Threat Status for Wednesday, September 2, 2026. Share this daily newsletter with your friends, who can sign up here. Send tips to National Security Editor Guy Taylor.
German officials are now publicly blaming Russia for last month’s attempted drone attack at Leipzig/Halle Airport.
… Moscow reacted with outrage Wednesday, with former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev threatening that Russia could carry out a “direct strike” on German factories supplying arms and munitions to Ukraine.
… The Pentagon has not confirmed the claim, and Jordan says three Iranian missiles that made impact landed in remote areas.
… In a piece for The National Interest titled “Why ‘Mowing the Lawn’ Isn’t a Winning Strategy for the Iran War,” Erik Gartzke argues that the latest U.S. sanctions will be anything but an “economic D-Day” for Tehran.
… Sources tell Threat Status that Army Secretary Dan Driscoll’s sudden resignation surprised his staff and was motivated by a toxic environment inside the Pentagon.
… Israeli forces said Tuesday they captured Muin al-Arabid, the head of Hamas’ internal security apparatus, during a raid in Gaza.
… And prominent pro-democracy activist Joshua Wong has pleaded guilty in Hong Kong after being targeted by the heavy-handed national security law imposed by Communist Party-ruled mainland China.
Iranian military forces overnight launched their most expansive round of drone attacks and missile strikes since fighting resumed earlier this week, targeting U.S. assets in Bahrain and Kuwait, as well as an American Marine Corps training facility in southern Jordan known as “Camp Titan.”
Jordan’s Ministry of Defense confirmed that 13 missiles entered its airspace from Iran, targeting the King Hussein and Al-Azraq air bases. Three impacts were detected, but Jordanian authorities said no damage was reported after the missiles crashed in remote areas.
The attacks came hours after U.S. forces carried out what the Pentagon called a “wave of strikes against Iranian military targets.” U.S. Central Command, which oversees American military operations across the Middle East, posted on social media that the American strikes hit Iranian “air defense sites, radar systems, maritime assets and facilities, mine laying capabilities and communications sites.”
U.S. officials say President Trump’s deal to give Washington majority control over 65 billion barrels of Venezuelan oil is a step toward stability and economic growth in the South American country, even as major questions linger about implications for Venezuelan citizens. The officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity during a conference call with reporters on Tuesday, argued that the arrangement will end a corrupt system that had benefited China and Cuba at the expense of the Venezuelan people.
The agreement signed last week by Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth creates a new private company, North American Blue Energy Partners (NABEP), to develop 17 Venezuelan oil fields holding a proven 65 billion barrels of reserves. Venezuela’s government has granted the company, led by Venezuelan businessman Alejandro Betancourt, 100-year operating rights over the fields.
The Pentagon’s Office of Strategic Capital holds a 35% equity position in NABEP, according to the White House, and the State Department has secured a right to purchase 20% of the company’s output at cost, constituting a U.S. claim to 55% of the fields’ effective output. The official text of the deal has not been released publicly.
Mr. Trump has expressed interest in a summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, even cutting joint military drills with South Korea as an apparent olive branch to garner buy-in from Mr. Kim. But regional analysts say substantive breakthroughs or concessions are unlikely if a summit happens and that Mr. Kim doesn’t need Mr. Trump the way he did when the two held historic meetings back in 2018 and 2019.
Asia Editor Andrew Salmon notes in a dispatch from Seoul that North Korea signed a mutual defense treaty with Russia in 2024 — a deal that Russian President Vladimir Putin signed to repay Mr. Kim for his support for Moscow’s war on Ukraine. Now, Russia is boosting North Korea’s economy and upgrading its military with new technologies and tactics while enabling the bypass of global sanctions.
Beijing-Pyongyang ties are equally solid. Mr. Kim may today be in the strongest position he has enjoyed since inheriting power in 2011. By contrast, Mr. Trump is trapped in an unpopular war with Iran, while his Republican Party faces a potential clobbering in the November midterm elections. Unmentioned in any talk of a potential summit is the nuclear issue. The State Department has told Seoul’s Yonhap News that denuclearization remains U.S. policy. That is problematic. “If denuclearization is on the table, no talks will take place,” says Andrei Lankov, a North Korea expert at Seoul’s Kookmin University.
Mr. Trump’s Operation Economic Outcast is “unleashing a painful wave of financial sanctions on the Iranian regime and its economic enablers,” according to Jonathan Schanzer and Zev Mendelson, who argue in an op-ed for The Washington Times that “the plan has a reasonable chance of success.”
Iranian regime figures are “already expressing concern about the Iranian economy, which was collapsing long before the current war erupted,” write Mr. Schanzer, executive director of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, and Mr. Mendelson, an intern at the think tank.
“Still, the Trump administration can dial up the pressure further by weakening the regime’s network of terrorist proxies,” they write, asserting that the Houthi militia is now “the most potent Iranian proxy group” and that the U.S., Israel and regional allies need “an integrated strategy” to erode Iran’s proxy network further.
The Russians “know that under Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty, an attack on one NATO member is to be regarded as an attack on all,” writes Clifford D. May. “They also know — and this is the part Americans tend to forget — that the clause commits each member to ‘such action as it deems necessary, including the use of armed force.’
“Note those four words: as it deems necessary. The treaty’s teeth are supplied by expectation, not by obligation,” Mr. May, the founder and president of FDD, writes in his biweekly opinion column for The Times. He adds that the Kremlin “may reason” that Mr. Trump might not honor the NATO pledge if Russian forces “take a bite out of tiny Latvia or Lithuania.
“Should Washington decline to defend even a single NATO ally, the alliance would almost certainly collapse,” writes Mr. May. “Mr. Putin would be heartily congratulated by Xi Jinping in Beijing, Kim Jong-un in Pyongyang and Mojtaba Khamenei in Tehran.”
• Sept. 22-23 — Nuclear Energy Policy Summit 2026, Atlantic Council
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