China Hawk on the End Goal of US-China Relations
Chairman John Moolenaar, who heads the House Select Committee on the Strategic Competition Between the United States and the Chinese Communist Party calls for China to 'acknowledge the reality that their government is moving in a very different direction than they promised'. He speaks to Bloomberg's Haslinda Amin on the sidelines of the Shangri-La Dialogue. (Source: Bloomberg)
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Yahoo
35 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Ex-ambassador to Russia: Putin, Xi will celebrate Trump's ‘preemptive war' in Iran
Former U.S. Ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul warned on Saturday of how U.S. strikes on Iran could influence U.S. adversaries around the world. In an interview on MSNBC, McFaul said Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping would be glad to see the U.S. engaging in 'preemptive' strikes. 'I think we've really got to understand our other interests in the world that might be affected by this attack today. This is a preemptive war. The world does not support preemptive wars. We learned that in 2003,' McFaul said, referring to the U.S. invasion of Iraq, which was launched based on the theory that Saddam Hussein's regime had weapons of mass destruction and threatened America. 'Putin will be celebrating this because he did his own preemptive war in Ukraine and now it's like, well, this is just what great powers do. Maybe Xi Jinping is going to think the same. He's going to say, 'Well, if they can do it here, we can do it in Taiwan,'' McFaul added. Trump announced on Saturday evening that the U.S. had bombed three Iranian nuclear sites and said, 'NOW IS THE TIME FOR PEACE!' McFaul, in the interview, said he wishes the president 'well' in his aim to bring about peace, saying that outcome is possible but not likely. 'I hope he can bring about an agreement as soon as possible. It's happened before — capitulation after an attack like this — so it could happen, but it's not what I'm predicting,' McFaul said. 'The idea that they will now sit down and negotiate with us some long-term deal in the immediate run, I think, is highly unlikely,' he added. McFaul said it's 'good news' that the U.S. strikes, according to Trump, 'totally obliterated' the Iranian nuclear facilities, saying, 'I applaud that.' 'That's good news for today, but we need to think about what are the first, second, third and fourth order consequences after this,' McFaul added. 'Most immediately, they are going to retaliate, and I hope we are prepared to prevent that and prevail against our forces in the region.' Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Bloomberg
2 hours ago
- Bloomberg
To a President With a Midnight Hammer, Everything Is a Nail
No other military in the world could have done this. That was one of the Truths, as they're called, which President Donald Trump banged out during the early hours (Iranian time) of Sunday, and which his defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, and highest-ranking military officer, Dan Caine, repeated in their own presentation. And it really is true. Operation Midnight Hammer, as the American 'strike package' (as Caine kept calling it) on Iran was code-named, was an awe-inspiring display of martial prowess. It involved 125 aircraft and 75 types of precision weapons in total, plus submarines and support from land, space and cyberspace, all seamlessly coordinated. It began, and continued, with a masterful deception, as some B-2 bombers allowed themselves to be tracked flying west from the United States, while the real hunters were going east in stealth.
Yahoo
2 hours ago
- Yahoo
US strikes on Iran: what we know
The United States has carried out strikes that caused "extremely severe damage" to three of Iran's nuclear facilities, the top US military officer, General Dan Caine, said on Sunday. President Donald Trump had spent weeks pursuing a diplomatic path to replace the nuclear deal with Tehran that he tore up during his first term in 2018. But he ultimately decided to take military action against Iran's nuclear program, which had already been bombarded in a more than week-long Israeli campaign that has also targeted Tehran's top military brass. Below, AFP examines what we know about the US strikes on Iran -- an operation dubbed "Midnight Hammer." - Major operation - Caine told journalists the strikes involved more than 125 US aircraft including B-2 Spirit stealth bombers, fighters, aerial refueling tankers, a guided missile submarine and intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance aircraft. "This mission demonstrates the unmatched reach, coordination and capability of the United States military," the general said. "No other military in the world could have done this." Caine said it was "too early" to comment on what remains of Iran's nuclear program, but that "initial battle damage assessments indicate that all three sites sustained extremely severe damage and destruction." - B-2 bombers - The US employed seven B-2s in the strikes -- aircraft that can fly 6,000 nautical miles (9,600 kilometers) without refueling and which are designed to "penetrate an enemy's most sophisticated defenses and threaten its most valued, and heavily defended, targets," according to the US military. "This was the largest B-2 operational strike in US history and the second-longest B-2 mission ever flown," according to Caine. Several B-2s proceeded west over the Pacific as a decoy while the bombers that would take part in the strikes headed east -- a "deception effort known only to an extremely small number of planners and key leaders," the general said. "Iran's fighters did not fly, and it appears that Iran's surface-to-air missile systems did not see us. Throughout the mission, we retained the element of surprise," Caine said. The United States used the B-2 in operations against Serbian forces in the 1990s, flying non-stop from Missouri to Kosovo and back, and the bombers were subsequently employed in the Afghanistan and Iraq wars in the 2000s. - Massive Ordnance Penetrator - Caine said the B-2s dropped 14 bombs known as the GBU-57 or Massive Ordnance Penetrator -- a powerful 30,000-pound (13,600-kilogram) bunker-busting weapon that made its combat debut in the Iran operation. The bombs -- which are designed to penetrate up to 200 feet (60 meters) underground before exploding -- were needed to hit deeply buried Iranian nuclear facilities. Testing of the weapons began in 2004 and Boeing was in 2009 awarded a contract to complete the integration of GBU-57 with aircraft. - Tomahawk cruise missiles - In addition to the bombers, a US guided missile submarine in the Middle East launched more than two dozen missiles at unspecified "surface infrastructure targets" at Isfahan, one of three nuclear sites struck in the operation, Caine said. The missiles are "designed to fly at extremely low altitudes at high subsonic speeds, and are piloted over an evasive route by several mission tailored guidance systems" and were first used in 1991 against Iraqi forces during Operation Desert Storm, according to the US military. - Aim of the strikes - US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth told journalists the strikes were launched to "neutralize the threats to our national interests posed by the Iranian nuclear program and the collective self-defense of our troops and our allies." "This mission was not, has not been, about regime change," Hegseth told journalists. A number of key figures in Trump's "Make America Great Again" movement have vocally opposed US strikes on Iran, and his promise to extract the United States from its "forever wars" in the Middle East played a role in his 2016 and 2024 election wins. - What comes next? - Trump has called on Iran to "agree to end this war," saying that "now is the time for peace." But it remains to be seen whether the strikes will push Tehran to deescalate the conflict, or to widen it further. If Iran chooses the latter option, it could do so by targeting American military personnel who are stationed around the Middle East, or seek to close the strategic Strait of Hormuz, which carries one-fifth of global oil output. wd/ft
