Indian Strategic Studies

9 May 2026

Could India Revisit The 1959 Chinese Proposal To Settle The Border Dispute? – Analysis

P. K. Balachandran

Gen. M.M.Naravane, who served as India’s army chief from 2019 to 2022, has suggested that India and China consider the 1959 Chinese proposal to barter the disputed territories of Aksai Chin and Arunachal Pradesh to end the 75-year-long boundary dispute between the two countries.

Because of the boundary dispute, India and China have not been able to have normal relations. Hence the need to find ways to bring the curtains down on the dispute, the General argues in his recent video interview to the New Delhi-based website The Print.

But India had rejected the Chinese proposal to barter Aksai Chin for Arunachal Pradesh in 1960 for good reasons argues historian Srinath Raghavan, Senior Fellow at the Centre for Policy Research, in his paper entitled, “A Missed Opportunity? The Nehru-Zhou Enlai Summit of 1960,” published by the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library in 2015.

Analysis: ISKP’s Exploitation of the Af-Pak Border War

Uma Miskinyar

Much of the current discussion treats the Iran–Israel–U.S war and the Pakistan–Afghanistan conflict as separate crises, but along the Iran–Afghanistan–Pakistan corridor they are unfolding in the same strategic space. This article analyzes how that overlap is reshaping militant dynamics in Balochistan, focusing on the growing confrontation between ISKP and Baloch nationalist groups. It also assesses the implications for U.S. counterterrorism policy, particularly in tracking cross-border networks, digital recruitment, and declining intelligence visibility.

On the early morning of February 27, 2026, Pakistan’s defense minister, Khawaja Muhammad Asif, declared what he termed “open war” between Pakistan and the Taliban authorities in Afghanistan. The announcement formalized a week of cross-border strikes and escalating retaliation along the Durand Line, a boundary whose instability has long been sustained by overlapping insurgencies and unresolved sovereignty disputes. This escalation differs from previous cycles of Af-Pak tension; it is unfolding simultaneously with intensifying conflict involving Iran, producing a regional security environment defined not by a single crisis, but by concurrent shocks.

Strategic Implications of the Iran War

Paul J. Saunders, and Nikolas K. Gvosdev

Over two months into the US-Israeli war with Iran, the conflict shows no signs of imminent resolution, with both sides convinced that time is on their side. The closure of the Strait of Hormuz has driven up the prices of oil and natural gas, but neither Washington nor Tehran appears ready to back down or make concessions, raising the possibility of a prolonged stalemate of “no war, no peace.” At the same time, the war’s immediate effects on the energy markets and US military posture will have repercussions for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and China’s plans for Taiwan, as well as President Donald Trump’s summit in Beijing later this month.

How long can each side endure this state of affairs, and what would it take to force a settlement and reopen the Strait of Hormuz? How does the war intersect with the ongoing conflict in Ukraine? And what lessons is China drawing as it watches another great power struggle to bring a middle power to heel?

Oil Tanker Hijacking Stokes Fears of New Disruption in Gulf Region

Pranav Baskar and Matthew Mpoke Bigg

Pirates from Somalia hijacked an oil tanker off the coast of Yemen on Saturday and have diverted it to Somalia’s waters, the authorities in Somalia said Sunday, the third such incident in recent weeks. The hijacking is an embarrassment for the government in the Somali capital, Mogadishu, and suggests a resurgence of piracy at a time when the Red Sea, which borders western Yemen, has become an even more critical route for global shipping, given the effective closure of the Strait of Hormuz by the war in Iran.

Yemen’s Coast Guard said that unidentified people had boarded the ship, the Togo-flagged Eureka, on Saturday and directed it through the Yemeni part of the Gulf of Aden toward Somalia’s coast. Efforts to monitor and recover the vessel were underway, it added.

Avoiding the Knife Fight: Defeating Iran’s Strait Strategy

David Levy

Iran has long prepared to close the Strait of Hormuz in the event of a major conflict with the United States, hoping to trigger an energy shock, draw US naval forces into a confined battlespace, and impose enough cost to weaken Washington’s will. The US has been fully cognizant of Tehran’s intent for decades and planned accordingly. In the recent conflict, rather than accept a direct fight inside the Strait on Iranian terms, Washington and Jerusalem widened the campaign, degraded Iran’s command structure, air defenses, naval forces, missile infrastructure, and supporting systems, and only then turned more directly to the Strait itself. Even so, reopening the waterway has proved difficult.

The IRGC’s naval capacity, though significantly diminished, is still sufficient to threaten shipping through mines, small craft, and shore-based systems. As a result, the United States has shifted to a broader indirect approach that combines limited military operations in and around the Strait with strikes and threats of further strikes on vital targets, economic coercion, blockade measures, and a diplomatic alternative. Thus far, that approach appears to be working. Iran’s Strait strategy has not forced the United States into the kind of fight Tehran had spent decades anticipating.

The U.S. Military Was Losing Its Edge. After Iran, Everyone Knows It.

Tierney L. Cross

On paper, the war in Iran should not be much of a contest. The United States spends around $1 trillion a year on its military, more than 100 times as much as Iran. That money buys a vastly larger Air Force and Navy, as well as advanced weapons technologies that Iranian generals can only dream about.

In the war’s early days, the mismatch played out as one might expect. American forces destroyed much of the Iranian military. Now, however, the contest looks less one-sided. Iran has taken control of the Strait of Hormuz, and its missiles and drones still threaten America’s allies in the region. While President Trump seems eager for a negotiated truce, Iran’s leaders do not. Somehow, the weaker nation is in the stronger negotiating position.

IRGC Announces New Maritime Control Zone In Strait Of Hormuz

The Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) on Monday announced a new maritime control zone in the Strait of Hormuz, reports Iranian media.

In an official statement, the IRGC said it has declared a new maritime control area in the strategic Strait of Hormuz, reports the Tasnim News Agency, which is closely aligned with the IRGC.

According to the statement, the new zone of “smart control” by the Armed Forces of the Islamic Republic of Iran in the Strait of Hormuz is defined as follows: “In the south: the line between Mount Mobarak in Iran and south of Fujairah in the United Arab Emirates; In the west: the line between the end of Qeshm Island in Iran and Umm Al Quwain in the United Arab Emirates.”

The Real Center of Gravity in Tehran

Stephen D. Cook

On April 22nd in these pages, I warned that ships and planes are tools of denial, not governance. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and the theocratic regime it protects can absorb the loss of tankers, missiles, and oil revenue so long as they retain their most valuable resource: armed loyalists on the ground who control the Iranian people. That piece drew on twenty-five years in the U.S. Army, including combat tours as a Green Beret where I watched the same pattern play out in Iraq and Afghanistan. The speed with which the situation in the Gulf continues to evolve compels a follow-up.

We are still fighting the wrong war.

The United States continues to treat Iran as a conventional nation-state whose center of gravity can be found in the familiar pillars of national power: military, economic, information, and political. We impose a naval blockade on the Strait of Hormuz believing the leadership values its economy. We prepare new precision strikes believing the regime values identified targets—missile sites, air defenses, nuclear facilities—the same way a Western government would. Both assumptions are flawed.

Tapping into America’s Distaste for Forever Wars: The Spread of Iranian Narratives on Bluesky

Jose M. Macias III and Nico Vacca

The United States and Israel have made battlefield gains in their conflict against Iran, but the United States is struggling to counter Iranian propaganda. Operational successes have removed Iran’s authoritarian supreme leader, dismantled its defense leadership apparatus, and degraded its missile capabilities. However, the opportunity cost of military success for the United States is the loss of ground in the information war for the hearts and minds of American audiences and Western audiences more broadly. While Iran is losing on the battlefield, it is competing effectively in the information space through an aggressive, multiplatform disinformation campaign.

Analysis by the Futures Lab of more than 9,000 Bluesky Social posts finds that messages seemingly designed to exacerbate public divisions, which compose 23 percent of posts in the dataset, are the highest performing, averaging 150 reposts, 470 likes, and 28 replies per post. These same posts have been viewed by an estimated 293,666 users and are statistically significantly associated with a higher sharing volume, with an estimated 41 percent increase compared to other posts.

Have any lessons been learned from US failures in the Iran war?

Stephen Bryen

While the US military has had many achievements in the Iran conflict, it’s been far from cost free. Iran conducted extensive retaliatory strikes targeting high-value US bases. According to international reports and satellite data, the damage to aircraft, radar, and communication systems throughout February and March was more significant than initially reported.

In all, 16 US military sites in eight countries across the Middle East were hit, and some of them sustained enough damage to be unusable.

Did the US learn any lessons as much from the failures as from the successes?

The US clearly made some major blunders, despite far superior air defenses and sophisticated command and control systems. Most spectacularly, the US lost two AWACS aircraft, one totally destroyed and the other possibly unrepairable, and three F-15 fighter jets, downed by “friendly” fire. The US also “missed” an Iranian jet that did substantial damage to Camp Buehring in Kuwait.

Trump’s Project Freedom Isn’t Going to Open the Strait of Hormuz

Max Boot

President Donald Trump announced Sunday that the United States would launch an operation to help tankers and cargo ships trapped in the Persian Gulf transit the waterway. Two U.S. destroyers entered the Persian Gulf on Monday, and two U.S.-flagged commercial ships exited it. Iran hit back by attacking commercial ships and targeting the United Arab Emirates with missiles and drones for the first time since the ceasefire began on April 8. Iranian forces also fired on U.S. warships, and U.S. forces responded by destroying six Iranian small boats.

Trying to open the Strait of Hormuz by force could reignite the wider conflict and expose U.S. warships to Iranian attacks in a narrow waterway with little time to react. All of this could quickly render “Project Freedom”—with its vague pledges of military help but no announcement of actual convoy operations—another improvised half-measure in a conflict that has lurched from misstep to misstep. As long as Iran remains capable of attacking commercial vessels, few shipping lines will risk running the gauntlet.

The End of America’s Soft Power

Stephen M. Walt

One of the more striking features of the Trump administration’s approach to foreign policy—not the chosen ends, but its preferred means—is its absolute confidence in America’s hard power and its near-total disdain for what my late colleague Joseph Nye called “soft power.” Nye defined the latter as “the power of attraction,” as a nation’s ability to get others to do what it wanted because it possessed qualities that made others want to emulate it, associate with it, and follow its lead. States with a lot of hard power could compel others through force and intimidation or by offering aid or protection; states with an abundance of soft power enjoyed greater influence because others wanted to be like them, agreed with the principles they stood for, or viewed them as fashionable, successful, and even “hip.”

A good realist like me is hardly going to denigrate the importance of hard power; on the contrary, it’s hard to have lots of soft power without substantial hard power to back it up. But you can have plenty of hard power and little or no soft power, as Vladimir Putin’s Russia has shown.

The Vanguard State: How Ukraine is Redefining the Character of War

Casey Christie

Ukraine is no longer fighting simply as the overmatched side adapting under pressure; it is now shaping the character of modern warfare. Through the ruthless and effective integration of robotic systems across land, air, and sea, it has transitioned from a recipient of aid to a global laboratory for 21st-century combat.

What began as improvised drone use in the early phases of the war has matured into something far more deliberate and dangerous. Ukraine has not simply adopted robotic warfare - it has mastered its doctrine. We are now seeing credible reports of Ukrainian units using unmanned ground systems to probe, fix, and even clear Russian positions before a single soldier steps forward. These are not theoretical trials; these are frontline realities where machines absorb the first contact, drawing fire and shaping the battlefield to reduce the cost in Ukrainian lives.

Trump’s Tragedy of Errors

Joseph E. Stiglitz

Regardless of how long US President Donald Trump’s ill-advised war and today’s stagflationary conditions last, the long-run consequences will be profound. Fancying himself an absolute monarch, Trump has broken something he cannot fix and unleashed forces he cannot control.

NEW YORK—It is true, as Alexander Pope once said, that to err is human. But while everyone is fallible, some humans are more prone to error than others. That is a justification for democracy—for subjecting decisions that affect large numbers of people to deliberative processes that include checks and balances. The history of authoritarian and absolutist political rule is rife with figures whose mistakes proved calamitous not just for themselves but for the societies they ruled.

Pentagon tech chief says Anthropic is still blacklisted, but Mythos is a separate issue

Ashley Capoot

Department of Defense CTO Emil Michael on Friday said Anthropic is still a supply chain risk, but that Mythos, the company’s artificial intelligence model with advanced cyber capabilities, is a “separate national security moment.”

“I think the Mythos issue that’s being dealt with government-wide, not just at Department War, is a separate national security moment where we have to make sure that our networks are hardened up, because that model has capabilities that are particular to finding cyber vulnerabilities and patching them,” Michael told CNBC’s “Squawk Box” on Friday.

Zelenskyy has no cards to play against Russia or the West

Leonid Ragozin

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s artistic skills have earned him the reputation of a public relations genius acknowledged by both friends and foes. United States President Donald Trump, who has openly attacked him in public, famously called the Ukrainian leader “the greatest salesman on Earth”. A much more sympathetic voice, New York Times columnist David French, has recently portrayed Zelenskyy as “the new leader of free world”.

But Zelenskyy’s PR genius can do very little when it comes to changing the dynamics of the battlefield in the Russia-Ukraine war. In recent weeks, his administration and allies have tried hard to create the impression that the war might be approaching a turning point. But realities on the ground tell a different story.

U.S. War in Iran Leaves Ukraine’s Air Defense in Limbo

Sam Skove

Ukraine and its partners in Europe are holding their breath and waiting to learn just how the war in Iran may affect U.S. military aid—and especially the delivery of the powerful Patriot air defense missiles that Kyiv has relied on to blunt the devastating impact of Russian ballistic missiles.

“Everything will depend on the situation around Iran,” said one European diplomat, who—like others quoted for this story—was not authorized to speak publicly.

Redefining Energy Security

Richard Haass and Carolyn Kissane

In the aftermath of COVID-19, firms shifted from a “just in time” model to a “just in case” approach that sought to strengthen resilience. With oil and gas infrastructure becoming a primary military target, energy systems must now undergo a similar transition.

NEW YORK—It is too soon to know when or how the war with Iran will end, or what its geopolitical or economic consequences will be. But one thing is already certain: What is meant by energy security must be rethought.

This Energy Crisis Is Undoing the Last Ones

Giuliana Chamedes

The standard story of the post-World War II international economic order is not wrong, but it is incomplete. Traditional accounts tell us that the alliance between Western Europe and the United States was consolidated immediately after World War II, as a result of the Bretton Woods order, which pegged global currencies to the U.S. dollar and stabilized global economic governance via the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank. They explain that the partnership was further strengthened by the conclusion of the Marshall Plan at the start of the Cold War and, in 1957, with the founding of the European Economic Community.

In reality, it was the three major oil shocks of the postwar period—in 1956, 1973, and 1978-79—that helped confirm the alliance between Western Europe and the United States, laying the foundation for today’s political and economic order. They also explain its fragility.

How the US Army is readying for a cyberspace fight against enemy AI hackers

Chris Panella

The communications and data networks essential to the US Army's operations across the Asia-Pacific region were probed by a new kind of adversary: an enemy AI trying to confuse and ensnare soldiers.

That's what Army leaders, guided by top US AI companies, saw in a new series of tabletop exercises as they prepare for a new era of AI-augmented cyber operations, and how to effectively defend themselves. It's the latest example of how the Army is embracing artificial intelligence at all levels of warfighting — and the latest acknowledgement that the challenges of future warfare may be too fast for humans to tackle alone.

Drone warfare in Ukraine: Martian drones, swarms and mesh technology

Olena Kryzhanivska

Ukraine has hinted at potential breakthroughs in AI-driven defence technologies—but what might those actually look like? This week, I spoke with a leading Ukrainian developer of collaborative autonomy software, Swarmer, and reviewed several interviews to assess how close we are to seeing it on the battlefield. There is clear progress—but no one is willing to predict when this shift will fully materialize.

On Saturday, I’ll release the second edition of my 2-page weekly brief on drones in Ukraine and Russia. I plan to continue publishing it even during weeks of reduced availability, when I’m unable to release the full Drone Warfare in Ukraine edition.

Ukraine Bets on AI

In a Hurriyet Daily News piece titled “Ukraine bets on battlefield AI amid weapons autonomy race,” two vital points are made clear about Ukraine’s use of AI.

First, AI is becoming a survival tool, not an enhancement. Ukraine is using it to compress decision cycles, sustain operations under heavy electronic warfare, and offset Russia’s advantages in mass. Autonomy at the edge keeps systems functioning when humans are jammed or delayed.

Second, the shift is about scale and integration rather than singular breakthroughs. A large domestic tech base is producing drones, interceptors, and unmanned ground systems that are already routine in logistics and combat.

The AI Battlespace: Artificial Intelligence, Civil Stability, and the Weaponization of Trust

Captain Scott Pleasants

Artificial intelligence is rapidly transforming the operational environment across military, cyber, and civil domains. While AI technologies provide significant advantages in data analysis, automation, and decision support, they also introduce new vulnerabilities that adversaries can exploit. This article examines how artificial intelligence may be weaponized to manipulate trusted information systems, accelerate cyber operations, and destabilize civilian infrastructure. Drawing on recent cyber incidents—including attacks on critical infrastructure, supply chains, and national energy systems—the article highlights how AI-enabled threats could affect governance, public trust, and stability operations.

Particular attention is given to the implications for Civil Affairs forces, which operate at the intersection of governance, infrastructure, and civilian populations. The article also explores how disaster response and humanitarian environments may be exploited through AI-driven disinformation and cyber disruption. As artificial intelligence becomes increasingly embedded in operational systems, preparing a workforce capable of critically evaluating and securely employing AI technologies will become an essential component of national security.

New Report Shows How AI Gives Cybersecurity Competitive Advantage

Artificial intelligence is rapidly reshaping cybersecurity and is the biggest driver of change in the field, according to a new World Economic Forum report. Some 94% of cyber leaders identify AI as a defining force and 77% of organizations already use it in their cyber operations.

The AI and Cyber: Empowering Defenders report, developed in collaboration with KPMG, highlights measurable gains in cost reduction, response speed and resilience. While threat actors increasingly weaponize AI to automate deception, generate malware and scale attacks at machine speed, the report indicates that organizations deploying AI strategically are achieving significant advantages. Organizations that extensively leverage AI in security reduce average breach costs by up to $1.9 million and shorten breach lifecycles by approximately 80 days.

The U.S. Wants to Break China’s Drone Dominance. Here’s Where It Will Struggle.

Josh Chin

With drones revolutionizing the battlefield in Ukraine, Iran and beyond, the U.S. is striving to dominate this latest evolution in military technology the way it has with previous wartime innovations. There is just one problem: China got there first.

Teardowns of drones recovered in Ukraine hint at the extent of China’s stranglehold on production. A recent dissection of a Russian first-person-view, or FPV, quadcopter by the Bulava unit of Ukraine’s Presidential Brigade found numerous parts manufactured at least partially in China: batteries, motors and an unmarked central “brain” chip that Bulava traced to a Chinese supplier. Like Bulava’s own similar drones, the Russian version couldn’t have been built without China’s supply chain, according to the unit’s chief drone specialist.

April 2026 Issue

Yannick Veilleux-Lepage, Joe Decie, Devorah Margolin, Alexandre Rodde, David Mcilhatton, John Cuddihy, Shannen Benton

In recent years, increasing attention has been paid to how violent non-state actors are using artificial intelligence (AI) to achieve their goals and how AI is being utilized for counterterrorism. Far less attention has been paid, however, to how AI itself—as a “whole-of-society transformative technology”—could change the landscape of political violence in much more fundamental ways. In our cover article this month, Yannick Veilleux-Lepage argues that “AI is reordering labor markets, institutional authority, and the relational worlds in which people live, generating preconditions for political violence independently of whether violent actors adopt the technology themselves.” Using a framework he developed centered on three grievance domains—economic order, state and institutional power, and social and personal fabric—Veilleux-Lepage “considers how violence arising from these grievances may materialize, including through targets and actor types that lie largely outside current counterterrorism monitoring.”

8 May 2026

Why the Next India-Pakistan War Will Escalate

Elizabeth Threlkeld

In his 2026 State of the Union address, U.S. President Donald Trump repeated a familiar refrain celebrating his role in ending the May 2025 conflict between India and Pakistan—the deal he has said he is most proud of. He declared that but for U.S. efforts to pull both sides back from the brink, the conflict “would have been a nuclear war.”

Trump’s claims rankled New Delhi, which has long insisted that its disputes with Pakistan are purely bilateral and don’t require the mediation or intervention of outside powers. But the president had a point. The May 2025 crisis, in which the neighbors exchanged intense cross-border fire for four days, was the most serious fighting between two nuclear powers in decades.

Watching Beijing Watching Moscow: Takeaways for a Taiwan Conflict

Sunny Cheung

This week, Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine enters its fourth year. What began as a European war has transformed into a live-fire laboratory for how major-power conflict unfolds across domains. The war’s protraction is instructive. The persistence of kinetic operations and operational pressures are demonstrating that contemporary interstate conflict can endure alongside tactical and institutional adaptation—and that such adaptation can enable its endurance.

Beijing has been closely studying Russia’s evolving approach to the conflict, conducted under sanction, surveillance, and constant drone threat. Across the People’s Republic of China (PRC), researchers and analysts are extracting lessons on how to fight, endure, and prevail in a conflict against a U.S.-led coalition characterized by deep intelligence, technological, and financial leverage.

China and America Are Courting Nuclear Catastrophe

Tong Zhao

Over the past decade, China has been steadily reshaping the global nuclear order. According to U.S. government assessments, Beijing has almost tripled its stockpile of nuclear warheads since 2019. It has rapidly increased its nuclear capabilities on land, in the air, and at sea. It has significantly expanded its infrastructure for the research, development, and assembly of nuclear warheads. And Beijing shows no intention of slowing down. In mid-March, the country announced that it would “strengthen and enlarge” its strategic deterrence capabilities, reaffirming its commitment to qualitatively and quantitatively enhance its nuclear arsenal.

American officials have certainly taken notice. They worry that the bipolar nuclear world—where almost all the globe’s warheads are controlled by either Moscow or Washington—is being replaced by a tripolar one. In response, they are trying to strengthen Washington’s own nuclear stockpile while attempting to negotiate with Beijing. In February, for example, the United States chose not to renew the New START treaty, a nuclear arms reduction agreement between Russia and the United States, because it did not want to be bound by restrictions that excluded China. But despite increasing U.S. pressure, China has consistently refused to conduct nuclear arms control negotiations. It seems to have no interest in constraining its capabilities.

Xi’s Forever Purge The Real Goal Behind China’s “Self-Revolution”

Neil Thomas

Since becoming China’s leader in 2012, Xi Jinping has carried out stunning assaults on both the Chinese Communist Party and its People’s Liberation Army, purging millions of cadres and even senior leaders who were once thought untouchable. Rooting out corruption was an early focus of Xi’s tenure, but he has intensified the effort in recent years: in 2025, the CCP’s “discipline inspection” authorities filed more than one million cases, an almost sevenfold increase from the year Xi took office. In January, Xi abruptly removed top generals Zhang Youxia and Liu Zhenli, which hollowed out a Central Military Commission already depleted by years of investigations. And in early April, Ma Xingrui, the former party secretary of Xinjiang Province, was placed under investigation. It was the first time since the aftermath of the tumultuous Mao Zedong era that three Politburo members had fallen during the same five-year term.

The standard explanation for these purges is that Xi, China’s most powerful ruler in generations, seeks to sideline rivals and consolidate power. There is much truth in that. The takedown of crooked senior leaders tied to his predecessors Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao helped Xi win public support and centralize decision-making, eventually setting him up to rule for life.

Why Trump Might Come to Regret the Iran War

Aaron David Miller and Daniel C. Kurtzer

The U.S.-Israeli war against Iran is now entering its third month. The average length of an interstate conflict in the past 200 years is three to four months, though many wars last far longer. This one shows little sign of abating.

But the war may be entering a new phase where prospects for a transformational change on the battlefield or at the negotiating table are receding. We need to adjust our frame of reference accordingly. Instead of looking for a determinative ending, a final resolution, or a negotiated agreement, this war may end up as just another round in an ongoing, half-century confrontation between the United States and Iran. Five politically inconvenient realities now define where we are.

Iran is Not a Monolith: The Case for Exploiting the Country’s Internal Fractures

Ed Husain

Since 1979, Islamist clerics have imposed on Iran a revolutionary Shiite creed of “Guardianship of the Jurist” (Wilayat al Faqih) that seeks to use clerical power to form an “axis of resistance” against Arabs, Sunni Muslims, Americans, and Israelis. This ruling theology has since isolated the country from its neighbors and the world.

It has also led many, like Henry Kissinger, to ask whether Iran is a country or a cause. It is clearly a cause, but the United States is striking a country and failing to tackle its ideology and identity. Therefore, the current conflict’s bombs and blockades have not provided a long-term answer that is much needed. By attacking its Arab neighbors with almost ten thousand drones and missiles in recent weeks, Iran has crossed a red line. The old order no longer holds.

HAYI: Iranian Proxy Targeting Jewish And Israeli Sites in Europe

Jacob Zenn

Harakat Ashab al-Yamin al-Islamia (HAYI) is a newly emerged militant group, strongly suspected of being an Iranian proxy operating under the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) Since March, HAYI has claimed over 15 non-lethal attacks across Europe against Jewish and Israeli targets, including synagogues and schools, aiming to instill fear without attracting a terrorist designation.

These coordinated attacks coincide with recent U.S.–Israeli military operations against Iran, raising concerns that HAYI could escalate its tactics to utilize lethal force against broader U.S. and Israeli interests.

Mythos, Not the Iran War, Is the Most Significant Geopolitical Warning of Our Time

Frederick Kempe

With the world fixated on Iran, the Strait of Hormuz, and Donald Trump’s peripatetic presidency, it’s worth a reminder that the geopolitics of artificial intelligence (AI) will almost certainly have far more lasting consequences than any of that.

We are living through a transformation of similar magnitude to the Second Industrial Revolution of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. That said, the AI Revolution is moving far faster with far less time for global leaders to adapt, so the perils are greater—notwithstanding AI’s considerable promise.

The Industrial Revolution rewired history. It shifted power from agriculture to industry, from landed aristocracies to barons of manufacturing, and from empires to nation-states that could produce, mobilize, and innovate at scale. Out of that upheaval rose capitalism and communism, mass politics and mass warfare, and eventually the cataclysms of two world wars.

The Combustion Mandate

On the morning of February 28, 2026, the official story began: the United States and Israel launched Operation Epic Fury against Iran, assassinating Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, targeting nuclear sit…

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