—❗️🇺🇸/🇯🇴/🇮🇷 NEW: Impacts at Muwaffaq Salti Airbase, Jordan, used by the U.S. military

@Middle_East_Spectator

🇮🇷🇸🇦⚡️- Air traffic has been temporarily halted in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.

📝 🇺🇸 🇮🇷 A classified Pentagon assessment has directly warned Trump's Secretary of War Hegseth that extending the Iran war will leave the US military dangerously weakened, including for China and Russia, with senior US commanders directly telling him "America can no longer afford to fight this conflict without breaking itself," per WaPo.

Leaders of US European Command, US Pacific Command, US Southern Command, and the Navy's top admiral all filed a formal "non-concur" against Hegseth's order to extend their forces in the Iran war, saying prolonged large-scale operations against Iran are "unsustainable" and risk "weakening US ability to confront threats elsewhere, including the US homeland." The overall tenor is that the Iran war has been "too much for too long."

US Chief of Naval Operations Admiral Daryl Caudle directly told Hegseth the US Navy cannot sustain its current level of support for the Iran conflict because there is no anticipated end date, with barely 1/4 of the US Navy's destroyer fleet currently ready to deploy, a sharp decline from prewar levels. Caudle directly said "the enemy gets a vote." The US Navy's only dedicated aircraft carrier in the Pacific, a keystone of the US military's plan to deter China, was sent to the Middle East to relieve another carrier deployed for more than 300 days.

US allies in the Pacific have directly warned that the Pentagon’s already catastrophic depletion of missiles and air defense interceptors leave them vulnerable to China.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2026/08/30/military-leaders-warn-hegseth-against-extending-iran-war-operations/

https://archive.ph/OViRw

📎 The Hormuz Letter

🇦🇺 🇫🇯 🇵🇬 Australia has signed two mutual defence treaties, with Fiji and PNG, over the past year—the first new alliances in the Asia Pacific since the early days of the Cold War.

🇨🇳 Australia builds a Pacific alliance system to keep China out

https://www.economist.com/asia/2026/08/27/australia-builds-a-pacific-alliance-system-to-keep-china-out

https://archive.ph/LIKfG

📎 Aaron Connelly