President Donald Trump’s former national security advisor, H.R. McMaster, weighed in as the Senate bill to send more aid to Ukraine was unveiled: “The abandonment of Kyiv would be a gift to the Moscow–Tehran–Beijing–Pyongyang axis of aggressors,” McMaster said in a Hudson statement.

Joe Biden needs to make Iran fear America again, otherwise “Iran will continue playing the Middle East like a piano, and President Biden will keep dancing to Tehran’s tune for the rest of his time in office,” writes Distinguished Fellow Walter Russell Mead in the Wall Street Journal.

On Counterbalance last week, Senior Fellows Michael Doran and Ezra Cohen explained how the October 7 attack was a failure of both Israeli and American intelligence. And with the war in Gaza entering its fifth month, Doran discussed how American pressure to end the war is creating a divide between Israel and the United States on Israel Update.

The Biden administration’s retaliatory strikes will not be enough to compel Iran to cease its aid to terrorist proxies, argued Senior Fellow Rebeccah Heinrichs on Fox News.

Senior Fellow Luke Coffey highlighted how a Russian victory in Ukraine could further destabilize Europe, which is America’s largest export market and the source of millions of jobs in the US, before a Senate foreign relations subcommittee. In Arab News, he writes about an old transit route that could help connect NATO to Central Asia amid Houthi attacks in the Red Sea: the Middle Corridor.

BEFORE YOU GO...

Facing an increasingly capable People’s Liberation Army, the US military needs to adapt for a post-dominance era. Senior Fellow Bryan Clark explains how on the podcast From the Crows’ Nest.