Welcome back to Foreign Policy’s Situation Report, where the U.S.-Israel war against Iran is poised to enter its fourth week with no immediate off-ramps or allied military support in sight.
Here’s what’s on tap for the day: the U.S. intelligence community’s latest global threat assessment, a top U.S. official’s resignation over the Iran war, and a temporary pause in hostilities between Pakistan and Afghanistan.
“It is not the intelligence community’s responsibility to determine what is and isn’t an imminent threat,” U.S. Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard told Congress on Wednesday while testifying on the intelligence community’s 2026 annual threat assessment.
That report, in its own words, “reflects the collective insights” of the intelligence community and “focuses on the most direct, serious threats to the U.S. primarily during the next year.”
Gabbard’s dissembling came as she faced tough questioning from Democratic and Republican lawmakers alike about the Trump administration’s justifications for the war with Iran and the state of Iran’s nuclear program. (Read more on her testimony from our colleague Rachel Oswald here.)
As for the assessment itself, here’s what it says about the primary U.S. adversaries, conflicts, and threats in 2026.
Iran. The report states that prior to Operation Epic Fury—Washington’s nickname for the Iran war—Iran was “intending to try to recover from the devastation of its nuclear infrastructure sustained during the 12-Day War.” That assessment—like Gabbard’s oral testimony to the Senate—diverges sharply from the prepared remarks that she submitted to senators before the hearing, which said that Iran’s nuclear program was “obliterated” via U.S. strikes in June and that there have been “no efforts since then to try to rebuild their enrichment capability.” This directly contradicts one of Trump’s justifications for the war.
Beyond nuclear concerns, the annual threat assessment says that the intelligence community is continuing to determine how the “U.S.-Israel-Iran conflict” will affect the global terrorism landscape in the year ahead. But it said that “Iran has proven capable of developing lethal operations against Americans at home and abroad.” The assessment also says that prior to Operation Epic Fury, Iran had “developed space-launch vehicles that it could use to develop a military-viable” intercontinental ballistic missile by 2035 “should Tehran decide to do so,” which echoes a Defense Intelligence Agency report from last year. It does not say that Iran had decided to do so, however.
And while the assessment states that Operation Epic Fury “almost certainly has curtailed Iran’s ability to project power,” it emphasizes that Tehran is using all of its remaining capabilities—including advanced ballistic missiles, drones, and regional proxies—to retaliate against the United States and its allies “in the hope of bringing the conflict to a close.”
Russia. Russia is repeatedly mentioned throughout the assessment, with a major focus on its missile development and the war in Ukraine, which Trump has unsuccessfully sought to end. “The most dangerous threat posed by Russia to the U.S. is an escalatory spiral in an ongoing conflict such as Ukraine or a new conflict that led to direct hostilities, including nuclear exchanges,” the assessment states.
Notably, there is no mention of Russian (or any other) election interference threats. In years prior—including 2025, Gabbard’s first year as intel chief—the U.S. intelligence community consistently determined that adversaries, especially Moscow, were seeking to spread disinformation and sow doubt in the integrity of the U.S. electoral system. Yet even in her testimony to the Senate, Gabbard insisted that so far, the intelligence community has found no evidence of foreign threats to this November’s midterm elections.
China. While Chinese President Xi Jinping and his government will seek to “overcome perceived containment efforts by the U.S.” and “reduce U.S. military presence and operations on its periphery,” Beijing is also prioritizing a “productive, stable economic relationship” with Washington and will “seek to reduce tension” when it serves its interests, the assessment says.
Most notably, the intelligence community “assesses that Chinese leaders do not currently plan to execute an invasion of Taiwan in 2027”—downplaying the oft-cited target for China’s military to be ready to take the island—“nor do they have a fixed timeline for achieving unification.”
Western Hemisphere. The assessment dedicates considerable attention to the United States’ heightened focus on its own neighborhood under Trump, devoting its opening section to threats from Latin America—such as foreign illicit drug actors, transnational gangs, and migration—ahead of other threats, such as terrorism and weapons of mass destruction.
“Venezuela continues to struggle with many of these dynamics, but since the arrest of Nicolas Maduro—who led a corrupt, authoritarian government—we have seen a willingness on the part of the Venezuelan Government to cooperate with the U.S.,” the document says, referring to the U.S. military’s January operation to invade Venezuela and capture Maduro.
Other threats noted in the assessment include the risks posed by cyber warfare, artificial intelligence, and quantum computing, as well as Russian and Chinese activity in the Arctic region and Pakistan’s conflicts with both India and Afghanistan—including Islamabad’s development of ballistic missiles that could “threaten” the United States.
Despite a contentious hearing on Wednesday, Sen. Markwayne Mullin’s nomination for secretary of the Department of Homeland Security advanced through the Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee by a narrow 8-7 margin, with Democratic Sen. John Fetterman providing the tiebreaking vote. Mullin’s appointment will now be voted on by the full Senate.
Joe Kent, the director of the Trump administration’s National Counterterrorism Center, stepped down on Tuesday, citing his opposition to the war in Iran. “Iran posed no imminent threat to our nation, and it is clear that we started this war due to pressure from Israel and its powerful American lobby,” he wrote in a letter posted on X announcing his resignation.
What should be high on your radar, if it isn’t already.
Energy attacks escalate. Iran intensified its targeting of energy infrastructure across the Middle East on Thursday, with strikes on several oil and gas refineries in Israel and Arab Gulf countries prompting fears of a further spike in already high global energy prices. The Iranian onslaught intensified after Israel attacked Iran’s South Pars gas field on Wednesday—a strike that Trump said the United States “knew nothing” about. However, a senior Israeli diplomat told John on Tuesday that Israel targeting Iran’s energy infrastructure “wasn’t a surprise” to the Trump administration.
Washington’s European and Asian allies, meanwhile, continue to remain noncommittal to helping to reopen and secure the Strait of Hormuz despite Trump’s demands that they do so.
Ukraine funding setback. Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban on Thursday blocked a proposed $100 billion European funding package for Ukraine that he had previously agreed to, over anger at what he said was Kyiv’s failure to repair a damaged pipeline running through Ukraine that supplies Hungary with Russian oil—an accusation that Ukraine has denied.
Af-Pak truce. Pakistan will temporarily pause its military operations against Afghanistan for five days in observance of the Muslim holiday of Eid al-Fitr, Pakistani Information Minister Attaullah Tarar announced in a Wednesday post on X, adding that Pakistan had taken the decision after requests from Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Turkey.
However, he added that any attacks or “terrorist incident” from Afghanistan during that period will result in Pakistani operations resuming with “renewed intensity.” The Taliban regime in Afghanistan also agreed to the pause for Eid al-Fitr but did not provide its own time frame.
Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi looks at her watch as U.S. President Donald Trump speaks during a bilateral meeting at the White House in Washington on March 19.Alex Wong/Getty Images
Tuesday, March 24: Denmark holds early parliamentary elections.
Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese hosts European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen in Canberra.
Preliminary hearing in artificial intelligence company Anthropic’s lawsuit against the Pentagon.
Thursday, March 26: Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, appear for a court hearing in New York.
France hosts a meeting of the Group of 7 (G-7) foreign ministers.
NATO releases its annual report.
$4.5 billion—The total cost of new Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) missile defense systems that the U.S. State Department approved for emergency sale to the United Arab Emirates on Thursday, in addition to $2.1 billion worth of anti-drone systems and F-16 fighter jet upgrades worth nearly $650 million. The department also approved additional military sales to Jordan and Kuwait.
“It takes money to kill bad guys.”
—U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth in a press briefing on Thursday, justifying the $200 billion in additional funds that the Pentagon has reportedly requested from Congress for the Iran war.
