Days before launching Operation Epic Fury on February 28, US President Donald Trump was reportedly warned by then-Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard that killing Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei would backfire by installing a more hardline successor eager for nuclear weapons.

Gabbard briefed Trump that attack on Iran will trigger the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, destabilize global energy markets, and prompt Iranian retaliation against U.S. forces and Gulf allies.

Despite these explicit intelligence assessments and similar cautions from Vice President JD Vance and senior military leaders regarding potential casualties and depleted stockpiles, Trump proceeded with the strikes, persuaded by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Dan Caine who argued for decisive military strikes.

The war has resulted in the death of Khamenei on the first day but failed to topple the regime or achieve a quick resolution as initially promised. The conflict is in its sixth month with 18 U.S. service members killed, 3,000 Iranians dead, and significant economic fallout including high oil prices and damaged American assets.

Gabbard, who had previously clashed with Trump over Iran’s nuclear timeline and was sidelined from pre-war planning, left the administration in May 2026, while the White House now faces pressure from Gulf allies and domestic political concerns to end a war that intelligence had predicted would have unwieldy consequences.

U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent on Monday, announced "Operation Economic Outcast," an "unprecedented" sanctions campaign described as an "economic D-Day" designed to sever every global financial lifeline sustaining the Iranian regime.

The initiative targets five critical sectors—digital assets, technology, gold, aviation, and shipping—and immediately sanctioned over 60 entities, individuals, and vessels involved in Iran's nuclear procurement, cyber operations, and oil smuggling.

Bessent said the operation presents a choice for the world: nations aligning with the U.S. will reap partnership rewards, while those maintaining economic ties with Tehran will face secondary sanctions** and isolation.

The Treasury Department asserted it has mapped every node and facilitator in Iran's evasion network, demanding that countries shut down identified activities within a defined but undisclosed timeline. Specific directives included the requirement that every branch of Bank Melli must be shuttered, with Bessent previewing a major sanction against a non-compliant financial institution by the end of the week.

While Bessent warned that "no one is above the reach of U.S. sanctions," including potential removal from the U.S. dollar system, the announcement stopped short of naming specific major Chinese banks, and offering a brief window for "quiet diplomacy" before further enforcement, ahead of a planned summit between President Donald Trump and President Xi Jinping.

In response, Iran stated it is "fully prepared" to counter with a two-year plan to manage the sanctions, relying on continued trade with China and Russia. Analysts note that the campaign's success hinges on whether China, which purchases roughly 90% of Iran's oil, complies with the U.S. demands.

China has vowed to take "all necessary measures" to safeguard its rights and interests if the United States expands secondary sanctions on Chinese entities trading with Iran. Foreign Ministry spokesperson Lin Jian said on Tuesday, that Beijing firmly opposes these "illegal unilateral sanctions" and warned that economic warfare would only intensify global tensions.

In response to previous US pressure, Beijing has already instructed domestic companies to ignore American sanctions and activated legal frameworks designed to neutralize foreign restrictions on Chinese firms.

Monday's announcement occurs amid a six-month war between the U.S./Israel and Iran, which has disrupted global energy markets and blocked the Strait of Hormuz.

SpaceX and Nvidia have officially partnered to deploy a space-optimized Vera Rubin NVL72 system into orbit, with the first launch targeted for Q4 2027 and significant scaling planned for 2028.

Announced on Monday, this initiative marks the first attempt to place a full rack-scale AI training and inference node in space, extending Nvidia's terrestrial "AI factory" architecture to SpaceX's Starmind satellite constellation. CEO Elon Musk confirmed that the company will exclusively use Nvidia hardware going forward, citing the Vera Rubin architecture as the "best AI computer" available for both ground and orbital operations.

The orbital system leverages the Vera Rubin NVL72 platform, which integrates 72 Rubin GPUs and 36 Vera CPUs connected via NVLink 6 into a shared-memory fabric. The Vera CPU, described as the first processor built specifically for AI agents, features 88 custom Olympus cores and 1.2 TB/s of memory bandwidth, claimed to complete agent tasks 1.8 times faster than comparable x86 processors. This infrastructure is intended to power the next generation of Grok's agentic AI applications, handling complex orchestration, code execution, and data processing directly in orbit to keep GPUs fully utilized.

The system aims to deliver up to 25 times more AI compute per GPU than previous space-based solutions like the H100, enabling real-time processing for geospatial intelligence and autonomous operations without relying on ground stations.

The core of this project is the Starmind AI satellite, which will house the adapted Vera Rubin NVL72 rack. Unlike traditional racks, this space-optimized version is designed to be simpler, lower cost, denser, and lighter, addressing unique orbital constraints such as power draw, thermal dissipation, radiation hardening, and physical integration.

This partnership extends xAI's infrastructure strategy, powering the Grok AI model both on Earth and in space. "SpaceX, in partnership with Nvidia, has designed a space-optimized Vera Rubin NVL72 system for launch to orbit in Q4 next year, with significant scale in 2028," Musk said. He has also said in a past X post the design is simpler, lower cost, and denser than traditional racks, making it suitable for both terrestrial gigawatt-scale data centers and orbital deployment.

This move aims to bypass terrestrial constraints like grid interconnect timelines and cooling limits while creating a unified computing ecosystem across Earth and orbit.

"@SpaceX is deploying NVIDIA Vera to accelerate the orchestration, code execution, and data processing that powers its next generation of agentic AI — keeping GPUs fed and agents acting fast. From gigawatt AI factories to orbit. One NVIDIA architecture, everywhere" Nvidia wrote on X.