyond what Russia has already occupied. In an interview with Politico, Trump said of Zelensky, “He’s gonna have to get on the ball and start accepting things…cause he’s losing.” It sounded like a gentler version of the treatment Zelensky had gotten on that February day in the Oval Office.

Photo by Wojtek Laski/Getty Images

A Tu-95 bomber aircraft takes off for a night patrol flies out of Engels-2 airbase on August 7, 2008 in Engels, Russia. (Photo by Wojtek Laski/Getty Images)

Operation “Spiderweb” – and What Came After

It was Ukraine’s greatest military success in 2025 – and it happened far from Ukrainian territory. An operation dubbed “Spiderweb” smuggled 117 drone weapons into Russia and unleashed them against several airfields on June 1, damaging or destroying dozens of Russian warplanes. The mission was months in the planning, the drones were smuggled on prefabricated cabins disguised as hunting lodges, and unsuspecting Russians were paid to drive the trucks that moved the cabins.

“Spiderweb” showcased Ukraine's special operations capabilities and was followed by more long-range sabotage. As The Cipher Brief reported, subsequent attacks targeted Russian refineries and other sites tied to the oil sector.

“It’s very impressive,” Balazs Jarabik, a former European Union diplomat and analyst for RPolitik, told The Cipher Brief. The energy-sector attacks, he said, were “making the Russian war effort more expensive, and creating shortages so the Russian people feel the pain of the war.”

By year’s end, Ukraine had carried out an estimated 160 strikes on Russia’s oil sector – the campaign reached as far as the Siberian city of Tyumen, some 1200 miles east of Moscow, and included strikes against vessels alleged to be working in Russia’s so-called "shadow fleet” of tankers carrying sanctioned oil.

“Ukraine’s theory of victory now includes destroying Russia’s energy sector,” Lt. Gen. Ben Hodges, a former commander of U.S. Army Forces in Europe, told The Cipher Brief. “They’ve developed capabilities that can reach great distances with precision, exposing Russia’s vulnerability – its inability to protect critical infrastructure across its vast landscape.”

Need a daily dose of reality on national and global security issues? Subscriber to The Cipher Brief’s Nightcap newsletter, delivering expert insights on today’s events – right to your inbox. Sign up for free today.

Palestinians flock to the Netzarim Corridor to receive limited food supplies as hunger deepens across Gaza amid ongoing Israeli attacks and blockade, on August 4, 2025. (Photo by Hassan Jedi/Anadolu via Getty Images)

A Peace Deal for Gaza

It was President Trump’s signature diplomatic achievement: a truce in Gaza reached just days before the two-year anniversary of Hamas’ October 7, 2023 massacre.

The deal’s first phase took hold, albeit in violent fits and starts – the return of hostages, the freeing of Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails, and a fresh flow of international aid for Gaza. But that may have been the easy part. As the year drew to a close, there were sporadic breaks in the ceasefire, and the fate of the deal’s next phases remained unclear.

The Trump administration’s plan for Gaza included the deployment of an international stabilization force and creation of an international “Board of Peace” (led by Trump himself) to oversee the implementation of the next phases – the transition of governance to Palestinians not affiliated with Hamas, and the beginning of a multi-billion-dollar reconstruction. The deal also included language offering a conditional pathway to Palestinian autonomy over its territories.

But as of mid-December, the announcement of the Board had been delayed, and the New York Times reported that while the U.S. was pressing other nations to contribute troops to a 8,000-member force for Gaza, it had yet to win any commitments. Countries were said to be worried their troops might be ensnared in fresh fighting; and the UN Security Council resolution to deploy the force gave no precise terms of engagement. Nor was there agreement on the makeup of a transitional government.

As these hurdles appeared, reports suggested Hamas was rebuilding its presence in the territory.

“Who’s really calling the shots there?” Ralph Goff, a former CIA Senior Executive, asked at The Cipher Brief’s annual Threat Conference, speaking of the uncertainty inside Gaza. “I remain pretty pessimistic on the idea of any kind of internal governing force being able to compete with Hamas at this point.”

By year’s end, two things were clear: the Gaza ceasefire itself was a welcome achievement after two years of carnage; and uncertainty hung over the truce’s critical next phases. This was one major story that will continue to unfold — with hope but also apprehension — well into 2026.

The commissioning and flag-presenting ceremony of the Fujian, China's first aircraft carrier equipped with electromagnetic catapults, is held at a naval port in Sanya City, south China's Hainan Province, on Nov. 5, 2025. (Photo by Li Gang/Xinhua via Getty Images)

China's Military Boom

China held a “Victory Day” parade in September – its way of marking 80 years since the end of World War II – and it was above all a show of military prowess. 12,000 troops marched alongside an arsenal of newly-minted battle tanks and rocket launchers, drone weapons and hypersonic missiles, and more. It was a fitting symbol for a year in which China turbocharged its military buildup.

As The Cipher Brief reported, China took a “leap forward” in drone weaponry in 2025: a huge new “stealth endurance drone,” mosquito-sized “micro drones,” and the deployment of a new “drone mothership.” The latter, known as the Jiu Tian, was billed as the world’s largest drone carrier – an 11-ton aircraft that is itself an uncrewed aerial vehicle. According to the South China Morning Post, the Jiu Tian can hold 100 smaller UAVs and carry them more than 4,000 miles.

“They have the production, they have large inventory and now they also have the AI,” Dr. Michael Raska, a professor at the Military Transformation Programme at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, told The Cipher Brief. “With all these combined, they have been experiencing a leap forward in the quality and quantity of all their drones.”

China also made leaps in maritime power. In November, the People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) commissioned the 80,000-ton Fujian, the country’s third aircraft carrier and largest to date. A week later came news that the Sichuan, one of the world’s largest amphibious assault ships, would be ready for deployment next year.

Retired Rear Admiral Mike Studeman, a former Commander of the Office of Naval Intelligence, told The Cipher Brief that China had achieved its longstanding goal of building “a world-class Navy,” which had surpassed the size of the U.S. fleet.

“It's not just not in the numbers, it's in the quality,” RADM Studeman said. “These ships are modern by any standard.”

“It's impressive,” another former Rear Admiral, Mark Montgomery, told The Cipher Brief. “They're building a hundred merchant ships for every one we build, and two warships for every one we build.”

The Trump Administration issued an executive order in April to jumpstart the U.S. shipbuilding industry and restore “American maritime dominance,” but experts said the U.S. faces an uphill road. As The Cipher Brief reported, China is on track to have a 425-ship fleet by 2030, while the U.S. Navy currently has fewer than 300 deployable battle-force vessels – a total which may drop as aging ships are retired faster than new ones are put to water.

Police cars are seen on November 17, 2025 close to the railways that were damaged in an explosion on the rail line in Mika, next to Garwolin, central Poland, after the line presumably was targeted in a sabotage act. (Photo by Wojtek Radwanski/AFP via Getty Images)

Europe Wakes Up to the “Gray-Zone” War

2025 was the year when Europe formally recognized – and began to respond to – a growing threat from the east: the so-called “gray-zone” war attributed to Moscow.

These attacks mushroomed in 2025 – from cyberattacks to railway bombings, the cutting of undersea cables to drone incursions into Poland and the Baltic states, and more. Experts said they were designed to be difficult to trace, and non-kinetic, so as not to draw a military response; as The Cipher Brief reported, the Kremlin was likely “aiming to create disruption without triggering escalation.”

But there were also signs that European leaders were waking up to the gravity of the threat.

NATO’s Secretary General Mark Rutte warned repeatedly of the dangers, and the alliance moved to improve detection and deterrence measures.

Nations took steps of their own. Finland acquired hundreds of drone jammers and outfitted border forces with high-end drone detectors; leaders from Poland, the Czech Republic and the Baltic states said they might shoot down Russian aircraft if Moscow continued its provocations; in a September speech to the United Nations, Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski went so far as to warn Moscow that “if another missile or aircraft enters our space without permission, deliberately or by mistake, and gets shot down and the wreckage falls on NATO territory, please don’t come here to whine about it.”

Even nations far from the Russian frontier were waking up to the dangers; Ireland unveiled a €1.7 billion, five-year defense plan that included systems to counter drones and protect undersea cables from Russian sabotage. And in her first public speech, MI6 chief Blaise Metreweli described the gray-zone threat bluntly: “The new frontline is everywhere,” she said.

Writing in The Cipher Brief, former Senior CIA Executive Dave Pitts stressed the need “to change the risk calculation.”

“We need to think of deterrence and response as a team sport - an Article 5 mindset,” Pitts wrote. “Gray-zone attacks that go unanswered reward our adversaries and reinforce the idea that there are more gains than risk…and encourage more attacks.”

Sign up for the Cyber Initiatives Group Sunday newsletter, delivering expert-level insights on the cyber and tech stories of the day – directly to your inbox. Sign up for the CIG newsletter today.

Heavy trucks haul earth and rock at the construction site of Wubian Xiangshang Reservoir on the top of Pandao Mountain in Zhangye, China, on March 3, 2025. (Photo by Costfoto/NurPhoto via Getty Images)

America’s Rare Earth Crisis

Not long ago, rare earth minerals rarely made global headlines. 2025 was the year when that changed. And for the U.S. government, it was also the year in which rare earths took center stage.

Two basic facts underscored the urgency: rare earths are essential building blocks for everything from smart phones to home appliances to cars to all manner of military equipment and weapon systems; and China now produces an estimated 60 percent of the world’s rare earths and processes nearly 90 percent of them. The U.S. Geological Survey said that in 2024, the U.S. imported more than 95 percent of the total rare earths that it consumed.

Those realities spurred multiple U.S. efforts to change the dynamic: deals with Australia and Japan; negotiations with other resource-rich countries, including Congo, Indonesia, Kazakhstan and Malaysia; and threats to annex mineral-rich Greenland. Even the negotiations with Russia and Ukraine reportedly included plans for U.S. firms to invest in rare-earth extraction in Russia.

China’s imposition of rare-earth export restrictions only heightened the concerns – and while those were lifted as part of a deal with Washington, the message was clear: China’s rare-earths dominance now poses a huge problem for the U.S., and gives China a powerful lever in any future negotiations with Washington.

Susan Miller, a Former Assistant Director of the CIA’s China Mission Center, called the rare earth access “vital” to U.S. technology and national security.

“We democracies must do more to assure we have continuous access to these metals, and we also need to start producing more,” Miller told The Cipher Brief. “All democracies must focus on this issue; we must act now.”

Then-National Security Agency Director General Timothy Haugh, FBI Director Kash Patel, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, Central Intelligence Agency Director John Ratcliffe, and then-Defense Intelligence Agency Director Jeffrey Kruse appear during a Senate Committee on Intelligence Hearing on March 25, 2025 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Andrew Harnik/Getty Images)

The Overhaul of the Intelligence Community

Before his return to the White House, Donald Trump promised to remake the U.S. intelligence community (IC). “We will clean out all of the corrupt actors in our national security and intelligence apparatus,” Trump said soon after the 2024 election.“The departments and agencies that have been weaponized will be completely overhauled.”

In 2025, it was a promise he kept.

There were widespread cuts in staffing at the CIA, FBI, and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), and the biggest reductions appeared to come at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), which coordinates the 18 agencies of the IC. Roughly 40% of ODNI staff were cut, including the elimination or consolidation of the Foreign Malign Influence Center and some cyber threat units into other agencies.

Other high-level dismissals drew particular attention: National Intelligence Council acting head Mike Collins was fired after presenting an assessment on Venezuela that contradicted the White House line; and NSA Director Gen. Timothy Haugh lost his job after Trump “influencer” Laura Loomer questioned his loyalty to the administration.

Depending who you asked, the changes were a much-needed streamlining of a bloated intelligence apparatus; a reorganization to focus less on Russia and China and more on border security and drug trafficking; or a Trump-driven retaliation against institutions and individuals he had blamed for investigations or views with which he disagreed.

The high-level firings troubled several experts. Jon Darby, a longtime NSA veteran who served as director of operations, told The Cipher Brief he was “very disheartened” by Gen. Haugh’s ouster. “We need an explanation of the underlying rationale,” he said.

Beth Sanner, a Cipher Brief expert who served as Deputy Director for National Intelligence at ODNI, warned of a broader politicization of the IC.

“The intelligence community is not like asking people to hit the easy button and the ‘I agree with you’ button,” she said. “That's not our role. Our role is to say what we think and why we think it…The intelligence community isn't always right. But when done correctly and behind closed doors, I cannot understand why anybody would say that presenting an intelligence assessment that disagreed with policy needed to stop, or was an example of deep state. It's not. And it's really important.”

All that said, the nature of the IC makes it difficult, even at the end of a tumultuous year for the various agencies, to know precisely what the impact of the “overhaul” has been – or will be in the future.

Fingers on laptop. (Photo by Silas Stein/picture alliance via Getty Images)

A Cybersecurity “Watershed”

It seemed like a headline from a science fiction journal. An artificial intelligence system had conducted a large-scale espionage operation.

But it wasn’t science fiction – or fake news. The AI giant Anthropic confirmed the first real-world case of the use of an AI system to do exactly that.

“Today marks a watershed in cybersecurity,” Jennifer Ewbank, a former Deputy Director of the Central Intelligence Agency for Digital Innovation, told The Cipher Brief. “AI has now crossed from tool to operator,” Ewbank said, “blurring the line between human intent and machine execution...a threshold has been crossed.”

Anthropic said that Chinese state-sponsored hackers had exploited its Claude AI system to carry out cyberattacks on corporations and foreign governments in September, and that the hackers had succeeded with only minimal human oversight. Anthropic’s threat intelligence chief said the campaign had targeted about 30 entities, and represented a new level of AI-enabled hacking. The hackers posed as security auditors and successfully breached several systems, accessing privileged accounts and private data before being blocked.

The good news? The number of breaches and scale of the damage appeared small, and no U.S. government agencies were compromised. But the incident gave ammunition to doomsayers who have warned of AI nightmares – and showed that AI is already a valuable tool for hackers and state-backed cyber operations.

Experts called it the latest code-red warning for securing AI systems and deploying effective cyber defenses. As Ewbank put it, “This is no longer a hypothetical threat being researched in a lab.”

Read more expert-driven national security insights, perspective and analysis in The Cipher Brief.

The wars in Ukraine and Gaza must stop. Russia’s February 2022 invasion of Ukraine, a sovereign nation with 1994 security assurances from Russia, has killed or maimed tens of thousands of combatants and civilians. Efforts by President Donald Trump to end this war have failed, with an emboldened Vladimir Putin escalating hostilities in Ukraine, while probing the credibility of NATO, flying drones into Poland and Romania and recently violating Estonia’s airspace. This is the Putin who lamented the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 and vowed to recreate the Russian Empire. And that’s what he’s doing. Georgia and Crimea in 2008 and 2014 was a prelude to his invasion of Ukraine in 2022. The Baltic states - Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania – are next, on Putin’s quest to recreate the Russian Empire.

It's obvious what Putin is doing. He got away with Georgia and Crimea and Putin is confident he’ll prevail in Ukraine with minimal consequences. So, what could the UN do to sanction Russia for its violation of Ukraine’s sovereignty? Indeed, there should be an outcry from the UN demanding that Mr. Putin halt his invasion of Ukraine and enter negotiations with Kyiv.

Iran’s continued refusal to permit UN nuclear inspections and refusal to resume nuclear talks with the U.S. resulted in the reimposition — on September 28 — of sanctions lifted in 2015. So, given that Iran has not changed its attitude and in fact has become more defiant, “snap back” sanctions ban nuclear enrichment, establish an arms embargo and ban tests and transfers of ballistic missiles. It’s clear that Iran wants the option to acquire nuclear weapons capability. A nuclear-armed Iran will be an existential threat to Israel -- an adversary Iran wants to annihilate – and the region.

But for Iran it’s more than acquiring nuclear weapons. Iran is a state sponsor of terrorism, working with its proxies – Hezbollah, Hamas, Houthis -- to destabilize and terrorize the region. On September 17, the Department of State also designated three Iraqi militia groups aligned with Iran as terrorist organizations. These terrorist groups have attacked the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad and bases hosting U.S. and Canadian forces.

Indeed, the human rights situation in Iran is equally dismal. The 2009 presidential election protests and the 2022 killing of Mahsa Amini by the so-called morality police for incorrectly wearing her head scarf sparked national protests that were brutally suppressed by the ruling theocracy. Nationwide arrests and executions were conducted by a weak and corrupt theocracy that was threatened by the public and its outcry for justice and liberty.

The Cipher Brief brings expert-level context to national and global security stories. It’s never been more important to understand what’s happening in the world. Upgrade your access to exclusive content by becoming a subscriber.

Ensuring that food and water are available to the people of Gaza is a priority objective, as is ending this bloody war. The onslaught in Gaza was caused by Hamas’s October 7 attacks that killed approximately 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and the abduction of 251 hostages. This was the bloodiest day for Israel since its independence on May 14, 1948. Indeed, Hamas is a terrorist organization closely affiliated with Iran, which provides Hamas with the weaponry and support needed for its acts of terrorism.

The situation in the South China Sea could escalate quickly between China and the Philippines. The irony is that a 2016 ruling by a UN-backed arbitration tribunal invalidated China’s expansive claims in the South China Sea, ruling overwhelmingly with the Philippines. The ruling was deemed final and binding, although China has rejected the ruling and continues to defy it.

These are just some of the national security issues the UN should openly discuss and attempt to resolve. The wars and turmoil in Myanmar, Sudan, Yemen, Haiti and Libya also require immediate UN attention. This is the mission of the UN.

This column by Cipher Brief Expert Joseph Detrani was first published in The Washington Times.

Are you Subscribed to The Cipher Brief’s Digital Channel on YouTube? There is no better place to get clear perspectives from deeply experienced national security experts.

Read more expert-driven national security insights, perspective and analysis in The Cipher Brief because National Security is Everyone’s Business.

EXPERT PERSPECTIVE – The White House rolled out a 20-point plan on Monday calling for a permanent truce in Israel's war against Hamas that calls for the release of hostages. President Trump is calling the plan the most significant effort yet to secure peace in the region.

Cipher Brief Expert General Jack Keane (Ret.), a trusted advisor to the president who declined multiple overtures to serve as U.S. Secretary of Defense during the first Trump administration, met recently in the region with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, President Isaac Herzog and Minister of Strategic Affairs Ron Dermer as well as senior IDF leaders to talk about what is needed for lasting peace and how to curb Iran's influence via proxies like Hamas.

After those meetings, we asked Gen. Keane for his assessment of the situation on the ground, whether he believes Israel is capable of sustaining wars on three separate fronts (Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Houthis in Yemen), and whether he believes Hamas will ever accept a deal that requires them to surrender power. Our conversation has been lightly edited for length.

THE INTERVIEW

Kelly: As you’ve just returned from the Middle East where you engaged in a number of high-level meetings with senior Israeli leaders, what is your raw assessment of events on the ground?

Gen. Keane: There's a major paradigm shift strategically taking place in the Middle East as a result of Israel’s - supported by the United States - domination of Iran and its proxies. And it's hard to overstate the significance of it. The reality is that it's a sea change that's going to be felt for decades, and there is such huge opportunity here - once and for all - to stabilize the Middle East. But it’s an opportunity that requires follow-up with the Iranians to keep the pressure on economically and diplomatically. Iran is so much more vulnerable now after the defeat that Israel has handed to them.

Israel also needs to stay focused on the proxies - obviously Hamas, and hopefully, we will see a deal here pretty soon. Either they surrender or Israel will force them to give up power and get the hostages back as well.

Israel also must continue to push back on the Houthis. While we were there, there were three attacks in the vicinity where we were staying, during a nine-day trip. The Houthis are launching individual missiles or drones, but not in volleys. These are more - in military terms - harassment attacks, but Israel is pushing back hard on Houthis by destroying their valuable infrastructure.

Hezbollah has been completely decapitated, and every time Hezbollah tries to move into Southern Lebanon, Israel conducts airstrikes as they just absolutely refuse to let them rebuild in that area. Israel has conducted over a thousand airstrikes to make sure they don’t reconstitute in the South without much media coverage. When I met with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, I told him that I think there are two major lessons learned here for Israel. One is that you can never, ever again, permit Iran's proxies to build up capability on your border. And that is obviously significantly for Hamas, as well as Hezbollah.

And the second is that you've got to work yourself into a position where you're much more independent of the United States. I said, "You can't afford, going forward, to go through these political swings that we have now in national security and foreign policy in America where one Administration fully supports with everything you need and another Administration holds back what you need.

During the Cold War, the U.S. had a fairly consistent policy whether the Democrats or Republicans were in charge. For sure, some of the methods were changed from one administration to the next, but the objectives were pretty much the same: contain the Soviet Union.

Recently, we’ve gone through major swings. The previous administration - much more so than the American people realize - pulled the plug on a lot of the vital ammunition and weapons that Israel needed, and then they micromanaged how they conduct a war and this was being led by civilians out of the White House who had absolutely no competence in doing something like that, and Israel can't afford to go through another swing like that.

So, my advice is to get as close to being completely independent of the United States for weapons and ammunition but not independent of the United States in terms of geopolitical support or moral support, to be sure.

But the opportunities today are pretty significant and they're already taking place.

There is now work toward normalization of relations with Lebanon and Lebanon is talking about disarming Hezbollah. Who would've thought that something like that could have taken place just a couple of years ago?

Bashar al-Assad is gone in Syria and in Israel, Ron Dermer, the Minister of Strategic Affairs in Israel, who I spoke to at length, is working very hard to develop a security agreement with Syria and the new regime. They have their eyes wide open. They know that Ahmed Al-Sharaa is former al-Qaeda and that organization is still supporting him, but he's trying to consolidate all the different factions in Syria. And Israel doesn’t want any of those factions coming south and interfering with their security.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) took me into Syria to show me their defensive positions that they've established there. That makes some sense. I doubt if they will give any of that up in this security agreement, but the fact that there are serious negotiations going on is pretty significant.

In Gaza, hopefully we will get a deal here pretty soon, and that will certainly enable a lot of other things to happen once the fighting stops. But the Abraham Accords, despite the attack on the Qataris, despite the prolonged and protracted war in Gaza, the feedback that I got from Israeli leadership is that the Arabs are still interested in normalizing the relationship. They know that it's going to add to peace and stability in the region. It’s not necessarily easy, but it's something that has huge strategic potential for the future.

I think Turkey is a real challenge. President Recip Tayyip Erdogan had great influence on Al-Sharaa seizing power. I think he wants to control Syrian leadership and he's anti-Israel, he's pro-Hamas, he's Muslim Brotherhood, and he has been a thorn in the side of Democratic and Republican administrations for years, despite the fact that he's a member of NATO. I think when we're dealing with Erdogan, even though he's been there longer than we would like to see, we have to look beyond him and look at the strategic place that Turkey holds in the Middle East and in Europe. They're the second-largest military in Europe, after Russia. The largest military member of NATO in Europe, obviously the United States is more powerful than them. So, they have huge capability, and while Erdogan frustrates us quite a bit, I think we need to figure out a way to work with him in our interest and Israel's interest despite his anti-Israel attitude.

And as much as that may be an opportunity, it's probably more of a challenge. President Trump is cutting the deal with him in the memorandum of understanding to build small modular nuclear reactors and the large nuclear reactors in the future. Turkey has one that was built by Russia and the fact that we're trying to pull him away from Russia, that's a good thing and could create some balance. If we just shut him down and don't want to deal with him because we don't like his attitude on a number of things, he'll just turn to Russia and China and that doesn't make any sense, strategically.

My overall take on this, is that if we continue to stay engaged and really finish Iran’s ability to be a destabilizer in the region, then the potential for stability and growth in the region - in the way that everybody's been hoping for, is really on the horizon.

The Cipher Brief Threat Conference is happening October 19-22 in Sea Island, GA. The world's leading minds on national security from both the public and private sectors will be there. Will you? Apply for a seat at the table today.

Kelly: Prime Minister Netanyahu was just in New York at the United Nations saying that Israel must finish the job in Gaza. You mentioned an agreement on the table. Do you have anything that makes you think Hamas would agree to it?

Gen. Keane: I don't know. I have great skepticism. We have been here so many times, where the United States, Israel and the Qataris have said, "We're really close to a deal." And then at the last minute, Hamas finds some reason to reject it. Hamas' real issue is that they want to stay in control of Gaza. Israel does not want that to happen, the United States does not want that to happen, and usually they foreclose on not making the deal because they don't want to give up control. Hopefully this time they're willing to, and that control would turn over to some representation of the Palestinians and Arab authorities and would allow for some kind of a stabilization force. Prime Minister Netanyahu has said time and time again, "I don't want to occupy Gaza. That's not in Israel's interest.”

Kelly: Yeah. Let's switch for just a moment to Russia. There’s been a change in the relationship between President Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin over the last several months. President Trump has shown his growing frustration with Putin's lack of interest in actually ending the war in Ukraine. Where do you see the path forward there?

Gen. Keane: Just as you say, it's been eight months, and the president has admitted that he thought this was going to be easier than how it has turned out because he had such a positive relationship with Putin. But Putin's strategic objectives are very clear. He wants to take control of Ukraine, put in place a stooge government and expand into Eastern Europe, and he's dead set on that. Nothing to date has convinced him to change those objectives. In other words, he believes continuing the war is in his national interest so that Moscow can achieve those objectives, and nothing we have done has dissuaded him from that. So, what the president has done, I think, is to be patient with him, despite the fact that Putin delays, obfuscates, tries to confuse, et cetera. The Alaska Summit was a pivotal moment. There is no doubt that Putin made an overture to President Trump that he was willing to meet with President Zelensky following the summit, not immediately, but in a short period of time and that he was also willing to have a three-party meeting to include President Trump. The very next day, Putin’s spokesperson said that there are no plans for a meeting between President Zelenskyy and President Putin, and if there were going to be plans, there would have to be some conditions established and negotiated before there would ever be a meeting such as that.

I think based on that, the president realized that Putin continues to lie consistently and especially during the last couple of months of the negotiations. And even post Alaska Summit, Putin has done what? He has militarily escalated the war, not a little bit, but quite significantly and his attacks are largely focused against the Ukrainian people with hundreds and hundreds of drones and ballistic missiles a night, raining down on them and hitting their energy infrastructure. He knows winter is coming and he wants the lights to be out and the heat to be off and for them to suffer.

And as of right now, there is somewhere in the neighborhood of 11,000 to 15,000 kidnapped Ukrainian children who are still in Russia's hands. We know this from multiple international sources and that, in of itself, is a war crime and really horrific. So, when you put all of that together; the delay tactics, the lies that he's been telling the President, and the military escalation, even as the president is trying to bring him to the negotiating table, he can’t be trusted.

Russia is weak economically, weak militarily, and they can be stopped. Not only can they be stopped, but they can be overtaken by the Ukrainian military. That is not a new thought process for the president. What's new now is that he is talking about it publicly. I can tell you for a fact that he's known for some time how weak Russia is economically and how weak they are militarily. Moscow is conducting a massive narrative that they're succeeding on offensive operations. “They're overwhelming the Ukrainians. It's just a matter of time. This is a war of attrition. The West, the United States and the Europeans, I can outlast them. They will eventually give in and we will win.” That has been his narrative. And now the president, I think, has made the decision to give up on Putin, and he's obviously talking to the public more about his perception of Putin, his perception of Russia, and the status that they have. That's step one. He hasn't changed any policy, but he's changed the narrative.

What remains to be seen is step two, and is the president going to continue what he said he would do, which is increase military and economic pressure on Russia? Military pressure could stop Russia cold from taking any more territory. And by the way, in the last two years, they've only increased the territory under their control by only 1% out of the 20% they control. And the president could also permit Ukraine to attack deep into Russia with increased long-range weapons and remove any restrictions on the use of those weapons. That would be significant military pressure.

We've been talking about economic pressure for weeks. Europeans must stop buying oil and gas from Russia. It’s shameful that they're still doing it, and very hypocritical. As the president says, "You are fueling Putin's war at the same time that you're supporting Ukraine. It makes no sense."

And then the United States needs to do the same in terms of sanctions and tariffs. That would be a part of a step two that makes the most sense. The sooner we get about that, the better. The president has said that in the past, and I believe that is what should be done. It's his decision, certainly, and we'll see what's going to happen next.

Kelly: As you mentioned, winter is coming, and Vladimir Putin knows how to take advantage of that time. How have you seen Russia expand military actions over the past few weeks?

Gen. Keane: We saw within the last week, Russia’s military activities escalating into violating Poland's airspace with war-like instruments. In this case, 19 drones penetrated Polish airspace and there was a smaller incursion in Romania and fighter jets violating Estonia's airspace as well. NATO must come to the conclusion that this activity is an Article 5 violation, and they have every right to shoot at those aircraft if they do it again. If they don't do that, if they wring their hands and continue to talk about it and push back rhetorically on Russia, what they'll see next is not a handful of drones but hundreds of drones and eventually a thousand drones that would absolutely overwhelm all of their air defense systems. These are acts of war, and they should be responded in kind. That doesn't mean that Poland's going to declare war on Russia, but I am suggesting they have every right to shoot at somebody who violates their airspace with warplanes. And that will get Putin's attention. Otherwise, if we don't do it and we just continue to use rhetoric, Putin will expand to other countries and increase the scale of the attack to weaken NATO and force the Europeans to focus more on their defense and less on Ukraine’s.

Putin is not reckless. He's a killer. He's a thug. He's ruthless, but he's not reckless. He's actually quite deliberate and methodical. We've been watching him for 25 years. Those of us who know him can almost call his plays because he's so predictable. Push back on him with strength and he will shut it down.

Updated to reflect White House release of the 20-point plan on Monday.

Are you Subscribed to The Cipher Brief’s Digital Channel on YouTube? There is no better place to get clear perspectives from deeply experienced national security experts.

Read more expert-driven national security insights, perspective and analysis in The Cipher Brief because National Security is Everyone’s Business.