Iran

In Wilbur Ross' first public announcement, the former hedge fund manger and current Trump commerce secretary announced that China's telecommunications giant ZTE has agreed to pay a total of $1.2 billion in penalties and plead guilty to violating U.S. sanctions on Iran, selling US technology to Tehran, and obstructing a federal investigation, ending a five-year probe that has raised trade tensions between the U.S. and China. The penalty was among the largest ever in a sanctions case.

Trump's geopolitical headaches continue to mount.

One day after North Korea launched 4 ballistic missiles, 3 of which fell into the East Sea inside Japan's economic exclusion zone, and which have painted a spotlight on how Trump will react to this latest provocation, Fox reports that Iran also test-fired a pair of ballistic missiles this weekend into the Gulf of Oman, with one missile destroying a floating barge approximately 155 miles away.

Iran has successfully test-fired a sophisticated, Russian-supplied S-300 air defense system, the official IRNA news agency reported on Saturday. The drill took place during a recent military exercise named Damvand, and was attended by senior military commanders and officials according to Tasnim.

Iran has staged a large scale military drill over a 2 million sq. kilometre area along the country’s southeastern coast. The final phase of operation “Velayat-e 95” began Sunday, with Iranian naval forces staging war games from the mouth of the Persian Gulf to the north of the Indian Ocean. It comes at a time when U.S. President Donald Trump has put Iran “on notice” by telling the Islamic Republic to stop “playing with fire,” while U.S. naval deployment has been concentrated more on dealing with China.

With little active US presence in the region (see latest naval map below), on Sunday Iran launched a massive naval drill at the mouth of the Gulf and the Indian Ocean. Ships, submarines and helicopters will take part in the drills across an area of about 2 million square kilometers (772,000 square miles) and marines will showcase their skills along Iran's southeastern coast, the state news agency IRNA said even as tensions with the United States continue to build after U.S President Donald Trump put Tehran "on notice".