Fears of nuclear proliferation. The evaporation of arms controls and the fading leadership of the United States have U.S. allies pondering nuclear-arms programs of their own, lawmakers and former U.S. officials said Wednesday on Capitol Hill. 

“I am very concerned about the potential for proliferation, so-called friendly proliferation. I do not think it will be helpful to stability and security,” said Rose Gottemoeller, a former NATO deputy secretary general. “There are many, I would say, debates and discussions that have surprised us among our NATO allies.” Defense One’s Patrick Tucker has more from the Senate Armed Services Committee hearing, here.

U.S., Russia agree to resume high-level military-to-military dialogue. The United States broke off the relationship in late 2021, months before Russia broadened its invasion of Ukraine. The move follows meetings in UAE between Gen. Alexus G. Grynkewich, who leads U.S. European Command and is also NATO’s senior military commander, and senior Russian and Ukrainian military officials, according to a Thursday release from EUCOM.

Rewind: The two countries had maintained senior ties during and after the Cold War, and had even begun cooperating in military exercises—until Russia seized Crimea in 2014.

Ukraine struck a Russian missile-launch site in January. Ukrainian Flamingo missiles, and possibly other weapons, damaged hangar-type buildings used to prep intermediate-range and intercontinental ballistic missiles, Ukrainian officials posted to Telegram on Wednesday. Reuters could not immediately verify the statement independently, but has a bit more, here.

Wargaming invasion: Meanwhile, a tabletop simulation organized by a German newspaper and the country’s military suggests that the rest of Europe is far from ready to resist a Russian invasion. According to the Wall Street Journal, “The exercise simulating a Russian incursion into Lithuania, organized in December by Germany’s Die Welt newspaper together with the German Wargaming Center of the Helmut-Schmidt University of the German Armed Forces, became an object of heated conversation within Europe’s security establishment even before the newspaper published its results on Thursday.” 

Why this matters: “A Russian incursion, or outright invasion, into countries of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and the European Union has become more likely because of Europe’s tensions with President Trump over Greenland, Ukraine, trade and other matters, many European security and political leaders say.” Read more, here.

Welcome to this Thursday 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 1988, Panama's military ruler Gen. Manuel Noriega was indicted in a U.S. court on drug smuggling and money laundering charges. The U.S. launched an invasion of Panama at the end of the year, leading to Noriega’s surrender and capture on Jan. 3, 1989. 

Iran and the Middle East

U.S. and Iranian officials are set to talk Friday in Oman, though the outlook for those talks is dim, analysts at the Washington-based Institute for the Study of War said in their Wednesday analysis. 

Differing goals: The U.S. side wants to discuss Iran’s nuclear and ballistic missile programs as well as its support for proxy groups across the region, but Iranian officials want to limit discussions to their nuclear program only.

Iranian officials seem to be signaling they are unafraid of a prolonged regional war should the U.S. military carry out additional attacks inside Iran, which is also a concern of White House officials, ISW writes. 

And for what it’s worth, the Navy’s guided-missile destroyer USS Delbert D. Black departed port in Israel on Sunday, U.S. military officials said Thursday ahead of talks with Iranian officials in Oman.

The U.S. Navy has at least eight other vessels in the vicinity of Iran, including the USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier. That’s according to open-source monitors sharing a regional map on social media Wednesday. 

The U.S. fleet deployed to the Middle East is nearly as large as the one deployed near Venezuela, open-source tracker Ian Ellis observed online Monday. “The primary difference is 3x littoral combat ships (with mine countermeasures package) in the Middle East vs 3-ship Amphibious Ready Group + Marine Expeditionary Unit in Caribbean,” he said. 

U.S. forces in the region attacked ISIS fighters with five recent strikes, Central Command officials said Wednesday. Targets included a “communication site, critical logistics node, and weapons storage facilities” via at least “50 precision munitions delivered by fixed-wing, rotary-wing, and unmanned aircraft,” CENTCOM said in a statement.

The U.S. and regional partners have killed or captured more than 50 alleged ISIS militants since mid-December. That includes a man named Bilal Hasan al-Jasim, who CENTCOM says was linked to a Dec. 13 attack that killed two U.S. troops and an interpreter at a Syrian base in Palmyra. 

Deportation nation

The White House is keeping 2,300 immigration officers in Minnesota, a city with just 600 police. Homeland Security officials sent 3,000 or so immigration agents to the city for their Operation Metro Surge crackdown, which began in December. But after their presence sparked protests and agents killed two Americans in the streets, President Trump’s “border czar” Tom Homan said Wednesday 700 agents would leave the city soon. 

Their outsized presence still raises questions about why Minnesota, a state with an estimated 130,000 undocumented immigrants, was the administration’s first choice for an agent presence so large and out of proportion to local police—especially when Florida and Texas are estimated to have undocumented immigrant populations orders of magnitude larger with 1.6 million in Florida and 2.1 million in Texas, according to a 2023 report from the Pew Research Center. 

The White House claims fraud allegations from a debunked video about Somali-American daycare centers are a large part of what drew their attention to Minnesota. That video went viral on right-wing networks in December; most immigration agents arrived in early January. It makes little difference to the administration and its online supporters that many of their claims about immigrants are not true (Haitian-Americans eating pets, e.g.), or that dozens of initial allegations by administration officials have fallen apart in court—including their prosecution of school teacher Marimar Martinez, who was shot five times in Chicago last October. DHS officials later claimed she was a “domestic terrorist” who “ambushed” them with her car. 

After Martinez’s attorney challenged the evidence, the case fell apart and the administration asked the court to dismiss the charges with prejudice so they can’t be filed again. (She detailed that case Tuesday before members of Congress in Washington.) 

But that didn’t stop Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito from repeating the administration’s false portrayal of the Martinez case in his dissenting opinion for Trump v. Illinois, the late-December SCOTUS case blocking Trump National Guard deployment in Chicago.

Others see an administration trying to impose its will on a state and region that did not vote for Trump in recent elections. David French argued that case last week in the New York Times. Indeed, Trump’s top immigration advisor Stephen Miller wrote online Sunday that he believes Democrats in Minnesota “after losing an election, launched an armed resistance to stop the federal government from reversing the invasion.”

To that end, “ICE has likely violated more court orders in January 2026 than some federal agencies have violated in their entire existence,” the chief judge for the U.S. District Court of Minnesota said in a decision released last week. In that document, the judge cataloged a total of 96 court orders that he said ICE had violated in 74 different cases.

Former DHS official Paul Rosenzweig has some ideas for how to reform ICE, and they begin with training and recruitment changes, he wrote Wednesday in The Atlantic. Rosenzweig, a former DHS deputy assistant secretary for policy from 2005 to 2009, recommends bumping the minimum age back up to 21 and adding “enhanced training on constitutional law, while significantly reducing its emphasis on SWAT-like uses of force.” He also advises dropping “broad sweeps in urban environments” and opting instead “for targeted enforcement against identified subjects.” However, such changes “will require immense political capital and lots of hard work,” he admits. Read more (gift link), here. 

Additional reading: “The Real Story Behind the Midnight Immigration Raid on a Chicago Apartment Building,” via ProPublica reporting Wednesday from still more inaccurate claims from the White House that later evaporated upon closer inspection. 

Etc.

In case you missed it, a judge appears to be skeptical of Pentagon chief Pete Hegseth’s effort to demote former astronaut and retired Navy Capt. Sen. Mark Kelly, D-Arizona, the Washington Post reported Wednesday. Kelly had joined other lawmakers in a video this fall warning troops against following illegal orders, which is a warning Hegseth himself issued 10 years ago before working in the Trump administration. “Our laws are clear. You can refuse illegal orders,” Kelly said in the video. 

Trump responded angrily, and said on social media Kelly’s message amounted to “SEDITIOUS BEHAVIOUR, punishable by DEATH.” 

Hegseth responded with a formal letter of censure for Kelly and claimed the lawmaker had “undermined the chain of command,” “counseled disobedience” and displayed “conduct unbecoming an officer.” He also launched disciplinary proceedings to reduce Kelly’s rank and retirement benefits. 

But: “That’s never been done before,” U.S. District Judge Richard J. Leon said at a hearing on the matter Tuesday. “You’re asking me to do something the Supreme Court’s never done,” Leon added, and later said he intends to rule on the matter by next Wednesday. He also said he expects his ruling to be appealed. 

“Today was a day in court, not just for my constitutional rights, but for millions of retired service members, and really all Americans,” Kelly told reporters at the hearing this week. “There’s nothing more fundamental to our democracy than the freedom of speech and the freedom to speak out about our government.” More, here.