INTREP360 INTELLIGENCE REPORT
02.17.2026
February 17th, 2026
Greetings! Europe needs to find its Julius Caesar. The continent desperately needed him today in Geneva to destroy—allegorically speaking—the rickety diplomatic bridge leading into the city just as the real Caesar did in 58 B.C. when he destroyed the city’s bridge over the Rhône to stop the Helvetii horde from invading Gaul.
Today’s Helvetii?
Alarmingly, they are an Axis of Evil with Russia on one flank, Iran on the other & China funding both through oil & energy purchases. Ukraine is their intended Gaul. Iran’s nuclear weapons ambitions are their strategic check on Europe & the U.S.
Photo credit: Grok AI. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky as Julias Caesar.
Either both are stopped or this time the modern-day versions of the Helvetii might prevail in Europe & the Middle East.
To that end, Team Trump’s court jesters—Steve Witkoff & Jared Kushner—need to be stopped as well. They are in over their heads & continue to conflate global diplomacy as though it were as simple as a business deal.
Economic deals are only one aspect of a nation’s power & decision-making calculus. Witkoff & Kushner continue to fail to grasp that. Both men are so hyper-focused on achieving the end state—trillion-dollar deals—that they keep overlooking the military realities—present & future—on the ground.
Consider Ukraine.
It is abundantly clear that Russian President Vladimir Putin has zero interest in reaching a deal. Reappointing Vladimir Medinsky as his chief negotiator in Geneva was proof enough of that reality.
Medinsky is a hardliner. His job—undoubtedly—was to drag out negotiations to a halt & by all accounts he did just that. Earlier today, Barak Ravid––an Axios reporter––reported that U.S. officials claimed that peace negotiations between Russia & Ukraine got “stuck” & implied it was over the Donbas.
For Medinsky, it was mission accomplished. Well, sort of. His primary mission—in all likelihood—is to buy Putin more time.
Time to avoid U.S. secondary sanctions. More time to prevent Team Trump from dispatching Tomahawks to Ukraine.
Moscow buying time was also why Kirill Dmitriev—Putin’s special envoy to the U.S.—was dispatched to Miami in early February. We warned then that Dmitriev’s shadowy bromance with Witkoff would lead to nothing good.
It didn’t.
It led to Putin dangling a $12 trillion post-war deal to entice Team Trump into forcing Ukraine to capitulate over the Donbas.
However, as we have warned here & elsewhere, Putin’s offer really is one of fool’s gold. If it were ever turned into a deal, Russia would—like it always does—find a way out of it (if not with Trump, then a future U.S. administration).
Let’s be candid. Dmitriev’s offer was intended as a bribe. Nothing more, nothing less save that it would come at the cost of Ukraine’s sovereignty & Europe’s short- & long-term security for decades to come.
Fortunately—for Europe & the U.S.—Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is drawing a line in the sand over the Donbas. He also called out President Donald Trump for continuing to pressure him but not Putin.
Zelensky also made it clear that the Ukrainian people are not ready to concede the Donbas––especially its strategic defensive belts guarding Sumy, Kharkiv, Odesa & Kyiv––for a peace deal with Russia.
He noted that, “They will not forgive me. They will not forgive [the U.S.]” if Washington forces Ukraine to capitulate.
To put it succinctly, Zelensky has established his floor. Trump––as the part of him that takes pride in arguing ‘The Art of the Deal’––finally needs to recognize that Ukraine does have a negotiating floor no matter how much pressure the White House puts on Zelensky, his generals & the Ukrainian people.
Trump also must recognize that he has yet to find Putin’s floor because Team Trump keeps enabling Moscow to avoid that discussion.
Why?
It is—likely—partly strategy. But it is also because Witkoff & Kushner are out of their league here. They keep failing to see that Putin is negotiating from a military standpoint—both short- & long-term—and they are trying to strike a business deal.
The latter approach isn’t going to get the job done. Not in Ukraine & certainly not elsewhere in Gaza, Lebanon & Iran.
Witkoff & Kushner’s approach is good for only two things. Either wasting time or buying time. In the case of Russia, they are wasting time—and Ukrainian civilians continue to die & suffer because of it at the hands of Putin.
This wouldn’t be the first time. Given Hamas’ refusal to fully disarm as they agreed to last October in Sharm El Sheikh, Egypt, Witkoff & Kushner’s shiny new redevelopment plans for Gaza are going for naught.
You can’t strike business deals before wars—or in this case, a contained armed conflict—are won or ended. Skyscrapers, hotels by the sea, luxury apartment towers all brief well, however, none of it matters if the fighting continues.
To be blunt, both Witkoff & Kushner—seemingly—allow $ signs to blind them to the realities around them. In the case of Russia, it is Putin’s near daily war crimes.
In the Middle East, it is that Hamas isn’t interested in peace. Mahmoud Mardawi—a senior Hamas official—is only focused on finding a way for Hamas to survive & fight another day.
Elsewhere—in Lebanon—Hezbollah is taking a page out of Hamas’ playbook. They are also refusing to disarm despite the government of Lebanon insisting that they do so under the terms of their August 2025 ceasefire with Israel.
The Islamic Republic of Iran—or more specifically, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC)—is why. Hamas & Hezbollah—as part of Iran’s so-called ‘Axis of Resistance’—are likely going to be needed soon as part of a wider war between Tehran, Washington & likely Jerusalem as well.
Here perhaps—or at least—Witkoff & Kushner are likely playing useful fools by buying time for the U.S. to emplace sufficient military assets in the region to conduct sustained military operations while also protecting U.S. troops & our allies.
It is clear that Iran—as evinced by today’s meetings in Geneva—is simply trying to buy time as well. As David Albright—a physicist & nuclear arms expert—noted on X, Iran’s stalling in Geneva is allowing it time to bury its new Taleghan 2 facility in Parchin—a military complex located 20 miles southeast of Tehran.
Khamenei—however—is running out of time. As Howard Altman noted today at The War Zone, the U.S. is putting into place the “final pieces” needed to begin launching kinetic strikes against Iran—F-22 Raptors, F-16 Fighting Falcons, E-3 Sentry radar airplanes & even a U-2 Dragon Lady spy plane. Plus, the USS Gerald R. Ford should be on station in 10 days or so.
Putin & Chinese President Xi Jinping likely know it as well. Both countries—again—deployed naval forces to participate in a naval exercise called “Smart Control of the Strait of Hormuz.” Nice try but that will not work.
![Iranian military personnel take part in an exercise titled "Smart Control of the Strait of Hormuz", launched by the Naval Forces of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, is being carried out in the Persian Gulf and the Strait of Hormuz on February 16, 2026. [Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps - Anadolu Agency]](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!BJ9Q!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F58c16788-dcd6-4439-ab68-f3b25fb2f3f8_920x613.png "Iranian military personnel take part in an exercise titled \"Smart Control of the Strait of Hormuz\", launched by the Naval Forces of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, is being carried out in the Persian Gulf and the Strait of Hormuz on February 16, 2026. [Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps - Anadolu Agency]")
Photo credit: Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps – Anadolu Agency. IRGC naval forces taking part in the “Smart Control of the Strait of Hormuz” exercise on February 16th, 2026.
Khamenei likely knows time is soon up as well. Earlier today, Khamenei posted on X that, “Fine, an aircraft carrier is indeed a dangerous weapon, but more dangerous than the carrier is the weapon that can send that carrier to the bottom of the sea!”
That’s not likely to happen. That said, Khamenei—as we’ve pointed out frequently of late—is likely betting he & his regime can survive any new U.S. military strikes.
In that narrow area, he may be right. Regime change is never easy. Especially in a country the size of Iran.
Yet Europe is not fully on board with eliminating Iran’s nuclear weapons program let alone with regime change.
Perhaps that’s the tradeoff German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, French President Emmanuel Macron & British Prime Minister Keir Starmer should have sought to achieve during the 62nd Munich Security Conference last weekend in exchange for Team Trump upping Putin’s cost calculus in Ukraine.
Europe—in reality—already has its Caesar. His name is Zelensky. Unfortunately, London & Brussels keep undercutting him. No immediate accession to the European Union. No widespread support for Ukraine to immediately join NATO.
That needs to change. Zelensky’s legions are already fighting for Europe’s survival. When will Europe fight as hard for Ukraine’s?
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Jon & Mark
Follow Jon on X at @JESweet2022 or on Bluesky at @JonSweet.bsky.social.
Follow Mark on X at @MCTothSTL or on Bluesky at @MarkToth.bsky.social.