Opinion

Iran has a strategic problem that no amount of tactical cunning can fully paper over: it keeps winning small and losing big. The pattern has repeated itself with enough consistency now that it deserves to be called what it is — a structural flaw in how the Islamic Republic conceives of power, threat, and the relationship between the two. The logic of the Islamic Republic's … [Read more...] about The Trap They Built Themselves: Iran’s Strategic Self-Defeat

There is a particular kind of governance that history keeps producing, and historians keep struggling to name cleanly. It is not incompetence exactly—incompetence is accidental. It is not corruption exactly—corruption at least pursues a coherent interest. It is something closer to organized unreality: the systematic deployment of state power against things that … [Read more...] about The Ministry of Unreality: How Trump’s Witch Hunts Against Vaccines and Wind Energy Are Breaking America

There is a reason Don Quixote has endured for four centuries. The old knight is deluded, yes—but he is sincere. He charges at windmills because he genuinely believes they are giants threatening the innocent. There is madness in it, but also a kind of tragic dignity: a man destroyed by his own idealism, fighting enemies only he can see. Donald Trump is not Don Quixote. He is … [Read more...] about A Grotesque Reenactment: Trump Charges the Windmills, America Pays the Bill

There was a window—narrow, fragile, but real—where Iran’s leadership, particularly the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, could have played a far more sophisticated game. The region was not aligned. United States priorities were not identical to those of Israel, and both diverged in meaningful ways from the calculations of the Gulf monarchies—especially Qatar, Oman, and Kuwait, … [Read more...] about Strategic Overreach and the Collapse of Iran’s Leverage

A clearer reading of the current Gulf positioning strips away the softer framing about “timelines” or tactical disagreement and exposes something sharper underneath: this is not just about risk tolerance or economic exposure, it is about fundamentally different political alignments and ideological instincts shaping how each state interprets the war and its desired … [Read more...] about The Gulf Divide Is Ideological as Much as Strategic