Defense Briefing

New revelations show that Saudi Arabia conducted covert attacks on Iran during the ongoing US-Israel-Iran conflict – coordinated with Washington. Additionally, a US envoy officially confirmed for the first time that Israel supplied the UAE with Iron Dome systems. This expands the conflict to a new regional coalition dimension and significantly increases escalation potential.

Germany is accelerating negotiations with Washington over the purchase of up to 400 Tomahawk Block 5 cruise missiles and Typhon intermediate-range systems, after the US scrapped plans to station its own systems. In parallel, Berlin announces it will help Ukraine develop deep-strike weapons – which according to critics represents a direct NATO escalation against Russia. This marks a fundamental realignment of German defense strategy.

NATO completed the Steadfast Deterrence 2026 military exercise in Europe on May 13 – one of the alliance's largest deterrence exercises this year. Simultaneously, Dutch intelligence services warn that Russia could be ready to attack a NATO member state just one year after a Ukraine peace settlement. The combination of exercise completion and warning underscores the new urgency of collective defense.

The FBI remotely removed Russian GRU malware from thousands of compromised home and office routers that formed a botnet targeting the military, government agencies, and critical infrastructure. Poland's domestic intelligence service ABW simultaneously warns that Russian cyberattacks are deliberately targeting physical disruption of critical infrastructure – a qualitative leap beyond pure espionage. The incidents demonstrate a new phase of hybrid warfare directly targeting NATO states.

Mark Carney is strategically moving Canada away from the US and toward Europe on defense and trade issues, leading observers to refer to Canada as a de facto 28th EU member. In parallel, former NATO Secretary General Rasmussen calls for a new European defense alliance that can operate independently of US vetoes. This transatlantic reordering – Europe plus Canada versus Trump-USA – structurally questions the existing NATO architecture.