Iran

As the September deadline for the U.S. troop drawdown approaches, Iraq’s period of comfortable neutrality is ending, but the country’s policymakers should not rush into unsustainable alignments.

After U.S.-Israeli strikes killed Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on February 28, Iran’s collective leadership has concluded that the best defense is a good offense.

The war between the United States and Iran revealed the vulnerability of static U.S. bases, while also showcasing Gulf Arab states’ capacity – bolstered with U.S. hardware and training – to intercept most Iranian strikes on their own, raising new questions about U.S.-Gulf security partnerships.

Wartime pressure has temporarily aligned the leadership’s overriding interest in regime survival, even as its members continue to differ over the costs, methods, and ultimate objectives of the war.

Hitting the systems that keep Gulf populations supplied with water and power is a threshold Iran now appears willing to cross.

While there is historical precedent for collective leadership in Iran, today’s leadership includes representatives of the IRGC and regular military – a reflection of the IRGC’s expanding role and the necessities of governing under wartime conditions.

Egypt has become the indispensable transit state linking Saudi Arabia's Red Sea infrastructure with global markets. But that strategic importance may also have exposed it to the same risks facing Gulf producers.

President Trump has led the United States into an impossible dilemma in which resuming and intensifying the war presents one set of alarming consequences while ending it under current circumstances offers at least as many disasters for Washington.