I - On Defense Podcast

For review:
1. US President Donald Trump’s son-in-law and top aide Jared Kushner met with Hamas chief Khalil al-Hayya in the Egyptian coastal city of El-Alamein on Sunday, an Arab diplomat told The Times of Israel.
2. The White House established a secret backchannel with Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, according to a Sunday report, which said that the United States has been informed that the IRGC stands behind the positions of the Iranian negotiators in their talks with Washington.
3. Iranian authorities on Saturday called for the release of three pilots they said were captured in Qatar amid the US-Israel war with Iran.
4. Lebanese media reported Israeli airstrikes in the Ali Taher Ridge in southern Lebanon Saturday overnight, a day after three Israeli soldiers were seriously wounded by an explosive drone launched by Hezbollah.
Israel is awaiting US approval for a military operation aimed at taking control of the ridge, Lebanese newspaper Al Joumhouria reported Friday morning, citing a senior security official.
5. US Central Command announced the stand-up of a joint US-UAE task force to advance AI in the two allies’ militaries.
The task force will be “the first bilateral task force focused on accelerating the development of military artificial intelligence,” the CENTCOM statement says, with a particular focus on “AI applications for intelligence support, protecting critical infrastructure, and monitoring the regional security environment.”
6. Department of War Undersecretary for Policy Elbridge Colby pushed back against reports that the U.S. military’s stockpiles and capabilities are strained following Operation Epic Fury.
“There’s been a lot of news about the United States military being stretched. Please don’t be misinformed,” Colby told Manila’s defense and security elites at a closed-door event organized by the Stratbase Institute think tank.

For review:
1. Russia believes the United States is deeply involved in Ukrainian attacks against it and has raised the issue with ​Washington, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said in comments broadcast on Friday.
He ‌said that the alleged U.S. support included the supply of intelligence.
2. US President Donald Trump said Friday that the United States will hit Iran hard economically, as Washington and Tehran struggle to reach a deal to end a nearly six month conflict.
His comments to Fox News came a day after US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said the US was going to apply measures that have “never been seen” on Tehran as soon as next week.
3. Iran will soon join the New Development Bank, the development lender established by the BRICS group of nations, central bank governor said in a state media report published on Wednesday ahead of a BRICS finance meeting in India.
4. Surveillance soldiers on the Gaza border were reportedly sounding the alarm on Thursday about armed terrorist activity inside the Gaza Strip, in what they said feels like a repeat of their unheeded warnings before the October 7, 2023, onslaught.
5. Yemen’s Houthi rebels fired missiles at the Yemeni port city of Mokha on Friday, killing eight people, the country’s internationally recognized government said, 
A Yemeni government official said the Houthis “fired five missiles at commercial ships unloading at the port” in Mokha, setting two ships on fire.
6. Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman met the commander of US Central Command, Brad Cooper, and discussed defense cooperation between the kingdom and the United States as well as efforts to reduce regional tensions, the Saudi state news agency says.
7. U.S. Central Command will stand up the inaugural task force focused on multi-domain, multinational attack drones.
Task Force Falcon Strike will utilize one-way attack drones composed of unmanned systems from above, on and below the sea, managed by U.S. military support staff and regional partners.
8. The Pentagon signed two framework agreements Friday with Boeing and RTX to expand production of critical components for the Standard Missile-3, the Navy’s primary ship-launched interceptor against ballistic missiles.
9.  US Army M1E3 & XM30 Prototypes.
10.  Breaking Defense Opinion Article- concerning US Transits through the Taiwan Strait.

For review:
1.Israel told the United States about the Iranian assassination threat that prompted the US Secret Service to take President Donald Trump off Air Force One and transfer to another military plane as he prepared to fly out of Turkey last month, the Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday, citing an unnamed US official.
Later Tuesday, Trump confirmed that he had indeed been smuggled off Air Force One in Ankara because the Secret Service and US military told him to switch planes.
2. Iran-backed Houthi rebels killed six people aboard a cargo ship in the Bab el-Mandeb Strait on Tuesday.
3. The Board of Peace on Wednesday denied that there is any “financial agreement” with Hamas, after the Kan public broadcaster reported that the body agreed to cover $400 million of Hamas’s debt to outside parties as part of its roadmap for the terror group’s disarmament.
4. Israel informed the White House recently that it would be willing to negotiate an agreement halting the targeted killings of Palestinian terrorists in Gaza, but that any such deal would exclude those who took part in the October 7, 2023, attack.
5. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Wednesday he hoped more countries would join a the defense agreement signed last week between Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan that they say is aimed at stabilizing a region wracked by conflict.
6. The US military is on track to pull all of its forces out of Iraq by the end of September, officials said Wednesday, marking the end of a presence that started with the 2003 invasion and beginning of the Iraq War.
7. An Army unit has been picked to begin training and testing out plans for the Pentagon’s Golden Dome air defense mission, according to a three-star general helping with plans.

For review:
1. US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said that the administration of President Donald Trump is escalating economic pressure on Cuba with an unprecedented sanctions campaign and warned that "there are no escape valves."
2. Yemen's Houthis said they attacked an oil facility Sunday in southwestern Saudi Arabia, the latest attack by the Iranian-backed rebels on the kingdom.
3. Nickolay Mladenov, the Gaza envoy of the US-backed Board of Peace, sought to dispel skepticism in Israel about the board’s roadmap for the disarmament of Hamas in the Strip, arguing that the plan’s full implementation is Israel’s only “guarantee” of preventing a repeat of the October 7, 2023, massacre, and that it will be based on verifiable steps, rather than trust of the terror group.
4. Iran on Monday said that it has no reason to be concerned about the new security pact between Pakistan, Turkey, and Saudi Arabia, arguing that it is “a sign of a change in the perception” of countries in the region toward the United States, and not a threat to Iran.
5. US President Donald Trump said Sunday that Washington was “low-keying” its approach to Iran and only “semi-negotiating” with the Islamic Republic, as it suffers in dire economic straits.
6. Russia’s Foreign Ministry has denied that Russian and German officials held talks in Azerbaijan last month to discuss the ongoing war in Ukraine.
“There have been no official contacts with Germany regarding a settlement in Ukraine, nor are there any now.” 
7. The US Defense Department has requested that American defense companies quickly boost their production and delivery of weapons amid an acute shortage of arms due to the Iran war, according to a memo reported on by the WP on Saturday.
8. The Army has officially opened up four of its domestic testing ranges and one international range where private industry can blast off interceptor missiles they have developed with their own funds, in hopes of getting promising candidates into the acquisition pipeline faster.

For review:
1. Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and Turkey signed a joint defense agreement in Mecca on Friday.
The agreement is intended to strengthen collective deterrence against any act of aggression and stipulates that an armed attack against any of the three would be regarded as an attack on all, they said in a joint statement.
2. Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan says that the defense pact his country signed yesterday with Pakistan and Saudi Arabia is technically the same as NATO’s Article 5 mutual defense agreement.
Egypt could potentially join the pact once certain technical matters are resolved, he adds.
3. A member of Iran's Parliament and National Security and Foreign Policy Commission has criticised the new defence pact between Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Turkey and said that even though the agreement has been signed, it would not guarantee Riyadh lasting security.
Ebrahim Rezaei reacted to the defence agreement on X and wrote, "Saudis must know that a paper agreement with Turkey and Pakistan will not bring them security, just as years of one-sided nursing to the Americans did not bring them security."
4. Houthi attacks on a strategic Yemeni province killed at least 10 people Friday, according to a minister and military source, as the rebels escalated strikes on the oil-rich region.
A source close to the Saudi military told AFP that the Saudi-led coalition supporting the Yemeni government since 2015 would not stand “idly by” against the Houthi attacks and that Marib was a “red line.”
5. In an interview with Fox News, US Vice President JD Vance says that Iran has told the US that it has “no plans” to impose tolls on the Strait of Hormuz.
6. As the US-backed Board of Peace pushed ahead with its roadmap for postwar Gaza, Hamas asserted Saturday it remained ready to proceed with the plan and urged Washington to pressure Israel to implement it, as Israeli officials warned that the terror organization was exploiting the process to prevent renewed military action.
7. The US Senate overwhelmingly approves a punishing Russian sanctions package, the result of a year-long campaign by the late Sen. Lindsey Graham.
The bipartisan legislation, which passes the Senate 86-11, would penalize countries that continue to buy Russian oil, gas and other exports.
8. The U.S. Air Force has committed $75 million to an initial production run of a jet-powered guided bomb that can fly more than 300 nautical miles.
Boeing’s Payload Delivery Unit is a wing-and-turbojet engine kit that converts a 500-pound Joint Direct Attack Munition (JDAM) into a long-range JDAM (JDAM LR) dubbed the GBU-75. The result is a gravity bomb with the reach of a cruise missile.