Policy Analysis

Washington’s message to Syrian officials should be simple: foreign energy capital is unlikely to flow quickly as long as the outside world sees their government as an opaque regime with unclear authority, factional infighting, uncertain legal protections, and unresolved military tensions with powerful neighbors.

Some may read Xi’s approach as a strategy to make America expend its strength far from Chinese shores, but Beijing increasingly looks more like a regional power than a global superpower.

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.

Tehran’s drone ecosystem has been hit hard, but not at its roots—with help from Russia and China, the regime could restore many of the program’s capabilities within months while steadily working toward more dangerous next-generation models.

The years that President Sharaa’s circle spent managing Idlib province now look less like improvised wartime governance and more like a deliberate long-term project to build the cadres of a future state.

For decades, Tehran has repeatedly exploited Western diplomatic urgency to extract concessions, buy time, and refill its coffers; the answer is to turn time itself against the increasingly vulnerable regime.

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.

In focusing on cartels and gangs in the Western Hemisphere as well as left-wing extremists, the administration's “radical shift” elides certain threats from the Middle East along with the political right, while appearing to write off diplomacy and capacity building as key tools.

The first gathering in a decade by the Palestinian Authority’s dominant party will cast light on a post-Abbas future and governance in Gaza, among other issues.

An agreement to open the Strait of Hormuz in exchange for lifting the U.S. blockade could make it easier to ultimately address more complex issues such as Iran’s uranium stockpile, missile program, and support for proxies.

The first presidential visit to China in nearly a decade will cover trade, technology, and a range of other bilateral topics, including frank conversations on Middle East subjects such as Beijing’s support to Iran and the wider global repercussions of the Strait of Hormuz crisis.

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.

If left unchecked, the reemerging rift between the two Gulf powerhouses could fragment the region into competing poles, further roil markets, and destabilize fragile states in the area.

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.

The Trump administration’s inconsistent China policy is undermining efforts to parlay the conflict into a geopolitical win.

From releasing its long-delayed CT strategy document to filling crucial professional vacancies, the administration needs to publicly clarify that countering terrorism—Iranian and otherwise—remains a top national security priority.

The low-sophistication, high-volume approach used in wartime attacks claimed by the front group HAYI has exposed critical vulnerabilities in Western efforts to harden soft targets, curb online recruitment, and protect Jewish communities amid spillover from the Middle East.

Tehran has upended traditional maritime arrangements in the Strait of Hormuz and remains in the driver’s seat despite U.S. pressure, so authorities cannot expect to reverse this shift quickly even if the war ends soon.

Tehran’s ongoing failures in critical areas such as fiscal responsibility, energy, and infrastructure repair are doing even more damage to the country’s economic position than the war itself.