Welcome back to Foreign Policy’s Situation Report. Rishi is on a much-deserved vacation this week, so FP’s Sam Skove has graciously stepped in to co-pilot this week’s edition with John.
Alright, here’s what’s on tap for the day: The Iran war remains in a holding pattern, U.S. troop commitments to NATO shift, and John speaks with Czech Foreign Minister Petr Macinka.
The Iran war is beginning to feel a bit like the movie Groundhog Day, with nearly the same series of events happening over and over again. For weeks now, we’ve seen the United States and Iran trade strikes amid a fragile cease-fire as U.S. President Donald Trump fluctuates between threatening to resume fighting and expressing optimism that the two sides will come to some kind of agreement to end the war. Several times, Trump and his advisors have suggested that a deal was in reach, only for no such deal to materialize.
That cycle seems to be playing out again this week. On Thursday, several outlets reported that U.S. and Iranian negotiators have reached an agreement on a 60-day memorandum of understanding that would extend the cease-fire and see the two sides begin talks on Iran’s nuclear program. The catch, though, is that neither Trump nor Iran’s leadership have approved it yet. (At a White House press conference on Thursday, U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent refused to confirm that a deal had been reached, telling reporters that “it is all going to be the president’s decision.”)
Meanwhile, the United States and Iran are continuing to exchange fire, which could potentially derail the negotiations altogether. In retaliation for recent U.S. strikes, Iran on Thursday launched a ballistic missile toward a U.S. military base in Kuwait. The missile was intercepted, but U.S. Central Command decried the attack as an “egregious ceasefire violation.”
The Lebanon problem. Further complicating the situation is Israel’s war against Hezbollah in Lebanon, where there is also a flimsy cease-fire that constantly appears to be on the verge of collapsing. That conflict has had a devastating impact, killing more than 3,200 people in Lebanon and displacing hundreds of thousands more.
Though the Trump administration has sought to portray this conflict as a separate issue from the Iran war, the two are fundamentally linked. And even if there is ultimately a peace agreement between Iran and the United States, the ongoing hostilities in Lebanon could threaten to unravel any deal. When the Iran war cease-fire began last month, a disagreement over whether Lebanon was included almost collapsed the truce.
Hezbollah and Israel appear determined to continue fighting, even as the Israeli and Lebanese governments participate in peace talks in Washington. Hezbollah is defying calls to disarm, and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is under pressure from far-right members of his coalition to keep taking the fight to the group. Israel conducted a fresh wave of strikes on the country this week, including in Beirut. Hezbollah has also continued to conduct attacks across Israel’s border while targeting Israeli troops in southern Lebanon.
Trump’s shadow. With so much up in the air, it’s difficult to anticipate precisely how and when the Iran war will end. And looking to Trump for a sign of what might happen next is about as reliable a bellwether as a groundhog’s shadow is for predicting when spring will begin. On Wednesday, Trump said that he’s in no rush to reach a deal, even as the war continues to fuel an energy crisis and cause pain at the pump for U.S. voters with midterm elections on the horizon.
And as negotiators work to craft an agreement that would be acceptable to both Tehran and Washington, Trump keeps throwing new elements into the mix. On Monday, he posted on Truth Social that he was “mandatorily requesting” that a number of Muslim-majority countries “immediately” join the Abraham Accords to establish diplomatic relations with Israel in return for his efforts to make a deal with Iran. The demand is extraordinarily unlikely to happen, and it is indicative of the myriad ways that Trump’s erratic leadership style has made ending the war more difficult.
Charles McLaughlin, senior director for European and Russian affairs at the U.S. National Security Council, will leave his role in mid-June, when his temporary assignment there expires, a White House official told SitRep on the condition of anonymity. Laughlin had been detailed to the council from his job as a professor at the National Defense University, and he will return to the U.S. Defense Department.
“The White House appreciates all of his contributions leading the Europe and Russia directorate on President Trump’s national security team, and we wish him well,” the White House official said.
The official did not say who might replace him.
The upcoming move comes after recent news that Mike Needham, a top aide to U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, will replace Robert Gabriel as deputy national security advisor. One possible replacement for McLaughlin could be Chris Curran, a deputy to Needham who previously served as a member of the U.S. negotiating team to end the war in Ukraine.
U.S. cuts NATO commitments. The Pentagon has told European allies that it is cutting the number of forces it would send during a crisis or war, German news outlet Der Spiegelreported, forcing a likely rewrite of NATO’s operational plans should Russia seek to expand its war in Ukraine.
Under the plan, the United States would cut the number of strategic bombers by half, the number of fighter jets by a third, send less destroyers, and no submarines, Der Spiegel reported. Politico separately reported that the Pentagon did not share a timeline for the reduction, although officials have reportedly stated in the past that Europe should be ready to lead its defense by 2027.
The move comes on the heels of several other recent changes, including a drawdown of troops in Germany, canceled plans to deploy long-range missiles to Germany, troop withdrawals from Romania, and the brief cancellation of a rotation of troops to Poland.
“This is totally in line with what we’ve been hearing from the beginning,” one European defense official, who was not authorized to speak publicly, told SitRep. Still, that doesn’t mean Europe will be happy about it, as it will place even more weight on European countries that have only recently begun to increase their defense budgets from a post-Cold War low.
Missile shortfall. Stocks of the key Patriot anti-air defense missile will take three more years to recover to their pre-Iran war stocks, according to new analysis from the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
Patriot missiles are one of the few systems that can defeat ballistic missiles, which can drop more than a thousand pounds of explosives on targets. Stockpiles of the Tomahawk attack missile and THAAD air defense missile will also take three or more years to reach current levels, the report found. Standard missiles, used both in attack and defense roles, will take two years to replace.
The missile shortage comes even as active conflicts, like the Russia-Ukraine war, and prospective ones, like a potential war over Taiwan, encourage high demand among U.S. allies.
A man looks at the damages at the site of an Israeli strike in Tyre, southern Lebanon, on May 28.Kawnat Haju/AFP via Getty Images
John sat down with Czech Foreign Minister Petr Macinka in New York City on Tuesday. Macinka, who was in town to address the United Nations Security Council, talked about the rippling consequences of the Iran war, noting that gas prices are “quite high.” But he defended Trump’s decision to go to war. “There’s a lot of critics of president Trump and the United States after they started this operation against Iran, but they probably forgot something,” Macinka said. That something was the Iranian regime’s deadly crackdown on anti-government protests in late 2025 and early 2026.
“We [in Europe] were very serious about condemning what was happening in Iran—their acts against their own society,” Macinka said. “And, of course, we see the seriousness of the [nuclear] proliferation threat from Iran. In this respect, I can say that Trump only did what several American presidents before him were not able to do. The Iranian regime is very dangerous.”
Macinka said that while politicians in many countries have said “‘this is not our war,’ or ‘this is not our problem,’” he believes that “it is our problem, and we should do something to solve it” so that it doesn’t morph into another prolonged conflict like Ukraine.
Friday, May 29: Pakistani Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar is set to visit Washington to meet with Rubio.
Saturday, May 30: Malta is scheduled to hold a snap general election.
Sunday, May 31: Colombia is set to hold presidential elections.
Guinea is set to hold parliamentary elections.
Monday, June 1: Ethiopia is scheduled to hold legislative elections.
500,000—The number of Russian troops killed in the war in Ukraine so far, according to the chief of Britain’s signals intelligence agency, Anne Keast-Butler. The number exceeds a recent report based on public records by Russian independent media, which put the figure at 352,000.
“He loves war.”
—Trump, speaking on Wednesday about U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth
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A former CIA officer was arrested last week after FBI agents found more than 300 gold bars worth over $40 million in his home, according to court records revealed this week by NBC News. The man, David Rush, allegedly requested the gold bars as well as “a significant quantity of foreign currency” from the CIA “for work-related expenses,” which he was given. The documents say he then took some of the haul home “for personal gain.” Rush is also accused of submitting false education records over the course of multiple applications to the agency.
We have so many questions.
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