Political Guyentist

Trump cuts joint war drills with South Korea, blaming Seoul's refusal to help on Iran

The president tied the order to a grievance over Iran and to his relationship with North Korea's leader.

What happened the last time Trump traded exercises for a Kim summit: He canceled the August 2018 Ulchi Freedom Guardian drills days after his first summit with Kim in Singapore, calling them provocative and, in his word, expensive. The follow-up summit in Hanoi collapsed in February 2019 with no deal. North Korea has run six nuclear tests, the last in September 2017, and kept building missiles through every pause in U.S. drills. Full-scale exercises did not return until August 2022, after four years of shrunken, mostly computer-simulated versions. The grievance driving this one is Iran — more than 4,000 miles from Seoul, and no part of what those troops are stationed there to deter.

ContextAbout 28,500 U.S. troops are stationed in South Korea under a mutual defense treaty signed in 1953, the year the Korean War stopped with an armistice — a truce that halted the fighting without ending the war. Seoul pays part of the cost of keeping them there. In November 2024 it agreed to pay 1.52 trillion won, roughly $1.1 billion, toward hosting them in 2026, more than it had agreed to pay for 2025. Ulchi Freedom Shield, the exercise held each August, is the yearly rehearsal that keeps those troops able to fight alongside South Korean forces; skipping it lets that skill decay.

THE HILL10 sources

2worldIran war

Trump threatens to bomb Oman, the U.S. ally brokering the deal to reopen the Strait of Hormuz

A 60-day window for peace talks is running out, and the president's target is the one American ally Iran still talks to.

What the U.S. would lose by bombing Oman — the basing deal, the sea lanes, and the broker: A 1980 facilities agreement, last revised and renewed in 2010, lets U.S. aircraft use Oman's Thumrait and Masirah Island airfields; a separate Strategic Framework Agreement signed in March 2019 expanded U.S. access to the ports of Duqm and Salalah. The strait narrows to about 21 miles between Oman's Musandam peninsula and the Iranian coast, and the inbound and outbound shipping lanes are only two miles wide each, which is why a handful of warships can choke the whole waterway. Sultan Haitham bin Tariq (Sultan, Oman), who took power in January 2020, has kept his country out of the Abraham Accords and out of the Saudi-led war in Yemen. That neutrality is exactly what makes Muscat useful to both sides. A U.S.–Oman free trade agreement has been in force since Jan. 1, 2009, one of four the United States holds with Arab countries, alongside Jordan, Morocco and Bahrain.

ContextOman has been Washington's back channel to Tehran for over a decade: Omani officials arranged the secret 2013 Muscat meetings that led to the 2015 nuclear deal and helped free five Americans held in Iran in September 2023. About 20 million barrels of oil a day move through the strait, close to a fifth of world consumption. Iran cannot close that water without closing Omani water too.

THE HILL6 sources

3not newsus

Border barrier work inside Big Bend National Park halts after bipartisan complaints

CBP Commissioner Rodney Scott stopped work on an access road, detection technology and vehicle barriers on Monday, Aug. 17, along the park's 118 miles of the Rio Grande.

Why a barrier at Big Bend is harder to build than one at El Paso: A 1970 boundary treaty with Mexico bars structures that would shove the Rio Grande's flow across the line, which is why Texas barriers usually sit set back inland rather than on the bank. The park's run of the Rio Grande has been a federally protected Wild and Scenic River since 1978, a status written to block projects that alter the riverway. Big Bend covers 801,163 acres — bigger than Rhode Island — and most of that is roadless desert and mountain, so building anything means building a road to it first.

ContextThe Trump administration paused the Big Bend project on Monday, Aug. 17, while U.S. Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Rodney Scott visits the Texas park. The sources do not say how much work crews completed, what the project costs or when construction could restart.

THE HILL4 sources