China’s Private Security Companies in the Middle East: Commercial Actors, Strategic Tools
Chinese PSCs are state-adjacent actors embedded in China’s overseas economic expansion, particularly under the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), generating new arenas of US–China...
Pause, Not Peace: The Iran Ceasefire Framework
A tentative U.S.–Iran memorandum of understanding appeared close to completion in late May, but Iran’s decision to suspend indirect talks over Israel’s expanding operations...
How China Is Positioning Itself Ahead of the Trump–Xi Summit
Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi has just concluded a two-day visit (April 9–10) to North Korea, in his first trip to Pyongyang in more...
Suspended Between Escalation and Exit: The U.S.–Iran War’s Strategic Deadlock
Entering the second month of the war with Iran, the United States has delivered substantial military effects without articulating a viable political end state—a...
Post-Saddam Iraq at 23: The War It Never Wanted Is Back
On the anniversary of the 2003 invasion, Iraq finds itself trapped between the same external powers that have defined — and destroyed — its...
Known Unknowns and Unknown Unknowns: The US-Israeli War on Iran
Modern wars are fought not only with weapons but with assumptions—and the most dangerous assumptions are often invisible to those making them. Donald Rumsfeld’s...
Iran and the Limits of Maximum Pressure
As the third and seemingly decisive round of talks in Geneva concluded, the Trump administration had avoided diplomatic deadlock — but only by narrowing...
Syrian Refugee Return: A Defining Moment
Freedom’s arrival in Syria remains deeply fragile. Even as the country’s new rulers gain diplomatic recognition, goodwill, and early relief from Western sanctions, Syria...
When Conflict No Longer Moves Oil
Despite escalating conflicts, sanctions, and strategic rivalry across key producing regions, the global oil market increasingly behaves less like a system gripped by scarcity...
Starving the Russian War Machine?
The U.S. Department of the Treasury framed the October sanctions against Russian energy firms as an effort to “starve Putin’s war machine.” Running in...