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Welcome back to Foreign Policy<\/em>\u2019s Situation Report, where we can finally report that Team SitRep has 100 percent canine representation. Rishi brought home a mini-goldendoodle named Luka<\/a>, who joins John\u2019s pup Indy and our editor Jenn\u2019s Bootsie as valuable if chaotic members of the crew.<\/p>\n Alright, here\u2019s what\u2019s on tap for the day: Trump\u2019s <\/strong>fight-filled week, a grim milestone in Sudan, <\/strong>and still more Latin America boat strikes<\/strong>.<\/p>\n U.S. President Donald Trump\u2019s political career has been typified by chaos and controversy. But even by Trump\u2019s standards, the past week has been especially messy. Facing mounting pressure to end the war in Iran, the president\u2019s behavior has become increasingly erratic as his administration struggles to find an off-ramp\u2014and he\u2019s alienating supporters at home and allies abroad in the process.<\/p>\n He\u2019s been picking fights in virtually every direction in recent days, including with Pope Leo XIV<\/a>, who has criticized U.S. military adventurism in Venezuela<\/a> and the Iran war. Politically, Trump has far more to lose than gain by going after the pope, particularly with midterm elections on the horizon. Pope Leo is originally from Chicago and is quite popular<\/a> among the roughly 53 million Catholics in the United States. But this has not stopped Trump from lobbing the kinds of attacks at the religious leader that he typically reserves for Democratic mayors and governors, such as accusing the pope of being \u201cweak on crime.\u201d<\/p>\n The president\u2019s war of words with the pope, who leads the roughly 1.4 billion Catholics worldwide, has led to criticism across the globe and in the United States\u2014including from some of the president\u2019s supporters. Trump rejected<\/a> a call from Bishop Robert Barron, who serves on the president\u2019s Religious Liberty Commission, to apologize. The situation has placed U.S. Vice President J.D. Vance, who is a Catholic convert, in a particularly awkward position\u2014though he\u2019s chosen to side with Trump so far.<\/p>\n The president added to the backlash he\u2019s facing among American Christians by posting an AI image depicting himself as Jesus Christ to Truth Social. Trump said the image (which he ultimately deleted) was meant to portray him as a doctor<\/a>, but it appears that few people, if any, are buying that.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, top U.S. allies seem fed up with Trump for reasons ranging from his ceaseless criticism of NATO, which has ramped up as alliance members refuse to get directly involved in the Iran war, to his fight with the pope.<\/p>\n Trump is now in the midst of a falling out with Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, who is Catholic, for attacking Pope Leo. Meloni, a far-right leader seen as one of Trump\u2019s ideological allies in Europe, said<\/a> the president\u2019s comments were \u201cunacceptable.\u201d Trump fired back, stating that Meloni is \u201cthe one who\u2019s unacceptable\u201d and criticizing her for not supporting the Iran war. In a sign of how Trump is uniting leaders across the political spectrum in Europe against him, Elly Schlein, leader of the main opposition party in Italy, came to Meloni\u2019s defense, decrying<\/a> Trump\u2019s \u201cserious lack of respect.\u201d<\/p>\n The United Kingdom also appears to be rapidly losing patience with Trump. In one of the sharpest critiques yet from a British leader on the Iran war, British Finance Minister Rachel Reeves on Wednesday ripped into the Trump administration\u2019s approach to the conflict. \u201cI\u2019m not convinced this conflict has made the world a safer place,\u201d Reeves said. \u201cIt\u2019s not been clear over the last six weeks what exactly the aim of this conflict is.\u201d<\/p>\n Such rhetoric is indicative of how frayed the trans-Atlantic relationship has become under Trump, and raises further questions about the long-term damage<\/a> Trump is potentially doing to America\u2019s historic ties with Europe.<\/p>\n Trump is also now set to lose one of his closest political allies on the continent. Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, a far-right leader who has been in power for 16 consecutive years, was defeated in Hungary\u2019s election on Sunday. Though Trump has downplayed the significance<\/a> of Orban\u2019s loss, it\u2019s a major blow to the global far-right movement that they\u2019re both a part of. Trump had endorsed Orban<\/a>, and Vance recently visited Hungary<\/a> in an attempt to boost support for the Hungarian leader ahead of the election.<\/p>\n Indeed, this may have been one of the worst weeks for Trump 2.0 to date. But instead of focusing his energy on digging himself out of the sizable hole he\u2019s already in, Trump seems set on digging new ones.<\/p>\n U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth\u2019s decision to force Army Chief of Staff Gen. Randy George to step down earlier this month is facing criticism\u2014both implicit and explicit\u2014from U.S. lawmakers on both sides of the aisle and even a senior member of the very military that Hegseth leads.<\/p>\n During a House Armed Services subcommittee hearing on Wednesday, Republican Rep. Austin Scott praised<\/a> George and warned that his ouster would have a \u201cchilling effect\u201d on the military. The praise was echoed in another hearing on Thursday by U.S. Army Secretary Dan Driscoll, who described<\/a> driving to George\u2019s house and giving him a hug on hearing the news of his ouster.<\/p>\n \u201cThere is no person who has more respect for Gen. George and his 42 years of service, his Purple Heart, his wife Patty, their grandkids, their kids. I adore them, and he was an amazing, transformational leader,\u201d Driscoll said. He did not directly criticize Hegseth, though, noting that \u201cthe civilian leadership, the design of our system is that they get to pick the leaders that they want, and we execute on those orders.\u201d<\/p>\n Ukraine\u2019s central bank chief, Andriy Pyshnyi, told a small group of reporters (including our colleague Sam Skove) on Monday that Ukraine\u2019s experience financing its rapidly growing defense industry could offer lessons for other European countries that are desperately rearming after years of falling defense budgets. \u201cOur experience of facilitating growth and restructuring the defense industry may be of use for the European Union,\u201d Pyshnyi said, adding that defense lending was a top priority for the central bank, on par with energy and agriculture.<\/p>\n Despite ever-widening trans-Atlantic tensions, the Trump administration added a second European signatory to its Pax Silica critical minerals alliance with the addition of Finland on Thursday, bringing the total number of signatories to 12, our colleague Christina Lu reports. The Philippines also joined the alliance in a separate ceremony earlier in the day. You can read more on Pax Silica and its goals from Christina here<\/a>.<\/p>\n What should be high on your radar, if it isn\u2019t already.<\/em><\/p>\n Spotlight on Sudan. <\/strong>As the wars in the Middle East continue to dominate headlines, a conflict in Sudan that has killed hundreds of thousands and displaced millions of people entered its fourth year on Wednesday.<\/p>\n The civil war that broke out in the North African country on April 15, 2023, has expanded into what experts describe as the world\u2019s worst humanitarian crisis and led the United Nations to declare \u201challmarks of genocide.\u201d At the same time, it has received a fraction of the world\u2019s attention and coverage\u2014leading to it frequently being referred to as the \u201cforgotten war,\u201d as FP columnist Nosmot Gbadamosi wrote in this week\u2019s Africa Brief<\/a>.<\/p>\n That\u2019s a major concern for humanitarian organizations such as Mercy Corps, whose vice president of global policy and advocacy, Kate Phillips-Barrasso, spoke to SitRep last week before joining a delegation that visited Sudan this week.<\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s nothing normal about what\u2019s going on in Sudan,\u201d Phillips-Barrasso said, expressing concern that the war fatigue from other long-running conflicts such as the ones in Ukraine and Gaza is even more acute in the case of Sudan because it never received as much attention in the first place.<\/p>\n She cited estimates that over 33 million people in Sudan are in need of humanitarian assistance, a number equivalent to nearly the entire population of California. And the war in Iran has exacerbated the situation by driving up the prices of basics such as gas, fertilizer, and food. \u201cThere\u2019s just no margin there for things to get worse,\u201d she added.<\/p>\n Lebanon cease-fire and potential Iran talks. <\/strong>Trump on Thursday announced<\/a> that Israel and Lebanon had agreed to a 10-day cease-fire and that he would be inviting the leaders of both countries to Washington for talks. But much remains up in the air. Hezbollah, the Iran-aligned group that Israel is fighting, has not explicitly agreed to the truce. In a statement<\/a> on Thursday, Hezbollah said that Israeli troops must not have freedom of movement in Lebanon under any cease-fire. Meanwhile, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said<\/a> troops would remain in southern Lebanon.<\/p>\n A cease-fire in Lebanon could provide significant momentum to the push for an end to the Iran war. After Trump announced a cease-fire with Iran on April 7, the U.S. and Israel said that Lebanon was not included\u2014while Tehran insisted that it was. The disagreement has been among the biggest threats to the fragile cease-fire.<\/p>\n Talks between the United States and Iran in Islamabad last weekend ended without a deal, but the two sides have continued to communicate even amid a U.S. blockade on Iranian ports. The blockade appears to be working<\/a> so far, but traffic<\/a> through the Strait of Hormuz remains at a virtual standstill. Iran has also threatened to block shipping in the Red Sea, Persian Gulf, and Gulf of Oman in response to the blockade.<\/p>\n No date has been set for further talks, though Trump on Thursday suggested<\/a> they could take place this weekend. He also said<\/a> that Iran has agreed to hand over its \u201cnuclear dust,\u201d a phrase he uses in reference to the country\u2019s uranium, but there has not been official confirmation from Tehran on this.<\/p>\n