Welcome back to World Brief, where we’re looking at reduced U.S.-South Korean military exercises, White House threats on Iran and Oman, and a renewed push for Israel-Hamas peace talks.

Joint U.S.-South Korean military exercises were just getting started early Monday when the White House issued a shocking about-face. Mere hours into the event, U.S. President Donald Trump ordered the Defense Department to scale back the 11-day Ulchi Freedom Shield drills, citing Seoul’s alleged failure to adequately help the United States combat Iran and his “very good relationship” with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.

Welcome back to World Brief, where we’re looking at reduced U.S.-South Korean military exercises, White House threats on Iran and Oman, and a renewed push for Israel-Hamas peace talks.

Joint U.S.-South Korean military exercises were just getting started early Monday when the White House issued a shocking about-face. Mere hours into the event, U.S. President Donald Trump ordered the Defense Department to scale back the 11-day Ulchi Freedom Shield drills, citing Seoul’s alleged failure to adequately help the United States combat Iran and his “very good relationship” with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.

“These exercises are not only costly, with much of these costs paid for by the United States of America (as usual!), but send a signal that is totally inappropriate and hostile, to a Country that, as long as Donald J. Trump has been President, has been unthreatening and respectful,” Trump wrote on Truth Social on Monday.

The U.S. president also claimed that South Korean President Lee Jae-myung said “No thanks!” when asked to join the United States in what Trump called the “denuclearization” of Iran.

Washington has previously viewed Ulchi Freedom Shield as an opportunity to reinforce the U.S.-South Korean alliance as the “linchpin for regional peace and security” and to reaffirm “the ironclad commitment between the United States and the Republic of Korea to defend their homelands.”

However, Monday’s downsizing instead transformed the annual event into another instance of the White House punishing an........

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