As Israel and Iran continue to exchange blows, accelerating prospects for another major conflict in the region, Sen. Tim Kaine (D - Va.) is introducing a war powers resolution that would force a Senate floor debate and vote prior to any use of U.S. military force against Iran, except in the case of self-defense.
“It is not in our national security interest to get into a war with Iran unless that war is absolutely necessary to defend the United States,” Kaine said as he introduced the legislation. “I am deeply concerned that the recent escalation of hostilities between Israel and Iran could quickly pull the United States into another endless conflict.”
Kaine, a member of the Senate Armed Services and Foreign Relations Committees, added: “the American people have no interest in sending servicemembers to fight another forever war in the Middle East. This resolution will ensure that if we decide to place our nation’s men and women in uniform into harm’s way, we will have a debate and vote on it in Congress.”
The legislation can be considered on the Senate floor after 10 calendar days.
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) posted on X Saturday that he would introduce legislation that would block the use of federal funding for military force against Iran without Congressional authorization to do so, again with the exception of the U.S. acting in self-defense.
President Trump said Sunday that “it’s possible” the U.S. could get involved in Israel’s ongoing offensive against Iran, which Israel started with strikes targeting Iran’s nuclear facilities, top scientists, and senior military officials. The U.S., which gave Israel a “green light” to attack Iran, has been helping Israel strike down incoming ballistic missiles and drones. The U.S. is also shifting its military resources in the Middle East in response to the strikes.
Iran’s foreign minister said Sunday that Israel’s attack on Iran could not have happened "without the agreement and support of the United States,” explaining that Iranian officials do not believe repeated U.S. claims of non-involvement in Israel’s attack.
In 2020, Kaine had similarly led a Iran war powers resolution to prevent military involvement in hostilities with Iran without congressional approval; it passed through the Senate with bipartisan support but was subsequently vetoed by President Trump.
RS contacted Sen. Kaine’s office to request a comment about the legislation, which directed the publication to its statement on the legislation.
In 2021, Ret. Gen. Lloyd Austin declared he had “no intent to be a lobbyist.” On June 3, less than six months after leaving office, former President Joe Biden’s Secretary of Defense announced that he would be launching a new strategic advisory firm called “Clarion Strategies.” Some Senators allege this is simply lobbying by another name.
A pitch deck obtained by Politico noted that Clarion Strategies’ name is a “nod to its aim to equip clients with the clarity they need to navigate geopolitical upheaval driven by the war in Ukraine, advancements in defense technology like AI and unmanned systems, global trade shifts and emerging alliances among U.S. adversaries like Russia, China, North Korea and China.” In other words, the new firm is very much hoping to court clients from the defense industry.
It won’t have too much trouble — Clarion Strategies is equipped with an all-star roster of Biden administration officials that, in addition to Austin, includes former Secretary of Veterans Affairs Denis McDonough, former Assistant Secretary of Defense for Indo-Pacific Security Affairs Ely Ratner, and former U.S. Permanent Representative to NATO Julianne Smith.
The news troubled two members of the Senate Armed Services Committee, Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Rick Scott (R-Fla.), enough to write Austin a letter on June 30 voicing their "serious questions" about how decisions he made in office "may have benefitted the defense contractors and other companies that may now be [his] clients.”
There is a cooling-off period that prohibits executive branch officials — typically either one or two years depending on seniority — from directly lobbying their former agencies. However, Warren noted that “Austin appears to have found a loophole by serving as an ‘adviser’ rather than a registered lobbyist.” This loophole, known as the “strategic consulting loophole,” allows some former officials to avoid waiting until the cool-down period for lobbying activities is over simply by serving as an “advisor,” meaning they can still coordinate campaigns and advise lobbyists.
As long as Secretary Austin doesn’t engage in direct lobbying, he is cleared to work for any military contractor that comes knocking.
Warren and Scott denounced Austin for reneging on his 2021 promise by invoking this loophole and demanded that his new firm disclose a list of clients and contracts. “We ask that you reconsider your actions," they wrote. "If you are unwilling to do that, you should at least provide transparency to the public about your new role.”
President Biden tried to crack down on this kind of shadow lobbying, barring certain senior officials such as Secretary Austin from this loophole. However, Trump revoked this executive order on Day One of his second term. For all of Trump’s lambasting on the campaign trail of the revolving door as a “big problem”, his decision to revoke the ethics rules helped Biden administration officials race to lucrative private sector gigs in record time. “It really does a huge favor for Biden administration political appointees,” Rob Kelner, a partner at the Covington & Burling law (and lobbying) firm, told Politico.
Craig Holman, Public Citizen’s Capitol Hill lobbyist on ethics, lobbying, and campaign finance rules, explained in an email to RS that revoking the rules forces the system to rely on weaker, preexisting revolving-door restrictions, which have no limitations on “strategic consulting.” If anything, Holman said, “the law encourages this form of shadow lobbying.”
Several other Biden defense policy officials are following in Austin’s footsteps and working for strategic advisory firms.
Faiq Raza, the Biden Pentagon’s Capitol Hill liaison for acquisition affairs is now a senior adviser to The Roosevelt Group, a consulting firm with noted expertise in defense, military installations, and the appropriations process. According to OpenSecrets, the group currently has nine clients in the defense sector, including Airbus and RTX (formerly known as Raytheon). Biden’s Army Acquisition Chief Doug Bush founded his own consulting firm, DRB Strategies. After four years of leading Army acquisitions, Bush’s new firm deals in government contracting, acquisitions, and “legislative strategies for companies focused on national security.”
“One could only hope that former Biden officials sincerely believed in the revolving door restrictions that they signed on to and would voluntarily live by those principles,” said Holman. “But the new consulting positions of former Secretary Austin and others suggest that is not the case.”
Other Biden defense officials are getting more creative, working for venture capitalists and banks with close ties to the defense industry.
Less than two months after leaving office, Austin’s former chief of staff, Derek Chollet, was tapped by JPMorganChase to lead the bank’s new Center for Geopolitics. According to the advisory unit’s website, the Center aims to help the bank’s clients respond to the shifting geopolitical landscape “through events, webinars, calls, in-person small groups, and one-on-one conversations.”
The Center’s inaugural report, signed by Chollet, highlighted the need to rapidly rebuild, modernize, and expand the U.S. defense industrial base in order to maintain strategic influence internationally. The report specifically argued that such efforts require a larger defense budget and the creation of multi-year procurement packages for weapons such as HIMARS and PAC-3 interceptor missiles. These weapons are built by a client of JPMorgan Chase Bank, Lockheed Martin, which enjoys a lending agreement with the bank worth $3.5 billion.
Brett McGurk, Biden’s top Middle East advisor, waited only three weeks after leaving the Biden administration to join Lux Capital as a Venture Partner. Lux Capital is a venture capital firm invested in defense technology companies such as Anduril, which specializes in autonomous weapons. In its announcement, Lux gushed that McGurk’s “unique combination of diplomatic experience and forging strategic partnerships are [sic] invaluable, as we continue to back founders building transformative companies that are reshaping the world.”
McGurk’s stature also landed him a CNN Global Affairs Analyst position, where he is simply introduced as “Former White House Coordinator for the Middle East and North Africa,” leaving out his new role at Lux. During the last few weeks, McGurk used his CNN platform to make the case for bombing Iran. “So if [you] want to destroy Fordow — and at the end of this I think Fordow has to be taken care of either diplomatically or through a military strike — it really is the U.S. military option.”
In case there was any doubt to where Lux’s interests lie, the venture capital firm’s co-founder Josh Wolfe said on X he hopes for the “day we can make our first Lux investments in a free + open Iran.”
Lastly, some Biden defense officials have opted to simply cut out any middleman and are already working directly for Pentagon contractors.
In May, Aerospace Corporation, selected two top Biden Pentagon officials to serve on its board of trustees — Bill LaPlante, the former Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition and Sustainment, and Frank Calvelli, Assistant Secretary of the Air Force for Space Acquisition and Integration. In June, former undersecretary of the Army Gabe Camarillo leveraged his experience into a Senior Vice President of Defense Technology Solutions position at KBR — a notable army contractor — overseeing a $2 billion budget to support “land, sea, air and cyberspace defense capabilities for the Department of Defense, UK Ministry of Defence, and Australian Defence Force.”
And just last week, Heidi Shyu, the Biden administration’s Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering, joined the board of Areté, a cyberdefense firm that currently holds contracts with the Navy and the Defense Intelligence Agency.
With Biden’s Pentagon racing through the revolving door at breakneck speed, the list goes on and on. Whether it’s an advisory firm engaging in shadow lobbying, a venture capital firm, or even a Pentagon contractor, it’s dealer’s choice.
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Top photo credit: U.S. President Donald Trump and Keith Kellogg (now Trump's Ukraine envoy) in 2017. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque TPX IMAGES OF THE DAY
Last week, Russian military forces seized a valuable lithium field in the Donetsk region of Ukraine, the latest success of Moscow’s grinding summer offensive.
The lithium deposit in question is considered rather small by industry analysts, but is said to be a desirable prize nonetheless due to the concentration and high-quality of its ore. In other words, it is just the kind of asset that the Trump administration seemed eager to exploit when it signed its much heralded minerals agreement with Ukraine earlier this year.
The response from Washington? Crickets. The loss attracted no notable reaction from President Donald Trump or his advisers. Ukraine and its backers, who had hoped that the deal would create an abiding and long-term U.S. interest in Ukraine and its security future, will certainly be disappointed.
Despite receiving almost no attention in the United States, however, the episode offers three important insights into the state of the war and the prospects for peace in the near-term.
First, the setback is a clear reminder that time is not on Ukraine’s side. Pressing on with the war is not likely to improve Kyiv’s battlefield or negotiating position. The Trump administration on Tuesday just ordered a halt on military assistance, the last of the aid packages initiated under the Biden administration will arrive. Ukraine’s army is already running short on air-defense missiles to protect its cities from punishing Russian drone and missile attacks, and the end of U.S. aid could trigger military shortages in other areas.
Add to this concerns about high desertion rates among exhausted Ukrainian soldiers and things aren’t likely to turn around soon for the beleaguered U.S. partner.
There are still voices pushing Ukraine to fight on, arguing that Russia is on the brink of collapse and that with just a little more military assistance from Europe and the United States, Ukraine has a chance at victory. But this is wishful thinking. Putin has staked too much on Ukraine to back down now and believes Russia has the ability to absorb additional pain and more fighting if necessary. Ukraine, on the other hand, continues to steadily lose territory, and with it, valuable resources and economic capacity that could support its reconstruction.
By extending the fighting, Kyiv is gambling away Ukraine’s post-war future. The sooner the war ends, the better the terms of the deal are likely to be for Ukraine.
Second, the non-existent U.S. response is emblematic of the very low ranking Ukraine and its war currently hold on Trump’s list of priorities. When Trump returned to the White House, the biggest fear of Ukraine’s supporters was that he would force Ukraine into an effective surrender, giving Russia the spoils. Despite significant tension between Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and Trump, manifested in a disastrous Oval Office meeting in late February, this did not happen.
Now, however, Kyiv and its supporters have a new concern: Trump has lost interest in Ukraine almost entirely. Trump was already frustrated with flailing efforts to reach a peace agreement in the three-year old conflict before two weeks of crisis in the Middle East wiped Ukraine off the White House’s radar. Trump skipped his meeting with Zelensky by departing the G-7 conference in Canada early, and, although the two did meet on the sidelines of the NATO summit a week later, Ukraine’s war was noticeably left off the summit’s agenda, in no small part to avoid surfacing disagreements between the United States and NATO allies on the issue. There has been no talk of extending new U.S. military aid packages to Ukraine, and even Ukrainian offers to buy U.S. weapons have been met with limited enthusiasm.
At this point, despite periodic Truth Social posts, Trump seems content to let Ukraine and Russia keep fighting until they come to settlement terms on their own. This is not a bad result for Russia which has momentum on the battlefield or for the United States which has no real strategic interest in Ukraine. But it leaves Kyiv at a disadvantage and is, moreover, exactly the outcome that the minerals deal was supposed to prevent.
The deal’s failure to maintain Trump’s support and interest in Ukraine should not be a surprise. It is a weak agreement with uncertain terms, signed by a president more interested in making deals than sticking to them. But the U.S. non-response should underscore for Kyiv that it is on its own going forward. Empty deals and more pleading will not resurrect U.S. interest and support for Ukraine. Europe can fill some of the gap left by U.S. disengagement, but for the most part, Ukraine’s future security will now be in its own hands.
Finally, Ukraine’s many disadvantages, combined with growing U.S. disinterest, suggest that the timeline for peace now rests largely with Putin. Though Russia’s progress on the battlefield is slow and costly in terms of materiel and human lives, Moscow’s army continues to press forward, capitalizing on weak spots along Ukraine’s lines and steadily gaining valuable territory, including economic and natural resources.
Meanwhile, Russia’s repeated missile and drone strikes on Ukraine’s cities are more confirmation that Putin is not tiring of the war just yet and intends to press his advantage.
There is little that Europe or the United States can do to change this calculus, even if Trump were interested in trying to strongarm Putin into a ceasefire. Additional sanctions are unlikely to force Putin to back down, and limits on Western defense production will constrain what can be offered to Ukraine in terms of additional military aid. Ukraine, itself, has few cards to play. High-risk military gambits by Kyiv, such as Operation Spiderweb, may impose costs on Moscow, but will not be sufficient to soften Putin’s resolve.
But while Putin may be in the driver’s seat right now, he too will be ready to stop fighting at some point, perhaps even when the current offensive runs out of steam later this fall. And though it makes sense for Trump and his advisors to step back from their day-to-day engagement with Ukraine and its war for now, they would be smart to take some low-cost steps to ensure that if and when a window for talks opens, they are ready to take advantage of it.
First, the Trump administration should resume bilateral meetings between U.S. and Russian officials, similar to those held in Riyadh earlier this year. Strengthening this communication channel now will make it easier to hold productive and substantive discussions later on, even if the topics covered over the next few months are superficial only.
Second, Trump should encourage Russia and Ukraine to continue and even increase the frequency of their direct dialogue. Ultimately, any lasting deal will need to have support from the two combatants, so these face-to-face talks will be essential to any effort to reach a peace agreement.
Finally, Washington will need to get Europe on board with a push for peace. This has been hard in the past, with Europe’s leaders acting primarily as an impediment to efforts to end the war. The recent NATO summit, however, showed just how much leverage the current White House still has over a European continent terrified of abandonment. The Trump team should not be afraid to use its upper hand, to compel Europe ahead of time to get behind any peace deal Ukraine, Russia, and the United States agree to.
It attracted little notice, but Russia’s capture of a Ukrainian lithium reserve in the country’s eastern reaches and the Trump team’s muted reaction actually speaks volumes about the state of the Ukraine-Russia war. With Ukraine on the ropes and the United States focused elsewhere, Putin seems in command of the war’s tempo. The near term prospects for peace are slim, but bigger opportunities for peace may lie ahead, especially if Washington sets some of the groundwork now.
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Top photo credit: Palestinians walk to collect aid supplies from the U.S.-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, in Khan Younis, in the southern Gaza Strip, May 29, 2025. REUTERS/Hatem Khaled/File Photo
Many human rights organizations say it should shut down. The Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) have killed hundreds of Palestinians at or around its aid centers. And yet, the U.S. has committed no less than $30 million toward the controversial, Israel-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF).
Through almost-daily email campaigns and X posts, the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation contends its work provides critical aid to Palestinians. But these assertions ring hollow when juxtaposed against the disastrous, widely condemned state of its Gaza operations, where IDF soldiers have reportedly been instructed to shoot Palestinians at or around their centers almost every day
GHF's peculiar media strategy
The GHF passes itself off as an independenthumanitarian group. In fact, it was conceived by Israeli officials at the beginning of the war, with buy-in from Israeli tech investors and venture capitalists, as well as stafffromIsrael’s state-aid coordinators, or COGAT (Coordination of Government Activities in the Territories). Israeli opposition lawmakers allege that Mossad, Israel’s intelligence agency, has funded the GHF. Meanwhile, former CIA officer Paul Reilly was allegedly in on the ground floor of the scheme and founded Safe Reach Solutions, one of the two U.S.-based private contracting firms managing the aid hubs. A former U.S. Special Forces soldier heads the other.
For their part, Israeli officials say the GHF is the only safe way to get direct aid to the Palestinians inside. The World Food Programme has found it nearly impossible to operate in Gaza due to the security situation, often halting its operations, while Israelbanned the UN program UNRWA, which was the predominant source of aid for Palestinians there, in January.
Eager to depict itself as a force for good, the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation inundates reporters with near-daily communications boasting of the number of meals provided to Gazans, and frequently featuring photos of smiling Palestinians, especially children, receiving aid. Its X account and new, flashy website employ similar messaging and photos.
The GHF has even recruited Shahar Segal, the prominent restaurateur and business partner of celebrity Israeli chef Eyal Shan, as its spokesperson. Segal arguably isn’t the GHF’s only flack: State Department spokespersons Tammy Bruce and Tommy Pigott have repeatedly gushed over GHF aid operations at recent press briefings.
GHF’s other communications efforts are markedly less glamorous. Its Facebook page, for example, often posts announcements in Arabic about upcoming aid distributions. Often, the GHF posts that it’s distributing aid in a given location, only to announce minutes later it’s already handed out all the supplies.
The GHF routinely denounces Hamas in its communications. Like the Israeli government, it says Hamas has fabricated the narrative of Palestinians being harmed or killed by the IDF at their aid sites, even though the killings have been widely reported by numerous mainstream outlets, including Haaretz, Reuters and Al Jazeera.
“There is a growing pattern of violent events being misreported as occurring near our sites, when they involve UN convoys or areas far outside our operations,” the GHF said in a June 17 email. “We’re also concerned by the role of the Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry, certain UN officials, and Al Jazeera in promoting these false narratives.”
Repeating a common Israeli claim that Hamas diverts humanitarian aid in Gaza to its own ends, Segal insisted that the GHF “is the only right and possible way to deliver food to Gazans without feeding Hamas' terror machine.” But Cindy McCain, the head of the U.N.’s World Food Program, said in late May that there was no evidence Hamas was stealing aid.
Despite credible media reports, GHF insists that IDF soldiers have not killed or injured hundreds of Palestinians seeking aid at their sites. As of June 29, at least 583 Palestinians have been reported killed at or near GHF-run aid sites since May 27, when they started operations.
“It is not surprising that the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation uses social media to portray itself as assisting Palestinians in Gaza,” Annelle Sheline, research fellow at the Quincy Institute’s Middle East program, told RS. “It has to try to overcome the overwhelming evidence that its aid distribution sites are in fact primarily responsible for killing Palestinians rather than saving them.”
Helping Israel dodge accountability
Concerned that GHF’s unconventional operations jeopardize Palestinian lives, many humanitarian organizations condemn its work.
In an open letter released June 23, a group of 15 international human rights organizations, including the International Commission of Journalists, the Palestinian Center for Human Rights, and the New York-based Center for Constitutional Rights, slammed the GHF’s operations, including involving private mercenaries and the IDF.
The GHF’s “new model of privatized, militarized aid distribution constitutes a radical and dangerous shift away from established international humanitarian relief operations,” they wrote.
In another letter from July 1, over 170 humanitarian NGOs, including Doctors Without Borders, Amnesty International, and Save the Children, said the GHF should cease operations. "Today, Palestinians in Gaza face an impossible choice: starve or risk being shot while trying desperately to reach food to feed their families," they wrote.
Alexander Smith, a former USAID contractor who resigned after his work on Gaza was censored by the Biden administration, told RS that the GHF is not behaving like a genuine aid organization. For example, forcing Palestinians to travel to a select few aid centers violated established humanitarian norms. “You don't want sick and injured people having to move, and you don't want them moving across a war zone,” he said. “You get the aid to them.”
Observers contend GHF operations assist Israel’s political goals for the region. Environmental researcher Yaakov Garb found that GHF’s aid structures were designed and located in ways “predominantly responsive to Israeli military strategy and tactics rather than…a broad humanitarian relief intervention.” And the GHF only deploys aid sites in the center and south of Gaza, suggesting the operations aim to force Palestinians out of northern Gaza — where Israel has now banned aid altogether.
"The placement of those three aid distribution hubs in [Gaza’s] extreme south are obviously meant to draw people to the south, near the Egyptian border... to draw people away from the north,” Smith said. “Israeli officials, from Netanyahu to Smotrich, have been very frank about their intention to simply take and resettle that land.”
Sheline said that GHF’s operations and communications help Israel skirt accountability for the humanitarian crisis it has created in Gaza, where Israel has killed more than 56,000 Palestinians since October 7, 2023.
“The IDF only allowed the GHF to begin operating to dispel the impression that Israel is deliberately starving the population of Gaza to death by allowing in almost no food since March 2, and still preventing any medicine, fuel or water from entering the territory,” Sheline said. “The GHF is not intended to help Palestinians, it is intended to dispel negative media coverage.”
When RS asked the State Department about its decision to directly fund the GHF, it was referred to a June 26 press briefing in which Pigott announced the $30 million donation. When reporters at that briefing repeatedly asked about the IDF killing Palestinians at GHF aid centers, Pigott simply said Hamas was solely responsible for starting the war.
“I think everyone in the State Department…and probably within the Trump administration, understands that GHF is not an effective way to deliver aid,” Smith said of the State Department’s $30 million contribution toward GHF operations. “They're choosing to double down on GHF because it's more politically expedient.”
The GHF did not return a request for comment. The IDF says it is investigating the shootings at and around GHF aid hubs as possible war crimes, and plans to reorganize its presence around the aid hubs, adding fences, signs and checkpoints around them, and marked routes to them to minimize “friction with the population.”
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