American forces launched airstrikes against ISIS in Nigeria on Thursday, President Donald Trump announced in a post on Truth Social, the administration’s latest show of lethal force in the international arena since Trump returned to the White House early this year. A Pentagon official told POLITICO the agency worked with the Nigerian government to carry out the strikes. On his social media platform, the president said the strike was a consequence for the militant group’s killing of Christians “at levels not seen for many years, and even centuries!” “I have previously warned these Terrorists that if they did not stop the slaughtering of Christians, there would be hell to pay, and tonight, there was,” he wrote. “The Department of War executed numerous perfect strikes, as only the United States is capable of doing.” There was no immediate word on casualties. Trump has in recent months taken Africa’s most populous country to task for what he claims to be the persecution of Christians within its borders. In November, he threatened to withhold all humanitarian aid — and even invade Nigeria with U.S. troops “guns-a-blazing” — if its government refused to work harder to tamp down the violence. The president has been far from shy in using American military might to promote his international agenda. Trump has now green-lit military strikes in Iran, Syria, the Caribbean and Nigeria, among other sites, since reentering the White House in January. “May God Bless our Military, and MERRY CHRISTMAS to all, including the dead Terrorists, of which there will be many more if their slaughter of Christians continues,” he wrote. The Nigerian Embassy did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the strike. Nigeria has claimed that Christians are not persecuted. “The crisis is far more complex than a simple religious framing suggests,” Taiwo Hassan Adebayo, a researcher at the Institute of Security Studies, told the Associated Press last month.

Two U.S. Army soldiers and one U.S. civilian interpreter were killed while three service members were left wounded in an ambush attack on Saturday in Palmyra, Syria, U.S. officials confirmed. Sean Parnell, the Pentagon spokesperson, confirmed the news on X Saturday morning, saying the two soldiers “were conducting a key leader engagement” and that their mission in the city was “in support of on-going counter-ISIS / counter-terrorism operations in the region. In a press release, U.S. Central Command said the attack was carried out by a “lone ISIS gunman” who was “engaged and killed.” President Donald Trump on Saturday said that in light of the attack, which he framed as an assault on both the U.S. and Syria, there will be “serious retaliation.” The president also said the soldiers were killed “in a very dangerous part of Syria, that is not fully controlled by them.” A Pentagon official said that Saturday’s attack took place in an area where current Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa does not have control. As of April, the U.S. had about 2,000 troops stationed in Syria involved in advisory, training, and counter-ISIS missions. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth confirmed that the person who perpetrated the attack had been killed. “Let it be known, if you target Americans — anywhere in the world — you will spend the rest of your brief, anxious life knowing the United States will hunt you, find you, and ruthlessly kill you,” Hegseth added in his post on X. The Kurdish-led and U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces also weighed in on X, saying, “We express our regret for the injury of a number of public security personnel and U.S. soldiers following their exposure to gunfire in the Syrian Badia while performing their duties,” according to a translation of the post from Arabic. The U.S. first deployed to Syria during the Obama administration as part of the Operation Inherent Resolve coalition to fight ISIS. After ISIS lost almost all territorial control by 2019, the U.S. did not fully withdraw but kept a smaller contingent of troops in the Middle Eastern nation to prevent the group’s resurgence. In 2024, the longstanding government of former Syrian President Bashar al-Assad fell, and a new transitional Syrian government formed with U.S. encouragement. Parnell, in his statement, said the soldiers’ names, as well as identifying information about their units, are being withheld for 24 hours after the next of kin notification. He also said an active investigation is underway.

LONDON — Iran’s attempts to murder and kidnap people on U.K. soil should be treated as attacks against Britain, the government has been warned. Parliament’s Intelligence and Security Committee (ISC) — tasked with oversight of Britain’s intelligence agencies and which has access to top-level classified briefings — on Thursday published its long-awaited report into the threat Iran poses to Britain. It warned that the Islamic republic has become a “full spectrum” threat across assassinations, espionage, cyber-attacks and nuclear weapons. It lambasts the previous Conservative government’s policy on Iran for being too focused on “crisis management” over Iran’s nuclear program, to the exclusion of the threats to those who live in Britain. The inquiry — which concluded before the October 2023 attacks by Hamas in Israel — was delayed by last summer’s general election. But Kevan Jones, the ISC chair, told POLITICO the events in the following months have shown that the threat from Tehran “is still there, it’s live.” Officials told the committee in 2023 that while China and Russia are “Premier League” threats to Britain, Iran was “top of the Championship,” with the two other world powers running hundreds of thousands of intelligence officers compared to Iran’s tens of thousands.  One intelligence official added: “What Iran has, is a risk appetite which is very ‘pokey’ indeed.” ATTACKS ON BRITISH SOIL Between 2022 and 2024 there are believed to have been at least 20 Iranian-backed plots on British soil, often involving attempts to either kill or kidnap Iranian dissidents or critics of the state who have made the U.K. their home. Iran often uses proxies such as British-based criminals to carry out these attacks. The ISC was told by government counter-terrorism officials that the attack on individuals in the U.K. is now “the greatest level of threat we currently face from Iran,” with the report noting that this risk has seen a “stark” rise since 2016, when British intelligence deemed that Iran would only look to do this in “extreme circumstances.” Since the committee took evidence, two Romanians have been charged after an Iranian journalist was stabbed outside his home in London. Separately, three Iranian men have appeared in court charged with plotting violence against journalists under instruction from Iran’s intelligence agencies. Jeremy Wright, the committee’s deputy chair, told POLITICO that although Iran does not view these as direct attacks on Britain “the U.K. government needs to make it clear to the Iranians, that is exactly how we will regard it.” “People are entitled to walk safely on British streets regardless of where they come from,” and that attempts to kill and kidnap increases the risk for U.K. citizens to be hurt in the process. “We think it needs to be met with an appropriate response at a government-to-government level,” he added. WORKING WITH THE ENEMY Iran’s emergence as a top-level threat to Britain has seen it deepen its relationship with the other “big four” of threats to UK security — Russia, China and North Korea. The ISC’s report noted that a shared concern about the United States has seen Iran become the main partner of Russia in the Middle East, and that it appears that the two country’s intelligence agencies are sharing intelligence which could increase the threat to the U.K.. It added that Iran’s relationship with China is more economic, with China becoming Iran’s biggest trade and economic partner and representing 36 percent of Iran’s exports. The ISC’s chair told POLITICO that military support for Russia and economic ties to China are a concern, but said Iran’s relationship with North Korea was “more concerning” on both nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles. North Korea has performed detonations in at least six nuclear tests — most recently in 2017 — and is actively working to develop warheads that it can place on intercontinental ballistic missiles. Its support for Russia and Iran has raised international concerns that these states can help Kim Jong Un’s dictatorship get to that point. John Bolton, the former U.S. National Security advisor told the committee in 2023: “This connection between North Korea and Iran, which we do not fully know about or understand is something that should be in our minds at all times.” Beyond global superpowers, the report noted that Iran — just as it does with attacks on British soil — uses proxies abroad. In the Middle East it uses a network of complex relationships with militant and terrorist groups in order to give it a deniable means of attacking British armed forces and those of its allies.

KANANASKIS, Alberta — The European Union and Australia overnight announced they would start negotiating a “Security and Defence Partnership” and noted their commitment to “advancing free trade negotiations.” In a statement announcing the planned defense partnership, the European Commission said it “will provide a framework for current and future cooperation including in areas such as defence industry, cyber and counter-terrorism.” But Brussels stressed the future pact “does not have military deployment obligations.” The decision to start defense talks was made on the sidelines of the G7 summit in Canada following a meeting between European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, European Council President António Costa and Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese. “This will open the door to joint defence procurement opportunities and will benefit both our industries and our security,” Albanese said in a statement. “In a time of rising tensions and strategic competition, trusted partners must stand together,” von der Leyen said in her own statement. She added that the EU and Australia are separately “also committed to advancing free trade negotiations — because economic security matters too.” Brussels and Canberra started negotiating a free-trade deal in 2018, before talks collapsed at the final hurdle in 2023, when Australian Trade Minister Don Farrell walked away complaining of a lack of access to the EU market. But with U.S. President Donald Trump slapping tariffs on the globe, the EU-Australia deal has come off the back-burner, with the Commission noting in its statement overnight that there was “strong momentum in the Australian – Europe relationship.”

British police have arrested eight men as part of two separate counterterrorism investigations. Five men, four of whom are Iranian nationals, were arrested in London, Swindon and Greater Manchester on Saturday as part of an investigation into a plot to “target specific premises,” the Metropolitan Police said in a statement early Sunday. The site targeted by the plot, which was not named for “operational reasons,” has been made aware and is being supported by police, the Met added. Three other men, all Iranian, were arrested in London on Saturday as part of a separate counterterror police probe. Police said the two cases are unconnected. Commander Dominic Murphy, head of the force’s Counter Terrorism Command, said of the first operation that police are still working to establish a motive “as well as to identify whether there may be any further risk to the public.” U.K. Home Secretary Yvette Cooper praised the police after Saturday’s arrests. “Protecting national security is the first duty of the government and our police and security services have our strong support in their vital work,” she told the PA news agency in a statement. “These are serious events that demonstrate the ongoing requirement to adapt our response to national security threats,” she added. Last year, the head of the U.K’s MI5 security service, Ken McCallum, said that Iran and Russia are behind a “staggering rise” in attempts at assassination, sabotage and other crimes in Britain. He said at the time his agents and police had tackled 20 “potentially lethal” plots backed by Iran since 2022, most aimed at Iranians in Britain. And he added there was a risk “of an increase in, or broadening of, Iranian state aggression in the U.K.” if conflicts in the Middle East deepened.

A joint Iraq-U.S. operation killed a leader of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, according to Washington and Baghdad. Abdallah Makki Muslih al-Rufay’i, also known as Abu Khadija, was responsible for Islamic State operations, logistics and planning and directed “a significant portion of finance for the group’s global organization,” the U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) said in a statement Friday. He was killed alongside one other IS operative in a “precision airstrike” in Iraq’s western Al Anbar province, CENTCOM said. Iraq’s Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani said Khadija was considered “one of the most dangerous terrorists in Iraq and the world.” Khadija was killed by Iraq security forces and U.S. central command forces, Sudani said on X on Friday. Islamic State seized large swathes Syria and northern Iraq in 2014. While Iraq declared it had been defeated in 2017, the jihadist network has remained active, with an IS group claiming responsibility for a deadly attack on a Moscow concert hall last year. In his post on X, Sudani hailed Iraq’s “remarkable victories against the forces of darkness and terrorism.” U.S. commander General Michael Erik Kurilla said Khadija was “one of the most important ISIS members in the entire global ISIS organization.”

Three U.K.-based Bulgarians were found guilty of being part of a Russian spy ring directed by Wirecard fugitive Jan Marsalek, London metropolitan police said on Friday. Katrin Ivanova, Vanya Gaberova and Tihomir Ivanchev were convicted of espionage charges in what concluded a three-month trial at the Old Bailey court for being junior members of the six-member group, the police said in a statement. They operated between August 2020 and February 2023. The spy ring was run by Marsalek, an internationally wanted fugitive Austrian businessman who is believed to have fled to Russia five years ago after German payments company Wirecard — which he helped to run — collapsed amid multibillion-euro fraud. According to the prosecutors, the members of the group carried out surveillance of journalists, in particular Bulgarian investigative reporter Christo Grozev, who exposed the spies responsible for poisoning Sergei and Yulia Skripal. The ring also spied on Ukrainian soldiers training at a U.S. military base in Germany, in order to locate them when they returned to Ukraine. “I have never seen anything like this in my more than 20 years in counterterrorism. It was an extremely sophisticated operation,” the metropolitan police’s counterterrorism chief, Commander Dominic Murphy, told PA news agency. “Really sophisticated devices — the sort of thing you would really expect to see in a spy novel — were found here, in Great Yarmouth and London,” he added. The trio pleaded not guilty, saying they did not know they were helping Russia. Ivanova was also found guilty of possessing fake passports. Three other members of the spy ring — Orlin Roussev, Bizer Dzhambazov and Ivan Stoyanov, 32 — previously pleaded guilty. The six will be sentenced in May.

Intelligence sharing among NATO countries is in danger as members become increasingly wary of one another, and the earthquake unleashed by Donald Trump risks making things worse, current and former alliance and security officials from across the alliance told POLITICO. There have long been strains caused by distrust between the alliance’s traditional Western members and newcomers from the ex-communist east. That grew worse following Russia’s attack on Ukraine, when pro-Russia Hungary, joined recently by Slovakia, are seen as unreliable, said eight current and former NATO and security officials with knowledge of intelligence sharing at the alliance. Many were granted anonymity to discuss the sensitive matter.  But now the U.S. shift toward Russian under Trump is shaking the core of the alliance — prompting countries to wonder about the risk of sharing intelligence with Washington, said five of the officials. The confusion around the reliability of the U.S. worsened this week, with reports that it temporarily cut off intelligence sharing with Ukraine to put pressure on Kyiv to come to the negotiating table with Russia. “There are a lot of whispers in the halls of NATO about the future of intelligence sharing within the alliance,” said Julie Smith, U.S. ambassador to NATO under Joe Biden until November, adding she had “heard concerns from some allies” on whether Washington will continue to share intel with the alliance. According to Daniel Stanton, a former official at Canada’s foreign intelligence service CSIS, “at a time when they actually need more intelligence, there will be less going into it.” “There’s less of a consensus about who the common enemy is” and “people are going to be more reticent to share,” Stanton said.  Trump’s pick for director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, has also caused concern, said Gustav Gressel, an analyst at the National Defense Academy Vienna and former European Council on Foreign Relations fellow. Gabbard has echoed Russian talking points over the wars in Ukraine and Syria, and she met with former Syrian President Bashar Assad, who had been isolated by the international community for his use of chemical weapons against his own citizens. Last month, the Financial Times reported that top White House official Peter Navarro is pushing to cut Canada from the Five Eyes intelligence-sharing network, a forum that also includes the United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand and is considered the most intimate multinational intelligence-sharing group in the world. Several officials said the U.S. shift hadn’t yet affected intelligence sharing but expressed fears that it could do so soon.  One current NATO official said that following the catastrophic White House meeting between Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Trump on Friday, there were “naturally a lot of questions.” But staff were “keeping calm and carrying on,” the official added. Donald Trump’s pick for director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, has also caused concern. | Brandon Bell/Getty Images “Of course there is corrosion because of the approach on Ukraine,” the same current official said, “but we remain of the view that Trump has no real issues with NATO beyond spending … so that’s something.” A former NATO official confirmed that a lot of intelligence sharing was happening bilaterally rather than in meetings among all NATO members. “That was always the case if the going got tough,” they added. Some officials denied the recent shocks to the alliance had impacted intelligence sharing. “Intelligence folks can share and talk to each other under conditions that others cannot,” the official said. “We haven’t seen any reduction in that.” WHO CONTROLS INFORMATION Intelligence sharing among NATO’s 32 members has never been as close as among Five Eyes, mainly because of fears of leaks and suspicions that some national intelligence agencies could have been penetrated by the Russians. Allies “don’t really share their crown jewels when it comes to formats like that … We knew they were coveted by hostile services,” said Stanton, the former Canadian intelligence official.  Sharing intelligence can be very powerful, as happened when the Biden administration trumpeted about Russia’s preparations to attack Ukraine, which played a decisive role in alerting allies and rallying a response. But three years on, and with a decisive political shift under Trump, the future role of U.S. intelligence is in question. “The question now is whether intel sharing will remain a key feature of transatlantic work at NATO, given the questions allies have about whether or not the U.S. is impartial in its handling of the war in Ukraine and future negotiations,” said Smith, NATO ambassador from 2021 to 2024.  The wariness about Washington is something new. NATO countries agreed last year to boost and share more intelligence based on technical retrieval — from electronic and satellite surveillance and signals interception.  When it comes to HUMINT — information collected by real-life spies and their sources — the sharing has always been more circumspect and based on “circles of trust” between small groups of partners and on a strict need-to-know basis.  One current NATO official said that following the catastrophic White House meeting between Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Donald Trump on Friday, there were “naturally a lot of questions.” | Saul Loeb/AFP via Getty Images Sharing information has always been “the best thing about NATO,” said a former official, saying it improved collective security and helped smaller countries get up to speed on threats. National governments “are the owners of the information” and determine who they’ll share with, said Robert Pszczel, a former Polish diplomat and NATO official. CUTTING TIES TO MOSCOW In the years after the fall of communism, Western intelligence services were especially cautious about sharing significant intelligence with their counterparts in the former Warsaw Pact countries as they joined the alliance. And doubts have persisted about some Central European agencies — notably Hungary’s security services since the political rise of Russia-friendly PM Viktor Orbán.  These suspicions have affected access granted to Hungary since the Ukraine war broke out — with Slovakia also becoming an issue following the return to power of pro-Kremlin populist Robert Fico in 2023 — according to six officials. Gressel, of the National Defense Academy Vienna, said information on Russia, China and technical intelligence about the adversaries’ weapons systems are being exchanged bilaterally or within smaller groups. “Hungarian intelligence is only informed about urgent counter-terrorism threats, nothing else,” said Gustav. “You do not want that information to go to Moscow.” But it’s not just Budapest and Bratislava that face mistrust. A former Bulgarian government official said that Sofia was currently not receiving all intelligence information over fears there are “Russian assets in key services.”  Wariness over sharing intelligence is nothing new. In an interview with POLITICO last year, Richard Dearlove said that when he was chief of Britain’s MI6 between 1999 and 2004 he was highly selective about what he would share with Germany’s BND, fearing it would leak to Russia. “There was certain highly sensitive stuff we wouldn’t have given them in a month of Sundays,” he said.  Pszczel said that there were other past examples when countries considered some members suspect. “For example, in Greece during the regime of the colonels,” he said, referring to the right-wing military junta that ruled Greece from 1967 to 1974. But none of those worries involved the United States. Jamie Dettmer contributed reporting from Kyiv. Antoaneta Roussi reported from Brussels. Amy Mackinnon reported from Washington.

Spanish police have arrested a man in connection with the 2023 shooting of two football fans in Brussels. Spanish police and Belgian prosecutors said on Saturday that the suspect was arrested at Malaga Airport the day before. Two Swedish nationals were killed and another injured in the attack, which took place after a qualifying game between Belgium and Sweden for the Euro 2024 football tournament. Belgian police shot and killed the gunman. Belgian authorities said the suspect arrested on Friday was believed to have supplied the firearm used in the attack.

A Kurdish separatist leader who has spent decades in prison appears to be keen to take up a surprise offer from his arch-rival. Devlet Bahçeli — a political veteran and close ally of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan — in October invited Abdullah Öcalan, the leader of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), to the Turkish legislature in order to publicly announce the group’s dissolution and to lay down arms. “If the terrorist leader’s isolation is lifted, let him come and speak … Let him declare that terrorism is over and the organization disbanded,” Bahçeli said at the time in a speech to members of parliament from his Nationalist Movement Party (MHP).  Bahçeli has consistently styled himself the PKK’s sworn enemy, and his offer came as a shock. But the imprisoned leader appears willing to work with Bahçeli and Erdoğan, according to a statement on Sunday by the pro-Kurdish DEM Party, following a visit to Öcalan the day before. “I possess the necessary competence and determination to contribute positively to the new paradigm supported by Mr. Bahçeli and Mr. Erdoğan,” the DEM Party statement quotes Öcalan as saying.  “I am ready to take the necessary positive steps and make the required call,” the statement adds. Erdoğan has signaled his awareness of Bahçeli’s move, saying in a televised speech on Wednesday: “We hope this unique window of opportunity that the ruling coalition is offering to end the terror will not be sacrificed to personal agendas.”  Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has signaled his awareness of Devlet Bahçeli’s move. | Carl Court/Getty Images Öcalan added in his reported statement that “recent incidents” in Gaza and Syria show that the “resolution of this issue … can no longer be postponed.” Syrian President Bashar Assad was recently ousted from the country after years of brutal authoritarian rule. Highlighting the volatility that surrounds Turkey and the Kurds, five people were killed in an attack at the Turkish Aerospace Industries headquarters in Ankara just a day after Bahçeli’s remarks in October. The Turkish interior minister said then that it was “highly likely” the perpetrators were members of the PKK, which is classified as a terrorist organization by Turkey, the U.S. and the EU.