After Iran, America may turn against Israel
https://www.newstatesman.com/international-politics/2026/04/after-iran-american-may-turn-against-israel
On 11 February, Benjamin Netanyahu walked down the stairs in the West Wing and – this is not usual for a foreign dignitary – straight into the Situation Room.
Inside, he tried to persuade Donald Trump to launch a war against Iran. According to The New York Times, Netanyahu promised the president that they could kill the Supreme Leader, Mossad could foment a popular rebellion and the regime would be too weak to close the Strait of Hormuz. Trump was on board: Operation Epic Fury was launched shortly afterwards. But the war didn’t work out as promised. Forty-one days later, the mullahs are still in control, Iran is charging a toll for ships to pass through the Strait and Israel is waging an increasingly brutal war in Lebanon. In other words, Trump was willingly mis-sold: what was supposed to be another Venezuela looks like an American Suez.
The end of the American empire
https://www.newstatesman.com/international-politics/geopolitics/2026/04/the-end-of-the-american-empire
The president and his coterie imagined that decapitating the leadership – “getting rid of some people,” as he put it in his golf club homily – would disable the regime. But Tehran is not Caracas, from which President Nicolás Maduro and his wife were extracted in a special operation on 3 January and Venezuela handed over to the deputy leader, Delcy Rodríguez. Iran’s government is multi-layered and – for all its murderous repression of the millions who yearn for a Western way of life – deeply embedded in society. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) manage a business empire spanning oil, telecommunications, construction and banking. The Basij militias, volunteer paramilitary forces used to crush domestic resistance, receive state benefits and jobs in IRGC-linked companies. Religious foundations and clerical elites control billions of dollars of assets seized from dissidents and minorities. For these groups, losing the war means losing their property, their livelihoods and their lives. They will fight to the death. Some may welcome death in battle as an opportunity for martyrdom – an enduring and still potent element in Shia Islam. The White House screens out these facts, along with Iran’s mastery of low-cost techniques of asymmetric warfare.
https://www.newstatesman.com/international-politics/2026/04/after-iran-american-may-turn-against-israel
On 11 February, Benjamin Netanyahu walked down the stairs in the West Wing and – this is not usual for a foreign dignitary – straight into the Situation Room.
Inside, he tried to persuade Donald Trump to launch a war against Iran. According to The New York Times, Netanyahu promised the president that they could kill the Supreme Leader, Mossad could foment a popular rebellion and the regime would be too weak to close the Strait of Hormuz. Trump was on board: Operation Epic Fury was launched shortly afterwards. But the war didn’t work out as promised. Forty-one days later, the mullahs are still in control, Iran is charging a toll for ships to pass through the Strait and Israel is waging an increasingly brutal war in Lebanon. In other words, Trump was willingly mis-sold: what was supposed to be another Venezuela looks like an American Suez.
The end of the American empire
https://www.newstatesman.com/international-politics/geopolitics/2026/04/the-end-of-the-american-empire
The president and his coterie imagined that decapitating the leadership – “getting rid of some people,” as he put it in his golf club homily – would disable the regime. But Tehran is not Caracas, from which President Nicolás Maduro and his wife were extracted in a special operation on 3 January and Venezuela handed over to the deputy leader, Delcy Rodríguez. Iran’s government is multi-layered and – for all its murderous repression of the millions who yearn for a Western way of life – deeply embedded in society. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) manage a business empire spanning oil, telecommunications, construction and banking. The Basij militias, volunteer paramilitary forces used to crush domestic resistance, receive state benefits and jobs in IRGC-linked companies. Religious foundations and clerical elites control billions of dollars of assets seized from dissidents and minorities. For these groups, losing the war means losing their property, their livelihoods and their lives. They will fight to the death. Some may welcome death in battle as an opportunity for martyrdom – an enduring and still potent element in Shia Islam. The White House screens out these facts, along with Iran’s mastery of low-cost techniques of asymmetric warfare.
Trump Has Fallen into a Familiar U.S. Foreign Policy Trap
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/04/11/opinion/trump-iran-war-middle-east.html
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/04/11/opinion/trump-iran-war-middle-east.html
The Trump Administration Is in a Psychotic State
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/04/10/opinion/trump-iran-psychotic-state-institutions.html
What are the implications if the government of the world’s most powerful country is chaotic in its thinking and not reliably in touch with reality?
Fareed Zakaria on the Moral Cost of Trump’s War
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/04/10/opinion/ezra-klein-podcast-fareed-zakaria.html