Trump Has Made a Fundamental Miscalculation about Iran

Phil Klay

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I have plenty of complaints about the war I served in two decades ago: the Iraq war was ill-conceived, hubristic and marred by poor leadership at the highest level. But I did know why I was there. What exactly do our service members think we’re trying to do in Iran?

The justifications for the war have been stunningly incoherent. Maybe the war is about regime change, about Iran’s nuclear program, about the narrow military objectives of degrading their ballistic missile and drone capabilities, or perhaps it was because Israel was about to attack and we’d be at risk, or because the United States was under imminent threat from Iran, or to achieve peace in the Middle East, and so on.

Maybe it’s not a war at all. Maybe it’s an “excursion that will keep us out of a war” or an incursion or maybe it’s only a “little excursion.” In President Trump’s America, there may be only two genders, but our military adventures can identify however they please.

The rise of the ‘leadership first’ strike — and why it’s so important in warfare

John Spencer

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Imagine if Allied intelligence had located Adolf Hitler in late May 1944 and killed him before the Normandy invasion. Imagine that in the same hour, strikes eliminated Hitler’s designated successor, the head of the German Armed Forces High Command, the chief operational planner of the war effort, Field Marshal Erwin Rommel, responsible for defending Western Europe, and the rest of Germany’s field marshals and senior commanders.

Imagine that the officers publicly announced to be replaced were struck within hours as well.

Before a single Allied soldier stepped onto the beaches of Normandy, the brain directing Germany’s war effort would have been destroyed. The Wehrmacht would still have possessed tanks, aircraft, and divisions. But it would have been operating without its central nervous system.

Why Iran does not appear ready to give in, despite heavy losses

Susannah George

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As the war in Iran enters its fourth week, with U.S. operations increasingly focused on global energy flows, Tehran is rebuffing efforts to identify a diplomatic off-ramp from the war launched by the United States and Israel, according to officials in the region.

Instead, Tehran is escalating attacks on its neighbors, betting it can ratchet up global economic pain faster than the Trump administration can relieve it with military force, according to an Iranian diplomat, two European diplomats stationed in the region and a senior Arab official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to brief the media on sensitive details.

Iran’s unwillingness to capitulate is wrapped up in the power it exerts over the Strait of Hormuz, through which roughly one-fifth of the world’s fuel shipments transit, that Tehran has largely closed, roiling energy markets. President Donald Trump gave Iran a 48-hour deadline on Saturday to reopen the critical waterway, threatening to “obliterate” the country’s power plants if Tehran doesn’t comply.

The Elder’s Gambit and the Practice of Narrative Warfare

Paul Cobaugh

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For years, the U.S. national security apparatus has grappled with influencing adversaries by confronting their ideological convictions head-on. This approach often hardens resistance rather than dissolving it. But what if, instead of attacking a hostile narrative, we could activate a deeper, more resonant one within the subject?

This approach is the essence of population-centric warfare, which prioritizes understanding and influencing the human domain over purely kinetic action. While the doctrine is widely discussed at the strategic level, its tactical application remains less understood.

This article argues that identity-based narratives—especially those rooted in honor and social obligation—are more powerful than ideological persuasion in tactical engagements, and that practitioners can deliberately activate these narratives to achieve effects in the human domain.

Interests And Armageddon: The Third Gulf War Shakes Middle East

Jose Miguel Alonso-Trabanco

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War has broken out in the Middle East once again, but this time the writing on the wall brings an unusually ominous message. Although the Third Gulf War is unlikely to be the last showdown between Iranian and Israeli-US forces, this ongoing conflict is heading in a dangerous direction. What both sides are fighting over is the strategic prerogative to redraw the very balance of power in West Asia, so the aftermath could produce a prolonged local ‘Cold War,’ a new hegemonic cycle, or widespread anarchy. The ripple effects are not just encouraging the proliferation of regional seismicity in multiple overlapping layers. This front is a facet of a broader chessboard in which the multipolar great game of high politics plays out. But perhaps the most troubling aspect of the war is that its politico-strategic logic of statecraft is interwoven with the incendiary grammar of religious millenarianism.

Geopolitical Outlook

The current US-Israeli Iran war is the culmination of a long-range trajectory. As the late Shabtai Shavit, former Mossad chief, noted, Israel and Iran have been locked in a low-intensity war for decades. In the multidimensional operational theatres of this dispute, both sides have relied on grey-zone tactics and mosaic warfare, but no checkmate has occurred.

The Fault Lines Of A New Middle East: The 2025-2026 US-Israel-Iran War And The Reordering Of Regional Geopolitics

Dr. Mohamed Chtatou

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The 2026 Iran War — formally initiated on February 28, 2026, when the United States and Israel launched coordinated airstrikes targeting Iranian nuclear facilities, military infrastructure, and senior leadership, including Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei — represents a watershed in Middle Eastern geopolitics. Building upon the precedent established by the June 2025 Twelve-Day War, the current conflict has detonated a cascade of secondary crises: the near-total closure of the Strait of Hormuz, Iranian retaliatory strikes across nine Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) states, the reactivation of Hezbollah on the Lebanese front, the effective dismantling of Iran’s Axis of Resistance, and unprecedented disruptions to global energy markets.

This analysis examines the structural fault lines exposed by the conflict across five interlocking domains: (1) the origins and escalatory ladder of the US–Israel–Iran confrontation from October 2023 to February 2026; (2) the strategic logic and operational dimensions of the combined air campaign; (3) the fracturing and realignment of Gulf Arab state security postures; (4) the energy-economic shock radiating from Hormuz closure; and (5) the wider implications for international order, including the responses of China, Russia, Turkey, and the Global South. The paper concludes that the conflict has irrevocably dismantled the post-2015 JCPOA architecture and catalyzed a new regional security order whose contours remain deeply uncertain.

In Lebanon, Israel Wants Dominance, Not Deterrence

Alexander Langlois

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As the American and Israeli war on Iran expands across the Middle East, Lebanon faces its nightmare scenario. Israel has invaded the country once again, supposedly to disarm Lebanese Hezbollah, its non-state rival to the north. This specific component of the broader war is ultimately critical, as it could become the primary focus of the warring parties in the coming weeks, especially if direct confrontation with Iran yields diminishing returns.

It is no secret that Israeli officials have long wanted to apply more pressure on Lebanon to solve the Hezbollah problem. After a year of exchanging fire, Israel opted to invade Lebanon in 2024 to directly combat the group, severely hampering Hezbollah’s ability to conduct serious military operations while killing most of its senior leadership. Following the November 2024 truce that was supposed to constitute a true ceasefire but rather fostered near-daily Israeli strikes on Lebanon, Beirut began the effort of disarming Hezbollah.

America and Israel United to Fight Iran. Both Will Pay a Price.

Jon B. Alterman

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When Israeli and American jets joined forces to attack Iran, it was a departure for both countries. The two had grown increasingly aligned over more than three-quarters of a century, but their militaries had never mounted a campaign together. This time, they were synchronized on every aspect: planning, execution, command and control, intelligence and damage assessments.

They were also newly connected in another way. The Israeli military has remained on a war footing for generations. Soldiers sometimes attack the same targets their fathers and grandfathers did. The reason is clear. Israel’s political and military leaders have focused on many of the same challenges for decades and often see force as the only available option. Seeing no near-term solutions, Israel’s political and military leaders have adopted an approach they describe as mowing the grass. That is, they attack adversaries, and when the adversary rebuilds, Israel merely attacks again.

A New Perspective on Protracted Wars

Harrison Schramm

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The purpose of war is to, eventually, stop being at war. So much the better if war achieves an objective otherwise unobtainable by peaceful negotiation. But how wars end is famously an oft under-studied strategic consideration. While there are many references on the theory of war, modern readers will be most familiar with the eponymous Powell Doctrine,[i] itself based on Fred Ikle’s[ii] earlier work. Powell lists seven conditions for entering into a military conflict, two of which involve war termination, restated here:

These two criteria suggest that when embarking upon a course of war, political and military leaders have a mandate to define termination conditions. Beyond the Doctrine, as a practical matter, it is difficult to get a legislature… let alone electorate – to sign on to a ‘protracted’ conflict. Furthermore, there are the double devils of a tendency for optimism that the war will be short and victorious, as well as the inclination to kick the proverbial ‘can down the road’ and claim it will be impossible to think about war termination before war because there is too much (perceived) uncertainty.[iii] Paradoxically, one source of perceived uncertainty is the difference between the efficacy of a fighting force in theory vs. in practice.

How two wars are pulling Europe and the US apart

Nicholas Vinocur

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The biggest fear of European leaders is that Donald Trump’s war in Iran will lead him to abandon Ukraine.

Governments are terrified that the U.S. president could retaliate against America’s European allies for spurning his appeals for assistance in the Middle East, primarily by cutting off what’s left of U.S. help for Kyiv, according to four EU diplomats with knowledge of their discussions. As they scramble to avoid a permanent break in the transatlantic relationship, leaders hope their offer of limited support for his action against Tehran will suffice to convince Trump to stay the course in the conflict with Russia.

The war in Iran “must not divert our attention from the support we give Ukraine,” French President Emmanuel Macron said at the end of last week’s EU summit in Brussels.

Why Russia Is Worried About the Iran War

Suzanne Loftus

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On February 28, the United States and Israel launched a large-scale bombing campaign against Iran, killing Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and dozens of the country’s senior leaders within the first day. According to the Trump administration, the objective of this campaign is to degrade Iran’s ability to wage war. This includes degrading its nuclear enrichment program, its missile development systems and capabilities, and its ability to arm proxy forces throughout the Middle East. Iran responded by attacking US bases across the region as well as neighboring countries.

Many commentators and analysts argue that rising oil prices and renewed American attention to the Middle East could give Russia an advantage in its war against Ukraine. While this may prove true in the short term, this view overlooks a potential strategic consequence of the United States’ renewed willingness to employ coercive diplomacy and targeted military force to reshape regional power balances. If the United States succeeds in significantly degrading Iran’s military capabilities and weakening the regime, it could contribute to a gradual weakening of the geostrategic ecosystem that has helped Russia withstand Western pressure since its invasion of Ukraine.

America Has No Good Options in Iran

Ilan Goldenberg

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Three weeks into the joint U.S.-Israeli war on Iran, the outlines of a familiar and dangerous pattern are emerging. The current conflict may for now be significantly different than American wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, or Vietnam—it has not yet drawn in U.S. ground forces in great numbers. But the Iran war shares a deeper strategic reality with these predecessors. Washington is once again fighting a weaker regional power without having clear objectives, a defined theory of victory, and a viable exit strategy.

The result is a different kind of quagmire, but a quagmire nonetheless. U.S.

Russia Is the Big Winner in the Iran War

Andrew A. Michta

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The Key Point: Drawing on his extensive expertise as a Professor of Strategic Studies and a Senior Fellow at the Atlantic Council, Dr. Andrew A. Michta argues that Russia is the “biggest winner” of the ongoing Iran War.

How Russia Is Leveraging the Iran War

M2 Bradley. Image Credit: Creative Commons.

With all the attention on the escalating war in Iran, Ukraine has almost faded from the headlines.

Still, there are signs that Vladimir Putin has taken advantage of this moment as the U.S. shifts its focus away from Europe, American munitions grow scarce, and Russia actively works to weaken the U.S. by assisting Iran with satellite targeting data showing the movement of U.S. forces.

What is Hybrid Warfare? A Comprehensive Guide

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Hybrid warfare is the coordinated use of military and non-military tools — including cyber attacks, disinformation, economic coercion, sabotage, proxy forces, and covert action — to achieve strategic objectives while remaining below the threshold of conventional armed conflict. The defining feature is not any single method, but the deliberate integration of multiple domains simultaneously, designed to exploit the seams between a target state’s military, political, economic, and information defenses.

The term entered mainstream military discourse through the work of U.S. Marine Corps officer Frank Hoffman, who in 2007 defined hybrid wars as conflicts incorporating “a range of different modes of warfare, including conventional capabilities, irregular tactics and formations, terrorist acts including indiscriminate violence and coercion, and criminal disorder.” But the practice is far older than the label. What distinguishes the modern iteration is the scale, speed, and technological sophistication with which state actors — particularly Russia, China, and Iran — now orchestrate campaigns across every domain of competition.

Drone Warfare Has Come to the United States

Glen VanHerck, and Ramon Marks

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Amid the raging conflict in the Middle East, the astonishing events at Barksdale Air Force Base earlier this month have attracted only limited media attention. It is reported that swarms of unidentified drones repeatedly loitered over Barksdale between March 9 and 15, drawing no publicly known effective response from the military or the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).

Barksdale is the headquarters of the Air Force’s Global Strike Command, which is responsible for the nation’s nuclear intercontinental ballistic missiles and strategic bomber forces, including B2, B1, and B52 aircraft. The base is home to the 2nd Bomb Wing B52s and is the central hub of communications and logistical support for coordinating and directing those forces. The fact that potentially threatening drones were able to operate over such a critical complex with apparent impunity over several days, after a similar event, spanning 17 days, occurred more than two years ago at Langley AFB, is astonishing. Reports indicate that Barksdale personnel were repeatedly ordered to take cover as drones roamed over buildings and aircraft.

Ensuring the Next Generation of U.S. Weapons Has Homegrown Electronics

David Schild

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The U.S. has in the works several new weapons to counter emerging enemy threats. These include new warships, fighter aircraft, bombers, submarines, drones and a network of air defenses to defend the entire U.S. against missile and air attacks. And yet the U.S. will be challenged to produce key electronics within these systems known as printed circuit boards (PCBs), which are primarily sourced domestically.

While the U.S. government has played a key role in helping to revive the domestic semiconductor industry, with the exception of some funding through the Defense Product Act it has largely ignored domestic production of PCBs.

Discovery Before Disaster: The Louisiana Maneuvers and the Untested Warfighting Concepts of Today’s Army

Matthew Revels and Eric Uribe

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This slogan is among the Army’s favorites, yet its application at the operational level remains uneven. Brigade combat teams rotate through combat training centers, maneuvering largely in isolation while simulated adjacent formations execute scripted roles that fails to introduce the friction that defines the real world’s battlefields. To compensate for the absence of field training at echelons above the brigade level, the Army increasingly relies on command post and simulation-based exercises. While such exercises are valuable for refining staff processes, they cannot replicate the uncertainty, degraded communications, and cumulative friction inherent in multidivision operations. The result is a training system optimized for confirmation rather than correction.

The Army’s shift toward preparing for large-scale combat operations has necessitated that the combat training centers reorient from training brigades on counterinsurgency doctrine to implementing the Army’s new operational concept, multidomain operations. Doctrine manuals make it clear that divisions and corps are the central maneuver elements under the new concept. To better align with its operational doctrine, the Army developed the Army of 2030 plan to reorganize the force, shifting responsibility away from brigade commanders by allocating additional resources to division and corps commanders, effectively centralizing an increasing number of resources and assets within higher echelons to limit brigade commanders’ span of control.

Two Loops: How China’s Open AI Strategy Reinforces Its Industrial Dominance

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China has opted to go all in on an open-source approach to AI. Most Chinese labs publish model source code and weights. They also charge far less to use high-end products than their global competitors. This has resulted in the acceleration of global uptake of Chinese AI and created a feedback loop where widespread adoption drives iteration, then further adoption. As of publication, Alibaba’s Qwen models accounted for the largest model ecosystem on Hugging Face, with over 100,000 derivatives.

This open ecosystem enables China to innovate close to the frontier despite significant compute constraints. Chinese labs have narrowed performance gaps with top Western large language models. They have also developed key architectural and training advances that are now industry standards.

China’s Sovereignty Paradox: Why Beijing Won’t Militarily Defend Its Close Partners

Tomaz Fares

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In an effort to reassert geopolitical influence vis-à-vis China’s longstanding allies, the United States, under the Trump administration, conducted a military operation in Venezuela that resulted in the capture of President Nicolás Maduro and subsequently launched military operations against Iran, which have escalated into a wider conflict in the Gulf region. Why, then, has China refrained from offering direct military support to its close partners? The first thing that comes to mind is that China lacks both the inclination and the expeditionary military capacity to undertake such ventures, but this article shows it is also about political will – rooted in Beijing’s deep integration into global capitalism, its cautious adherence to non interference, which results in the absence of binding security commitments with these regimes.

Over the past two decades, several regimes positioned against Western dominance – Iran, Venezuela, North Korea, Cuba, and Russia – have endured in part through Chinese economic and diplomatic engagement. Beijing has become their key creditor, trading partner, and political interlocutor. This has led some observers to interpret China’s rise as the consolidation of an alternative bloc within the global order. However, while China’s support for anti-Western regimes is real, it is structurally constrained, often utilitarian and subordinated to Beijing’s broader integration within the existing international system. The very sovereignty-centred politics that attract these regimes to China simultaneously prevent Beijing from converting partnership into broader influence with durable political allegiance or security guarantees.

Could Taiwan’s military continue to fight after an Iran-like decapitation?

Lawrence Chungin

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The survival of Iran’s political and military apparatus following a massive US-Israeli decapitation strike has ignited a strategic debate in Taiwan, with experts weighing the island’s ability to withstand a similar “surgical” opening to an attack from the mainland.

Military analysts and officials in Taipei are closely studying the February 28 strikes that killed Ali Khamenei, the Iranian supreme leader, and Iran’s ability to sustain organised resistance in the weeks that have followed.

How the war with Iran is actually goingby Harlan Ullman, opinion contributor

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While President Donald Trump has told Americans that Operation Epic Fury is “way ahead of schedule,” how well are the U.S. and Israel doing in compelling Iran to submit to our demands, no matter how confusing they may be in declaring the outcomes we seek?

According to press reports, U.S. officials confirmed five KC-135 tankers crucial to refueling striking aircraft were damaged at an airbase in Saudi Arabia. One had a mid-air collision and crashed killing its aircrew. And an F-35 was reportedly damaged but made it safely to base. In addition to three F-15’s downed by friendly Kuwaiti fire, over 200 American service personnel have been wounded or killed by Iranian missiles and drones.

The Geopolitical Implications of the Iran War

Bulent Gokay and Lily Hamourtziadou

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Since the United States and Israel commenced their unwarranted and unprovoked strike against Iran, codenamed Operation Epic Fury by the US and Roaring Lion by Israel, the character of the offensive has become apparent. It constitutes a large-scale bombing campaign intended to systematically dismantle the Iranian state and subjugate the entire population. The US under Trump has started a war whose outcomes it neither anticipates nor controls. Its actions have an element of irrationality, but this irrationality is based on decades of aggression in the Middle East, and in particular against Iran.

Wesley Clark famously recounted seeing a 2001 Pentagon memo that detailed plans to “take out” seven countries over five years, culminating in Iran. Clark attributed the origin of these plans to the neoconservatives within the George W. Bush administration, specifically mentioning the influence of the Project for the New American Century (PNAC) (Greenwald, 2011). PNAC was an influential think tank established in 1997, and almost all of its major figures found themselves in the George W. Bush administration after 2000. Considering US foreign policy in the Middle East since the start of this century, this attack should not be considered a surprise and is largely unrelated to the idiosyncrasies of Donald Trump, who is simply implementing a longstanding project aimed at establishing complete US dominance over the energy-rich regions of the Middle East. Furthermore, American (and Western) interventions in Iran have a long history.

The First Casualty of Trump’s War in Iran Was the Truth

David Remnick

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“In war, truth is the first casualty.” It’s a line often attributed to Aeschylus, and it has never lost its relevance. Sometimes the culprit is the observer—the propagandizing correspondent, the mythologizing historian. Now, three weeks into a war of choice, the chief offender is the President of the United States.

On February 28th, at two-thirty in the morning, the White House press operation released a prerecorded video of Donald Trump at Mar-a-Lago standing at a lectern in dim light. Wearing an oversized U.S.A. ball cap and no tie, the President announced that he had ordered American bombers to commence destroying targets throughout the Islamic Republic of Iran. Trump made a claim of preëmption. He was acting, he said, to “defend the American people by eliminating imminent threats from the Iranian regime.” (This was confusing. Hadn’t Trump declared last June that he had “obliterated” Iran’s nuclear program?

War of Distraction in Iran: Existential Anxiety and Strategic Failure

Robert L. Oprisko

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Anxiety over the existentially precarious position Israel occupies in the Middle East has persisted for thousands of years, though it has grown and intensified after World War II; genocide was no longer mere theory, it had been attempted. While existential anxiety can be alleviated, mitigated, and ultimately eliminated through dedication, discipline, and intentional action, Israel’s persists. Israeli and American politicians have personally found it politically useful to maintain and leverage the eschatological anxiety of the Jewish people. Existential angst matters here: in the spectrum of conflict, it escalates everything into an absolute position, one where defeat is untenable – because there will be no tomorrow (Speier 1941). 

When absolute anxiety extends beyond martial conflict and becomes internalized within any dispute or disagreement, it presents in one of two absolute or “fanatic” forms: zeal or spite (Oprisko 2010). Fanaticism generally is, “the political mobilization of the refusal to compromise” (Olson 2009, 83). Within that there is a characteristic of directionality between the self/in-group and the other/out-group; zeal is the absolute will to inflict one’s value system onto others whereas spite is the absolute rejection of others’ values being inscribed onto the self (Oprisko 2010).

Erasure as Assessment: Middle East Forum’s Analysis of Iran’s Opposition

Morteza (Mory) Gharib and Kazem Kazerounian

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The Middle East Forum’s January 2026 report, “After the Protests: Who Can Lead Iran?”, does not analyze Iran’s principal opposition, the Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK); it attempts to erase it. That is not scholarship but political denial. No serious observer can wish away a movement that has been embedded in Iran’s political and social life for more than six decades; one that has survived two dictatorships and has paid for its resistance through mass executions and exile. Whether the MEF approves or not, the MEK remains an enduring fact of Iranian politics: discussed in the streets and in private homes, debated within the regime’s own seminaries and institutions, and raised even in Tehran’s political exchanges with foreign interlocutors.

The sheer volume of regime propaganda devoted to it, dozens of feature films and long-running television series, hundreds of books, and thousands of articles, speaks less to the MEK’s marginality than to its perceived threat. The authorities themselves understand this best: even mentioning the MEK’s name or its slogans is treated as a prosecutable offense, a red line enforced by prison and, at times, death.

Iran at War: Deterrence, National Identity, and Existential Stakes

Tewfik Hamel

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To read the present conflict in Iran only through the categories of the Iran-Israel rivalry or the Tehran-Washington confrontation is to miss its most consequential dimension. For Israel, the central problem is the neutralization of a military and potentially nuclear threat. By the time of the military attacks of June 2025, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) assessed that Iran had accumulated 9,247.6 kg of enriched uranium in total; by the time of the attacks in mid-June 2025, it had also accumulated 440.9 kg enriched up to 60 percent U-235, making it the only non-nuclear-weapon state under the NPT to have produced and accumulated material at that level (IAEA 2025a; IAEA 2026).

For the United States, the conflict is embedded in a broader calculus of regional security, alliance credibility, energy security, and escalation control. For several Arab states, it is principally a matter of balance, containment, and spillover management. Tehran, however, increasingly appears to read the war in a different register: not simply as another episode in a long regional struggle, but as a crisis touching the continuity of the state itself.

War on Iran and the Breakdown of the Liberal International Order

Carlos Frederico Pereira da Silva Gama

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On February 28, 2026, Iran suffered coordinated missile attacks from Israel and the United States. The breakdown of diplomatic negotiations on the Iranian nuclear program was followed by heavy bombing of civilian infrastructure and military sites. The assault on Teheran victimized a girl’s school (with more than 170 casualties) as well as the highest echelon of the Islamic Republic’s administration – including its Supreme Leader, 86-year-old Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who was in office since the Cold War, in 1989. 

This event provided the apex to a 3-year long war of mutual attrition between the regional powers, ignited by unprecedented missile attacks in April 2024. The entrance of the US into the conflict in 2025, so far, has not proved decisive. In spite of President Donald Trump’s declarations that the US bombing of Iranian nuclear facilities during 2025’s 12-day war “obliterated” the Islamic Republic’s nuclear program, diplomatic negotiations on the nuclear issue were still under way in the weeks leading to the February 28 attack. In hindsight, the latest Trump declarations stating that US attacks “decimated” Iranian military capacities shall be similarly taken with a pinch of salt.

As War Disrupts India’s Gulf Ties, Economy Faces ‘New Broadside’

Alex Travelli

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India was one of the fastest-growing major economies, consistently outpacing its powerful neighbor, China. It had surpassed Britain to become the world’s fifth-largest economy and was within striking distance of overtaking Japan for fourth. In a world beset by risks — from the war in Ukraine to President Trump’s tariff campaign — India’s skilled labor force, fiscal discipline and strong currency reserves made it a relatively safe bet.

An underappreciated component of the momentum was India’s deepening ties to the Arab countries of the Persian Gulf. But that advantage is now turning into a liability.

Iran’s willingness to escalate this high-stakes war is its greatest weapon

Patrick Wintour

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Brinkmanship, the ability to take a country to the edge of war without plunging it into the abyss, was the cornerstone of cold war diplomacy. But in our different, more unstable times – in which the line between state and non-state actors has blurred, and weapons of war have diffused – the world this week finally tipped over the edge, and suddenly it is in freefall.

The first six days of the Iran war cost the US $12.7bn (£9.5bn), but now the Pentagon is seeking as much as $200bn in military funding. Oil at $125 a barrel is no longer an Iranian, or Russian, fantasy. The crown jewel of Qatar, Ras Laffan – the world’s largest liquefied natural gas plant – may not reopen fully for five years, at a cost of $20bn a year. Other combustible oil depots in the Gulf, from Bahrain to Abu Dhabi, are exposed to Iran’s low-cost drones. Then add the human cost of 18,000 civilians injured and more than 3,000 killed in Iran alone.

United States nuclear weapons, 2026

Hans M. Kristensen, Matt Korda, Eliana Johns, Mackenzie Knight-Boyle

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The United States has embarked on a wide-ranging nuclear modernization program that will ultimately see every nuclear delivery system replaced with newer versions over the coming decades. In this issue of the Nuclear Notebook, we estimate that the United States maintains a stockpile of approximately 3700 warheads—an unchanged estimate from the previous year. Of these, only about 1770 warheads are deployed, while approximately 1930 are held in reserve. Additionally, approximately 1342 retired warheads are awaiting dismantlement, giving a total inventory of approximately 5042 nuclear warheads. 

Of the approximately 1770 warheads that are deployed, 400 are on land-based intercontinental ballistic missiles, roughly 970 are on submarine-launched ballistic missiles, 300 are at bomber bases in the United States, and approximately 100 tactical bombs are at European bases. The Nuclear Notebook is researched and written by the staff of the Federation of American Scientists’ Nuclear Information Project: director Hans M. Kristensen, associate director Matt Korda, and senior research associates Eliana Johns and Mackenzie Knight-Boyle.

Pragmatism in the PRC’s South Asia Party Diplomacy

Shantanu Roy-Chaudhury

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The International Liaison Department (ILD) of the Chinese Communist Party held 33 engagements in 2025 with representatives from South Asian countries. The department pursued particular interests in each country, reaching out to institutional, incumbent, and peripheral actors.

The greatest shift in the ILD’s South Asia strategy has been rapprochement with India’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). This, alongside meetings with opposition and peripheral parties, as well as media, think tanks, and youth groups, suggests that the CCP views party diplomacy not merely as a tool for building influence with smaller neighbors, as in previous years, but as a mechanism for managing major power relations.

Nepal’s Electoral Transformation

Martin Duffy

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As I have learnt, observing Nepal’s elections, its dual-election system all but excludes “knock-out” victory. Typically, counting continues tediously for weeks. Party bosses sit cheek by jowl, quarrelling over paltry, disputed ballots. The 5 March election was called after youth protests in September 2025 forced the resignation of K. P. Sharma Oli. This year, the Gen Z vote brought seismic change. From e-day 5 March 2026, it was apparent that the Rastriya Swatantra Party (RSP) under rapper-turned-politician, Balendra Shah, had broken the glass ceiling. The country’s allegedly corrupt political elite and entrenched power structures fell. Symbolically, Balendra himself trounced Oli even on his home turf. Thus, the barely four-year-old RSP pulled off a decisive majority. The CPN (Nepal’s Communist Party) simply folded like a box of cards.

How did Nepal electorally transform, and why is Gen Z so important? The immediate catalyst for the unrest was the Cabinet decision on 4 September 2025 to ban major social media platforms, including YouTube, Facebook, and WhatsApp, citing their failure to register under new, restrictive digital laws. This digital blackout was widely perceived as an attempt to stifle dissent and stymy communication networks used by activists. In response, a leaderless movement, predominantly organised by students, erupted on 8 September 2025. Protesters converged at Maitighar Mandala and marched toward the Federal Parliament Building, demanding an end to both the digital embargo and the Council of Ministers.

Opinion – Can the BRICS Adapt to a Transactional World?

Emilio Rodriguez

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Over the last 15 years, the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa) have become a relevant player in world politics. The origins of the bloc can be traced back to a 2001 Goldman Sachs report that highlighted the economic potential of Brazil, India, China, and Russia. With South Africa’s inclusion in 2011, the BRICS have since become an active and increasingly powerful actor in global affairs, aiming to represent the “voice” of the Global South. Led by China’s unrelenting rise in global trade, infrastructure finance, investment, technological innovation, and thirst for natural resources, the bloc has been seen as a potential counterbalance to the US-led liberal international order.

During the last decade, the commercial and financial interactions within the group have increased significantly, accounting for a significant share (20%) of the South-South trade. Moreover, the bloc has been searching to institutionalize with the creation of the New Development Bank (the so-called BRICS Bank) and the Contingent Reserve Arrangement (CRA), both alternatives to the World Bank and the IMF, respectively. These institutions have been accompanied by initiatives to involve their civil societies through projects focusing on education, science, sports, and culture. Indeed, the potential of the BRICS has become so appealing that various countries in the Global South have sought to become another letter in the acronym. In 2023, the BRICS invited several countries to join the bloc, and by 2026, Egypt, Ethiopia, Indonesia, Iran, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) became full members, while Bolivia, Cuba, Thailand, Vietnam, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Uganda, Malaysia, Nigeria, and Uzbekistan became partner countries.

US intel doubts China will invade Taiwan in 2027

Gabriel Honrada

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The March report, entitled 2026 Annual Threat Assessment of US Intelligence Community, says China has no fixed timetable for forcible unification and instead prefers to achieve it without force, even as the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) continues to build capabilities for a cross-strait campaign. 

It assesses that Chinese officials view an amphibious assault as highly risky and complex, particularly given the likelihood of US intervention. China’s approach is shaped by PLA readiness, Taiwan’s domestic politics and uncertainty over US response, with conflict carrying major global economic consequences.

Trump is showing Beijing how to seize Taiwan

Brahma Chellaney

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Since returning to office last year, U.S. President Donald Trump has ordered military strikes from the Caribbean and eastern Pacific to Africa and the Middle East, targeting alleged drug-smuggling boats and suspected terrorist groups. He has attacked Venezuela and kidnapped its leader, Nicolas Maduro. And he has joined Israel in a large-scale assault on Iran that amounts to a major escalation from last year’s strikes, which supposedly “obliterated” the country’s nuclear facilities. Meanwhile, he is tightening a noose around Cuba, in the hopes that the resulting humanitarian crisis will open the way for a “friendly takeover” of the island by the United States.

As Trump acts with open contempt for international law, China is taking notes. The Cuba model, in particular, offers a useful blueprint for Chinese President Xi Jinping to apply in pursuing his “historic mission” of “unification” with Taiwan. This is a live demonstration of how a superpower can strangle a country into submission.