Indian Strategic Studies

8 March 2026

After Khamenei: China Is Watching, and So Should Taiwan

Charles Lyons Jones

The harder lesson from Iran may be what comes after a decapitation strike.

U.S.-led military operations against Iran – which began with a decapitation strike that killed the regime’s most senior leadership figures including Ayatollah Khamenei – will have far-reaching implications beyond the Middle East. For China, the U.S.-led campaign may prove a valuable lesson in how to disrupt continuity of government and the military chain-of-command during an invasion of Taiwan. But it may yet become a cautionary tale of what can go wrong after a successful decapitation strike.

The lessons for China’s military are clear. U.S. and Israeli forces were able to glean exquisite, time-sensitive and operationally relevant intelligence, which likely required a deft integration of signals intelligence, geospatial capabilities and well-placed human sources inside the orbit of Iran’s most senior leadership. Quick, streamlined processes for the collection, processing and assessment of intelligence, combined with seamless joint operations between U.S. and Israeli forces, likely proved critical to the success of recent decapitation strikes in Iran. Such capabilities will matter for any military operation against Taiwan.

Thirty Days: How Pakistan's Borrowed Energy Economy Meets America's War on Iran

The lights went out first in the power-loom streets of Faisalabad, then in a Karachi katchi abadi where a cheap Chinese fan froze above a child’s bed, and finally in the control room of a small textile mill in Lahore where the owner watched the gas pressure fall on a borrowed computer he could no longer afford to upgrade. In each place the explanation was the same: Pakistan’s energy system depends on imported fuel paid for with money it does not have, and the Iran-US-Israel war is turning that dependence into a noose.

Somewhere near the mouth of the Strait of Hormuz, a vessel named for that city of twenty million people sits at anchor, going nowhere. The MT Karachi, operated by the Pakistan National Shipping Corporation, is carrying the fuel those twenty million people need. A second PNSC tanker is stranded alongside it. A third cargo, mid-loading when American and Israeli aircraft struck Iran on February 28, will not sail under any condition the insurance market is currently willing to cover.

In Islamabad, a second emergency meeting has been convened. Petroleum Minister Ali Pervaiz Malik sits across from Finance Minister Muhammad Aurangzeb. The agenda is simple and terrible: what does Pakistan have, how long will it last, and what happens when it runs out.

China is about to show the world its plan to win the future

Simone McCarthy

China spent the last five years cultivating innovation and new technology at home. The next half decade will be dedicated to deploying the fruits of its labor to transform its economy – and its place in the world.

That’s set to be an overarching message as thousands of delegates from across China gather in the nation’s capital for the “Two Sessions” – a carefully choreographed annual meeting where the country’s leadership signals its priorities for the year ahead, and its rubber-stamp legislature approves them.

The pomp and ceremony of the gathering has long stood as a symbol of China’s tightly controlled political process, and Beijing’s authoritarian leaders are well aware of the juxtaposition that creates as the US, the world’s most powerful democracy, is riven with partisan infighting and engaged in another spiraling conflict in the Middle East.

The Costs of Militarized Rivalry with China: A First Estimate

This report provides the first estimate of the amount the U.S. has spent competing with China in the military domain over the period between 2012 and 2024. This period follows then-President Barack Obama’s November 2011 announcement of his intention to “pivot” U.S. attention from the Middle East toward Asia. In addition to Department of Defense spending, the analysis also includes relevant expenditures by the intelligence agencies, Department of Homeland Security, Department of Energy, and the State Department. The estimate is a best approximation of total spending focused on military competition with China – and excludes costs associated with economic or technological competition, for example. It also likely represents an undercount of the actual total China-focused military spending due to conservative methodological decisions made throughout the analysis.

Broken down by government agency, the Navy and Marine Corps are responsible for an estimated 33% of the total cost estimate for spending on militarized rivalry with China, followed by Defense Agencies (25%), the Air Force and Space Force (15%) and the Army (14%).

Iran Strike Exposes U.S. Capacity Vulnerabilities, Experts Say

Laura Heckmann

WASHINGTON, D.C. — Following the United States and Israel’s joint attack on Iran, known as Operation Epic Fury, experts speculated that the strike exposed weaknesses in U.S. capacity that could affect a potential conflict in the Indo-Pacific.

The Heritage Foundation recently released its annual index on U.S. military strength, with analysis divided into three sections: the global operating environment, threats to U.S. vital interests and U.S. military power.

In the 2026 analysis — the think tank’s 11th iteration — the report identified capacity as one of the military’s biggest hindrances to countering current threats, a vulnerability exposed by the recent Operation Epic Fury. The massive campaign launched Feb. 28 against Iran involved stealth bombers, fighter jets, drones and aircraft carriers across the Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps.

What We Know About Drone Use in the Iran War

Steve Feldstein and Dara Massicot

In its Iran attacks, the United States used low-cost one-way attack drones for the first time in combat, and Iran has been using its Shahed drones extensively with similar intent. Why is this noteworthy?

Steve Feldstein: There are two aspects here that I think are significant.

First, America’s adoption of one-way attack drones, derived from Iran’s Shahed-136 unit, shows that technological innovation doesn’t flow in a single direction from more advanced states to less advanced ones. Rather, it demonstrates that new innovations come from a variety of sources.

Iran’s designs have clearly showed their benefits, including in Ukraine, to the point where Russia has invested $2 billion in setting up a dedicated factory to produce these drone models (which it calls Geran-2 units). It should come as little surprise that the United States would emulate this design as well.

The Man Who Destroyed Iran

Karim Sadjadpour

In June 1989, when Ali Khamenei was elevated to the position of supreme leader of Iran, he let slip the sense of insecurity that would come to define his brutal 37-year reign.

“I am an individual with many faults and shortcomings,” he said in his inaugural address, and “truly a minor seminarian.” It was, at the time, an accurate self-assessment for a mid-ranking cleric in the hierarchical world of Shiite Islam.

Over the next four decades, this seemingly unqualified cleric who rose to the top almost by chance would become one of the world’s longest-serving autocrats, confounding every American president since George H.W. Bush. He would at one point become the most powerful man in the Middle East, dominating five failing lands — Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Yemen and Gaza. This ambition and hubris also eventually led to his downfall. He came to govern with the hypervigilance and brutality of a man driven by the idea that much of his own society and the world’s greatest superpower sought to unseat him — which, in the end, it did. President Trump announced on social media that Ayatollah Khamenei was killed on Saturday. He was 86.

How Long Can the Iranian Regime Hold On?

Suzanne Maloney

Just days after clerics in Iran celebrated the 47th anniversary of the revolution that brought them to power, the United States and Israel assassinated Iran’s senior leadership, razed its military infrastructure, and humbled the once seemingly impregnable theocracy. The death of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and other senior military and political leaders at the hands of their foremost adversary leaves a gaping vacuum. U.S. President Donald Trump seems to think that airstrikes will enable an uprising; he has urged Iranians to “take over” their government.

The bitter reality, however, is that the remnants of the regime are well armed and well entrenched. For years, they have been preparing for a scenario just like the one today. After decades of brutal repression, Iranians are poorly equipped to mount a successful challenge to clerical rule. When the guns fall silent, the most likely outcome is that some residual version of Iran’s revolutionary regime will remain intact, albeit more bloodied, battered, and vulnerable than at almost any point since 1979.

Real-Time Analysis: In Iran, a Tactical Victory Without a Strategic Plan

Dr. Muqtedar Khan

Given the overwhelming military superiority that Israel and the United States can bring to bear against an already sanctioned and weakened Iran, the achievement of their immediate tactical objectives appears highly likely. Nuclear facilities can be destroyed, missile stockpiles reduced, senior commanders eliminated, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) degraded. The targeted killing of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei sends an unmistakable signal that the military advantage rests overwhelmingly with the United States and Israel.

Yet it is equally possible that Khamenei’s death could backfire – not by strengthening the regime but by uniting Iranians around a sense of national sovereignty. In moments of external attack, societies often rally around the flag rather than rise against their governments. The desired public uprising against the regime may therefore not materialize.

But decapitation is not an end in itself. By eliminating the leadership, the U.S. and Israel appear to be operating on the assumption that elite fragmentation will follow. Fragmentation, in turn, would generate internal contestation. Out of that contestation – and with external encouragement – a more compliant set of leaders might emerge.

Race to the Bottom: Who's Winning the Missile War in the Middle East?

Fabian Hoffmann

In the early hours of 28 February 2026, Operation Epic Fury commenced with large-scale U.S. and Israeli air strikes against Iranian military, command, missile, and infrastructure targets.

Since then, the United States and Israel have conducted extensive operations against Iran, while Iran has retaliated with missile strikes against U.S. bases, Israel, and regional neighbours. This post offers an initial assessment of the missile war, which has defined the early stages of this conflict, in terms of missile and interceptor availability and its implications for Ukraine.

The race to the bottom

The central military dynamic between Israel and the United States on the one hand and Iran on the other can be understood as a race to the bottom. Iran is seeking to deplete regional missile defence arsenals while inflicting damage. In contrast, the United States and Israel are attempting to locate and destroy Iranian transporter erector launchers (TELs) before they can fire, while also degrading command and control and Iranian missile production capacity.

'All red lines have been crossed': Gulf states weigh response to Iranian strikes

Barbara Plett-Usher

Gulf states have found themselves on the front line of the Middle East's newest war, and they are angry. Iran has retaliated to US-Israeli air strikes by firing hundreds of missiles and drones at its Arab neighbours – targeting American military bases on their soil, but also civilian and energy infrastructure.

In doing so it is targeting the Gulf's image as a safe, prosperous hub for travel, tourism and finance, and disrupting the oil and gas industry at its core. This is a war that the Arab governments didn't want and tried to prevent. The question is whether they'll be drawn into it by what they've called the "treacherous" Iranian attacks.

Retired Vice Admiral gives military perspective on US-Israel attacks on Iran

Mary Louise Kelly

All right, staying with the Iran news, we wanted to get a military perspective on today's events. And for that, we have called Robert Harward, retired vice admiral, former U.S. Navy Seal, also former deputy CENTCOM commander - U.S. Central Command. He's now a member of the Iran Policy Project at the Jewish Institute for National Security of America. Admiral Harward, thank you for joining us.

ROBERT HARWARD: Good to be with you, Mary Louise.

KELLY: Now, we have reached you tonight in Abu Dhabi, capital of the UAE. Iran launched a retaliatory strike there earlier today. The UAE says at least one person was killed by shrapnel. So let me begin by asking, were you able to see anything, hear anything where you are?

Iran Got Trump All Wrong

Kenneth F. McKenzie Jr.

For decades, Iran managed to bluff American presidents. It deterred attacks from a superpower and carried out proxy campaigns against its neighbors and Israel. Our strikes on Iran on Saturday are evidence that this long-term strategy of negotiating in bad faith is bankrupt. The military campaign underway is the direct result of Iranian leaders’ foot-dragging, obfuscation and delay tactics.

This time, they misjudged the president.

The path to today began in 2020, when President Trump made the decision to strike then Maj. Gen. Qassim Suleimani, an Iranian military leader who masterminded attacks against American people and facilities in the Middle East. Since his death, Iran has been unable to recover the coherence and purpose of General Suleimani’s proxy operations. Equally important, the strike established Mr. Trump’s credentials as someone who would not be in thrall to Iran. The president is the unique advantage we have in the region. For the first time in decades, American military power in the Middle East deployed against Iran is coupled with a commander in chief who isn’t afraid to use it.

Trump’s Iran Gamble How the Latest Strikes Risk Opening a Pandora’s Box in the Gulf

Ali Vaez

For the second time in eight months, the United States and Israel have conducted military strikes in Iran. Last June, Washington’s focus was almost entirely on Iran’s nuclear program, with the U.S. strikes hitting three of the Islamic Republic’s key nuclear facilities, and Israel hitting a wider set of strategic targets, including military commanders, missile launch and production facilities, and nuclear infrastructure.

This time, the United States and Israel conducted a sweeping joint military operation against Iranian leadership and capabilities, and U.S. President Donald Trump has called for “regime change” after Iranian protesters were viciously repressed by their own government early this year. On Saturday, February 28, the U.S. and Israeli militaries struck hundreds of sites across the country and targeted several top leaders, including Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who was killed along with members of his family and key advisers.

U.S. troops killed amid Iranian counterattack, fueling air defense fears

Alex Horton

Four U.S. troops were killed and five others seriously wounded amid ongoing hostilities with Iran, officials said, the first known American casualties in a military campaign that has quickly heightened concerns about the Pentagon’s ability to protect its personnel.

America and Israel: Divisive Politics, Decisive Defense

Noah Glyn

American political support for Israel has declined to its lowest point in decades. A recent Gallup poll found that for the first time more Americans sympathize with Palestinians than with Israelis. This trend is being driven by the protracted war in Gaza, which resulted in the widespread suffering of the population. Among elected officials, opposition to Israel is mostly isolated to the Democratic party. Congressional Republicans remain staunchly pro-Israel, with a few notable exceptions, but Israel is also taking a beating among certain prominent Republican commentators.

However, the American and Israeli militaries are more closely aligned and integrated than ever before, which is driven by Israel’s military dominance in the region.

Historically, Israel has shared intelligence and technology with America, which is no small thing, since Israel is among the world’s leaders in both. Israel was also a strategic asset for America, whether it was combatting Soviet expansion during the Cold War or fighting Al Qaeda during the war on terror. But the most recent attacks on Iran show that there is a more formal and structured military alliance taking shape.

The United States Is Still Addicted to War

Stephen M. Walt

No matter what they say, American presidents find it impossible not to go to war. Back in 1992, Bill Clinton won the presidency by saying “it’s the economy, stupid,” and declaring the era of power politics to be over. Once in office, however, he found himself ordering missile strikes in several countries, maintaining no-fly zones over Iraq (and sometimes bombing it), and waging a long aerial campaign against Serbia in 1999.

In 2000, George W. Bush captured the White House by criticizing Clinton’s overactive foreign policy and promising voters a foreign policy that was strong but “humble.” We all know how that turned out. Eight years later, a young senator named Barack Obama became president in good part because he was one of the few Democrats who had opposed the invasion of Iraq in 2003. Within a year of assuming office, he had a Nobel Peace Prize he had done nothing to earn, simply because people believed he’d be a committed peacemaker. Obama did try on several issues and eventually reached an agreement scaling back Iran’s nuclear program, but he also ordered a pointless “surge” in Afghanistan, helped topple the Libyan regime in 2011, and grew increasingly comfortable ordering signature strikes and other targeted killings against an array of targets. As his second term ended, the U.S. was still fighting in Afghanistan and no closer to victory.

Did Trump Miscalculate on Iran?

Ravi Agrawal

Intense fighting is underway in the Middle East. Early on Feb. 28, Israel and the United States struck a range of sites across Iran. It later emerged that Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader, was killed as bombs rained down on his compound. But both before and after the confirmation of that news, Tehran shot volleys of missiles at Israel, suggesting a command-and-control structure that operates even in the top leadership’s absence. Iran is also attacking several other countries in the region, particularly Gulf states that host U.S. military bases such as Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, and Kuwait.

How will the war end? How do each of Iran, Israel, and the United States define success, and how different are their respective thresholds for pain? On the latest episode of FP Live, I spoke with Vali Nasr, an expert on Iran and the Middle East, a former senior advisor in the U.S. State Department, and a professor at Johns Hopkins University. Subscribers can watch the full discussion on the video box atop this page or download the free FP Live podcast. What follows here is a lightly edited and condensed transcript.

Will Ukraine’s War Effort Be Threatened by Kamikaze Drone Engine Shortage?

Bart Marcois

The United States has just crossed a strategic threshold. In the strike against Iran, U.S. Central Command confirmed American forces are employing low-cost one-way attack drones in combat for the first time, using systems reverse-engineered from Iranian Shahed designs. This marks the formal entry of the world’s largest defense buyer into the mass expendable drone market. When Washington operationalizes a weapons category, global supply chains tighten fast.

That move exposes a bottleneck most planners still underestimate: the small two-stroke piston engine. These cheap, air-cooled motors—not airframes or guidance kits—are the pacing item for long-range kamikaze drones. This has effects worldwide, but pain point from the looming shortage will show up first in Ukraine.

As the United States and its NATO allies accelerate procurement, they run into the engine shortage that already plagues Russia and Ukraine. This converging demand on a fragile industrial base will undermine Ukraine’s deep-strike strategy and the future of mass drone warfare.

Pentagon details cyber, space ‘first mover’ role in Iran operations

Sandra Erwin

At a March 2 Pentagon news conference alongside Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Gen. Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, described the coordinated campaign as “major combat operations” that remain ongoing, without offering a timeline. President Trump and senior officials have said the strikes are aimed at halting what they characterize as a growing threat from Iran’s nuclear and missile programs.

Caine said the operation, led by U.S. Central Command, required tight coordination across air, maritime, cyber and space domains. “The United States, Army, Navy, Marine Corps, Air Force, Space Force, Coast Guard and our reserve components integrated across our combat commands and began coordinated operations with the Israeli armed forces of an unprecedented scale,” he said.

Marines opened fire after group attempted to storm US consulate in Pakistan

Jeff Schogol

Marines assigned to the U.S. consulate in Karachi, Pakistan, recently fired their weapons in self-defense after they were attacked by protestors who had breached the facility, a U.S. official told Task & Purpose. Reuters first reported that the Marines had fired their weapons when protesters tried to storm the consulate on Sunday following the death of Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Hosseini Khamenei, who was killed the day prior during air and missile strikes against Iran launched by Israel and the United States.

Ten people were killed during the incident, but it is unclear whether any of the attackers were hit by the Marines or by other forces, including private security guards and local police, according to Reuters. “The Marines took appropriate defensive measures to protect themselves and de-escalate the situation,” the U.S. official said. “Any actions that resulted in the discharge of weapons were justified, given the consulate facility and Marines were attacked. There was no further incident.”

Ukraine to help down Iran’s drones: How Russia’s war rewrote the playbook

Mansur Mirovalev

Just days earlier, Ukrspecsystems, one of Ukraine’s largest drone manufacturers, opened a factory in the eastern English town of Mildenhall to churn out up to 1,000 unmanned aircraft a month. Ukraine’s former top general and current ambassador to the United Kingdom, Valerii Zaluzhnyi, attended the opening, the BBC reported.

Back in 2022, when Moscow started the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, some Western military analysts believed that two ex-Soviet armies would fight each other using obsolete stratagems and weapons. Who would have thought that four years later, China, the United States and Europe would scrutinise the war’s technological and tactical breakthroughs, a combination of unorthodox, hi-tech solutions and jury-rigged fixes that make warfare cheaper and arms manufacturing faster and deadlier?

Pentagon blacklists Anthropic, labels AI company "supply chain risk"

Dave Lawler, Maria Curi

President Trump said Friday the U.S. government would blacklist Anthropic, and the Pentagon declared the company a "supply chain risk," in the most consequential and controversial policy decision to date at the intersection of artificial intelligence and national security. The big picture: Anthropic rebuffed the Pentagon's demand to lift all safeguards on the military's use of its model, Claude, due to its concerns about the use of AI for mass domestic surveillance and the development of weapons that fire without human involvement.

For that, the government will now impose a penalty usually reserved for companies from adversarial countries, such as Chinese tech giant Huawei. By Friday evening, Anthropic said it would challenge any "supply chain risk" designation in court, and rejected Hegseth's claim that military contractors would be barred from working with the company.

The C.I.A. Helped Pinpoint a Gathering of Iranian Leaders. Then Israel Struck.

Julian E. Barnes, Ronen Bergman, Eric Schmitt and Tyler Pager

Shortly before the United States and Israel were poised to launch an attack on Iran, the C.I.A. zeroed in on the location of perhaps the most important target: Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the country’s supreme leader.

The C.I.A. had been tracking Ayatollah Khamenei for months, gaining more confidence about his locations and his patterns, according to people familiar with the operation. Then the agency learned that a meeting of top Iranian officials would take place on Saturday morning at a leadership compound in the heart of Tehran. Most critically, the C.I.A. learned that the supreme leader would be at the site.

The Regional Reverberations of the U.S. and Israeli Strikes on Iran |

Q1: What are the regional repercussions of the strikes on Iran?

Soon after the joint strikes, Iran launched a series of retaliatory missile and drone strikes across the region… Iran also opted to go after U.S. military and Gulf civilian targets across several countries including Bahrain, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), and Qatar… Jordan and Iraq also reported intercepting Iranian missiles, and Oman’s port at Duqm was hit by an Iranian drone strike…

The Iranian strikes have already unleashed significant disruptions across the region… airports in Abu Dhabi, Bahrain, and Kuwait also sustained damage… Several countries have closed their airspace… The simultaneous closure of the Gulf’s three major air hubs—Dubai, Abu Dhabi, and Doha—is unprecedented…Iran has effectively closed the strategic Strait of Hormuz… leading to oil shipment disruptions that could provoke significant price hikes…

How Talks Between Anthropic and the Defense Dept. Fell Apart

Sheera Frenkel, Cade Metz and Julian E. Barnes

For weeks, Mr. Michael, a former top executive at Uber, had been negotiating a $200 million artificial intelligence contract with the A.I. company Anthropic for the Pentagon. The talks had hit obstacles as the agency demanded unfettered use of Anthropic’s A.I. systems, while the company countered that it would not allow its technology to be used for purposes such as the surveillance of Americans.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth had set the Friday deadline for a deal, and the two sides were close. The only thing that remained was agreeing on a few words about the issue of lawful surveillance of Americans, multiple people with knowledge of the talks said. Mr. Michael, who was on a call with Anthropic executives, demanded that the company’s chief executive, Dario Amodei, get on the phone to hash out the language, the people said. But Mr. Michael was told that Dr. Amodei was in a meeting with his executive team and needed more time.

Earning a Spot on the Team: Autonomy, Trust, and the Future of Warfare

Heidi Segars and Ericka Rovira

The rotor noise above roared louder as the helicopter touched down at the landing zone. US Military Academy cadets piled out, ready to perform exercises in the field as part of their summer Cadet Leadership Development Training. Organized in their tactical formation, the cadets gazed up one by one and locked eyes with their new teammate. “All of the sudden it’s like, hey, we have Spot,” one of them noted. “I don’t know what to do with this asset.”

Exercises like these are an integral part of cadet military training and necessitate substantial interpersonal trust and strong cohesion among the team as a whole to be successful. Overall, the 357 participating cadets (97 percent between nineteen and twenty-one years old and 73 percent male) reported extremely high levels of trust in their fellow cadet teammates and high team cohesion.

Fading into the Background: From Risk Awareness to

Anna M. Gielas, PhD

During missions, SOF teams have traditionally focused on visible, kinetic dangers, but emerging technologies complicate this threat picture. Some new systems integrate sensing, identification, and targeting so tightly that they significantly narrow opportunities for human judgment and mitigation. Other systems gather, fuse, and analyze data for prospective exploitation and future analytic value, making operations and personnel more detectable in the moment and over time. In short, emerging technologies compress the timeline from exposure to consequence while also extending risk beyond the immediate moment—increasing short-term vulnerability and long-term detectability.

Exposure can unfold from multiple directions—ahead of, behind, above, below, or near the operator —and across different timescales. Viewing risk through this lens makes emerging technological threats easier to recognize and avoid. To add another layer of protection, sharpening technological intuition can help operators anticipate how their actions generate data and trigger downstream effects. Together, risk awareness and technological intuition enhance personnel safety and operational effectiveness.

U.S.-Israel Strikes on Iran: Preliminary Assessment

Christopher Zambakari

The joint U.S.-Israeli military operations against Iran announced Saturday, February 28, 2026, represent a dangerous escalation in Middle Eastern tensions—one rooted in strategic miscalculation and contradicted by America’s own intelligence assessments. The military campaign aims to topple Iran’s ruling leadership, dismantle its missile and naval capabilities, and encourage popular uprising following the strikes.

Initial reports from regional and international media indicate sharp escalation following the coordinated strikes. Iranian retaliation has reportedly targeted U.S. interests and allied positions across the Middle East. A representative from Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) reported Saturday that ships in the region are receiving radio communications declaring a prohibition on all maritime traffic through the Strait of Hormuz, through which 20% of the world’s oil passes.

China’s AI Arsenal The PLA’s Tech Strategy Is Working

Sam Bresnick, Emelia S. Probasco, and Cole McFaul

At China’s Victory Day parade in September 2025, it was not the marching troops or rolling tanks that made headlines, but the next-generation weapons systems on display. Uncrewed ground vehicles, underwater and aerial drones, and collaborative combat aircraft—autonomous jets that fly alongside piloted aircraft to aid missions—were presented as core components of China’s future fighting force. The exhibition of these systems sent a message about how the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) intends to leverage emerging technologies for battlefield advantage. Seen from Washington, the parade underscored Beijing’s ambition to erode the United States’ technological edge.

China has stated that its long-planned military modernization will unfold in three distinct but overlapping phases: mechanization, or the adoption of modern machinery and equipment; informatization, or the incorporation of advanced information technologies and cybernetworks to link military platforms and enable real-time information sharing; and intelligentization, or the application of artificial intelligence to automate operations and support decision-making. So far, China has made significant progress in realizing the first two aims. Its mechanization drive has provided the Chinese military with the ships, tanks, and aircraft it once lacked. Informatization has connected those platforms and sensors through data links and digital communications networks.

7 March 2026

India’s Afghan Test: Is New Delhi A Status Quo Power Or A Strategic One?

Zarif Aminyar

There are moments in geopolitics when inaction becomes a decision. The Pakistan–Afghanistan war is one of them. As Islamabad launches strikes over allegations that Kabul harbors the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), and Afghanistan retaliates in defense of its sovereignty, South Asia is witnessing the unraveling of a doctrine decades in the making. Pakistan’s pursuit of “strategic depth”, the belief that influence over Afghanistan would secure its western flank and counterbalance India , is collapsing under the weight of militant blowback. Yet the more consequential question may not concern Islamabad at all. It concerns New Delhi. But the question to ask is that why is India behaving like a peripheral observer in a crisis unfolding in its own strategic backyard?

For years, Indian policymakers criticized Pakistan’s Afghan policy as reckless. A reckless policy to New Delhi is characterized as dangerous flirtation with militant proxies that would eventually destabilize the region. That critique now appears vindicated. But vindication without action is geopolitically meaningless. It is important to state that looking at the history, great powers do not merely wait for adversaries’ strategies to fail; they shape what comes next but instead, India appears trapped between aspiration and hesitation. It seeks recognition as a global actor, a voice of the Global South, a counterweight in the Indo-Pacific, a rising economic power yet hesitates to assert itself decisively in continental South Asia. The contradiction is glaring.

Military called to northern Pakistan region after deadly Iran protests

Mushtaq Ali

In the northern city of Skardu, in Shi'ite majority Gilgit-Baltistan, normally a tourist hotspot, protesters set fire to a U.N. office on Sunday with 14 people, including a soldier, killed in the ensuing clashes, local officials said. Two others died in the capital Islamabad. Ten people were killed on Sunday in Karachi, where protesters stormed the U.S. consulate and breached the compound's outer wall.

Thousands of people also protested in the northern cities of Parachinar, Dera Ismail Khan and Peshawar but no clashes were reported. The Shi'ite community announced funeral processions for those killed in Gilgit-Baltistan, Karachi and Islamabad for Monday. Pakistan is home to the world's second-largest Shi'ite community after Iran. Many protesters said Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, who was killed in the airstrikes, was like a spiritual leader for the community.

Beyond The Security Lens: A Pragmatic Analysis Of Taliban Governance In 2026

Ioritz Abecia Bermudez

Internal Consolidation and the End of the “Forty-Year War”

In February 2026, the primary argument for the Taliban’s legitimacy among its domestic and regional supporters is the unprecedented cessation of large-scale internal conflict. Since 1978, Afghanistan had been a theater of continuous warfare, with shifting frontlines and a fractured landscape of warlordism. Under the current administration, the central leadership in Kandahar and Kabul has successfully established a unified chain of command that extends to the remotest provinces. This consolidation has eliminated the “security tax” previously imposed by local militias and has allowed for the reopening of national highways, facilitating a level of domestic commerce and movement that was impossible during the presence of international coalition forces.

Furthermore, the administration has demonstrated a capacity for policy enforcement that eluded previous Western-backed governments. The most striking example is the 2025 anti-narcotics campaign, which sustained the opium poppy ban for a third consecutive year. By February 2026, satellite data confirms that cultivation remains near zero in former strongholds like Helmand and Kandahar. While this has caused significant economic hardship for rural farmers, it has been hailed by regional neighbors—particularly Iran and Russia—as a critical contribution to regional health and stability, proving that the Taliban can be an effective partner in tackling cross-border issues when their interests align with international mandates.

The Limits and Risks of Sino-Russian Military-Technological Cooperation

Michael Magill

The United States probably cannot break Russia off from China in the military technology sector. But it can recognize that there are tensions between the two, and do its best to grow them.

Technological cooperation between the People’s Republic of China and the Russian Federation has evolved into one of the most consequential strategic alignments shaping international security. Cooperation across ISR (Intelligence Surveillance & Reconnaissance), BMD (Ballistic Missile Defense), and the space domain challenges existing US advantages and demands a shift in US policy.

Once characterized by opportunistic transfers and transactional exchanges, the Sino-Russian partnership since 2014 has matured into a structured, dual-use ecosystem spanning space operations, intelligence and reconnaissance networks, missile warning and air defense systems, and the industrial technologies that enable them. Technological cooperation between the two nations has oscillated between dependence, mistrust, and limited convergence since the Cold War, shaped initially by Soviet assistance to China’s missile and space programs and later by post-Cold War arms and technology transfers. Following Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea and the imposition of Western sanctions, this cooperation shifted from episodic, transactional exchanges to more institutionalized, asymmetric collaboration in dual-use domains, with China emerging as the dominant economic and manufacturing partner.

How Did America Know Where to Find Iran’s Leaders?

Stavros Atlamazoglou

There is overwhelming evidence that the United States and Israel have thoroughly penetrated Iran’s security services.

On Saturday morning, the conflict that was brewing around Iran for weeks finally exploded. The United States and Israel launched strikes across Iran. This is not the first time the three countries have gone to war in recent months. Last summer, Iran and the US conducted precision strikes against Iran’s military and nuclear facilities. Iran responded with salvoes of missiles and kamikaze drones across the Middle East.

But the scale of the ongoing strikes, as well as the objective of the US—regime change—are unprecedented.

Trump Is Trying Regime Change from the Air

President Donald Trump verified reports that Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei had been killed in the air strikes. Khamenei had been leading Iran’s theocracy since 1989 following the death of Ruhollah Khomeini, the man who overthrew the Shah and established the Islamic Republic of Iran.

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