The demands of the Iran war also caused President Donald Trump to delay by several weeks his highly anticipated trip to China, deepening worries that the U.S. is once again getting distracted at the cost of its strategic interests in Asia, where Beijing seeks to unseat the U.S. as the regional leader.

Those skeptical of the U.S. involvement in the Middle East say the war is preventing Trump from adequately preparing for his summit with Chinese leader Xi Jinping next month, when economic interests are on the line, and they warn that a failure to focus on Asia and maintain strong deterrence could lead to greater instability, if China should believe the time is ripe to seize the self-governed island of Taiwan.

“This is precisely the wrong time for the United States to turn away and be sucked into another intractable Middle East conflict,” said Danny Russel, a distinguished fellow at the Asia Society Policy Institute. “Rebalancing to Asia is highly relevant to America’s national interests, but it has been undercut by many bad decisions.”

Others defend the president’s approach, arguing that the forceful steps he is taking elsewhere, including in Venezuela and Iran, serve to counter China globally.

“Beijing is the chief sponsor for the adversaries that President Trump is dealing with sequentially, and it’s wise to do this sequentially,” Matt Pottinger, who served as a deputy national security adviser in the first Trump administration, said in a recent podcast.

NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte also said conflicts may not be confined to a single theater, suggesting that China could call upon its “junior partners” elsewhere to divert U.S. attention if it should move against Taiwan.

“Most likely it will not be limited, something in the Indo-Pacific to the Indo-Pacific,” Rutte said, speaking Thursday at the Ronald Reagan Institute in Washington. “It will be a multi-theater issue.”

Repercussions in Asia of the Iran war

Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, recently led a bipartisan group of senators to Taiwan, Japan and South Korea, where they heard concerns about the impact of the war on energy costs and about the departure of U.S. military assets, including missile defense systems from South Korea and a rapid-response Marine unit from Japan.

She sought to reassure them of the U.S. commitment to deterring conflicts in Asia and shoring up regional stability.

“Failure is not an option,” Shaheen told The Associated Press after returning from Asia. “We know China has already said they intend to take Taiwan by force if they need to, and they’re on an expedited time schedule. And we also know that what happened in Europe, in the war in Ukraine, in the Middle East is affecting those calculations.”

Kurt Campbell, who served as deputy secretary of state in the Biden administration, said he’s worried that the military capabilities that the U.S. had patiently accumulated in the Indo-Pacific region might not return in full even after the Iran war ends.

The longer the conflict goes on, the more it will pull resources and focus away from Asia, said Zack Cooper, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute who studies the U.S. strategy in Asia. He added that future arms sales to the region also will be negatively affected.

“The United States has expended substantial numbers of munitions in the Middle East and will have to keep an increased force presence there, some of which has been redirected from Asia,” Cooper said. “Meanwhile, Xi Jinping’s wisdom in preparing a ‘war time’ economy by stockpiling and adding alternate energy sources has shown itself to be beneficial.”

Shaheen said the U.S. defense industry will struggle to meet the demand to replenish the weapons stockpile. “We’re working on a number of strategies to improve that, but at this point, timelines for weapons delivery are slipping,” she said.

The senator from New Hampshire said she’s encouraged that Taiwan, Japan and South Korea are stepping up their own defense.

After 15 years and 3 presidents, pivot to Asia remains elusive

Obama’s strategic rebalance to Asia reflected his understanding that the U.S. must be a player in the Pacific to harness the region’s growth and ensure continued U.S. leadership in the face of China’s rising influence.

“After a decade in which we fought two wars that cost us dearly, in blood and treasure, the United States is turning our attention to the vast potential of the Asia-Pacific region,” Obama said in a speech to the Australian Parliament. “So make no mistake, the tide of war is receding, and America is looking ahead to the future that we must build.”

But the strategy was set back when a proposed trade agreement known as the Trans-Pacific Partnership with key U.S. regional partners failed to get through the U.S. Senate. After Trump first took office in 2017, he withdrew the U.S. from the partnership and launched a tariff war with China.

His Democratic successor, Joe Biden, kept Trump’s tariffs on China and tightened export controls on advanced technology, while strengthening regional alliances to counter China.

Middle East again grabs US attention

By the time Trump rolled out his national security strategy in late 2025, the U.S. strategy in Asia had been narrowed to military deterrence in the Taiwan Strait and the First Island Chain, a string of U.S.-aligned islands off China’s coast that restrict its access to the Western Pacific.

The national security document says it’s in the economic interest of the U.S. to secure access to advanced chips, which are sourced primarily from Taiwan and are needed to power everything from computers to missiles, and to protect shipping lanes in the South China Sea.

“Hence deterring a conflict over Taiwan, ideally by preserving military overmatch, is a priority,” the document says. “We will build a military capable of denying aggression anywhere in the First Island Chain.”

The Middle East, it says, should be getting less attention: “As this administration rescinds or eases restrictive energy policies and American energy production ramps up, America’s historic reason for focusing on the Middle East will recede.”

Then came the Iran war.

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A U.S. official said there was continued engagement with Iran, and forward motion on trying ‌to get to an agreement. Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif also said efforts were still under way to resolve the conflict.

But oil prices climbed back over $100 per barrel, with no sign of a swift reopening of the Strait of Hormuz to ease the biggest ever disruption in supplies and broader concerns over the durability of a two-week ceasefire agreement reached last week.

Trump said Iran had been in touch on Monday and wanted to make a deal but that he would not sanction any agreement allowing Tehran to have a ​nuclear weapon.

“Iran will not have a nuclear weapon,” Trump told reporters at the White House. “We can’t let a country blackmail or extort the world.”

Since the United States and Israel began the war on February ​28, Iran effectively shut the Strait of Hormuz to all vessels except its own, saying passage would be permitted only under Iranian control and subject to a fee.

Trump ⁠has said Washington would block Iranian vessels and any ships that paid such tolls and that any Iranian “fast-attack” ships that went near the blockade would be eliminated.

Brigadier General Reza Talaei-Nik, a spokesperson for Iran’s Ministry of Defence, warned ​that foreign military efforts to police the strait would escalate the crisis and instability in global energy security.

NATO allies including Britain and France said they would not be drawn into the conflict by taking part in the blockade, stressing instead ​the need to reopen the waterway, through which about one-fifth of the world’s oil normally passes.

CEASEFIRE UNDER STRAIN

The ceasefire that halted six weeks of U.S. and Israeli airstrikes looked in jeopardy, with only a week left to run. Washington said Tehran rejected its demands at weekend talks in Islamabad, the highest-level discussions between the two nations since Iran’s 1979 Islamic Revolution.

The U.S. military’s Central Command said the blockade would be “enforced impartially against vessels of all nations” entering or leaving Iranian ports in the Gulf and Gulf of ​Oman.

“The blockade will not impede neutral transit passage through the Strait of Hormuz to or from non-Iranian destinations,” Central Command said in a note to seafarers seen by Reuters on Monday.

Two Iranian-linked tankers, the Aurora and New Future, left the ​strait laden with oil products on Monday before the deadline, according to LSEG data.

An Iranian military spokesperson called any U.S. restrictions on international shipping “piracy,” warning that if Iranian ports were threatened, no port in the Gulf or Gulf of Oman would be ‌secure. Any military ⁠vessels approaching the strait would violate the ceasefire, Iran’s Revolutionary Guards said.

Trump said Iran’s navy had been “completely obliterated” during the war, adding that only a small number of “fast-attack ships” remained.

“Warning: If any of these ships come anywhere close to our BLOCKADE, they will be immediately ELIMINATED, using the same system of kill that we use against the drug dealers on boats at Sea. It is quick and brutal,” Trump, much of whose communications are on social media, wrote on his microblogging site.

He was apparently referring to the U.S. strikes carried out against suspected drug boats in the Caribbean and Pacific. The strikes, which began in September, killed more than 160 people. The U.S. military has not provided ​evidence that the vessels were ferrying drugs.

LEBANON FACES ATTACKS

Trump ​has also lashed out at U.S.-born Pope Leo, who ⁠has spoken out against the war, denouncing him as “terrible” in a rare direct attack by a U.S. president on a pontiff.

With the war unpopular at home and rising energy prices causing political blowback, Trump paused the U.S.-Israeli bombing campaign last week after threatening to destroy Iran’s “whole civilisation” unless it reopened the strait.

Israel has continued to bombard Lebanon and ​on Monday Israeli troops launched an attack it said was intended to seize a key south Lebanon town from Iran-backed Hezbollah. Israel and the U.S. have said the ​campaign against Hezbollah was not part ⁠of the ceasefire, while Iran has insisted it is.

The International Committee of the Red Cross said on Monday it was deeply concerned about attacks on medical workers in Lebanon after a deadly strike on a Red Cross center in the country.

Iran has brought new demands, including recognition of its control of the waterway, lifting of sanctions and the withdrawal of forces from U.S. military bases across the Middle East.

Trump has declared victory, despite failing to achieve the objectives he set out at ⁠the start of ​the war: to eliminate Iran’s ability to strike its neighbours, end its nuclear programme and make it easier for Iranians to topple their ​government.

Benchmark oil prices, which had eased last week after the ceasefire was announced, traded around 6% higher on Monday, off the day’s peaks but still above $100 a barrel.

Traders say the main benchmarks – used to set prices for trillions of dollars’ worth of commodities worldwide – actually understate the severity ​of a disruption with no precedent in modern times.

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WASHINGTON (AP) — The Pentagon has sent military advisers, including a Marine Corps general versed in urban warfare, to Israel to aid in its war planning and is speeding multiple sophisticated air defense systems to the Middle East days ahead of an anticipated ground assault into Gaza.

One of the officers leading the assistance is Marine Corps Lt. Gen. James Glynn, who previously helped lead special operations forces against the Islamic State and served in Fallujah, Iraq, during some of the most heated urban combat there, according to a U.S. official who was not authorized to discuss Glynn’s role and spoke on the condition of anonymity.

Glynn will also be advising on how to mitigate civilian casualties in urban warfare, the official said.

Israel is preparing a large-scale ground operation in an environment in which Hamas militants have had years to prepare tunnel networks and set traps throughout northern Gaza’s dense urban blocks. Glynn and the other military officers who are advising Israel “have experience that is appropriate to the sorts of operations that Israel is conducting,” National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said Monday. The advisers will not be engaged in the fighting, the unidentified U.S. official said.

The military team is one of many fast-moving pieces the Pentagon is getting in place to try and prevent the already intense conflict between Israel and Hamas from becoming a wider war. It also is trying to protect U.S. personnel, who in the last few days have come under repeated attacks that the Pentagon has said were likely endorsed by Iran.

Kirby said Iran was “in some cases actively facilitating these attacks and spurring on others who may want to exploit the conflict for their own good, or for that of Iran. We know that Iran’s goal is to maintain some level of deniability here. But were not going to allow them to do that.”

On Monday, the U.S. military garrison at an-Tanf, Syria, came under attack again, this time by two drones. The drones were shot down and no injuries were reported. It was the latest episode of more than a half-dozen times in the last week that U.S. military locations in the Middle East had come under rocket or drone attack since a deadly blast at a Gaza hospital.

Last Thursday the destroyer USS Carney shot down four land-attack cruise missiles launched from Yemen that the Pentagon has said were potentially headed toward Israel.

In response, over the weekend the Pentagon announced it was sending multiple Patriot missile defense system battalions and a Terminal High Altitude Area Defense system to the Middle East, as well as repositioning the Eisenhower strike group to the U.S. Central Command area of responsibility. The ship had previously been en route to the Eastern Mediterranean.

The shift means that the Navy will have a carrier strike group off the shore of Israel — the Ford carrier strike group — and another, the Eisenhower, potentially maneuvered to defend U.S. forces and Israel from the Red Sea or the Gulf of Oman.

“We’re going to continue to do what we need to do to protect and safeguard our forces and take all necessary measures,” Ryder said. “No one wants to see a wider regional conflict. But we will not hesitate to protect our forces.”

The U.S. has also advised Israeli officials to consider a delay in any ground assault, saying it would give more time to allow the U.S. to work with its regional partners to release more hostages, according to a U.S. official familiar with Biden administration thinking on the matter. The official, who requested anonymity to discuss the private discussions, said it was unclear how much the argument will “move the needle” on Israeli thinking.

The official noted that with the help of Qatar mediating with Hamas, the U.S. was able to win the release of two captives, Judith and Natalie Raanan. The process that led to their release — just two of more than 200 people in Israel who were taken hostage in the Oct. 7 attacks — started soon after the Hamas operation. The official noted arranging for the release of the Raanans took longer to come together than many people realized.

Asked during a brief exchange with reporters at the White House on Monday if the U.S. would be supportive of a ceasefire-for-hostage deal, President Joe Biden replied, “We should have those hostages released and then we can talk.”

The International Committee of the Red Cross said Monday that Hamas had released two more hostages. They were identified by Israeli media as Yocheved Lifshitz and Nurit Cooper of the Israeli kibbutz of Nir Oz.

Glynn’s assignment to Israel was first reported by Axios.

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History was made this past Tuesday at the White House as leaders from Israel, the United Arab Emirates, and Bahrain met with President Trump and signed the Abraham Accords, which will normalize diplomatic relations between Israel and the two Arab nations.

Before this summer, only two peace deals involving Israel had been negotiated in the last 72 years, with the most recent coming in 1994. During the past month alone, President Trump has helped broker two such agreements.

“Today the world sees that [these nations] are choosing cooperation over conflict, friendship over enmity, prosperity over poverty, and hope over despair,” President Trump said.

“They are choosing a future in which Arabs and Israelis, Muslims, Jews, and Christians can live together, pray together, and dream together.”

The first steps between Israel and both Bahrain and the UAE are an exchange of embassies and ambassadors, as well as the start of direct commercial flights between countries.

Each leader spoke today about the significance of the Abraham Accords in the pursuit of enduring peace in the Middle East:

• “This day is a pivot of history. It heralds a new dawn of peace,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel said.

• “Peace requires courage, and shaping the future requires knowledge,” Abdullah bin Zayed Al Nahyan of the United Arab Emirates said. “We have come today to tell the world that this is our approach.”

• “Today is a truly historic occasion—a moment of hope and opportunity for all the peoples of the Middle East,” Abdullatif bin Rashid Al-Zayani of Bahrain said.

When President Trump took office, the Middle East was fraught with turmoil. Today, a geopolitical transformation is underway. As more and more Arab countries begin to establish direct ties with Israel, the region’s prospects for peace, economic growth, technological innovation, and opportunities for young people will only improve.

“The people of the Middle East will no longer allow hatred of Israel to be fomented as an excuse for radicalism or extremism,” President Trump said.

The failed foreign policy approaches of the past only served to stoke division, empower bad actors, and permit violence to spread across the Middle East. The signing of the Abraham Accords today begins a new, brighter chapter that rewards true peace.

Earlier this month, President Trump also announced a historic economic agreement between Serbia and Kosovo. That deal led to a pledge from Serbia to move its embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, while Kosovo has agreed to mutual recognition with Israel.

In other words, President Trump’s bold, creative diplomacy gets real-world results. The ISIS caliphate is destroyed, trust is being restored with America’s allies, extremists are being sidelined, and American troops are coming home from never-ending wars.

“After decades of division and conflict, we mark the dawn of a new Middle East,” President Trump said.

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