India has splurged billions on metro trains. But where are the commuters?

Nikhil Inamdar

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On a weekday evening last month, Mumbai's southbound Aqua Line metro train nearly emptied out a couple of stops before the final one. On de-boarding, the last station bore the look of a desolate Soviet-era structure rather than a bustling train terminal in a city where crowds typically jostle for space.

Aqua Line is the city's new fully underground metro train connecting the old business district of Cuffe Parade to newer commercial hubs like BKC and the airport terminals in the northern suburbs. It opened last year. The 33.5km (20.8-mile) corridor was expected to ease congestion in India's financial capital and projected to carry nearly 1.5 million passengers every day. The actual numbers are about a tenth of that, according to various estimates.

China’s silent war: How Beijing armed, funded, and enabled Iran

Lisa Daftari

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China is a central actor in the war with Iran, though it remains largely unnamed in Washington’s public debate. Without Beijing’s money, oil purchases, sanctions‑busting networks, and satellite support, the Iranian regime would not be able to fight.

The story begins with energy and finance. In March 2021, Chinese premier Xi Jinping and Iran’s leadership signed a 25‑year “Comprehensive Strategic Partnership,” widely reported as a $400 billion framework for Chinese investment in Iran’s oil, gas, banking, and infrastructure in exchange for long‑term access to discounted Iranian crude.

Dragon Slayer: America’s Pivotal Role in the Indo-Pacific

Travis A. Karnes

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In the vast expanse of the Indo-Pacific, America stands as the indispensable defender—guardian of freedom, guarantor of open sea lanes, and bulwark against authoritarian aggression. Red China and its erratic ally North Korea pose existential threats to regional stability, sovereignty, and the rules-based order that has underpinned prosperity for decades. These adversaries pursue multi-domain dominance through conventional, nuclear, hypersonic, cyber, and space warfare. Yet America possesses the will, the allies, and the strategic vision to prevail. Drawing on insights from visionary authors and military leaders, this article outlines a strategy of strong national economic deterrent alongside a Reagan-style commitment to Taiwan. Peace through strength, not appeasement, is the path forward.

The Red Dragon's Multifaceted Menace

The People's Republic of China (PRC) has transformed its People's Liberation Army (PLA) into a peer competitor capable of challenging U.S. primacy across every domain. Beijing's core operational concept—Multi-Domain Precision Warfare (MDPW)—integrates command, control, communications, computers, intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (C4ISR) systems powered by artificial intelligence and big data. This enables instantaneous aggregation of forces to strike weaknesses in U.S. and allied operations, from the First Island Chain to the open ocean.

This Was the First War Against AI

Hamid Dahouei

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On March 1, Iranian drones struck two Amazon Web Services data centers in the United Arab Emirates, and a third was damaged in Bahrain. Banking apps went dark. Payment platforms froze. For weeks, cloud services across the Gulf remained partially offline.

The technology industry has long spoken of “the cloud” as though it were weightless, distributed, resilient, borderless. The Iran war corrected that metaphor with fire. The cloud has an address. That address can be hit by a drone that costs less than a used car.

Gulf poised to move closer to China after the war

Burak Elmali

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The Iran war has delivered a profound and systemic shock to the Gulf, fundamentally challenging two assumptions that have underpinned regional stability for the better part of a century. For decades, the Gulf’s economic model thrived on a perception of stability, reinforced by push factors like tax exemptions, flexible regulatory regimes and a dynamic, diversified start-up ecosystem.

Simultaneously, the region’s security architecture rested on a traditional oil-for-security arrangement, maintained by a dense network of American military bases and hardware. Yet, both pillars have been materially weakened by nearly two months of war, during which missile and drone strikes have targeted all Gulf states. This reality has ushered in a painful phase of strategic reassessment of Washington’s reliability as a security guarantor, forcing regional capitals to look toward the East with newfound urgency.

Why Has America Lost So Many MQ-9 Reaper Drones Against Iran?

Harrison Kass

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Operation Epic Fury has come with extraordinarily heavy UAV losses. The MQ-9 Reaper, once the pride of America’s drone fleet, has been especially affected; at least 24 drones have been shot down in the Middle East since the onset of the conflict. At a price tag of $30 million each, the cost of the lost Reaper drones to the US Air Force is roughly $720 million in total—higher than the cost of the E-3 Sentry destroyed on the ground, the high-end MQ-4C Triton drone lost in early April, or the multiple aircraft destroyed during the rescue of “Dude 44,” the pilot and weapons systems officer of the F-15E Strike Eagle shot down inside Iran.

Perhaps even more important than the fiscal cost of losing the drones is the attrition rate, which exposes the limits of legacy drones operating in hostile airspace—even in an environment in which the United States has largely achieved air superiority.

Middle East Oil Pricing Is Cracking Under Pressure

Alex Kimani 

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In a “perilous position,” the Platts Dubai benchmark, which used to price around 18 million barrels per day, nearly a fifth of global supply, is now severely strained by the halt in exports through the Strait of Hormuz. According to Reuters, with most cargoes having been unable to move safely through the chokepoint, the system is grappling with a fundamental question of how to price oil that cannot be loaded. The situation remains largely unchanged as of today, despite Washington’s announcement that the Strait is officially open for business again. The Platts Dubai benchmark depends on crude produced in the UAE, Oman, and Qatar, much of it loaded within the Strait. But since the outbreak of conflict, tanker traffic has slowed dramatically, leaving the benchmark disconnected from physical reality. Platts has responded by cutting deliverable grades from five to two--Murban and Oman--reducing supply in the pricing basket by roughly 40%.

Market participants have told Reuters the benchmark is “effectively broken,” with some stepping back from trading Dubai-linked cargoes or derivatives altogether. Others are shifting activity toward exchange-based mechanisms, particularly Murban Futures on IFAD, where pricing continues to function even as physical-linked benchmarks come under strain.

Tehran will never cede control of Strait of Hormuz, senior Iranian politician tells BBC

Lyse Doucet

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As worry mounts about the closure of this strategic waterway causing growing economic shocks worldwide, it's becoming clear this is not a short-term crisis to be resolved in a day. War has handed Tehran what it sees as a new weapon - Azizi described this highly strategic strait Iran has managed to weaponise during this conflict as "one of our assets to face the enemy".

He's a key player in a parliament dominated by hardliners. Azizi also reflects the thinking among some of the senior decision-makers emerging in the new order born of this war, which has become increasingly militarised and also dominated by hardliners, most of all the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), after a series of high-level assassinations in Israeli strikes.

Can Saudi Arabia Keep Hedging?

Maria Fantappie

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Over the course of six weeks of war between Iran, Israel, and the United States, Saudi Arabia’s restraint has perplexed some onlookers. After all, the war almost immediately spilled into the Persian Gulf. Iran’s retaliatory attacks on infrastructure in Gulf countries—and then Tehran’s closure and Washington’s subsequent blockade of the Strait of Hormuz—ended a security paradigm that had dominated for decades and facilitated the astonishing rise of the Gulf’s economies. Although Saudi Arabia allowed U.S. forces to use its bases, it refrained from directly responding to Iran’s strikes. It issued terse

For Iran, Flexing Control Over Waterway Is New Deterrent

Mark Mazzetti, Adam Entous and Julian E. Barnes

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The United States and Israel launched their war against Iran on the argument that if Iran one day got a nuclear weapon, it would have the ultimate deterrent against future attacks.

It turns out that Iran already has a deterrent: its own geography.

Iran’s decision to flex its control over shipping through the Strait of Hormuz, the strategic choke point through which 20 percent of the world’s oil supply flows, has brought global economic pain in the form of higher prices for gasoline, fertilizer and other staples. It has upended war planning in the United States and Israel, where officials have had to devise military options to wrest the strait from Iranian control.

Japan Moves to Institutionalize Drone Warfare as Manpower Shortfalls Deepen

Takahashi Kosuke

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Japan is moving to institutionalize unmanned warfare capabilities within its Ground Self-Defense Force (GSDF), signaling a broader transformation in how it prepares for future conflict. The move underscores Tokyo’s urgency to adapt to drone-centric warfare amid intensifying regional tensions and a shrinking workforce.

On April 13, the Ministry of Defense held a ceremony in Tokyo to mark the establishment of two specialized offices tasked with advancing the use of unmanned systems. The GSDF said it established the “Unmanned Defense Capability Promotion Office” and the “Unmanned Systems Office” on April 8 within its Ground Staff Office in Ichigaya.

Although small in size – just 13 personnel in total – the two offices carry an outsized mandate. The promotion office, staffed by seven members, is responsible for developing operational concepts, conducting research and development, and training personnel. The systems office, with six members, oversees procurement, logistics, and maintenance of unmanned platforms.

Building A Drone Like Producing Nutella

Anushka Saxena

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The US-Israel war on Iran, starting February 28, 2026, and spilling over both in terms of geographic scope and intended outcomes, has spotlighted, among other crucial aspects, Tehran’s attritional capabilities against a much-too superior adversary. Its use of uncrewed aerial systems, or ‘drones’, in this regard, has emerged as key in both, explaining Tehran’s strategy, and epitomising the revolution in the global means and methods of warfighting in an era of network-centric, beyond-visual-range, and asymmetric warfare. There are three main conclusions I draw from Iran’s strategy of using its Shaheds:

The Shahed is representative of the accessible proliferation of precision strike capability. Iran has been able to engineer a low-cost UAV and produce it en masse. This UAV has been able to perform nearly as well as much more expensive systems. The Shahed challenges traditional cost-benefit calculations in air defence and enables sustained attritional campaigns against more powerful adversaries.

Japan, Australia and a New Regional Order

George Friedman

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We have written a great deal on the evolution of U.S.-China relations, and we expect them to evolve further after the upcoming summit between Chinese President Xi Jinping and U.S. President Donald Trump. We have also written on the evolution of relations between Japan and Australia, driven in part by the U.S. and China. Last week, a significant event enhanced Japanese-Australian ties: The government in Canberra signed a deal to order 11 frigates from Japan. More, Australia announced recently the largest-ever increase in its defense budget, while Japan has dramatically increased its own defense budget.

Both of these developments are predicated on U.S. policies to reduce involvement in the Eastern Hemisphere. They are the same policies on which Washington’s efforts toward accommodation with China are based. Now that the U.S. has attacked Iran, it’s hard to see America’s presence in the Eastern Hemisphere declining. But, assuming it’s part of the process of disengagement, the attack is meant to eliminate the future need to be concerned with Iran’s nuclear capability. The basic principle of limiting U.S. entanglement in the Eastern Hemisphere adheres to the administration’s stated priorities in its National Security Strategy.

Ukrainian Military Offers Lessons Learned to NATO (Part Two)

Taras Kuzio

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Ukraine’s most important battlefield lessons have much to teach the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). Ukraine’s experience has shown how cheap drones can destroy high-value assets, highlighting urgent gaps in NATO preparedness. Battlefield experience in Ukraine shows that innovation, speed, and adaptability matter more than expensive legacy systems in modern warfare. Its forces update software in weeks, use decentralized procurement, and integrate civilians and industry into defense.

Ukraine has become a leader in modern warfare—producing thousands of drones daily, pioneering sea-drone combat, and achieving high air-defense interception rates. Its tactical creativity underscores that future wars require whole-of-society mobilization, flexible doctrines, and scalable, low-cost technologies.

Hungary’s Landmark Election

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Parliamentary elections in Hungary on April 12 marked an end to the 16-year rule of Viktor Orban and his Fidesz party. Peter Magyar and the Tisza party claimed a landslide victory, winning 137 of 199 seats. The record-high turnout reflected a strong demand for change after a decade and a half of Fidesz political domination.

With a two-thirds majority in parliament, the new leadership could theoretically dismantle many of the changes introduced by Orban. It won’t be easy, however, as he made many institutional, not just political, reforms to embed loyal networks across the state apparatus. Hungary is therefore likely embarking on a long transition, in which incremental political adjustments will outstrip deeper, long-term institutional shifts. Economically, there’s a sense of optimism that improved relations with the European Union could finally unlock billions in frozen funds and stabilize markets. But here, too, the reality is more complicated

Moscow Finds No Escape From Predicament in Partnership With PRC

Pavel K. Baev

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Russia’s usually close relationship with the People’s Republic of China (PRC) appears to be experiencing a distinct lull. Russia’s continued dependence on the PRC implies a reconfiguration of their partnership. The conflict in the Persian Gulf has highlighted this development, as Russia’s attempts to be involved in the mediation process have been futile, while the PRC’s position appears to have been seriously considered by all parties.

The value of Russia’s partnership for the PRC is diminishing, while one of the few possibilities for Russia to regain strategic initiative in its war against Ukraine lies in expanding its reliance on drone components and communication technologies from the PRC.

Canada in Europe? Geography, Law, and the Prospects of EU Membership

Matteo Vecchi

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The Union’s territorial configuration already extends far beyond the boundaries that commonly structure our political imagination and our mental maps: even a cursory look at Netherlands and French overseas territories shows how the EU’s reach already leans into the Pacific and other extra-European regions. In this scenario, the Union lives today in a “beyond the map” dimension that destabilizes any purely continental account of what counts as “Europe.” What it is important to consider, first and foremost, is the relationship between geography and law. 

The definition of territories, the impact law has upon them, and, conversely, the constraints that territorial facts impose on legal choices are issues that arise independently of – and in many respects prior to – any geopolitical analysis. When the Union determines who can become a member state, it does not simply draw lines on a map; it makes an interpretive choice about what should be treated, today, as “Europe.”

Ukraine Has Finally Given Up on Trump

Phillips Payson O’Brien

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For more than a year after Donald Trump returned to the White House, Ukraine held out hope—at least publicly—of winning him over. Trump, who revealed his affection for Russia’s Vladimir Putin again and again, largely halted American military aid to Kyiv. He insulted Ukrainian leaders regularly, personally berating President Volodymyr Zelensky in the Oval Office in February 2025. Nevertheless, Ukraine diligently took part in Trump’s peace negotiations, which were tilted to reward Putin’s invasion and turned out to be fruitless. Zelensky agreed to mineral deals that supposedly promised to enrich Americans. He even lavishly praised Trump himself. Despite Ukrainian leaders’ growing doubts, they calculated that speaking sweetly of the American president would do no harm and just might gain his favor.

But now Kyiv appears to have given up on the United States. It is aggressively seeking new diplomatic and military partners—for instance, by sharing its hard-won expertise in drone warfare with Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates and forging arms-production agreements with Germany. Ukraine has sent drones to attack oil-export facilities near St. Petersburg, deep inside enemy territory, in defiance of what Zelensky called “signals” from unspecified “partners” to avoid striking Russian energy infrastructure.

Al Gore and the Politicization of Science with Roger Pielke Jr.

J. Peder Zane & James Varney

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On this week’s episode of the RealClearInvestigations Podcast, RCI Editor J. Peder Zane and RCI Senior Reporter James Varney speak with Roger Pielke Jr., a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, about his article detailing how Al Gore’s seminal 2006 book and film on climate change, “An Inconvenient Truth,” helped politicize science.

In our round-up of the week’s best investigative reporting, Zane and Varney discuss Paul Sperry’s article for RCI on newly declassified documents showing how a top government official fast-tracked a politically compromised whistleblower complaint in 2019 that ultimately triggered the first impeachment of President Trump. They also discuss the sexual accusation that forced Rep. Eric Swalwell to resign from Congress – and why this evidently widely-known questions about his conduct had not been reported until now.

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Oliver Whang

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When Deep Blue, IBM’s chess-playing supercomputer, beat Garry Kasparov in 1997, computers were still just computers. Deep Blue weighed more than a ton, had 32 central processing units and could evaluate 200 million board positions in a second, but everyone knew what it was doing: The computer determined the best next move by simulating, and assigning values to, board positions up to 12 moves ahead (amounting to billions of positions). This ability was programmed into Deep Blue directly by its makers, just as the first modern computer, the Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer, or ENIAC, was programmed in 1945 to add numbers. These were “white box” systems. There was no mystery around what was going on inside them, even though they were, in a way, intelligent: What else would you call something that was good at chess?

Fifteen years later, in 2012, a research group from the University of Toronto developed a program called AlexNet (named after one of its creators, Alex Krizhevsky) that identified objects in images far more accurately than any previous program — a capability demonstrated when it handily won an image-classifying competition. It was a curious victory because, in most ways, AlexNet hadn’t really been programmed at all.

How to Adapt in an Era of Algorithm Warfare

Anne Neuberger

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In the past, only major powers with billion-dollar budgets could strike a target with precision from a distance. Today, commercial technology has democratized precision strikes. A soldier can hunker down in a trench with a simple controller and, streaming video through a pair of goggles, steer a commercial drone with a $500 payload to disable or destroy a $5 million tank.

Such technology has reshaped modern warfare in recent years, making it easier and cheaper to attack and more difficult and expensive to defend. Soldiers now drop grenades from store-bought drones, commercial satellites sustain military communications, and radios popular with hobbyists can be used for drone detection and even signal jamming.

Keep Humans in the Loop

Nicholas Grossman

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In the U.S.-Israel war on Iran, airstrikes hit an elementary school in Iran, killing at least 175, most of them children. According to the Pentagon’s preliminary report, the United States is responsible. It’s far from the first time U.S. forces mistakenly hit a purely civilian target and killed innocents. But unlike erroneous civilian killings in previous wars, this one may have involved artificial intelligence—which makes it much harder to work out what went wrong.

In one of the worst incidents of the war on terror, a drone strike hit a wedding procession in Yemen in 2013, killing at least 12. In another, a strike during the withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021 killed 10 civilians, most of them children. Subsequent analyses concluded that the drone operators believed they were shooting at military targets.

Launching AI into Orbit

Timothy Murphy

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The Strait of Hormuz reminds us that a single chokepoint can shape the global economy overnight. What most policymakers miss is that space has its own version of Hormuz—and we are rapidly losing control of it. Multiple sectors of the global economy are dependent on access to the Strait of Hormuz, but nations are becoming ever more reliant upon access to space to drive their economies. Similar to the Strait, the key corridor in space is Low Earth Orbit (LEO). All space systems are dependent upon access to it (either directly or indirectly), and the security of LEO and freedom of maneuver in space will increasingly rely upon Artificial Intelligence (AI). Success will come from AI’s capabilities in advancing commercial space activity, responding to current and future threats in space, and ensuring AI dominance through American control of the AI supply chain.

AI is fundamental to maintaining U.S. advantages in commercial space activity. Many people still do not realize the extent of U.S. military involvement in all international space activity - both military and commercial. During my time standing up current operations at U.S. Space Command, we saw the volume and speed of activity in space explode beyond what human operators could effectively track in real time. That gap is only widening. The Space Force operates a Space Surveillance Network that monitors the space environment and tracks all artificial objects in Earth’s orbit. U.S. and foreign companies use this data to launch satellites, avoid debris, and ensure their systems do not conflict with other objects in space.

How the Pentagon Can Manage the Risks of AI Warfare

Paul Scharre

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The U.S. military struck more than 13,000 targets in the war on Iran, and used artificial intelligence to help plan operations. AI tools were used to synthesize intelligence, help prioritize targets, and build strike packages. The battle space is changing, but the age of AI warfare is already here. In addition to Iran, AI has been used for real-world operations in Ukraine, Gaza, and Venezuela. And next up is agentic warfare, in which AI systems are used as agents to take action. Over the next few years, these AI agents will be adopted by militaries to improve workflows in everything from logistics and maintenance to offensive cyberoperations.

Given all these capabilities, AI has the potential to dramatically change the cognitive speed and scale of warfare. Yet military AI comes with profound risks. The dangers go beyond the use of autonomous weapons, which was one of the sticking points in the recent dispute between the Pentagon and leading AI company Anthropic. General-purpose AI systems such as large language models are prone to novel failure modes, vulnerable to hacking and manipulation, and have even been demonstrated to lie and scheme against their own users.

Pakistan's Doctrine Of Military Led Diplomacy

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On the morning of November 5, 1971, President Richard Nixon and his National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger met in the Oval Office of the White House to debrief after Nixon’s meeting the previous day with Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi. Gandhi had come to Washington to press Nixon on the humanitarian catastrophe unfolding in East Pakistan. Seven months after Operation Searchlight had begun, approximately ten million Bengali refugees had crossed into India. Gandhi wanted the United States to pressure Yahya Khan to stop the killing.

Kissinger was not sentimental about Gandhi either. “The Indians are bastards anyway,” he replied. “They are starting a war there.” Then, reflecting on what he felt he had achieved by receiving Gandhi cordially while conceding nothing: “While she was a bitch, we got what we wanted too. She will not be able to go home and say that the United States didn’t give her a warm reception and therefore in despair she’s got to go to war.”

Opinion – The Need for a More Assertive Diplomatic Stance from China on Iran

Sergio Villarroel

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In such a stalemate, the position of non-belligerent powers carries significant weight. Iran's closure of the Strait of Hormuz has transformed a local conflict into one with global consequences. Despite the relative caution shown by the major powers, the message from non-belligerent countries has been clear: these nations do not wish to be drawn into a conflict they did not start and in which there appear to be no clear gains, not even for the initiators. In this respect, China's stance is quite revealing.

At first glance, China's relatively passive attitude toward the conflict may seem somewhat perplexing. China and Iran have maintained close political and economic ties for decades. Despite the sanctions imposed, China accounts for approximately 80% of Iran's oil exports, and the Chinese yuan has become indispensable for the survival of the Iranian regime. Iran, for its part, is a major energy supplier for China and a strategically vital point within its Belt and Road Initiative.

Iran Resisted a Powerful Attacker. Taiwan Can, Too.

Daniel Byman and Seth G. Jones

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As the United States’ and Israel’s war with Iran grinds to an uncertain conclusion, observers have been quick to label it a win for China. The war has damaged American prestige around the world and angered countries and their populations whose economies face inflation and disrupted supply chains. But a closer look at Iran’s methods in resisting the United States reveals uncomfortable lessons for China as it weighs whether to follow through on its threats to take Taiwan.

Iran prevented the far more powerful United States from winning a war that, on paper, it should have walked away with. Iran weathered decapitation strikes and continued to counterattack, despite heavy bombing and inferior weapons. Iran’s ability to close the Strait of Hormuz is particularly instructive. Its navy had only dilapidated surface ships, a small number of diesel-powered submarines and numerous small, fast-attack speedboats. Iran’s air force had no advanced attack aircraft and no true bombers.

Europe Still Needs China Washington, Not Beijing, Is the Bigger Threat

Da Wei

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In 1969, with the Cultural Revolution raging at home and tensions rising abroad, Chinese leader Mao Zedong instructed four elder military leaders to study the relationships between China and the world’s two superpowers. Using Mao’s theoretical framework of “contradictions,” which states that the struggle between opposing forces is what drives history forward, they posited that the contradiction between the United States and the Soviet Union was greater than that between China and the Soviet Union, which in turn was greater than that between China and the United States.

New Five-Year Plan Could Boost PLA Combat Power

K. Tristan Tang

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The Outline of its 15th Five-Year Plan contains new development priorities for the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) through 2030, as well as a high degree of continuity with directives from previous plans. This iteration adds a section on military governance, in addition to the recurring focus on combat capability and military–civil fusion, and emphasizes military theory, military governance, and “spin-on” mechanisms for facilitating the integration of civilian technologies into the PLA.

The repeated appearance of policies that have existed for years highlights the limited effectiveness of past reforms. The Outline’s release has been accompanied by a number of specific regulations and implementation mechanisms to further obligate compliance with policy directives.

A New Era of U.S.-China Interaction: From Competing to Racing

Evan S. Medeiros

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This essay examines the U.S.-China trade war in 2025 as a possible turning point in the U.S.-China competition, arguing that the trade war created new power dynamics around a supply chain race that centers on leveraging chokepoints in critical minerals and advanced technologies.

Note: The author would like to thank the following colleagues for their superior research assistance: Jessica Shao, Davis Di, and Henry Wessel. This is the final essay in a series of four essays in 2025–26 on trade policy made possible by the generous support of the Hinrich Foundation.

Türkiye and Azerbaijan Contend With Potential Kurdish Role in Iran Conflict

Fuad Shahbazov

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Ankara has signaled from the outset of the Iran conflict that it would consider military intervention in northern Iraq’s Kurdistan region should a Kurdish-led insurgency materialize. Türkiye views potential Kurdish militancy in Iran as a direct national security threat, strongly opposes any armed Kurdish role, and has signaled it could consider intervention to prevent Kurdish cross-border insurgency and regional destabilization.

Azerbaijan fears Kurdish involvement in the Iran conflict could destabilize Iran’s northwest, inflaming ethnic tensions and endangering Azerbaijani minorities in the region along with regional connectivity drives. Ankara and Baku coordinate diplomatically and militarily to contain spillover risks.

Why the Israel-Lebanon Ceasefire Won’t Hold

Alexander Langlois

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Washington hosted the first direct talks between Israel and Lebanon since 1993 on April 14, marking the latest effort to expand the Abraham Accords and bring about a ceasefire. Hailed as a “historic opportunity,” the meeting comes amid major regional upheaval across the Middle East, with Lebanon among the main arenas. Yet the effort to normalize relations between the two eastern Mediterranean countries within the Abraham Accords framework, even if successful, is highly unlikely to resolve the conflict or the core issues plaguing the civilians—particularly Lebanese—caught in the crossfire of Israel’s ongoing conflict with Hezbollah.

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio opened the meeting with a brief statement, describing the talks as a “process” with “complexities” that he hoped would produce an outcome in which “the people of Lebanon can have the kind of future they deserve, and so that the people of Israel can live without fear of being struck by rocket attacks from a terrorist proxy of Iran.” Recognition of the difficulties plaguing the long-running issue is certainly welcome, but the overall statement ultimately indicates why the overall approach misses the mark.

The Emirates on the Tightrope

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On Sunday, March 22, the United Arab Emirates’ foreign minister, Abdullah bin Zayed al Nahyan, maternal brother of UAE President Mohamed bin Zayed al Nahyan, put on a brave face. The evening prior, President Donald Trump declared that if the Strait of Hormuz was not opened within forty-eight hours, he would order strikes on Iranian power plants. The announcement prompted Iran’s military command to specify that any such attack would bring destruction to the energy, IT, and water facilities servicing the American military within the Gulf. 

Because the power stations and desalination plants on the target list were public utilities, serving resident populations as well as the range of forces directed by US CENTCOM, Iran’s prospective retaliation imperiled practically everyone living in the UAE. Paying little heed to the fact that his own allies were driving the escalation—and, indeed, had started the war itself—the UAE’s foreign minister responded to Tehran’s threat by proclaiming, “We will never be blackmailed by terrorists.”

Three Scenarios for the Gulf States After the Iran War

Andrew Leber and Sam Worby

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The Middle East Program in Washington combines in-depth regional knowledge with incisive comparative analysis to provide deeply informed recommendations. With expertise in the Gulf, North Africa, Iran, and Israel/Palestine, we examine crosscutting themes of political, economic, and social change in both English and Arabic.

Amid a tenuous U.S.-Iran ceasefire, Arab Gulf monarchies are aiming to project strength. “We prevailed through an epic national defense . . . in the face of treacherous aggression,” Emirati diplomatic adviser Anwar Gargash wrote on X. Saudi-owned newspaper Asharq Al-Awsat emphasized the kingdom’s “intensive political consultations” with regional countries as leading to the present calm.

The Road to 2040: A Summary of Our Forecast

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In this glimpse into the next 19 years, we forecast several significant changes and disruptions in the global structure, which will be summarized here. However, one fact that will not change is the United States’ position as the sole global power. Over the next 19 years, it will adopt a new strategy to maintain power at the lowest possible cost. This strategy will resemble isolationism, in that the U.S. will not be drawn into regional military conflicts in any significant capacity. The U.S. will support its allies with supplies, training and some air power, however, it will contain regional problems in Europe, the Middle East and Asia, rather than directly and forcibly engaging. This will prove to be a prudent strategy and help the U.S. sustain its global dominance.

In Europe, the European Union as an institution will collapse or redefine itself as a more modest trade zone encompassing a smaller part of the continent. The current free trade structure is unsustainable because its members, particularly Germany, have grown overly dependent on exports. This dependency makes these economies extremely vulnerable to fluctuations in demand outside of their own borders. Germany is the most vulnerable country and will experience economic decline due to inevitable fluctuations in the export market.