Happy Tuesday! Five zebras, four camels, and a miniature horse were rescued from a burning circus truck in Indiana on Sunday. All of the animals and the vehicle’s driver were uninjured, and, as far as we can tell, this was not a preview of a new death-defying act.

Quick Hits: Today’s Top Stories

• The United States and United Kingdom on Monday announced sanctions targeting a network of individuals, led by Iranian narcotics trafficker Naji Ibrahim Sharifi-Zindashti, that plotted to assassinate Iranian dissidents at the direction of Iran’s Ministry of Intelligence and Security. The sanctions followed indictments that charged Zindashti with hiring two Canadian hitmen to kill two Iranian refugees living in Maryland, though the plot was never successfully carried out. “The Iranian regime’s continued efforts to target dissidents and activists demonstrate the regime’s deep insecurity and attempt to expand Iran’s domestic repression internationally,” Under Secretary of the Treasury for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence Brian E. Nelson said in a statement released yesterday. The Treasury Department identified multiple assassination plots allegedly led by Zindashti, including the 2017 murder of Saeed Karimian, a British national and owner of Gem TV, which aired content that was critical of the Iranian government.
• Former Finnish Prime Minister Alexander Stubb was projected to narrowly win the first round of the country’s presidential elections on Sunday, setting him up for a runoff election against Pekka Haavisto, a former foreign minister, on February 11. Both Stubb and Haavisto have promised to take a hard line against Russia in the first election since Finland became a NATO member in 2023.
• The U.S. on Monday began to reinstate sanctions on Venezuela in response to President Nicholas Maduro’s continued ban on leading opposition candidate Maria Corina Machado from running for president. The sanctions announced last night require U.S. companies to end transactions with Minerven, a Venezuelan state-owned gold mining company, by February 13, and the Biden administration has suggested that it would allow a Treasury deal permitting trade with Venezuelan oil companies to expire in April unless Machado is allowed to run.
• U.S. military officials told the Wall Street Journal on Monday that confusion over a returning U.S. drone caused the failure to stop Sunday’s attack on a military outpost in Jordan that killed three U.S. service members and injured at least 40 more. The enemy drone, which was launched from Iraq by Iranian-backed militants, was reportedly mistaken for the friendly surveillance drone as it approached the base at the same time the U.S. craft was also returning to base. The Department of Defense identified the three fallen soldiers on Monday: Sgt. William Jerome Rivers of Willingboro, New Jersey; Spc. Kennedy Ladon Sanders of Waycross, Georgia; and Spc. Breonna Alexsondria Moffett of Savannah, Georgia.
• The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) finalized new energy efficiency standards for household cooking products on Monday that, among other inclusions, allow gas stoves to keep high-powered burners. The new rules impact appliances built in 2028 or after, and DOE estimated that “approximately 97 percent of gas stove models and 77 percent of smooth electric stove models on the market already meet” the new standards. 

A Matter of Time

In the wake of the October 17 explosion at the Al-Ahli Arab Hospital in Gaza—and widespread misreporting on what occurred—U.S. troops stationed in Iraq and Syria began facing near-daily drone, rocket, mortar, and missile attacks launched by various Iranian-backed militia groups. 

On October 25, for example, American forces stationed at Al-Asad Air Base in Western Iraq were targeted in a drone attack—one drone, laden with explosives, struck a barracks but didn’t explode. Had it detonated, Americans likely would have been killed. On Christmas Day, an attack on Erbil Air Base injured three service members, with one soldier suffering a “devastating neurological injury” and needing to be put in a medically-induced coma after shrapnel from a drone struck his head. Four U.S. troops suffered traumatic brain injuries on January 20 after a ballistic missile strike on Al-Asad Air Base.

There have been 165 such attacks since October—and at that rate, it was a matter of when, not if, U.S. forces would suffer fatalities. It happened over the weekend, when three American soldiers were killed in an attack on a military outpost in northeast Jordan, near the Syrian border. With previous retaliatory strikes failing to stem the tide of attacks, the Biden administration is now weighing how the U.S. will respond to the loss of American lives.