The Dalai Lama’s Succession Battle: The Stakes for Tibetans and Beijing

Saransh Sehgal

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As the 14th Dalai Lama enters the later years of his life – he turns 91 in July – the question of succession is no longer a distant concern. It is an unfolding reality that will shape the future of Tibetan Buddhism, the trajectory of regional politics, and the global conversation on the balance between spiritual authority and state control of Tibet.

For over six decades, Tenzin Gyatso, the exiled 14th Dalai Lama, has anchored the Tibetan cause, using his global stature as a Nobel Peace Prize laureate to transform what began as a Himalayan territorial dispute into a worldwide movement.

Helping Iran, China Is a Party in the War

Rajeswari Pillai Rajagopalan

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China may claim neutrality and call for peace in the Middle East, but it is heavily invested in the Iran conflict. Perhaps because of its dependence on Iran for energy security, it is transferring dual-use technologies as well as military items, as has been reported in the media.

China has an arms-supply relationship with Iran that goes back decades and includes evasion of UN sanctions, including getting oil in return for weapons. And, along with Russia and Iran, it has a broader strategic interest in undermining the United States and the US-led international order. This motivation makes China’s actions even more concerning.

China weathered Trump's tariffs - but the Iran war is taking a toll

Laura Bicker

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It's a sombre gathering in the backstreets of one of China's biggest manufacturing hubs, where workers are smoking under a tree in front of storefronts advertising temporary factory jobs.

"No-one understands what our life is like," says one man who is unwilling to be named.

"We work and work and have no life. Please help us," another adds - a rare, risky plea to a foreign journalist. They seem desperate, struggling to earn enough to send money home, as they cope with the massive shifts in Chinese manufacturing, from cheap, mass-produced goods to automated advanced tech.

The Significance And Influence Of China’s ChiNext Reform – Analysis

Wei Hongxu

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The China Securities Regulatory Commission (CSRC) has issued a directive on the reform of the ChiNext market, a stock exchange market designed to help high-growth startups and small-to-medium enterprises (SMEs). The reform encompasses eight key reform measures. These initiatives involve the upgrade across various dimensions, which include board positioning, listing standards, review mechanisms, financing and M&A, investment-side reforms, and full-process supervision, signaling that a new round of deep-seated, comprehensive capital market reforms is moving into a more profound stage.

It is noteworthy that this reform was launched following the issuance of the nine key guidelines for the development and regulation of the country’s capital market, serving as a further extension of the ongoing stock market transformation. This context differs significantly from the environment surrounding the establishment of the Science and Technology Innovation Board (STAR Market) and the Beijing Stock Exchange. First, focusing on technology and encouraging innovation has now become the prevailing trend in the market. Second, the overall market environment has undergone a significant shift, marked by a visible rise across various indices.

Iran's uncomfortable position, between fragile ceasefire and blockade standoff

Ghazal Golshiri

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US President Donald Trump's announcement on Tuesday, April 21, that he would extend the ceasefire until Iran presents a proposal to end the conflict is not good news for Tehran. It leaves it in a kind of limbo between war and peace, a situation its leaders have historically sought to avoid, with the American naval blockade still in place and the prospect of renewed hostilities hanging over Iran, further strangling an already heavily weakened economy.

"Economic pressure through blockade, strategic uncertainty, and continued low-intensity confrontation – this scenario is seen as gradually eroding Iran's remaining strategic capacity," explained Hamidreza Azizi, a researcher at the Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik think tank in Berlin, on X. "Trump's extension of the ceasefire is not interpreted as a face-saving exit from the conflict, but rather as a recalibration of the war's form and shape, which lowers costs for the United States while increasing them for Iran," the researcher continued.

Outlook for Minority Rebel and Separatist Militants in Iran

Andrew McGregor

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Iran’s marginalized ethnic minorities, who often endure state suppression, may view current U.S. and Israeli military operations as an opportunity to seize greater autonomy. Four minority groups—the Kurds, Balochs, Lurs, and Ahwazi Arabs—maintain armed factions. Additionally, the exiled Mujahedin-e-Khalq (MEK) aggressively pursues violent regime change, losing 100 fighters in a clash with the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) on February 25.

Armed factions are most likely to hesitate before any action due to unclear American objectives, fears of brutal regime retaliation if abandoned, and the fact that ethnic Persian opposition figures often share the regime’s hostile view of these minority groups as separatist threats.

Iraq Turns to Risky Overland Routes as Oil Exports Collapse

Alex Kimani

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Iraq has been facing a critical oil export crisis since tanker traffic through the Strait of Hormuz largely seized up. About a month ago, Iraq reached a temporary agreement with Iran to allow its ships to sail through the waterway; however, additional war risk premiums for Persian Gulf transits have increased dramatically, rendering transport through the route uneconomical.

Unlike Iran, which relies heavily on a shadow fleet of tankers to transport its oil, Iraq lacks a large national fleet, forcing it to rely on third parties. Lack of shipping forced Iraq’s oil production to collapse by 80% to roughly 1.2 to 1.3 million barrels per day, turning into an existential crisis for a country that relies on oil for up to 95% of federal budget revenue. But now Iraq can breathe a sigh of relief after a key border crossing opened after remaining shut for more than a decade. The Rabia-Yarubiyah border crossing between Iraq and Syria has been reopened after remaining closed for 13 years, offering Iraq a potential alternative to the Strait of Hormuz. The border was initially closed in 2011 due to the Syrian civil war and was later seized by the Islamic State (ISIS) in 2014 before being retaken by Iraqi Kurdish forces.

The Iran Talks Are Making India Feel Small

Vaibhav Vats

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Pakistan is having a diplomatic moment, and India’s political elites are not enjoying it.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has spent the past decade promoting the notion that India is the leader of the global South and, as such, is indispensable to world affairs. Now a conflict in the Middle East has thrown the global economy, and, with it, India’s, into crisis. On top of that, Islamabad, not New Delhi, has hosted at least one round of talks between the United States and Iran and is preparing to mediate others, leaving the Indian government to ponder its irrelevance.

Indian Foreign Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar first dismissed Pakistan’s role in the U.S.-Iran talks, using a pejorative Hindi word for a kind of unsavory middleman. But in Indian political circles, particularly after the April 8 cease-fire was announced, criticism has been trained on the Modi government.

The Strait of Hormuz in 8 Charts

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

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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.

The Ghost of Saigon in Tehran: Why Ships and Planes Won’t Break a Holy War

Stephen D. Cook

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As a retired Green Beret with 25 years in the U.S. Army, I have spent much of my life in the dust of Iraq and Afghanistan. I have seen, firsthand, what happens when a superpower tries to trade blood for progress. Today, as I watch the escalating tension with Iran and the new U.S. naval blockade now choking the Strait of Hormuz, I don’t see a “surgical” strategic solution. I see a hauntingly familiar pattern of over-reliance on technical superiority to solve a human problem.

We are making the Vietnam mistake all over again. Just as Washington once believed that a massive aerial bombing campaign—Operation Rolling Thunder—would break Hanoi’s will and end the war from the air without a messy ground commitment, we are again betting that ships, precision strikes, and economic pressure alone will force the regime to fold.

The Iran War’s Five Lessons for Europe

Peter Doran, and Mark Montgomery

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A universal lesson of military strategy is never to get caught preparing for the last war. It is, however, possible to learn a great deal from it. European NATO has had a front-row seat to the Ukraine and Iran wars, two conflicts that combine the old and new aspects of the modern battlefield. America’s allies should take note. Applying lessons from these conflicts will be the best way to build up their forces and prevent an unwanted crisis with their most dangerous neighbor, Russia. Here’s how.

1. Bombs win battles. Allies win wars. The United States was significantly more effective in Operation Epic Fury thanks to Israel’s “near-peer” capabilities and exceptional interoperability with US forces. As Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth noted, we often settle for “willing but not capable” allies. Instead, Israel has demonstrated the value of going to war with a friend that can hit just as hard as the United States, is properly equipped with well-integrated systems and munitions, and has the willingness to fight. It is a model that European capitals must apply right now.

Why Israel has fallen out of favor with Americans

Joel Mathis

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The United States has backed Israel since its founding as a modern state in 1948. That alliance is looking fragile these days, with recent polls suggesting American public support for its longtime ally has cratered amid deadly wars in Gaza, Iran and across the Middle East.

The number of Americans who now hold a “very or somewhat unfavorable view of Israel” is 60%, said Pew Research Center. That’s up seven points since last year, and “nearly 20 points since 2022.” There was once bipartisan support for Israel among U.S. voters, but 80% of Democrats now disapprove while 58% of Republicans approve. There has also been a departure from 25 years of polling, which long reported that “Israelis consistently held double-digit leads in Americans’ Middle East sympathies,” said Gallup. Americans now view Palestinians more sympathetically than Israel, by a margin of 41 to 36%.

US military developing plans to target Iran’s Strait of Hormuz defenses if ceasefire fails

Zachary Cohen

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US military officials are developing new plans to target Iran’s capabilities in the Strait of Hormuz in the event the current ceasefire with Iran falls apart, according to multiple sources familiar with the matter.

The options, among several sets of target types under consideration, include strikes with a particular focus on “dynamic targeting” of Iran’s capabilities around the Strait of Hormuz, southern Arabian Gulf and Gulf of Oman, the sources said, describing potential attacks against small fast attack boats, minelaying vessels and other asymmetric assets that have helped Tehran effectively shut down those key waterways and use them as leverage over the US.

What Recent Wars Mean for US-India Defense Cooperation

Kriti Upadhyaya

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US and Israeli forces conducted nearly 900 strikes against Iranian targets in the first 12 hours of Operation Epic Fury. Russia, meanwhile, has begun launching over 4,000 Iranian-made Shahed drones per month against Ukraine, up from roughly 800 per month just a year earlier. In May 2025, Pakistan fired over 600 drones at India during the four-day conflict between the two countries last year. Within the three conflicts over three theaters, one pattern emerges: the importance of volume.

For 30 years, Western defense establishments operated on a particular logic: the future of warfare belonged to precision, stealth, and network dominance. Massed firepower was passé. Artillery was a relic of the past world wars. The “Revolution in Military Affairs,” validated by the Gulf War’s surgical air campaigns, had rendered volume irrelevant. Stealth and precision would rule the future.

Russia’s Nuclear Weapons: Arsenal, Strategy, And Global Implications – Analysis

Anya L. Fink

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According to the Pentagon’s 2026 National Defense Strategy, Russia “possesses the world’s largest nuclear arsenal, which it continues to modernize and diversify, as well as undersea, space, and cyber capabilities that it could employ against the U.S. Homeland.”

Since Russia’s February 2022 invasion of Ukraine, Russian President Vladimir Putin has invoked Russia’s nuclear weapons in an apparent attempt to deter Western military intervention against Russia in Ukraine and stated that Russia has deployed nonstrategic nuclear weapons to its ally Belarus. The 2010 New START Treaty that limited U.S. and Russian strategic nuclear forces expired in February 2026, though Russian officials then stated that Russia would continue to abide by the treaty’s central limits—1,550 warheads on 700 deployed strategic nuclear delivery vehicles and a total of 800 deployed and nondeployed strategic nuclear delivery vehicles—as long as the United States did so. Congress may choose to examine U.S. deterrence and risk reduction policy toward Russia, including whether or not to support future arms control.

Magyar wants to put the Austro-Hungarian Empire back on the map

Nette Nöstlinger

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Prime Minister-elect Péter Magyar says he will deepen ties with neighboring states, especially Austria, building on strong economic links and a shared history rooted in the Austro-Hungarian Empire of the late nineteenth century.

“We used to share a country, and Austria is a key economic partner of Hungary,” Magyar said after his victory over Viktor Orbán in the Hungarian election earlier this month. “I would like to strengthen the relationship between Hungary and Austria for historical but also for cultural and economic reasons.”

The Guardian view on the true cost of the Iran war: bombs kill – but so does the economic fallout

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More than 3,300 Iranians, including 383 children, have been killed since the US and Israel launched their illegal war, authorities said this week. Asked about Wednesday’s ceasefire deadline, Donald Trump first said that he expected to resume bombing, then unilaterally announced that he was extending the truce “until discussions are concluded”. Whatever happens – or doesn’t – with the US-Iranian peace talks due to take place in Islamabad, the costs of this disastrous conflict will keep growing. The only thing that the sides have in common is that each needs peace, but thinks that it can force the other into significant concessions.

Iran has deployed its drones and missiles to punishing effect, but knows that its chief weapon is the economic pain it can inflict, primarily through control of the strait of Hormuz. The International Monetary Fund warned last week that a further escalation could trigger a global recession. Its head, Kristalina Georgieva, had already said that the crisis would remain a threat to the global economy even if it ended overnight. The costs mount over time. But while the pain is widely spread, it is far from evenly shared. The combination of higher energy, food and fertiliser costs will increasingly hammer poorer and heavily import-reliant nations.

Rules for a digital republic: Why India needs modernized and robust IT laws

Lt. Gen. M. U. Nair

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In a digital republic, accountability is not a constraint on freedom. It is what makes freedom sustainable.India’s digital transformation is among the most consequential economic and governance shifts of the 21st century. In less than a decade, the country has built a Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI) of unprecedented scale, enabling real time payments, direct benefit transfers, digital identity, and seamless access to public services.

This transformation has not only improved efficiency, it has reshaped the relationship between the state and the citizen. Financial inclusion has expanded, leakages in welfare delivery have reduced, and a new generation of digital first enterprises has emerged.

AI policy is built for oversight, not crisis. That needs to change

Juhyun Nam

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Many attribute the Oil Pollution Act of 1990 to the Exxon Valdez oil spill. But the legislation had been drafted and debated for more than a decade—public pressure simply shifted theory into execution. After the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the US government passed 32 security-related laws in rapid succession. Almost none were new ideas, though. They drew upon existing frameworks that had been sitting in committee, waiting for the political moment to arrive.

These are textbook examples of what American political scientist John W. Kingdon, in an influential 1984 book, coined a “policy window”—a brief, unflinching moment after a crisis when political will, public attention, and existing proposals converge. But what happens when there is no framework ready to go?

AI has crossed a threshold – what Claude Mythos means for the future of cybersecurity

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The limit of what artificial intelligence can achieve, known as frontier AI, has crossed another threshold. AI can now plan and execute sophisticated cyber operations with minimal guidance at speeds far beyond human capability.

That, at least, is the evidence from an independent test of Claude Mythos Preview, the latest and most advanced model in the Claude family of AI systems, developed by US tech firm Anthropic. Similar to ChatGPT, these can understand and generate human-like text, analyse information, and solve complex problems.

The New Trade Order Restoring Balance to a Broken Global Economy

Robert E. Lighthizer

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At the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos this past January, dozens of senior officials from around the world sat alongside multinational CEOs, fresh off their private jets, and applauded Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney for what they saw as speaking truth to power. Carney gave an address inspired by a 1978 essay by Vaclav Havel, who was then a Czech poet and Soviet dissident and later served as his country’s first president in the postcommunist era. The essay, titled “The Power of the Powerless,” sought to explain how the communist system survived. 

In it, Havel imagined a greengrocer who, like all the shopkeepers around him, places a sign in his window that reads “Workers of the World, Unite!”—even though none of them believe in the communist system. Havel called this “living within a lie” and argued that the Soviet dystopia could come to an end when that archetypal shopkeeper decided he could no longer play along and took the sign down.

The Cylinder and the Strait

FrameTheGlobe and The Ren Way

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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.