United States

The United States launched Operation Epic Fury alongside Israel on 28 February 2026, striking IRGC infrastructure across Iran at a rate of $900 million per day; CSIS estimated the cost at $19 billion after three weeks, and Defense Secretary Hegseth told HASC on 29 April that the total has reached $25 billion. By Day 80 (18 May 2026), the White House presidential-actions index still recorded zero signed Iran executive instruments across the entire conflict, spanning a 15,000-personnel CENTCOM escort announcement, Operation EPIC FURY, a naval blockade declaration, and Project Freedom. Every operational announcement has emerged from Truth Social posts.

On 19 April, Treasury extended Russia's GL-134B seaborne-oil waiver while Iran's GL-U lapsed the same day, the first signed evidence of differential treatment between the two wars. CENTCOM's blockade intercept count has reached 58+ vessels; the War Powers Resolution operative cliff under Section 1544(b) sits at approximately 1 June. Senator Murkowski's Iran AUMF remained unfiled through Day 80; Defense Secretary Hegseth testified under oath on 12 May that Article 2 covers the Iran strikes and a congressional authorisation is unnecessary. The House voted 212-212 on a third War Powers Resolution in mid-May, a tied vote that fails, with no presidential response. The US is co-hosting the 2026 FIFA World Cup while operating a wartime blockade; its travel ban bars tourist visas from multiple nations, creating a co-host credibility gap. The group stage closed on 27 June with an all-time FIFA attendance record across all 11 US host cities , though the record was shadowed by Iran's squad facing a 24-hour Visa protocol applied to no other nation, with 14 support staff denied entry before the tournament.

The US operates across 16 Lowdown topics in 2026. On trade, tariff policy drove economic approval to 31 percent. On AI and technology, the CHIPS Act implementation continues alongside the Iran-related OFAC designation of a Chinese commercial satellite firm, the first such designation. On FIFA, the travel ban conflict has produced a legal challenge by rights group FairSquare. The Iran war's fiscal and constitutional footprint intersects every other topic the US government is managing simultaneously.

On Cuba, the US opened a third parallel sanctions programme in May 2026 with Executive Order 14404 (1 May), authorising personal SDN designations against named officials and their adult relatives. Ania Guillermina Lastres Morera became the first individual designated under EO 14404 on 7 May, with Cuba General License 1 issued the same day as a savings clause aligning the new order with the Cuban Assets Control Regulations. Diplomatically, three authoring officials now run parallel Cuba tracks: Treasury Secretary Bessent (personal sanctions), Secretary Rubio (Vatican humanitarian channel after 9 May audience with Pope Leo XIV), and the State Department (bilateral channel opened 10 April). Congressional opposition broadened on 14 May when 32 House Democrats led by Rep. Delia Ramirez sent a letter warning against US military action against Cuba, joining the Senate cohort behind S.J.Res.124.

On Ukraine, the US Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control Left the crude-oil waiver, General License 134C, lapsed for 26 days as of 13 July 2026, the longest gap of the war, with no successor licence issued. Washington's diminished centrality was underlined days earlier at NATO's Ankara summit, where allies pledged EUR 70bn in 2026 military support for Ukraine; the declaration's own text states European Allies and Canada now finance the "vast majority" of that assistance, the American share receding into NATO's own wording rather than an outside inference.

On the domestic front, US measles cases are on pace in 2026 to exceed 2025's total, which was already the highest since the disease was declared eliminated in 1991 . A confirmed exposure at a US airport terminal in July prompted contact-tracing alerts, while a separate suspected cluster in Philadelphia was investigated and stood down after testing ruled out further transmission . The CDC's modelling of the unrelated Bundibugyo Ebola outbreak in DR Congo, built around an R0 of 2.51 and a 70 percent isolation threshold, has become a reference framework cited in wider discussions of outbreak response capacity, though the measles resurgence and the African Ebola outbreak remain epidemiologically distinct events.