Indian Strategic Studies: March 2026

31 March 2026

After Modi: Political Leadership and the Future of Indian Foreign Policy

Rohan Mukherjee

By the time of India’s next national election in 2029, Prime Minister Narendra Modi will be 78 years old. At present, it is unclear whether he will run for another term. It is equally unclear who within his party, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), might succeed him when he eventually retires. In the latter scenario, the BJP itself may be in a difficult electoral position without Modi’s personal charisma and mass following. This unclear line of succession in the BJP could lead to India’s current political opposition, led by the Indian National Congress party, winning the first election of the post-Modi era and consolidating power for itself and its allies with an eye on future electoral cycles.

Against this backdrop, this essay identifies two individuals from within Modi’s own party and from within the opposition as representing the next generation of India’s political leaders. They are Yogi Adityanath, who is a seasoned BJP leader and currently chief minister of Uttar Pradesh (India’s most populous state), and Rahul Gandhi, who is de facto leader of the Congress party and leader of the opposition in the lower house of parliament. Both Adityanath and Gandhi are in their early 50s, at least 20 years younger than Modi, and therefore positioned for long periods of rule, making them “next generation” in terms of age and political longevity as well. Both have already spent long periods in politics, though neither has held a position in the executive branch of government at the national level.

The Infantry Division Transformed: Four Fighting Principles

James "Jay" Bartholomees and Greg Scheffler

The US Army is rediscovering the division as the warfighting formation. During the post-9/11 wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the brigade combat team became the Army’s primary warfighting unit. Brigades trained, deployed, and fought largely independently. Company commanders and platoon leaders were responsible for integrating attached fire support teams, engineers, intelligence collectors, and signal assets into maneuver formations. Successful integration depended on early collaboration, integrated leader development, and habitual relationships. When these conditions were absent, integration became improvisation under the pressure of final manifest call and line-of-departure actions.

Modern battlefields demand longer ranges, more sensors, and tighter coordination between warfighting functions. Many of those capabilities that were previously pushed to the tactical edge now sit at the division level. Consolidating capabilities such as artillery, intelligence, signal, cyber, and electronic warfare at this level reflects the realities of the changing character of warfare—and makes the Army more lethal and more optimized for the modern battlefield, particularly in the long-range joint fight of the Pacific.

Pakistan’s Afghan Frankenstein: The beast is loose and Europe is unsuspecting

Konstantinos Bogdanos

Is Pakistan finally facing the monster it created? Is Europe prepared for the consequences? The answer is in the smoke rising over the Durand Line. For decades, the Islamabad establishment has played a dangerous game, nurturing the Taliban as a strategic depth agent against India. Today, this plan backfires, and the resulting explosion of violence threatens to send a fresh wave of illegal immigration toward the already strained borders of the European Union.

The “open war” declared by Defence Minister Khawaja Asif marks the end of a thirty-year illusion. The apprentice has not only left the master. He has now turned openly against him. The March 16 strike on Kabul was the moment masks fell. When Pakistani warplanes hammered a rehabilitation centre in the heart of the Afghan capital, the “Islamic brotherhood” of the two neighbours officially ceased to be.

The Gulf States in the Shadow of the War with Iran

Yoel Guzansky

The war with Iran has placed the Gulf states, against their will, at the heart of the confrontation. Iran identified the Gulf states as an “underbelly” and potential lever of pressure on the United States to shorten the duration of the campaign. Nevertheless, despite the Iranian attacks on their territory, they have thus far refrained from openly joining the campaign and have preferred a cautious policy: allowing other forces to operate from their territory while undertaking limited offensive actions with plausible deniability.

This policy reflects their concern that Iranian attacks against them will intensify, along with uncertainty regarding the American war objectives. From the perspective of the Gulf states, a key test of the campaign’s outcome is not only the extent of the damage inflicted on Iran, but also, and above all, whether a regional-international framework will emerge that can prevent Iran from rebuilding its capabilities. This article examines the central question of the extent to which the war undermines the logic underlying the hedging strategy that the Gulf states adopted toward Iran or whether it precisely underscores its necessity. It also assesses the implications of the war and the reality that will emerge in its wake for Israel’s relations with the Gulf states while presenting possible opportunities and risks that may limit their realization.

"Iran Must Only Succeed Once to Trigger a Catastrophe"

Claus Hecking

For days, U.S. President Donald Trump has been trying to end the blockade of the Strait of Hormuz imposed by Iran as a result of the war. He has ordered military facilities on Iran’s oil-loading island of Kharg to be bombed. He has threatened to destroy the oil terminals. And he is calling on other countries to send warships into the Strait of Hormuz.

S. Clinton Hinote is a retired three-star U.S. Air Force general. In the mid-2000s, under U.S. President George W. Bush, he developed scenarios for a possible war against Iran. He says that every military option for securing the Strait of Hormuz involves risks that would be difficult, perhaps impossible, to eliminate.

Bottling the World Economy

Adam Hanieh

Amid the destruction of the US–Israeli war against Iran, much of the world’s attention has fixed on the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow passage through which roughly a fifth of the world’s oil and liquefied natural gas passes. In normal times ships traversing the Strait—which runs between Oman and the United Arab Emirates on one bank and Iran on the other—follow a pair of two-mile-wide lanes for inbound and outbound traffic, separated by a two-mile buffer. Shortly after the onset of the war Iran began attacking commercial vessels and laying mines in the waterway, effectively shutting it to most marine traffic. As of March 18 around 3,200 ships were stranded in the Gulf, with only a handful of tankers permitted to pass each day.

The disruption of this vital artery has sent markets into convulsions, with the international price benchmark for Brent crude oil briefly surging to nearly $120 a barrel on March 9, its highest level since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine sparked panic. Donald Trump has urged Western allies to help escort tankers through the Strait in an effort to keep prices in check, so far finding no takers; more recently he has threatened to strike Iran’s power plants if its government refuses to reopen the waterway. Oil, in this sense, has become a proxy for the war’s nearly incalculable costs.

Prepare for turbulence - how a prolonged Middle East conflict could reshape how we fly

It was once a humble outpost in the world of global aviation, a dusty overnight halt for luxury flying boats making the arduous journey from the UK to far-flung parts of the British Empire, such as India and Australia. By the 1960s, it had a simple runway made of desert sand, used as a refuelling stop by airliners en route to arguably more exotic destinations.

Yet today, Dubai is one of the key pillars of the industry, and Dubai International Airport (DXB) is its beating heart. In 2024, more than 92 million passengers made their way through its gleaming, marble-floored halls and sparkling, brightly lit shopping malls.

‘Everything After This Will Be Harder’: Gen. Stanley McChrystal on Iran

David French

Did President Trump fall for the myth of surgical warfare? Gen. Stanley McChrystal joins the columnist David French, both veterans of the Iraq war, to discuss what may have been overlooked in the planning of Operation Epic Fury. McChrystal, who retired from the Army in 2010, argues that the United States often overestimates the decisive power of aerial bombing while underestimating the weight of historical grievance. And the general weighs in on the current culture of bravado coming from the secretary of defense, Pete Hegseth.

‘Everything After This Will Be Harder’: Gen. Stanley McChrystal on IranDavid French talks with the retired general about the “great seduction” America fell for in Iran. Below is a transcript of an episode of “The Opinions.” We recommend listening to it in its original form for the full effect. You can do so using the player above or on the NYTimes app, Apple, Spotify, Amazon Music, YouTube, iHeartRadio or wherever you get your podcasts.

USS Gerald Ford limps out of hot war and into embarrassment. Why?

Dan Grazier

A March 12 fire that injured 200 sailors is just the latest embarrassing incident in the history of the USS Gerald R. Ford. The vaunted aircraft carrier has become a case study demonstrating how such a program will fail when policymakers prioritize economic and political concerns over military effectiveness. Navy leaders pulled their premier ship from the front lines after the laundry room fire and sent it to the island of Crete, where it will undergo urgent repairs for at least a week.

Construction on the Ford began in 2009, but the ship wasn’t commissioned until July 2017. Even then, the ship was far from ready for service. It took another five years for the Navy to put the ship to sea on its first operational deployment.

The Countdown to a Ground War

Thomas Wright

Donald Trump announced this week that the United States and Iran had made significant progress in negotiations, and he was allowing five days to reach a deal. Tehran denied that it was talking with Washington at all. This is not, in any meaningful sense, a negotiation: It is a countdown.

The timing is not coincidental. Thousands of Marines and much of the 1st Brigade of the 82nd Airborne are en route to the Middle East. Trump may intend the talks to act as cover for an escalation decision already made. Even if he doesn’t, the structural reality is the same: When the deadline expires, he will be close to having significant ground-combat capability in the region and a collapsing diplomatic process to justify using it.

Ukraine signs deal with Saudi Arabia offering drone expertise

Vitaly ShevchenkoKyiv

President Volodymyr Zelensky says Ukraine has signed a deal with Saudi Arabia to share its drone defence expertise and technology. Zelensky said Saudi Arabia was facing the same type of ballistic missile and drone attacks from Iran that Ukraine had been resisting for more than four years from Russia. "We are ready to share our expertise and systems with Saudi Arabia and to work together to strengthen the protection of lives," he said in a post on X.

Ahead of a meeting with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, Zelensky posted that the defence deal laid the foundation for future contracts, technological cooperation and investment. "Saudi Arabia also has capabilities that are of interest to Ukraine, and this cooperation can be mutually beneficial," the Ukrainian president added. Zelensky said he had also discussed with Mohammed bin Salman reports that Russia was assisting Iran's regime, as well as developments in the fuel market and energy co-operation.

The world is rediscovering chokepoints — and they are not just geographic

Duncan Wood

Commercial vessels are pictured offshore in Dubai on March 11, 2026. New attacks hit three commercial ships in the Gulf on March 11, with one of the vessels in flames as Iran pressed its campaign against its oil-exporting neighbours, threatening shipping in the Strait of Hormuz and plunging the global energy economy into crisis. (Photo by AFP via Getty Images).

As Middle East tensions rise, the Strait of Hormuz has again become a focal point for policymakers and markets. Roughly one-fifth of globally traded oil passes through that narrow waterway. Any disruption reverberates immediately through global energy prices and, ultimately, the wallets of American consumers.

But focusing solely on Hormuz risks missing the bigger picture. The real story of the global economy in 2026 is not a single chokepoint. It is the proliferation of chokepoints: across geography, infrastructure, industry and even the digital world. These bottlenecks form the hidden architecture of the global economy. And increasingly, they are becoming the terrain on which economic competition and geopolitical rivalry are fought.

When the war is interested in you

Karl Pfefferkorn

German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier may not be interested in the war with Iran, but that war is certainly interested in Germany. The oil and gas it desperately needs flows through the Straits of Hormuz, which can be secured only by the US Navy. The ballistic missile attack on Diego Garcia shows Iran’s strategic reach now encompasses Berlin, Rome and Warsaw. The nightmare scenario under which an economically weak Iran could blackmail the mighty European Union is forestalled only by the layered ballistic missile defense constructed at great cost by the United States, which includes satellites, ground based radars, and interceptors both ashore and on US ships based in Rota, Spain (hello Pedro Sanchez, and welcome to the party!). The two-stage rockets fired by Iran are clearly sized for use with an atomic weapon, should the current campaign fail to end the nuclear ambitions of the Islamic Republic.

Rather than express gratitude for American defence against this alarming new Iranian capability, Steinmeier parroted Germany’s traditional faith in international law and the moribund Joint Consultative Plan of Action negotiated by President Obama. That this deal would have ended all restrictions on uranium enrichment a full year ago, and never placed any limits on Iran’s ballistic missile programmes troubles Steinmeier not at all. Apparently words on paper have a magical power far superior to the tawdry complexities of missile defence. The possibility that the inadequacies of the JCPOA encouraged rather than hindered the covert development of hostile capabilities is a notion beyond the sentimental yearnings of the German President.

The War in Iran Could Become Like the War in Ukraine

James F. Jeffrey

When the United States and Israel started bombarding Iran in late February, U.S. President Donald Trump and his advisers likely believed that they could debilitate the regime and the situation would stabilize quickly, as occurred with the military operation to remove Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro in January. Given the repeated failure of nuclear talks with Iran and the Israeli desire to neutralize Tehran’s growing missile arsenal, Trump and his advisers likely reasoned that acting now was better than later for a conflict that would eventually have to be fought. Washington had already built up forces in the region, and the Iranian regime, which faced an emboldened Israel and rising domestic unrest, was weaker than it had been for decades.

But what has transpired looks more like Russia’s war in Ukraine than Washington’s quick intervention in Venezuela. The fierce Iranian response has led to a war of attrition and possible stalemate similar to the conflict in Ukraine. The United States, like Russia, does not have an obvious way to achieve a decisive victory and risks getting mired in an endless war.

How the Army’s most tech-forward units are practicing for war

JENNIFER HLAD

SCHOFIELD BARRACKS, Hawaii—Inside a mud-splattered tent, the Army’s vice chief and the commander of the 25th Infantry Division watched on two giant TV screens as the division attempted to repel an enemy attack from the sea. Just outside, the service’s first launched-effects battery used an unmanned reconnaissance glider that arrived about a month before to provide a picture of the simulated assault, while the division’s new HIMARS rocket launchers shot down “enemy” drones.

“We have old stuff, we have new stuff, and we’re fighting in a new way,” said Col. Dan Von Benken, the division’s artillery commander. It was the last day of a two-week Joint Pacific Multinational Readiness Center exercise, and this constructed amphibious battle was the end of a scenario in which the soldiers worked with partner forces to defend an archipelago and take back islands seized by the enemy.

Israel’s Lebanese Campaign Will Backfire

Shira Efron

Israel began planning its operation in Lebanon months ago when it became apparent that since the November 2024 cease-fire, Hezbollah had not depleted its rocket and missile arsenal, that it had rebuilt its command structure and restored its ability to fight and that, despite promises, the Lebanese government had not fully disarmed the terrorist group. On March 2, after Hezbollah joined the Iranian counterattack and fired at the Galilee, Israel seized the opportunity to go on the offensive.

It’s widely agreed that action against Hezbollah — an internationally recognized terrorist group and a Shiite Muslim political party in Lebanon’s multisectarian society — is necessary. However, a prolonged Israeli military operation, the destruction of state infrastructure and a wider presence in southern Lebanon, as Israeli officials now propose, could further undermine weak Lebanese institutions, turn the country’s people against Israel and further entrench Hezbollah’s resistance narrative. That’s precisely the opposite of what Israel and the region need.

Iran’s Long Game Decades of Preparation Are Paying Off

Narges Bajoghli

Judging by the metrics of conventional conflict, Iran is not faring well against the United States and Israel. Its adversaries are destroying crucial targets in Iran, killing its commanders and degrading its military assets. But these are the wrong measures for assessing Iran’s position in the war. The right measure is not even an assessment of whether Iran is absorbing punishment well—which it is. The question that will matter when the fighting ends is whether Tehran is achieving its strategic objectives. And on that count, Iran is winning.

This outcome is not accidental. Tehran has been preparing for this war for nearly four decades, since the new revolutionary government faced its first major military test in the Iran-Iraq War, which lasted from 1980 to 1988. And it is now executing a strategy that has managed to neutralize key U.S. and Israeli air defense batteries, severely damage U.S. military bases in the Persian Gulf, inflict substantial economic pain, and drive a wedge between the United States and its Gulf allies. The Iranian regime, in other words, is not just surviving the U.S. and Israeli bombardment. The serious economic and political problems it is creating for its adversaries are, on a strategic level, giving Iran the upper hand.

The U.S. and Iran Are Fighting a Massively Asymmetrical War

Nancy A. Youssef and Missy Ryan

The Iran war started as a test of military capabilities and stockpiles, and the United States and Israel had the clear advantage. The U.S. brought some 20 ships and submarines to the fight—including two aircraft carriers—50,000 troops, and hundreds of planes and drones. President Trump declared that he would decide when the war would end, claiming after just days that the U.S. had won.

But the momentum of the now three-week war has shifted dramatically since Iran effectively shut the Strait of Hormuz, stranding tankers that usually carry one-fifth of the world’s oil supply through the channel. Trump responded by dispatching reinforcements. Three amphibious ships, carrying more than 5,000 Marines and sailors, are traveling from Asia and will be in the Gulf as soon as Friday, defense officials told us. The Pentagon is preparing to dispatch 2,000 paratroopers from the 82nd Airborne Division, and more troops may soon get orders to deploy.

Iran Is Putting a ‘Toll Booth’ in the Strait of Hormuz

Keith Johnson

One month into his war on Iran, U.S. President Donald Trump is now scrambling to secure something that was not previously insecure—the Strait of Hormuz—turning it into the central thrust of the war’s uncertain endgame.

Iran, or more specifically its Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), has taken effective control of the world’s most important shipping lane and choke point, through which normally passes one-fifth of the world’s oil and natural gas as well as even more of its fertilizer and helium.

The United States Has Become a Rogue State

Stephen M. Walt

The second Trump administration has been far more disruptive, damaging, and dangerous than most observers—including me—expected, and the tragically inept war with Iran is driving that point home in spades. As a result, every country in the world is having to figure out how to deal with an increasingly rogue United States. Ask yourself: If you led Saudi Arabia, Brazil, Germany, Indonesia, Nigeria, Denmark, Australia, etc., what would you do?

Here’s why this is a hard problem. The United States is still very powerful, even if it is now pursuing policies—misguided mercantilism, mindless attacks on science and academia, overt hostility to immigrants of all sorts, doubling down on fossil fuel dependence, wasteful military spending, chronic deficits, etc.—that will weaken it over time. For the moment, however, other states still have to worry that U.S. power could be used to harm them either intentionally or inadvertently.

Libya, Iran, and the Limits of Airpower

Christopher S. Chivvis

For the last few weeks, U.S. policy in Iran has been following a pattern reminiscent of the war it fought 15 years ago in Libya. That was the last time that the United States conducted an air war to change a regime in a large, oil-rich, and Muslim country.

If Iran continues to follow Libya’s pattern, then the world is in for long and dangerous days ahead. Now that the regime has survived the initial U.S. and Israeli salvo, Washington has no good options. Attacking civilian infrastructure, as U.S. President Donald Trump recently threatened to do, would end any chance of a pro-U.S. uprising in Tehran. Inserting ground forces to stem the attacks on energy markets would only compound the war’s cost. Finally, negotiating a cease-fire, while still the best choice available, would publicly confirm the limits of the Trump’s power at home and abroad.

The post-Cold War order is over – what do we do now?

MICK RYAN

The previous document had shortfalls including its failure to learn from modern war. It did not once mention Ukraine, a consequential protracted conflict that has up-ended many assumptions about modern war and deterrence. Japan and Taiwan have absorbed those lessons, updated their procurement plans and restructured their forces. Australia, not so much.

That oversight cannot continue. We are living through an accelerating convergence of threats, including the rise of Chinese military and economic power, the resurgence of Russian aggression, and a technological revolution in drones and artificial intelligence moving faster than governments can absorb. Australia is also adrift in a new interregnum: the post-Cold War order is over, and the world that comes next has not yet fully revealed itself. In that void, the weak, the feckless and the unprepared will pay a high price.

Israel’s Lebanese Campaign Will Backfire

Shira Efron

The fighting between Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon, for now, runs parallel to the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran. But Lebanon will become a main arena when the campaign against Tehran ends.

Israel began planning its operation in Lebanon months ago when it became apparent that since the November 2024 cease-fire, Hezbollah had not depleted its rocket and missile arsenal, that it had rebuilt its command structure and restored its ability to fight and that, despite promises, the Lebanese government had not fully disarmed the terrorist group. On March 2, after Hezbollah joined the Iranian counterattack and fired at the Galilee, Israel seized the opportunity to go on the offensive.

The Gaza Doctrine

Neve Gordon

On Friday, March 13, nearly two weeks into the Lebanese front of “Operation Roaring Lion,” Israeli forces bombed Burj Qalaouiyah, a village in the country’s south. The strike destroyed a health care center, killing twelve doctors, paramedics, nurses, and patients; The New York Times reported that “only one severely injured worker survived.” Among the victims, according to the journalist Lylla Younes’s reporting for Drop Site, was a paramedic who had spoken last fall at a memorial service for several colleagues killed by an Israeli airstrike during the previous war in Lebanon. “Even if we are killed one by one,” he reportedly said then, “we will not abandon our duty.”

The US and Israel’s illegal war on Iran, launched in the late stages of negotiations to renew a nuclear deal, spread quickly to Lebanon. Hezbollah joined the fray on the second day, after a US–Israeli strike killed Ali Khamenei in Tehran. Israel has conducted near-daily airstrikes in Lebanon in the fifteen months since the two countries signed a truce, killing more than three hundred people, but since March 2 its fighter jets have been relentlessly bombing south Lebanon, Beirut, and other cities; it recently launched a ground incursion in the south. Where in Iran the US and Israel are operating side by side, in Lebanon Israel has taken the lead, with the US providing arms and other support.

'A game-changing moment for social media' - what next for big tech after landmark addiction verdict?

Zoe Kleinman

A jury in LA has delivered a damning verdict for two of the world's most popular digital platforms, Instagram and YouTube. It ruled those apps are addictive, and deliberately engineered that way – and that its owners have been negligent in their safeguarding of the children who have used them. It's a sombre moment for Silicon Valley and the implications are global.

The tech giants in this case, Meta and Google, must now pay $6m (£4.5m) in damages to a young woman known as Kaley, the victim at the centre of this case. She claimed the platforms left her with body dysmorphia, depression and suicidal thoughts. Both companies intend to appeal, with Meta maintaining a single app cannot be solely responsible for a teen mental health crisis.

30 March 2026

Iran war shows BRICS limits as India pushed to choose sides

Sudhi Ranjan Sen, S'thembile Cele and Dan Strumpf

Almost a month after the US and Israel began airstrikes on Iran — which killed the senior leadership in that country and triggered a global energy crisis — the BRICS group has failed to take a position on the war. Driving the impasse is the fact that multiple members of the bloc are on different sides of the conflict, making any hard consensus difficult to wrangle. Iran, a BRICS member since 2024, has responded to the US-Israel attacks by firing rockets at the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia. The UAE joined the bloc in 2024, while Saudi Arabia is weighing an invitation to join.

Iran has asked India — which holds the rotating chairmanship of BRICS this year — to support its bid to condemn the joint US and Israeli military campaign against it, according to people familiar with the matter, who asked not to be identified because of the sensitivity of the matter. The UAE and Saudi Arabia are unlikely to agree, the people said, while China and Russia may extend tacit support to Iran.

War in Iran and the nuclear non-proliferation regime: a perspective from Pakistan

Sufian Ullah

On 28 February, the United States and Israel launched joint missile strikes and airstrikes targeting several Iranian cities. This included a decapitating strike that assassinated the country’s supreme leader, Sayyid Ali Khamenei. The apparent objective of these strikes was to fuel regime change in Tehran (as US President Donald Trump framed the situation speaking to the Iranian people: ‘When we are finished, take over your government. It will be yours to take’) and conduct preventive counter-proliferation measures. The principal disagreement between Washington and Tehran – evident before and during their latest round of nuclear talks – has concerned the latter’s uranium enrichment levels, and monitoring mechanisms. Trump’s hardline stance with respect to Iran’s nuclear compliance – a consistent feature of both his presidential terms – has gradually narrowed the scope for negotiated de-escalation.

Diplomacy falters

In February 2026, high-level talks between the US and Iran, facilitated through third-party mediation, were underway in Oman and Geneva. These sought to reconcile the United States’ and its allies’ demands for caps on Iran’s enrichment levels with Tehran’s insistence on its legal rights as laid out in the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT).

China’s 15th Five-Year Plan

Erik Green

On 12 March 2026, China concluded its annual ‘Two Sessions’ – a large political meeting of delegates from China’s legislative body, the National People’s Congress, and its advisory body, the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference. At this year’s gathering, delegates approved China’s 15th Five-Year Plan (FYP), which outlines the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) developmental objectives for 2026–30. This was President Xi Jinping’s third FYP as leader, delivered at a time of slowing economic growth, internal instability following last year’s widespread anti-corruption campaign and global uncertainty due to the ongoing war in Iran.

The 15th FYP highlights several points of continuity in the CCP’s strategic ambitions – namely its aim to achieve technological supremacy and self-reliance. More importantly, however, the FYP also emphasises a growing concern regarding internal and external risks that may threaten these ambitions and outlines how the CCP plans to mitigate them. As the CCP faces an increasingly unpredictable external environment as well as continued challenges at home, it is investing in enhanced early-warning and risk-monitoring systems. To achieve these ambitions and coordinate risk assessments, improvements in centre–local party relations and information flows will be key.

Taiwan’s Four Lessons from the Iran War

James Holmes

Geography matters. Iran’s principal assailant, the United States, lies thousands of miles from the combat zone. America is a resident power in the Middle East, but heavy forces bound for the Persian Gulf typically surge from bases in the homeland. Maritime forces sortieing from the East Coast of the United States have to traverse not just vast distances, but potentially embattled waterways—the Red Sea and Bab el-Mandeb Strait in particular—to gain entry to the waters and skies adjoining the Islamic Republic. Or they have to undertake the arduous roundabout voyage through the South Atlantic into the Indian Ocean.

It may not seem so considering the pounding it has taken, but Iran is actually a tremendous beneficiary of the tyranny of distance. Not so with Taiwan. In one sense, geography has cursed the island republic. It lies under the shadow of its major antagonist, China, which has armed itself with an array of weaponry to pummel the island while fending off US or allied reinforcements for a time. Nor does Beijing bother to conceal its malice toward Taipei. If the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) can recruit time as its ally, it will dramatically bolster its chances of subduing the island’s defenders. And while the United States has committed only a fraction of its armed might to Operation Epic Fury, China tends to keep its massive armed forces grouped in East Asia, near potential battlegrounds. Numbers of ships, combat aircraft, and munitions are its friend.

Iran, the $39 trillion national debt and dedollarization: How Trump exposed America’s Achilles Heel in Hormuz

Nick Lichtenberg

The year was 1974 and President Richard Nixon had dispatched his Secretary of State Henry Kissinger to Saudi Arabia to strike a secret deal. Three years earlier, in August 1971, Nixon had already administered the “shock” that ended the Bretton Woods system governing global finance since World War II — suspending the dollar’s convertibility to gold in a televised address that transformed every major currency overnight. By 1973, the system had fully unraveled.

The world wouldn’t know for another 50 years what Nixon and Kissinger replaced it with, striking a deal that would quietly govern the global economy for the next half-century. Riyadh agreed to price and trade its oil in U.S. dollars and channel its petroleum windfalls back into U.S. Treasury bonds; in return, Washington promised military aid, equipment, and security guarantees—a deal that would quietly govern the global economy for the next half-century.

Choppy waters in the Strait of Hormuz

Nick Childs

When the Houthis threatened shipping in the Bab el-Mandeb Strait from November 2023, the dire economic consequences that were forecast did not materialise, in part because shippers could reroute around the Cape of Good Hope. There was also sufficient shipping capacity to cope, and markets adapted. The Strait of Hormuz is different. It accounts for 20% of all internationally traded oil, 34% of seaborne oil-trade flows and 30% of liquefied natural gas exports. It is also the only maritime route in and out of the Gulf.

There are pipeline alternatives, but they have only about one-third of the capacity that normally flows through the Strait of Hormuz. There have long been calls to build more pipelines, and even a canal, to bypass the strait. However, building sufficient capacity would be a challenge. And recent events have shown that canals and fixed land-based energy infrastructure have their own vulnerabilities.

Defending the skies of the Arab Gulf states

Albert Vidal Ribe

Since the beginning of the current war in Iran on 28 February, the Arab Gulf states have used hundreds of missile interceptors to counter Iranian missiles and one-way attack uninhabited aerial vehicles (OWA UAVs). They have already consumed a significant portion of their stockpiles of long-range interceptors. These air-defence systems have protected the Arab Gulf states while the United States and Israel prioritised the destruction of Iran’s ballistic-missile launchers and effectively eliminated most of Iran’s launch capabilities, which led to a sharp drop in the rate of Iranian ballistic-missile fire after the first few days of hostilities.

Though Iran’s UAV attacks have also decreased in intensity, drones continue to enter the skies of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) states by the dozen. Compared with ballistic missiles, these are cheaper systems and easier to launch, and Iran possesses a much larger stockpile of them. In the absence of a durable diplomatic settlement to the conflict – which is unlikely, at least in the short term – Iran is likely to rely on UAVs as a major part of its harassment strategy.

Trump Needs a Humanitarian Plan for Iran and the Middle East—Before It’s Too Late

Sam Vigersky

More than three weeks into Operation Epic Fury, with U.S. President Donald Trump unleashing the full might of military dominance, a critical feature of the country’s power is conspicuously absent—humanitarian aid.

Since 1945, the United States’ global authority has rested on being a complete power: an unmatched military paired with the diplomatic and economic tools needed to advance peace. Together, this has secured a period of safety and prosperity that has defined U.S. leadership for decades. Despite having spent an estimated $11 billion on military operations in the first week of the Iran conflict alone—and an additional $200 billion war supplemental under debate on Capitol Hill—the State Department’s new Bureau of Disaster and Humanitarian Response has yet to articul

What the Iran War Reveals About the Limits of US Power

Alexander Clackson

This matters because global influence rests not only on capabilities, but also on credibility, coalition management, and the ability to shape escalation dynamics. On each of these fronts, the conflict is offering lessons – not only for Washington, but for its competitors.

The first lesson is that overwhelming military superiority does not guarantee strategic control. The United States possesses the most advanced military capabilities in the world, from precision strike systems to unmatched naval power. Yet Iran has demonstrated how a weaker state can impose meaningful costs through asymmetric means.

Unable to compete conventionally, Tehran has relied on relatively low-cost but disruptive tools: drones, missiles, naval mines, and attacks conducted through regional partners. These capabilities have allowed Iran to expand the scope of the conflict beyond direct exchanges with US forces. Strikes on infrastructure across the Gulf, attacks on shipping lanes, and pressure on regional bases have imposed a broader strategic burden that is difficult to neutralize quickly.

Are the US and Iran holding peace talks, and what do both sides want?

Frank Gardner

Donald Trump has insisted the US is negotiating with Iran over an end to the war, but Tehran has repeatedly said talks are not taking place. Iran's foreign minister Abbas Araghchi admitted messages have been exchanged with the US via intermediaries, but said these constituted "neither dialogue nor negotiation, nor anything of the sort".

Trump claimed on Wednesday that Iran is "afraid" to admit to talks "because they figure they'll be killed by their own people". So, who to believe? Is peace just around the corner? Or are both sides settling in for a costly, protracted war that will keep energy prices high, affecting the whole world right through the summer?

The signs are that we are now entering into a situation not dissimilar to the logjam over ending the Russia-Ukraine war. Both sides say they want it to finish, but on their terms, which are still far apart from what the other side will accept.

Autonomous swarms are the future of drone warfare

DRONES HAVE become a standard weapon of war. Small quadcopters currently inflict the majority of casualties on the battlefield in Ukraine, and in recent weeks Iran has rained thousands of larger drones on the cities, airfields and oil facilities of the Middle East.

The War Is Going Better Than You Think

Bret Stephens

Most Americans probably don’t look back at March 2012 — if they remember it at all — and think of terrifyingly high gas prices. In the month when “The Hunger Games” ruled the box office and President Barack Obama was on his way to a comfortable re-election, the price of Brent crude closed the month around $123 a barrel. That would be about $175 a barrel in today’s dollars.

As of Tuesday, despite Iran’s effective closure of the Strait of Hormuz and its attacks on its neighbors’ energy facilities, it’s hovering around $100, slightly higher than the average inflation-adjusted price since January 2001, roughly $95.

Decentralize or Defeat: How Institutional Ego Slows U.S. Military Intelligence

Jared Martin

For more than two decades, the United States has been lulled into complacency fighting counterinsurgencies against foes who were woefully overmatched by the technical prowess of the U.S. military. Satellites and high-altitude surveillance aircraft thrived in uncontested airspace which provided American forces the distinct intelligence advantage. This advantage seemed so dominant that the United States stopped evolving. In Ukraine, our illusion is being dismantled by $500 drones.

Across a battlefield saturated with electronic warfare and long-range fires, Ukrainian units now use cheap commercial drones to spot targets, track movements, provide surveillance and reconnaissance, and organize strikes in real-time. These systems do not belong to a rigid, centralized enterprise. Instead, they belong to platoons, companies, and volunteer operators scattered across hundreds of miles along the warfront. Together, they have built something no Western military currently possesses: a disposable, decentralized intelligence network designed to survive in a high-attrition war.

Trump, Iran, and Diego Garcia: Inside the Fight Over a Remote Military Base

Mariel Ferragamo

In the central Indian Ocean, 1,000 miles south of the southern tip of India—and around 5,800 miles southeast of the United Kingdom (UK)—lies the Chagos Archipelago, a small group of roughly sixty islands designated as the British Indian Ocean Territory since 1965.

U.S. President Donald Trump has marked the cluster of islands as critical to U.S. foreign policy because of a joint U.S.-UK military base on the archipelago’s largest island, Diego Garcia. Since the Cold War era, the base has acted as a staging ground for deployments to the Middle East and East Africa, allowing the United States quicker access to these areas—which has become all the more important as the Trump administration plunges forward with the U.S. war with Iran.

Assessing the Air Campaign After Three Weeks: Iran War By the Numbers

Mark F. Cancian and Chris H. Park

In the first 24 hours of Operation Epic Fury, U.S. forces struck over 1,000 targets as they worked from the long-standing U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) target list. The Israeli Air Force struck over 750 additional targets during this time. After that, the pace eased. CENTCOM likely was being judicious in using expensive and scarce long-range missiles like the Tomahawk and Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missile (JASSM)—both around $3.5 million per shot.

The intensity of the U.S. bombing campaign picked up between Days 7 and 10 as the coalition took advantage of its air dominance over large parts of Iran. Operational success in diminishing Iran’s air defense meant U.S. planes could fly with few limitations and use less expensive, more plentiful munitions like Joint Direct Attack Munition (JDAM), which costs less than $100,000 per shot.

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Clayton Seigle

After more than three weeks of open warfare, Iran effectively controls the Persian Gulf. The country’s two-pronged attack against gulf commercial shipping and critical infrastructure has cut off roughly one-fifth of the world’s oil and liquefied natural gas supplies, leaving only Iranian oil to make it out.

President Trump last week responded by removing sanctions from some of the oil flowing out of Iran, in an effort to ease high petroleum prices. If the money from selling that oil gets back to Tehran, the president’s move will be deeply counterproductive. Instead, he should order a blockade of Iranian oil. To negotiate an end to the crisis from a position of strength, the Trump administration should flip the script on Iran, depriving it of revenue unless the regime restores security in the gulf.

The key to securing — or blockading — gulf energy exports is not at the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow waterway that connects the gulf with global markets. Even if the United States fully secures the strait for commercial traffic, Iran will retain the firepower and range to continue striking ships and the facilities that load those ships throughout the region. Securing the strait would impose no pressure on Iran to ease up, because the country would continue exporting oil.

Empty Words Don’t Open Straits

Maisoon H. Kafafy

Earlier this month, U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright posted on X that the U.S. Navy had successfully escorted a tanker through the Strait of Hormuz. Within minutes, the post was deleted, and the White House soon clarified that no such escort had taken place. On its face, it was a simple case of miscommunication. In practice, it revealed more about the Trump administration’s approach to crisis management than any official briefing has.

What was remarkable was not that the post was wrong. It was that, for about 10 minutes, it worked: Crude oil futures plunged by nearly 17 percent—a false signal, accepted by markets desperate for evidence that the crisis was being resolved.

Bottling the World Economy

Adam Hanieh

Amid the destruction of the US–Israeli war against Iran, much of the world’s attention has fixed on the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow passage through which roughly a fifth of the world’s oil and liquefied natural gas passes. In normal times ships traversing the Strait—which runs between Oman and the United Arab Emirates on one bank and Iran on the other—follow a pair of two-mile-wide lanes for inbound and outbound traffic, separated by a two-mile buffer. Shortly after the onset of the war Iran began attacking commercial vessels and laying mines in the waterway, effectively shutting it to most marine traffic. As of March 18 around 3,200 ships were stranded in the Gulf, with only a handful of tankers permitted to pass each day.

The disruption of this vital artery has sent markets into convulsions, with the international price benchmark for Brent crude oil briefly surging to nearly $120 a barrel on March 9, its highest level since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine sparked panic. Donald Trump has urged Western allies to help escort tankers through the Strait in an effort to keep prices in check, so far finding no takers; more recently he has threatened to strike Iran’s power plants if its government refuses to reopen the waterway. Oil, in this sense, has become a proxy for the war’s nearly incalculable costs.

Love Actually? Washington’s current relationship with Britain is more like Contempt Actually

Timothy Garton Ash

“Afriend who bullies us is no longer a friend. And since bullies only respond to strength, from now onward, I will be prepared to be much stronger. And the president should be prepared for that.” Thus spoke Hugh Grant, playing the British prime minister confronting the US president in a famous scene in the romcom Love Actually. Real-life British prime minister Keir Starmer has attempted to stand up ever so slightly to the current bully in the White House over the latest US war in the Middle East. Despite the British government’s right-royal efforts to flatter Donald Trump ever since he was elected US president, his response to Starmer’s little attempt has been a torrent of contempt. So the reality is not Love Actually. It’s Contempt Actually.

Asked about the British government’s subtle distinction between defensive strikes in the Gulf, which it now supports, and offensive ones, which it doesn’t, Maga ideologue Steve Bannon tells the New Statesman’s Freddie Hayward: “That’s diplomatic bullshit. Fuck you. You’re either an ally or you’re not. Fuck you. The special relationship is over.” Ah, the “special relationship”! It must be 40 years since I first heard former West German chancellor Helmut Schmidt say: “The special relationship is so special only one side knows it exists.”

Iron Dome Steps up on Ballistic Missiles

Ryan Brobst, Bradley Bowman & Justin Leopold-Cohen

Multiple videos from the past year of conflict in the Middle East appear to show the Israeli Iron Dome air defense system intercepting Iranian ballistic missiles, a capability well outside its original purpose and specifications. If these early observations are accurate, this impressive feat demonstrates how Iron Dome can, at least to some degree, complement Israel’s Arrow and David’s Sling systems and provide some modest additional protection against ballistic missiles.

To maximize Iron Dome’s emerging capabilities against ballistic missiles and continue to defend against more traditional threats for which Iron Dome was designed, Israel and the United States must work together to exploit its potential and significantly increase production capacity and Israel’s inventory.

Trump’s Iran War Turns Into Fight for the Dollar

Sven R. Larson

Recently, various news stories have surfaced around the world about Iranian demands that oil be traded in yuan. In return for a shift to the Chinese currency, Tehran would guarantee that the Hormuz Strait is open to oil shipping.

The tie between the yuan and the U.S. special military operation against Iran is sensational. In one fell swoop, it would shift the balance of power in the conflict, away from America’s military hegemony to a point where China could deal a near-fatal blow to the U.S. dollar as the world’s preeminent currency. With such high stakes involved, Trump no longer ‘owns’ this conflict. He cannot back out of it without being absolutely sure that he does not sacrifice the dollar in the bargain.

Trump, Xi, and the Specter of 1914

In the early 1910s, British Foreign Secretary Edward Grey was surveying the world from his office in Whitehall. He saw many minor wars, but nothing that would pit the great powers at the time against one another. Even “in the early months of 1914 the international sky seemed clearer than it had been,” he later wrote in his memoirs.

World War I, of course, broke out just months later, and went on to kill 40 million people. Almost nobody saw it coming, but many, including Lord Grey, concluded afterward that it happened because the great powers did not manage to solve the many smaller conflicts that together fueled the conflagration of 1914.

Russia’s Influence Continues to Decline in Azerbaijan and Armenia

Sertaç Canalp Korkmaz

U.S. Vice President J.D. Vance’s visits to Armenia and Azerbaijan in February 2026 are the most recent major indications of Baku and Yerevan’s increasing diplomatic engagement with the West and distancing from Moscow. Moscow’s influence in Azerbaijan and Armenia has declined sharply since its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Moscow can no longer sustain the force posture that underpinned its role as the South Caucasus’s security guarantor.

Development of the Middle Corridor, TRIPP, Baku–Tbilisi–Ceyhan pipeline, and Trans-Anatolian Natural Gas Pipeline all demonstrate that the South Caucasus is evolving into an energy and logistics hub independent of Russian leverage.

How Trump’s Iran War Could Torch the Global Economy

Simon Flowers has spent more than four decades working in the energy industry and analyzing it. After studying geology at Edinburgh University at the beginning of the nineteen-eighties, he worked for two years on exploration wells in the eastern Mediterranean, then joined Wood Mackenzie, which was then a stockbroker known for its energy research. When he started out, oil and gasoline prices were falling after two big shocks in the nineteen-seventies. Since then, he’s witnessed gluts in which prices collapsed, two previous Gulf wars that disrupted supply, and other major price spikes, including one in 2008 that was driven by strong demand and stagnant production, and another in 2022, after Russia invaded Ukraine. Now the chairman and lead analyst of Wood Mackenzie, which has evolved into a global energy consultancy, Flowers is no stranger to dramatic turns and market volatility.

But even he was surprised last week when Iranian missiles struck the huge Ras Laffan liquid-natural-gas (L.N.G.) complex in Qatar, which converts gas that comes out of the ground into a liquid that can be transported on ships over long distances. “It takes the whole thing to another level,” Flowers, who is still based in Edinburgh, said to me in a video interview a day after the Iranian strike, which came in response to an Israeli attack on an Iranian gas field. Looking at a screen on his desk, he pointed out that the price of L.N.G.—a fuel widely used in power stations and heating systems—had jumped by thirty per cent in a single day.

The Iran war through Asia’s eyes

Christopher Harding

Such has been the intensity of events in the Gulf, and the relentlessness of the media coverage, that the Iran war can feel older than it is. In fact, some of the oil tankers that left the Middle East before the closure of the Strait of Hormuz have yet to reach their destinations in Europe. The real impact of radically reduced supplies, across the array of industries that rely on oil and the customers who depend on their products, has yet to be felt, leaving an eerie sense of consequences pending.

To the east of the Gulf, where transit times to major Asian destinations are shorter and reliance on Middle Eastern oil is much greater, things are already looking very different. South, East and Southeast Asia have long suffered a severe energy deficit, owing to dense populations, high industrial demand for power and uncooperative geology when it comes to oil and gas production. Around 84 per cent of oil passing through the Strait of Hormuz is destined for Asia, and economies in South and Southeast Asia in particular are starting to struggle. Relationships with the United States are meanwhile being stress-tested, most of all in South Korea and Japan.

29 March 2026

Russian Crude and India: Here to Stay Amid Middle East Tensions?

Shashwat Kumar

For most of 2025, the Trump administration pressured India to curb Russian crude imports. It sanctioned Rosneft and Lukoil—Russia’s largest oil firms—and imposed a 25 percent punitive tariff on all Indian exports to the United States. The escalating Middle East conflict—including Iran’s blockade of the Strait of Hormuz and strikes on Gulf refineries—now challenge India’s strategy of diversification. India’s traditional Gulf oil suppliers who could have replaced Russian crude are under attack, and supplies from Venezuela remain too low to offset major disruptions. Amid uncertainty, Russian crude oil flows to India might endure, not by choice, but by necessity.

It is too early to speculate whether Russian oil exports to India will surge. Washington’s March 5 waiver aids continuity, but sanctions persist. However, larger energy security concerns raise a key question: Can India afford to cut Russian reliance further from current levels (around 20–22 percent) amid turmoil in other major oil-producing regions? Pragmatism suggests it won’t be an easy decision to make for Indian policymakers.

India’s Foreign Policy in the Age of Populism

Sandra Destradi

India’s populist, Hindu-nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has been in power for over a decade and won a third consecutive mandate in 2024 under the leadership of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

In many ways, Modi is a prototypical populist leader. He has styled himself as a self-made man, an outsider to the corrupt political establishment, the son of a tea seller devoted to the service of his people. This self-presentation casts him as someone able not only to speak in the name of the people, but even to personally embody the popular will against established political elites.

The Wartime Role of Iran’s “Axis”: Countering Proxy and Terrorist Threats

Assaf Orion

As allied officials consider the possibility of additional foreign groups entering the war on Iran’s behalf, they should keep in mind the degree to which multifront fighting can strain military force size. Similarly, protracted warfare can test endurance, strain stockpiles of ammunition and spare parts, and test a country’s wider logistical and economic resilience. Shortages in forces can be overcome by phasing fronts—after October 7, for example, Israel attacked the Gaza Strip and defended on the Lebanese front at first, then pivoted to major offensive operations against Hezbollah in September 2024 and Iran in June 2025.

Israel’s main challenge in the current war with Iran is twofold: to continue striking targets there while simultaneously defending the home front against missiles and drones. Hezbollah’s decision to enter the conflict—possibly to be joined by the Houthis later on—will challenge Israel’s defense systems and stockpile of interceptors even more. Attacking enemy threats at their source (e.g., hunting down launchers: destroying warehouses, stockpiles, and production plants further upstream) is a cost-effective way to remove threats and save more limited and expensive defense resources.

Dancers at the Knife's Edge: PLA Rocket Force Nuclear Warhead Management

The PLA Rocket Force (PLARF), until 2016 known as the PLA Second Artillery Force (PLASAF), is the People’s Liberation Army’s (PLA) ground-based strategic missile service. It is equipped with a wide range of nuclear and conventional missiles, including short, medium, intermediate, and intercontinental ballistic missiles, cruise missiles, and anti-ship missiles. It has significantly expanded in size and capabilities since being upgraded to a full service in 2015 adding a range of new weapons systems and at least 11 new missile brigades, the majority of which are likely nuclear-capable.

The People’s Republic of China (PRC) has been a nuclear power since 1964, when it successfully detonated its first atomic weapon. Since then, the PLASAF/PLARF has served as the PRC’s primary nuclear deterrent force. While the PLA has begun building up a credible nuclear triad in recent years, the PLARF and its ground-based nuclear force remain by far the largest and most capable component of that triad.

Epic Fury and Roaring Lion: From War Scenarios to Pressing Postwar Questions in Iran

Assaf Orion

The statements made by President Trump and Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu announcing this weekend’s operations—codenamed “Epic Fury” by the United States and “Roaring Lion” by Israel—reflect close coordination but also some differences. Both recalled the Iranian regime’s lethal legacy, vowed to prevent it from acquiring nuclear weapons, and called for its fall, though without committing to topple it directly.

President Trump stated that his central goal is to defend the United States, and that the operation will be a massive and protracted campaign aimed at destroying Iran’s missiles and navy, preventing Tehran from ever obtaining a nuclear weapon, and neutralizing its regional terrorist proxies. He also called on the regime’s security and police agencies to surrender, and for the Iranian people to take power once the operation is over.

World Oil Transit Chokepoints

Chokepoints are narrow channels along widely used global sea routes that are critical to global energy trade and security because of the large volumes of petroleum and other liquids and liquified natural gas that pass through them. International energy markets depend on reliable transport routes. The blockage of oil transit through a major chokepoint, even temporarily, can lead to substantial supply delays and higher shipping costs, resulting in higher world energy prices. Although most chokepoints can be circumvented by using other routes—which adds significantly to transit time—some chokepoints have no practical alternatives.

This report analyzes seven chokepoints, disruptions to which could add thousands of miles of transit in alternative routes and affect oil and natural gas prices. The world’s most important strategic chokepoints by volume of oil transit are the Strait of Hormuz, leading out of the Persian Gulf, and the Strait of Malacca, which links the Indian and Pacific Oceans (Figure 1). This report also discusses the Cape of Good Hope, which is not a chokepoint but is a major trade route and alternative route to other chokepoints.

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