ایران

Although the U.S. military approach to the region has delivered many operational successes, the Iran war has exposed its serious shortcomings and created new challenges.

Whether the U.S. truce with Iran breaks down or winds up rewarding the regime, the previously restrained Houthis may take it as a signal to resume their own aggression.

Flipping the kill switch is a potent exercise of authoritarian control, but expediting countermeasures like D2C can help prevent regimes from using this tactic in the future.

Although disarming the group is still crucial, negotiators need to realize that they will never really break Hezbollah’s hold on Lebanon so long as it retains Iranian support and key political allies and government posts in Beirut.

Power parity informs the view from Ankara, which has a strong interest in preventing Iran from going nuclear or alternatively falling into chaos—even as the war’s outcome will be largely outside Turkish control.

The war has shown that Iran’s one-way attack drones are highly adaptable tools of coercion and military effect, able to continue imposing costs across the Gulf region and beyond even after heavy losses.

Cairo’s economic mismanagement has increased the country’s reliance on Gulf largesse, but that spigot may soon run dry for diplomatic and financial reasons.

Neither the United States nor Israel has offered the concrete incentives needed to spur high-level defections from the security, political, and clerical establishments—a crucial precondition for regime change.

Although the threat may be somewhat diminished by the damage inflicted on Tehran’s security and intelligence agencies, the regime will reconstitute those capabilities over time and may calculate that the benefits of attacking highly vulnerable targets inside the United States outweigh the risks.