Russian President Vladimir Putin’s visit to Pyongyang culminated Wednesday with the signing of a major new partnership deal, believed to be the strongest since the end of the Cold War more than three decades ago. The pact includes a vow of mutual aid if either country is attacked. It’s the next step in the growing military relationship between the two countries, one that is of deep concern across the U.S. national security sphere.

But Mr. Putin doesn’t seem to see the two nations as equals. Washington Times Asia Editor Andrew Salmon has a unique look at the meeting between Mr. Putin and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un. Mr. Putin’s late arrival in Pyongyang — in the early hours of Wednesday morning, rather than on Tuesday as planned — looks like an assertion of primacy over his host, Mr. Salmon writes. And it may have been aimed at his domestic audience, as Mr. Kim leads a country that Moscow has been forced to turn to for ammunition, but which Soviets and Russians customarily looked down upon for its oddness and backwardness.

At the center of the Putin-Kim meeting is Russia’s dire need for more North Korean weapons and ammunition for its war in Ukraine. U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Tuesday vowed that the U.S. will “continue to do everything we can to cut off the support that countries like Iran and North Korea are providing,” though it’s not clear how much more Washington can do. 

For Moscow and Pyongyang, the current arrangement serves both of their interests. Former CIA official Joseph R. DeTrani writes in an op-ed for The Times that “Mr. Putin probably views this enhanced relationship with North Korea as a positive development: help with weapons for the war in Ukraine and claiming an ally in his confrontation with the U.S. and NATO.”

“For North Korea, it is an ephemeral victory. It is aligned with a revanchist Russian Federation and a leader who is bent on recreating the Russian empire,” Mr. DeTrani writes. “What that translates into is a Russia that will persist with wars of aggression and resultant alienation from the international community.”

Israel is taking fire from all sides, figuratively and literally. Just days after Benjamin Netanyahu dissolved the country’s three-man War Cabinet, the Israeli prime minister on Tuesday blasted the Biden administration for the “inconceivable” decision to withhold weapons and ammunition from Israel for its war against Hamas. 

The White House pushed back on that characterization. White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said the administration doesn’t know what Mr. Netanyahu is talking about, though she acknowledged one delay in weapons deliveries to Israel, presumably meant to express the administration’s frustration with Israel’s tactics in Gaza. 

The administration also reportedly canceled a meeting with key Israeli officials scheduled for Thursday to demonstrate its displeasure with Mr. Netanyahu’s criticism. Axios first reported the development.

Tensions between the two nations keep escalating. The Wall Street Journal, citing U.S. officials, reported late Tuesday that the administration hasn’t moved forward with the sale of a fleet of F-15 jet fighters to Israel, even after congressional leaders agreed to allow the major weapons deal to proceed last month. The reports, which quickly circulated across Israeli media, could deepen the rift between the Netanyahu and Biden camps at a crucial moment for Israel.

And if that weren’t enough, the United Nations once again took Israel to task on Wednesday. The U.N. Human Rights Office said Israel’s bombing campaign against Hamas in the Gaza Strip “raises serious concerns” about violations of rules of war. 

The likelihood of a full-blown war between Israel and Hezbollah seems to grow more likely each day. Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz on Wednesday warned that “we are very close to the moment of decision to change the rules against Hezbollah and Lebanon.”

“In an all-out war, Hezbollah will be destroyed and Lebanon will be severely hit,” he wrote on social media.

The Lebanon-based group’s fighters are widely considered to be better trained and better armed than those of Hamas, meaning that a war between Israel and Hezbollah could be far more deadly and destructive than the ongoing campaign in Gaza. Hezbollah officials said Wednesday that Israeli strikes killed three of its fighters along the Israel-Lebanon border region, the latest in a series of increasingly serious clashes between the two sides. 

Whether it’s Hamas or Hezbollah, any attempts by Israel to make peace or strike cease-fire deals with an Iranian proxy group are useless — or worse, lethal traps. That’s the take from Clifford D. May, founder and president of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, who writes for The Times that at some point, Israel will need to attend to unfinished business with the patron of both terrorist groups, the jihadi and genocidal regime in Tehran.

Another of Iran’s proxy forces, the Yemen-based Houthi rebels, may have drawn the U.S. into yet another endless war in the Middle East. Military correspondent Mike Glenn offers a deep dive into the ongoing U.S.-led mission to stop the Houthis’ attacks on commercial shipping lanes in and around the Red Sea.

The key point: Despite the massive U.S. and international naval coalition arrayed against them, the Houthis are keeping up their barrage and succeeding in creating a vast disruption in international shipping patterns. 

The U.S. and its allies have launched some 450 strikes against Houthi positions along the Yemeni coastline, including some of the most intensive sorties just in the past few weeks. But the Houthis’ ability to cause death and destruction was once again on display in recent days. The British bulk carrier The Tutor sank in the Red Sea days after an attack by the Houthis. At least one mariner was killed, British authorities said. 

The Defense Security Cooperation Agency announced late Tuesday that the Biden administration has approved a potential sale of Switchblade 300 attack drones to Taiwan. The sale could be worth about $60 million, the federal government said. The DSCA said “the proposed sale will improve the recipient’s ability to meet current and future threats.”

The transfer of major U.S. arms to Taiwan comes amid growing fears that China could launch an assault against the island democracy sometime in the next few years. Small armed drones such as the Switchblade have already been used extensively in Ukraine’s war against Russia.

Wahid Nawabi, CEO of the company AeroVironment, which makes the Switchblade, spoke to Mr. Wolfgang on a recent episode of the “Threat Status Podcast” and talked in detail about the product and the role it will play in wars of the future. 

• June 20 — Nuclear Weapons and Foreign Policy: A Conversation with HPSCI Chairman Mike Turner, Center for Strategic and International Studies

• June 21 — AUKUS: Taking Stock and Looking Forward, Center for a New American Security

• June 24 — Israeli-Saudi Normalization: An Effective Incentive for Israeli-Palestinian Peacemaking? Middle East Institute

• June 25 — 2024 Freedom and Prosperity Indexes launch, Atlantic Council

• June 25 — AI in the Field of Economic Development, Center for Strategic and International Studies

• June 25 — Korean War Legacies: Healing the Trauma of Korean American Family Separation, U.S. Institute of Peace