U.S. prepares for long Iran campaign

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Weekend Briefing

From Reuters Daily Briefing

By Robert MacMillan, Reuters.com Weekend Editor

Welcome to the Weekend Briefing. The Homeland Security Department went into partial shutdown. Figure skater Ilia Malinin unraveled in stunning fashion at the Olympic Games – where drones are giving TV viewers a nearly visceral sensation of the action. Volodymyr Zelenskiy thanked a disqualified Ukrainian skeleton racer for being "who you are." Hollywood workers are going to AI film academy. City Memo took us to Melbourne. And we have plenty more below.

U.S. military prepares for weeks-long operation against Iran

Majid Asgaripour/WANA

Fear as a tool: The disclosure by two U.S. officials suggests the possibility of a far more serious conflict between the two nations and emphasizes the importance of the talks underway between Washington and Tehran. Trump said Iran had been difficult in negotiations and that using fear would be the only tool to "get the situation taken care of."
Munich Security Conference: Secretary of State Marco Rubio whittled JD Vance's stick into something more resembling a carrot as he persisted in U.S. criticism of Europe's policies from migration to climate change, while saying Washington did not intend to abandon their transatlantic alliance. European leaders took it well.

Trump has no time to defend, plenty of time to sue

Priorities: The president frequently resorts to litigation to target his opponents, but when he's on the defending side in civil litigation, he says a sitting president has better things to do. Judges also have ruled more than 4,000 times that ICE has jailed people illegally. And yet, they're still doing it. ICE also has blocked detainees from seeing their lawyers.
Developments: The Trump administration sued Harvard, accusing it of failing to comply with a federal investigation and seeking documents to determine whether the university illegally considered race in its admissions process. Did Trump alienate his Hispanic voting base with his gripes over Bad Bunny's Super Bowl halftime show? And recent Supreme Court rulings allowing partisan voting maps to be used in the midterms highlight how a 2019 court decision helped supercharge a political practice that polling shows most Americans oppose.

RSF committed atrocities in Sudan, UN says

Siege: Rapid Support Forces violations during the capture of the city of al-Fashir amount to war crimes and possible crimes against humanity, the UN's human-rights chief said. Ethiopia revoked accreditation for three Addis Ababa-based journalists from Reuters three days after we published a report that said Ethiopia was hosting a secret camp to train fighters for the RSF.
Operation: Blackwater founder and Trump ally Erik Prince deployed a private security force to operate drones and help the Democratic Republic of Congo's army secure the city of Uvira against Rwanda-backed rebels. His contractors coordinated the operation with Israeli advisers who were involved in training Congolese special-forces battalions.

U.S. faces largest measles outbreak in 30 years

'Medical freedom': Doctors in South Carolina are trying to control the spread of measles as Americans' opposition to vaccines deepens. The state outbreak has surpassed 930 cases, while in Europe and Central Asia, cases fell 75% in 2025 from a year earlier.
Formula scare: French investigators are examining the death of a third baby who consumed infant formula subject to recall, though the health ministry said it had not established causal links.

U.N. starts clearing giant Gaza dump

Health hazard: The wartime garbage heap swallowed an entire Gaza City health district. Israel's Supreme Court ruled five months ago that prisons were failing to provide enough food to Palestinian detainees and ordered this to change. It hasn't, prisoners say.
Coming next week: Trump plans to announce his Gaza reconstruction plan as his Board of Peace holds its first formal meeting in Washington next Thursday. He also is expected to share plans for a U.N.-authorized stabilization force in the strip. Israel has joined the board.

U.S. allows oil companies to operate in Venezuela

Investment: The U.S. eased sanctions on Venezuela's oil and gas sector, though its authorization prevents transactions with companies in Russia, Iran or China or companies controlled by joint ventures with people in those countries. The state-run oil company is refusing to sell to companies without individual U.S. licenses, preventing Venezuela from draining its brimming storage tanks.
Cuba: Two Mexican-flagged ships brought humanitarian aid to Havana after the U.S. threatened tariffs on countries that send oil to Cuba. Russia said it would fly its tourists out of Cuba and suspend flights afterward because of jet-fuel shortages. Canada also suspended its flights.

Before I forget…

Goldman Sachs' top lawyer and the head of Dubai's port giant DP World resigned over their ties to Jeffrey Epstein.
Three people were killed and several injured in shootings in two areas of the Papua region of eastern Indonesia. Separatists claimed responsibility for both attacks.
An airplane that took off from Mogadishu crash-landed on the seashore shortly after takeoff. All 55 people survived.
The White House deleted a JD Vance social-media post that commemorated Ottoman forces' massacre of Armenians as a genocide.
Bon appétit: Indian food-safety officials warned a McDonald's in Jaipur after inspectors found rotten tomatoes in storage as well as 40 liters of repeatedly used cooking oil.
A golden heart pendant linked to the marriage of King Henry VIII and Katherine of Aragon will go on permanent display at the British Museum. The pendant includes the confident and ultimately incorrect inscription tousiors – "always."
Don't it make you wanna twist and shout when you're inside out?

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