Crooked Bough News Round-up

— Israel’s push for Somaliland base raises fears of wider war

 

at 3/12/26 8:21am

Bloomberg reported Wednesday that Israel is in talks with Somaliland officials to form a strategic security partnership, which might include granting Israel access to a military base or other security installation along the Somaliland coast from which it can launch attacks against Yemen’s Houthi rebels. With war raging in the Middle East, the Horn of Africa is a particularly important geoeconomic and geopolitical puzzle piece. Its location near the Bab el-Mandeb strait, which connects ships traveling through the Red Sea with the Gulf of Aden and the Indian Ocean, makes it a strategic location from the perspective of global shipping, 10% to 12% of which travels through the strait annually.For Israel, Somaliland’s strategic importance stems from its close proximity to Yemen. Israeli military officials have long sought to destroy the capability of Houthi rebels to attack Israel as well as its assets in the region. The Houthis’ aggression has grown since the start of the Gaza war in October 2023; the group has conducted nearly 500 attacks against ships and against Israel in the years since.Although the Houthis have thus far stayed out of the U.S.-Israeli war with Iran, the group’s close relationship with Iran — from which it receives arms, military equipment, and training — keeps it in Israel’s crosshairs.News of Israeli-Somaliland security talks comes less than three months after Israel became the first country in the world to recognize Somaliland’s independence, which has been contested by Somalia ever since the breakaway region claimed full sovereignty in 1991. Upon Israel’s recognition on December 26, Somalia’s president claimed, without evidence, that the normalization of relations between Israel and Somaliland came with a quid pro quo to open an Israeli military base on Somaliland soil.In an interview with Bloomberg, Somaliland’s minister of the presidency denied that any negotiations had occurred between his country and Israel on the question of a military base, but didn’t close the door to the possibility of one. “We haven’t discussed with them if [the security partnership] becomes a military base, but definitely there will be an analysis at some point,” said Minister Khadar Hussein Abdi. An Israeli military base or other security presence on Somaliland would risk significantly expanding the war in the Middle East to the fragile Horn of Africa region, which is already home to plenty of factionalization, armed violence, and proxy conflicts.Alliances are forming on the question of Somaliland’s independence, with the United Arab Emirates joining Israel in supporting the breakaway state (though the UAE still doesn’t recognize it). Some experts say the UAE — which built and operates the commercial-military Berbera port on the coast of Somaliland — helped facilitate this recognition. Turkey, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia, meanwhile, have thrown their support behind Somalia, including through security arrangements and arms sales. Turkey’s largest base outside its own territory is in the Somali capital of Mogadishu.Questions now abound over whether the United States might also recognize Somaliland independence, something President Trump has reportedly contemplated, and a policy position being pushed in Washington by a Somaliland lobby, as reported by Drop Site.Beyond Somalia’s intense disagreement with Somaliland over the latter’s independence, the Somali government is also in a decades-long fight against the al-Qaeda affiliate al-Shabaab, which has made some territorial gains in recent months. Since the presidency of George W. Bush, the United States has engaged in heavy counterterrorism activity in Somalia, and President Trump has conducted more air strikes on the country than his three predecessors combined. Meanwhile, directly to the west, Ethiopia and Eritrea are preparing for what could be another military confrontation between the two. Neighboring Sudan, meanwhile, is in the middle of a brutal civil war that has forced the displacement of 14 million people, more than any other current conflict in the world. This civil war has become a major proxy conflict, with different African and Middle Eastern players supporting opposite sides. South Sudan is also at risk of returning to civil war, as violence between the government and opposition forces intensifies; the latest clash in early March left at least 169 people dead.Extending Israel’s military presence to Somaliland is only likely to exacerbate these already intense regional crises and proxy conflicts, and bring the widening Middle East war to African soil.

[Category: Iran-war, Somalia, Horn-of-africa, Israel, Al-shabaab, Somaliland]

— Trump's 'commercial diplomacy' runs into violent reality

 

at 3/11/26 10:05pm

Donald Trump is trying to make it easier for American businesses to access critical minerals and other resources across the Global South, particularly in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and Venezuela. But widespread armed group violence on the ground in these countries threatens the safety and security of American firms looking to do business there, which risks counterbalancing Trump’s effort to deepen American economic engagement with the DRC and Venezuela.Both countries are filled with some of the world’s most important critical minerals and other resources that are vital to fueling the technological and infrastructure advances required to sustain modern economies. And America’s economic competition with China — the United States’ primary economic and technological rival — has served to jolt the U.S. government into finding ways to increase access to these minerals for American companies. But Trump’s ambition to improve access for American firms looking to mine critical minerals across the Global South is running up against a hard reality on the ground. Intense fighting by armed groups threatens the safety and security of those working in and around many of the most valuable mines in both countries, and complicates the U.S. government’s efforts at commercial diplomacy. In December, the DRC and the U.S. signed a Strategic Partnership Agreement (SPA) , that gave preferential access to American firms looking to mine in the DRC, a country rich with critical minerals, such as gold, cobalt, coltan, and copper. This deal followed a June 2025 agreement, in which Washington brokered a peace deal between the DRC and Rwanda in their decades-long war.The SPA aims to facilitate “greater investment by U.S. persons and aligned persons in order to diversify the Democratic Republic of the Congo’s mining sector.”To promote this economic engagement, the agreement grants American companies preferential access to the critical minerals and other resources in the DRC by creating a strategic asset reserve (SAR). The SAR is a list of critical minerals and other assets to which American companies receive priority when submitting bids.But mining in the Congo is a complicated pursuit. Joshua Walker, Director of Programs for the Congo Research Group at NYU’s Center on International Cooperation, told Responsible Statecraft that though minerals aren’t the cause of the most recent iteration of the conflict, they have helped to fuel it. According to Walker, “as the M23 has taken more and more territory (…) we’ve also seen, for instance, a massive increase over the last several years in Rwandan gold exports. The assumption is that a lot of that gold is illicitly mined gold [by the M23] coming from the eastern Congo”.As it relates to the SAR, Walker said that though most of the sites are “not located in the M23-controlled zone,” one major mine — the Rubaya coltan — is controlled by the M23 rebels.. It is likely that the Congolese included this site as part of the SAR “as a way of trying to draw the United States more closely into engaging in … political processes to bring about” some sort of peace in the area surrounding the mine, according to Walker. Essentially, the idea is that if American interest in the mine is high enough, Washington would be willing to pressure Rwanda to demand the M23 pull away from the mine.This wouldn’t be the first time the Trump administration has taken such action. In March 2025, the Bisie mine in eastern Congo — which was operated by the partially American-owned Alphamin Corporation — was threatened by the advance of the Rwanda-supported M23 rebel group. In response to the security threats, Alphamin halted its mining activity. In order to protect the company’s operations, Trump’s Africa advisor, Massad Boulos, successfully pressured Rwanda to force the M23 group to pull back from the site, which allowed Alphamin to restart operations. But, in a clear case showing the complexity involved with mining in the region, within a few months of the deal, the U.S. stake in Alphamin was sold to an Emirati holding company, ending American equity in the firm.Armed groups have made it similarly difficult to tap into the mining sector on the other side of the planet, in Venezuela, where Trump has also feverishly sought access to critical minerals. These vital resources, Trump hopes, will boost the United States’ geopolitical leverage in a region across which he seeks to expand American influence and curb the influence of strategic rivals. This is particularly true now that diplomatic relations have been restored and U.S. oil sanctions are being lifted following the January 3 bombing of Caracas and kidnapping of President Nicolas Maduro.Last week, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum visited Caracas to promote joint ventures in the mining sector, just weeks after Energy Secretary Chris Wright traveled to the country to expand U.S. investment and production in the country’s vast oil and natural gas reserves., But swooping into Venezuela’s precious metals and critical minerals in the country’s southern Orinoco Mining Arc — particularly gold, diamonds, coltan, bauxite, tungsten and gallium — may not be as easy as Trump thinks.As the Wall Street Journal recently reported, armed actors in Colombia’s six-decade-old ELN and FARC guerrilla groups operate openly in Venezuela’s mining region, taxing illegal operations and enforcing strict rules in communities that subsist on the trade. Colombian president Gustavo Petro’s efforts to bring those groups to the negotiating table and establish state control in the border regions with Venezuela have largely fallen flat, and the Trump administration has put pressure on Colombian and Venezuelan authorities to drive Colombian guerrillas out of the territory, with limited success thus far.“An estimated 90% of gold exported from Venezuela is of illicit or criminal origin. These groups exert significant operational and financial control of mining regions,” Julia Yansura, program director for environmental crime and illicit finance at the Washington-based FACT Coalition, told RS. “We’ve documented children as young as nine operating in illegal mines, miners getting their hands chopped off by irregular groups if they’re unwilling to pay the extortive 10-20% tax, systematic extrajudicial killings and clandestine graves.”Moreover, Venezuela’s mineral resources are largely unexplored and undeveloped; state security forces are often complicit in illicit mineral trafficking; and the sector is plagued by weak rule of law, lackluster infrastructure, insecurity, and informality. Serious environmental degradation from makeshift open pit mining, widespread disease, and mercury-related health ailments make the prospects for swift U.S. involvement in Venezuela’s mining industry even more precarious.But perhaps the biggest challenge to tapping Venezuela’s critical mineral wealth is ongoing political uncertainty., Broad financial sanctions against the country’s main mining (Minerven) and metals (CVG) conglomerates, an opposition questioning the Rodríguez government’s authority, and a fickle Trump administration have undermined investor confidence, even for those willing to tolerate elevated political risk. Ultimately, Trump’s efforts to expand American mining interests in both the DRC and Venezuela will require continued efforts by the U.S. government to contend with the threats to mining companies’ interests without risking getting bogged down in the quagmire of decades-long local guerrilla conflicts.

[Category: Trump, Venezuela, Democratic-republic-of-the-congo, Minerals-deal]

— The Iran war's early lessons

 

at 3/11/26 10:05pm

The Bunker appears originally at the Project on Government Oversight and is republished here with permission.Ten lessons of the Iran war (so far)The U.S. military is always busy studying the last war so it can be sure it’s ready to fight that last war the next time. Okay, that’s a little cynical. But just a little. Combat always throws off sparks of innovation that can lead to new or improved strategies, tactics, and weapons. But those changes tend to happen at the margin. War is fundamentally a grim business — nasty, brutish, and usually too long. Big League changes tend to creep, not sweep, the battlefield. That’s why the U.S. military, in its Professional Military Education courses, is always on the hunt for quicker, better, and/or cheaper ways (you can only pick two) to prevail. There are reams of “lessons learned” studies and “after action” reports designed to distill the most recent war’s wisdom.Speaking of schooling, the Pentagon’s military education program now finds itself amid its own tug-of-warrior-ethos-education. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth recently machine-gunned military fellowships at places like Harvard and Princeton universities (he’s a graduate of both) for being out of whack with “American Values” (PDF). Not everyone thinks this is smart. Of course, it’s unlikely the U.S. war effort in Iran, or in any future conflict, will suffer from a lack of Ivy League diplomas in its ranks. Nonetheless, given the SECDEF’s emphasis on education, it’s never too soon to check out early returns from Iran and hazard some incipient intelligence:1. Hype new weaponsThere’s nothing like a war to put new military hardware to the test. Early top scorers in the U.S. military’s arsenal include the Low-cost Uncrewed Combat Attack System (LUCAS) kamikaze drone and the long-range Precision Strike Missile (PrSM). The most expensive weapon system in world history — the F-35 fighter — got its first combat kill against a crewed aircraft (even if it was an Israeli F-35 downing an Iranian trainer).Speaking of cost, it’s worth noting that the LUCAS drone boasts “Low-Cost” as part of its official name. That’s because each drone costs only about $35,000, a bargain in Pentagon terms. That’s the good news. The bad news is that it’s a copy of Iran’s Shahed-136. “This was an original Iranian drone design,” Admiral Brad Cooper, who is overseeing the war as chief of U.S. Central Command, said. “We captured it, pulled the guts out, sent it back to America, put a little Made-In-America on it, brought it back here, and we’re shooting it at the Iranians.” (“Boomerang” would be a good nickname for it.)2. But don't ignore the old onesSure, shiny new weapons get all the ink when war breaks out. But we can’t overlook the tried-and-true arms the U.S. is using against Iran. For the first time since World War II, a U.S. submarine torpedoed an enemy vessel to the bottom of the sea. And lumbering Eisenhower-era B-52 bombers attacked Iranian targets.3. Defend your troops in harm's wayThe first six U.S. combat deaths came in the war’s opening hours when an Iranian drone exploded through the ceiling of a command post in Kuwait. While concrete barricades protected those inside from ground-based attacks, the command post’s roof was vulnerable to an overhead strike. Unlike high-flying missiles that can be shot down by the U.S. missile defenses now protecting U.S. troops in the region, slow-and-low-flying drones can sneak under such shields. Although the type of drone involved in the strike isn’t known, a Shahed-136 is suspected.4. Buy more cheap weaponsThe opening days of the U.S.-Iran war have made clear that the U.S. still relies too much on so-called “exquisite weapons.” Because they are so expensive, few are bought and stockpiles are quickly depleted. Even for countries like the U.S. and Israel, war becomes unaffordable when you are forced to shoot down cheap drones with $4 million missiles. The nation’s biggest defense contractors saluted when President Trump ordered them to increase munitions production March 6. The Pentagon insists it has sufficient ammo of all kinds to wage its war on Iran as long as necessary. Even so, it has reached out to Ukraine seeking help to defend against Iran’s drones — and is ordering 30,000 more of its own.5. While you may be running out of explosives, don't run out of explanationsWar works best when there’s a simple, achievable goal. Things bog down when such clarity is diffused by multiple, and shifting, aims. Operation Epic Fury has muddled into Operation Epic Confusion as the Trump administration has launched a barrage of rationalizations for the war.The conflict began with Trump telling the Iranian people that their future is “yours to take,” a call for regime change that Hegseth denied two days later. Along the way, other reasons for the war have included the imminent but unspecified threats Iran poses; the need to destroy Iran’s nuclear weapons and missile programs; its support for terrorism; freedom for the Iranian people; a pre-emptive, knock-out blow because Israel was going to attack, anyway; Iran’s effort to assassinate Trump; and (of course), Tehran’s efforts to interfere in the 2020 and 2024 U.S. presidential elections.By March 6, a week after the first shots were fired, Trump unilaterally declared total war on Iran. “There will be no deal with Iran except UNCONDITIONAL SURRENDER!” he said. “Surrender,” of course, means the loser capitulates. But what if Iran refuses to throw in the towel? In that case, Trump will decide when the war should end, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said. “Then Iran will essentially be in a place of unconditional surrender,” she declared. “Whether they say it themselves or not.”Nifty piece of work, that. If they can redefine “surrender,” they can redefine “victory.”6. For Pete's sake, calm downThe soldier you want in the foxhole ain’t the same person you want at the Pentagon podium. Unfortunately, Hegseth, a former infantryman who served in Afghanistan and Iraq, is late of Fox News, and still thinks he’s in the Fox Hole. At times like this, the nation craves a steady and sober mouth on the tiller (The Bunker can’t believe he’s saying this: like Dick Cheney).But Hegseth has been a Multiple Launch Rocket System spewing incendiary rhetoric around the world since the war began. “They are toast … death and destruction from the sky all day long,” the Pentagon pugilist said March 4. “We are punching them while they’re down,” Hegseth added, pledging that U.S.-Israeli “violence of action” will prevail.Hegseth is sounding less like Lieutenant Colonel Bill (“I love the smell of napalm in the morning”) Kilgore in “Apocalypse Now” than reprising the role of the late and great Robert Duvall in the remake: “Apocalypse Right Now, Dammit.” Hegseth’s words don’t sway public opinion in Iran — they’ve got enough real trouble there right now — but they do unnerve the Americans whom Hegseth is supposedly serving.7. Dangers of decapitationAir strikes are the 21st century’s version of assassination. If there’s no Brutus handy to knife Caesar from the inside, bombs from the outside will have to do the job (“Et tu, B-2?” so to speak). That’s how the Israeli air force, with targeting help from the CIA, killed Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader, on February 28.But this so-called decapitation strategy has its downsides. As David Ignatius noted in the Washington Post, it’s like a “fire and forget” missile. It’s designed to knock off a leader in the hopes that someone better — at least in the decapitator’s estimation — will fill the job. Unfortunately, the U.S. and Israel have recently killed a lot of potential successors to Khamenei. Beyond that, U.S. intelligence doesn’t think that even an extended U.S. military campaign would help put the Iranian opposition into power. Turns out that when it comes to “fire and forget,” it’s a lot easier to pull the trigger than to remember what comes next.8. Train, or at least screen, your allies betterIn the opening hours of the war, a single Kuwaiti F-18 fighter shot down three — three! — U.S. F-15E fighters. Each was apparently downed by a short-range missile that would have required the Kuwaiti pilot to eyeball his targets before firing his missiles. Thankfully, all six crew members safely bailed out. The only F-15s we make today are F-15EXs, which cost about $150 million a copy.“We know that this was not from hostile enemy fire,” former F-16 pilot and Air Force General Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said. Interesting word choices there. The common phrase is “hostile fire,” or “enemy fire.” There’s growing suspicion that the shootdowns were due to hostile allied fire, which hardly qualifies as truly friendly fire. “To make the same mistake three times over seems highly improbable, especially at close range,” Thomas Newdick at The War Zone wrote March 6. Stay tuned.9. Nukes remain the best defenseJust ask North Korea.10. No need to worry about public backing of the war, so long as they believe it's not going terribly wrong(So far.)Here's what has caught the bunker's eye recently→See you in court! AI pioneer Anthropic has sued the Trump administration for declaring the company a risk to the Defense Department’s supply chain, Matt O’Brien of the Associated Press reported March 9.→Bandaging bolts out of the blueLawmakers encouraged the U.S. military to address the new kinds of wounds that drones are increasingly inflicting on the battlefield, Brandi Vincent reported in DefenseScoop March 6.→And speaking of boomerangs...The Trump-created U.S. Space Force’s push to boost procurement of complicated orbiting systems is being hamstrung by a lack of skilled government managers following workforce reductions by the Trump administration, Sandra Erwin reported March 3 at Space News.Thanks for visiting with The Bunker this week. Kindly consider forwarding this on to allies who can subscribe here.

[Category: Iran-war, Iran, Defense-tech, Hegseth, Military-industrial-complex]

— Most Iranian Americans want diplomacy with Iran: poll

 

at 3/11/26 10:05pm

Recent data released by the National Iranian American Council (NIAC) suggests that a strong majority of Iranian Americans support diplomacy to resolve tensions between the U.S. and Iran — a finding at odds with the dominant conversation online suggesting that most Iranian Americans are in favor of the Iran war.The data was collected through a survey of 505 Iranian Americans conducted by Zogby Analytics between Feb. 27 and March 5. Among the most notable results were that a clear majority of Iranian Americans — 61.6% — support diplomacy to move toward de-escalation and a negotiated path forward. Screengrab via niacouncil.org“If anything, a lot of people were surprised because they thought Iranian Americans overwhelmingly favored this war,” NIAC president Jamal Abdi said in a Wednesday press briefing. “In fact, it is divided in half. There was really no mandate for the war.”As Abdi noted, the survey results show that Iranian Americans were nearly evenly divided on whether the U.S. should have initiated war with Iran, with 49.3% opposing the attacks and 48.9% supporting them. Those who oppose the war are primarily concerned with harm inflicted on innocent civilians and the potential for further destabilization of the country, while those in support hope the war will make regime change more likely and reduce threats imposed by Iran’s nuclear program, according to the poll. Screengrab via niacouncil.orgDuring the press briefing, Abdi also said that prominent Iranian Americans have attempted to “shape public perceptions about this war” by “proclaiming that war is the only path that anybody who disagrees is an Iran regime lobbyist.”The reality is much more nuanced. This newly released data attempts to dispel some of the misinformation surrounding the opinions of the Iranian American community — a community that has faced trauma and division, Abdi said. “This trauma has been preyed upon by outside interests who want war,” Abdi said during the press briefing. “We think it's really important to end this predatory relationship and expose to the public where our community actually stands, and encourage members of our community to stand up and be vocal and feel that they can be a full participant in U.S. democracy without fear of political violence or online cancellation or death threats and attacks.”

[Category: Iran, Diplomacy, Iranian-americans, Poll, Iran-war]

— Are we on the precipice of World War III?

 

at 3/11/26 10:05pm

Shortly after U.S. and Israeli bombs and missiles began falling in Tehran, Iranian missiles flew in all directions at U.S. bases in Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and others. The people living in these countries were justifiably terrified, which was a likely objective of those Iranian leaders who survived the first assaults. Tehran’s strategy may be to persuade America’s regional allies to reconsider their security alliances.In 2010, most people shook their heads when a now-infamous map of Afghanistan’s various societal, governmental, and tribal interests went public. The counterinsurgency (COIN) spaghetti chart was terribly complex – and intractable. One PowerPoint slide shows how challenging it can be to understand how a stimulant in one corner can produce a response in a seemingly tangential sector. And this is just a single country.Imagine a chart depicting the world’s alliances, treaties, trade agreements, cultural bonds, and religious ties today. It would be so complex that no one could fully understand how everything fits together and interacts. Should one player choose to escalate the conflict, there is no telling who else might get involved. In an age of nuclear weapons on hairpin triggers, events can rapidly spin out of control before any of the key players has a chance to truly understand what is really happening. Our civilization could end in minutes, and it will only be a matter of luck if any human beings survive. If any people do survive, it is likely that they will never really know precisely how the end of the world started.The global situation is eerily similar to 1913. In the years leading up to World War I, European leaders created an intricate system of alliances. France and Russia signed a mutual defense pact. Germany and Austro-Hungary had a similar arrangement. The Russians also had a cultural bond with their fellow Slavs in Serbia. So, when Franz Ferdinand and his wife were murdered by a Serbian nationalist in June 1914, the resulting diplomatic crisis and war declaration by Austria-Hungary against Serbia pulled Russia into the war. The Russian mobilization prompted the Germans to mobilize. In quick succession, the Germans declared war on Russia, France, and Belgium. When German troops entered Luxembourg and Belgium, Great Britain declared war on Germany, and World War I began for real. The international network established by those early 20th century leaders was so precarious, it only took a relatively minor jostle in a forgotten corner of Europe to bring the entire system crashing to the ground.The world today is vastly more complex. In 1913, there were approximately 61 sovereign states, but the key players were the major European empires like Great Britain, Russia, France, and Germany. Today, there are 195 countries, each striving for their place on the world stage as they pursue their national interest. It is impossible to calculate the potential number of black swan events capable of jostling the geostrategic network sufficiently to collapse it on top of itself.Consider this as well: we may already be in the beginning stages of a global war. Victor Davis Hanson wrote about how World War II only looks like World War II in hindsight. For the people living through it, especially in the beginning, World War II looked like a series of rather ordinary border conflicts and territorial conquests. The Japanese invaded Manchuria in 1931 and then further expanded the conflict with China in 1937. Italy invaded Ethiopia in 1935. Germany remilitarized the Rhineland in 1936, annexed Austria in 1938, and occupied the Sudetenland six months later. Today, Russia is still fighting in Ukraine. Gaza remains an open wound. The United States captured the president of Venezuela in an audacious military raid. Now the Iranian regime has been decapitated, but the remaining officials appear bent on provoking a larger war by lashing out at every country in the region that hosts U.S. military facilities.This raises the uncomfortable question: are we now on the precipice of the next Pearl Harbor moment?With the capture of President Maduro in Venezuela, the United States disrupted the flow of oil to China. Now, with the fall of the Islamic Republic of Iran, China appears poised to lose another important source of oil. Does anyone remember what prompted the Japanese to strike the American Pacific Fleet and then declare war against the United States? Those who answered the loss of access to key commodities, notably oil, due to actions by the United States responded correctly. The same leaders who developed the pre-World War I international system also spent the years before Sarajevo engaged in a decades-long arms race. Most of them had read Alfred Thayer Mahan’s writing about the importance of seapower, so several countries invested huge amounts of capital building dreadnought ships. Hiram Maxim inspired a slew of weapon designers to develop more effective machine guns. The world’s aviators were just beginning to imagine the warfighting potential of the airplane. No one in 1913 understood quite how the industrial age had changed warfare. The leaders were all still playing by the old international rules that sufficed while armies fought in rank and file on relatively limited and distant battlefields. Had those early 20th century leaders foreseen the trenches and poison gas, they almost certainly would not have celebrated the war’s beginning. Many of the key players also lacked any direct experience with war, which tends to encourage recklessness. The last major European war was the Franco-Prussian War that ended in 1871. Before that, the last truly significant European battle had been Waterloo in 1815.No leader in any country today has any experience with war on a global scale. World War II ended more than 80 years ago. The relatively few remaining World War II veterans are all centenarians or soon will be. No one can truly know how the next world war will unfold. If, by some miracle, the next war is not fought with nuclear weapons, it is still impossible for anyone to know for certain how a conventional war between superpowers will be fought.Policymakers around the world must take the time to reflect on the state of the world today. We may be living through the early days of what future historians will call World War III. Of course, that depends on there being any future historians. With every bomb dropped, every missile fired, and every warship torpedoed, events creep ever closer to the single jostle, the 21st century Sarajevo, to topple the fragile network. It will only take one minor miscalculation, one bomb to miss and fall on another country’s embassy, one airliner to be accidentally shot out of the sky, or any other of a million incidents to trigger an escalation leading to a full nuclear exchange. There may be time left to prevent such a scenario. The administration and the U.S. military deserve credit for planning and executing two spectacular displays of martial prowess in less than two weeks. But they should also bear in mind that victory is far from guaranteed. Luck, fate, and the enemy have a say in the outcome of any conflict. It is easy to believe that modern military technology has eliminated war’s uncertainty. But war will always remain a human endeavor, serving human ends. The administration must bring the current operation with Iran to a quick end. It can celebrate its successes but should not push their luck any further. Every military operation is the geostrategic version of Russian roulette.

[Category: Escalation, World-war-i, Russia, Trump, Iran-war]

— Oil disruption from Iran war won’t end any time soon

 

at 3/11/26 11:08am

The US-Israel-Iran war has led to extraordinary volatility in global energy markets this week, and there is little reason to think that it will abate any time soon. Benchmark Brent crude, which traded below $60 per barrel early this year, jumped to $80 last Thursday. It then bounced to $120 in thin weekend markets and, as of this writing, has settled in around $92. In other words, the range of the recent oil price has been 50% of where it was a mere five days ago. Needless to say, this is not normal behavior for what still remains the modern world’s most important industrial commodity. A similar (but slower) move from $70 to $120 per barrel was seen in late 2021 and early 2022 around the Russian invasion of Ukraine, but, as the investment bank Goldman Sachs has noted, the physical disruption of oil supply due to the war in the Persian Gulf is 15 times as severe as that of the Ukraine crisis. One respected (and usually non-alarmist) oil commentator has suggested that the price could jump to over $200 per barrel if the situation in the Strait of Hormuz is not resolved.This morning the International Energy Agency (which primarily includes the advanced industrial economies that are U.S. allies) announced that member countries would release 400 million barrels of oil from storage, starting with Japan. However, the impact of the announcement has been quite muted.A release that amounts to four days of global consumption and roughly 20 days of oil and products transiting through the Strait of Hormuz has had little impact on an oil market that is grappling not just with multiple uncertainties but also wildly inconsistent official messaging.For one thing, there is a fundamental diplomatic uncertainty. It is unclear what U.S. and Israeli aims are in this war. At various moments, the White House has called for Iran’s “Unconditional Surrender,” and then modified this to reflect that the administration will determine what constitutes such an outcome, “whether they themselves [Iran] say it or not.” Yet other officials have called for the equivalent of a Morgenthau Plan that leads to the comprehensive deindustrialization of Iran. And even if President Trump does decide that he has had enough and wishes to end the war, it is far from clear that Iran would agree to what might seem a “premature ceasefire” from its own point of view, where it was still left substantially weaker against future attacks and had not imposed enough costs to restore deterrence.Against this backdrop, it is hard for the oil market to judge both U.S. and Israeli intentions and the potential scale of Iranian retaliation against all the oil infrastructure in the Persian Gulf — a region that accounts for about 20% of all global production of crude petroleum and products. The diplomatic uncertainty has been compounded by two basic questions that reflect the military uncertainties: what can Iran do to harm shipping? And can the U.S. Navy escort ships safely through the straits? As to the first, three vessels were reportedly struck yesterday in the Strait, indicating that Iran is ready and able to use force to stop ships.The answer to the second question is more ambiguous. Yesterday, the U.S. appended a farcical element to the tragedies unfolding in the Gulf, as Energy Secretary Chris Wright first posted, then deleted, a tweet saying the Navy had successfully escorted a tanker through Hormuz. Greater clarity from the U.S. on this question does not appear to be forthcoming.The broader point is that Iran’s offensive capabilities against civilian shipping have been described as cheap and plentiful, a reflection of the revolution in drone warfare. It is perhaps this capacity that has led the navy to tell the shipping industry that it is simply not possible to escort ships right now. The scale of the war and the fact that the U.S. is a primary and declared belligerent in the conflict also undermines financial tools like the reinsurance coverage (insuring private insurers against loss) that has been proposed by the Development Finance Corporation. This makes for a different situation than the convoy/insurance combination provided by the U.S. to Gulf shipping during the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s. Iran knows very well that the price of gasoline remains a key factor in U.S. domestic politics. This fact suggests that Hormuz and the global oil markets will remain a key point of pressure in this war. And solutions to the diplomatic, military, and financial uncertainties described above still seem very far away.

[Category: Oil, Strait-of-hormuz, Iran-war]

— Russia shouldn't get too excited about oil sanctions relief

 

at 3/11/26 7:11am

The U.S.-Israel war on Iran has, unsurprisingly, destabilized global energy markets. Oil prices shot up by around 30% to $119 per barrel earlier this week, marking a four-year high that is starkly felt by Washington’s alliance network in Europe and parts of Asia. The spike in oil prices stems from supply shortages and logistics constraints that, even if the U.S. takes steps to guarantee partial traffic through the blockaded Hormuz Strait, will likely persist throughout the duration of the war. The White House, in an attempt to ameliorate global energy pressures stemming from the war, has temporarily lifted some sanctions on Russian oil. These steps include a recent decision to approve a 30-day waiver on Indian purchases of Russian oil; additional measures in this vein may be expected following a phone call between President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin on Monday. These moves, though clearly not intended with larger linkages in mind, cannot be entirely divorced from the context of American-led efforts to secure a peace deal to end the Ukraine war. There are several analytical strands to pursue here. First, though the global spike in oil prices is unquestionably a boon for Moscow, these macroeconomic gains will take time to be reflected in Moscow’s economic ledgers and even longer to be translated into additional military capabilities to help Russian forces prosecute the war against Ukraine. Current developments in the Middle East are unlikely to shape Russia’s military strategy. After all, the Kremlin knows better than anyone else the pitfalls of basing long-term decisions on the short to medium term vicissitudes of energy markets. The more immediate benefit for Russia is the fact that the U.S. is expending stockpiles of weapons and interceptors that could have otherwise gone to Ukraine, further widening the existing firepower gap between Russia and Ukraine as the war grinds into its fifth year. Though this won’t fundamentally alter the course of the war in the near future, it further solidifies a losing trajectory for Ukraine. And these weapons shortfalls could begin to exercise serious constraints on Ukraine’s armed forces if the Iran war goes on indefinitely without accompanying U.S. production increases that factor in Kyiv’s needs. Then there are the potential effects on Ukraine negotiations. The White House has heretofore pursued a strict policy of linking sanctions relief and U.S.-Russia economic cooperation to a peace deal that ends the war. The latest round of oil waivers is the first major example of decoupling sanctions from peace talks, something the Kremlin has long sought but was unable to get until now. This move raises the concern that the White House, in a bid to arrest the spike in global energy prices, is weakening leverage it could use to secure the Russian concessions necessary to make the Ukraine settlement stick. Moscow, if it perceives that it has a separate pathway to economic relief without a Ukraine settlement, may be incentivized to push for steeper concessions on territory and security that may be unacceptable to Kyiv, thus jeopardizing positive diplomatic momentum made over the past half year of difficult but constructive negotiations. U.S. negotiators can take steps to contain this unintended spillover effect by emphasizing to their Russian counterparts that these are temporary measures for the narrow purpose of stabilizing global energy markets and that a fuller, permanent removal of sanctions is squarely linked to a Ukraine settlement. Put differently, these waivers are best presented as a small, temporary preview of things to come if Moscow takes the necessary steps to finalize the peace deal currently being negotiated. To this end, quietly relaxing enforcement of certain sanctions offers a lower risk of policy contagion than officially waiving them, and these temporary measures can continue to be extended for short-term windows of around 30 days pending renewal so as not to give the impression that they have been institutionalized. Most importantly, the White House should continue to convey to Moscow that, despite whatever extraordinary measures it pursues in the short term, its core philosophy on diplomatic linkages has not changed. Long-term sanctions relief should be, and is, on the table as part of a framework peace deal; the administration can credibly argue that without it, there is not a politically and geopolitically viable basis for sustainable U.S.-Russia engagement, including on economic issues. One of the principal pitfalls of using sanctions to compel a change in state behavior is that, in order for sanctions to play their intended role, the side being punished must believe that the restrictions can be lifted. The Trump administration has demonstrated through its engagement with Belarus and Syria that it commands the flexibility and situational judgement to lift sanctions when circumstances call for it. The latest crop of waivers on Russian oil is yet another indication to Moscow that sanctions relief is on the table, but these measures can and should be packaged in ways that do not unnecessarily burden the Ukraine peace process.

[Category: Iran-war, Oil, Sanctions, Trump-administration, Russia]

— What do we actually know about Iran's nuclear program? Not much.

 

at 3/10/26 10:05pm

Last summer’s air strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities failed to resolve the nuclear issue. Instead, they clouded the situation. When Israel attacked Iranian nuclear facilities, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) ceased all on-site verification and monitoring activities in Iran; by the end of that month, it had pulled all inspectors out of the country for safety reasons. This loss of oversight is the key context for the war launched by the U.S. and Israel late last month. The campaign is not a necessary response to an imminent Iranian bomb, but rather a discretionary escalation in which Tehran’s nuclear program supplied the most persuasive justification for what appears to be a regime change operation.The timeline is crucial. In June 2025, before the “Twelve-Day War,” the IAEA Board of Governors found Iran in non-compliance with its safeguards obligations but also stressed support for ongoing U.S.-Iran talks. Oman had just confirmed another round of negotiations in Muscat. The next day, Israel attacked. The current conflict followed the same pattern. On February 27, 2026, the Omani Foreign Minister stated that the latest U.S.-Iran talks in Geneva had made significant progress and that technical discussions would continue in Vienna the following week. Rafael Grossi, the IAEA director general, said he personally joined the two most recent rounds to offer technical advice. An Israeli defense official, by contrast, told Reuters that the February 28 operation was coordinated with Washington, had been planned for months, and had a launch date fixed weeks in advance. This is not the timeline of a war triggered by a suddenly discovered nuclear emergency; it is the timeline of a war chosen while diplomacy was still ongoing.None of that means Iran’s nuclear program was benign. Before the June 2025 strikes, the IAEA estimated Iran had accumulated 440.9 kilograms of uranium enriched to 60 percent U-235. If further enriched to weapons-grade, this is enough for about ten nuclear weapons, according to the agency’s standards. In May 2025, the IAEA also determined that three undeclared sites were part of a structured weaponization program conducted until the early 2000s. At Lavisan-Shian, a former nuclear site in Tehran, the agency assessed that undeclared uranium metal was used in 2003 to produce neutron initiators for scaled implosion tests. Iran was, and still is, a real proliferation threat.But danger is not the same as imminence. The public record before this war showed an advanced threshold capability, not a demonstrated rush to build a bomb. The U.S. intelligence community’s 2025 threat assessment stated that Iran was not constructing a nuclear weapon and that Ayatollah Ali Khamenei had not reauthorized the weapons program suspended in 2003. The Defense Intelligence Agency was similarly clear: Iran was “almost certainly” not producing nuclear weapons, even though its enrichment progress had likely decreased the time needed to make enough weapons-grade uranium for a first device to less than a week. The IAEA’s May 2025 assessment said it had no credible indications of an ongoing nuclear weapons program. The key difference, then, was between a serious threshold capability that demanded tighter verification and an imminent weapons threat that might justify preventive military action.That distinction matters because the stated reason for the current war quickly extended beyond nonproliferation. In briefings to Congress, Pentagon officials acknowledged there was no intelligence indicating Iran planned to attack U.S. forces first, despite earlier claims to the contrary. President Trump, meanwhile, described the campaign in broader terms: preventing an Iranian bomb, destroying missile capabilities, and neutralizing wider threats to the United States and its allies. He then went even further, demanding Iran’s “unconditional surrender” and saying Washington should help choose Iran’s next leader. Once that becomes the language of war, the nuclear issue is no longer the entire casus belli. It is simply the most defensible public justification for a campaign whose goals are already expanding.This is a major problem from a nonproliferation standpoint. The key requirement for a serious Iran policy is verifiable knowledge about the location of uranium, its form, whether enrichment continues, and the remaining centrifuge capacity. As of late February 2026, the IAEA reported that it had no access to any of Iran’s four declared enrichment facilities. It said it did not know whether the newly declared Isfahan Fuel Enrichment Plant, located within Iran’s nuclear complex in central Iran, contained nuclear material or was operational. The agency also said it could not provide information on the current size, composition, or whereabouts of Iran’s enriched uranium stockpile, nor could it verify whether Iran had suspended enrichment-related activities. And, because it has lacked access since February 2021 to centrifuge component manufacturing, assembly, and testing workshops, it was unable to provide information on Iran’s current centrifuge inventory. This is not the mark of success in a nuclear crisis. It is only what success looks like if one mistakes visible damage for verifiable constraint.Nor is there much reason to believe that air power can solve the constraint problem. A preliminary U.S. intelligence assessment in June 2025 found that the earlier U.S. strikes probably only delayed Iran’s program by a few months. Grossi has now emphasized the larger point with particular clarity, saying that military escalation was delaying “indispensable work towards a diplomatic solution for the long-term assurance that Iran does not acquire a nuclear weapon.” Even the latest fighting highlights the limits of force. The IAEA states that recent strikes damaged entrance buildings at Natanz, Iran’s main enrichment complex in central Iran. But there is no evidence for claiming that the deeper verification problem has been solved. Bombing can crater entrances. It cannot, by itself, block Iran’s path to a nuclear deterrent.The real issue is that the war has made monitoring the nuclear program more difficult, not easier. A serious nonproliferation strategy would have aimed to roll back Iran’s dangerous proximity to a nuclear weapon through tighter inspections, clearer limits, and more reliable warning times. Instead, this war has done the opposite. It has traded transparency for destruction, verification for guesswork, and diplomacy for a widening conflict whose nuclear outcome is now less certain than before. This does not solve the nuclear problem. It makes the next decision point more dangerous than the last.

[Category: Iran-war, Nuclear-weapons, Iaea, International-atomic-energy-agency, Donald-trump]

— Why Hezbollah's 'irrational' gambit against Israel makes sense

 

at 3/10/26 10:05pm

Hezbollah and Israel continue to trade blows in the worst escalation on the Lebanese-Israeli front since a 66-day war in late 2024. The renewed fighting has taken an especially heavy toll on Lebanon, with more than 500 people killed and nearly 700,000 more displaced as of Wednesday.Israeli forces have advanced deeper into south Lebanon, as part of what Israeli officials describe as a plan to create a larger buffer zone in Lebanon against Hezbollah operations.The latest round of escalation was sparked by a cross-border Hezbollah rocket and drone attack on March 2nd earlier this month on the Israeli port city of Haifa, making it the first such operation by the Lebanese Shiite movement since a ceasefire deal was reached in November 2024.In a written statement, Hezbollah said the operation was in retaliation for the assassination of now former Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and to the ongoing Israeli attacks on Lebanon that have continued almost unabated since the ceasefire deal. Israel, meanwhile, has justified its attacks on the pretext of preventing Hezbollah from rebuilding its military capabilities, which were badly battered during the 2024 war. Notably, Hezbollah’s written statement opened by citing the assassination of Khamenei, before referring to the Israeli attacks.Hezbollah’s decision to take this course of action has reportedly infuriated the Lebanese government, which subsequently announced an unprecedented crackdown on the group."This necessitates the immediate prohibition of all of Hezbollah's security and military activities, considering them to be outside the law, and obliging it to hand over its weapons", declared Prime Minister Nawaf Salam following an emergency cabinet session. In an unprecedented development, this measure received the support of ministers from the Shiite Amal movement led by Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri. Amal is Hezbollah’s closest ally in Lebanon; its support for the government’s decision has fueled speculation of an emerging rift between the two sides.President Joseph Aoun has also come out strongly against the Lebanese Shiite movement, accusing it of prioritizing Iranian interests at the expense of Lebanon.During a virtual meeting with senior European officials, Aoun slammed Hezbollah, saying it “places no value on Lebanon’s interest nor on the life of its people,” and that its actions were “for the sake of the calculations of the Iranian regime.”Aoun proposed a plan according to which direct Lebanese-Israeli talks would be held. The plan stipulates that Israel would gradually withdraw from Lebanese territories and cease its attacks, and requests that the international community support equipping the army with the necessary capabilities to disarm Hezbollah, thereby leading to a Lebanon-Israel truce.Aoun’s stance is particularly noteworthy given that he has often adopted a softer line towards Hezbollah compared to Prime Minister Salam. The Lebanese Shiite movement, by contrast, has struck a defiant note, pledging to continue its operations against Israel.“We have no other option to preserve honor, pride and dignity than the option of resistance,” declared leader of Hezbollah’s parliamentary bloc, Mohammad Raad, during a televised speech in which he emphasized that the group would not back down no matter the costs. At first glance and given the balance of power, this stance appears to be ill-considered.But Hezbollah’s decision to resume operations against Israel may not be as costly as it seems. Regarding its ties with Amal, media reports indicate that the latter’s vote in favor of the government’s decision was more about safeguarding Lebanese Shiite political interests than signaling a genuine rift between the two parties. According to these reports, Amal’s vote was a precaution to preserve Lebanese Shiite leadership should Hezbollah end up being destroyed.A Hezbollah official told RS that ties with Amal are back on track, seemingly acknowledging that the decision to resume operations against Israel at this time had initially caused some friction between the two political allies.“The relationship with Amal is very good and is back to what it was,” said the official who spoke to RS on the condition he not be identified.An official from Amal meanwhile strongly denied any tensions between the two parties.“There is no rift with Hezbollah, he insisted, without going into further detail. This comes as reports emerged of a meeting between Berri and former Hezbollah minister Mohammad Fneish, where the latter relayed a message that Hezbollah will continue to entrust Berri with the role of political interlocutor on its behalf.For its part, the Lebanese army still appears reluctant to take action against Hezbollah out of fear that this could ignite civil strife.Speaking during a meeting with Lebanese military officials, army commander Rodolphe Haykal underscored the importance of preserving national unity.“The military institution is pursuing its utmost efforts to protect internal stability and national unity” he said, adding that the army “stands at equal distance from all Lebanese”Hezbollah can also continue to rely on support from its Shiite base, notwithstanding the disproportionate suffering endured by Lebanese Shiites — who are about 31% of the total Lebanese population — as a result of the ongoing conflict. A large segment of this popular base followed Khamenei as a religious “Marja” whose religious decrees are to be strictly adhered to. Therefore, it is likely that a not insignificant number of Shiites saw in his assassination an act of war against their faith that necessitates action.It is also likely that the group can continue to count on ongoing Shiite support given the situation in post-Assad Syria. With the fall of the Assad dynasty, many Lebanese Shiites see in Hezbollah their most reliable protector against what they perceive to be an anti-Shiite Salafi Jihadi threat emanating from the new leadership in Damascus. Atrocities committed against minorities in post-Assad Syria have only reinforced these sentiments.Not surprisingly then, Syria’s president Ahmad al-Sharaa voiced his support for Aoun’s efforts to disarm Hezbollah."We stand alongside Lebanese president Joseph Aoun in disarming Hezbollah,” stated al-Sharaa. Such statements are likely to further harden Lebanese Shiite support for Hezbollah.Hezbollah’s decision to resume cross-border operations may therefore not be the irrational risky gambit some may claim it to be, especially given that the war against Iran poses an existential threat to the group itself.In the midst of these developments, some in Washington appear to be promoting an even tougher approach against Hezbollah. According to Axios, there is now a bipartisan push in Washington to replace Haykal with someone more willing to confront the group.Republican Senator Lindsey Graham has even gone so far as to urge President Trump to join Israel in the bombing campaign against Hezbollah.From an American interest standpoint, these policy recommendations make even less sense than the decision to go to war against Iran.While there is a case to be made that toppling the Islamic Republic serves American geopolitical interests given Tehran’s close ties with rival superpowers like China and Russia, no such geopolitical rationale exists in the case of Hezbollah and Lebanon.By choosing to go after the Lebanese Shiite movement so vigorously in the absence of a clear geopolitical justification, Washington would further reinforce an already existing Shiite perception arising from Khamenei’s assassination; namely, that Washington is engaging in an anti-Shiite crusade.This could have potentially devastating repercussions, not least the emergence of hard-core anti-American Shiism that could rival the anti-Americanism espoused by Salafi-Jihadi groups like ISIS and Al-Qaida.

[Category: Hezbollah, Beirut, Israel, Joseph-aoun, Shia, Shiite, Lebanon]

— Why did mainstream media slow-walk coverage of school attack?

 

at 3/10/26 9:44am

As the U.S. war with Iran rages, mainstream media’s slow response to a probable U.S. attack on an Iranian school suggests it is hesitant to report on the conflict’s growing human toll.The attack occurred on February 28 in Minab, Iran, and killed at least 165 people — mostly school-aged children. Although the U.S. stresses it would not deliberately attack a school, subsequent investigation by American military investigators points the finger at Washington, as do remnants of a U.S.-made Tomahawk missile recovered from the site. (Only the U.S., the UK, and Australia have Tomahawk missiles.) CBS news reported that the strike on the school might have been an accident, perhaps sprung from outdated intelligence wrongly identifying it as still part of a nearby Iranian base.Although the Trump administration says it is investigating the attack, President Trump has repeatedly asserted that an Iranian misfire, rather than a U.S. attack, was behind it.That assertion is now sparking critical questions from reporters. As New York Times reporter Shawn McCreese pressed President Trump yesterday: “You just suggested Iran got a Tomahawk and bombed its own elementary school. But you're the only person in your government saying this. Even your defense secretary wouldn't say that. Why are you the only person saying this?” That forced Trump to admit he “didn’t know enough” about the school attack, but would accept the findings of an investigation on it. “Whatever the report shows, I’m willing to live with that report,” Trump said yesterday.But the skepticism has been slow to arrive, and the press has ultimately made some critical stumbles covering the school attack. On NBC’s Meet the Press Sunday, Kristen Welker toed the U.S. line, asking Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi: “President Trump said Iran is responsible for [the school] strike. What is your response?” After Araghchi responded that the U.S. likely struck the school, Welker pressed him for evidence — failing to mention reporting suggesting the U.S. was behind the attack.Moreover, the school attack did not at first receive substantive coverage in major outlets, despite its severity. As media analyst Adam Johnson observed on his Substack, the attack did not garner any front page coverage by New York Times, The Washington Post or The Wall Street Journal from February 28 through March 4.“I am really shocked at the almost non-reporting…of the striking of a school in Iran in which 80–100 children may have been killed,” Ben de Pear, a former editor at Channel 4 News, wrote on social media. “I fear that we have become so inured to the killing of children in Gaza, that the destruction of the [girls’] school” has been “completely drowned out.”“In the days that followed [the attack], you could watch the wall-to-wall coverage on U.S. cable news networks for hours, including the supposedly more progressive MS Now, and not see anything about the atrocity — even though there was plenty of visual evidence available,” observed James North, Mondoweiss’ Editor at Large.As Gregory Shupak, who teaches media studies at the University of Guelph in Canada, tells RS, many articles covering the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran do not even mention the school attack. Shupak used the media aggregator Factiva to assess how much the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and Washington Post have covered the incident. These outlets published 318 pieces that mentioned both Iran and the U.S. between from March 1 to March 9, but only 59 of those articles contained the word school, according to Shupak.“That’s just 19%,” he said. “In other words, 81% of the material these outlets have run on the U.S.-Israeli war of aggression overlooks this horrific massacre, which suggest[s] that they don’t think the slaughter is terribly important or a crime that ought to have a major impact on how their audiences understand the war and its stakes.”“This atrocity has received far too little attention in coverage of the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran,” Shupak stressed. Senators Brian Schatz (D - Hawaii), Patty Murray (D - Wash.), Jeanne Shaheen (D - N.H.), Jack Reed (D - R.I.), Mark Warner (D - Va.), and Chris Coons (D - Del.), released a statement demanding a probe into the school attack Sunday, signaling public anger over it is growing.“The killing of school children is appalling and unacceptable under any circumstance. This incident is particularly concerning in light of Secretary Hegseth’s openly cavalier approach to the use of force, including his statement that U.S. strikes in Iran wouldn’t be bound by ‘stupid rules of engagement,’ in his words,” the lawmakers wrote.The civilian toll of the war in Iran, where Al Jazeera reports the U.S. and Israel have struck more than 20 schools, continues to mount. The Iranian government reports at least 1,300 people have died.

[Category: Media-bias, Mainstream-media, Trump, Iran, Us, Israel, Iran-war]

— Did Caine just announce the Morgenthau option for Iran?

 

at 3/10/26 8:54am

Gen. Dan Caine’s formulation of American war aims in Iran is remarkable not because it is bellicose, but because it is strategically incoherent. In a press conference Tuesday morning, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff did not describe a limited campaign to suppress missile fire, blunt Iran’s naval threat, or even impose a severe but bounded setback on Tehran’s coercive instruments. He described a campaign against Iran’s “military and industrial base” designed to prevent the regime from attacking Americans, U.S. interests, and regional partners “for years to come.” In an earlier briefing he put the objective similarly: to prevent Iran from projecting power outside its borders. Rather than the language of a discrete coercive operation, this describes a war against a state’s capacity to regenerate power.And once one says “industrial base,” the logic becomes much more radical than administration officials may realize. Destroying missile launchers is one thing. Destroying missile factories is harder but still intelligible. But preventing Iran from threatening anyone “for years to come” means something else again. It means attacking not merely weapons, but the system that produces and reproduces them: electric power, transport, fuels, machine tools, metallurgy, electronics, repair facilities, and perhaps the broader fiscal and industrial foundations of military recovery. A country whose critical infrastructure remains intact can rebuild military industry. A country that cannot rebuild has, by definition, suffered something much closer to strategic deindustrialization.That is why Caine’s wording evokes Henry Morgenthau’s wartime vision for Germany. Morgenthau argued that making Germany incapable of renewed aggression required more than smashing its armaments sector. He called for eliminating the metallurgical, electrical, and chemical industries and contemplated a Germany that would become “predominantly agrarian.” Another State Department summary described the plan as looking toward converting Germany into a country “primarily agricultural and pastoral in character.”No, the administration has not formally announced a Morgenthau Plan for Iran. But that is not the point. The point is that Caine’s rhetoric tracks the same underlying logic: if your war aim is not merely to punish or deter, but to keep a state from threatening others for “years to come,” then you are no longer talking about operational suppression. You are talking about systematically crippling the economic foundations of war-making.That is an extraordinary thing for the chairman of the Joint Chiefs to say. Caine is supposed to be the sober professional in the room, the man who translates political impulse into disciplined military language. If he is now defining American aims in terms that imply the long-term disabling of an entire national military-industrial ecosystem, then one of two things is true.Either the administration has genuinely lost its strategic bearings. It has wandered from limited war into maximalist fantasy without admitting the scale, duration, and destruction such an aim would require. Or it has sacrificed strategic communication to pure bloviation. It is using inflated language to sound tough while pursuing something much narrower in practice.Neither possibility is reassuring. If the first is true, Washington is flirting rhetorically with an objective that airpower alone is unlikely to achieve absent a far wider campaign against Iranian infrastructure. If the second is true, American officials are carelessly overstating war aims in ways that make later restraint look like failure. In war, rhetoric matters. Maximalist definitions of success create their own escalatory trap.That matters especially now, because this is exactly the kind of war Washington may soon want to curtail. If so, Caine’s phrasing was not merely loose. It was damaging. A chairman should clarify ends, align means, and preserve room for termination. He should not borrow, even inadvertently, the logic of Morgenthau while the White House still pretends it is fighting a limited war.

[Category: Iran, World-war-ii, Henry-morgenthau, Dan-caine, Us-military, Hegseth, Iran-war]

— Even if team Trump wanted it, a military draft would be a fiasco

 

at 3/10/26 4:22am

On Sunday, Fox News anchor Maria Bartiromo asked White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt about the possibility that a ground war in Iran might lead to activation of a U.S. military draft.“Mothers out there are worried that we’re going to have a draft, that they’re going to see their sons and daughters get involved in this,” Bartiromo asked. “What do you want to say about the President’s plans for troops on the ground?”Leavitt didn’t mention the draft specifically in her response, but said repeatedly that no option had been ruled out. Presumably those “options” included the draft, which was the focus of the question.“President Trump wisely does not remove options off of the table,” Leavitt said. “It’s not part of the current plan right now, but the president, again, wisely keeps his options on the table.”Leavitt’s comments highlight the ways that, even when a draft is neither likely nor feasible, military planners and politicians insist on keeping it in their playbook of “options” for military escalation and threats. The Selective Service System (SSS) is mandated by Federal law to maintain readiness to activate either of two types of draft whenever ordered to do so by Congress and the President. In theory, the SSS has plans for either a general “cannon fodder” draft of young men, or a Health Care Personnel Delivery System (HCPDS) for men and women up to age 44 in certain medical professions.In reality, attempting to activate either type of draft would be a fiasco. The list of registrants for a general draft is grossly incomplete and inaccurate. Draft boards that would have to make life-and-death decisions about who to send to war have received only cursory training. Many draft boards lack a quorum and would be unable to function, letting anyone who applied for a deferment or exemption off the hook if no draft board was available to adjudicate their claim. Meanwhile, proposed regulations for the HCPDS were published in 1989 and revised in 2009 but never finalized.To prosecute a draft resister, the government must prove to a jury, beyond a reasonable doubt, that any violation of the Military Selective Service Act is “knowing and willful.” If a draftee knows not to sign for any certified letters or make incriminating public statements, they can ignore induction orders with impunity unless and until they are individually served by a U.S. Marshal or FBI agent.This year the SSS is preparing for the largest change in its operation since 1980. In response to plunging compliance with the requirement for men ages 18-25 to register and report all changes of address to the SSS, Congress has directed the SSS to try to register potential draftees “automatically” by using data obtained from other Federal agencies. This change in the law was enacted without hearing, debate, or any budget review, and takes effect in December 2026. It will require new regulations and notices and one of the largest and most complex data aggregation and matching programs in Federal history. SSS data sharing is drawing criticism even before the launch of “automatic” draft registration.But none of the necessary rules or notices for “automatic” draft registration have been published yet, and no money for this project is included in this year’s SSS budget. Much of the information that would be needed to identify and locate all potential draftees isn’t in any current Federal database.Therefore, “automatic” registration will produce a list that’s just as inaccurate and incomplete as the current “self-registration” system. The list it does produce will be vulnerable to weaponization and misuse. Enforcing a draft will prove just as impractical as enforcing registration has been.The lengths to which Congress is willing to go to try to salvage a failed Selective Service System are indicative of the importance war planners place on claiming to be “ready” for a draft – even if an actual draft is and will remain a political and practical non-starter. Under both Democratic and Republican administrations, military planners from the Pentagon, the SSS, and hawkish think tanks have argued that ongoing preparation for a draft is needed as a “fallback” for scenarios such as an invasion of the mainland U.S. by China or a land war in Central Asia that would immediately require an additional 100,000 “bodies” to bolster U.S. active-duty forces.What’s really at stake in this debate over the “need” to be prepared for a draft is whether it should be possible — and whether it’s desirable — for war planners to contemplate wars like these without having to think about whether enough Americans will volunteer to fight them.Perceived or pretended availability of a draft as a “fallback” enhances the ability of U.S. war planners and policy makers to threaten or commit the country to larger, longer, less popular wars and more rapid military escalation. Having a draft available also encourages the president and commander-in-chief to be quicker and less thoughtful in resorting to military means to resolve diplomatic disputes.In situations like these, a fallback draft serves as part of the arsenal of military escalation and threats. President Trump’s insistence on keeping a draft “on the table” as an option is dangerous but, sadly, nothing new. Its dangerousness is indicative of why it’s so important to do precisely what he doesn’t want: take the draft off the table as an option by abolishing the Selective Service System.

[Category: Draft, Conscription, Selective-service, Trump, Us-military, Iran, Military-draft, Iran-war]

— How targeting water changes the entire face of the war

 

at 3/9/26 10:05pm

Over the weekend, airstrikes targeted water desalination plants in Iran and Bahrain, threatening a vital life source in one of the most water-scarce regions in the world. Analysts said that this development was not only a “serious escalation” in the Iran war, but also an indication that the conflict could have a wider civilian impact.Iran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, called a Saturday attack on a desalination plant on Iran’s Qeshm Island “a dangerous move with grave consequences” on social media and accused the U.S. of setting a precedent. Capt. Tim Hawkins, a spokesman for the U.S. Central Command, has since denied that the U.S. was behind the attack. One day later, Bahrain’s interior ministry alleged that an Iranian drone caused material damage to a desalination plant in the Persian Gulf island nation, accusing Iran of “indiscriminately” attacking civilian targets. Bahrain’s water and electricity authority said there had been “no impact on water supplies or water network capacity.” While there has been no immediate response from Iran about Bahrain’s allegation, Iranian officials have stated that their attacks on close U.S. allies in the Gulf are a direct response to the American-Israeli attacks in Iran. They have also stated that the attacks are aimed at American military bases and U.S. soldiers, not civilians.It was not immediately clear whether either plant was still functioning. Political experts have long warned about the plants’ vulnerability as military targets.Desalination plants are used to convert seawater into water for drinking, irrigation and industrial purposes. In an area where potable water is scarce, the plants have become vital to life in the Gulf region.According to a 2020 report by the Gulf Research Center, groundwater, with desalinated water, accounts for around 90% of the region’s main water resources. And with groundwater fast deteriorating due to climate change, Gulf countries have come to rely more heavily on desalinated water. About 42% of the UAE’s drinking water comes from desalination plants, compared to 90% in Kuwait, 86% in Oman, 70% in Saudi Arabia and about 80% in Israel. If the attacks on desalination plants in Gulf countries continue, the situation could very quickly devolve into a “massive humanitarian catastrophe for the people living in the Gulf,” according to Annelle Sheline, a research fellow in the Quincy Institute’s Middle East Program.These attacks come after a leaked 2008 diplomatic cable sent from the U.S. Embassy in Riyadh warned that the Saudi capital relied on a singular desalination plant for more than 90% of its drinking water. Since then, the Saudi government has expanded their water storage, however, the region’s cities have also continued to grow, placing an undue burden on the water ecosystems that support them.With this in mind, water desalination plants in the region remain essential for the region and represent a vulnerable military target. Sheline said she wouldn’t be surprised if more facilities were attacked in the future, despite international humanitarian law prohibiting the targeting of civilian infrastructure that is crucial to the survival of the population, which includes drinking water plants.“Laws of war dictate that a military target is a legitimate target, and a civilian target is not legitimate. Targeting, whether it's oil infrastructure or water infrastructure, those are war crimes and violations of international law,” Sheline told RS. These attacks could mark a major turning point in the war, escalating existing tensions and indicating a new willingness to harm civilians in an already deadly conflict.

[Category: Iran-war, Desalination-plants, Water, United-states, Iran, Israel, Bahrain, Qiosk]

— Neocons wanted an Azeri uprising against Iran. They didn't get it.

 

at 3/9/26 10:05pm

With Iran resisting the U.S./Israeli onslaught for the second week, what was supposed to be a quick transition to a pro-U.S. regime following the decapitation strike that killed Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is fast turning into a quagmire. While the U.S. and Israel continue to sow mayhem on Tehran from the skies, the previously unthinkable option of sending ground troops to Iran is gaining ground.First, an apparent plan was being hatched to employ Kurdish fighters to take on Tehran. Then, when drones, allegedly flying from Iran although Tehran denied it, struck the Nakhchivan Autonomous Republic of Azerbaijan — hitting an airport terminal and a village school, and wounding four civilians — the stage appeared set for the opening of a northern front against Iran. Here was an alleged act of aggression from Iranian territory against Israel's closest partner in the South Caucasus. It offered the pretext to goad Azerbaijan into joining the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran.Azerbaijan's President Ilham Aliyev called the drone attack "an act of terror.” In a combative speech, he vowed retaliation and called Iran’s Azerbaijanis (who constitute an estimated 20 million Iranians, or twice the population of the Republic of Azerbaijan) his “compatriots” for whom Baku provided a “beacon of hope.” He also declared that Tehran had deliberately “smeared” Baku in the eyes of Iranian Azerbaijanis by accusing it of permitting Israeli warplanes access to its airspace during Israel’s 12-day air campaign against Iran in June.All of that was music to the small but vocal group of neoconservative hawks perched at D.C. think-tanks, such as Hudson Institute’s Mike Doran, a former National Security Council official in the George W. Bush administration, and Brenda Shaffer who has performed undisclosed work for Azerbaijan’s state oil company SOCAR. Shaffer has promoted Iran’s disintegration along ethnic lines in her work for the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. Doran and Shaffer appeared to be inciting Baku to join the fray against Tehran.Despite Aliyev’s tough rhetoric, however, the hawks must be disappointed by his response, which so far has been mainly symbolic. The Iranian ambassador was summoned to the foreign ministry and handed a protest note. In practical terms, vehicle border crossings with Iran have been suspended, a measure that has mostly affected Russian, Azerbaijani, and Georgian truck drivers transporting goods to and from Iran.Then on Sunday Aliyev spoke on the phone with his Iranian counterpart, Masoud Pezeshkian. According to the Azerbaijani read-out, Pezeshkian thanked Aliyev for personally visiting the Iranian embassy in Baku to express his condolences over Khamenei’s assassination and for pledging humanitarian support to Iran. He reiterated Iran’s official position that it was not involved in launching the drones towards Azerbaijan, echoing the official line of the Islamic Republic that blamed Israel for a “false flag” operation. Aliyev also conveyed his condolences to the Iranian people for the death and destruction they have experienced.Significantly, following the conversation, Aliyev ordered the reopening of the border; its closure lasted a total of only four days. The Nakhchevan airport resumed its operations.This de-escalatory impulse was reinforced by Baku's closest allies. The Organization of Turkic States (OTS)—which includes Turkey, Azerbaijan, and the Central Asian republics—issued a joint statement in which they condemned the drone attacks "from the territory of Iran." Not "by Iran."That careful diplomatic wording reveals where Baku and its Turkic partners stand. They are showing solidarity and support for Baku while avoiding casting blame on Tehran and thus providing cover for Aliyev to pull back from escalation.This matters because the OTS countries are precisely the states that neoconservatives and Abraham Accords advocates have been busily courting. Their vision, promoted most actively by figures like Joseph Epstein from the Turan Research Center at the Washington-based Yorktown Institute, was always for an "alliance of moderate Muslim states” from the Gulf to the Caspian — a wall of secular Sunni-led countries allied with Israel against Iran.On the face of it, the return on that investment is looking meager. When push came to shove, these states are choosing diplomatic ambiguity over confrontation with Iran and a pro-Israel alignment. The much-hyped expansion to Central Asia of the U.S.-brokered Abraham Accords, with Kazakhstan formally joining last year, appears to be producing more symbolism than substance too. Kazakhstan, an OTC member, condemned the drone attack (without attribution) in a separate statement, and called for a joint investigation by Azerbaijan and Iran.To understand Azerbaijan’s reluctance to join the war, one needs only look at the map — and Baku’s vulnerability becomes evident.Azerbaijan's energy infrastructure—the oil and gas platforms and pipelines that underpin the entire economy — sits within easy reach of Iranian drones and missiles. In particular, the Baku-Tbilisi (Georgia)-Ceyhan (Turkey) pipeline, known as BTC, has become the economic lifeblood of the Azerbaijani state — and a key source of oil for Israel. In early 2026, the share of Israeli oil imports from BTC reached 46%. According to Azerbaijan’s official media, up to 80% of the oil transported through this pipeline is of Azerbaijani origin. Disruption to its operation would severely damage the country’s economy. The Gulf states learned this lesson, which is why they have consistently chosen de-escalation with Tehran over confrontation. Azerbaijan is proving to be no different.Another reason for Aliyev’s caution is Turkey’s restraining role. While also targeted by Iranian missiles apparently designed to hit the giant Incirlik Air Base used by the U.S. military, Ankara’s worst nightmare is the emergence of an independent Kurdish entity in western Iran which it would regard as a direct threat to its territorial integrity and security. Most critically, Iranian Azerbaijanis, much more numerous than those in the Republic of Azerbaijan, have shown no interest in seceding from Iran, much less in joining Baku in a “Greater Azerbaijan.” The majority appear to identify with Iran, with many playing key roles in Iranian governance: the slain Ayatollah Khamenei was ethnically Azeri, as is President Pezeshkian and countless other members of Tehran’s elites. Despite the efforts of exiled “South Azerbaijani” activists, pan-Turkist propaganda appears to have made only limited inroads among Iranian Azerbaijanis.None of this is to suggest that the hawks’ project to lure Azerbaijan into the war has run out of steam. If the war continues for weeks or months, as now seems likely, the “humanitarian aid” that Aliyev has professed to be willing to offer Iran could plausibly turn into “humanitarian intervention” to protect his ethnic kin, a possibility that Baku’s pro-regime commentators openly entertain. That could include encroaching deep into Iranian territory to create what the latter call a “buffer zone.” Pressure will also grow on Aliyev to reciprocate for Israel’s help in his war with Armenia in 2020. Turkey, which also supplied weaponry to Azerbaijan in that conflict, would likely be opposed, however.In any case, the best way to prevent the northward spread of a conflict that already involves in one way or another well over a dozen countries is to end the war as soon as possible and to stop listening to neoconservative hawks in Washington.

[Category: Kurds-iran, Azerbaijan, Armenia, Turkey, Iran, Israel, Neoconservatives, Central-asia, South-caucasus, Iran-war]

— Bohemian Grove: More than a getaway for our war machine elites

 

at 3/9/26 10:05pm

Dozens of former senior national security and military officials are members of a secret society known as the Bohemian Grove, according to membership lists obtained by RS.The Bohemian Grove is an exclusive mens-only club that hosts a two-week summer retreat for the rich and powerful at a 2,700 acre compound tucked away in the redwoods of Northern California. With a $25,000 initiation fee and a decades-long membership waiting list, the hideaway was described in a 1989 Spy article as “the most exclusive frat party on earth.” The club serves as a popular destination for national security officials and defense industry executives to fraternize and party, far from the public eye. The 2023 camp attendance list, which one club member confirmed to the San Francisco Standard as authentic, includes two former national security advisors, three former Chairmen of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and two former directors of the NSA. A 2017 roster, which lists all dues-paying members of the club, included three former directors of the CIA, among other former national security personnel. That list, reported here for the first time, was obtained by RS in 2022 and confirmed by cross referencing members with previously leaked versions of the club’s membership rolls. The grove has long served as the meeting place where critical paths in U.S. foreign policy are charted. The nucleus of the Manhattan project was formed below the northern California redwoods when Robert Oppenheimer met with the S-1 committee in 1942 and was appointed to develop the bomb the very next month. In 1988, the CIA director briefed members on the CIA’s exploits abroad. (Some of this information was apparently safe for club members but not the American public; large portions of former director William Webster’s speech are still redacted in the CIA archive.)Former National Security Advisor H.R. McMaster has been a public critic of informal relationships within the arms industry, Congress, and the Pentagon — sometimes referred to as the “iron triangle” — because they elevate special interests over the national interest. In 2008, McMaster wrote that “leaders should understand how informal relationships between and among the ‘iron triangle’ of defence contractors, military establishments and governments can undermine the ability to think clearly about future conflict.”As an attendee of the 2023 Bohemian Grove retreat, McMaster might know. The Bohemian Grove, whose members frequently cycle between government and industry, may well be the epitome of these informal relationships. Each club member is assigned to one of 130 separate “camps” inside the compound, which act as different fraternities for attendees to party together. “Mandalay” is seen as the most elite camp, whose members in 2023 included Henry Kissinger, Sen. Dave McCormick (R-Pa.), and Riley Bechtel, the billionaire heir of the Bechtel corporation. A visitor once said of Mandalay, “you don’t just walk in there — you are summoned.” “Wayside Log” appears to be another watering hole for revolvers between the national security community and defense contractors. Its members include former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Richard Myers, who went on to join the boards of Northrop Grumman and United Technologies Corporation, which merged with Raytheon in 2020. Wayside Log is also home to J. Michael Myatt, a Marine Corps Major General who became an executive for Bechtel after leaving government. McMaster himself is also a member of Wayside Log. After leaving government, McMaster too joined the boards of several Pentagon contractors after his tumultuous time in Trump’s cabinet, including C3AI and Elroy Air. Turns out he isn’t that averse to the “iron triangle” after all.A Quincy Institute study found that 80% of four-star admiral and general retirees between 2018 and 2023 accepted lucrative positions in the defense industry. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) has warned that government officials cashing in on their public service can lead to questions about whether “special interests gain access to key decisionmakers, undermining public officials’ integrity and casting doubt on the fairness of government contracting.” While the Bohemian Grove’s motto is “Weaving Spiders Come Not Here,” meaning leave your business outside, this rule is often ignored. More recently, Sen. McCormick wracked up over a dozen high dollar donors from fellow club members ahead of announcing his successful senate bid in 2023. And a team of high powered real estate brokers, many from the same camp, teamed up to quash affordable housing ballot measures in San Francisco. According to Spy magazine, the practice of flagrantly flouting the Club’s only public rule has been going on since at least 1989, though likely much longer; State Department cables published by Wikileaks indicate that longtime member Kissinger — who attended the 2023 retreat just months before his death — discussed business at the retreats in the 1970s. The Bohemian Grove also serves as a place for these buttoned-up generals turned defense executives to let loose. While the rule of not talking business is widely ignored, another unwritten rule is that “everyone drink — and that everyone drink all the time.” Longtime member and musician Peter Arnott wrote that every camp in the Grove is “competing to pour drinks down your throat” in a summer 2009 edition of the club magazine.RS reached out to many of the national security officials who are members of the Bohemian Grove, but none responded to a request for comment.Aside from the “revolvers” between government and national security, the Bohemian Grove offers summer solace to plenty of defense contractor executives and financiers. Military tech investor Eric Schmidt, former Lockheed Martin CEO Norman Augustine, co-chairman of the defense-focused private equity firm Carlyle Group David Rubenstein, and several members of the Bechtel family all participated at the 2023 camp. Tex Schenkkan, the former director of National Security Innovation Capital, also made it to the 2023 celebration after years overseeing a DOD office that funds dual use defense/consumer startups. In 1967 President Nixon gave a lakeside talk at the Bohemian Grove that he would later claim was instrumental to launching his bid for the presidency. Before the assembled club members comprised of moneyed elite and aristocratic four-stars, Nixon made clear that it was they, and not the American public, who were the rightful masters of America’s destiny:“Never has a nation had more advantages to lead. Our economic superiority is enormous; our military superiority can be whatever we choose to make it. Most important, it happens that we are on the right side—the side of freedom and peace and progress against the forces of totalitarianism, reaction and war.”

[Category: Cia, Endless-war, Revolving-door, Enewsletter, Bohemian-grove, Defense-industry]

— Trump press conference reveals a man who wants out of war

 

at 3/9/26 8:15pm

Trump’s “all over the place” press conference at his Miami resort on Monday appears to have had two key objectives: a) Calm the markets by signalling the conflict may soon be over because it has been so "successful,” and b) Prepare the ground for Trump ending the war through a unilateral declaration of victory.Though ending a war that never should have been started in the first place — rather than fighting it endlessly in the pursuit of an illusory victory as the U.S. did in Afghanistan — is the right move, it won’t be as easy as Trump appears to think.Tehran also has a vote — and there is little to suggest that it will agree that the war is over.Tehran objects to what it would consider a premature ceasefire out of fear that it would only give the U.S. and Israel time to regroup, rearm, and then re-attack Iran. For the conflict to be ripe for a ceasefire, Tehran believes that enough cost must have been inflicted on the U.S., regional states, Israel, and on the global economy that all states conclude that starting the war was a mistake — and as a result, no state will seek to restart it.Moreover, if the war ends now, Iran will be in a worse situation than it was before the start of the war. Much of its infrastructure has been destroyed, its missile capabilities have taken hits, its ability to export oil has been damaged, and most crucially, its prospects for sanctions relief have been obliterated. Indeed, who will and can help rebuild Iran under these circumstances?This would leave Iran not only in a weakened position but also in a continuously weakening state. Which, in turn, would make another war of aggression by the U.S. and Israel more, not less, likely, since it is Iran’s perceived weakness that prompted Trump and Israel to see an opportunity for war.As such, it appears likely that Iran will continue to target Israel, even if the U.S. declares victory and withdraws its military. Even GCC states may continue to be targeted. And Tehran will very likely try to keep the Straits of Hormuz shut. (At least for now, there are no signs that Tehran has lost its ability to do these things).This will create a dilemma for Trump. It will be difficult for him to stay out while Iran and Israel continue to go at each other. But if he reenters the war, the hollowness of his declared victory will have been revealed. Markets will react negatively, and all the costs Trump is currently trying to avoid will likely intensify dramatically.Iran, of course, does not want, nor can it afford, an endless war. But it will likely demand some significant steps in order to accept a ceasefire. This may include a commitment from Trump not to restart the war (though I don’t understand the value of such a commitment). But more importantly, it will likely require sanctions relief and release of its frozen funds abroad.Trump will, of course, bark, but if the outcome is continued war, that will put a lot of pressure on him. Here, the role of some GCC states may prove crucial due to their willingness and ability to find an arrangement that could leave both Trump and Iran feeling that they “won.”Whether Israel will allow that to happen, of course, is a different matter.

[Category: Trump, Iran, Israel, Enewsletter]

— Is the US goading Arab states to join war against Iran?

 

at 3/9/26 12:25pm

On Sunday, U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Mike Waltz told ABC News that Arab Gulf states may soon step up their involvement in the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran. “I expect that you'll see additional diplomatic and possibly military action from them in the coming days and weeks,” Waltz said. Then, on Monday morning, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) slammed Saudi Arabia for staying out of the war even as “Americans are dying and the U.S. is spending billions” of dollars to conduct regime change in Iran. “If you are not willing to use your military now, when are you willing to use it?” Graham asked. “Hopefully this changes soon. If not, consequences will follow.”Ten days into the war with Iran, Arab Gulf states have gone to great lengths to avoid joining the fight. But Iran has complicated their calculations with its decision to target both civilian and military targets in the territory of states like Bahrain, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, and Saudi Arabia. Now, hawks like Waltz and Graham are joining the push to pull these countries into war.At this point, Arab states in the Gulf only see bad options. “The Gulf leaders are just really trying to calculate which is the lesser of two evils — complete chaos and destabilization in Iran or an even more sort of hostile and frightened regime,” said Annelle Sheline of the Quincy Institute, which publishes RS. If it seems like the war is trending in Iran’s favor, then Arab leaders will have little reason to join the war, Sheline said. “Whereas if it looks like it's going more in the U.S. and Israel's favor, they may decide it's better to just get involved and end it sooner, because they do just want it to be over one way or another.”Further complicating their calculations are the mixed signals coming out of Iran in recent days. Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian apologized on Saturday for targeting Gulf states in the initial response to the U.S. and Israeli bombardment. But he walked back the comments Sunday, saying, “If they seek to attack and invade our soil from any country, we are compelled to respond to this aggression.”Now, Iran is planning to refocus its attacks on “targets associated with Israel, while attacks on U.S. bases in the region may decrease to some extent,” according to a senior Iranian official who spoke to Drop Site. But “this reduction may not apply to U.S. bases in two particular countries, where such actions could continue,” the official said, without further elaboration.Regardless of what Gulf leaders decide, “the long-term prospects for the Gulf are not really good either way,” Sheline said.“They'd built this image of luxury and stability and sort of abundance in a part of the world that was all a facade,” she added. “There will always be a question in the back of everyone's mind: how safe are these places really?”

[Category: Iran, Saudi-arabia, Israel, Waltz, Iran-war]

— Why Tehran may have time on its side

 

at 3/9/26 9:07am

A provocative calculus by Anusar Farrouqui (“policytensor”) has been circulating on X and in more exhaustive form on the author’s Substack. It purports to demonstrate a sobering reality: in a high-intensity U.S.-Iran conflict, the United States may be unable to suppress Iranian drone production quickly enough to prevent a strategically consequential period of regional devastation.The argument is framed through a quantitative lens, carrying the seductive appeal of mathematical precision. It arranges variables—such as U.S. sortie rates and degradation efficiency against Iranian repair cycles and rebuild speeds—to suggest a "sustainable firing rate." The implication is that Iran could maintain a persistent strike capability long enough to exhaust American political patience, forcing Washington toward a premature declaration of success or an unfavorable ceasefire.There are, of course, valid reasons to approach this analysis with a healthy grain of salt. The model is structurally narrow, its empirical foundations regarding Iranian industrial recovery are speculative, and its strategic conclusions often leap further than the raw numbers can strictly justify. However, focusing solely on the mathematical flaws misses the broader point. The most significant takeaway is that the analysis may be directionally accurate, even if specific data points are off-target. Its core assessment suggests that Iran may have time on its side. This is a serious proposition—one that deserves closer attention than the dismissive reactions of traditional defense circles would suggest.The primary claim is straightforward: if the United States cannot achieve a "rapid collapse" of the Iranian drone infrastructure, Tehran can sustain a campaign of attrition against global shipping lanes, Gulf energy facilities, regional U.S. bases, and American partners. At some point, the cumulative economic and political costs of Iranian persistence become so visible that the domestic pressure in Washington to exit the conflict outweighs the strategic desire to stay.In its most distilled form, the model reduces the entire contest to a mathematical relationship between two opposing forces: the rate of U.S. suppression and the rate of Iranian reconstitution. If the "regeneration constant"—the speed at which Iran can repair a bombed workshop or move assembly to a new basement—remains high relative to the "attrition constant" imposed by U.S. strikes, a functional portion of the production base survives. This surviving base acts as a floor for continued attacks. From this mechanical premise, the author moves to a political conclusion: continued attacks lead to prolonged disruption, which eventually results in a politically unfavorable outcome for the United States.As a stylized exercise, this is far more useful than it might initially appear to those who prefer traditional "order of battle" analysis. It identifies a critical variable often obscured in grand strategy: the industrial contest. A war of this nature would not be decided solely by tactical successes. It would be a trial of industrial resilience. If Iranian one-way attack drones can be manufactured through a network of relatively simple, dispersed, and easily repairable facilities, then the standard assumption that Western airpower can "solve" the problem in a matter of days is dangerously optimistic. The model performs a service by directing our gaze away from slogans of "overwhelming force" and toward the slower mechanics of suppression, reconstitution, and sustained coercion.The shift in emphasis toward industrial resilience is backed by recent history. The experience of the Russia-Ukraine war has fundamentally altered our understanding of Shahed-type systems. They are not "boutique" weapons requiring delicate, high-tech cleanrooms. Instead, they belong to a new category of "attritable" systems that can be produced in massive quantities and expanded rapidly under wartime duress.Their strategic significance lies precisely in their lack of sophistication. They do not need the performance of a fifth-generation fighter to create a strategic crisis; they only need to be available in sufficient volume to saturate defenses and keep the global energy market in a state of perpetual anxiety. For decades, the U.S. military has thought in terms of "target sets": identify the factory, hit it hard, and watch the enemy’s capability collapse. This logic fails against a modular, dispersed, and industrially "flat" production ecosystem. If Iranian drone production is indeed an adaptive, decentralized network, the suppression problem becomes less like knocking out a building and more like trying to keep a biological organism below a certain threshold of activity. This is a repetitive, costly, and time-consuming endeavor.This is where the analysis pulls its true weight. The real insight is not the exact ratio of drones produced per week, but the warning that even a "successful" military campaign might take longer than Washington’s political timetable allows. We can illustrate this with a medium-case scenario. Iran does not need to sustain a maximal, high-intensity attack indefinitely. It only needs to demonstrate that, for a period measured in months rather than days, it can keep the conflict "active" and "costly."If Tehran can do this, it creates a classic asymmetry: long-term U.S. military superiority does not guarantee short-term, politically usable success. This distinction is vital. Iran cannot defeat the U.S. military in a head-to-head clash, but it can likely keep the conflict inside the "American political pain window." A four-month delay in achieving total suppression might seem like a minor tactical hiccup to a general, but to a politician, four months of rising oil prices, skyrocketing shipping insurance, and daily headlines about "failed" strikes is a catastrophe.The issue is as much about perception as it is about material damage. U.S. administrations must make decisions amid the noise of market volatility, allied franticness, and domestic congressional fallout. In such a pressure cooker, Iran doesn’t need to "win" the war; it only needs to ensure the war feels "unresolved." Time, in this context, is the primary commodity being consumed by both sides. Tehran’s goal is to ensure that Washington experiences the conflict as a corrosive drain before the U.S. military can produce a "stable and publicly legible result." This is a sophisticated strategy for a weaker power, exploiting the massive delta between a battlefield timeline and a political election or budget cycle. Even if the U.S. implements mitigation strategies—like escorting tankers or tapping into the Strategic Petroleum Reserve—these measures have a lag time. Iran’s opportunity exists in the gap between the initial shock and the eventual adaptation.The real value of these calculations is that they force the U.S. to confront a specific category of failure: the possibility that the United States, while remaining the stronger party, may find itself under immense pressure to stop before its superiority has been translated into a real result. The risk is not that we cannot win, but that we may be politically disinclined to wait for the win to mature. Susie Wiles, for one, seems to be on the case.The model might not be the most sophisticated, and it may oversimplify the complexities of military manufacturing, but its central intuition is inescapable. We are entering an era where the industrial simplicity of the adversary’s weapons allows them to compete not on the level of technology, but on the level of persistence. The looming question for U.S. policymakers is not "Can we hit the targets?" but "Can we produce a victory faster than the enemy can produce chaos?" That is a much harder question to answer, and it is the only one that truly matters in the end.

[Category: Iran, Drones, Trump, Attrition, Iran-war]

— Is Ukraine peace toast now that the Middle East is on fire?

 

at 3/8/26 10:05pm

President Donald Trump came into office promising to end wars, but last week, he instead started a new one, when he ordered what the White House is calling a “proactive defensive” operation in response to Iran’s “imminent threat.” The onset of yet another U.S.-initiated conflict in the Middle East deals a double blow to Trump’s ambitions as a peacemaker. It has obviously derailed, perhaps permanently, the on-and-off talks between Tehran and Washington over the future of Iran’s nuclear program. But it is also likely to interfere with another Trump priority: ending the four-year-long war between Russia and Ukraine. The conflict in Iran probably won’t alter the long-term trajectory of Russia’s special military operation. It will, however, prolong the fighting and make it harder to reach a ceasefire. Not only does the Iran war fallout weaken U.S. leverage over both combatants, but its economic and military consequences will give both Kyiv and Moscow incentives to slow-walk diplomatic efforts. A breakthrough is still possible, but these setbacks mean peace in Ukraine is likely a long way off.It would be a stretch to say that U.S.-mediated talks between Russia and Ukraine over the early months of 2026 were successful, but by all accounts, progress has recently been meaningful if slow. For example, U.S. officials reported that the two sides had reached some agreements on post-conflict ceasefire monitoring. Most of the big issues, such as security guarantees for Russia and Ukraine, Ukraine’s military capabilities and alignment, NATO expansion, and territory, have yet to be resolved. But all parties seemed optimistic that with time and consistent meetings, a deal could be reached.Now, about a week into the U.S. war in Iran, the picture looks much murkier. Peace talks seem to have stalled, with little information or interest from the Trump administration about the timing or agenda for the next round.Some obstacles to continued talks are logistical in nature. For example, the war’s rapid escalation makes meetings in places like Abu Dhabi impossible. Bandwidth within the U.S. government is another likely constraint. Special Envoy Steve Witkoff may have time on his hands now that negotiations with Iran are indefinitely suspended, but other key players in the State and Defense Departments will be busy managing the domestic and global ripple effects of President Trump’s Middle East war. They may simply not be available for repeat trips to neutral locations in Europe or elsewhere.Other impediments to the diplomatic process are more pernicious.For starters, the conflict’s effect on global oil prices and supplies will give Russia’s flagging economy new life and could decrease Moscow’s interest in negotiations. Economic pain was never likely to be the reason Russian President Vladimir Putin decided to end the war, but with the conflict in the Middle East scrambling oil exports and triggering sharp increases in prices and demand for Russian oil, the Trump administration has lost any economic leverage that it might have had. At least since last November, the Trump administration’s hope was that slowly squeezing Russia’s oil revenues would eventually force Moscow to accept greater compromise at the negotiating table. To that end, Trump imposed new sanctions on Russia’s oil industry, pressured India to cut its purchases of Russian oil, and stepped up the campaign against Russia’s shadow fleet. Now, with tanker traffic through the Strait of Hormuz effectively paused, the Trump administration has been forced to recalibrate its approach. The U.S. Department of Treasury has already eased pressure on Russian oil exports, announcing on March 5 that it would allow (even encourage) India to resume purchases of Russian oil for 30 days without penalty. At the same time, U.S. interest in chasing Russia’s shadow fleet has diminished. Not only are many U.S. naval and air assets tied up in the Middle East, but with Trump eyeing gas prices as a key piece of his “affordability” agenda domestically, Washington needs Russian oil in the market to help keep costs down. The economic windfall Russia receives from the Iran war’s disruption of trade may endure only over the short-term. But even limited relief will give Moscow the income necessary to put off painful structural changes to the Russian economy for some time. At the very least, higher oil revenues will give Putin more options when it comes to financing his war effort. U.S. military operations in the Middle East could also affect the military balance inside Ukraine in ways that make negotiations less appealing to Moscow. Rapid expenditure of U.S. air defense and munitions against Iran will drain stockpiles and reduce what is available to support Ukraine’s self-defense. Ukraine can produce much of its own military equipment now and is entirely self-sufficient in the production of the drones needed to freeze Russian offensives. It still relies on the United States, however, for air defense interceptors—the same weapons that are needed today in large quantities by U.S. forces and Gulf partners. If U.S. air defense shipments to Ukraine dwindle, it will not necessarily change things on the battlefield right away, but it will leave Ukraine’s civilian and industrial infrastructure vulnerable, damaging its defense materiel production and its civilian population over time. Whether the military, industrial, or civilian effects of the loss of U.S. support will be large enough to push Ukraine toward bigger concessions is uncertain, but Putin and his advisers may be willing to wait and see, hoping that this will be the case. At the same time, Ukraine may see new reasons to drag out negotiations as well. Specifically, the success of the most hawkish elements of Trump’s coalition in persuading him to attack Iran may give Ukraine reasons to hope that a successful Middle East war will further empower the U.S. factions most in favor of taking a hardline on Russia as well. This might open the door to harsher sanctions on Russia and more military aid to Ukraine in the future. Such an outcome seems unlikely given Trump’s consistent opposition to these moves, but with little to lose, Ukraine’s leaders may take the chance.The most serious hurdle facing U.S. efforts to end the war in Ukraine, however, affects both combatants equally: Washington’s loss of credibility as a mediator. Twice now, in June 2025 and last week, the United States has attacked Iran during negotiations. Some participants of the most recent round of diplomacy have suggested that the talks were a sham, meant as a distraction while the United States and Israel prepared for war. The Gaza ceasefire that the Trump administration negotiated has similarly proved to be partial at best. Hostages were released, but Israeli airstrikes did not stop.At this point, it is not clear that either Kyiv or Moscow trusts that Washington can deliver on a deal or make good on its security promises to each side. For its part, Russia may fear that any guarantees from the United States on Ukraine’s neutrality or NATO expansion will be as empty as those verbal promises offered to Iran. Ukraine, meanwhile, will rightly worry that it will make painful concessions but still be left with no binding security commitments from the United States and no way to prevent the return of war on Russia’s terms.This lack of trust in the United States as mediator is fatal to any U.S.-led diplomatic effort and will be hard to overcome even once the war in Iran ends. With no confidence that talks will address their underlying security concerns or lead to a durable armistice, both Russia and Ukraine are likely to choose continued war, gambling on battlefield gains as the better path to security.If Trump is serious about ending the war in Ukraine, his administration should start thinking now about what will be required to rebuild Washington’s credibility as a negotiator and diplomatic broker. Options might include adding new faces to the core of the U.S. negotiating team or beginning serious discussions domestically and internationally about how post-war security assurances can be codified and made legally binding alongside any ceasefire.Trump has admitted surprise at how complicated efforts to end the war in Ukraine have been. Unfortunately, it is about to get even harder.

[Category: Enewsletter, Kushner, Witkoff, Russia, Ukraine, Trump, Iran]

— Today's 'Arrogance of Power' meets the ghost of J. William Fulbright

 

at 3/8/26 10:05pm

If one listens closely, faint echoes from 60 years past might be discerned in the aftermath of the United States’ latest aggression against the Islamic Republic of Iran. The voice of Senator J. William Fulbright, condemning a Congress for abrogating its power to decide when and how the nation went to war, rings clear given we face a nearly mirror situation today.It seems worthwhile then to revisit that moment as debate now rages over the merits, morality, and legality of President Trump’s second regime-change war in less than two months. In 1966, Fulbright convened five days of televised “educational” hearings for better comprehending the American war in Vietnam. The Arkansas Democrat, then chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, followed with a series of lectures that spring at Johns Hopkins University, widening his scope and leveling a sharp critique against U.S. foreign policy.The denouement came shortly after with the publication of The Arrogance of Power, a meditation on the excesses of an increasingly imperial presidency that merits our attention today.Two years after the 1964 Gulf of Tonkin Resolution authorized President Lyndon B. Johnson to take “all necessary measures” to repel armed attacks against U.S. forces and “prevent further aggression” in Southeast Asia, Fulbright offered a stark warning about U.S. interventionism. The senator worried that a “lack of self-assurance” tended to “breed an exaggerated sense of power and mission.” Confusing “great power with unlimited power” was dangerous not only to the nation, but to the entire globe.Given the subjective nature of waging an ideological (and global) campaign against communism, legitimate justifications for war mattered. So too was maintaining American prestige and credibility abroad as Cold War policymakers consistently fretted about the Soviet Union’s “design for world domination.”Fulbright, however, castigated senior Pentagon officials for conflating pride with achievement. Deploying large numbers of warships and aircraft to Vietnam, for instance, might seem impressive on its face, but were these displays of military muscle truly achieving a lasting peace in war-torn Asia? Unsurprisingly, the senator admonished Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara for treating the American “war machine as an end in itself.”Fulbright went further, denouncing the consequences of a military-industrial complex that had embedded itself into foreign policy decision-making. Rejecting more “constructive pursuits,” Americans had fallen prey to policy elites stirring up a “war fever in the minds of our people.” Worse, in the context of Vietnam, he forewarned that the longer war endured “without prospect of victory or negotiated peace … hopes will give rise to fears, and tolerance and freedom of discussion will give way to a false and strident patriotism.”Americans’ self-righteous approach to their place in the world accentuated such worries. Fulbright thought it important to make “moral distinctions” between wars, contending that the then commonly used Munich analogy — where appeasing any aggressor would lead to global conflict — did not apply in all instances. Not every belligerent was a would-be Hitler.To the senator, however, the U.S. policy elite had engaged in a form of fearmongering, leading to armed interventionism unfettered by moral restraint. American exceptionalism left little room for self-reflection when it came to decisions of war. In the process, both civilian and military leaders failed to distinguish much difference, if any, between “virtue” and “omnipotence.” Notably, the late historian Marilyn Young would reinforce these critiques as she condemned Americans’ penchant for believing their nation’s unique power gave them carte blanche to employ military force, unchecked, across the globe. To Young, the United States wasn’t morally or culturally exceptional, “only exceptionally powerful.”This eroding moral authority to curb interventionism concerned Fulbright. The former Rhodes scholar, according to biographer Randall B. Woods, pledged “not a determination to export American culture and institutions but rather a commitment to the principle of national self-determination.” As a southern Democrat, Fulbright proved far less circumspect when it came to supporting the civil rights movement at home, maintaining “a perfect anti-integration voting record in Congress from his first election to the House in 1942 until 1970.” Still, as he argued in 1964, Americans were unsettlingly “predisposed to regard any conflict as a clash between good and evil rather than as simply a clash between conflicting interests.”Acknowledging these conflicting interests, the Arkansan leaned into his most trenchant critique of contemporary foreign policy debate. Or lack thereof. Fulbright lamented the “intolerance of dissent” to interventionism and believed, in some instances, “dissent [to be] the higher patriotism.” Not until 1968 and the disastrous Tet offensive in Vietnam would more Americans come around to this way of thinking. In short, Fulbright maintained that dissent was a duty. As was Congress’s obligation to shoulder its constitutional responsibilities regarding war. While the senator had voted for the Tonkin Resolution, by 1966 he was chastising his legislative colleagues for granting the president “such sweeping authority with so little deliberation.”In the following decades, Fulbright’s convictions would prove prescient. In 1973, as just one example, historian Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr. enunciated how executive privilege had led to an “imperial presidency,” a challenge obliging “democratic control over American foreign policy.”Of course, an echo from the past doesn’t necessarily mean that history repeats itself. Context matters. In 1966, a nationwide poll found that 47% of Americans described themselves as “hawks” who wanted to “step up the fighting in Vietnam.” Today, 54% of polled voters “disapprove of Trump’s handling of Iran.” Perhaps “war fevers” can be broken. Another related distinction centers on what we might call “moral exceptionalism.” In 1966, many Americans still believed in the value of containing communism as a moral imperative, in LBJ’s words, to fulfill their “responsibility for the defense of freedom.” Aside from Mr. Trump’s charge that Iran’s leadership is “evil,” there’s no real sense that most citizens today believe their nation is attacking Iran in pursuit of any greater ideals. It seems hard to contest the claim that in our current moment President Trump has exploited the power of the presidency with arrogant abandonment. Indeed, he appears to relish that power. From deploying federal paramilitary forces against American citizens to repudiating Supreme Court decisions, this administration sees itself as free from traditional democratic constraints. Sixty years ago, J. William Fulbright warned his fellow citizens of the dangers in supporting such excesses. Arrogance tended to “confuse power with wisdom” and could lead to “self-appointed missions to police the world … [and] defeat all tyrannies.” The time has come to heed the senator’s call for a bit more humility and a lot less hubris.

[Category: William-fulbright, Iran-war, Military-spending, Vietnam-war]

— Is Ukraine peace toast, now that the Middle East is on fire?

 

at 3/8/26 10:05pm

President Donald Trump came into office promising to end wars, but last week, he instead started a new one, when he ordered what the White House is calling a “proactive defensive” operation in response to Iran’s “imminent threat.” The onset of yet another U.S.-initiated conflict in the Middle East deals a double blow to Trump’s ambitions as a peacemaker. It has obviously derailed, perhaps permanently, the on-and-off talks between Tehran and Washington over the future of Iran’s nuclear program. But it is also likely to interfere with another Trump priority: ending the four-year-long war between Russia and Ukraine. The conflict in Iran probably won’t alter the long-term trajectory of Russia’s special military operation. It will, however, prolong the fighting and make it harder to reach a ceasefire. Not only does the Iran war fallout weaken U.S. leverage over both combatants, but its economic and military consequences will give both Kyiv and Moscow incentives to slow-walk diplomatic efforts. A breakthrough is still possible, but these setbacks mean peace in Ukraine is likely a long way off.It would be a stretch to say that U.S.-mediated talks between Russia and Ukraine over the early months of 2026 were successful, but by all accounts, progress has recently been meaningful if slow. For example, U.S. officials reported that the two sides had reached some agreements on post-conflict ceasefire monitoring. Most of the big issues, such as security guarantees for Russia and Ukraine, Ukraine’s military capabilities and alignment, NATO expansion, and territory, have yet to be resolved. But all parties seemed optimistic that with time and consistent meetings, a deal could be reached.Now, about a week into the U.S. war in Iran, the picture looks much murkier. Peace talks seem to have stalled, with little information or interest from the Trump administration about the timing or agenda for the next round.Some obstacles to continued talks are logistical in nature. For example, the war’s rapid escalation makes meetings in places like Abu Dhabi impossible. Bandwidth within the U.S. government is another likely constraint. Special Envoy Steve Witkoff may have time on his hands now that negotiations with Iran are indefinitely suspended, but other key players in the State and Defense Departments will be busy managing the domestic and global ripple effects of President Trump’s Middle East war. They may simply not be available for repeat trips to neutral locations in Europe or elsewhere.Other impediments to the diplomatic process are more pernicious.For starters, the conflict’s effect on global oil prices and supplies will give Russia’s flagging economy new life and could decrease Moscow’s interest in negotiations. Economic pain was never likely to be the reason Russian President Vladimir Putin decided to end the war, but with the conflict in the Middle East scrambling oil exports and triggering sharp increases in prices and demand for Russian oil, the Trump administration has lost any economic leverage that it might have had. At least since last November, the Trump administration’s hope was that slowly squeezing Russia’s oil revenues would eventually force Moscow to accept greater compromise at the negotiating table. To that end, Trump imposed new sanctions on Russia’s oil industry, pressured India to cut its purchases of Russian oil, and stepped up the campaign against Russia’s shadow fleet. Now, with tanker traffic through the Strait of Hormuz effectively paused, the Trump administration has been forced to recalibrate its approach. The U.S. Department of Treasury has already eased pressure on Russian oil exports, announcing on March 5 that it would allow (even encourage) India to resume purchases of Russian oil for 30 days without penalty. At the same time, U.S. interest in chasing Russia’s shadow fleet has diminished. Not only are many U.S. naval and air assets tied up in the Middle East, but with Trump eyeing gas prices as a key piece of his “affordability” agenda domestically, Washington needs Russian oil in the market to help keep costs down. The economic windfall Russia receives from the Iran war’s disruption of trade may endure only over the short-term. But even limited relief will give Moscow the income necessary to put off painful structural changes to the Russian economy for some time. At the very least, higher oil revenues will give Putin more options when it comes to financing his war effort. U.S. military operations in the Middle East could also affect the military balance inside Ukraine in ways that make negotiations less appealing to Moscow. Rapid expenditure of U.S. air defense and munitions against Iran will drain stockpiles and reduce what is available to support Ukraine’s self-defense. Ukraine can produce much of its own military equipment now and is entirely self-sufficient in the production of the drones needed to freeze Russian offensives. It still relies on the United States, however, for air defense interceptors—the same weapons that are needed today in large quantities by U.S. forces and Gulf partners. If U.S. air defense shipments to Ukraine dwindle, it will not necessarily change things on the battlefield right away, but it will leave Ukraine’s civilian and industrial infrastructure vulnerable, damaging its defense materiel production and its civilian population over time. Whether the military, industrial, or civilian effects of the loss of U.S. support will be large enough to push Ukraine toward bigger concessions is uncertain, but Putin and his advisers may be willing to wait and see, hoping that this will be the case. At the same time, Ukraine may see new reasons to drag out negotiations as well. Specifically, the success of the most hawkish elements of Trump’s coalition in persuading him to attack Iran may give Ukraine reasons to hope that a successful Middle East war will further empower the U.S. factions most in favor of taking a hardline on Russia as well. This might open the door to harsher sanctions on Russia and more military aid to Ukraine in the future. Such an outcome seems unlikely given Trump’s consistent opposition to these moves, but with little to lose, Ukraine’s leaders may take the chance.The most serious hurdle facing U.S. efforts to end the war in Ukraine, however, affects both combatants equally: Washington’s loss of credibility as a mediator. Twice now, in June 2025 and last week, the United States has attacked Iran during negotiations. Some participants of the most recent round of diplomacy have suggested that the talks were a sham, meant as a distraction while the United States and Israel prepared for war. The Gaza ceasefire that the Trump administration negotiated has similarly proved to be partial at best. Hostages were released, but Israeli airstrikes did not stop.At this point, it is not clear that either Kyiv or Moscow trusts that Washington can deliver on a deal or make good on its security promises to each side. For its part, Russia may fear that any guarantees from the United States on Ukraine’s neutrality or NATO expansion will be as empty as those verbal promises offered to Iran. Ukraine, meanwhile, will rightly worry that it will make painful concessions but still be left with no binding security commitments from the United States and no way to prevent the return of war on Russia’s terms.This lack of trust in the United States as mediator is fatal to any U.S.-led diplomatic effort and will be hard to overcome even once the war in Iran ends. With no confidence that talks will address their underlying security concerns or lead to a durable armistice, both Russia and Ukraine are likely to choose continued war, gambling on battlefield gains as the better path to security.If Trump is serious about ending the war in Ukraine, his administration should start thinking now about what will be required to rebuild Washington’s credibility as a negotiator and diplomatic broker. Options might include adding new faces to the core of the U.S. negotiating team or beginning serious discussions domestically and internationally about how post-war security assurances can be codified and made legally binding alongside any ceasefire.Trump has admitted surprise at how complicated efforts to end the war in Ukraine have been. Unfortunately, it is about to get even harder.

[Category: Enewsletter, Kushner, Witkoff, Russia, Ukraine, Trump, Iran]

As of 3/12/26 8:08pm. Last new 3/12/26 8:27am.