In this pool photograph distributed by the Russian state agency Sputnik, Vladimir Putin enters a hall to meet with graduates of higher military educational institutions at the Kremlin on June 23, 2025. (Alexander Kazakov via Getty Images)
A formation of Dongfeng-41 nuclear missiles takes part in a military parade celebrating the seventieth anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China in Beijing on October 1, 2019. (Xia Yifang via Getty Images)
Senior lecturer in the Department of Security Studies and Criminology at Macquarie University, Council of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute
President Donald Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy pose for a picture with European leaders following a meeting at the White House on August 18, 2025. (Win McNamee via Getty Images)
A US Marine Corps VXE30 Stalker unmanned aerial system is staged during a maritime domain awareness training exercise in southern Finland on July 31, 2025. (DVIDS)
Victoria Coates is a senior fellow at the Center for Security Policy and former deputy national security adviser for Middle Eastern and North African
Biography
Victoria Coates is a senior fellow at the Center for Security Policy and former deputy national security adviser for Middle Eastern and North African affairs at the National Security Council.
Demonstrators gathering around a burning barricade during a protest for Mahsa Amini, a woman who died after being arrested by the Islamic republic's "morality police", in Tehran on September 19, 2022. (AFP via Getty Images)
Iranian Clerics chant slogans during an anti-U.S. rally in Tehran on April 14, 2019 after the U.S. designation of Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps as a terrorist organization. (Photo by Rouzbeh Fouladi/NurPhoto via Getty Images)
This picture taken late on March 27, 2021 shows a view of tugboats by the Panama-flagged MV 'Ever Given' (operated by Taiwan-based Evergreen Marine) container ship, which has been wedged diagonally across the span of the canal about six kilometres north o