America has grown addicted to the phrase “wars of choice,” often using it to vilify the U.S. government for campaigns deemed unnecessary. Wholesale skepticism of military power, however, undermines...
In a world of globalized supply chains, enforcing export controls is also a globalized effort. On August 24, Taiwan charged nine individuals in a scheme to smuggle Super Micro servers containing Nvidia...
And so, it begins. On Monday, the U.S. Treasury Department launched Operation Economic Outcast in a bid to expand the architecture of U.S. sanctions against the Islamic Republic of Iran and its network...
First there was the maximum pressure campaign during President Trump’s first term. Then came Operation Economic Fury in April 2026. Now, with Operation Economic Outcast, the Trump administration is launching...
The United Arab Emirates (UAE) is moving to constrain Iran economically — but it is leaving a major source of regime revenue untouched. On August 18, following a series of high-level discussions with...
Chemicals and intelligence keep Tehran’s war machine alive.
In confronting Chinese cyber threats, the call is coming from inside the house. On August 4, the House Select Committee on China revealed that three Chinese telecommunications firms — China Mobile,...
Tehran faced two rounds of new U.S. sanctions in as many days. On July 29 and July 30, the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) issued back-to-back sanctions targeting the...
As U.S. bombs struck Iran’s military, Treasury targeted the financier who helped keep it funded. The U.S. Treasury Department on July 24 sanctioned four individuals and nine entities sustaining...
Iran has spent more than four decades building Hezbollah into a force capable of making war against Israel in hopes of one day destroying the Jewish state. Israeli forces have inflicted tremendous damage on Hezbollah’s leadership, arsenal, and manpower, yet the terror group is rebuilding, thanks in no small part to its globe-spanning illicit finance network. To shed greater light on this crucial subject, FDD has invited Israeli expert Dr. Iftah Burman to provide a robust overview of the transnational web of enterprises, stretching across the Middle East — and from Latin America to West Africa and into cyberspace — that sustains Hezbollah’s aggression. This work provides information essential to intelligence and law enforcement agencies in every country, including the United States, that recognizes the severity of Hezbollah’s threat to peace, stability, and prosperity in the Middle East.
Iran’s repeated attacks on commercial shipping may ultimately force the United States to take a more aggressive posture by reviving its maximum pressure campaign against the Tehran regime. Following...
China has a new opportunity to use American chips to achieve its artificial intelligence (AI) ambitions. On July 14, Jeffrey Kessler, the head of the Commerce Department’s Bureau of Industry and Security...
The memorandum of understanding (MOU) between the United States and Iran was meant to secure a 60-day ceasefire. Instead, the Islamic Republic has repeatedly attacked commercial vessels operating in...
In the early hours of July 3, 2026, Pastor Ezra Jin Mingri was pulled from his jail cell in southern China. He assumed he was being transferred to another prison. Only when he arrived at the...
During his first term, President Donald Trump made fighting Christian persecution around the world a foreign policy priority. In his second term, it has become something more than that. The...
Despite Iranian intransigence, the U.S. blockade of the Islamic Republic’s ports, which began on April 13, is already generating real pain — and real results — for the Islamic Republic. Iran exported...
Trump and Xi met face-to-face, but their minds are worlds apart. Both sides described this week’s summit as constructive and there were no major surprises, but based on initial readouts, the two leaders...