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      Behind the Tactical Gains Against Iran, a Longer-Term Worry

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      Experts inside and outside the Biden administration fear that Iran may conclude it has only one defense left: racing for an atomic weapon.When Israeli fighter jets roared off the runways on Friday night, on a thousand-mile run to Iran, they headed for two major sets of targets: the air defenses that protect Tehran, including Iran’s leadership, and the giant fuel mixers that make propellant for Iran’s missile fleet.Israel’s military leaders, in calls with Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III and other senior American officials, had concluded that taking out the air defenses would make Iran’s leaders fearful that Tehran itself could not be defended. That feeling of vulnerability was already high, after Israel decimated the leadership of Hamas and Hezbollah, Tehran’s proxy forces that could strike Israel, over the past month.The surprise element for the Iranians was a set of strikes that hit a dozen or so fuel mixers, and took out the air defenses that protected several critical oil and petrochemical refineries, according to a senior U.S. official and two Israeli defense officials who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal planning.Without the capability to mix fuel, Iran cannot produce more of the type of ballistic missiles that its forces fired on Israel on Oct. 1, the immediate provocation for Israel’s strike. And it could take more than a year to replace them from Chinese and other suppliers.By Saturday, American and Israeli officials were claiming a major success, but lurking behind the satisfaction with the tactical gains lies a longer-term worry. With Iran’s Russian-produced air defenses in smoldering piles, many fear the Iranian leaders may conclude they have only one defense left: racing for an atomic weapon.That is just what American strategists have been desperately trying to avoid for a quarter-century, using sabotage, cyberattacks and diplomacy to keep Tehran from crossing the threshold to become a full nuclear-armed power.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Pentagon to Give Honorable Discharges to Some Kicked Out Under ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’

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      More than 800 service members administratively separated from the military under the now-repealed policy will receive discharge upgrades.The Pentagon announced on Tuesday that more than 800 service members who were kicked out of the military under the now-repealed “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy will receive honorable discharge upgrades.Pentagon officials said they had completed a review of about 2,000 cases, as Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III ordered last year.Mr. Austin said in a statement that the military would “continue to honor the service and the sacrifice of all our troops — including the brave Americans who raised their hands to serve but were turned away because of whom they love.”About 13,500 service members were separated from the military because of their sexual orientation while the policy was in effect from 1994 until 2011. About a third of them were not considered for discharge upgrades because they were separated during their initial military training and had not served long enough to qualify.Some groups that work with veterans said the Pentagon should review those cases as well.“We don’t have a ton of clarity about how the Department of Defense went about its process here,” said Renee Burbank of the National Veterans Legal Services Program, which provides legal assistance to veterans on a wide array of issues.Ms. Burbank, who serves as the group’s director of litigation, said that about 7,000 of the 13,500 people ousted under “don’t ask, don’t tell” had already received honorable discharges.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      California Rejects Bid for More Frequent SpaceX Launches

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      A commission denied a request to increase the number of rocket launches on the state’s central coast, citing environmental concerns.A California state commission this week rejected the U.S. Space Force’s bid to increase the number of SpaceX rocket launches on the state’s central coast, citing concerns about the environmental impacts of the launches.The Space Force had sought to increase the number of launches of SpaceX’s flagship Falcon 9 rocket from 36 to 50 per year out of California. But on Thursday, the California Coastal Commission denied the bid in a 6-4 vote, pointing to its previous requests for the military and SpaceX to mitigate the disruptive sonic booms caused by the rockets and to keep a closer eye on the operations’ effects on the state’s wildlife.The commission also rejected the military and SpaceX’s argument that the launches should be considered a federal activity, saying they mostly benefit SpaceX and its private business operations, as opposed to the government.The move came just a couple of months after the commission had approved increasing the number of SpaceX launches to 36, contingent on the military’s commitment to adopting such measures. The board, which is tasked with protecting the state’s coastal resources, previously expressed its reservation for approving more launches without understanding the effects of the sonic booms and launch debris on wildlife.SpaceX, which is owned by Elon Musk, has grown to dominate the space launch business, serving as the primary provider to both NASA and the Pentagon. It has blasted its own commercial satellites into space out of bases across the country at a rapid clip, and it is set to test its new Starship rocket on Sunday in Texas. In California, SpaceX carries out many of its missions at the Vandenberg Space Force Base in Santa Barbara County.But the sonic booms have been startling residents in Southern California, whose homes have been shaken by powerful, confusing jolts, The Los Angeles Times reported. And several environmental groups submitted letters urging the commission to take more time to study the impact on wildlife ahead of this week’s meeting.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      In North Carolina Town Hall, Trump Makes a Series of Promises to Appeal to Veterans

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      At the end of his town hall in North Carolina on Friday, former President Donald J. Trump was asked by a former Air Force pilot whether he would create a panel to keep “woke generals” out of the Defense Department.Mr. Trump not only agreed, but also went a step further. “I’m going to put you on that task force,” he said, to cheers from the crowd.The remark was the last in a series of promises the former president made as he answered preselected questions from voters in Fayetteville, N.C., an area with a large military population. It’s a dynamic that happens often at Mr. Trump’s events, in which he makes direct commitments on small and large issues to appeal to and energize his specific audience.He promised that his proposed missile defense system, an American clone of Israel’s Iron Dome, would be made in North Carolina. He pledged to raise military pay. And before taking a question, he promised to restore the name of nearby Fort Liberty, the largest U.S. military base, back to Fort Bragg, which honored a Confederate general from a slave-owning family. The name was changed in June 2023 as part of the U.S. military’s examination of its history with race.Attendees cheered as Mr. Trump arrived for the town hall at Crown Arena in Fayetteville, N.C.Kent Nishimura for The New York TimesSitting onstage at the Crown Arena in front of several thousand people, many of whom said they were active-duty military service members or veterans, Mr. Trump took eight questions from audience members. Like the event’s moderator, Representative Anna Paulina Luna, Republican of Florida and a veteran, the participants teed him up to offer lines from his stump speech. Many of the questions echoed his exaggerated and false claims about immigration, approved of his vow to conduct massive deportations of undocumented immigrants and acknowledged his fear-inspiring predictions of global war.All Mr. Trump had to do, largely, was agree. He repeated his false claims that Democrats cheated in the 2020 election and made familiar attacks against the media.Mr. Trump earlier in the day toured parts of Georgia hit by Hurricane Helene, and he claimed that reporters were doing little to cover the storm and the Biden administration’s response.Ms. Luna, a proud and combative ally of Mr. Trump, took the ball and ran with it, and claimed that the administration’s response was intentional. “I do believe that they’ve intentionally, this is my opinion, not helped out those residents, because it’s red communities that are impacted,” she said. More

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      Ukraine Wants Long-Range Weapons. Here’s a Look at What They Are.

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      Much of the public discourse about arming Ukraine has revolved around whether the United States will send “long range” weapons. But that can mean different things.There are roughly 500 miles between Kyiv and Moscow.The United States has weapons that can fly much farther than that, but it is unlikely to supply them to Ukraine for fear that an attack on the Russian capital with American weapons might spark a third world war.So within that 500-mile range the Biden administration has been pushed repeatedly to give Kyiv weapons that can hit targets as far away as possible. Discussion among Ukraine’s supporters often centers on calls for “long range” weapons — a term with no real military definition, but that has an emotional pull Ukrainian leaders have used to pressure the White House for ever more capable munitions.Over two and half years of war, “long range” has evolved in the public forum to describe a host of increasingly advanced U.S. weapons. The trend began soon after Russia’s 2022 invasion, when U.S. government officials first used the term to apply to …ArtillerySeveral 155-millimeter howitzer shells waiting to be fired in Ukraine’s Donetsk region in March.Nicole Tung for The New York TimesThe United States has sent Ukraine the longest-range artillery pieces in its arsenal: 155-millimeter howitzers, which can fire 100-pound shells at targets about 20 miles away. Each shell contains about 24 pounds of explosives.Since the beginning of the war, the United States has shipped three million M795 artillery shells to Ukraine for the weapon to fire. That model can be fitted with a guidance kit that steers the projectile to its target, though there is no evidence to suggest the Pentagon has sent those devices to Kyiv.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Sweeping Iraq Raid Killed 4 ISIS Leaders

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      The U.S. military said those killed in a joint assault by U.S. and Iraqi forces last month included the group’s top commander in Iraq and its leading bomb maker.One of the largest counterterrorism operations against the Islamic State in Iraq in recent years killed four top insurgent leaders last month, the U.S. military said on Friday, dealing the group a major blow at a time when its attacks in Iraq and Syria are on the rise.The raid by American and Iraqi commandos against several Islamic State hide-outs in western Iraq on Aug. 29 killed at least 14 insurgents and devastated the group’s top leadership in the country, according to a statement from the Pentagon’s Central Command and U.S. counterterrorism officials.Among the dead the military identified was Ahmad Hamid al-Ithawi, the top ISIS commander in Iraq and one of the group’s most well-established veterans. Two senior commanders for ISIS operations in western Iraq were also killed, the military’s statement said.Another main target killed was Abu Ali al-Tunisi, a Tunisian national who was the subject of a $5 million reward from the U.S. government, the military revealed on Friday. Mr. al-Tunisi has been ISIS’s most significant designer, manufacturer and teacher in explosives — including improvised devices, suicide vests and car bombs, counterterrorism officials said.“The raid appears to have effectively killed off ISIS’s entire command in Anbar,” Charles Lister, the director of the Middle East Institute’s Syria and counterterrorism programs, wrote in a Substack newsletter, “Syria Weekly,” on Friday. Anbar is a vast province in western Iraq that has been a locus for violent Sunni extremists for years.Central Command and the Iraqi military offered scant details when they announced the raid on Aug. 30, even though it was one of the most sweeping counterterrorism missions in the country in years.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Starmer, Meeting Biden, Hints at Ukraine Weapons Decision Soon

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      As the president deliberated with Prime Minister Keir Starmer, the question of whether to let Ukraine use long-range weapons in Russia was a rare point of contention between allied nations.President Biden’s deliberations with Prime Minister Keir Starmer of Britain about whether to allow Ukraine to attack Russia with long-range Western weapons were fresh evidence that the president remains deeply fearful of setting off a dangerous, wider conflict.But the decision now facing Mr. Biden after Friday’s closed-door meeting at the White House — whether to sign off on the use of long-range missiles made by Britain and France — could be far more consequential than previous concessions by the president that delivered largely defensive weapons to Ukraine during the past two and a half years.In remarks at the start of his meeting with Mr. Starmer, the president underscored his support for helping Ukraine defend itself but did not say whether he was willing to do more to allow for long-range strikes deep into Russia.“We’re going to discuss that now,” the president told reporters.For his part, the prime minister noted that “the next few weeks and months could be crucial — very, very important that we support Ukraine in this vital war of freedom.”European officials said earlier in the week that Mr. Biden appeared ready to approve the use of British and French long-range missiles, a move that Mr. Starmer and officials in France have said they want to provide a united front in the conflict with Russia. But Mr. Biden has hesitated to allow Ukraine to use arms provided by the United States in the same way over fears that President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia would see it as a major escalation.On Thursday, Mr. Putin responded to reports that America and its allies were considering such a move by declaring that it would “mean that NATO countries — the United States and European countries — are at war with Russia,” according to a report by the Kremlin.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Two U.S. Marines Attacked in Turkey by Nationalist Youth Group

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      Turkish officials said they had detained 15 members of the group. The two servicemen had returned to the ship and were safe, U.S. officials said.The Turkish authorities said they had detained 15 members of a nationalist youth organization in connection with the assault of two U.S. Marines stationed in a port city in western Turkey on Monday.The marines, members of the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit, were off their ship and wearing plain clothes at the time of the attack in Izmir, Turkey, Cmdr. Timothy Gorman, a spokesman for the U.S. Sixth Fleet, told CBS News. They were taken to a hospital for evaluation as a precaution, he said.The marines have since returned to the ship and are safe, officials said.“Local Izmir police and the Naval Criminal Investigative Service are cooperating in an investigation of the incident,” Commander Gorman told CBS. “No Marines have been detained by authorities and those involved are cooperating with investigators.”The Izmir governor’s office said in a statement on social media that members of the Turkish Youth Union were detained after the attack. The group is affiliated with the Patriotic Party, a nationalist group that does not hold any seats in Turkey’s Parliament, and has anti-American views, according to The Associated Press.The U.S. Embassy said in a statement on social media that the service members who had been assaulted were safe and aboard their amphibious assault ship, the U.S.S. Wasp. Video posted on social media and verified by the news agency Storyful appeared to show the attack on the Marines. The footage shows a group of young men crowding around a man, restraining him and attempting to put a sack over his head, while another man tries to intervene and push members of the group away.People could be heard chanting “Yankee go home” in English in the footage. In 2014, members of the nationalist youth group were arrested in connection with the assaults of three visiting American sailors in Istanbul. Members of the group used similar tactics at the time — a large group descending on a few servicemen on leave and pulling white sacks over their heads — and uttered similar chants, including “Yankee go home!” and “Down with U.S. imperialism!”The U.S.S. Wasp arrived in Izmir on Sunday for a regularly scheduled port visit after a joint training exercise with Turkey in the Mediterranean, according to the Department of Defense. The vessel was sent to the region as a part of broader plan by the U.S. Navy to deter further conflict in the Middle East. More