Senior U.S. naval commanders are warning that China’s rapidly expanding submarine force presents a mounting strategic challenge, as Beijing develops next-generation ballistic missile submarines capable of striking larger portions of the U.S. mainland from waters closer to its own shores, the Wall Street Journal reported.
The United States has closed its embassy and consulates in Saudi Arabia and suspended operations at its embassy in Kuwait as Iranian retaliatory strikes continued across the Gulf region.
An Israeli defense source confirmed Tuesday that the Israeli Air Force struck a building in the Iranian city of Qom where senior clerics had reportedly gathered to elect a successor to Iran’s slain supreme leader.
Iran was weighing its options Tuesday after U.S. forces said they had destroyed much of its navy as part of the expanding war between the United States, Israel, and the Islamic Republic.
Iran declared 40 days of public mourning after confirming that 86-year-old Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was killed during Israeli and U.S. strikes on his compound in downtown Tehran.
The U.S. State Department on Monday urged Americans to immediately depart more than a dozen Middle Eastern nations as the war with Iran entered its third day and regional security conditions deteriorated.
Israel announced Monday that it eliminated the head of Hezbollah’s intelligence apparatus in an overnight strike on Beirut, as Lebanon’s government declared it would move to prohibit the terror group’s military activities following a dramatic escalation along the northern border.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is forcefully rejecting claims that the United States and Israel are entering into a prolonged conflict with Iran, declaring that the current military campaign will be swift and decisive.
The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled in favor of plaintiffs in a lawsuit against a California law that allowed public schools to conceal a student’s “gender transitions” from their parents, a policy SCOTUS ruled likely violates the First and Fourteenth amendments.
U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, whom President Donald J. Trump calls “secretary of war,” said Monday that Operation Epic Fury against Iran was “the most lethal, most complex, and most precise aerial operation in history,” though he declined to rule out the possibility of American ground forces becoming involved.