Norway suspended new applications for military export licenses to Turkey today. Norway is also reviewing all current licenses for Turkey for military and multi-use military export licenses.

New reports emerge of Israeli strikes in Iraq, as a prominent Senator (and Trump ally) pushes a new security pact between Washington and Jerusalem.

It’s the second time this year Republicans and Democrats have come together to oppose President Trump’s policy towards Riyadh.

Mattis’s last message to the troops is three brief, carefully crafted paragraphs packed with historical references and political messages — which are implicitly critical of President Trump.

Republican Senators erupted in outrage, and there are some indications that Turkey pushed Trump to withdraw support from its traditional foes, the Kurds. The British government issued an equivocal statement, while the Kremlin applauded the move.

“I’ve never agreed with 100% of what this president says off the cuff like that,” Perdue said. The pledge to end exercises — deemed critical to allied military readiness — was not mentioned in the official joint statement, he noted, and therefore isn’t a binding commitment, only an expression of presidential intent predicated on continued cooperation from Pyongyang.

WASHINGTON: “When does that moment come when their program matures and goes across those redlines? At the pace we’re on, it’s just a matter of time. If something doesn’t change, it will be inevitable these redlines are met — if there’s another test of a warhead.” Sen. Lindsey Graham appeared to document one of the redlines he… Keep reading →

PENTAGON: There are a lot of empty offices around the E-ring, the most prestigious sector of the Pentagon, where top defense officials enjoy the rare privilege of windows. But that’s about to change, a senior aide to Defense Secretary Jim Mattis told me. “There’s a bow wave of names that are very close to being… Keep reading →

WASHINGTON: With just 10 days before Donald Trump’s inauguration, our European allies appear to have gotten over the initial shock of his election and moved to a wait-and-see mode. They’ll judge him by his actions in office, not by his mixed messages on the campaign trail. “What I detect from my colleagues within NATO is… Keep reading →

WASHINGTON: The day before intelligence analysts brief a skeptical Donald Trump on Russian interference with the 2016 elections, the Director of National Intelligence told supportive senators that he had only grown more confident the Kremlin was the culprit. DNI James Clapper not only repeated his assessment that Russia had tried to manipulate the election with… Keep reading →