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Welcome back to Foreign Policy<\/em>\u2019s Situation Report.<\/p>\n Alright, here\u2019s what\u2019s on tap for the day: U.S. President Donald Trump\u2019s new counterterrorism strategy<\/strong>, Iran considers a new U.S. proposal to end the war<\/strong>, and Israel strikes Beirut<\/strong> for the first time in weeks.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n Welcome back to Foreign Policy<\/em>\u2019s Situation Report.<\/p>\n Alright, here\u2019s what\u2019s on tap for the day: U.S. President Donald Trump\u2019s new counterterrorism strategy<\/strong>, Iran considers a new U.S. proposal to end the war<\/strong>, and Israel strikes Beirut<\/strong> for the first time in weeks.<\/p>\n U.S. President Donald Trump on Wednesday signed a new national counterterrorism strategy<\/a> that outlines his administration\u2019s approach to terror threats both at home and abroad. The strategy is indicative of the ways that Trump has sought to reshape U.S. national security priorities and reframe what should be considered a terror threat.<\/p>\n The document points to countering drug cartels in the Western Hemisphere as the administration\u2019s first priority, breaking from the counterterrorism strategies of Trump\u2019s predecessors that placed more emphasis on threats emanating from jihadis<\/a> or white supremacist groups in the United States.<\/p>\n The strategy\u2019s release comes more than eight months after the Trump administration began a controversial campaign of deadly strikes on alleged drug boats in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific. Trump has characterized these strikes as part of a fight against \u201cnarcoterrorists\u201d who produce and sell drugs that kill Americans.<\/p>\n Legal experts have said<\/a> the strikes violate both domestic and international law. They have also pushed back against the notion that drug cartels or smugglers can be considered terrorists.<\/p>\n \u201cCriminal organizations aren\u2019t terrorist groups,\u201d Colin Clarke, a top counterterrorism expert and executive director of the Soufan Center, told SitRep. That doesn\u2019t mean such groups aren\u2019t a threat, Clarke said, but the United States shouldn\u2019t necessarily use its military to deal with them. \u201cThat should be a law enforcement action,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Sebastian Gorka, the controversial White House counterterrorism director behind the strategy, was expected to release the document months ago and has faced scrutiny over the delay.<\/p>\n Common sense? <\/strong>The strategy also focuses heavily on vaguely defined left-wing extremist groups. \u201cOur national [counterterrorism] activities will also prioritize the rapid identification and neutralization of violent secular political groups whose ideology is anti-American, radically pro-transgender, and anarchist,\u201d the document says.<\/p>\n Though the strategy states that Trump has returned the United States to a \u201ccommon sense and reality-based counterterrorism,\u201d that is open to debate. For example, the document makes no mention of right-wing or far-right extremism nor white supremacist groups\u2014despite the well-documented threat they pose.<\/p>\n Clarke described the document as \u201cOrwellian\u201d and \u201can exercise of gaslighting.\u201d It begins by promising to execute an apolitical and \u201creality-based\u201d counterterrorism strategy but goes on to repeatedly criticize former U.S. President Joe Biden and \u201cproceeds to entirely omit the threat from right-wing terrorist groups or people inspired by far-right ideas,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Though experts have raised concerns<\/a> about rising support for political violence across the spectrum in the United States, Clarke emphasized that the empirical evidence<\/a> shows most lethal terror attacks in recent years have been tied to far-right extremism\u2014pointing to the 2022 mass shooting at a supermarket in Buffalo, New York, and the 2018 mass shooting at a synagogue in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, among others.<\/p>\n \u2018Fingernail deep.\u2019<\/strong> Beyond the emphasis on drug cartels and left-wing extremism, the strategy also lists \u201clegacy Islamist terrorists\u201d as among the three \u201cmajor types of terror groups\u201d that the United States is currently grappling with. \u201cEven a broken clock is right twice a day,\u201d Clarke said. \u201cYes, we are still facing a jihadist threat.\u201d<\/p>\n But the strategy is \u201cfingernail deep\u201d in this regard, and offers few specific details on the capabilities of the jihadi groups that Washington is concerned with, Clarke added: It\u2019s \u201cless of a strategy and more of a worldview.\u201d<\/p>\n What should be high on your radar, if it isn\u2019t already.<\/em><\/p>\n The Iran waiting game. <\/strong>Trump\u2019s efforts to find an off-ramp from the Iran war continued amid another chaotic week, with Iran saying<\/a> on Wednesday that it would consider a U.S. peace proposal and convey its response to Pakistan, which has been mediating between the countries.<\/p>\n In a Truth Social post<\/a> on Wednesday, Trump threatened Iran with more bombing \u201cat a much higher level and intensity than it was before\u201d if it did not agree to the U.S. terms and expressed optimism later in the day that the Iranians \u201cwant to make a deal,\u201d saying<\/a> that the war was going \u201cunbelievably well\u201d and would be \u201cover quickly.\u201d<\/p>\n Those statements came a day after Trump suspended \u201cProject Freedom\u201d\u2014a naval operation to escort ships through the Strait of Hormuz\u2014over widely reported opposition from Saudi Arabia and Kuwait to use military bases in their territory for the operation. However, the Wall Street Journal <\/em>reported<\/a> that both countries walked back that opposition, paving the way for the operation to resume.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, a confidential CIA assessment reported<\/a> by the Washington Post<\/em> indicated that Iran\u2019s regime can survive Trump\u2019s blockade of Iranian ports for several months.<\/p>\n Israel bombs Lebanon ahead of talks. <\/strong>Elsewhere in the region, Israel threatened a fragile cease-fire with Lebanon with an airstrike<\/a> on Beirut that killed more than a dozen people, including a senior Hezbollah leader, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Israel Katz said. \u201cThis is how it\u2019s done and this is how it will be done,\u201d Netanyahu said in a post<\/a> on X.<\/p>\n Efforts to make that cease-fire stick continue, however, with the U.S. State Department saying<\/a> that talks between Israel and Lebanon will resume in Washington next week.<\/p>\n