Indian Strategic Studies: 04/26/26

26 April 2026

The Cylinder and the Strait

FrameTheGlobe and The Ren Way

The blue LPG cylinder in the corner of Sunita Devi’s kitchen in Noida Sector 63 has been empty since the third week of March. She knows the date because she marked it in the small notebook she keeps for household expenditures, the same notebook that records her husband Ramesh’s fortnightly wage from the plastics factory three kilometers away: Rs 10,200 per pay period. The refill costs Rs 913 now, up from Rs 853 in early March, and the commercial cylinder her neighbor Kavita uses for her small tea stall costs Rs 1,883. Sunita is not cooking on LPG this week. She bought a small bag of wood charcoal from the vendor near the main road, the kind sold for barbecues, and she heats the dal on that. The smoke fills the single room that serves as kitchen and bedroom both. Her two daughters sleep through it; they are used to it.

The war that the United States and Israel launched against Iran on February 28, 2026, has consumed, in its first fifty-three days, a great quantity of commentary about strategic depth, nuclear thresholds, and the geopolitical futures of the Gulf states. It has consumed rather less commentary about Sunita Devi’s cylinder. This is a piece about the cylinder.

The Institutional Hegemony of the Pakistan Army

The United Nations reimburses troop-contributing countries at a standard rate of $1,428 per soldier per month. Pakistan currently contributes 8,230 uniformed personnel across seven active UN missions…

Houthis and Al-Qaeda Growing Terror Supply Chain

Luke Zakedis

The Houthis are increasingly exchanging arms, training, and drone technology with Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) and al-Shabaab, marking a collaboration that transcends ideological divides and threatens to proliferate advanced weapons capabilities. The gravest emerging risk is technology transfer. If al-Qaeda affiliates acquire the capacity to indigenously produce Houthi missiles or unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), this know-how could cascade across the global jihadist network.

These collaborations remain transactional and compartmentalized, centered on near‑term arrangements for the Houthis to acquire funds and smuggling routes while al-Qaeda affiliates seek weapons procurement and manufacturing capabilities.

China’s energy fortress was built to withstand just this type of oil shock

Simone McCarthy

For more than a decade, leader Xi Jinping has overseen a transformation within the Chinese economy with one aim: making it energy-secure. Under that vision, China has unleashed a renewable energy revolution of wind, solar and hydropower, drilled ever deeper into oilfields offshore and on, and forged pacts with partners for more supply – all in a bid to cut the country’s reliance on imported fuel and insulate it against “external shocks.”

Now, the historic oil crisis triggered by the United States and Israel’s war on Iran is posing the sternest test to date of China’s Promethean effort toward energy self-sufficiency. It’s a test that China appears to be passing.

Are America and China Condemned to Repeat History?

Elizabeth D. Samet

History, in the hands of a policymaker, can be a dangerous thing. When officials recruit the wrong historical analogy—or misinterpret an apt one—in the decision-making process, the consequences can be catastrophic. During the Vietnam War, to take one notable example, some American leaders perceived in North Vietnam’s Ho Chi Minh another Adolf Hitler. The comparison helped fuel the United States’ misadventures in Southeast Asia by making any accommodation in Vietnam tantamount to the notorious appeasement of the 1938 Munich Agreement. This case became a central example in Ernest May’s 1973 cautionary tale, “Lessons” of the Past. May advocated for more nuanced approaches to historical precedents and argued that analogies might be used responsibly and effectively “to point out criteria for a choice rather than to indicate what the choice ought to be.”

Thirteen years later, in 1986, May teamed up with Richard Neustadt to publish Thinking in Time, a how-to for decision-makers. Instead of searching for perfect analogies, May and Neustadt proposed, policymakers might find more success by looking for not only the similarities but also the crucial differences between the present and potential historical parallels.

How North Korea Won

Jung H. Pak

The 75th anniversary of the Korean Workers Party in October 2020 was not the festive affair that North Korean leader Kim Jong Un wanted it to be. Despite the fireworks, military flyover, and procession of new intercontinental missiles, Kim appeared to wipe away tears when he approached the lectern and apologized to the crowd: “My efforts and sincerity have not been sufficient enough to rid our people of the difficulties in their lives.” The COVID-19 pandemic had been tough for most countries, but it seemed especially portentous for North Korea, which was largely food-insecure, home to a notoriously dilapidated public health-care system, and struggling with a battered economy. Kim himself was humiliated and isolated, both domestically and internationally, after failing to deliver much-needed sanctions relief in some heady high-profile summitry with the leaders of the United States, South Korea, China, and Russia. It was arguably the lowest moment in the Democratic People’s Republic of North Korea’s 78-year history.

And yet, just five years later, in September 2025, Kim was beaming at a different military parade—in Beijing, where he stood with Chinese leader Xi Jinping and Russian leader Vladimir Putin. North Korean soldiers were now fighting alongside Russian troops in Ukraine, North Korean trade with China had reached healthy pre-pandemic levels, and Kim had been welcomed into a unified cohort of leaders countering U.S. and Western influence.

6 Things I Wish I Knew About the U.S. and Israeli Positions on Iran

Daniel Byman

As the U.S.-Israeli conflict with Iran drags on, it’s possible to imagine both a negotiated settlement and a resumption of the fighting. The outcome—either war or peace—depends on how the three parties to the conflict see their goals, what risks they’re willing to take, and what limitations they face at home and abroad. In an earlier piece, I wrote about gaps in our knowledge of Iran today, which make it difficult to predict the country’s next moves. This article identifies similar gaps in our understanding of the U.S. and Israeli positions.

What do the United States and Israel consider “victory”?

Both U.S. President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared a wide range of goals when war broke out. The two countries both oppose Iranian nuclear enrichment, seeing it as a way to build a nuclear bomb. They are also bent on eliminating Iran’s missile and drone threat, along with its naval forces, and in general seek to weaken the country’s military capabilities. Both oppose Iran’s regional proxies, such as Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Houthis in Yemen, and have declared support for regime change in Iran. After Iran threatened maritime traffic in the Strait of

The Iran Shock And the Dangerous Allure of Energy Autarky

Jason Bordoff and Meghan L. O’Sullivan

Within days of the initial U.S. and Israeli attack on Iran on February 28, 2026, the world was plunged into an energy crisis. Tehran’s near shuttering of the Strait of Hormuz, through which roughly 20 percent of the world’s oil and liquefied natural gas transit each day, amounted to the largest disruption of global energy flows in history, according to the International Energy Agency. Within the first three weeks of the conflict, oil prices rose by 55 percent. Gasoline jumped by roughly a dollar a gallon, and heating oil and jet fuel soared even higher. Many countries began to ration fuel,

Potential for Kurdish Militants to Capture Territory in Iran

Wladimir van Wilgenburg

The Coalition of Political Forces of Iranian Kurdistan—made up of 2,500 to 10,000 lightly armed fighters—recently formed amid reports that the United States and Israel were considering offering support to a Kurdish operation in Western Iran.

The fighters in this coalition are drawn from a variety of armed groups. Participation by the Kurdistan Freedom Life Party (PJAK) is notable, as the PJAK operates from underground bases outside Iraqi Kurdish control. The PJAK’s involvement in any potential operation, however, may be restricted due to its affiliation with the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), which is currently engaged in peace talks with Türkiye.

How to Reopen the Strait of Hormuz

Luke Coffey

One of the biggest geopolitical consequences of the recent U.S.-Israeli airstrikes on Iran is the closure of the Strait of Hormuz. Though the exact status of the waterway remains unclear at the time of writing, the daily flow of oil and gas through it has been severely reduced. Even though the United States imports relatively little energy from the Persian Gulf, it is not insulated from global price shocks that follow any disruption in transit—as many Americans are feeling at the pump right now.

It is clear that President Trump did not anticipate Iran’s willingness to close the strait. His subsequent effort to pressure European allies into deploying a maritime force to the region appeared rushed and uncoordinated. With no prior consultation or planning, and with many European navies tied up in existing commitments or maintenance cycles, expecting an immediate deployment of high-value assets to one of the world’s most dangerous waterways was unrealistic.

How to make peace in the Middle East

Shiraz Maher

Like the fruit of the medlar tree, the ceasefire between Iran and the United States threatened to turn rotten before it was ripe. Barely hours after it was announced, Israel launched a series of blistering attacks on Beirut, while both Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates reported Iranian drone strikes. Each side accused the other of misrepresenting the deal, with confusion over its precise terms. Amid that backdrop, negotiators finally met in Islamabad, but eventually walked away after failing to reach an agreement. President Trump responded almost immediately by announcing a full blockade of all Iranian ports, with a series of commensurate threats following from Iran, which threaten retaliation against partners in the Gulf.

All this reveals the extent to which each side distrusts the other, a factor that will provide the most significant hurdle in securing a lasting settlement. While some reports suggest that mediators may soon meet again, conflicting statements from Pakistani and Iranian officials have made it difficult to read what the Islamic Republic will do next. In any case, the region’s potted history of conflict and conciliation reveals an uneven catalogue of both success and failure from high-level diplomatic initiatives.

The Blockade Dressed as Peace

The word Trump chose was “extension.” Extension implies a diplomatic interval, a corridor of time in which something negotiated can happen. On April 21, 2026, speaking through a social media post rather than a formal statement to Congress or the Security Council, the president announced that the two-week ceasefire with Iran, set to expire the following day, would continue “until such time as” Tehran’s leaders submit a “unified proposal” to end the war. The phrasing is important. No deadline was set. No mediating framework was named. No reciprocal concession was offered. The US would “continue the Blockade,” Trump wrote, and remain “ready and able” in “all other respects.”

Since April 13, the United States Navy has maintained a full blockade of Iranian ports, interdicting vessels departing from or docking at Iranian territorial waters. The blockade, activated after Islamabad talks collapsed without agreement, costs Iran an estimated $435 million per day in lost export revenue, according to figures compiled by the Foundation for Defense of Democracies using LSEG and S&P Global trade data.

The Strait of Hormuz in 8 Charts

Matthew P. Funaiole, Harrison Prétat, Aidan Powers-Riggs, and Jasper Verschuur

Access to the Strait of Hormuz, which carries roughly a quarter of global oil flows, remains contested. The waterway has been effectively closed since March 2, following U.S. and Israeli strikes on Iran. Although Tehran declared the strait open on April 17, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps reversed course and announced it shut just one day later. The United States has since moved to enforce its own presence, including by seizing an Iranian-flagged cargo vessel on April 19. Vessel tracking and maritime trade data offer key insights into the ongoing dispute.

Since the conflict in Iran began, hundreds of tankers have been stranded in the Persian Gulf. After Iran’s foreign minister announced the reopening on April 17, dozens of vessels surged toward the Strait of Hormuz, trying to exit. Automatic identification system (AIS) data from Starboard Maritime Intelligence shows that most quickly reversed course and remain stuck in the Persian Gulf, but at least 13 tankers made it through.

Iran sees mass redundancies from war with US and Israel

Behrang Tajdin

Iran has been hit by a massive wave of redundancies, both directly and indirectly as a result of the conflict with the US and Israel. Its Deputy Work and Social Security Minister, Gholamhossein Mohammadi, said two days ago that two million people had lost their jobs because of the war.

The widespread lay-offs are one of the biggest topics of conversation among ordinary Iranians on social media. Employers and government officials euphemistically refer to it as "balancing the workforce". The impact goes far beyond factories closed down after being hit by air strikes. It also includes other manufacturers, retailers, import and export business, and the digital sector.

Venezuela Needs Regime Change The Narrow Path to a Democratic Transition

Javier Corrales

When U.S. forces swooped into Caracas in January to seize President Nicolás Maduro, many Venezuelans inside and outside the country rejoiced. Maduro’s ouster seemed to signal the imminent end of a regime that had for years oppressed and immiserated its people. Thanks to bold U.S. action, a government that had rankled its neighbors and sowed instability in the region now appeared destined to fall.

But something peculiar happened. Unusual in the long annals of U.S. intervention in Latin America, the United States removed the dictator but kept the dictatorship. In the past, when Washington decided to intervene militarily to remove a regime, it delivered. Except perhaps for the foiled 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba, U.S. military actions in Latin America catalyzed change, deposing regimes or defeating foes in the Dominican Republic, Grenada, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Panama, and elsewhere. Democracy did not always follow, but the United States did remove its adversaries. In Venezuela, however, the United States got rid of Maduro but left in place his party and allies.

Baku–Moscow Tensions Subdued, but Underlying Distrust Persists

Vasif Huseynov

Azerbaijan lodged diplomatic protests against Russia over President Vladimir Putin’s comments on Karabakh during his April 1 meeting with Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan, which Baku regarded as an attempt to reopen an issue it deems resolved.

Despite accumulated grievances over the past year and a half, including the December 2024 targeting of Azerbaijan Airlines Flight 8243 and Russian strikes on Azerbaijan’s embassy in Kyiv, the sides have largely compartmentalized disputes to protect economic ties. Azerbaijan’s commitment to non-alignment keeps its relations with Russia open, but Baku is seeking concrete steps from Russia to repair relations, grounded in respect for Azerbaijan’s territorial integrity.

Central Asia’s Ascent: From Geopolitical Object to Collective Actor

Islam Supyaldiyarov

In a 2024 article, Navigating New Realities: Central Asia’s Role in Contemporary Geopolitics, my co-authors and I argued that the Central Asia was experiencing a structural change. Driven by Russia’s war in Ukraine and the growing ambitions of China, we contended that the region's states were no longer objects of influence but were taking on a more active role in international politics. Going back to this point at the beginning of 2026, the record of experience has not only ascertained it; it has exceeded it.

The speed, complexity, and multi-dimensionality of the transformation of Central Asia requires a significantly enhanced analytical structure; one that goes beyond the Russia-China dichotomy, takes into account the institutional inertia of the region, and takes seriously the material interests that have rendered Central Asia essential to virtually each of the major powers on the planet.

What we know about the Iranian ship seized by the US

What we know about the Iranian ship seized by the US

The US has intercepted an Iranian ship entering the Gulf as part of its naval blockade, US President Donald Trump has said. Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform that the ship was seized by the US Navy after failing to respond to a warning to stop.

Iran said it was a violation of the ceasefire and it would retaliate soon for an "act of armed piracy". It's the first ship to be seized by the US since its blockade of Iranian ports began.

Russia Is Meddling for Meddling’s Sake in the Middle East

Nikita Smagin

Carnegie Politika is a digital publication that features unmatched analysis and insight on Russia, Ukraine and the wider region. For nearly a decade, Carnegie Politika has published contributions from members of Carnegie’s global network of scholars and well-known outside contributors and has helped drive important strategic conversations and policy debates.Learn More

Russia has reaped some significant dividends from the fighting between Israel, the United States, and Iran: in particular, additional income from elevated oil prices and a possible reduction in Western military support for Ukraine. But the lack of options for influencing the course of the conflict is a cause of concern for the Kremlin.

Accordingly, Moscow has been looking for ways to get involved by providing drones and battlefield intelligence to Iran. What Russia might seek to do with any influence it may accumulate is an open question. It’s entirely possible that even the Kremlin doesn’t know. For the moment, though, that’s less important. All Moscow wants is leverage.

Trump buys time for Iran deal after frantic day of diplomacy

Daniel Bush

Tuesday began as a frantic day of diplomacy in Washington, with Air Force Two ready to fly Vice President JD Vance to Islamabad for another round of peace talks between the US and Iran. Several hours later, Air Force Two hadn't taken off and the negotiations were postponed. President Donald Trump announced that he would extend the ceasefire with Iran, set to expire on Wednesday evening, to allow the regime more time to create a "unified proposal" to end the war.

In between, Trump weighed his options as the world waited to see if the countries were any closer to ending the war. Trump's decision marked the second time in as many weeks that he has backed off a threat to escalate the war, buying himself more time to wind down a conflict as it approaches the two-month mark.

A Grand Strategy of Consolidation How Trump Can Revitalize American Power

A. Wess Mitchell

The country’s new defense strategy envisioned a dramatic shakeup. It prioritized the homeland and repositioned forces that had patrolled distant frontiers for nearly a century. It handed the task of securing farther-flung defensive perimeters to allies, many of which appeared unprepared to take on the burden. Establishment experts were appalled. Hawks warned that the new strategy would embolden adversaries and advocated for the old approach of being strong everywhere at once.

The year was 1904, and the country was the United Kingdom. It faced a dilemma broadly similar to the one the United States now confronts. Its empire was the world’s strongest power. Its navy had more warships than the next two largest navies combined. But its strategic situation was deteriorating. Britain’s economic primacy was beginning to slip as rising powers surpassed it in industrial production. Imperial Germany was building a blue-water fleet. France and Russia were mounting fresh challenges to British power in Africa and Asia. The United States and Japan, new rivals, were pursuing dominance over their regions. British leaders had a choice: they could keep trying to outgun all these competitors or try something new.

Could Deep Sea Mining Break China's Grip on Critical Minerals?

Miles beneath the surface of the Pacific Ocean lies a vast stretch of seabed littered with what look like dull, dark rocks. Those rocks are actually polymetallic nodules, rich in the minerals that drive modern economies. They could help the United States break its reliance on China, which otherwise controls the market. But nobody has ever mined seabed nodules at scale, much less processed them for industrial use.

The United States is about to try. But as a recent RAND study found, getting those nodules to the surface is only part of the challenge. “We need to find alternative sources of these critical minerals that don't involve China,” said Tom LaTourrette, a senior physical scientist at RAND. “This is an all-of-government, all-hands effort. Seabed mining is one way we might accomplish it.”

New Internet of Things Plan Targets Global Infrastructure

Matthew Johnson

A new action plan for the Internet of Things (IoT) increases the possibility that Chinese-built connected infrastructure in the United States could become a platform for data access, cyber pre-positioning, and attacks on U.S. cyber-physical systems in a prolonged crisis or confrontation.

The plan, launched jointly by nine ministries, defines IoT as a total cyber-physical environment that links “people, machines, and things” across sensing, networks, platforms, applications, and security, and sets targets for 10 billion terminal connections, more than 50 standards, and deployment across production, consumption, and governance.

How Big of a Threat Is Mythos?

Rishi Iyengar

It sounds like the beginning of a nightmare scenario that artificial intelligence doomsayers have been warning about: This month, Silicon Valley AI company Anthropic said it had developed a model so dangerous that the company had decided against releasing it to the public.

The model, known as Claude Mythos Preview, is a general-purpose language model like Anthropic’s Claude or OpenAI’s ChatGPT. But during testing, it showed an ability to find and exploit so-called “zero day” vulnerabilities—an industry term that refers to previously undiscovered holes in a system’s software. The model “could reshape cybersecurity” because it found “thousands of high-severity vulnerabilities” in “every major operating system and web browser,” Anthropic said. It made those claims in a blog post announcing that it would open up Mythos only to a few dozen companies and critical infrastructure operators. That collective, which Anthropic named Project Glasswing, includes Amazon Web Services, Apple, Google, JPMorganChase, Microsoft, and Nvidia as companies that will receive early access to the model to patch vulnerabilities in their systems.

RAND Research on Workforce and Force Development Innovation

The establishment of the U.S. Space Force (USSF) in December 2019 represented the first creation of a new military service in more than 70 years, reflecting the strategic imperative to defend U.S. interests in an increasingly contested space domain. As the service shifts from start-up to mature operations, its challenge is to transform deliberately into a warfighting force purpose-built to contest and control space.

The Chief of Space Operations defines this direction in Space Force Vector 2025 (Saltzman, 2025), which establishes four service-level activities—Force Design, Force Development, Force Generation, and Force Employment—as the primary levers through which the USSF achieves space superiority. These activities implement the service’s theory of success, Competitive Endurance, which is composed of three tenets: avoiding operational surprise, denying first-mover advantage, and conducting responsible counterspace campaigning.