Indian Strategic Studies

17 April 2026

In Islamabad, Iran Will Try to Cement Strategic Gains

Iranian leaders interpret U.S. President Donald Trump’s agreement to a two-week ceasefire as an admission that U.S. and Israeli application of overwhelming airpower achieved military, but not strategic, gains. Iran’s remaining leaders, many of whom have been elevated to key positions following airstrikes that killed their predecessors, assert they have emerged victorious after absorbing one of the most comprehensive and precise strike campaigns in modern military history. Iran remains in essential control of the Strait of Hormuz chokepoint, through which 20 percent of seaborne traded oil flowed daily prior to the conflict. Iran also retains the ability to cause damage in Israel and at key energy infrastructure targets in the Arab Gulf states, despite more than 13,000 strikes on its ballistic missile, armed drone, and related production sites that U.S. military leaders say severely degraded Iran’s arsenal.

Iran’s de facto civilian leader, Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, Speaker of the Iranian Majles (parliament), will try to cement Iran’s strategic gains when he meets with U.S. negotiators, led by Vice President JD Vance, in Islamabad on Saturday morning (local time). Ghalibaf has emerged as a top figure after Israeli air strikes killed Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and his designated chief executive, Supreme National Security Committee (SNSC) chair Ali Larijani. Strikes also apparently severely injured Khamenei’s son and successor, Mojtaba Khamenei. In negotiating a war-ending accord, Ghalibaf and his team — who Trump perhaps mistakenly characterizes as more pragmatic than the slain elder Khamenei — see Washington’s acceptance of the ceasefire and Islamabad talks as a tacit U.S. admission that the regime cannot be toppled by outside powers.

The Strait of Hormuz in Brief: Non-Oil Shipments and Effects on U.S. Shippers

Frittelli, John; Goldman, Ben

Before U.S. and Israeli military operations began against Iran on February 28, 2026, the average number of ships from various countries transiting through the Strait of Hormuz (the Strait) was about 130 each day.1 As of April 7, 2026, only a handful of ships have risked the transit each day since the start of the operations for fear of attack by Iranian forces, which are reportedly negotiating with and permitting selected ships to pass through the Strait. Before the conflict began, the Strait was open to ship navigation without constraint as per long-standing international law,2 but since the conflict began, Iran has asserted control over the Strait.

The U.K. Maritime Trade Operations center has recorded 17 attacks on vessels since March 1, 2026, with several crew members killed or seriously injured.3 An estimated 1,000 ships are in a holding pattern in the Persian Gulf region: 800 ships in the Persian Gulf inside the Strait waiting to transit eastbound and 200 ships outside the Strait waiting to transit westbound.4 The announcement of a two-week ceasefire on April 7, 2026, to allow these ships to pass through the Strait without being fired upon does not appear to require Iran to give up its control over the Strait.

Four Alternative End States in Iran – the Only Good One Becomes Unlikely

Dr Graeme Herd

Operations ‘Epic Fury’ and ‘Roaring Lion’ seek regime change in the Iranian Islamic Republic, understood as an end to Iran’s missile (launcher and production site) and nuclear programmes. Success would be International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspections of Tehran’s nuclear sites and a surrender of its stockpile of weapons-grade fissile material to the US. Iran would pose no imminent threat to Israel or to US in the longer term. Two other unstated but reasonable-to-expect outcomes would follow. First, the US consolidates its position as the primary security provider and stabilizer in the region. Second, the Iranian energy sector – as with Venezuela following Maduro’s ousting – opens to US investment and influence over strategic sales to preferred partners, and control of global supply and the Strait of Hormuz.

From the moment daylight strikes began on 28 February, at least four Iranian alternative end-state scenarios appeared possible, each resting on assumptions that can be made explicit.

The UAV-Enabled Anti-Air Defense Campaign in the Third Gulf War

Aaron Stein

In late 2020, drones burst onto the national security scene in a new way. During the Nagorno-Karabakh war between Turkey and Armenia that year, videos of Turkish long-endurance TB-2 and loitering Harop drones identifying and striking Armenian air defense systems flooded the internet. Even more sophisticated Russian systems like the S-300 were marked, monitored, and destroyed by Azerbaijan’s force of Turkish and Israeli drones. These images garnered lots of media attention at the time, and helped inaugurate a new role for drone warfare—hunting air defense systems.

The videos were more revelatory than innovative. The Israelis and, later, the Americans have used drones to spot air defense sites since the technology began to proliferate in the 1970s. However, with age comes innovation—specifically through the use of data links and high-definition video to share information with regional “shooters” and then to “market” success to an audience eager to understand how the war is unfolding.

Pathways for the War with Iran

Philip Wasielewski

After a month of combat operations, the United States and Israel have made it clear that they will not allow Iran to become a nuclear power. Based on Iran’s history of domestic repression and foreign terrorism, this is a positive development. However, an unexpected consequence is that Iran may emerge from this conflict with increased international influence due to its demonstrated ability to close the Strait of Hormuz. How Iran will use this newfound leverage remains to be seen and could depend on the length of the conflict and how it ends. The world could soon see an agreement that prevents a major international economic crisis and gives each side some claim to victory. The other possibility is a long conflict in which one or all of the parties try to achieve maximalist goals, resulting in worldwide economic distress, yet no guarantee that military force will give any party a final advantage over the other.

A New War or Just an Old One?

The fighting between Israel and America on one side and Iran on the other that began on February 28, 2026, was not the outbreak of a new war but the continuation of a five-decade-long conflict between Iran’s theocracy, its Sunni neighbors, and the West. Since its inception, the Islamic Republic of Iran has legitimized its rule by domestically incorporating Shia theology into all aspects of daily life and pursuing a foreign policy dedicated to the destruction of Israel and the removal of American influence from the region. Iran invested in nuclear and ballistic missile programs as a means to this latter end.

Jihadism in the Middle East: From hierarchical territorial control to dispersed local insurgency

Matteo Colombo

This brief argues that the main jihadi movements in the Middle East have experienced three interconnected and transformative crises since the collapse of Islamic State’s territorial control in 2019: a crisis of authority; a crisis of ideology; and a crisis of cohesion. These crises stem primarily from the decline of the central leadership and organisational capacity al-Qaeda and Islamic State in the Middle East due to the Syrian Kurdish People’s Defense Units (with US support), Iraq’s Hashd al-Sha’abi (with Iranian and US support) and Global Coalition efforts against Islamic State. Peer networks of violent jihadi groups remain active across the wider Sahel–Horn–Middle East–Afghanistan-Pakistan region, even though their structure has evolved. With al-Qaeda and Islamic State having lost much of their capacity to hierarchically direct and control affiliates across the Middle East, new spaces have opened.

The result is a more networked and horizontally connected jihadist landscape rather than one dominated by strong central command. The erosion of central authority has also given jihadists more doctrinal flexibility in relation to local context. Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham is a key example of pragmatic adjustment. Today, jihadism in the Middle East is characterised by ideologies and practices that are more localised, pragmatic and fluid than in the pre-2019 period. Increasingly it is bottom-up and more networked than it is territorial. A key implication for policymakers is that countering such configurations requires tailored and locally anchored responses.

Was the Iran War Worth It?

Michael Froman

This week, President Donald Trump declared victory in Iran, and, on Wednesday, after the announcement of a two-week ceasefire brokered by Pakistan, he heralded a “big day for World Peace!” People are now asking whether the war was worth it. The truth is that it’s simply too soon to tell. The success or failure of the war to advance the United States’ national interest hinges as much on what happens next as it does on what happened over the course of the past forty-one days.

In the Secretary of War Pete Hegseth’s telling, Operation Epic Fury was a “capital V military victory.” Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Dan Caine framed this victory in the context of “three distinct military objectives: destroy Iran’s ballistic missile and drone capabilities, destroy the Iranian navy, and destroy their defense industrial base to ensure that Iran cannot reconstitute the ability to project power outside their borders.” This is consistent with the objectives Under Secretary of War for Policy Elbridge Colby described during a conversation at CFR at the start of the war.

The five big sticking points in US-Iran talks

Paul Adams

US Vice-President JD Vance is to lead the US team during the talks, while reports suggest Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi will co-lead Iran's delegation The venue is ready, the guards are in place and the kerb along the approach road has received a fresh coat of yellow and black paint.

As hosts of vital US-Iranian talks, the Pakistani government officials are making optimistic noises, emphasising that unlike many others, they enjoy the trust of both sides. The man heading the US delegation, Vice-President JD Vance, is also sounding upbeat. "If the Iranians are willing to negotiate in good faith," he said before leaving the US, "we're certainly willing to extend the open hand."

How a Cease-Fire Can Lead to Disaster

Daniel Chardell and Samuel Helfont

No sooner had the United States and Israel launched their joint war on Iran than observers began invoking a familiar historical analogy: that this Middle Eastern intervention echoed the fateful 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq. As in 2003, Washington had initiated a war of choice against a long-standing adversary in the Persian Gulf, with the overt goal of toppling its regime. But for now, at least, that is where the parallel ends. Until the cease-fire announced on April 7, the United States largely confined its operations against Iran to the sky and the sea. President Donald Trump appears to have understood that

Everyone Said Aircraft Carriers Were the New Obsolete Battleships. The Iran War Just Proved Them Wrong

Steve Balestrieri

So, are aircraft carriers just obsolete battleships that should be turned into museums? The Iran war has given us some keen insight into this question, and the answers will surely make the U.S. Navy quite happy. Aircraft Carriers as the New Battleship: Not a Good Comparison US aircraft carriers, notably the USS Gerald R. Ford and USS Abraham Lincoln, have operated as central, highly resilient, and mobile command hubs in the 2026 conflict with Iran.

Utilizing advanced defenses, EW (electronic warfare), and standoff weapons, they have effectively conducted sustained, long-range strikes from outside immediate coastal threats while operating under a very high stress operational tempo. The Navy’s carriers are a central part of the US effort, as they’ve maintained constant air patrols alongside deployed US Air Force aircraft, flying about 800 sorties a day.

What Strategy Demands from Influence Practitioners: Why Meeting Strategic Intent from the recent NSS, NDS, and NDAA Requires Institutional Transformation

John Wilcox, Ryan Walters

The operator sits in a secure basement, awaiting the green light to push out a digital expose’ onto carefully selected social media platforms and networks. The information in the expose, all truthful and professionally curated to attract attention, is meant to awaken the populace to ever increasing foreign maligned influence. The only problem: the request to publish it has been pending for over seventy-two hours. On the screen, a deepfake video depicting an allied commander committing a war crime has already been viewed three million times. It has moved from a fringe Telegram channel to WhatsApp groups and is now breaking on mainstream outlets and trending on TikTok. The strategic guidance is clear: compete. Yet, the request for action sits in a queue, waiting for a legal review designed for a kinetic strike cycle, while the adversary’s narrative hardens into “truth” on the streets of a partner nation. By the time the stamp of approval comes, the riots will have already started.

This friction is the defining characteristic of the modern information fight: while others can exploit opportunities at speed, the U.S. has consistently found itself unable to match the pace, spending more time navigating bureaucracy than contesting adversaries. But for the first time in a generation, national policy, defense strategy, and legislative authority have converged on an undeniable judgment: the decisive terrain of modern conflict is human cognition, and the United States is currently organized to lose the fight for it.

Measuring Lethality: Army Combat Power and Force Design

Nick Reynolds and Dr Jack Watling

With the UK and US military facing potential numerical disadvantages in future conflicts, this Research Paper explores how lethality – defined as the rate at which a force inflicts damage relative to the casualties it incurs – can be used as a metric to guide force development and ensure operational success. Lethality should be understood as the output of combat power, or an attempt to predict effect rather than inputs to operations.

Adopt a multi-metric approach to measuring lethality: Avoid oversimplified, aggregated metrics that obscure critical dependencies. Instead, measure lethality using four distinct metrics: overmatch, potential, endurance and efficiency. Develop an overmatch matrix: Map out enemy systems and align British Army capabilities to evaluate the proportion of the enemy that is overmatched or held at risk.

Fast energy: How Europe can power the AI revolution and stay competitive

Alan Riley

SummarySlow decision-making in Europe undermines the continent’s security, prosperity and political stability—from defence industrial output for Ukraine to exposure to hostile powers in energy and technology. global AI-driven surge in electricity demand is reshaping geopolitics, favouring states such as America and China that can rapidly expand power generation and grids. Europe risks becoming an energy-constrained AI follower.

Europe faces structurally higher energy costs than the US and China, as well as grid bottlenecks, permitting delays and carbon prices that erode its competitiveness. It also has significant resource constraints.

How NATO can integrate AI to prevail in future algorithmic warfare

Dominika Kunertova

Military artificial intelligence (AI) is moving from the margins of experimentation into the core of how NATO will fight, make critical decisions, and deter competitors over the next decade. The 2022 NATO Strategic Concept identifies the technological edge to be critical for the Alliance to fulfil its core tasks. Both contemporary warfare and renewed strategic competition suggest that data-driven AI decision-support systems and autonomous battlefield capabilities augmented with AI will define the character of future conflicts. There is a justified focus on evaluating strategic risks associated with such systems.

This report argues that integrating AI into military systems does not generate vulnerabilities that are fundamentally new in kind compared to existing cyber risks. But the difference lies in consequences. Once AI-enabled decision-support systems and autonomous platforms become critical to Alliance operations, interference with data, models, and computing infrastructure may have implications for NATO’s ability to see, decide, and act under pressure. Similarly, the offensive use of AI-enabled capabilities does not, on its own, raise or lower the nuclear threshold. Escalation thresholds in algorithmic warfare will continue to be driven by effects on the ground rather than by whether a system is AI-enabled. Yet the characteristics of AI—the speed, system opacity, and physical infrastructure—create more room for human error, misperception, and miscalculation.

Implementing New Airpower Concepts: Insights from Agile Combat Employment

Sandeep S. Mulgund, PhD

This paper examines a multiyear Headquarters Air Force effort to develop, implement, and institutionalize Agile Combat Employment (ACE) across major commands and subordinate units. Focused on dispersed aircraft operations with allies and partners, the initiative addressed doctrine, organization, training, materiel, leadership, personnel, facilities, and policy considerations. Key insights include defining combat credibility; aligning ACE with concurrent efforts; engaging stakeholders across doctrine, organization, training, materiel, leadership, personnel, facilities, and policy; and organizing guidance around joint functions. The effort emphasized separating tactical and operational roles, building capability through phased progression, integrating with joint and combined forces, identifying resource requirements, managing risk deliberately, and codifying lessons learned in emerging doctrine to sustain institutional memory and enable enduring change.

A New Generation Takes Power in Nepal

Amish Raj Mulmi

Among the bevy of Nepali communist parties is the Nepal Majdoor Kisan Party (Nepal Workers Peasants Party or NWPP), which draws inspiration from Juche, North Korea’s doctrine of national self-reliance. Founded in 1975, the party had remained largely on the sidelines of Nepal’s communist movement. Its electoral strength had come almost entirely from its lone stronghold, the Bhaktapur-1 constituency in the Kathmandu Valley, where its candidates had won every general election since 1991. In this year’s Nepali election, however, that decades-long record in Bhaktapur-1 was broken by the upstart Rastriya Swatantra Party (RSP). What might have seemed like a local upset was in fact part of a nationwide political upheaval. The RSP went on to secure 182 of the 275 total seats, two short of a two-thirds majority in the lower house of Parliament.

The NWPP’s rout in its home constituency is among the many remarkable stories to emerge from a snap election that has overturned much of the conventional wisdom about Nepali politics. The RSP’s parliamentary majority is the first since the Nepali Congress (NC) secured one in 1999. No election result has been as decisive since Nepal’s first general election in 1959, when the NC won a two-thirds majority. Many observers had doubted that the current electoral system—which combines first-past-the-post and proportional representation—could allow one party to secure a majority.

The Iran War: A War With or Against the AI Sector?

Jean-Michel Valantin

On the very first day of the Iran War, February 28, 2026, more than 1,000 Iranian targets were struck by US airstrikes. This is almost double the number of strikes carried out on the first day of the Iraq War, launched in 2003. The intensity and precision of these strikes are inextricably linked to the massive use of artificial intelligence (AI)by the American and Israeli militaries.

However, Iran is also involved in the militarization of AI, conducting drone and missile strikes in the air, while also investing heavily in cognitive warfare through the production of deepfakes on social media to destabilize public opinion among its adversaries. But the interplay between the Iranian war and AI deepens further with Iranian strikes and Qatar’s inability to export liquid helium. Liquid helium is a chemical component essential for cooling the machines and photolithography plants that print the semiconductors needed for the computers and data centers of artificial intelligence companies. And Qatar accounts for more than 38% of global helium production.

Developing a Framework for Secure Third-Party Access to Frontier AI

Dr Louise Marie Hurel

As frontier AI models expand in their capability and application, it is key that their evolution remains grounded in safety and security safeguards. Proactive safeguarding is essential to prevent them from being misused or repurposed by malign state or criminal actors to conduct cyber-attacks, terrorist attacks, and other harmful activities.

Third-party evaluation of frontier AI models is increasingly recognised as essential to safety and security—by developers, governments, and regulators alike. Yet enabling meaningful external evaluation requires granting access to some of the most sensitive intellectual property in tech/AI sector. The security risks associated with this access—from intellectual property leakage to model compromise to exploitation by state-sponsored actors—remain poorly mapped and inadequately standardised. This gap stifles the evaluation ecosystem—one where developers restrict access out of security concerns, while evaluators lack the information they need to conduct effective assessments.

Everything You Should Know About CAF Cyber Command

Alex Rudolph

On September 26, 2024, Minister of National Defence Bill Blair and Chief of the Defence Staff General Jennie Carignan held a ceremony at Canadian Forces Station Leitrim, the home of the Canadian Armed Forces (CAF) Network Operations Centre (CFNOC), to officially create CAF Cyber Command (CAFCYBERCOM). Although the creation of CAFCYBERCOM was first officially announced in Our North, Strong and Free only five months earlier, in April 2024, CAFCYBERCOM represents the culmination of nearly 25 years of work by the CAF’s cyber operations program. While CAFCYBERCOM was stood up in near record time compared to similar organizations, it took the Department of National Defence (DND) and senior CAF leadership considerable time to recognize the need for such a command in the first place.

Its creation had been a long time coming and desperately needed—it was the early 2010s when the Defence Team’s Cyber Task Force identified many issues related to command and control and the force development of DND/CAF’s digital and cyber capabilities. Canada’s investment in CAF cyber capabilities has only recently begun to parallel similar investments by other Five Eyes and NATO allies, so there remains significant work for CAFCYBERCOM to grow as an organization. As a result, it is important that we understand why it was created, the purpose of a cyber command, what CAFCYBERCOM can do, and the ways the Government of Canada can authorize CAFCYBERCOM to conduct cyber operations.

Mind the gap: AI adoption in Europe and the US

Alexander Bick, Adam Blandin, David J. Deming, Nicola Fuchs-Schündeln, and Jonas Jessen

Surveys last spring and early this year show that U.S. workers are using artificial intelligence (AI) at a significantly higher rate than European workers, according to a paper discussed at the Brookings Papers on Economic Activity (BPEA) conference on March 27.

“In 2026 we find that 43% of U.S. workers use AI for their job compared to 32% among European workers,” write the authors, Alexander Bick of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, Adam Blandin of Vanderbilt University, David J. Deming of Harvard University, and Nicola Fuchs-Schündeln and Jonas Jessen of WZB Berlin Social Science Center.

Securing cloud infrastructure for AI

Sara Ann Brackett

Securing artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure requires ensuring the security of the cloud ecosystem. The cloud infrastructure that implements and executes AI workloads presents an opening for adversaries that existing vulnerability management institutions were not designed to cover. This brief examines the mechanisms through which vulnerabilities in cloud infrastructure are discovered, disclosed, communicated, and remediated, and finds them to be inadequate to meet the security demands of an ecosystem in which AI has a growing impact.

Nation-state actors continue to target cloud environments, compressing vulnerability discovery and exploitation timelines. At the same time, public vulnerability data, anchored by the Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVE) ID system and the linked National Vulnerability Database (NVD), faces severe strain. The policy institutions tasked with addressing cloud security face leadership vacuums, funding uncertainty, and competing priorities.

Anthropic’s new AI tool has implications for us all – whether we can use it or not Shakeel Hashim

In June 2024, a cyber-attack on a pathology services company caused chaos across London’s hospitals. More than 10,000 appointments were cancelled. Blood shortages followed and delays to blood tests led to a patient’s death.

Lethal cyber-attacks like this are thankfully rare. But a new AI release could change that – plunging us into a terrifying new world of chaos and disruption to the digital systems that we rely on.

This week Anthropic, a leading AI company in San Francisco, announced “Claude Mythos Preview”, an AI model that the startup says is too dangerous to publicly release, thanks to its exceptional cybersecurity – and cyber-attacking – capabilities. Mythos, the company claims, has found vulnerabilities in every major browser and operating system. In other words, this new AI model might be able to help hackers disrupt much of the world’s most important software.

Examining US Military Options for Kharg Island and the Strait of Hormuz

Can Kasapoğlu

The ongoing American–Israeli campaign against Iran has been operationally effective in degrading the Islamic Republic’s destructive military capabilities. Yet Washington will face difficulty compelling Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) to stand down so long as Tehran retains the ability to disrupt maritime economic activity through the Strait of Hormuz.

The strait, while still susceptible to Iranian threats, remains the central vulnerability in the global economy. Prior to Operation Epic Fury, a substantial share of global shipping transited this narrow maritime corridor—including roughly one-quarter of global seaborne trade, one-fifth of the world’s oil supply, one-fifth of the world’s liquid natural gas (LNG), and a wide range of other critical goods such as fertilizers. This concentration of maritime traffic along predictable sea lanes has created a structural exposure: a disruptive and hostile actor with continued access to the strait can impose disproportionate effects on a global scale. Iran’s military and strategic approach to the current conflict rests squarely on this stark geopolitical reality.

16 April 2026

India and the America First Arms Transfer Strategy

Kriti Upadhyaya

It hasn't received much attention outside of the defense industry, but the executive order President Trump signed in February establishing the America First Arms Transfer Strategy has ushered in some profound changes in U.S. priorities.

The order reframes U.S. arms transfers as an instrument of industrial policy. Namely, it outlines using foreign purchases to rebuild domestic production capacity, prioritizes the platforms most critical to the U.S. National Security Strategy, and rewards partners who invest in their own defense. Applied to the Indo-Pacific, this framework shows India as an ideal defense partner under this defense strategy.

Pakistan Walks a Tightrope on Iran

Salman Masood

When Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif met Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, on March 12, nearly two weeks after the U.S.-Israeli war in Iran began, one photo from the meeting stood out.

In it, Pakistan Army chief Asim Munir is seated near the two leaders in combat camouflage. Munir’s attire seemed to reflect a country precariously balancing military mobilization and diplomacy—just as he was directing strikes in Afghanistan one moment and discussing the conflict in the Middle East with regional leaders the next.

China’s Energy Security Doesn’t Run Through Hormuz but Through the Electrification of Everything

Damien Ma

The energy shock brought on by the Iran war is still percolating, but those shockwaves will not hit countries with equal intensity. The consensus believes China is well-positioned to withstand the shock, given the ample commercial and strategic petroleum reserves at its disposal (at least three months), so long as this does not turn into a forever war, which looks less likely with the ceasefire. The Chinese stock market performance also implies that investors have generally bought into this consensus.

But beyond China’s stockpiles, a basic reality appears to have been overlooked in the flurry of commentaries on the war’s impact on China. The country’s energy security isn’t really tied to oil or gas, for which the country does depend on imports. It has always been inextricably linked to coal. China consumes more than half of the world’s coal, and it is the main commodity that powers Chinese industry and the electricity system.

Desert Storm Made the PLA. What is the Iran War Making?

Commander Ander S. Heiles

In January 1991, Chinese military officers watched CNN footage of the United States dismantling the Iraqi Army and experienced what one People’s Liberation Army (PLA) analyst later called a “psychological nuclear attack.” Desert Storm displayed every capability the PLA lacked, and China had no choice but to begin remaking its military from the ground up.

Two years later, China’s Central Military Commission codified these lessons in the Military Strategic Guidelines centered on “Local Wars Under High Technology Conditions” and acknowledged the PLA had been preparing for the wrong war. The Gulf War didn’t just scare China, it gave it direction.

Avoiding the Next Gulf War How America’s Allies in the Region Can Get Out of the Cross Hairs

Neil Quilliam

Israel and the United States may have launched the war on Iran. But it is the Gulf Arab states that have borne the brunt of Tehran’s response. Since February 28, the Islamic Republic has rained down missiles and drones on Gulf hotels and airports. It has hit their oil and gas infrastructure. National energy companies in Bahrain, Kuwait, and Qatar have declared force majeure because they cannot fulfill their contractual obligations.

For the Gulf countries, this conflict has been a reckoning. Although they are not saying it publicly, the war has caused leaders throughout the region to reassess their relationship

How the Iran War Will Upend the Global Economy

Henry Tugendhat

In late March, both Israel and Iran attacked gas fields in the Persian Gulf, the most dramatic escalation yet in the Iran war. By striking upstream energy infrastructure, the belligerents have ensured that the war will have global ramifications lasting beyond the end of the conflict. Even if the recently announced cease-fire holds and the war ends soon, it could take up to five years to rebuild the infrastructure that was lost. And if the cease-fire fails and the war continues, so, too, does the risk of even further destruction. In a world of finite resources, it will be the

The five big sticking points in US-Iran talks

Paul Adams

US Vice-President JD Vance is to lead the US team during the talks, while reports suggest Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi will co-lead Iran's delegation The venue is ready, the guards are in place and the kerb along the approach road has received a fresh coat of yellow and black paint.

As hosts of vital US-Iranian talks, the Pakistani government officials are making optimistic noises, emphasising that unlike many others, they enjoy the trust of both sides. The man heading the US delegation, Vice-President JD Vance, is also sounding upbeat. "If the Iranians are willing to negotiate in good faith," he said before leaving the US, "we're certainly willing to extend the open hand."

Crisis in Hormuz Exposes Fragility of the Rules-Based Order

Kurniawan Arif Maspul

What has unfolded is not simply another Middle Eastern conflict. It is a moment that forces a reckoning. Within weeks of the initial strikes, maritime traffic through Hormuz collapsed from around 130 daily transits to barely a handful. Oil prices surged toward crisis levels, with some refiners reportedly paying near US$150 per barrel. The consequences have rippled far beyond the Gulf: inflationary shocks in Europe, fuel rationing risks in Asia, and deepening food insecurity across parts of Africa. The global economy, already strained, now teeters on the edge of systemic disruption.

Against this backdrop, Bahrain’s attempt to shepherd a UN Security Council resolution to restore freedom of navigation appeared, at least superficially, as a defense of the global commons. Yet the subsequent veto by China and Russia did more than block a diplomatic initiative — it reframed the narrative. Their argument was blunt: any resolution that ignores the precipitating use of force against Iran risks legitimizing aggression.

Iran ceasefire: too many brokers, too little leverage

Eric Alter

Pakistan, with China’s help, brokered it. Turkey and Egypt shuttled the proposals. Qatar had been working the phones for weeks. When the ceasefire between the United States, Israel and Iran was announced on April 7, Pakistan had stepped forward as the lead mediator, pulling the disparate threads together. Within hours, attacks had resumed. Both sides declared victory. Israel’s campaign against Hezbollah continued as though the deal didn’t exist, because for that front, it didn’t.

This is diplomacy now: a single broker in the spotlight, yet no one is responsible for the final outcome. The machinery still generates the same paper trail of summits and communiqués. But something has changed in how it functions. The post-Cold War moment produced occasional bursts of genuine great-power brokerage — ugly and imperfect, but decisive when it worked.

The Iran War’s Real Lessons for China

Carter Malkasian

In nearly six weeks of war with Iran, the United States’ and Israel’s military performance has been unexpectedly effective. Between the start of the war on February 28 and the start of this week’s cease-fire, U.S. and Israeli airstrikes destroyed thousands of targets in Iran. Although Iranian retaliatory strikes caused damage, American and Israeli air defenses worked well. Complete details about the targets the U.S. and Israeli militaries hit, the Iranian drones and missiles they intercepted, and the units they deployed are not yet public. But judging by the available information, it is likely that the two militaries’ methods and technology attained new levels of tactical effectiveness.

The performance should give pause to U.S. adversaries that have been watching the war in Iran unfold. Massive volleys of long-range drones and ballistic missiles are a preferred offensive tool of China, North Korea, and Russia, used to pound military bases and headquarters, sink fleets, and level civilian infrastructure. If a U.S. adversary were to undertake a war of aggression in Asia or Europe, its plan would be to launch strikes to try to neutralize U.S. and allied military forces, likely inflicting high civilian losses in the process, and then use that cover to carry out its war objectives. The success of high-end Western missile defenses against Iranian strikes calls such a plan into question. Ballistic missiles and drones may not be the decisive offensive weapons that many countries thought them to be. They could still be effective in a campaign of attrition and coercion—but this would be a slow process, not a path to quick victory.

Ceasefire or no ceasefire, the Middle East's reshuffling is not yet done

Jeremy Bowen

The best hope for the ceasefire talks in Pakistan is that both the United States and Iran have strong reasons to call a halt to the war. The biggest obstacle to their success is a total absence of trust, no discernible common ground and the fact that Israel, America's full partner in the war, has hugely escalated its onslaught on Lebanon.

US President Donald Trump is already speaking about the war in the past tense. He has declared victory and needs an exit. Not only does he have a state visit from King Charles in the diary for later this month, followed by a summit with China's President Xi Jinping in May, there are midterm elections in November. With America's summer holiday season looming, Trump also needs petrol prices to fall back to where they were before he went to war. Royal visits, summits and elections do not mix well with wars.

How a Cease-Fire Can Lead to Disaster

Daniel Chardell and Samuel Helfon

No sooner had the United States and Israel launched their joint war on Iran than observers began invoking a familiar historical analogy: that this Middle Eastern intervention echoed the fateful 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq. As in 2003, Washington had initiated a war of choice against a long-standing adversary in the Persian Gulf, with the overt goal of toppling its regime. But for now, at least, that is where the parallel ends. Until the cease-fire announced on April 7, the United States largely confined its operations against Iran to the sky and the sea. President Donald Trump appears to have understood that

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