Washington's Iran campaign and Moscow's war effort are both approaching inflection points defined by exhaustion rather than resolution. According to Axios, President Trump ordered a halt to strikes on Iranian coastal and Strait of Hormuz targets after CENTCOM commander Admiral Brad Cooper assessed that roughly 80% of the Epic Fury target list had been struck, leaving the decision on the hardened Pickaxe Mountain facility as the campaign's central unresolved question. In parallel, CSIS's Maria Snegovaya and Dr. Jade McGlin report that Russian state pollster VTsIOM recorded Putin's trust rating at 65% by July 12—the lowest since the 2022 invasion—as Ukrainian deep strikes degrade both Russian refining capacity and civilian logistics infrastructure, compounding a widening internal security and economic strain that Kremlin-watchers increasingly treat as structurally significant rather than transient.
Key Development
According to Axios, citing two sources familiar with internal deliberations, President Trump ordered US forces to halt strikes on Iranian targets along the southern coast and Strait of Hormuz for the first time in two weeks, following a recommendation from Admiral Brad Cooper that the Epic Fury target list was approximately 80% exhausted. Cooper's prepared Senate Armed Services Committee testimony detailed the campaign's scope: over 10,200 sorties and 13,500 strikes across 38 days, destroying over 90% of Iran's 8,000-plus naval mine inventory through more than 700 dedicated strikes, reducing Iranian air sorties from a pre-war baseline of 30-100 per day to zero, and destroying or disabling roughly 82% of Iran's air defense missile systems. The unresolved question is Pickaxe Mountain, a facility CBS News describes as an extension of Natanz roughly two kilometers away, which James Acton of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace assesses as 'very likely at least 100 meters deep,' beyond the 60-meter penetration capability of the GBU-57 Massive Ordnance Penetrator used in Operation Midnight Hammer.
**Strategic Implications:** Cooper reportedly framed Washington's choice starkly to the Pentagon, Joint Chiefs, and White House: commit fully to the remaining 20% of targets, including Pickaxe Mountain, or accept diminishing returns from continued limited strikes. This decision is complicated by a genuine intelligence dispute—per WSJ/CNN reporting cited in the source material, unnamed Israeli intelligence sources allege Iran has already transferred thousands of centrifuges and enriched uranium stockpiles to the site, a claim that directly contradicts other unnamed US/Israeli classified assessments describing no active current threat. Secretary of State Rubio has separately reframed US deterrence doctrine, stating any Iranian attack would be met with a response that 'costs more and does not scale down proportionally'—an explicit break from tit-for-tat escalation logic toward deliberate overmatch.
**Second-Order Effects:** The naval campaign's success in suppressing Iran's mining threat has already reshaped regional shipping economics: the US Naval Institute reported that Strait of Hormuz transits fell to 78 vessels between July 13-19, versus 174 the prior week, amid 13 consecutive days of renewed strikes. A July 26 tanker explosion attributed to an Iranian naval mine signals Tehran's willingness to enforce blockade compliance with lethal force. US Congress has approved approximately $95 billion for the campaign, per the source material, with a withdrawal resolution passing the House but failing in the Senate by a two-vote margin—indicating real but insufficient political opposition. Diplomatic envoys Kushner and Witkoff, working with Oman as historical mediator, are reportedly pursuing a Strait of Hormuz security framework, though no binding agreement exists.
**Historical Pattern:** The exhaustion-then-pivot dynamic mirrors Operation Desert Fox (1998) and NATO's Kosovo campaign, where diminishing marginal returns from strikes prompted diplomatic recalibration. Pickaxe Mountain's construction—reportedly initiated after a 2020 fire at Natanz that Iranian authorities characterized as sabotage—replicates the logic behind Fordow's original construction into a mountainside near Qom following earlier exposure concerns, reinforcing a recurring Iranian pattern of using geological depth to offset conventional military inferiority.
Key Development
According to CSIS researchers Maria Snegovaya and Dr. Jade McGlin, Ukrainian strikes have hit approximately 196 sites across roughly 20 Russian regions, triggering fuel shortages and price spikes, while Russia's official pollster VTsIOM recorded Putin's trust rating falling to 65% by July 12—the lowest since the 2022 invasion—despite a VTsIOM methodology change earlier in 2025 that Snegovaya suggests was designed to slow the recorded decline. Separately, per The Military Show's reporting, Ukraine launched a coordinated drone campaign beginning the weekend of July 18 against Wildberries, Russia's dominant e-commerce platform, which processes roughly 4 million deliveries daily and represents over 10% of Russian domestic trade according to company figures cited in the source. Confirmed strikes hit warehouses in Elektrostal, Kotovsk, Krasnodar, and Nevinnomyssk, with Pravda reporting on June 19 that over 60% of Russians report war fatigue.
**Strategic Implications:** Snegovaya's analytical framework divides Russian war supporters into ideological 'hawks' and a much larger 'loyalist' majority whose support is contingent on economic stability—precisely the segment most exposed to refinery and logistics strikes. Jason Jay Smart's reporting adds that fuel rationing now affects at least one-third of Russia's population, with Belarus supplying approximately 1.56 million barrels of gasoline to Russia in June—three times the prior month's volume. Both CSIS guests conclude public opinion is not currently forcing Putin toward negotiation but constrains his options, most visibly in continued public resistance to a second mobilization wave—a constraint relevant given Zelensky's claim, per a Sky News interview, that Putin plans a mobilization of 300,000 to 500,000 troops beginning quietly in early October, timed after Russia's parliamentary elections to minimize backlash.
**Second-Order Effects:** The Wildberries strikes have produced direct SME collapse inside Russia; Kyiv Post-sourced reporting cites business owners describing imminent bankruptcy, while Wildberries has announced compensation of $12,000 per injury and $25,000 per death for workers while declining to compensate small businesses for destroyed stock. Jason Jay Smart's reporting separately describes a Rosgvardia self-inspection that visited only 18-20 of roughly 30-35 mandated fuel and energy facilities, uncovering 145 security violations while issuing total fines of approximately $5,000—evidence, per the analysts, of regulatory capture that leaves infrastructure vulnerable to further sabotage. British press reporting cited by Smart describes Putin in a form of Kremlin lockdown for the preceding week amid concern over internal betrayal, meeting only three to five people daily.
**Historical Pattern:** Snegovaya situates the current dynamic within a pattern of five Putin-initiated conflicts over 25 years, each showing an initial rally-around-the-flag effect that dissipates over time. The mobilization timing echoes lessons from September 2022's partial mobilization, which triggered mass emigration and localized unrest that the Kremlin now appears determined to avoid repeating through a deliberately quiet post-election rollout.
Key Development
According to a Hardware ZONE analysis, five Iranian Kurdish opposition parties signed a charter in Erbil on February 22, 2026, forming the Coalition of Political Forces of Iranian Kurdistan (CPFIK) with a joint command center, six days before US-Israeli strikes on Iran began. PJAK fighters reportedly crossed into Iranian territory beginning March 2, with thousands deployed across the Zagros mountains by late June. The source documents at least nine armed incidents inside Iran between late May and July 1, including a June 29 killing of IRGC officers in Pave and a July 1 IRGC ambush near Piranshahr that killed six named KDPI Peshmerga fighters. Sentcom reportedly directed approximately one-fifth of its total strikes into Kurdish provinces, with over 40 IRGC/Basij installations destroyed in Sanandaj alone by early March, while Iran's retaliatory campaign against opposition bases in Iraqi Kurdistan is claimed to exceed 800 strikes since February 28.
**Strategic Implications:** The source frames Iran as facing classic strategic overextension: absorbing sustained air strikes on missile and drone infrastructure while simultaneously securing the Strait of Hormuz, suppressing domestic protest, and now containing a mobilized western insurgency. If CPFIK establishes and holds 'liberated zones' in cities such as Mahabad or Sanandaj, the analysis argues this would carry outsized psychological significance beyond its military footprint, potentially emboldening other marginalized groups including Baluchis, Ahwazi Arabs, and Azerbaijanis.
**Second-Order Effects:** Energy infrastructure has already registered spillover: Dana Gas, a major Kurdistan Region operator, suspended operations on July 16, 2026, explicitly citing Iranian drone threats. PAK, the coalition's most militarily aggressive faction, has alleged Iranian use of white phosphorus against its Peshmerga on July 19 and called for UN, UN Security Council, and ICRC investigation—an allegation Iran has neither confirmed nor denied. Turkey's sensitivities over PJAK's linkage to the PKK constrain any Western backing, while Trump reportedly described direct Kurdish military involvement as 'complicated enough' in March, signaling US ambiguity despite Sentcom's targeting choices in the same provinces.
**Historical Pattern:** The dynamic replays Ayatollah Khomeini's 1979 jihad declaration against Kurdish autonomy demands, and the 2022 death of Mahsa Amini and subsequent Woman, Life, Freedom movement, which briefly internationalized Kurdish grievances before fading without structural change. CPFIK's own cautious, non-premature operational posture—per PAK leadership counsel to 'wait for the right moment'—reflects lessons drawn from the perceived US abandonment of Kurdish forces following the anti-ISIS campaigns in Iraq and Syria, a precedent explicitly shaping the coalition's current restraint.
Reuters reported that Ukrainian and US officials have discussed a proposal to halt Ukrainian air strikes as part of a renewed push toward peace talks, ahead of Zelensky's scheduled July 28 Washington meeting with Trump, which also coincides with the funeral of Senator Lindsey Graham. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov called the proposal premature to discuss. Simultaneously, per the source material, Greece withheld approval of the EU's latest sanctions package for roughly a week, ultimately securing an exemption for Dynagas, owned by billionaire George Procopiou, to continue transporting Russian LNG to non-EU markets—described as the first formal softening of EU economic sanctions since the full-scale invasion began. The stalled package included asset freezes on 94 Russian financial institutions and transaction bans on 33 additional banks. Separately, Ukraine's Center for Countering Disinformation, corroborated by Poland's NASK institute, identified a network of AI-generated 'Polish soldier' videos—one channel alone posting roughly 50 clips reaching 300,000 views per Polskie Radio—designed to exploit the Volhynia historical wound and fracture Polish-Ukrainian solidarity, following President Nawrocki's decision to strip Zelenskyy of Poland's highest honor over a Ukrainian unit named for the UPA.
An FPRI panel featuring Peter Dombrowski, Luke Colin, and Jonathan Caverley examined the Trump administration's shipbuilding partnership with South Korea and Japan, concluding no genuine trilateral architecture exists despite the popularity of the term. South Korea has committed to the roughly $150 billion 'Make American Shipbuilding Great Again' pledge, with Hanwha investing $5 billion to rebuild the Philadelphia shipyard and securing a new $2 billion Department of War contract for missile-range instrumentation vessels—a move Caverley characterized as a defensive response to Trump's tariff coercion rather than commercial opportunism. Japan, by contrast, has made no comparable capital investment, focusing instead on maintenance and repair under the Alliance Co-Sustainment Initiative. Caverley noted US naval shipbuilding-related labor demand is estimated at 250,000 workers against a current maritime workforce of roughly 150,000, and that subsystems—propulsion, combat systems, sensors—constitute approximately 78% of a modern ship's value, representing the US's genuine comparative advantage over hull production. An unresolved risk factor is Chinese sanctions on Hanwha Ocean's US subsidiaries, currently paused for one year and set to expire soon.
According to an intelligence-adjacent analyst identified as Sarah, US funding to the Taliban under the 2020 Doha framework flows through roughly a dozen channels condensing into approximately $40 million per week in State Department-routed humanitarian aid and a separate $47 million per week in classified counterterrorism payments embedded in a Doha annex that 'not everyone in Congress has even seen,' according to the source. Separately, a report presented to US Congress and cited by VisualPolitik EN estimates Chinese money-laundering networks moved $312 billion in narcotics proceeds between 2020 and 2024, engineered through a 'flying money' mirror-transaction scheme that charges Mexican cartels under 5% commission versus up to 18% for prior Colombian and Lebanese networks. Network architect Xi Lee was sentenced to 15 years in 2023 following an FBI/DEA investigation; a DHS document cited in the report estimated 270 suspected illicit marijuana operations in rural Maine alone generated $4.37 billion in revenue. Both cases illustrate a recurring pattern of opaque, low-oversight financial arrangements with non-state or quasi-state actors that current legislative bodies struggle to monitor in real time.
The next seven to fourteen days center on three convergence points. First, the July 28 Trump-Zelensky Washington meeting will indicate whether the Reuters-reported air-strike-halt proposal gains traction or whether Kremlin noncommittal signaling from Peskov persists. Second, any US decision on Pickaxe Mountain—signaled by intensified B-1B/GBU-72 strikes on hardened Iranian ammunition depots or new satellite imagery from the Institute for Science and International Security—would resolve whether Washington accepts diminishing returns or commits to the remaining Epic Fury targets. Third, watch for confirmation or denial of Zelensky's claims regarding Russian satellite intelligence-sharing with Iran over US Gulf bases and a 30,000-troop North Korean deployment, given their unverified status. Additional signposts include EU movement toward smaller sanctions batches following the Greek carve-out, further Wildberries and refinery strike tempo as a proxy for Russian loyalist sentiment ahead of Russia's October mobilization window, and whether CPFIK forces in Iran hold territory in Mahabad or Sanandaj for a sustained period.