Welcome again Foreign PolicyStatus Report, where we are happy to hear that Kuwait has to be released award-winning journalist Ahmed Shihab-Eldin, who was detained nearly two months ago while visiting family in the country for allegedly spreading fake news about the war in Iran and threatening national security. Shihab-Eldin is expected to be released in the next few days.
Here’s what’s available for the day: The United States and Iran pivot to economic war in the middle of time ceasefireEurope offers a new way of life for Ukraineand Claude Mythos’ Anthropic AI model raises new cyber security concerns.
Welcome again Foreign PolicyStatus Report, where we are happy to hear that Kuwait has to be released award-winning journalist Ahmed Shihab-Eldin, who was detained nearly two months ago while visiting family in the country for allegedly spreading fake news about the war in Iran and threatening national security. Shihab-Eldin is expected to be released in the next few days.
Here’s what’s available for the day: The United States and Iran pivot to economic war in the middle of time ceasefireEurope offers a new way of life for Ukraineand Claude Mythos’ Anthropic AI model raises new cyber security concerns.
A cease-fire agreement between the United States and Iran on shaky groundand there are currently no concrete plans for another round of peace talks. The war has not resumed on a large scale—and US President Donald Trump extended the ceasefire on Tuesday—but it is debatable whether the current situation qualifies as a truce.
Washington and Tehran are now locked in a tense economic war, with both sides trying to pressure the other into making concessions by targeting the other’s pocketbooks through a naval dispute. The United States continues to block Iranian ports, which Tehran says is a violation of the ceasefire, and has seized several Iranian-linked vessels, including cargo ship in the Arabian Sea and two oil tankers in the Indian Ocean—in recent times. Although reports suggest that some ships are getting through, the blockade is aimed at inflicting enough economic pain on Iran that it accedes to Trump’s demands on issues such as its nuclear program.
Meanwhile, Iran still has a stranglehold on the Strait of Hormuz, which has become the most important issue in Trump’s war. The closure of the channel has caused a global energy crisis and seen gas prices skyrocket. Trump on Thursday he demanded that the United States has “full control” over the strait, but there is little evidence of this. And the fact that Trump he announced the same day he had ordered the US Navy to “shoot and kill” any ship laying mines in the waterway doesn’t help his case.
It is closed. It’s an open question whether this escalating economic game of chicken will force either side to back down. Iran has withstood US sanctions for years. It is no stranger with great economic pressure from Washington, and now has great power due to its possession of Hormuz.
Restrictions are also a double-edged sword for Trump. While it could bring more financial disruption to Tehran by cutting profits from oil sales, it also threatens to undo the ceasefire and exacerbate the ongoing energy crisis (which the head of the International Energy Agency has described as worst in history)
Trump good, Trump bad. Although Trump has been doing the “good soldier, bad soldier” routine by issuing repeated threats before turning back at the eleventh hour – and it is clear that he wants to find a crossroads – it is also clear that he does not want to end the war on terms that are not favorable to the United States.
While there is no denying that the war has caused pain at the pump for Americans, the United States (the world’s largest producer of crude oil) has been more isolated from the direct economic consequences of the conflict than the wider world, according to FP editor-in-chief Ravi Agrawal. he has written. This gives Trump some wiggle room—but not much, given the political pressure he’s already facing over the war.
Reluctant to start a war or put American boots on the ground to achieve unfulfilled goals, Trump’s options are to make a deal or hope that Iran blinks first. But the longer the impasse continues, the more likely one or the other will take expansive measures to break the impasse. If that happens, the pact can completely fall apart. (Read John’s piece here on the very important questions we will face if the ceasefire collapses.)
The Hegsodus continues: The Secretary of Defense of the United States, Pete Hegseth, purged the senior leadership of the Pentagon, claimed another victim on Wednesday, when the Secretary of the Navy John Phelan was. removed due to its role even as the Navy enforces a blockade on Iranian ports in the Strait of Hormuz. Phelan has clashed frequently with Hegseth in recent months, CNN reported informationwhile Hegseth is unhappy about the pace of the military’s shipbuilding program and Phelan’s direct communication with Trump.
Trump he told reporters on Thursday that although Phelan is a “very good man” and “loved him very much,” Phelan was fired because “he had some conflict and not necessarily Pete (Hegseth) but someone else—he was a non-charger, and he had some conflicts with other people, especially about building and buying new ships.” Phelan will be replaced by Deputy Secretary of the Navy Hung Cao, a Trump ally who ran for the Senate in 2024, when FP colleague Allison Meakem said he told her: “I’m about to kill a commie every day and twice on Sunday.”
Hegseth, meanwhile, announced Tuesday that he was the end Department of Defense mandate for service members to receive flu vaccine.
In other staff news, we can’t recommend it enough deep diving which our FP colleagues Sam Skove and Rachel Oswald posted this week on the US State Department’s controversial new hiring push.
What should be high on your radar, if it isn’t already.
Ukraine gets a lifeline. The European Union on Thursday approved a $106 billion loan to help Ukraine that had been blocked for months by Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban. However, eventually he left his veto after losing national elections this month, and after Ukraine reopened its section of the Druzhba pipeline on Wednesday. The loan emphasizes defense spending and will allow Ukraine to buy the necessary weapons it needs to continue its war against Russia, against which the European Union also passed an agreement. new sanctions package on Wednesday.
“The end is over,” EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Kaja Kallas wrote in a post on X, adding that the loan and sanctions “will give Ukraine what it needs to hold its ground, until (Russian President Vladimir) Putin understands that his war is going nowhere.”
Managing Stories. Leading artificial intelligence company Anthropic shocked the cybersecurity world this month when it said its new language model, Claude Mythos Preview, was too good at jailbreaking computer systems to be released to the public. This week saw a troubling revelation about the model: A small group of unauthorized users from a private online platform gained access to Mythos on the same day that Anthropic announced its release to a small set of companies, according to to Bloomberg. Meanwhile, Axios information that the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Agency—the country’s top cyber defense agency—does not have access to that model, as other parts of the government such as the National Security Agency do.
But how big a threat is Mythos, and what does it mean for US national security? Rishi spoke to many former government officials and cyber security experts to try to figure that out – read more here.
An election worker holds up a poster with instructions to voters ahead of the upcoming municipal elections in Deir el-Balah in the central Gaza Strip on April 21, four days before voters go to the polls in the first such election since the start of the war with Israel in October 2023.Eyad Baba/AFP via Getty Images
Monday, April 27: Britain’s King Charles begins a four-day visit to the United States.
Tuesday, April 28: Croatia hosts the Three Seas Initiative summit.
Deadline for Kosovo’s parliament to elect a new president or face snap parliamentary elections.
Wednesday, April 29: Hegseth and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Dan Caine testifying before the House Armed Services Committee, their first public appearance before lawmakers since the start of the Iran war.
The US Federal Reserve announces its interest rate decision, followed by Jerome Powell’s last press conference as chairman of the central bank.
“We will be tormented by it for a long time. I will be, and I want to say sorry for misleading people. It was not intentional.”
-Conservative commentator Tucker Carlson, a vocal critic of the Iran war, expressing regret for supporting Trump.
FBI Director Kash Patel defamation case against Atlantic– for article explaining Patel’s alleged drinking problems and fear of being fired by Trump—not a good start. Patel’s legal team filed the complaint in a Washington, DC court on Monday full of typos even as it accuses the newspaper of not adhering to journalistic standards, with spelling mistakes including “feable” instead of “feeble,” “politics” instead of “policy,” and “discussed” instead of “discussed.”
