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The President's Daily Brief
February 4th, 2026: U.S. and Iran Enter Direct Military Contact & Nuclear Arms Treaties Expire
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It's Wednesday, the 4th of February. Welcome to the President's Daily Brief. I'm Mike Baker, near eyes and ears on the world stage and quite definitely still on the road. All right, let's get briefed. First up, US Forces enter direct military contact with Iran, shooting down an Iranian drone near a US Aircraft carrier as tensions escalate further with a second incident occurring in the Strait of Hormuz. I'll have those details later in the show. Ukraine signs on to a ceasefire enforcement plan with Europe and the US As Russia continues to pound Ukraine's energy grid. Well, there's nothing like continued aerial assaults to show that you're serious about peace talks. Plus, the last remaining nuclear arms control treaty between the US And Russia is set to expire, raising new questions about what comes next once formal limits on nuclear weapons are gone. And in today's Back of the Brief, the government shutdown ends. Well, look at that. Leaving unresolved questions, though, about long term homeland security funding. But don't worry, like the swallows returning to Capistrano, there will be other shutdowns. But first, today's pdb. In two separate incidents just hours apart, the US And Iran crossed a critical threshold, entering direct military contact for the first time in this current environment. The first incident unfolded at sea. US Forces shot down an Iranian military drone after it approached the USS Abraham Lincoln. That's the nuclear powered aircraft carrier operating in the region. According to U.S. officials, an Iranian drone flew toward the carrier strike group while the ship was operating in international waters. Commanders assessed the aircraft's behavior as unsafe and potentially hostile. A US Fighter jet was launched and the drone was engaged and destroyed before it could close on the carrier. The response from the US Navy shouldn't be surprising. Aircraft carriers are among the most protected and most sensitive assets in the US Military. Any unidentified or hostile aircraft approaching the carrier is treated as a serious threat. There's very little tolerance for risk. Iran likely knows that. Which implies, of course, that this was not an accident. It was a deliberate decision to fly a drone toward a US Carrier at a moment of already heightened tension. Drones are familiar tools in Iran's playbook. They're scalable, they're expendable, and often used to test red lines without immediately triggering full scale retaliation. In 2016, Iranian forces seized US Navy boats and detained American sailors near Farsi Island. In 2019, Tehran shot down a US Global Hawk drone over the Strait of Hormuz, pushing right up to the edge of a broader confrontation. And repeatedly, Iranian fast boats have harassed U.S. and allied ships in The Gulf testing rules of engagement and measuring resolve the playbook is consistent. Test the response, observe the reaction and see how far you can go before the other side. In this case the US pushes back. And in this case the US pushed back immediately and decisively. And the response didn't end there. Just hours after the drone shoot down, Iranian forces escalated again. This time in one of the world's most sensitive maritime choke points. Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, that's the irgc, deployed high speed boats and another drone that approached a US flagged merchant vessel. That would be the tanker MV Stena imperative as it transited the Strait of Hormuz. According to U.S. officials, the Iranian craft threatened to board the vessel. The situation did not escalate further only after a US Navy destroyer, the USS McFaul, intervened supported by US Air Force assets and escorted the tanker safely through the area. The incident shows just how quickly these encounters can escalate, especially in narrow, heavily trafficked waterways where miscalculation carries immediate global consequences. The message that Washington is sending is clear. Threats to high value US assets will be met with force. It's also important to note what all this was not. This was not a preemptive strike. It was not a broader offensive operation. U.S. officials have described the action as defensive, designed solely to protect American forces. There are no reports of follow on strikes or expanded targeting or casualties beyond that destroyed drone. But defensive does not mean inconsequential. Once shots are fired, of course, the dynamic changes. Every approach, every patrol, every close contact now takes place in a more dangerous environment. It would seem that Iran now faces a decision. It can absorb the loss and step back, signaling that this was a test that failed. Or it can escalate directly with additional drone activity or maritime harassment. Or it can shift pressure elsewhere, using regional proxies to respond indirectly while avoiding creating another direct clash with US forces on the US side. The posture is likely to tighten. Expect heightened alert levels, more aggressive air and maritime patrols, and stricter rules of engagement around critical assets. The goal will be deterrence, but deterrence backed by demonstrated willingness to act. All right, coming up next, Ukraine agrees to a new cease fire enforcement plan with Europe. Now, have you noticed by now that what's missing from all these various discussions and agreements is the is the Russians. And speaking of Moscow, the last remaining US Russian nuclear arms treaty nears expiration. I'll be right back. Hey, Mike Baker here. Now, if you like great food and you like convenience, well, you're going to love Gold Belly. 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That's coming up quick fellas. By the way, that's goldbelly.com code PDB for 20% off your first order. Welcome back to the PDB. There's now a plan for what happens if Russia breaks a future ceasefire. If Putin does ever decide to back off his maximalist demands and agree to end his four year war. That's a big if. Ukraine and its Western partners though, say they have agreed that sustained Russian violations, if there is a ceasefire, will trigger a coordinated military response by Europe and the US. What that multi tiered agreement looks like in practice is something officials have been hammering out for weeks, according to the Financial Times, citing people briefed on the discussions. American, European and Ukrainian officials spent much of December and January working through a step by step enforcement plan to address Moscow's repeated testing of ceasefires. Here's how it would work in practice. If Russia violates the ceasefire again, if there ever is a ceasefire, the response wouldn't wait on prolonged diplomacy. Within 24 hours there would be a formal warning, followed if necessary, by immediate action from Ukrainian forces to halt the infraction. If Moscow continues to push beyond that point, the plan would escalate to a second phase involving the so called coalition of the willing, which includes multiple EU states, the uk, Norway, Iceland and Turkey. And if Russia expanded or sustained its attacks, the framework envisions a broader Western backed military response incorporating American forces triggered within 72 hours of the initial breach. All of this is unfolding as envoys from Kyiv, Moscow and Washington prepare to meet in Abu Dhabi today and Thursday for talks aimed at ending the war. Western officials say those talks only matter if there's a clear answer to a question that has haunted every past ceasefire. What happens when Russia violates it? All of this was unfolding as Russia moved in the opposite direction. Well, now there's a surprise. Overnight into Tuesday, Russia launched its largest aerial assault of the year, firing 71 missiles and 450 drones at Ukraine, according to the Ukrainian Air Force. Now, while most were intercepted or suppressed, 27 missiles and 31 drones struck targets across 27 locations, injuring at least nine civilians and making it the heaviest single night barrage since late December. Ukrainian President Zelensky wrote in a post on telegram that the attack was focused on critical energy infrastructure, accusing Russia of deliberately exploiting extreme weather conditions to terrorize civilians. Zelenskyy called on the international community to apply maximum pressure on Moscow, writing that without pressure on Russia, there will be no end to this war, referencing continued Western arms shipments as well. Ukrainian energy officials backed that assessment. The country's energy Ministry said thermal power plants supplying Ky Kharkiv in Dnipro were among the targets, stressing that strikes were exclusively civilian in nature. Dtek, which is Ukraine's largest private energy producer, reported damage to its facilities, calling the assault the ninth major strike on its thermal plant since October of 2025. Emergency outages were imposed in parts of Kyiv, Kharkiv and Odesa to bring systems back online. Meanwhile, there's a different message from the Kremlin. Russia's Defense Ministry claimed its forces carried out a massive strike against Ukraine's military industrial complex and associated energy facilities. Ukrainian officials, of course, rejected that characterization, pointing instead to damaged residential buildings and civilian infrastructure as evidence that Moscow's targets once again extended well beyond any military justification. And that detail carries weight. The attack came just days after the expiration of a brief White House brokered pause on strikes against energy infrastructure. Moscow said that the pause lapsed on Sunday. Ukrainian officials accused Russia of using the lull not to support diplomacy, but instead to stockpile missiles and drones. All of this played out even as diplomatic momentum appeared, well, at least on paper, to be building. NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte visited Kyiv Tuesday and told Ukrainian lawmakers that important progress had been made in establishing trilateral US Ukraine Russia talks. But he added a blunt caveat that cut through the optimism, stating, quote, russia continues to attack. This demonstrates their lack of seriousness about peace. End quote. And for that, we award Mark Ruta today's PDB statement of the obvious award. Congratulations, Secretary General. Your Certificate suitable for framing is in the mail. That contradiction sits at the heart of the emerging ceasefire enforcement plan. Ukrainian and Western officials argue that Moscow's pattern of diplomatic engagement followed by military escalation is unmistakable and that any truce will hold only if violations are met with clear, rapid and escalating consequences designed to confront the aggression head on. Okay, shifting gears, there's a major deadline approaching that hasn't really gotten much attention. The New START Treaty, as it's known, expires Thursday, officially ending the last nuclear arms control limits between Washington and Moscow. Now you could ask, does this really matter? And when the calendar flips to Friday, will anything actually change? On paper, the consequences sound dramatic. Once New Start expires, there are no inspections, no formal data exchanges, and no legally binding caps on how many strategic nuclear warheads either Russia or the US can deploy. That may seem serious, but the reality is in fact more complicated. To understand why, it helps to step back and look at what New Start was. The treaty was signed in 2010 by then President Barack Obama and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and entered into force the following year. The framework was the latest in a long line of Cold War era arms control agreements designed to limit the most destructive category of nuclear weapons and introduce predictability into the US Russian nuclear balance. Under New Start, both countries agreed to deploy no more than 1,550 strategic nuclear warheads. Makes you wonder how they came up with that number. Cap deployed intercontinental ballistic missiles, submarine launched ballistic missiles and heavy bombers at 700 and limit total launchers deployed and non deployed to 800. These were not abstract targets. They were hard ceilings meant to prevent unchecked expansion at the top end of each arsenal. Just as important as the numbers was how they were enforced. The treaty allowed for up to 18 on site inspections each year conducted with minimal notice. Inspectors could verify warhead counts, delivery systems and declared facilities, creating a level of transparency that went well beyond intelligence estimates alone. That verification regime is what turned newstart from a political promise into a functioning arms control system. That's also the part that began to erode. First inspections were suspended in March 2020 due to the COVID 19 pandemic. And they never resumed. Yes, because you wouldn't want to have to wear a mask and stand six feet apart while counting nukes. That seems almost impossible to do. Then in 2023, Russian President Vladimir Putin suspended Moscow's participation in the treaty, halting inspections and data sharing while technically remaining a party to the agreement. From that point on, both Washington and Moscow relied on national Intelligence, not inspectors on the ground to assess compliance. Despite that breakdown, neither side accused the other of exceeding the treaty's warhead limits. Both countries continued to observe those limits informally even as the enforcement mechanisms behind them faded. In practice, much of the system already stopped functioning. Now, I want to point out that the treaty's expiration doesn't immediately change behavior. There's no automatic surge in warhead deployments anticipated for Friday morning. But what does change is what disappears along with it. Once New Start lapses even informal restraints, they lose their anchor. There's no agreed ceiling. There's no shared framework, and there's no sense of obligation to stay within past boundaries. The US and Russia together possess roughly 90% of the world's nuclear warheads. That's according to the center for Arms Control and Non Proliferation. The group estimates Russia holds over 5400 warheads, with roughly 1600 deployed, while the US maintains approximately 5550 warheads. That's a lot of warheads, with about 3800 of those being active. President Trump has made clear that he views the treaty less as something to extend and more as something to replace. In a January interview with the New York Times, Trump said, if it expires, it expires. We'll just do a better agreement. Moscow's messaging, by contrast, has been mixed. Putin last year floated the idea of informally continuing to observe warhead limits for another year. At other times, he downplayed the treaty's importance, citing Russia's development of new weapons. So in that sense, New Start's expiration doesn't spark a crisis overnight. It formalizes a shift years in the making from rules and verification to deterrence driven by intelligence and hopefully restraint. Okay, coming up in today's Back of the Brief, the partial government shutdown ends well, huzzah. With DHS funding, though, still in question. More on that when we come back. Hey, Mike Baker here. Let me take just a moment to talk personal finances. 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For a limited time, our PDB listeners get 10% off at Ridge by using code PDB at checkout. Just head on over to ridge.com that's R I D G E just like you would think. Ridge.com and use the code PDB and you're all set. After you purchase, well, they'll ask you what you heard about them. Do me a favor, tell them the PDB sent you in today's back of the brief. The partial government shutdown is now officially over. The House has passed a spending package that reopens major parts of the federal government after funding lapsed over the weekend. President Trump then signed the legislation formally ending the shutdown that began when Appropriations expired. The legislation restores funding for much of the federal government through the 30th of September. That's the end of the current fiscal year. That includes the Pentagon, the State Department, the Treasury Department, and the Departments of Education and Labor. Under the measure, federal operations across those agencies can now resume without interruption. But the bill treats the Department of Homeland Security, or dhs, differently. Funding for DHS is only extended on a short term basis through the end of next week. Yeah, that's pretty short term. That means the department, which oversees border security and immigration enforcement and counterterrorism operations, is facing another funding deadline in roughly 10 days. In effect, the shutdown has ended, but another, albeit for dhs, is looming on the horizon. The short extension gives lawmakers limited time, obviously to negotiate a longer term funding solution specifically for the Department of Homeland Security. If no agreement is reached by that deadline, DHS funding would lapse again, potentially triggering another targeted shutdown affecting homeland security operations. The spending package also sets overall funding levels largely in line with current spending, rejecting deeper cuts that had been proposed earlier. Instead, it includes modest across the board reductions for many agencies aimed at keeping government operations running while broader budget negotiations continue. With the immediate funding crunch resolved, attention now shifts to the unresolved questions surrounding dhs. At the center of those talks are conditions tied to immigration enforcement, oversight and accountability. While some operational changes have already been announced, including expanded use of body cameras for immigration officers, no comprehensive agreement has been reached on longer term funding or policy adjustments. That means the clock is now ticking. Lawmakers have that 10 day period to reach a deal that would keep the Department of Homeland Security funded beyond the current stopgap. If they fail, DHS once again faces a funding lapse. So while today's vote brings an end to the current shutdown, obviously it doesn't fully resolve the broader funding fight. And that, my friends, is the President's Daily brief for Wednesday 4th February. If you have any questions or comments, and I hope you do, please reach out to me@pdbhefirsttv.com and I hope you'll check out our YouTube channel. Just wander on over to YouTube and search up Presidence Daily Brief if you like what you see. Well be bold and hit that subscribe button. The entire PDB production team really appreciates your support. I'm Mike Baker and I'll be back later today with the PDB Afternoon bulletin. Until then, stay informed, stay safe, stay cool.