In the absence of a permanent deal, the war between the US and Iran is becoming one of attrition despite huge costs.
As the US-Israeli war on Iran enters a third month, there is no imminent sign of a break in the deadlock between Washington and Tehran. These are the main takeaways from what happened overnight. What did Trump say? After welcoming Britain’s King Charles III in Washington on Tuesday, US President Donald Trump lashed out at German Chancellor Friedrich Merz. “I am doing something with Iran, right now, that other Nations, or Presidents, should have done long ago,” Trump wrote in a social media...
In the latest move as the US and Iran circle each other warily and the world holds its breath, US President Donald Trump on Saturday ordered his negotiating team not to travel to Pakistan for talks on ending the eight-week war that has upended the global economy. Trump told his son-in-law Jared Kushner and special envoy Steve Witkoff to stay put and avoid wasting more time until Tehran stepped up. Vice-President J.D. Vance, who presided over the first round of talks earlier this month, remains...
As the war on Iran continues to command global attention, North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has stepped up his appearances at military events, using drills and missile tests to project confidence at home and defiance abroad. His heightened visibility suggests that Kim feels more secure in his country’s nuclear deterrence as Washington’s focus is pulled in several directions, analysts say. Kim has cast himself as increasingly assertive and is distancing himself from the symbolic rituals observed by...
The quiet conclusion of US and Iranian backchannel engagements in Islamabad left more than diplomatic ambiguity. It crystallised a striking image: a financially strained, politically volatile Pakistan briefly positioning itself as a facilitator in one of the world’s most combustible rivalries. Substantive or symbolic, the episode underscores a deeper churn in West Asian geopolitics – one in which agility trumps credibility. Pakistan’s role was not incidental. Islamabad offered itself as a...
Washington misread Iran, overestimated its own leverage and found itself trapped in a costly 40-day war of attrition.
The fraying of the ceasefire in the US-Israel war against Iran reflects grim patterns of history. Truces are often doomed because they focus on stopping battle-related violence and rarely begin to address the underlying struggles that ignited hostilities. A pause without a shared common endgame often resets the battlefield as reasons harden for prolonging warfare. Viable political solutions seldom follow and take hold for peace to endure. Over the past decade, we’ve seen the perils. The Minsk...
Whether the US-Israeli war on Iran wraps up quickly or drags on, the repercussions will be felt for years, reshaping warfare, geopolitics and energy security as well as how the world sees the United States and its tactical and strategic capabilities. In the final instalment of a three-part series, we look at the move away from precision strikes on limited military assets. When Iran’s South Pars gas field was hit at the start of the US-Israeli war on the country, Tehran retaliated with attacks on...
The war on Iran has repeated the failures of past US conflicts defined by hubris and ignorance.