The prospect for a dramatic new escalation in the U.S.-Israel war on Iran is looming. Mr. Trump ripped the Iranian regime Sunday for “playing games” as his team reviewed Tehran’s latest response to a U.S. peace proposal that had called on the Islamic republic to abandon its nuclear ambitions and release its stranglehold on shipping in the Strait of Hormuz.

Mr. Trump accused Iran of delaying negotiations and again threatened further attacks. “I have just read the response from Iran’s so-called ‘Representatives.’ I don’t like it — TOTALLY UNACCEPTABLE!” the president posted on Truth Social.

Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Esmaeil Baghaei said Monday Tehran’s response to U.S. demands was “reasonable and generous.” The Iranians issued their own list of demands as part of the response, including a call on the U.S. to end all attacks on Iran, lift the U.S. blockade of Iranian ports and unfreeze many of Iran’s assets currently restricted by sanctions.

Russia and Ukraine accused each other throughout the weekend of violating a temporary ceasefire that Mr. Trump said was established over the war zone. Mr. Trump announced Friday that Russian President Vladimir Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy had accepted his request for a Saturday-through-Monday ceasefire to mark Victory Day, the Russian celebration marking the defeat of Nazi Germany.

An Associated Press report Monday noted that similar ceasefires announced since Russia invaded its neighbor more than four years ago also have failed to stop the fighting, and U.S.-led diplomatic efforts to negotiate an end to the war over the past year have come to nothing.

The Washington-based Institute for the Study of War said data from NASA observations indicated military activities decreased in the war zone but did not halt over the weekend. The think tank asserted on its website Sunday that “ceasefires without explicit enforcement mechanisms, credible monitoring and defined dispute resolution processes are unlikely to hold.”

The U.S.-Israel war with Iran has shown how easily a regional economy dependent on seaborne shipping can be taken hostage — a lesson that’s particularly sobering for China, the world’s biggest exporter. At a minimum, the current Mideast conflict underscores the massive economic risks that a trade-dependent China would face if Beijing invades Taiwan.

In addition to the peril built into any assault across the 100-mile-wide Taiwan Strait, China would face the sobering reality of a potentially closed Strait of Malacca, which connects the Indian and Pacific oceans and is the world’s second-busiest shipping lane after the English Channel. About 80% of China’s energy imports pass through the Strait of Malacca and almost 60% of its seaborne commerce.

Asia Editor Andrew Salmon examines the situation, writing that China also has to consider the stark fact that a powerful navy does not ensure that shipping lanes remain open, nor does it guarantee that the maritime insurance sector is willing to gamble with massive ships loaded with millions of dollars’ worth of cargo.

The files released by the Pentagon Friday include dozens of government memos, photographs and FBI investigation reports, providing the public with a never-before-seen window into official evidence gathered on what the government refers to as unidentified anomalous phenomena, or UAP.

Pentagon Correspondent Mike Glenn reports that one document in the tranche details a January 1994 report to the U.S. Embassy in Tajikistan from the flight deck crew of a passenger jet that insisted they spotted a UAP in the skies over Kazakhstan. They described the object as a “bright light of enormous intensity” flying at an altitude much higher than their own.

The files posted on the Pentagon website also contain a brief transcription of a conversation in December 1965 between the crew of NASA’s Gemini VII mission and ground control. Astronaut Frank Borman told Houston that he spotted a “bogey at 10 o’clock high,” describing it as some kind of object accompanied by “hundreds of little particles.”

A single nuclear weapon detonated high above Earth would produce an electromagnetic pulse on a wide area of the planet’s surface, causing an “enormous voltage and current surge in the nation’s electric power grid,” according to Rudy Boschwitz and Henry F. Cooper.

“This would likely destroy our key, difficult-to-replace elements, such as the huge transformers essential to providing electricity to essentially our entire population,” the two former U.S. ambassadors write in an op-ed for The Washington Times. “We can protect those transformers by installing grounding devices that guard against the huge voltage thrust.

“The Iranians know all about EMP,” Messrs. Boschwitz and Cooper write. “They have written about it, and they know full well what a single nuclear weapon can do. That is why even one such weapon in the hands of the mullahs is one too many.”

• May 11 — Defending Taiwan: A Strategy to Prevent War with China, Hudson Institute

• May 13 — The 2026 Iraq Dialogue, Atlantic Council

• May 13 — The Strategic Value of China to South Korea, Center for Strategic & International Studies

• May 14 — Offset Symposium 2026: Scaling Software Advantage Across the Mission, Second Front