National Security and Defense

Russian President Vladimir Putin has warned that Moscow might use nuclear weapons if the West attacks Russian territory. (PHOTO: GAVRIIL GRIGOROV/KREMLIN/ASSOCIATED PRESS)

A picture taken on November 10, 2019, shows an Iranian flag in Iran's Bushehr nuclear power plant, during an official ceremony to kick-start works on a second reactor at the facility. Bushehr is Iran's only nuclear power station and is currently running on imported fuel from Russia that is closely monitored by the UN's International Atomic Energy Agency. (Photo by ATTA KENARE/AFP via Getty Images)

Qasem Soleimani with Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis at a 2017 ceremony commemorating the father of Soleimani, in Musalla, Tehran. (Fars Media Corporation via Wikimedia Commons)

Taliban fighters stood guard as people searched for relatives outside a hospital after a suicide attack at an education center in Kabul on Friday. (PHOTO: STR/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGES)

An F-35B Lightning II lands on the flight deck aboard amphibious assault carrier USS Tripoli in the Philippine Sea on September 12, 2022. (US Navy Photo by Malcolm Kelley)

Afghan politician Ahmad Massoud, one of the leaders of the National Resistance Front and son of the famed Mujahideen leader Ahmed Shah Massoud, in Paris, France, on March 22, 2021. (Joel Saget/AFP via Getty Images)

Servicemen march during the military parade marking the 76th anniversary of the Soviet victory in the Great Patriotic War, Russia's term for World War II, on Red Square in Moscow, Russia, May 9, 2021. (Photo by Evgeny Sinitsyn/Xinhua via Getty Images)