Indian Strategic Studies: 03/15/26

15 March 2026

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.1

Populism is commonly understood as a “thin-centered” or “thin” ideology—that is, a limited set of ideas about what society should look like. Specifically, populism “considers society to be ultimately separated into two homogeneous and antagonistic groups, ‘the pure people’ versus ‘the corrupt elite’, and . . . argues that politics should be an expression of the volonté générale (general will) of the people.”2 Who exactly constitutes the people and the elite is mostly determined by a “thick,” more comprehensive ideology combined with populism—in the BJP-led government of Modi, the ethnonationalist ideology of Hindu nationalism, which focuses on the notion of Hindutva (Hinduness). This thick ideology is promoted by the BJP and by a family of related organizations, chief among them the paramilitary volunteer organization Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS).

And So It Begins: Iran’s Terror Proxies Emerge From the Shadows

Sharon Hudson-Dean

The explosion outside the US Embassy in Norway at 1 a.m. on March 8 is likely a significant marker that the war with Iran has now expanded beyond the Middle East.

Other events across the continent reinforce the message that Tehran has activated its terror networks; on March 9, a bomb exploded at a synagogue in the Belgian city of Liege, and on March 6, British counter-terrorist police arrested four Iranian men suspected of spying on Jewish sites.

One week into the conflict, pundits and intelligence officers had been holding their collective breath waiting for the first sign of Iran activating its support groups for attacks outside the Persian Gulf neighborhood. The question has been, not if, but when will Iran’s extensive proxy network, whose online chatter has rung alarm bells since February, take action.

What to Watch for Next in the Iran War

Ilan Berman

The United States has proved its military superiority over Iran. Whether it can secure Iran’s enriched uranium, protect the Gulf states, and encourage popular protests is a different story.

What is already being called the Third Gulf War is now in its second week, and most of the commentary so far has focused on US and Israeli military operations, as well as Iran’s maximalist response. But three other issues are likely to determine the conflict’s future course and what might come next for both Iran and the region.

The first is the fate of Iran’s remaining uranium. Even if key nuclear facilities have now been damaged or destroyed, the most important issue isn’t the technology that they housed but the regime’s existing fissile material. Iran had managed to accumulate significant stocks of enriched uranium before the war, and those weren’t successfully eliminated during last summer’s “12-Day War.” According to authoritative estimates, the regime still possesses 440 kilograms or more of 60 percent enriched uranium—a sufficient quantity, if it were enriched further, to produce 10 nuclear weapons.

Why China’s critical mineral dominance is still disrupting US supply chains

Kandy Wong

American companies are grappling with a shortage of critical minerals used in daily operations despite China easing some of its export controls, according to industry insiders.

After Beijing and Washington agreed to a so-called trade truce last November, the Ministry of Commerce issued a notice suspending a ban on shipments of gallium, germanium and antimony to the US for one year.

But China’s dominant position in the global market for these vital raw materials, including heavy rare earths, continued to weigh on US companies, industry insiders said.

“There is no immediate broad-based solution except supply loosening in China,” said David Abraham, director of Three Legged Capital in New York, a specialist advisory firm focused on critical mineral supply chains.

China’s Management of Electromagnetic Spectrum Resources

China seeks to lead the development of future generations of spectrum management technology. The use of wireless technologies has exploded in recent decades, and technological development is expanding the possibilities for use of the electromagnetic spectrum. As competition between the United States and China intensifies, interest has sharpened in finding better ways to manage the use of spectrum to support critical applications in areas such as warfighting, mobile communications, and remote sensing. Beijing’s approach to spectrum management has been poorly understood, but it offers important lessons regarding the benefits and drawbacks of a relatively centralized, civilian-led approach. This report therefore investigates how China manages its electromagnetic spectrum, how that spectrum is used, how China’s approach to spectrum management is impacting global standards, and what benefits (and costs) China’s approach has offered.

China’s approach to managing its electromagnetic spectrum resources has generated a number of benefits, including rapid deployment of 5G technologies, a highly active spectrum research field, and expanded influence in international markets. The relative centralization of its spectrum management authorities is also likely to improve the People’s Liberation Army’s joint warfighting capabilities in the future. However, its approach has also generated a complex, opaque bureaucratic process, high barriers to entry for smaller companies, and possibly lower efficiency in allocating and utilizing spectrum resources.

Why China Won’t Help Iran Beijing Cares About the Oil, Not the Regime

Yun Sun

China is watching carefully as the United States and Israel bombard Iran. Beijing is, after all, Tehran’s most important partner. The two countries grew close over shared history and goals: both trace their roots to leading ancient non-Western civilizations, and both oppose a Western-dominated global order today. China’s energy security is also connected to its relationship with Iran. More than 55 percent of China’s total oil imports in 2025 came from the Middle East (approximately 13 percent from Iran itself), most of which must pass through the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow waterway bordered by Iran. Because the recent bombing

The Dangers of a Weak Iran

Afshon Ostovar

After nearly two weeks of withering attacks, the Islamic Republic is weaker than it has been at any point in its history. U.S. and Israeli strikes have killed much of its leadership, including Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, destroyed much of its navy, heavily degraded its missile program, and buried its nuclear facilities. Bombings have cratered government ministries, police stations, and military buildings. Even the headquarters of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps—or the IRGC, the country’s most powerful institution—has been reduced to ruins.

But although the Islamic Republic is down, it is not out. The regime selected

War expands to central Beirut as Israeli strike kills Iranians in luxury hotel

Alice Cuddy

It was about 01:30 in the morning when a loud explosion tore through the Raouche neighbourhood in the heart of the Lebanese capital Beirut.

The Israeli strike on the four-star Ramada Plaza hotel marked the first time in this war that Israel's bombing campaign had struck the city centre - a bustling coastal area full of restaurants and hotels.

Inside, the Israeli military said, was a secret meeting of Iranian operatives - an allegation that has now been denied by Iran's government.

The strike came without warning, and locals and displaced people staying in the area ran to their windows and balconies to see what had happened. Those on the streets nearby - still busy with Ramadan crowds - ducked for cover.

The Drone Attrition Trap

David Petraeus and Clara Kaluderovic

Recent U.S. and Israeli operations against Iran and the latter’s retaliatory strikes have once again demonstrated the mathematics of modern air defense. Waves of Iranian-designed Shahed-136 drones—crude, slow, and estimated to cost as little as $20,000 apiece—have in a number of exchanges forced the United States and several Gulf partners to expend Patriot and SM-6 interceptors that cost millions of dollars each.

Interception rates have been impressive. A successful shoot-down that requires a high-end interceptor, however, can be a Pyrrhic victory. The defender burns through scarce and expensive munitions while the attacker draws from comparatively large stockpiles of low-cost systems. This is the drone attrition trap. And it is not new.

Why Haven’t the Houthis Fired?

Fatima Abo Alasrar

In the weeks before the U.S.-Iran war began, the Houthis promised that in the event of conflict, the Red Sea would run with the blood of their enemies. In speech after speech, Abdul-Malik al-Houthi, the group’s leader, told his followers that any attack on Iran would trigger an immediate and devastating response. The movement that had spent two years disrupting global shipping, launching ballistic missiles at Israel, and branding itself as the most committed member of the “axis of resistance” staked its credibility on a single proposition: If Iran is hit, we strike.

Iran has been hit constantly for more than a week. The Houthis have not struck.

Conflict In Iran Creating New Winners And Losers Across Former Soviet Space

Paul Goble

The military conflict in and around Iran is creating new winners and losers among the countries of the former Soviet space, transforming their relationships with one another and with the rest of the world (RITM Eurasia, March 3). Iran appears to have launched drone attacks on Azerbaijan’s exclave of Nakhchivan (Akcent, March 5; Caliber, March 7). Tehran has also restricted the flow of food northward to some countries in the region (Stan Radar, March 5).

Broader transformations stem, however, not from direct effects on these countries, but rather from the conflict closing Iran as a transit corridor, boosting oil prices, and prompting Iran’s neighbors to take sides in the conflict (Cronos Central Asia; Stan Radar, March 3; Bugin.info, March 6). Some of these consequences are likely to end when the conflict does, but others may continue long into the future. As a result, many governments in the region are now discussing how to benefit from the fallout if they find themselves on the winning side, or how to reduce their losses if they have suffered from the conflict itself (Stan Radar, March 7).

Iran Conflict And The Strait of Hormuz: Impacts On Oil, Gas, And Other Commodities

Phillip Brown, Michael Ratner, Liana W. Rosen, and Clayton Thomas

U.S. and Israeli military operations against Iran since February 2026 and subsequent Iranian military action throughout the Persian Gulf have raised concern about oil and natural gas markets in relation to the Strait of Hormuz (the Strait). Starting on March 4, 2026, Iranian forces have declared the Strait “closed,” threatening and carrying out attacks on ships attempting to transit the Strait. In light of a considerable decrease in shipping traffic, President Donald Trump has raised the prospect of U.S. actions intended to reestablish free transit of the Strait.

U.S. and Israeli military operations against Iran since February 2026 and subsequent Iranian military action throughout the Persian Gulf have raised concern about oil and natural gas markets in relation to the Strait of Hormuz (the Strait). Starting on March 4, 2026, Iranian forces have declared the Strait “closed,” threatening and carrying out attacks on ships attempting to transit the Strait. In light of a considerable decrease in shipping traffic, President Donald Trump has raised the prospect of U.S. actions intended to reestablish free transit of the Strait.

Middle East war: military, strategic and diplomatic angles

Douglas Barrie

Tehran’s stock of close, short, medium and intermediate-range ballistic missiles was a central pillar of its deterrence strategy. However, this strategy was found wanting when faced with the aerial onslaught by Israel and the United States.

Iran expended a significant element of its medium- and intermediate-range ballistic-missile inventory during the Twelve-Day War in June 2025. The extent to which it was able to replace these missiles in the interim would have depended on its ability to repair damaged manufacturing facilities and secure the raw materials for propellant manufacture.

Despite this, however, Iran may have so far launched over 700+ ballistic missiles, with Israel and the United Arab Emirates the recipients of most attention. Ground-based air defence was used in both countries to intercept nearly all the missiles. In the UAE, the Ministry of Defence said on 1 March 2026 that since the beginning of the Israeli and US attacks, it had engaged 165 ballistic missiles. Two days later, this figure had grown only to 186, of which 172 were engaged, 13 fell in the sea and one impacted the UAE. By 4 March, the total was 189, and by 9 March it had reached 253, of which only two had struck UAE territory.

Unpacking Iran’s Drone Campaign in the Gulf: Early Lessons for Future Drone Warfare

Kateryna Bondar

The first week of Iran’s retaliation campaign during Operation Epic Fury demonstrates that drones are no longer auxiliary strike systems but central instruments of modern air campaigns. Their ability to generate sustained pressure at relatively low cost allows actors to impose economic, psychological, and operational strain on adversaries while preserving higher-end missile assets for select targets. The effectiveness of such campaigns lies not only in the drones themselves but in the broader ecosystem that enables their large-scale employment—production capacity, operational doctrine, targeting architecture, and integration with other strike systems.

The Middle East crisis escalated in early March 2026 after coordinated U.S.-Israeli strikes under Operation Epic Fury killed Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and several senior commanders. Iran responded with a large-scale retaliatory campaign primarily targeting Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) states. Despite damage to parts of its command and control structure, Tehran has rapidly generated sustained strikes using a layered architecture combining drones, ballistic missiles, and cruise missiles against military installations, energy infrastructure, and economic centers.

Iran’s Real War Is Against the Global Economy

Navin Girishankar

Iran may be losing the military contest with the United States. But it is fighting a different war—one aimed at the global economy.

Over the past 12 days, the United States has demonstrated clear military superiority. Iran’s navy has been severely degraded, with more than 50 ships sunk or damaged; its retaliatory missile launches are down more than 90 percent; and its air force has been grounded. On the battlefield, the scorecard favors Washington, despite risks of escalation.

Strategically, the picture is far less certain. Even as the Trump administration struggles to define its objectives—be it decapitating Iranian leadership, destroying Iran’s nuclear capability, or pursuing regime change—it must confront a new reality.

Iran War’s Maritime Front Heats Up

The United States and Israel carried out heavy bombing of Tehran yesterday, while officials on both sides warned of maritime escalation. The United States announced it destroyed Iranian vessels capable of laying mines in the Strait of Hormuz, which could have added to the risks faced by commercial ships. Three ships were attacked in separate incidents in the strait today, the United Kingdom (UK) maritime agency said. As countries across the world begin to feel the gap in global oil supply, the thirty-two member states of the International Energy Agency are due to decide today whether to release strategic oil reserves.

The debate in Washington. Around 140 U.S. service members have been wounded in the war so far and seven have died, the Pentagon said yesterday. It has not released estimates on the war’s financial cost, but the Washington Post reported that the United States spent $5.6 billion in the first two days of the war alone. U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Dan Caine said yesterday the United States was making progress reducing Iran’s missile, drone, and naval capabilities and was looking at options to get maritime trade flowing.

Cloud To Ground: Iran Puts Foreign Data Centres on the Front Line

James Corera , Jason Van der Schyff

When Iranian drones struck hyperscale cloud data-centre facilities in the United Arab Emirates and damaged infrastructure near Bahrain on 1 March, they did not just target military bases. They also targeted server farms. That distinction matters more than it might appear.

For decades, data centres were treated as oversized commercial warehouses. Today they underpin government identity systems, financial networks, logistics chains and the AI-enabled targeting and intelligence platforms that define modern military advantage. The integration of companies such as Anthropic and Palantir into US and allied defence applications—fusing large-language-model reasoning with operational data to accelerate targeting cycles and intelligence synthesis—runs on exactly this infrastructure. And that infrastructure is physical. It appears on satellite imagery. It has addresses, power feeds, cooling systems and fibre runs. It can be hit.

Hundreds of Tomahawk Cruise Missiles Now Gone: The U.S. Navy’s Ohio-Class SSGN Submarine Crisis Is Coming

Kris Osborn

Synopsis: Kris Osborn, President of Warrior Maven and former Pentagon expert, evaluates the “massive collective firepower” loss as the USS Ohio, USS Georgia, USS Michigan, and USS Florida prepare for retirement between 2026 and 2028.

-Each SSGN carries 154 Tomahawk missiles, providing unmatched land-attack support for campaigns like Operation Epic Fury.

-This report analyzes the Navy’s transition to the Block V Virginia-class, which utilizes an 80-foot Virginia Payload Module (VPM) to carry 28 additional missiles.

-Osborn concludes that while the Virginia-class improves sensor integration, the Navy must accelerate production to maintain undersea mass in the Pacific.

Behind the Curtain: America's big lie

Jim VandeHei, Mike Allen

Watch TV, scroll social media or listen to politicians, and the verdict seems clear: Americans are hopelessly divided and increasingly hateful.It's a ubiquitous, emphatic, verifiable ... lie.

Why it matters: Most Americans are too busy for social media, too normal for politics, too rational to tweet. They work, raise kids, coach Little League, go to a house of worship, mow their neighbor's lawn — and never post a word about any of it.

This isn't a small minority. It's a monstrous, if silent, majority. Most Americans are patriotic, hardworking, neighbor-helping, America-loving, money-giving people who don't pop off on social media or plot for power.The hidden truth: Most people agree on most things, most of the time. And the data validates this, time and time again.

Oh, but you're so naive, so delusional and detached from reality. Everywhere I look, I see dispute and decline!

The U.S. Data Center Build-Out Depends on GPU Imports

Kate Koren

Data center construction is surging as firms rush to build infrastructure to meet growing demand for AI. According to December 2025 U.S. census survey data on construction spending, private spending on U.S. data center construction increased by almost 80 percent in 2025 compared to 2023. Server chips (GPUs) represent the single largest component of modern data center capital expenditures, accounting for at least 45 percent of total investment, by CSIS estimates. For now, the United States must import GPUs—although the chips are designed by U.S. firms, they are produced and packaged almost entirely in Taiwan.

In October 2025, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang announced that Blackwell wafers were in full production at TSMC’s Arizona Fab 21. While an important step, reliance on Taiwan will remain until planned memory production and advanced packaging facilities open in the United States, which likely won’t happen until 2028 at the soonest. For now, the silicon made in Arizona must be shipped to Taiwan for advanced packaging with high bandwidth memory. Imports of the finished GPUs could be subject to the pending Section 232 semiconductor tariff, unless either routed through Mexico for assembly or exempted through a tariff offset program.

The Wars After the War: Why Israel and Iran May Keep Fighting

Daniel Byman

The end may be in sight for the current war in the Middle East, with its massive U.S. and Israeli air strikes on Iran and Iranian attacks on U.S. regional allies and Gulf shipping. Even then, however, hostilities may not stop. One plausible future scenario is that the Iranian regime and Israel remain in a state of low-level conflict that involves cyberattacks, sabotage, terrorism, and the occasional overt military strike, with the United States perhaps joining in from time to time. For Israel, this will be a way to keep Iran weak and off balance, while Tehran will be striking back out of vengeance, to legitimize its tottering regime, and to restore deterrence.

The future of the Iranian regime is unclear, but one plausible scenario—perhaps the most plausible—is that it will emerge from the war weak but unbowed, and perhaps even more radical. Regime change is possible but unlikely, and the decision to choose Mojtaba Khamenei, the son of assassinated Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, as his successor signals defiance and a strong role for the hardline Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC).

Trump Should Aim to Neutralize the Iran Regime, Not Destroy It

Charles A. Kupchan

Charles Kupchan is a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and professor of international affairs at Georgetown University in the Walsh School of Foreign Service and Department of Government. He is the author of the forthcoming book: “Bringing Order to Anarchy: Governing the World to Come.”

President Donald Trump’s decision to join Israel in launching a broad military campaign against Iran has produced a swirl of unanswered questions. Why did a president who has repeatedly vowed to pull the United States back from military quagmires plunge the nation into yet another risky war in the Middle East? Did Trump short shrift diplomacy and move too quickly to war? Did he do an adequate job of justifying the war to the American public and U.S. allies?

How Trump and His Advisers Miscalculated Iran’s Response to War

Mark Mazzetti, Tyler Pager and Edward Wong

Even during the Israeli and U.S. strikes against Iran last June, Mr. Wright said, there had been little disruption in the markets. “Oil prices blipped up and then went back down,” he said. Some of Mr. Trump’s other advisers shared similar views in private, dismissing warnings that — the second time around — Iran might wage economic warfare by closing shipping lanes carrying roughly 20 percent of the world’s oil supply.

The extent of that miscalculation was laid bare in recent days, as Iran threatened to fire at commercial oil tankers transiting the Strait of Hormuz, the strategic choke point through which all ships must pass on their way out of the Persian Gulf. In response to the Iranian threats, commercial shipping has come to a standstill in the Gulf, oil prices have spiked, and the Trump administration has scrambled to find ways to tamp down an economic crisis that has triggered higher gasoline prices for Americans.

The anti-American axis myth

Leon Hada

Every few years, Washington’s foreign policy establishment rediscovers its favorite bogeyman: a grand, coordinated coalition of adversaries hell-bent on dismantling the American-led world order. Today, the specter haunting the think tanks and op-ed pages is the so-called “anti-American axis” — a sinister alignment of Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea, presumably plotting in unison to bring the United States to its knees.

It’s a compelling narrative. It’s also mostly wrong.

Let me be clear about what does exist. There are states with serious grievances against American foreign policy. There are bilateral transactions — Russia buys Iranian drones, North Korea ships artillery shells to Moscow, China maintains economic ties with Tehran despite sanctions.

The Menace of Misunderstanding: Learning the Wrong Lessons from Ukraine’s Drone-Saturated Battlefields

Charles S. Oliviero and Phil Halton

The advent of drone technology and the amazing advances demonstrated by Ukrainian military units has the feel of déjà vu. Authors have filled the media universe with breathless commentary describing how drones have fundamentally altered modern ground warfare. Considering Carl von Clausewitz’s admonition that warfare changes constantly, readers should not be surprised. But professional soldiers and serious students of warfare should view the highly touted changes created by drones with skepticism; they are nothing we have not seen before. The success of drones has obscured the fact that their use needs to be considered, deeply studied, and then incorporated into combined arms theory.

Everything old is new again. After the introduction of the Gatling gun, and its evolution into the machine-gun, pundits heralded this weapon as the end of infantry. Clearly, that did not occur. There are many parallels between the institutional reaction to the machine-gun at the beginning of the last century and the reaction to drones today. During World War I, these initial reactions were all technical. The widespread employment of machine-guns negated the battlefield mobility that all armies assumed would exist, locking them into a stalemate that they believed only technology would overcome. The same initial reactions are resurfacing regarding the use of drones. In World War I, innovations such as the tank were meant to negate the effect of the machine-gun and restore battlefield mobility. But it wasn’t until armies revisited combined arms theory and integrated tanks, machine-guns, artillery, and other nascent technologies such as airpower that new equilibrium was achieved. By the end of World War II, automatic weapons were nearly ubiquitous on the battlefield, and yet the problem of battlefield mobility had been solved. Western militaries are not yet at the point where it is obvious how the conundrum posed by drones will be solved, but all should understand that it will be through integration of combat systems, rather than through a single technology or countermeasure.

The Autonomous Battlefield

David Petraeus and Isaac C. Flanagan

The era of autonomous warfare will not announce itself with robotic armies marching across battlefields. Instead, it is already emerging, quietly and inexorably, in the skies and fields of eastern Ukraine (and to a lesser degree in the Middle East), where missions are increasingly executed by machines at speeds no human can match and electronic warfare is severing the links between operators and their machines. Very soon, autonomous systems will no longer operate individually; over time, they will form platoon- or even battalion-sized units that share information and coordinate without human intervention. And the side that waits for human approval

An AI Bubble Won’t Trigger a Financial Crisis

Lenny Mendonca and Martin Neil Baily

HALF MOON BAY, CALIFORNIA – A familiar anxiety has returned to financial markets. Amazon is devoting $100 billion to data centers. Meta has committed more than $600 billion to building them over three years. Microsoft, Google, and Apple plan to spend hundreds of billions more. With AI investments running into the trillions, are we witnessing a bubble, and what will happen if it bursts?

We have been here before. One of us (Martin) served as chairman of the White House Council of Economic Advisers during the late 1990s technology boom, and the other watched California navigate the dot-com collapse and the 2008 financial crisis from various government and consulting roles. Our experience tells us that even if an AI correction comes, it will not trigger the kind of financial crisis that devastated the economy in 2008-09.

The reason is that the structure of AI investment is fundamentally different from what we saw in these previous episodes. The dot-com collapse is remembered for dramatic losses – the Nasdaq fell 77% from its March 2000 peak – and spectacular flameouts like Pets.com. But the economic story was more nuanced.

The Most Disruptive Company in the World

Harry Booth/San Francisco and Billy Perrigo

In a hotel room in Santa Clara, Calif., five members of the AI company Anthropic huddled around a laptop, working urgently. It was February 2025, and they had been at a conference nearby when they received disturbing news: results of a controlled trial had indicated that a soon-to-be-released version of Claude, Anthropic’s AI system, could help terrorists make biological weapons.

They were members of Anthropic’s frontier red team, which studies Claude’s advanced capabilities and tries to project worst-case scenarios, from cyberattacks to biosecurity threats. Sprinting back to the hotel room, they flipped a bed on its side to serve as a makeshift desk and pored over the test results. After hours of work, they still weren’t sure whether the new product was safe. Anthropic ended up holding up the release of the new model, known as Claude 3.7 Sonnet, for 10 days until they were certain. That may not sound like much, but it felt like an eternity for a company operating at the vanguard of an industry rapidly remaking the world.

We’re in a New Kind of War

Jeff Wise

At the opening of the air war against Iran, the U.S. and Israel won a massively one-sided victory that left Iran’s defenses in tatters and much of its leadership dead. “We achieved air superiority within two days, if that,” says Mark Gunzinger, an analyst at the Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies. But just because a war starts well doesn’t mean it will end that way. “The enemy gets a vote,” as former secretary of Defense James Mattis liked to say.

Within hours of the opening salvos, Iran responded with barrages of its own, though of a different nature. Its air force neutralized, Iran turned to waves of ballistic missiles, cruise missiles, and drones. Though these were cheap and lo-fi compared with U.S. weapons, the Iran counterstrike took a surprisingly painful toll with a single drone killing six American soldiers at a base in Kuwait. Amid the confusion, a Kuwaiti F-18 fighter jet reportedly shot down three U.S. F-15 fighters, the most ever lost in combat. By the second week of the conflict, Iran had also destroyed some of America’s most sophisticated radar systems, each of which costs $500 million, and taken down 11 hi-tech Reaper drones with a total cost of $330 million.

Winning the Kinetic Battle, Losing the Narrative War

Irina Tsukerman

Andrew Fox recently described a strategic nightmare now unfolding in Iran. Military power has damaged the Islamic Republic’s military infrastructure and weakened parts of its security architecture. Air superiority has allowed American and Israeli forces to dismantle missile production, strike naval assets, and degrade facilities tied to Iran’s military posture. None of these accomplishments resolve the central question that determines the outcome of wars. Military destruction alone does not impose political order.

Iran remains a large, complex society governed by a system that has survived decades of sanctions, covert attacks, and internal unrest. The regime has never relied solely on military strength for survival. Its endurance rests on coercive institutions, ideological networks, and the ability to control the narrative of resistance. When those pillars remain intact, even a heavily damaged state continues to function. The danger Fox describes lies here. A wounded regime that survives retains the power to repress its population while lacking the capacity to stabilize the country.