Thanks for the kind words 🙏🏻🙏🏻

Iran Is Becoming America’s Ukraine The shift to an attritional war focused on energy infrastructure risks becoming a quagmire.

The result is a widening gap between what is militarily achievable in the short term and what is politically defined as an acceptable end state.

foreignpolicy.com/2026/03/23/i...

Now, regardless of who can hit hardest, I borrow from @mashabani this war is clearly about who can endure longest, and how much strain the global system can absorb before it, too, becomes part of the conflict.
This is the emerging risk: not simply a larger war but a longer one.

It doesn’t feel the urge to balance between old and new guards anymore, latest appointments in Supreme National Security Council, and possible naming of a new secretary of Supreme National Defence Council, derive from the inner circle of the new leadership.

This very leadership, led by Mujtaba Khamenei, is clearly saying it’s not accepting a ceasefire but a compete end of the conflict “a war to end all wars”.
What’s obvious is that the system is still working, with more harmony than before.

He’s also claiming the “regime change is complete”, when the new leadership is nothing but a very organic extension of the one that was killed. One that’s originating completely from the deep state that’s been entrenched in the military that’s already fighting the war.

when their military is still launching rockets and drones, blocking the strait of Hormuz except for vessels and ships they approve, and fully controlling 31 out of 31 provinces in the country.

Interesting to see president Trump announcing (well he’s done that at least 50 times in the last 25 days) that his war on Iran has been won and Iran completely defeated, and they aren’t capable of launching missiles,

My latest for @foreignpolicy.com :
“Iran Is Becoming America’s Ukraine - The shift to an attritional war focused on energy infrastructure risks becoming a quagmire.”
foreignpolicy.com/2026/03/23/i...

Israel Thought It Could Spur Rebellion Inside Iran. That Hasn’t Happened.

NEW: Netanyahu embraced a Mossad plan to ignite a regime change uprising in Iran for a quick victory. He used it to help convince Trump to start the war — despite doubts among some senior US and Israeli officials. It was a critical flaw in war plans. Gift link: www.nytimes.com/2026/03/22/u...

Every additional day, Trump narrows his own room for an off-ramp.
This war is a dead end, with clear potential to expand.
You cannot erase a country of more than 90 million people, spread across nearly 1.6 million km², with thousands of years of history, from an aircraft carrier.

🧭 Bottom line:

This is no longer a contained war

For the first time in decades:
📍 Geography
📍 Politics
📍 History

➡️ All align toward a wider conflict

🔥 Possibly much bigger

📍 Iran is now fighting with very limited strategic space

If it holds, the real test begins after:

🏚️ Internal cohesion vs strain
🌍 Regional trust collapsing
🚧 Hormuz becomes a fault line
🤝 Negotiations, shaped by battlefield outcomes

❗ The real question is no longer Tehran vs Washington

🌐 It’s what happens when other powers move

The US assumption: pressure breaks Iran
📌 Reality: pressure at this level often produces the opposite
➡️ Expansion, not collapse

📊 This is starting to mirror the Russia-Ukraine War

• No decisive breakthrough
• Sustained strikes
• War of attrition logic

⚠️ But with one critical difference:
⛽ This war sits on top of the world’s main energy arteries

➡️ The cost won’t be regional
➡️ It will be global

Iran didn’t just absorb strikes, it reshaped the battlefield:

🇱🇧 Lebanon → Hezbollah pushing toward ground attrition
🇮🇶 Iraq → factions hitting US interests, Kurdish dynamics unstable
🇾🇪 Yemen → not in yet, but
🚢 Bab al-Mandeb = global trade shock

❌ And “full war” ≠ Iran only
🌍 It means the entire region igniting
🪖 Tens, possibly hundreds of thousands of troops
🔥 Multiple fronts opening at once

📉 The quick victory illusion is over

Week 3 of the war… where are we really?

⚠️ This is no longer just a military confrontation
⚡ It is now an energy war shaping global risk

The Donald Trump administration faces a binary choice:
🔻 End the war without decisive results
🔺 Or escalate into full regional war

📌 These strikes on critical energy infrastructure represent a significant pressure on the state and residents. Aside from the day to day impact, the scene, the smoke, the smell all have their own effects.

📌 Following a deceptively calm day yesterday, airstrikes targeted local fuel depots post-midnight. The escalation continued into this morning with a massive blast heard toward the city center, followed by at least two more explosions in the northern suburbs.

📌 Because Tehran is such a huge city, the physical toll of the conflict isn't spotted. Destruction is localized, though the damage is unmistakable in certain districts. Meanwhile, state mobilization remains highly visible, with several pro-government rallies taking place across neighborhoods.

📌Iranian authorities are navigating on two layers. State rhetoric clearly frames this as an existential conflict, yet there is a concerted domestic effort to project normalcy and stability for residents. All indicators suggest the government is bracing for a protracted, multi-month conflict.

Been here in Tehran for the past couple of days, here are a few observations.

📌 Striking contrast, despite the ongoing military confrontation, daily life largely continues. Shops, restaurants, and malls are open, clear shift from the paralyzed atmosphere of last year’s 12-day war.

Iran Is Built to Withstand the Ayatollah's Assassination The U.S. and Israeli militaries are targeting Iran’s leaders—but that may only strengthen the state.

In case you were asking.
@alihashem.bsky.social in @foreignpolicy.com

Iran analysis from journalist @alihashem.bsky.social

How to Hold Syria Together In the wake of Assad’s fall, the biggest threat is chaos.

My latest for @foreignaffairs.com, on why Syrian rebels' previous, largely chaotic experiments in governance should make us concerned about a post-Assad Syria; but why, nonetheless, everyone now has an interest in seeing Syria's transition succeed: www.foreignaffairs.com/syria/how-ho...

Shortly afterwards, informed sources explained, a decision was made to evacuate the country through the same route that had been used to enter the Syrian conflict back in 2013.

But Hezbollah’s deployment turned out to be far smaller, with commanders quickly concluding that a withdrawal was in order after an operational assessment, Amwaj media has learned.

Accounts of what happened next are conflicting. Initially, insiders charged that up to 2,000 members of Hezbollah’s elite Radwan Force were to be deployed for one last stand.

“The war had become too costly to continue,” the source explained, saying that Hezbollah “has serious shortcomings…it no longer has the resources to fight effectively and cannot acquire advanced weapons to shift the war’s trajectory.”