Here’s this week’s edition of articles I thought worth reading and sharing. Don’t hesitate to recommend your own reads; I may include some as well.

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• David J. Lynch, “China, Iran weaponized the global economy to beat the U.S. at its own game,” The Washington Post, April 12, 2026. Lynch argues that Washington no longer has a monopoly on economic coercion: China used its grip on rare earths, and Iran used the Strait of Hormuz to show that interdependence can now be turned against the United States. The post-Cold War assumption of benign integration has broken down. Instead, globalization has created a world of mutual choke points, not simply American leverage. The article grounds that shift in concrete supply-chain effects, tracing how disruptions in energy and shipping feed into higher costs for fuel, fertilizer, plastics, packaging, and food. Going forward, states will try to increase domestic capacity, build redundancy, and alternative routes, rather than restoring the old world order.

• Lawrence Freedman, “The causes and consequences of Trump’s defeat,” Comment is Freed Substack, April 12, 2026. Freedman, Emeritus Professor of War Studies at King’s College London, treats the failed Islamabad talks as proof that the administration has failed to achieve its central aims in Iran: the regime survived, the nuclear issue remains unresolved, and the world economy has suffered lasting damage. He argues that the failure followed a familiar pattern, with Trump seduced by the promise of decisive early blows but failing to articulate a clear strategy. The essay insists that wars are easier to start than to end, and that hurting the enemy is not the same thing as getting closer to one’s political objectives. The larger lesson is about the limits of military power when it is not anchored in realistic ends and a credible plan for how the war is supposed to conclude.

• Sheera Frenkel, Paul Mozur and Adam Satariano, “Mutually Automated Destruction: The Escalating Global A.I. Arms Race,” The New York Times, April 12, 2026. The race between the US and China to develop autonomous drones is accelerating. Following a Chinese military parade last September that featured several advanced autonomous systems, US drone manufacturer Anduril has sped up production. But this is no longer just a race between the US and China. Ukraine has increasingly become a testing ground for new drone technologies, blurring the lines between development and deployment. The authors warn that as these systems become more advanced, traditional deterrence may no longer hold if autonomous systems move faster than human judgment, increasing the risk of accidental escalation.

• Dion Nissenbaum, “The Man Who Shaped Washington’s View of the Middle East,” Foreign Policy, April 9, 2026. In this article, Nissenbaum outlines the influence of Brett McGurk, who served as Middle East Advisor to four presidential administrations. As the architect of Iraq’s democratic government, the campaign against ISIS, and the response to October 7, his name is synonymous with US policy towards the region. McGurk is both cause and symbol: a highly capable operator whose career captures the strengths and failures of bipartisan U.S. Middle East policy, and whose influence is likely to endure.

• Ryan McMorrow, Sam Fleming, Peter Foster and Joe Leahy, “China shock 2.0: the flood of high-tech goods that will change the world,” Financial Times, April 14, 2026. The authors warn that the second China shock is more threatening than the first, with high-end manufacturing rather than low-cost consumer goods flooding world markets. The production growth is fueled by domestic competition, government subsidies, and a weak exchange rate, all of which enable companies to survive brutal price wars and then export the pressure abroad. These same forces also generate chronic overcapacity and collapsing margins inside China. To keep up, the West will have to shield vulnerable industries in the short term while adapting to a world in which Chinese manufacturing dominance is likely to persist.

• Ezra Klein, “Reckoning With Israel’s ‘One-State Reality,’” The Ezra Klein Show, April 14, 2026. Ezra Klein argues that the two-state framework is effectively dead. His guests, Shibley Telhami, Professor at the University of Maryland, and Marc Lynch, Director of the Middle East Project at George Washington University, argue that October 7 has only accelerated Israeli control of Palestinian territories through intensified settlement construction, deeper Israeli control in Gaza, and spillover into Lebanon. The episode confronts the political and moral consequences of a status quo that is routinely described as temporary but is increasingly entrenched.

• Sebastian Mallaby, “I Went to China to See Its Progress on A.I. We Can’t Beat It.,” The New York Times, April 13, 2026. Mallaby, Senior Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, argues that US chip controls have failed to stop China’s progress in the AI race. Chinese firms have effectively evaded controls, stacked weaker chips, and imitated frontier models. The decisive question is no longer who has the best model, but who can deploy AI most effectively across industry and defense. China is quickly outperforming the US on AI integration. Mallaby argues that Washington should stop chasing an unattainable monopoly and instead try to bargain with Beijing over AI safety and nonproliferation.

• Jamelle Bouie, “This Is Not a Man in Control of Himself,” The New York Times, April 15, 2026. Bouie, Opinion columnist for The New York Times, argues that the Iran war has exposed not only Trump’s impulsiveness and emotional instability but also the deeper weakness of a presidency built on unilateral command. But despite his unprecedented use of executive power, Trump has been unable to achieve many of his goals. Bouie links the President’s failure abroad to his failure at home, contending that Trump can destroy institutions and lash out at enemies more easily than he can legislate, persuade, or consolidate power. Durable governance at home depends on consensus and collaboration across the branches of government, not on one person trying to rule by will alone.

Finally, below are links to some of the things I did and wrote this week.

• I joined Diane Rehm to talk about the ceasefire with Iran and the future of NATO.

• Finally, this week’s World Review focused on new hope on ending the Iran War, the political earthquake in Hungary, and the president vs the pope.

Happy reading, watching, and listening! Stay safe.

Here’s this week’s edition of articles I thought worth reading and sharing. Don’t hesitate to recommend your own reads; I may include some as well.

Subscribe now

• Charles Homans, “America Is Used to Hiding Its Wars. Trump Is Doing the Opposite,” New York Times, April 4, 2026. Homans argues that Trump is breaking with an American tradition that has largely insulated the public from the real costs of war and kept military action outside the spotlight. Instead, the administration is celebrating the war against Iran on its social media channels. For decades, the American public has become accustomed to endless wars protected from political consequences by professionalized forces, hidden financing, and the use of drones.

• Ronan Farrow and Andrew Marantz, “Sam Altman May Control Our Future—Can He Be Trusted?,” The New Yorker, April 6, 2026. In this investigative piece, Farrow and Marantz uncover serious concerns about Sam Altman and the governance of OpenAI. They find that concerns about Altman’s candor and manipulation were longstanding and drove the 2023 board revolt, raising concerns over whether he should be leading one of the country’s most advanced AI companies. OpenAI’s original safety-first nonprofit ideal has steadily been undermined to prioritize capital, scale, and founder control.

• Martin Wolf, “Freedom itself is at stake in Hungary,” Financial Times, April 8, 2026. Wolf, Chief Economics Commentator for the Financial Times, argues that Sunday’s election matters far beyond Hungary because Viktor Orbán has built one of the clearest contemporary models of illiberal democracy through the slow capture of courts, media, civil society, and electoral rules. Orbán has become a hero to many on the authoritarian right, especially in the United States. Péter Magyar may have a real chance to win, but removing Orbán would only mark the beginning of the fight to disband the entrenched networks of patronage and power he created.

• Eric Cortellessa, “Inside Trump’s Search for a Way Out of the Iran War,” TIME, April 2, 2026. Cortellessa’s central point is that President Trump wants an off-ramp from the war without accepting the appearance of retreat, a balance that is proving harder to strike as the economic and political costs mount. The administration’s initial theory of the conflict, that overwhelming force would produce limited retaliation, collapsed once Iran attacked US allies across the region and closed the Strait of Hormuz. Trump is torn between two incompatible aims: ending the war quickly and achieving a decisive strategic outcome that can be sold as victory. As gas prices keep rising and the midterms approach, the military and diplomatic objectives will become even more difficult to achieve.

• Sergey Radchenko, “I had poked the bear right in the eye: my fight to renounce my Russian citizenship,” The Guardian, April 9, 2026. Radchenko, Professor at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, shares his reflections on what it means to be a Russian citizen following the invasion of Ukraine. In this essay, he shares his reflections on guilt, responsibility, and political belonging, while recounting the difficult journey he undertook to renounce his Russian citizenship. Renouncing citizenship becomes, in his view, less a symbolic gesture than a deliberate refusal of the Kremlin’s claim that Russianness entails loyalty to the Russian state.

• Jonathan Swan and Maggie Haberman, “How Trump Took the U.S. to War With Iran,” New York Times, April 7, 2026. Jonathan Swan and Maggie Haberman, both White House reporters for The New York Times, depict the decision to go to war with Iran as the result of a concentrated campaign of persuasion by Netanyahu, who painted a picture of swift success and manageable risk. Several senior figures, including Vice President Vance, were skeptical, but Trump was swayed by the more expansive interpretation of what force could accomplish.

• “America’s war on Iran has changed the Middle East—for the worse,” The Economist, April 9, 2026. This Economist briefing suggests the war has left the region less secure, more economically exposed, and strategically more unstable than before it began. The Iranian regime survived, its coercive capacity was damaged but not broken, and its ability to leverage the Strait of Hormuz has moved from a hypothetical to a demonstrated fact. For the Gulf states, the war exposed both the fragility of their trading system and the limits of their long-standing reliance on American protection.

Finally, below are links to some of the things I did and wrote this week.

• I joined Bloomberg This Weekend on NATO’s 77-year anniversary to argue that the alliance faces the gravest crisis in its history.

• NATO and Secretary General Rutte’s meeting with Trump were major topics of interviews I did this week on CNN with Brianna Keilor, CNN with Audie Cornish, and MS NOW.

• I spoke to EuroNews about the ceasefire, arguing Iran now has the upper hand. I also joined John Byrne on Raw America to discuss the strategic consequences of the ceasefire.

• I joined Jim Acosta to share my initial reactions to the ceasefire and Rutte’s meeting with Trump.

• Finally, this week’s World Review also focused on the fragile ceasefire and President Trump’s threats to pull out of NATO.

Happy reading, watching, and listening! Stay safe.

Here’s this week’s edition of articles I thought worth reading and sharing. Don’t hesitate to recommend your own reads; I may include some as well.

Subscribe now

• Patrick Foulis, “What the Iran war teaches America’s adversaries,” Financial Times, March 27, 2026. Foulis argues that the war reveals both American weakness and strength: attacking Iran has drained munitions, strained alliances, raised costs, and pulled attention and resources away from Asia. But it has also demonstrated astonishing military reach, precision, and economic resilience. For America’s adversaries, this creates a complex picture. Smaller adversarial regimes may conclude they need chokepoints or weapons of mass destruction to avoid interference or decapitation. While Xi Jinping likely welcomes America’s focus shifting elsewhere, China is confronted with its own vulnerability to economic shocks in a broader war.

• Paul Sonne, Valerie Hopkins, and Oleg Matsnev, “Putin’s Internet Blackout: A Chaotic Drive to Cut Off Russians From the World,” The New York Times, March 31, 2026. The piece argues that the Kremlin is taking its boldest steps yet to bring Russian communications under tighter state control, using war and security justifications to normalize outages and platform restrictions. Using Ukrainian drone attacks as the pretext, the government is building tools it could use against domestic unrest. Telegram has become both a daily utility and one of the last relatively open spaces for news, dissent, and communication in Russia. The crackdown is not only political but also socially disruptive, causing problems with payments, transport, medical monitoring, and everyday life. Russians are finding workarounds, yet many seem to believe they have little real power to stop the tightening system controlling the flow of information.

• Tej Parikh, “The Iran war will cement China’s superpower status,” Financial Times, March 29, 2026. Parikh, the economics leader writer for the Financial Times, argues that although China depends on energy supplies from the Middle East, it has spent years preparing for exactly this kind of shock through stockpiles, diversified supply routes, and a far more electrified economy than its rivals. The war may also strengthen China in the long run by increasing demand for green technologies, rare earths, refined fuels, and industrial inputs in which the country already dominates. The conflict may hurt China in the short term, but it is far more likely to reinforce the impression that China is the steadier, more strategically prepared power and increase its global influence.

• Robert Kagan, “America Is Now a Rogue Superpower,” The Atlantic, March 30, 2026. Kagan, Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution, argues that the Iran war is accelerating the breakdown of the alliance system that has underwritten American power since World War II. The war has hurt Ukraine, unnerved Europe and Asia, diverted forces from the Pacific, and strengthened Russia and China by driving a wedge between Washington and its allies. Trump treats allies less as partners than as dependents to be threatened, bullied, or coerced, which pushes them to hedge and search for alternatives. Kagan concludes that as confidence in American reliability collapses, more countries will hedge, drift away, or align against the United States, ushering in a lonelier and more dangerous era of a rogue superpower.

• Janan Ganesh, “Trump learns that not everyone has a price,” Financial Times, April 1, 2026. Ganesh’s core claim is that Trump misreads the world because he assumes that everyone is ultimately transactional, when in fact states and leaders are often driven by ideology, nationalism, or belief. That is why Iran’s willingness to absorb punishment and Ukraine’s refusal to accept a settlement seem baffling to the President. The problem is compounded by the people around him, many of whom are themselves opportunists rather than true believers capable of explaining how conviction shapes foreign policy. The result is an administration poorly equipped to deal with regimes such as Iran, Russia, or China because the President follows what Ganesh calls a right-wing Marxist ideology that mistakes deeply held commitments for bargaining positions.

• Neri Zilber, “One battle after another: Netanyahu’s new security doctrine,” Financial Times, April 1, 2026. Zilber’s argument is that Netanyahu has moved away from the language of decisive victory toward a doctrine of permanent pre-emption: strike first, hold buffer zones, and accept open-ended conflicts. October 7 marks a turning point for Israeli strategy in the region. While Netanyahu’s supporters argue that his sequence of wars has weakened Israel’s enemies and improved its regional position, critics see it as a post-traumatic reflex rather than a coherent grand strategy that is already straining the IDF. Zilber argues that Netanyahu may be winning battles, but he is leaving the country trapped in a costly and potentially unsustainable state of endless war. I found this map particurlarly striking:

  

• Bret Stephens, “Yes, This Is Your War, Too,” The New York Times, March 31, 2026. Stephens argues that, however understandable the distaste for Trump’s handling of the war may be, America’s allies, Democrats, and the wider public still have a direct stake in an outcome that leaves Iran weaker and less able to cause disruption in the region. He contends that ending the conflict before reopening the Strait of Hormuz would amount to a strategic failure, because Tehran would read it as vindication, Gulf partners would feel abandoned, and Europe lacks the will and means to pick up the burden. His preferred approach is not immediate occupation but coercive pressure, including stopping Iranian oil exports until Iran allows energy flows to resume. Indifference is a luxury no one really has: an emboldened Iran would make the next round of American and allied choices much harder, no matter who is in office.

Finally, this was a very busy week, with America appearing increasingly stuck in Iran with no easy way out, and President Trump repeatedly threatening to leave NATO due to his displeasure with allies. Below are links to some of the things I did and wrote this week.

• My POLITICO column explained the shortcomings of President Trump’s tendency to go with his guts and relying on negotiators without the diplomatic skills and knowledge necessary to deal with adversaries like Iran. I delved deeper on how Steve Witkoff likely didn’t understand the deal Iran was offering before the war in America Abroad.

• I argued that the current crisis in NATO is the worst ever in its 77-year history in America Abroad. The piece and argument generated a lot of interest. I spoke to The Guardian, New York Times, The Telegraph, NBC News, Axios, CNN News.

• NATO and Trump’s threats to leave were also major topics of interviews I did this week on MSNOW’s 11th Hour with Stephanie Ruhle, CNN News Central, CNN International, Fox News Rundown Podcast, As It Happens, and All Things Considered.

• I spoke with France24 and Al Jazeera about the President’s speech on the war in Iran.

• I joined Diane Rehm to discuss how Steve Witcoff and Jared Kushner failed to understand Iran's serious proposals.

• Finally, this week’s World Review focused on the implications of the Strait of Hormuz closing, Israel’s military campaign in Lebanon, and Trump’s speech on his objectives in Iran.

Happy reading, watching, and listening! Stay safe.

Before diving into this week’s read, a couple of things that struck me about the Iran War this week (for my own analysis and perspective, please see links at the end).

• The administration, from the president on down, has made much of how effective the bombing campaign has been – notably with respect to destroying the ballistic missile threat, which was one of the principal reasons for going to war. We’re told, repeatedly, that Iran’s ballistic missile launches are down 90 percent. True. But largely irrelevant. The big question is what does Iran have left, and how much damage it can do. And on this, the news is not good. A report by Reuters cites five intelligence sources to argue the US can confirm that about a third of Iran’s missile arsenal has been destroyed, and perhaps another third buried deep underground and possibly destroyed. That still leaves a third of its arsenal intact. As a result, the rate of Iranian missile and drone fire has remained remarkably consistent – and their effectiveness, the New York Times reports, has steadily increased. Dmitri Alperovitz has tracked Iranian drone and missile strikes and his daily graphs are instructive.

• Iran’s control of the Strait of the Hormuz is a bigger deal than much of the analysis to date appears to assume. Iran is controlling access through the Gulf, making money by sending its own oil and gas through the Strait, and charging others $2 million or more per tanker to cross the Strait. The Trump administration appears to assume that Iran will continue to control access even after the war ends, and isn’t taking the lead in trying to prevent it. “One of the immediate challenges that we are going to face is an Iran that may want to set up a tolling system in the Strait of Hormuz,” Marc Rubio said on Friday. “It is important that the world have a plan to confront it. The U.S. is prepared to be a part of that plan. We don’t have to lead that plan, but we are happy to be a part of it. But these countries have a lot at stake, not just the G7 countries but countries in Asia and all over the world have a lot at stake and should contribute greatly to that effort.”

• Finally, the first US Marines arrived in the region–a month after the war started. Nothing underscores the lack of planning and the best-case assumptions behind “Operation Epic Fury” is the fact that ground forces were not in place in case those assumptions didn’t pan out. All the talk of ground forces – of delivering the “final blow” as Axios reported this week – just underscores how unprepared the administration was when the president decided to go to war. As Lawry Freedman put it in a perceptive take on the state of the war: “Talk of ‘final blows’ should come with flashing warning signs. The language, reflected even more in Hegseth’s hyperbolically belligerent rhetoric, almost as if shouting at the enemy will cause it to surrender, assumes that the enemy’s pain threshold will soon be reached or vital capabilities are about to be lost. None of this reflects any sense of what it takes to defeat a regime fighting for its survival.”

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Now, here’s this week’s edition of articles I thought worth reading and sharing. Don’t hesitate to recommend your own reads; I may include some as well.

• Phil Klay, “Trump Has Made a Fundamental Miscalculation about Iran,” The New York Times, March 22, 2026. Klay, Marine Corps veteran of the Iraq war and author of the book Redeployment, argues that the administration’s case for war is not just incoherent but morally questionable. The stated objectives keep shifting, and the administration seems driven less by strategy than by a fascination with violence, domination, and spectacle. This marks a break with an American tradition of treating war as a grave instrument tied to clear political ends. Using force without clear ends is both strategically foolish and morally corrupting, and may end up strengthening the very regime it seeks to weaken.

• Kim Ghattas, “History is tragically repeating itself in Lebanon,” Financial Times, March 21, 2026. Ghattas, Fellow at Columbia University’s Institute of Global Politics, draws parallels to Israel’s 1982 invasion of Lebanon, which contributed to the creation of Hezbollah and set Lebanon on the path to becoming a recurring battleground. But what is different is the Lebanese government’s response. Ghattas argues the West should be supporting Lebanon in its efforts to counter Hizbollah, rather than sitting on the sidelines for another Israeli occupation that would embolden the militia.

• Lisa Baertlein and Jonathan Saul, “Western powers were unable to secure shipping in the Red Sea. Hormuz will be harder,” Reuters, March 25, 2026. The West struggled to secure shipping against the Houthis despite billions of dollars and a major military effort. Given Iran has better capabilities, a more favorable geography, and more ways to threaten ships than the Houthis did, reopening the Strait of Hormuz will be significantly more difficult. Baertlein and Saul emphasize the scale of the economic stakes and the military reality that even a few mines or drones could keep insurers and shippers away, which is all Tehran may need.

• David French, “‘Everything After This Will Be Harder’: Gen. Stanley McChrystal on Iran,” The New York Times, March 23, 2026. In this podcast, General Stanley McChrystal argues that Americans repeatedly fall for the illusion that covert action, special operations, and air power can produce clean political outcomes. The easy part is the opening bombardment, but the hard part begins once grievances, economic costs, and rising casualties turn the war into a more equal struggle than Washington imagines.

• Nahal Toosi, “Why Marco Rubio Is Escaping the Brunt of Fury Over Iran,” POLITICO, March 24, 2026. Despite his role in reducing the size of the NSC and weakening interagency coordination, Marco Rubio has largely managed to escape criticism over the war against Iran. Toosi argues that this may be a sign that Washington still views Rubio more as Secretary of State than as the man running the National Security Council.

• Marc Daalder, “What I’ve learned (and saved) in my first year owning an EV,” Newsroom, March 24, 2026. As gas prices are going through the roof, some may be thinking about switching to an electric vehicle and abandoning the gas-guzzling internal combustion engine. If you are one of these people, Marc Daalder (yes, we are related) reports on his 10-month experience of owning an EV. Yes, he lives in New Zealand (and therefore his driving habits are more comparable to those in Europe than in the US), but the math (or maths, as they would say down there) is still instructive. And please excuse the shameless plug!

• Nancy A. Youssef and Missy Ryan, “The U.S. and Iran Are Fighting a Massively Asymmetrical War,” The Atlantic, March 25, 2026. Although the US and Israel dominate in conventional military terms, Iran has managed to shift the balance of power in their favor by using low-cost drones and strategic disruption to global trade. The regime does not need to win. It only needs to keep the Strait of Hormuz dangerous and energy markets unstable enough to turn American tactical victories into a war of attrition and frustration.

• Victoria Guida, “Carney’s Grand Ambition On Trade Does Not Include Trump,” POLITICO, March 26, 2026. Guida, Economics correspondent at POLITICIO, describes an emerging effort by Mark Carney and other middle powers to build a trade alignment around the EU and CPTPP that would reduce their exposure to US tariff politics and preserve some version of a rules-based order without Washington at the center. This marks a clear shift in their response. America’s allies are no longer merely complaining about Trump’s trade policy but beginning to organize around the possibility that the US can no longer be relied on to lead.

• Martin Wolf, “We must not underestimate the peril for democracy,” Financial Times, March 25, 2026. Wolf, Chief Economics Commentator at the Financial Times, argues that the US has turned into a prime example of democratic deterioration, a global crisis that risks deepening into a democratic depression. His warning is that the real danger is not just bad leadership or polarization but a rapid executive assault on the institutional constraints, legal norms and civic freedoms that make liberal democracy possible in the first place.

• “A Conversation with Antony J. Blinken, 71st U.S. Secretary of State,” Institute of Politics Harvard Kennedy School, March 25, 2026. In this conversation with David Sanger, former Secretary of State Blinken criticizes the Trump administration for failing to make a clear case to the American public for war with Iran. He argues that the old postwar divide between democracy and autocracy is giving way to a messier world of issue-specific coalitions that must still operate by shared rules

Finally, in case you missed it, here are links to some of the things I did and wrote this week.

• I spoke to Bloomberg about the strategic implications of the Strait of Hormuz and shared my detailed assessment in America Abroad.

• I wrote in POLITICO and spoke to abcNews about why the war with Iran will have far greater strategic consequences than the war in Iraq in 2003.

• I spoke with Lev Parnas about Iran, Ukraine, North Korea, nuclear proliferation, and Russia.

• I responded to President Trump’s most recent criticisms of NATO in America Abroad.

• Finally, this week’s World Review focused on escalation with Iran, Trump’s criticism of NATO, and recent elections in Europe.

Happy reading, watching, and listening! Stay safe.

Here’s this week’s edition of articles I thought worth reading and sharing. I’m in New Zealand, trying to focus on what these wonderful islands have to offer, so fewer items than normal.

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• Joel Schectman, Christopher M. Matthews, and Vera Bergengruen, “He Was Chevron’s Man in Venezuela—and a CIA Informant,” Wall Street Journal, March 15, 2026. The Wall Street Journal reports that former Chevron executive Ali Moshir advised the CIA to pursue a managed transition through Vice President Delcy Rodríguez, rather than to install the democratic opposition led by María Corina Machado. Chevron’s continued presence in Venezuela gave it unusual leverage because it was the only major U.S. company still embedded in the country’s oil sector. It now stands to benefit from the development of Venezuela’s oil reserves.

• Kelsey Davenport, “U.S. Negotiators Were Ill-Prepared for Serious Nuclear Negotiations with Iran,” Arms Control Association, March 11, 2026. Davenport, Director of Nonproliferation Policy at the Arms Control Association, argues that the Trump administration never seriously tested whether diplomacy could work because its lead negotiators did not understand the technical components of the negotiation. She takes apart Steve Witkoff’s public claims about the Tehran Research Reactor, arguing that its 20 percent fuel stock was known to the IAEA, stored in fuel assemblies rather than the form needed for easy further enrichment, and did not amount to evidence of covert weapons activity. It was technical ignorance and political impatience that turned a difficult negotiation into a war.

• Muhanad Seloom, “The US-Israeli strategy against Iran is working. Here is why,” Al Jazeera, March 16, 2026. Seloom, Assistant Professor of International Politics and Security at the Doha Institute for Graduate Studies, notes that critics are measuring the war by its immediate costs rather than by its strategic effects. In his view, Iran’s military capabilities, nuclear infrastructure, and proxy networks are all being steadily degraded, serving a clear strategic goal even if the administration’s rhetoric may not sound coherent. While I think Seloom makes an interesting case, I recommend reading Ilan Goldenberg’s response, who argues that these short-term victories are unlikely to translate into long-term strategic benefits.

• Vaughn Hillyard, David Rohde, and Ian Sherwood, “Nuclear experts undercut White House claims about Iran reactor at heart of case for war,” MS NOW, March 9, 2026. The Trump administration made the Tehran Research Reactor central to its public justification for strikes, yet experts interviewed for this article argue the reactor cannot do what officials implied, and there is no public evidence it was being used as a facility to build a nuclear weapon. Witkoff and Kushner reportedly participated in the negotiations without nuclear specialists, skipped the technical follow-up talks, and went to war before demonstrating that the reactor posed the urgent threat the White House claimed.

• Lawrence Freedman, “The Split-Screen War,” March 15, 2026. Freedman, Professor of War Studies at King’s College London, masterfully dissects the total lack of US strategy in Iran. The war must be watched on two screens at once: on one, the US and Israel dominate Iranian airspace; on the other, Iran is still managing to threaten shipping routes, energy production, and the wider regional economy. His point is that Tehran planned for regime survival and regional disruption, while Washington and Jerusalem seem to have assumed the regime would crack quickly under pressure. The issue is not that Iran is plainly “winning,” but that US-Israeli airpower has not produced the political collapse it was hoping for. As the fighting continues, the economic consequences of the war are increasing the pressure on Washington to find a way out.

Finally, in case you missed it, here are links to some of the things I did and wrote this week.

• I was interviewed by Yannis Palaiologos for the Greek newspaper Kathimerini on the war against Iran.

• Finally, this week’s World Review focused on the ongoing war in Iran, shifting US-China relations, and the evolving situation in Cuba. The episode will also be streamed on WBEZ on Sunday morning.

Happy reading, watching, and listening!

Here’s this week’s edition of articles I thought worth reading and sharing. Don’t hesitate to recommend your own reads; I may include some as well.

Subscribe now

• Jacob Judah, Bob Haslett and Alan Smith, “The hunt for Iran’s ballistic missile crews,” Financial Times, March 8, 2026. The piece describes the challenge Iranian missile crews face as they seek to avoid detection by US and Israeli forces. Crews often only have minutes after a launch to hide their vehicle under nearby bridges or in tunnels. Given the importance of the launch vehicles to the Iranian effort, they have been one of the primary targets of air strikes on the country. The failure of Iranian air defenses means this cat-and-mouse game is stacked heavily against Iran.

• Richard Haass, “America chose this war — and must now choose how to end it,” Financial Times, March 8, 2026. Haass, President Emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations, describes the current war against Iran as a textbook war of choice, arguing this raises the pressure on President Trump to demonstrate results that justify the costs. With mounting costs of dead US service members, spiking energy prices, and attacks on allies in the region, and poor prospects of regime change leading to a democratic Iran, the administration must decide when and how to end this war. But Haass notes ending the war may be more difficult than starting it, requiring the US, Israel and Iran to agree to an end of hostilities.

• Chrystia Freeland, “The Great Capitulation Is Over. What Will Take Its Place?,” The New York Times, February 25, 2026. Freeland, the former Deputy Prime Minister, Minister of Foreign Affairs and Minister of Finance of Canada, describes 2025 as the year of the great capitulation by media organization, law firms and universities to the Trump administration. Self-doubt risks being a self-fulfilling prophecy and everyone who choses to appease President Trump’s maximalist demands makes it more difficult for others to stand firm, but courage can also be contagious. She argues that we should resist accepting this right-wing populism as the new normal: President Trump’s narrow win over Harris was not a sign of a global shift toward the extreme right, but rather a post-Covid pushback against incumbents.

• Francis Fukuyama, “What ‘Western Civilization’ Really Means,” March 3, 2026. Fukuyama, Senior Fellow at Stanford University and author of The End of History, looks at Marco Rubio’s use of the term “Western Civilization” in his speech at the Munich Security Conference. Fukuyama argues that abolishing classes on Western civilization has left students vulnerable to arguments defining it in terms of religion, heritage or ancestry, rather than the liberal values like openness, tolerance and skepticism that have long been at the core of what is truly western.

• Sophia Yan, “In the scarred border mountains of Iran, hopes of an uprising fade,” The Telegraph, March 11, 2026. Yan, Senior Foreign Correspondent for The Telegraph, reports from the Iraq-Ian border that the idea of the CIA or others arming Kurdish militias for a possible ground invasion of Iran do not match the lived experience of Kurdish communities living on the border. Repeated fighting has left a permanent scar on the region and hopes of an uprising on the other side of the border are slim.

• Isaac Chotiner, “The Lawlessness of Trump’s War in Iran,” The New Yorker, March 10, 2026. In this interview with Oona Hathaway, Professor at Yale Law School and president-elect of the American Society of International Law, Chotiner unpacks the war against Iran from from an international law perspective. Most worrying are the ongoing efforts by DoD to dismantle some of the international protections limiting how force is to be used, which may result in a greater number of civilian casualties.

• Alec Russell, “Middle East War Explained: US and Israeli Attacks on Iran and the Global Fallout,” Financial Times Webinar, March 11, 2026. In this webinar, FT Foreign Editor Alec Russell is joined by FT columnists Gideon Rachman, Kim Ghattas, Edward Luce and Katie Martin to examine the political, military and economic calculations of the war against Iran. They argue the conflict could fundamentally reshape regional power dynamics, with consequences well beyond the Middle East.

Finally, in case you missed it, here are links to some of the things I did and wrote this week.

• I wrote in NOTUS about what Iran might look like in a year.

• I argued that hubris is the best explanation for President Trump’s decision to go to war in Iran in America Abroad.

• Finally, this week’s World Review focused on the war in Iran, implications for global security, and the shifting dynamics in international alliances amidst chaos in the Middle East.

Happy reading, watching, and listening! Stay safe and stay warm.

Here’s this week’s edition of articles I thought worth reading and sharing. Don’t hesitate to recommend your own reads; I may include some as well.

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• Nahal Toosi, “Forget Regime Change. How About Behavior Change?,” POLITICO, March 3, 2026. Toosi, POLITICO’s Senior Foreign Affairs Correspondent, argues that President Trump’s aim in Iran, Venezuela and Cuba is not traditional regime change but rather behaviour change, forcing the regimes to engage with the US on his terms. Ending Iran’s nuclear and ballistic missile programs and support for terrorist groups may suffice for Trump to declare victory. But the administration has shown no willingness to commit to the messy state-building process that would need to follow a regime change. How the conflict in Iran evolves may have have implications for how leaders in Venezuela and Cuba choose to respond to his demands.

• Dana Stroul, “America and Israel’s War to Remake the Middle East,” Foreign Affairs, March 4, 2026. Stroul, Director of Research at the Washington Institute and former Assistant Secretary of Defense for the Middle East, reports that over the past six years the US-Israeli military relationship has evolved into a true operational partnership, accelerated when Trump in 2020 ordered Israel’s inclusion in CENTCOM. She describes a relationship increasingly defined by shared intelligence, shared operational experience, and a deeper integration of planning and execution than in earlier eras of the alliance. But she warns that this military convergence is colliding with growing political divergence: Israelis remain broadly supportive of the war while American support is far weaker, producing the widest gap in public opinion between the two societies in memory. This combination of military integration and political distancing raises risks for both countries and for the current war effort.

• Laura Rozen, “Was diplomacy with Iran really doomed to fail?,” March 4, 2026. Rozen, the Al-Monitor’s diplomatic correspondent, suggests that diplomacy with Iran wasn’t inherently “doomed to fail” and that the Trump administration’s claim that Iran flatly rejected a reasonable deal is not supported by what Trump’s own negotiators have since described. It looks like the administration abandoned diplomacy prematurely because the President’s chief negotiatior Steve Witkoff fundamentally misunderstood the Iranian positions and was operating under an artificial, rushed timetable that pushed Trump toward backing Israel’s move to war before negotiations were exhausted.

• Dasha Burns, “Trump says he’ll help pick Iran’s leader, predicts regime change in Cuba,” POLITICO, March 5, 2026. Burns, White House Bureau Chief for POLITICO, writes about a combative phone interview with President Trump in which he brushed off domestic blowback over the Iran war. The President still seems to think that Iran is like Venezuela and he will be able to pick the Ayatollah’s successor. Just like 12 of his predecessors, he seems to think that regime change in Cuba is a foregone conclusion. He went on to blame Zelenskyy for failing to end a war Trump had promised to end within 24 hours, while asking Ukrainians to support defending US forces from Iranian drones. The President continues to boast about the military strength he has built, but to what ends remains unclear.

• Henry Mance, “Did Britain need to strike the Chagos deal?,” Financial Times, February 28, 2026. Mance, the FT’s Chief Features Writer, argues that the agreement with Mauritius was necessary to reduce the risk to a key US-UK joint military asset. The war against Iran has once again raised the strategic value of the Chagos islands on the political agenda. President Trump has changed his position on the Chagos deal several times, increasing the pressure on Starmer who faces criticism from the Reform Party for “giving up” the islands. The debate over the islands raises larger questions about the global role of the United Kingdom and its empire in the current geopolitical environment.

• Jane Perlez and Rana Mitter, “The Black Box: Inside China’s Military Mind,” Face-Off: The U.S. vs China Podcast, March 3, 2026. In this episode with Colonel Zhou, a Retired Senior Colonel in the People’s Liberation Army, Perlez and Mitter ask him about Xi Jinping’s sweeping purge of senior generals in the Chinese military and China’s perspective on recent geopolitical developments, from Ukraine, to Greenland and Venezuela.

• Jake Sullivan and Jon Finer, “Iran After Khamenei & Pentagon vs. Anthropic,” The Long Game Podcast, March 5, 2026. In this episode with Karim Sadjadpour, Senior Fellow at the Carnegie Endowment and Contributing Writer for The Atlantic, Sullivan and Finer unpack the strikes that killed Ayatollah Khamenei and what comes next in Iran, warning that we should not expect a democratic opening anytime soon.

Finally, in case you missed it, here are links to some of the things I did and wrote this week.

• I wrote in POLITICO on how the Iran War contradicts all six criteria for the use of force known as rhetorical “Weinberger Doctrine.”

• I joined the POLITICO Brussels Playbook Podcast last week to discuss how the role of US ambassadors has evolved under the Trump administration.

• I sat down with Diane Rehm to discuss the U.S. strike on Iran, the underlying motivations and what happens next.

• I appeared on Bloomberg with Katie Greifeld and Romaine Bostick to discuss how the war in Iran could evolve.

• Finally, this week’s World Review focused on the war in Iran, the economic and political shockwave it has caused around the world, and the Pentagon’s ongoing war with Anthropic.

Happy reading, watching, and listening! Stay safe and stay warm.