For weeks, President Donald Trump has promised the Iranian people that ‘help is on the way’ while positioning a massive U.S. naval armada within striking distance of Iran’s coast. But as the White House pivots toward a diplomatic summit in Istanbul Friday, analysts warn the president may face a growing credibility test if threats are not followed by action.

By threatening ‘speed and fury’ against a regime accused of killing thousands of protesters, Trump has drawn a red line — one that analysts say echoes President Barack Obama’s 2013 warning over Syria’s use of chemical weapons. Obama ultimately chose diplomacy over military strikes, a decision critics said weakened U.S. credibility and emboldened adversaries, while supporters argued it avoided a broader war and succeeded in removing large portions of Syria’s chemical arsenal. Trump now faces a similar debate as he weighs whether to enforce his own warnings against Iran.

Trump’s envoys are set to meet Friday in Istanbul with Iranian officials to press for an end to Iran’s nuclear enrichment program, curbs on ballistic missiles and a halt to support for proxy groups such as Hamas and Hezbollah — terms Tehran has shown little public sign of accepting. Trump has also demanded an end to the regime’s violent crackdown on protesters.

But signs of strain are already emerging around the talks. 

Iran is now seeking a change in venue to Friday’s meeting — wanting it to be held in Oman, according to a source familiar with the request — raising questions about whether the summit will proceed as scheduled or produce substantive progress.

Tensions on the ground have continued to rise even as diplomacy is pursued. This week, U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) said American forces shot down an Iranian drone after it aggressively approached the USS Abraham Lincoln while the aircraft carrier was operating in international waters in the Arabian Sea. CENTCOM said the drone ignored de-escalatory measures before an F-35C fighter jet downed it in self-defense. 

No U.S. personnel were injured.

Hours later, Iranian naval forces harassed a U.S.-flagged, U.S.-crewed commercial tanker transiting the Strait of Hormuz, according to CENTCOM. Iranian gunboats and a surveillance drone repeatedly threatened to board the vessel before the guided-missile destroyer USS McFaul intervened and escorted the tanker to safety. 

CENTCOM warned that continued Iranian harassment in international waters increases the risk of miscalculation and regional destabilization.

Despite weeks of delay, foreign policy analysts say the pause does not mean military action has been taken off the table.

‘If you just look at force movements and the president’s past statements of policy, you would have to bet on the likelihood that military action remains something that is coming,’ Rich Goldberg, a former Trump National Security Council official now at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, told Fox News Digital.

‘I don’t think the window is closed,’ said Michael Makovsky, president of the Jewish Institute for National Security of America. ‘If the president doesn’t do something militarily, it would damage his credibility.’

The standoff is reviving comparisons to Obama’s 2013 decision not to carry out military strikes in Syria after warning that the use of chemical weapons would cross a U.S. ‘red line.’ The moment became a touchstone in debates over American deterrence. 

The Syria episode remains a touchstone in Washington’s red-line debates. Critics argued Obama’s decision not to strike emboldened adversaries, while supporters said diplomacy prevented war — a divide resurfacing as Trump weighs his next move.

‘They have challenged the president now to try to turn him into Obama in 2013 in Syria, rather than Donald Trump in 2025 in Iran,’ Goldberg said.

Fox News Digital has reached out to Obama’s office for comment.

Trump has publicly encouraged Iranian protesters to continue their demonstrations, telling them in early January to ‘KEEP PROTESTING’ and promising that ‘HELP IS ON ITS WAY.’

U.S. officials, however, have previously said the pause reflects caution rather than retreat, pointing to concerns about retaliation against American forces and uncertainty over who would lead Iran if the regime were significantly weakened. Trump himself raised those questions in January, publicly casting doubt on whether any opposition figure could realistically govern after decades in exile.

‘As for the president, he remains committed to always pursuing diplomacy first,’ White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Tuesday. ‘But in order for diplomacy to work, of course, it takes two to tango, you need a willing partner to engage.’

‘The president has always a range of options on the table, and that includes the use of military force,’ she added. 

Some analysts reject the premise that the administration has meaningfully slowed its military posture.

‘I don’t think they’ve paused action,’ said Gregg Roman, executive director of the Middle East Forum. ‘The more assets that the president deploys to the theater gives the U.S. more maneuvering room, rather than less.’

Roman pointed to continued U.S. force movements into the region, arguing the buildup signals preparation rather than restraint.

‘That’s not the behavior of a country backing away from military options,’ he said.

Fox News’ Aishah Hashnie contributed to this report. 

For months after the Trump administration dismantled the U.S. Agency for International Development, critics warned that America’s global health programs were being gutted. What drew far less attention was what replaced it. 

In December 2025, the White House quietly rolled out the America First Global Health Strategy, shifting control of U.S. global health aid from USAID to the State Department and fundamentally rewriting how billions of dollars in foreign assistance are distributed.

The transition has been shaped in part by a small group of former officials now advising the White House from the private sector, including former USAID administrator Mark Green and former lawmakers Ted Yoho and Chris Stewart. They are not running the programs, but they have been involved in pressing for clearer accountability standards, tighter performance metrics and congressional guardrails they say are necessary if the new framework is going to last beyond a single administration.

At the core of the strategy is a sharp break from how U.S. health aid traditionally has worked. The America First Global Health Strategy replaces USAID’s grant-heavy, nongovernmental organization-driven model with country-by-country agreements that tie funding to performance benchmarks and push foreign governments to assume greater responsibility over time. The framework promises tighter control over spending, but many of its enforcement details — including how benchmarks will be set and applied — are still being developed.

So far, the strategy has been implemented through a limited number of bilateral health agreements negotiated country by country. In December 2025, the United States signed a five-year health cooperation agreement with Kenya, covering areas such as HIV/AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis, with U.S. funding tied to continued performance and increased co-investment by the Kenyan government. Similar memorandums of understanding have since been signed or are under negotiation with countries including Nigeria and Cameroon, according to State Department disclosures.

Congress has long appropriated global health funding at a high level, giving USAID broad discretion over how programs were designed and implemented — a structure that left lawmakers with oversight but little involvement in individual funding decisions. Yoho said that discretion allowed the agency to drift over time.

‘It lost the purity of purpose of what it was designed to do,’ Yoho said. ‘They lost their mark and they became political and ideological.’

The new strategy, by contrast, explicitly frames global health assistance around U.S. national security, bilateral relationships and economic interests. But because it has not been codified into law, those priorities could be redefined or reversed by a future administration.

‘If it’s not codified in the law, how aid is supposed to be done, it’ll go away if we flip to a Democratic administration,’ Yoho said.

Former Rep. Chris Stewart, who served on both the House Intelligence Committee and the Appropriations subcommittee responsible for funding foreign assistance, said that even lawmakers who approved global health spending often had limited visibility into how programs operated once money left Washington.

‘Even as an appropriator — someone who supposedly wrote the checks — we didn’t have the oversight that we needed,’ Stewart said.

Under the America First Global Health Strategy, Stewart said oversight is intended to begin earlier, with clearer priorities and closer alignment between U.S. objectives and what recipient countries actually want. During his travels, Stewart said foreign leaders repeatedly told him they were less interested in open-ended aid than in building their own capacity.

‘We don’t really just want aid,’ Stewart said. ‘We want trade. We want to build our own capacity.’

Stewart said the shift toward government-to-government agreements is intended to make spending more traceable and more directly attributable to the United States, while still requiring firm controls to prevent waste or abuse.

‘That doesn’t mean every government we work with is perfect,’ he said, ‘but it does make it easier to know where the money is actually going.’

Supporters of the new framework point to longstanding disease-specific programs as evidence that tighter oversight does not require abandoning global health investments altogether. Yoho, Stewart and Green all cited PEPFAR, the U.S. government’s HIV/AIDS initiative, as a model of bipartisan foreign assistance that has saved lives while strengthening U.S. relationships abroad. 

Stewart and Green also pointed to malaria prevention efforts, while both emphasized child health and nutrition as areas Congress should continue to prioritize.

Yoho also cited the use of ready-to-use therapeutic food (RUTF) to treat severe childhood malnutrition, describing it as a low-cost intervention with clear humanitarian impact and broad bipartisan support.

Former USAID administrator Green said the strategy is built around accelerating what he calls the ‘journey to self-reliance,’ moving countries from long-term aid recipients to partners — and eventually, in some cases, donors themselves.

‘We want every country to go from being an aid recipient, to a partner, to — in a perfect world — a fellow donor and investor,’ Green said.

Under the new framework, Green said global health assistance is negotiated nation by nation through bilateral agreements tailored to local conditions and reciprocal obligations. 

‘This isn’t a handout,’ he said. ‘This instead is a joint venture between the U.S. and the government in another country,’ designed to build local capacity and shift responsibility over time.

The strategy also places greater emphasis on leveraging private-sector tools alongside government funding. 

Green pointed to partnerships with U.S. companies such as Zipline, which uses drone technology to deliver blood and medical supplies in hard-to-reach areas, as an illustration of how the framework seeks to pair public health goals with American innovation.

Still, Green acknowledged that much of the system remains a work in progress. While the agreements are intended to tie funding to performance and burden-sharing, he said many of the specific benchmarks and enforcement mechanisms are still being finalized.

‘A wedding is easy and a marriage is hard,’ Green said, describing the challenge of translating broad agreements into measurable, enforceable outcomes.

For supporters of the new strategy, the tighter focus on accountability is also meant to address longstanding skepticism on the right about foreign aid itself. Yoho said he once shared that skepticism.

‘I was one of those that wanted to get rid of foreign aid,’ he said. ‘Then I got up there and realized how ignorant I was about good, effective foreign aid.’

He said the argument becomes easier when programs are clearly defined and measurable.

‘If representatives have credible information and can go back to their constituents and explain why we should support something — because it makes America safer, stronger, and more prosperous — the majority of people will support it,’ Yoho said.

Whether the America First Global Health Strategy ultimately delivers on its promises — or exposes new risks — may depend less on its design than on how much authority Congress chooses to formalize, and how rigorously the administration enforces the accountability standards it has laid out.

A federal judge on Tuesday appeared receptive to the claim from Sen. Mark Kelly, D-Ariz., that the Pentagon is retaliating against him for protected political speech, raising concerns about potential violations of the First Amendment.

U.S. District Court Judge Richard Leon is considering whether to issue a preliminary injunction that would halt War Secretary Pete Hegseth’s efforts to reopen Kelly’s military retirement grade, a process that could result in a reduction of his pension, while the case proceeds.

‘You don’t need a weatherman to see which way the wind is blowing,’ Leon said, invoking Bob Dylan and suggesting he needed little additional information to determine whether Kelly’s First Amendment rights were violated.

The case stems from a video posted on social media in November in which Kelly and five other Democratic lawmakers told members of the U.S. military to refuse illegal orders.

Hegseth issued a letter of censure against Kelly on Jan. 5, accusing him of undermining the chain of command, counseling disobedience, and engaging in conduct unbecoming an officer.

Kelly sued Hegseth days later, arguing the censure and effort to reopen his military retirement grade amounted to unconstitutional retaliation for protected political speech.

Kelly’s defense team argued in court that the situation is unprecedented, and that Hegseth is ‘openly admitting they are punishing a decorated war veteran and senator’ for exercising his First Amendment rights.

Justice Department lawyers arguing for Hegseth contended that Kelly is still subject to the Uniform Code of Military Justice as a retired officer and that his comments undermined order and discipline within the armed forces.

They also suggested an injunction from the judge could take power away from the government to administer personnel matters in its own military.

Judge Leon did not rule from the bench but acknowledged that he knew Kelly was up against looming deadlines and would make an effort to issue a ruling in the coming days.

Kelly said after the high-stakes hearing that the case is not only about his First Amendment rights, but those of all retired military personnel. 

‘Since taking office, this administration has repeatedly gone after the First Amendment rights of Americans,’ he said. ‘That’s not how we do things in the United States of America. We have the Constitution and the law on our side.’

House Republicans who are spearheading the charge of another ‘big, beautiful bill’ say they only have a short window of time to pass a massive piece of legislation aimed at lowering costs for Americans across the board.

‘We need to see good movement within the month of February that puts us on a path to achieve this by late spring, early summer,’ Republican Study Committee (RSC) Chairman August Pfluger, R-Texas, told Fox News Digital.

President Donald Trump led Republicans through passing the One Big, Beautiful Bill Act last year, sprawling legislation that made good on versions of several Trump campaign promises like reducing taxes on tipped and overtime wages, extending his 2017 tax cuts, and surging more money toward his immigration crackdown.

The budget reconciliation process makes such a feat possible by lowering the Senate’s threshold for passage to line up with the House’s own simple majority line, empowering the party holding the levers of power in Congress to pass sweeping fiscal changes to U.S. law.

A large contingent of Republican lawmakers, including Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., have said they want to use that process again sometime this year. Pfluger’s RSC, the largest caucus in the House GOP, released a framework last month with recommendations on a bill that would lower costs in areas like housing, healthcare and energy.

Pfluger told Fox News Digital that affordability would likely be a ‘major driver’ of another such GOP bill, but said he was still working on getting input from other areas of the House Republican Conference.

‘I’m sure that there will be refinement as we hear feedback from the different groups. But we do believe that it’s a solid framework. We believe that it’s a winning issue based on good policy,’ Pfluger said.

But both he and House Budget Committee Chairman Jodey Arrington, R-Texas, have acknowledged they will need to work fast — particularly with the 2026 midterm elections coming in November.

‘I would be embarrassed as a leader and as a conservative if our conference and Republicans in Washington won’t rally in these 10 or 11 months we have before November, where we still have this window of opportunity to strike,’ Arrington said in a forthcoming episode of the RSC’s ‘Right to the Point’ podcast, which Fox News Digital got an exclusive first look at.

He said elsewhere in the podcast that Republicans ‘probably have a three-month window’ to take meaningful action, lining up with Pfluger’s own prediction that action should happen by springtime.

Pfluger said he hoped to get the first key step done this month after sending instructions on what kind of cuts to enact to various House committees.

But Republicans are currently dealing with a one-seat majority in the House until a special election to replace former Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., takes place in March.

That could get reduced back down in April after a special election for a blue-leaning seat to replace New Jersey’s new Gov. Mikie Sherrill. Republicans won’t get more breathing room until early August, when California holds a special election for the GOP-leaning seat that was held by the late Rep. Doug LaMalfa, R-Calif.

Their first reconciliation bill notably passed with all but two House Republicans on board.

‘We have a path. We’ve dug that path, and we should just do it for the things that we can all agree on,’ Arrington argued.

He said a second bill ‘doesn’t have to be as big and comprehensive, it needs to be targeted on the things that were either left undone, things that fell out, that we should put back in… like not allowing tax dollars to go to transgender procedures and not allowing the fungible federal dollars to support states that use their state Medicaid dollars to fund illegals.’

But it’s not yet clear that such policies could make it in or gain the support of moderate Republicans who are wary of an election cycle that’s expected to be an uphill climb for the GOP.

Pfluger, however, told Fox News Digital that he hoped they could even get some Democratic support if the bill stayed focused on affordability measures.

‘I believe that we are going to produce something that is going to make it very difficult for Democrats to vote against,’ he said. ‘I would hope that we would have something on the board that would get Democrat support in some cases.’

As the House crushed Republican resistance to a Trump-backed funding package to end the latest partial government shutdown, lawmakers in the upper chamber weren’t confident that Congress could avoid being in the same position in the coming weeks.

President Donald Trump and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., brokered the deal to end the shutdown last week. That funding truce included a move to sideline the controversial Department of Homeland Security (DHS) funding bill in favor of a short-term extension to keep the agency open.

The House’s passage of the package, which funds 11 out of 12 government agencies under Congress’ purview, sets the stage for tense negotiations between the White House and Senate Democrats over reforms to DHS.

But several Senate Republicans are questioning whether two weeks, which had shrunk to just nine days as of Wednesday, would be enough time to avert another partial shutdown — this time only for DHS.

‘I think it’s gonna be very difficult to get the funding bill done for DHS in two weeks,’ Sen. Rick Scott, R-Fla., told Fox News Digital.

Scott was one of a handful of Republicans in the upper chamber that rejected the compromise plan and the underlying original package because of bloated spending on earmarks and concerns that Senate Democrats would effectively try to kneecap Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) operations across the country.

‘We’re going to be in a worse spot,’ Scott said. ‘I mean… all their earmarks got done, and then now they’re going to want to, you know, they want to [get] busy de-fanging and defunding ICE.’

Congressional Democrats wanted to relitigate the bipartisan DHS bill after the fatal shooting of Alex Pretti during an immigration enforcement operation in Minneapolis. The demand forced Trump to intervene and thrust the government into a partial shutdown on Friday.

While the funding deal made it across his desk, it won’t get Congress out of the jam it’s in, given the short amount of time lawmakers have to negotiate the bill, which is consistently the most difficult spending bill to pass year in and year out. 

Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., noted that once negotiations began, Congress had a ‘very short timeframe in which to do this, which I am against.’

‘But the Democrats insisted on, you know, a two-week window, which, again, I don’t understand the rationale for that,’ Thune said. ‘Anybody who knows this place knows that’s an impossibility.’

Some Senate Democrats did not want to weigh in on a hypothetical scenario just days away, but Sen. Mark Kelly, D-Ariz., contended that because of the events in Minnesota, ‘there should be some motivation across the aisle to do something on, you know, all these issues.’ 

‘I mean, I think [DHS Secretary] Kristi Noem should be fired, leadership needs to be changed at ICE, their budget needs to be the right size,’ Kelly said. ‘We got to get them looking like normal police officers.’

Senate Appropriations Chair Susan Collins, R-Maine, struck a more positive tone. 

She told Fox News Digital that Congress would be in a much better position, considering that lawmakers will have passed 11 out of the 12 bills needed to fund the federal government. 

‘We’ll now start the negotiations on DHS, and I hope we’ll be successful, but I don’t see how you can compare where we are today,’ Collins said.

Thune believed that Noem’s announcement that ICE agents in Minneapolis would begin wearing body-worn cameras could act as a sweetener for Democrats. There is already $20 million baked into the current bipartisan DHS funding bill for body cameras. 

Schumer rejected that olive branch from Noem, arguing that it didn’t come nearly close enough to the portfolio of reforms Democrats wanted for the agency. And he reaffirmed that Senate Democrats wanted actual legislative action on DHS reforms, not an executive order. 

‘We know how whimsical Donald Trump is,’ Schumer said. ‘He’ll say one thing one day and retract it the next. Same with Secretary Noem.’

‘So, we don’t trust some executive order, some pronouncement from some Cabinet secretary. We need it enshrined into law.’

When asked if lawmakers would need to turn to another short-term funding patch, Schumer argued that ‘if Leader Thune negotiates in good faith, we can get it done. We expect to present to the Republicans a very serious, detailed proposal very shortly.’

But Thune has said for several days that it would be the White House in the driver’s seat, and ultimately it would be Trump who could broker a new deal. 

‘But at some points, obviously it has to be the White House engaged in the conversation with the Senate Democrats, and that’s how that thing’s gonna land,’ Thune said.