Afghans Fear for Safety as War Returns

Ruchi Kumar

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Born and raised in Kabul, Haroon, a 45-year-old former educator who asked to use a pseudonym due to safety fears, is no stranger to the sound of explosions. But he wasn’t expecting to be jolted awake on the night of Feb. 26 as the sound of nearby airstrikes reverberated across his house in West Kabul.

“At first, we thought it was an earthquake, but then we heard two more explosions,” he told Foreign Policy.

Does Iran’s Future Look Like Cuba, Syria, or North Korea?

H.A. Hellyer

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As the war in Iran grinds on, the tension between the Israeli and Gulf approaches has sharpened. Iran’s strikes on Gulf territory mean there will be no return to business as usual. Arab Gulf states are increasingly leaning toward effectively quarantining Iran until it becomes something akin to Cuba: diminished and rigid but contained. Israel, by contrast, is perfectly content to smash the country—degrade the Islamic Republic militarily until it is like civil-war era Syria: fractured, with the regime broken and its regional capacity destroyed.

Aside from some divergences, Gulf states want to degrade Iran’s power without pushing it to collapse. With this in mind, Qatar, Oman, and Kuwait have quietly pushed for a swift end to the war; Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Bahrain have signaled their readiness to absorb further escalation if it produces durable constraints on Iran’s military capabilities. Officials in Abu Dhabi have argued for a “conclusive outcome,” while Oman and Qatar have emphasized coexistence and negotiation. But despite these differences, there is a consensus on wanting to see Iran weakened.

The Iran War Is a Hostage Crisis

David Ignatius

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Let’s examine how the Iran war became what is essentially a hostage crisis: President Donald Trump joined Israel on Feb. 28 in an assault on Iran that demonstrated masterful military tactics but poor strategic planning. Iran responded with ballistic missiles and drones - and, most important, by closing the vital Strait of Hormuz. That last action took not just America but the entire global economy captive.

Iran Gets a Vote in This War

Mark Hertling

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THE TRUMP ADMINISTRATION APPEARS to have gone to war against Iran with two assumptions: First, they assumed they could adjust their objectives as the war went on based on how much they thought they would accomplish; and second, they assumed that because the United States and Israel are, together, militarily superior to Iran, they would have complete control over the timing, intensity, domains, repercussions, and outcomes of the conflict, and they could determine the end of the conflict when they decided.

Those are dangerous assumptions. Just a few weeks into the war, they are being tested. While it’s common for war aims to shift over the course of a conflict, doing so is a complicated and delicate process that requires military leaders and politicians to balance political desires against military realities. This administration, which has repeatedly proven to be improvisatory in its approach to policy and rhetoric, has so far in this conflict not been able to manage that balance between political desires and military actions.

As for the second assumption—every soldier, sailor, marine, airman, and guardian knows and often repeats this truism: The enemy always gets a vote.

WAR ALWAYS BEGINS WITH POLITICS. Political leaders define the objectives of the conflict—the ends that the nation seeks to achieve. Military planners then develop the ways to pursue those ends through campaigns, operations, and even specific battles. Finally come the means: the forces, resources, and capabilities required to execute the plan. This framework—ends, ways, and means—is not simply an abstraction taught in war colleges. It is the basic logic that connects political objectives to military action. When those three elements align, military operations can achieve meaningful strategic outcomes. When there is even the slightest misalignment, leaders discover that even the most powerful military can find itself operating without a clear direction.

Trump’s Iran War Is a Dilemma, Not a Debacle

Raphael S. Cohen

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The Iran war is just over a month old, and the prevailing opinion among the commentariat is that it’s already a “quagmire,” if not a “catastrophe.” Critics have compared the conflict to the United States’ invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, its intervention in the Korean War, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and, of course, the most traumatic U.S. foreign-policy debacle, Vietnam.

Iran Flexes Its Cyber Chops

Rishi Iyengar

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One prominent hacking group secured a particularly attention-grabbing moment on Friday, compromising an old personal email address belonging to FBI Director Kash Patel and publishing many of its contents online, including an old resume and pictures of him smoking cigars and posing in a mirror with a bottle of rum.

What a U.S. Operation to Get Iran’s Uranium Would Look Like

John Haltiwanger

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Trump has gone back and forth on this issue rapidly, so it’s difficult to determine where he stands. On March 29, for example, Trump suggested that Iran would be destroyed if it didn’t give its HEU to the United States. “They’re going to give us the nuclear dust,” Trump said, in reference to the HEU. “If they don’t do that, they’re not going to have a country,”

Trump Faces a Decision on Whether to Start a Ground War in Iran

David E. Sanger and Tyler Pager

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As the war in Iran has entered its second month with no negotiations yet scheduled between the major combatants, President Trump is facing several interlocking decisions that will determine how long American forces will stay engaged in the battle, and with what kind of risks.

The most pressing choice seems to be whether he should narrow his war aims in hopes of pushing through a negotiated settlement with a new crop of Iranian leaders. Talking to reporters on Sunday night aboard Air Force One, Mr. Trump called the Iranian leadership “a whole different group of people” who have “been very reasonable.” (His secretary of state, Marco Rubio, was significantly more skeptical.) Deal-making, as Mr. Trump knows, requires give-and-take — although he generally dislikes being seen as giving an inch.

But if the Iranians continue to rebuff him, claiming as they did on Monday that there is nothing to talk about until the United States and Israel stop bombing Iranian territory, he has different choices to make.

With more than 4,000 Marines and the 82nd Airborne Division about to arrive in the region, Mr. Trump can put muscle behind his threat to take Kharg Island’s oil-exporting facilities, free the Strait of Hormuz and perhaps seize Iran’s cache of near-bomb-grade nuclear material.

But the risks of all three steps are enormous. Even Mr. Trump admitted on Sunday that if he sent troops to seize Kharg Island, keeping it operating would require the U.S. military “to be there for a while.” The same goes for opening the strait, which the Iranians now say is their sovereign territory — and that ships wanting to pass will have to pay the multimillion-dollar tolls they have begun to impose.

Control of the strait was not even an issue four weeks ago, when the war started. But Iran’s assertion of control over traffic has so disrupted the global trading system that it looms large in any discussion of how the conflict gets resolved.

Trump’s Propaganda Machine Is Flailing on Iran

Ross Barkan

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Watch enough Pentagon press conferences and a running theme emerges: Pete Hegseth whining about media coverage of the war in Iran. “You’re either informing American people of the truth or you’re not,” the Defense secretary and former Fox News pundit fumed recently. “Behind every headline you write, there’s a helicopter crew in the air, and behind every news banner you write, there’s a battalion on the move. And behind every fake news story, there’s an F-35 pilot executing a dangerous mission. My message to the media is get it right.”

The media, of course, is getting it right. Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu’s war has been an abject disaster. It’s a victory for the West that the murderous Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is now dead, but little has otherwise changed: Khamenei’s son is in charge, and the theocratic, autocratic regime remains functional. Israel’s apparent belief that the Iranian people would successfully overthrow the regime if a bombing campaign commenced was entirely mistaken. Netanyahu doesn’t seem to care much either way since he has moved on to immiserating Lebanon, but it’s now clear the war has offered little for the world but needless bloodshed and chaos. A decade ago, Barack Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran was a peaceful, clearheaded attempt to head off further disaster. Diplomacy had a chance. Now, the Middle East is on fire, thousands of civilians are dead, and the U.S. troop death toll threatens to skyrocket if Trump launches any sort of ground invasion as he has indicated he might. The Strait of Hormuz remains throttled; a global energy crisis is already here and, with it, far higher prices at American gas pumps.

Hegseth can pretend all this isn’t true. MAGA has long dwelled within its own propaganda bubble, and that will continue as long as Trump remains in power. For the hard right of Congress and a slice of the most conservative Americans, Trump and his acolytes can continue to lie with impunity. They can, as Karl Rove once infamously declared, create their own reality. But there are limits to all this, as Hegseth, in his whimpering media events, is beginning to find. In a fractured media age, government propaganda is only so effective. Americans still live in a democracy with free access to information and can make up their own minds. They can focus on their own material reality. They cannot be told, wholesale, what to think.

The Real War for Iran’s Future

Afshon Ostovar

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On March 1, 2026, the Iranian government made it official. “After a lifetime of struggle,” a state broadcaster declared, “Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei drank the sweet, pure draft of martyrdom and joined the Supreme Heavenly Kingdom.” The broadcaster praised Khamenei for being “unceasing and untiring” and for his “lofty and celestial spirit.” As he read the announcement, people offscreen wailed. When he finished, he, too, broke down in tears.

Most Iranians probably didn’t cry when they learned of Khamenei’s passing. For over 35 years, Iran’s supreme leader ruled with an iron fist, repressing women, minorities, and anyone who dared challenge him. But the dramatic wording of the death announcement was, in a sense, warranted: more than anyone else, Khamenei is the architect of the Islamic Republic and all it has entailed. Although it was Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini who established the theocracy by seizing power during Iran’s 1979 revolution, it was his successor who transformed it into the country it is now. It was Khamenei who ensured that the supreme leader remained Iran’s paramount authority in practice, not just in principle. It was Khamenei who pushed Iran to pursue regional hegemony, thus committing it to perpetual conflict with Israel and the United States. And it was Khamenei who transformed the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), once a military with an uncertain future, into the central pillar of the government.

The Iranian elite moved quickly to name a replacement. Just over a week after his death, the Assembly of Experts, the clerical body tasked with appointing the supreme leader, announced that Khamenei’s son, Mojtaba, would assume the position. But speed and lineage will not prevent a power vacuum in Iran. Only the elder Khamenei had the experience and standing required to keep the regime’s various camps in check. As a result, Iran’s top officials are now lining up to chart the country’s future.

At the time of this writing, the actors best positioned to succeed are those affiliated with the IRGC, Mojtaba Khamenei included. As Iran’s strongest armed actor, it has the resources to impose its will on the country’s populace. This bodes poorly for Iran. The IRGC’s leaders are, for the most part, hard-liners who thrive in perpetual conflict with both external and internal forces. If they solidify power, Tehran will remain reflexively antagonistic toward Israel, the United States, and pro-democracy elements inside the country.

The Best- and Worst-Case Scenarios of Iran’s Strait of Hormuz Closure

Milton Ezrati

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The current energy crisis, luckily, will not usher in a return to the inflation-laden economy of the 1970s.

The war in the Persian Gulf—whether one supports the effort or not—presents all sorts of frightening prospects. News of negotiations briefly offers hope of an end to destruction and a clear path forward, while denials that talks have begun dash those hopes. As long as the fighting continues, it is hard to see an end to the Iranian blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, much less allow an assessment of the conditions that might ultimately impinge on shipping there. Possibilities—good, bad, and ambiguous—seem endless.

For business and the economy, however, some things are certain. The closure of the Strait of Hormuz has, for the time being, denied the world some 20 percent of its seaborne oil and natural gas supplies. That includes every bit of Iran’s production, just about all of it going to China, but also much Saudi, Kuwaiti, Qatari, and Emirati oil and gas, most of it going to Europe, Japan, and elsewhere in Asia. The other stark fact is how oil and natural gas prices have soared. The price of a barrel of West Texas Intermediate (WTI) has risen over 60 percent from $62 in mid-February to just over $100 at the time of writing. Bent crude has seen its price rise by a comparable percentage, approaching $110 a barrel.

These matters have unleashed a torrent of scare stories in media outlets that variously envision debilitating inflation akin to what happened in the economically bleak 1970s, the end of any hope for more affordable lifestyles, recession, and stagflation. All of these, of course, are completely plausible, but much else in this admittedly uncertain situation points to less dramatic and less frightening economic repercussions.

Houthis, Al-Shabaab Deepen Deadly Alliance

Africa Defense Forum

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Somalia’s al-Shabaab terrorists and Yemen’s Houthi militants have long been known to cooperate across the Red Sea, capitalizing on entrenched networks that enable all kinds of illicit commerce back and forth from East Africa to the Arabian Peninsula.

Now, however, evidence indicates that links forged more than a decade ago might be taking on a more tangible, and dangerous, character.

“The cooperation is now advancing beyond fundamental logistical and intelligence coordination into political, media and direct military collaboration,” according to a 39-page February 2026 report by Somalia’s Mogadishu-based Saldhig Institute research organization.

“We were aware that the relationship was very much on basic lines, where they were just cooperating on a kind of needs-based cooperation, but not in a connection that we can call a proper relation,” report author Hussein Sheikh-Ali told The Africa Report magazine for a February 17 report. “It was mainly the weapons trafficking.”

“In this particular relationship that we’re now addressing in this paper, it is a bit more alarming, it is more systematic, more strategic and it has every sign that it should be a huge concern for anyone concerned about regional security,” the former Somali national security advisor said.

Al-Shabaab is the more notorious and well-known of the two groups. It gained prominence in 2006 and eventually aligned itself with al-Qaida. The Houthis’ roots are planted in the 1990s, when they emerged under the name Ansar Allah, which means “Partisans of God.” Their more common name is taken from their late founder. They represent the Zaidis, a sect of Yemen’s Shia Muslim minority. Al-Shabaab is a Sunni Muslim group.

Observers have been tracking cooperation between the two groups for several years. The alliance “began as an exchange of information and maritime facilitation and subsequently evolved into logistical and technological collaboration,” the report states.

Dire Strait: US Tells Europe That Hormuz Is ‘Not Our Problem

Thomas Moller-Nielsen

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(EurActiv) — US officials are ramping up pressure on Europe to help Washington reopen the Strait of Hormuz amid fraying transatlantic ties over the continued US-Israeli war on Iran.

In a social media post on Tuesday, President Donald Trump said that US allies that have refused to participate in so-called Operation Epic Fury should consider military action to prise open the strategically crucial waterway.

“All of those countries that can’t get jet fuel because of the Strait of Hormuz… build up some delayed courage, go to the Strait, and just TAKE IT,” he wrote.

“You’ll have to start learning how to fight for yourself, the USA won’t be there to help you anymore, just like you weren’t there for us,” he added.

His remarks were later amplified by US Secretary of Defence Pete Hegseth, who refused to confirm that reopening the Strait – which carried a fifth of global gas and oil supplies prior to the war’s onset on 28 February – is a core US strategic aim.

“This Strait of Hormuz issue… is not just a United States of America problem set,” Hegseth told reporters. “So, ultimately, I think other countries should pay attention when the president speaks.”

Trump’s remarks alarmed EU diplomats. “Apparently, in the eyes of Trump, it’s no longer: ‘If I break it, I fix it,’ but ‘I break it, and the EU will fix it,’” one said.

The comments came as Italy denied the use of an airbase in Sicily for US war planes involved in operations against Iran, the day after Spain – whose vocal opposition to the war has enraged Washington – closed its airspace to American aircraft involved in the conflict.

In a separate post on Tuesday, Trump accused France of being “very unhelpful” for allegedly refusing to allow Israel-bound planes carrying military material to fly over its territory. A French government spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment.

Alliance Rift And De-Dollarization As Derivatives Of The U.S.-Israel Vs Iran War – Analysis

Lucio Blanco Pitlo III

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The U.S.-Israel war with Iran is exposing widening reluctance among American allies to support the conflict, signaling potential erosion in U.S. global influence. At the same time, moves to bypass the U.S. dollar in oil trade, amid growing Chinese involvement, could challenge the petrodollar and reshape the global energy order.

Two developments tied to the intensifying war in West Asia may shape the United States’ long-term global appeal: how its allies react, and whether the conflict diminishes the role of the U.S. dollar in the region’s petroleum transactions.

Cracks in the alliance

The reluctance of U.S. allies to be sucked into a war they did not sign up for is ominous. Despite suffering collateral damage from Iranian attacks on U.S. military bases they host, America’s Gulf allies are staying out of the U.S. and Israel’s war against their neighbor. They bore the brunt of Tehran’s reply to joint U.S.-Israel bombing raids. These affluent monarchies saw their petroleum exports curbed, their energy facilities damaged or threatened, and flights to and from their cities disrupted, affecting tourism and business confidence. Washington’s pledge to protect them is also put into question. U.S. military bases became big fixed targets for Iran’s asymmetrical arsenal of missiles, drones, and proxy groups. Arab partners are expending their own inventory to thwart Iranian drones and projectiles entering their airspace or territory to hit U.S. targets, including U.S. military infrastructure and diplomatic missions. Thus, security recipients are rising up to protect the assets of the supposed security guarantor, as well as their own.

The Iran Conflict Is Becoming a Russia-Ukraine Proxy War

Max Boot

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It has become common for major conflicts to become proxy wars, with outside powers intervening to help their friends and hurt their foes. The Soviet Union, for example, supplied North Korea and North Vietnam in wars against the United States. The United States returned the favor by supplying the Afghan mujahideen during the 1980s in their war against the Red Army.

The Iran war is no different. Both Russia and Ukraine are trying to use the Middle East conflict, which pits Israel and the United States against Iran, to their own advantage.

Russia has a long-standing alliance with Iran, so it is natural that Russian President Vladimir Putin has been aiding the Islamic Republic by reportedly providing it with satellite imagery and drones. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy wrote on social media that, according to Ukrainian intelligence, Russian satellites had “imaged,” among other sites, the joint U.S.-United Kingdom military base on the island of Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean, Kuwait International Airport, Prince Sultan Air Base in Saudi Arabia, and Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar—the largest U.S. military installation in the Middle East. If Zelenskyy’s claim is accurate, it is surely no coincidence that Iran has targeted many of these same facilities.

An Iranian attack on March 27 against Prince Sultan Air Base damaged several U.S. aircraft on the ground. A valuable E-3 Sentry AWACS command and control plane was destroyed on the tarmac. Other Iranian strikes have hit at least ten early warning radars used by the United States and countries in the Persian Gulf to defend against Iranian drone and missile strikes. The Iranian attacks have been so extensive that, according to the New York Times, “Many of the thirteen military bases in the region used by American troops are all but uninhabitable.”

It is hard to see how Iran, which lacks satellites of its own, could have struck so many of these targets so accurately were it not for Russian, and possibly Chinese, assistance.

In the past, Russia has been a recipient of Iranian military largesse—Iran provided the Shahed drones that are now being used en masse by Russia to attack Ukraine. But Russia has been manufacturing its own versions of the Shahed drones, including one that is equipped with a jet engine rather than a turboprop. There are widespread reports that the supply chain is now running the other way, with Russia sending its drones to Iran.

The Real War for Iran’s Future

Afshon Ostovar

Source Link

On March 1, 2026, the Iranian government made it official. “After a lifetime of struggle,” a state broadcaster declared, “Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei drank the sweet, pure draft of martyrdom and joined the Supreme Heavenly Kingdom.” The broadcaster praised Khamenei for being “unceasing and untiring” and for his “lofty and celestial spirit.” As he read the announcement, people offscreen wailed. When he finished, he, too, broke down in tears.

Most Iranians probably didn’t cry when they learned of Khamenei’s passing. For over 35 years, Iran’s supreme leader ruled with an iron fist, repressing women, minorities, and anyone who dared challenge him. But the dramatic wording of the death announcement was, in a sense, warranted: more than anyone else, Khamenei is the architect of the Islamic Republic and all it has entailed. Although it was Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini who established the theocracy by seizing power during Iran’s 1979 revolution, it was his successor who transformed it into the country it is now. It was Khamenei who ensured that the supreme leader remained Iran’s paramount authority in practice, not just in principle. It was Khamenei who pushed Iran to pursue regional hegemony, thus committing it to perpetual conflict with Israel and the United States. And it was Khamenei who transformed the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), once a military with an uncertain future, into the central pillar of the government.

The Iranian elite moved quickly to name a replacement. Just over a week after his death, the Assembly of Experts, the clerical body tasked with appointing the supreme leader, announced that Khamenei’s son, Mojtaba, would assume the position. But speed and lineage will not prevent a power vacuum in Iran. Only the elder Khamenei had the experience and standing required to keep the regime’s various camps in check. As a result, Iran’s top officials are now lining up to chart the country’s future.

At the time of this writing, the actors best positioned to succeed are those affiliated with the IRGC, Mojtaba Khamenei included. As Iran’s strongest armed actor, it has the resources to impose its will on the country’s populace. This bodes poorly for Iran. The IRGC’s leaders are, for the most part, hard-liners who thrive in perpetual conflict with both external and internal forces. If they solidify power, Tehran will remain reflexively antagonistic toward Israel, the United States, and pro-democracy elements inside the country.

Iran: A Land War Illusion

Mick Ryan

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Deploying ground forces without defined political objectives leads to failure.

America is weighing the deployment of land forces onto Iranian territory – a move that would dramatically escalate the war and risk drawing it into a prolonged conflict. While this conflict is not Iraq, Afghanistan, Vietnam or any number of previous wars, history offers a guide on employing ground forces. They can be extraordinarily decisive when used at scale, for the right mission and with a clear political objective. But, without these things, land operations can result in tactical catastrophe, the death of soldiers and marines, and overall political failure in war.

All strategies start with a diagnosis of the problem to be solved. Any consideration of land force operations in Iran – and in any war – must begin with the following question: “What problem will land forces solve?”

The political objectives of employing land forces are several. First, the American president will want Iran to see US troops on the ground as a profound statement about US will. He will want them to know that he is not giving up and walking away from the war. Second, Trump will use land forces as a statement of commitment to regional allies: America is not abandoning you. And finally, the commitment of land forces will aim to solve an ongoing political quandary for Trump: how to bring the Iranians to the table, quickly, for diplomatic negotiations that can end the war.

What might be America’s military objectives? Securing Iran’s enriched nuclear material will be a high priority – a mission that both American and Israeli ground forces have rehearsed for years, although rehearsals do not guarantee success or casualty-free operations.

Another priority will be to re-open the Strait of Hormuz. Not only is the shipping restriction having a profound impact on the global economy, but it is also being used by Iran as a symbol of American weakness in its cognitive warfare. The US mission might also be to seize ground objectives – including refineries, bases, islands – that provide America with enhanced leverage in diplomatic negotiations. Most of these operations would best be described as raids and could last from hours to days. Maybe.

Israel’s Message to a Broad Swath of Lebanon: Shiites Must Go

Christina Goldbaum

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When Israel and Hezbollah last went to war two years ago, Israeli evacuation warnings came a few villages at a time for residents in southern Lebanon.

With the outbreak of a new war last month, the warnings came all at once. As fighting reignited, Israel issued blanket evacuation guidance for a vast stretch of southern Lebanon — extending 25 miles from the Israeli border — publicly urging all civilians to flee to the north.

But behind the scenes, Israeli officials have conveyed a more targeted message.

In private calls to local leaders across southern Lebanon, Israeli military officials have assured several Christian and Druse communities that they could remain in the evacuation zone. They have pressed them, however, to force out any Lebanese from neighboring Shiite Muslim communities who have sought refuge among them as Israeli bombardments flatten Shiite towns, according to local Christian, Druse and Shiite leaders who spoke to The New York Times. The Shiites make up the majority of southern Lebanon.

Local leaders took the messages as a clear signal: Israel is trying to force out one group in the south — Shiites, who are from the same sect as Hezbollah, the Iranian-backed militant group that Israel is trying to vanquish.

“Israel wants to create a new buffer zone, it wants us out, what can we do?” said Ali Naser, 26, a Shiite from one border village, Aitaroun.

Mr. Naser and his relatives fled their farm there when the war broke out and sought refuge in Rmeish, a predominately Christian town within the evacuation area. About two weeks later, municipal leaders informed them they needed to leave at once. First they went to the city of Sidon, on the coast, and then, after being unable to find space in any of the government-run shelters there, a relative’s home in the eastern Bekaa Valley beyond the limits of the evacuation zone.

Iran war costs grow as key U.S. systems are knocked out

Colin Demarest

Sourec Link

Data: Axios research; Graphic: Sara Wise/Axios; Photos: Defense Visual Information Distribution Service

The U.S. is dedicating significant amounts of firepower to the Middle East as it wrestles with Iran. Some of it — billions of dollars' worth, in fact — will not be returning.

Why it matters: The costs of Operation Epic Fury are mounting.Hundreds of American troops have been injured and 13 killed.

Some exquisite weaponry, everything from stealth jets to radars, has been knocked out.

By the numbers: The incremental cost of the Iran war sat at $16.2-23.4 billion as of March 19, according to research published by the American Enterprise Institute.The high end includes costs associated with radar replacement at Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar and some fixes to the Gerald R. Ford aircraft carrier, which last month suffered an hourslong laundry fire.

Among the other materiel either damaged or destroyed are:One Lockheed Martin F-35A

What they're saying: Regarding "air wings and airframes, there's some things adversaries are doing to provide info and intel they shouldn't. We're aware of it," Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said during a Tuesday briefing."Ultimately, we move things around. One of the biggest principles you learn in the military is to not set predictable patterns," he added.

"Commanders are working hard to adjust, in real time, with those systems and make sure they're in the right places and not easily targetable."

The other side: The U.S. has also expended more than 850 Tomahawk missiles, launched by surface ships and submarines."We've shot a lot of munitions," Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Daryl Caudle said at a separate CSIS event. "The munitions have taken a hit."

Maker RTX in February said it would surge production to 1,000-plus annually.

The big picture: Six in 10 Americans disapprove of President Trump's handling of the conflict, according to a Pew survey.A little more than half believe the fight will continue for another six months.

Tehran Is Setting a Trap for Trump

Ravi Agrawal

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One of the most striking elements of the ongoing war in the Middle East is how a severely damaged and depleted Iranian military has still managed to hold the world economy hostage. In doing so, Tehran’s new leadership is exerting pressure on the United States to either escalate or change course. But as the costs keep mounting for Iran, how long can it continue down that path? Who are its current leaders, and how are they thinking about an endgame in the current conflict?

On the latest episode of FP Live, I put those questions to Ali Vaez, the director of the Iran Project at the International Crisis Group and an analyst with extensive contacts with Iranian lawmakers. Subscribers can watch the full discussion on the video box atop this page or download the free FP Live podcast. What follows here is a condensed and lightly edited

Flip the Script in the Strait: How a Unilateral Ceasefire Could Pressure Tehran to Restore Navigation

Peter Slezkine • Jennifer Kavanagh

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When the United States and Israel commenced their joint military operation in Iran on February 28, Donald Trump and his closest advisors expected a quick and easy victory. After two weeks of fighting, the war shows no sign of abating. Although the Trump administration has claimed to have achieved several key objectives, including the elimination of much of Iran’s senior leadership and the destruction of significant portions of Iran’s military capability, it has yet to find a solution to a far-reaching and apparently unforeseen challenge: reopening the Strait of Hormuz and restoring global energy supplies.

Trump’s continued ambiguity about the objectives of his military “excursion” allows him a degree of discretion when it comes to deciding when the campaign has been successfully completed. Indeed, he has already made multiple declarations of mission mostly accomplished. But while regime decapitation and military degradation are flexible metrics, the continued obstruction of the Strait of Hormuz is not fungible and carries direct and measurable cost to the United States. Unfortunately, no American military action, US-led international coalition, or near-term US-Iran diplomatic agreement is likely to resolve the issue. In fact, pursuing these options may only exacerbate the situation. Trump has only one alternative: walking away, restraining Israel, and shifting the pressure of reopening the strait onto Iran’s closest partners and Tehran itself.

Any attempt to open the strait through military measures is likely to fail and may come at huge cost. Trump has floated the idea of naval escorts, but this would strain U.S. capacity and place U.S. navy warships at risk. Military analysts suggest that 10 U.S. destroyers — about 20% of the U.S. deployable fleet of these vessels — plus supporting aircraft would be needed to escort a dozen or so tankers per day through the strait. This would cap tanker traffic at less than 10% of its pre-war capacity. Naval escorts themselves would also be vulnerable during such operations and could be targeted by sea and air drones or the hidden threat posed by naval mines (which even minesweeping could not fully eliminate).

Stimulating Creativity in Human-Machine Teams

Luke M. Herrington

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Introducing HWIT: Using Prompt Engineering to Stimulate Creativity in Human-Machine Teams

The question of how best to use artificial intelligence (AI) resources in the military, including for writing, is an important one. AI marketing materials (and other rhetorical efforts) frame AI and large language models (LLMs) as capable of enhancing human creativity or capable of being creative in their own right. Some of this hype stems from the desire to sell these products to writers—including those in the military. As a practical matter, however, AI’s creative potential remains a subject of debate. For example, most of the ideas generated by AI fall into the category of conventional, while AI’s ability to achieve surprise or novelty is limited. Additionally, while some research finds that AI improves individual performance and creativity, it also stifles the creativity of larger groups. For my part, while I find value in employing AI in the classroom, I too am skeptical about its inherent “creativity.”

If AI is not actually all that creative, it poses a real problem for military writing, especially as the U.S. military progressively turns to AI to maintain its competitive warfighting advantage over our adversaries. This is because working with LLMs is often associated with a process of cognitive offloading, whereby human users shift the burden of creative and critical thought to AI. Yet, not only do creative and critical thinking usually require higher-order thinking, the arts, to include that of military planning, involve fundamentally creative and critical processes. It is one thing to offload tasks that can and should be automated, but it would be an altogether different thing to shift creative tasks requiring higher-order thought to an AI. For instance, using AI to summarize meeting notes or format briefing slides can be as invaluable to staff officers drowning in paperwork as it can be for students to employ AI to check for spelling, grammar, and formatting mistakes.

But what about using AI to draft orders, to craft options for complex military problems, or even to write in an academic setting? The risk, when shifting the burden of creative expression to an AI, is in regression to the mean. LLMs are built on powerful statistical models and massive datasets that treat frequency as synonymous with importance. Thus, their output is generally going to reflect the underlying averages found in their original training data. In fact, this is the origin, at least in part, of both AI hallucination and the proclivity for AI-generated writing to overuse certain words and punctuation. An AI that anchors on a term is likely to produce output correlated with related terms in the data regardless of either the relevance of those associations to a given prompt or the veracity of any ostensible truth claims found in its output.

From Creating to Engineering: Conspiracy Theories in Information Warfare

Douglas Wilbur

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Modern armed conflict is often used to shape battlefields before violence occurs. Influence is decided by how people interpret uncertainty, threat and intent. In How to Create a Conspiracy Theory: What Information Warriors Need to Know, I argued that conspiracy theories function as cognitive environments rather than collections of false claims. They impose order on ambiguity, assign agency to events and stabilize belief under perceived existential threat. This follow on essay moves from explanation to application. It continues to rely on the Existential Threat Model (ETM) and the conspiracy belief formation model to explain how belief environments are constructed and why they persist in information warfare contexts. This essay will walk the reader through how these theoretical frameworks can be applied by information warriors to engineer an actual weaponized conspiracy theory.

Theoretical Models

Before we proceed, a concise review of the relevant theoretical frameworks is required. The ETM explains the narrative structure that allows conspiracy theories to function as stable belief systems. It identifies five elements that must be present. First, events are organized into a pattern that suggests coordination rather than coincidence. Second, that pattern is attributed to intentional agents rather than error or chance. Third, the agents are linked to a meaningful threatthat endangers the group’s safety, identity or moral order. Fourth, the threat is understood as involving a coalition rather than a single actor, which signals power and reach. Finally, secrecy explains gaps in evidence and preempts counterarguments. When these elements align, uncertainty is transformed into perceived design and ambiguity becomes threatening rather than neutral.

The conspiracy belief formation model explains why individuals become receptive to conspiratorial narratives and why belief persists over time. It emphasizes sustained anxiety rather than sudden shock, since unresolved uncertainty creates demand for explanation. Belief adoption is socially mediated, with people relying on trusted peers rather than authorities to judge credibility. Synergy is achieved when multiple reinforcing cues work together, so no single claim carries the full burden of persuasion. Plausibility matters more than proof, as narratives must fit existing experiences and grievances. Finally, conspiracy beliefs resist falsification because contradictory information is reframed as manipulation or concealment. Once belief becomes tied to identity and social belonging, disengagement becomes costly and belief stabilizes.

Warfare Revolution: How The Military Uses AI

John Miley

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To help you understand the trends surrounding AI and other new technologies and what we expect to happen in the future, our highly experienced Kiplinger Letter team will keep you abreast of the latest developments and forecasts. (Get a free issue of The Kiplinger Letter or subscribe.) You'll get all the latest news first by subscribing, but we will publish many (but not all) of the forecasts a few days afterward online. Here's the latest…

Artificial intelligence holds huge promise for the U.S. military for both offensive measures and deterrence. That's why the Pentagon is racing to put AI in the battlefield and the office. With a yearly budget nearing $1 trillion, it's a massive tech shift.

The AI arms race

The global AI arms race leverages an unprecedented commercial AI boom. Large language models powering top AI tech are ideal for the military, since they are a general-purpose technology that can process vast amounts of data, reason and generate usable insights. Users interact with the AI in plain English, making adoption far easier. And vast U.S. tech spending has powered AI advances. The most cutting-edge models are being built by Anthropic, Google and OpenAI.

AI is already being used extensively in battle: By Israel in Gaza. Ukraine against Russia. Now the U.S. against Iran. These conflicts are a testing ground for many new AI tools. Ukraine even launched a product-development war program, known as "Test in Ukraine," where foreign military tech companies can get real-time data from combat conditions. In Iran, the U.S. is using AI to screen incoming data and help identify targets.

The big concern is competition with China, the second-largest AI spender. China is rapidly deploying AI to its military, adding electrical capacity at a rapid clip and providing $200 billion in state-backed AI capital. But China's top tech firms spent only 15% to 20% of what U.S. tech giants invested on AI in 2025, according to Goldman Sachs. This year, Alphabet, Amazon, Meta and Microsoft will unleash nearly $700 billion of capital expenditures to build AI.

Hedge with Non-Kinetic Defense

Connor Keating

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In April 2025, Admiral Samuel Paparo delivered his annual posture statement to the House Armed Services Committee, arguing that the United States must invest in several capabilities to remain competitive in the Indo-Pacific: command, control, computing, communications, cyber, intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance, and targeting (C5ISRT); counter-C5ISRT (C‑C5ISRT); fires; integrated air and missile defense (IAMD); force sustainment; autonomous and AI-driven systems; and maritime domain awareness and sea control. According to Admiral Paparo, space, AI, and IAMD are critical enablers for reducing risk to U.S. forces in a conflict with China. These capabilities offer exquisite performance for roughly 95 percent of the missions the United States might face short of full-scale war, but they may not be the most cost‑effective way to reduce risk in a high‑end fight with China.

In “C-Note” #3 and in his address at the Surface Navy Association’s 38th National Symposium in January 2026, Chief of Naval Operations Admiral Daryl Caudle outlined a new “hedge strategy.”1 He explained that the Navy will build a general-purpose force—the 95 percent solution—while pursuing “tailored offsets” that augment the general-purpose force and cover the high-intensity 5 percent beyond it. Examples of hedge capabilities in his C‑Note include special operations forces to counter terrorism, ballistic-missile submarines (SSBNs) for nuclear deterrence, and the “Hellscape” concept to defeat a Taiwan invasion force.2 Taken together, Admiral Paparo’s requests and Admiral Caudle’s strategy suggest a gap: the Navy is investing heavily in the 95‑percent, general‑purpose force but underinvesting in simple, low‑cost hedge capabilities tailored to the most dangerous 5 percent of scenarios. This article focuses on one particularly dangerous contingency within that 5 percent—a high‑end conflict with China—and argues that the Navy should rapidly field a set of low‑cost, non‑kinetic hedge capabilities that improve platform survivability by stressing the entire Chinese kill chain and driving up adversary salvo requirements.

A Non-Kinetic Hedge Strategy