Second opinion: “In Iran’s War, Russia Serves as Backstage Partner,” Nicole Grajewski wrote Thursday for Russia Matters. 

Update: Iran’s attacks have plummeted, but its targets are more spread out, the Wall Street Journal reported Thursday. Since Saturday, Iran’s ballistic-missile launches are down 90% and drone attacks, 83%, defense officials said Thursday, thanks in part to the targeting of Iran’s underground missile cities. “But Iran still has other ways to retaliate, most important its arsenal of low-cost drones. It continues to launch drones by the hundreds at Arab neighbors across the Persian Gulf, spreading fear, roiling markets and disrupting shipments of oil and goods from a region that is crucial to the world’s economy.” 

“Iran’s emphasis now is persistence, not volume,” said Hasan Alhasan, a senior fellow at the International Institute for Strategic Studies and a former foreign policy analyst for the crown prince of Bahrain. More, here.

Latest: Israeli strikes are pounding Lebanon, including an ongoing barrage around Beirut after the Israelis issued new evacuation orders for citizens living in and around Lebanon’s capital city. “At least three buildings collapsed, and thousands who live in the area have been displaced,” the New York Times reports as Israel targets Iran-backed Hezbollah militants in the region. 

View a regularly-updated interactive map of U.S. and Israeli strikes on Iran via the Institute for the Study of War, here. 

The death toll inside Iran has risen to over 1,300 people while more than 200 have been killed inside Lebanon, according to the Times and al-Jazeera. On Friday, Israel also issued a new evacuation order for Iranians living in the Qom region, which is located near an Iranian nuclear site.

The State Department suspended operations at its embassy in Kuwait City amid the widening regional war, officials announced Thursday. 

At least two of America’s Gulf allies complain the U.S. didn’t give them enough time to prepare for defense against Iranian drones and missiles, AP reported Friday. One expert said U.S. officials appear to have “underestimated the risk to its Gulf Arab allies, believing American troops and Israel would be the primary targets of Iranian retaliation.”

Related: “Operational secrecy kept the US from making evacuation plans—and that means Americans in the Mideast could wait days,” 35-year Foreign Service veteran Donald Heflin told The Conversation on Thursday. 

Duration alert: The U.S. military has asked for more Iran-focused intelligence support “for at least 100 days but likely through September,” Politico reported Wednesday. “It’s the first known call for additional intelligence personnel for the Iran war by the administration, and a sign the Pentagon is already allocating funding for operations that may stretch long beyond President Donald Trump’s initial four-week timeline for the conflict,” Nahal Toosi, Jack Detsch, and Paul McLeary wrote. 

But many Republicans are insistent that there is neither a war going on, nor that it will last long. “We're not at war, we have no intention at being at war,” House Speaker Mike Johnson told reporters on Thursday. “The president and the Department of Defense have made it very clear, this is a limited operation.” 

Johnson spoke after House lawmakers failed to rein in Trump’s Iran war powers in a 212-219 vote in the lower chamber Thursday. The bill would have required the White House to suspend operations until it gained Congressional approval for the war. Four Democrats joined Republicans to oppose the effort—Reps. Jared Golden of Maine; Henry Cuellar of Texas; Ohio’s Greg Landsman; and Juan Vargas of California—while two Republicans joined the Democrats in support, including Kentucky’s Thomas Massie and Ohio’s Warren Davidson. 

• “It’s not a war,” Florida GOP Rep. Randy Fine said Wednesday. 
• “I would call it an operation at this point,” California Rep. Ken Calvert said this week about 72 hours after the first bombs fell in Tehran. 
• “This is war, and we’re taking out the threat,” Oklahoma Sen. Markwayne Mullin said Tuesday. Moments later when asked about his use of the word, “war,” he replied, “That was a misspoke.” 
• “I have to go back and look at the war,” President Trump said Wednesday after a public event at the White House. 

Trump acknowledged, but shrugged off dangers to stateside Americans. Time magazine asked the president this week whether Americans should be worried about retaliatory attacks at home from the Iran war. “I guess,” Trump replied. “But I think they’re worried about that all the time. We think about it all the time. We plan for it. But yeah, you know, we expect some things.” 

“Like I said, some people will die. When you go to war, some people will die,” Trump said. 

On rising gas prices, “I don't have any concern about it,” the president told Reuters Thursday. “They'll drop very rapidly when this is over,” he said, “and if they rise, they rise, but this is far more important than having gasoline prices go up a little bit.”

Related reading: 

• “Kuwait Shuts Production, Qatar Warns Oil Could Hit $150 in Weeks,” Oilprice.com wrote Friday off developments initially reported hours earlier in the Wall Street Journal;
• And “Dow drops 800 after the US job market weakens and oil prices jump to the highest since 2024,” the Associated Press reported Friday as well. 

Welcome to this Friday edition of The D Brief, a newsletter focused on developments affecting the future of U.S. national security, brought to you by Ben Watson with Bradley Peniston. It’s more important than ever to stay informed, so we’d like to take a moment to thank you for reading. Share your tips and feedback here. And if you’re not already subscribed, you can do that here. On this day in 1987, the Reagan administration was finalizing its decision to escort reflagged commercial vessels through the Strait of Hormuz, an operation that would lead to a shadow war with Iran and a one-day battle the following April.

After a report surfaced Thursday that the Pentagon is using artificial intelligence to carry out attacks inside Iran, two additional outlets have taken a much closer look at an airstrike Saturday on an elementary school that killed more than 170 people, including children in southern Tehran. 

After visual analysis using satellite imagery, social media posts and verified videos, the New York Times reported Thursday that “official statements that U.S. forces were attacking naval targets near the Strait of Hormuz, where the I.R.G.C. base is located, suggest they were most likely to have carried out the strike.”

And according to Reuters, “U.S. military investigators believe it is likely that U.S. forces were responsible” for the Feb. 28 strike on the Shajarah Tayyebeh elementary school in Minab, southern Iran. However, officials “have not yet reached a final conclusion or completed their investigation,” the wire service notes. According to the Times, satellite imagery “shows that multiple precision strikes hit at least six Revolutionary Guards buildings along with the school. Four buildings inside the naval base were completely destroyed and two other buildings showed impact points at the center of their roofs, consistent with such precision hits.”

A former Air Force analyst said “the most likely explanation was that the school had been a ‘target misidentification’—that forces had attacked the site without realizing that it might have had large numbers of civilians inside.” Read more (gift link), here. 

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth batted away concerns about U.S. munitions stockpiles in a press conference Thursday at the Pentagon. Instead, he seemed to suggest that as Iran’s capabilities are weakened, the remaining missiles are stretching further, Defense One’s Meghann Myers reports.

Notable: U.S. and partner forces have fired more than 800 Patriot missiles in the first three days of fighting, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Thursday—adding that the total is more than Ukraine has been given since it was invaded by Russia four years ago, the Kyiv Independent reported Thursday.

Little planning for drones: “Fears are already circulating at the Pentagon that the U.S. will soon burn through its arsenal of advanced air-defense systems, given the intensity of the air war in the Middle East,” The Atlantic’s Simon Shuster and Nancy Youssef wrote Thursday. “Whether those fears are realized could depend on how long the war lasts. But the U.S. failure to deploy cheap and effective weapons against Iranian drones already looks like poor planning at best, and hubris at worst.” Read on, here.

U.S. forces destroyed Iran’s military space command, Adm. Brad Cooper, the head of Central Command, announced Thursday. But experts told Novelly that the country’s nascent space capabilities never posed a significant threat.

Decades-old B-1 and B-52 bombers have hit hundreds of Iranian military targets this week, defense officials said in another fact sheet from the ongoing war. Defense One’s Thomas Novelly has a bit more on the recent history and anticipated future of those airframes, here.

Analysis: “The inaugural deployment of the LUCAS drone, a near-clone of the Iranian Shahed-136, signals a big Pentagon step into the era of affordable mass,” writes Anna Miskelley of Forecast International. “While the Iranian drone flies to pre-programmed GPS coordinates, LUCAS has a vision-based object recognition system that enables it to find and hit specific military hardware.” 

“And LUCAS’ combat debut may prove far more than a regional tactical experiment,” she warns. “If successful in the coming weeks, it could be a live-fire proof of concept for the Hellscape strategy being developed for the Pacific.” More, here. 

Proxy watch: Most Iran-backed militants inside Iraq are not interested in jumping into this fight, Reuters reported Friday. Much of this is because Iran’s proxy network has been “hollowed out by years of targeted assassinations of hard-to-replace leaders; the loss of secure bases for training and weapons transit; and the transformation of Iraqi commanders into wealthy politicians and businessmen with more to lose than gain from confronting the West.” 

On the other hand, the Kurdish people posted “a message to the American people” on Thursday. Their message comes amid reports the CIA is looking to arm Kurds to enter Iran to distract and help destabilize remaining regime forces. “Kurdish forces fought ISIS not only to defend our homeland, but also to protect the world from terrorism. We stood on the front lines against extremism because we believe in freedom, stability, and peaceful coexistence. However, we cannot ignore the painful moments of the past,” the Kurds wrote in their Thursday message. 

“During the last nine years, decisions made during the presidency of Donald Trump left the Kurds in difficult situations three times: in 2017 in Kirkuk, in 2019 in Rojava, and again in 2026 in Rojava. In those moments, Kurdish forces were left to face powerful enemies alone,” the message reads. “We still see the United States as an important partner and a friend of the Kurdish people,” but “At the same time, we have learned from the past,” they said. 

“The Kurds in Iran will not repeat the mistakes that happened in Iraq and Syria. Partnership must be built on clear understanding and real guarantees,” they said, which to our ears doesn’t necessarily sound like they’ve declined the offer to assist the U.S. in this conflict. Indeed, they conclude, “We believe in the same values of freedom, dignity, and the fight against extremism. Together, we can stand against terrorism and build a more stable and peaceful future.” Read the rest, here.  

Related reading:

• “Hegseth Finds His Footing as Epic Fury’s Front Man,” the Wall Street Journal reported Friday; 
• ‘“Largest US military hospital abroad halts labor, delivery services amid Iran war,” Military Times reported Thursday regarding the Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany;
• “Berlin warns against losing sight of Ukraine's needs amid Iran war,” Reuters reported Friday from Germany; 
• “Hegseth’s comments are a reminder that government isn’t always eager to show the human cost to war,” AP reported Friday; 
• “White House to China: Buy Less Oil from Russia, More from America,” the Journal reported Thursday; 
• And “China in talks with Iran to allow safe oil and gas passage through Hormuz, sources say,” Reuters reported Thursday. 

Around the Defense Department

Drones will present a “bigger” threat than IEDs did in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, Brig. Gen. Matt Ross, the head of Joint Interagency Task Force-401, told reporters on Thursday at an industry event hosted by the Army. “What I can tell you is that the challenge of unmanned systems, the threat posed from unmanned systems, is going to far exceed the threat that we saw from IEDs…where we made some progress, but never really got in front of it,” Ross said. 

The U.S. spent more than $20 billion defending against IEDs 20 years ago, and never came up with a good detection system for roadside bombs, Defense One’s Meghann Myers reports. But thanks to the efforts of then-Defense Secretary Robert Gates, the U.S. managed to create a vehicle—MRAPs—that at least offered much better protection from them than the unarmored humvees that troops had been using in the first years of those wars.  

But unlike IEDs, “we're going to see proliferation of unmanned systems into our commercial airspace,” Ross predicted. “It's going to be very common in the next few years. And what that means is that our ability to manage that airspace safely—and then protect critical infrastructure that must be protected, whether it's formations or locations—that market is just going to continue to grow over time.” More, here. 

SecDef Hegseth just appointed a 25-year-old to run the Pentagon’s AI efforts. His name is Gavin Kliger, and he was one of Elon Musk’s staffers charged with overhauling the federal government in last year’s much-promised, little-delivered DOGE effort. Kliger led the DOGE operation at the IRS last February. Twelve months later, he’s been nominated to be the U.S. military’s Chief Data Officer, according to a social media post Friday morning on Twitter. 

As CDO, Kliger will be “at the center of the Department’s most ambitious AI efforts,” the account for the Defense Department’s Under Secretary of War for Research and Engineering said. “His background includes service on Secretary Hegseth’s [DOGE] team, where he oversaw the launch of GenAI.mil,” and an unspecified role in the Pentagon’s Drone Dominance program. “Kliger will be a key leader in executing the Department's AI strategy,” with a “focus on the day-to-day alignment and execution of the Department’s AI projects, working directly with America's frontier AI labs to support the warfighter,” officials said in the Friday post.

Related reading: 

• “Sam Altman Wants Elected Officials, Not OpenAI, to Decide How Military Uses AI,” the Wall Street Journal reported Thursday;

• “GOP’s Turner rips Pentagon No. 3 at hearing,” The Hill reported Thursday regarding policy chief Elbridge Colby’s input on allegedly stalled Pentagon support for Ukraine; 
• “Ukraine's F-16 jets were starved of US-made missiles for weeks,” Reuters reported Thursday;
• “Air Force cybersecurity chief tapped to lead Pentagon's information-security efforts,” Nextgov reported Thursday; 
• “US tells Latin America: Military force is the only way to defeat cartels,” the wire service reported Thursday as well; 
• “Venezuela and US to work together on mining developments, Rodríguez says,” the BBC reported Thursday; 
• And from the region, “Ecuadorean troops find 35m-long hidden ‘narco-sub’,” the BBC reported separately on Thursday.