The American public has delivered a crushing verdict on Donald Trump’s second-term presidency so far, handing Democrats an historic victory that swept Republicans from control of both houses of Congress. The scale and scope of the defeat were stunning. Democrats won Senate races in deep Republican strongholds like Texas, Kansas, and South Carolina—in some cases… Continue reading Trump’s Midterm Rout and the Uncertain Future of the Iran War

It is the height of political and military failure when a state with the world’s biggest arsenal and its most advanced technology concludes that deploying a nuclear weapon—even of limited yield—could resolve a political crisis or war that conventional weaponry could not settle. This is not merely a dangerous idea. It marks a resounding collapse… Continue reading Going Nuclear: A Political Failure and an Irrational Option

The U.S. midterm elections slated for November 3 constitute a critical temporal threshold in the U.S.-Iranian confrontation. Although President Donald Trump has repeatedly invoked the elections as an inflection point in the war’s trajectory, their significance lies less in setting a deadline for settlement than in potentially changing the incentives governing military escalation. The period… Continue reading U.S.-Iran Diplomacy Against the Electoral Clock