So are we just watching the usual early chaos before things stabilize, like we saw with Israel and Hamas?

Or did the US, Israel, and Iran simply need a breather to regroup, reposition, and prepare for whatever comes next?

A hacker says they broke into a state-run Tianjin supercomputer.

They allegedly stole more than 10 petabytes of data.

A Telegram account calling itself FlamingChina posted sample files on February 6.

Sample defense files include missile schematics and secret documents.

Experts who reviewed the samples think the leak looks real.

The hacker claims they got in through a compromised VPN and pulled data out for six months.

China hasn't publicly explained what happened.

Trump met with NATO chief Mark Rutte in Washington on Wednesday.

Before the meeting, the White House said one of the topics on the table was a possible US withdrawal from NATO.

In a post-meeting interview, Rutte said Trump was "clearly disappointed with many NATO allies."

Critics keep pointing to the 2023 law saying a president cannot just pull the US out of NATO without Congress signing off.

Note: Analysts argue that the US would not need to formally leave NATO, but it could just start pulling troops out of the region instead.

Right now, I’m normally sending around 3–4 a.m. Eastern Time so it’s ready for a quick morning read.

That said, some of you have mentioned you’d rather read it at night as a wrap-up after work.

Note: Today, I sent it out at 12 am so you can see if the timing and visibility feel better at this hour.

All versions of the 10-point proposal Iran released today includes the cessation of Israel's attack against Hezbollah in Lebanon.

However, both Israel and the US dispute this.

But supposedly because of Israel's continued attack against Lebanon, Iran is continuing to fire missiles and drones at surrounding countries like the Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and the UAE.

Meanwhile, some outlets are also reporting that Iran closed the Strait of Hormuz, which is supposedly the key conditions keeping this ceasefire from totally collapsing.

But then the White House pushed back on that too, with the press secretary saying they are actually seeing increased traffic in the area.

Media propagated it as if the US accepted that public proposal (some English versions didn’t include Iran’s demand for continued nuclear enrichment).

Press Secretary Leavitt said that Iran original put forward an “unworkable” 10-point proposal, which was promptly thrown in the trash by Trump.

VP Vance backed that up too, saying there are multiple versions of it floating around, which are all false.

In response to US objections, Iran later submitted a more condensed proposal that the White House described as more reasonable.

Leavitt said the real talks are still happening privately.

He announced that the US will immediately tariff countries that supply military weapons to Iran.

But remember points 7 and 8? "Lift all US primary/secondary sanctions on Iran."

Is Trump publicly trashing Iran’s proposal ahead of Friday’s proposed Islamabad talks, trying to box them in before negotiations? Or is he slowly laying the groundwork for restarting attacks once the US is done repositioning and reworking the strategy?

But since the US says these public versions are not the ones actually being worked out behind closed doors, all anyone can really do right now is wait and see.

Later reports said some demonstrators were chanting, “Death to America, death to Israel, death to compromisers!” and kept going even when organizers tried to settle things down.

At the same time, other footage seemed to show some pro-regime crowds looking more relieved than anything.

Either way, one thing people were worried about seems to be playing out: surrounding Arab states are seeing pro-regime hardliners in Iran come out more emboldened.