With the combined American and Israeli strikes against Iran on 28 February 2026 the Middle East has entered a new strategic phase. Military operations, in this respect, were the continuation of events during the past two and a half years — from October 7 onward — which have not merely reshaped tactical realities; they have […]

In a recent essay in this journal, “Regime Change in Iran Is a Strategic Imperative,” Gen. Yosi Kuperwasser argued for eliminating and replacing the current government in Iran. He wrote, The phrase “regime change” is often treated as reckless.  It should be understood instead as strategic realism.  A Middle East is which Iran is governed […]

For many years, I have argued that a political system built on internal repression and external confrontation cannot sustain durable legitimacy or long-term strategic credibility. A state that governs through fear at home while exporting instability abroad ultimately confronts the accumulated costs of that contradiction. No system can indefinitely suppress its society while destabilizing its […]

“Who needs allies?,” asked the cover of Foreign Affairs last summer. Adorned by an American Eagle, the title question was intentionally sarcastic, implying that American foreign policy simply cannot proceed alone. The issue’s contents, authored by a tired round-up of familiar names from the former foreign policy establishment, either derided notions of American unilateralism outright […]

Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s address to the Knesset represents a strategic inflection point in the evolution of India–Israel relations. Beyond symbolism, the visit signals the maturation of a partnership that increasingly bridges the Indo-Pacific and the Middle East — anchoring cooperation in defense, innovation, and shared democratic resilience at a moment when regional balances are […]

The debate over Iran has long revolved around tactics: sanctions or engagement, containment or deterrence, military strikes or diplomatic agreements. These discussions, while important, obscure a more fundamental reality. The challenge posed by Iran is not merely about enrichment levels, missile ranges, or proxy networks. It is about the nature of the regime itself. The […]

Among Iran hawks, there is confidence that talks between the United States and the Islamic Republic of Iran will collapse. Iran, they reckon, will reject the Trump administration’s demands, namely, disarmament of the nuclear program, missile program, and proxies. In his four decades of rule, Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei has never shown strategic flexibility, and […]

Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s decision to visit Israel, for the first time since 2017, and to address the Knesset for the first time ever, is a significant milestone in the emergence of what his long-time Israeli partner, Binyamin Netanyahu, calls a “tremendous alliance”: an overstatement, perhaps, insofar as the two nations are not formally allied […]

As the United States reassesses its military posture in Europe and shifts strategic bandwidth toward the Indo-Pacific, it must also reassess the architecture of its Mediterranean partnerships. The Mediterranean remains a theater Washington cannot afford to neglect. Between Russian revanchism, Chinese technological penetration, North African instability, energy corridors, and the security of the Red Sea, […]

For more than a decade, Libya has stood as a symbol of unfinished intervention — a country liberated from dictatorship but never stabilized into durable statehood. The result has not merely been internal fragmentation. It has been the steady erosion of security across the central Mediterranean, the expansion of external influence, and the normalization of […]

The twentieth century was initially the worst of times and then the best of times for Europe.  In that century’s first half, the continent experienced the two most deadly and destructive wars in all of history. During the first of them, communists seized control of the Russian empire and from there spread their rule westward […]

For almost five decades, the Islamic Republic of Iran has survived sustained American pressure not through strength, legitimacy, or economic resilience, but through strategic utility. Tehran has learned to convert asymmetric tools—hostage diplomacy, proxy warfare, and ideological export—into leverage within a shifting global order.  Unfortunately, Washington has treated Tehran as a self-contained Middle Eastern problem […]