Welcome back to Foreign Policy’s SitRep! Robbie and Jack here. We have reversed roles from the summer: Robbie is back in Washington chasing down U.S. officials and congressional aides, while Jack is in the airport between Sweden and Brussels after a week in the aspiring NATO country.

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Alright, here’s what’s on tap for the day: The U.S. is playing a high-stakes game in the Strait of Hormuz with Iran, China’s top diplomat is coming to America, and Russia’s wounded Black Sea Fleet is limping away from a key base in Crimea.

High-Stakes Games on the Straits

In the early hours of July 5, U.S. Naval Forces Central Command received a frantic distress call from an oil tanker navigating the Strait of Hormuz. The TRF Moss signaled that an Iranian naval vessel was fast approaching, with apparent plans to board and seize the tanker.

The Navy quickly dispatched a small task force to head off the seizure, including the USS McFaul, a guided missile destroyer, a P-8 maritime patrol aircraft, and an MQ-9 Reaper drone. The Iranian vessel retreated.

And then, hours later, it happened again. The USS McFaul rushed to the scene of the Richmond Voyager, another tanker in the same vicinity, after receiving a distress call that the Iranian Navy was attempting to stop it, firing long bursts across the bow of the ship and at one point hitting it. Again, the McFaul chased off the vessel. (After the incident, Iran said it had a court order to seize the tanker.)

Cat and mouse. The incidents are emblematic of the high-stakes geopolitical game of cat and mouse that the U.S. military is playing with Iran around the Strait of Hormuz, the strategic chokepoint connecting the Persian Gulf and Gulf of Oman, through which an estimated 20 percent to 30 percent of the world’s total oil consumption.

A new tracker. The Foundation for Defense of Democracies has released a new interactive study tracking all the confirmed incidents of Iran seizing or attempting to seize vessels, as well as showdowns between Iranian and U.S. Navy vessels. Between January 2021 and July 2023 alone, there were 26 such incidents, ranging from a suicide drone attack on an Israeli-owned tanker to Iranian patrol boats buzzing U.S. naval ships.

At one point in September 2022, an Iranian vessel in the Red Sea seized two U.S. unmanned surface drones for nearly 18 hours before the U.S. Navy negotiated their release after dispatching two U.S. destroyers nearby. (The drones were missing their cameras when they were given back.)

The tracker sheds new light on how Iran is once again playing spoiler in the strait as it feels the squeeze of Western sanctions, prompting the United States to allocate more resources to the Persian Gulf at a time when policymakers are itching to redirect resources to countering China in the Indo-Pacific and Russia in Europe.

Near misses. Future incidents could spark a new showdown between U.S. forces and Iran, as tensions mount between the West and Tehran over its uranium enrichment program and blossoming military partnership with Russia. Iran is continuing to feed drones and other military supplies to Moscow for its war in Ukraine.

Bulking up in the Mideast (…again). The U.S. military has begun slowly building up its presence in the Middle East again in the wake of Iran’s campaign to harass and seize ships navigating the Strait of Hormuz, including in recent months dispatching a Marine Expeditionary Unit, with some 3,000 Marines and sailors, to the Persian Gulf in a bid to deter Iran from expanding its campaign of targeting commercial shipping.

The new military buildup shows how it’s much easier for officials in Washington to talk about quitting military entanglements in the Middle East than it is to actually do so.

Still, keeping shipping lanes in the Strait of Hormuz open remains a top strategic priority for the United States, given its strategic role in ensuring the free flow of oil and other commodities, which is already under immense pressure in the wake of the war in Ukraine.

Who gets the last laugh? The United States, meanwhile, has been sitting on a massive stockpile of Iranian assault rifles and ammunition it seized from Iranian vessels en route to Yemen to supply Iran-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen’s conflict. On Wednesday, the Pentagon announced it had transferred over a million rounds of small arms ammunition to Ukraine earlier in the week. No word when other weapons seized from the Iranians will get into Ukrainian troops’ hands, though.

Let’s Get Personnel

Republican Rep. Kevin McCarthy has been voted out of his job as House Speaker after a dramatic showdown with a small faction of the GOP House majority. (The fallout will make allocating funding for more U.S. military aid for Ukraine incredibly difficult, as we report this week.)

U.S. President Joe Biden’s former undersecretary of defense for policy, Colin Kahl, has joined the Brookings Institution think tank as a scholar in residence.

Arms control expert Jon B. Wolfsthal has joined the Federation of American Scientists as director of global risk.

On the Button

What should be high on your radar, if it isn’t already.

Can we just talk? China’s top diplomat is headed to Washington later this month, diplomatic sources confirmed to Robbie and our colleague Christina Lu. Foreign Minister Wang Yi’s visit to Washington will likely lay the groundwork for a highly anticipated meeting between Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping at a major diplomatic summit in San Francisco next month. The Biden administration has been trying to dial down the roiling tensions with its arch geopolitical foe in the east through a series of high-level meetings in recent months. But given the way the geopolitical headwinds are blowing, it’s unclear if more meetings can patch things up.

White flag. Russia has withdrawn the bulk of the Black Sea Fleet from its main naval base at Sevastopol in Kremlin-occupied Crimea after repeated strikes from Ukrainian troops, the Wall Street Journal reports. Satellite imagery indicates that Russia has withdrawn three Kilo-class submarines, two guided-missile frigates, and a patrol ship, just days after a Ukrainian strike pummeled and seriously damaged the headquarters for the wounded fleet, which lost its flagship, Moskva, to another missile shot from Kyiv in April 2022. More to come on this story as Jack travels around Europe for the next week.

Gun running. Israeli weapons helped to fuel Azerbaijan’s lightning campaign to take the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh region from Armenia, The Associated Press reports. Azerbaijani planes traveled to southern Israel to load up on weapons in the weeks before launching its September offensive, according to flight data reviewed by the wire service, angering Armenian officials. At least 200 people have been killed in the current round of fighting in the ethnic Armenian area, forcing nearly 80 percent of Armenian residents to flee.

Snapshot

Put on Your Radar

Friday, Oct. 6: The Nobel Peace Prize winner is announced.

Sunday, Oct. 8: Argentina’s presidential candidates debate. Luxembourg holds parliamentary elections.

Monday, Oct. 9: French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz co-chair the two-day Franco-German Ministerial Council. The International Monetary Fund and World Bank Group begin their weeklong annual meetings.

Tuesday, Oct. 10: Liberia holds general elections.

Quote of the Week

“Congressman Bowman did not realize he would trigger a building alarm as he was rushing to make an urgent vote. The Congressman regrets any confusion.”

—A spokesperson for Rep. Jamaal Bowman explains why the New York representative decided to pull a fire alarm during the chaos of Capitol Hill negotiations to prevent a government shutdown this weekend.

This Week’s Most Read

• The Scrambled Spectrum of U.S. Foreign-Policy Thinking by Ash Jain
• The Biden Administration Is Addicted to Partnerships by Stephen M. Walt
• Blue Hawk Down by Robbie Gramer

Whiskey Tango Foxtrot

Driving with the enemy. Ukrainian Tesla drivers insist they bought their cars before they knew Elon Musk was so inimical to Kyiv. Some are even marking up their cars just to make the point.