It is hard not to conclude that the US is suffering from massive strategic disarray. It was just a week ago that Secretary Bessent promised the US’s D-Day sanctions of Iran would make “force unnecessary.” Six days later, the US bombed the Iranian island of Larak, followed by Iranian retaliation against US assets in Jordan and the UAE. And now Axios reveals that all along, the Pentagon was preparing a plan for “periodic” bombings of Iran to prevent it from suppressing traffic in the Strait of Hormuz.

Let that sink in. Hegseth is pushing for a plan that would have the US periodically bomb Iran. What does this tell us? First, the administration is apparently giving up on solving the issue militarily, economically, or diplomatically. Instead, permanent warfare is needed to manage the problem.

Make no mistake - to periodically bomb a country is to fight a forever war.

In fact, a US official is even quoted by Axios calling it “mow the lawn.” This is the Israeli strategy of never making peace, never winning the war, but just keep bombing the countries surrounding it to ensure they never gain the capacity to deter Israel. It’s what Israel has been doing in Gaza and Lebanon for years.

During previous administrations, Israel tried to sell war with Iran to the US and conceded that military strikes would not knock out Iran’s nuclear program, but would require “periodic” return to kinetic action to keep the program in check. The US rejected the plan precisely because it didn’t want to be in a permanent state of war with Iran. Now, Trump’s Secretary of War is pushing for it.

So there is much to discuss. I am scheduling our next Q&A session for Sunday, September 6, at 4.00 pm ET.

As I have written before, all my writing is free; I do not paywall the analysis. But for the busy members of the community who want to go beyond the headlines, I host exclusive Zoom briefings and Q&As for paid subscribers.

The conversation will go in whatever direction you choose to take it. And if you want, you can message me ahead of time and raise issues you’d like to see discussed.

So join me this coming Sunday, September 6, at 4.00 pm ET for a 45-minute Q&A and discussion via Zoom.

Register for the Zoom here:

(I will post the video on my Substack afterward, available only to paid subscribers).

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Just hours ago, the United States struck the Iranian island of Larak, killing several Iranian forces. Washington views its actions as preemptive, asserting that Tehran was preparing to mine parts of the Strait for the first time in weeks. Iran will most likely retaliate, and a new round of war cannot be ruled out.

Together with the fanfare around the sanctions regime, one can easily be left with the impression that Trump is looking to escalate. But dig a bit deeper and a different picture emerges: Trump seems to prefer a lower-intensity conflict - with neither major diplomatic events nor military escalation - until the midterm elections. That calculation may now be upended.

I write about this for Responsible Statecraft today, reposted in part below:

US strikes on Iran risk resuming a war Trump hoped to freeze

Trita Parsi
August 30, 2026
Responsible Statecraft
https://responsiblestatecraft.org/whats-next-iran-war/

Despite the excitement around Donald Trump’s new sanctions and even the US strikes against the Iranian island of Larak just hours ago, much suggests that Trump is not seeking a dramatic ratcheting up of pressure on Iran.

According to reports Sunday, the U.S. military hit Iranian launchers on the island to prevent Tehran from planting new mines in the Strait of Hormuz. This is the first known U.S. strike against the country since Trump announced a ceasefire in July. Details are forthcoming.

Meanwhile, the much-touted “major financial institution” that Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent promised to sanction for dealings with Iran turned out to be nothing more than Egypt’s second-largest bank. Though Banque Misr ranks among the region’s major banks, it is a dwarf beside the multi-trillion-dollar giants of global finance.

It should come as no surprise that there is more bark than bite in Trump’s latest sanctions moves. That is not to say Bessent’s economic warfare won’t hurt ordinary Iranians or squeeze the Iranian economy. It will. But there is little to suggest that the pain will compel Tehran to submit to Trump — or that the sanctions are even designed to inflict significant harm, despite his rhetoric.

Rather, Trump appears to be pursuing a very different gamble: maintaining a low-level conflict until the midterms—neither securing a diplomatic deal nor allowing the situation to deteriorate into full-scale war. A period of relative tranquility that pushes Iran out of the headlines and, in the run-up to the elections, weakens the connection between rising inflation and gas prices, on the one hand, and Trump’s foolish war of choice, on the other.

The D-Day sanctions help create the perception that the U.S. has the upper hand while increasing pressure on Iran. Together with increased traffic in the Strait of Hormuz, they make the status quo more costly for Tehran than for Washington — but not so costly that Iran is incentivized to counter-escalate in the short term.

Rather, it is a slow strangulation designed to ensure that, for the next two months, there is neither headline-grabbing diplomacy nor military escalation.

This gives Tehran little cause for immediate panic. Its response will largely depend on what Washington does next. I see three possible scenarios.

Trump may overshoot, pushing Iran beyond what Tehran deems manageable in the short term. For instance, the strikes against Iranian positions on Larak island will very likely generate an Iranian response. Moreover, if Trump confiscates Iranian oil tankers bound for China, Tehran will almost certainly respond by intensifying attacks on ships using the southern corridor of the Strait, while potentially also targeting energy infrastructure in the GCC. China, too, would likely respond forcefully to such a move. The result would be precisely the kind of escalation Trump wants to avoid over the next two months.

In the second scenario, the D-Day sanctions neither incentivize Iran to counter-escalate in the short term nor alter its medium-term calculations. Tehran reckons that, despite the hype, its closure of the Strait remains sufficient and that the mounting economic pressure on Trump will eventually compel him to return to the table with a more pragmatic posture.

Though this is not the most likely outcome, it helps explain why Iran is investing heavily in regional diplomacy even as all signs point to Trump not wanting a deal at this juncture.

Read the full piece here: https://responsiblestatecraft.org/whats-next-iran-war/

I wanted to invite you to an online panel discussion hosted by my organization, the Quincy Institute, and the Arab Center in Washington DC, on the post-US regional order emerging in the aftermath of Trump and Israel’s Iran War.

I will be speaking on the panel together with Shana Marshall, non-resident fellow at the Quincy Institute, Yasmine Farouk, project director of the Gulf and Arabian Peninsula at the International Crisis Group, and Waleed Hazbun, professor of Middle East Studies at the University of Alabama. Tamara Kharroub, deputy executive director at the Arab Center, will moderate.

The webinar will take place on Tuesday, September 1st from 11:00 AM – 12:30 PM ET and you can register here: https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/2617876784887/WN_F2N3vrKdRPe3_jp7ZpPtKQ.

Also, I am including some of my latest interviews, dealing primarily with Trump’s D-Day sanctions on Iran, whether war is likely to erupt again after the mid-terms (or earlier) and why so many states in the Western camp are quietly are rooting for Iran in this war.

Mario Nafal, August 27:

Ana Kasparian, August 27:

Glenn Diesen, August 28:

Lena Petrova, August 27:

Karan Thapar, August 28:

One of the important characteristics of Israel and Donald Trump’s war on Iran was that it never had the support of the American people. When George Bush launched his illegal invasion of Iraq, support stood strong at 72%. As the war turned into a debacle, that support waned. By contrast, the Iran war had the support of only 27% of the American public at the outset. It took four years for support for the Iraq war to fall to the low levels of support the Iran war enjoyed from the beginning.

But an untold story is the apparent opposition—though the exact numbers remain unknown—within the ranks of the US military. I am not talking about frustration, as evidenced by complaints about living standards on the USS Abraham Lincoln, but actual opposition.

One anecdotal piece of evidence is quite telling. A US service member based in the Persian Gulf sent me a picture of what soldiers had written in the dust covering the flaps of an aircraft. I tweeted it a few days ago. It quickly went viral.

The common theme running through the scribbles is a belief that the war does not serve US interests, coupled with the assertion that it was started on behalf of Israel.

For instance:

“Peace deal #64 incoming... ALL THIS FOR THE HOLY LAND”

“Be a good goy and do what Israel tells you to”

“Operation Epstein Fury”

As I wrote on X, I have no frame of reference to compare these expressions with the sentiments of US soldiers in previous conflicts. But I have heard them often enough from men and women in uniform to believe they represent a sizable portion of active-duty service members in the Middle East.

Moreover, while similar sentiments may have existed in previous conflicts, there clearly wasn’t the willingness then to express them so openly or so bluntly.

As one service member told me: “What people in the media don’t understand when they compare past conflicts to this one, is this operation has no morale behind it. That makes a world of difference to service members deployed to undesirable locations indefinitely.”

There is a lot to unpack in that quote.

“This operation has no morale behind it.”

“Deployed to undesirable locations indefinitely.”

This is precisely why you don’t start wars of choice—wars that do not serve the national interest. Because the first people to recognize their unjustness will be the servicemen and women on the frontlines.

And when their morale collapses, defeat is only a matter of time.

Put differently: When a war has no morale behind it, winning simply means ending it. There is no other form of “winning” in such an unjust war.

I have been stunned by the number of officials from a wide variety of countries who, while hardly favoring Iran or feeling much empathy for the Islamic Republic, have privately expressed to me a huge sigh of relief over Tehran’s success in thwarting US-Israeli aggression.

Given that many of these officials represent countries squarely in the US camp and have deep problems with the Islamic Republic, this “tacit rooting” for Iran tells us something about the state of global affairs.

There is relief that aggression and violations of international law did not pay off for the US and Israel in Iran, just as they didn’t for Russia in Ukraine. Venezuela was, in the eyes of many, a terrifying case. Regardless of one’s views of Maduro, the idea that a superpower could surgically kidnap the head of state of another country, install its favored ruler—who must now get her social media posts approved by the US Secretary of State—and gleefully announce that Venezuela is now American territory was petrifying to a lot of countries. So was the fact that European leaders praised the regime-change operation while dismissing concerns about its legality.

Europe, which had by and large stood against the George W. Bush administration’s illegal invasion of Iraq, was now enthusiastically onboard with regime change in Venezuela, all while insisting on the sanctity of international law in Ukraine and Greenland. That lack of resistance made the cost of a US neocolonial rampage all the more manageable. And given Donald Trump’s proclivities, both friends and foes of the United States feared they could be next.

The remarkable military success in Venezuela was one reason Trump became so gung-ho about war with Iran. If Venezuela took a few hours, he believed Iran would take four days at most. He promised skeptical regional leaders that the whole ordeal would “take no longer than 100 hours,” according to an Arab official.

Six months later, he is stuck in a losing war with no end in sight. And officials around the world feel relieved because Iran’s successful resistance has effectively prevented Trump from moving on to his next targets.

As one official from a traditional American ally told me: “Had it not been for the resilience of the Iranians, Trump would likely have attacked Cuba by now and perhaps even annexed Greenland.”

It is important to understand that these sentiments have little to do with Iran. I have detected little sympathy for the Islamic Republic at the government level, although the situation appears different among general public. Rather, these sentiments are rooted in naked self-interest.

An America pursuing a naked neocolonial foreign policy is a greater threat to many countries than Iran’s closure of the Strait of Hormuz. Certainly, the latter hurts innocent countries that played no role in encouraging Trump’s disastrous war. But it is a comparatively manageable pain. Few countries, unlike Iran, have designed their militaries to repel American or Israeli aggression should they find themselves on Trump’s target list.

Indeed, I have even detected concern that Iran may open the Strait of Hormuz too soon—before Trump has committed himself to never playing neocon again. Just as Iran helped create a quagmire for America in Iraq to prevent the Bush administration from invading Iran next, many countries now secretly hope Trump remains stuck in the Persian Gulf for the foreseeable future. It may be the most effective guarantee that his regime-change and annexation spree comes to a halt.

What we are seeing is a world yearning for balance. And from the perspective of many countries—not just those in the Global South—the United States is the country that most acutely needs to be balanced against.

Not Russia. Not Iran. Not North Korea. And certainly not China.

That is not an endorsement of any of these countries, their governing structures, domestic policies, or ideologies. Nor is it a dismissal of the threats and challenges they pose in their respective regions. It is simply a cold and sober assessment of where the most pressing threat emerges from.

We saw a variation of this in 2022, when Russia invaded Ukraine. The vast majority of countries in the Global South sympathized with Ukraine for obvious reasons, even if they also placed some blame on NATO. But they did not see Russia as a threat to themselves, because Russia lacked the capacity to replicate its invasion of Ukraine in Africa, for instance.

Then Washington cut Russia off from the international financial system within five days, and alarm bells rang in capitals around the world. Not because they sympathized with Russia or believed the sanctions were unwarranted, but because the US had demonstrated that it could devastate economies around the world within days, given their dependence on the dollar for trade.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine revealed no comparable vulnerability of Global South states to Russian designs. Washington’s swift sanctions response, however, revealed a massive vulnerability to American whims and capabilities.

That threat may have been theoretical in 2022. After all, Biden showed no inclination to wield that weapon for the fun of it. Today, it is anything but.

Being a friend of America provides you with no protection from Trump’s mood swings. A Western diplomat recently told me about her efforts to convince her leadership not to push for a state visit to Washington. “Nothing good can come of it. It’s just better to not be on his radar,” the diplomat of an allied state told me.

Just as in the jungle, there is protection in not being noticed by the top predator.

This reality demonstrates once again how disastrous the Iran war—and neoconservative foreign policy more broadly—has been for the United States itself. All states seek to amass power. But responsible statecraft and diplomacy ensure that power is not unnecessarily perceived as a threat by other nations, which will have no choice but to find ways to balance against you.

Or, as we are now seeing, to balance against you by proxy.

Don’t get me wrong, I am not saying that the world wants America to lose. But it increasingly wants America to be balanced and constrained.

The Trump administration believes it has turned the tables on Iran. Washington assesses that the rerouting of maritime traffic through the Omani corridor, combined with a global shift away from Persian Gulf oil, has reduced the effectiveness of Tehran’s closure of the Strait of Hormuz. At the same time, the U.S. blockade has sharply constrained Iran’s ability to sell its oil. The result, in Washington’s view, is a status quo that imposes greater costs on Iran than on the United States.

That calculation changes the strategic equation. Rather than being forced to accommodate Iranian demands, President Donald Trump now believes he can afford to wait Tehran out. For the first time since the war began, the White House has concluded, time is working in America’s favor.

Assuming that assessment is correct, the more important question is what Trump intends to do with this newfound leverage. If Washington interprets Iran’s vulnerability as an opportunity to extract capitulation rather than to negotiate a durable settlement, the result is more likely to be another round of war than an end to the conflict. Tehran has already demonstrated that when confronted with a choice between surrender and escalation, it will choose the latter. Giving Iran the same choice again is therefore unlikely to produce a different outcome.

The only way to turn this unexpected shift in the balance of leverage into a political victory is through diplomacy. If Washington’s assessment is correct, it now has an opportunity to use its leverage to secure a compromise that addresses its core interests while giving Tehran sufficient reason to accept an agreement. If, instead, the administration pursues maximalist demands, it risks converting a moment of leverage into another cycle of war.

Historically, however, Washington has tended to make precisely this mistake. Whenever U.S. policymakers have concluded that time and leverage are on their side, they have often treated Iranian weakness not as an opening for compromise, but as an opportunity to seek capitulation. The danger is that Trump will repeat that pattern. He will mistake leverage for victory and turn a potentially favorable negotiating position into the continuation of the tragedy that is US-Iran relations.

Trump failed militarily, but thinks he can win economically

America has run out of military options. The clearest indication is that the Trump administration has stopped striking Iranian targets even as Tehran continues to attack ships transiting the Strait. On Monday, an Iranian attack killed a sailor aboard a vessel using the southern corridor. Yet Washington did not respond militarily—even though the second round of the war began precisely because the administration had declared that it could not accept Iran firing on ships.

According to Reuters, U.S. forces have used virtually all of their global stockpile of ATACMS and Precision Strike Missiles (PrSM) during the five-month Iran conflict. Moreover, roughly 65% of Patriot interceptors, 38% of THAAD interceptors, and almost half of the Navy’s Tomahawk cruise missiles have been expended.

The depletion of these stocks appears to have forced Trump to abandon its pursuit of a military knockout and instead shift the burden of economic pressure onto Tehran. That strategy, in turn, appears to be producing results faster—and to a greater degree—than the administration anticipated.

In the American description of events, this success is mainly due to three factors: New, much larger ships are being used that carry primarily crude oil. These VLCCs (Very Large Crude Carrier) can carry up to 2 million barrels of oil. In comparison, other oil tankers can transport between 350,000 and 1 million barrels.

Before the outbreak of the war, approximately 21 million barrels of petroleum and crude oil passed through the Strait of Hormuz on a daily basis. These were carried by 65 to 80 tankers. Roughly the same amount of oil transition through the strait can now be achieved by only ten VLCCs a day. And given that the vast majority of ships transitioning through the Strait in the Southern Corridor have their transponders off, this traffic has not been noted by outlets tracking the traffic.

Secondly, demand for Persian Gulf oil has significantly dropped as numerous economies have started to transition to other sources of supply. Brazil, for instance, has increased its exports and started to serve markets that previously relied on Persian Gulf oil. Most importantly, Beijing appears to have deliberately reduced its oil consumption to prevent prices from remaining above $100 a barrel and thereby aggravating the risk of a global recession.

Third, the war has created economic incentives strong enough to attract ships and crews willing to assume substantially greater risks. The growing volume of traffic through the Southern Corridor, despite the obvious dangers, is evidence that these incentives are surprisingly powerful.

Unlike its earlier illusions about the blockade as a guaranteed knockout blow against the Iranian theocracy, Washington no longer expects economic pressure to produce a quick surrender. Instead, the administration appears to be betting on a slower process of economic strangulation that will eventually force Tehran to capitulate. Faith in a knockout blow has given way to the more fragile hope of prolonged strangulation.

Tehran isn’t worried - for now

Iran’s calculation is effectively the opposite of Washington’s. Tehran doubts the United States can sustain the flow of VLCC traffic through the Strait and believes Trump will have little choice but to return to the Islamabad MOU within the next two to three weeks. Trump may have made progress on oil exports, but LNG and many petrochemical products, including fertilizers, remain unable to leave the Persian Gulf.

Tehran also appears to believe that it retains the ability to halt the VLCC traffic, but is deliberately refraining from doing so for now. The calculation is to avoid escalation while waiting to see whether the United States’ depleted military options ultimately compel Trump to return to the MOU.

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In short, Tehran does not appear overly concerned—for now. But that could change. If Trump refuses to return to the MOU, or succeeds in turning the balance of economic pain against Iran, Tehran will face a far harsher reality. Just as Washington underestimated Iran’s resilience, Tehran may have underestimated the both resilience of the global economy and Trump - the former’s ability to shift away from oil and the latter’s craftiness in finding non-military ways to effectively reopen parts of the Strait.

Between surrender or escalation, Iran will almost certainly choose escalation. Even if Trump has gained the economic upper hand, Tehran still believes it holds a military advantage. Its options range from more aggressive attacks on VLCCs to strikes on Emirati pipelines that bypass the Strait, and potentially to renewed escalation in the Red Sea.

Indeed, it was precisely Trump’s erroneous assumption that Iran would choose surrender over war that helped drive the United States toward escalation in the first place. Washington’s recurring search for Iran’s breaking point has repeatedly produced escalation rather than capitulation. There is little reason to expect the pattern to be different this time.

The US-Iran tragedy

Herein lies the tragedy of the lethal dance between Washington and Tehran. America’s winner-take-all approach makes agreement unacceptable when Iran has the momentum. When the momentum shifts to Washington, the United States comes to believe that nothing short of Tehran’s full capitulation is palpable.

Because Iran fears surrender more than war, the cycle oscillates between economic pressure and military escalation, interrupted only by brief and often fragile periods of diplomacy. Put simply, the structure of the situation favors war.

This is particularly visible today as neither side is investing in any real diplomacy with the other. Tehran’s “diplomacy” is to simply wait for Trump to return to the MOU, while Trump has barred U.S. officials from engaging with Iran and committed himself instead to economic warfare.

When you don’t negotiate when you’re weak, because you are weak, and you don’t negotiate when you are strong, because you are strong, then war becomes the baseline.

I am increasingly convinced that there will be a third round in the US-Israel-Iran war. It is not inevitable, but the signals I am picking up from the two sides, as well as from key GCC states, leaves me quite pessimistic.

Tehran believes it has the military edge and is openly discussing going on the offensive instead of merely responding to American attacks. By that, Iran will not only have wrested control of the scope and geography of the war from the US, but also its timing.

In the US, on the other hand, an increasingly frustrated Trump not only promises to annex a Strait he can’t open, but also threatens to bomb Oman, even though Muscat by all accounts has become very helpful to the US’s broader strategy. Meaning, it is increasingly representing the US position in the talks rather than its own, given it was Oman’s previous compromise proposals that prompted the first threat by Trump to bomb America’s own mediator.

And of course, Trump has formally endorsed the Pakistan-Saudi-Turkey defense pact, while Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei has reshuffled much of the top Iranian leadership. So once again, we have lots to discuss and I am scheduling our next Q&A session for Sunday, August 23, at 11.00 am ET.

As I have written before, all my writing is free; I do not paywall the analysis. But for the busy members of the community who want to go beyond the headlines, I host exclusive Zoom briefings and Q&As for paid subscribers.

The conversation will go in whatever direction you choose to take it. And if you want, you can message me ahead of time and raise issues you’d like to see discussed.

So join me this coming Sunday, August 23, at 11:00 am ET for a 45-minute Q&A and discussion via Zoom.

Register for the Zoom here:

(I will post the video on my Substack afterward, available only to paid subscribers).

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I have always favored dialogue and debate, but it has become increasingly difficult to find venues that ensure true debate, rather than the screaming matches we usually see on TV these days. I have, for instance, declined several invitations from Piers Morgan because I don’t think I am a good fit for his “debate” format.

But I made an exception and accepted an invite from Mario Nawfal to debate the former IDF spokesperson Jonathan Conricus. Though both Jonathan and I grew up in Sweden, I have never had any dealings with him. And perhaps I overestimated his interest in having a proper conversation. So in many ways, this is not the type of debate I prefer, but nevertheless, I think it brought about some important revelations, particularly after Jonathan realized he couldn’t overvoice me.

I wont claim you will enjoy it, but I do think you might find it useful.

Sincerely,

Trita

The year was 2018, and I was toying with the idea of starting a new think tank in Washington—one that could help shift U.S. grand strategy away from endless wars and needless foreign entanglements.

I was frustrated. More than a decade of work to secure the Iran nuclear deal had come to nothing when Trump simply walked away from it. Most people saw the explanation in Trump’s persona. While most saw the explanation in Trump’s persona, I detected a deeper systemic problem: For a deal like the JCPOA to survive, it needed to be embedded in a larger grand strategy that would sustain such achievements. But Liberal Hegemony sustained endless wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, but would not protect a diplomatic agreement that evaded war.

If a new think tank were going to challenge that system, it would have to punch far above its weight.

So I began studying Washington’s think tanks: how they were governed, their communication strategies, how they raised money, and—perhaps most importantly—who actually funded them. That last question was harder than it sounds. Many think tanks are remarkably opaque about where their money comes from. I needed someone who knew how to follow the money.

So I called Eli Clifton.

Eli was an investigative journalist who had made a specialty of tracing funding networks and uncovering the real power players behind Washington institutions. He was, as they say, one of the best in the business.

Eli, of course, became a co-founder of the Quincy Institute.

I tell you this backstory because it goes directly to the significance of the extraordinary new book Eli has written with UPenn professor Ian Lustick, Israel’s Lobby: America in the Grip of a Foreign Power, which is officially released today.

I believe it will become the most important book of 2026.

If you haven’t bought the book yet, you should do so right away!

Israel’s Lobby is neither a sequel to John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt’s groundbreaking 2007 book, The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy, nor simply an update of it. It does something different.

Eli and Ian provide a systematic history of the moments when, in their telling, Israel and its American supporters have worked against U.S. interests. But they also add a dimension that Mearsheimer and Walt did not explore at length: money—and, specifically, the financial machinery behind efforts to put Israel’s interests ahead of America’s.

They follow that money.

Eli and Ian trace the funding that fuels the pro-Israel lobby, identifying major donors behind donor-advised funds and other vehicles that can obscure the money trail. Drawing on leaked emails and extensive investigative work, they map the donors’ connections to Israel and document the methods through which money and political influence are brought to bear on U.S. foreign policy.

They then layer this financial investigation onto a broader historical argument: that Israel and the pro-Israel lobby have repeatedly sought to thwart U.S. presidents, pressure lawmakers, and derail policies they viewed as contrary to Israel’s interests—even when those policies served America’s. The book examines efforts to fuel Islamophobia, spread false rumors about American presidents, and weaponize accusations of antisemitism to marginalize and silence critics of Israel.

As Ian explains in the video below: “The point of this book is to tell the American people that they have faced, and are facing, a danger from the Israel Lobby in the United States that doesn’t just compromise American interests abroad but threatens American freedoms at home.”

But the reason I believe this will become the most important book of 2026 lies in the collision between its findings and its timing. Never before have Americans been so willing to openly debate the once-taboo question of Israel’s influence in American politics.

Indeed, we have reached an inflection point. America’s relationship with Israel—and the genocide in Gaza—has become a litmus test in consequential Democratic and Republican primaries. The New York mayoral race and the Michigan Senate primary were not isolated episodes. They are data points in an emerging trend.

For years, Washington operated according to a peculiar asymmetry: what was bad policy for America could still be good politics for individual politicians. Aligning with the pro-Israel lobby might undermine sound U.S. policy, but it could help keep lawmakers safely in their seats.

That equation is breaking down. Bad policy is increasingly becoming bad politics.

Support from AIPAC and other elements of the pro-Israel lobby can now carry a political cost rather than confer political protection. And politicians who challenge Israel’s conduct in Gaza or its supporters’ influence over American politics are discovering that doing so can win them not only votes, but donations.

That is a profound change in American politics. And it is precisely the moment into which Israel’s Lobby arrives.

A paradigm shift in U.S.-Israel relations is coming. And I suspect Eli and Ian’s book will play an important role in accelerating it—and in making this long-overdue shift impossible for Washington to ignore.

P.S. If you want a taste of the book before diving in, The Guardian has published a fantastic excerpt, adapted from Israel’s Lobby: “The pro-Israel lobby has swayed US presidents since Truman. It must end with Trump.”

P.P.S. Ian and Eli have also agreed to join me for a Geopolitical Chat with paid subscribers in September. You’ll have a chance to put your questions directly to them. I’ll share the details as soon as we have a date.

Just a few hours ago, we concluded our sixth Q&A with paid subscribers. We didn’t get to all of the questions, unfortunately, but we did manage to cover a lot of ground. We discussed the latest developments in the negotiations over the Strait, why the Iranians have opted for negotiations even though oil prices have not crept above $100, the meaning and implications of the Saudi-Turkey-Pakistan defense pact, and whether it risks turning into an anti-Iran bloc

The video is available below for paid subscribers.

We will hold these sessions roughly every two weeks, but I will also schedule emergency sessions at your request.

Thank you!

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Oman and Iran appear close to a temporary arrangement to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, potentially providing both an exit from the current round of fighting and the foundation for a more durable maritime order. Washington should welcome such an agreement—even if it acknowledges a degree of Iranian authority in administering traffic through the strait—because US interest dictates that open and non-discriminatory passage must be given priority over control.

The emerging formula would reportedly divide responsibility for the shipping lanes. Vessels entering the Persian Gulf would travel through waters administered by Iran, while outbound traffic would pass through an Omani-administered route. Iran would be notified of departing vessels and, while this has not yet been discussed, Tehran appears open to also ensuring that Oman would be notified of incoming traffic. Tehran and Muscat may collect and share fees for specified security and environmental services, although this sensitive issue has not yet been settled. The negotiations remain fluid, and any agreement is reportedly linked to the lifting of the American blockade on Iranian ports.

The arrangement would represent a slight climbdown by Tehran. Iran’s earlier position would have required traffic in both directions to pass through some portion of Iranian waters as well as Omani waters. That would have brought even ships already inside the Persian Gulf under an Iranian-administered transit system. The emerging division of lanes would give Oman primary responsibility for outbound shipping and limit the universe of vessels requiring Iranian approval or coordination.

If successful—and if Washington accepts it—the agreement could help end the present fighting. It remains unclear whether that would restore the previous American-Iranian memorandum of understanding or require a new framework. Nor does it in and of itself move the needle on two other major stumbling blocks: Iran’s demand for a regional ceasefire and Washington’s demands on Iran’s nuclear activities.

The Trump administration will likely receive strong pushback from hawkish elements in Washington and Israel who will complain over the arrangement’s de facto acceptance and legitimization of Iran (and Oman’s) management of the Strait.

But this critique is borne out of a confusion of what the US’s actual core interest in the Strait is: The free and predictable flow of commerce or preventing the ability of a hostile power to assert control.

The Trump administration has increasingly framed the objective as preventing Iran from “controlling” the strait. Yet the central American interest in strategic waterways has historically been less about who administers them than about whether ships can pass through them freely, predictably and without discrimination. Preventing a hostile state from acquiring coercive leverage has generally been a means of preserving passage, not an end that supersedes passage itself.

That hierarchy of interests matters. If reopening the strait requires acknowledging that Iran possesses some capacity to regulate traffic in waters along its coast, Washington should not reject an agreement merely because it fails to preserve the appearance of unqualified American dominance.

The Suez crisis provides the clearest example. In 1956, Egypt’s president, Gamal Abdel Nasser, nationalized the Suez Canal Company, displacing the British- and French-controlled corporation that had operated one of the world’s most important commercial arteries. Britain and France regarded nationalization not merely as an economic injury but as a strategic humiliation and, together with Israel, invaded Egypt.

President Dwight Eisenhower refused to support them. After rejecting the Anglo-French invasion, Eisenhower’s administration did not make restoration of British or international ownership a condition for accepting Egypt’s continued administration of the canal. Instead, Washington opposed the invasion and pressed for a diplomatic arrangement that would preserve international access. The applicable legal regime emphasized the canal’s free use by ships of all countries on equal terms, while leaving Egypt responsible for administering and defending the waterway.

Egyptian control was not the same as unrestricted Egyptian discretion. The distinction was crucial. Washington could accept Egyptian sovereignty over the canal while insisting that sovereignty be exercised within rules guaranteeing nondiscriminatory passage. The overriding American interest was not which flag flew over the canal authority, but whether the canal remained open under internationally accepted rules.

A crucial detail that should not be overlooked: Egypt at the time was not an American ally, whereas France and the UK were. Indeed, Egypt was at the time closely aligned with the Soviet Union though not formally allied with Moscow. Washington nevertheless accepted continued Egyptian administration of the canal rather than seeking to reverse nationalization, provided freedom of navigation was preserved.

The Turkish Straits offer another instructive precedent. Under the 1936 Montreux Convention, Turkey recovered control over the Bosporus and Dardanelles, including the right to remilitarize and defend them. Yet commercial vessels retained freedom of passage under an internationally recognized regime. The United States has lived for decades with a strategically important NATO ally exercising extensive authority over a waterway connecting the Black Sea with the Mediterranean—even though Turkey can regulate warship access and, in wartime, exercise additional powers.

The South China Sea makes the same point from another direction. The United States does not claim territory there and formally takes no position on sovereignty over most disputed features. It objects instead to excessive maritime claims, coercion and unlawful restrictions on navigation and overflight. American naval operations are designed to demonstrate that ships and aircraft may exercise rights recognized by international law regardless of which government claims nearby rocks, reefs or waters.

Washington certainly cares about China’s growing regional power. Its legal position, however, is not that the United States must control the South China Sea. It is that no coastal power may transform contested waters into an exclusive domain or condition lawful passage on political obedience. Once again, the preservation of navigational rights lies at the heart of the U.S. legal position. Strategically, Washington’s concern about control extends beyond navigation alone, but it is precisely because control creates the capacity to restrict those rights—and to alter the regional balance of power—that it commands such attention.

Iran, of course, is viewed in Washington as a hostile power. Few American officials would be comfortable with an arrangement that left Tehran able to close the Strait of Hormuz at will. Any agreement must therefore contain credible safeguards: passage should be nondiscriminatory; notification procedures should not become a discretionary licensing system; service charges should be limited to reasonable fees for services rendered rather than function as political tolls; and disputes should be subject to an agreed international mechanism.

But Washington must also acknowledge the strategic reality the war has exposed. The conflict did not give Iran the capacity to close the strait. It revealed a capacity Iran already possessed—perhaps to a greater extent than either Washington or Tehran had fully appreciated.

Crucially, a diplomatic agreement recognizing that reality would not expand Iran’s military power. Rather, it would seek to limit that ability through a legally and politically binding agreement that can be sustained for the simple reason that it meets the core interests of all relevant parties.

The alternative is to insist that even the symbolism of Iranian control is intolerable. But unless the United States can reliably eliminate Iran’s ability to threaten shipping—a goal it has thus far failed to achieve and appears increasingly incapable of achieving—that position offers no practical path to reopening the waterway. Instead, it creates the conditions for an endless war: a militarily unattainable objective coupled with a political dynamic that makes pursuing it indefinitely more acceptable than abandoning it.

If President Trump concludes that keeping the strait open is more important than denying Iran all visible administrative authority, an agreement appears possible. If he decides that American primacy requires rejecting any arrangement that acknowledges Iranian leverage, the likely result will be renewed military action—even though military action has so far failed to guarantee passage.

Incidentally, the elevation of control over access is closely associated with the postwar American pursuit of global primacy - the very same grand strategy that has led to America almost always being at war.

A settlement that subjects Iranian and Omani administration to predictable, nondiscriminatory international standards may not appear attractive, but would meet America’s core interest of free commerce in a region with fast diminishing strategic significance. Washington should judge it by whether ships can pass—not by whether the agreement preserves the illusion that Iran lacks leverage over waters along its own coast that we now know it always enjoyed.

Yet another apocalyptic threat, followed by another self-congratulatory climbdown. The pattern is becoming tiresome by now: Unable to escalate his way out of the self-inflicted debacle, Trump tries to bluff his way out. Except, Tehran is not falling for it. Rather, it is confidently raising the stakes, calculating that Trump will only dedicate himself fully to a diplomatic solution once he has internalized that he does not have a military option.

It’s a risky strategy - with potential attacks in Egypt and cyber attacks in the US - but one that the new and far less restrained military leadership believes is more likely to achieve security than giving in to Trump.

So the next few days will undoubtedly be eventful and leave us with much to discuss. I am scheduling our next Q&A session for Friday, August 7, at 2.00 pm ET.

As you know, all my writing is free; I do not paywall the analysis. But for the busy members of the community who want to go beyond the headlines, I host exclusive Zoom briefings and Q&As for paid subscribers.

The conversation will go in whatever direction you choose to take it. And if you want, you can message me ahead of time and raise issues you’d like to see discussed.

So join me this coming Friday, August 7, at 2:00 p.m. ET for a 45-minute Q&A and discussion via Zoom.

Register for the Zoom here:

(I will post the video on my Substack afterward, available only to paid subscribers).

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Just an hour after CENTCOM began a wave of strikes on several Iranian cities in the south of the country, ’s Zeteo had published a piece from me explaining the likely logic behind Iran’s surprise attack on US bases in Jordan yesterday - and why Iran was not deterred by the US’s likely retaliation.

Bottom line is that to Tehran, an informal ceasefire is not a ceasefire at all. Simply put, the current situation serves Washington better than it serves Tehran. The de facto ceasefire that has emerged in recent weeks has lowered oil prices, easing one of the principal economic pressures on the Trump administration while leaving most of the sanctions and military pressure on Iran intact. In Tehran’s view, an informal pause in fighting allows Washington to reap the energy market benefits of de-escalation without making any political or diplomatic commitments in return.

Secondly, Iran likely intended to signal its willingness to conduct preemptive military action rather than simply retaliate after being attacked. Iranian officials privately argue they acted on intelligence indicating that the United States was preparing military operations against Iran, citing the movement of additional American military assets into the region. Whether that intelligence was accurate matters less than the strategic message Tehran intended to send. Iran wanted Washington to understand that it no longer assumes the first strike must come from the United States.

Consequently, the immediate target was not simply American military infrastructure: It was the strategic assumptions underpinning current U.S. policy.

But most importantly, the strike appears intended as a warning against a broader American escalation that Tehran believes Netanyahu – and perhaps Zelensky as well – were advocating during their meetings in Washington.

There is an obvious paradox here. Attempting to prevent American escalation by attacking American forces risks producing precisely the escalation Iran says it seeks to avoid. Yet from Tehran’s perspective, allowing Washington to believe it could escalate without facing immediate costs may be even more dangerous.

It is, to say the least, an extraordinarily risky strategy. It seeks to compel diplomacy by increasing the perceived costs of military escalation. Yet it simultaneously raises the probability of the very conflict it is ostensibly designed to prevent.

But as I write in the piece, there is still a narrow path out of this disaster.

You can read the full piece here:

Zeteo

Why Did Iran Launch a Surprise Attack on U.S. Bases in Jordan?

The Iranian strike on U.S. bases in Jordan during Volodymyr Zelensky’s and Benjamin Netanyahu’s visits to Washington caught American decision-makers off guard. The timing alone guaranteed that the attack would be interpreted as a dramatic escalation. The prevailing explanations followed a familiar pattern: Tehran was overplaying its hand, hardliners were sabotaging diplomacy, Iran was probing Donald Trump’s resolve, or the strike was retaliation for recent U.S.-Saudi operations against Iraqi militias…

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a month ago · 142 likes · 6 comments · Trita Parsi

I have a piece in Responsible Statecraft today that argues that rather than just showcasing Ukraine’s ability to strike Iran and by that help the US war effort against Iran, the Ukrainian President may be pursuing a larger and more consequential gamble: Merging the Ukraine war with the U.S.-Iran conflict into a single strategic theater.

The distinction matters. If the two wars become one, Ukraine ceases to be merely a recipient of American military assistance and instead becomes a direct participant in Washington’s war with Tehran. By the same token, the United States would no longer simply be Ukraine’s principal arms supplier. It would become an active belligerent against Russia through a conflict that stretches from the Black Sea to the Caspian.

For Kyiv, this would represent the strategic breakthrough it has sought since Russia’s invasion in 2022.

This dynamic would also appeal to Israel. First, it would give the Iran war another lease on life. Second, it would internationalize the conflict further by drawing European governments into the Iran theater through their deep commitments to Ukraine. And third, perhaps most significantly, it would transform the political narrative. Defeating Iran would no longer be presented as a necessity to defend Israel, but rather, to defend Ukraine.

Given the levels of elite and public support Ukraine enjoys — after all, it was the victim of an illegal invasion — such a framing is far more politically digestible than centering the war on Israel, given Israel’s plummeting standing in the West due to its genocide in Gaza and critical role in starting the illegal war with Iran.

You can read the full piece here: https://responsiblestatecraft.org/zelensky-iran-war-trump/

Earlier today, we held our fifth Q&A with paid subscribers. Every week, we have had a larger and larger turnout, and there was no shortage of questions. We discussed the meaning and potential repercussions of Ukraine’s attack on Iranian ships and the potential merger of the Ukraine and Iran wars, whether the de facto ceasefire can lead to a deal on the Strait of Hormuz or whether it will only lead to a temporary pause that eases oil markets and gives the US breathing room to restart the war in a week or two, and given the current talks between Oman and Iran on the Strait, whether any viable solutions remain that Iran, the US and the GCC writ large can accept.

The video is available below for paid subscribers.

We will hold these sessions roughly every two weeks, but I will also schedule emergency sessions at your request.

Thank you!

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Well, it’s not looking good. And if Trump follows his previous pattern, we are likely going to see a major escalation starting sometime this weekend, possibly as early as today after the markets close.

By Monday, we may have a better idea as to whether this was all a bluff, whether Trump actually has a plan that can turn the war to his favor, or if there is less than meets the eye: The past 13 days of a seemingly haphazard bombing campaign is the plan.

So I am scheduling our next Q&A session for Monday, July 27 at 2.00pm ET.

As you know, all my writing is free; I do not paywall the analysis. But for the smart and busy members of the community who want to go beyond the headlines, I host exclusive Zoom briefings and Q&As for paid subscribers.

The conversation will go in whatever direction you choose to take it. And if you want, you can message me ahead of time and raise issues you’d like to see discussed.

So join me this coming Monday, July 27, at 2.00 pm ET for a 45-minute Q&A and discussion via Zoom.

Register for the Zoom here:

(I will post the video on my Substack afterward, available only to paid subscribers).

Read more

A few points on the shocking U.S.–Saudi nuclear deal announced.

1. This reflects a weaker American bargaining position, not a stronger one.

The broader context is China. The Biden administration pursued a nuclear deal with Saudi Arabia, as part of a broader expansion of Trump’s Abraham Accords, in part to pull Riyadh closer to Washington and away from Beijing. But Washington’s position has deteriorated since then. The credibility of the U.S. security umbrella has weakened, GCC states have become more strategically autonomous, and Saudi Arabia has gained leverage by diversifying its partnerships.

The result appears to be that Washington had to offer substantially more to try to keep Saudi from drifting further toward China, while getting substantially less in return.

2. By any historical standard, this is an extraordinary Saudi victory.

Compared to previous negotiations, Riyadh has secured remarkable concessions. It no longer appears to have to normalize relations with Israel as part of the package. It is reportedly not required to sign a traditional Section 123 agreement that would deprive KSA of enrichment technology. And there are no comprehensive IAEA safeguards comparable to those Washington has long insisted upon elsewhere.

If these reports hold, Saudi Arabia has achieved what few thought Washington would ever accept.

3. Biden was going down the same path…

The Biden administration reportedly considered similar arrangements, but its efforts were derailed by the repercussions of the October 7 attacks.

Biden officials also understood the risks, although it did not prevent them from pursuing it and signalling willingness to offer Saudi major nuclear concessions. Some of the contingency ideas reportedly discussed bordered on the surreal: having American troops physically guard Saudi enrichment facilities from the Saudis themselves, or designing systems that would allow the United States to disable—or even destroy remotely—the facilities if necessary.

The fact that such safeguards were seriously contemplated should itself have been a warning. If your proposal requires extraordinary mechanisms to prevent your own ally from using the technology you are providing, perhaps the proposal is fundamentally flawed.

4. This may prove a stepping stone toward an even greater disaster: Security Guarantees for Saudi

As Rosemary Kelanic points out, this deal provides Riyadh with leverage it can use in the future to force Washington to provide it with security guarantees. Saudi Arabia can threaten to build nuclear weapons unless the U.S. offers it Article 5-level security guarantees - a disastrous move that would further entangle the US in the region militarily instead of allowing America to come home from the Middle East.

As Kelanic argues, there is ample historical precedent. South Korea and West Germany both advanced nuclear programs that alarmed Washington. Rather than allowing them to acquire nuclear weapons, the United States ultimately strengthened its military commitments and security guarantees in exchange for abandoning those programs.

As a result, this nuclear deal may prove to be a prelude to an even more damaging concession to Saudi down the road.

5. This likely weakens Washington’s negotiating position with Iran.

If there is eventually another U.S.-Iran nuclear agreement, today’s decision establishes an entirely new benchmark.

It becomes impossible to argue that Saudi Arabia may enrich uranium while Iran cannot, although Tehran was never going to accept zero enrichment in the first place. But proposals that earlier had been entertained - such as a 5- to 10-year moratorium on enrichment - may now also be out of reach.

Moreover, and perhaps more importantly, it becomes harder to insist on intrusive international inspections for Iran while accepting a far lighter non-IAEA inspection regime for Saudi Arabia. And it becomes much more difficult to portray enrichment itself as an unacceptable proliferation risk.

Washington has made the type of deal it wants from Iran more complicated.

6. Israel has every reason to be deeply unhappy.

Much attention will focus on the loss of the Saudi normalization card, which has been one of Israel’s strategic objectives.

But the more consequential issue may be that Saudi Arabia now appears to have a far more credible pathway toward a nuclear weapons capability should it ever choose to pursue one.

That represents a fundamental shift in Israel’s long-term strategic environment.

7. Is this about widening the war with Iran?

Possibly. One interpretation is that Washington made these concessions to secure greater Saudi cooperation in the current (or a future) confrontation with Tehran.

But Tehran itself does not appear particularly alarmed.

Saudi Arabia’s direct military contribution to a war with Iran would likely remain limited, and the Kingdom’s participation does little to alter Iran’s fundamental geographic advantages in the Persian Gulf. More importantly, Saudi leaders have spent years trying to reduce—not increase—the risk of becoming a battlefield in a U.S.-Iran conflict.

If that remains Riyadh’s strategic priority, this agreement is unlikely to fundamentally change the military balance in the war.

Taken together, it is difficult to see today’s announcement as advancing US interest, let alone being compatible with other existing efforts such as finding an acceptable resolution to the conflict with Iran. It raises further questions as to whether a cohesive Middle East policy exists.

We have seen a major escalation between the US and Iran over the past 24 hours, but it is likely only a prelude to what appears to be coming next week.

Tehran continues to respond tit-for-tat, demonstrating that, contrary to repeated Pentagon assurances, its ability to penetrate American and regional air defenses remains formidable. (Its strikes on U.S. bases in Jordan and Syria have killed at least two Americans.)

Yet because Iran’s responses have been deliberately calibrated to remain proportionate—unlike earlier exchanges, when it pledged to respond at a ratio of 1.5 to one—its full military capacity remains unseen.

Tehran has struck desalination plants in Kuwait in response to American strikes on Iranian desalination plants, and bridges and other infrastructure across the GCC in response to U.S. attacks on Iranian infrastructure. It has not, for example, initiated attacks on Persian Gulf oil facilities without first seeing its own energy infrastructure targeted by the United States.

In doing so, Tehran seeks to signal to GCC states that it is not opening new fronts in the war; Washington is. Its message is that the GCC has placed itself in an untenable position by relying on a country willing to restart the war with Iran even though it knows the GCC—not the United States—will bear the heaviest costs.

That, however, is not how the GCC states are likely to see it. Qatar and Oman in particular, which went to great lengths to prevent this war, are furious with Tehran. While they never accepted that U.S. bases on their soil were legitimate targets, they reject even more forcefully the notion that their critical infrastructure can be bombed simply because Iran cannot strike the United States directly.

Trump, however, appears to have concluded that Tehran’s hard line in the negotiations stemmed from the United States not hitting Iran hard enough during the 38-day war. Seemingly indifferent to the costs for the GCC states, the global economy, inflation and the American cost of living—not to mention the risk to U.S. troops—he is gambling that a few more weeks of war will degrade Iran’s ability to close the Strait and force Tehran into a more accommodating negotiating position.

It is, at best, a perilous gamble. Tehran has grown increasingly convinced that while Trump is unconventional enough to pursue diplomacy with Iran, he lacks the discipline and strategic patience to see negotiations through.

Herein lies the paradox of Trump: his willingness to break with convention makes him open to pursuing peace with Iran—a possibility previous presidents scarcely entertained. Yet that same disregard for convention leads him to dismiss the discipline, protocols and methods that successful diplomacy requires.

Indeed, Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei issued a written statement today arguing that Trump’s conduct has proven that “the signature of the U.S. President is utterly worthless and devoid of credibility.”

As long as Washington retains the option of returning to war, some in Tehran argue, negotiations serve little purpose. The United States will always be tempted to improve its bargaining position through military force - if such military options are available.

That view is gaining ground in Tehran. Yet taken to its logical conclusion, it implies that no durable diplomacy is possible until the other side has been militarily exhausted—a mirror image of Trump’s own rationale for returning to war in the first place.

For both sides to embrace this logic is not an adjustment to reality. It is a profound failure of imagination and statecraft.

I did a lengthy interview with the CEBRI, Brazil’s premier foreign policy think tank, on the war and its implications. Some of the most interesting questions, however, touched on the regional order we are shifting to - and what we are shifting from. I rejected the idea that there existed a stable balance before the war and that it is desirable to return to it. In reality, the United States held up a regional imbalance in which Israel was equipped to deter all other actors while no one was allowed to deter Israel. This policy provided Israel with impunity, which in turn ensured that peace no longer was part of Israel’s survival strategy.

With CEBRI’s permission, I have reposted the interview below.

The following is the interview given to CEBRI-Journal in July 2026.

Many analysts argue that the United States underestimated Iran’s willingness and capacity to restore deterrence. In your view, what were the main strategic miscalculations made by Washington before the outbreak of this war?

Trita Parsi: The main miscalculation the US side committed before the war was to believe Iran feared war more than it feared capitulation. Beyond miscalculating Iran’s strength, the US side more crucially believed that the Iranian theocracy would seek to save itself by capitulating to US demands on the nuclear front, not understanding that nothing constituted a more decisive threat to the theocracy’s survival than capitulation. The Iranians believed they could survive war, perhaps even come out on top (which appears to have happened), but they could never survive capitulation because they would lose their core base of support in that scenario.

Indeed, to the hardcore supporters of the Iranian government, its resistance against the US is a central pillar. This is why many of them–but far from all–also oppose an accommodation with Washington. Surrendering to the US would delegitimize the theocracy in the eyes of these steadfast supporters and push it towards collapse much faster than even a decisive defeat in war could.

Washington never understood this. On numerous occasions, Trump and his envoy Steve Witkoff expressed frustration over Iran’s refusal to surrender. The US issued military threats, to no avail. It moved a third of the US navy to the Persian Gulf, to no avail. And when the US tried to find a face-saving exit from its military bluff–by requesting that Iran respond performatively to a limited American strike–Tehran refused to oblige, further exasperating the American administration.

The second decisive miscalculation was to fundamentally underestimate Iran’s power and the resilience of the theocratic system. Trump was convinced by the Israelis that assassinating the Supreme Leader would either lead to the theocracy imploding from the inside or for the remnants of it offering their capitulation in return for a Venezuela-style deal in which Iran would give up its sovereignty to the US in return for a figure within the theocracy being allowed to take custodianship of the country.

Again, the American misreading of Iran is borderline comical. Washington viewed Iran no differently from authoritarian governments in the Middle East such as Iraq under Saddam Hussein or Libya under Moammar Qaddafi. In those systems, power was entirely centered in the hands of the ruling family. By assassinating the ruler and his children, these systems would completely collapse. Iran is organized entirely differently. Power is dispersed throughout a vast system–the nezam. Redundancies are deliberately created because the theocracy is itself a revolutionary government that from the outset was organized to withstand a counter-revolution. As a result, taking out even its top leaders does not bring about a collapse of the regime because it is designed to quickly replace that leadership with other revolutionaries waiting in the wings. While it is not a democracy in the Western liberal sense, neither is it a dictatorship in which power is centered in the hands of very few and, as a result, suffers from the vulnerability that inherently comes with such systems.

You recently argued that Iran has established a new regional equation by directly retaliating against Israeli strikes on Lebanon. Do you see this as the emergence of a genuine collective deterrence framework in the Middle East, or is it still too dependent on the current political circumstances to become a lasting regional order? If Iran is now willing to impose costs on Israel for actions taken against Lebanon, could this logic eventually be extended to Gaza, Syria, Iraq or Yemen? Where do you think Tehran would draw the boundaries of this emerging deterrence doctrine?

TP: One of the fundamental problems for stability in the region has been that Western countries–under the guise of upholding Israel’s right to defend itself–have actively sought an uneven balance in the region that would allow Israel almost complete maneuverability in the region. Under this uneven balance, Israel would be able to strike at countries such as Syria, Lebanon, and Iraq at will, with impunity and without American involvement (Israel even built military bases in Iraq without the knowledge of the Iraqi government). Israel has sought to extend this dominance to Iran as well but failed.

Israel asserts that it must have this impunity in order to survive. Thus, for Israel to feel safe, everyone else in the region must be unsafe. Israel should be able to deter everyone else, but no one should be able to deter Israel.

Needless to say, this is, at the end of the day, not a formula for stability. Rather, it is an arrangement that is inherently unstable. Major powers like Iran–regardless of their form of government–will never accept living under the military hegemony of a country not even ten times its size. Even smaller countries, such as Lebanon, will resist.

But for years, regional States lacked the hard power to push back. Their pushback was primarily asymmetric. Having restored its own deterrence, Iran is now trying to establish extended deterrence to include Lebanon. This will be the first time in a very long time that a regional power is willing to put hard power behind its efforts to prevent Israel from attacking a third country.

It remains to be seen if the effort is successful. While the US-Iran Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) led by JD Vance did appear to move in the direction of an American acceptance of Iran’s protection of Lebanon, the Israeli-Lebanese agreement brokered by Marco Rubio appears to contradict the MOU and reasserts Israeli dominion over Lebanon.

Assuming it is successful, it will in and of itself not establish a new regional equilibrium. But it may be a step toward a balance that demands restraint and non-maximalism from all sides.

Moreover, while Iran may desire to extend this to Gaza, it does not appear to have the leverage to do so at this point. If its extended deterrence in Lebanon proves successful, however, Tehran may inch toward including Gaza as well.

But it is important to understand that deterrence in Lebanon directly strengthens Iran’s own security as it deters Israel from attacking Iran due to Hezbollah’s intimate relations with Tehran. Iran’s relations with Hamas are not comparable, and, as a result, including Gaza in this arrangement does not automatically translate into a deterrence benefit for Tehran.

Your analysis suggests that the traditional separation between different conflict theaters in the Middle East is breaking down. For decades, conflicts in Gaza, Lebanon, Syria, and elsewhere were largely treated as separate theaters of confrontation. You argue that this separation is now eroding. How does this new regional logic compare to other historical cases in which States expanded deterrence commitments beyond their own territory?

TP: It is important to recognize that the region is not going from a situation in which extended deterrence did not exist to one in which it does. It is going from a scenario in which Israel, with the support of the West, has sought to establish and sustain complete dominance over the region, in which it has given itself the right to intervene militarily almost anywhere in the region with complete impunity. Look at the complete silence from the West when it comes to Israel’s assassination campaigns throughout the region. Israel even went so far as to try to assassinate Hamas negotiators in Doha, capital of Qatar, a country that is a close ally of the United States.

The carte blanche Europe and the United States have given Israel over the last couple of years, and by which Israel has willfully committed war crimes and even genocide without facing any meaningful pushback from the West, is what is lacking precedent in modern times. Most of the West has completely set aside international law and instead prioritized their political, diplomatic, and military support for Israel. By that, they have completely destroyed their own credibility in the eyes of most of the Middle East and the Global South writ large.

As mentioned earlier, such a situation is untenable. Such a regional imbalance begs to be balanced.

Whether Iran’s extended deterrence is the right answer is a different matter. What is clear, however, is that the posture and the policies of the West are a decisive part of the problem. Even if Israel desired it, it could never have achieved this imbalance on its own. The role and support of Europe and the United States were instrumental.

Ultimately, it is much better for the region to move towards an inclusive security architecture based on collective security and an explicit rejection of the containment-based logic. However, movement in that direction requires leverage against Israel and its continued occupation of Palestine. Since the West has proven itself unwilling to provide that leverage, it will by necessity have to come from somewhere else before the region can advance toward an inclusive security architecture.

One implication of your argument is that Israel may no longer enjoy complete freedom of military action in neighboring countries. How significant is this shift for the broader regional balance of power, and does it represent the first serious challenge to Israel’s military dominance since the end of the Cold War?

TP: It is still too early to tell, but a likely outcome of the United States and Israel’s ill-advised war against Iran may be that Israel will lose much of its impunity and maneuverability in the region. The Israelis will do everything they can to prevent this from happening, as well as reverse it if it does happen. It will indeed be a significant shift in the dynamics of the region if it occurs.

While Israel’s opposition is unsurprising, such an outcome is ultimately better for Israel itself as well. It is this Western-provided impunity that has fueled maximalist policies and politics in Israel and moved it further away from recognizing the necessity of peace and coexistence. This impunity has enabled an Israeli outlook that is anathema to peace. It has made the Israelis believe that they can live securely without suing for peace and without ending the illegal occupation of Palestine. Indeed, this policy has further fueled Israel’s territorial appetite, which renders conflict rather than peace far more likely. It has also made Israelis believe that they can live and survive in a state of perpetual warfare. This has had a profound and negative impact on Israeli society. As Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu himself stated, Israel will now live like Sparta: peace is neither achievable nor desirable; war is unending, and the only thing that matters is your ability to constantly wage it successfully. This impunity has ensured that peace is no longer part of Israel’s survival strategy.

No State will ultimately survive living in accordance with these principles, particularly not a State that is so dependent on the West and the United States for its military needs.

In 2004, a senior Israeli military official told me about his concerns in this regard. He told me that when he fought in the 1967 and 1973 wars, both he and his fellow soldiers believed that if they won the war, the Arab side would eventually sue for peace. To him and most Israelis at the time, war was unfortunately necessary to achieve peace, he said. But when he looked at Israeli soldiers today, he told me, he did not see any belief in peace. He did not see in them the foundational view that peace was necessary. This generation of Israeli soldiers had resigned themselves to the belief that perpetual warfare was their lot in life. He was deeply worried about how this would impact Israeli society. This was 22 years ago.

You suggest that the United States increasingly prefers regional stability over maintaining Israel’s unrestricted military freedom. If this trend continues, are we witnessing the beginning of a transition from a US-centered regional order to a more multipolar Middle East in which regional powers themselves define the rules of deterrence and escalation?

TP: Regardless of Washington’s decisions going forward, the era of American military dominance over the Middle East is over. The American security umbrella has neither proven to be reliable nor effective. The Iran War revealed its stunning limitations. The military bases the United States had set up throughout the region were supposed to prevent an Iranian attack. Instead, it was the US itself that started the ill-advised war, and then, in that war, the bases did not act as a deterrent against Iranian attacks but rather as a magnet for them. Moreover, from the perspective of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) States, the majority of whom oppose this war, the United States prioritized the defense of Israel over the defense of its own bases. Iran also proved far more effective in striking and destroying these bases as well as hitting other targets in countries that were supposedly protected by the American umbrella.

Altogether, this will lead to a scenario in which many of these States will continue to retain a strong military relationship with the United States, but they will no longer put all of their security eggs in the American basket. They will continue to buy American weapons, but it appears likely that most American bases in the region will slowly but surely sail off into the sunset. Neither the United States nor the GCC countries will be eager to pay for their reconstruction. The Pentagon has also hinted that it may move the headquarters of US Central Command (CENTCOM) to Israel, because of the vulnerability of Bahrain to Iranian attacks.

But we have to be humble and recognize that the region knows what it is leaving, but it is not entirely clear what it is moving towards. What will replace American dominance is at this stage still undecided. Could it be new bloc formations in a multi-polar region? Could States such as Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Turkey come together to try to continue the policy of containing Iran? Alternatively, will these regional States come together to rehabilitate Iran in the region’s security structures while forming a block against Israel?

In my view, the former is unlikely. There will be efforts to balance Iran, but it will be coupled with new efforts to integrate Iran economically, since four decades of Iranian containment ultimately did not work and eventually resulted in a disastrous war. Economic integration a la Europe pre-2022 has not been tested in the region, and this is the direction they are currently moving towards.

In my view, it would be a mistake, however, if that also leads to a new bloc formation against Israel. Instead of changing the paradigm of security in the region, all we would see is a change in its fault lines. The decontainment of Iran would be coupled with the recontainment of Israel. Neither will provide long-term security for the region. Only a truly inclusive security arrangement can do so. But that, of course, requires a fundamental shift in Israel’s regional approach, including an end to the illegal occupation–which is unlikely to happen as long as the West continues to underwrite Israel’s violations of international law.

China has become Iran’s most important economic and diplomatic partner in recent years. To what extent do you believe Beijing supports Iran’s emerging regional deterrence strategy, and how might China react if the current Israel-Iran confrontation escalates into a broader regional conflict?

TP: China has cleverly stayed out of this conflict. While it has provided Iran with intelligence, it has kept its support below the threshold that could legitimately provoke the US. China’s approach is not one based on having a favorite in the region. Rather, China is laser-focused on its own interest: ensuring that it has access to a stable level of energy coming out of the Persian Gulf that enables China, at optimal cost, to bring millions of its own people out of poverty while catapulting China toward great power status. It is less concerned with who dominates the region, who is controlling a specific disputed area of land, or the ideological leanings of specific leaders–as long as the region doesn’t turn against China, is not susceptible to US pressure to undermine China, and as long as China can rely on its energy resources.

While China is perceived as seeing Iran as a closer party geopolitically than, for instance, Turkey or Saudi Arabia–two close US allies, of which one is a NATO member–Beijing did sign 25-year strategic partnership agreements with Riyadh and Ankara long before it did so with Tehran.

Tehran is well aware of this. It knows that its relationship with Beijing is not a military alliance and that Beijing would never sacrifice its own interest to support Iran against any of its regional rivals or against the US. China plays a much longer game in which entanglement in other countries’ conflicts is rightfully seen as highly detrimental distractions.

As such, China will likely support most variations of regional arrangements that come out of this war as long as they provide reasonable levels of stability and do not put China in a detrimental position.

The United States would have been in a much stronger position today had it similarly approached the Middle East in the past thirty years.

Interview granted through written medium on July 5, 2026.