HOUSTON — Oil companies and the world’s largest energy consumers face a significant challenge to rebuild global petroleum supply chains and inventories once the critical Strait of Hormuz bottleneck opens, Chevron CEO Mike Wirth said Monday. “We’ve got a lot of oil and gas now that is not flowing into the market,” Wirth said at the CERAWeek by S&P Global conference in Houston. “Physical supply chains don’t respond immediately, so even if the strait opens at some point, it will take time to rebuild inventories of the right grades of crude and the right types of fuel.” Wirth cautioned that Iran’s attacks on oil tankers and the broader damage of the Middle East war did greater damage to oil and gas markets than the Russia-Ukraine war. Asian nations are running low on diesel and jet fuel. The war has held up deliveries of LNG, fertilizer and other products. Part of the challenge, Wirth said, will be taking a read of the damage. It’s unclear how much production has been shut in, Wirth said, and how badly some facilities were damaged. At the same event, Energy Secretary Chris Wright reiterated to oil executives that he anticipated the global disruption to oil and gas flows would be “short-term,” but he encouraged companies to ramp up production. “Markets do what markets do,” Wright said. “Prices went up to send signals to everyone that can produce more: ‘Please, produce more.’”

President Donald Trump said Wednesday that the U.S. had no advance knowledge of an Israeli strike on a major Iranian natural gas field that prompted Iran to retaliate against neighboring Qatar and sent oil prices soaring. Even as he distanced the U.S. from the strike on the South Pars gas field, Trump vowed to “massively blow up the entirety of the field” if Iran attacked Qatar again. “The United States knew nothing about this particular attack, and the country of Qatar was in no way, shape, or form, involved with it, nor did it have any idea that it was going to happen,” he said in a social media post. The president’s response to the attack on the world’s largest gas field, which supplies the vast majority of Iran’s domestic energy demands, appeared to be an unusual acknowledgment of a breakdown in coordination between Israel and the U.S. in the war that the two countries launched with joint strikes on Feb. 28. Trump said Israel struck a “relatively small section” of the natural gas field. He said South Pars would not be targeted in the future unless Iran launches further attacks on Qatar, in which case he threatened to destroy the entire natural gas field. “NO MORE ATTACKS WILL BE MADE BY ISRAEL pertaining to this extremely important and valuable South Pars Field unless Iran unwisely decides to attack a very innocent, in this case, Qatar – In which instance the United States of America, with or without the help or consent of Israel, will massively blow up the entirety of the South Pars Gas Field at an amount of strength and power that Iran has never seen or witnessed before,” he said. Iran depends heavily on natural gas to produce electricity and heat throughout the country. The natural gas from South Pars fulfills 80 percent of Iran’s natural gas demands.

BRUSSELS — The European Union’s anti-deforestation law will put United States producers off exporting to the European market, harming EU competitiveness, a senior official with the U.S. Department of Agriculture told reporters in Brussels Friday. The law, also called EUDR, is “going to discourage us from looking at the European market” and from “paying attention to any European rules [linked to deforestation],” the official said. The law as it stands would affect $9 billion of U.S. trade to the EU annually, added the official, who spoke to journalists on condition that he was not named. A delegation of U.S. government representatives is finishing a tour of EU capitals — including Madrid, Rome, Paris, Berlin and Brussels — to lobby governments to simplify the EUDR ahead of an upcoming review of the rules next month. One example of a sector that could be affected is livestock farming, the official said, arguing these farmers depend on soybeans to feed their animals, and Europe does not produce enough protein feed. “It needs to import from countries that are better at it, like us,” he said, warning that the U.S. stopping that export “will drive up their costs, hurt their competitiveness.” The EU’s anti-deforestation law requires that companies police their supply chains to ensure that any commodities they use, such as palm oil, beef or coffee, have not contributed to deforestation. After complaints from industry groups and trade partners, EU institutions in December agreed to put off implementation of the law by a year — until Dec. 2026 — and mandated the Commission to present a review of the rules by April. “It’s particularly difficult for us because these [compliance] costs will be borne by our producers,” said the official. U.S. farmers also don’t want to share information on their farms with foreign governments, he said. Washington’s main qualms with the law include the fact that there’s no category of “negligible” risk in the EU’s ranking of countries by risk of deforestation. The U.S. — like all EU member countries as well as China, Canada, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ghana, Kenya, Vietnam and others — has been labeled “low risk” under the EU’s deforestation classification system. Members of the European Parliament in the center-right European People’s Party have also backed the introduction of a “no risk” category, “for countries with stable or expanding forest areas.” The senior official also complained about a stipulation in the law that if the level of deforestation in any country exceeds 70,000 hectares annually, that country cannot be considered “low risk.” That standard “just doesn’t work for us,” they said. “It’s not fair.” Representatives from the European Commission are meeting with members of the delegation on Friday “at technical level” to discuss the law, a spokesperson for the European Commission confirmed to POLITICO. European Environment Commissioner Jessika Roswall told reporters in January that there would be no new legislative proposal come April, saying businesses need “predictability.” A 2024 report from the U.S. Congressional Research Service estimated that, in 2023, U.S. exports of the seven commodities under the EUDR accounted for approximately 3 percent of the value of U.S. exports to the EU, “so overall the EUDR may not significantly affect U.S. trade.” European Environment Commissioner Jessika Roswall told reporters in January that there would be no new legislative proposal come April, saying businesses need “predictability.” | Gabriel Luengas/Europa Press via Getty Images Still, the authors wrote, the law could affect U.S. producers of specific commodities covered by the law. In 2023, the highest value of covered commodities exported to the EU from the U.S. were wood and wood products ($4.5 billion), soybeans ($4 billion), rubber ($1.1 billion), and cattle, such as beef and related products ($409 million). Environmental groups are calling on EU governments and the Commission to stick by the EUDR and keep the rules intact. “Misleading and self-serving foreign pressure on the EU should not distract policy-makers from staying focused on facts,” said Anke Schulmeister-Oldenhove, manager for forests at WWF EU, in an emailed statement. “Every year the EUDR is postponed results in the loss of nearly 50 million trees and the release of 16.8 million tonnes of CO₂ into the atmosphere.”

OSLO — Norway is doubling down on its role as Europe’s energy lifeline as wars and geopolitical turmoil rattle global markets. Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre said the widening conflict in the Middle East, which has already pushed oil prices higher and reduced supply, underscores why Europe needs stable energy partners. “It’s a war that appears to have no plan,” Støre said at the Offshore Norge Annual Conference in Oslo on Thursday, referring to the U.S. and Israeli attacks on Iran. “In such unpredictable times, Norway needs to be reliable.” Since Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Norway has become Europe’s largest pipeline gas supplier, replacing much of the fuel that once flowed from Russia. “All the gas we produce in Norway goes to Europe, and around 90 to 95 percent of oil we produce goes to Europe,” Anders Opedal, chief executive of Norwegian oil and gas company Equinor, told POLITICO. But while Oslo is positioning itself as a pillar of Europe’s energy security, Norwegian officials say the country cannot quickly ramp up production even if geopolitical tensions tighten global supply. Norway’s Energy Minister Terje Aasland said his country is already operating close to maximum output. “We are at the top of production capacity just now,” he told POLITICO. Increasing supply would require new exploration and investment, Aasland said, as his government works to slow an expected decline in production after 2030 by developing additional resources on the Norwegian continental shelf. “Our focus is to be a stable and long and predictable supplier of energy to the European market,” he said. ARCTIC TENSIONS At the same time, Norway is pushing back against calls in Brussels to halt oil and gas development in the Arctic as the EU revises its Arctic strategy. The EU’s current policy commits the bloc to pursuing an international moratorium on Arctic oil and gas extraction, but the strategy is now under review, with a public consultation closing March 16 and a revised version expected before the summer. Norwegian officials, industry groups and unions are lobbying Brussels to drop the idea, arguing Europe will continue to need Norwegian Arctic gas as it phases out Russian supplies. Aasland defended Norway’s record in the region, pointing to the Barents Sea — where the country launched the Johan Castberg oil field last August — as an example of responsible development. “We have delivered oil and gas to the European market from the Arctic for several decades,” he said. “And we will develop it.” Industry leaders say Arctic production already plays a role in replacing Russian supplies. “When we opened the Johan Castberg field last year, the first cargo went straight to Europe, replacing Russian oil,” Opedal said. “Any moratorium here would actually reduce Europe’s security of supply.” Norway supplies roughly a third of EU gas imports, though Arctic gas accounts for a much smaller share, around 3 percent of the bloc’s imports. Still, Norwegian leaders argue a moratorium would send the wrong signal while Europe remains dependent on external energy supplies. Norwegian officials, industry groups and unions are lobbying Brussels to drop the idea, arguing Europe will continue to need Norwegian Arctic gas as it phases out Russian supplies. | Soeren Stache/picture alliance via Getty Images Ine Eriksen Søreide, the leader of Norway’s Conservative party, said calls to stop Arctic development clash with Europe’s current energy security priorities. “It sends a very bad signal when the Commission says we need to stop oil and gas development in the Arctic, because that’s development the EU relies on,” she said. Experts say the broader Arctic energy picture is dominated by Russia, which has major plans to expand liquefied natural gas production through projects such as Yamal LNG and Arctic LNG 2. Malte Humpert, founder and senior fellow at the Arctic Institute, said climate change is rapidly transforming the once-inaccessible region. “If we didn’t have climate change, we wouldn’t be talking about Arctic geopolitics,” he told POLITICO. “Climate change is actively reshaping the map, where suddenly there’s new trade routes available that didn’t exist even 10, 15 years ago.” OIL AND GAS AREN’T GOING ANYWHERE FOR NOW Across Oslo’s political spectrum, the message is broadly the same: Europe still needs reliable fossil fuel suppliers, and Norway intends to remain one of them. Opposition leader Sylvi Listhaug of the right-wing Progress Party argued Europe should encourage Norway to produce more oil and gas to reduce reliance on authoritarian regimes. “The more Norway can produce of gas, the less dependent Europe will be” on non-democratic producers, she said. Ine Eriksen Søreide, the leader of Norway’s Conservative party, said calls to stop Arctic development clash with Europe’s current energy security priorities. | Pool photo by Olivier Doulier/AFP via Getty Images Listhaug also warned that high energy prices risk undermining European competitiveness. “Energy and economic growth are a one-to-one relationship,” she said. Even as Norway expands renewables, leaders insist fossil fuels will remain crucial to Europe’s energy system during the long transition to cleaner alternatives. “We have to have two thoughts in our heads at the same time,” Aasland said.

The war with Iran is sucking up expensive U.S. air defense munitions that Ukraine desperately needs, putting future deliveries at risk and threatening Kyiv’s ability to counter Russian ballistic missile attacks. The U.S. and Gulf allies have burned through hundreds of Patriot missiles shooting down Iranian ballistic missiles and attack drones, eating up stockpiles that might have gone to Ukraine. The dynamic has put the Trump administration’s expanding war against the Iranian regime in direct conflict with Kyiv’s reliance on contracts for U.S.-made air defenses, according to interviews with 10 top European officials and two U.S. lawmakers. Those allies fear that Russia will seize the initiative by attempting to lay waste to more of Ukraine’s civilian infrastructure and try to move the front lines while the U.S. and Europe are distracted with a separate war — and stockpile concerns — of their own. “If [Vladimir] Putin was feeling any pressure to negotiate before, and it’s not clear he was, it’s gone for now,” said a EU official. “The U.S. is distracted and burning through some of the weapons Europe wants to purchase for Ukraine. … It’s a very gloomy scenario.” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Wednesday warned of impending shortages. The overall deficit of missiles for Patriot systems “is not because of this war in the Middle East,” Zelenskyy told WELT, part of the Axel Springer Global Reporters Network, which includes POLITICO. But “this war will have [an] influence on decreasing the number of missiles, decreasing the opportunity to get more missiles” for Ukraine. The scale of attacks against American and allied forces in the Gulf is beyond anything seen in decades. The United Arab Emirates’ defense ministry said Tuesday that Iran had launched 1,475 drones, 262 ballistic missiles and eight cruise missiles at the country since the war began, many of which were met with U.S.-made Patriot and Terminal High Altitude Area Defense missiles. More than 1,600 of those drones and missiles were brought down — underscoring the intensity of the air defense fire. A Bloomberg Intelligence report estimated that the U.S. and its partners in the region have fired as many as 1,000 PAC-3 Patriot interceptors at Iranian missiles and drones since the start of the war, a number that dwarfs the replacement rate for the expensive — and hard to produce — weapon. The missiles take months to manufacture, and the war in Ukraine has led to allies across the globe rushing to put in new orders. Lockheed Martin agreed in January to triple its production of Patriot missiles — in part due to demands from the Trump administration — going from about 600 annually in 2025 to 2,000 to meet exploding worldwide demand. But it will take several years for the company’s factories to expand capacity sufficiently to meet any new requirements. “There’s a lot of confusion on that question, of what the priorities are going to be for Ukraine versus the Middle East, and specifically, how long and how high the demands are for these munitions,” said U.S. Sen Richard Blumenthal, a Connecticut Democrat and Ukraine ally. “Europeans are frustrated that we’re not more forthcoming in terms of our production capacity, and that the difficulty of ramping up production is used as an excuse for failing to provide more.” In the years before conflicts erupted in Europe and the Middle East, the U.S. only produced about 270 Patriot missiles a year, according to the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Industry has a long way to go before it can meet expected demand. “It goes without saying that Ukraine will be affected as the U.S. will prioritize national needs” in the coming months, an official from a NATO country said. The official, like others in this story, was granted anonymity to discuss sensitive national defense issues. One German official said that “sluggish” deliveries of weapons to Ukraine in November and December have significantly contributed to the destruction of Ukraine’s energy infrastructure. And that could just be the start. “The worry is that [Donald] Trump will break agreements, withhold supplies, and that Putin will ruthlessly exploit this,” the official said. Allies also are increasingly concerned about skyrocketing prices for sought-after American weapons. “Some prices of weapon systems are clearly doubled,” said a second official from a NATO country. “That’s the ballpark and degree of price issues we are having.” Beyond the near-term scramble for air defenses, Europeans are worried that the broader Ukrainian arms pipeline could be in jeopardy as U.S. forces — and their allies — expand their arsenals amid escalating conflict in the Middle East. The U.S. and NATO set up the Prioritized Ukraine Requirements List, or PURL, last year as a way to keep weapons flowing into Ukraine, including helping Kyiv procure much-needed Patriot air defense interceptors. The Trump administration stopped American military aid for Ukraine last year, and PURL has served as a way to keep the spigot open. It allows European countries to buy American equipment and then donate it to Kyiv. Finnish defense secretary Antti Häkkänen said his government has “emphasized there has to be some kind of a European industry pillar, and Ukrainian pillar,” that would allow some manufacturing to move from the U.S. to the continent so Ukraine can quickly get what it needs. Stefanie Bolzen at WELT, Joe Gould and Eli Stokols contributed to this report.

Hungarian opposition leader Péter Magyar is accusing the Kremlin of supporting the election campaign of Prime Minister Viktor Orbán with a new barrage of disinformation videos that are supposed to appear on Thursday. Orbán is the EU leader closest to Russian President Vladimir Putin — and a persistent obstacle to Brussels’ support for Ukraine — but he now faces the toughest fight of his political career in Hungary’s April 12 election, where polls put him about 10 points behind Magyar.   Magyar — a former member of Orbán’s Fidesz party, who understands its playbook — said on Tuesday he’d received information that the attack would take the form of “14 AI-generated smear videos,” and complained that the disinformation campaign had been produced “with the help of Russian intelligence services.” People in Magyar’s Tisza party and analysts in Budapest have long expected the race to get dirty as it enters the final stretch. Magyar’s tactic is to sound the alarm on the alleged impending smear attacks against Tisza before they land, hoping to blunt their impact. That’s the same strategy he adopted in mid-February, when faced with the prospect that his opponents could release a sex tape featuring him. He went public and accused Fidesz of planning to release a tape “recorded with secret service equipment and possibly faked, in which my then-girlfriend and I are seen having intimate intercourse.”   For now, that intervention seems to have worked, and such a video has not yet been released. BLOWING THE WHISTLE On Thursday, just as Magyar arrives to campaign in a constituency on the Danube close to Budapest, his team expects Fidesz to target the local candidate and her family with AI-generated videos which will be promoted via fake accounts. Magyar announced his concerns on social media, and called on Orbán “to immediately halt the planned election fraud and order Russian agents out of Hungary.” “By advancing what’s going to happen, we hope to neutralize it … whenever we had any information, [Magyar] made it public right away,” Zoltan Tarr, Tisza’s No. 2 and a long-time Magyar confidant, told POLITICO. “The system is not 100 percent waterproof or leakproof. And we always get some hints of what will be Fidesz’s next move,” he added. It’s too early to assess whether this strategy of going public will be successful for the sex tape and future smear campaigns, said Péter Krekó, executive director of Political Capital, an independent policy research consultancy. But he added that anticipating Fidesz’s moves had worked “really well” to build Magyar’s “Teflon image” because no scandals had yet “burnt” him. Tisza has also raised the specter of foreign interference, openly accusing Orbán of inviting Russian spies to meddle in the election, following reports by independent media VSquare and journalist Szabolcs Panyi. Fidesz denies the allegations. “The left-wing allegation linked to journalist Szabolcs Panyi, claiming Russian interference in the elections, is false,” the Hungarian government’s international communications office told POLITICO in a statement. “No information supports the presence or activities in Hungary of the specific individuals named by Szabolcs Panyi, or of any other persons allegedly engaged in such activities. Other countries’ intelligence services also have no concrete information regarding this matter.” Fidesz members insist Magyar is financed by Ukraine with the aim of installing a puppet government that will be loyal to Kyiv and Brussels. They accuse Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy of interfering in the election by blocking Russian oil imports via the Druzhba pipeline and threatening the life of Orbán. The latter allegation came after the Ukrainian leader insinuated he would refer Orbán to Ukrainian troops for a direct talk “in their own language.” The leading Fidesz lawmaker in the European Parliament, Tamás Deutsch, turned the tables and accused Tisza of spreading false information. “As part of this serious interference, the pro-Ukrainian and pro-Brussels Tisza party is spreading disinformation through sympathetic media outlets in Brussels and Hungary,” he told POLITICO. “Hungary and its government will not accept pressure or interference in its democratic processes and will do their utmost to stand up for the interests of the Hungarian people.” FORCING RESIGNATIONS Because the deadline to register candidates for the April 12 vote has passed, the names on the party lists can’t be changed. For this reason, analysts say, Fidesz may now try to dig up dirt on Tisza candidates in the 106 constituencies to knock them out of the race with no hope of replacement. “There are some people who have had certain issues in their lives in the past. Nothing criminal, but perhaps they had a company that had to be closed down, or they went through a divorce, or something similar. These things then can be used as hooks to try to infiltrate the psyche of the candidate, creating false narratives around them,” said Tisza’s Tarr. The campaign that Magyar alleges will be launched on Thursday targets a candidate for the fifth district in Pest, Orsolya Miskolczi. He has not given further details, but Kontroll, a media platform close to Tisza whose publisher is Magyar’s brother, suggested in an article that Fidesz will try to link Miskolczi to a high-level corruption scandal in the Hungarian National Bank, where her husband worked as a legal advisor. The Financial Times on Wednesday reported the Kremlin had endorsed a plan by a communications agency under western sanctions to support Fidesz in the election, including by targeting controversial Tisza candidates. The objective of such smear campaigns “is to push us as far as possible and break us, or force us to give up,” Tarr said, adding the muckraking also targets family members and takes a psychological toll. “They are singling out some of us in the hope that one might resign,” he added.

Kari Lake was illegally empowered to run the U.S. Agency for Global Media — the federal agency that oversees Voice of America — and her actions in that role were illegitimate, a federal judge ruled Saturday. U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth concluded that Lake was ineligible to serve as USAGM’s acting CEO when she was formally elevated to the position on July 31 in an “acting capacity” and without Senate confirmation. She relinquished that position on Nov. 19. Lamberth said any actions Lake took in that four-month timeframe must be treated as “void,” including an Aug. 29 reduction in USAGM’s workforce. Lamberth also invalidated actions Lake took when the agency’s previous acting CEO, Victor Morales, delegated nearly the entirety of his responsibilities to her, concluding that this was also an illegal end-run around the Senate’s advice and consent role. “The Court finds that these expansive delegations were an unlawful effort to transform Lake into the CEO of U.S. Agency for Global Media in all but name,” the judge wrote. In a statement to POLITICO, Lake said she “strongly disagrees” with the ruling and that the government will appeal. “The American people gave President Trump a mandate to cut bloated bureaucracy, eliminate waste, and restore accountability to government,” she added. “An activist judge is trying to stand in the way of those efforts at USAGM.” Lake specifically called out Lamberth, saying he has a “pattern of activist rulings — and this case is no different.” In a statement, Patsy Widakuswara, Kate Neeper and Jessica Jerreat, the named plaintiffs in the lawsuit against Lake, said they were “vindicated and deeply grateful.” “The judge’s ruling that Kari Lake’s actions shall have no force or effect is a powerful step toward undoing the damage she has inflicted on this American institution that we love,” they said. “Even as we work through what this ruling means for colleagues harmed by her actions, it brings renewed hope and momentum to the next phase of our fight: restoring VOA’s global operations and ensuring we continue to produce journalism, not propaganda.” At the heart of the fight is the federal Vacancies Reform Act, which limits the way agencies can appoint temporary leaders while awaiting permanent nominees to be confirmed. Lake, Lamberth concluded, did not fit any of the criteria required to assume the acting CEO position. Though Lake claimed that as Morales’ deputy — or “first assistant” — she was eligible to assume the acting CEO position once he was removed from it, Lamberth said this would essentially negate the Senate’s role in confirming powerful appointees. Lamberth leaned heavily on the ruling by the 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals that similarly invalidated the appointment of Alina Habba, President Donald Trump’s former personal lawyer, to lead the U.S. Attorney’s Office in New Jersey. “Adopting Lake’s position would require the Court to find that the President can fill a first assistantship at any time during a vacancy in a Senate-confirmed office and then … elevate the first assistant to serve as the acting officer,” Lamberth said, agreeing with other courts that instead only the person occupying the deputy role at the time the vacancy occurs is eligible to take on the acting role. “Because Lake was not first assistant at the time of the vacancy, she lacks authority to serve as the acting CEO,” Lamberth wrote.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu isn’t even pretending there is a master plan for what happens after the death of Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Indeed, chaos and internal strife in Tehran — and beyond — would suit him just fine. For years, Netanyahu has been the driving force behind military action and sabotage against the Islamic Republic’s nuclear program and its clerical government. Now that Khamenei is dead, Netanyahu is close to realizing his greatest political ambition by neutralizing the Iranian threat. The Israeli day-after plan now leaves a lot to luck, and to the bravery of millions of Iranians. From Tabriz to Zahedan, the people of Iran are supposed to overthrow the brutal security apparatus of their regime in mass street protests, without any clear idea of what type of government could succeed the theocracy. On Saturday night, Netanyahu urged Iranians to “unshackle themselves from tyranny,” seizing a “once in a generation chance” to overthrow the dictatorship. “Take to the streets en masse” and “get the job done,” he added. Cleaving to the same strategy, U.S. President Donald Trump is insisting the Iranians have their “single greatest chance” to “take back” their country. Netanyahu thinks he comes out on top, even if the popular uprising he is calling for plunges the nation into violent disorder. In an ideal world, a friendly regime appears in Tehran. But Israel often makes the Realpolitik judgment that turmoil can bolster its interests too. That has been obvious in Lebanon and in Syria. Netanyahu has not assisted the Lebanese authorities in their efforts to discipline Hezbollah’s Shiite militia, or to get them to disarm. He has done quite the reverse, continuing air raids and drone strikes. Similarly, he’s stirred up trouble for the new leadership in Damascus by backing the Druze minority. In the Palestinian territories, Netanyahu is often accused of exploiting the divisions between Hamas and the Palestinian Authority. The logic is clear. If countries are consumed by internal political strife — even civil war — they can’t get their acts together and turn on Israel. So it would be a mistake to think that Netanyahu’s only desirable endgame is stability in Tehran. Instability could work too. If Iran is too weak to run uranium enrichment centrifuges, and to support Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Houthis in Yemen, that is also a victory. The goal of the Iran war, according to Netanyahu’s foreign policy adviser Ophir Falk, is simple: “To win.” And in a text exchange with POLITICO he added that winning would be when “the threat posed by the Ayatollah regime and its proxies is removed.” When asked what the Israeli government thinks is happening inside the embattled regime, Falk replied, almost nonchalantly: “We’ll see what happens.’ Former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert told POLITICO that what Netanyahu and Trump had outlined didn’t amount to a plan — just optimism.  “Bibi [Netanyahu] wanted the war and Trump was anxious to do something exceptional. But I don’t see any plan other than the hope that the government will collapse,” he said. ‘YOU BREAK IT, YOU OWN IT’ The strategy of smashing an enemy with overwhelming force, and then hoping there will be a smooth succession to a benevolent regime has a poor track record, and there are already signs that things will be messy in Iran too. According to Israel’s Kan public broadcaster, Netanyahu assured his cabinet ministers that Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s death would shorten the military operation. | Majid Saeedi/Getty Images Ahead of the invasion of Iraq in 2003, Gen. Colin Powell famously cautioned U.S. President George W. Bush: “If you take out a government, take out a regime, guess who becomes the government and regime and is responsible for the country? You are. So if you break it, you own it.” That seems not to be resonating with Netanyahu and Trump, who are taking the view that the Iranian people now “own it.” That’s a big gamble, however. According to Israel’s Kan public broadcaster, Netanyahu assured his cabinet ministers that Khamenei’s death would shorten the military operation, as it would embolden the regime’s opponents to rise up.  Few doubt most Iranians’ desire for change, but for the regime to fall something would have to snap within the security services. For now, the political and military backbone of the state is showing resilience in its command structure, and massive public unrest in recent years and months has been met with brute force, mass arrests and executions. To whom are the Revolutionary Guards meant to surrender and seek an amnesty? Although Iran has lost many of its top leaders, it is has still managed to launch retaliatory attacks across the Gulf and eastern Mediterranean. The Revolutionary Guards vowed to “revenge” after promising to conduct “the most devastating offensive” in Iranian history, saying it had carried out the sixth phase of its Operation True Promise IV against U.S. bases throughout the Middle East and against Israel.  REGIME RESILIENCE That all suggests the regime’s structure is holding for now, even after Khamenei’s death. “We had prepared for such moments and have plans in place for all scenarios, even for the time after the martyrdom of revered Imam Khamenei,” said Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, Iran’s parliamentary speaker. “You’ll see that after the leadership council is formed, the power and integrity of officials, defensive forces and the people will be beyond imagination,” he added in a video broadcast by state television. Ali Larijani, secretary of the Supreme National Security Council , announced a three-man council would be set up on Sunday, comprising Iran’s President Masoud Pezeshkian; the hard-line head of the judiciary, Gholamhossein Mohseni Ejei; and Alireza Arafi, a jurist member of Iran’s Guardian Council and head of the Basij, a volunteer paramilitary force. The council will govern while the 88-member Assembly of Experts picks a new leader. And that could happen soon. No doubt Israel will be trying to disrupt the interim council and the process of picking a successor to Khamenei, much as it did with its decapitation strategy last year in Lebanon when it kept targeting possible successors to Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah. Reza Pahlavi, son of the Shah deposed in 1979, is styling himself as an interim leader. | Joel Saget/AFP via Getty Images But so far, different arms of the Iranian state, many of which were allowed to operate semi-autonomously under Khamenei and weren’t micromanaged, still appear to be cohering and functioning. Former Prime Minister Olmert was also cautious about potential collapse. “I will be surprised if Iran will change its nature after this phase,” he said. [Syrian leader Bashar]Assad killed more than half a million of his citizens and got rid of millions who became refugees and it took 10 years for his regime to collapse. Iran is 90 million. The regime will kill many and even then may not lose control,” he added. Still, he acknowledged that the U.S.-Israeli war can set back Iran as a military power in the region and “that in itself is not bad at all.”  NO UNIFIED OPPOSITION The big question remains: Can this work without a unified opposition? “Can external military pressure realistically rely on an Iranian public that lacks cohesive leadership, particularly when facing a regime that has operated for 47 years under the disciplined control of the [Revolutionary Guards]?” asked Danny Citrinowicz, a former head of the Iran branch of Israeli defense intelligence and now a fellow at the Atlantic Council, a think tank. “There is no unified, organized opposition capable of immediately capitalizing on elite disarray. Public dissatisfaction is real and widespread, but fragmentation and repression limit its political translation.” Khamenei is gone, but “predictions of regime collapse would likely be premature,” he said. “The greatest danger may be a prolonged campaign that fails to produce dramatic internal change in Iran and lacks a clearly defined termination mechanism, resulting in an open-ended conflict with no visible conclusion on the horizon,” he added. There are various feuding contenders jostling to take the helm should the Islamic Republic collapse. Reza Pahlavi, son of the Shah deposed in 1979, is styling himself as an interim leader who can chart the course to democracy. The Mujahedin-e Khalq Organization opposition — previously listed as a terror group by the U.S. and EU — also casts itself as waiting in the wings. The situation is complicated further by the potential for regional and ethnic unrest among communities such as the Kurds and the Baluchis.   Former Israeli peace negotiator Daniel Levy said he feared the military intervention would sow chaos in the Middle East for years to come with unforeseen consequences and will be come to be seen as a “defining moment in Israel’s reach for regional domination.” 

Pentagon officials and Hill lawmakers are increasingly warning that prolonged Iran strikes could stress U.S. military stockpiles to the brink and make the country more vulnerable. Gen. Dan Caine, the Joint Chiefs of Staff chair, has raised concerns about the military’s shortage of air defense interceptors since January, according to a person familiar with the conversations. But the fears have magnified in recent weeks as the Pentagon amassed the largest military buildup in the Middle East since the Iraq War. They follow a huge expansion of the nation’s military operations. U.S. President Donald Trump has often relied on the Pentagon to pursue his foreign policy goals — from capturing Venezuela’s leader to killing alleged drug traffickers, bombing Yemen’s Houthi group and striking Iran last year to decimate its nuclear program. Many of these operations burned through significant numbers of Standard Missile-3s, Terminal High Altitude Area Defense interceptors and Patriot missiles. The defense industry has struggled for years to produce critical air defense interceptors that protect against incoming missiles, partly because of the complexity and speed of production. Interviews with six current and former U.S. officials and members of Congress underscored widespread worries that sustained Iranian responses could deplete those waning U.S. air defenses and leave tens of thousands of American troops in the region unprotected against Tehran’s missile salvos. “Do we have enough interceptors to sustain a retaliation?” said the person familiar with the talks. “We don’t have a discretely focused objective. Is it regime change or is it [just] ballistic missiles?” American allies have already felt the shortage of U.S. air defense interceptors and batteries, including NATO nations trying to purchase more Patriot missile systems to send to Ukraine in its war against Russia. “That has been a central, continuous concern,” said a defense official, who like others interviewed, was granted anonymity to discuss sensitive issues. “It would also give fodder to those in the building that say we need to be more constrained with what we give Ukraine.” The Joint Staff did not respond to a request for comment. But the Pentagon dismissed concerns about weapons stockpiles. “The Department of War has everything it needs to execute any mission at the time and place of the President’s choosing and on any timeline,” said spokesperson Sean Parnell, using the administration’s preferred title for the Pentagon. Some lawmakers warn that a strike, especially one that spurs a prolonged conflict, could take away from other critical needs. “There have been urgent calls for reforms in procurement, but the net result is that we are seemingly unable to meet all of the needs for defense production — for Ukraine, for our partners in the Middle East,” said Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), who argued the defense industry is not producing Lockheed Martin-built Patriot interceptors or RTX’s Tomahawk long-range missiles quickly enough. Blumenthal and a group of other lawmakers, who have pressed to shift interceptor missiles from the Middle East to Ukraine to protect against Russian attacks, now see that as more difficult. “It may be problematic to think about moving Patriot missile interceptor systems from the Middle East because now we’re going to have to protect our embassies, not to mention our bases,” he said, adding that U.S. defense contractors already are telling European allies they don’t have the capacity to produce more weapons to aid Ukraine. The Defense Department doesn’t detail its weapons supplies for national security reasons, but analysts warn U.S. stockpiles already are dissipating. The Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington think tank, estimated the U.S. fired up to 20 percent of the Standard Missile-3 interceptors it was expected to have on hand in 2025, and between 20 to 50 percent of Terminal High Altitude Area Defense missiles. Experts believe the state of Iran’s air and ballistic missile arsenal and any further American strikes could also factor into how much U.S. air defenses are stretched. “How much of a concern it is depends upon how degraded the Iranians are, or still are after the last go round, and how coordinated and capable we’re going to be in terms of getting things before they take off,” said Tom Karako, the director of the Missile Defense Project at the think tank. The U.S. military, beyond air defense munitions, also risks overusing Tomahawk land attack missiles and other precision strike weapons, Karako said, which are likely to figure into any future fight with Beijing. “It’s a tragedy to expend a Tomahawk when a gravity bomb will do,” he said, referring to an aircraft-dropped explosive. “It’s the strike munitions that we also need to steward and husband for deterring or prosecuting a war with China.” Not everyone involved in Washington’s drive to ramp up munitions production sees the situation as dire. Rep. Ken Calvert (R-Calif.), the House’s lead lawmaker for defense spending, downplayed the risk even while acknowledging munitions are scarce. Congress, Calvert said, recently authorized the Pentagon to enter multiyear contracts for munitions intended to boost production and bring down costs. Assembly lines for air defenses such as Patriot interceptors and Terminal High Altitude Area Defense systems “are set up, and they just have to maximize, with double or triple shifts,” he said. Calvert noted the scarcity was “not a secret,” but insisted the military had plenty of munitions in the short term. “I don’t want our adversaries to think for a second that we don’t have enough resources,” he said. “We do.”

BRUSSELS — Next up on Ursula von der Leyen’s trade to-do list: Australia. The EU’s ally Down Under is ready to tango again as Donald Trump’s tariffs push the rest of the world closer together. Both Brussels and Canberra worry about China. And they already see eye-to-eye on issues, ranging from research funding to defense cooperation. The EU and Australia came close to a deal in October 2023, on the sidelines of a G7 meeting in Osaka, Japan. But Aussie Trade Minister Don Farrell pulled out at the last minute under pressure from the beef lobby back home. Sticking points remain: access for Australian beef and lamb to the European market; EU trade protections on specialty foods; critical minerals; and an Australian tax on luxury cars. Farrell visits Brussels on Thursday to meet the EU’s trade and agriculture commissioners, Maroš Šefčovič and Christoph Hansen. Only if they resolve those differences would the Commission chief get to fly to Australia to finally conclude a formal agreement. “I don’t do bad deals,” Farrell said before heading to Brussels. Here are five issues that need to be sorted out for a good deal to happen: ANGRY FARMERS The biggest obstacle is whether the EU will grant more access to Australian farm produce, chiefly beef and lamb. Farrell needs a deal he can sell to vocal farmers back home who effectively blocked the deal just over two years ago. It’s not only meat but also sugar, rice and dairy — even though quotas for those are less sensitive. The Australian National Farmers’ Federation said this week that it’s still looking for “significantly increased access” on all of those fields. The crux here: Australia might want more, but if the EU gives more it risks the ire of European farmers ready to protest on the doorstep of the Berlaymont. The European Parliament’s referral of the EU’s agri-heavy deal with the Latin American Mercosur bloc for judicial review adds to the uncertainty. PROTECTING PARMIGIANO While the matter of protected European products on the market down under was all but solved in 2023, it’s likely this chapter will return to haunt negotiators. Australia knows very well how to use anything the EU says against it: Nothing is agreed until everything is agreed, after all. Canberra signaled it was ready to set up its own version of Europe’s system of geographical indications. These, for instance, denote that Champagne can only be called that when it’s made in the eponymous region of France. They are also some non-Greek supermarkets that have to resort to calling their feta imitations “white cheese.” Australia might want more, but if the EU gives more it risks the ire of European farmers ready to protest on the doorstep of the Berlaymont. | Geoffroy van der Hasselt/AFP via Getty Images Australia is a peculiar case because, for example, Italian-heritage farmers have made parmesan cheese for generations in the same way as around Parma. They could now face limits on what they can call their product — but probably not Parmigiano Reggiano. A likely solution would allow established brands to continue to use product names for a grace period. This is why prosecco, pecorino, parmesan and feta are still under discussion, the Australian Associated Press reports. On the flip side, the EU usually offers to protect some of the other side’s products on its own market. Let’s hope they don’t come after our flat whites. RAW MATERIALS (AND THEIR PRICE) Australia holds the world’s largest lithium reserves but lacks the refining capacity to monetize them. As a result, China processes virtually all of the raw lithium that Australia produces, enabling Beijing to dominate global supply. Brussels and Canberra continued talking on this topic after the Osaka debacle, concluding a memorandum of understanding in early 2024. Australia is also a partner in Europe’s RESourceEU program to reduce dependencies on a subset of critical raw materials. And the European Investment Bank is teaming up with Australia. Ideally, a trade deal would unlock exports from Australia to Europe and also boost the confidence of European companies to invest in local refining capacity. This is true not only for lithium, but also uranium, silver, bauxite used for aluminum, and a host of others. It cuts both ways: One example of an existing project getting a boost is the Australian-owned lithium producer Vulcan Energy in Germany. So is this really a hurdle? There’s a technical one: Europe wants to avoid a dual pricing system for critical raw materials (and energy sources like natural gas) that favors domestic customers. Australia hasn’t signaled it’s ready to end the practice, however. TAXING LUXURY CARS Australia still taxes luxury vehicle imports — a relic of a bygone era when it still had a car industry of its own. The tax is a 33 percent charge on models above a certain price threshold. There’s also a 5 percent import duty on all foreign cars. Trading partners that have deals with Canberra — like Korea and Japan — saw that removed but are still charged the luxury car tax. The potential is there: Japan sold $8 billion worth of vehicles to Australia in 2024, with German only in fifth position at $2 billion. While the EU would love to pave the way for more high-end German autos to be sold Down Under, the tax is domestic legislation and not formally part of the talks. Australia was rumored in 2023 to be willing to get rid of the tax, and Albanese hinted at it again late last year. That could be a sweetener for the EU to stomach a slightly higher beef quota. THE POLITICS OF IT ALL The EU is on a roll with new trade agreements: it has signed the Mercosur deal, closed talks with India and an Australian win is close. The streak serves von der Leyen’s geopolitical agenda for Europe to stand on its own two feet economically. On the other side of the world, Albanese is in more dire need of a win. He’s under pressure over his response to the Bondi Beach terror attack in December. And even though Trump only hit Australia with a 10 percent tariff, the country needs strong alliances if it wants to weather both Chinese and American pressure. The same is true for Europe, which sees the deal as underlining its cultural and historic ties with Australia, lifting an already-strong working relationship to the next level, as with Canada. And Australia is a key member of “the West” in the Indo-Pacific where Europe needs and wants to expand its attraction and influence. Zoya Sheftalovich contributed to this report.