President Trump conceded overnight that the Iran war, which he launched on Feb. 28, was a key factor in Democrats’ Election Day dominance. The president said he still believes history will view the conflict favorably, but that the resulting sky-high gas and diesel prices helped doom Republicans.

This is hardly a surprise. Exit polling showed a strong majority of Americans believed attacking Iran was the wrong decision. House Republicans have been well aware of the war’s deep unpopularity. They’ve been delicately messaging for months that the conflict needs to end.

In May, Rep. Gabe Evans, Colorado Republican, said this when asked if the Iran war had been worth it:

“I’m confident that we are going to get this wrapped up. Once it’s wrapped up, gas prices are going to drop,” he told the Threat Status podcast in an exclusive interview. Mr. Evans lost his reelection bid to Democrat Manny Rutinel.

And in a July interview on the Threat Status podcast, Rep. Pat Harrigan — a North Carolina Republican who narrowly won reelection Tuesday — publicly floated the idea of Mr. Trump simply declaring victory and ending the war, calling it a “legitimate option” that the U.S. must consider.

The Navy’s top enlisted officer said sailors should expect near-term deployments to last almost a year. And while that’s not ideal, he said it’s better than the alternative of shorter deployments being extended multiple times with no clear end date.

The blunt message from Master Chief Petty Officer of the Navy John Perryman at a U.S. Navy Memorial Foundation event last week comes at a crucial moment for the Navy. The USS Abraham Lincoln was scheduled for a routine seven-month Western Pacific patrol when it departed its home port of San Diego in November 2025. But the aircraft carrier was rerouted to the U.S. 5th Fleet to enforce a naval blockade and take part in the war against Iran.

The Lincoln returned to San Diego on Oct. 8, 321 days after it left. Such deployments could become the norm for sailors, at least for now.

Moscow was already engaged in aggressive, sophisticated hybrid warfare against the West, including attacks on food supply chains, arson, bomb plots, undersea cable threats and airspace incursions across the continent.

But analysts say the campaign is growing more brazen — and potentially dangerous. Threat Status Special Correspondent Guillaume Ptak has a fresh dispatch from Paris that digs deep into what many analysts view as the Kremlin’s “gray zone” tactics against the U.S. and its NATO partners.

Monday’s wave of supermarket sabotage followed last month’s attempted arson attack on a Starlink communications station in Lithuania. Suspicion has fallen on Russian-linked hackers, though no official determination has been made about who is responsible.

There are plenty of other examples. In Britain, the Royal Air Force began using drones in September to track suspicious Russian ships loitering above the nation’s vital undersea communication cables in the English Channel. And in Poland and Estonia, officials have renewed their charges that Russian intelligence services are targeting equipment and manufacturers.

Tuesday’s midterm elections brought a stark reminder of the fundamental differences between the U.S. system of governance and that of its chief geopolitical rival, communist China.

In his latest column, Threat Status contributor Joseph R. DeTrani explains how Chinese President Xi Jinping has solidified power by stamping out dissenting voices, including those at the highest levels of military leadership in the People’s Liberation Army.

“How many of the 500 ministerial-level officials were purged because Mr. Xi believed them disloyal?” writes Mr. DeTrani, former associate director of national intelligence. “How many of the PLA generals and admirals expressed views on Taiwan that were not pleasing to Mr. Xi?

“How many people in China wish that they could vote to elect representatives who would articulate their concerns?” Mr. DeTrani writes. 

National Security and Foreign Affairs Columnist Jed Babbin has a straightforward take on a key case unfolding before the International Court of Justice: The body cannot be allowed to rewrite the definition of genocide.

Mr. Babbin zeroes in on a case brought by South Africa against Israel, accusing the Jewish state of carrying out genocide during its war against the Iran-backed terrorist group Hamas in the Gaza Strip. If the ICJ declares Israel guilty of genocide, Mr. Babbin argues the Trump administration should impose sanctions against the body, just as it did against the International Criminal Court last month.

“The ICJ is neither competent nor credible in any effort to redefine genocide. It would have to become a legislature to do so, and it obviously cannot. International law on genocide is set out in the 1948 Convention, and that should be the end of it,” Mr. Babbin writes. “Any ‘redefinition’ of genocide is effectively an attack on U.S. sovereignty. We have the sovereign right to enter into treaties such as the Genocide Convention, and no court has the right to modify them.”

• Nov. 5 — Israel After the Elections: What’s Next for U.S.-Israel Relations? Brookings Institution 

• Nov. 10 — China, America and the Fragmentation of the Global Economy: A Conversation with Aaron Friedberg, American Enterprise Institute

• Nov. 10 — 2026 Homeland Security Summit, Potomac Officers Club

• Nov. 10 — Elisabeth Braw on ‘Undersea War’ and the Battle Over Cables and Pipelines, Atlantic Council

• Nov. 16 — The Black Sea Blueprint for Taiwan: Lessons in Asymmetric Naval Warfare, Foundation for Defense of Democracies

• Nov. 17 — Special Threat Status Event: The Golden Age of Space, Threat Status

• Nov. 18 — Rebuilding the Arsenal of Freedom and Reindustrializing America, Hudson Institute

• Nov. 20-22 — Halifax International Security Forum in Nova Scotia, Canada, HFX