With the Chinese government having swiftly dismissed the major U.S. sanctions package announced against Iran this week, questions are swirling around the extent to which the Trump administration’s reliance on sanctions may backfire by tightening the screws on economic connectivity among the so-called CRINKs — China, Russia, Iran and North Korea — alignment of authoritarian powers against the United States.

China’s Foreign Ministry indicated Tuesday that the Chinese Communist Party-ruled government in Beijing will not adhere to demands from the U.S. Treasury Department to cut off economic ties to Iran. The Trump administration had hoped Beijing would at least tacitly embrace Washington’s new attempt to isolate the Iranian regime on the world stage.

China remains one of Iran’s most valuable links to international markets. Beijing buys about 90% of Iran’s crude oil, and Tehran maintains access to China’s banking system, which helps Iran mitigate the effects of Western sanctions. The concern among some in U.S. national security circles is that U.S. sanctions will result in a strengthening of connectivity between China — the only military treaty ally of North Korea — and Iran, as well as Iran-Russia relations, as Tehran is a supporter of Moscow’s war on Ukraine.

Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps is running a network of terror proxies in Europe, leaning on organized crime outfits to carry out targeted killings of individuals deemed to be promoting dissent against the Iranian regime.

Foreign Affairs Correspondent Vaughn Cockayne examines the situation in a deep-dive report, highlighting the role played by the Foxtrot Network, a Swedish organized crime syndicate that evolved from a major drug-trafficking operation into a terror proxy for Iran.

Foxtrot and similar groups focus on symbolic targets — public opponents of Tehran, critical journalists — rather than major security sites. “When they try and kill an Iranian dissident, when they try and kill someone who’s too pro-Israel, from their perspective, that’s defending the [Iranian] revolution,” said Matthew Levitt, who focuses on counterterrorism and intelligence at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy think tank.

Conditions in some barracks for U.S. military personnel and mission-critical infrastructure, such as runways on Air Force bases, have suffered because of a $285 billion maintenance backlog, according to a new Government Accountability Office report.

Because of competing budget priorities, the Pentagon set the goal for funding maintenance projects at 90%, but GAO investigators found the military services were meeting only 80% of their maintenance needs.

The Pentagon is often described as the largest institutional landlord in the world. It has more than 736,000 facilities in its real estate portfolio with an estimated value of $2.6 trillion as of fiscal 2025, according to the GAO report. About one-third of the facilities are more than 50 years old, with aging infrastructure adding to the growing maintenance needs.

President Trump is “drawing the United States into a military quagmire in Iran, despite his campaign promise to end so-called forever wars,” according to National Security Correspondent Bill Gertz, who writes in part one of a two-part op-ed for The Washington Times that “as a news correspondent for The Washington Times for more than 40 years, I rarely write opinion pieces. The problems facing the United States in Iran compelled me to comment.

“The standoff results from launching a war and then abandoning it halfway through in favor of diplomacy: negotiating with a radical Islamic regime whose deep ideological hatreds render its leaders incapable of honoring any agreement with its avowed premier foe,” writes Mr. Gertz.

“The best way for Mr. Trump to extricate the United States from the war is to unleash American and Israeli air, naval and missile power once again, with added elements of intense covert action and intelligence power to complete the mission called Operation Epic Fury launched in February,” he writes. “The announced goal should be to force the unconditional surrender that Mr. Trump initially demanded, or so weaken the nation of 93 million that it joins the list of U.S. enemy states in the region.”

In the second part of the two-part op-ed, Mr. Gertz writes that the Chinese Communist Party is watching the U.S. campaign against Iran “closely and learning from Mr. Trump’s lack of resolve.”

Mr. Gertz argues the administration should consider embracing the “false notion” that Beijing has promoted by accusing Washington of engaging in a “global conspiracy aimed at ousting enemy regimes in the Middle East and elsewhere” through nonmilitary means.

He writes that “Mr. Trump should tell” Joint Chiefs Chairman Dan Caine to “carry out a scorched-earth bombing campaign to end the Iran war in weeks, not years, and rid the world of its hated regime.”

• Aug. 26 — Counter UAS Summit, Institute for Defense and Government Advancement

• Aug. 26-27 — 2026 Intelligence & National Security Summit, INSA and AFCEA

• Aug. 27 — 2026 Navy Summit, Potomac Officers Club

• Aug. 27 — Artificial Intelligence and Autonomy on the Modern Battlefield, Atlantic Council

• Sept. 3 —The AI Open-Weight Debate: Balancing Innovation and Security, Center for a New American Security

• Sept. 9 — Bend but Do Not Break: Shaping the Future of the All-Volunteer Force, Center for Strategic & International Studies

• Sept. 11 — The 9/11 Terrorist Attacks at 25: Assessing the Legacy, Addressing the Future, Brookings Institution

• Sept. 12-13 — AFA National Convention, Air & Space Forces Association