For the first time, Pentagon chief to reportedly skip Ramstein-format meeting of Ukraine's allies
U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth will not attend the June 4 meeting of the Ukraine Defense Contact Group (UDCG), the Associated Press (AP) reported, citing a U.S. official.
The news agency reported that Hegseth will not arrive in Brussels until the conference is over and will not participate in the event online either. If confirmed, this will be the first meeting of Kyiv's roughly 50 military backers in the so-called Ramstein format that the Pentagon chief will not attend.
The U.K. and Germany will chair the June 4 meeting, which will take place as Russia continues to reject a ceasefire and reportedly prepares new offensives against Ukraine.
Ukraine has called upon its partners to invest more in its arms production and to provide additional air defenses, namely Patriot systems, to help fend off intensifying Russian aerial attacks.
Hegseth's predecessor, former Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, launched the UDCG after the outbreak of Russia's full-scale war in 2022 to coordinate assistance among Kyiv's allies.
The last Ramstein-format UDCG meeting took place in Brussels on April 11 under the chairmanship of London and Berlin, with allies committing more than 21 billion euros ($23.8 billion) in long-term military aid to Ukraine.
Hegseth attended the Ramstein summit on Feb. 12, but not as its chairman, a position held by Austin until then. His British counterpart, John Healey, presided over the summit instead. Previous reporting suggested that the defense secretary was to skip the April meeting, but he eventually joined via video link.
Since taking office in January, U.S. President Donald Trump has begun scaling down the U.S. presence in various international pro-Ukraine initiatives as he seeks to broker a ceasefire and a peace deal between Kyiv and Moscow.
As the peace talks stall, Trump has signaled he might walk away from the effort. The U.S. president has been notably silent on the most recent war developments, including the most recent peace talks in Istanbul or Ukraine's mass drone attack on the Russian strategic aviation.
Read also: Inside Russia, calls for peace come with conditions — and Kremlin talking points
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Los Angeles Times
44 minutes ago
- Los Angeles Times
With 40,000 troops in the region, U.S. braces for response as Iran weighs its options
WASHINGTON — Fallout from President Trump's historic gamble to strike Iran's nuclear facilities reverberated across the Middle East Sunday, as Washington braced for an unpredictable response from a cornered but determined Islamic Republic. While the Iranian government downplayed the impact of the U.S. attack, noting the depths of its nuclear know-how built over decades of study, U.S. military officials said its precision strikes against Iran's three main nuclear facilities caused 'extremely severe damage and destruction.' A senior Israeli official told The Times that Jerusalem was so satisfied with the operation that it was prepared to suspend hostilities if Iran ends its missile salvos against Israeli territory. 'We are ready to be done,' the Israeli official said, granted anonymity to speak candidly. As the dust settled, the sun rose and satellite imagery emerged of the wreckage, the main question among Trump administration officials became how Tehran would respond — both militarily, against U.S. interests in the Persian Gulf and around the world, as well as with the remnants of its nuclear program, with so much of it destroyed. Tehran's nuclear-armed allies, in Russia and North Korea, have been critical of the military campaign, with former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev raising the prospect of Moscow giving Iran a nuclear warhead in response to the attacks. The Israeli official dismissed that idea, alluding to direct talks with Moscow over the Iranian program. 'We are not concerned,' the official said. Trump's military action, dubbed 'Operation Midnight Hammer,' was a contingency years in the making, prepared and much feared by Trump's predecessors over two decades as a desperate last resort to a nuclear Iran. Ever since Tehran resumed its fissile enrichment program in 2005, Republican and Democratic presidents alike have warned that the Islamic Republic could never be allowed to obtain a nuclear weapon. But a constellation of diplomatic talks and complex agreements have failed to dissuade Tehran from a fundamental principle of a 'right to enrich' uranium — near to weapons grade — on its own soil. Despite the dramatic nature of the U.S. air raid, few in Washington expressed an appetite for a prolonged U.S. war with Iran and echoed Israel's interest in a truce after assessing its initial operations a success. Vice President JD Vance denied that the United States was 'at war' with Iran on Sunday, telling CBS that the nation is, instead, 'at war with Iran's nuclear program.' But the prospect of another full-scale U.S. war in the Middle East, made palpable by the weekend strikes, shook Capitol Hill on Sunday, compelling Democrats who have long advocated a tough approach to Iran to push for a vote to restrict Trump under the War Powers Act. More than 60 members of Congress, including Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, both of New York, called on the Trump administration to seek congressional authorization for any further action. At least one Republican, Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky, joined in the call. The Pentagon said that seven B-2 Spirit stealth bombers deployed a total of 14 Massive Ordnance Penetrators — 30,000-pound bombs known as 'bunker busters,' for their ability to destroy facilities buried deep underground — against Fordow, Natanz and Isfahan. The U.S. operation followed an Israeli campaign that began last week with strikes against Iranian air defenses and nuclear facilities, scientists and research facilities, as well as against military generals, ballistic missile launch pads and storage depots. While the United States and Israel believe that Saturday's strikes were a strategic victory, some concern remains that Iran may have removed critical equipment and materiel from its site in Fordow — an enrichment facility that had been burrowed into the side of a mountain — to an undisclosed location before the U.S. operation began, the Israeli official said. 'That remains a question mark,' the official added, while expressing confidence that Israeli intelligence would be aware of any other significant nuclear facilities. Addressing the nation on the attacks on Saturday night, Trump warned Iran that U.S. attacks could continue if it refuses to give up on its nuclear program. 'There will be either peace, or there will be tragedy for Iran, far greater than we have witnessed over the last eight days,' Trump said, flanked by his vice president, national security advisor and secretary of defense. 'Remember, there are many targets left. Tonight's was the most difficult of them all, by far, and perhaps the most lethal. But if peace does not come quickly, we will go after those other targets with precision, speed and skill. Most of them can be taken out in a matter of minutes.' Across the region Sunday, the question paramount on observers' minds was what shape Iran's response would take. Iranian officials downplayed the strikes' impact, acknowledging damage to nuclear facilities but that the know-how remained intact. 'They [the United States and Israel] should know this industry has roots in our country, and the roots of this national industry cannot be destroyed,' said Behrouz Kamalvandi, spokesman of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran, according to a Sunday interview with the semi-official Tasnim News Agency. 'Of course, we have suffered some losses, but this is not the first time that the industry has suffered damage. … Naturally, this industry must continue and its growth will not stop.' Hassan Abedini, the deputy political director of Iran's state broadcaster IRIB, said the three targeted nuclear sites had already been emptied some time before the attacks and that they 'didn't suffer a major blow because the materials had already been taken out.' Other officials, including leaders in the targeted areas in Natanz, Isfahan and Fordow, reassured residents there was no nuclear contamination as a result of the strikes and that they could 'go on with their lives,' according to a statement Sunday from government spokesperson Fatemah Mohajerani. The U.S. attacks drew swift pleas for restraint from Saudi Arabia and Qatar, both of which issued statements calling on all parties to de-escalate. Iraq, meanwhile, said the U.S. escalation 'constitutes a grave threat to peace and security in the Middle East,' according to an interview with its government spokesman on Qatari broadcaster Al-Jazeera. Oman, a key mediator in the negotiations between Tehran and Washington, was more scathing, expressing what it said was its 'denunciation and condemnation' of the U.S.'s attacks. In Europe, as well, governments urged caution and affirmed support for Israel. 'We have consistently been clear that Iran can never have a nuclear weapon and can no longer pose a threat to regional security,' France, Germany, and Italy, known as the E3, said in a statement. 'Our aim continues to be to prevent Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon.' The last significant face-off between Iran and the United States happened during Trump's first term, when he ordered the assassination of top Iranian commander Gen. Qassem Suleimani in 2020. That attack spurred predictions of a furious retaliation, with fears of Tehran deploying its missile arsenal or activating its network of regional militias to attack U.S. forces and interests across Washington's footprint in the region. Instead, Tehran reacted with little more than an openly telegraphed ballistic missile barrage on a U.S. base in Iraq. Iran's options are even more limited this time. Much of that network — known as the 'Axis of Resistance' and which included militias and pro-Tehran governments in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Gaza, Afghanistan and Yemen — lies incapacitated after more than 20 months of Israeli attacks. Allies such as Russia and China, though issuing condemnations of the U.S. attack, appear to have little appetite for involvement beyond statements and offers of mediation. And how much remains of Tehran's missile capacity is unclear, with the Israeli official estimating roughly 1,000 ballistic missiles – half of their capacity before the most recent conflict started – remaining available to them. Nevertheless, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps warned that the United States should expect 'regrettable responses.' 'Instead of learning from repeated failures, Washington effectively placed itself on the front lines of aggression by directly attacking peaceful installations,' said a statement from the Guard Corps on Sunday. It hinted that its targets would include U.S. military presence in the region. 'The number, dispersion, and size of U.S. military bases in the region are not a strength, but have doubled their vulnerability,' the statement said. The United States has more than 40,000 stationed in the region, according to Pentagon figures, and has bases in at least 10 countries in the region, not to mention a significant presence at sea. Yet experts say the likeliest scenario would involve disruptions to shipping lanes, with Iran leveraging its control of the Strait of Hormuz, an oil transit chokepoint handling a fifth of the world's energy flows, that is 30 miles wide at its narrowest point; or calling on Yemen's Houthis to intensify their harassment campaign of merchant vessels on the Red Sea. It a situation in which Iran has experience: During its conflict with Iraq in the eighties, Tehran engaged in the the so-called 'Tanker War,' attacked hundreds of Iraqi ships near Hormuz and entering into direct confrontations with the U.S. Navy. Shippers are already girding themselves for disruptions. But Danish shipping giant Maersk said it was continuing to use the Strait of Hormuz for the time being. 'We will continuously monitor the security risk to our specific vessels in the region and are ready to take operational actions as needed,' Maersk said in a statement. Wilner reported from Washington, Bulos from Beirut.
Boston Globe
an hour ago
- Boston Globe
Europe is finally ready to spend more on defense. The hard part is how.
Advertisement This is a 'global reset,' Lieutenant General Sean Clancy, the new chief of the European Union's military committee, said at a security conference in Brussels this month. But 'we haven't even defined what the transition looks like.' Money, though, is far from the only issue Europe confronts now that it has reluctantly accepted the reality that it must be able to protect itself without help from the United States. Formidable political, strategic, and regulatory hurdles remain. EU leaders must maintain public support for common military spending and joint weapons procurement, even as right-wing nationalist sentiments oppose giving the bloc more power. And the farther from the Russian border, the less urgent the threat feels. Poland, for instance, is already spending nearly 5 percent of its gross domestic product on defense while Spain dedicated just 1.3 percent last year. Advertisement The European Union and Britain must also figure out how to prepare for the new kind of war that Russian aggression presents. Since the fall of the Soviet Union, Europe's military has been focused on deploying troops to hot spots like Afghanistan and Iraq. Now they must be able to defend their own territory. Intelligence officials warn that Russian forces could be ready to attack a NATO country in five years. Complicating the decision-making are rapid advancements in intelligence, surveillance, battlefield management, and cyber technologies. Warfare is undergoing a transformation that is akin to what occurred during World War I, when horse-drawn wagons, muskets, and swords were replaced by tanks, machine guns, and airplanes. Look at Ukraine's battlefields. They are dominated by new technologies and throwback strategies, millions of drones and muddy trenches. 'Today 80 percent of targets in Ukraine are destroyed by drones,' said Andrius Kubilius, European Commissioner for defense and space. 'Every two months, there is a need for radical innovation of the drones in operation.' In recognition, the British Defense Ministry announced this month a startling overhaul of its warfighting approach, moving away from the Cold War-era focus on heavy armor and mechanized infantry. Under the plan, 80 percent of combat capability will rely on remote-controlled, reusable ground vehicles and drones as well as missiles, shells, and self-destructing drones. The EU has also taken steps to revise its strategy. In March, the 27 member nations issued a blueprint for combat readiness by 2030. Last month, the EU created a 150 billion euro (about $173 billion) program allowing joint investments in security. (Twenty-three countries are members of both the EU and NATO.) Advertisement But higgledy-piggledy rules and practices still hamper efforts to rapidly turn Europe's fragmented defenses into a unified and efficient fighting force. Joint financing is more the exception than the rule. Red tape, lack of coordination, and slow decision-making across the continent are causing delays, supply shortages, waste, and duplication, according to political and industry leaders. Overall strategy and standards are set by NATO commanders, but military budgets, specifications, quality control, export licenses, purchasing, and planning are handled by individual nations. The result is that a German-made component going into a French-made plane needs a separate export certification that can delay delivery by months. And though 12 European countries use NH90 helicopters, there are 17 versions, said Camille Grand, a former senior NATO official who leads defense studies at the European Council on Foreign Relations. Europe is also looking to decrease its dependence on American weaponry. The share of military equipment supplied to the European members of NATO by the United States has grown to nearly two-thirds, from about half less than a decade ago, according to a report by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. Europe has put a priority on investment in its own defense industry and is looking to make its supply chains for key materials, like gunpowder, more resilient. 'There is an adjustment in terms of the business model for the European defense industry,' Grand said, as it shifts to standardized mass production. That, he said, will require more consolidation to create economies of scale and joint procurement. Industry leaders, meanwhile, complain that they cannot invest in expanded production and research without more direction from government officials. Advertisement 'The political machinery is slow,' said Jan Pie, secretary-general of ASD, a trade group that represents 4,000 companies across Europe. 'So it's difficult to scale up.' Environmental approvals needed before a new weapons factory may be built can take up to five years, Pie said. He said that despite the talk about the need for urgency, the defense industry was not given priority in times of shortages. Nammo, a Norwegian ammunitions manufacturer that supplies Ukraine, for instance, was unable to ramp up production in 2023 because a nearby TikTok data center had already bought up the region's surplus electricity. As economies slow across Europe, budget battles are expected to continue to soak up the spotlight. It's doubtful that some countries will ever reach the 5 percent target. Still, as far as funding goes, Europe has turned a corner, several European leaders and military experts said. 'There's a lot of discussion about numbers, percentages, financing,' Nadia Calviño, president of the European Investment Bank, the EU's lending arm, said in Brussels recently. 'But I want to be very clear: Europe is a rich continent, and we can mobilize the necessary financing.' This article originally appeared in
CNN
an hour ago
- CNN
Hegseth and Caine play dueling roles as key architects of Iran strike
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Dan Caine approached a pair of lecterns in the Pentagon briefing room Sunday morning to detail the most significant military operation of President Donald Trump's tenure in office. Hegseth spoke first, lavishing praise and congratulations on his boss in a made-for-television moment, a pressed American flag pocket square tucked into his lapel. He described Operation Midnight Hammer as an 'overwhelming success' that 'devastated the Iranian nuclear program' and 'achieved destruction of capabilities' at the Fordow nuclear site. Caine, dressed in military uniform, offered sober and meticulous details and a timeline of the strikes targeting Iranian nuclear facilities. He urged patience, saying the battle damage assessment 'is still pending, and it would be way too early for me to comment on what may or may not still be there.' The moment underscored their dueling approaches as Trump's top military officials and what sources have described as a core difference between the two men. Trump, a connoisseur of stagecraft, has long heralded the importance of having top officials straight out of 'central casting.' Hegseth, a former Fox News anchor, has played a visible role as the president deliberated US involvement, an opportunity that came after his first months in the job were marred by the Signal group chat scandal and upheaval among his staff. At the same time, Caine has emerged as a subtle, but trusted adviser behind the scenes. And as Trump weighed the biggest decision of his presidency, it was the qualities Caine demonstrated Sunday that he valued behind closed doors. Caine was among a small group of aides Trump came to rely on as he was presented with military options to target Iran's nuclear program. Gen. Michael Kurilla, head of US Central Command, also became as a key voice for Trump on the issue, along with CIA Director John Ratcliffe and special envoy to the Middle East Steve Witkoff, who had been leading negotiations on a potential nuclear agreement that ultimately stalled. Hegseth, while personally skeptical of ballooning US military involvement overseas, was largely deferential to Kurilla in recent months, current and former officials told CNN. During a US military operation against the Houthis in Yemen earlier this year, Kurilla's influence over Hegseth was often a point of contention among the more non-interventionist members of the Pentagon chief's inner circle, one of whom told CNN that Kurilla would 'run circles around' Hegseth. US Central Command, responsible for American military operations in the Middle East, has also conveyed a greater sense of urgency than the civilian intelligence community when it comes to Iran's pursuit of a nuclear weapon. In the lead-up to Israel's attacks on Iran earlier this month, Central Command had endorsed a more dire timeline, believing Tehran could obtain a usable nuclear weapon more quickly if it were to sprint toward that goal, according to a source familiar with the discussions. And while Hegseth has been present during national security meetings at the White House related to Iran, and during a meeting at Camp David where top officials drew up options for potential US involvement, Trump leaned on Caine and Kurilla. Hegseth also received a reputation internally as an aide with a primary objective: to please Trump. 'At the end of the day, if he sensed that the president wanted something, you know, or was like, going a certain way, he would just kind of roll over,' said a source familiar with Hegseth's thinking at the time. Still, a White House official described Hegseth as 'intimately involved' as Trump deliberated actions, 'frequently briefing' the president throughout the process, leading up to a key phone call at 4 p.m. ET Saturday. 'While the administration was also actively continuing to pursue diplomacy with Iran, Secretary Hegseth called the president and gave him the final option to proceed with the strike yesterday. He continued to check in with the president to see if he wanted to proceed, and that final go-ahead was given at 4 o'clock yesterday,' the official told CNN on Sunday. And White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt highlighted Hegseth's influence on the operation, telling CNN in a statement, 'Secretary Hegseth played a vital role in this extremely successful operation and the president fully trusts his leadership at the Pentagon. He was by the president's side every step of the way, and the president fully trusts Pete's leadership at the Pentagon.' Hegseth's visibility around this mission offers a marked change from just two months ago, when the defense secretary was embroiled in the administration's first self-induced scandal after sharing detailed plans about a military operation against the Houthis in Yemen on a pair of Signal group chats, including one thread that included his wife and brother. Some of Hegseth's closest advisers subsequently sounded the alarm about the secretary's judgment and operational security, including his former press secretary, John Ullyot, and three former senior officials Hegseth fired. Ullyot lambasted what he described as 'total chaos at the Pentagon' in a statement obtained by CNN, though Trump defended Hegseth at the time, casting blame on the media and 'disgruntled employees.' Hegseth has been fixated on leaks behind the scenes, people familiar with the matter said, annoying some White House officials. Sources told CNN at the time that Trump privately asked for feedback about Hegseth's performance, but was hesitant to dismiss him. 'I think he's gonna get it together,' Trump said of Hegseth in an April interview with The Atlantic. 'I had a talk with him, a positive talk, but I had a talk with him,' Trump said, adding that Hegseth's job was 'safe.' The White House official dismissed the idea that there had been any changes to Hegseth's stature with Trump over the first months of the president's second term. 'He always had a standing with the president on these issues. The president has the utmost trust in Secretary Hegseth,' the official said. Months later, Operation Midnight Hammer has been praised by military experts for its operational security and stunning lack of leaks — and Hegseth became one of the leading faces of the strikes. Hegseth, the White House official added, 'was absolutely a key player in executing this mission.' As Trump made an address to the nation Saturday night, he was flanked by Hegseth, Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio. The defense secretary was pictured in an official photo from the Situation Room released by the White House. And he was the first administration official to speak publicly after the president, joining Caine for that Sunday morning news conference. 'It was an incredible and overwhelming success. The order we received from our commander in chief was focused, it was powerful and it was clear,' he said Sunday at the Pentagon, heralding Trump's 'bold and visionary leadership.' He continued, 'Many presidents have dreamed of delivering the final blow to Iran's nuclear program, and none could until President Trump. The operation President Trump planned was bold and it was brilliant, showing the world that American deterrence is back. When this president speaks, the world should listen.'
