Mr. Trump threatened Wednesday to bomb Iran at a “much higher level” if Tehran does not agree to emerging terms to end the war. The president issued the threat on his Truth Social platform, a day after agreeing to pause Project Freedom, the U.S. military effort to free commercial ships in the Strait of Hormuz.

Pakistani mediators called for the pause, saying a potential U.S.-Iran peace deal could be taking shape. The details of the deal remain elusive. “Assuming Iran agrees to give what has been agreed to, which is, perhaps, a big assumption, the already legendary Epic Fury will be at an end, and the highly effective Blockade will allow the Hormuz Strait to be OPEN TO ALL, including Iran,” Mr. Trump posted on social media, referring to Operation Epic Fury, the joint U.S.-Israeli military campaign against Iran. “If they don’t agree, the bombing starts, and it will be, sadly, at a much higher level and intensity than it was before.”

Iran’s strategic partner China — the leading consumer of Iranian crude oil — also is trying to influence peace negotiations. Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi hosted his Iranian counterpart, Abbas Araghchi, for talks in Beijing Wednesday and pushed for an agreement that would end hostilities and reopen the Strait of Hormuz, through which about 20% of the world’s seaborne oil trade had been flowing before the war.

Mr. Trump will host Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva on Thursday for talks about shared economic and security issues. Sources say the leftist Mr. Lula will urge Mr. Trump to ease steep tariffs on Brazil and seek to deepen U.S.-Brazil collaboration against organized crime in South America. 

It remains to be seen whether the meeting will feature discussion on wider geopolitical matters, including Brazil’s relations with Russia and expanding strategic ties to China. The House Select Committee on China has warned of Beijing’s expanding network of space facilities in Latin America, including in Brazil, that could serve dual-use military and intelligence purposes.

A February 2026 analysis by the committee urged the Trump administration to push back against the expansion and specifically highlighted developments at the Tucano Ground Station in Brazil, a joint venture between China Aerospace Science and Technology Corp. and Brazil’s Ayla Nanosatellites.

A political storm exploded in Seoul recently over remarks made by South Korean Unification Minister Chung Dong-yong, which reportedly included the leak of sensitive U.S. intelligence on a little-known North Korean uranium enrichment site called Kusong.

While private analysts and academics have pointed to Kusong as a site of nuclear activities since 2016, it had never been formally identified as a uranium enrichment facility by Seoul or Washington. U.S. intelligence officials were reportedly so angry about Mr. Chung’s public remarks on Kusong that they have halted the sharing of some sensitive satellite data with Seoul.

Some in South Korea have pounced on the situation to call for Mr. Chung’s resignation. Mr. Chung maintains he provided only “open” information. President Lee Jae-myung has defended him, saying it’s an “undeniable fact” that Kusong’s nuclear facilities had “already been widely known to the world through various academic papers and media reports.”

The Pentagon’s Defense Counterintelligence and Security Agency has a contract worth more than $20 million with New York-based Moody’s Analytics, which is linked to a Chinese credit rating company that national security analysts say could be used to compromise U.S. counterintelligence activity.

National Security Correspondent Bill Gertz reports that Moody’s Analytics owns a 30% stake in China’s main credit rating firm, which has given top financial ratings to key Chinese military companies. The Pentagon is now using Moody’s data to assess the risk posed by those companies in what critics say compromises intelligence assessments of those same companies.

Critics say Moody’s also has an interest or ownership in a network of subsidiaries inside China’s financial infrastructure that are subject to Chinese military and intelligence influence and access. The situation is raising concerns that American companies are actively helping to legitimize and enable Chinese military-linked companies by supporting the financial infrastructure that sustains them.

Mr. Trump has two “essential objectives in the current conflict: to ensure that Iran’s rulers can never acquire nuclear weapons, and to frustrate the regime’s attempts to annex the Strait of Hormuz, an international waterway vital to the global economy,” writes Clifford D. May.

“The regime’s occupation of the strait would set a precedent for the Houthi rebels of Yemen, who want to control the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, another major global choke point, and for Beijing, which covets the Taiwan Strait and the free people to its east,” writes Mr. May, president of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and a columnist for The Washington Times.

“Iran’s rulers see themselves as jihadis fighting a holy war against the enemies of Allah,” he writes. “They can contemplate temporary ceasefires, periods of calm that allow them to rearm for the next battle, but a serious ‘peace deal’ would be out of the question.”

• May 6 — U.S.-Japan-Philippines Trilateral Cooperation, Center for a New American Security 

• May 7 — Chernobyl’s Legacy 40 Years On, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace

• May 7 — Beyond the Gulf: How the Iran War Is Fueling Crisis in the Horn of Africa, Center for Strategic & International Studies

• May 7-9 — The Artificial Intelligence+ Expo, Special Competitive Studies Project 

• May 8 — Is Russia’s War Machine Running out of Steam? Atlantic Council

• May 11 — Defending Taiwan: A Strategy to Prevent War with China, Hudson Institute

• May 13 — Forging the Next Era for the U.S.-Republic of Korea Alliance in Economic and National Security at America’s 250th, Stimson Center

• May 13 — The Strategic Value of China to Korea, Center for Strategic & International Studies