Russia in Global Affairs

A military campaign is easy to start; it is much more difficult to end—especially when initial goals remain unachieved. This is precisely the situation in which the U.S. found itself after it had failed to crush Iran with bombing.

Saudi Arabia finds itself at a critical juncture. The recent Houthi advances, Iran’s expanding proxy network, and the limitations of international and regional support have exposed vulnerabilities in the security architecture. The coming phase will be decisive in determining whether Riyadh can forge a resilient strategy to counter external pressures or whether it will succumb to the pressures of an unpredictable regional environment.

Iran is exploiting U.S. strategic cul-de-sac: Trump can move neither forward nor backward, and is now exactly where Tehran wants him to be. The lesson of history, applicable to all asymmetric wars, is: “If strategists have little or no confidence that a prospective war can be kept short, then arguably the only prudent policy is not to fight it at all.”

In the aftermath of the US-Iran war, what is the outlook for the global oil market? Will new sanctions-related risks emerge? Finally, what strategies will oil producers and buyers adopt to manage geopolitical risks? These three questions are relevant for India because of its voluminous oil consumption and rising imports.

States that fail to understand how warfare has changed and continue to seek decisive outcomes and far-reaching political ambitions using military power are likely to find themselves worse off: entangled, depleted, and facing no good options.

The age in which superior force could reliably produce the desired political outcome is passing and wars are becoming more complex, their consequences less controllable, and their results less linear. The US and Israel may still possess overwhelming military power, but Iran has shown is that this no longer guarantees victory.

Iran’s resilience in countering the Israeli-U.S. aggression launched by Trump and Netanyahu in anticipation of Tehran’s rapid collapse, has placed it in two strategic traps deliberately set by Israel and the U.S.

The unprovoked attack by the United States and Israel on Iran on 28 February 2026 marked the beginning of a new phase in the crisis that has gripped the Middle East almost continuously for several years. Its origins lie in the combination of the extraordinary complexity of regional politics and the intervention of the world’s wealthiest and most heavily armed power.

Donald Trump has declared the start of a new “golden age” in the Middle East after announcing a ceasefire with Iran. The war, at least for now, has been paused. And while predictions are always risky with this White House, there is at least a chance that the fighting will not immediately resume.