Indian Strategic Studies

9 April 2026

Beware Pakistan’s General Bearing Peace Talks

Charles Lyons Jones

In August 1969, a secret diplomatic cable from the United States embassy in Islamabad reported on a conversation between Henry Kissinger, then National Security Advisor to President Richard Nixon, and the head of Pakistan’s air force, Air Marshal Nur Khan. According to the cable, both Kissinger and Nur Khan agreed that China’s then premier Zhou Enlai might be willing to negotiate with the United States, provided that Washington withdrew its military forces from Taiwan.

The cable gave rise to a flurry of secret diplomacy seeking to broker detente between two Cold War rivals, drawing in the White House and the highest levels of the Pakistani and Chinese governments. The thrust of this old cable has a new relevance in the Iran conflict, with Pakistan again seeking to play a mediating role in talks involving America and an adversary. There is talk that US Vice President J.D. Vance might soon travel to Pakistan for a lead role in negotiations. He should be sure to read this history.

How China Dominates the World’s Critical Minerals Production

Kyle McCollum

Critical minerals are mined all over the world but the majority of the supply ends up passing through China. For a broad range of key metals and minerals, China is either the largest miner, the dominant refiner, or both. This is true for rare earths, lithium, cobalt, graphite, nickel, and many other metals and minerals that are essential to defense, energy and high-tech applications. It is less about where ores are dug out of the ground and more about where they are turned into usable components. In other words, Chinese processing plants are essentially the gatekeepers of global supply.

Australia and South America host much of the world’s lithium, while Congo supplies the lion’s share of cobalt and copper. But the rocks themselves can’t become a battery or magnet without intensive downstream processing and refining. China built those downstream industries at scale over decades through state support and investment. The result is clear — China has effectively monopolized refining for most critical minerals while the rest of the world depends on it for much-needed supply. China is listed as the dominant refiner for 19 of 20 minerals analyzed by the IEA in their Global Critical Minerals Outlook for 2025, making up roughly 70% of the global processing capacity overall.

How does the Iran war end?

Jeff Schogol

Since the war against Iran began on Feb. 28, the U.S. military has provided updates on how many targets have been struck, how many Iranian ships have been sunk, and how many combat sorties have been flown. But no one in the U.S. government seems to be able to say how the war ends and what comes next.

We’ve been here before. U.S. troops routed the Taliban in 2001, but that wasn’t enough. They stayed for 20 years in a failed attempt to turn Afghanistan into a democracy, even though top U.S. officials knew the mission was hopeless. The U.S. military’s invasion of Iraq in 2003 destroyed Saddam Hussein’s regime in weeks, but that wasn’t enough either. American forces spent the next eight years battling insurgents and later returned to fight the Islamic State group, or ISIS. Twenty-three years after the mission in Iraq was supposedly accomplished, U.S. troops are still there.

The Iran Imperative How America and Israel Can Shape a New Middle East

Amos Yadlin and Avner Golov

In early 2024, the Islamic Republic of Iran was riding high. It was the dominant external actor in four Middle Eastern states: Iraq, Lebanon, Syria, and Yemen. Its missiles and armed proxies menaced and coerced Arab countries. Israel, Tehran’s main enemy, had been damaged by Hamas’s October 2023 attack and was fighting a seven-front war against Iranian proxies. The Islamic Republic’s nuclear program was moving steadily closer to producing a weapon as Iranian officials enriched uranium to 60 percent and expanded their ballistic missile manufacturing. Suddenly, the regime’s long-standing calls for “death to Israel” and “death to America” seemed to have much more meaning. Iran appeared close to fulfilling its five-decade quest to become the most powerful country in the Muslim world.

Then, in April 2024, Israel struck a Quds Force meeting building situated adjacent to the Iranian embassy complex. The facility served as the operational headquarters for Brigadier General Mohammad Reza Zahedi, the commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ operations in Syria and Lebanon, who was responsible for coordinating Iranian-led terror activities against Israel.

When Fools Go to War

FEDERICO FUBINI

One need only look past the moral and strategic differences between Iran and Ukraine to see that both are facing similar situations. Both have been attacked by larger powers whose institutional decline has produced regimes that failed to anticipate what they were setting into motion.

MILAN—Although one might be hard-pressed to find similarities between the wars in Ukraine and Iran, Donald Trump’s April Fools’ Day speech from the White House has brought the parallel into sharper focus.

The Gulf in the Line of Fire: The Calculations and Contradictions of Iranian Strategy

No sooner had news broke of a US-Israeli attack on Tehran on the morning of 28 February 2026, than Iran had launched a series of its own strikes targeting the six member states of the Gulf Cooperation Council. The Iranian attacks included missile and drone strikes against military, civilian, and economic sites, aimed at raising the costs of war for the United States and its allies, and at shocking the global economy in a way that might force an end to the war. The United Arab Emirates received the largest number of Iranian strikes, followed by Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and Oman.

From Mediators to Parties to the Conflict

The US-Israeli strikes against Iran punctured efforts by several Gulf states to contain the escalation between Washington and Tehran. Since the Twelve-Day War in June 2025, they had intensified their political and diplomatic efforts to prevent the region from sliding into another conflict that could undermine the security and stability of the Gulf, as well as its economies and the global energy markets that depend heavily on it.

Maritime Chokepoints and Risks to Global Shipping and Energy Security

Kristian Coates Ulrichsen, Jim Krane

Iran’s halt of shipping through the Strait of Hormuz in 2026 has provided a palpable demonstration of the risks such maritime chokepoints pose to international shipping and the global economy. At the time of writing, the Hormuz closure was diverting or blocking some 20% of the global trade in crude oil and liquefied natural gas, as well as halting exports of petrochemicals, fertilizers, helium, aluminum and other materials critical for agriculture, manufacturing and the world economy in general.

Hormuz is just one of an array of global chokepoints where maritime traffic is easily interdicted. This paper analyzes the various strategic chokepoints across the globe that are most relevant to the transit of oil and liquefied natural gas (LNG), with emphasis on those that most directly and critically affect major energy exporters in the Middle East. Chokepoints such as the Bab al-Mandeb and Strait of Hormuz are scrutinized because of the nature of fuel-based energy systems, as well as commodity trading critical for food supply and manufacturing, all of which require continuous uninterrupted supply chains from producer to consumer.

US op to seize Iran’s uranium would take weeks, require building a runway — report

Michael Horovitz

A US military option to seize some 450 kilograms of highly enriched uranium would reportedly require flying in excavation equipment and building a runway for cargo planes to fly off with the radioactive material. US President Donald Trump was presented with the plan by his military over the past week, two people familiar with the matter told The Washington Post, though experts said such an operation would take weeks and carry enormous risks to troops.

Iran’s stockpile of some 450 kilograms of 60 percent-enriched uranium is believed to be buried under the rubble of sites bombed by the US last year, specifically near Isfahan and the Natanz area. The mission to extract it would demand an airlift of hundreds or even thousands of troops specially trained to remove nuclear material from behind enemy lines, along with heavy equipment, all while operating under Iranian fire, former defense officials told the Post.

Shutting Hormuz is a template for China in Taiwan

EYCK FREYMANN

The writer is a Hoover fellow at Stanford University and author of the forthcoming book ‘Defending Taiwan: A Strategy to Prevent War with China’ Iran did not need to sink a single tanker to shut down a fifth of the world’s oil supply. It took only a handful of missile and drone strikes to persuade insurers to pull coverage from vessels transiting the Strait of Hormuz. Within days, the vital energy chokepoint was functionally closed.

So far, the market is still refusing to bear the risk — despite Washington’s efforts to backstop reinsurance coverage, which would depend on US Navy escorts. This is a replicable playbook. China is a vastly more capable actor than Iran that could use a more sophisticated version of the same economic blackmail in the Taiwan Strait. The US and its allies should start preparing accordingly.

Will the Iran War Evaporate the Gulf’s AI Oasis?

Rishi Iyengar

There’s a reason U.S. President Donald Trump, the self-styled “Dealmaker-in-Chief,” chose to visit Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates for his first overseas trip after returning to the White House in 2025.

The deals (cumulatively valued at trillions of dollars) promptly flowed, largely toward the technology companies whose executives had accompanied Trump on his trip.

Hegseth’s War on America’s Military

Tom Nichols

The United States is in the middle of a major war, but that didn’t stop Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth on Thursday from firing General Randy George, America’s most senior Army officer. George was the Army’s chief of staff, and he was cashiered along with another four-star general, David Hodne, and Major General William Green Jr., the top Army chaplain, in what has been a rolling purge by Hegseth of senior officers—particularly those close to the secretary of the Army, Dan Driscoll.

Why were these men fired while U.S. forces are fighting overseas? The Defense Department has given no official reason for their dismissals, but likely they are the latest victims of Hegseth’s vindictive struggles with the Army, which he feels treated him poorly—the service “spit me out,” he said in his 2024 book—as he struggles in a job for which he remains singularly unqualified.

Empires Rise and Fall. Will Ours?

John Nagl

Trier—” Augusta Treverorum”, as the Romans called it, or “The Rome of the North”, as historians call it today—is one of the most interesting places to evaluate the role of the United States in the world, and to question the future of the world it created in the wake of the Second World War.

A little history first. Augusta Treverorum was the capitol of Belgian Gaul (“omni Gallia divisa in tres partes”, per Julius Caesar) and was a city of some note during the Roman Empire, with as many as 100,000 inhabitants. One of the eight city gates, the “Porta Nigra”, still stands, as do the remnants of two large public baths and a coliseum that seated 20,000 for gladiatorial contests. Frescos and mosaics preserved in the city museum depict a flourishing culture that centered on sports and wine, at least for the people who could afford frescoes and mosaics.

How Iran Should End the War

M. Javad Zarif

Iran did not start its war with the United States and Israel. But more than a month in, the Islamic Republic is clearly winning it. American and Israeli forces have spent weeks incessantly bombing Iranian territory, killing thousands of people and damaging hundreds of buildings, all in hopes of toppling the country’s government. Yet Iran has held the line and successfully defended its interests. It has maintained continuity of leadership even as its top officials have been assassinated, and it has repeatedly hit back at its aggressors even as they strike at its military, civilian, and industrial facilities. The

The Iran War Isn’t a Rehearsal for a Taiwan War with China — It’s a Stress Test

Andrew Latham

If the United States cannot secure a clean victory over Iran — a country with no blue-water navy, no fifth-generation air force, and an economy smaller than the state of Texas — what hope does it have against China? Thirty days into the campaign against Iran, with THAAD stocks drawn down and precision munitions being spent faster than they can be replaced, the question has more bite than Washington would like to admit.

It is, however, the wrong question. The campaign against Iran has achieved real successes — but degrading Iran and denying China a successful amphibious seizure of Taiwan are not the same problem. Different problems, different operational logics. The Iran war is not a rehearsal for Taiwan.

How many aircraft has the US lost in Iran war?

Richard Thomas

Since the outbreak of combat operations by the US and Israel on Iran in late-February, hundreds of US Air Force (USAF) aircraft have conducted air strikes, surveillance, and support flights in aid of the ongoing campaign. According to US CENTCOM, as of 1 April, more than 12,000 combat flights directly supporting Operation Epic Fury have been conducted.

While Iran’s losses have been significant, with most of its air defence and fixed-wing air combat capability destroyed, the USAF has also sustained its own attrition of airframes, accompanied in some cases with loss of personnel. Airforce Technology charts the ongoing USAF airframe losses in the war and examines the service’s overall fleet inventory to determine the potential long-term impact. For the purposes of this report, aircraft damaged to the point of probable combat ineffectiveness are also included.

Israel’s War on Iran and Netanyahu’s Role

For the second time in less than a year, Israel, in alliance with the United States, has launched a large-scale attack against Iran, using the latter’s nuclear and missile programmes and regional influence as pretexts to achieve its own goal: the overthrow of the Iranian regime. Israel had previously waged a war on Iran in June last year, a 12-day conflict in which the US joined by striking Iranian nuclear facilities.

Over the past three decades, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has played a major role in inciting hostility towards Iran, making it a central objective of his political career to destroy and overthrow the regime in Tehran, thus ensuring Israel’s continued regional monopoly on nuclear weapons and preventing the emergence of any regional power to rival it. Israel has been the driving force behind broader international efforts, particularly by the US, to isolate Tehran and impose the harshest possible sanctions on it, in order to weaken it and force it to abandon its nuclear programme. Ultimately, this has once again culminated in war.

Raising the Cost of War: Iran’s Response to the US–Israeli War

Nearly a week into the US-Israeli attacks on Iran, which resulted in the assassination of several senior political and military leaders early on, the Assembly of Experts in Iran elected Mojtaba Khamenei in a secret ballot as the new Supreme Leader of the Islamic Republic, succeeding his late father, Ali Khamenei. The latest assault marks the second time that Iran has been subjected to a joint US-Israeli attack in less than a year. The latest confrontation follows the collapse of a potential settlement that had emerged during negotiations held in February under the mediation of Oman.

The United States raised the bar of its conditions for reaching a “deal”, demanding the dismantling of Iran’s nuclear programme according to a “zero enrichment” principle on Iranian soil, the removal of highly enriched uranium from the country, and the imposition of restrictions on Iran’s ballistic missile programme as well as an end to its support for regional allies.[1] Tehran viewed these conditions as an attempt to translate the outcome of the previous war into strategic concessions that would undermine the core of its security and defence doctrine. The ongoing conflict raises questions about how Tehran intends to manage sustained military pressure, as well as the possibility of another round of fighting in the future if the current bout does not produce a clear outcome. Much will depend on the scope of US demands and on Iran’s own conception of the regional security equation and of its nuclear and missile programmes.

The Changing Character—and Enduring Nature—of Command

Philip Swintek, Charlie Phelps, Rudy Weisz and Matt Linarelli

The United States Army’s shift away from the counterinsurgency focus that dominated the early twenty-first century toward preparing for large-scale combat operations has been going on for nearly a decade. Discussion about that shift is dominated by a focus on technology and adoption of innovations, and it is already forcing a reimagination of a wide range of activities—from intelligence to communications to sustainment. But what about command of ground forces?

All four of us have served during a period that spans the Army’s transition from low-intensity conflict and stability operations to preparing for tomorrow’s major war. Our experiences, like those of a generation of officers, highlight fundamental differences in what is required to succeed as a ground force commander as conditions change. But they also highlight deep-seated, permanent truths. In effect, the character of command changes, but its underlying nature remains the same.

Winning an Unpopular War? The United States–Israel War Against Iran: Strategic Miscalculation, Escalation Dynamics, and a Lose–Lose Dilemma

Tahir Azad

The United States–Israel war against Iran, initiated in February 2026, represents one of the most consequential — and strategically flawed — military undertakings in recent American foreign policy history. Launched without clearly articulated end-state objectives and premised on dangerously optimistic assumptions about Iranian fragility, the conflict has rapidly evolved into a multidimensional crisis threatening to destabilize the entire Middle East and accelerate a structural shift in the global order.

This paper argues that the war presents the United States with no favorable exit. Both plausible outcomes — military victory or strategic failure — carry consequences profoundly damaging to American interests, credibility, and influence. The paper further contends that this predicament is the direct product of poor strategic planning, a fundamental misreading of Iranian society, and a wilful disregard for the escalatory logic that has historically governed conflicts in the region.

Hormuz disruption will change trade — and defense — at other chokepoints

Michael Kidd

Major disruptions to maritime chokepoints always send ripples through the entire global network. Like voltage through an electrical grid, maritime commerce will shift to the path of least resistance, with nations forced to redistribute security assets accordingly. The current conflict with Iran is testing this concept in real time — and US government planners need to be paying attention, both for short-term and long-term planning.

Maritime canals, straits, and capes are not independent waterways with unchanging risk profiles. They are, in fact, interconnected points in a system within the global maritime network on which international commerce relies. Disruption in one location redistributes traffic worldwide, altering shipping costs, delivery timelines, and global capacity.

In more extreme circumstances, this creates risk calculations that are very different from the steady state. This also creates dilemmas for governments regarding required force distributions to either maintain a specific chokepoint or protect national shipping interests.

Trump Officials Try to Fight Foreign Disinformation They Once Dismissed

Steven Lee Myers and Edward Wong

The Trump administration is scrambling to respond to a global information war with adversaries like Russia, China and a battered but defiant Iranian government. The information warfare around the conflict in Iran is just one instance in which administration officials appear increasingly worried that a growing number of anti-American narratives are taking root worldwide, according to current and former government officials.

The State Department ordered every American embassy and consulate this week to do more to push back against foreign influence campaigns, warning that they fueled hostility toward U.S. security interests. The administration has also taken steps recently to restore some broadcasts of the government-funded news organizations Voice of America, Radio Free Asia and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty after seeking to shut them down last year. The operations remain limited, and the administration was forced to act because of court challenges, U.S. officials said.

Once again, Trump declines to describe desired end-state to his Iran war

MEGHANN MYERS

President Donald Trump promised a swift end to his war in Iran during a Wednesday-night speech that didn’t detail what military objectives his administration is pursuing nor what it wants from the Iranian government.

Speaking during the fifth week of Operation Epic Fury, Trump made no mention of thousands of soldiers from the 82nd Airborne Division who arrived in the Middle East in recent days, nor of reports that the Pentagon had put together plans for a ground operation to seize Iran’s highly enriched uranium.

“Thanks to the progress we've made, I can say tonight, we are on track to complete all of America's military objectives shortly, very shortly,” the president said. “We're going to hit them extremely hard over the next two to three weeks. We're going to bring them back to the stone ages, where they belong. In the meantime, discussions are ongoing.”

The Carter Doctrine and the Limits of Liminal Conflict in the Persian Gulf

Richard W. Coughlin

The U.S.-Israeli war against Iran is on the verge of superseding the limits of the liminal conflict. What is liminal conflict? Liminal conflict is a way in which states deploy bounded violence to shape the international order and to reproduce that order over time (Lacey 2024). Liminal conflict is oriented toward system maintenance rather than disruption. But in the case of the Persian Gulf, the regional order is now experiencing systemic disruption, which may escalate into systemic collapse. Both Israel's geopolitical ambitions and Iran's capacity to engage in horizontal escalation exceed the limits of liminal conflict. There are diplomatic responses to this conflict that can be characterized as entropic diplomacy. The goal is not to establish order but to minimize the disorder toward which the system tends.

The historical aspiration of the United States has been to order the international system rather than to permit the system to order itself (Bacevich 2010). This is because if the world orders itself, the U.S. position of the primacy within it will become eroded. But, of course, this primacy is already badly eroded from the point of view of technology and production, as Time Sahay and Kate Mackenzie (2026) emphasize with regard to energy production.

America’s War Machine Runs on Tungsten—and It Could Run Out

Christina Lu

The barrage of munitions that U.S. forces have fired into Iran have laid bare just how reliant the U.S. war machine is on a powerful metal that you’ve likely never heard of: tungsten.

The silvery metal is known for its exceptional density and for having the highest melting point of all pure metals. Those qualities have made it essential for the U.S. defense industry, powering everything from armor-piercing munitions to rocket nozzles.

How Technology is Transforming National Security

Randi Charno Levine

The nature of national security has always evolved with technology, but the pace and scope of change today are unprecedented. A dramatic surge in technological innovation is reshaping how conflicts are fought and how nations defend themselves. For the United States, these advances are a matter of military strength and a cornerstone of national security strategy.

National security efforts increasingly rely on systems that reduce risk to human life while amplifying precision and effectiveness. Drones and other remotely operated weapons have become emblematic of this shift. These tools allow commanders to strike targets with remarkable accuracy from thousands of miles away. The result is that fewer American service members are exposed to direct danger. Deployments to volatile regions are no longer the default response to every crisis. Instead, technology enables a lighter footprint while maintaining overwhelming capability.

8 April 2026

How Hezbollah Stands to Benefit From an Israeli Invasion

Anchal Vohra

As Israel moves to occupy parts of southern Lebanon, Hezbollah appears to be calculating that a war of attrition would play to its strengths as a guerrilla group, allowing it to reprise its tactics from a previous occupation and force an Israeli retreat.

The group is facing a broad backlash across the country for plunging Lebanon into another conflict by launching rockets at Israel on March 2, two days after Israel assassinated Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei in Tehran. Prime Minister Nawaf Salam has complained that Hezbollah’s attacks on Israel were meant to avenge the Iranian leadership and had “nothing to do with” Lebanon.

The Afghanistan–Pakistan War Poses Awkward Questions for Russia

Ruslan Suleymanov

The latest fighting between Afghanistan and Pakistan may have been overshadowed by the U.S. and Israeli attacks on Iran, but for the Kremlin, the conflict poses a challenge. Both Afghanistan and Pakistan are important Russian partners, and each subsequent military escalation weakens regional security and undermines the concept of the Global South that has been heavily promoted by Moscow. Despite claims by Russian officials that the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) and BRICS group of developing nations could form the basis for a new world order, the practical help these groups can offer in conflict situations has been shown—yet again—to be limited.

The Afghanistan-Pakistan confrontation began on February 26, two days before the start of the war in the Middle East. While the fighting has received little attention, hundreds have been killed on both sides. After an eleven-day ceasefire for Eid al-Fitr, hostilities resumed on March 29, and further escalation is possible at any moment.

Some Countries Are Better Prepared for an Energy Crisis This Time

Noah Gordon

With the Strait of Hormuz still effectively closed, the world faces a severe economic crisis. One-fifth of global trade of oil and natural gas is blocked in. Prices and borrowing costs are rising in the United States, while countries across Eurasia are cutting fuel consumption by decree: Egypt is closing restaurants early, the Philippines is closing public offices on Fridays, and Bangladesh is closing its universities altogether. Europe fears it must ground planes for lack of fuel, while South Koreans are hoarding plastic bags. Their president, Lee Jae Myung, said he “can’t sleep at night.”

This energy supply shock, with 11 million barrels a day missing from markets, is the inverse of the COVID-19 demand shock, when oil demand fell by 9 million barrels a day in the lockdown-marred year of 2020. At nearly $120/barrel, oil prices are reaching the heights of the last major energy shock in 2022.

In Its Iran War Debate, Washington Has Lost the Plot in Asia

Evan A. Feigenbaum

As the United States wages war with Iran, much of Washington has been consumed with a geopolitical debate about what it will mean for America’s strategic competition with China. But this abstract debate belies the harsh realities now facing governments, firms, and people across Asia—the very region that Washington’s strategic class views as the cockpit of competition with Beijing.

The war threatens budgets, welfare programs, and ordinary livelihoods in Asia, a deeper and potentially existential set of challenges that seem sure to influence perceptions of whether and how American goals and interests intersect in the real world with the region’s priorities and its people’s daily realities.

More Than ‘Boots on the Ground’: Pentagon Wants Bunkers for the Middle East

Peter Suciu

The Pentagon has solicited proposals for prefabricated bunkers to be delivered to its bases in the Middle East, hinting at preparations for a longer-term conflict. As the United States military begins to mass ground troops for a potential invasion of Iran, including its Kharg Island, there are signs the Pentagon could expect to see personnel deployed to the region for far longer than the weeks that President Donald Trump has so far indicated.

Last week, the Department of Defense (DoD) issued a federal contract notice seeking private contractors to provide “prefabricated, transportable, hardened shelter systems designed to protect personnel from blast and fragmentation threats.” “All proposed solutions must be deliverable to the Aqaba Air Cargo Terminal at King Hussein International Airport in Aqaba, Jordan,” the request read. It requested that potential vendors submit delivery options with timelines for three days, 15 days, and 30 days, as well as the highest level of protection the bunker could provide.

Kharg Island: Iran’s Oil Lifeline and a Tempting U.S. Target

Will Merrow

The United States carried out a large bombing raid of the island on March 13, hitting more than ninety Iranian military targets, including missile and naval mine storage facilities. U.S. President Donald Trump said on social media that the attack “obliterated” every military target on the island but he chose not to “wipe out” oil infrastructure there. However, he warned he would “immediately reconsider” that decision if Iran continues to disrupt global shipping in the Strait of Hormuz—the choke point for nearly one-fifth of the world’s oil and natural gas supply.

Trump has indicated that his administration is considering seizing the island, telling the Financial Times on March 29 that “Maybe we take Kharg Island, maybe we don’t. We have a lot of options.” While the United States has been ramping up its military presence in the Middle East, experts say an attack or invasion of Kharg Island could further drive up global oil prices by curbing Iran’s oil exports, provoke retaliation, and endanger the lives of U.S. military personnel who could be deployed to the island.

Can Middle Powers Gel?

Sarang Shidore

Middle powers are having a moment. But that moment has been long arriving. The decline of unipolarity—with its roots in the 2008 global financial crisis and the disastrous U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003—led to a world of three great powers: not only the United States but also China and, to a lesser extent, Russia. The latter two are working increasingly in tandem. Moreover, a set of rising nations in the global south also contributed to the waning of Washington’s hegemony.

Conditions are favorable for the emergence of a third force in international politics: middle powers. These major regional players—including Brazil, France, India, and South Korea—possess material capabilities in their region (GDP, defense spending, etc.) and enjoy appreciable global influence. They also now sense an opportunity. The past few years have provided still more fodder for their collaboration. First, Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, igniting the biggest conflict in Europe since World War II—and then, amid Kyiv’s long, grinding war with Moscow, the Trump administration pulled back on its financial support, further unnerving Europe. Second, Washington’s brazen territorial claims on Canada and Greenland shocked its NATO allies. Meanwhile in Asia, China stepped up harassment of Philippine craft in pursuing its illegal claims in the South China Sea and gradually enhanced its military shows of force around Taiwan in the context of a growing U.S. military footprint in the region.

Putin’s Moves Against Internet Alienate Russians

Paul Goble

Russian President Vladimir Putin has been making moves against Telegram channels and restricting the Internet in recent months, especially in the last few weeks (see EDM, March 19; Important Stories, March 30). These moves have alienated many Russians and angered regime allies in business and government who depend on the web and who—in a sign of opposition—have not come to the defense of these Kremlin policies (Kommersant, March 11; Telegram/@agentstvonews, March 23; Verstka, March 27; Russian Field, accessed April 2). A new poll confirms that Russians are overwhelmingly opposed to many of the steps Putin has already taken (Novaya Gazeta, April 1.

In addition and likely even more important, many in the Kremlin appear to recognize that moves against the Internet are increasingly undercutting the Kremlin leader’s own goals both in the short term regarding prosecuting the war against Ukraine and in longer term regarding ensuring that his regime can continue to reach the population via the media and boosting the birthrate (Novaya Gazeta, March 20; Yesli Byt’ Tochnym, March 19; Noviye Izvestiya, March 30, 2026). So far, this alienation and anger have not led to massive protests. When these have been attempted, the regime has responded harshly (7x7 Gorizontal’naya Rossiya; Agenstvo; Radio Svoboda, March 30).

The Houthi Threat: Is Trump Underestimating One of Iran’s Key Remaining Cards?

Will Todman

On April 1, President Trump announced that the United States’ strategic objectives in the war with Iran were “nearing completion.” He threatened to send Iran “back to the stone ages” if it did not make a deal within three weeks, and said “we have all the cards, they have none.”

Yet, Iran does have other cards to play. A few days before President Trump’s address, the Houthis entered the fray in the Middle East. After months of signaling their readiness to escalate, they launched missiles toward Israel. Iranian officials had warned that their Yemeni proxies would be activated if the United States and Israel escalated further or if Arab Gulf states entered the war. But despite these threats and the Houthis’ past willingness to target international shipping, they have not attacked maritime traffic through Bab al-Mandab so far this year.

Who Is Winning the Iran War?

Daniel Byman

It is difficult to tell which side is winning in the U.S.-Israeli war with Iran because the objectives and strategies for victory of the combatants are so different. This is even further complicated by the fact that, for the United States, many of the highest costs of the war lie outside the theater of conflict and involve the economic costs to U.S. allies and the diplomatic damage to the United States.

President Donald Trump and his advisers have laid out multiple goals for the United States, some quite limited and others expansive. These include ending Iran’s nuclear program, degrading its missile capabilities and conventional military stocks, stopping Tehran’s support for Hezbollah, Hamas, and other proxy forces, and, most ambitiously, regime change in Tehran. To achieve these goals, the United States and Israel have killed Iranian leaders and bombed Iran’s military forces and infrastructure.

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