Get your day started with SOFREP's Morning Brief, offering key updates on defense and global affairs for June 16, 2025.

Trump distanced himself from direct involvement in Israel’s strikes. But Benjamin Netanyahu will need the U.S. president to finish the job.

MIT security studies senior research associate Jim Walsh weighs in on reports of Israel planning to kill Iran's supreme leader and the state of Iran's relationship with Russia on 'Fox Report.'

Israel did not ask permission in 1981 before destroying Saddam Hussein’s Osirak reactor, or in 2007 before destroying Iran’s reactor that was under construction in the Syrian desert. Trump is grievously mistaken if he thinks Netanyahu will “chicken out,” standing idly by as Iran becomes a nuclear power. Cometh the hour, cometh the man.

Iran launched missiles toward Israel in return on Friday, and the U.S. helped intercept them, a U.S. official said.