When President Trump returned to the Oval Office earlier this year, he confidently proclaimed that he could broker an immediate end to the Russia-Ukraine war. But the White House has gotten a better sense of the potential for meaningful compromise in the months since, and revised its expectations down — way down. "I don't know what the hell happened to Putin," Trump told reporters in late May. The same day, he posted on Truth Social that Russia's leader "has gone absolutely CRAZY." Since then, although the administration has continued to press Moscow for some sort of compromise with Kyiv, more of its officials now seem to grasp that Russia has no real interest in de-escalation. But why, precisely? After all, the Kremlin has already expended enormous blood and treasure in its efforts to dominate Ukraine, and is continuing to do so. Russian battlefield casualties are estimated to have hit 1 million, making its campaign against Ukraine more costly than all of the country's post-World War II conflicts combined. Still, the Kremlin has persisted in its war of aggression, for both ideological and practical reasons.

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Last month's conflict between Israel and Iran has only just concluded, but its results are already being felt throughout the Middle East—and beyond. As a result of Israel's military offensive, Iran's nuclear program has been set back substantially. And, following months of strategic drift in Gaza, the Jewish state's decisive campaign against the Islamic Republic has helped it rebuild regional deterrence. The United States, meanwhile, has finally demonstrated that it is committed to preventing Iran from going nuclear by any means necessary. The region is taking notice; for instance, prospects for an expansion of the Abraham Accords are now the brightest they have been in years. But the conflict that's already being billed by the White House as the "12-day war" is also notable for what didn't happen. Despite the dire predictions of many, Israel's campaign against Iran's nuclear program (and America's assistance to it) didn't lead either Russia or the People's Republic of China (PRC) to wade into the fray in defense of the Islamic Republic, generating a wider war.

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Israel has begun a little-noticed foreign policy transformation. Against the backdrop of its ongoing war against Hamas in the Gaza Strip, Jerusalem has launched a new initiative in strategic communications. The shift was borne of necessity. Historically, Israel's international outreach has been based on the concept of hasbara [means "explanation"] – if the country were able to thoroughly explain its version of events to global publics, it would gain support. But that concept appears to be outdated in the current Gaza conflict.  Over the past twenty months, Hamas has met with enormous success in its efforts to shape the popular narrative surrounding the conflict. It has done so via exaggerated or false claims designed to discredit Israeli military operations, the proliferation of misinformation and fake videos to stoke outrage, and the adroit use of social messaging platforms to spread extremist content. The results of this information war have been dire for Israel: a growing isolation of the Jewish state on the world stage, and a massive, ongoing focus on potential Israeli wartime excesses rather than on the atrocities being perpetrated by Hamas and other Palestinian Islamist organizations, against both the Israeli hostages and the captive population of the Gaza Strip.

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It has now been nearly three-and-a-half years since the government of Russian President Vladimir Putin launched its "special military operation" against neighboring Ukraine, with the twin goals of "demilitarizing" and "denazifying" — that is, removing the democratic government in Kyiv. That effort persists, despite truly immense Russian losses of blood and treasure, with nearly a million casualties and an estimated $1.3 trillion in squandered economic growth by 2026. Despite these losses, the Kremlin's core objectives have not changed. Earlier this month, Dmitry Medvedev, the deputy chairman of Russia's powerful Security Council, made clear on social media that the Kremlin remains dedicated to the "complete destruction of the neo-Nazi regime" in Ukraine. That, however, is just part of the story. In reality, Russia's strategic plans extend far beyond Ukraine.

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Over the past several days, all eyes have been on the Middle East. Last week, Israel initiated "Operation Rising Lion," its unilateral military campaign to roll back Iran's nuclear program. The effort marks the end of a quarter-century during which Israeli policymakers desperately urged Western governments to take the threat of the Iranian atomic effort more seriously – and to take concrete steps to mitigate it. The early results have been dramatic. Numerous Iranian nuclear facilities have been struck. Israel has killed a significant portion of Iran's senior military leadership, as well as a cohort of its nuclear scientists. It has likewise taken aim at Iran's energy facilities, signaling to Tehran that it has the power to cripple the oil and natural gas trade which cumulatively represents the lifeblood of the Iranian regime. And more is assuredly in store in the days ahead. Here are a few things that bear watching as the conflict continues to unfold.

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