Iran has also carried out cyberattacks on critical infrastructure in the continental United States, demonstrating its reach and determination to harm noncombatants. Attacking infrastructure can quickly undermine our way of life, such as threatening our school safety, clean water, food access, and heating and cooling systems. In a horrifying incident in March, Handala likely launched the most significant wartime cyberattack against the United States, with hackers claiming to have wiped between 80,000-200,000 devices, prompting surgery delays at hospitals and panic amongst patients nationwide. Then, in July, several American towns issued water advisories after a coordinated cyberattack struck water facilities across the United States, with cybersecurity experts noting that the techniques mirror past Iranian hacking operations.

As Iran openly hacked U.S. infrastructure, the regime also launched cyberattacks on Israel and America’s Arab partners, pressuring them to curtail relations with the United States. While claiming responsibility for cyberattacks on military and critical infrastructure systems across the Middle East, including in Israel, Jordan, Kuwait, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates (U.A.E.), Iranian forces also combined cyberoperations with kinetic strikes to maximize their damage. Handala has claimed to have hacked the facility and stolen around 430,000 classified documents.

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When U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent launched Operation Economic Outcast against Iran, he promised to target its “enablers” and “sever every economic lifeline that sustains this tyrannical regime until Tehran stands alone.” Washington has since sanctioned everything from foreign banks to Iranian airlines. Yet it has spared one of the most prominent institutions ever accused of helping Iran evade U.S. sanctions: Turkey’s state-owned Halkbank. This Iranian lifeline, too, must be severed.

In one of the biggest sanctions-evasion cases ever, U.S. prosecutors charged in 2019 that, between 2012 and 2016, Halkbank violated U.S. sanctions by transferring roughly $20 billion in Iranian oil proceeds into gold and cash while disguising the transactions as legitimate food trade. Washington spent years prosecuting Halkbank, only to settle the case through a deferred prosecution agreement in March and drop it in June without the bank paying a fine or admitting to any wrongdoing.

Halkbank’s reprieve, according to Justice Department filings, was tied to Turkey’s help in brokering the October 2025 ceasefire in Gaza. With this trade, Washington told Ankara that it can buy immunity from U.S. sanctions enforcement and signaled to Tehran that Turkish banks remain a safe channel for its money.

Turkey and Iran got the message. A financial architecture like the one that enabled Halkbank’s sanctions evasion once again operates from Turkey.

On September 4, the Treasury said Istanbul-based Golden Global Yatirim Bankasi was established to enable Iran’s rahbar network—the front companies Iran’s sanctioned banks use to move money abroad—to transfer oil revenues from China to Turkey, where exchangers could convert them into cash and gold and move them to Iran. That is the route Halkbank was accused of running a decade earlier.

And, soon, Halkbank itself could restart funneling money to Iran. Turkey’s 25-year gas contract with Iran expired in July, but the pipeline network in eastern Anatolia was built around Iranian supply and Iranian gas met nearly 13 percent of Turkish consumption. Neither government has said whether the contract’s automatic five-year extension was triggered. But if it was, Halkbank, which historically processed Turkey’s payments for Iranian energy, could again be handling Iranian revenue.

Despite this exposure of its financial institutions to Iranian sanctions evasion, Ankara has acted only when Washington applies pressure. On September 18, Turkish regulators revoked the operating license of Bank Mellat’s Istanbul branch, an Iranian state lender under U.S. sanctions that Turkey had allowed to operate for years. Two days earlier, regulators placed nearly all shareholder rights at Golden Global under state control, roughly two weeks after the U.S. designation. When the Treasury went after Iran’s aviation sector, Ankara halted Mahan Air flights and Turkey’s flag carrier Turkish Airlines suspended flights to Iran. Yet, none of these steps touched Halkbank or the exchange houses that convert Iranian revenue into gold, and Iranian trade still moves through Turkish intermediaries and informal networks.

Washington, too, so far, seems uninterested in Halkbank, or Turkey’s, possible role in aiding Iran, even after Economic Outcast began. After the Golden Global designation, U.S. Ambassador to Turkey Tom Barrack stressed that the action was no indictment of Ankara, saying “the health of the Turkish financial system is not in question.” That reassurance clashes with the Treasury’s warning that foreign institutions facilitating Iranian sanctions evasion risk losing access to the U.S. financial system. A warning that loses force if it stops at institutions with clout in Washington.

Washington should apply pressure most forcefully on Halkbank to close the channel Iran has used before for its energy revenue and show Ankara that political influence no longer buys exemption from U.S. law. After all, American pressure has worked in Ankara before. In 2018, sanctions on two Turkish ministers and higher steel and aluminum tariffs secured the release of detained American pastor Andrew Brunson that October.

First, the Treasury should require Halkbank, as a condition of its access to U.S. correspondent banks, to accept a U.S.-selected monitor with access to any accounts held for Iranian entities, a safeguard the deferred prosecution agreement left to a reviewer of Halkbank’s own choosing.

Second, the Treasury’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network should publicly state that any Iranian payment routed through Halkbank outside a transparent, U.S.-monitored channel will trigger a Section 311 finding—which can bar U.S. banks from maintaining correspondent accounts for the targeted institution—as it has already proposed for Banque Misr’s United Arab Emirates branches. More broadly, Washington should hold the Turkish state responsible for the conduct of the banks it owns and the exchange houses it regulates.

Economic Outcast rests on the premise that no foreign institution can safely facilitate Iran’s access to international finance. That premise holds only if it applies to the largest state banks of an American ally, which just so happens to have been one of Iran’s largest economic lifelines. That lifeline must be severed.

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Europe’s governments have stepped into a ring and leveled their weapons inward, treating Israel as the sole target in the center. The trouble is that the circle is not empty ground — it is a shared defense line.

Several European countries face concrete threats from Russia and Iran, yet Denmark, France, and Norway have lately moved to impede the military readiness of the country supplying them advanced defense technology.

Norwegian officials worry that Russian gray-zone activity near Svalbard could trigger a NATO-Russia confrontation. In late September, Danish intelligence flagged the growing risk of limited Russian military action against NATO states, citing Russia’s aggressive naval behavior in the Baltic Sea. Iran and its proxies have recently plotted attacks on Danish, French, and Norwegian targets. During the recent Iran war, Tehran also demonstrated that its long-range missiles could reach much of Western Europe.

Instead of reinforcing their defenses, the three governments have restricted Israeli port access and withheld components from the German shipyards that build Israel’s warships. Norway and Denmark barred Israel’s INS Drakon submarine, even while it sailed under a German flag, from conducting trials in their territorial waters, forcing a detour of thousands of miles and causing months of delay. France has joined them in refusing certain defense components for the German yards constructing Israeli submarines and Saar corvettes. Germany has built all four of Israel’s Saar-6 corvettes and all six of its active submarines.

Political incentives help explain these choices. Israel is a fault line in the French presidential cycle, and around 10 percent of the French population are Muslims. France’s government formally recognized a nonexistent Palestine last year. Denmark’s fragile governing coalition has taken heat for defense ties with Jerusalem, and approximately 5 percent of Denmark’s population is Muslim. The measures may be symbolic, but their effect is not.

The circular-firing-squad problem is straightforward. The same governments still buy, or plan to buy, combat-proven Israeli systems to protect their own forces. Norway, which also recognizes a Palestinian state, this year began receiving Leopard 2A8 tanks fitted with Israeli firm Rafael’s Trophy active protection system — the only such system with a sustained combat record against anti-tank missiles. Without it, Norwegian armor would be more exposed to the Russian threat Oslo itself describes as growing. Norway is also acquiring British Type 26 frigates whose electronic warfare suites draw on Israeli technology.

Denmark purchased Israeli rocket artillery and has shown interest in Israel’s Barak-MX air defenses and in frigates carrying Israeli systems, precisely to counter Russian naval and aerial pressure. The shared stock is broader still: interceptor and sensor families, and parts pools that feed multiple NATO inventories.

In a circular firing squad, the danger is not only that you miss the person you meant to punish. It is that a slight misfire — in this case, a restriction that travels through the common pipeline of components and technology — could hit your ally. Europe depends on the same line it is starting to cut. Should Israel answer with reciprocal limits, the buyers would lose access to systems they have already judged necessary. Even without reciprocity, delays to Israel’s submarine and surface fleet weaken a navy that helps secure the Mediterranean sea lanes necessary for European energy imports.

For the United States, the friction is worse than ordinary disagreement between allies. NATO partners are actively complicating the readiness of Israel, a country with Major Non-NATO Ally status and which the current administration has called a model ally. A visible circular firing squad inside the broader US alliance structure undercuts domestic support for those partnerships and signals to Russia and Iran that Western defense cooperation can be fractured from within.

Washington should warn against further steps that degrade Israeli readiness and should be prepared to attach costs if the warnings are ignored. As Denmark’s foreign minister has framed his own government’s measures targeting Israel, the correction would be for Europe’s own good.

RADM Paul Becker, USN (ret.), is former Director of Intelligence (J2) for the Joint Chiefs of Staff, a Jewish Institute for National Security of America’s (JINSA) Generals and Admirals Program participant, and a member of JINSA’s Board of Advisors.

Yoni Tobin is a senior policy analyst at JINSA. 

Drone warfare is expanding from the skies to the seas, and the United States must be ready. The Russia-Ukraine war, which has become synonymous with aerial drone warfare, has now featured the first naval battle in history between unmanned boats, according to the Ukrainian Navy. On September 14, a Ukrainian Sargan 300 drone boat fired at and sank a Russian unmanned surface vessel (USV) in the Black Sea — a significant milestone in warfare’s rapid evolution.

Unmanned naval platforms are also startin​​g to see combat beyond the battlefield laboratory of eastern Europe. During the Iran war, in July, three American one-way attack USVs struck an Iranian submarine and naval facility — the first-ever U.S. use of USVs to strike enemy targets. Just weeks prior, a USV rescued two U.S. Army pilots from nearby waters after an Iranian drone struck their helicopter.

Nor are recent U.S. unmanned successes confined to the Middle East. They have occurred right in America’s backyard. Reporting from Aug. 5 indicated that an American USV recently detected, tracked, and helped intercept a U.S.-bound narcotics shipment worth $81 million in the Caribbean Sea.

Now, accelerated U.S. efforts, not complacency, are needed to build on this recent tactical success. Greater strategic imagination is the first step. The Pentagon needs to think bigger about unmanned military platforms — but also smaller. Thinking smaller means complementing high-end platforms with inexpensive, expendable ones. Thinking bigger means integrating them into a single network with manned assets and human warfighters. Today, the U.S. military does neither at scale.

First, expendability has its own currency. Ukraine has achieved outsized battlefield effects with lower-end, expendable unmanned platforms — as have Iran and Russia. This is true for sea-based autonomous systems too. However, one-way attack USVs, like those American forces used against Iran, remain in short supply.

That shortfall stems from bureaucratic, not technological, reasons. The Pentagon applies the same rigid standards to unmanned, expendable platforms as to high-end, manned surface combatants. Yet overly rigorous testing and evaluation inhibits production at the pace which the battlefield demands.

Second, as the recent USV rescue of U.S. aviators from the Arabian Gulf demonstrates, unmanned platforms offer more than strike or surveillance functions. In fact, those lower-tech functions may have greater upside involving less rigorous testing and faster deployment timetables.

Take, for example, the since-axed UCLASS program to build carrier-based surveillance-and-strike drones. Due to a lengthy requirements list, the project became unsustainable. That is subtraction by addition. Now, the Navy is developing the MQ-25 Stingray, an unmanned aerial refueler — a simpler platform meeting a more fundamental need.

Another potential evolution is now on the horizon: unmanned amphibious landings. A Ukrainian startup has a prototype for an autonomous amphibious vehicle, resembling a small truck. It can carry drones, travel underwater with a low radar profile, and drive onto enemy shores. The United States, by acquiring that capability, could facilitate a naval version of Operation Spiderweb, where Ukrainian drones hidden inside cargo trucks infiltrated Russia and neutralized strategic Russian bombers across the country.

Third, the Pentagon’s unmanned advances must be complementary, but currently are not. This is the “think bigger” half of the equation, and what makes the first two lessons pay off. Expendable autonomous mass, low-cost single-purpose platforms, and distributed unmanned hubs reach their potential only by working as a team. Recognizing this, Taiwan is seeking over 200,000 one-way attack drones and over 1,200 USVs, but also the systems architecture to link them together.

To prevail in a hypothetical Pacific war, American forces must have persistent adversary surveillance. Currently, that interconnectivity is lacking, impeding readiness. Surveillance drones cannot directly communicate with nearby submarines or USVs, nor fuse data into a common operating picture.

Linking autonomous platforms, manned assets, and human warfighters in a shared data mesh and command-and-control system would close those gaps. The U.S. military’s Combined Joint All-Domain Command and Control (CJADC2) aims to forge that very integration. Yet CJADC2 remains limited to “fragmented deployments,” according to the Pentagon. Fixing that is a critical next step.

Innovating in the unmanned domain will require the Pentagon to be more imaginative in how it acquires, tests, and links its manned and unmanned platforms. That requires thinking smaller, by acquiring more expendable unmanned systems, and thinking bigger, about operationalizing a joint-domain network. It also should involve Washington acquiring Israeli, Taiwanese, and Ukrainian unmanned technology, and expanding co-production with those U.S. partners at the cutting edge of warfare.

Successful adaptation also requires re-examining of how the Pentagon allocates resources. Currently, the Pentagon’s unmanned capabilities are constrained by cost overruns on large, manned surface combatants that are not well calibrated to today’s threat landscape. Studies indicate that guided-missile destroyers would be highly vulnerable in a Pacific war, and that reliably fixing and returning them to battle would be nearly impossible. Spending on these platforms, while important, represents a disproportionately large portion of the Navy’s budget — crowding out unmanned innovation and acquisition.

The Pentagon’s recent unmanned successes show it is not completely outpaced by warfare’s rapid evolution. Yet this race is a marathon, not a sprint.

Vice Admiral Michael Connor, USN (ret.) is former Commander of the U.S. Submarine Forces and a Jewish Institute for National Security of America (JINSA) Generals and Admirals Program participant. Vice Admiral Connor also previously served as director of the Pentagon’s Naval Warfare Integration Group.

Yoni Tobin is a senior policy analyst at JINSA.

The war for the world’s key maritime chokepoints now has a second front. Reportedly with Iranian assistance, Houthi forces staged a 48-hour offensive on September 10-11, seizing further stretches of Red Sea coastline and the Hanish and Perim islands. When the dust settled, the Iranian axis had gained effective control over another vital maritime chokepoint—the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, through which 25 percent of global container traffic passes in peacetime—without a clear U.S. response as yet.

Yet more is at stake than Yemen’s internal dynamics, regional tensions, or global energy prices. The Iranian regime’s ongoing efforts to hold hostage the Strait of Hormuz, and the Houthis’ seizure of the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, are fundamental challenges to the global freedom of navigation that the United States has upheld for over two centuries.

In 1785, then-ambassador to France Thomas Jefferson argued that forceful U.S. action is necessary “if we wish our commerce to be free.” That is why, as president, he dispatched the U.S. Navy against the Barbary pirates in modern Libya.

Since that war, upholding freedom of navigation has been a core U.S. strategic pillar. The 2025 US National Security Strategy (NSS), like its predecessors, noted the continued American objective of “preserving freedom of navigation in all crucial sea lanes.” Ever since presidential administrations began issuing the strategy document in 1987, 16 of the 20 total NSS papers have reaffirmed this principle. Threats to international waterways have been one of the most common causes of US military action in recent decades, including against Libya in 1981 and 1986; Iran in 1988; and the Houthis themselves in 2025.

Iran appears to be exporting its Strait of Hormuz playbook to the Red Sea.

The Houthis’ sudden seizure of the Bab el-Mandeb Strait has weaponized a strategic choke point to inflict economic pain, but Tehran is pursuing a more ambitious strategy: turning Israel’s playbook — developed after the Oct. 7, 2023, attacks — against America.

As Israel systematically dismantled Iran’s network of proxies across the Middle East, Iran has turned to targeting the Arab allies that underpin U.S. power in the region.

On Oct. 7, 2023, Israel found itself surrounded by an Iranian ring of fire — attacked by Hamas but facing Iranian-armed terrorist armies on seven fronts. Though it realized that it could be safe only if it dealt with the arsonist in chief — Iran itself — it first had to douse the closest flames.

It was the successful degradation, if not elimination, of Iran-backed proxies — Hamas, Hezbollah and the Assad regime — that cleared the way to Tehran. With those groups diminished, Israel no longer had to fear that they would unleash their fury in defense of their Iranian patron.

Tehran has clearly internalized the lessons from Israel’s dismantling of its ring of fire. It is now deploying them against the United States. The recent Houthi offensive represents a double reversal of the Israeli strategy.

First, the Houthi offensive demonstrates that Iran’s terrorist pawns have not been completely swept off the Middle East’s chessboard. After sitting out several weeks of intense regional fighting, the Houthis have rejoined Iran’s offensive. Worse, they have been acting in coordination with Iran-backed Shiite militias in Iraq, which have bombarded Kurdish groups and targeted Saudi oil infrastructure.

Both of these proxies have survived efforts to sideline them. The U.S. and Israel pummeled the Houthis. Iraq’s new government has demanded that the militias disarm and attempted to arrest a high-ranking official, but neither effort has succeeded.

The ring of fire might have shrunk, but it has not been extinguished.

More ominously, Iran has adopted Israel’s anti-proxy strategy. It is now fighting what it sees as an American ring of fire encircling Iran, not with terrorist groups, but with partner states. The closest to Tehran are the Arab states hosting U.S. forces.

Now, Tehran appears to be pursuing a calculated strategy to pressure those states to expel American troops and abandon their alignment with Washington. Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Jordan, Bahrain and even Egypt have all been targeted by Tehran and its proxies, even as they have avoided striking Israel.

By attacking America’s Arab partners and their infrastructure, Tehran seeks to punitively demonstrate that U.S. security guarantees endanger them. If this is Iran’s strategy, recent attacks are likely a prelude to a broader escalation.

The Houthis are on the march and could seek to control Yemen’s Red Sea coastline and establish a beachhead in the Horn of Africa. Iraq’s militias are growing bolder, perhaps portending a showdown with Baghdad or the Kurdish region, as soon as U.S. forces complete their withdrawal from the country.

This Iranian strategy seems to be working. Never has Tehran been closer to achieving its goal of expelling the U.S. from the Middle East politically and militarily.

In a drastic pivot from its recent pursuits of a U.S. defense treaty and normalization with Israel, Saudi Arabia has instead pursued an Islamic alliance with Pakistan and Turkey to hedge against exclusive reliance on America. Even this attempt at realignment failed.

Iranian proxies attacked the kingdom anyway, while the Saudis’ new allies offered limited initial support, underscoring the limits of the pact.

The Saudis are right that the region needs new security arrangements, but wrong to seek them beyond the United States. The answer is not less American security but more. The U.S. may not be able to commit the military resources needed to keep Bab el-Mandeb open, but it can bring together its partners to provide the security that the region needs.

This requires doubling down on the Israeli strategy of extinguishing Iran’s ring of fire. This time, however, there must be a coordinated approach, with all of America’s partners fighting the fires together, at once.

Mitigating the threats from Iran, Yemen and Iraq will require cooperation among the U.S., Saudi Arabia, Israel and the United Arab Emirates. The UAE is the only state with a track record of success in ground operations against the Houthis in Yemen.

Israel has a record of successful strikes deep inside Yemen, intelligence penetration of Iranian networks, possible access to bases in Somaliland, across the Gulf of Aden from Yemen, and effective missile defense that it is ready to share with partners.

Iran is trying to reignite its ring of fire and direct it not against Israel this time, but against America’s Arab partners. Only a joint, coordinated response can secure the region’s critical waterways and infrastructure and perhaps finally stamp out the Iranian threat.