What Caught My Eye (no. 52)
Some interesting articles and podcasts that caught my eye this week
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.
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.