A tough sell

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Donald Trump may have backed away from his demand that US allies help him in Iran. That doesn't mean Sanae Takaichi is off the hook.

The Japanese prime minister is due to meet with Trump at the White House tomorrow, one of the first foreign leaders to visit from a country singled out by the president since he launched the war.

Photographer: Andrew Caballero-Reynolds/AFP/Getty Images

Japan was among those nations Trump called on to help protect shipping in the Strait of Hormuz, a tough proposition for Tokyo given its pacifist constitution strictly limits the deployment of the military overseas. Like those others, Japan indicated it had no plans to meet the request.

Faced with a blanket no, Trump abruptly dropped his demand yesterday, saying that the US didn't need any help. But the famously petulant president may yet try to extract a price from Takaichi.

The prospect of Trump pressuring Takaichi in the Oval Office is a worrying thought for Japanese officials who want the trip to demonstrate the strength of US-Japan ties.

They're also looking for US support in a damaging standoff with China.

The timing had looked optimal: getting in Trump's ear immediately before he visited Beijing.

That was before the joint US-Israeli attacks on Iran disrupted oil supplies, especially to Asia, and dragged on the global economy, prompting Trump to postpone his China trip.

Addressing parliament in Tokyo today, Takaichi said she's facing an "extremely difficult" meeting. She did, though, hint at her possible approach of pledging more US investments.

While avoiding expressing support for Trump's war, Takaichi has often repeated a guiding principle of Tokyo's foreign and security policy: Countries shouldn't seek to alter the geopolitical status quo through force.

It's a message usually directed at revisionist powers like China and Russia. With its attacks on Iran, the US may now be in that bracket, too. — Alastair Gale

Photographer: Akio Kon/Bloomberg

Global Must Reads

Israel's killing of Ali Larijani, a veteran Iranian politician known for his pragmatism and long experience helming national security, leaves the Islamic Republic's wartime leadership largely in the hands of hardliners who may be less likely to seek a diplomatic pathway out of the war. Trump meanwhile is desperate to reopen the Strait of Hormuz to ease a growing global energy crisis, but he won't achieve that easily without a ceasefire.

A top counterterrorism official and staunch MAGA Republican resigned over the war with Iran, claiming that Israel had misled Trump into believing that the regime in Tehran posed an imminent threat, underlining strife in the president's base over the conflict. Joe Kent, the director of the National Counterterrorism Center, said he could not support "sending the next generation off to fight and die in a war that serves no benefit to the American people."

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio dismissed an initial move by Havana to open the Cuban economy to the diaspora as falling short, suggesting no letup in pressure from the Trump administration that has choked off fuel supplies and sources of funding to force change. The government unveiled measures that would for the first time allow Cubans living abroad to invest and take a stake in private companies on the island.

Photographer: Yamil Lage/AFP/Getty Images

Colombia deployed troops to its border with Ecuador after the countries traded accusations over alleged bombing in the area, raising tensions already strained by a trade war. While the region is overrun with illegal armed groups that control cocaine smuggling into Ecuador, Colombian President Gustavo Petro said an initial investigation found the bomb dropped from an aircraft didn't appear to have been deployed by those gangs.

Pakistan's deadly airstrikes in Afghanistan this week sparked calls for a ceasefire from the European Union to China, showing the global alarm at the prospect of another major conflict next door to Iran. Afghanistan's Taliban government said yesterday that at least 400 people were killed in Pakistani airstrikes on a drug treatment hospital in Kabul, a charge that Islamabad denied, saying the strikes were aimed at military targets.

The USS Gerald R. Ford aircraft carrier is leaving the fight with Iran and heading back to port after a fire broke out in its laundry area, injuring at least two sailors, a source says.

Photographer: Costas Metaxakis/AFP/Getty Images

The Pentagon is working to develop alternatives to Anthropic's artificial-intelligence tools after the Trump administration's decision to declare the company a supply-chain risk, a senior US defense official said. 

Reductions in child mortality have slowed around the world and even stalled in some places, with communities in sub-Saharan Africa and southern Asia particularly at risk, the United Nations said in a report.

Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva is shaking up the top of his economic team just months before elections in which he'll seek a record fourth term.

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Chart of the Day

The UN warned that as many as 45 million more people could face acute hunger if the conflict in Iran doesn't ease by the middle of the year. The near shutdown of the Strait of Hormuz and mounting risks to traffic in the Red Sea are already increasing energy, fuel and fertilizer costs, deepening hunger beyond the Middle East, the UN World Food Programme said yesterday. That could push the number of people in acute food insecurity to 363 million, eclipsing the hunger levels that followed Russia's invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

And Finally

As the national enforcer of Trump's escalating war with the press, Brendan Carr has appeared in feverish cable-news segments and butted heads with late-night hosts Jimmy Kimmel and Stephen Colbert. But he wasn't always like this, having undergone a midcareer transformation from a staid, low-profile telecommunications lawyer into the powerful head of the Federal Communications Commission after what he calls a series of "Gump-like experiences and opportunities" propelled him up the ranks. Read this Big Take on how such an attention-shy, seemingly apolitical person could have morphed into the strident and outspoken frontman for the political upheaval rocking DC.

Photographer: Samuel Corum/Getty Images

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