Warfronts

The 2008 Russo-Georgian War: Europe's First War of the 21st Century

Simon Whistler — Tue, 02 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

August 2008 is a month most of the world remembers for other reasons. Beijing was preparing to host the Summer Olympics. In the United States, a presidential campaign was building toward its climax and Barack Obama was bracing for the election ahead. The global economy was still reeling through the depths of the Great Recession. For most observers, that was the shape of the year. For the citizens of Georgia — the country in the South Caucasus, not the American state — 2008 carried a very different meaning. It was the year thousands fled their homes as their land became a battlefield. After a long escalation between the Georgian military and armed separatists, Russia launched a full assault by air, land, and sea into Georgia, a conflict widely regarded as the first European war of the 21st century. The fighting lasted only five days. In that time it produced hundreds of casualties, shook the geopolitical balance of Europe, and laid the groundwork for Russia's later confrontation with its other neighbor, Ukraine. To understand how a short war could leave such a long shadow, you have to follow the history, the battle plans, the finger-pointing, and the messy political aftermath of Russia's invasion of Georgia. This is the story of how a frozen conflict in the Caucasus thawed into open warfare — and why the questions of who started it, and who is to blame, remain bitterly contested to this day. ## Key Takeaways - The 2008 Russo-Georgian War lasted roughly five days in August 2008 and is widely regarded as the first European war of the 21st century, centered on the breakaway regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia. - The roots of the conflict trace to the collapse of the Soviet Union, when South Ossetia and Abkhazia broke from Georgian control in the early 1990s and held de facto independence under shaky ceasefires. - Georgia's 2003 Rose Revolution brought pro-Western President Mikheil Saakashvili to power, who prioritized NATO and EU integration and the restoration of the two breakaway regions to Georgian control. - Fighting escalated through years of border skirmishes, a disputed 2007 missile incident, a downed reconnaissance drone over Abkhazia in April 2008, and an August 2008 roadside bombing, before Georgian forces launched an assault on Tskhinvali. - Russia responded with overwhelming force across all domains, eventually pushing to within 40 kilometers of the capital Tbilisi before halting, and the war ended with a ceasefire brokered by French President Nicolas Sarkozy. - Georgia lost 180 troops, Russia 65, and South Ossetia nearly 100; nearly 600 civilians were killed, 800 wounded, and 192,000 displaced, with both sides accused of using cluster munitions. - Russia recognized South Ossetia and Abkhazia as independent states — a move opposed by the vast majority of countries — and the regions remain recognized by only a handful of others to this day. ## A Long History of Conquest and Occupation To understand how and why the war began, you first have to look at Georgia's deep past. People have lived in and around Georgia for an extraordinarily long time. Excavations indicate the area was first settled nearly 1.8 million years ago — the oldest evidence of humans found anywhere outside of Africa. After a long history of occupation and fighting, Georgia was first unified as the Kingdom of Georgia roughly a thousand years ago. In the 1200s it fell to the Mongols, as did so much of the surrounding world. Later the territory fragmented into self-governing kingdoms that had to fight off the Ottomans, the Persians, and essentially every other neighbor that coveted their land. In the 19th century, Georgia was conquered by the Russian Empire. After a brief window of independence, it was annexed into the Soviet Union as the Georgian Soviet Socialist Republic. This pattern of being absorbed by larger powers would prove formative — a small nation perpetually caught between empires, and never entirely in control of its own fate. ## Uneasy Inside the Soviet Union Like many nations forced into the USSR, Georgia did not settle comfortably into Soviet life. Tens of thousands of Georgian intellectuals were executed under Stalin — who was himself born to Georgian parents and grew up speaking Georgian, a detail that lends the repression a particular irony. By the 1980s, widespread protests by Georgian nationalists were demanding independence. Georgia declared its independence just before the Soviet Union formally collapsed, joining the wave of republics that suddenly found themselves responsible for their own affairs once more. But independence brought new problems. South Ossetia, a region in northern Georgia, opposed Georgian nationalism and claimed its own autonomy. That dispute sparked military conflict between South Ossetian separatists and the Georgian government in the early 1990s. South Ossetia was being supplied by Russia, which warned that it might soon intervene directly and begin bombing Georgia's capital, Tbilisi. Faced with the threat of full-scale war not just with separatists but with Russia itself, Georgia accepted a ceasefire, and South Ossetia remained under de facto separatist control. A parallel situation produced the unofficial independence of a second region, Abkhazia, in northwestern Georgia. ## A Ticking Political Time Bomb A shaky ceasefire held, but it could not resolve the underlying contradiction. South Ossetia and Abkhazia wanted independence; Georgia's government refused to recognize it, insisting the territory remained Georgian soil. That standoff kept Georgian politics intensely strained throughout the 1990s. The country was also being pulled in two directions at once. Some citizens favored strengthening ties with the Russian Federation. Others looked west, toward what NATO and European integration might offer. The result was a nation balanced on a fault line, with tensions steadily rising — a ticking political time bomb waiting for a spark. That spark came in 2003. In Tbilisi, thousands of protestors took to the streets for 20 days, calling for political reform and an alliance with the West. The demonstrations became known as the Rose Revolution, named for the final episode, in which protestors entered Parliament holding red roses. In its wake, Georgia removed its pro-Russian president and elected Mikheil Saakashvili. ## Roses, Smuggling, and Renewed Skirmishes Saakashvili announced that cooperation with NATO and the European Union would become Georgia's foremost priority — a stance met with broad support both at home and across much of the international community. He also declared that one of his central goals was the restoration of South Ossetia and Abkhazia to Georgian control. Those two ambitions, Western integration and territorial reunification, would soon collide. Georgia began trying to shut down illegal businesses and smuggling routes running out of South Ossetia. Separatist authorities read this as an escalation. Border skirmishes resumed, at times involving heavy weapons. In July 2004, South Ossetia seized 50 Georgian peacekeepers as hostages; after negotiations, all but three were released. From there the situation deteriorated. As Saakashvili put it: "The crisis in South Ossetia is not a problem between Georgians and Ossetians. This is a problem between Georgia and Russia." Hostilities flared again, killing 17 Georgians and 5 Ossetians. Villages near the city of Tskhinvali were caught in the crossfire, and several civilians were hurt. Both sides agreed to yet another ceasefire and, eventually, to demilitarizing the conflict zone — though shooting continued for quite some time afterward. ## Escalation Toward the Breaking Point In 2005, Saakashvili proposed a new unified Georgian state that would include South Ossetia and Abkhazia. Eduard Kokoity, the leader of South Ossetia, rejected any possibility of reunification. The following year, Georgian police and security forces moved against Abkhazia to disarm a growing militia. The operation ended with dozens of rebels captured, a civilian killed, and several wounded on both sides. Georgian forces reported that the Abkhazian rebels were being resupplied by a Russian helicopter, and Georgia's defense minister called the rebellion a "provocation planned in a foreign country." Conditions only worsened. South Ossetian troops opened fire on a Georgian Mi-8 helicopter, later claiming it had entered restricted airspace and fired at the ground — an account Georgia denied, noting that the defense minister had been aboard. South Ossetian police then reported killing four men from an armed group. Weapons recovered included grenade launchers, assault rifles, and explosives, along with maps of the area and sets of fake Russian peacekeeping uniforms. The men were identified as Chechens carrying extremist literature, prompting South Ossetia to accuse Georgia of plotting terrorist attacks to destabilize the region. Georgia denied involvement and suggested the episode might instead reflect internal separatist conflict. ## The Missile Mystery of 2007 Just as tensions seemed to be reaching a breaking point, a series of incidents pushed the dispute toward open conflict. In 2007, a missile landed in a Georgian village but failed to detonate. Even so, it left a 16-foot crater and had to be disarmed by a bomb squad. Georgian officials said a Russian Su-24 Fencer had entered their airspace and launched a Kh-58 guided missile that fortunately did not explode. Russia denied the accusations, suggesting instead that Georgia had fired the missile at its own village to frame Russia and stir up tensions. South Ossetia backed that theory, adding a claim that a Georgian fighter jet had dropped two additional bombs on South Ossetian villages — though it offered no evidence. Georgia immediately dismissed the accusations as absurd. To settle the matter, a team of specialists from the United States, Sweden, Latvia, Lithuania, Britain, Poland, and Estonia traveled to Tbilisi. They concluded that a Russian jet had indeed entered Georgian airspace three times that day, confirmed the missile was a Soviet-made anti-radar guided weapon, and stated that the Georgian Air Force "does not possess aircraft equipped with or able to launch that missile." Moscow sent its own team, which unsurprisingly concluded that the international report was worthless. The international community urged both sides to de-escalate, but the situation was already slipping out of hand — and it erupted further when Georgia was promised a path to NATO membership in 2008. ## The Drone, the Buildup, and the Roadside Bomb In April 2008, an unmanned Georgian reconnaissance drone flying over Abkhazia was shot down by a Russian fighter jet. Russia denied involvement, claiming the aircraft must have belonged to separatists, and Russia's ambassador to NATO suggested the attack had probably been carried out by a NATO MiG-29. NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer could not believe what he was hearing, responding: "I'll eat my tie if it turned out that a NATO MiG-29 had magically appeared in Abkhazia and shot down a Georgian drone." In response to the rising threats, Russia deployed 2,500 troops to the separatist regions, and Georgia began reinforcing its own forces along the borders. On August 1, 2008, a Georgian police truck drove over an improvised explosive device planted on a road near Tskhinvali. The blast wounded five police officers. Because the device had been planted by South Ossetians, Georgian snipers opened fire on separatist positions, killing four and wounding seven. South Ossetia answered with intense mortar fire onto Georgian villages, and the Georgians returned fire. The exchanges continued for two more nights, with casualties accumulating on both sides. On August 3, the Russian deputy defense minister met with the separatists and ordered the evacuation of Ossetian women and children to Russia. About 20,000 civilians were evacuated, and Russian news outlets were already reporting that the Russian military was mobilizing to protect its citizens in South Ossetia — and that war was on the horizon. ## The Final Hours Before the Offensive On the night of August 6, Saakashvili tried to reach Moscow to negotiate a ceasefire. The Russian Foreign Ministry rejected the talks, declaring that "the time for presidential negotiations has not yet arrived." Mortar fire shook the entire South Ossetian frontline that night as both sides fired without pause. The next morning, Georgia received word that the Ossetians were preparing an offensive, and moved more tanks and heavy artillery to the front to deter them. The last hope for diplomacy was a pre-scheduled meeting of the three powers, set for 4 p.m. the following day. The Georgian representative arrived to find himself alone. The South Ossetian diplomat never appeared, and neither did the Russian emissary, who blamed a flat tire. Later that night, Georgia announced another unilateral ceasefire. It held for just three hours before it became clear the Ossetians had no intention of honoring a truce and had kept shooting, prompting Georgian forces to return fire once more. Just before midnight on August 7, Georgian forces received word that Russian battalions were moving into the country. Saakashvili had no time to consult Western powers as he would have preferred, and he decided to strike before Russia could establish a grip on his country. ## The Battle of Tskhinvali At 11:30 p.m., Georgian forces fired smoke grenades into South Ossetia and then waited 30 minutes — a pause intended to give civilians the chance to leave — before opening up with heavy artillery. Georgia then began pounding military targets with shoulder-fired rocket launchers, 152mm howitzers, and cluster munitions. Despite an earlier pledge not to fire on Russian peacekeeping troops already in the region, those peacekeepers followed their own orders to fire on the Georgians. As Georgian forces approached Tskhinvali, they split into three groups. The main body would march directly into the city, while two others moved to the flanks: the 4th Infantry Brigade to the left and the 3rd Infantry Brigade to the right. The flanking groups were tasked with securing the high ground on the hills outside the city, then advancing north to capture key points such as the Gupta bridge and the Roki Tunnel, the route through which Russian forces would arrive. The 4th Brigade shelled fortified positions on the left flank and captured several South Ossetian villages. The 3rd Brigade moved into the right flank and also secured the high ground, despite heavy resistance. But Kvaisa, a heavily fortified village on the right flank, remained under Ossetian control. Georgian special forces sent to take it were repelled and suffered several casualties. ## House-to-House: Tanks, Cobras, and the Peacekeeper Compounds At 6:00 a.m. on August 7, with most of the high ground in Georgian hands, the main force of infantry and tanks began entering the city. At its entrance stood the Russian peacekeepers' southern compound, manned by roughly 250 troops who immediately opened fire. Georgian armored Cobra vehicles raked the base with heavy machine guns, and three Russian BMP-1 infantry fighting vehicles emerged to return fire. After exchanges between the vehicles, the Georgians called for tank support. Three T-72s soon arrived and began firing immediately. The first tank shell struck an observation post on a rooftop, killing an Ossetian mortar spotter and a Russian soldier. The tanks then turned on the infantry fighting vehicles and destroyed all three. One Georgian tank was struck by an RPG and became stuck in a ditch; another was destroyed by mortar fire. After two hours of fighting, Georgian forces reached the center of Tskhinvali. By then more than 1,500 Georgian troops were in the city center, along with several tanks and other vehicles, pressing toward the second Russian peacekeeper base in the northern part of town. Despite their overwhelming numbers, the Georgians could not break through: the Russian peacekeepers and Ossetians repelled five separate attacks while holding their position, though at the cost of several casualties. Much of Tskhinvali was now in ruins. Separatists claimed Georgians had burned down the South Ossetian Ministry of Culture, and Russian media reported that dozens of apartment buildings had gone up in flames and that thousands of civilians lay dead in the streets — a figure later revised down to near 100. The fighting was still intense, and it was about to grow far worse as reinforcements arrived. ## Russia Enters: Land, Sky, and Sea According to Russian sources, the South Ossetian security council formally requested backup from Moscow at 11 a.m., as the Georgians were entering Tskhinvali. But Georgian troops who had tried to secure the Roki Tunnel reported clashing with Russian forces much earlier, as those forces entered the region through the tunnel. Whatever the precise moment of first contact, Russia now declared that Georgia was committing genocide and that its objective was "peace enforcement" in the conflicted areas. Early on August 8, several Russian aircraft entered Georgian airspace and began bombing airstrips and other targets in the Gori district, just south of the conflict zone. Russia fielded a range of warplanes, including Su-27 and MiG-29 fighters, Su-25s in the close air support role, and Tupolev Tu-22 strike bombers. Georgia's air force was minuscule by comparison, a disadvantage compounded by the destruction of much of its aircraft in rapid airfield bombing runs. Yet, likely due to a lack of training and communication, Russia failed to achieve air superiority over much of Georgia on the first day. Three Su-25s were shot down by Georgian anti-air missile defenses, along with a Tu-22 bomber. This forced Russia to back off and attack cautiously for two full days until the defenses were cleared. The exact aircraft losses are disputed by both sides, but even Moscow admitted that three of its own planes were downed by friendly fire in the early days of fighting. It is also possible South Ossetians accidentally shot down one or two Russian jets; they claimed to have downed at least two Georgian aircraft, though Georgia never confirmed it. ## The Tide Turns Around Tskhinvali Back in Tskhinvali, Georgian forces made another push to advance deeper north but were stopped again. Russian tanks were now surrounding the city and began shelling the Georgians from a distance in the evening. Under the bombardment, Georgian forces withdrew from the center and prepared another push. The next afternoon they launched another offensive, but this time the separatists and Russian reinforcements counterattacked. Georgia suffered heavy losses, including three tanks destroyed with their entire crews and 20 men killed in an air attack outside the city. By now Russian forces outnumbered the Georgians in every category. The speed of that response led Ralph Peters, a retired US lieutenant colonel, to conclude that Russia had positioned its troops and armor well ahead of time in anticipation of the attack. As he noted, anyone with experience knows it takes considerable planning "even to get one armored brigade over the Caucasus Mountains" — and Russia had dozens of vehicles on the scene in just hours. Even outnumbered, Georgian forces still inflicted serious damage. On August 9, 30 Russian vehicles led by Lieutenant General Anatoly Khrulyov exited the Roki Tunnel and began driving toward Tskhinvali when they were ambushed on the road. A mixed group of Georgian police and the 2nd Infantry Brigade surprised and encircled the convoy, destroying 25 of the 30 vehicles. The Russian convoy commander was wounded in the leg, and the surviving troops scattered into smaller groups to escape. To keep up the momentum, Georgian saboteurs were dispatched to destroy the Gupta bridge and the Roki Tunnel, but Russian special forces intercepted the teams before they could do any damage. ## The War Widens Across Georgia The same day, Russian short-range missiles struck the Georgian town of Borjomi, and jets began bombing runs on Gori, near the center of the country. Several apartment buildings and a school were destroyed in Gori, and at least 60 civilians were killed. Other cities were bombed as well, including the capital, Tbilisi, and the Baku–Tbilisi–Ceyhan pipeline, a crucial component of Georgia's oil economy. The pipeline strike was read not only as an attack on Georgia's economy but also as a message about the pipeline's future. By the morning of August 10, after intense street fighting in Tskhinvali, Georgia was officially retreating from South Ossetia, and Saakashvili declared a ceasefire in hopes of ending the unnecessary civilian deaths. As Georgian troops pulled back, Russian forces ignored the ceasefire and kept pursuing them. During the retreat, the Georgian 4th Mechanized Infantry Brigade was almost completely wiped out by air attacks. Another Georgian convoy tried to pass through a Russian-occupied village and was waved through by the troops stationed there — but after reaching an abandoned train station, the convoy was surrounded and ambushed, and all but a few were killed, saved only by local civilians who hid them. Meanwhile, on Georgia's west coast, 13 ships from the Russian navy arrived and began attacking the port city of Poti. The Russian corvette Mirazh fired a guided missile that struck and sank a Georgian patrol boat. After taking the port, Russian forces aided the Abkhazian separatists fighting Georgian troops at the Kodori ridge. Casualties there were minimal — two Georgians killed and one Abkhazian killed by friendly fire — but the Georgians had to retreat. Russian paratroopers then occupied the cities of Zugdidi and Senaki and began destroying military bases in western Georgia. With Georgian forces gone, Abkhazia declared victory and announced a new border deeper to the south, now encompassing the Inguri River hydropower plant. ## The Road to Tbilisi and the Ceasefire On August 11, Georgia's forces had completely withdrawn from South Ossetia and were regrouping in Gori. Russia began heavy bombing of the city, hitting both military and civilian targets and forcing the Georgian military to abandon the area. This was meant to be the final day of fighting, as a complete ceasefire had been agreed to by both sides, brokered by French President Nicolas Sarkozy. Yet even on August 12 — the ceasefire deadline — Gori continued to be bombed. Gori University was set ablaze, administrative offices crumbled, and Gori Military Hospital, flying a Red Cross flag, was bombed, killing a doctor. More than 30 people were injured that day, and 8 lost their lives, including a Dutch journalist. Russian forces captured Gori and continued marching south toward Tbilisi. On the way, they announced that any ethnic Georgians who did not surrender immediately would be shot. The Russian 58th Army was just 40 kilometers from Tbilisi when it received orders to stand down. Had those orders not come, Russia almost certainly had the power to take Georgia's capital as well. ## Counting the Cost By August 13, the fighting was over. Russian President Medvedev announced that Russian forces would begin withdrawing from the country, a process that took over a month. Prisoners of war were exchanged, and Georgia accused Russia of holding back two prisoners — an accusation Russia denied. When the dust settled, Georgia had lost 180 men, with more than a thousand wounded. Russia's losses were lighter but still significant: 65 troops killed and nearly 300 wounded. South Ossetia lost nearly a hundred men, with at least 60 injured. Russia's military had performed poorly in several respects. US-controlled GPS satellites had blacked out the area because of the conflict, and Russia did not yet have its own satellite navigation system, so GPS-guided munitions could not be used. Ground forces often fired at their own planes before identifying them, and many Russian land units complained of being short on ammunition throughout the war. For its part, Georgia claims to have shot down no fewer than 21 Russian aircraft and to have destroyed 20 tanks and 30 other vehicles. ## Who's to Blame? Directly after the conflict, Russia officially recognized South Ossetia and Abkhazia as independent states. The move was opposed by the vast majority of countries, and to this day the regions are recognized only by Venezuela, Syria, and the Donetsk and Luhansk people's republics — the regions of Ukraine later recognized as independent by Russia. The broader international response to Russia's intervention was far from uniform. Dozens of countries, including most of the EU, the US, and Canada, called for Georgia's territorial integrity to be defended. Others were more cautious about assigning blame. Italy warned that taking a side was a dangerous step toward forming an unnecessary anti-Russian coalition. Slovakia stated outright that Georgia was at fault for the conflict, as did Kazakhstan and Saudi Arabia. And Russia accused US President George Bush of orchestrating the entire war to secure his party's election later that year — a charge Putin actually made. No matter who one believes was at fault, the people who suffered most were the ordinary citizens caught in the crossfire. Between South Ossetia and Georgia, nearly 600 civilians were killed, 800 wounded, and 192,000 displaced from their homes. Though Russia officially denies it, both Russian and Georgian forces were seen using cluster bombs, banned by most countries for the danger they pose to civilians and their tendency to leave behind unexploded munitions. Seven Georgian villages were burned to the ground, and dozens more were hit by explosives and bullets. ## An Uncertain Future for the Caucasus The future of the region remains uncertain. Georgia still claims Abkhazia and South Ossetia as Georgian territory, and that will not change anytime soon. Tensions remain high, and Georgia's ambitions of joining the West have been all but crushed for years to come. The border of South Ossetia continues to creep further south on a regular basis. It now covers a section of the Baku–Tbilisi–Ceyhan pipeline, meaning a huge part of Georgia's economy now sits at Russia's mercy. In the years ahead, perhaps the best that can be hoped for is the continuation of the ceasefire — and that whatever solution is eventually reached does not come at the cost of more innocent lives. ## Frequently Asked Questions ### How long did the 2008 Russo-Georgian War last, and why is it significant? The war lasted roughly five days in August 2008. It is widely regarded as the first European war of the 21st century. Despite its brevity, it produced hundreds of casualties, shook the geopolitics of Europe, and set the stage for Russia's later conflict with Ukraine. ### What caused the conflict between Georgia and its breakaway regions? After the collapse of the Soviet Union, South Ossetia and Abkhazia opposed Georgian nationalism and claimed their own autonomy, sparking fighting in the early 1990s. Ceasefires left both regions under de facto separatist control, but Georgia refused to recognize their independence and considered the territory Georgian soil — a standoff that kept tensions high for years. ### What was the Rose Revolution, and how did it change Georgia's direction? In 2003, thousands of protestors filled the streets of Tbilisi for 20 days demanding political reform and alliance with the West. The protests, named for demonstrators who entered Parliament holding red roses, led Georgia to remove its pro-Russian president and elect Mikheil Saakashvili, who made cooperation with NATO and the EU his top priority. ### How did the fighting in Tskhinvali unfold? Georgian forces opened with smoke grenades and heavy artillery late on August 7, then advanced in three groups — a main force into the city and two flanking brigades to secure the high ground. They battled Russian peacekeepers and Ossetian fighters through the city using Cobra vehicles, T-72 tanks, and infantry, reaching the center after about two hours but failing to overcome the Russian and Ossetian defenders who repelled five attacks on the northern peacekeeper base. ### What were the human and material costs of the war, and which countries now recognize South Ossetia and Abkhazia? Georgia lost 180 troops with more than a thousand wounded; Russia lost 65 troops with nearly 300 wounded; and South Ossetia lost nearly a hundred men. Nearly 600 civilians were killed, 800 wounded, and 192,000 displaced, with both sides accused of using cluster munitions. Russia recognized both regions as independent states after the war, but to this day they are acknowledged only by Russia, Venezuela, Syria, and the Donetsk and Luhansk people's republics.

Is Abiy Ahmed the Most Dangerous Man in Africa? Ethiopia on the Brink

Simon Whistler — Tue, 02 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

"War is the epitome of hell for all involved." When those words echoed around an Oslo lecture hall in December 2019, it was still possible to believe that Ethiopia stood on the cusp of change, that a new era of freedom might be at hand. On the stage stood the leader of Africa's second-most populous nation, outlining a vision for regional harmony that had already ended a long-running border conflict with Eritrea and earned him the Nobel Committee's prestigious annual Peace Prize. Aged just 43, Abiy Ahmed cut a reassuring figure. Ethiopia's first prime minister of Oromo ethnicity, his smart suit and boyish smile offered a warm contrast to the cold Norwegian capital, a symbol of his youthful energy and his promise of renewal. His words were reassuring too, the Nobel speech littered with homilies about how "peace is a labor of love." Only with hindsight did those words come to seem loaded with irony. In the years since that cold December day, Abiy Ahmed has overseen a series of civil wars that, taken together, count among the deadliest conflicts of this century. Tensions with neighbors have been ratcheted up to boiling point, even as the thin fabric holding Ethiopia's many ethnicities together has begun to fray. How did the country travel from Abiy the Nobel laureate to the figure who may yet unleash devastation across the Horn of Africa? This analysis digs into Ethiopia's recent bloody history and asks whether Abiy Ahmed really is the most dangerous man on the continent. ## Key Takeaways - Abiy Ahmed rose to power in 2018 on a wave of reformist optimism, freeing political prisoners, liberalizing the media, and striking a 2018 peace deal with Eritrea that won him the 2019 Nobel Peace Prize. - Ethiopia's ethnic federal structure, codified in the 1995 constitution, divides the country into ethnolinguistic states that hold paramilitary forces and a constitutional right to secede, an arrangement that fuels chronic instability. - The Tigray War (November 2020 to November 2022) killed an estimated 600,000 to 800,000 people, more than the Syrian Civil War, with mass famine, blockade, and atrocities by federal, Amhara, Eritrean, and Tigrayan forces. - The November 2022 peace deal excluded Abiy's wartime allies, the Amhara and Eritrea, and left the status of Western Tigray unresolved, planting the seeds of fresh conflict. - A new insurgency erupted in 2023 in the Amhara region after Abiy ordered regional paramilitaries to disarm, pitting Fano militias against federal forces. - Abiy's revived claim to a Red Sea port, focused on the Eritrean port of Assab, threatens a wider regional war that analysts warn could collapse both Ethiopia and Eritrea. - With multiple armed factions locked in a zero-sum standoff, observers warn Ethiopia faces grave risks of nationwide civil war on a scale that could dwarf even the Tigray conflict. ## From Protest Movement to Power: How Abiy Rose For Ethiopians who lived through it, the 2010s protest movement that brought Abiy Ahmed to power was perhaps the defining moment of their lives. The country was coming off an incredible run of economic growth, but one marked by a shriveling of opportunity, in which a sclerotic political leadership failed to distribute the good times to all. For almost three decades, Addis Ababa had been ruled by the Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front, or EPRDF, an umbrella party that included representatives of the country's biggest ethnicities. Forged from many of the groups that helped overthrow the Marxist Derg regime in 1991, it had initially promised a new chapter. But over time, some of Ethiopia's ethnicities came to feel increasingly marginalized. This was especially true of the Oromo, Ethiopia's largest minority, who in the mid-2010s began a series of protests that shook the EPRDF. It was only when other groups, such as the Amhara, joined in that the nation's elite realized its position was untenable. In early 2018, the fallout led to the prime minister's resignation, followed by a backroom deal that quickly elevated Abiy Ahmed to power. ## Medemer and the Quiet Revolution A mere 41 years old when he took office, Abiy was a somewhat obscure choice. The former minister for science and technology had previously worked in the military and done a stint overseeing cyber security. What he lacked in an impressive résumé, though, he more than made up for in other ways. A major one was his background. As an Oromo, Abiy could connect directly with the youth who had led the earliest protests, even if few expected him to be a simple conduit for Oromo grievances. With a Christian mother and a Muslim father, the new prime minister seemed a near-perfect choice to represent a new, unified Ethiopia. His guiding philosophy in those early days was Medemer, an attempt to forge a common bond across the country's many ethnicities and subsume division beneath a wider patriotism. As Abiy put it, "I like to think of Medemer as a social compact for Ethiopians to build a just, egalitarian, democratic, and humane society by pulling together our resources for our collective survival and prosperity." The other ingredient was his reformist zeal, expressed in his youthful energy and boyish smile. After decades of remote, out-of-touch elites, Abiy felt less like a breath of fresh air than a hurricane of change. The early record was striking. As the BBC summed up his first years as PM, "He released thousands of political prisoners, lifted restrictions on the independent media and invited the country's once-banned opposition groups back into the country from exile. He backed a woman to become president, created gender parity in the cabinet and established a ministry of peace." At the time, it felt like a quiet revolution, part of a wave of transformation sweeping the Horn of Africa. Just months after Abiy took power, pro-democracy protests toppled the longtime dictator in neighboring Sudan. But it was events in Eritrea, to Ethiopia's north, that netted Abiy his Nobel Peace Prize. In July 2018, the new PM struck a deal with Eritrean dictator Isaias Afwerki, ending a long-simmering border conflict. To outside observers, it seemed that after decades of authoritarianism, Africa's east was experiencing its own democratic spring. Yet all was not well beneath the surface. Just as few who visited Sarajevo for the 1984 Winter Olympics sensed Yugoslavia's impending collapse, so could few of those applauding Abiy in Oslo have guessed the potent mixture of ethnic tension and cold calculation that would soon drown the country beneath a tidal wave of blood. ## A Nation Built on Ethnic Fault Lines With around 126 million inhabitants, Ethiopia is Africa's second-most populous state, behind only Nigeria in sheer manpower. It is also one of the continent's more diverse nations, with over 90 recognized ethnicities and language groups. The biggest are the Oromo, who make up over a third of the population, and the Amhara, who make up over a quarter. Behind them come the Somali and the Tigrayans, each comprising about six percent, followed by a litany of others. What makes Ethiopia unusual is the sheer extent to which ethnicity determines the shape of the state. Back in 1995, the post-Derg constitution divided the country into nine regions based on ethnicity. Since Abiy came to power, a series of referendums has removed one of those regions and added three new ones; the South Ethiopia Regional State and Central Ethiopia Regional State, for example, only came into being in 2023. The result is that Ethiopia today consists of two autonomous cities, Addis Ababa and Dire Dawa, plus 12 ethnolinguistic states. Each not only has its own leaders and power bases but often its own paramilitary forces. They also hold the constitutional right to break away from Ethiopia, a fact that has helped fuel much of the tension straining the country. ## The Shifting Balance of Power Understanding that tension requires a detour through Ethiopia's modern history and the ever-shifting balance of power between its major ethnicities. The first thing to grasp is that modern Ethiopia spent most of its existence with the Amhara at the top of the ethnic pile. Think of an iconic person or place in Ethiopia, and there is a good chance they are tied to the Amhara: Haile Selassie, the Amharic language, the UNESCO-listed rock-hewn churches. These groups were mostly in charge from 1855 to 1991. Even under the Marxist Derg who overthrew Haile Selassie, the Amhara dominated elite life. That long era ended in the early 1990s when a coalition of ethnic militias finally chased the Derg from power. One of the key militias was the Tigray People's Liberation Front. Drawn from the Tigrayan minority in the north, the TPLF were so powerful after 1991 that they were able to make their kinfolk the new dominant force. Despite being just six percent of the population, Tigrayans dominated the coming decades. Their candidate, Meles Zenawi, led the country from 1991 to 2012, and their TPLF party wielded the real power within the EPRDF. It was also the TPLF that oversaw the 1995 constitution. That controversial clause on secession was contentious because rival ethnicities feared the Tigrayans would expand their territory and loot the state before declaring independence if events moved against them. ## Eritrea, the Lost Coastline, and a Frozen War It was in this era that Eritrea split off from Ethiopia to become a separate state, capping a liberation struggle that had begun in the 1960s and ended with Eritrean partisans helping overthrow the Derg. The split created two problems. First, with Eritrea's exit, Ethiopia lost its Red Sea coastline, becoming the world's largest landlocked country by population. Second, it led to the Eritrea-Ethiopia War. Caused by disputes over the border, that war ran from 1998 to 2000, killed 100,000 people, and ended with a bitter, semi-frozen conflict on Ethiopia's northern frontier. The 2000 ceasefire granted a Boundary Commission the right to adjudicate the border. But when the commission partially ruled in Eritrea's favor, Addis Ababa refused to implement the changes, because Eritrea does not just border Ethiopia, it borders Tigray. By accepting the ruling, the TPLF would have been surrendering parts of their home turf, so they refused. When Abiy came to power in 2018, implementing the ruling became central to his peace deal with Eritrea. In return for tax-free access to Eritrean ports, Ethiopia would surrender its claim to contested border territories, something only possible thanks to the dethroning of the TPLF. ## The Quiet Coup and the Birth of the Prosperity Party That dethroning was a deliberate act by non-Tigrayan elites, in effect a quiet coup. Although the TPLF had overseen a huge economic boom, they had also sidelined, and in the eyes of many even oppressed, the Amhara and Oromo peoples. The fallout from the 2010s protests gave the other ethnic parties in the EPRDF cover to move against the Tigrayans and elevate the Oromo Abiy at their expense. Abiy soon took the plan to its logical extreme. In November 2019, the EPRDF was suddenly disbanded. In its place he founded the new Prosperity Party, an umbrella organization containing all of Ethiopia's major ethnic groups, with one exception. Their hold on power broken, the TPLF refused to join. Instead, they retreated to Tigray itself, where they remained in undisputed control. It was the brewing political conflict between the new Prosperity Party and the TPLF that would soon unleash Ethiopia's biggest military conflict in decades. ## Ancient Hatreds and Mutually Exclusive Histories That is the basic political setup, but it is far from the whole story. To make sense of the violence bearing down on Ethiopia, one has to go beyond statistics and backroom deals to a place that is uncomfortable even to mention: the country's endless web of ancient hatreds. Most of the groups involved do not consider one another mere rivals, like the English and the Scots. They consider one another bitter enemies, who will not hesitate to oppress, persecute, or kill if the opportunity arises. These fears are often rooted in history but are also practical, the product of lived experience. The Amhara, for instance, do not dislike the Tigrayans simply because the TPLF replaced them as the elite in 1991. They are also deeply aware of the TPLF's 1976 founding manifesto, which, in the words of the Brussels International Center, "called Amharas colonizers and the number one enemy needing to be eliminated." And they remember the history of Western Tigray, the region the Amhara call Welkait. From at least 1944, Welkait was Amhara land, a fertile oasis in arid surroundings that was key to their prosperity. Then the TPLF came to power, annexed Welkait into their homeland, and renamed it Western Tigray. Ever since, Amhara nationalists have been desperate to right what they see as a historic wrong. That is only one side of the story. Talk to a Tigrayan, and they will produce maps dating to the 17th century that appear to show Western Tigray as part of their ethnic territory since time immemorial, along with documents claiming the Amhara elite engineered the great famine of the 1980s specifically to starve Tigrayans. This recurs throughout Ethiopia's modern story: the country no longer has a single history but a plurality of histories, based on ethnicity, all mutually exclusive, all serving to reinforce claims to land or superiority. Often these "histories" are relatively new; The New Humanitarian has documented how Welkait only became a cause célèbre among Amhara nationalists during the 2018 protest movement. Other times the grievances are all too real, bitter memories in which every group has played both victimizer and victim. ## The Oromo Dream and the Cycle of Violence Take the Oromo. While the Tigrayans and Amhara loathe one another, the Oromo see them both as colonizers who took turns marginalizing and persecuting them. As a result, the Oromo have pushed harder for full autonomy than almost any other group. For their elites, the ideal outcome would be an Oromia, including the capital Addis Ababa, that functions almost as an independent state. Yet it is not so simple as casting the Oromo as plucky underdogs. To fulfill the dream of an independent Oromia, Oromo extremists feel obliged to cleanse their land of other ethnicities, a huge problem given that both Oromia and especially Addis Ababa have large Amhara minorities. Since the fall of the Derg, Amhara in Oromia have been systematically murdered and driven into exile. In 2021 alone, some 3,300 Amhara were killed by Oromo paramilitaries. On the outskirts of Addis Ababa, Oromo construction workers demolish Amhara homes under false pretenses. More than half a million have fled in recent years as refugees from sectarian violence. As a result, many young Amhara have been driven to join an ethnic militia known as Fano, which they perceive as a necessary self-defense force. Yet the Fano are implicated in ethnic killings of their own, of civilians in Oromia and in the Benishangul-Gumuz region. The role of the federal government is equally complex and open to interpretation. For Amhara who fear Oromo extremists, Abiy is one of their persecutors, a leader under whom federal forces smash Fano militias but leave the Oromo be. Yet the main Oromo force, the Oromo Liberation Army, or OLA, itself an offshoot of a group Abiy made peace with in 2018, is in open rebellion against the government. And "federal forces" describes a government comprised of many ethnicities; there are Amhara, Oromo, and Tigrayans in the Prosperity Party who stand with Abiy against their own regions' ethnic militias. So shorthand like "the Amhara fought the federal forces" never means literally all Amhara. A final accelerant is local media. After ending many restrictions on journalists and liberalizing the landscape, Abiy presided over an explosion of ethnically based "news" networks that exist solely to pump out dehumanizing propaganda against rival groups. The upshot is a story with no clean good guys and bad guys but a gigantic mess in which everyone feels wronged, everyone has legitimate grievances, and everyone plays both oppressor and victim, each convinced they are locked in a zero-sum game where defeat could mean extermination. Ethiopia, at this stage, resembled a teetering Jenga tower made of dynamite, one sharp push from catastrophic collapse. ## Pulling the Trigger: The Road to Tigray Although Abiy's Nobel win in December 2019 marked the high-water mark of his global popularity, back home the wheels were already coming off. While Medemer remained the priority on paper, on the ground ethnic divisions only deepened. In Oromia, OLA activity was ramping up against minorities. In Amhara, a coup attempt led to the death of the region's president and the assassination of the army's chief of staff. Meanwhile an insurgency broke out in Benishangul-Gumuz, an ethnically mixed state home to entire peoples beyond the main players. Beyond the Amhara, Oromo, Tigrayans, Eritreans, and federal forces, many more groups, such as the Afar or the Walqaytes, carry their own grievances, some swept into the coming collapse and others not. External pressures were mounting too. One of the few truly national projects, the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam, a project to dam the Nile, promised to modernize infrastructure but was raising tensions with Egypt. By the time Abiy collected his prize in Oslo, the liberal thaw that had marked his rise had vanished. In its place, the Prosperity Party reached for methods straight out of the old EPRDF handbook: mass arrests, jailing people including opposition MPs without charge, and silencing journalists. This only fed the spreading narratives of ethnic persecution. So many Oromo were arrested that young men joined the OLA's ranks in protest. Things grew uglier in 2020, when the Oromo musician and former protest leader Hachalu Hundessa was murdered in Addis Ababa. Oromo rioted across their region and the capital, leading to around 200 deaths. The Oromo were not alone in escalating. As the wider world fixated on the pandemic, Fano militias from the Amhara region launched a growing number of attacks on federal forces. When the decisive shove finally came, though, it arrived not in Amhara, Oromia, or Benishangul-Gumuz, but in the far north, in the region bordering Eritrea, hundreds of kilometers from Addis Ababa: Tigray. ## The Election That Sparked a War In the end, the trigger was an election, or rather the lack of one. With the pandemic sweeping the world, Abiy's government indefinitely postponed a general parliamentary election scheduled for 2020. This frustrated everyone, since democratization had been a key promise of Abiy's rise, with elections central to it. But in Tigray, the frustration reached another level. Outraged, the TPLF declared they would defy federal orders and hold the vote regardless, warning that any attempt to stop it would be an act of war. In September 2020, the vote went ahead, and unsurprisingly the TPLF won a resounding majority. No sooner was it over than the first jolt came. In the wake of the TPLF's regional victory, Abiy accused the group of attacking government bases and looting their weapons. Even now the accusation remains controversial; some believe the TPLF was overreaching, others that Abiy was simply seeking a pretext to strike them. Whatever the truth, the result was the same. On November 4, 2020, Abiy ordered federal forces into Tigray on what was sold as a limited military operation but was anything but. It was the start of the Tigray War, a two-year civil conflict among the deadliest fought this century, one that Pulitzer Center journalist Ann Neumann called "as deadly as those [conflicts] in Darfur, Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen, and Crimea combined." At its height, one million men were fighting, with a thousand dying every single day. Overall, somewhere between 600,000 and 800,000 are thought to have been killed, more than died in the Syrian Civil War, and quite possibly more than have died even in Russia's war on Ukraine. The conflict became the place where all those old ethnic hatreds finally boiled over, as Tigrayans, Amhara, Eritreans, and others sought to right historic wrongs, opening a new chapter written not in ink but in the blood of civilians. ## Blockade and Famine: The True Face of the War The speed with which the Tigray War went from "limited military incursion" to atrocity exhibition would have been spectacular had it not been so unremittingly awful. As federal forces advanced, the government cut all cell phone and internet service, blockaded roads, and patrolled borders with armed guards. The result was a 50,000-square-kilometer zone cut off from the outside world, with nothing allowed in or out, including food. The federal blockade was so severe that it led to hundreds of thousands of civilian deaths from famine. At its height, researchers at the University of Ghent estimated that between 437 and 914 people starved to death every single day. As the civilian toll climbed, Abiy displayed a messianic streak that deeply unsettled observers. As Kenya-based analyst Rashid Abdi told CNN in 2021, "In the initial stages of the war, actually, he spoke openly about how this was God's plan, and that this was a kind of divine mission for him." If anything about the war was biblical, it was strictly Old Testament: a combination of the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah and a hyper-violent Tower of Babel, in which mankind is not merely divided but begins immediately killing all those who speak differently. Among the killers were Amhara state paramilitaries and their Fano militias. Human Rights Watch released a shocking report during the conflict documenting, in page after unrelenting page, the atrocities Amhara forces carried out: door-to-door massacres in Tigrayan villages, the burning of farmland and slaughter of animals, piles of bodies so high that tractors were needed to drag them away. ## A Carnival of Revenge: Amhara, Eritrea, and the TPLF Yet the Amhara saw themselves not as perpetrators but as victims. In the conflict's opening days, Tigrayan militants descended on the village of Mai Kadra, near the Sudanese border, and hacked hundreds of Amhara civilians to death. Hours later, Fano forces avenged them by entering the same town and killing scores of Tigrayans. The Amhara role was not just revenge, though. It was also about righting a historical wrong, in this case the 1990s annexation of Welkait, since renamed Western Tigray. Over the course of the conflict, Amhara state paramilitaries and the Fano occupied Western Tigray and drove out the Tigrayans, while also seizing the southern part of Tigray that Amhara call Raya. This explains why the Amhara, who so distrusted Abiy, sided with him: the promise of Western Tigray, plus fear of what a TPLF victory might mean. The Amhara region itself was not spared. In 2021, the TPLF rebounded, seized the initiative, drove federal forces into retreat, and invaded Amhara state. There, by one brief and brutal description, "they destroyed hospitals, murdered civilians, and used sexual violence as an instrument of revenge." Similar acts were carried out by Tigrayan forces in the Afar region. But the Amhara were far from the worst perpetrators. From the war's early days, an outside actor joined on Abiy's side. Now at peace with the Ethiopian state, Eritrea was more than happy to invade Tigray from the north. Over the war, President Isaias Afwerki's troops occupied border areas originally promised to Eritrea by the Boundary Commission, ultimately snatching 52 districts. The Eritreans, too, ended up as victims, first when civilians who had fled Afwerki's regime to Ethiopia were massacred in revenge killings by Tigrayan forces, and second when the TPLF counterattacked and drove the Eritreans back over the border, killing so many that Afwerki was forced to start conscripting middle-aged men. Ultimately, only one side could prevail. While the TPLF's 2021 counteroffensive got within spitting distance of Addis Ababa, their forces were finally driven back with the help of Emirati and Turkish drones. The conflict officially ended on November 2, 2022. By then, over half a million were dead. Tigray lay in ruins, with the Amhara occupying Western Tigray and Eritrean forces holding territory in the north. The economy was shattered. With federal forces busy in Tigray, the OLA insurgency had run wild in Oromia, taking swathes of territory and even briefly allying with the TPLF during the 2021 counteroffensive. For all the damage, though, Abiy had won. The TPLF had agreed to disarm. All the Nobel laureate had to do now was manage the peace. ## Losing the Peace It takes a special kind of genius to produce a peace agreement that only makes things more unstable, yet that is exactly what happened at the end of the Tigray War. While the United States and international bodies like the African Union were relieved at the halt to the killing, the way Abiy made his deal with the TPLF alienated all his former allies and paved the way for greater ethnic tension within Ethiopia. Among the most outraged were the Amhara. By the war's end, relations were already deteriorating between Amhara paramilitaries and federal forces. When the TPLF invaded Amhara state and carried out brutal massacres, most Amhara felt Abiy's government had failed to protect them, that federal forces had been more keen on shielding the capital than stopping the mass murder of their allies. During the war, the need to defeat the TPLF kept those tensions in check. Then came the November 2022 peace deal. Amhara and Fano officials were excluded from the talks, which ended with an agreement between Addis Ababa and the TPLF to resolve the issue of Western Tigray "in accordance with the constitution." That last phrase set alarm bells ringing, because a constitutional solution suggested Western Tigray must be returned to Tigray region. From the Amhara perspective, they had just fought and survived a brutal war to right a historical wrong and regain Welkait, and now Abiy's government was suggesting the price of peace would be handing this sacred land back to the Tigrayans. This was almost the opposite of Abiy's wartime position; as the fighting raged, the prime minister had repeatedly declared Western Tigray to be Amhara land. The Eritreans were likewise excluded, despite their invasion from the north being a key factor in Abiy's victory. Like the Amhara, they felt abandoned during the fighting, in their case when Addis Ababa retreated without warning during the TPLF counteroffensive, leaving Eritrean forces to be massacred. Like the Amhara, they too felt they had fought and died to regain northern Tigrayan lands they considered historically theirs, lands the deal now suggested they, as foreign forces, should vacate. Unlike his allies, Afwerki harbored a more maximalist goal: the complete eradication of the TPLF as a fighting force. ## The Timebomb in the Peace Deal Sadly for Afwerki, the TPLF was one thing the peace deal inadvertently preserved. The agreement called for demobilization of Tigrayan forces. In the early days, many heavy weapons were handed over and hundreds of thousands of fighters sent to demobilization camps. But the process was badly mishandled. More than a year on, many remained in the camps, lacking adequate food or shelter and growing increasingly angry, while the TPLF still had some 270,000 fighters under arms. The one thing stopping them from reigniting the war was the promise of Western Tigray. This is the landmine Abiy laid for himself. The only thing that convinced the TPLF not to fight to the bitter end was the implicit promise that districts of Tigray occupied by Amhara and Eritreans would be returned. On the other side, the only reason the Amhara and Eritreans fought with federal forces, rather than turning on them, was the promise of keeping those same lands, territories they historically believed to be theirs and had already shown themselves willing to take up arms to defend. As of late 2023, this paradox remained unresolved, a political bomb that could yet detonate and plunge Tigray back into war. Before reaching its full consequences, though, one major crisis the Western Tigray issue has already provoked demands attention: a brand-new insurgent war between Abiy's federal forces and the Amhara. ## Instability Spreads to Amhara The lasting lesson of these later chapters is just how destabilizing the Tigray War proved for the whole of Ethiopia. It was not merely a hyper-deadly two-year conflict but one whose consequences continue to threaten the country's foundations, especially given Abiy's strategic choices afterward. Nowhere is this clearer than in the Amhara region. The instability began a mere month after the peace deal, when Amhara militias clashed with the OLA, killing hundreds. But things truly ignited in April 2023, when Abiy ordered that all regional paramilitaries and special forces either be integrated into the federal army or lay down their arms. Rather than obey, the Amhara region erupted in revolt. The reasons were obvious. To the north, the TPLF still had not disarmed. To the south, OLA militants in Oromia still held vast territory from which they organized attacks on Amhara civilians. By disarming, the Amhara felt they would leave themselves dangerously exposed. So instead, many disappeared into the countryside, joining the smaller Fano militias and bringing their guns and wartime experience with them. The federal government responded in a way almost guaranteed to deepen Amhara fears. Worried about Fano attacks, Abiy set up roadblocks on routes into Addis Ababa. Amhara were barred from entering the capital. Their representatives, including some opposition MPs, were mass-arrested, even as the government moved to forcibly disarm the fighters. What followed was explosive but predictable. In August 2023, the brewing conflict became a full-on, extremely destructive war. In lightning assaults, Fano militias seized major sites in Amhara, including vital airports and the second-largest city. Although federal forces regained control, the Fano were not dismantled. They slipped back into the rural areas that form their base of support, and they are still fighting there. As in Tigray, federal forces have cut all communications, making information hard to get out, but what slips through is unrelentingly grim. In November 2023, a government drone strike targeted an elementary school, killing teachers and pupils alike. Days later, the UN reported that about 50 civilians had been killed over the preceding month. Many Amhara insist the violence is far worse than the outside world knows. Speaking to Deutsche Welle, Curtin University researcher Yirga Gelaw Woldeyes declared, "I believe there is a genocide happening in Ethiopia and the world is not talking about it." From this perspective, Abiy is now doing to the Amhara what he so recently did to the Tigrayans: crushing them militarily to break their power base. For Amhara suffering under the federal assault, the assumption is that Abiy is acting on behalf of the Oromo and means to gift them Addis Ababa. For a group that, barely a year earlier, had helped Abiy's forces commit war crimes in Tigray, it is a dramatic reversal, epitomized by fears that the government will soon move to evict the Amhara from Western Tigray. ## The New Northern Front There is a reason for this abrupt shift, and it is not just Abiy trying to break all possible opposition. On the northern frontier, another conflict may already be in its early stages, one with the power to rip back open the barely healed wounds of the Tigray War. In November 2023, Abiy began making veiled threats toward Eritrea, invoking Ethiopia's "historic and natural right" to a port on the Red Sea. He never named Eritrea, but the inference was clear: it was Eritrea that took Ethiopia's sea ports when it declared independence in 1993, most crucially the port of Assab. The 2018 peace deal Abiy struck with Afwerki was widely understood to include tax-free access to Eritrea's ports, with the tradeoff being Eritrea's claim to border areas in northern Tigray, areas where 40,000 Eritrean troops are currently stationed. But the poisoned peace that ended the Tigray War appears to have killed hopes of access to Assab. Recent troop movements and weapons deliveries to Ethiopia from the UAE suggest Abiy might be seriously considering an invasion of Eritrea to annex the port. This should be seen not as a separate crisis but as one with the potential to compound the war in Amhara, sparking a kind of mega-crisis that could make the Tigray War look like a mere trifle. To win a war against Eritrea, Abiy would likely need the TPLF, and its 270,000 soldiers still under arms, on his side. Given that federal forces were committing war crimes against Tigrayans only recently, such a team-up might seem impossible, but shifting alliances are simply how things work in modern Ethiopia. While the Tigrayans were brutalized by the government, the deepest anger is directed at the Eritreans, perceived as particularly savage, not just murdering civilians but sexually enslaving captured women. If Abiy goes to war with Eritrea, the TPLF might fight alongside him to reclaim occupied territory, territory occupied by Eritrea but also by Amhara forces. That means federal forces would first have to evict the Amhara from Western Tigray before joining the TPLF against Eritrea. But with Western Tigray still under their control, the Amhara militias have direct access to Eritrea, access a terrified Eritrean government, dreading invasion, might use to funnel weapons to the Amhara and fuel their insurgency. This is why the situation earns the clumsy but apt label of mega-crisis: it has the potential to reactivate every warring party and bitter grievance of the Tigray War, only shaken into a new configuration. As the National Interest wrote of a renewed border war, "The last time Ethiopia and Eritrea went to war, the conflict lasted two years and cost an estimated 100,000 lives. The current war [could] potentially plunge the entire region into a crisis that results in both states collapsing." ## A Mexican Standoff with Dynamite The intention here is not merely to show how a new Ethiopia-Eritrea conflict could cause chaos, but to document how a series of decisions made since Abiy came to power has placed Ethiopia where collapse may be the most likely scenario, with multiple potential trigger points that could send society into freefall. The worst part is that, no matter what anyone does, at least one of those triggers may now be fated to be pulled. The result is four major players inside Ethiopia, plus another in Eritrea, locked in a kind of Mexican standoff, a zero-sum game where everyone has a non-negotiable need but cannot secure it without inviting the others to fire in turn. The federal government needs the TPLF to help it potentially annex an Eritrean port, or at the very least to disarm. But the TPLF will do neither until Western Tigray is returned, as hinted in the peace deal. As The New Humanitarian has written, "Diplomats fear the dispute over western Tigray could reignite the war if it is allowed to drag on and if the TPLF feel they have no option but to take it back by force." Yet the government cannot hand over Western Tigray without first clearing it of Amhara forces, and if it tries, the Amhara militias may seek help from Eritrea. This is a major problem, since Abiy's troops are already bogged down with the insurgency in Amhara, where the local civilian population of over 20 million overwhelmingly supports the Fano and federal power has all but evaporated in the countryside. At the same time, the Oromo, through the OLA, seek greater control of Addis Ababa, a city completely surrounded by Oromia. But that vision is unacceptable to the Amhara, who have many kinfolk in the capital and fear a massacre like those that befell Amhara in Oromia. Finally, Eritrea stands off to the side, gun drawn, with its own dangerous goals: to keep occupying parts of northern Tigray and to use the Amhara insurgency to prevent an Ethiopian thunder run on its ports. Outside powers loom over all of it. The United Arab Emirates is clandestinely funneling weapons and money to Abiy's government, while Saudi Arabia may back Eritrea if interstate war breaks out, to thwart Abiy's ambitions. ## Could Ethiopia Become the Next Yugoslavia? It is an incredibly complex situation, made more so by the mutually exclusive nature of all these desires. The Amhara, Tigrayans, and Oromo each perceive themselves to be in a zero-sum game, where they can either get what they want or fail and be persecuted. That combination of desire, fear, and historical grievance is a powerful driver of war. The collapse of Yugoslavia, where a similar mixture produced utter carnage in the 1990s, offers an ominous precedent. What happened in Yugoslavia, however, may wind up looking like a firecracker next to Krakatoa if Ethiopia truly erupts. Ethiopia's population is over 125 million. The Oromo and Amhara number tens of millions each, while the Tigrayans, smaller in number, hold outsize influence. As Crisis Group memorably put it, "Given the competing but interlinked grievances in its three most powerful regions, Ethiopia faces grave risks to its overall stability." The dark vision is one in which a single trigger is pulled, with catastrophic consequences not just on the ground but among the elites, the nation dividing so sharply along ethnic lines that even Amhara and Oromo in the government or federal military turn on one another. As the group warned again, "Unless it is arrested, a burgeoning power struggle between politicians from Ethiopia's two largest regions threatens even wider turmoil and even nationwide civil war." Should that come to pass, it would likely mean a conflict beyond anything seen even in Tigray, a scaled-up version of Bosnia's civil war with all the horror that implies. None of this is inevitable. History is full of less-remembered moments, like the Annexation Crisis of 1908, when whole continents stepped to the brink of war only to tiptoe back at the last moment. Perhaps that is what will happen here. But this would be a tough balancing act even with a deft dealmaker in charge, and Ethiopia is currently led by a man who is less a master of conciliation than someone with a penchant for conflict. That has been the theme throughout. While Abiy may have cut a reassuring figure onstage in Oslo, he has in reality overseen an era of bloodshed unmatched since the fall of the Derg in 1991, an era in which his philosophy of togetherness, of Medemer, has masked a sharp increase in ethnic division that could have catastrophic consequences for tens of millions. Is Abiy Ahmed the most dangerous man in Africa? Perhaps it is a little hyperbolic to say so. But he certainly has the potential to claim that title unless he treads very carefully. Back in 2021, an Ethiopian diplomat who quit in disgust at his government's war in Tigray, Berhane Kidanemariam, told CNN, "Instead of fulfilling his initial promise, he has led Ethiopia down a dark path toward destruction and disintegration." Only the coming years will reveal whether that assessment is correct, and whether it really is the fate of the man who, not so long ago, won the Nobel Peace Prize, to ultimately destroy his nation in the fires of war. ## Frequently Asked Questions ### Why did Abiy Ahmed win the Nobel Peace Prize? Abiy Ahmed was awarded the 2019 Nobel Peace Prize largely for the July 2018 peace deal he struck with Eritrean dictator Isaias Afwerki, ending a long-simmering border conflict between the two nations. In his early years as prime minister he also freed thousands of political prisoners, lifted restrictions on independent media, invited exiled opposition groups home, backed a woman for president, and created gender parity in his cabinet. ### How many people died in the Tigray War? The Tigray War, which ran from November 4, 2020, to November 2, 2022, is estimated to have killed between 600,000 and 800,000 people, more than died in the Syrian Civil War. At its height, one million men were fighting and around a thousand were dying every day. A federal blockade caused hundreds of thousands of famine deaths, with University of Ghent researchers estimating that between 437 and 914 people starved to death each day at the peak. ### What is the dispute over Western Tigray and why does it matter? Western Tigray, called Welkait by the Amhara, was Amhara land from at least 1944 but was annexed by the TPLF after it came to power in the 1990s and renamed Western Tigray. During the Tigray War, Amhara paramilitaries and Fano militias occupied the region and drove out the Tigrayans. The 2022 peace deal said the issue would be resolved "in accordance with the constitution," which the Amhara fear means returning the land to Tigray, leaving the dispute a potential trigger for renewed war and the central landmine Abiy laid for himself. ### Who are the Fano militias and why did they turn against the federal government? Fano are Amhara ethnic militias that many young Amhara joined as what they regard as a self-defense force against Oromo paramilitaries and other threats. They fought alongside federal forces in the Tigray War but later turned against the government after Abiy ordered regional paramilitaries to disarm in April 2023, at a time when the TPLF had still not disarmed and OLA militants held vast territory in Oromia. In August 2023 the Fano seized major sites in Amhara, including airports and the second-largest city, before slipping into the countryside to wage an ongoing insurgency. ### Could Ethiopia collapse into civil war? Analysts warn it could. Crisis Group has cautioned that competing but interlinked grievances in Ethiopia's three most powerful regions pose grave risks to overall stability, and that a power struggle between politicians from its two largest regions threatens nationwide civil war. With four major armed factions inside Ethiopia plus Eritrea locked in a zero-sum standoff over Western Tigray, Addis Ababa, and Red Sea access, multiple trigger points could send the country into freefall on a scale potentially dwarfing the Tigray War. ## Related Coverage - [Amhara Crisis: Is Ethiopia the Next Yugoslavia?](https://warfronts.pub/conflicts/amhara-crisis-ethiopia-next-yugoslavia) - [Why Famine is Returning as a Weapon of War](https://warfronts.pub/conflicts/why-famine-is-returning-as-a-weapon-of-war) - [Al-Shabaab's Unstoppable Advance Threatens Mogadishu](https://warfronts.pub/conflicts/al-shabaab-unstoppable-advance-threatens-mogadishu-somalia) ## Sources 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12.

The Al-Rashid Incident: Tragic Accident or Deliberate Massacre in Gaza?

Simon Whistler — Tue, 02 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

It was the sort of incident that demanded headlines on every news site, every television channel, and every global-affairs podcast around the world. But it was also the sort of incident where every one of those headlines said something just a little bit different. In the early hours of February 29, 2024, something happened in the northern reaches of the Gaza Strip, just to the west of Gaza City itself. On a city road called Al-Rashid Street, a convoy of humanitarian aid trucks was approaching its destination, where thousands of Gazans waited to receive desperately needed food aid amid widespread food insecurity and a growing risk of starvation across the territory. That is where the consensus falls apart. In its place comes confusion, hazy details, conflicting accounts, and very forceful claims about precisely what happened on Al-Rashid Street. According to some accounts, the incident was a crowd stampede, one in which far too many Gazans died in the crush, while a few others were shot by Israeli troops attempting to protect the convoy. According to others, it was a massacre — planned, deliberate, and carried out by Israeli troops against Palestinian civilians with complete impunity. According to still others, the truth lies somewhere in the middle, though with endless disagreement over exactly which point in that middle ground is the correct one. WarFronts has worked to sift through the confusion, the horror, and the bitter animosity on all sides, and to gain what clarity is possible on the Al-Rashid incident: what exactly happened, who is to blame, what the world intends to do about it, and what it means for the prospect of peace in a war that has already claimed tens of thousands of lives. The thesis is uncomfortable but unavoidable: in conditions of mass starvation, asymmetric warfare, and a collapsed civilian order, the deaths on Al-Rashid Street were the predictable product of a system primed for catastrophe — and assigning definitive blame may remain impossible for a very long time. ## Key Takeaways - On February 29, 2024, an aid convoy on Al-Rashid Street in northern Gaza became the site of a mass-casualty event in which Gaza health officials counted at least 112 dead and over 760 injured, with later estimates exceeding a thousand total casualties. - The IDF's preliminary review attributes most deaths to a stampede and to people being run over by aid trucks, claiming Israeli fire was limited to individuals who posed a direct threat after the main incident. - Eyewitnesses, survivors, and doctors describe a fundamentally different event: gunfire directed at a largely docile crowd, casualties with gunshot and shrapnel wounds to the head and chest, and allegations of fire from tanks, drones, and naval forces. - The convoy carried aid donated by Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates, entering Gaza from the south and moving north along the coast through a secured corridor before reaching the al-Nabulsi roundabout. - The collapse of Hamas civilian police, who once escorted convoys, left a security vacuum that aid agencies say made looting and violence around deliveries nearly inevitable. - The international response split sharply: Jordan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Colombia, and China condemned Israel, while the United States blocked a UN Security Council statement and instead authorized symbolic food airdrops. - The incident intensified the global push for a ceasefire as Ramadan approached and as roughly 300,000 people in northern Gaza faced a deepening starvation crisis. ## The Conditions That Made It Possible Before the events of February 29 can be understood, the conditions that produced them must be. The Gaza Strip is among the most brutal war zones on the planet today. It is a territory under the internationally recognized authority of Israel, but it is primarily settled by an Arab Palestinian population of about two and a half million people. It has been functionally encircled by Israel and its diplomatic partner, Egypt, since Israel withdrew its military forces from Gaza in 2005. The relationship between Israel and its Palestinian population in Gaza has drawn international controversy and condemnation for decades — a relationship that devolved into the current war on October 7, 2023. October 7 saw a brutal attack by the Gaza-based militant terror organization known as Hamas, one that killed upward of one thousand Israeli civilians and soldiers and saw Hamas fighters take hundreds of hostages back into the Gaza Strip. The subsequent Israeli counteroffensive, billed as an operation to rescue hostages, dismantle Hamas, and restore order in Gaza, has drawn increasing condemnation as tens of thousands of Gazans — including high numbers of civilians and even children — have been killed in the violence. The offensive has displaced the vast majority of Gazans from their pre-war homes. Most are now clustered into southern sections of the Strip, but some have remained in the north, where Israel has claimed success in rooting out most of the Hamas organization's fighters and infrastructure. The most pressing problem among a great many is mounting food insecurity that has pushed much of Gaza's population to the brink of starvation. Israel's wartime blockade has seen humanitarian aid nearly entirely shut out, in a territory that lacks either the agricultural capacity or the land development to support anywhere near the food demands of its population. ## A Population on the Edge of Famine The numbers tell the story of a deficit that is widening by the day. Across February 2024, UNRWA — the UN agency that manages work with Palestinian refugees — reported that an average of ninety-seven aid trucks per day entered Gaza. That sounds substantial until the contents of those trucks have to be spread among a population of more than two million. In reality, ninety-seven trucks is less than a fifth of the daily arrivals believed necessary to keep the Gazan population alive, and the consequences of that shortfall are becoming more visible all the time. The warnings from inside the UN system were stark. As United Nations aid official Ramesh Rajasingham told the UN Security Council on Tuesday, February 27, roughly one-fourth of the Gazan population is currently "one step away from famine." Against that backdrop, the news that a large food convoy would be coming to northern Gaza — the part of the Strip where hunger and food shortages are most severe, and where no similar deliveries had happened in more than a month — was understandably enormous news for the Palestinians still living there. Those Palestinians were living in a part of northern Gaza that has seen some of the most brutal and well-reported violence of the conflict. The location where the Al-Rashid incident took place sits just about three kilometers from al-Shifa Hospital. It was at al-Shifa that Israel made global headlines with a military incursion in November 2023, alleging the hospital was being used as a Hamas headquarters and seizing it despite the presence of thousands of wounded people and refugees. In the months since, this part of Gaza has become an increasingly desperate place for those who tried to remain rather than flee southward. When the February 29 aid convoy arrived, it represented far more than a meal. It was a desperately needed lifeline. ## The Convoy and the al-Nabulsi Roundabout The convoy was moving northward on Al-Rashid Street before dawn, at approximately 4:30 in the morning, carrying aid that — according to an Israel Defense Forces spokesperson — had been donated by other nations including Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates. The convoy had entered Gaza at the territory's southern border with Israel and traveled north along the coast in a secured humanitarian corridor. IDF troops in military vehicles escorted the convoy, while other IDF equipment, including tanks, was positioned close to the route the convoy was expected to follow. It is unclear whether any stops were planned. Before reaching its intended destination in the Rimal neighborhood of Gaza City, the convoy does not appear to have been scheduled to halt where it did. But the desperation among local residents was profound. Eyewitness accounts indicate that at least some people living near the convoy's intended route began gathering the previous night, hoping to convince the convoy operators or the IDF to hand out supplies on the spot. By the best available reconstruction, there was not so much one single crowd gathered at one point as there were a great many people spread up and down Al-Rashid Street — generally in the vicinity of one particular roundabout called al-Nabulsi. That roundabout sits along the convoy route just past a nearby IDF checkpoint, which would have been the last on the convoy's journey. It was here, at this junction of a starving population and a heavily armed military escort, that accounts of what happened begin to diverge. ## Two Versions: The IDF Account The IDF has published a preliminary review of the incident, and Israel's presentation of events deserves to be examined first. According to the IDF, the crowd in and around the al-Nabulsi roundabout rushed the aid trucks as they passed. Israeli soldiers fired warning shots from small arms and tanks to deter what military spokesman and Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari described as a stampede. That stampede, the IDF says, is where a majority of the Palestinians who died in the incident actually died — some crushed by the crowd or trampled after falling, and others run over by aid trucks. The IDF does admit that Israeli troops took some lives, but maintains that the only Palestinians fired upon were people who appeared to pose a direct threat after the main stampede had concluded and after the convoy had moved out of the area. In a press briefing on March 3, Hagari said: "Following the warning shots fired to disperse the stampede and after our forces had started retreating, several looters approached our forces and posed an immediate threat to them. According to the initial review, the soldiers responded toward several individuals." Drone footage released by the IDF indicates at least two separate events during the incident, at two points roughly half a kilometer apart. Annotated screenshot images released by the military highlight what appear to be people lying motionless on and around Al-Rashid Street, with Israeli military vehicles nearby. A significant caveat applies: the IDF's video of the incident is heavily edited and was presented only in short clips, a fact that has done little to settle the dispute and a great deal to inflame it. ## Two Versions: The Account From the Scene Accounts from the scene present a very different version of events. The many eyewitness reports relate to a range of individual experiences at various moments throughout the tragedy, but a general sequence emerges. Non-IDF reports indicate that the crowd around Al-Rashid Street was mostly docile before the IDF began firing gunshots, including tracer ammunition. Those gunshots, witnesses say, were not warnings; they were fired toward people in the crowd. Some accounts say this happened before any Gazans had reached the stopped aid trucks; others say people were fired on while removing food from the trucks. One journalist at the scene, Mahmoud Awadeyah, said: "Israelis purposefully fired at the men… they were trying to get near the aid trucks that had the flour. They were fired at directly and prevented people to come near those killed." A panic and a stampede followed. During it, by these accounts, IDF troops continued to fire and kill local Gazans, and in the confusion aid trucks struck some of the casualties while trying to flee the scene and escape the troops' line of fire. Another journalist, Ismail al-Ghoul, reporting for Al Jazeera, claimed that "Israeli tanks advanced and ran over many of the dead and injured bodies." Even those allegations are the less damning ones. Some survivors claim the IDF's actions were far more nefarious, describing snipers firing on the crowd and the military opening fire not only with infantry but from armored vehicles, tanks, attack drones, and even naval forces on the nearby Mediterranean Sea. By these accounts, what happened on the convoy route was no accident at all. It was a massacre. ## The Death Toll and the Medical Evidence Whether accidental or deliberate, the carnage at Al-Rashid was devastating to the Gazans who had gathered to meet the convoy. Preliminary death-toll estimates were released by Gazan health officials, who are employed by the territory's Hamas-run government but who typically issue casualty counts that are subsequently substantiated by international aid organizations. According to Gaza, at least 112 people were killed and more than 760 injured. Further estimates revised the total upward to over a thousand casualties, counting both the dead and the wounded. Muatasem Salah, part of the Gaza Ministry of Health's Emergency Committee, told Reuters: "Any attempt to claim that people were martyred due to overcrowding or being run over is incorrect. The wounded and the martyrs are the result of being shot with heavy-calibre bullets." On the ground, local and international medics said they could not keep up with the flood of injured streaming into hospitals. One high-ranking UN official who visited al-Shifa twice afterward said: "There were a lot of heavy injuries, there were many, many surgeries. One surgeon told me he had to do 18 surgeries just in the first night." That official also reported personally seeing several people wounded by bullets rather than by trampling or crush injuries. An emergency-room doctor at al-Shifa named Mohamed Eghrab described the pattern of wounds: "Most of these injuries were the result of gunshots, injuries as a result of explosions of artillery shells and tank shells. Most of the injuries were in the upper part of the body, in the head, the chest, and in the abdominal area. The majority of the injuries were severe injuries. Roughly about 70% of the injuries needed surgeries." Eghrab added that because al-Shifa currently has only two functioning operating rooms, no oxygen supplies, and very limited medications, many of the wounded were expected to die before they would ever reach an operating table. A doctor named Yehia al Masri, who witnessed the event directly, said he saw dozens of people dead or injured by gunshot in addition to those crushed or trampled. Two other nearby hospitals, Kamal Adwan and al-Awda, said that all or most of the people they treated had been wounded by bullets or shrapnel. ## Israel's Statements and the Drone Footage Problem The Gaza Ministry of Health labeled the incident a massacre, and Hamas military representatives accused the IDF of firing directly at civilians' heads with intent to kill. In the hours immediately afterward, the ministry announced that Gaza's total death toll since the start of the Israel-Hamas war had crested over thirty thousand, including 21,000 women and children, alongside seven thousand missing and seventy thousand injured. It remains unknown whether the Al-Rashid deaths pushed those figures past their most recent benchmarks, though many if not all were likely already counted. Hamas tied the incident quickly to the ongoing ceasefire negotiations. Spokesperson Izzat al-Rishq said: "The negotiations are not open-ended and we won't allow it to be used as cover for crimes against the Palestinians in Gaza." Israel rejected the Gazan death toll out of hand, but it has not yet offered its own estimate of how many people were killed or what proportion died from Israeli gunfire. Nor has it reconciled earlier government claims with its later report. One IDF official told reporters shortly after the incident, as quoted by Axios, that Israeli soldiers had fired on "dozens of Palestinian civilians who approached the IDF and got within tens of meters," stating that troops had fired at the legs of nearby civilians, hitting about ten people. Hagari, the spokesman, reiterated that the bulk of the deaths were not attributable to the IDF, saying of the Palestinians involved: "Some began violently pushing and even trampling other Gazans to death, looting the humanitarian supplies. The unfortunate incident resulted in dozens of Gazans killed and injured." He described Israel's actions as a "limited response." Those statements fell short of what much of the international community had hoped to see. The drone footage Israel published has not backed up its claims in the way the IDF might have wished. It depicts many people fleeing the vicinity of the aid trucks, including some who appear to take cover behind walls, but it is spliced together from multiple clips and omits whatever happened immediately before people are seen running away. As WarFronts notes, if there were one surefire way to convince skeptics of the Israeli government that the IDF wanted to conceal something, splicing footage while omitting critical sections would probably be it. ## The Collapse of Order Around the Aid Line The incident also revived hard questions about the new status quo on aid deliveries in Gaza, where local actors who once helped keep order are now absent from the process. Until recently, convoys were escorted by civilian police from Hamas, who had generally been able to avoid this sort of violence — and certainly anything on this scale. But those civilian police walked off the job earlier in February, leaving a vacuum. Desperate Palestinians began attacking convoys, and the only people now guarding deliveries are simultaneously on the opposite side of a war. The reason the Hamas police quit is itself telling: they had been increasingly targeted by Israel. Recent convoys have borne the brunt of this breakdown. The World Food Program suspended aid deliveries after a recent convoy — the worst in three weeks — was surrounded by hungry Gazans at an IDF checkpoint and then fired on in Gaza City. The WFP tried again, only to have its 14-truck convoy turned away at an Israeli checkpoint and then looted. In the aftermath of February 29, Jan Egeland, Secretary-General of the Norwegian Refugee Council, acknowledged: "The chaos, yes, around the aid line is becoming worse and worse because there's so little aid coming in […] you see the aid trucks going full speed down the road, being chased by gangs of youth who jumped the trucks and before our eyes, loot mattresses, blankets, food, et cetera, to the desperate people outside who want to get some aid." As more survivors spoke, more accounts circulated. Speaking to BBC Arabic, survivor Ramzi Rihan said: "We were informed that a shipment of flour would arrive through Al-Nabulsi Street and that there would be no shooting. We went to get flour to feed our children. We went to Nabulsi Street and before the trucks arrived there was gunfire. As the trucks entered, we headed towards them, and as we tried to get the first bag of flour out of the truck, they began to fire at us." Some witnesses described waiting to be loaded into donkey carts, whose operators made several trips to nearby hospitals to transport the wounded. Others recalled being both shot and struck by aid trucks trying to leave. Still others contradicted these claims, contending that most of the injured were rammed or crushed by the aid trucks as people panicked and tried to escape the line of fire. Israel has called for a larger, more independent review, but when that review will come — or whether it would be conducted by people Israel's opponents would accept as impartial — remains unknown. ## International Outcry As word of the tragedy spread, many nations moved quickly to stake out positions. Jordan, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia condemned Israel almost immediately, accusing it of deliberately attacking the civilians who became casualties at al-Rashid. The South American nation of Colombia announced it would stop importing weapons from Israel and likened Israel's conduct in Gaza to genocide — a characterization that a growing number of nations have begun to endorse. China issued a strong condemnation and called for an immediate ceasefire to prevent future disasters of this kind. No international response drew more scrutiny than that of the United States, Israel's primary backer and chief advocate in great-power conversations about the war. President Joseph Biden expressed shock at the incident but simultaneously emphasized that Washington would attempt to weed through "two competing versions of what happened." White House deputy press secretary Olivia Dalton explained that the US had spent weeks pressing Israel to produce plans for the basic security and safety of parts of Gaza where military operations had concluded — including the very area where the incident occurred, where Israel claims Hamas no longer maintains a presence. "We have yet to see those plans and we are deeply concerned about that," Dalton said. Inside the White House, the incident sharpened existing divisions. In an anonymous statement provided to NBC, several staffers wrote: "Saying there are two 'versions' of what happened when we have video proof of what occurred is absolutely disgusting. […] On Thursday morning we all woke up to a 'Hunger Games' style massacre, weaponizing starvation and over one hundred people dead and this administration's response is that we need to clarify information? It's baffling." The American response did go somewhat beyond requests for information. The day after the incident, the US took a unilateral and overtly symbolic step against Israel, authorizing an airdrop of humanitarian food aid directly into Gaza. "Aid flowing into Gaza is nowhere nearly enough… lives are on the line," Biden said. "We should be getting hundreds of trucks in, not just several. We're going to pull out every stop we can." Airdrops are a notoriously inefficient way to deliver supplies, but the message to the Israeli government was amplified precisely by America's choice to pursue an inefficient and insufficient option rather than work through the corridors Israel controls. On March 4, the US also signed onto the idea of an independent UN review and noted that UN staff had already begun visiting hospitals to assess the nature of the wounds. Elsewhere among Israel's allies, the United Kingdom denounced the deaths and endorsed demands for an impartial investigation. France condemned "fire by Israeli soldiers against civilians trying to access food," while Germany's foreign minister demanded a full explanation. Writing on X, German foreign minister Annalena Baerbock said: "People wanted relief supplies for themselves and their families and found themselves dead. The reports from Gaza shock me." She added that Gazans are "closer to dying than to living." ## A Blocked Resolution at the UN At the United Nations, the dispute grew sharper still. In the hours after the incident, the UN Security Council convened a closed-door emergency meeting. Algeria, the Council's current representative from the Arab world, offered a draft statement that would have blamed Israeli forces for "opening fire" and causing the deaths. Fourteen of the Council's fifteen members supported it, including four permanent members — China, France, Russia, and the United Kingdom — as well as close US allies Japan and South Korea, both current non-permanent members. The United States blocked the resolution. Because of America's permanent status, that veto rendered the statement dead in the water. Outside the Council chamber, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres offered a strong condemnation: "The desperate civilians in Gaza need urgent help, including those in the north where the UN has not been able to deliver aid in more than a week." ## The Ceasefire Clock If the rest of the world agrees on anything in the aftermath of al-Rashid, it is that this latest mass-casualty incident underscores the urgent need for a ceasefire as soon as possible. Those calls grow more desperate as the Gaza Ministry of Health begins reporting the deaths of children in northern Gaza killed not by bullets or bombs but by dehydration and malnutrition. International humanitarian warnings increasingly stress that local children are approaching the tipping point into starvation more and more often, and that if food remains scarce, Gaza's death toll could climb far more rapidly than it already has. More targeted aid has begun moving into the north, including a shipment of vaccines and formula milk that reached al-Shifa Hospital — but no single shipment can hope to make a meaningful difference. In the immediate aftermath, Hamas officials said they expected the incident to put ceasefire talks in jeopardy, a view echoed by President Biden when asked about the consequences. Despite those early warning signs, the discussions continued to progress until March 5, when Hamas officials indicated that negotiations in the Egyptian capital of Cairo had stalled yet again. Hamas political leader Basem Naim said: "Netanyahu doesn't want to reach an agreement […] the ball now is in the Americans' court." The implication is that the United States will have to convince Israel to return to the table for any progress to be made. Hamas has signaled it plans to remain available for talks — and these are talks that the US had recently said came close to Israel accepting Hamas's terms. Among the current points of disagreement, anonymous officials close to the negotiations cite the formation of a list of hostages Hamas would be willing to release. Why that list has not materialized is not yet clear. The deadline pressure is bound up with the Muslim holy month of fasting, Ramadan, slated to begin at sundown on Sunday, March 10. The holy month is the period a ceasefire would cover, likely lasting about six weeks. The urgency is not only a matter of respect for religion. Fasting itself becomes very difficult and even dangerous for people already malnourished and without access to food. Worse, the religious significance across the Muslim world of a Muslim population being continually attacked during Ramadan is something that international observers — and the Biden administration — fear could become a flashpoint escalating violence beyond Gaza. That could include worse violence from the Houthis in the Red Sea, from Hezbollah to Israel's north, or even the entry of new players, a list that in a worst-case scenario could draw Iran directly into the war. ## The Countdown to Starvation Ramadan or not, an even more important countdown is underway: the one determining how long each person in northern Gaza has left before starvation becomes unavoidable. About three hundred thousand people are believed to be living in northern Gaza, with very scarce food resources and very little access to clean water. According to the UN, one in six children under the age of two in northern Gaza is believed to be acutely malnourished, with that number only expected to rise. Natalie Roberts, executive director of the UK branch of Doctors Without Borders, described the reality: "We know from our own colleagues that they're having to eat animal food, that they go without food for days on end sometimes. And so people are just completely desperate, and the minute you start trying to deliver food to the region without any sort of security for the convoy, then this was always going to happen." Beyond the United States, Jordan has organized unilateral airdrops of humanitarian supplies, and Canada is considering the same. America completed a second airdrop alongside Jordan over recent days and appears poised to carry out further operations if conditions demand. The US has even floated delivering a ship's worth of aid if road access remains restricted or handled the way Israel has been handling it. But for now, anything beyond the occasional airdrop is just talk — which means the countdown to starvation continues uninterrupted. ## What the Incident Reveals The violence of the Al-Rashid incident is a horrible tragedy no matter which version of events is ultimately confirmed. But what it is not — and this is painful to acknowledge — is a surprise. That people on the brink of starvation would gather around, and even try to stop and take from, a convoy they know is carrying rare and precious food aid should surprise no one. That an Israeli military accustomed to waging war inside Gaza with impunity, and to keeping order as it sees fit, would fire its weapons and shells from its tanks — whether as warning shots or not — should surprise no one either. Whether those weapons were aimed above the heads of the crowd, at their legs and feet, or at their hearts and heads cannot yet be determined. But the very fact that the world is in a position to debate whether the deaths of over a hundred people, and the injuries of nearly or more than a thousand others, were a deliberate massacre or a tragic accident is itself a reflection of the dire conditions that made such an incident all but inevitable. People who fear they may starve will do everything they can to find food while they still have the strength. Soldiers fighting an asymmetric war, expecting enemies around every corner, will perceive a surging crowd as a threat to their own lives. In those conditions, when an acute crisis erupts as it did on February 29, the dominoes fall as they are laid out — and people die. There is no clean resolution to offer. A definitive finding, a clear perpetrator named and held to account, is not available, and while subsequent investigations may be conducted fairly and published transparently, that is not necessarily how this conflict works. Resolution on this incident may not come for a very long time. What can be said with confidence is how urgent it is that all parties work to change the conditions on the ground — through a ceasefire, a more comprehensive humanitarian aid program, or whatever else it takes. Call it a massacre, call it a tragedy: the Al-Rashid incident of February 29 should not have happened. The burden now falls on all sides to ensure that the next incident like it never happens in the first place. ## Frequently Asked Questions ### What happened on Al-Rashid Street on February 29, 2024? Before dawn, an aid convoy moving north on Al-Rashid Street in northern Gaza became the site of a mass-casualty event near the al-Nabulsi roundabout. A large, hungry crowd had gathered ahead of the convoy's arrival. By the end, Gaza health officials counted at least 112 dead and over 760 injured, with later estimates exceeding a thousand total casualties. Accounts of how those casualties occurred diverge sharply between an Israeli account centered on a stampede and witness accounts centered on Israeli gunfire. ### What is the IDF's explanation for the deaths? The IDF's preliminary review says the crowd rushed the aid trucks, and that Israeli soldiers fired warning shots from small arms and tanks to deter a stampede. The military maintains that most deaths resulted from the stampede itself — people crushed, trampled, or run over by aid trucks — and that Israeli forces only fired on individuals who posed a direct threat after the main incident had concluded. Spokesman Daniel Hagari described Israel's actions as a "limited response." ### What do witnesses and doctors say happened? Survivors, journalists, and medical staff describe a largely docile crowd that was fired upon, including with tracer ammunition, before a panic and stampede ensued. Doctors at al-Shifa and other hospitals reported that most injuries were gunshot and shrapnel wounds, many to the head and chest, with roughly 70 percent requiring surgery. Some survivors alleged fire from snipers, tanks, drones, and even naval forces on the nearby Mediterranean Sea. ### How did the United States respond to the incident? President Biden expressed shock but referred to "two competing versions of what happened." The US blocked an Algerian-drafted UN Security Council statement that would have blamed Israeli forces — a statement supported by fourteen of the Council's fifteen members. Washington authorized symbolic airdrops of food aid into Gaza and, on March 4, endorsed an independent UN review of the incident. ### How did the incident affect ceasefire negotiations? Hamas officials said they expected the incident to jeopardize talks, and Biden echoed that concern. Discussions in Cairo nonetheless continued until March 5, when Hamas said negotiations had stalled again, with leader Basem Naim placing the ball "in the Americans' court." The talks were further pressured by the approach of Ramadan and by the deepening starvation crisis facing roughly 300,000 people in northern Gaza. ## Sources - [New York Times — A UN aid official warns that Gaza is close to famine](https://www.nytimes.com/live/2024/02/28/world/israel-hamas-war-gaza-news/a-un-aid-official-warns-that-gaza-is-close-to-famine?smid=url-share) - [New York Times — Gaza famine, hunger and the UN](https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/03/world/middleeast/gaza-famine-hunger-un.html) - [AP News — Israel, Palestinians, UN, humanitarian famine, malnutrition](https://apnews.com/article/israel-palestinians-un-humanitarian-famine-gaza-malnutrition-cf622f843fe531fb6dbd5657a39d6b49) - [Reuters — Gaza's hunger crisis worsens, emaciated children seen at hospitals](https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/gazas-hunger-crisis-worsens-emaciated-children-seen-hospitals-2024-03-04/) - [BBC News — Middle East report (68443883)](https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-68443883) - [Reuters — Israeli military review of Gaza aid convoy deaths finds most killed in stampede](https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/israeli-military-review-gaza-aid-convoy-deaths-finds-most-killed-stampede-2024-03-03/) - [Axios — Gaza aid Palestinians killed, Israel, IDF, Hamas](https://www.axios.com/2024/02/29/gaza-aid-palestinians-killed-israel-idf-hamas) - [BBC News — Middle East report (68434443)](https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-68434443) - [New York Times — Gaza aid trucks map (interactive)](https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/02/29/world/middleeast/gaza-aid-trucks-map.html) - [New York Times — A witness said he saw people with gunshot wounds and sacks of flour covered in blood](https://www.nytimes.com/live/2024/02/29/world/israel-hamas-war-gaza-news/a-witness-said-he-saw-people-with-gunshot-wounds-and-sacks-of-flour-covered-in-blood) - [NBC News — Israel-Hamas war live updates (rcna141305)](https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/live-blog/israel-hamas-war-live-updates-rcna141305) - [CNN — Gaza food truck deaths, Israel](https://www.cnn.com/2024/02/29/middleeast/gaza-food-truck-deaths-israel-wwk-intl/index.html) - [CBS News — Israel-Gaza war, Palestinians, deaths, food aid convoy, mounting condemnation, Netanyahu](https://www.cbsnews.com/news/israel-gaza-war-palestinians-deaths-food-aid-convoy-mounting-condemnation-netanyahu/) - [France 24 — Pity us: deadly scenes as desperate Gazans rush aid trucks](https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20240229-pity-us-deadly-scenes-as-desperate-gazans-rush-aid-trucks) - [NBC News — Gazan doctor says bullets and shells caused aid truck casualties (video)](https://www.nbcnews.com/video/gazan-doctor-says-bullets-and-shells-caused-aid-truck-casualties-205294661931) - [NPR — Gaza death toll 30,000 Palestinians, Israel-Hamas war](https://www.npr.org/2024/02/29/1234159514/gaza-death-toll-30000-palestinians-israel-hamas-war) - [NPR — Gaza food aid convoy, Israel, Hamas](https://www.npr.org/2024/02/29/1234906745/gaza-food-aid-convoy-israel-hamas) - [BBC News — Middle East report (68445973)](https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-68445973) - [The Guardian — Gaza aid trucks death toll explainer](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/feb/29/gaza-aid-trucks-death-toll-explainer) - [Reuters — Injured survivors of Gaza aid chaos say Israeli forces shot them](https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/injured-survivors-gaza-aid-chaos-say-israeli-forces-shot-them-2024-03-01/) - [Reuters — US supports UN review into aid-related Gaza incident where dozens were killed](https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/us-supports-un-review-into-aid-related-gaza-incident-where-dozens-were-killed-2024-03-04/) - [CBS News — Israel-Gaza-Hamas war, humanitarian aid, death toll over 30,000](https://www.cbsnews.com/news/israel-gaza-hamas-war-humanitarian-aid-death-toll-over-30000/) - [NBC News — Israel-Hamas war live updates (rcna141090)](https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/live-blog/israel-hamas-war-live-updates-rcna141090) - [Washington Post — Gaza aid delivery stampede shots](https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2024/03/01/gaza-aid-delivery-stampede-shots/)

Alexander the Great vs Darius III: The Battle for Persia

Simon Whistler — Tue, 02 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

When King Philip II of Macedonia was assassinated in 336 BC, the crown and the army he had built passed to his son. Alexander was just 20 years old. Despite his youth, he would lead his armies into battle time and again, never once tasting defeat. Through superior planning, tactical instinct, and intelligence, he became one of the most successful military commanders in history, finishing his career with an undefeated record. His conquests stretched across nearly 12 years, but one of his most stunning victories was also one of his earliest: the destruction of the Achaemenid Empire, the First Persian Empire. Ruled by Darius III, Persia was the largest empire the world had ever seen up to that point, a power that had dominated western Asia for more than two centuries. It fell to Alexander in a series of decisive battles, fought principally at Granicus, Issus, and Gaugamela. The full conquest was long and tangled, a campaign of sieges, marches, and political maneuvering across thousands of miles. But the empire's fate was sealed in those three field battles, where a smaller, better-drilled army repeatedly broke a much larger one. This is the story of how Macedonia brought down a colossus, and of the duel between two kings whose contrasting fortunes decided the future of the ancient world. ## Key Takeaways - Alexander inherited both the Macedonian throne and command of a planned Persian campaign in 336 BC after his father Philip II was assassinated, becoming king at age 20. - Persia was vulnerable when Alexander struck: King Artaxerxes III had recently been murdered, Egypt was in revolt, and the Persian fleet was away from the coast. - At Granicus in 334 BC, Alexander forced a river crossing under fire and shattered the Persian satraps' army; at Issus in 333 BC, Darius fought in person but chose a narrow coastal battlefield that neutralized his numbers, and fled when Alexander broke his line. - At Gaugamela in 331 BC, Darius assembled over 100,000 men with war elephants and scythed chariots, yet Alexander anticipated a Persian trap, turned it against them, and charged straight at Darius — who fled for the second time. - Persepolis was captured and burned, Darius was murdered by his own relative Bessus, and Alexander was proclaimed King of the Persian Empire. ## Why Persia Was the Target To understand why Persia was Alexander's first objective, and how Macedonia could even hope to match such a vast empire, the story must begin before Alexander was born. From roughly 499 BC to 450 BC, a series of conflicts collectively known as the Greco-Persian Wars saw the Persian Empire launch repeated attacks in an effort to conquer Greece. Greece at this point was not a single country but a region of several independent city-states. Ultimately those city-states, led chiefly by Athens and Sparta, formed an alliance and managed to defend against the invading Persian forces, securing peace in the region. The memory of those invasions lingered for generations, and it gave any future campaign against Persia a powerful moral framing: this would be a war of revenge for wrongs done to their forefathers. A century later, those same city-states were again at war, but not with the Persians. They were fighting each other. The political landscape that Alexander would inherit was one of Greek division, and it was Macedonia that had risen to exploit it. ## Philip II and the League of Corinth Under the rule of Alexander's father, King Philip II, Macedonia had become the dominant kingdom in the area, with the largest army, the most resources, and the most land. Many of the other city-states, mainly Athens and Thebes, saw Philip's power as a looming threat to their own independence. They declared war on Macedonia and on whatever city-states would side with them. The confrontation culminated at the Battle of Chaeronea, where, in a single engagement, Macedonia and its allies defeated Athens and Thebes in what many historians describe as the most decisive victory in history. The armies of Athens and Thebes were annihilated and could no longer wage war against Philip's Macedonia. As a result, every Greek city-state except Sparta entered an alliance known as the League of Corinth, or the Hellenic League. This new coalition voted Philip, distinctive with his missing eye, as the military leader for an upcoming campaign against the Persian Empire, a war that would avenge their forefathers, liberate allied city-states still under Persian occupation, and ensure that Persia would never again be a threat. But before those plans came to fruition, Philip was suddenly assassinated in 336 BC. The throne and the command of the invasion passed to his son. Alexander was now king of Macedonia and the appointed general of an alliance preparing to march against the mightiest empire of its age. ## A Vulnerable Empire Persia, normally seen as a symbol of stability and prosperity, was in a fragile state at the moment Alexander prepared to strike. The Persian king Artaxerxes III had been recently murdered, leaving the throne to Darius III. Egypt had revolted against Persian occupation. And the Persian fleet was not nearby to respond. If there was ever a window for Alexander to launch his invasion, this was it. The first encounter between Alexander's army and the Persians came at the river Granicus in May, 334 BC. Today that river is called the Biga River, in northwestern Turkey. Alexander approached from the west, but the Persians were waiting on the eastern bank, which meant the Greeks would have to cross the river and its muddy banks under fire in order to fight. Estimates of the armies' sizes vary wildly, from as few as 20,000 to over 600,000 men. The general consensus is that both sides fielded somewhere between 30,000 and 40,000, a figure that lines up with the numbers in the battles that followed, though it remains an estimate. What is known for certain is that Persia had several thousand more heavy cavalry than Macedonia, and had also hired Greek mercenaries, men intimately familiar with Macedonian tactics. ## The Battle of Granicus The Persian cavalry was placed at the front of the army, waiting to charge any infantry that attempted to cross the river, with archers and light infantry stationed behind them, a formidable sight to the approaching Macedonians. Despite having marched all day to reach the river, Alexander decided that camping for the night was not his style and ordered an immediate crossing of the Granicus to attack. King Darius III was not present at this fight, likely because he underestimated the threat the Macedonian army posed. Instead he sent his satraps, or nobles, to deal with it, alongside a Greek mercenary named Memnon of Rhodes. But Alexander, in his flashiest armor and decorated helmet, would never pass up a chance to lead his army headfirst into battle. The Greek cavalry split into two groups on the flanks, with Alexander leading the right and his right-hand man, Parmenion, leading the left. The battle began as the Macedonian heavy infantry, in phalanx formation, started crossing the river in the center, immediately becoming a target for the Persian archers on the far bank. As thousands of arrows and thrown spears struck the phalanx, the cavalry on either end charged across the river. Parmenion and his horsemen crossed and moved straight ahead, engaging the Persian cavalry positioned to intercept them. Alexander, by contrast, ignored the cavalry directly in front of him and drove his own force straight into the Persian center, scattering the archers and giving his infantry the chance to complete their crossing. ## Alexander in the Thick of It As the Persian cavalry realized what was happening, they wheeled around Alexander's force, producing some of the most intense fighting of the entire battle. Despite being nearly surrounded on the Persian half of the river, Alexander's cavalry held firm. The Macedonian horsemen were expert wielders of the xyston, a long, fearsome spear that often had two pointed ends, giving them an advantage against the shorter Persian javelins. Alexander himself fought fiercely. When his spear snapped in half, without missing a beat he took another from one of his generals and continued his attack. He then spotted Mithridates, a Persian noble and cavalry leader. Alexander charged him, and after a brief clash emerged victorious by thrusting his spear into Mithridates' face. But the bold charge had left Alexander exposed. Another Persian noble, Rhoesaces, charged him from behind and struck his helmet with his sword. Alexander's helmet was punctured and his head was bleeding, but he turned and killed Rhoesaces nonetheless. As a third noble, Spithridates, swung his sword at Alexander, the attacker's arm was severed by one of Alexander's bodyguards, Cleitus the Black. The Persian center had been broken, and the Macedonian infantry was now arriving steadily from the Granicus, marching forward in tight phalanxes. The Persian armies began to flee. Alexander's men did not chase them far, focusing instead on the Greek mercenaries who had been fighting for the enemy. Parmenion's cavalry circled behind those mercenaries, leading to their absolute defeat, with thousands killed and thousands more taken prisoner. ## The Aftermath of Granicus In the end, Granicus was a massive victory for Alexander. Most sources say as few as 150 Greek soldiers were killed, with about a thousand wounded. On the Persian side, it is possible that up to 2,000 cavalrymen were lost, along with 3,000 of their mercenaries killed and another 2,000 taken prisoner. The battle also showed Alexander's men that they could rely on him in combat. He had, after all, taken a sword to the head, and some sources even say he fell unconscious during a portion of the fight as a result. But crucially, once the battle was won, the Macedonians looted the abandoned Persian camps, sending much of the spoils home and providing much-needed financial support to the campaign. After the defeat at Granicus, King Darius III realized he had underestimated the Macedonian army, and that it was now a genuine threat to his entire empire. To put an end to the invasion, Darius began amassing an army to confront Alexander himself. ## The Road to Issus With the initial Persian resistance out of the way, Alexander's army moved essentially uncontested through western Asia Minor, liberating cities that welcomed him and besieging those that resisted. Another important Macedonian objective was to capture as many Persian port cities as possible. This way the Persian fleet, far too large for the Macedonian navy to challenge directly, would be unable to land reinforcements to support Darius. After capturing important coastal cities such as Ephesus, Halicarnassus, and Miletus, the Persian navy had nowhere to safely land reinforcements behind the Macedonians. To ensure this, Parmenion was sent with a large force to occupy the area around the town of Issus. It was also during this period that Alexander captured the city of Gordion, home to a knot so large and complex that local legend held the man who could untie it was destined to rule Asia. After inspecting the knot, Alexander drew his sword and sliced it open. As he continued through Asia Minor, Alexander was aware that Darius was to the east, in Babylon, assembling an army. But in the autumn of 333 BC, his scouts informed him that King Darius was marching closer. Alexander gathered his forces and marched south of the town of Issus, into a narrow mountain pass where he rejoined forces with General Parmenion. His hope was that Darius would take the quickest route to him, leading the Persians south through the Belen Pass, to the west of which the Macedonians would be waiting to ambush them. ## The Battle of Issus Darius, possibly anticipating this, moved his army to the north, taking the longer route around the Amanus Mountains, today known as the Nur Mountains, in south-central Turkey. This allowed Darius to swing wide behind Alexander's army, and he captured the now defenseless city of Issus, where the Macedonian sick and battle-wounded were resting. Darius had them all killed and began marching southbound, behind Alexander, cutting off the Macedonian supply lines. This forced Alexander's hand, and he immediately marched northward for battle. The two armies caught sight of each other on November 5, 333 BC, south of the town of Issus at a small river known as the Pinarus. This time, Darius had used his empire's vast resources to amass an army much larger than Alexander's. Most sources say the Macedonian army was about 40,000 men, while the Persian army was likely more than double that size. The Persians again brought hired Greek mercenaries, cavalry, and all 10,000 Persian Immortals, an elite heavy infantry unit. Darius wanted to fight Alexander in an open field where the advantage of his immense numbers would be felt, but the Gulf of Issus, where the battle was about to take place, was only a couple of kilometers wide between the sea and the mountains, meaning he could not take full advantage of the size of his army. Darius was also surprised to find the full force of Macedonia there, as he was unaware Alexander had beaten him to Parmenion, having hoped to face each of their forces individually while they were still separated. ## Breaking the Persian Line at Issus Alexander stationed his troops just as he had at Granicus: cavalry on the left, led by Parmenion; phalanx in the center; and Alexander with his elite companion cavalry on the right. This time, though, Darius threw the first punch. His cavalry, positioned near the beaches on Alexander's left, charged across the small river, hoping to overwhelm Parmenion's horsemen. In response, the Macedonian phalanx began its attempt to cross the river, its formation once again relentlessly struck by thousands of Persian archers. Initially, the tide was shifting in favor of Persia. Parmenion's cavalry on the left was heavily outnumbered, and the center phalanx was slowly coming undone under the sheer number of enemies pushing it. But Alexander and his companion cavalry managed to charge across the river on the right, near the mountains, and crushed the infantry that resisted them, breaking a hole in the Persian defensive line. He then made a quick decision to flank behind the enemy lines to aid his phalanx. Now under attack from three sides, the Persian center quickly began to crumble. The Macedonian phalanx moved like a machine through the enemy lines, their long spears making quick work of anyone who got too close. Darius realized the danger he was in and turned around and ran. Alexander and many of his troops stormed after him but were unable to catch the king himself. The Persian cavalry, despite its initial success against Parmenion, also turned and fled, suffering heavy losses as they attempted to escape, saved only perhaps by the Macedonians stopping the chase as the sun fell below the horizon. The Battle of Issus was another devastating loss for Persia. Darius had lost at least 20,000 soldiers, while under a thousand Macedonians were killed, with between five and seven thousand wounded. Alexander had shown that discipline and training could defeat sheer numbers. But Darius was still alive, already preparing for a rematch, and he would not make the same mistakes twice. ## The Buildup to Gaugamela For the next couple of years, Darius retreated to Babylon, deep in his empire, to decide how to handle the invasion, while Alexander continued his conquest of Persian territories. First he besieged Tyre, then successfully attacked Gaza. When he arrived in Egypt, he did not have to fight; its people were more than happy to be liberated from Persian occupation. As Alexander snatched one city after another, Darius tried his luck with a more diplomatic approach, drafting three separate treaties presented to the Macedonians, each more generous than the last. All three were rejected, even though the final offer included letting Alexander co-rule the empire and offered one of Darius's own daughters to be his wife. Desperate times, it seems, called for desperate measures. As the Macedonian army moved eastward, Darius assumed Alexander would advance to the southeast, along the banks of the Euphrates to Babylon. To counter this, Darius employed a scorched-earth tactic, burning and plundering the land ahead of time, leaving no food or supplies for an invading army moving through the area. The strategy had been suggested to Darius years earlier, when Alexander first entered his kingdom, but Darius had ignored it until now. Alexander, instead of heading southeast along the Euphrates as Darius expected, headed northward, opting to cross the Tigris river first, looting rural villages as he went rather than assaulting heavily defended cities. Darius sent an advance party, led by a noble named Mazaeus, to burn and plunder the eastern banks of the Tigris before Alexander crossed, but it failed to arrive in time to prevent the crossing. By the lunar eclipse on October 1st, 331 BC, both armies were on the eastern side of the Tigris. Darius looked for an optimal place to wait for Alexander and chose a wide, flat plain near the village of Gaugamela, not wishing to be caught in the same geographical trap he had been lured into two years prior. ## The Armies at Gaugamela Alexander was initially unaware of the Persian army's location, but his soldiers managed to capture some of Darius's scouts and learned the enemy was just to the east. Alexander immediately marched in their direction. As he approached, his army was spotted by a small Persian force on a hill next to the open fields. This smaller group, led by Mazaeus, understandably did not want to fight the entire Macedonian army, so they simply retreated back to the main camps, handing Alexander the high ground. But Darius was confident in his positioning, as the open field below the hill was well suited to the number of soldiers he had with him. Most sources place the Persian army at over 100,000 men. Darius had once again brought his 10,000 Immortals, tens of thousands of infantry, plenty of cavalry, and this time even 15 Indian war elephants and several bladed chariots. The Macedonian force, by contrast, was about 47,000 strong. From his vantage point on the hill, Alexander could see the entire Persian formation and every enemy movement. He knew Darius would not dare risk attacking his well-defended hill, so Alexander took his time, ensuring his soldiers were well-rested, fed, and prepared for war the next day. Conversely, Darius was under constant threat of a sudden Macedonian charge, and his soldiers had to be ready for battle at a moment's notice, even throughout the night leading up to the fight, fatigue that would tell the following day. ## The Trap at Gaugamela As the sun crested the horizon the next morning, Alexander's men marched down the hill and positioned themselves for combat. The Macedonian formation was once again a line with a phalanx center and cavalry on each side, but this time the wings curved backward slightly, to avoid being surrounded by an enemy flanking maneuver. Alexander once again took his companion cavalry on the right edge and trusted the left side to Parmenion. As Alexander moved to attempt a wide charge on the right, the Persian cavalry charged his position, but the elite companion cavalry held their ground, pushing the Persians back. Darius then commanded his chariots to speed into the Macedonian phalanx. The Macedonians had trained for such a threat, and they responded by breaking formation and allowing the chariots to enter their lines, after which they quickly surrounded them, making quick work of the chariots with their three-meter pikes as they rode through. With the chariots out of the fight rather quickly, Darius ordered his remaining cavalry to attack the Macedonian left flank, where Parmenion was stationed. Though heavily outnumbered, Parmenion's cavalry were able to hold their line for quite some time. With the entirety of the Macedonian cavalry occupied at both flanks, Darius seized an opportunity to strike the formation's weak center. As his Immortals charged toward the Macedonian phalanxes, it seemed as if Darius had the upper hand, but this was a trap. Alexander had anticipated the move. When the front line of Persian infantry reached the Macedonian line, Alexander's cavalry, triumphant on their right flank, immediately charged toward the Persian center, straight at Darius and his royal bodyguards, who were now left without their 10,000 Immortals. ## The Fall of Persia The second line of Persian infantry stepped up, but despite numbering in the thousands, these units were poorly trained and equipped, especially in contrast to Alexander's elite cavalry. As Alexander slashed his way toward Darius, eager to take his crown, the Persian king ran away for the second time. Alexander started to chase him but quickly turned around and headed to aid Parmenion. The remaining Persian forces were swiftly surrounded and destroyed. Alexander lost around a thousand soldiers at Gaugamela, but it is estimated that Persia lost more than 40,000. Alexander had humiliated Persia's army for the third time in just three years. With this latest victory, he had gained control over the central regions of the empire, giving him the chance to attack Persepolis, the capital of the Persian Empire, which he successfully captured and burned. And while Alexander was disappointed that Darius had slipped through his fingers a second time, he would never face him in battle again. Following the defeat, Darius once again attempted to amass an army, but struggled to gather a force of sufficient magnitude. This was partly due to his shrinking empire and the diminishing support of his own people, who were losing confidence in his ability to match Alexander tactically. In fact, Alexander was not even meeting much resistance from some occupied Persian cities, as, among other liberal policies, he allowed them to continue practicing their own religion. Darius was eventually murdered by his relative, the noble Bessus. Bessus and the leader of the Persian palace guard bound Darius to an ox cart in the desert. As Alexander approached, they fled, wounding Darius and leaving him to die before the Macedonians reached him. Darius's killers were caught and executed shortly thereafter. Alexander was disappointed that he did not capture Darius alive, but he sent the body back to Persepolis, where it was given a grand funeral and buried in the royal Persian tombs. Alexander was now officially the King of the Persian Empire. And that daughter Darius had offered him earlier? He married her anyway. ## Frequently Asked Questions ### How did Alexander come to lead the campaign against Persia? King Philip II of Macedonia was assassinated in 336 BC, passing both the Macedonian throne and command of a planned Persian invasion to his son. Alexander was just 20 years old. Philip had already united the Greek city-states — except Sparta — into the League of Corinth and been named military leader of the campaign, which was framed as revenge for the Greco-Persian Wars of roughly 499–450 BC. ### Why was capturing Persian port cities so important to Alexander's strategy? The Persian fleet was far too large for the Macedonian navy to challenge at sea. By capturing coastal cities such as Ephesus, Halicarnassus, and Miletus, Alexander denied the Persian navy any safe harbor from which to land reinforcements behind his advancing army, neutralizing a threat he could not confront directly. ### What advantages let a smaller Macedonian army defeat Persia's much larger forces? Discipline, training, and tactical flexibility. The Macedonian phalanx wielded three-meter pikes, and the cavalry used the xyston, a long spear that outreached Persian javelins. Alexander repeatedly shaped the battlefield to neutralize Persian numbers — choosing narrow ground at Issus, resting his men on high ground before Gaugamela — and he personally led charges that targeted enemy command, breaking morale and triggering routs. ### How did Alexander defeat the scythed chariots and war elephants at Gaugamela? The Macedonians had trained for the chariot threat: they opened their phalanx lines to let the chariots ride through, then quickly closed around them and destroyed them with pikes. The 15 Indian war elephants did not play a decisive role in the battle. Darius then sent his 10,000 Immortals at the Macedonian center — which Alexander had anticipated — and used the opening to charge his companion cavalry directly at Darius and his bodyguards, causing Darius to flee for the second time. ### What happened to Darius III after his defeat at Gaugamela? After Gaugamela, Darius retreated eastward and tried to raise a new army, but his shrinking empire and the loss of his people's confidence made this increasingly difficult. He was eventually murdered by his own relative, Bessus, who bound him to an ox cart, wounded him, and fled as Alexander approached. Darius was found dying by the Macedonians. Alexander sent the body back to Persepolis for a royal funeral, took the throne of the Persian Empire, and later married the daughter Darius had offered him during failed diplomatic negotiations.

America Has Bombed Iran: The Strikes, the Targets, and What Matters Now

Simon Whistler — Tue, 02 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The United States of America has bombed the nation of Iran. At approximately 2:30 in the morning local time, during the mid-evening hours in Washington, D.C., a group of B-2 stealth bombers and nuclear submarines carried out airstrikes against three facilities critical to the nuclear program of the Islamic Republic of Iran. According to the United States, those sites now lie in ruin. According to Iran, retaliation is on the way. The events described here unfolded on June 22, 2025, and reflect what was known to a reasonable degree of confidence as of the midmorning hours of that day, local time in Tehran and Jerusalem. This is a rapidly evolving crisis, and the picture has continued to shift since the first hours after the strikes. WarFronts intends to return to this story as it develops; what follows is an early, deliberately careful accounting of what happened, why Washington became involved in the way that it did, and what may come next. The headline is simple even if its consequences are not. The world's premier superpower has now inserted itself directly into a war between Israel and Iran, and very few of the paths that opens up are good ones. Here is what matters about the attack itself, its likely effect on Iran's nuclear ambitions, and the dangerous range of outcomes now on the table. ## Key Takeaways - On June 22, 2025, U.S. B-2 stealth bombers and submarines struck three Iranian nuclear facilities: Natanz and Fordo enrichment centers, and the Isfahan Uranium Conversion Facility. - Against the deeply buried Fordo site, the B-2s dropped six Massive Ordnance Penetrators — 30,000-pound bunker-busters that only the United States possesses and that only the B-2 can deliver. - American submarines surfaced roughly 400 miles away and launched some 30 Tomahawk cruise missiles; the choice of conventional warheads kept the strike within the bounds of conventional warfare. - Trump claimed complete destruction of the targets and threatened follow-up strikes if Iran retaliates or refuses to negotiate, but actual damage remains deeply uncertain. - Iran has vowed reprisals, analysts judge the crisis severe but short of a world war, and no greater power is positioned to enter the conflict on Iran's side. ## The Anatomy of the Attack The United States carried out its strikes in the middle of the night on a Sunday, when its B-2 bombers would have been no more visible to the naked eye than to Iranian air defenses. Those bombers launched under a veil of secrecy some hours earlier, sent to attack in clandestine fashion. At the same time, a separate group of B-2s embarked on a highly visible journey from the United States across the Pacific Ocean. The bombers traveling the Pacific route flew with their transponders on, meaning their movements could be easily tracked by global open-source intelligence and by other governments. That visibility was almost certainly the point. As best as can be determined, those aircraft were meant to serve as a diversion, drawing attention westward while the real strike package slipped toward Iran undetected. The deception worked in tandem with the timing. By striking in darkness, with stealth aircraft that Iran's degraded air defenses could not realistically track, the United States maximized the odds that its bombers would reach their targets and return without interception. It is a textbook combination of misdirection and stealth, and it set the stage for the heaviest single act of American force yet seen in this war. ## The Targets: Fordo, Natanz, and Isfahan The real attack was directed at three Iranian nuclear facilities. Two of them are enrichment centers, located at Natanz and Fordo respectively. The third is the Isfahan Uranium Conversion Facility, where powdered yellowcake uranium is converted into a form that can be used for enrichment. Together, these sites represent critical nodes in Iran's ability to move raw material toward weapons-grade fuel. Buried deep underground, the enrichment facility at Fordo appears to have been the main target for the B-2 bombers. It is precisely the kind of hardened, deeply buried installation that conventional munitions struggle to reach, and it drew the most powerful weapons in the American arsenal that night. The really important parts of the Fordo installation are believed to sit several hundred meters underground, carefully insulated against aerial attack. Natanz and Isfahan rounded out the target list. Natanz is an enrichment center; Isfahan handles the conversion step that precedes enrichment. By hitting all three, the United States aimed not at a single facility but at multiple, sequential stages of Iran's path to a bomb, an approach designed to cut the chain in more than one place. ## The Bunker-Busters and the Bombers Against Fordo, the B-2s unleashed the combined power of six of America's most powerful bunker-buster munitions. Known as the Massive Ordnance Penetrator, those bombs weigh 30,000 pounds in total, with a 5,000-pound warhead, and are designed to burrow deep through reinforced concrete in order to expose and destroy some of the most hardened bunkers in the world. With six of these weapons used in the strike, at least three B-2s must have participated. The B-2 is the only aircraft that can carry the Massive Ordnance Penetrator, only the United States possesses it, and each bomber can carry just two in its internal weapons bays. These are weapons Israel did not have and could not obtain; they had to be delivered by way of the United States, which is a central reason American involvement was needed to reach a target like Fordo at all. The math itself tells a story. The decision to expend six of these scarce, enormously expensive penetrators against a single installation suggests Washington took seriously the prospect that Fordo's depth might defeat a smaller strike, and chose to overwhelm the problem with mass. ## Tomahawks From the Sea The bombers were not acting alone. Elsewhere near Iran, American submarines surfaced at a distance reported by news outlets to have been about 400 miles from their targets, the Natanz and Isfahan facilities. From there, those submarines launched 30 subsonic cruise missiles known as the Tomahawk. Each Tomahawk can carry a conventional explosive of up to 1,000 pounds. The missiles are also able to carry nuclear warheads, but in this case they clearly did not. The use of conventional warheads is itself a significant signal: even as the United States struck a nuclear program, it kept the strike firmly within the bounds of conventional warfare. At the time of the initial reporting, the strikes on the three nuclear facilities appeared to be the full extent of America's attack. President Donald Trump confirmed as much in an address to the nation. During that address, Trump made several key claims: that the United States had "completely and totally obliterated" its targets; that this was, at least for the time being, the extent of the military action Washington would take against Iran, in hopes that Tehran would immediately enter peace negotiations to end the conflict; and that if Iran refuses to negotiate or chooses to retaliate, the United States can and will engage in follow-up strikes. ## How Much Was Actually Destroyed? Whether these tactics succeeded is difficult to say. Predictably, the United States has claimed complete destruction, while Iran has claimed that most of the damage was surface-level. It is simply too early for either side to have completed a thorough damage assessment, and both claims should be treated with caution. Bunker-busting deep targets is a layered problem. Defense experts have suggested that early bombs might have to burrow part of the distance, blow open as much of the target as they can, and clear the way for successive bombs to burrow deeper and deeper, all with the help of precision-guiding technology. America's Massive Ordnance Penetrator is the premier conventional bunker-buster in any Western arsenal, but there are still limits to how far a single bomb can go, which helps explain why so many were used at Fordo at once. Even if Fordo's centrifuges survived, they may now be inaccessible, owing to tunnel collapses or other extensive damage elsewhere in the installation. As for the other two sites, the United States has again claimed to have destroyed its target. That may be true at Natanz. The facility at Isfahan, however, is deep underground, where Tomahawk missiles alone are unlikely to have broken through completely. Some conflicting reports suggest America's bunker-busters were also used at those sites, though the truth was not yet clear in the immediate aftermath. It is likewise unclear whether Iran managed to move any of its enriched uranium or centrifuge components, in the event that reports of advance notification proved accurate. ## The Charade Before the Strike, and the Warning Before the Bombs Several days before the attack, Washington signaled that it would wait to carry out a strike, suggesting it would consider its options for two weeks before deciding. In retrospect, that appears to have been little more than a charade. Notably, it repeats the same elements of misdirection that allowed Israel to catch Iran by surprise with its first wave of strikes. Then, as now, Iran's opponents sent clear signs that they did not believe themselves ready to attack imminently, before then attacking almost immediately. That misdirection sits alongside reporting that the United States contacted Iran in the hours before the strike, notifying both Tehran and Jerusalem about the strikes that were about to unfold. According to some American officials quoted anonymously by the global press, Iran was able to evacuate the targeted facilities before the strike took place. Even so, the advance warning may have mattered less than it seems. Considering how badly diminished Iran's air defenses are at this stage, it is unlikely that stealth bombers flying under the cover of darkness could have been stopped, even with advance warning. The notification may have saved lives and allowed Iran to remove some materiel, but it almost certainly did not save the facilities themselves. ## What the Strikes Mean for Iran's Bomb If those three facilities have indeed been destroyed, the main implication is that Iran's ability to produce new enriched uranium is disrupted for the long term. Unless Iran has other, unknown enrichment facilities elsewhere, its path to a weapon has been badly damaged. Such hidden sites are not likely, considering the apparent depth of penetration of Israeli intelligence across Iran's military apparatus. On that assumption, Iran now lacks the ability to enrich its existing uranium to weapons-grade, or to provide new uranium in a state suitable for enrichment. That disruption, combined with an Israeli strike on a heavy-water reactor that could have been used to make plutonium once it eventually came online, would indicate that Iran's supply chain for weapons-grade material has been cut off at several points, in ways that will be very difficult for Iran to undo. In other words, the value of the American strikes is not merely the rubble at Fordo or Natanz. It is the cumulative effect of hitting conversion, enrichment, and the plutonium route in sequence, leaving Iran's weapons program severed at multiple links of a chain that is slow and costly to rebuild. ## Why Iran May Choose to Retaliate Understanding what comes next is as important as understanding what has already happened. Based on the publicly expressed goals of America's leaders, the best-case outcome for Washington would be one where Iran re-engages in peace talks and ultimately agrees to American terms for a deal. That does not seem entirely likely to happen. Iran's command-and-control structure has been in disarray, with leadership issues getting in the way of the prior attempt to negotiate a peace, and what the world has heard from Iran's leaders has not been encouraging. According to Iran, reprisals will be coming, and all American troops and other citizens in the Middle East will be viewed as acceptable targets. The calculus driving that choice is grim. Iran's regime may feel it is in a position to pick its poison rather than assume its survival. Ayatollah Khamenei has reportedly chosen several potential successors and has been rapidly deputizing new military leaders as old ones are wiped out. Khamenei, who by some reports is still sick with cancer, appears well aware that he might not survive this conflict. Even if he does, peace with Israel carries its own dangers: Iran's regime is bitterly opposed by much of a public that would like to see the nation reformed. A truce, especially if Iran does not retaliate after taking such heavy losses, would likely enrage the hardliners the regime depends on for its survival. From the regime's perspective, the question becomes whether the least-worst option is to stand aside and be swallowed by its own people, or to begin a retaliatory cycle and hope some face-saving offramp emerges. ## What Iranian Retaliation Could Look Like When it comes to retaliation, it is assets located in the Middle East that are at the greatest risk. Both the United States and Israel anticipate major retaliatory strikes and have been taking precautions, with early reports indicating that two waves of missiles have already scored hits in several locations. At this stage in the war, Iran appears to lack the offensive capabilities that would enable it to defeat Israel. But not being able to defeat Israel is not the same as not being able to hurt it, and Iran does appear capable of the latter. According to Israeli defense sources, the country's stocks of available interceptors are running low on some components of its multilayered missile defense system. Iran has recent experience coordinating large-scale missile and drone strikes that can overwhelm those defenses for a short period. While Iran has lost some of its missile-launch capabilities, it has still been able to launch missiles in significant numbers and may have held some capabilities in reserve. When hard-hitting ballistic missiles are combined with masses of hundreds, or even thousands, of kamikaze drones that Iran has not yet unleashed, they still have the ability to deliver real damage to Israel, even if Israel is all but guaranteed to endure and strike back in kind. The same calculus holds for American assets in the region. An attack on the American homeland is somewhat less likely. It is not inconceivable that Iran could have snuck drones or small units of personnel onto American soil, and such an attack would carry major psychological effects for the United States, but its impact on America's actual warfighting ability would be negligible. ## Widening the War: Hormuz and the Proxies Beyond an immediate retaliation, Iran could expand its response in a few directions. One option would be to shut down the Strait of Hormuz, which is critical for worldwide shipping and whose closure would lead to global economic fallout. Iran could do this by formally announcing a blockade in the hope that other nations respond, or it could strike maritime shipping traffic outright, using drones or missiles in the manner of the Houthi rebels in Yemen. Speaking of the Houthis, Iran's proxy allies across the Middle East have threatened a direct response if the United States gets involved, including the Houthis, Hezbollah, and a major militia group called Kata'ib Hezbollah. While the latter two groups may or may not choose to act on their pledge, some degree of participation from the Houthis should be expected, perhaps restarting their own long-range campaign against Red Sea shipping. The proxy network gives Iran a way to impose costs far from its own territory, even as its conventional forces are battered. ## Is This World War III? As attention turns toward what comes next, it is worth answering one final question: is this World War III? After knocking on all the available wood, the answer is no, at least not for now. At this stage, the crisis in the Middle East is still several orders of magnitude short of a world war, and the warning signs that it could metastasize into that sort of conflict are not yet appearing. Although Iran can hurt Israel and the United States in the short term, it does not have the military resources to wage a protracted war against either nation, let alone both, by itself. And while its proxy forces may get involved, there are currently no indicators that a more powerful nation would enter the conflict on Iran's side. China simply does not care that much. Russia is in no position to open a second and much larger front than the one it is already managing in Ukraine. Pakistan and India are far too focused on each other, and there is not really anybody else to account for. However this plays out, it is not World War III, and it is not going to be. What it is, instead, is one of the defining crises of the twenty-first century thus far, and as the situation evolves, WarFronts will be back to cover it. ## Frequently Asked Questions ### What did the United States strike in Iran? On June 22, 2025, U.S. forces struck three Iranian nuclear facilities: the enrichment centers at Natanz and Fordo, and the Isfahan Uranium Conversion Facility, where powdered yellowcake uranium is converted into a form usable for enrichment. The deeply buried Fordo site appears to have been the primary target for the B-2 bombers. ### Why were the Massive Ordnance Penetrators used instead of other weapons? The Massive Ordnance Penetrator is the only conventional weapon capable of reaching a target as deeply buried as Fordo. The B-2 is the only aircraft that can carry it, each B-2 holds just two, and only the United States possesses both the bomb and the bomber. Israel did not have and could not obtain these weapons, which is a central reason American involvement was needed. ### Was the attack successful in destroying the targets? It is too early to know. The United States claims it "completely and totally obliterated" its targets, while Iran claims most of the damage was surface-level, and neither side has completed a thorough assessment. Even if Fordo's centrifuges survived, they may now be inaccessible due to tunnel collapses. Isfahan sits deep underground, where Tomahawks alone are unlikely to have broken through completely. ### Did Iran receive advance warning before the strikes? Reporting indicates the United States contacted Iran in the hours before the attack. Some American officials, quoted anonymously, said Iran was able to evacuate the targeted facilities beforehand. Even so, given how severely degraded Iran's air defenses are, stealth bombers flying under the cover of darkness were unlikely to be stopped even with warning. ### Is this the start of World War III? No, at least not for now. The crisis is several orders of magnitude short of a world war, and the warning signs of escalation into one are not yet appearing. Iran lacks the resources to wage a protracted war against Israel and the United States simultaneously, and no greater power — China, Russia, Pakistan, or India — is positioned or inclined to enter the conflict on Iran's side. ## Sources 1. https://www.reuters.com/business/aerospace-defense/us-b-2-bombers-involved-iran-strikes-us-official-says-2025-06-22/ 2. https://www.reuters.com/world/israel-iran-live-trump-address-nation-after-us-bombs-nuclear-sites-iran-2025-06-22/ 3. https://www.bbc.com/news/live/ckg3rzj8emjt 4. https://www.ft.com/content/cc5f3407-22ef-4fd4-9825-7810bcea3c5e 5. https://newlinesmag.com/argument/the-fordow-conundrum/ 6. https://www.twz.com/news-features/u-s-has-attacked-irans-nuclear-facilities 7. https://x.com/sentdefender/status/1936591901966086463 8. https://www.wsj.com/livecoverage/iran-israel-conflict-latest-news 9. https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/israel-seeks-swift-action-iran-sources-say-with-split-us-administration-2025-06-21/ 10. https://www.france24.com/en/middle-east/20250622-trump-says-us-bombed-three-iran-nuclear-sites-including-fordow-usa-israel-war 11. https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2025/jun/22/israel-iran-war-live-trump-says-us-has-attacked-nuclear-sites-in-iran-including-fordow 12. https://www.nytimes.com/live/2025/06/21/world/iran-israel-trump 13. https://www.politico.com/news/2025/06/21/us-bombed-3-iranian-nuclear-sites-trump-says-00416403 14. https://abcnews.go.com/International/live-updates/israel-iran-live-updates/ 15. https://x.com/spectatorindex/status/1936591159650054562 16. https://www.nbcnews.com/world/middle-east/live-blog/israel-iran-conflict-rcna214241 17. https://www.newsweek.com/b2s-dropped-six-bunker-busters-irans-fordow-fox-host-says-citing-trump-2088881 18. https://www.axios.com/2025/06/21/us-strike-iran-nuclear-israel-trump

America Enters Ecuador's Drug War: Joint Strikes, a Border Crisis, and the Civilians in Between

Simon Whistler — Tue, 02 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Given everything happening in Iran, you would be forgiven for momentarily forgetting that other conflicts involving the United States are still raging. But they are, and perhaps nowhere is this more evident than in Ecuador, where American and Ecuadorian forces have begun launching joint strikes against drug traffickers. Since President Daniel Noboa came to power in 2023, riding a wave of public anger over record-breaking violence, the country has been locked in a grinding war against trafficking gangs that have turned Ecuador's Pacific ports into one of the world's most important cocaine transit points, all while turning Ecuador itself into one of the most dangerous nations on Earth. Once among the safest countries in South America, Ecuador saw its homicide rate surge by 40 percent last year to nearly 50 per 100,000 inhabitants, according to the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime. That surge followed two years in which murder rates had already reached record levels. With the launch of joint operations alongside U.S. Southern Command, backed by roughly 35,000 Ecuadorian troops, armored vehicles, and helicopters, the conflict has entered a new phase. Ecuador's interior minister, John Reimberg, put it plainly: "We're at war." Whether that war is being won is a different question entirely. ## Key Takeaways - On March 3, 2026, U.S. and Ecuadorian forces launched coordinated operations against Washington-designated terrorist organizations, the first reported instance of U.S.-assisted land operations targeting cartel infrastructure on Ecuadorian soil. - Ecuador closed 2025 with 9,161 intentional homicides in a nation of roughly 18 million people, a rate that, if transplanted to the United States, would mean over 170,000 Americans murdered each year. - The strikes triggered a diplomatic crisis with Colombia, whose President Gustavo Petro accused Ecuador of bombing inside Colombian territory and has himself been named a DEA priority target. - Residents of the farming village of San Martin allege that air strikes destroyed their homes and farmland rather than drug-trafficking sites, with the AFP finding buildings reduced to rubble and no sign of narcotics production. - Analysts warn that mano dura crackdowns, while sometimes effective, are historically excellent at creating the next generation of aggrieved insurgents. ## A Nation at War With Itself The context for American involvement is Ecuador's declaration of an internal armed conflict in January 2024, a move that saw Noboa designate 22 gangs as terrorist organizations, deploy the military into prisons and streets, and impose curfews across the country's most violent provinces. He was comfortably reelected in 2025 on a promise to keep fighting. The scale of the crisis is difficult to overstate. Ecuador closed 2025 with 9,161 intentional homicides. That figure may not sound staggering until you measure it against the United States, which recorded 22,830 homicides in 2023, the last year of accurate data. Ecuador's population is roughly 18 million; the United States is home to 340 million. Were Ecuador's homicide rate transplanted to America, it would translate to more than 170,000 murders each year. The nature of the violence is as telling as its scale. According to Matías Abad Merchán, a professor at the University of Azuay, 95.4 percent of the deaths were directly associated with organized crime, territorial control disputes, and illicit economies linked to drug trafficking. This is not random street crime; it is the byproduct of a war over cocaine routes. ## The Months Before the Strikes The final stretch of 2025 was among the worst in Ecuador's recent history. Between November 1 and December 23, some 1,232 people were murdered in the provinces under a state of emergency. Those provinces include Guayas, Esmeraldas, Los Rios, El Oro, Santa Elena, and Manabi on the coast, Loja in the south, and Chimborazo in the center. The bloodshed was not confined to the streets. Ecuador's prisons have long functioned as operational headquarters for the country's gangs, and they saw some of the worst killing. In November 2025, two clashes between rival groups inside a southern prison left at least 31 inmates dead, 27 of them killed by asphyxiation. In December, at least 13 more inmates were found dead at the same facility. According to local media and the prison service SNAI, a drone carrying explosives was detonated roughly 100 meters from the prison as a diversion, drawing guards away while the killings took place inside. The violence reached into corners of Ecuadorian life that would have been unthinkable a few years earlier, including professional football. In December, former national team player Mario Pineida was shot and killed, the fifth Ecuadorian footballer murdered in 2025 alone. The targeting began with an attack on Richard Mina of Liga de Quito, wounded in an alleged robbery in Guayaquil, before spreading elsewhere. According to El Pais, most of these killings were linked to sports betting, which has become a new niche for organized crime. ## The Porous Borders Fueling the Trade To stem the violence, Ecuador took the unusual step of restricting most of its border crossings with Colombia and Peru, leaving only two key international points open, citing national security concerns tied to organized crime and narco-trafficking along the northern and southern frontiers. The geography explains the desperation. Ecuador shares approximately 600 kilometers of northern border with Colombia and 1,500 kilometers of southern border with Peru, much of it dense jungle, river systems, and rural terrain nearly impossible to patrol effectively. For years these porous boundaries have allowed weapons, precursor chemicals, and fighters to flow freely, giving gangs in border provinces like Esmeraldas and Sucumbios a logistical lifeline that no amount of military deployment further inland could sever. This matters because Colombia and Peru are the top two producers of cocaine in the world. Now everyone from Mexican cartels and Colombian guerrilla forces to the Albanian mafia is competing to control the routes that funnel that cocaine down to Ecuador's ports and out into the wider world. Ecuador is not the source of the drug; it is the chokepoint, which is precisely what makes it so contested. ## Quito's Escalating Crackdown The government's response grew steadily heavier through the winter. By mid-January, Quito had deployed 10,000 soldiers to three coastal provinces: Guayas, Manabi, and Los Rios. Hundreds of special forces soldiers were sent in to reinforce operations. Defense Minister Gian Carlo Loffredo instructed the military high command to operate indefinitely out of Guayaquil, with troops inspecting the seaports critical to the drug trade. The Defense Ministry made its posture clear, declaring: "Prison or hell for anyone who jeopardizes security." By mid-February it was clear that even the threat of hell was not enough. On February 16, some 75,000 soldiers and police officers were deployed to four provinces: Guayas, El Oro, Los Rios, and Santo Domingo de los Tsachilas, accompanied by a nightly curfew from 11 p.m. to 5 a.m. Interior Minister Reimberg told reporters that troops had even used artillery to destroy targets in the region, though he gave no details about what was struck. None of it stopped the bleeding. So Quito turned to Washington. ## Washington Enters the War It would be easy to miss the news that the United States had entered Ecuador's internal armed conflict. The world has been so consumed by the fire in the Middle East that even closely watched conflicts like the war in Ukraine are being crowded out of the headlines. Yet entering the war is exactly what the United States did. On March 2, 2026, SOUTHCOM Commander Marine General Francis Donovan traveled to Quito to meet with Noboa and senior defense officials. The following day, U.S. and Ecuadorian forces launched coordinated operations against groups Washington had designated as terrorist organizations. It was the first reported instance of U.S.-assisted land operations targeting cartel infrastructure on Ecuadorian soil, falling under Operation Southern Spear, the broader U.S. military campaign of strikes on suspected drug-smuggling vessels in the Caribbean and Eastern Pacific that has already killed over 150 people since September 2025. So far the operations in Ecuador have been relatively limited: the bombing of a training camp belonging to a dissident faction of Colombia's FARC rebel group, situated just inside Ecuadorian territory, and the sinking of a narco-submarine off the coast. According to Pentagon officials, this is only the start. The FBI announced it would open an office in Ecuador to investigate organized crime, money laundering, and corruption alongside local police, while acting assistant secretary for homeland defense Joseph Humire told Congress the Ecuador campaign was setting the pace for regional, deterrence-focused operations against cartel infrastructure throughout Latin America and the Caribbean. ## The Fracture With Colombia While the White House claims success after success, the campaign is also creating diplomatic friction, and nowhere more sharply than between Quito and Bogota. "We are being bombed from Ecuador," declared Colombia's President Gustavo Petro, who on March 17 accused Quito of striking targets inside Colombian territory. He said later that the burned remains of nearly 30 people had been found near the border, in what the Guardian described as a sharp deterioration of relations between the two neighbors. Petro also claimed that an unexploded bomb dropped from an aircraft was found 100 meters from the home of an impoverished peasant family. Noboa denied the accusations, insisting his forces were operating strictly within national borders. Yet he also added that Ecuador was fighting narco-terrorism in all its forms and bombing places that serve as hideouts for those groups, many of which, he claimed, were Colombian. Given that admission, it is reasonable to assume that some strikes may well have landed within Bogota's territory. That is a major concern for Colombia, because it suggests a violation of national sovereignty, one that risks escalating a localized counter-terrorism operation into a wider conflict. This is not a prediction that Quito and Bogota will declare war; it is a warning that the situation, if mishandled, could escalate far beyond what anyone envisioned when the operations were designed. ## A Relationship Already on Edge This is not the first time the two leaders have clashed. Noboa, a close ally of President Trump, has repeatedly blamed Colombia for failing to prevent criminal groups operating along their porous shared border. Beyond closing the border, he imposed a 30 percent "security tax" on Colombian imports, citing what he described as insufficient action against trafficking. Colombia retaliated with tariffs of its own and cuts to electricity exports. Given the state of the world, it is not hard to see how such a diplomatic crisis could escalate. That is before accounting for the sour relationship between Washington and Bogota. Although Trump and Petro met in February, with Trump calling the meeting terrific, relations have not noticeably improved since the two presidents began clashing on social media last year. Colombia was left out of the Shield of the Americas program, unlike Ecuador, which was invited to join. More significant than that exclusion is the fact that the DEA named Petro a priority target as federal prosecutors in New York probe his alleged ties to drug traffickers. A priority target is the label the DEA assigns to those it claims have a massive impact on the drug trade. DEA records show Petro has been mentioned in multiple investigations dating to 2022, many based on interviews with confidential informants. ## The Allegations Against Petro The alleged crimes the DEA has investigated include Petro's possible dealings with Mexico's Sinaloa cartel and a scheme to leverage his Total Peace plan, an ongoing Colombian initiative to negotiate a ceasefire with both guerrilla groups and cartels, to benefit prominent traffickers who contributed to his presidential campaign. The records also suggest that Petro used law enforcement to smuggle cocaine and fentanyl through Colombian ports. Petro denies all of these claims. Whether the allegations are true or merely a byproduct of social media feuding, it is not implausible to speculate that the United States might attempt a Venezuela-style raid on Bogota, using Quito as a base of operations. Trump threatened Petro with exactly that shortly after Maduro was captured. This is not a forecast that it will happen, especially not in the near term with America's focus on Iran, but it is a possibility worth considering, particularly because Trump has shown a willingness to use decisive action to eliminate anyone he considers a threat to American safety. Even if the campaign remains focused solely on Ecuador's criminal gangs, it remains vitally important, not just because of America's involvement, but because of its impact on the people of this Andean nation. ## The Civilians Caught in the Crossfire The civilians are squeezed between government bombing campaigns on one side and violent, marauding gangs on the other. According to a complaint by residents of San Martin, a farming village of about 27 families, air strikes bombed their homes. They told USA Today the strikes did not target traffickers; they targeted farmland. The AFP visited the area and found buildings reduced to rubble, dead animals scattered on the ground, and trees destroyed. Community leader Vicente Garrido told the AFP the farmers had lost everything. Crucially, there was no sign of drug trafficking or production. That absence might mean the gangs moved their materials before the campaign began, or it might mean the strikes hit the wrong location. As with the deaths of those Iranian schoolgirls, even the best intelligence can lead to tragedy. Beyond the bombing, locals claim Ecuadorian soldiers burned homes to confirm no one was inside, and some say they were arrested, blindfolded, kicked, and threatened before being flown to a military base and held for hours. While the AFP could not verify the claims, they fit a broader pattern of abuse by security forces during Latin America's mano dura crackdowns. In Colombia, the false positives scandal saw soldiers killing ordinary people and dressing them as guerrillas to claim bounties. In Ecuador itself, four teenage boys were kidnapped by Air Force personnel on their way home from a football game in December, their charred bodies later found on Christmas Eve. ## Who Is Right, and What Comes Next Ecuador's Defense Ministry has denied any wrongdoing, saying it cooperated with Washington to validate intelligence on the site in northeastern Ecuador before the airstrikes began. It claimed there was no way the property was a farm because there was no presence of livestock or productive activity, and asserted that the site was actually a hideout for the leader of a Colombian drug-trafficking group and a training facility with capacity for 50 traffickers. It is beyond any outside observer's ability to say for certain who is right. History shows that when Latin American states opt for violent crackdowns, civilians are often caught in the chaos. Yet it is also true that the line between civilian and trafficker can be extremely blurry in rural areas, where small-time farmers often have little option but to grow coca leaf to help armed groups produce cocaine. None of this is to argue that the operations are unnecessary or that they cannot work. The need to eliminate the traffickers who have made Latin America their playground is real. It was not the government that pushed the nation into chaos, carried out massacres in prisons, assassinated presidential candidates, or hung headless bodies from bridges. The gangs started this fight, and Quito is desperately trying to finish it. But the government must exercise caution, because while mano dura policies can sometimes work, as in El Salvador, history shows they are often excellent at creating the next generation of aggrieved insurgents, a recipe for a never-ending cycle of violence, death, and destruction. ## Frequently Asked Questions ### When did the United States enter Ecuador's drug war, and what operations were launched? On March 2, 2026, SOUTHCOM Commander Marine General Francis Donovan traveled to Quito to meet President Noboa and senior defense officials. The next day, U.S. and Ecuadorian forces launched coordinated operations against groups Washington had designated terrorist organizations — the first reported instance of U.S.-assisted land operations targeting cartel infrastructure on Ecuadorian soil, falling under the broader Operation Southern Spear campaign that has already killed over 150 people since September 2025. ### How severe is Ecuador's violence, and what is driving it? Ecuador closed 2025 with 9,161 intentional homicides in a nation of roughly 18 million, a rate that would translate to over 170,000 murders a year if applied to the United States. According to the University of Azuay's Matías Abad Merchán, 95.4 percent of those deaths were directly associated with organized crime, territorial disputes, and illicit economies tied to drug trafficking — the byproduct of a war over cocaine routes through Ecuador's Pacific ports. ### Why has the campaign created a diplomatic crisis with Colombia? On March 17, Colombian President Gustavo Petro accused Quito of bombing targets inside Colombian territory, saying the burned remains of nearly 30 people had been found near the border. Although Noboa denied striking Colombian soil, he acknowledged bombing hideouts of groups he described as often Colombian, suggesting some strikes may have landed across the border and raising sovereignty concerns between the two neighbors. ### What happened to the civilians of San Martin? Residents of San Martin, a farming village of about 27 families, told USA Today that air strikes hit their homes and farmland rather than traffickers. The AFP found buildings reduced to rubble, dead animals, and destroyed trees, with no sign of drug production or trafficking activity. Ecuador's Defense Ministry denied wrongdoing, claiming the site was a Colombian trafficker's hideout and training facility for up to 50 people. ### Why do analysts warn against a purely military crackdown? While mano dura policies can sometimes work — as in El Salvador — history shows they are often excellent at creating the next generation of aggrieved insurgents. Colombia's false positives scandal saw soldiers killing ordinary people and dressing them as guerrillas, and in Ecuador itself four teenage boys were kidnapped by Air Force personnel in December, their charred bodies found on Christmas Eve, illustrating how such campaigns risk a never-ending cycle of violence. ## Sources 1. https://evrimagaci.org/gpt/drone-explosion-sparks-deadly-prison-riot-in-ecuador-519275 2. https://www.rfi.fr/en/international-news/20260320-us-backed-airstrikes-leave-ecuador-border-communities-in-fear 3. https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2026/03/ecuador-under-international-scrutiny-for-enforced-disappearances/ 4. https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2026/03/24/ecuador-farmers-bombed-military-us-joint-operation/89195234007/ 5. https://www.bangkokpost.com/world/3220603/usbacked-airstrikes-leave-ecuador-border-communities-in-fear 6. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/3/20/colombias-president-gustavo-petro-under-investigation-in-us-for-drug-ties 7. https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/24/world/americas/us-ecuador-drug-camp-bombing-dairy-farm.html 8. https://insightcrime.org/news/military-strikes-criminal-landscape-colombia-ecuador-border/ 9. https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cgjzz4gn64zo 10. https://theintercept.com/2026/03/23/trump-operation-total-extermination-ecuador-colombia-cuba/

America Isn't Ready for the Drone Warfare Era

Simon Whistler — Tue, 02 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The Israel Defense Forces are, by just about any measure, one of the most sophisticated militaries on Earth—technologically, operationally, and in terms of sheer ability to punch above their weight. And yet you would not know it from what is happening in southern Lebanon right now. On the fifth of May alone, Hezbollah claimed twenty separate attacks on Israeli positions, many of them carried out with drones. The IDF's response to this new technology has been, to put it charitably, underwhelming. Troops have been handed hunting shotguns in case a drone strays too close. The Iron Beam, the country's much-hyped laser defense system, is running into the hard limits of what lasers can actually do in imperfect conditions—when it rains, for instance—and that is assuming the IDF can get enough batteries to the Iron Beam in the first place. Israel is the most visible case at the moment, but it is far from alone. Across the Gulf, American-supplied Patriot batteries are burning through interceptors faster than the factories can replace them, and the Pentagon, despite years of trying, does not have an answer of its own ready to deploy at scale. The most advanced militaries on the planet are stumbling in real time, with their own soldiers' lives on the line. The thesis is uncomfortable but unavoidable: the world's premier armed forces have not adapted to an era in which cheap drones are rewriting the economics of war faster than expensive defenses can keep up. ## Key Takeaways - On May 5, 2026, Hezbollah claimed twenty separate attacks on Israeli positions, many of them drone strikes, and has continued near-daily attacks since. - The IDF has resorted to issuing hunting shotguns to troops as a last-resort counter-drone measure, the same improvised tactic used on both sides of the Russia-Ukraine war. - Israel's Iron Beam laser has a short range, degrades in rain or fog, and would need roughly 14 batteries to withstand a larger Hezbollah attack—the IDF has only a fraction of that. - In the opening weeks of Operation Epic Fury, Iran launched roughly 1,200 ballistic missiles and 4,000 drones across the Gulf; Gulf states fired more than 900 Patriot interceptors in the first four days alone. - The Pentagon has promising systems—RTX's Coyote, Anduril's Roadrunner-M, BlueHalo's LOCUST laser, and Epirus's Leonidas microwave weapon—but procurement dysfunction has kept them from deploying at scale. - Ukraine now produces more than three million drones a year, has stood up the world's first dedicated drone branch, and achieved roughly a 90 percent interceptor success rate over Kyiv. - By late March 2026, Ukraine had over 200 counter-drone advisors operating across the Gulf and signed ten-year defense export deals with Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the UAE. ## Hezbollah's Drones Catch the IDF Off Guard Hezbollah fighters have plenty of tactics at their disposal, but it is the drones that have caught the IDF—and the wider world—by storm. The group claimed six separate drone strikes in a single day, and those are neither the first nor likely the last. When a fiber-optic drone struck an armored unit near Taybeh, killing at least one soldier, troops on the ground had to resort to firing their rifles at the next wave coming in. The army's broader countermeasures have not inspired confidence. Soldiers have been issued hunting rifles, a tactic used with some success by both Ukrainian and Russian forces to down incoming drones. But it is fundamentally a last-resort measure, not the sophisticated, high-tech approach Jerusalem has become known for. The optics of a world-class military reaching for shotguns tell their own story about how far behind the curve advanced forces have fallen. ## The Limits of the Iron Beam To be fair, the IDF has more than shotguns. First among its tools is the Iron Beam, the country's laser defense system. But the system has a very short range and reaches peak effectiveness only in clear weather. Fog, rain, or particulates in the air all degrade the beam. Even in optimal conditions it can be overwhelmed relatively easily. To bring a drone down, the Iron Beam must focus its laser on the target for several seconds. That might not sound like much, but sustaining an incredibly narrow beam on a moving target makes the math run decisively against the defender. By the IDF's own estimates, it would need roughly 14 batteries to withstand a larger Hezbollah attack. It has only a fraction of that—hence the shotguns to fill the gap. The IDF has also deployed a homegrown drone-on-drone interceptor into Lebanon, in which a radar picks up an incoming threat and launches a drone of its own to take down the enemy's with a net. It remains in its trial phase. Drone industry sources told Israeli media that as recently as a year ago the system could not reliably detect enemy drones in testing. How much of that problem has been solved remains an open question. ## Why Fiber-Optic Drones Break Jamming For the last few years, as drone warfare took off, countries turned to jamming a drone's signal as a cheap alternative to expensive, hard-to-manufacture traditional interceptors. It was never bulletproof, but it had its successes. At their peak, Ukrainian electronic warfare units were knocking close to two thousand Russian drones out of the sky, and a national spoofing network that fed false GPS data to incoming Shaheds managed to divert more than 150 of them into Belarus in a single month. What makes Hezbollah's recent attacks so concerning is the pivot to fiber-optic FPV units—drones with an ultra-thin cable running back to the controller. It sounds like a logistical headache, but it renders them completely impervious to the IDF's jamming, because there is no wireless signal to jam in the first place. Israeli population centers are not defenseless. Jerusalem is protected by a multi-layered defense system that has repeatedly proven resilient against most of what the region can throw at it, and the IDF has been flexing its own drones on offense. But on the whole, Israel faces the same problem plaguing nearly every sophisticated military: using big, expensive interceptors to shoot down cheap drones is simply not sustainable. Across the Gulf, the world's premier military superpower is learning the same lesson, at far greater cost. ## Bleeding Out in the Gulf In the early days of Operation Epic Fury, Iran responded with exactly the kind of attritional barrage that military planners had warned about for years. Roughly twelve hundred ballistic missiles and 4,000 drones were sent across the Gulf in the opening weeks alone, a figure constrained only by American strikes on Iranian launch sites. Panic set in across the Gulf within a day. American leaders had not expected Iran to attack this widely, despite Gulf states insisting such an outcome was possible. Strikes on Israel and American bases were not surprising—but Dubai? Riyadh? Doha? Gulf states fired more than 900 Patriot interceptors in the first four days alone, more than Ukraine had used in four years of war against Russia. It was completely unsustainable, and reports began circulating that the Gulf was close to running dry. The UAE and Kuwait together burned through nearly three quarters of their combined pre-war Patriot inventory. Doha, according to Bloomberg, came as close as four days from running out entirely. The two underlying problems are the cost of producing interceptors and the time it takes to build them. ## Washington's Promising—and Stalled—Arsenal To its credit, the Pentagon has not been entirely blind. It has been clear for some time that drone warfare is the future, and the Pentagon's first dedicated counter-drone office was created in 2020. American defense contractors have been racing to find solutions ever since. The five-billion-dollar contract RTX locked up last year shows where the biggest bets are going. Its Coyote interceptor—a small turbine-powered missile that flies into a drone and detonates—has racked up roughly 170 confirmed hits across three active combat zones and is deployed at no fewer than 36 sites overseas. At about $100,000 per round it is not cheap, but compared to a four-million-dollar Patriot it is a different category of math entirely. The catch is that Coyote is still one interceptor per drone. That is part of what makes Anduril's Roadrunner-M interesting: a recoverable interceptor that takes off vertically, hunts for a target, and if it finds none, flies back and lands for reuse. The Marines awarded Anduril a $642 million contract to field a counter-drone family of systems at every Marine Corps base worldwide, and the Navy has begun mounting them on Arleigh Burke-class destroyers alongside Coyote. BlueHalo, meanwhile, has more than a dozen of its LOCUST laser systems deployed with the Army at locations the Pentagon will not publicly name. LOCUST is essentially the American version of the Iron Beam. One system costs roughly what a handful of Patriot interceptors do but can be used on repeat without reloading. An AI-powered tracker locks onto incoming drones from over two miles out, then burns a hole through them with a focused beam. It suffers the same drawbacks as the Iron Beam, however: limited range compared to traditional interceptors, and up to 15 seconds to burn through a target. If it fails, the drone is by then far too close to launch any backup interceptor—lights out. ## The Microwave Option and a Procurement Failure The Leonidas system from Epirus is arguably more versatile, because it can do something lasers cannot. It is a microwave weapon that switches between sniping individual drones with a focused beam and projecting a wide electromagnetic blast that fries everything in its path at once. Epirus has built variants for every branch that wants one: an expeditionary version for the Marines that mounts on its armored jeep carriers, a mobile version that integrates onto the Army's Stryker, and a lightweight pod configuration that could go on almost anything. So if all of this is so good, why is none of it actually being used? Leonidas is the most frustrating example. The US Army sent four prototypes to Central Command in 2024, got feedback that the system worked but needed better range, and got to work on the upgrades. It was supposed to become a formal program in 2025, putting it on a path to bulk purchase and force-wide deployment—in case, as it turned out, 2026 proved to be an eventful year. It still has not deployed. The reasons reek of poor prioritization. The original 2020 counter-drone office did not have the authority to purchase hardware. A Senate review later found that the Army had "inadvertently self-imposed restrictions" on its own procurement authority—a polite way of saying the office responsible for solving the drone problem had accidentally made it illegal for itself to buy the solutions. Its replacement, Joint Interagency Task Force 401, only gained real spending authority last August. Defense Secretary Hegseth told Congress that the defense industrial base "is currently postured to produce only a limited number of prototypes" of directed-energy systems, rather than ramping toward mass production. Contractors like Epirus and BlueHalo have been expanding factories and hiring engineers essentially on faith that the financing will come. Whatever else can be said about Washington, a failure to spend on defense when it is truly deemed critical is not usually one of its sins. Israel has a parallel problem. The Jerusalem Post reported how little the Iron Beam was actually used during the war with Iran, due to a simple lack of batteries. It would be more sustainable and cost-effective to build more, but the sophisticated design of these units means it could be years before Jerusalem fields enough to replace its conventional Iron Dome system. This lack of urgency is often the product of nations that feel secure in their existing systems. There is no pressing need to stand up new ones when the old ones are still working fine—or at least, were before this year. ## Made in Ukraine: The Accidental Superpower One country never had that luxury, and the time crunch it faced put it at the center of any conversation about drone warfare. That country is Ukraine, and its path to drone expertise was anything but conventional. When the Russians rolled across the border in February 2022, Ukraine's entire drone arsenal consisted of a few thousand commercial Chinese quadcopters that operators had jerry-rigged with grenades. There was no industrial capacity to produce more, and only a small number of troops had been trained to use them. Fast forward to today and it is almost a different country. Ukraine now produces more than three million drones a year and has stood up the world's first dedicated drone branch of any modern military. It did not merely adapt to drone warfare and survive—it now exports its survival stories and methodologies to anyone willing to buy. Lately that has meant a growing list of customers, with Gulf states lining up for Kyiv's expertise at nearly any expense. The transformation began with the same fiber-optic cable Hezbollah is now using in Lebanon. Ukrainian engineers realized early that running control commands down a thin trailing wire made a drone immune to jamming. Given how heavily Moscow had invested in electronic warfare, neutralizing the entire jamming layer for the price of a spool of cable was one hell of a trade. Photos online today show entire Ukrainian fields covered in a glimmering fiber-optic spiderweb. ## From Spider's Web to Plug-and-Play Defense By 2023, FPV kamikaze drones costing a few hundred dollars apiece were destroying Russian tanks and artillery across the front lines. Crucially, the people designing Ukraine's counter-drone programs were often the same ones designing its offensive systems, so advances in one fed directly into the other. They got very good at both. The following year, cheap interceptors purpose-built to kill other drones began rolling out, their efficiency boosted by Sky Map—a national command platform that fused thousands of previously separate acoustic and radar sensors into a single, real-time picture across the whole country. In June 2025, Kyiv showed how far the ecosystem had come. Ukrainian intelligence smuggled 117 quadcopters deep into Russia in civilian trucks and unleashed havoc, hitting four strategic airbases across four time zones in a single night and destroying somewhere between 10 and 41 aircraft, depending on whose reporting you trust. The operation was so effective that the Pentagon later ran a rehearsal of the same technique at a Florida air base to see what would happen if someone tried it on the United States. Washington would not admit it, but Kyiv had effectively been crowned champion of drone and counter-drone tech. By 2026, drones like Sting—costing just a few thousand dollars—accounted for more than 70 percent of drone shoot-downs over Kyiv in February, with other inexpensive systems pushing Ukraine's total success rate to around 90 percent. That defensive record turned Ukraine into an international star. Amid the Gulf interceptor shortage, as the war with Iran intensified, it was Kyiv that the Gulf reached out to—and Kyiv showed up. By the end of March, over 200 counter-drone advisors were operating across Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Qatar, Kuwait, Jordan, and elsewhere. ## Why Ukraine's Edge Transferred to the Gulf There was a deeper reason Ukraine's expertise translated so cleanly. Russia's longstanding relationship with Iran meant the drones Moscow used against Ukraine were essentially Iranian. Since 2023, Russia had been mass-producing clones of Iran's Shahed-136 under a billion-dollar franchise deal. The weapons now raining down on Riyadh and Abu Dhabi were more or less identical to the ones Kyiv had spent years learning to kill. Ukrainian interceptors had been designed around the Shahed's specific flight profile and speed, and the entire counter-drone stack had been stress-tested against nightly barrages of hundreds at a time—something no Western testing range could simulate. When those same Shaheds began hitting the Gulf, the Ukrainian systems were essentially plug-and-play. Kyiv moved fast to formalize the edge. During a diplomatic sprint in late March, Ukraine's president signed ten-year defense export agreements with Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the Emirates, covering interceptors, joint production lines, electronic warfare, and full technological exchange. Analysts project north of two billion dollars in drone and interceptor sales this year alone, with a framework designed to scale well beyond that. As Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen put it bluntly last fall: "The only expert right now in the world when it comes to anti-drone capacities is Ukraine, because they are fighting the Russian drones almost every day." There is one final, telling detail. Kyiv pitched the concept to Trump first—and Washington passed. It would be unwise to bet against the American military eventually catching up to its rivals, but it badly needs to raise its game on drone warfare, and so does Israel. Whether either can do so fast enough is the trillion-dollar question. For America and its long-term customers around the world, the clock is ticking. ## Frequently Asked Questions ### Why are the world's most advanced militaries struggling against cheap drones? The economics are fundamentally unfavorable to defenders. Cheap drones costing a few hundred dollars apiece force defenders to fire interceptors worth thousands or millions each. Hezbollah launched twenty separate drone attacks on Israeli positions in a single day, and Gulf states fired more than 900 Patriot interceptors in the first four days of Operation Epic Fury—more than Ukraine had used in four years of war against Russia. No production line can sustain that rate, and the sophisticated high-tech militaries most confident in their existing systems have been the least prepared to adapt. ### What makes fiber-optic drones particularly difficult to counter? A fiber-optic FPV drone runs an ultra-thin control cable back to its operator instead of using a wireless link. With no radio signal being broadcast, there is nothing for electronic-warfare units to jam. This defeats the jamming-based defense layer that many militaries had relied on as a cheaper alternative to traditional interceptors—at one point Ukrainian EW units were knocking nearly 2,000 Russian drones a month out of the sky before Moscow and Hezbollah pivoted to fiber-optic units. ### Why has the United States failed to deploy its counter-drone systems at scale? Despite promising systems—RTX's Coyote interceptor, Anduril's recoverable Roadrunner-M, BlueHalo's LOCUST laser, and Epirus's Leonidas microwave weapon—procurement dysfunction has kept them limited. The original 2020 counter-drone office lacked authority to purchase hardware, and the Army inadvertently self-imposed restrictions on its own procurement authority. Its replacement, Joint Interagency Task Force 401, only gained real spending power last August. Defense Secretary Hegseth told Congress the defense industrial base is postured to produce only a limited number of prototypes rather than scaling toward mass production. ### How did Ukraine transform from drone novice to the world's foremost counter-drone power? Out of necessity. When Russia invaded in February 2022, Ukraine's entire drone arsenal consisted of a few thousand jerry-rigged commercial quadcopters. By 2026 it produces more than three million drones a year, built the world's first dedicated military drone branch, and achieved roughly 90 percent interceptor success rate over Kyiv. The key was having the same engineers design offensive and defensive systems simultaneously, and fusing thousands of separate acoustic and radar sensors into a real-time national picture through the Sky Map platform. ### Why did Ukraine's counter-drone expertise transfer so effectively to the Gulf? Russia has mass-produced clones of Iran's Shahed-136 under a billion-dollar franchise deal since 2023, meaning the drones Moscow used against Ukraine are essentially the same weapons that began hitting Riyadh and Abu Dhabi during Operation Epic Fury. Ukrainian interceptors had been specifically designed around the Shahed's flight profile and stress-tested against nightly barrages of hundreds at a time—something no Western testing range could simulate. When the Gulf ran short of Patriot interceptors, Kyiv arrived with over 200 counter-drone advisors and signed ten-year defense export deals with Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the UAE. ## Sources 1. https://www.criticalthreats.org/analysis/iran-update-evening-special-report-may-5-2026?utm_campaign=22129330-FDP_NLR%20CTP%20Iran%20Update&utm_medium=email&_hsmi=417397667&utm_content=417397667&utm_source=hs_email 2. https://www.timesofisrael.com/idf-soldier-killed-in-south-lebanon-drone-attack-as-israel-hezbollah-trade-blame/ 3. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/4/29/how-hezbollahs-fibre-optic-drones-test-israels-sophisticated-radar-system 4. https://www.criticalthreats.org/analysis/iran-update-evening-special-report-may-4-2026 5. https://www.kyivpost.com/post/57113 6. https://www.twz.com/news-features/israels-iron-beam-laser-air-defense-system-has-downed-enemy-drones 7. https://www.jpost.com/israel-news/defense-news/article-894838 8. https://www.ynetnews.com/article/s12ujzr0wg 9. https://sofrep.com/news/ukraine-spoof-russian-drones-electronic-warfare/ 10. https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/world/4361649/how-drone-warfare-developed-ukraine-2025/ 11. https://www.defenseone.com/defense-systems/2025/08/pentagon-stands-new-group-coordinate-anti-drone-efforts/407778/ 12. https://www.defensedaily.com/army-awards-5-04-billion-deal-to-rtx-for-coyote-interceptor-systems/army/ 13. https://www.yahoo.com/news/army-coyote-drone-hunting-drones-172747412.html?guccounter=1 14. https://www.twz.com/drastic-increase-in-army-coyote-drone-interceptor-purchase-plans 15. https://www.thedefensenews.com/news-details/Gulf-States-Use-2400-Interceptors-as-Iran-Conflict-Pushes-Patriot-Stocks-Toward-Depletion/ 16. https://www.fpri.org/article/2026/03/over-5000-munitions-shot-in-the-first-96-hours-of-the-iran-war/ 17. https://www.hudson.org/national-security-defense/operation-epic-fury-irans-declining-capabilities-emerging-strategy-can-kasapoglu 18. https://www.business-standard.com/world-news/iran-s-missile-math-20-000-drones-take-on-4-million-patriots-126030401035_1.html 19. https://www.yahoo.com/news/coyote-roadrunner-loitering-drone-interceptors-194344040.html 20. https://defensescoop.com/2025/03/13/marine-corps-anduril-contract-defend-installations-small-uas-drones/ 21. https://www.war.gov/News/News-Stories/Article/Article/4473408/joint-interagency-task-force-401-paratroopers-test-new-counter-uas/ 22. https://thedefensepost.com/2025/12/30/ukraine-record-military-aid-drones/ 23. https://ctc.westpoint.edu/moving-targets-implications-of-the-russo-ukrainian-war-for-drone-terrorism/ 24. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/5/4/what-is-the-ukrainian-anti-drone-system-sky-map-being-used-in-the-gulf 25. https://www.csis.org/analysis/how-ukraines-spider-web-operation-redefines-asymmetric-warfare 26. https://www.cfr.org/articles/ukraines-operation-spiders-web-shows-future-drone-warfare 27. https://www.defenseone.com/threats/2026/04/pentagon-ukraine-counter-drone/413087/ 28. https://www.defensenews.com/global/europe/2026/03/05/novel-interceptor-drones-bend-air-defense-economics-in-ukraines-favor/ 29. https://warontherocks.com/cogs-of-war/lessons-from-ukraine-for-defending-gulf-airspace-from-shaheds/ 30. https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/ukrainealert/drone-superpower-ukraine-is-teaching-nato-how-to-defend-against-russia/ 31. https://www.kyivpost.com/post/74292 32. https://jinsa.org/irans-evolving-attack-strategy-aims-for-interceptor-shortage/ 33. https://www.rferl.org/a/ukraine-drone-operator-new-front-war-russia/32054212.html

America Wants Regime Change in Cuba: Inside the Blockade Squeezing Havana

Simon Whistler — Tue, 02 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

This Monday, the island nation of Cuba was plunged suddenly into darkness. It was not the first time Cuba's energy grid had collapsed in recent weeks, but it was the worst in a string of blackouts imposed by the United States. Without warning, and with no known prior failures in Cuba's system to set off the collapse, the entire grid simply gave way under its own weight. The lights did not even begin to come back on until two days later. Roughly ten weeks after the United States captured Venezuelan dictator Nicolas Maduro, Washington's blockade of Venezuelan oil shipments to Cuba has reached a critical stage. The island is running low not just on power but on basic necessities. Humanitarian aid is intermittent and slow to arrive, and even with the strictest rationing, Cuba will go totally dark within weeks. Social unrest is spreading, and Cuban officials are weighing unprecedented concessions to the United States. Yet it seems that America's leader wants something more. As Cubans sat and waited in the dark, Donald Trump told reporters on Tuesday: "I do believe I'll have the honor of taking Cuba. Whether I free it, or I take it, I think I can do anything I want with it." Venezuela's Maduro is incarcerated in Brooklyn, Iran's Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is now a memory, and in Cuba, President Miguel Diaz-Canel appears to be the latest world leader to stumble into Donald Trump's crosshairs. The United States is using an energy blockade, not an invasion, to force the collapse of Cuba's communist government, and a regime that has survived sixty-seven years of calamity now finds itself with no resources, no rescuer, and no time. ## Key Takeaways - A US blockade of Venezuelan oil shipments has triggered Cuba's worst-ever energy crisis, including a 29-hour nationwide blackout that struck with no warning signs, even after months of strict rationing. - The blockade was enabled by Washington's January intervention in Venezuela, which placed the country and its oil reserves under the de-facto control of US-friendly acting president Delcy Rodriguez, fracturing the fuel-for-services barter that kept Cuba running. - Washington's stated objective is clear: Cuba's communist government must fall and President Miguel Diaz-Canel cannot remain in power, with Secretary of State Marco Rubio and a Cuban-American contingent driving the policy. - Cuba has no military or diplomatic counter. Russia and China are unwilling to intervene directly, and Latin American nations fear reprisals from Trump's America if they push too far. - Trump has signaled Cuba ranks below Iran on his priority list, giving Havana a narrow window, but with no resources to play for time, the island's position only worsens. ## A Crisis Without Precedent From the Bay of Pigs Invasion to the Cuban Missile Crisis, from the fall of its Soviet sponsor to the return of full American embargoes in the late 2010s, Cuba's communist government has weathered more than its fair share of calamity. But across sixty-seven years of continuous communist rule, the nation has never experienced a catastrophe like this one. Cuba's situation is one small part of a much larger global shift. The island and its people are what poet Robert Penn Warren once called "a bubble on the tide of empire." The global order that Washington built after the Cold War is coming apart with stunning speed; alliances are breaking and regimes are falling. The breakdowns between Washington and its allies, and Moscow and its allies, are grand-scale stories that demand the world's attention. But for the sake of the Cuban people, perspective cannot be lost. In any ordinary time, the situation in Cuba today would be the defining foreign-affairs story of the year. This Caribbean nation of roughly ten million people is now under a near-total energy blockade by the global superpower on its doorstep. After decades of difficult but manageable coexistence, and without any known, imminent threat to justify it, Washington has chosen this moment to topple the Cuban regime by force. ## The Venezuela Lever The blockade was made possible by a single, decisive event: the United States' January intervention in Venezuela and the subsequent managed transition that placed the country under US-friendly acting president Delcy Rodriguez. With Venezuela and its immense oil reserves under de-facto American control, Washington gained a powerful instrument to squeeze Cuba. The mechanics are simple. Havana satisfies about 40 percent of its energy needs through its own production of oil and natural gas, but it imports all the rest, mostly from Venezuela. Because modern Cuba historically has little money to spare, and pre-intervention Venezuela badly needed other forms of support that Cuba could provide, the two nations had bartered Venezuelan fuel for Cuban services. Once the United States arrived in Caracas, that arrangement was easy to fracture. Washington then added a blockade to prevent other energy supplies from entering Cuba, backed by a top-tier global military that Havana had zero chance of meaningfully opposing. As of this episode's release, Cuba has now gone three months without a single fuel shipment. ## No Rescue From Abroad Cuba lacks the means to change its situation, either internally or with help from outside. Its armed forces are badly outdated and horrifically overmatched, not only by the assets the US has deployed to the Caribbean but by the forces available on the American mainland. Florida sits so close that fighter jets could take off, bomb the presidential palace, and return without a refuel or even drop tanks. Russia, sympathetic as it may be, is both unwilling and unable to compel the US to lift the blockade. It dispatched a pair of vessels carrying oil and gas toward Cuba on Wednesday, but those ships are highly likely to be interdicted by US forces, if they even reach the island in time. China has exported solar equipment to Cuba in recent years and meaningfully improved the island's renewable infrastructure, but Beijing is even less willing to intervene directly than Moscow. Latin America's hands are tied. Mexico has delivered over two thousand tons of humanitarian food aid in the last month, but regional leaders understand that pushing further could invite severe economic, diplomatic, or even military reprisals from Trump's America. Humanitarian groups from Latin America and Europe, predominantly leftist ones, have organized smaller shipments, the first of which arrived on Wednesday, the eighteenth of March. But these are a tiny fraction of what Cuba needs, and they do not include the fuel Havana requires most. ## Washington's Objective In Washington, the goal is unambiguous. Cuba's communist government, ruled for over half a century by Fidel Castro and then his brother Raul, must fall, and current leader Miguel Diaz-Canel will not be allowed to remain in power. Trump has taken a keen personal interest in the project, hence his remark about the "honor of taking Cuba." Trump clearly wants to replicate his Venezuela operation, where most of the Maduro regime actually remained in place but transitioned into the direct control of a far more compliant leader who responded to threats of force by doing as Washington demanded. According to American news outlets, US negotiators have told their Cuban counterparts that Diaz-Canel cannot stay, although, as in Venezuela, they have left it to Cuba to supply its own answers about what comes next. The administration is strongly influenced by a Cuban-American contingent within US leadership, with Secretary of State Marco Rubio its most prominent member. The Cuban-American community and a large population of Cuban emigres have pushed for a regime-change operation like this for decades, and now they clearly believe they have found their moment. If Havana has any saving grace, it is Cuba's place on Washington's priority list. "We're talking to Cuba," Trump said last Sunday, "but we're going to do Iran before Cuba." That does not mean Cuba will escape his notice, but it does suggest the bulk of American foreign-policy attention will remain elsewhere. In another nation, that would mean a critical window to play for time, leverage world events, or build a deterrent. But Cuba exists at the butt end of many decades of attritional losses, decay, and deprivation. Time is on Washington's side, not Havana's, and as Cuba waits, its problems only deepen. ## Breaking Point on the Grid Heading into this week, it was no surprise to Cubans or outside observers that the situation was worsening. On Monday it deteriorated further when, without warning, the entire nation went dark. It was not the first grid collapse in recent weeks, but it was an especially ominous one. The blackout lasted a full twenty-nine hours and struck with no prior signs of failure. Normally there are warning signs: localized interruptions, or strain elsewhere as the grid compensates. This time there was nothing. Worst of all, the collapse came when Cuba was already deep into nationwide rationing. Across much of the country, power might be available for four hours on a good day, and even hospitals and other critical infrastructure have faced serious constraints. For the grid to fail even after those measures were in place is a bitter reminder of the scale of Havana's challenges. Like most of the country's infrastructure, the power grid is elderly; under normal circumstances elsewhere, it would have been retired long ago. ## The Streets Respond The Cuban public is feeling the pressure and making its presence known in ways Havana historically has not had to confront. Last weekend, deep into the most recent blackouts, demonstrators in the city of Morón took to the streets in the hundreds, in what quickly devolved from protest to riot. Civilians set fires inside the local Communist Party headquarters, causing significant damage. Across the country, Cubans bang pots and pans each night in a show of discontent, especially when daily blackouts drag on too long, and street protests have begun to spread. In just the first half of March, the human rights organization Cubalex reported 130 protest gatherings, against only thirty-one in all of January. In better times for the government, such acts would have drawn serious and quite possibly deadly reprisals as a deeply entrenched secret-police apparatus reasserted control. This time the response was very different. After the headquarters burned in Morón, President Diaz-Canel publicly sympathized with the protesters, warning of severe retaliation if demonstrations turned violent but otherwise endorsing their right to express their frustrations. ## Concessions and the Threat of Force If Diaz-Canel hoped leniency might endear him to Washington, he appears mistaken; his ouster remains a top priority for American negotiators. He has hardly been welcoming of US actions, deriding the blockade, accurately, as "economic war," and promising "impregnable resistance" against any military invasion. On the eighteenth of March, the head of US Southern Command reassured legislators there are no active plans or rehearsals for ground operations in Cuba. From Havana's perspective, that reassurance counts for only so much. Even without a full invasion, the US has other military means to remove Diaz-Canel. After the removal of Nicolas Maduro, in which dozens of elite Cuban bodyguards were slaughtered, Cuban forces likely understand they would struggle to stop a similar raid by special operators. American spec-ops units are known to operate throughout the Caribbean, and although some have been redeployed to the Middle East, the remainder would likely be more than capable of a raid into Havana. Other US assets are highly active in the region, especially in Ecuador, where American naval and air power is assisting Quito's major offensive against organized crime and narcotrafficking groups in the eastern Ecuadorean forests. According to the SOUTHCOM commander, the US is also preparing for mass migration out of Cuba, with the Department of Homeland Security and particularly the Coast Guard expected to lead the response if thousands of migrants try to flee at once. To the extent Cuban officials can offer concessions, they have mostly appealed to the Trump administration's economic interests. Last week Cuba's Deputy Prime Minister offered a "fluid commercial relationship with US companies," in which American investors could back the rehabilitation and reconstruction of Cuba's economy while securing a stake in future growth. The proposal would require legal changes through the US Congress, but it is a shrewd bet: from the Middle East to the Caucasus, America's current leadership has been eager to look past historical animosity, ideological difference, and even ongoing conflict if it means a deal. Cuba is home to critical minerals Washington would very much like to secure, including cobalt, nickel, and manganese. To sweeten the deal further, Havana has begun releasing political prisoners, a move that could make Cuban-Americans and Cuban exiles more likely to support a negotiated resolution. In a further appeal to those communities, Cuba is expected to invite investment from the Cuban diaspora abroad starting Monday, a long-awaited change for Cubans living elsewhere. ## What a Managed Transition Might Look Like Communism is not necessarily prohibitive to forming economically vibrant, close alliances with the United States. Take Vietnam, a country under single-party communist rule since its days at war with America, yet now one of Washington's closest partners in the Indo-Pacific. In Cuba, communism is not necessarily a deterrent either. According to people familiar with the talks, one candidate to lead the country under American supervision is a grandson of 94-year-old ex-leader Raul Castro, named Raul Guillermo Rodriguez Castro, better known as El Cangrejo. He leads his grandfather's security detail and enjoys deep connections with the Cuban military and its many economic interests. Whether it is him or someone else, Washington has been consistent in wanting a complete overhaul. "Their economy doesn't work," Rubio said of the island government. "They're in a lot of trouble, and the people in charge, they don't know how to fix it, so they have to get new people in charge." But as US action in Venezuela showed, Washington is far less interested in the principle of regime change than in ensuring a targeted regime changes as much as is necessary to comply with American objectives. ## The Cuban-American Wild Card That distinction may cause Trump short-term problems, especially with the Cuban-American constituents who have played a key role in his political movement. According to local and national news outlets, Cuban Americans in south Florida now worry that Trump might not go far enough, leaving elements of the Cuban government, the communist political system, or even a member of the Castro family in place. These are communities that have pushed for Cuban democratization for decades, many descended from people who fled during and after the communist takeover. A fair proportion still hold property claims on Cuban land expropriated by the Castro government; they have economic interests tied to a post-communist liberation and family members still on the island, waiting for the US to bring change. Many feel they were already burned once, in the Obama years, when Raul Castro's government partially opened relations with Washington. This time they wield considerably greater power, and their influence might be enough to push the White House away from pure economic integration and toward a more comprehensive overthrow of the Cuban Communist Party. Whether that is possible, or whether it might pose a greater long-run risk to the Cuban people, is another question entirely. Washington's decisions to balance that risk will ultimately determine Cuba's future. ## Frequently Asked Questions ### What triggered Cuba's current energy crisis? A US blockade of Venezuelan oil shipments to Cuba. Havana produces about 40 percent of its energy and imports the rest, mostly from Venezuela. After Washington's January intervention placed Venezuela under US-friendly control, the fuel-for-services barter between the two nations fractured, and a blockade prevented other supplies from reaching the island. Cuba has now gone three months without a single fuel shipment. ### How severe was the most recent blackout, and why did it happen even under rationing? The nationwide blackout that began Monday lasted a full twenty-nine hours and struck with no warning signs, which is highly unusual. It came even after Cuba was already deep into rationing, with power available perhaps four hours a day in much of the country and hospitals facing serious constraints. The grid is elderly and would have been retired long ago under normal circumstances elsewhere. ### What does the United States want in Cuba, and who is driving the policy? Washington wants Cuba's communist government to fall and President Miguel Diaz-Canel removed from power. US negotiators have told their Cuban counterparts that Diaz-Canel cannot remain, while leaving it to Cuba to determine what comes next. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, a Cuban-American, is the most prominent member of the contingent driving the policy, backed by decades of Cuban-American pressure for regime change. ### Can any foreign power rescue Cuba from the blockade? Not effectively. Russia sent two oil-and-gas vessels toward Cuba but they are likely to be interdicted by US forces. China has supplied solar equipment but is even less willing than Moscow to intervene directly. Mexico has delivered over two thousand tons of food aid, but Latin American leaders fear economic, diplomatic, or military reprisals from Trump's America if they push further, and none of these efforts include the fuel Havana needs most. ### What concessions has Cuba offered, and who might replace Diaz-Canel? Cuba's Deputy Prime Minister offered a "fluid commercial relationship with US companies," inviting American investment in reconstruction while appealing to Trump's interest in deals. Havana has also begun releasing political prisoners and plans to invite investment from the Cuban diaspora. 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America's New Approach to Air Supremacy: The USAF's Networked Bet

Simon Whistler — Tue, 02 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

When it comes to air power, the United States stands unmatched. The world's largest and most potent air force, by a wide margin, is the United States Air Force. The runner-up is the United States Navy. Ranking in the global top ten by number of military aircraft are the United States Army and the United States Marine Corps. America's newest fighters are hyper-advanced and functionally invisible to its adversaries. Its workhorse fighters rank among the very best in the world. Its bomber fleet can do things no other bomber fleet on Earth can accomplish, and its ability to move cargo, refuel entire airfleets in flight, and maintain awareness of an entire battlespace are all without compare on the global stage. But American air power is not merely formidable. It is changing. The reasons are complex, ranging from new acquisitions of staggeringly sophisticated technology to real-world constraints like budgeting and strategy, to the new demands of a shifting modern battlefield. It is an approach that promises to rewrite how America fights its air wars, redefine the meaning of American air supremacy, and pioneer a strategic playbook not just for the air wars of the 2020s, but for air wars across the entire twenty-first century. The transition is neither cosmetic nor optional. It is being driven by a recognition, increasingly explicit among Air Force leaders, that the assumptions underpinning decades of American air dominance are quietly coming apart. The thesis of this analysis is straightforward: faced with shrinking budgets, multiplying threats, and an over-reliance on stealth and exquisite single platforms, the US Air Force is betting that a networked, versatile force of data hubs, missile trucks, and modular fighters can deliver supremacy more cheaply and more durably than buying its way out of the problem. ## Key Takeaways - On February 12, 2024, the US Air Force and Space Force announced sweeping changes to reorient toward great-power competition, with Secretary Frank Kendall repeatedly warning, "We are out of time." - The centerpiece is versatility: a new Integrated Capabilities Command to plan operations at scale and knit together the service's many capabilities, rather than relying on a handful of exquisite new aircraft. - The Next Generation Air Dominance (NGAD) program is under budget pressure, with redesign, a possible shift to an unmanned concept, or even cancellation all reportedly on the table. - The emerging concept pairs stealthy aircraft that "clear the way" with un-stealthy "missile trucks" like the F-15EX Eagle II, all coordinated by sixth-generation data hubs acting as an aerial "offensive coordinator." - New weapons such as the hypersonic Mako stand-off missile and the AIM-260 air-to-air missile, plus upgraded targeting pods, extend the reach and lethality of both stealthy and non-stealthy platforms. - The approach is designed to cost less, not more, by moderating programs instead of slashing them and spreading development costs across decades, including a revived "Digital Century Series" model. - Russian and Chinese air programs face their own deep problems, and the USAF's evolving capabilities function as much as a deterrent as a warfighting tool. ## A Shifting Landscape On February 12, 2024, the United States Air Force announced that change was on the horizon. Together with the US Space Force, the USAF's top brass introduced a raft of changes meant to reorient the service toward an age of great-power competition. Among the strategic shifts were a few rather pedestrian ones, but several that were a good deal more substantial. America's nuclear forces received considerable support. The organization committed to expanding the ranks of technical personnel able to use modern warfighting methods. And it called for large-scale exercises of a kind America has largely held off from performing, in hopes of getting the US ready for large-scale wartime operations against militarily powerful adversaries. Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall framed the urgency in stark terms. "We need these changes now," he said. "We are out of time to reoptimize our forces to meet the strategic challenges in a time of Great Power Competition." He returned to the same phrase again later: "We are out of time." It was a deliberate drumbeat, meant to puncture any sense that the service could afford to drift. Perhaps the most important part of the new plan is its emphasis on versatility. The strategic shift calls for the creation of a new command center, the Integrated Capabilities Command, meant to do basically what it says on the tin: bring together planning operations at large scale and figure out how to use the Air Force's many capabilities together, with increasing effectiveness. Other provisions in the report pointed in much the same direction across different areas of Air Force operations. And while it is a new thing for the USAF to publicize that it is thinking this way, it is a shift the service has increasingly woken up to, not as a good idea, but as a necessity. That reality has increasingly come home to roost in the minds of Air Force leaders. Long accustomed to having the best air arm on the planet, the US has been ineffective, and some might even say complacent, in keeping its advantage over the long term. China now boasts hundreds of Chengdu J-20 stealth fighters, seemingly ideal to ambush America's key airborne control, tanker, and strategic lift aircraft. The J-20 and a range of other fighters fly alongside hundreds of strategic bombers and dozens of electronic warfare and control planes. Russia, although its purportedly fifth-generation Su-57 is nowhere to be found over the skies of Ukraine, still fields well over a thousand other air-superiority and multirole fighters, and retains the potential to draw the US into a very damaging air war over continental Europe. Neither Russia nor China is projected to actually catch up to America anytime soon in air power. But that is not the point. The current US approach was built for an American public unwilling to accept major combat losses, and for a military branch long used to establishing air superiority quickly and then operating in uncontested skies. Meanwhile, both primary adversaries, Russia especially, are learning the hard lessons of twenty-first-century air warfare and enhancing their capabilities accordingly. Get into a conflict against them, and the US is almost certain to come out on top, but it is almost guaranteed to absorb costs and complications that it simply is not prepared to accept. ## The Limits of Buying New Aircraft While the United States typically solves these problems by building new aircraft, that approach now displays its own mounting troubles. The most vexing at present is the Next Generation Air Dominance program, or NGAD, meant to produce the world's first sixth-generation fighter. On paper, the plans are highly impressive: exceptionally sophisticated onboard technology, so-called adaptive cycle engines that can operate across many speeds, and the ability to fly very stealthily while commanding a group of drone wingmen and calling the shots for other American warplanes in a battle environment. But year-over-year budgets for NGAD are shrinking, and some Air Force leaders have even implied that drastic options, including slashing the program entirely, may be on the table. More likely is a redesign of some kind, intended to bring down costs, along with a potential reduction in the overall number of fighters the US intends to procure. Just how far that number could drop is unknown. Per statements by Secretary Kendall, the redesign might not only eliminate adaptive cycle engines but potentially drop the entire piloted NGAD concept in favor of an unmanned design. Such cost-saving measures are nothing new. In fact, NGAD is so urgent largely because America slashed its F-22 Raptor program decades ago to save money during the War on Terror. A slimmed-down or canceled NGAD would compound those problems, putting American air superiority in the hands of two underdeveloped programs in a row. That, in turn, would force greater reliance on the multirole F-35 and compel America to start sacrificing real capabilities in a war environment. Other research and development programs are faring better. The B-21 Raider, America's next-generation bomber, has pulled off the rare feat of being both on time and under budget. But the Raider fleet is projected to include as few as 100 aircraft, a figure generally believed to be well below the number the US would need to phase out its aging bomber fleet. That is because the Raider must compete for budget not against other bomber designs, but against new logistical programs: the Liberty Lifter seaplane, the Pegasus air-refueling tanker, a next-generation strategic airlift aircraft, and secretive efforts like the purportedly Mach 10-capable Project Mayhem and the alleged RQ-180 spy drone. All the while, the US must maintain the aircraft it already has in service, produce new and better munitions, and think about the next next generation of advanced projects to ensure the USAF's upcoming evolution is not its last. Every one of these initiatives is, by nature, meant to up the ante for global air strategy. As General Mike Minihan, who leads the Air Force's Air Mobility Command, put it regarding its upcoming projects: "We must imagine and demand a flight line where field and platform are unrecognizable to our grandparents." It is high ambition, to be sure, but the drive to develop and pay for so many unrecognizable things at once brings enormous pressure. ## Air Power Built for the Wrong War As America's military budget cracks under the Air Force's intense demands, the country's military leaders have begun to question just what American air power is meant to accomplish. For decades, the Air Force was part of the War on Terror across the Middle East and Central Asia. Partly because of the Air Force itself, partly because of Washington, the airfleet shifted to match. Today, US air power is optimized for counterinsurgencies, for long patrols in safe airspace, and for the fundamental assumption that America's adversaries cannot compete with it in the skies. Until recently, the prevailing wisdom held that America's future air-superiority needs could be handled by a couple of hundred stealthy fighters, that those same fighters were the best weapon for air-to-ground operations, and that no new adversary would be ready to challenge the US anytime soon. Today, the US faces major-power competitors on multiple fronts. In a world where American air power could have to defend Europe against Russia, defend Taiwan against China, and defend Israel against Iran and its proxies all at once, the balance of power is shifting. America has allies to rely on, and it has very good aircraft. But splitting those aircraft across multiple hot zones while dealing with multiple kinds of threat is something the US is supposed to be good at, and it simply is not. Focused on decades of asymmetrical war against insurgents, its budget consumed by the vampiric influence of costly projects like the F-35, the B-2 bomber, and the F-22, the Air Force has been caught lacking in a major way. The US Air Force is more than a match for China, but divide it into thirds. Even under perfect conditions, can sixty-odd F-22s, under a hundred F-35s, a couple of hundred F-16s, a handful of stealth bombers, and a severely reduced number of tankers and reconnaissance planes really provide the dominant win over China that the American people expect? It is not likely. Hamstringing America's ability to make up the gap, now as much as in recent decades, is the country's seeming obsession with stealth aircraft. Stealth jets are very helpful for nations that can leverage them, but they are not everything. To operate stealthily at all, they must use internal weapons bays, which seriously limits both the number and size of the munitions they carry. They are also expensive, difficult to maintain and repair, and global air-defense systems are starting to catch up to them in some ways. Stealth is important. Used right, it can decide the course of battles or perhaps even wars. But it is not everything. The Air Force now appears to recognize that it is dealing with headwinds from multiple sources at once. It lacks critical funding. It has too many problems piling up simultaneously. And it has spent decades making decisions under a set of assumptions about the future, only to see those assumptions break apart at the seams. Frankly, it is too big a set of obstacles to be solved by brute force. There is no version of the United States in which Social Security or Medicare is gutted to beef up the strength of the USAF. But forced to think critically about the assets it has, rather than relying on the magical appearance of new ones, the organization has begun to string together some real solutions, and at least in theory, they are starting to look pretty good. ## New Problems, New Solutions The Air Force cannot simply wave its hand and replace the inventory it has. It cannot bully other parts of the US government into fully funding NGAD or committing to all of the initiatives it wants. And it cannot recover the money already spent on research, development, procurement, maintenance, or training. Instead, its solutions will have to be tactical and strategic, using all the benefits and all the drawbacks of its current situation to become the fighting force its country now needs. To illustrate the answer, begin with one particular piece of new technology: the F-15EX Eagle II. The Eagle II is a sort of rebirth project for America's esteemed but aging F-15 Eagle. Capable of flying above Mach 2.5, around 2,800 miles per hour, the Eagle II can carry about 30,000 pounds of munitions, including more than twenty missiles or bombs, with a wide combat radius and a great deal more. The un-stealthy Eagle II is not the only surprising aircraft the US Air Force is procuring. Look no further than the OA-1K Sky Warden, a prop plane the US worked hard to acquire in 2024. But unlike the Sky Warden, the F-15EX is intended to fly alongside hyper-modern fifth-generation fighters and even the NGAD, and it will be a major part of the arsenal for decades to come. Congress is pushing the Air Force to acquire more of them, with a real possibility that the current projection of a bit over a hundred may only be the start. The Eagle II is envisioned as what the USAF calls a missile truck, an aircraft that can carry a great deal of ordnance, of varying kinds depending on the mission, and ruin the day of whoever happens to be in its path. On paper, that approach suits the kind of war America just finished fighting, the kind that involves devastating the hideouts of terror organizations lacking the means to shoot down an aircraft. But although the Eagle II drew much of its design inspiration from those older wars, it is being procured at a time when that thinking has already changed. It is an un-stealthy, bellowing bull of an aircraft at a moment when America is contemplating how to face sophisticated rival militaries, and yet the nation's military minds want more of them, not fewer. Pair the Eagle II with the other weapons in America's arsenal, and its usefulness begins to make far more sense. An F-35, carrying no more than four missiles or bombs internally, is not going to devastate many targets in a single run. But it can clear the way. Flying unseen through contested airspace, the F-35 can slip like a knife through enemy air defenses and launch precision attacks on the assets an enemy has standing guard. That might be advanced fighters, ground-based air-defense systems, radar installations, or command-and-control aircraft. Whatever an adversary has waiting, stealth aircraft are the most likely to clear the way. All the while, they mark other targets and transmit precise data back to the rest of the force, providing real-time intelligence that is all but unmatched in today's world. Once that happens, aircraft like the Eagle II become far more useful. Using medium- to long-range munitions, they can loiter in areas where the now-destroyed front-line defenses can no longer touch them, but where other air-defense assets are too far away to reach. And it is not just the Eagle II. The same approach should work, at least in theory, with strategic bombers including the B-21 Raider, and with America's other non-stealthy multirole aircraft like the F-16 and the Navy's F/A-18. ## The Aerial Quarterback and the Offensive Coordinator High over the battlefield, we reach the assets most critical to this new approach. Sixth-generation aircraft like the NGAD, and potentially other platforms that use sixth-generation technologies such as the B-21 Raider, are special for many reasons. But perhaps the greatest is their ability to serve as a hub that processes incredible amounts of data and real-time battlefield intelligence. To understand how this works, defense expert Alex Hollings of Sandboxx offers a useful analogy. The F-22 Raptor, America's most sophisticated air-superiority jet at present, has an avionics suite that allows it to help other aircraft identify and destroy targets, keeping command and control over a battlefield in a way that lets it function as a sort of aerial quarterback. For those unfamiliar with American football, a quarterback commands and coordinates the team in real time, deciding where to exploit weaknesses in order to score. If the Raptor is a quarterback, then the NGAD is expected to be more of an offensive coordinator, a figure positioned on the sidelines, or in this case out of the direct heat of battle, doing a great deal of advanced tactical thinking very quickly. Its job is to influence the entire game, or in this case, the entire battlespace. With hyper-advanced sixth-generation aircraft in the skies, coordinating and maneuvering a combined swarm of piloted aircraft and drones in real time, the US gains a level of situational awareness unheard of in aerial warfare. Historically, adding many different types of aircraft, each in different mission roles working toward a common task, tends to make the whole mission harder. That is not the case when a data hub like the NGAD is involved. Its sensor technology is purportedly able to detect and target enemy aircraft from extreme ranges and transfer that data to other pilots and drones near-instantaneously. The NGAD's value, as currently drawn up, is not as a dogfighter or even a long-range air-superiority fighter in the conventional sense. It is meant to be a master tactician, not a piece of hardware that takes part in a fight, but a strange sort of consciousness that takes the other American aircraft in the sky and transforms them into a single, unified organism. With that battlefield overwatch, the Air Force could leverage the potential of its various aircraft simultaneously while letting each focus on what it does best. Instead of expecting F-35 squadrons to spend their limited ordnance taking out an entire region's military assets, they can focus on using stealth where it matters most: picking off enemy aircraft before being discovered, scoping out targets just minutes before the cavalry arrives, and surgically dismantling the systems that would stand against an air assault. Fourth-generation aircraft, rather than being held back by their lack of stealth, can be used more effectively in combat zones where stealth is no longer needed, relying on the awareness of a higher authority to guide their actions. Tankers, airlifters, early-warning and control planes, and more can all run more precise missions or fly safer routes, confident they are being watched over even in an austere environment. ## Versatility as a Strategy, and a Cost Saver Depending on the mission, this new approach grants the US matching versatility. If America launches an all-out attack on fortified enemy territory, it can leverage its stealth aircraft, then its missile trucks, then its heavy bombers in waves that would be nearly unstoppable for most modern militaries. If America needs to defend Poland and the Baltics against a Russian advance, it can better coordinate its defense and counterattacks over a wide area, using stealth aircraft when necessary and non-stealthy aircraft when possible, fighting individual air battles overseen by NGAD data hubs, all coordinating in real time for a continental defense. If the US needs to protect its homeland or guard secure airspace, it can do so without relying on costly stealth fighters, while still gaining the stealth capability and battlespace awareness that a few sophisticated command-and-control planes provide. Just as critical is the possibility that this new approach would cost less, not more. In the case of the NGAD, using the aircraft in concert with a range of other platforms and loyal-wingman drones means that putting four, eight, or twelve NGADs into a single battle is overkill. You could do it, but the combination of America's existing fighter assets plus the situational awareness a single, nearly invisible NGAD provides should be enough to overcome US adversaries for quite a while. Not only does that lower the number of NGADs needed, it buys the US valuable time to address other critical priorities. Meanwhile, an Air Force that does not rely on stealthy F-35s for tasks where stealth is unnecessary can save on operating costs at a minimum, and could conceivably downsize the overall F-35 fleet, currently projected to include nearly 1,400 aircraft. Adopt an approach better at keeping America's new B-21s protected in contested airspace, and it becomes more feasible to consider purchasing just a hundred for now, because they would have a higher chance of surviving if a crisis really did devolve into a costly war. Keep probing the budgetary benefits of the apparent shift, and the Air Force keeps getting chunks of money back, in ways that should let the Pentagon recover from its desperation mode and space out more affordable initiatives over the next decade or two, instead of attempting the Herculean and probably doomed task of getting everything done at once. ## The Tech Behind the Shift That is the what and the why of the Air Force's emerging strategic shift, or at least how those in the unclassified world can best read the tea leaves to decipher decisions made behind closed doors. But the how matters too, because simply introducing individual new aircraft like the NGAD or the Raider does not tell the whole story. The individual technologies powering the shift are even more important. Some, like the new advances in stealth, remain out of reach in the public domain. But the ones we do know about are very impressive, and suggest that if this is what the public knows, there is some seriously unbelievable work happening behind the scenes. Start with the Mako, a missile that puts just about every fighter-carried munition in history to shame. Developed by Lockheed Martin, the Mako is a stand-off missile intended to strike naval and ground targets from very far away after being launched from the air. It is also hypersonic, able to fly at over five times the speed of sound. And it is not only incredibly fast, but highly maneuverable. The combination of high speed and high maneuverability is thought to make it entirely capable of penetrating advanced air-defense systems, where interceptors are too slow to catch it and not maneuverable enough to chase it. Its exact top speed is unknown, but it can operate at, above, or below hypersonic speeds. Crucially, the Mako is the first hypersonic weapon ever, from any country, able to fit inside the weapons bay of a fifth-generation fighter. That includes not just the F-35 but also the F-22, each of which could carry Mako missiles internally while maintaining their stealth. The Mako can also fly on the F-15, the F-16, the Navy's F/A-18, almost certainly the Eagle II, and even the Navy's P-8 Poseidon, derived from the Boeing 737. It is the Mako that enables stealth fighters to so precisely and reliably devastate enemy air defenses, since the missiles can be carried right up to their targets, and by the time they begin their own hypersonic flight, it is already too late to stop them. That is a level of capability Russia and China cannot match. Both nations can launch hypersonic weapons, but neither can do so from an aircraft, let alone a stealth aircraft. Also in weapons news is the AIM-260, the Joint Advanced Tactical Missile. It is a beyond-visual-range air-to-air missile meant to take over for America's current beyond-visual-range missile, the AIM-120 AMRAAM, and when it does, it will offer a major leap in capability. The most advanced AMRAAM offers a range of about ninety-five nautical miles, while the AIM-260 is expected to fire at a minimum range of about 110 nautical miles. That is not only out of range but out of radar sight for most aircraft trying to hit back at the launching plane. And while the AMRAAM flies at Mach 4, the new missile flies at Mach 5. It carries far better onboard technology than even the newest AMRAAM versions, and it can fly with the F-22, the F-35, and the Eagle II. To grasp what this missile can do, imagine a dozen Russian Su-27s flying in formation against three American warplanes: one F-22, one NGAD, and one Eagle II. The F-22 flies ahead undetected, marking every aircraft in the Russian squadron without being seen. It beams that data back to the NGAD, which presents a fully mapped, targeting-ready profile of the battlefield to the Eagle II, flying over a hundred miles away, well out of range of the Russian aircraft, carrying more than twenty air-to-air missiles that can attack at hypersonic speeds from that extreme distance, crossing it at Mach 5 in about a minute and a half. With the F-22 and the NGAD lurking unseen at closer range to pick off any survivors, the Su-27 formation is dealt with in about two minutes. The AIM-260 is expected to enter service by the end of 2026. ## Wiring the Legacy Fleet Together Just as important as weaponry are the technologies that will make older fighters, bombers, support aircraft, and command-and-control planes compatible with the data-processing systems the NGAD, the Raider, and the F-35 carry aboard. One such item is the Sniper Advanced Targeting Pod, currently in use on America's Stratofortress and Lancer bombers, the F-15E and F-16 fighters, and the A-10 attack aircraft. It has been in service for more than two decades, but recent upgrades vastly expand its ability to participate in data-sharing networks. Today, the Sniper pod can commune not just with stealth aircraft but with other aircraft involved in an operation, and even ground-based assets like the HIMARS missile launcher, using encrypted systems compatible with what these less sophisticated platforms already carry. It is this capability that makes munitions like the AIM-260 so meaningful, all but guaranteeing that aircraft equipped for combat at stand-off range will receive the information that lets them use that capability. Just as important as individual technologies are the changes in how the Air Force thinks about its aircraft. Take the idea of the missile truck, made possible by special pylon extenders that allow an aircraft to carry two, three, or four missiles or bombs on a hardpoint that would usually carry just one. The concept is already in use on the F-15EX Eagle II, but it can go further. Consider the expected hardpoint expansions of the Navy's P-8, which may receive more and more pylons over time. There is even room for some theoretical weirdness here. Take a pylon extender meant to fit four missiles on an Eagle II, then imagine how many you could mount on the wings of an extensively modified C-5 Galaxy. A hundred? Two hundred? Turning single C-5s into missile trucks capable of taking down entire rival air forces from stand-off range is obviously not in the cards. But the example illustrates just what the USAF could do if it keeps thinking outside the box with that new tool. The versatile thinking goes much further. Defense analysts have proposed that the B-21 Raider could conceivably serve in the NGAD's role, if NGAD were hypothetically cut or seriously scaled down, so long as no one expects the Raider to dogfight. The Raider design may also soon be adapted into America's upcoming stealthy aerial-refueling tanker, currently designated the NGAS or KC-Z. The Liberty Lifter proposal calls for seaplane airlifters that can double as mobile command posts on the water. F-35s are increasingly being adapted to serve a wide range of mission roles, including taking over the role the A-10 will eventually leave behind. And all these aircraft will merge with a fleet of unmanned drones, including not just the upcoming Loyal Wingman line of UAVs but potentially aircraft built on the technology the Air Force demonstrated in September 2023, when an AI-powered, autonomous, heavily modified F-16 proved capable of dogfighting a human pilot, ultimately going five for five in victories over the humans behind the stick. ## The Digital Century Series Returns Finally, Air Force officials have recently indicated that, at least with NGAD, they may revisit an idea once discussed for the program and then discarded: the Digital Century Series. The name is a play on America's Century Series of the 1950s and 1960s, the F-100 through the F-106, which put small batches of each aircraft line into production one after another to cope with rapid technological advancement. For a time, the idea circulated around NGAD as a way to develop smaller batches of open-system, highly modular aircraft, each meant to serve only a decade or two, rather than trying to build an NGAD in 2020 that would still be useful in 2070. Per recent reporting, the idea is making a comeback, with the potential to field new sixth-generation, and eventually seventh-generation, fighters every five to ten years. Not only would that keep the USAF versatile in its new capabilities and able to respond to new threats as they emerge, it would save additional costs, both on development and in procuring fighters that now only have to last a few years before being phased out. Expand that thinking across the Air Force's new and developing arsenal, and the burden of 2020s development costs can be at least somewhat relieved, spread across several subsequent decades. ## But Can It Work? With all these changes in tactical and strategic thinking, all these new technologies, and very soon all these new aircraft, the most important question remains: will the changes actually work? As much as military leaders may want to impress on their subordinates that failure is not an option, that is simply not accurate. Failure is very much an option. If the Air Force has heaved itself into new ways of thinking and new approaches to warfare only to watch them all fail under pressure, that is an outcome America would like to avoid at all costs. The new approach certainly has its naysayers. A large portion of the American military aerospace world still believes in the maxim of stealth above all, and strongly opposes any approach that would entrust responsibility to an aircraft that cannot stay hidden. Other detractors emphasize that the approach involves too many moving pieces, or that it relies on programs like NGAD that could still be slashed before even the end of this year. Others point to the risk of adopting a strategy history has never validated, especially when America's enemies seem more dangerous than ever. And still others worry that the budgetary spine of the Pentagon itself may snap under the pressure, knowing that after so many ambitious development programs have so consistently run over budget, an initiative of this size could lead to a financial catastrophe of similar proportion. But while all those criticisms are fair, and all of them will need to be dealt with over time, the state of affairs matters for both proponents and detractors. The alternative to such a change is not a return to a status quo that is working just fine. The status quo in today's US Air Force is unsustainable, weighed down by too many urgent projects pulling in too many directions, with no other way to lower the pressure except piecemeal cuts here and there. Make a big change, and a lot could go wrong. But stay the current course, and make no mistake, a lot will go wrong. The benefits go well beyond merely giving America a chance to avert catastrophe. An approach like this offers real potential to draw down costs, both by moderating existing or proposed programs instead of slashing them outright, and by spacing development and production costs across the coming decades instead of forcing a make-or-break moment in the 2020s. From a tactical and strategic standpoint, an Air Force that leans into versatility is certainly not a bad thing, and the thinking behind this particular interpretation of versatility appears sound. The approach makes one key assumption that must hold true: that America's stealth aircraft, its missile trucks and long-range munitions, its next-generation warplanes, and its information technology all remain potent threats for the near-to-mid future. So long as that holds, the approach should work very well. ## The Competition, and the Deterrent As for whether the USAF's capabilities will be matched by its nearest competitors, that does not seem likely in a world where the US keeps improving rather than stopping in its tracks. China's stealth fighters appear hamstrung by difficulties working out the stealth materials needed to absorb radar, and its purportedly upcoming stealth bomber, the H-20, is still nowhere to be found. Much of China's air force is outdated, it has not been tested in real-world combat, and in any future conflict it would have to worry not just about the American Air Force but the Japanese and South Korean Air Forces too. Russia has seen a number of new toys exposed as shadows of the wonder weapons they were hyped to be, like the poorly performing Kinzhal hypersonic-ish missile and the S-400 missile-defense system. Others have proven too precious or too broken to risk sending to the front, like the Su-57 fifth-ish-generation fighter. Still more appear to be little more than vaporware, like the Su-75 Checkmate, the Pak DP fighter, and Tupolev's PAK DA stealth bomber. Meanwhile, most of Iran's and North Korea's air arsenals consist of warplanes an F-22 could backhand into a different century, without any help from an NGAD, a missile truck, or anything else. Iran's purported stealth fighter drone, the Qaher-313, has not appeared in public since a mock-up was lampooned by the foreign press in 2013. From a strategic perspective, the US may even have less to worry about regarding rapidly evolving adversary capabilities that might catch up to and then surpass the USAF's ongoing progress. Since Russia's invasion of Ukraine began in 2022, America and its allies have increasingly heeded the wake-up call that major-power conflict remains a real possibility. In the years since, despite stop-and-start progress, NATO and America's Pacific allies have worked hard to make war less likely, not more. In Europe, NATO members are quickly raising spending and looking for ways to reinvigorate a sleepy arms industry, hoping that by the time Russia is ready to test NATO's resolve, the US will be backed by a capable allied force. In the Pacific, the US is increasingly weaving a web of military cooperation around China, drawing in Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Indonesia, Vietnam, the Philippines, Australia, and more. While those war preparations are loud, and at times rightly worrying for the future, they are designed to lower the probability that war actually breaks out. Neither Russia, nor China, nor anybody else is going to willfully start a war against someone they believe is going to kick their asses, and the US and its allies are hard at work convincing both Russia and China that a royal ass-kicking is now back on the table. The evolving capabilities of the US Air Force are part of that same deterrent effort, and in fact one of its most important elements. In any major-power war that does eventually break out, the USAF would be the tip of the spear. If it can show America's adversaries that it, alone, packs too much of a punch to be overcome, then war is deterred before all the other factors are even taken into account. In the coming years, public announcements around America's air force are likely to be a mixed bag. Some programs will have their funding cut, a couple may even be slashed, and tough decisions will have to be made, no matter how this goes. But if the US Air Force is indeed committed to the changes it appears to be seeking, then that difficult news will be balanced by a great deal that would satisfy even America's toughest war hawks. From technology to tactics to training and beyond, the United States Air Force has realized that change is on the horizon, and flying toward the horizon, at many times the speed of sound, is precisely what an air force is meant to do. ## Frequently Asked Questions ### What did the US Air Force announce on February 12, 2024? Together with the US Space Force, the USAF announced a raft of sweeping changes to reorient the service toward great-power competition. These included greater support for nuclear forces, expanding the ranks of technical personnel skilled in modern warfighting methods, large-scale exercises to prepare for major wartime operations, and a new emphasis on versatility, anchored by a new Integrated Capabilities Command. ### Why is the NGAD program considered troubled? The Next Generation Air Dominance program is meant to produce the world's first sixth-generation fighter, but its year-over-year budgets are shrinking. Air Force leaders have implied that drastic options, including outright cancellation, may be on the table. More likely is a redesign to cut costs and reduce the number procured, with Secretary Kendall noting the redesign could eliminate adaptive cycle engines or even drop the piloted concept in favor of an unmanned one. ### What is a missile truck, and how does the F-15EX fit in? A missile truck is an aircraft that carries a large amount of ordnance and can devastate whatever is in its path. The un-stealthy F-15EX Eagle II, capable of flying above Mach 2.5 and carrying about 30,000 pounds of munitions including more than twenty missiles or bombs, is the prime example. In the new concept, stealth aircraft clear enemy defenses first, then missile trucks loiter safely and strike with medium- to long-range munitions. ### What makes the Mako missile significant? The Mako is a Lockheed Martin hypersonic stand-off missile that is highly maneuverable and able to penetrate advanced air defenses. Most importantly, it is the first hypersonic weapon from any country able to fit inside the internal weapons bay of a fifth-generation fighter, including the F-35 and F-22, allowing them to carry it while remaining stealthy. It can also be carried by the F-15, F-16, F/A-18, the Eagle II, and the P-8 Poseidon. ### What is the Digital Century Series idea? Named for America's 1950s and 1960s Century Series of aircraft, the Digital Century Series envisions developing smaller batches of open-system, highly modular fighters meant to serve only a decade or two each, rather than building one aircraft expected to last fifty years. 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Assad Loyalists Are Plotting a Comeback in Syria — and It's Falling Apart

Simon Whistler — Tue, 02 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

For more than half a century, the Assad family dynasty ruled Syria with an iron fist. So when Bashar al-Assad was unceremoniously ejected from Damascus in late 2024, after a nearly fourteen-year civil war that left more than half a million people dead, Syrians and onlookers around the world largely greeted the news with relief. Today Assad has retreated to Moscow, his allies have scattered across the globe, and although Syria's new transitional government absolutely has its own problems, life under the new leadership is still a vast improvement over the old regime. But the defeat of the Assad government does not mean the Assad family and its allies have given up. Across post-war Syria, and across a hidden international network, powerful figures from the old regime are plotting a comeback. Their leaders draw on immense concealed wealth, their loyalists have melted into mountain hideouts and government ministries, and their ambitions for Syria have not changed a bit. All of the old regime's skills of intelligence and infiltration, all of its tools of violence and repression, remain at their disposal — and the people who survived the fall of the dynasty have become ghosts, watching and waiting for a chance to take power. There is, however, one key problem for them. As hard as it may have been to preserve and protect the Assad dynasty, it is even harder to bring a dead regime back to life. WarFronts traces the shadow campaign to restore Assadist rule, the rivals at its center, and the reasons it is now coming apart. ## Key Takeaways - Bashar al-Assad was forced out of Damascus in late 2024 after a civil war lasting nearly fourteen years that killed more than half a million people; he now lives in Moscow under close Russian supervision. - The fall of a family dictatorship displaces an entire elite — ministers, generals, intelligence chiefs, and regime financiers — many of whom fled with cash, valuables, and offshore reserves while others went to ground inside Syria. - On March 6, 2025, pro-Assad loyalists ambushed transitional-government forces in Jableh, Latakia province, triggering a security crackdown in which up to 1,700 Alawite civilians were killed. - Two exiled figures dominate the resistance: Kamal Hassan, Assad's former head of military intelligence, and Rami Makhlouf, a billionaire who managed the family's finances; both live in Russia and despise each other. - Bashar al-Assad wants no part of the plot, and his brother Maher al-Assad — who commands thousands of soldiers from Moscow — has refused to endorse either contender, leaving the movement without a figurehead. - Russia is pulling back, money is running short, and a stabilizing Syria with little appetite for renewed war has effectively closed the window for an Assadist restoration. ## When a Regime Falls, an Entire Elite Falls With It Across the modern world, dictatorships have a way of evolving into a family business. The Kim family has ruled North Korea for three generations, with the young Kim Ju-ae poised to inherit her father's legacy one day. Turkmenistan and Nicaragua, two of the most repressive states on Earth, have each been ruled by family dynasties for generations, and similarly repressive Eritrea appears set to follow. In the Islamic world, the Bin Salman family in Saudi Arabia, the Bin Zayed family in the Emirates, and the Aliyev family in Azerbaijan have grown incredibly wealthy at the head of petrostates, while in Africa, leaders such as Museveni, Deby, and Obiang have either handed power to their sons or are preparing to do so. What these dynasties share is a tendency to obscure the much larger base of support that lets them function. When Kim Jong-un addresses the North Korean public, he is flanked by dozens, even hundreds, of figures in suits and uniforms — nameless functionaries most observers never bother to identify. It is easy to dismiss them as mere cogs in the machine, ministers or generals who exist only to do the leader's bidding. Yet they matter enormously to the regime. Whether in North Korea, Syria, or anywhere else, family-run dictatorships are surrounded by a very wealthy and usually very corrupt national elite. These figureheads maintain loyal power bases, oversee the countless levers of state power the dictator has no time to track, and compete relentlessly for a bigger slice of the pie. So when a regime falls, as Syria's did in 2024, it is not only Bashar al-Assad's immediate family that is put out of work. The entire human infrastructure that powered the regime collapses with it: government ministers and bureaucrats, military chiefs and generals, the heads of the intelligence apparatus and the security state, and the operators who protected and expanded the regime's business interests, often without holding any official post. All of them spent decades getting rich together, extracting from an entire nation and its people. ## How the Old Guard Scattered After Assad's Fall When the regime crumbled, all of those people scattered to the wind at once, each with a vested interest in not being caught. As they fled, they helped to spirit money out of state coffers and load suitcases with cash in foreign currencies. They smuggled precious jewels, paintings, artifacts, and other portable stores of wealth. They hid weapons caches, burned or stole sensitive documents, and drew up lists of enemies marked for future retribution. Those who stayed behind went to ground — often mid-level military officers or intelligence operatives still commanding networks of their own. They vanished with their subordinates, lay low, and waited for opportunities or direct orders from their former superiors. The figures at the top, meanwhile, fled into exile — to Moscow, Paris, London, Dubai, or Riyadh — and on reaching safety, tapped massive reserves of offshore wealth accumulated across decades of preparation for precisely this moment. When Assad was ousted from Damascus, that process played out as it always does. Some elites, particularly experienced military commanders and provincial leaders in the path of the revolution, were forced to go down with the ship. Others did not get out in time and were dragged into the streets and humiliated, or tracked down and killed in secret by anti-regime operatives who had waited years for the chance. But for the most part, those who were in the room with Bashar al-Assad understood what was coming before the collapse arrived — even though Assad himself fled without warning much of his inner circle. Many of his former allies reached private jets or snuck aboard commercial flights. Others escaped into the Mediterranean on speedboats, or slipped through rebel-held checkpoints amid the chaos of the decisive hours. Still others reached foreign embassies, particularly Russia's, where they received the full generosity of Moscow's best and brightest. Those who did not flee disappeared into the country — especially the governorates of Latakia and Tartus on the Mediterranean coast, areas with majority Alawite populations, the same ethno-religious group as the Assad family and many of the regime's most powerful deputies. There, and in other parts of Syria where anti-regime sentiment ran weaker, soldiers and intelligence agents could rendezvous, form cells, and melt into the population, waiting to reactivate. ## The Jableh Ambush and the March Massacres In the earliest weeks of post-Assad Syria, the threat of violence from loyalist factions was well understood but mostly abstract. The Assadists, it was assumed, would have their tails tucked between their legs and would need time to reconstitute their forces or coordinate a national resistance. In reality, it did not even take three months for them to begin hatching plans. On March 6, 2025, in the village of Jableh in Latakia province, groups of pro-regime loyalists ambushed fighters loyal to the new transitional government in Damascus. First in Jableh, and then in nearby towns, villages, and along highways, pro-Assad forces killed dozens of fighters — many of them part of Syria's General Security Service, but also members of militias that had chosen to ally with the new leadership. Assadist leaders abroad later claimed to have had nothing to do with the uprising, though there is little reason to take them at their word. The pro-regime rebels on the ground were not trying to seize local control. They were trying to provoke a very specific kind of chaos, and they got it. The Assadists had made a calculated bet: that if battle-hardened, often ideologically extreme, and perpetually nervous Syrian security forces were attacked by organized gunmen in the same majority-Alawite areas that had been regime strongholds for decades, those forces would assume the worst. That is exactly what happened. Fighters loyal to the transitional government streamed into Latakia in massive numbers. The Assadists worked to accelerate the spiral, ambushing a military convoy and killing several more soldiers, while their leaders announced the creation of the so-called Military Council for the Liberation of Syria, led by a former brigadier general known both for his close ties to Assad and his deep connections to Iran. The Assadists understood that government-aligned fighters would respond with overwhelming force against the Alawite population — but that was the point. Many Alawites would die, yet the survivors would be embittered toward Syria's new leadership and might come to see the Assadists as their protectors. Up to 1,700 Alawite civilians were killed by the time the March massacres concluded. ## A Low-Grade Insurgency and Its Hidden Leadership Since then, pro-Assad forces have not attempted escalation on that scale, but they have remained in regular contact with government forces. Across 2025 and into 2026, Damascus-aligned fighters have worked to disrupt pro-regime resistance cells, loyalist militias, and the funding and arms-smuggling networks that sustain them. Alleged cells are announced as dismantled with some regularity, while the Military Council for the Liberation of Syria and other known groups — including the Coastal Shield Brigade and the Saraya al-Jawad — have continued guerrilla-style operations. These groups lean heavily on disinformation, targeting Alawite and other minority communities and exploiting well-documented abuses of power by Syria's transitional leadership to amplify their own message. Dozens of high-level ex-regime personnel are believed to be hiding in Lebanon and coordinating resistance actions. But even those operatives are merely a gateway to the Assadist leaders who are really calling the shots. ## Hidden Hands: Kamal Hassan and Rami Makhlouf Go all the way to the top of the secretive, ex-regime resistance and you find two men in charge. One is Kamal Hassan, who served for many years as Assad's head of military intelligence and was known to have overseen the brutal torture and mass disappearances of Syrian civilians. He now lives in Russia. The other is Rami Makhlouf, also currently residing in Russia — a billionaire who oversaw the transfer of vast sums out of Syria for the Assad family's benefit and, for a long time, sat inside Bashar al-Assad's inner circle, essentially running the national economy. After a falling-out with the family, Makhlouf was kept under house arrest until the regime fell, then escaped to Lebanon in an ambulance. The scale of his wealth is suggested by his brother's fate: he failed to flee the country, attempting to escape in his Maserati only to be shot and robbed of millions of dollars in cash. Although both men are high-ranking veterans of the former regime, and on paper appear aligned in their ambitions, it is by examining their day-to-day operations that the cracks in the Assadist resistance become visible. Hassan and Makhlouf are not working together. They are in direct competition, each building up rival militias in Syria and Lebanon, courting the Alawite community, and — perhaps most important — vying for control of a network of fourteen underground command posts that the regime constructed in its final years in power. According to an extensive Reuters report published in December 2025, Hassan and Makhlouf are the two major players in what has become a crowded contest, as several factions jockey for the lion's share of an estimated fifty thousand loyal fighters. That report describes both men as deeply, and unproductively, personally invested in the effort. As Reuters put it, "Hassan […] seethes about his lost influence and outlines grandiose visions of how he would rule coastal Syria […] Makhlouf […] now portrays himself in conversations and messages as a messianic figure who will return to power after ushering in an apocalyptic final battle." The same report concludes that the two men despise each other. ## The Assad Family Wants No Part of It Armed with money, loyal fighters, and delusions of grandeur, Hassan and Makhlouf are both competing for the favor of the Assad family itself — and here lies a second problem. According to numerous insider accounts from Moscow, and especially a December 2025 report from The Guardian, Bashar al-Assad wants nothing to do with the new resistance. The Assad family remains quite wealthy, living in a prestigious gated community in Moscow, but the patriarch is under close scrutiny from Russian minders who keep him from contacting senior officials of his former regime. Not that Bashar appears especially interested. According to The Guardian, he is returning to the practice of ophthalmology — one of the world's most brutal ex-dictators is also a trained eye doctor — and has developed a real affection for video games. The German newspaper Die Zeit reported that he spent his final days in Syria largely absorbed in Candy Crush; today he reportedly locks himself in his luxury apartment for most of the day, occasionally stepping out to visit a shopping mall in the same building. With Bashar checked out, Makhlouf and Hassan have instead been courting the endorsement of his brother, Maher al-Assad, who also lives in Moscow and exerts control over thousands of his own soldiers. Maher has yet to take a side. He is very wealthy, with global connections and a record as commander of what was once Syria's most powerful military unit, but he has not been able to win support from Moscow, and he does not appear to consider himself the heir apparent to the old regime. The goal, at this stage, is simply to identify someone capable of leading Syria in the future and to rally the former regime's assets behind that person — if anyone can actually prove himself the leader of the pack. ## A Plot Undone by Exposure and a Stabilizing Syria Once a leader is chosen, both Makhlouf and Hassan claim to have a general outline of what comes next, though neither seems particularly invested in the details. Both are pursuing a fractured Syria, conceding that they are unlikely to retake Damascus outright but betting that nationwide chaos would let them seize local control in Alawite areas. From there, they imagine drawing on external backers like Russia and Iran, rebuilding their forces, reintroducing financial assets to the country, and preparing for a larger, second-stage offensive. But all of this points to another serious problem: the word has gotten out. Put simply, if the plot were going well, WarFronts would not know about it — nor would outlets like Reuters or the New York Times, which published its own report on the Assadist faction, and nor would the new Syrian government. Today, Damascus is relying on a former member of the Assad regime, Khaled al-Ahmad, to serve as a messenger to the Alawite population after he switched sides during the civil war. Based on recent reporting from majority-Alawite areas, he and his allies are doing a fairly decent job. There is plenty of pro-Assad sentiment if one looks hard enough, but life was also very difficult in Alawite areas under the old regime, and hundreds of thousands of Alawites want nothing to do with a resurgent Assadist regime, no matter who is in charge. Worse for both Hassan and Makhlouf, officials in Damascus and the coastal provinces are openly confident that the Assadist resistance is being tracked, and that there really isn't very much to worry about. The plotters may command tens of thousands of fighters on paper, but there appear to be no real plans to get those fighters to do anything. ## Money Dries Up and Russia Walks Away The ground in Syria is shifting fast. Barely a year ago, the country really was fractured and chaotic in the way the Assadists were hoping for — a state in which they might seize territory while the government fought on multiple fronts. But in the wake of multiple large-scale massacres by government-aligned forces, and battles in Aleppo and the Kurdish-held northeast that have greatly diminished the power of Kurdish paramilitaries, Syria's other fighting factions have lost a great deal of their strength. Those still partially intact are focused mostly on their own survival, with no appetite for large-scale fighting. In many regions, economic recovery and reconstruction are well underway, and while many Syrians still distrust the new leadership in Damascus, they are not so distrustful that they refuse to give it a chance. Nor are Makhlouf and Hassan especially good at cultivating loyalty among pro-Assad fighters on the ground. According to multiple sources speaking to Reuters, Makhlouf does have more than fifty thousand fighters on his payroll, but he is paying them only the equivalent of about thirty US dollars a month, or even less. Hassan commands a fraction of that — only twelve thousand fighters — and has been exposed for trying to set up a charity as a humanitarian front for his force, ostensibly to support Alawites who have not actually received much aid. Watching the Syrians fail to get their act together, Russian officials have reportedly been meeting with them less and less, especially now that Moscow has built a working relationship with the transitional government. Hassan has even tried to lobby the US government, according to the New York Times, but has generated no real momentum in Washington. For both men, the money is starting to run out, and even the ground commanders still inside Syria — those with control over the secret underground command posts and weapons caches — have seen nothing worth supporting. ## Makhlouf's Network Comes Apart Most recently, Rami Makhlouf's network in particular appears to be unraveling. His close allies in Lebanon are being detained and investigated, including his purported top money-man in the country, while his message to the Alawite population has been undercut from within the community. A prominent Alawite religious figure, Sheikh Ghazal Ghazal, has taken an increasingly active role advocating peaceful federalism despite overreaches by Damascus. He has become a more palatable option for Alawites who want to take a hard line against the new government but would rather not return to all-out war. Hassan's faction is faring no better: with security in Alawite regions seeming to stabilize compared with 2025, local sources suggest there simply is no longer an appetite for the kind of large-scale resistance either man is promising. If the past decade and a half in Syria has shown anything, it is that nothing is ever truly certain. But at least for now, the specter of an Assadist revolution appears to have come and gone. The regime loyalists, the weapons, the financiers, and the former kingpins of the Assad government are all still out there — but their window of opportunity has closed, and neither their Russian allies, nor their Alawite communities, nor even Bashar al-Assad himself wants to see them succeed. These last few holdouts have their ambition, but they also have quite a bit of money, and they have escaped to places where they can live undisturbed for the rest of their lives. In the end, all of Syria will be better off if they can learn to enjoy their retirement. ## Frequently Asked Questions ### What happened in Jableh in March 2025, and what were the consequences? On March 6, 2025, pro-Assad loyalists in the village of Jableh, in Latakia province, ambushed fighters loyal to Syria's new transitional government, killing dozens. The attacks spread to nearby towns and highways. The crackdown that followed escalated into mass violence: up to 1,700 Alawite civilians were killed by the time the March massacres concluded. ### Who are Kamal Hassan and Rami Makhlouf, and why do they matter? Kamal Hassan served as Assad's head of military intelligence and oversaw torture and mass disappearances; he now lives in Russia. Rami Makhlouf is a billionaire who managed the transfer of vast sums out of Syria for the Assad family and once effectively ran the national economy; he escaped to Lebanon in an ambulance after the regime fell. Both lead rival wings of the exiled resistance and, according to Reuters, despise each other — a rivalry that has prevented any unified effort. ### Does Bashar al-Assad support the effort to restore his regime? No. Reporting from Moscow and a December 2025 Guardian account indicate Bashar wants no part of the resistance. He lives under close Russian supervision, is returning to the practice of ophthalmology, and has reportedly developed an affection for video games, including Candy Crush. His brother Maher al-Assad commands thousands of soldiers from Moscow but has also refused to endorse either Makhlouf or Hassan. ### How large are the loyalist forces, and how well are they paid? Makhlouf reportedly has more than fifty thousand fighters on his payroll, but pays them only the equivalent of about thirty US dollars a month or less. Hassan commands roughly twelve thousand fighters. Despite these numbers, officials in Damascus say the resistance is being actively tracked and that there are no real plans to mobilize those forces, while Hassan has even been exposed for running a charity as a humanitarian front for his faction. ### Why is the Assadist comeback plot falling apart? Several factors have converged: the deep personal rivalry between Hassan and Makhlouf, a Syria that has stabilized faster than the plotters anticipated, dwindling funds, Russia's pivot toward building a working relationship with the transitional government, and the public exposure of the plot through outlets like Reuters, the New York Times, and The Guardian. Alawite religious figures such as Sheikh Ghazal Ghazal are steering the community toward peaceful federalism, closing the window the Assadists were counting on. ## Sources - [Reuters — Assad's exiled spy chief and billionaire cousin plot Syrian uprisings from Russia](https://www.reuters.com/investigations/assads-exiled-spy-chief-billionaire-cousin-plot-syrian-uprisings-russia-2025-12-05/) - [The New York Times — Assad henchmen plot to retake Syria](https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/24/world/middleeast/assad-henchmen-retake-syria-plots.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share) - [The Guardian — Assad family live in Russian luxury as Bashar brushes up on ophthalmology](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/dec/15/assad-family-live-in-russian-luxury-as-bashar-brushes-up-on-ophthalmology) - [ACLED — What happened in the coastal region of Syria last week](https://acleddata.com/qa/qa-what-happened-coastal-region-syria-last-week) - [Reuters — Syrian forces massacred 1,500 Alawites, chain of command led to Damascus](https://www.reuters.com/investigations/syrian-forces-massacred-1500-alawites-chain-command-led-damascus-2025-06-30/) - [Long War Journal — Fierce clashes erupt between Assad loyalists and government forces in western Syria](https://www.longwarjournal.org/archives/2025/03/fierce-clashes-erupt-between-assad-loyalists-and-government-forces-in-western-syria.php) - [The Week — Is the pro-Assad insurgency a threat to the new Syria?](https://theweek.com/world-news/is-the-pro-assad-insurgency-a-threat-to-the-new-syria) - [France 24 — Deadly clashes erupt between Syrian forces and remnants of Assad's militias](https://www.france24.com/en/middle-east/20250306-deadly-clashes-erupt-between-syrian-forces-and-remnants-of-assad-s-militias) - [Reuters — How Syrian government forces and factions are linked to mass killings of Alawites](https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/how-syrian-government-forces-factions-are-linked-mass-killings-alawites-2025-06-30/) - [The New York Times — Assad regime Syria exodus](https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/16/world/middleeast/assad-regime-syria-exodus.html) - [Al Jazeera — Leaked calls reveal plot by al-Assad regime officers to destabilise Syria](https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/12/31/leaked-calls-reveal-plot-by-al-assad-regime-officers-to-destabilise-syria) - [AP News — Syria asks Lebanon over arrested Assad-era figures](https://apnews.com/article/syria-lebanon-assad-alawites-ahmad-dunia-arrested-a400aeae3bb5d85cb2610f2b8afc1144) - [Middle East Forum — The Alawite insurgency against the new Syrian government (interview)](https://www.meforum.org/mef-online/the-alawite-insurgency-against-the-new-syrian-government-interview) - [The New York Times — President Assad's Syria officials (interactive)](https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2025/10/15/world/middleeast/president-assad-syria-officials.html) - [Middle East Eye — Exiled Assad loyalists plot to destabilise Syria's new government](https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/exiled-assad-loyalists-plot-destabilise-syria-new-government) - [The Arab Weekly — Assad's cousin urges Alawites to maintain calm amid coastal unrest in Syria](https://thearabweekly.com/assads-cousin-urges-alawites-maintain-calm-amid-coastal-unrest-syria) - [BBC News](https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c0ew5g3vzreo) - [International Crisis Group — Restoring security in post-Assad Syria: lessons from the coast and Suweida](https://www.crisisgroup.org/rpt/middle-east-north-africa/syria/253-restoring-security-post-assad-syria-lessons-coast-and-suweida) - [Reuters — Facing Alawite backlash, Syria's new leaders take controversial steps to win loyalty](https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/facing-alawite-backlash-syrias-new-leaders-take-controversial-steps-win-loyalty-2025-12-30/) - [Middle East Monitor — Ousted Assad's billionaire cousin slams religious leaders' call for federalism in Syria](https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20251231-ousted-assads-billionaire-cousin-slams-religious-leaders-call-for-federalism-in-syria/) - [Middle East Monitor — Assad cousin appears to announce formation of elite fighter force](https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20250428-assad-cousin-appears-to-announce-formation-of-elite-fighter-force/)

Attack of the Drones: How UAVs Are Reshaping Warfare

Simon Whistler — Tue, 02 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

In warfare both ancient and modern, the only constant is change. In antiquity, battles and even entire wars could be decided when one side learned to shoot arrows from horseback, made their spears two meters longer, or stuffed a cannonball and a charge of powder into a metal pipe and hoped for the best. But in the modern era, changes to warfare have a tendency to challenge the fundamental nature of war itself. Are wars fought with guns and explosives? Not always—the world has nuclear weapons now. Are wars fought on land and sea? Not always—a nation that controls the skies generally controls the battlefield beneath them. And are wars fought between combatants trading flesh and blood for victory? Not always. The rise and rapid evolution of drone-based warfare has meant that a growing number of the world's militaries can now wage war without ever putting their own troops in harm's way. The America-dominated Reaper and Predator strikes of the 2010s were only the prologue. What has emerged since is something grittier, cheaper, and far more effective: a set of strategies and tactics built around expendable machines that have rewritten the rules of the modern battlefield. This is a close look at how drone warfare is changing—not the multimillion-dollar hunter-killers of a decade ago, but the swarms of off-the-shelf quadcopters, the affordable military strike drones flooding out of Turkey and Iran, the suicide boats prowling the Black Sea, and the robot tanks edging toward production lines. The thesis is simple and unsettling: the defining drone of this revolution is not the most advanced one, but the cheapest one, and that economic fact may already be changing the very nature of war. ## Key Takeaways - The drone revolution is driven not by new technology but by cost and miniaturization: for the price of one new F-16, a force could buy sixty thousand armed quadcopters that are more maneuverable, harder to detect, and completely expendable. - Consumer drones have become decisive on battlefields from Ukraine to Gaza, Myanmar, Sudan, and Yemen, serving small units for reconnaissance, ambush, sabotage, and assassination, and arriving in Ukraine at five to ten thousand units per month. - Turkey's Bayraktar TB-2 and Iran's Shahed line lead on the metric that now matters most — low cost paired with high effectiveness — with the Shahed 136 costing as little as ten thousand dollars and reproduced in Russia as the Geran-2 for wave attacks against Ukrainian cities. - Ukraine has pioneered naval attack drones — cheap, low-lying explosive boats costing roughly $250,000 each — that have deterred the Russian navy from parts of the Black Sea and opened a maritime arms race nobody anticipated. - Drone development is splitting into two diverging paths: maximum technological sophistication on one side, and maximum cheap, indigenous, expendable mass production on the other. ## Drones Are Not New To grasp how quickly modern drone warfare is evolving, one fact has to come first: drones themselves are not new. Non-piloted aircraft have existed nearly as long as piloted ones. The British Aerial Target and the American Kettering Bug aerial torpedo both took their first flights before the end of World War I. After limited use as training tools in World War II, reconnaissance drones were flying missions as early as Vietnam, where they also began launching missiles at ground targets. Several nations have manufactured drones since the Cold War, and through the 2000s and 2010s they matured into well-tested weapons in the arsenals of the United States and NATO. It is precisely that long, quiet history that makes the upheaval of the past few years so striking. The difference-maker behind the revolution was not an advance in technology or the invention of a new tactic. It was cost and miniaturization. Drones first became available for commercial use in the United States in 2006, when federal regulations permitted unmanned aerial vehicles for non-military purposes. Public and private organizations spent those early years trying to use them for disaster relief and property monitoring, while other companies worked to bring drones to ordinary consumers—a slow process requiring both technological and regulatory progress across many countries. By the late 2010s, early quadcopters—drones with four helicopter-like propellers—were on the market for just a couple thousand dollars. Since then, consumer drones have grown both cheaper and far more capable as critical components have been miniaturized and mass-produced. According to Statista, roughly five million consumer drones shipped worldwide in 2020, with shipments expected to exceed seven million per year by 2025. Today a quick Amazon search turns up drones that fly for over an hour and transmit video across ten kilometers or more for under five hundred dollars, with simpler camera-equipped models available for less than fifty dollars each. ## The Hobbyist's Toolkit Turned Weapon Those consumer drones can be heavily modified, and there is no shortage of expertise to draw on. Legions of knowledgeable enthusiasts on Reddit, YouTube, and other open platforms freely share the technical know-how. That same insight that would let someone bolt a speaker to a drone to blast music outside an irritating neighbor's window, rig a device to spray seeds across a vegetable garden, or mount a confetti cannon for a gender-reveal party can just as easily be turned to violent ends—and to wartime use. The core issue is cost. Consider the F-16 Viper, an internationally available and genuinely dangerous multirole fighter in the arsenals of well over a dozen militaries. It can win air-to-air battles, fly reconnaissance, attack ground targets, and much more. It also costs around $30 million to acquire a single recently built unit, runs roughly $27,000 per flight hour, and carries maintenance demands that require dedicated personnel and frequent parts replacement. And on the spectrum of modern jets, the F-16 is the affordable option—the KAI T-50, the Sukhoi Su-27, the Saab Gripen, and the Chengdu J-10 all run at similar or higher cost. Many missions genuinely require a fighter like that, and no guerrilla force should take a quadcopter into a dogfight with a Raptor. But some jobs handled by advanced aircraft—particularly strikes against targets near the front lines, or in asymmetrical and guerrilla conflicts—can be done by consumer drones. And the savings are not marginal. For the price of one new F-16, a force could buy sixty thousand high-quality quadcopters or more, each with a range of several kilometers, a camera, and a payload capacity reaching a couple of kilograms. Strap a cheap detonator and a standard half-kilo block of C4 to a quadcopter, and it becomes a bomb capable of blasting through reinforced doors or killing several combatants. And there is not just one—there are sixty thousand, each more maneuverable at low speed, harder to detect, and completely expendable. ## The New Battlefield Workhorse On battlefields from Ukraine to Gaza to Myanmar, Sudan, and beyond, drones have been a game-changer for smaller, underfunded, or cost-conscious militaries, as well as for insurgencies, resistance movements, and even terror organizations. During large battles, drones can be deployed one by one, in small groups, or in massive wave attacks, descending to explode at enemy positions or force a retreat. They can be flown by cell phone or handheld remote in the field, transported easily, and used to launch ambushes or harassing strikes against enemy units in outposts, fortified positions, urban areas, or open ground. They can overwhelm, outwit, or bypass anti-air defenses built to catch guided missiles, and they can be used improvisationally in the moment, with no need for the remote-operator control bases the United States is known for. Small squads with minimal training can operate them, and depending on configuration, they can even be reused—dropping grenades or other payloads before making a quick escape. They are also far more than improvised missiles. In recent years they have proven invaluable for front-line reconnaissance, especially in wars defined by frequent small skirmishes rather than rare large battles. In that environment, a unit that can spot an approaching enemy from two kilometers away rather than five hundred meters holds an enormous advantage—able to set ambushes, plan attacks, or slip away before being found. Consumer drones have flown sabotage missions, blowing themselves up beside ammunition depots, power infrastructure, and supply stores. They have been used for assassination, creeping toward a target in the dead of night even when that means navigating a hostile city or slipping into an enemy encampment. And perhaps best of all, they can be crowdfunded, meaning any nation or organization with popular support somewhere in the world can procure them in large numbers without going through a foreign military. ## Ukraine, Gaza, and the Spread of the Quadcopter These consumer drones have been absolutely critical on the battlefields of Ukraine, where they are routinely handed out to units as small as three to five troops as well as to much larger forces. Ukrainian drone operators are among that military's most valuable assets, and more are trained by the day. Drones now live-stream a real-time view of the battlefield for both Ukrainian and Russian soldiers, helping them understand and operate within their immediate combat radius. That information feeds back to command centers, enabling more effective real-time battlefield analysis and faster response than the world has ever seen. Ukrainian drones guide artillery onto the right targets, launch swarm attacks, and harass Russian troops deep in the rear—and they have been arriving at a rate of five to ten thousand every month. The pattern repeats elsewhere. In the attacks of October 7, 2023, Hamas used a large wave of drones in a combined assault alongside rockets and ground forces, with the drones serving as the primary instrument against Israeli watchtowers, gun emplacements, and surveillance equipment. In Myanmar, rebel organizations have begun mounting their own bombing attacks with drones. In Yemen, where the Houthi rebels' drone technology can become fairly advanced, the group has also used consumer drones to supplement its offensives. Even the Islamic State was an early adopter of quadcopters, employing them to great effect during the 2017 Siege of Mosul. Responding to this new wartime demand, a wide range of companies have begun producing drones better optimized for warfighting. In Ukraine alone, more than 200 startups now build expendable, cheap drones they update constantly, relying on software and limited production runs to stay versatile and evolve rapidly. Private firms worldwide have entered the field, while major militaries weigh whether to do the work in-house. But any military that wants to field its own small drones successfully will have to abandon the years-long development cycles most weapons go through and pivot to low-cost, high-output production built around highly adaptable, easily modified platforms. Whether the world's militaries can manage that shift, or simply leave it to the private sector, remains to be seen. ## The Military Drone Market: Israel, China, and America The growing world of drone warfare reaches far beyond what sits on the shelves at a big-box store. Over thirty nations were known or believed to field armed drones in late 2024—not just powerhouses like the United States and China, but countries from Kazakhstan to Poland, Egypt, Indonesia, Nigeria, and more. Many acquired their drones from other militaries; others built robust arsenals with parts sourced abroad or produced entirely at home. More than ten of these nations have actually conducted drone strikes, including Azerbaijan, the UAE, and Iraq—countries a casual observer of world news might never have associated with drone warfare. When assessing what a country has in its arsenal, three basic factors matter: the drone's intended altitude, its endurance, and whether it is armed. A high-altitude, high-endurance, unarmed drone is likely built for strategic reconnaissance—India scoping out Pakistan, or China patrolling above the South China Sea. Low-altitude, low-endurance drones tend to run short, often armed missions into active crisis zones, and may be cheaper and more expendable. Low-altitude, high-endurance drones show up in the arsenals of nations that need to project power over long distances—the United States, for instance, launching drones from the Indian Ocean to strike Afghanistan. Among global exporters, Israel deserves special mention: between 2001 and 2011 it was responsible for nearly half of all military drone sales, and it remains among the largest exporters by proportion today, having supplied the EU, Australia, and nations across Africa and Asia. China is gaining ground with its domestically produced CH-series, serving buyers from Ethiopia to Serbia to Zambia and the Congo. Different CH variants fill different roles, but some, like the widely used CH-4, can stay aloft for over a day and a half and fire air-to-ground missiles at altitudes beyond the reach of most surface-to-air missiles. The United States, for its part, has exported drones to 55 countries, including nearly every NATO member along with a range of allies and frenemies around the world. ## Turkey's Bayraktar: The Drone That Tilted Wars When it comes to drones that have actually changed the battlefield—now meaning proper military drones rather than commercial hardware—the difference-making factor is, once again, not superior performance or new capabilities. It is cost. And on the metric of low cost paired with high effectiveness, two countries lead the pack: Turkey and Iran. Turkey's Bayraktar line has made a major difference for beleaguered countries in war zones around the world. Its flagship, the Bayraktar TB-2, is a six-and-a-half-meter-long drone with a twelve-meter wingspan, a top speed of just 222 kilometers per hour, and an endurance of about a day at altitudes above five thousand meters. Those figures place it neatly in the medium-altitude, long-endurance, or MALE, category, and it can carry smart bombs, anti-tank missiles, laser-guided rockets, and more across its four hardpoints. An exact price is hard to pin down, but a single unit appears to cost around five million dollars—an excellent deal given its capabilities. The drone's low speed yields a low radar cross-section, and with hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, of flight hours logged across its operators, it has proven highly dependable and effective in combat. The Bayraktar drones do not just perform well; they proliferate. With at least six hundred TB-2 models in operation globally, they have reached a remarkable range of operators. They played a major role in the Second Libyan Civil War on behalf of the internationally recognized Libyan government, shooting down large cargo planes, destroying bases and troop columns under the warlord Khalifa Haftar, and helping turn Haftar's major 2019 offensive into a stalemate. In Azerbaijan, they destroyed artillery and tanks during the 2020 Nagorno-Karabakh War. In Ethiopia, the government has used them, including in attacks that killed dozens of civilians. Across Africa's Sahel, they are widely used against Islamist militants, where governments appreciate working with a more lenient Turkey rather than meeting the geopolitical and humanitarian conditions attached to US or EU providers. They also played a critical role in the early months of Ukraine's defense against Russia in 2022, where the TB-2 quickly became a morale-boosting symbol of resistance. TB-2s streamed in from international benefactors, and though Russia's improving air defenses have blunted their effectiveness, there is hope that the arrival of F-16s and other vital air equipment will get Ukraine's remaining TB-2s back into the skies. ## Iran's Shahed and the Rise of the Suicide Drone Then there is Iran, where the Shahed series has seen wide international use and gained international notoriety. Several members of the family warrant attention. The Shahed 129 is essentially a knockoff of the American MQ-1 Predator, capable of a full day's flight and generally regarded as a potent weapon. It has seen action in the Syrian Civil War, been provided to Hezbollah in Lebanon, and supplied in several dozen units to Russia for strikes over Ukraine. Within Iran it is viewed as the backbone of future large-scale drone operations, though its current fleet size is unknown. The Saegheh, or Thunderbolt, subseries is a flying-wing design believed to be used for reconnaissance, which has drawn Russian attention and appeared in the skies over Israel. The Shahed 238 is a newer, turbojet-powered drone whose full capabilities are not yet known, meant to drop munitions on targets below. But it is the Shahed 136 that has drawn the most attention. With a low build cost somewhere between ten and fifty-five thousand dollars per unit—and an unknown total produced—it is a suicide drone using a pusher-prop engine and a narrow delta wing to drive forward at a minimum speed of 185 kilometers per hour. It weighs roughly 200 kilograms, can fly as far as 2,500 kilometers, and carries a 50-kilogram warhead capable of immense destruction on the ground. Its low cost and ease of production have made it a favorite of the Houthi rebels in Yemen, Iran's proxy forces in Syria, and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps during attacks on Iraqi Kurdistan. Most significant of all is the Shahed 136's use by Russia—first the Iranian-made version, then a Russian-built model called the Geran-2. The Geran-2 is made of fiberglass and carbon fiber and uses Russian internal systems and munitions. Russia has launched hundreds of these drones against Ukraine, including wave attacks of dozens at a time against the Ukrainian power grid and the capital, Kyiv. Their slow speed, low flying altitude, and small size make them very hard to catch on the radar carried aboard Ukrainian aircraft, and Ukraine has gone to great lengths to find interceptor systems that can handle them. So far, the best solution seems to be shooting them down with Soviet-era machine guns. ## The Loyal Wingman and the High-Tech Path Though cheap drones have been the real game-changer in modern battles, one advance belongs firmly to the technological frontier: the so-called Loyal Wingman. It is an integral part of the United States' plans to introduce a sixth-generation fighter jet, upgrade its bomber fleet to the B-21 Raider, and further modernize its current fleet of F-35 Lightning aircraft. The concept is that when next-generation fighters take to the sky, they will not fly alone. Each will be accompanied by two autonomous wingman drones able to fly just as fast, just as far, and just as stealthily as the piloted aircraft they escort. With these Loyal Wingmen, the US military hopes to more than triple the firepower of its current fighters, using the drones' internal bays alongside the aircraft's own to carry missiles, bombs, and other munitions while staying stealthy. As of now, the plan calls for acquiring one thousand drones, pairing two each to 200 next-generation fighters and 300 F-35s. The drones are unlikely to keep up in a dogfight for the time being—that is probably a goal for far down the road—but in the meantime they open tactics unthinkable with human pilots, running highly dangerous missions or even throwing themselves in front of incoming enemy missiles as a last resort. ## Drone Warfare at Sea For all the advances in consumer drones, affordable military drones, and Loyal Wingmen, the story is not finished—because it has not yet touched the drones that were never meant to fly. Begin with the sea drone, which before 2022 was a concept mostly reserved for remotely operated exploration or maintenance craft—surveying the sea floor, inspecting undersea pipelines—or for military tasks like mine-clearing well away from active combat. That changed with the Russian invasion of Ukraine, when sea drones took on a far more aggressive role in and around the Black Sea. These craft typically consist of a low-lying hull, a top-mounted camera, an enclosed compartment packed with explosives, and a detonator. They are not vessels anyone would want to ride, which is just as well, since their entire purpose is to get as close as possible to the hull of an enemy ship and explode. They beam images back to handlers on land, putter slowly toward a target on their own, then hand off to remote operators for a final mad dash. Sitting so low they are practically underwater, too small to leave much of a wake, and painted black to vanish into the night, these naval drones were both a massive surprise to Russian forces and very difficult to counter even after they became a constant presence. They are relatively cheap—roughly $250,000 apiece—and easily crowdfunded and built from off-the-shelf parts, minus the high explosives. They are especially dangerous in swarm attacks, overwhelming the limited anti-boarding guns carried on most Russian ships, and they have figured in several major strikes on Russian naval targets. They have effectively deterred Russia from parts of the Black Sea and forced operational changes in how the Russian navy conducts itself. Russia has tried to build its own sea drones with some success, but for now these weapons remain a decisively Ukrainian phenomenon. They may not stay that way for long. International experts broadly agree that sea drone technology is still mostly experimental, but its clear effectiveness has caught the attention of global militaries and opened the door to an arms race nobody anticipated. It is one of those blind spots that looks unmissable in hindsight, yet low-tech, unsophisticated sea drones were the last thing on most navies' minds—including when they designed new and very expensive vessels. Major navies like those of the United States, the United Kingdom, and China will now have to think differently, because a warship that can be sunk by the grown-up version of a remote-controlled bathtub speedboat presents a serious problem. Assuming Ukraine remains a sovereign nation in some form by the end of its war with Russia, it is likely to emerge as a global leader in maritime drone technology. Its first-generation attack drones remain in heavy use alongside an arsenal that appears to grow by the day: weaponized jet-skis, suicide boats built for greater maneuverability or to dodge anti-drone fire, and craft carrying heavier munitions able to punch through seriously reinforced hulls. Ukraine is also developing submersible explosive drones—some fast with small charges, some slow with very large ones. And Ukrainian veterans will be in demand, since they are currently the only people on Earth with experience using naval attack drones at large scale, expertise that will matter greatly to other countries entering the game. ## Robots on the Ground Alongside drones of the air and sea come UGVs—unmanned ground vehicles, defined loosely as anything with wheels that can blow up. They take many forms, from heavily armored tank-like machines to fast, quickly deployed drones to small devices that scurry like mice. They are already well developed outside the military sphere, used in search and rescue, firefighting, nuclear response, mining, manufacturing, agriculture, and more. As offensive military tools, though, they have been largely overlooked, developed instead for explosives disposal, search-and-rescue, and defensive or limited-offensive guard duty. That is beginning to change. Offensive UGVs have captured growing attention from militaries and arms manufacturers. The Type-X, revealed in 2020 by the Estonian robotics firm Milrem, looks like a tank because it essentially is one—able to mount high-caliber autocannons, mortars, surface-to-air missiles, and more, placing it well above most infantry fighting vehicles if not quite at the level of a manned heavy tank. There is also the Ripsaw series from the American firm Howe & Howe Technologies, which spent decades struggling to land a US military order but has produced an impressive latest iteration. Fully autonomous, all-electric, and armed with a Bushmaster II chain-gun and two anti-tank guided missiles, the Ripsaw M5 is undergoing experimental testing with the US Army. It is being designed so it can be controlled from modified manned Army vehicles—an on-the-ground version of the Loyal Wingman concept. The Type-X, the Ripsaw, and other experimental tank-like UGVs are inching toward production, pointing to a future in which mechanized armies can send heavy armor into harm's way without risking their crews. Once again, though, it is not just bigger and better robots that may make the difference on land. A few nations have begun at least tentatively exploring technologies to convert older tanks, trucks, Humvees, and even smaller vehicles into autonomous or remotely operated drones, turning large stockpiles of outdated surplus into kamikaze weapons like those already seen in the air and at sea. Consider the fifth-generation Toyota Hilux, the stuff of legend for insurgencies, militias, and land-holding terror organizations for nearly five decades. Several million fifth-generation Hiluxes are spread across the world, not counting the older models that defined the very real Toyota War fought between Chad and Libya in the 1980s. Nobody is eager to drive the ones still running, but they can be packed full of explosives and driven remotely into a reinforced target with serious battlefield effect. Replicate that with other abundant but outdated vehicles—military jeeps, trucks, even old tanks due to be scrapped—and the result is a weapon that nearly every nation with a military could eventually field. ## Two Diverging Futures Evolutions in drone-based warfighting appear to be heading down two simultaneous but diverging paths. One is about technological advancement: making bigger, more sophisticated, more capable, and more heavily armed drones that can augment or replace the cutting-edge manned hardware already in the field. The other is far more utilitarian: building the highest possible number of autonomous vehicles for the least possible money, machines that can deliver battlefield success while sacrificing as few troops as possible. On the utilitarian side, miniaturization, assembly-line readiness, and indigenous production appear to be what matter most. A drone need not be big, clunky, or sophisticated to be transformative. One just a meter across that can fly fast, low, and quiet for a hundred kilometers before striking a target would be a major advance in its own right. So would a flying-wing drone light enough to toss into the air by hand yet able to stay aloft for weeks, beaming images back to its handlers. A cheap, small drone that can deliver a chemical or nuclear weapon suddenly has the potential to do the work of a B-2 bomber or a Dreadnought-class submarine at a tiny fraction of the cost. And drones built from parts, expertise, and infrastructure sourced at home rather than abroad give both nations and non-state actors the ability to choose their own destiny and gain air power without relying on more powerful backers. On the side of technological advancement, the coming decades will be about discovering just what AI, machine learning, and other emerging technologies can do when fully unleashed. Beyond the difficult ethical questions of allowing killer robots to take human lives lies the open question of how advanced this technology can really become. Could future warfare see autonomous tanks roll across grassy battlefields, or entire drone battleships coordinating every weapon and system in perfect synchronicity? And what does it mean for the world when one or a few nations can field such weapons, fully insulating their troops from harm, while everyone else cannot? Whatever humanity's eventual course, one thing is certain. Drone technology is not merely here to stay—it is here to take over, and as it does it will fundamentally change the way war works. What we now call modern warfare is modern only until the next technological revolution arrives, sweeping away the weapons and war machines bequeathed by the last one. The cycle will continue, as it always has, and where it takes us will not be known until we arrive. ## Frequently Asked Questions ### What sparked the recent drone warfare revolution if drones themselves are not new? Not a new technology or tactic, but cost and miniaturization. Drones have existed since before the end of World War I, but only in the late 2010s did mass production and miniaturized components make capable quadcopters available for a couple thousand dollars. That economic shift, not any single breakthrough, made expendable drone warfare possible. ### Why is cost considered the decisive factor over capability? A single new F-16 costs around $30 million, plus roughly $27,000 per flight hour and heavy maintenance demands. For that same price, a force could buy sixty thousand or more high-quality quadcopters, each with a several-kilometer range, a camera, and a payload of up to a couple kilograms. Even fitted with a half-kilo of C4, these drones are more maneuverable, harder to detect, and fully expendable. ### Which countries lead in affordable, effective military drones? Turkey and Iran. Turkey's Bayraktar TB-2 costs around five million dollars and has tilted conflicts in Libya, Nagorno-Karabakh, the Sahel, and early-war Ukraine. Iran's Shahed line, especially the Shahed 136 suicide drone at ten to fifty-five thousand dollars per unit, has been used heavily by Russia — reproduced domestically as the Geran-2 — in wave attacks against Kyiv and the Ukrainian power grid. ### How have naval drones changed warfare in the Black Sea? Ukrainian sea drones — low-lying explosive boats costing about $250,000 each, painted black and built from off-the-shelf parts — surprised Russian forces and proved hard to counter. Especially dangerous in swarms, they have struck several Russian naval targets, deterred Russia from parts of the Black Sea, and forced changes in how the Russian navy operates. ### What is the Loyal Wingman concept? It is the United States' plan to pair next-generation fighters with autonomous drone escorts able to match their speed, range, and stealth. 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The Battle of Crete: Nazi Germany's Costliest Airborne Victory

Simon Whistler — Tue, 02 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

In May 1941, Adolf Hitler's confidence was sky-high. Much of Europe had already been steamrolled: the British cowering on their island, the French browbeaten and hopeless, the Americans still unwilling to join a conflict so far from home. For the German Führer, everything he touched seemed to turn to gold. With his armies massing on the border of the Soviet Union to begin Operation Barbarossa the following month, Hitler had a little housekeeping to do in Europe before launching the largest invasion in history. His focus lay on the strategically vital island of Crete, a hub for trade and movement for thousands of years and an important stepping stone toward strengthening his grip across Southern Europe and Northern Africa. With fewer than 60,000 Allied troops on the island after a frantic and chaotic evacuation of mainland Greece, few held much hope that they could hold off the Nazi juggernaut for long. It was supposed to be routine. Yet although the German invasion ultimately succeeded, it was anything but straightforward. In just the first three days of the Battle of Crete, German losses were higher than in every other conflict the Wehrmacht had taken part in combined. A combination of uncharacteristically shambolic German planning, stern defence by Greek and Allied soldiers, and ferocious resistance by the Cretan people turned the operation into a nightmare for the invaders — and for the first time, they were met with mass defiance from the local population. The Battle of Crete may have ended in a German conquest, but it was the moment the myth of Nazi invincibility first began to crack. ## Key Takeaways - Crete fell to a German airborne invasion in May 1941, but the operation cost the Wehrmacht its heaviest losses of the war to that point, with estimates ranging from 5,000–6,000 to over 10,000 killed or wounded. - Germany had attempted only one major airborne assault before Crete — the April 1940 seizure of Aalborg Airport in Denmark — and its success was used to justify the far larger gamble over the Mediterranean island. - Major-General Bernard Freyberg, despite Enigma intelligence from Bletchley Park warning of an airborne attack, stuck to his belief that the invasion would come from the sea, leaving Maleme Airfield under-defended. - A communication breakdown caused Allied troops to abandon Hill 107 and Maleme Airfield overnight, handing the Germans the foothold that ultimately decided the battle. - Cretan civilians — men, women, and even children — joined the fighting with pitchforks, clubs, knives, and antique rifles, the first mass civilian uprising the Germans had faced since Poland in 1939. - Just over 18,000 Allied troops were evacuated to Egypt before the surrender on 1 June 1941, while German reprisals against the Cretans killed thousands during a brutal occupation lasting three and a half years. - Crete forced Hitler to commit far more troops to garrison the island than he wanted, eventually weakening his position in Northern Africa. ## The Fall of Greece The invasion of Greece had initially been placed in the hands of Hitler's ally Benito Mussolini — or rather, the Führer's fascist friend had taken it upon himself to conquer nearby Greece. But the Italian army's venture south brought new meaning to the word shambolic. After a final demand to cede territory was rejected by the Greek Prime Minister, Mussolini ordered his troops across the Albanian-Greek border on 28th October. Within a matter of weeks, the poorly equipped, inadequately trained, and hopelessly out-of-their-depth Italians had been halted and gradually pushed back across the border. It was the first major fascist setback of the entire war, and it enraged Adolf Hitler. When Britain began reinforcing the beleaguered Greek army, Hitler took this as a direct threat to the southern flank of his expanding sphere. Bulgaria had joined the Axis cause in March 1941, and German troops began moving into the region. On 6th April 1941, Germany launched Operation Marita. While the Italians had toiled for months in the mountains of northern Greece, Hitler's force — numbering some 680,000 — smashed its way south with devastating effect. By the end of the month, Athens had fallen, and the Greeks, along with a sizable portion of the remaining British, Australian, and New Zealand troops, had surrendered. ## Waiting for the Inevitable The German invasion of Crete was not a surprise. After bulldozing their way through Greece in a matter of weeks, there was no way Hitler would allow a rebellious outpost to remain — especially as the island now harboured just under 25,000 Allied soldiers and the fleeing Greek royal family. It was an open secret what was coming, though there was plenty of confusion over how and where the invasion would arrive. An amphibious assault would have been the preferred choice, but with the Royal Navy's ships prowling the area, Hitler and his commanders deemed it impractical and unworkable. Instead, with enormous air superiority in the region, an airborne invasion was chosen as the route onto Crete. The images of vast numbers of paratroopers descending into Northern France on D-Day are now familiar, but in the spring of 1941, that kind of assault had scarcely been tried. In fact, Nazi Germany had only one major airborne operation under its belt at this stage of the war. On 9th April 1940, German paratroopers had landed in Denmark to take control of Aalborg Airport in the country's north. It had been a remarkably successful operation, and its achievement was used to promote similar action on Crete. ## A Defence Built on Helmets and Hope From the 30th of April, when mainland Greece fell, Allied troops and their Greek defenders had nearly seven weeks to prepare as best they could for what they knew was inevitable. Progress, however, was hampered for several reasons. The Luftwaffe repeatedly targeted ships carrying supplies to the island, sinking many, but operational decisions also failed to make the most of the time available. In war, it is a little unfair to blame individuals who no doubt believed they were doing what was best. Yet the decisions of Major-General Bernard Freyberg, the man who oversaw the Allied forces on Crete, were far from perfect in hindsight. Despite several messages from the Enigma decoders at Bletchley Park indicating that the Germans would carry out an airborne attack, Freyberg stuck stubbornly and firmly to his theory that the invasion would come from the sea. This conviction led to several key points being left under-defended, most notably the airfield at Maleme. Instead of concentrating strength there, Allied troops were stationed across other areas of Crete, often staring out to sea, searching for ships that would never come. With the clock ticking down, Allied and Greek forces did what they could to reinforce their positions — but it was always a hopeless situation. The chaotic evacuation of mainland Greece had left behind much of the equipment and heavy artillery needed for any kind of formidable defence. Conditions were so bad that soldiers had to dig trenches and foxholes with their helmets rather than regulation shovels. Supplies and ammunition were low, as was morale after the chastening experience on the mainland. These well-trained soldiers would fight on regardless of the circumstances, but few were optimistic about success. ## The Invasion Begins When German bombers stopped bombing Crete and commenced taking reconnaissance pictures instead, it was clear that the invasion would be airborne. Shortly before 8 a.m. on 20th May 1941, a legion of Junkers Ju 52 aircraft appeared above Crete, and within minutes, thousands of paratroopers were drifting slowly down towards the Greek island. Almost everything had gone right for the Nazis up until that point in the war, but this is where things began to go very badly. Casualties were appallingly high, often with almost entire regiments wiped out. The next stage of the invasion involved gliders, which proved equally disastrous. When the gliders did manage to land, they were quickly set upon by Allied or Greek troops — or by the fearsome Cretan citizens themselves. The slow, vulnerable descent of the paratroopers turned the opening hours into a slaughter. Men who had been promised a routine operation found themselves drifting helplessly into concentrated fire, and those who survived the landing often touched down scattered, disoriented, and separated from their weapons. For the elite Fallschirmjäger, Crete was meant to be a showcase of German airborne power. Instead, it became a graveyard for some of the Reich's finest troops. ## The People of Crete Rise Up Before going any further with the invasion, it is worth dwelling on the everyday men and women — and even children — who put up a monumental fight against the invading Nazi horde. From the start of the war until then, the Germans had faced very few, if any, major civilian uprisings. The soldiers of many nations had fought them hard, but when it came to non-combatants, open fighting was practically unheard of, with the only real exception being areas of Poland in 1939. As German paratroopers drifted down from the sky, many Cretan civilians grabbed whatever they could — often pitchforks, clubs, knives, or antique rifles — and rushed forward. One story tells of an elderly man clubbing a paratrooper to death with his walking stick as the German attempted to untangle himself from his parachute. Another recounts a young boy and a priest who broke into a nearby museum to retrieve a gun used in the Balkan Wars of the century's first decade, then began shooting at the descending invaders. These were not isolated incidents; they occurred throughout the zones targeted by the Germans. Not only did the invaders have to contend with the Allied forces and the Greek soldiers fighting for their homeland, but the savagery and determination shown by the Cretan people stayed with them long after they had gained a foothold on the island. ## Mistakes and Consolidation As night fell on the 20th of May, the Germans were just about holding on but had failed to secure almost all of their objectives. The most important had been the capture of Maleme Airfield, which would have allowed a steady flow of resupply and reinforcement. Instead, it had been bravely defended by the 21st, 22nd, and 23rd New Zealand battalions. For many of the Germans, the situation was dire. A significant number had lost their weapons while descending, or had been unable to retrieve weaponry parachuted separately, leaving them defenceless and reliant on others. When darkness came, those hardy German soldiers knew a concentrated counterattack would easily overrun their positions. This was one of those sliding-doors moments. Had the Allied soldiers counterattacked the following morning, or even during the night, most historians believe they would have succeeded, and the vital airfield could have been held. This may well have been fatal for the entire invasion, because everything that came next flowed through Maleme Airfield. As fate would have it for the Germans, Allied soldiers withdrew from Hill 107 overnight, leaving Maleme undefended. This order has been debated ever since. A communication breakdown meant that one sector presumed the other had been overrun, when it was, in fact, standing firm. As a result, the eastern section of Allied troops withdrew under cover of darkness, with the west not realising they had gone until morning — when they followed suit because they could not hold the line alone. While this might seem like an enormous blunder — and to some degree it was — the situation was at least understandable. These soldiers were running dangerously low on ammunition and supplies, while daybreak would bring renewed airstrikes from the Luftwaffe. Even so, it is difficult to imagine that the weak German positions could not have been taken had the two sectors communicated properly and attacked together. Instead, doubtless to their disbelief, the Germans woke to find Maleme Airfield undefended and walked freely in. It was a stroke of unbelievable luck that swung the entire battle in their favour. Immediately, German reinforcements began arriving and fortifying their invaluable new position. Two separate Allied counterattacks over the next two days came to nothing, again with more than an element of misunderstanding and missed opportunity. The primary reason was that the Allies were now fighting on multiple fronts. An amphibious landing of German troops was repulsed by the Royal Navy, a pattern that repeated in the days that followed. Casualties and losses of aircraft and ships mounted on both sides, as the Royal Navy did what it could to keep the Kriegsmarine — supported by the Italian Navy — at bay. The Germans later had more success when they ingeniously beached a wooden ship carrying two Panzer tanks, which immediately rumbled into the thick of the action. After just over a week of fighting, the Germans had consolidated their positions, reinforced them with fresh troops, and pushed the Allies and Greeks southward. ## Full Retreat and Evacuation Despite holding a numerical advantage, the Allies had missed their opportunity. With more paratroops and mountain troops arriving on Crete, the German tide became unstoppable. Yet this surge did not go unchecked, and both the Allies and the Greeks put up a hell of a defence to allow for a full retreat. The fighting around Kastelli, west of Maleme, had been ferocious from the very start. Greek civilians joined the remaining Greek soldiers en masse in a heroic last stand, but with few weapons and a dwindling ammunition reserve, they were no match for the marauding German army. Conditions grew significantly worse for the citizens of Kastelli when the town fell. This area had seen some of the most concerted fighting by the civilian population, and when German troops arrived and found paratroopers still hanging from the trees — killed instantly where they fell — their retribution was horrific. Two hundred Greek male hostages were executed, and worse was to come for the soon-defeated Cretans. With the battle increasingly hopeless, Allied troops poured southward, where a planned evacuation would transport soldiers across the Mediterranean to Egypt. The problem was that the speed of the German advance left little space for manoeuvre — it was the kind of situation that called for one of those courageous sacrifices so often dramatised in films. What came next became known as the Battle of 42nd Street. ## The Battle for 42nd Street Allied troops were now in full retreat, but it was a retreat that needed covering to give the bulk of the forces enough time to reach the southern shore. On the 27th of May, several severely understrength and badly battered Australian and New Zealand infantry battalions formed a defence line along the Hania-to-Tsikalaria road, southeast of Chania on the north coast. The location had been where the 42nd Field Company of the Royal Engineers had recently camped, hence the nickname. As the German 5th Alpine Division drew closer, orders to halt them at all costs were given. The first German unit to arrive was the 1st Battalion of the 141st Gebirgsjäger Regiment, numbering around 400 men. The exact details of what came next are a little sketchy, but there are reports of either one or several Maori soldiers standing up and roaring out the Ka Mate — the song that accompanies the Haka — before rushing forward, soon joined by others around them. In an act of war heroism worthy of any Hollywood film, the Australian and New Zealand battalions bayonet-charged the Germans, driving them back nearly a mile and killing more than half the Gebirgsjäger Regiment. Forty Anzac soldiers died in the attack, which many agree was the most effective counterattack by Allied troops during the entire battle — particularly remarkable considering these were men at the very edge of their physical and mental endurance. In the grand scheme of things, it was a minor success. But the resulting delay is thought to have allowed nearly 12,000 Allied troops to be evacuated from the island. Such was the ferocity of the skirmish that the Germans actually attempted to bring war-crime charges against those who had taken part, claiming that soldiers who had wanted to surrender were killed. Unsurprisingly, those charges never stuck. ## Surrender and the Cost of Resistance Just over 18,000 Allied troops were successfully evacuated from Crete before the final surrender on 1st June, with around 12,000 still on the island when it finally fell. Many were taken prisoner, though some disappeared into the mountains to join the partisans — a story so enthralling it probably deserves an account all its own. The brave resistance on Crete continued throughout the entire war, with sabotage and killings that infuriated Adolf Hitler. He eventually had to deploy as many as 100,000 German troops to subdue an island less than half the size of Wales, or twice the size of Rhode Island. The exact number of Germans killed or wounded during the invasion remains unclear; some say 5,000 to 6,000, while others place the figure at over 10,000. Whatever the true number, it was dramatically higher than anything the Germans had experienced up to that point in the war. The retribution handed out to the Cretans for daring to resist was frequently horrifying. The village of Kandanos was razed entirely, and 180 citizens were murdered on 3rd June. This had been the site of some of the bravest civilian fighting, but the chilling message left by the Germans said it all: "Here stood Kandanos, destroyed in retribution for the murder of 25 German soldiers, never to be rebuilt again." Massacres took place across the island, concentrated mainly in the regions where the civilians' defence had been most robust and bloody. Two thousand Cretans were executed in the first month of occupation alone, with another 25,000 killed during the three-and-a-half-year occupation. ## What Crete Cost Hitler What effect the battle had on the German war machine has long been debated. Some argue it delayed Hitler's invasion of Russia, which eventually caused its failure. However, it seems the date for Operation Barbarossa had been agreed upon long before the invasion of Crete — although plans were adjusted in light of the near-catastrophic failure of the airborne assault. It may not have greatly affected Barbarossa itself, but it seems clear that Hitler was forced to keep more troops on Crete than he wanted, eventually weakening his position in Northern Africa. Yet it was not timelines or troop numbers that were most affected. The German Army had gone into Crete with an air of invincibility after easily sweeping all before it. Whether nations would freely admit it or not, facing the Germans had carried an aura of tragic inevitability — and that all changed after Crete. What happened on this tiny Mediterranean island was a chastening experience for the German Army, the Luftwaffe, and the Kriegsmarine alike. They may have succeeded, but they did so battered, bleeding, and by the skin of their teeth. The horror of Stalingrad was still to come, but the Battle of Crete had cracked the myth of German invincibility for the very first time. ## Frequently Asked Questions ### Why did Germany invade Crete by air rather than by sea? An amphibious assault was the preferred option, but the Royal Navy's ships were prowling the waters around Crete, and Hitler and his commanders deemed a seaborne landing impractical and unworkable. With enormous air superiority in the region, an airborne invasion was chosen as the route onto the island instead. ### Why was Maleme Airfield so important to the battle? Maleme Airfield was the key to a steady flow of German reinforcements and resupply. When Allied troops withdrew from Hill 107 overnight following a communication breakdown, the airfield was left undefended. The Germans walked in freely, and everything that decided the battle afterward flowed through Maleme — a stroke of luck that swung the entire campaign in their favour. ### What role did Cretan civilians play in the fighting? Cretan civilians — men, women, and even children — joined the fight with pitchforks, clubs, knives, and antique rifles. One account tells of an elderly man clubbing a paratrooper to death with his walking stick; another of a boy and a priest who broke into a museum to retrieve a Balkan Wars-era gun. It was the first mass civilian uprising the Germans had faced since Poland in 1939. ### What was the Battle of 42nd Street? On 27th May, understrength Australian and New Zealand battalions formed a defence line along the Hania-to-Tsikalaria road, southeast of Chania, named after the 42nd Field Company of the Royal Engineers who had camped there. They bayonet-charged the German 141st Gebirgsjäger Regiment, drove them back nearly a mile, and killed more than half the regiment. Forty Anzac soldiers died, and the delay is thought to have allowed nearly 12,000 Allied troops to be evacuated. ### Did the Battle of Crete delay Operation Barbarossa? Historians have long debated this. The invasion date for Barbarossa appears to have been agreed upon before the assault on Crete, though plans were adjusted after the airborne operation's near-catastrophic failure. The clearer consequence was that Hitler was forced to keep more troops garrisoning Crete than he wanted, which eventually weakened his position in Northern Africa.

The Battle of Hong Kong: The British Empire's Humiliation

Simon Whistler — Tue, 02 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

From the 7th to the 8th of December 1941, an apocalyptic onslaught began to sweep across East Asia as the Imperial Japanese military launched a grand, multi-fronted offensive across the region. The US Navy base at Pearl Harbor was famously targeted on that day, but so too were the Philippines, British Malaya, Thailand, the Dutch East Indies, numerous smaller islands scattered across the Pacific, and British Hong Kong. The campaign was, put simply, devastating. At Pearl Harbor, 19 US Navy ships were damaged or destroyed. The Philippines fell in five months, Malaya in two, Thailand in less than a day, the Dutch East Indies in three months, and those countless small islands in a matter of days. As for Hong Kong, it did not even last three weeks. The colony's vastly outnumbered and outgunned defenders held out until Christmas Day, when their valiant defense finally broke and they were forced to raise the white flag. For the British, this was not just a defeat. It was a humiliation, and that uncomfortable fact has made the Battle of Hong Kong, or rather how it should be remembered today, a contentious point among historians. What follows traces not only the story of the battle itself, but the wider argument it has provoked, so that the colony's fall can be not merely known but understood. This article presents both the narrative of those 17 days and the debate over whether the outcome was ever in doubt, drawing on the strategic, geographic, and political pressures that converged on a single rocky outpost off the southern coast of China. ## Key Takeaways - Hong Kong was one of several territories struck simultaneously when Imperial Japan launched its grand Pacific offensive on the 7th–8th of December 1941, alongside Pearl Harbor, the Philippines, Malaya, Thailand, and the Dutch East Indies. - The colony held out for just 17 days, with its defenders forced to surrender on Christmas Day 1941 after running low on men and being told no help was coming. - The defenders, around 14,564 troops under Major General Christopher Maltby, were heavily outnumbered by Lieutenant-General Takaishi Sakai's 26,928 battle-hardened soldiers, many of them veterans of the war in China. - The Gin Drinker's Line, a thinly built defensive line across the New Territories meant to buy at least a week, was breached at the heavily fortified Shing Mun Redoubt in a single night and collapsed in roughly a day. - Historians remain divided over whether the colony could have been saved, with explanations ranging from British arrogance and rigid doctrine to global overstretch and Hong Kong's exposed geographic position. - The fall ushered in three years and eight months of Japanese occupation; Hong Kong's population fell from 1,639,000 in 1941 to barely 600,000 by 1945. ## A Symbol of Power and a Point of Vulnerability To understand the invasion of Hong Kong, one must first trace the confluence of economic, political, and military trends that culminated in the battle. In 1941, the British Empire, the largest the world had ever seen, was the world's preeminent power. Hong Kong, a crown colony since 1842 following the Treaty of Nanking, was a symbol of that power in East Asia and a bustling international trade hub. Yet its location cut both ways. Sitting off China's southern coast, the colony's strategic position made it both an asset and a vulnerability. It was a fine place to trade and to station warships, but it was very far from home and surrounded by increasingly powerful nations. The same geography that made Hong Kong valuable also left it dangerously exposed, a contradiction that would prove decisive when war finally arrived. Chief among those rising powers was Japan, which, in parallel with the British Empire's high noon, was emerging as the dominant force in East Asia. The Meiji Restoration of 1868 had set the island nation on a rapid course of modernization and industrialization, and victories in the Russo-Japanese War of 1904 to 1905, along with the annexation of Korea in 1910, had given it a taste of imperial ambition that it found most palatable. ## Japan's March Toward War By the 1930s, Japan had shifted its imperial gaze toward mainland China, driven by a quest for resources and the supposed ethos of Pan-Asianism, which advocated for Asian liberation from Western colonial rule, though under Japanese leadership of course. Manchuria, a region in north-eastern China, was the first to be targeted, falling under Japanese control in 1932 after being invaded the previous year. But this was merely an opening course. It would not be until 1937, after the Marco Polo Bridge Incident, that Japan attempted to fully satisfy its hunger for Chinese land, beginning a full-scale invasion of China proper. This initially went well, and the Japanese military swept down the coast of China, which in turn soon brought it face-to-face with the western powers. Its new borders met those of British Hong Kong and Portuguese Macau on the south coast. Trade embargoes from the West soon followed as a response to Japanese aggression, with the United States, Britain, and the Netherlands imposing severe economic sanctions, including a critical oil embargo. Japan, reliant on imports for its industrial economy, viewed these embargoes as a stranglehold, and it began to consider more direct solutions to sourcing its precious oil. These considerations were only strengthened by the international situation. By 1941 Europe was in turmoil. The Netherlands had fallen, and Britain appeared on the verge of sharing the same fate. There would likely never be a better moment to strike at the European colonies in Asia, and so, if Japan was serious about taking the resources it needed by force, the time was now. ## Hong Kong in the Crosshairs Japan devised a bold, multi-pronged strategy to strike simultaneously at multiple territories in the Pacific, intending to take them all out of the picture in one go. Thus Hong Kong found itself in Japan's crosshairs. The colony itself had little to no resources worth claiming, but the strategic logic of seizing it was hard to ignore. If Japan was serious about throwing the Europeans out of the Pacific, leaving the British a staging post that led straight into the soft underbelly of its Chinese holdings hardly seemed prudent. On top of that, Hong Kong was one of the best-developed ports in the region, and claiming it for themselves certainly would not harm the Japanese war effort. And so the die was cast. Japanese troops began massing on the border in early December and waited for the calendar to turn over to the 8th, the appointed start of the operation. The defenders, for their part, knew something was coming but could only guess at how soon, or how hard, the blow would fall. ## The Opposing Commanders Leading the offensive was Lieutenant-General Takaishi Sakai, a seasoned officer with years of experience commanding troops in China. Under his command were 26,928 troops, most of them hardened veterans with their own fair share of combat experience in China. Supporting his efforts in the sky were 47 planes, and at sea he had access to one cruiser, three destroyers, four torpedo boats, and three small gunboats. Opposing Sakai was Major General Christopher Michael Maltby, commander of the British forces and himself also a seasoned officer. Maltby had served both on the Western Front during World War I and in India during the inter-war years. He was no armchair general either, as attested to by his being awarded the Military Cross for gallantry and being thrice mentioned in dispatches during World War I. Under his command was a modest 14,564 troops. His was a most diverse force, comprised of Britons from the Royal Scots and Middlesex Regiments, Canadians from the Royal Rifles of Canada and Winnipeg Grenadiers, Indians from the 7th Rajput and 14th Punjab Regiments, and Chinese, split between the Hong Kong Chinese Regiment and the Hong Kong Volunteer Defence Corps. Unfortunately for Maltby, unlike Sakai, many of his troops were unproven in combat. Some, like the Royal Scots, had fought in France in 1940, but others, like the 14th Punjab's, had not seen combat since World War I, with only some of its senior officers having any combat experience at all. As for supporting units, Maltby had access to only five planes, one destroyer, four gunboats, and eight motor torpedo boats. ## The Invasion Begins Maltby was well aware that the Japanese were planning an attack. Both his own border forces and intelligence from occupied China had reported a significant build-up of Japanese troops around Shenzhen. The question was not if, but when. His answer came at 4:45 a.m. on the 8th of December, when Radio Tokyo proclaimed across the airwaves of Asia: "We hereby declare War on the United States of America and the British Empire." No fool, Maltby quickly put two and two together and deduced that the attack was imminent. Within 15 minutes of the declaration, his engineers were frantically at work in the New Territories, blowing up all the key infrastructure they could while they still could, with orders to retreat once the Japanese came into sight. They had little more than an hour, as the invasion began at 6 a.m. The Japanese plan was simple. The 228th, 229th, and 230th Infantry Regiments would spearhead the assault down through Kowloon, with the 228th taking the eastern route, the 229th the centre, and the 230th the west. As they advanced, an air raid was launched on Kai Tak Airport, the base of Maltby's meagre aerial forces, at 8 a.m. The attack was quick and devastating. In only one sortie, a squadron of four G3M medium bombers and eight Kawasaki Ki-32 light bombers completely destroyed all five of Maltby's aircraft and rendered the airport inoperable. Not that those aircraft would have made much difference. They consisted only of two Supermarine Walrus maritime patrol aircraft and three Vickers Vildebeest torpedo bombers, both chronically obsolete types that would have been little concern for the Japanese even if they had not been grossly outnumbered. ## The Gin Drinker's Line Maltby's forces did enjoy some initial success in repelling Sakai's push. The 14th Punjab held back the 228th's advance in the Tai Po district to the east. But this success was not uniform across the front, and with the 229th rapidly pushing deep into the New Territories, the 14th were forced to withdraw lest they be encircled and destroyed. They escaped by the skin of their teeth, narrowly avoiding encirclement. Eager to preserve his forces, Maltby forbade any more full-frontal engagements that day. Instead he ordered his men to harry the Japanese with hit-and-run tactics to slow their advance, then make a full retreat to the Gin Drinker's Line once the sun went down. The Gin Drinker's Line was a fortified defensive line that spanned 18 kilometres across the New Territories' thinnest point. If the name conjures images of the Maginot Line, those thoughts should be set aside. Rather than an impenetrable wall of bomb-proof concrete, it was instead a series of small bunkers, pillboxes, and fortified machine gun posts, interconnected by mostly dirt trenches that had been thrown together between 1936 and 1938. Still, it was better than nothing, and Maltby reasoned it would be his best chance of delaying the Japanese advance. Hong Kong's defense strategy at the time rested on delaying any attack until reinforcements could arrive. Tragically for Maltby, he was completely unaware that the whole of East Asia was in the same situation as him, and that therefore no help was coming. ## The Collapse of the Line The 9th of December saw a desperate attempt to hold the line. The Royal Scots, 7th Rajputs, and Hong Kong Volunteer Defence Corps took up positions across strategic points. After facing a surprisingly valiant defense throughout the day and failing to penetrate the line, Sakai decided to cut the head off the snake. He ordered the 228th to launch a surprise attack on Shing Mun Redoubt, the most fortified bunker on the line, in the dead of night with all of their numbers. The attack was absolutely devastating. Under the weight of hundreds of grenades and tens of thousands of bullets, the Redoubt fell under Japanese control in the early hours of the 10th. The rest of that day consisted of Maltby desperately trying to hold the remainder of the line and retake Shing Mun Redoubt, with the Royal Scots chosen to lead the assault. But it was to no avail. Lieutenant Colonel White, the officer in command of the Royal Scots, reported back to Maltby that it would be nothing short of suicidal to attempt to retake the Redoubt, and refused to attack. Consequently, the day ended with the line fully in Japanese hands. A fortification designed to buy Maltby at least a week of breathing space had barely lasted a day. ## The Retreat from Kowloon The 11th was back to old form for Maltby: desperately doing whatever he could to slow the Japanese advance toward the southern tip of Kowloon as he delayed the inevitable. Fighting was fierce across the whole front, with the 7th Rajputs and Royal Scots even managing to repel the Japanese for a time at Kam Shan. But victories like this were the exception to the rule, and Maltby had to accept the unfortunate fact that the Kowloon Peninsula was lost, or else see his entire force decimated. That acceptance came just after midday, when he called a full retreat from the peninsula, with all forces to fall back across Victoria Harbour to Hong Kong Island itself. What followed over the next two days was a fighting retreat to Tsim Tsa Tsui on the southern tip of Kowloon, with British units simply trying to preserve their numbers and put up just enough resistance to avoid being completely overwhelmed as they headed south. To begin with, the evacuation was calm enough. The first units to arrive, such as the Winnipeg Grenadiers, were ferried across the harbour via the Star Ferry in conditions that could almost be described as leisurely. But this quickly broke down as the Japanese advance rolled ever on. The last unit to cross, the 7th Rajputs, made a fierce scramble for anything that floated, be it ferry, sampan, or anything in between, all as Japanese bullets rained over them from only streets away. By daybreak on the 13th, all forces had been evacuated across the harbour, and the final stage of the battle could begin. ## The Desperate Defense of the Island On the morning of the 13th, Maltby, with the burden of command heavy on his shoulders, took a moment to review his situation. He knew the confines of Hong Kong Island were his last fortress against the relentless Japanese tide. But luckily, he reasoned, the island was at least a literal fortress as well as a proverbial one. Mountainous, rugged, and characterized by a maze of urban structures, it was a defensive dream. If held correctly, it had the potential to become the Japanese's worst nightmare. Sakai recognised this fact, and rather than sending his forces storming across the bay, he instead opted to set up artillery along the waterfront to soften the island up, bombarding key targets before assaulting it proper. Initially this was focused on large targets, the enormous fort-mounted naval guns that could do real damage if left unchecked. This proved largely successful, and by the close of the 14th, many of the 9.2-inch and 3-inch guns that adorned Mount Davis had been destroyed. With that threat largely neutralised, the Japanese artillery moved to target pillboxes and other smaller fortifications alongside the shoreline. They also launched six separate air raids against military sites on the west side of the island, forcing Pinewood Battery and its many guns to be abandoned. While this bombardment was underway, the Japanese tried to negotiate the surrender of the British garrison, sending delegations across the harbour on the 13th and 17th, both of which were politely told to go away. ## The Amphibious Assault On the 18th, with Hong Kong Island nicely softened up and a surrender clearly not forthcoming, the Japanese decided enough was enough and launched an amphibious assault across the harbour in the dead of night, making land at North Point. They quickly secured a foothold and penetrated further into the island, with the 229th and 230th reaching Causeway Bay and the Wong Nai Chung Gap respectively by the time day broke. This advance threatened to cut the island in half, a situation Maltby could not allow. He hastily ordered a counterattack, sending the Winnipeg Grenadiers and the Royal Rifles of Canada to retake the vital ground. The resulting fight was nothing short of brutal, with close-quarters combat unfolding tree by tree as they pushed into Wong Nai Chung Gap, and eventually street by street as they pushed into Wong Nai Chung Village itself. Eventually, however, the British were repelled and the Japanese held onto the Gap. This set a tragic precedent that would echo across the remainder of the battle: the Japanese would push the British further back and take yet another key strategic location, the British would attempt to counterattack and occasionally find some fleeting success, but ultimately fail to hold it. And Hong Kong Island is not exactly enormous. Maltby could only keep this up for so long until he reached breaking point. ## The Surrender on Christmas Day That breaking point came on Christmas Day. Maltby was down over 4,000 men, and having recently been given the heartbreaking news that no help was coming, he decided enough was enough. He raised the white flag rather than see all of his men slaughtered trying to delay the inevitable. He ordered his men to lay down their arms and approached a Japanese officer to discuss the terms of his surrender. Shortly afterwards he found himself in the Japanese headquarters on the third floor of the Peninsula Hotel, the very hotel whose bar he had often frequented before the invasion, and surrendered in person to Sakai. Thus ended the Battle of Hong Kong, 17 days after it had begun, and Hong Kong became the first British Crown Colony to fall to an invader. The symbolism of that surrender, in a hotel bar Maltby had once known in peacetime, captured the abrupt reversal of fortune. A colony that had stood as a monument to British power in East Asia had been overrun in less than three weeks, its garrison broken and its commander a prisoner. ## Analysing the Defeat Across the narrative of the Battle of Hong Kong runs an ever-present sense of inevitability, the idea that no matter what Maltby or his soldiers did, it was not a question of if they would lose, but when. This naturally raises a question: was the British defeat actually inevitable, and if so, why? To answer it, it is worth seeking the counsel of historians. Philip Snow, author of "The Fall of Hong Kong: Britain, China, and the Japanese Occupation," holds that the British defeat was caused by catastrophic misjudgements rooted in arrogance. He argues the British underestimated Japanese military prowess, a blunder manifest in the fact that Hong Kong's garrison was ill-prepared for a confrontation of such magnitude. He also points to the Gin Drinker's Line, which the British had three years after its completion to further improve, and yet completely failed to do so. Stephen R. MacKinnon takes a similar view but lays the blame not at the Gin Drinker's Line specifically, but in the British military's rigid doctrine generally. He argues that had they considered other tactical options, such as guerrilla warfare, Maltby might have at least prolonged his defense, if not changed the outcome entirely. ## The Case for and Against Inevitability In parallel with this train of thought, some historians believe that British complacency led to a diminishment of potential reinforcements. It has been argued that there existed an opportunity to garner greater support from Commonwealth allies, or even to entertain the thought of American aid. Such support might have bought the defenders additional time, potentially stalling the Japanese advance and leaving room for diplomatic manoeuvres. Not everyone is this optimistic, however, and many think that regardless of how the British tweaked their strategy and tactics, Hong Kong was inevitably doomed. One such thinker is Rana Mitter, a leading historian on Asia during World War II, who often emphasizes the undeniable strengths of the Japanese military apparatus at that time. He argues that the Japanese forces, having accumulated experience and tactical acumen from their ongoing war in China, were a formidable adversary. Their strategies were refined, and they enjoyed a clear numerical superiority. Given these advantages, Mitter argues that the British, even with better preparation, would have faced a herculean task in repelling the Japanese onslaught. Then there is Antony Beevor, renowned for his sweeping accounts of World War II. For Beevor, the British Empire was grappling with challenges on a global scale, battling the Axis powers on multiple fronts from North Africa to Southeast Asia. Given these expansive commitments, Hong Kong was but one of many concerns, and resources were inevitably spread thin. Beevor suggests that even if the British had committed more resources to Hong Kong's defence, they might have inadvertently weakened their position elsewhere, leading to potential defeats and more catastrophic losses in other critical theatres. Christopher Bayly, meanwhile, points to the geographical realities of the colony's location. Its proximity to Japanese-occupied territories in China afforded the Japanese logistical advantages, such as shorter supply lines and the ability to amass troops rapidly. Hong Kong's location was, in Bayly's view, a significant disadvantage for the British. ## The Voices of Those Who Were There Beyond the historians are the voices of those who were actually there, many of whom felt a profound sense of betrayal. Sergeant George MacDonnel of the Royal Rifles of Canada wrote in his memoirs: "Hong Kong was an isolated, unprepared military death trap. If the Japanese attacked, we had two options: we could die on the battlefield or become prisoners of a savage enemy." Such opinions were not purely retroactive either. Many felt this during the battle, as attested to by Georges Verreault, also of the Royal Rifles of Canada, who wrote on the 19th of December 1941: "We're caught like rats, with no hope of escape. [...] I'll probably never see my old Montreal again." Ultimately, the debate over whether Hong Kong could have been saved is multi-faceted, encapsulating a range of perspectives that encompass strategic miscalculations, geopolitical constraints, and the sheer unpredictability of warfare. Some historians suggest missed opportunities and alternative tactics that could have changed Hong Kong's fate, while others argue that the broader context made the colony's fall, if not inevitable, then highly probable. ## The Dark Aftermath However one interprets it, the Battle of Hong Kong sent ripples that were deeply felt, not just in military circles, but in the very fabric of the city's society. With the British forces defeated, the once-vibrant metropolis entered a new, dark chapter under Japanese occupation. For the next three years and eight months, the torture, ill-treatment, and brutalization of civilians, soldiers, and prisoners of war became routine, darkening the skies of the Pearl of the Orient. The true extent of Japanese brutality is hard to convey in microcosm, but a single figure captures something of its scale. In 1941, Hong Kong's population stood at 1,639,000. By 1945, it was barely 600,000. The colony that had once symbolized British power had become a place of suffering on a staggering scale. Given the great tragedy that befell the colony, it is all the more important to strive not merely for a surface-level understanding of dates, people, and which regiment went where, but for a deeper understanding of the battle. Having now heard the story of how it began, how it played out, and the opinions of historians and veterans, readers are left to weigh the questions that still divide the record: was it fair to call the fall of Hong Kong a humiliation, could the colony have been saved, and were the men sent to defend it thrown to the dogs? History, or rather our interpretations of it, remains an incredibly subjective matter, with no neat right or wrong answers, only different conclusions drawn from the same hard facts. ## Frequently Asked Questions ### How long did the Battle of Hong Kong last, and when did it end? The battle lasted 17 days. The Japanese invasion began at 6 a.m. on the 8th of December 1941, and Major General Christopher Maltby surrendered the colony on Christmas Day, the 25th of December, after running low on men and learning that no reinforcements were coming. Hong Kong thereby became the first British Crown Colony to fall to an invader. ### How did the two opposing forces compare in strength? Lieutenant-General Takaishi Sakai led 26,928 mostly veteran Japanese troops, supported by 47 planes, one cruiser, three destroyers, four torpedo boats, and three gunboats. Major General Christopher Maltby commanded just 14,564 troops, many of them unproven in combat, supported by only five obsolete aircraft, one destroyer, four gunboats, and eight motor torpedo boats. His diverse garrison drew on British, Canadian, Indian, and Chinese units. ### What was the Gin Drinker's Line and why did it fail so quickly? The Gin Drinker's Line was an 18-kilometre defensive line across the thinnest point of the New Territories, built between 1936 and 1938. Rather than an impenetrable wall, it was a series of small bunkers, pillboxes, and machine gun posts linked by mostly dirt trenches. It was meant to buy at least a week, but after the Japanese 228th Regiment stormed the heavily fortified Shing Mun Redoubt at night on the 9th of December, the commanding officer of the Royal Scots refused to attempt a suicidal counterattack and the whole line collapsed in roughly a day. ### Do historians agree the defeat was inevitable? No. Philip Snow blames British arrogance and a failure to improve the Gin Drinker's Line over the three years available after its completion, while Stephen R. MacKinnon faults rigid British doctrine and argues guerrilla warfare might have prolonged the defense. Others note that greater Commonwealth or American support might have bought time. Against them, Rana Mitter stresses Japanese military strength and numbers, Antony Beevor cites Britain's global overstretch across multiple fronts, and Christopher Bayly points to Hong Kong's exposed geographic location directly adjacent to Japanese-held China. The consensus, if any, is that the fall was at least highly probable. ### What happened to Hong Kong's population during the Japanese occupation? The colony endured three years and eight months of Japanese occupation, during which the torture, ill-treatment, and brutalization of civilians, soldiers, and prisoners of war became routine. The human cost was immense: Hong Kong's population fell from 1,639,000 in 1941 to barely 600,000 by 1945, a decline that captures something of the scale of suffering the occupation inflicted on the Pearl of the Orient.

The Battle of Kursk: How the Largest Tank Battle in History Broke the German Army

Simon Whistler — Tue, 02 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Situated on the western edge of Russia, Kursk is a bustling industrial city with a stunning cathedral at its center. But it is no ordinary Russian city. Nearly eight decades ago, the ground around it hosted one of the largest battles the world has ever seen, a clash so vast and so intense that it shifted the entire balance of the Second World War's eastern front. The fighting at Kursk in the summer of 1943 changed the trajectory of the war. It broke the momentum of the German army, exhausted its best armored formations, and paved the way for the Red Army's long march all the way to Berlin. It was the moment the initiative on the Eastern Front passed, for good, from Berlin to Moscow. This is the story of the legendary Battle of Kursk: how it came to be fought, how it unfolded across minefields and burning steppe, and why it marked the beginning of the end for the Third Reich. ## Key Takeaways - The Battle of Kursk was fought in July and August 1943 around a massive Soviet salient, a bulge stretching 150 miles north to south and protruding nearly a hundred miles westward into German lines, that became the highest-priority target on the Eastern Front. - The German offensive, codenamed Operation Citadel, planned a double envelopment, striking the shoulders of the salient from north and south to meet at Kursk and encircle the Soviet armies trapped inside the bulge. - Senior German commanders, including Field Marshal Manstein and General Guderian, openly doubted the operation, and even Hitler admitted the thought of it "turns my stomach," yet he ordered it forward anyway and repeatedly delayed it to gather more strength. - Forewarned by intelligence from the Lucy spy network in Switzerland, the Soviets turned Kursk into a fortress with three defensive belts, hundreds of thousands of mines, and an elaborate deception campaign that hid the true scale of their forces. - German forces fielded around 780,000 men and just under 3,000 tanks; the Soviets had assembled roughly two million soldiers and more than 5,000 tanks, making Kursk one of the largest concentrations of armor in military history. - The armored battle around Prokhorovka on July 12 pitted roughly 300 German tanks against more than 600 Soviet machines in a chaotic, close-range melee that ended without a decisive breakthrough for either side. - Operation Citadel collapsed when Hitler called it off on July 13, drained of fuel, vehicles, and experienced men, and the Germans never again launched a major offensive on the Eastern Front. ## The Road to Kursk In 1941, Hitler launched Operation Barbarossa, the German invasion of the Soviet Union. After months of fighting, German forces had seized enormous swaths of Soviet territory, overrunning Ukraine, the Baltics, and Belarus while pushing the Red Army back to the very edges of Moscow. Yet despite that staggering early success, Barbarossa failed to achieve its main goals. The Soviet Union was still standing and still fighting fiercely. The front line between the two powers now ran north to south down the edge of western Russia. In early 1943, after one of the bloodiest battles in human history, the Soviets finally pushed the Germans away from Stalingrad. Within weeks they launched another counterattack, liberating the cities of Kharkov, Belgorod, and Kursk. It was an exhilarating run of victories, but it came at a cost. The Soviets had suffered immense casualties and had begun to overextend their forces, and the Germans struck back at the first opportunity. After intense tank and infantry fighting in the cities and relentless bombing from the air, the Germans recaptured Kharkov and Belgorod, forcing the remaining Soviet forces to fall back to Kursk. ## A Bulge in the Front Line The Germans did not retake all the ground they had lost during the Soviet counterattacks. Just to the west of Kursk, the Soviet Union had punched a salient, a bulge, deep into the German front line. And it was enormous. It stretched 150 miles from north to south and protruded nearly a hundred miles westward into the Nazi frontline. That bump in the line gave the Soviets breathing room at Kursk and offered a launching point for yet another counterattack. To the German command, that made it the single highest-priority target on the entire Eastern Front. Eliminating the salient would not only blunt a dangerous Soviet position but also hand Berlin a chance to regain the initiative it had been losing for months. On March 13, 1943, Hitler signed an order authorizing the attack on the Kursk salient. But muddy ground and exhausted troops meant it would have to wait. A month later he issued a second order, insisting the attack begin no later than early May. For the Germans, the logic was clear: capitalize on momentum and strike before the Soviets fortified Kursk too heavily. ## Operation Citadel and the Generals' Doubts The attack was codenamed Operation Citadel, and its plan centered on a double envelopment. Two German thrusts would strike the shoulders of the salient, the corners where the bulge met the straight front line. One would push from the south, the other from the north, meeting at Kursk in the middle to cut off supply routes to the Soviet armies inside the bulge like a tourniquet. The Germans had used similar tactics during their initial invasion of the Soviet Union with staggering effect, encircling thousands of Soviet troops and besieging them until surrender or annihilation. Taking Kursk looked like their best chance to deal the USSR another heavy blow and reclaim the momentum that had slipped away. That was a simple plan on paper. Reality was more complicated. General Model, in charge of the northern pincer, told Hitler he was having second thoughts. For weeks his scouts had reported that Kursk was beefing up its defenses, clearly preparing for the coming assault. In light of this, Hitler summoned his senior officers to Munich on May 4 to argue over whether Citadel was worth attempting, or even possible. Field Marshal Manstein, one of the operation's chief planners, said it could only succeed if he received two additional infantry divisions, and Hitler told him none were available. General Guderian worried the attack would grind down the panzer divisions he was working to rebuild. He pressed the point bluntly: "Is it really necessary to attack Kursk, and indeed in the east this year at all? Do you think anyone even knows where Kursk is? The entire world doesn't care if we capture Kursk or not." Hitler agreed, replying, "I know. The thought of it turns my stomach." Other generals argued that the manpower and supplies earmarked for Kursk should be held back for an expected Allied attack in western or southern Europe. Such an attack was, in fact, already on its way. ## An Arms Race of Delays Despite the meeting ending with no official consensus, Hitler decided to go through with Operation Citadel anyway. He convinced himself that even though the Soviets were fortifying their defenses and amassing huge numbers of tanks, newer and more advanced German weaponry would prove decisive. That meant the powerful Elefant tank destroyer and the new Panther tank. The operation soon began to resemble an arms race. Each time Hitler received reports of fresh Soviet reinforcements, he delayed the attack to strengthen his own forces, and each delay handed the Soviets more time to deepen their defenses. This back-and-forth continued for two months, with both sides growing steadily stronger. It was a contest the Germans could not win. With every postponement, the salient the Wehrmacht hoped to slice off was becoming harder to crack. ## A Fortress Built to Bleed the Wehrmacht On the Soviet side, Stalin had known about the impending Nazi attack for months, thanks to the Lucy spy network operating out of Switzerland, which leaked German intelligence to the Allies. At first Stalin wanted to strike first, before the Germans could consolidate. His generals talked him out of it, convincing him that a defensive strategy was the better play. General Zhukov in particular argued that defending Kursk offered the perfect place to lure the bulk of German armor into a destructive trap. As he put it: "It would be better to make the enemy exhaust himself against our defenses, and knock out his tanks and then, bringing up fresh reserves, to go over to the general offensive which would finally finish off his main force." Soldiers and more than 300,000 hired civilians worked around the clock to turn Kursk into a fortress. On both the northern and southern faces of the bulge stood three main rows of defense, built from machine gun bunkers, barbed wire, anti-tank ditches, artillery, and mines. Lots of mines. Concentrated mostly on the first defensive lines of the northern and southern faces, the Soviets planted more than 500,000 anti-tank mines and almost 450,000 anti-personnel mines. Along the most likely German routes sat hundreds of anti-tank strongholds, each fielding several anti-tank guns, even more anti-tank rifles, a number of heavy machine guns, and infantry armed with grenades and automatic weapons. Movement between bunkers ran through thousands of miles of interconnecting trenches dug throughout the salient. ## Ironing, Incentives, and Deception Preparing men to stand against tanks was as much a psychological challenge as a physical one. To rid Soviet infantry of their tankphobia and steel them for anti-tank combat, soldiers underwent a mandatory training known as "ironing." Packed into a trench like sardines, the men endured tanks driving just over their heads until they grew used to the giant machines bearing down on them. Soldiers were taught to separate the tanks from their accompanying infantry, leaving an isolated tank a sitting duck once attackers closed to point-blank range. There was even a financial incentive: the government pledged to pay a man a thousand rubles for every tank he destroyed. Perhaps the Soviets' most effective preparation, though, was their practice of maskirovka, or deception. Camps and vehicles were camouflaged, ammunition depots hidden, and command posts disguised. Dummy airfields were constructed, which the Germans reportedly bombed, and false rumors were sown throughout the German-held areas around Kursk. The deception worked spectacularly. By late June 1943, the Germans estimated the Soviets had massed around 1,500 tanks in or near Kursk. In reality, more than three times that number stood ready for action. The Soviets also struck behind enemy lines. Partisan groups, resistance fighters operating in Nazi-occupied territory, wreaked havoc on German supply routes, destroying dozens of bridges, over a thousand railcars, and almost 300 locomotives while constantly damaging the railroads. All of it slowed German preparations and bought precious time to gather strength at Kursk. Finally, after two months of postponing, Hitler decided his army was ready. The German offensive force totaled about 780,000 men and just under 3,000 tanks, backed by artillery and air support. The Soviets, meanwhile, had built up roughly two million soldiers and more than 5,000 tanks. In July 1943, these colossal armies came face to face. ## The First Day: Mines, Tigers, and a Crawl On the evening of July 4, the first fighting of Operation Citadel began. On the southern face, the battle opened with an artillery barrage and bombing runs, followed by infantry attacks on the first line of defense to seize high ground for future artillery spotting. Before midnight, the villages of Butovo and Gertsovka fell to the Grossdeutschland panzergrenadier division and the 3rd and 11th panzer divisions. But they did not fall easily. Fierce Soviet resistance, and anti-tank mines in particular, inflicted heavy casualties. German armor broke through the first line of defense in several places along the southern front but was stopped short of the second. At 2 AM on July 5, anticipating an assault on the northern face and another push in the south, Zhukov ordered a massive artillery strike on the German front line. The strike had been planned long in advance, ever since the dates of the impending attack leaked to the Soviets. Zhukov hoped this preemptive bombardment would shatter the German forces drawn in for the offensive and throw their armies into disorder. For an entire hour, hundreds of self-propelled guns, mortars, and mobile Katyusha rocket launchers fired at suspected enemy positions, lighting the horizon with explosions. The Germans answered with their own bombardment, pounding the northern face for 80 minutes and the southern for 50. When the bombardments ended, both sides had suffered minimal casualties. Firing in the dark made corrective adjustments difficult, and many shells missed their targets entirely. Then the German army on the northern face began its advance, only to find the Soviets ready. Seemingly impenetrable defenses and dense minefields slowed the attackers to a crawl as Soviet troops fought ferociously along the whole front. Later that day, an interrogated Soviet prisoner revealed a weak point in the Soviet line, a gap torn open by German artillery. Wasting no time, the Germans threw their Tiger tanks at the breach, and the Soviets rushed in 90 T-34s to defend it. After three hours of fighting, 40 Soviet tanks had been destroyed, while the Germans lost 2 Tigers destroyed and 5 immobilized. It was a costly exchange for the Soviets in raw numbers, but the fight bought them time to patch up the weakness in their line. In all, the first day netted the Germans a measly 10 kilometers, about 6 miles, of territory. Much of that meager gain owed to the effectiveness of the Soviet minefields, which savaged German armor. The 653rd Heavy Panzerjäger Battalion, for instance, committed 45 Ferdinand tank destroyers, and all but 12 were destroyed or immobilized by mines. Many were later recovered and repaired, but only at a cost of both time and materiel. ## Grinding North, Stalling Out On July 6, the Soviets launched a counterattack but suffered heavy losses, including 69 tanks, and pulled back into their lines. The Germans struck back and were repelled by the first line of defenses. Overhead, the air forces of both sides fought for supremacy in the skies. Over the following days, the Germans pushed through the front lines of the northern defenses, concentrating on the towns of Ponyri and Olkhovatka. By July 10 they had taken Ponyri but were still struggling to capture Olkhovatka, which sat on a hill with a clear view of the front line. Soviet reserve units were pulled up from behind Kursk to reinforce the area, and the defenders absorbed heavy casualties holding it. In the north, the German offensive was grinding to a halt. ## The Battle of Prokhorovka While the northern thrust stalled, the situation on the southern face turned tense. The Soviets had launched another counter-offensive there that ended in complete failure, with 50 of their tanks lost to the Luftwaffe. They had committed nearly all their reserves and were still struggling to fend off the attackers. The Germans, for their part, were employing a tactic called Panzerkeil, or tank wedge, with Tiger heavy tanks at the front, medium Panthers on the flanks, and the weaker Panzer III and Panzer IV tanks in the center. The Germans were steadily gaining ground in the south and dispatched several hundred tanks to seize the vital city of Prokhorovka. Capturing it would be crucial to encircling the rest of Kursk, and it was well defended. The Soviets had funneled many of their forces into the city along with whatever reserves they could scrape together nearby. On July 12, the Germans sent hundreds of aircraft to swarm the Soviet positions around Prokhorovka, bombing them relentlessly. The Soviets answered with artillery strikes against the German lines. As the artillery began to quiet, the tank forces of both sides emerged from their positions and bore down on a collision course. The German tanks came from three main formations: SS Totenkopf on the left flank, SS Liebstandarte in the center, and SS Das Reich protecting the right. In total, the Germans fielded about 300 tanks for the battle, against more than 600 Soviet machines. ## All Hell Breaks Loose As the hordes of tanks smashed into one another, all hell broke loose. Thick dust thrown up by the explosions, combined with the close intermingling of friend and foe, made it nearly impossible for either side to call in air or artillery support. Soviet formations were far less coordinated but numerically superior, and they improvised aggressive tactics, speeding up to close the distance with the enemy and, according to some accounts, even ramming directly into German tanks. The Germans were horrified to discover that at such close range, Soviet tank shells could punch through their armor. The repair calculus cut against them, too. To the Soviets, a damaged tank could likely be recovered and fixed later. For the Germans, fighting this deep in enemy territory, a damaged Tiger was a permanently lost Tiger. The battle raged all day with neither side winning a clear victory. Several times the Germans seemed on the verge of breaking through the Soviet formations, and each time the line held. At one point, two Soviet tank brigades broke through the front line and came close to reaching the German communication lines. As they were held off, four German Tigers positioned themselves to defend the breached left flank of the Liebstandarte group and stubbornly held their ground. After defeating the Soviet 181st tank brigade without losses, the four Tigers took on the 31st and 32nd tank brigades. Finally the 170th brigade, after losing its commander and several tanks, managed to push the Tigers back and gain some ground, only to be driven back to its original position. As the sun set, both sides were spent, and the German forces retreated. In a single day of fighting, the Germans had lost 60 to 80 tanks and the Soviets up to 400, some recoverable, some reduced to nothing more than heaps of scrap metal. On paper the exchange looked like a heavy German blow against the Soviet Union, but the Germans had failed to gain any ground, which made the day an operational failure. The numerically superior Soviets quickly replaced their losses. The Germans were running out of steam. ## Shifting Tides On July 13, 1943, Hitler ordered the end of Operation Citadel. He was bleeding away his best panzer divisions and most experienced men around Kursk, and he could no longer afford such losses. On July 9, just days into Citadel, the Allies had invaded Sicily. The war was becoming exactly what Hitler had done everything to avoid: a fight on two fronts. With Italy's support for the cause crumbling, he needed to divert some of his own troops to help defend southern Europe. So he ordered his men to hold the ground they had taken near Kursk and shift to a defensive posture. This played directly into Soviet hands. They had hoped to destroy large numbers of German armor before launching their own offensive, and they wasted no time. Beginning on July 12, the Soviets launched Operation Kutuzov in the north. Spearhead attacks drove deep into the German lines, threatening encirclement and forcing the Germans into a desperate, spiraling retreat. Although the Soviets suffered heavy losses, they replaced them as always. The operation gave them momentum in the north and opened the way for the liberation of more Russian cities in the weeks that followed. In the south, the Soviets launched Operation Rumyantsev. After two weeks of diversionary attacks, the main Soviet spearheads struck on August 3, quickly driving deep into German lines and seizing territory. In just two days they liberated Belgorod once again, freeing them to focus on Kharkov, which they retook three weeks later. ## Counting the Cost Operation Citadel had been a massive failure. For the first time, a German advance had failed to achieve a major breakthrough, and it had drained the German army of fuel, vehicles, and men. Counting both Citadel and the immediate Soviet counteroffensives, the Germans lost more than 160,000 men and over 750 tanks. More than 250,000 Soviets were killed in the fighting, more than 600,000 were wounded or sick, and at least 6,000 Soviet tanks were destroyed. These figures should be taken with a grain of salt, because the numbers vary wildly depending on the source. Many German records were scattered or lost after the war, and the Soviets, like any army, downplayed their own losses and exaggerated their victories. It is also genuinely hard to gauge how many tanks were truly lost. A machine could be immobilized and counted as destroyed, yet if it was easily repairable it could be back in action shortly. Exact numbers aside, one thing was made clear from the Battle of Kursk: the end of the Third Reich was near. The Soviets could absorb heavy losses in every battle and still come out ahead, because their high production rates meant almost anything could be replaced. During the Kutuzov operation in the north, for example, the Soviets started with 2,308 self-propelled guns and lost 2,349, more than they had begun with. Beyond hardware, the USSR drew on a seemingly unending supply of fresh recruits, pulling in conscripts from across the country. ## The End of German Initiative in the East General Guderian, who had argued against the offensive in the first place, understood that the tide had turned. After Citadel was called off, he said: "There were to be no more periods of quiet on the Eastern Front. From now on, the enemy was in undisputed possession of the initiative." Hitler, growing ever more frustrated with the war, blamed his generals for the failure at Kursk, even though his own insistence on launching the offensive after postponing it for months bore much of the responsibility. As the war progressed, he made more and more military decisions himself, trusting his generals less and less. Stalin did the opposite, handing his generals full command over their respective areas and trusting their judgment rather than micromanaging every detail. After the Battle of Kursk, the Germans never again launched a major offensive on the Eastern Front. Instead they fought desperately to hold the territory they had gained while the Soviet Union marched relentlessly westward. Kursk had been Hitler's last real chance to defeat the Soviet Union, and he had completely failed. ## Frequently Asked Questions ### What was Operation Citadel and why did senior German commanders doubt it? Operation Citadel was the codename for the German offensive against the Kursk salient in July 1943, calling for a double envelopment from north and south to meet at Kursk and cut off the Soviet armies inside. Field Marshal Manstein said it could only succeed with two additional infantry divisions Hitler could not provide, General Guderian argued it would grind down the panzer divisions he was rebuilding, and even Hitler admitted the thought of the attack "turns my stomach"—yet he ordered it forward anyway. ### How did the Soviets prepare for the German assault? Forewarned by the Lucy spy network operating out of Switzerland, the Soviets chose a defensive strategy rather than a preemptive strike. More than 300,000 soldiers and civilians worked around the clock to build three defensive belts with machine gun bunkers, anti-tank ditches, and over 500,000 anti-tank mines and almost 450,000 anti-personnel mines. Soviet deception tactics (maskirovka) hid the true scale of their forces so effectively that by late June 1943 the Germans estimated 1,500 Soviet tanks near Kursk; in reality more than three times that number stood ready. ### What happened at the Battle of Prokhorovka? On July 12, 1943, German and Soviet armor collided near Prokhorovka in one of the largest tank engagements of the war. About 300 German tanks from SS Totenkopf, Liebstandarte, and Das Reich faced more than 600 Soviet machines in a chaotic, close-range melee where thick dust and the intermingling of friend and foe made air and artillery support nearly impossible. Neither side achieved a clear breakthrough; the Germans retreated at the end of the day having gained no ground, making it an operational failure despite inflicting heavy Soviet losses. ### Why did Hitler call off Operation Citadel? Hitler ended Citadel on July 13, 1943, after the offensive had drained his best panzer divisions and most experienced men. On July 9—just days into Citadel—the Allies had invaded Sicily, forcing exactly the two-front war Hitler had sought to avoid. With Italian support for the Axis crumbling, he needed to divert forces to defend southern Europe, and ordered his Kursk forces onto the defensive. ### Why is Kursk considered the turning point that broke German offensive power in the east? Kursk was the first time a German advance failed to achieve a major breakthrough, and it exhausted the Wehrmacht's best armored formations. Counting Citadel and the immediate Soviet counteroffensives, the Germans lost more than 160,000 men and over 750 tanks. The Soviets could replace their losses through high production and a seemingly endless supply of recruits; the Germans could not. After Kursk, the Wehrmacht never again launched a major offensive on the Eastern Front, and as General Guderian observed, "the enemy was in undisputed possession of the initiative."

The Battle of Mogadishu: Anatomy of Black Hawk Down

Simon Whistler — Tue, 02 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

It is the afternoon of the 3rd of October, 1993. Mogadishu, the capital of Somalia, is torn apart by a relentless civil war. Its citizens are ravaged by famine, harassed by warring factions, or actively caught up in the violence themselves. In the words of author Mark Bowden, the city has become "the world capital of things-gone-completely-to-hell." And things are about to go much further south. The whirring of rotor blades tearing through the sky announces another American mission heading into town. It could be an operation like many others before it: risky, certainly, but fairly routine nonetheless. Soon, a rocket-propelled grenade will blast through one of those helicopters. A Black Hawk will go down, and the Battle of Mogadishu will be on. Fought across the 3rd and 4th of October 1993 between US forces and the Somali militias of the Somali National Alliance (SNA), the engagement became known as the "Black Hawk Down" incident. It was the longest continuous firefight involving American forces since the end of their engagement in South-East Asia, and its significance and cultural impact were later captured by Mark Bowden's 1999 book, on which the 2001 Ridley Scott film was based. This is the story of how that battle unfolded, what it cost, and the mistakes committed by American military leadership that turned a tactical victory into a strategic defeat. ## Key Takeaways - The Battle of Mogadishu was the longest continuous firefight involving US forces since the Vietnam era, fought on 3-4 October 1993 between Task Force Ranger and the militias of the Somali National Alliance under General Mohamed Farrah Aidid. - The raid achieved its objective, arresting 24 high-ranking militiamen, but the loss of two Black Hawk helicopters to RPG fire turned a snatch-and-grab mission into a desperate overnight rescue operation. - American losses totalled 18 killed in action, 1 prisoner, and 84 wounded; Somali casualties are estimated between 300 and 1,000 killed, many of them civilians caught in the crossfire. - Air Force combat controllers such as Jeff Bray and Dan Schilling, and pararescueman Tim Wilkinson, played decisive roles coordinating air support and treating the wounded under fire. - The battle was a tactical success but a psychological and strategic defeat; images of dead American soldiers dragged through the streets prompted President Clinton to order a withdrawal from Somalia. - The defeat fed a US reluctance to deploy ground forces abroad that shaped non-intervention in Rwanda in 1994 and Bosnia in 1995, an isolationism that ended only after 9/11. - After-action analysis concluded that Task Force Ranger lacked armour and gunship support, and that commanders had severely underestimated the SNA's numbers, capabilities, and will to fight. ## From Independence to Civil War To understand how American helicopters came to be falling over an African city, the context matters. Following World War II, the country today known as Somalia was divided into two territories, one under British protectorate and the other under Italian trusteeship. In 1960, the two territories gained independence and merged into a single state. After a period of democratic rule, in October 1969 General Mohamed Siad Barre seized power in a military coup. Years of incompetent and violent rule led to Barre's overthrow in 1991. But this was no liberation. Opposing clans, led by local warlords, plunged the country into a bitter civil war. The fighting destroyed Somalia's agricultural sector, triggering widespread famine and a collapse of state institutions. A nation was unravelling, and the world was beginning to take notice. ## The Failed Relief Effort In April 1992, the United Nations established UNOSOM, the United Nations Operations in Somalia, a relief effort to secure the distribution of food and medical supplies to Somali civilians. The intentions were humanitarian, but the results were perverse. The presence of relief convoys only worsened the situation, as warring factions seized an estimated 80 percent of the supplies for their own profit. The strongest and most active faction was the Somali National Alliance, a coalition of four rebel groups under the leadership of General Mohamed Farrah Aidid. In response to the deteriorating situation, US President George H. W. Bush launched Operation Provide Relief in August 1992. Composed of 400 troops from the 5th Special Forces Group (Airborne) and ten C-130 transport planes flying in from Mombasa, Kenya, the mission oversaw the transport of 48,000 tons of supplies. Yet warlords still ran rampant, and the death toll from fighting, starvation, and disease rose to half a million. ## Operation Restore Hope and the Road to Confrontation In December 1992, the US government deployed the far larger Operation Restore Hope, a joint-command mission designed to better protect the UN's humanitarian efforts. On the 9th of December, units from the Marines, Air Force, and Navy, including SEAL elements, descended onto Mogadishu and secured its airport and harbour. The mission proceeded without major incident until May 1993, when the recently elected President Clinton terminated Restore Hope and handed leadership of operations back to the UN. Even so, the US military maintained a large presence in the country: 2,600 logistics personnel, a quick reaction force of 1,100 troops, and a Special Forces detachment. General Aidid, however, had sinister intentions. On the 5th of June 1993, his militia ambushed a team of Pakistani peacekeepers, killing 24. On the 17th, another ambush claimed the lives of five Moroccan soldiers. On the 2nd of July, Aidid's militiamen killed two Italian troops. The commander of US forces in Somalia, General Hoar, did not sit idle. He obtained the deployment of four AC-130 gunships, which throughout June and July rained destruction upon Aidid's weapons depots and hideouts. The warlord retaliated by killing four Western journalists on the 12th of July, and four US military police personnel on the 8th of August. This was one step too far. On the 22nd of August, US Secretary of Defence Les Aspin deployed a joint special operations task force to capture Aidid and his top lieutenants. This was Task Force Ranger. ## Task Force Ranger and the Snatch-and-Grab Doctrine The commander of Task Force Ranger, or TF Ranger for short, was Major General William F. Garrison. His unit numbered 440 members drawn from the Army's and Navy's Special Forces, the 75th Ranger Regiment, the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment, and combat controllers and "pararescuemen," the combat medics of the Air Force's 24th Special Tactics Squadron. TF Ranger landed in Mogadishu on the 28th of August, and by the end of September it had already conducted five successful missions to thin out Aidid's command structure. The task force's modus operandi was a well-rehearsed one. A Special Forces team would be dropped by helicopter onto a specific location within the city, then swoop into a building to apprehend or kill the intended target. Simultaneously, other choppers dropped Rangers around the landing area to establish a perimeter of "blocking forces," preventing Somali reinforcements from pouring in. Throughout, the Air Force's combat controllers ensured coordination via radio, calling in airstrikes when needed or summoning helicopters to extract their compatriots. The first ominous signs appeared late in September. On the 21st, during one such mission, TF Ranger first faced Somali troops firing rocket-propelled grenades, or RPGs. Days later, on the 25th, an RPG took down a US Army H-60 "Black Hawk" helicopter, killing three soldiers in the blast. It was a sinister omen of the far worse engagement that awaited on the 3rd and 4th of October. ## The Raid Begins On the 3rd of October, at 1350 local time, General Garrison received precious intelligence: two of Aidid's top lieutenants had been spotted in a compound within the "Black Sea," a Mogadishu district. He immediately approved a snatch-and-grab mission for later that afternoon. At 1532, a team of Army Special Forces, Navy SEALs, Rangers, and Airmen lifted off from Mogadishu's airport. Three minutes later they reached their destination, Hawlwadig Road. At the same time, a relief convoy of eight Humvees and three flatbed trucks departed from the airfield. The Special Forces teams immediately fast-roped to the ground and initiated the assault on the compound, while the Rangers descended from their H-60 choppers to set up the blocking-force perimeter. As the Black Hawks hovered above, the assault team raided the building and quickly arrested not two but 24 high-ranking militiamen. Outside the compound, however, the Somalis were fighting back with a vengeance, showering the helicopters and the vehicles below with small-arms fire and RPGs. Several TF Ranger troops were wounded in the first minutes, and one flatbed truck was disabled. The worst was yet to come. ## Black Hawks Are Down At 1620 hours, one of the Black Hawks, call sign "Super 6-1," took a direct hit from an RPG and crashed three blocks away from Aidid's compound. Both pilots died instantly, but the rest of the crew survived the impact. A call for help went out, and three teams headed towards the crash site to extract the survivors: a Special Forces unit, a team of Rangers from the blocking force, and the relief convoy. The actions of these detachments were coordinated thanks to the professionalism and cool-headedness of three Air Force combat controllers embedded within them: Jeff Bray with the Special Forces, John McGarry with the Rangers, and Dan Schilling with the convoy. While searching for the downed helicopter, all three teams endured persistent fire from Somali militias and suffered several casualties. Schilling in particular distinguished himself, acting as both radio operator and an unofficial combat medic, treating several wounded comrades, including the ground force commander. Amidst the chaos, a second RPG streaked into the sky, leaving behind an ominous plume. A sound of thunder filled the Mogadishu sky as a second Black Hawk, call sign "Super 6-4," crashed into the dirt. As a crowd of militiamen and civilians surrounded its wreckage, a small column of Ranger Humvees set off to the rescue. But the Somalis had prepared for their arrival, setting up a series of ambushes along the road linking the airport to downtown Mogadishu. Shortly after leaving the airfield, two Humvees were taken out, killing three Rangers. ## Gordon, Shughart, and the Loss of Super 6-2 The Task Force dispatched another Black Hawk, Super 6-2, to try to rescue the crash survivors at the second site. Two Special Forces snipers, Master Sergeant Gary Gordon and Sergeant First Class Randy Shughart, fast-roped to the ground and engaged the incoming enemies. For about ten minutes, Super 6-2 provided supporting fire from above, until yet another RPG struck its cockpit. The pilot was knocked unconscious, but the co-pilot managed to land safely away from the battle. Now Gordon and Shughart were on their own. It was only a matter of minutes before the militias overran the crash site. The two snipers and most of the Black Hawk crew were killed. The only survivor, pilot Michael Durant, was captured by one of Aidid's commanders, Yusuf Dahir Mohalim. The sacrifice of the two snipers, who had volunteered to defend a crew they could not ultimately save, became one of the defining acts of the battle. ## Lost in the Maze Meanwhile, the relief column was still searching for the wreckage of the first downed chopper, Super 6-1. Targeted by small-arms fire directed at his Humvee, combat controller Schilling had been radioing for directions to the crash site of Super 6-1. But the operators on the other end made matters even more confusing, providing directions to Super 6-4 instead. The convoy soon became lost in the maze of alleyways, each blind corner a promise of death. Realising the situation was desperate, the ground force commander ordered the convoy to retreat to the airfield. As the three teams on the ground struggled to reach Super 6-1, yet another Black Hawk, Super 6-8, finally came to the rescue. The chopper hovered above the wreckage and a squad of Rangers fast-roped down. Before the troops had even touched the ground, another RPG slammed into the side of Super 6-8. Luckily it was not a fatal hit, and pilot Dan Jollata ensured his men made it safely down. The Rangers and Airmen then headed north towards the crash site, fighting their way against countless well-concealed gunmen. Finally, they spotted Super 6-1: a mangled carcass at the end of an alley. ## Heroism Under Fire While the combat medics treated the survivors inside the helicopters, the Rangers set up a defensive perimeter and exchanged gunfire with the militias. As the battle escalated, they were joined by the Special Forces team. Then a cry for help roared above the gunfire: a Special Forces soldier had been hit, and a medic was needed. The Rangers laid down suppressive fire while Air Force pararescueman Tim Wilkinson dashed across the battlefield, dodging bullets, shrapnel, and RPGs for a good 45 metres, or 50 yards. Three times he braved that stretch of hell, treating or dragging his comrades to safety. In the words of Ranger captain Scott Miller, "These trips across the open street were at the peak of the battle when enemy fire was... most intense... Wilkinson's repeated acts of heroism saved the lives of at least four soldiers." Even the most intense of battles can be interrupted by moments of sheer surrealism. While the Americans and Somalis did their best to slaughter each other, an unsuspecting donkey wandered onto the battlefield, quietly trudging along the alleyways strewn with bullet casings. Shouts of "Cease fire! Don't kill the donkey!" took over the din of battle, and both sides complied. Silence descended over the Mogadishu afternoon, and the little donkey resumed his walk unharmed. The firefight resumed, fierce as ever, for another hour. Then the donkey appeared again, and another ceasefire ensued. ## The Long Night and the Final Rescue As the sun began to set, the combat medics in charge of the wounded took shelter inside a nearby building. A Ranger escorting them used a load of C4 explosive to tear down a wall, allowing the surrounded American forces to push deeper into the compound. The tactic worked. Around 2100 hours the attacks seemed to quiet down, and it appeared Aidid's militias were struggling to locate the Americans. By 2300, however, the Somalis had regrouped, and RPGs began slamming into the building. Worse, militiamen had set up a 12.7mm machine gun across the street and were now targeting the interior of the compound. Air Force combat controller Jeff Bray did what combat controllers do best: he radioed for an airstrike. Some AH-6 "Little Bird" helicopters came to the rescue, knocking out the machine gun with rockets and then showering the surrounding area with their mini-guns. But Bray was acutely aware of the risk of friendly fire. To direct the AH-6s accurately, he first located his comrades, who were split into four groups, and placed infrared strobe lights, part of his standard kit, next to each position so the crews knew which spots to avoid. To pinpoint the enemy, he used the infrared laser beam on his rifle's sights, a solution that was simple and effective. The besieged troops could not hold out forever. Luckily, another relief convoy departed from the harbour shortly after midnight. Army Rangers were joined by four Pakistani tanks and 28 Malaysian armoured personnel carriers, with Dan Schilling again ensuring coordination via radio. This convoy too endured incessant fire and ambushes, but by 0155 it approached the battle area. The column split in two: the northern element heading for the Super 6-1 crash site, the southern one driving to the second downed chopper, Super 6-4. By this time there were no survivors left at Super 6-4, and the southern element, bogged down by ambushes, soon retreated to the rendezvous point. The northern convoy, meanwhile, picked up the survivors around Super 6-1. Reunited around 0500 hours, the relief column moved towards the football stadium, chosen as the most secure position to stabilise the wounded. The road there was anything but safe, so Bray again linked up with the Little Birds to direct their air-to-surface strikes. The convoy reached the stadium at 0630, and shortly after 0800 the wounded and survivors were airlifted back to the safety of the airfield. ## After Action Report The clash with Aidid's fighters had cost American forces 18 killed in action, one prisoner, and 84 wounded. Two Malaysian soldiers fighting under the UN had also died, with seven of their comrades wounded, and Pakistani UN troops suffered two wounded. Somali losses are far harder to estimate. Figures range between 300 and 1,000 killed in action, plus a similar number of wounded. Many of these casualties were civilians. Some participated in the mob violence against the crew of Super 6-4, but most were neutral civilians caught in the crossfire. On the 14th of October, Aidid released Michael Durant, the Super 6-4 pilot. He eventually recovered from his injuries and continued to fly for the Special Operations Aviation Regiment. With Durant's release, the Battle of Mogadishu could be considered truly over. On the surface, the engagement could be read as a tactical success for the US and UN allies. Task Force Ranger had apprehended its targets, and the bulk of the force eventually evacuated the area suffering a fraction of its enemy's losses. But on a deeper level, the US military had suffered a psychological and strategic defeat. Media coverage of the wrecked helicopters, and especially the images of dead American soldiers dragged through the streets of Mogadishu, left the home front in shock. The Clinton administration faced widespread criticism over its involvement in East Africa, and on the 21st of October the President ordered a withdrawal from Somalia. By the end of March 1994 only a small number of Marine companies remained to support the evacuation of US civilians. One year later, all remaining US troops and their UN allies had abandoned Somalia, which quickly reverted into a failed state ruled by warlords. ## What Went Wrong After-action reports, congressional inquiries, and military scholarly articles all analysed what had gone wrong on the 3rd of October, and their conclusions are fairly consistent. First, US forces in Somalia generally, and TF Ranger in particular, lacked the appropriate equipment. Land forces relied exclusively on Humvees, which left them exposed to RPGs and small-arms fire. For air support, TF Ranger had access only to helicopters. The deployment of tanks, Infantry Fighting Vehicles, and AC-130 gunships would have significantly limited the casualties. It later emerged that Secretary of Defence Les Aspin had denied the provision of tanks and Infantry Fighting Vehicles to TF Ranger, a decision that may have contributed to his resignation in December 1993. The second failure was one of perception. Sergeant Major Dos Santos and James Perdue, writing for the US Army NCO Leadership Center of Excellence, noted that "[US] commanders and intelligence analysts painted an inaccurate picture of enemy numbers, capabilities, and will to fight." In other words, Aidid's forces had been severely underestimated. These militiamen were dismissed by US troops as "Sammies" or "Skinnies" who rarely hit their targets. But the SNA fighters had already proved, even before the 3rd of October, that they could use RPGs effectively in an anti-aircraft role. They also possessed a perfect knowledge of the urban battleground, which enabled them to turn Mogadishu's alleyways into a killing field of ambushes. ## The Long Shadow of Mogadishu The consequences of the battle reached far beyond Somalia. Afterwards, the US government grew deeply reluctant to deploy ground forces abroad, especially in Africa. As a result, Washington did not intervene in Rwanda in 1994 during the genocide of the Tutsi minority, nor in Bosnia in 1995 when Bosnian Serbs perpetrated ethnic cleansing against Muslim and Croatian civilians. It was an isolationism that ended only after the 9/11 terrorist attacks. In more recent times, the American military has stepped up its involvement in Somalia once again, launching raids, airstrikes, and drone attacks against the Al-Shabab terrorist group, an affiliate of Al-Qaeda that opposes the current Somali government. Yet high-ranking experts within the government itself are sceptical of this long-range approach. Among them are Brigadier General Don Bolduc, former commander of Special Operations in Africa, and Stephen Schwartz, former US Ambassador to Somalia. Both believe the key to addressing instability and the emergence of radical factions in Africa and the Middle East is to invest in the affected countries, strengthening their infrastructure and civil service. Bolduc applied exactly that approach in Puntland, northern Somalia. Refraining from offering air support or "boots on the ground," he oversaw the funding and training of local militias, who in a matter of a week wiped out the bases of Al-Shabab and even a growing ISIS presence. He estimated that an investment of approximately 110 million US dollars would enable the Somali government to replicate that success across all its territory, a far smaller budget than the one spent on long-range strikes. The question that lingers is a stark one. Should the United States, with its apparently inexhaustible military power, intervene abroad to quell instability and restore order? And if so, should it strike at its enemies from afar to prevent a second Battle of Mogadishu, or dedicate time and investment to rebuilding a nation's infrastructure instead? ## Frequently Asked Questions ### What was the objective of the 3 October 1993 raid, and what went wrong? Acting on intelligence that two of Aidid's top lieutenants were in a compound in the "Black Sea" district, General Garrison approved a snatch-and-grab mission. The assault team succeeded in arresting 24 high-ranking militiamen, but RPG fire downed two Black Hawk helicopters and transformed the brief raid into an overnight rescue operation that lasted until 0630 the following morning. ### How many casualties did the battle cause? American forces suffered 18 killed in action, one prisoner, and 84 wounded. Two Malaysian soldiers under the UN were killed and seven wounded, and Pakistani UN troops suffered two wounded. Somali losses are estimated between 300 and 1,000 killed in action, plus a similar number of wounded, many of them civilians caught in the crossfire. ### What role did Air Force combat controllers and pararescuemen play? Three combat controllers—Jeff Bray, John McGarry, and Dan Schilling—coordinated air support and radio traffic throughout the battle, while pararescueman Tim Wilkinson made repeated dashes across open ground under intense fire to treat wounded soldiers. Bray later directed AH-6 Little Bird strikes by marking friendly positions with infrared strobes and enemy positions with his rifle's laser sight to prevent friendly-fire casualties. ### Why is the battle considered a strategic defeat despite being a tactical success? Task Force Ranger achieved its objective and inflicted far heavier losses than it suffered, making the raid a tactical success. But media coverage of the wrecked helicopters, and especially images of dead American soldiers dragged through the streets of Mogadishu, shocked the American public. The Clinton administration faced widespread criticism, and on the 21st of October the President ordered a withdrawal from Somalia. ### What failures did after-action reports identify? Analysts concluded that Task Force Ranger lacked adequate equipment—it relied solely on Humvees and helicopters, with no tanks, Infantry Fighting Vehicles, or AC-130 gunships. Equally important was a failure of perception: commanders had severely underestimated the SNA's numbers, capabilities, and will to fight, dismissing militia fighters who had already proved they could use RPGs in an anti-aircraft role and who possessed expert knowledge of Mogadishu's urban terrain. ## Sources 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6.

The Battle of Okinawa: The Pacific's Bloodiest Battle

Simon Whistler — Tue, 02 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

It is April 1945, and the war in Europe is winding down. Germany is surrounded, the Soviets are about to push into Berlin, and an Allied victory over the Third Reich is all but guaranteed. But on the other side of the globe, the deadliest days of the Pacific Theatre are only just beginning. As the tide of war shifted dramatically in favor of the United States during the final months of the conflict, Japan prepared for one last stand. It would come on the island of Okinawa, a desperate bid to deny the Americans a much-needed victory and to buy time for the home islands. What followed was a battle that would be remembered forever for its scale and ferocity. The Battle of Okinawa was the bloodiest single engagement of the entire Pacific War, a roughly 80-day ordeal that consumed soldiers, sailors, and an enormous civilian population alike. Its sheer brutality would echo far beyond the island itself, reshaping how the United States imagined the cost of invading mainland Japan, and ultimately influencing one of the most consequential decisions of the twentieth century. ## Key Takeaways - Okinawa was the bloodiest battle of the entire Pacific Theatre, lasting roughly 80 days; Americans suffered about 50,000 casualties, the Japanese around 77,000, and an estimated 150,000 civilians — roughly half the island's population — were killed. - The naval and aerial fighting earned the battle the nickname "Typhoon of Steel," defined in large part by nearly 1,500 kamikaze aircraft sent against the Allied fleet and the April 7 sinking of the Yamato, which cost Japan 3,700 men against only 12 US airmen lost. - Japanese forces used Okinawan civilians as human shields, forced them at gunpoint to fetch supplies, and coerced thousands into suicide near the battle's end; many Okinawans who threw themselves off cliffs had been told Americans were "White Devils." - Medic Desmond Doss earned the Medal of Honor for saving an estimated 75 soldiers without ever carrying a weapon, wading through fire and grenades while wounded four times himself. - The ferocity of the Japanese defense convinced US planners that a land invasion of the home islands could produce the greatest loss of life in human history, a fear widely believed to be a major reason the atomic bomb was ultimately used. ## Japan's Last Stand By 1945, the claim that the tide of war was turning was no understatement. Suffering defeat after defeat, Imperial Japan was losing not only islands and military bases but its experienced men and dwindling resources. Between 1942 and 1945 the Empire had lost hundreds of ships, thousands of aircraft, and thousands more men, and the situation was about to get far worse. Early in 1945, the United States captured Iwo Jima, an island brimming with fortified positions. With Iwo Jima taken, only one important island stronghold remained between American forces and the Japanese home islands: Okinawa. It was seen as the final stepping stone into mainland Japan, the Empire's last grip on its fading power over the Pacific. Seizing Okinawa served two purposes. It was necessary to neutralize the Japanese forces dug in there, but the island would also make an ideal place to build airbases as the war crept further and further from American shores. Okinawa was both an obstacle and an opportunity, and the planners on both sides understood exactly what was at stake. ## A Populated Island Bracing for Slaughter Long before the first landing craft hit the beaches, there were fears of the blood the battle would draw. Iwo Jima had been defended by a much smaller force, and yet, despite overwhelming American air and naval superiority, it had turned into an absolute bloodbath the moment soldiers began landing. Many of the Americans who had fought there were now preparing to land on Okinawa's shores, painfully aware of the horrors that awaited their amphibious assault. But Iwo Jima had at least been evacuated before the fighting. Okinawa was still fully populated, with an estimated 300,000 civilians on the island, the majority of them native Okinawans, all about to be caught in the crossfire. Even schoolchildren would not be spared. Several thousand children as young as 13 were mobilized, with the boys forming a front-line division called the Tekketsu Kinnotai and the young girls trained to assist the army's nurses. Around 40,000 other Okinawans were conscripted to fight the Americans. Beyond these hastily drafted civilians, the island's defense rested on the Japanese 32nd Army, roughly 77,000 men. To break them, the United States assembled the Tenth Army, a cross-branch force of both Army and Marine divisions tasked with launching the dreaded amphibious landing, supported from the sky and the sea. Commanding it was General Buckner, who had already faced Japan while leading the Aleutian Islands campaign. ## The Landings Begin Throughout late March, American troops landed on the smaller Kerama islands to the southwest of Okinawa, defended by a force of around 600. It took roughly five days to capture them, and losses were fairly high, with more than 100 casualties. But the Keramas had been a staging ground for Japanese suicide boats, and clearing them meant landing craft could now safely approach the main island. A couple of weeks later, the Americans inched even closer, seizing a few abandoned islands just a few miles west of Okinawa, close enough that artillery set up there was well within range of the main island. On April 1, the real battle began as US forces landed on Okinawa's western coast. To their pleasant surprise, the defenses were minimal and the beaches were secured with ease. Keeping the momentum, the Tenth Army swept across the central part of the island and captured two critical airbases before the sun had even set on the first day. With that first step completed so easily, the Tenth Army wasted no time launching the second phase of the attack, moving to secure the northern half of Okinawa. ## Typhoon of Steel While the fighting on land had only just begun to unfold, a battle of immense scale was about to erupt on the sea and in the sky. The United States had brought a massive force to Okinawa, which over the course of the campaign would consist of more than 3,000 aircraft, nearly 40 aircraft carriers, 27 cruisers, 18 battleships, and more than 170 destroyers and destroyer escorts. Guarding the American southern flank was a British Commonwealth fleet accompanied by more than 250 aircraft. The unfathomable scale of the naval and aerial fighting is what earned the engagement the nickname "Typhoon of Steel," for both its size and its utter chaos. The storm began to swirl just days after the first amphibious landings, when more than 400 Japanese aircraft took off from the mainland to attack the American fleet. Throughout April, more than 20 US ships were sunk and more than 150 damaged, many of them by kamikaze attacks. Japan had launched kamikaze sorties before, but around Okinawa is where they truly made their mark on history. Between April and June, nearly 1,500 kamikaze aircraft were sent screaming toward the Allied fleet, in waves so large they struck fear into every American who witnessed them. As Vice Admiral Brown recalled, "We watched each plunging kamikaze with the detached horror of one witnessing a terrible spectacle rather than as the intended victim." Most of the ships lost to these attacks were the smaller ones, such as landing craft or radar pickets, but even many aircraft carriers took damage. ## The Death of the Yamato While the waves of suicide planes were a terrifying sight, one of the battle's most historic moments came on April 7, during Japan's Operation Ten-Go. The plan was a desperate attempt to defend Okinawa, a daring mission in which ten ships would fight their way through the American naval forces and beach themselves on Okinawa's coast, turning their guns into coastal defenses. Leading this strike force was none other than the Yamato, which, along with her sister ship, was the heaviest and most heavily armed battleship in all of history. For context, her main armament was the Type 94 gun, a 21-meter cannon that weighed a staggering 147 tons, and she carried nine of them. Her secondary armament included more than a dozen turrets of various calibers and more than 160 anti-aircraft guns. If the Yamato could reach the beaches of Okinawa, things could become genuinely dangerous for the Americans ashore. Carrying only enough fuel for a one-way trip, the Yamato and her nine escorts began cruising toward Okinawa and made contact with the Americans on April 7. At 10 AM, American fighters arrived high in the sky, ready to duel any Japanese interceptors defending the approaching ships, but they found nothing but empty clouds. The Yamato and her team were sitting ducks. Just after noon, 280 American torpedo and bomber aircraft filled the sky over Japan's prized battleship, and soon the air was thick with anti-aircraft fire. In the first hour or so, five bombs struck the ship, destroying one of its radar rooms and damaging many turrets, while four torpedoes hit Yamato's port side. This left the ship listing, and the crew scrambled to correct it by counterflooding the opposite side. But the situation only worsened. With one of the boilers damaged, the ship struggled to maintain speed, and many of her guns had been knocked out by strafing aircraft. Half an hour later, a second attack commenced, with planes swooping in and dropping torpedoes from every direction, striking the escorts as they tried to encircle and protect the flagship. During this second wave, three more torpedoes struck the port side, and the Yamato began listing dangerously. A third and final attack sealed her fate with several more torpedo strikes. By 2:00 PM, the order was given to abandon ship, which was now listing so severely that further torpedoes hit the bottom of her hull. As she rolled onto her side in the water, one of her major magazines exploded, creating a mushroom cloud nearly four miles high. The jewel of Japan's Navy had been defeated, along with four of her escorts, in a battle that lasted only a few hours. In total, Japan lost 3,700 men in the confrontation, at the cost of only 12 US airmen, and long before the Yamato ever reached Okinawa. It was the epitome of Japan's desperation in the final months of the war, a willingness to sacrifice everything rather than surrender, something that would become painfully clear to the Tenth Army back on the island. ## Tropical Nightmare Back on land, the situation was growing intense. Within a week, the Tenth Army had marched all the way to the northernmost point of the island, isolating the remaining enemy forces in the north on the Motobu Peninsula. The fighting there was vicious, as the rough, mountainous terrain favored defenders who fought from the rocky ridges lining the front. The brutal combat lasted several days, until the north was finally cleared on April 18. With the north secured, attention turned to southern Okinawa. The terrain here was similar to the north, if not worse, and it was guarded by even more men. A considerable portion of the defenses centered on the city of Shuri, with the so-called Shuri Line extending across the island. Even reaching the line would prove difficult. The Americans advanced on Japanese positions after thoroughly pounding them with bombers and naval guns, but the defenders had built a network of tunnels throughout their fortifications, sheltering inside during bombing runs and rendering the bombardments largely ineffective. With the brunt of the fighting back in the hands of ground forces, fierce combat erupted as the Japanese rained bullets and grenades on the advancing Americans, ensuring that for every position lost, they inflicted as many casualties as possible. Once the Americans reached a defensive network known as the Kakazu Line, the US attack began to stall, unable to break through the intense defenses and jagged ridges lined with determined Japanese soldiers. Most notably, the Japanese held positions on what is known as a reverse slope, where a second hill stands in front of the defenders, creating a small valley that the attacker must cross. This largely negated US mortar and artillery power by blocking line of sight and made it difficult to advance without walking straight into a trap. Even so, General Buckner remained convinced that a breakthrough could be achieved. ## Hills, Mud, and a Conscientious Hero It would be an understatement to call the fighting here brutal. Each side threw everything it had at individual hills, desperately trying to make some kind of progress in the mayhem. It was here that the famed medic Desmond Doss earned the Medal of Honor for saving the lives of an estimated 75 soldiers, all without the use of a gun, as violence was strictly against his religious beliefs. His citation described how he waded through seas of bullets, with grenades raining down around him, dragging his wounded comrades to safety and treating their wounds no matter the danger, despite being wounded four different times. This fierce combat played out all across the front, with some of the most horrifying scenes emerging when caves had to be cleared of combatants, a task often handled by flamethrowers or flame tanks. At the beginning of May, Japan launched its biggest counteroffensive of the battle, attempting a risky amphibious landing behind American lines. But while providing cover for the landing, the Japanese moved much of their artillery into the open, where it was promptly destroyed, leading to the quick collapse of their attempted flank maneuver. On May 11, General Buckner ordered a renewed American assault, during which two key hills were captured, nicknamed Conical Hill and Sugar Loaf Hill. Both had been heavily defended, and many lives were lost in seizing them, but their capture provided a clear view of the city of Shuri, which Buckner hoped to soon encircle. That encirclement would have to wait. As the monsoons covered the island in heavy rain, Okinawa began to look less like a battle of the Second World War and more like Verdun or the Somme nearly three decades earlier. Each side was entrenched in the muddy, wet mess, with so many corpses left unrecovered that their rotting piles filled the island with the stench of death and decay. ## The Fall of Shuri and the Final Pockets Regardless of the conditions, the Americans inched forward where they could. By early June, following a heavy offshore bombardment from the USS Mississippi, the Japanese defending Shuri Castle decided to withdraw and flee south. Not wanting to let the opportunity slip away, marines quickly captured the position, unaware that an American bombing run was en route to their location, as the castle was not technically among their objectives. After panicked communications, the bombing was called off at the last second, likely preventing a friendly-fire catastrophe. With Shuri now falling, the rest of the Japanese forces continued running south and began preparing their final defensive positions on the Kiyan Peninsula. It was here, in the battle's final chapter, that General Buckner was killed, struck by artillery fire while checking on his men near the front. But even without him, there was no stopping the Allied momentum. As the Americans advanced, both on the ground and through several more amphibious landings, this last stage became the scene of the greatest slaughter of the battle, with tens of thousands of civilians losing their lives. Native Okinawans had been told that American soldiers would do unspeakable things to their wives and children, so many attacked desperately with nothing more than spears. As the situation grew more dire, thousands of mothers threw themselves and their children off the southern cliffs, truly believing that death was preferable to falling into the hands of what they had been told were "White Devils." They were not the only ones to take matters into their own hands. As the final Japanese pockets were surrounded, thousands of soldiers ended their lives in the tunnels, including the highest-ranking Japanese officer on the island, General Ushijima, who committed seppuku on June 21, in the final hours of the battle. This marked the end of large-scale hostilities, though clean-up operations continued for a couple of weeks to weed out remaining guerrilla fighters across the island. By June 30, Okinawa was deemed clear: the island had fallen. ## The Aftermath Okinawa was the bloodiest battle of the entire Pacific Theatre. The Americans suffered about 50,000 casualties, and the Japanese around 77,000, including 30,000 conscripted Okinawans. Of the civilian population, a shocking one-half were killed, totaling roughly 150,000 people. The most horrifying aspect of the battle is that not all of these deaths came from combat. It was well documented that the Japanese used the natives as human shields, forced them at gunpoint to fetch supplies, and coerced them into suicide near the end of the fighting. Combat translators managed to save many from ending their own lives, but that number is eclipsed by the thousands who went through with the act. One Okinawan official later put the tragedy in stark terms, telling The Guardian: "You have the Battle of Britain, in which your airmen protected the British people. We had the Battle of Okinawa, in which the exact opposite happened. The Japanese army not only starved the Okinawans but used them as human shields. That dark history is still present today – and Japan and the US should study it before they decide what to do next." The island had been absolutely devastated. In the span of just 80 days, it had gone from a tropical island rich in culture and architecture to a wasteland of ruins, fire, and maggots. Ninety percent of the buildings had been destroyed, so even those who miraculously survived had almost certainly lost their homes, left only with the trauma of war. ## How Okinawa Changed the World The Battle of Okinawa had a far greater impact on the overall war than it might appear on the surface. In fact, it potentially changed the world. Because of the ferocity with which the Japanese defended the island, and the appalling attitude they displayed toward civilians, the United States grew desperate to find an alternative to invading mainland Japan. All American planners could imagine was Okinawa, but on the scale of 75 million people. If the same kind of combat were to erupt in Tokyo, Osaka, and other densely populated cities, the resulting battle had the potential to become the greatest loss of life in all of human history. It is widely believed that this fear was one of the major reasons the decision was made to drop the atomic bomb on Japan and force its surrender, marking the only wartime use of nuclear weapons in history and bringing an end to the final chapter of World War II. ## Frequently Asked Questions ### Why was Okinawa considered so strategically important? Okinawa was seen as the final stepping stone into mainland Japan, the Empire's last grip on its dwindling power over the Pacific. Capturing it would neutralize the Japanese forces stationed there and provide an ideal location to build airbases as the war moved closer to the home islands, making it both an obstacle and an opportunity for American planners. ### What happened to the battleship Yamato during Operation Ten-Go? On April 7, the Yamato sailed toward Okinawa carrying only enough fuel for a one-way trip, with the plan to beach herself and use her massive guns as coastal artillery. American torpedo and bomber aircraft attacked in three waves. She capsized after a major magazine exploded, sending a mushroom cloud nearly four miles high. Japan lost 3,700 men in the engagement; only 12 US airmen were killed. ### Why were civilian casualties at Okinawa so catastrophic? An estimated 300,000 civilians were on the island when the fighting began, and roughly half — around 150,000 — were killed. Many deaths came not from combat but from deliberate Japanese policy: forces used Okinawans as human shields, forced them at gunpoint to fetch supplies, and coerced thousands into suicide. In the battle's final chapter, many mothers threw themselves and their children off the southern cliffs, having been told that American soldiers were "White Devils." ### Why was the battle nicknamed the "Typhoon of Steel"? The nickname reflects the unfathomable scale and chaos of the naval and aerial fighting surrounding the island. The United States deployed more than 3,000 aircraft, nearly 40 carriers, 27 cruisers, 18 battleships, and more than 170 destroyers and escorts. Japan responded with nearly 1,500 kamikaze aircraft between April and June — attacks so relentless that Vice Admiral Brown described watching them with "the detached horror of one witnessing a terrible spectacle." ### How did the Battle of Okinawa influence the decision to drop the atomic bomb? The ferocity of the Japanese defense at Okinawa — and the willingness of both soldiers and civilians to die rather than surrender — convinced American planners that an invasion of the home islands would be catastrophic on an unimaginable scale. All they could envision was Okinawa replicated across a population of 75 million. It is widely believed that this fear was one of the major reasons the United States chose to use the atomic bomb to force Japan's surrender rather than launch a land invasion.

The Biggest Losers of the Iran War So Far: How the Conflict Spilled Past Iran's Borders

Simon Whistler — Tue, 02 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The whole world is currently reeling from the effects of the Iran War. Fuel prices are jumping and stock markets are plummeting like two sides of a demonic seesaw. It has been not quite a month since the first attacks were launched, but even in that short a span, the war's impact has spilled far past Iran's borders. From drone strikes and spiking oil prices to supply chain disruption and looming food shortages, it seems no corner of the globe has been left untouched. The unsettling part is that there is currently no telling whether the conflict will last another week, another month, or, god forbid, another year. The longer it runs, the more pain piles up on the worst-affected regions, pain that ranges from a minor ache to screaming economic agony. This is not a story about the three belligerents alone. It is a story about everyone else, the bystander nations and economies caught in the blast radius of a war they did not start and cannot end. As the conflict continues to spiral, the nations described below are, so far, suffering the most. ## Key Takeaways - The Iran War, less than a month old, has already pushed global fuel prices up and stock markets down, with effects far beyond the three belligerents: the US, Israel, and Iran. - Every Gulf state — Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE — has been hit by Iranian retaliatory strikes; tens of thousands have fled Dubai and just shy of two dozen GCC civilians have been killed, around three hundred injured, most of them foreign workers. - Strikes on Gulf desalination plants threaten civilian water survival; a leaked 2008 US Embassy cable warned that destroying one plant could force Riyadh to evacuate within a week. - Iran's closure of the Strait of Hormuz — through which roughly 20 percent of the world's oil passes — has disrupted global energy flows and could shrink Qatar and Kuwait's economies by as much as 14 percent if the war runs through April. - India faces a compounding fuel, remittance, and aviation crisis; the rupee hit an all-time low, and a $50 billion annual remittance stream from Gulf workers is at risk. - A drone strike on the UK's Akrotiri base in Cyprus marked Iran's first successful hit on EU-adjacent soil, drawing European warships and raising fears of a Greek-Turkish escalation on the divided island. - Lebanon may be faring worst of all: renewed Israel-Hezbollah fighting has killed nearly a thousand Lebanese, displaced over a million, and threatens a 10 percent economic contraction. ## The Gulf States: Strikes, Water, and a Shattered Illusion Outside of the three belligerent nations, the most obviously impacted countries have so far been Iran's neighbors in the Gulf. Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates have all been on the receiving end of retaliatory air strikes by Iran. Consider Dubai. Over the decades, the city built a reputation as a hub of global finance, a luxurious tourist destination, and a home away from home for anyone rich enough to afford it and willing to overlook the Emirates' facilitating a genocide in Sudan. Now residents and tourists alike monitor their phones for text notifications warning of potential missile threats in their area. The UAE has taken the brunt of Iranian drone strikes since the beginning of the month, and the illusion of Dubai as a luxurious safe haven has been shattered. The ruling sheikhs have scrambled to censor social media influencers sharing content that, in their words, "contradicts official announcements or that may cause social panic," and they insist that the sound of missiles being intercepted midair is "the sound of safety." Over the last three weeks, tens of thousands of residents and tourists have left Dubai. Those unable to flee have weathered the storm as best they can. If attacks continue, the tourism economy will most likely keep contracting, sharply cutting income for locals, for the large population of migrant workers, and for international businesses headquartered in a city that built its entire reputation on the idea that it was untouchable. ## Water as a Weapon: The Desalination Threat The Gulf's desalination plants supply tens of millions of people with drinking water. The region is a hot, dry desert and relies on these plants to turn seawater into something humans can actually drink. Already, Kuwait and the UAE have reported missile-related damage to desalination plants, and two plants in Bahrain have been struck, hitting some thirty villages' supply of fresh water. Deliberately targeting desalination infrastructure would be a serious escalation. As Abdullah Baabood, an Omani academic at Waseda University in Japan, put it, "striking them risks turning a military confrontation into a direct threat to civilian survival." Any significant damage to the Gulf's ability to produce water for its residents would be a catastrophe so vast that the only fitting descriptor would be "Biblical." To put it in concrete terms, consider a leaked 2008 cable from the US Embassy in Riyadh. It warned that, at that time, a single desalination plant provided the Saudi capital with more than 90 percent of its drinking water. If that plant were destroyed or even significantly damaged, the entire capital would have to evacuate within a week. As the cable put it, "the current structure of the Saudi government could not exist" without the plant. For Bahrain and the rest of the Gulf Cooperation Council, the damage to these plants is not an inconvenience. It is an existential threat. ## Justifications, Casualties, and Escalation Iran insists it is not bombing its neighbors for the hell of it. Tehran claims it is justifiably targeting US installations in the region — embassies, military bases, and air defense systems used to protect American interests. But it has not limited itself to military targets or US-operated sites. Since the 28th of February, oilfields, desalination plants, ships, and ports across the GCC have all found themselves on the wrong end of a drone strike. These pieces of infrastructure are vital. Beyond fresh water, they provide food and energy and support economic activity for millions. As this account was being prepared, the US and Israel escalated further by attacking Iranian operations at the underwater South Pars field, a massive natural gas reserve whose ownership is shared by Qatar and Iran. In a word, this was bad. Iran retaliated almost immediately, striking Saudi, Emirati, and Qatari oil terminals and oil fields, shutting down Qatari operations and forcing Gulf nations to confront an uncomfortable new reality: that they might have to step into the conflict themselves. Iran has apologized to its neighbors for the ongoing attacks, maintaining that its true target is American assets. But even if that were true, it would do little to undo the damage already done to infrastructure, diplomatic relations, and human lives. Precise figures are hard to come by at this stage, but general counts suggest just shy of two dozen civilians across the GCC have been killed in Iranian strikes so far, with around three hundred injured. The majority were foreign workers supporting families back home in places like Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Bangladesh. Whatever the official line from Tehran, the outcome is the same: those dead civilians are not coming back. ## The Strait of Hormuz and the Economic Squeeze Iran has barred entry to the Strait of Hormuz — the 21-mile stretch of ocean passage through which some twenty percent of the world's oil passes — for all but what it calls "non-hostile ships." Individual vessels have been granted passage, and Iran's own ships are still exporting upwards of one million barrels a day. But the rest of the world must press through negotiations to secure passage, a process still ongoing. The impact on the global economy is already massive. Resource extraction, refinement, and exports from the region have been majorly disrupted and in some cases halted altogether. While some Gulf states are anticipated to fare better than others, Qatar and Kuwait's economies are expected to contract by as much as 14 percent if the war continues through April. Investments and investment proposals by the UAE, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia on the order of trillions of dollars may be reviewed and possibly rescinded as the region's priorities shift. Imports are a parallel worry. The Gulf imports about 85 percent of its food, and the strait's closure has forced the region to lean on its food stocks, which will last around five months. With no resolution on the horizon, the world is bracing alongside the Gulf for the continued fallout. ## India: A Fuel Nightmare While the headlines have focused on the bombs falling in the Persian Gulf, there has been less discussion of the implications for South Asia. India and its neighbors are, thankfully, not subjected to the same nightmare fuel unfolding in the Gulf. Instead, they are facing down another kind of nightmare: a fuel nightmare. India imports more than 85 percent of its domestic oil needs, and about half of those imports must pass through the Strait of Hormuz. The closure, and the corresponding spike in oil prices, is putting incredible pressure on the Indian economy. Pankaj Srivastava, senior vice president at the Norwegian energy research firm Rystad Energy, has stated that even a few dollars' increase in oil prices per barrel will "weigh on the balance of payments and could put further pressure on the rupee." Beyond crude, India faces a significant shortage of liquefied petroleum gas. Indian homes and restaurants rely on this resource, forty percent of which is imported from the Middle East. The strait's closure has driven restaurants to slash hours and trim menus as shortages of fuel and cooking oil take hold. In response, Mumbai has temporarily lifted its ban on restaurants burning coal, backsliding on its air-quality and pollution-control standards — though, to New Delhi's credit, it is generally good form in geopolitics to make sure your people do not go without food. ## India's Stranded Workers and a Plunging Rupee The upheaval is rippling well beyond fuel. Each year, Indian workers living in the Gulf send a whopping $50 billion back home to support their families. Now they find themselves living in something that is not quite a warzone yet, but certainly not the island of stability the region once was. And they cannot simply up and leave now that missiles are flying. Jet fuel prices in India have spiked since January, and insurance rates for any craft entering the Middle East, by air or by sea, are at an all-time high. Some of that rising cost is being passed to consumers as fuel surcharges on already expensive tickets. Even those who can afford to leave fear they will not be able to support themselves and their families once gone. Many are stranded regardless of finances. In peacetime, the Gulf is by far India's largest aviation corridor; roughly half of all flights to or from India rely on Gulf airspace and airports, much of it serving the roughly 9 million Indian nationals across the GCC. Now the combination of the conflict and the closure of Pakistani airspace to Indian flights means thousands of flights between India and Europe have been cancelled or rerouted, stranding passengers and adding hours of costly airtime. India is not alone. Much of South and Southeast Asia is in the same boat. Thailand has directed office workers to work from home one day a week to cut commuting costs, and the Philippines — which imports 98 percent of its oil from the Gulf — has declared a national energy emergency. For India itself, the rupee saw its sharpest one-day plunge in four years last week, hitting an all-time low of 93 paisa to the dollar and looking like it may fall further. Facing these mounting crises, the Indian government now confronts the choice of whether to turn to Russian oil to bridge the gap. ## The Cyprus Situation: A Frozen Conflict Reawakens Cyprus has been torn between the Republic of Cyprus in the south and the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus — a state recognized only by Turkey — since 1974. Despite its small size and internal division, the island holds outsized strategic importance for its European allies. Its location in the eastern Mediterranean gives NATO a foothold in the Middle East. The UK established two military bases there in 1960 and has maintained a presence for decades. In the war's early days, a drone launched from Lebanon — likely by Hezbollah, but possibly by an IRGC unit stationed in the area — slipped past British defenses to hit the base at Akrotiri, damaging a runway. There were no injuries, but it was still a big deal. The attack marked the first time Iran has successfully struck an EU nation, albeit technically the sovereign soil of non-EU Britain, and Europe responded with predictable alarm. The UK has now begun allowing US forces to use its bases on the island, and on the tenth of March the HMS Dragon charted a course from her home base in Portsmouth to the eastern Mediterranean. Visiting Cyprus shortly after the strike, French President Emmanuel Macron declared that "when Cyprus is attacked, it is Europe that is attacked," and pledged additional warships to bolster the island's anti-drone and anti-missile defenses. Cyprus, meanwhile, was understandably furious at this violation of its airspace by Iranian forces aiming at British targets. Some civilians took to the streets to demand the removal of British forces. After all, if Britain is not holding up its end of the bargain — providing security for the Cypriot people — why continue to host them? ## Cyprus and the Turkish Shadow Nicosia reconsidering the value of British forces is, perhaps, a loss for Britain's standing in the region. But even if Cypriots wanted to, kicking British forces off the island would not be straightforward. Any further boiling over of the war poses another acute risk: the possibility that it could be used to justify a Turkish military buildup on the island. Cyprus is a frozen conflict zone, split between the Republic of Cyprus government in the south and the Turkish Republic in the north. The population has been deeply divided between those politically and culturally aligned with Greece in the south and those aligned with Turkey in the north since the 1950s, when tensions escalated into a series of internal conflicts. After decades of violence, during which the opposing sides received support from the Greek and Turkish governments, a tense peace took hold when the UN established a "Green Line" dividing the two sections of the island. Broadly, the British presence in the south is meant, at least in part, to serve as an insurance policy against further Turkish incursion against the Cypriot government. In the wake of the Iranian strikes, Turkey smells blood in the water. According to a recent analysis by Gönül Tol, a Senior Fellow at the Middle East Institute, "Turkish officials fear that the growing military buildup in the Eastern Mediterranean could further tilt the regional balance against Turkey." Greece and Turkey have both responded to the strike on Akrotiri by reinforcing their presence on the island. Ankara has deployed half a dozen fighter jets to the northern half, ostensibly for protection against further Iranian attacks, while Athens has deployed missiles, F-16s, and two frigates to the Republic of Cyprus. Both sides have their hackles raised, and some form of escalation is not totally outside the realm of possibility. From Nicosia's perspective, none of this is good. Cyprus has been targeted in a conflict it wants nothing to do with, its ally failed to prevent that targeting, and the island is now hosting more of the very military assets that got it targeted in the first place. In a televised address after the strike, Cypriot President Nikos Christodoulides stated: "Our country does not participate in any way and does not intend to be part of any military operation. We remain committed to the humanitarian role that we have served all this time. Always as part of the solution and never as part of the problem. We do what we have to do responsibly." Because the attack came from Lebanese airspace, Christodoulides has remained in contact with Lebanese President Joseph Aoun to discuss the situation. ## Lebanon: Possibly Faring Worst of All The Lebanese government has struggled for years to keep the Iran-aligned paramilitary group Hezbollah in check. Despite ceasefire and disarmament agreements, Hezbollah remains a significant player in the region. This became obvious at the beginning of March, when — in retaliation for the death of Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei — the group retook strategic positions it had previously yielded to the Lebanese Armed Forces south of the Litani River, near the border with Israel, and launched barrages of missiles, rockets, and drones against Israeli territory. The attacks triggered an Israeli response that has left nearly a thousand Lebanese citizens dead. According to a March 19th UNICEF report, at least one hundred and sixteen of those killed were children. The same report details disruptions at hospitals, dozens of attacks on emergency medical service workers, school closures, and the danger faced by those forced to flee their homes. The war has displaced over a million Lebanese civilians, along with a number of Palestinian and Syrian refugees living in Lebanon, leaving families to shelter in cars and tents as shelters overflow. ## Lebanon's Economic Reckoning and Israel's Vow The reignited hostilities would have been a major headache for Beirut even without the death toll and humanitarian crisis. Dragged back into war, the nation is bracing for an economic contraction of as much as ten percent, having barely recovered from the previous round of fighting in 2024. The Lebanese government has repeatedly appeared weak and ineffective in its attempts to disarm Hezbollah in the sixteen months since that last war. After the group launched its attacks on Israel at the start of this month, Lebanese Prime Minister Nawaf Salam declared Hezbollah's military activity illegal and demanded the militia relinquish its weapons. Hezbollah, predictably, responded with the equivalent of "come and take it," and threatened a confrontation with the Lebanese government once the war with Israel ends. Israeli leaders have vowed to continue their offensive until Hezbollah is disarmed. Officially, the ongoing strikes are intended to destroy "terror infrastructure" and prevent Hezbollah's return to the area. Bridges crossing the Litani River, connecting southern Lebanon with the rest of the country, have already been destroyed, after Israel's military claimed they were being used by Hezbollah. Israel's maneuvers are paired with rhetoric promising even more destruction, signaling that this campaign will likely extend beyond the US-Israeli hostilities with Iran. Israel's Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich — a man not noted for his calm rhetoric — said in early March that the south of Lebanon will "become like Khan Younis," referencing a Gaza city that has by now been largely reduced to rubble. ## Continuing Fallout: Russia, the Horn of Africa, and East Asia The regions above are not the only ones affected. Others are having far more mixed experiences. Take Russia. The US has waived sanctions on Russian oil exports until at least April 19th in an attempt to soothe global markets. That, combined with the spike in oil prices, has already helped stabilize a Russian economy that had been looking increasingly fragile. Even another month of sanctions relief and high prices would be enormously beneficial for the Russian war effort in Ukraine, which has absorbed an incredible amount of resources over the last four years. Yet the economic boost does not change the fact that Moscow looks weak in its inability to militarily back its Iranian allies. After failing to help its allies in Armenia in 2023, Syria in 2024, Iran in 2025, and now Venezuela and Iran again in 2026, the Kremlin no longer looks like even a remotely credible security partner. Then there is the Horn of Africa, which could be a whole video in itself. The UAE, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia have been heavily involved in the region in recent years, providing funding, weaponry, and mediation for various factions while advancing their own agendas. Now the situation has changed. Ethiopia, Sudan, and Somalia face something of a power vacuum as their patrons in the Gulf turn their attention to more pressing matters. Sudan may be particularly affected. While the Sudanese government's forces are backed by Turkey, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia, the RSF paramilitary group relies primarily on the UAE, both for supplies and for laundering the gold produced by mines under its control. With the Emirates' attention focused much closer to home, the militia is likely to face a significant drop in external support. Finally, there are the nations — mostly in East Asia — that stand to be badly impacted but have not quite got there yet. Japan, Taiwan, and South Korea, among others, rely heavily on Middle Eastern fuel; roughly 90 percent of the oil and gas passing through the Strait of Hormuz is bound for Asian nations. Most East Asian states have enough fuel reserves to last a few more weeks, but if the strait does not reopen soon, everything from heavy industry to street vendors could face temporary or longer-term closures. Japan holds more than eight months of oil in strategic reserves, and Brunei and Malaysia can produce and export their own, but many Asian states could run out within four weeks. Nations across the region are imposing mitigation policies; among them is South Korea's Prime Minister Kim Min-seok, who is setting up an emergency economic task force to prepare for "worst-case scenarios." The war between the US-Israel coalition and Iran is now nearly a month old, with little indication that an end is remotely in sight. For those involved, and for the many who wish they were not, things could yet get worse before they get better. ## Frequently Asked Questions ### Which countries have been hit hardest by the Iran War so far? Outside the three belligerents — the US, Israel, and Iran — the Gulf states have been most obviously impacted, with every member of the GCC struck by Iranian retaliatory fire. India faces a severe fuel and economic crisis, Cyprus was hit by a drone strike on the UK's Akrotiri base, and Lebanon may be faring worst of all, with nearly a thousand dead and over a million displaced. ### Why are the Gulf's desalination plants such a critical vulnerability? The Gulf is a hot, dry desert region that relies on desalination to turn seawater into drinking water for tens of millions of people. Plants in Kuwait, the UAE, and Bahrain have already been damaged. A leaked 2008 US Embassy cable warned that destroying a single plant supplying over 90 percent of Riyadh's water would force the capital to evacuate within a week, making such strikes an existential, not merely military, threat. ### What is the significance of the Strait of Hormuz closure? Roughly 20 percent of the world's oil passes through the 21-mile strait, which Iran has closed to all but "non-hostile ships." The disruption has spiked global oil prices, halted some exports, and could shrink Qatar and Kuwait's economies by as much as 14 percent if the war runs through April. About 90 percent of the oil and gas transiting the strait is bound for Asian nations. ### How is the war affecting India specifically? India imports more than 85 percent of its oil, about half of it through the Strait of Hormuz, so the closure has driven up fuel prices and triggered a liquefied petroleum gas shortage that has restaurants cutting hours. The rupee hit an all-time low of 93 paisa to the dollar, a $50 billion annual remittance stream from Gulf workers is at risk, and thousands of flights have been cancelled or rerouted, stranding nationals abroad. ### What triggered the renewed Israel-Hezbollah fighting in Lebanon? In retaliation for the death of Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, Hezbollah retook positions south of the Litani River and launched missiles, rockets, and drones at Israel in early March. 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The Blueprint for an Invasion of South Korea: How a Second Korean War Would Unfold

Simon Whistler — Tue, 02 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

In 1905, the philosopher George Santayana wrote that "those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." In the case of Korea, we may soon get a real-life example of this. The Korean War, fought across three years between 1950 and 1953, killed between three and five million people, over half of them civilians. Although the conflict concluded with an Armistice Agreement, no formal peace treaty was ever signed. It is better to think of the war as paused rather than resolved. Today there are very real worries that this time-out could soon expire. In recent years, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has grown increasingly bellicose toward the South, threatening to "deal a deadly blow to thoroughly annihilate them by mobilising all the toughest means and potentialities without a moment's hesitation." Some read this as bluster. Others fear it could be a genuine statement of intent. And it is not only Koreans who should fear the war's return to the peninsula. While analysts hold differing perspectives on Kim's behavior, there is a broad consensus on one point: a sequel to the Korean War would be even more bloody and destructive than the first. A second iteration is a potentially apocalyptic prospect. This article examines what that second war would actually look like — the forces each Korea brings to the fight, the great powers circling the peninsula, the flashpoints that could ignite it, and the phase-by-phase course it would likely run. The central conclusion is uncomfortable but clear: a renewed Korean conflict would be an all-or-nothing affair, and its outcome could ultimately hinge on the calculations of a single man in Pyongyang. ## Key Takeaways - North Korea fields one of the world's largest standing armies at roughly 1.3 million active personnel, a nuclear arsenal estimated at around 50 warheads, and a massive artillery force positioned near the border, including an estimated 8,500 field artillery pieces and 5,100 multiple-launch rocket systems. - South Korea has chosen not to build nuclear weapons, relying instead on the US nuclear umbrella under the 1953 Mutual Defence Treaty; it compensates with technological sophistication, the world's second-largest artillery force, and advanced systems like the K9 Thunder, F-35s, and a forthcoming laser air-defense program. - A second war would almost certainly draw in outside powers, just as the first did, with the United States, China, and Russia likely to reprise interventionist roles — though under very different conditions than in the 1950s. - China is unlikely to jump in early on behalf of an aggressor North Korea, but its calculus could change if Pyongyang's regime faced collapse and Seoul-US forces approached the Chinese border, echoing 1950. - Doubts over US security guarantees have intensified under President Trump, whose "America First" posture and complaints about South Korean cost-sharing have unsettled an alliance once thought iron-clad. - Analysts map the likely course of a conflict across distinct phases — build-up, initial strike, counteroffensive, and either de-escalation, stalemate, or existential escalation — with Seoul, just 50 km from the border, well within range from the opening barrage. - The most likely trigger is not a calculated invasion but a miscalculation: a tit-for-tat flare-up, perhaps in the Yellow Sea around the contested Northern Limit Line, that escalates uncontrollably. ## A Nightmare of Epic Proportions: The North's Arsenal Before considering how a second Korean War might unfold, it is essential to understand the aggravating factors that could turn it into a once-in-a-generation bloodbath — a conflict so devastating it would make the war in Ukraine look modest by comparison. Fearing renewed war on both sides of the Military Demarcation Line, both Koreas have rapidly expanded their militaries in the decades since the 1953 armistice. For Pyongyang, the nuclear weapons program is the crown jewel. The Congressional Research Service's 2025 report noted that "over the past decade, North Korea has advanced its nuclear weapons and ballistic missile programmes, raising the threat Pyongyang poses to the United States homeland, US allies in East Asia, and US interests." Despite sanctions, trade restrictions, and engagement efforts, no meaningful progress has been made toward denuclearization. As the US Intelligence Community's 2025 report stressed, "Kim has no intention of negotiating away his strategic weapons programmes, which he perceives as a guarantor of regime security and national pride." The threat is also intensifying. A law introduced in September 2022 lowered the threshold for nuclear use in certain scenarios, including a declaration of intent to launch pre-emptive nuclear attacks. North Korea's arsenal is expanding while its ballistic missile technology grows more sophisticated. Pyongyang has never disclosed its warhead count, but the figure is thought to be around 50. These are deliverable via short- and medium-range ballistic missiles capable of striking South Korea and Japan, intermediate-range missiles able to reach US bases across the Asia-Pacific, and intercontinental ballistic missiles designed to threaten the US mainland. The regime has also accelerated its Pukguksong series of submarine-launched ballistic missiles, conducting multiple successful tests. ## Manpower, Artillery, and the Limits of the North The North Korean problem extends far beyond nuclear weapons. The country fields one of the world's most formidable standing armies, with roughly 1.3 million active personnel — the fourth largest on earth. National service is mandatory: at least ten years for men and seven for women. Despite North Korean units taking heavy losses in Russia's Kursk region, with around 6,000 killed or injured, those casualties represent a small fraction of total manpower. The fighting may even prove instructive, allowing military leaders to absorb lessons from a modern war. The North also possesses a massive, if aging, artillery and rocket arsenal: an estimated 8,500 field artillery pieces, 5,100 multiple-launch rocket systems, 100 170-millimetre self-propelled guns, and 200 240-millimetre multiple-launch rocket systems. Many are positioned near the border, close to Seoul. Pyongyang is also believed to hold roughly 4,300 tanks alongside a growing inventory of unmanned ground vehicles, AI-equipped suicide drones, and robotic sentries with AI navigation and identification capabilities. Not every branch carries such fearsome numbers. Owing to a historical focus on land power, the North's brown-water navy is unimpressive. According to The Interpreter, "the navy still relies on approximately 60 diesel coastal and mini submarines, the majority of which date back to the 1960s and 1970s, while its surface forces comprise only small patrol vessels and corvettes for operations along the coastline, not to project power far from the shore." Efforts to expand are underway — new warships like the Choe Hyon-class and nuclear-capable submarines like the Hero Kim Kun Ok — but limited industrial capacity and sanctions on critical materials are likely to slow progress. A separate shadow fleet of illicitly registered vessels exists to bypass UN sanctions, smuggle technology, and transport equipment and troops, reinforcing Pyongyang's broader defensive posture even if its wartime role would be limited. ## The Darker Arsenal: Air Power, Chemical, Biological, and Cyber The Korean People's Air and Anti-Air Force is similarly unremarkable, overly reliant on Soviet-era jets. As The Cove outlined, it is "largely composed of ageing aircraft with roughly 800 combat aircraft, including MiG-21s, MiG-23s, and MiG-29s, 300 helicopters, including Mil Mi-2 and Mi-8/17 variants and a range of air defence systems including SA-2, SA-3, SA-5 surface-to-air missile systems and newer indigenous systems." Change is being pursued: in 2023 Pyongyang unveiled AI-equipped UAVs resembling the American RQ-4 Global Hawk and MQ-9 Reaper — named the Saebyeol-4 and Saebyeol-9 — and in March 2025 Kim revealed the country's first airborne early-warning drones. Then there are the weapons of mass destruction. North Korea's biological and chemical capabilities offer the regime a low-cost, high-impact means of asymmetrical warfare. As one Centre for Strategic and International Studies report warned, "North Korean development of biological weapons both poses a serious potential threat to the United States and its strategic partners. Biological weapons could be even more lethal than nuclear weapons and they have always been far cheaper." Intelligence is uncertain, but the US Department of Defence suspects Pyongyang holds agents including anthrax, smallpox, plague, and botulinum toxin, deliverable by missile, artillery shell, or covert contamination of water, food, or population centers. On chemical weapons, CIA assessments hold that Pyongyang has maintained a program for many years. South Korea's defence ministry estimates a reserve of 2,500 to 5,000 tonnes of agents, including nerve agents like VX and sarin, blister agents such as mustard gas, and choking agents like chlorine. Short of war, these serve mainly as deterrence and the occasional assassination tool. To apply pressure without triggering open conflict, Pyongyang has leaned on hybrid warfare — above all, cyberattacks. Its cyberwarfare agency, Bureau 121, coordinates attacks, gathers intelligence, and raises revenue through hacking. The roughly 6,000-strong unit was blamed by the FBI for the 2014 attack that crippled Sony's network, and North Korean operatives have infiltrated Western firms by posing as legitimate remote contractors. In any conflict, expect these operations to expand as a low-cost means of disrupting infrastructure and funding the regime. ## South Korea: A Matter of Life and Death Despite possessing the technical capacity to build them, Seoul has opted against nuclear weapons, relying instead on Washington's nuclear umbrella. Under the 1953 Mutual Defence Treaty, both nations treat an armed attack on either as a threat to their own security. While the treaty does not mandate automatic military action, it has been interpreted as a commitment to defend South Korea by military means. As a signatory to the Chemical Weapons Convention and the Biological Weapons Convention, Seoul is not known to hold chemical or biological weapons — a moral high ground that could nonetheless hand the North a battlefield advantage should it resort to such arms. South Korea's military is not what it once was. A historically low birth rate has shrunk it to 450,000 active personnel, even as research suggests at least half a million would be needed to defend against a Northern invasion. National service — required of all able-bodied men aged 18 to 28 for between 18 and 21 months — does, however, provide a sizeable pool of reservists. What Seoul lacks in manpower, nukes, and WMDs it more than makes up for in technological sophistication. It fields the world's second-largest artillery force, after the North, with 12,100 pieces, including roughly 1,100 K9 Thunder 155-mm self-propelled howitzers considered best in class. It also operates hundreds of K239 Chunmoo multiple-launch rocket systems, various Hyunmoo ballistic missiles, and advanced air-defense systems including the M-SAM and L-SAM. ## Seoul's Technological Edge at Sea and in the Air The South Korean navy, transitioning from green-water to blue-water capability, is in a different league entirely. The fleet numbers 147 vessels, including 13 destroyers, 17 frigates, three corvettes, and 21 submarines, and Seoul is developing its first light aircraft carrier, the CVX-class, which would mark a major leap in power projection. With over 800 aircraft, the ROK Air Force is formidable, blending Western technology with Korean innovation. It is spearheaded by F-35s, upgraded KF-16s, and F-15K Slam Eagles, supported by a multi-layered air-defense system. Seoul is also upgrading its airborne early-warning and control fleet, having awarded a $2.26 billion contract to L3Harris for new Phoenix AEW&C aircraft. South Korea is making significant strides in drone technology as well. In late 2025 it launched the "Drone Warrior" initiative, which aims to train every service member in drone piloting, while the KAORI-X stealth unmanned combat aerial vehicle remains under development. Seoul is also set to become the first country to officially deploy and operate laser weapons to shoot down North Korean drones — a program it dubbed the "Star Wars Project." Much of this prowess flows from a highly developed defence industrial base. As confidence in US security guarantees has wavered, Seoul has emphasized self-reliance. The expansion brings economic dividends too: South Korea has become one of the world's top ten arms exporters, a trend that will be crucial to sustain given its shrinking population and military. ## A Great Power Showdown — Again Neither Korea needs help to inflict devastating damage on the other. But the strategic, historical, and symbolic weight of the peninsula raises the stakes for the entire world, and a conflict would likely draw great powers onto both sides — exactly as it did the first time. The Korean War was the first major proxy conflict of the Cold War: China and the Soviet Union intervened for the North, while a US-led UN coalition backed the South. Washington repelled the initial invasion before pushing beyond the 38th parallel into North Korea. China, motivated by national security fears, then intervened and reversed UN gains. The Soviet Union, while avoiding large-scale ground deployments, was an essential supplier from the outset. By the war's end in 1953, the US and China had collectively committed three million troops, with Washington deploying one-fifth of its air force and nearly half its navy. Soviet personnel numbered only two to three thousand, but Moscow supplied T-34 tanks, MiG-15 fighters, small arms, and essential materiel. Together these actors turned a civil war into a major Cold War confrontation and locked the peninsula into prolonged division. Convincing evidence suggests the US, China, and Russia would reprise these roles under the right circumstances. But the rules of the game have changed. Advances in military capability and global economic interdependence have raised the stakes, so the precise nature of intervention would differ this time. ## How the Powers Have Changed Since 1953 In the 1950s, China was a backward, agrarian society devastated by civil war, with a brown-water navy, an embryonic air force of propeller planes, and a numerically large but technologically primitive army lacking heavy artillery, tanks, and any nuclear weapons. It was essentially in the Soviet Union's pocket. Today's China is a military powerhouse with an industrialized, export-driven economy, the world's second-largest, and clear ambitions to become the leading superpower. The United States has not stood still either. In the 1950s its economy was heavily industrial and it was building its first permanent overseas bases. Nuclear weapons were emerging but delivery systems were rudimentary and conventional forces dominated. Since then, the US has shifted toward services and technology, advanced across every military domain from mass artillery to precision-guided munitions and unmanned systems, and now oversees roughly 750 military outposts worldwide. Both nations command vastly more advanced nuclear forces. Beijing is believed to hold 600 warheads — the world's fastest-growing reserve — while Washington holds around 5,200, both fielding nuclear triads spanning land, sea, and air. Their armies have shrunk: China's from 4.6 million to two million, the US Army's from 1.4 million in 1950 to 1.3 million today, with roughly 28,500 US personnel stationed in South Korea. Reduced manpower has not diminished capability; technology has simply made mass mobilization less central. ## What Beijing and Washington Would Bring to the Fight China boasts the world's largest land-based missile arsenal, including advanced systems like the DF-17 and DF-21. But Beijing is unlikely to deploy its most sophisticated weapons casually. More probable is enhancing Pyongyang's arsenal — supplying manufacturing components, handing over older systems like the DF-11 and DF-15, and crucially providing targeting data and satellite imagery. Chinese assistance is also likely to arrive well after a war begins. A conflict on its front porch does not serve Beijing's interests, and the 1961 Sino-North Korean Mutual Aid Treaty obligates China to intervene only if Pyongyang is attacked, not if it is the aggressor. Should the war turn and Pyongyang risk falling, however, that calculus could shift. Washington fields equivalent precision systems — HIMARS, MLRS, GMLRS, and ATACMS — complemented by howitzers like the M109A7 Paladin. In December 2025 the US Army confirmed the M270A2 rocket artillery system took part in live-fire testing in South Korea for the first time, underscoring Seoul's priority status. Treaty-bound to defend its ally, the US could bring these weapons to bear from the conflict's inception. On tanks, China's 6,800 edge the US fleet of 4,600, though Washington enjoys greater combat experience and fields more modern variants like the M1 Abrams, permanently stationed in South Korea. China would likely send older Type 59 and Type 69 tanks to avoid advanced technology being captured. At sea, the People's Liberation Army Navy is the world's largest fleet — three aircraft carriers, 60 destroyers, 50 frigates, 70 corvettes, and 60 submarines — but Beijing's focus is firmly on Taiwan. Any naval help for the North would lean defensive: submarines shadowing US movements, carriers positioned to complicate allied operations. The US Navy, the world's leading force with 11 carriers, 75 destroyers, 25 corvettes, and 70 submarines, would likely commit two to four carrier strike groups rather than its entire fleet. In the air, China's roughly 2,150 combat aircraft would likely provide a defensive umbrella over the North, with a higher chance of deploying advanced jets like the J-20 and J-35 given the lower theft risk. The US, with around 2,650 combat aircraft, would deploy top-end jets — F-16s already in South Korea, possible F-35s at Kunsan Air Base — alongside strategic bombers including B-1Bs, B-52s, and B-2s. ## The Russian Bear One key difference from the 1950s is Russia's diminished standing. During the Korean War the Soviet Union was Washington's undisputed archenemy. Today many analysts place Russia a distant third behind the US and China across military and economic metrics — only one of the three was driven out of the Black Sea by a country lacking a navy. With Moscow's attention fixed on Ukraine, the Kremlin would likely take a back seat in any Korean conflict, leaving Beijing to do the heavy lifting. But Russia could still rock the boat. The Ukraine war must end eventually, and when it does, Moscow's readiness to extend its reach elsewhere will grow. Grey-zone tactics — cyberattacks, disinformation, political interference, and the targeting of infrastructure such as undersea cables — are likely to become more problematic. A mutual defence clause exists within the June 2025 Comprehensive Strategic Partnership between Russia and North Korea, but many analysts believe the Kremlin would avoid direct intervention given the escalatory risks of a war involving the US. Even so, Moscow retains plenty of options short of stepping into the firing line — much as Russian intelligence recently helped Iran target American assets across the Gulf. Moscow may also feel indebted to Pyongyang. Since September 2022, North Korea has supplied Russia with artillery shells and ballistic missiles, and in 2024 sent troops to help repel Ukraine's Kursk incursion — roughly 15,000 North Koreans have fought alongside Russian forces. Returning the favor could mean supplying equipment: Pyongyang already mass-produces basic systems like the Soviet-designed BM-21 Grad, and Moscow could provide precision-guided systems such as the 9A52-4 Tornado. ## Russian Hardware and the Question of Reliability Russia's tank reserves have been hammered in Ukraine — estimates suggest a pre-war stockpile of 7,300 has fallen to around 3,000 — so a flood of tanks across the Korean border is unlikely. Were the Ukraine war to end, with Russian factories running around the clock, transfers could increase quickly; while it continues, upgrading the North's existing fleet with advanced systems is the more probable move. In the air, Moscow's fleet excels in sheer volume, with around 4,200 combat aircraft. As Stalin put it, "quantity has a quality all its own." US Indo-Pacific Command Admiral Samuel Paparo stated in November 2024 that Moscow had agreed to supply Pyongyang with MiG-29 and Su-27 fighters in exchange for troops, so aircraft provision is on the table. Kim is known to want the more advanced Su-35 and Su-57, though whether Putin would part with his best equipment is unclear. Russia's prior shipments of advanced air-defense missiles suggest more would follow, helping Pyongyang defend its airspace, and former US Secretary of State Antony Blinken has warned that Russian satellite technology and real-time targeting data could make North Korean strikes far more lethal. At sea, with limited power-projection capacity of its own, Moscow would more likely transfer nuclear-powered submarine technology, anti-ship missiles, and advanced naval mines like the MDM series than supply ships. Other countries could be drawn in. Japan ranks high: although Article 9 of its constitution renounces force to settle disputes, Tokyo can legally assist Seoul through collective self-defence, and Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi has steered the country toward a more hawkish posture. In November 2025 she angered Beijing by suggesting Japan could intervene militarily to protect Taiwan, and has since moved to raise defence spending to 2% of GDP. With a two-thirds supermajority in the lower house and a stated desire to amend Article 9, constitutional change has never looked more likely. Many of the 18 United Nations Command "sending states" — including Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the UK, Germany, the Philippines, and Thailand — would also likely contribute, with Australia, Canada, and New Zealand the most active non-US partners. The list of nations prepared to back the North, by contrast, is short, amounting to a wary China and Russia bound more by "the enemy of my enemy" than by trust. ## Complicating Factors and the Holes in the Umbrella Nothing is certain in international affairs, and the prospect of mutually assured destruction has largely kept a lid on the peninsula since the armistice. This cuts both ways: parties are less inclined to involve themselves in a second war, but if they do, the impact would be far worse. Washington, with 28,500 troops in South Korea, is treaty-bound to intervene against an invasion — yet it remains unclear whether American and North Korean troops could clash without the situation sliding toward nuclear exchange. Would Kim, assuming he acts on strategic interest, launch an invasion given the escalatory risks to his regime? Would he be feeding Russia troops and supplies if he were about to go to war himself? From the outside an invasion seems illogical — but so, to many, did Russia's invasion of Ukraine. When power is concentrated in one man and ego enters the equation, assessment becomes harder. To take the leap, Kim would likely need an overwhelming sense either that success was assured or that an attack on the North was imminent. In a system built on projecting strength and punishing dissent, bad news shortens lives, creating an echo chamber of yes-men. With information reaching Kim filtered at best and embellished at worst, there is no guarantee his decisions rest on credible intelligence. Doubts over US guarantees have meanwhile intensified under President Trump. As a 2025 Chatham House commentary put it, "unlike Biden, Trump views alliances as dependencies to be exploited by extracting maximum benefits to suit his America First agenda." Trump has complained about Seoul's cost-sharing and threatened to withdraw or redeploy troops, telling reporters in July 2025 that "South Korea is making a lot of money, and they're very good... but, you know, they should be paying for their own military." In May 2025 the Pentagon rejected a Wall Street Journal report that the US was considering withdrawing roughly 4,500 troops, yet a Centre for Strategic and International Studies report noted the issue "is under serious consideration at the Pentagon, US Forces Korea, and Indo-Pacific Command." For Beijing, intervening on behalf of an aggressor would be extraordinarily risky — bad PR, sanctions, and a possible fight with the US — but a Seoul-US advance toward the Chinese border, with Pyongyang's regime at risk, could once again force its hand. ## The Catalyst: How War Might Actually Begin A Korean meltdown could start in many ways. Perhaps Kim's ambitions and his desire to secure a legacy lead him to overlook the risks of invasion. Perhaps insecurity over regime survival pushes him toward a pre-emptive attack, fearing that outsiders will land the first punch. The most likely scenario, however, is that a misunderstanding or flare-up triggers a tit-for-tat exchange that escalates uncontrollably. The Yellow Sea is one obvious candidate. The Five West Sea Islands, administered by Seoul but lying precariously close to the North, have been flashpoints before. In March 2010, the South Korean warship Cheonan was sunk by a North Korean submarine near Baengnyeong Island, killing 46 sailors and prompting major sanctions — widely seen as retaliation for the earlier Daechong Incident, in which a North Korean patrol boat was damaged for crossing the Northern Limit Line. Pyongyang disputes the NLL maritime border established by the UN after the war, claiming a line further south that would encompass the islands and rich fishing grounds. The Yellow Sea is not the only problem area. In October 2024, North Korea accused Seoul of sending drones carrying propaganda leaflets to Pyongyang, an allegation the South denied; throughout that year the North floated balloons of rubbish across the DMZ, one of which landed on the presidential compound. Other incidents include drone incursions, guard-post shootings, missile tests, cyberattacks, large-scale exercises, and the shooting of defectors. The most bizarre came in 1976, when two US Army officers were killed by North Korean troops while supervising the pruning of a tree obscuring a checkpoint — what the BBC called "the most dramatic gardening job in history." A task force of 813 US and South Korean soldiers, backed by nuclear-capable B-52s, 20 utility helicopters, seven Cobra attack helicopters, F-4, F-5, and F-86 fighters, and the carrier USS Midway, was deployed simply to cut down the tree. Like an active volcano, tensions are destined to overflow cyclically; the question is whether one day they erupt entirely. ## The Task Ahead for North Korea: Phases of the Opening Once the North chooses to invade, there is no going back. Because no one wins a nuclear war, launching nukes from the outset would be Pyongyang's "Hail Mary." The reasonable assumption is that Kim restricts himself to conventional force at first, with the nuclear option held as a last resort whose likelihood rises if the regime's survival is at stake. This creates a dilemma for Seoul and Washington: the more damage they inflict, the greater the risk Kim reaches for nuclear weapons. They must choose between eliminating the North's nuclear program and leadership so swiftly that it loses the ability to fire, or repelling the invasion without seeking regime change in hopes of restoring the status quo. Analysts identify a build-up phase first. In an era of satellite imagery, a North Korean build-up would likely be spotted early — as Russian movements were before the Ukraine invasion. But unlike Russia, the North keeps much of its force and weaponry near the border, so it can attack with minimal observable preparation, making a large forward deployment unnecessary and ill-advised. Preserving surprise is one of Kim's most valuable tools; failure risks a pre-emptive strike or stiffer resistance. Tactics like camouflage, false documentation, and false-flag operations could throw the allies off the scent — planted "leaked" documents signaling a different plan, decoy deployments of dummy artillery, even a deliberately sunk vessel blamed on the South to manufacture justification. The initial strike phase would likely open with an extensive artillery and missile barrage targeting government buildings, command facilities, military bases, airfields, communications nodes, and energy infrastructure. Seoul, around 50 km from the border, sits well within range; Pyongyang could attempt a decapitation strike on South Korean officials. Should the North live up to its threat to turn Seoul into a "sea of fire," casualties in the greater Seoul metropolitan area alone could surpass 100,000 within 48 hours, by some estimates — and that is without any weapons of mass destruction. ## Multi-Domain Strikes and the South's Defenses The first wave would also be multi-domain. Cyberattacks would aim to paralyse critical infrastructure such as power grids and financial networks while crippling military command-and-control. Naval units could create threats along the NLL and the coastline, inserting special forces for sabotage; given the fleet's limits, assets would be used opportunistically and asymmetrically. Picture small special-forces units executing high-tempo strikes, infiltrating through tunnels beneath the DMZ, via agile amphibious craft, or by airborne deployment behind enemy lines, targeting power plants, the electrical grid, ports, telecommunication towers, fuel depots, airfields, and naval bases. The main event, though, would be the hellfire of drones, missiles, and artillery raining down on Seoul. South Korea would turn to the Patriot PAC-3, Terminal High Altitude Area Defence (THAAD), the Korean Air and Missile Defence (KAMD) system, and C-RAM. These intercept at various ranges and altitudes, but their combined effectiveness is untested, and even well-covered strategic missile threats could be overwhelmed by massed artillery and rocket strikes. With firing positions revealed, mobile units — multiple rocket launchers, self-propelled guns — would move in anticipation of counterstrikes. Within hours, Kim would likely declare war, framing the attack as defensive, blaming Seoul and Washington as hostile provocateurs, calling for their destruction, and threatening nuclear retaliation to deter outside intervention. World leaders would respond in turn — Western nations condemning the move while China and Russia stay tight-lipped, calling for restraint and dialogue. After the initial strike, Pyongyang would face choices: double down with a larger second wave, possibly moving troops across a DMZ that is heavily mined, fortified with anti-tank obstacles, and monitored by surveillance; sustain pressure with lighter follow-up attacks, acknowledging that the first wave's tempo cannot be maintained in a prolonged war; or consolidate and fortify, conceding the initiative. The DMZ tunnels — four discovered, with South Korean intelligence believing up to 20 more may exist — could move only small units like special forces, not entire armies. ## The Counteroffensive: Seoul's Three Axes and Washington's Choice Whatever the North's next move, Seoul will be scrambling to make its counteroffensive lethal, having spent heavily to prepare. With its technological edge, establishing air superiority will be an early objective; any surviving airfield will be launching ROK fighters. The opening airspace would be contested — intense air battles, surface-to-air engagements, uncertain control — but analysts expect South Korea, likely with US help, to win the skies relatively quickly, since the North's older aircraft are simply not a match. Even alone, Seoul's retaliation would be formidable. Its Three Axis System frames its actions before, during, and after an attack. The first axis, "Kill Chain," involves pre-emptively striking Pyongyang's nuclear and missile facilities once their intended use is detected. The second, the Korea Air and Missile Defence system, intercepts short- and medium-range missiles, conventional and nuclear. The third, the Korea Massive Punishment and Retaliation (KMPR) plan, aims to "cut the head off the snake" by eliminating the North's leadership through precision strikes and special-forces operations. Though classified, an anonymous South Korean military source has said that "every Pyongyang district, particularly where the North Korean leadership is possibly hidden, will be completely destroyed by ballistic missiles and high-explosive shells as soon as the North shows any signs of using a nuclear weapon... the North's capital city will be reduced to ashes and removed from the map." Worth remembering, though, that decapitation efforts against Iran's leadership did little to halt retaliation from the Islamic Republic. War is hard. Seoul would expect Washington to honor the 1953 Mutual Defence Treaty. Fears over the Trump administration's "America First" posture are valid, and confidence in the US has dipped among South Koreans, yet analysts generally agree Washington would intervene — South Korea is too strategically and economically vital, given its record-breaking industrial investments in the US and its role as a naval repair hub and frontline buffer against China. If a North Korean barrage hit US installations and killed Americans, the likelihood of US entry would skyrocket. And the current administration has not been shy about using power: Trump has employed airpower to remove Iran's leadership, naval assets to enforce de-facto blockades on Cuba and the Iranian coastline, and even seized a country's leader in the case of Venezuela. He once threatened Kim with "fire and fury like the world has never seen." ## The Decisive Phase: Escalation, Stalemate, or De-escalation If South Korea leads on the ground, US support could take several forms. American jets stationed on the peninsula, in Japan, and across the Asia-Pacific could be mobilized to great effect, with F-35s and B-2 stealth bombers striking the North's nuclear facilities and leadership. As US naval assets shift to a wartime footing, multiple carrier strike groups, submarines, and other assets would likely deploy in line with OPLAN 5022, the latest joint plan, which includes leadership-decapitation options designed to end the conflict swiftly while avoiding large-scale war. The 2026 National Defence Strategy has signaled a shift from plans reliant on massive US reinforcements toward "critical but more limited" support. All of this assumes Kim does not try to wipe the board clean at the outset — nuclear missiles at Guam and Okinawa, an opening salvo aimed not at Seoul but at obliterating US and South Korean military installations. For those who doubt the North could hit US facilities, recall that Iran struck US bases in a war the US anticipated and had time to prepare for, using relatively low-tech weapons. Most analysts believe Kim is too wary of provoking Washington to "go big or go home," but the power disparity could tempt him to gamble that overwhelming destruction is his best opening move. Even so, with US bases scattered across the Asia-Pacific, coordinating simultaneous strikes would be extremely difficult — distant bases would likely receive warning as closer ones were hit — and a successful first strike would merely recreate Pearl Harbor for the 21st century, with the lesson that implies. However the early days unfold, if Pyongyang survives to keep fighting, its calls to China and Russia would grow increasingly desperate. As the US Army War College notes, "the same strategic fear that drove China to intervene in the Korean War is still embedded within the Chinese government today," and as one Al Jazeera reporter put it, "the second to last thing China wants is a new Korean war. But the last thing China wants is a united Korea under South Korean leadership." Intervention carries military, economic, and reputational risk for Beijing, but a faltering North could force its hand, as in 1950 when China poured troops in to repel General Douglas MacArthur's advance toward its border and pushed UN forces back 400 km. Moscow faces similar calculations — Putin's backing has never been unconditional, and recent history shows Russia leaving partners like Maduro, Assad, Pashinyan, and the late Ali Khamenei in the lurch when the wolves arrived. The likeliest outcome is watered-down support — equipment and supplies short of intervention. From the counteroffensive, three paths emerge. If neither side breaks through and front lines harden, a de-escalation phase could open under diplomatic pressure, returning to the status quo much as the May 2025 India-Pakistan conflict did. If Seoul's counteroffensive succeeds so thoroughly that the North's regime is endangered, Pyongyang could escalate — closer to how the first war played out, but with nuclear weapons now magnifying the risk. A third scenario sits between the two: Seoul's offensive succeeds tactically but stops short of regime collapse, while Pyongyang, lacking the backing it needs, gets stuck — a stalemate, much as the 1991 Gulf War liberated Kuwait without toppling Saddam Hussein, though the Americans returned 13 years later to finish the job. Pausing a war is not always the end. ## Conclusion: All or Nothing When things heat up on the Korean peninsula, everyone should pay attention. With both Koreas fielding formidable militaries and backed by self-interested superpowers, any escalation would carry severe, far-reaching consequences for regional and global security. The fact that a second Korean War has not yet materialized suggests that North Korean wargames have told the leadership an invasion would be a poor course of action, and there is no current indication of a shift dramatic enough to upend that. Pyongyang does not appear to possess the means to successfully invade and occupy the South — but there is no guarantee that will always hold, and in international affairs things can change at a moment's notice. Nor can anyone be certain the odds would even have to favor the North for an invasion to begin. In the end, it could come down to the mind of one man, and the hope is that Kim has learned from the mistakes of his strategic ally Vladimir Putin: sometimes it is simply not worth rolling the dice. Yet building foreign policy on the premise that North Korea is all bark and no bite would be dangerously naive, and fortunately there is no strong sign that such complacency has taken hold among policymakers. If another conflict erupts, with neither side likely willing to return to the status quo, it could be all or nothing. ## Frequently Asked Questions ### How large is North Korea's nuclear arsenal and how could it be delivered? Pyongyang has never disclosed its warhead count, but the figure is thought to be around 50. These are deliverable through short- and medium-range ballistic missiles capable of striking South Korea and Japan, intermediate-range missiles that can reach US bases across the Asia-Pacific, and intercontinental ballistic missiles designed to threaten the US mainland. North Korea is also developing the Pukguksong series of submarine-launched ballistic missiles. ### Why might China hesitate to intervene on North Korea's behalf in a war? A war on its front porch does not serve Beijing's interests, and the 1961 Sino-North Korean Mutual Aid Treaty obligates China to intervene only if Pyongyang is attacked, not if it is the aggressor. Intervening for an aggressor would risk severe economic sanctions, reputational damage, and a potential fight with the United States. China's calculus could change, however, if South Korean and US forces advanced toward the Chinese border and the North's regime faced collapse — the same strategic fear that drew Beijing in during 1950. ### What is the most likely trigger for a second Korean War? Rather than a calculated invasion, the most likely trigger is a misunderstanding or flare-up that escalates into an uncontrollable tit-for-tat exchange. The Yellow Sea is a prime candidate, particularly the contested Northern Limit Line and the Five West Sea Islands, where incidents like the 2010 sinking of the South Korean warship Cheonan have occurred. Pyongyang disputes the NLL maritime border established by the UN after the war, raising the risk of escalation around the islands and their fishing grounds. ### What is South Korea's Three Axis System? The Three Axis System is a response framework outlining Seoul's actions before, during, and after a North Korean attack. The first axis, "Kill Chain," pre-emptively strikes the North's nuclear and missile facilities once their intended use is detected. The second, the Korea Air and Missile Defence system, intercepts short- and medium-range missiles. The third, the Korea Massive Punishment and Retaliation plan, aims to eliminate the North's leadership through precision strikes and special-forces operations. ### How have doubts about US security guarantees affected South Korea's strategic position? Doubts have intensified under President Trump, who has complained about Seoul's contributions toward hosting US troops and threatened to withdraw or redeploy them. While the Pentagon rejected a May 2025 report about withdrawing roughly 4,500 troops, a Centre for Strategic and International Studies report indicated the issue was under serious consideration. 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What If BRICS Became a Military Alliance?

Simon Whistler — Tue, 02 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

In late October 2024, a collection of leaders and dignitaries from thirty-six world nations descended upon the city of Kazan, in Russia. Boasting striking architecture, more than a million residents, and the status of capital of the Russian Republic of Tatarstan, Kazan is a vibrant city accustomed to welcoming tourists from across the globe. On this occasion, however, its visitors had come strictly on business. Delegations from places as far-flung as China, Brazil, South Africa, Turkey, Malaysia, and dozens more had not gathered to celebrate Russian President Vladimir Putin, to engage in geopolitical pageantry, or even to plead with him to halt the war in Ukraine. They had come to be part of a little something called BRICS. First founded over fifteen years ago by Russia, Brazil, China, and India, BRICS is an intergovernmental organization that has grown from a geopolitical curiosity into a rising global powerhouse. Today it comprises nine powerful nations, conducts business in eight official languages, spans thirty percent of the world's land surface, and holds forty-five percent of the global population. Its waitlist includes dozens of nations across four continents. The bloc runs a global financial institution that rivals the International Monetary Fund, intends one day to rival the Western world on every conceivable economic metric, and hopes to become an enduring counterweight to the G7, the World Bank, and other institutions dominated by the influence of the global West. As BRICS grows in power and pulls in a widening array of nations that the United States, the European Union, and other Western players consider hostile, analysts have begun to center on a single critical question. What if BRICS became a military alliance? This WarFronts analysis examines the prospect of a militarized BRICS: the motivations that might drive its members toward such a step, the considerable military power such an alliance could command, and the real likelihood that the bloc would ever take the leap. The conclusion is that a BRICS defense pact is plausible on paper but strategically hollow, lacking the concrete threat that gives an alliance like NATO its purpose. ## Key Takeaways - BRICS has grown from a four-nation economic club into a nine-member bloc holding forty-five percent of the world's population and thirty percent of its land surface, with a long waitlist of aspirant members. - A combined BRICS military would, on paper, field the world's three largest active forces — China, India, and Russia — alongside immense reserves of armor, artillery, and air power. - Geography is the alliance's first fatal flaw: six of the nine members share no land border with any other member, with continental distances separating Brazil, South Africa, Ethiopia, and the rest. - BRICS nations lack the strategic airlift and blue-water sealift to honor a NATO-style mutual defense pact, and most have little recent large-scale combat experience to fall back on. - The bloc's genuine advantages are manufacturing depth, vast manpower, world-class aerospace firms, and a potential nuclear umbrella from Russia, China, and India. - Internal rivalries — China-India border disputes, Putin's ICC arrest warrant, Gulf-Iran tension, Egypt-Ethiopia friction — make even procedural agreement difficult, let alone a binding defense treaty. - The decisive problem is purpose: BRICS faces no shared external threat that collective defense would solve, leaving any future pact as "nuclear-capable window dressing" for an organization whose real power lies elsewhere. ## From Acronym to Powerhouse: BRICS Explained When the organization first came into being, it was known as BRIC, each letter standing for a founding nation: Brazil, Russia, India, and China. The name was not even their own idea. It came from a 2001 article by Jim O'Neill, an American working for Goldman Sachs, who predicted that those four rapidly advancing economies were destined to grow and rival the United States and Europe. The four nations, perhaps unsurprisingly, liked the idea. After nearly a decade of meetings — meetings about meetings, and meetings to schedule still more meetings — they finally sealed the arrangement in Yekaterinburg, Russia, in 2009. The goal at the outset was for the four founders to band together, leverage their shared economic weight, and address problems that had long plagued them. Those included the world's Western-controlled, inefficient, and arguably broken financial institutions; the tendency of developing nations to be shut out of geopolitical decision-making; and a collective vulnerability to economic shocks such as the then-ongoing Great Recession. Catastrophes like that downturn, and institutions like the World Bank or the IMF, had a way of becoming the BRIC nations' problem even though they had little say in how those bodies were run. A year and a half after BRIC formed, South Africa joined courtesy of an invitation from China, and with a catchier name — BRICS — the group got to work. ## Building an Alternative Order Since its founding, BRICS has worked to create financial machinery to rival the IMF and the World Bank. Its New Development Bank now does business with ten core members rather than the original five. Headed by former Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff, the bank leverages the equivalent of hundreds of billions of US dollars and now cooperates with the World Bank while supporting a range of development initiatives. By the end of 2022, BRICS contributions to global infrastructure development totaled over 32 billion dollars. The bloc has also pursued an alternative network of optical-fiber submarine cables, intended to allow secure communication between members without exposure to America's National Security Agency. It has worked toward an organization-wide alternative to the global SWIFT payment system, a challenge most members have already met on their own. Expansion has continued without the indignity of an ever-lengthening acronym. On the first of January 2024, BRICS welcomed Egypt, the United Arab Emirates, Iran, and Ethiopia. Saudi Arabia is still weighing its invitation, while Argentina, the sixth nation invited, declined on foreign-policy grounds. Turkey — a NATO member — along with Pakistan, Indonesia, and Azerbaijan are among those under consideration, and nine other nations, including Nigeria, Malaysia, and Vietnam, are counted as partners. ## The Vibe Shift While BRICS has kept both its core members and its core priorities over fifteen years, the organization has undergone what can only be described as a shift in mood. It was founded when China's economic power still lagged behind the United States, when Russia was fresh off the sting of losing superpower status, when Narendra Modi was not yet a household name in India, and when Brazil's long-run economic potential was unclear. In those days, World Bank inefficiency and dependence on the dollar carried real consequences but were rarely matters of life and death. That has changed. China is now the world's newest superpower. India and Brazil are increasingly critical players. And the bloc's outlook has been fundamentally reshaped by a difficult decade. Russia has absorbed years of Western economic punishment, intensifying since it began an invasion of Ukraine it insists was justified. China has found itself in trade wars with the United States and has confirmed, the hard way, that whatever sweet talk the West once offered, those same nations never intended to come gently into a multipolar world. India has been transformed under Modi. Brazil has learned hard lessons through the cycle of Lula, then Bolsonaro, then Lula again. South Africa has struggled to stay afloat. And the four newest members raise the stakes further: Ethiopia, with an expansionist leader fresh off a genocide; Egypt, which has weathered two revolutions since the original BRIC arrangement; the UAE, which has backed warlords and revolutions abroad; and Iran, currently squared off against one of America's closest allies, Israel. ## A Bloc United by Grievance To call the change a "vibe shift" may understate it. When the group convened in 2024, the summit was a landmark moment for Putin's Russia, proof that the country had survived Western attempts to isolate it. Member nations issued joint declarations decrying the disruptive effect of "unlawful unilateral coercive measures, including illegal sanctions," and tacitly looked past elements of international law that, on paper, might have obliged some attendees to confront others over divisive issues. Analysts pointed to the bloc's growing power, its shared dissatisfaction with the West, and its grievances over a world order its members increasingly work to supplant. As reporter Keith Johnson put it in Foreign Policy: "Outside of Washington, and the G-7 and the European Union, it is hard to appreciate just how much resentment there is of Western hypocrisy and hegemony, all mortar helping to bond the loose membership of BRICS." Not every member approaches that challenge the same way. For China, BRICS is a financial extension of its global infrastructure and development efforts — above all the Belt and Road Initiative — and a vehicle for becoming the undisputed leader of the Global South. For Russia, and for Iran, it is a way to count and court friends at a sensitive moment, leaning on a non-Western collective to survive a split from Europe. For India, it is insurance that the country will be a power player in the multipolar world that comes after the present one — perhaps in twenty years, perhaps in a hundred. For several aspirants, membership would be a guarantee of solvency even if they took actions that landed them in trouble with a sanctions-happy West. Every member has its own goals and its own reading of the group, but together their stance is clear: opposition to a world order centered on Europe and America. It is not a large leap, then, to imagine BRICS as more than an economic organization. For nations that want immunity from the Western order, the step after countering the G7 or the IMF could plausibly be to counter NATO, or the American-led alliances of the Indo-Pacific. Discussing that prospect demands nuance, but it must begin with the least nuanced element of all: sheer military power. ## A Collection of Power Players BRICS today consists of nine nations, each able to leverage substantial military strength in its own way, several of them powerhouses on a regional or global stage. Rather than account for the totality of each country's forces, the relevant lens is what each brings to an international military coalition: advanced hardware, major naval vessels, aggregate manpower, and available air power — the metrics that would let the bloc stand up to existing alliances, primarily NATO. Russia continues to prove itself viable in large-scale open warfare despite early stumbles in Ukraine. The Russian Armed Forces are the world's fifth-largest military, with 1.15 million active-duty troops and nearly two million reservists, and active numbers are expected to climb to one and a half million within three years. On the ground, Russian forces have taken a heavy beating in Ukraine, losing massive numbers of tanks and infantry fighting vehicles, yet according to Ukraine's military commander-in-chief, Russia still fields some 3,500 tanks and nearly 9,000 armored personnel carriers in combat. Its greatest strength, artillery, runs to many thousands of pieces capable of firing staggering volumes of shells. At sea, the Black Sea Fleet and the carrier Admiral Kuznetsov have disappointed Moscow, but Russia still maintains three relatively strong fleets besides. Its air wing is its most impressive asset: hundreds of modern fighters, hundreds more attack aircraft, over a hundred strategic bombers, and the purportedly stealthy, fifth-generation Sukhoi Su-57. ## China, India, and the Tier of Heavyweights Alongside Russia, China would serve as the other great powerhouse — and quite possibly the more formidable of the two. China fields over two million active personnel, the largest active force in the world, plus another half-million in reserve. It leverages nearly five thousand main battle tanks, tens of thousands of other heavy fighting vehicles and artillery pieces, and a robust rocket force, despite persistent concerns about corruption within the Rocket Force ranks. Its navy is the country's pride and joy, soon to boast three aircraft carriers, some fifty destroyers, hundreds of other combat-ready ships, and several ballistic-missile submarines. In the air, China flies one of only two meaningful fleets of stealth aircraft on Earth, with an estimated 200-plus J-20 multirole fighters, hundreds of fourth-generation aircraft, and well over two hundred strategic bombers. The Indian Armed Forces are not to be trifled with either, boasting the world's second-largest active force at nearly 1.5 million, plus close to 1.2 million reservists. India is as proud of its navy as China, fielding two active aircraft carriers, two ballistic-missile submarines, and several dozen major surface and subsurface combatants. Its army holds over 1.2 million soldiers and roughly five thousand more main battle tanks to add to the bloc's collective total. Though India lacks advanced artillery, it commands immense numbers of field guns suited to the grinding, attritional warfare Russia knows well. In the air, India brings about 350 advanced fighters plus a couple hundred older-model aircraft. ## Where the Heavyweights End It is there, however, that the list of major power players is cut short. Brazil brings far less in raw numbers, though its 334,000 active troops and 1.3 million reservists make it Latin America's largest fighting force. On the ground it leverages only a few hundred main battle tanks — none particularly new — and a few hundred artillery pieces. At sea it fields just eight major surface combatants and four attack submarines, while its air force consists of a handful of advanced JAS 39 Gripen aircraft and a mix of older jets and prop-driven attack planes. South Africa's military counts only about a hundred thousand active and reserve personnel combined, with fewer than a hundred main battle tanks in active service, a few hundred infantry fighting vehicles, and little sophisticated artillery. It sails four frigates and three attack submarines, and though it too flies the Swedish-made Gripen, it operates a total of seventeen for combat, with only minimal backup. The four newest arrivals each have strengths, but none transforms the equation. The UAE can field a fairly substantial ground force — several hundred relatively modern French tanks and many hundreds of infantry fighting vehicles — and flies dozens of American F-16s, with dozens of French Rafales soon to follow, yet it falls short in manpower, naval power, and aggregate numbers. Iran brings the world's ninth-largest active force, over 600,000 personnel, with a robust unconventional-warfare branch and a large stock of ground equipment that is mostly outdated and in questionable repair; how much of its aging air force can fly is an open question, and its navy is small. Ethiopia fields predominantly Soviet-era ground equipment, a handful of post-Soviet fighters, and no meaningful naval vessels, having only reconstituted its navy in 2018 after shutting it down in 1996. Egypt is probably the most formidable newcomer: a decently sized army of over 300,000, more than 1,300 American-designed M1 Abrams tanks, and ridiculous aggregate numbers of older kit. Its navy fields eight attack submarines and twenty meaningful surface combatants, and it flies over 200 F-16s, with plans for another hundred-odd Russian and French advanced aircraft by the end of the decade. ## The Tyranny of Distance Military viability as a cohesive alliance involves far more than each nation's arsenal, and the first complication is simple geography. Compare NATO: its members are concentrated in Europe, and despite a nearly 1,600-mile, 2,600-kilometer border with Russia following Finland's 2023 accession, the alliance enjoys decisive advantages. It controls both coasts of the North Atlantic, holds the chokepoints to the Mediterranean and Baltic Seas, and faces meaningful military threats only across one broad front — toward Russia and the Middle East — and across one ocean, when accounting for the Pacific coasts of the United States and Canada. For BRICS, the picture is far messier. Six of the nine members — Ethiopia, Egypt, Iran, the UAE, Brazil, and South Africa — share no land border with any other member. South Africa's nearest fellow member, Ethiopia, sits almost five thousand kilometers away; Brazil's nearest, South Africa, is nearly eight thousand kilometers away. One can trace a continuous land path from India to China to Russia, but the China-India border is blocked by the high Himalayas, while China connects primarily to the vast open expanses of Russia's Far East, with its most significant city on the Russian border, Heihe, more than 5,500 kilometers from Moscow. A BRICS military alliance would therefore face geographic constraints of a kind NATO simply never confronts. ## Could the Bloc Honor an Article 5? The constraints need not end the discussion. The real test is whether the bloc could use logistics to make good on a collective-defense pact. Assume BRICS adopted a principle like NATO's Article 5 — an attack on one member treated as an attack on all. Could its members actually rush to one another's defense? The honest answer is probably not, at least not meaningfully. Without land bridges, members would depend on air and sea power to move troops, and the picture there is grim. Consider a hypothetical in which BRICS rushed to defend Ethiopia against an attack from some version of Sudan capable of posing an existential threat — noting that today's Sudan decisively is not. Landlocked Ethiopia could be supported only by air, while any counterattack staged through Egypt to Sudan's north would depend on whatever mass of troops could reach Egypt by sea. Strategic airlift would matter most, and BRICS does not possess airlifters in large numbers. Using a reasonable portion of its fleet — not some fantasy where every aircraft is perfectly positioned — Russia could move perhaps three to five thousand troops from the southern city of Krasnodar to Addis Ababa within a couple of days, drawing on the subset of its longest-range airlifters that might plausibly reach Krasnodar promptly. Moving fighters or attack aircraft would be far harder: Russia owns only twenty-odd aerial-refueling tankers, a subset of which might shuttle a few dozen aircraft to Ethiopia's limited airfields over several days. ## The Logistics Verdict The wider tally is bleak. The Emirati Air Force has eight strategic airlifters and three tankers. India has six tankers and twenty-eight airlifters. Even China has fewer than thirty tankers and seventy airlifters. Assume one in three of those aircraft from each nation could be devoted to collective defense in a pinch, and the capacity is dismal — further constrained by Ethiopia's limited airfields and infrastructure, which could take over a decade to upgrade to an alliance standard. Every other member would be functionally unable to intervene by air, and Ethiopia is not even a worst case. Imagine attempting the same for South Africa or Brazil. Getting troops in place for the hypothetical Egyptian counterattack would be a separate ordeal, requiring either the Suez Canal or the less reliable, broadly NATO-controlled Mediterranean. China and India could each probably send an aircraft carrier, but neither's troop-transport ships are thought ready for intercontinental operations, and most other navies are simply not up to the task. Russia has very few blue-water landing ships even in theory, before accounting for vessel or crew readiness; the nearby UAE has almost no capacity; Iran might send a few ships, if they can stay afloat for the voyage; Brazil and South Africa have none to spare. ## The Experience Gap Beyond its limited rapid-response capability, the alliance would face a deeper problem: a lack of combat experience. Unlike NATO's members, who have at least rotated through US-led coalitions and gathered nominal experience, most BRICS nations have had a militarily quiet few decades. China and India have hardly fought at all; the same goes for Brazil and South Africa. Iran has operated in the Middle East, but not at large scale beyond its unconventional-warfare branch and its exchanges of strikes with Israel. The UAE has fought in Yemen and intervened in Libya, and Ethiopia has waged internal conflicts while patrolling neighboring Somalia with thousands of troops. Russia is the exception, fighting a war in Ukraine now nearly three years old. As Russia learned, inexperience in large-scale combat is about more than worrying that troops might hold their knives by the pointy end. Recall the failure and collapse of Russia's first-wave advance on Kyiv in the early days of the 2022 invasion: until complex logistical plans are tested in real time, no country can reasonably trust that they work. None of Russia, China, or India has ever attempted an urgent strategic airlift on the scale a BRICS defense pact would demand. Done right, such an airlift is a beautiful thing — witness the United States' stunningly efficient air operations amid an otherwise disastrous withdrawal from Kabul. But for the US, well-honed logistics underpin everything else. For nearly every BRICS member, that capacity has never been attempted at scale in a crisis. ## The Genuine Advantages A BRICS alliance would, nonetheless, hold real advantages. First is manufacturing capacity. Russia is pivoting toward a semipermanent war economy and has proven it can produce munitions at a mind-bending scale. India and China rank among the world's five largest manufacturing economies and could win wars on sheer numbers, especially if they directed conscription toward their combined population of 2.8 billion. Several members boast world-class aerospace bureaus: Sukhoi and Mikoyan in Russia, Hindustan Aeronautics in India, Embraer in Brazil, and Chengdu and Shenyang in China. The bloc also has a quiet but meaningful potential ally in Saudi Arabia, still weighing its invitation, which would bring both vast quantities of oil and vast sums of oil money if it lent its support. Then there is the nuclear angle. Much as the United States, France, and Britain do for NATO, Russia, China, and India could extend a nuclear umbrella over the bloc's six non-nuclear members. India is the smallest of the three, with an estimated 172 warheads per the Arms Control Association — not even enough to wipe out every major city on Earth. Russia is the largest, with over 5,500 total warheads including those in storage and over a thousand deployed. China sits in the middle with about five hundred estimated, but is on pace to catch Russia and the United States within the next decade or two. The three are well accustomed to nuclear dialogue; this past September they agreed to collaborate on building a nuclear power plant on the Moon, in keeping with China and Russia's lunar-base ambitions and India's goal of a crewed Moon mission by 2040. Forming a credible umbrella is about more than handshake deals, but the basis for one clearly exists — and where several members are nuclear-armed, the non-nuclear states can feel far safer about the credibility of their allies' deterrent. ## Would BRICS Actually Militarize? That is the potency of a potential BRICS military alliance: not a union of nine equal powers, and not one whose capacity for rapid conventional response could be trusted, but one where a nuclear umbrella, diplomatic and economic clout, and sheer numbers on paper could go a long way. The ultimate question remains: would they actually do it? As with any geopolitical choice, there is a list of reasons to engage and a list of reasons not to — and here, the divides the members share could become real barriers to organizing under a collective-defense framework. China and India just spent years in a bitter border dispute they have only recently resolved. Putin cannot visit South Africa without fear of arrest, because the country is party to the International Criminal Court, which has called for his detention. Egypt and the UAE both maintain strong defense ties with the United States, and Egypt is one of the IMF's largest debtor nations. Several members have defense relationships with NATO countries despite broad opposition within the bloc to NATO itself. South Africa's energy troubles, Brazil's political volatility, China's economic downturn, the sanctions crushing Russia and Iran, and pre-existing rivalries — Gulf states against Iran, Egypt against Ethiopia, China against Russia — all add to the potential for friction. The group has struggled to reach even basic procedural agreements, and its four founders are split on enlargement, with China and Russia generally in favor and Brazil and India generally against. Its core nations also reckon with fundamental divides over democracy versus authoritarianism, and over whether the United States is a friend, an enemy, or something between. ## The Question of Purpose It is hard to ignore the bloc's drift toward a more sharply anti-US, anti-EU, anti-democratic posture, with the addition of authoritarian, West-averse members in Iran and Ethiopia, balanced only by relatively neutral additions in the UAE and Egypt rather than countervailing viewpoints. The choice between waiting for the West's eventual decline and taking proactive steps to accelerate it is one the bloc will increasingly be forced to confront. Yet the value of forming a collective-defense organization might be unchanged regardless of the answer. For nations that actively want to bring about the West's decline so they can take its place, gathering into an explicit counterweight to NATO would advance that goal. Even those content to watch the process unfold would be securing their membership in the world-leading organization that follows. There is an argument that BRICS risks saying the quiet part out loud — inviting the United States, Europe, and East Asia into a formalized two-party competition and prompting those adversaries to reverse or slow what BRICS sees as a decline. But the bloc is already saying that quiet part out loud. Organizing militarily would say it louder, not differently; the West has already received the message. That leaves the decisive question: concrete purpose. Waiting for the downfall of the West is not nothing, but it is a decades-long, partly theoretical ambition. Contrast NATO, born of very real fear of the Soviet Union at the Cold War's outset and sustained afterward largely by fear of Russian aggression — fear that has since materialized repeatedly in the twenty-first century. BRICS has no equivalent. If members agree the West is in decline, and reasonably expect that neither the US nor Europe would rather end the world by fire than settle for second place a few decades hence, then what, exactly, is there to fight? India has its rivalry with Pakistan, but that has been contained for well over half a century. Ethiopia worries about Somalia, but the combined power of BRICS is overkill there. Russia has its invasion of Ukraine — yet not even the most generously worded treaty could interpret Russia's choice to invade Ukraine as an attack on Russia. ## Nuclear-Capable Window Dressing Look at the actual interests of the BRICS nations and the threats they face, and collective defense simply is not the right answer. For some, collective offense is not inconceivable — but that is a difficult thing to commit to paper without driving most of the bloc away and explicitly setting Earth on the path to a third world war. Barring that, most members have little to gain from a military alliance. Russia's interests lie in Eastern Europe, in brinksmanship and land grabs of its own making. China's expansionism in the South China Sea and its designs on Taiwan are acts instigated by China, however the CCP might wish to reframe them, and its policies across Asia, Africa, and Latin America have far more to do with economic outreach than war. Brazil and South Africa face no meaningful external threats to their sovereignty. The UAE has far too much money to waste it on war, and Iran is too mired in its own troubles to help anyone else. India works to become a bridge between East and West; Egypt to bridge Israel, the US, and the Arab world; and Ethiopia simply does whatever its leader Abiy Ahmed decides on a given day. The point is not that a mutual-defense treaty has zero value. Ask each member the binary question — would you like these other nations to help ensure you are not attacked, yes or no — and the answer is obviously yes. But there is a vast difference between preferring the convenience of a defense treaty and having a specific reason to chase one. Right now, there is no such reason. Will BRICS one day agree to a treaty of collective defense? Maybe, maybe not. If it does, it will not be a concrete agreement to destroy the West, and even its basic value as a guarantee of response to conventional attack may not be as reliable on paper as NATO's, or that of other multilateral pacts around the world. Bringing the members under a nuclear umbrella, offering assurances that should deter any attacker, building a geopolitical counterweight to NATO — there are sound arguments for all of it. But should such an alliance materialize, it is best understood as nuclear-capable window dressing for an organization whose real power is concentrated elsewhere. ## Frequently Asked Questions ### What is BRICS, and how large has it grown? BRICS is an intergovernmental organization founded over fifteen years ago by Brazil, Russia, India, and China, with South Africa added about a year and a half later. It now comprises nine nations, conducts business in eight official languages, spans thirty percent of the world's land surface, and holds forty-five percent of the global population. On the first of January 2024, it welcomed Egypt, the United Arab Emirates, Iran, and Ethiopia, while Turkey, Pakistan, Indonesia, and Azerbaijan are among those under active consideration for membership. ### Which BRICS members have the strongest militaries, and what do they bring? China, India, and Russia are the heavyweights. China fields over two million active personnel — the world's largest force — nearly five thousand main battle tanks, a navy soon to carry three aircraft carriers, and an estimated 200-plus J-20 stealth fighters. Russia, the world's fifth-largest military, brings hundreds of modern fighters, strategic bombers, and a war-hardened land force despite heavy Ukraine losses. India adds the second-largest active force at nearly 1.5 million troops, two aircraft carriers, and roughly five thousand more main battle tanks. ### Why would geography be a fatal obstacle to a BRICS military alliance? Six of the nine members — Ethiopia, Egypt, Iran, the UAE, Brazil, and South Africa — share no land border with any other member. South Africa's nearest fellow member sits almost five thousand kilometers away; Brazil's is nearly eight thousand. Even the India-China-Russia land corridor is blocked by the high Himalayas and vast Siberian distances. Without land bridges, the bloc would depend on strategic airlift and blue-water sealift it largely lacks: China has fewer than thirty tankers and seventy airlifters, Russia owns only twenty-odd aerial-refueling tankers, and most navies cannot carry troops intercontinentally. ### What genuine military advantages would a BRICS alliance possess? The bloc's real strengths are manufacturing depth, manpower, and nuclear deterrence. Russia is shifting to a war economy and can produce munitions at massive scale; India and China rank among the world's five largest manufacturing economies with a combined population of 2.8 billion. Aerospace firms including Sukhoi, Hindustan Aeronautics, Embraer, and Chengdu and Shenyang give the bloc serious aviation capacity. Most importantly, Russia, China, and India could extend a nuclear umbrella over the six non-nuclear members, providing deterrence regardless of conventional shortfalls. ### Why is a BRICS military alliance considered unlikely despite the bloc's size? The decisive obstacle is the absence of a shared external threat that collective defense would actually solve. Unlike NATO, which was founded around a very real fear of Soviet aggression, BRICS faces no comparable enemy. Internal rivalries further complicate any treaty: China and India have only recently resolved years of border disputes, Putin faces an ICC arrest warrant in South Africa, Egypt and the UAE maintain strong US defense ties, and the bloc's four founders are split on enlargement and strategy. Most members' interests are better served by economic and diplomatic weight than by binding military commitments. ## Sources 1. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-66525474 2. https://www.reuters.com/world/spurred-by-shared-grievances-brics-gathers-pace-2024-10-24/ 3. https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/what-brics-group-and-why-it-expanding 4. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/russia-putin-brics-summit-china-ukraine-war-us-nato-sanctions-perverse-methods/ 5. https://carnegieendowment.org/research/2024/10/brics-summit-emerging-middle-powers-g7-g20?lang=en 6. https://foreignpolicy.com/2024/10/21/brics-russia-china-kazan-summit-west-dollar/ 7. https://www.cfr.org/councilofcouncils/global-memos/brics-summit-2023-seeking-alternate-world-order 8. https://www.pbs.org/newshour/world/turkey-applies-to-join-china-and-russia-in-brics-economic-bloc-kremlin-says 9. https://www.dw.com/en/a-new-world-order-brics-nations-offer-alternative-to-west/a-65124269 10. https://www.france24.com/en/europe/20240905-nato-member-turkey-balancing-act-brics-bid-russia-china 11. https://www.bu.edu/gdp/2024/07/09/the-new-new-development-bank-a-decade-plus-in-the-making/ 12. https://www.un.org/en/ga/sixth/73/new_development_bank.shtml 13. https://www.france24.com/en/economy/20230824-how-the-brics-nations-failed-to-rebuild-the-global-financial-order 14. https://www.geopoliticalmonitor.com/the-brics-is-not-a-strategic-threat-to-the-united-states/ 15. https://foreignpolicy.com/2023/09/11/china-russia-alliance-cooperation-brics-sco-economy-military-war-ukraine-putin-xi/ 16. https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/science/india-china-russia-to-jointly-build-massive-nuclear-power-plant-on-moon-to-establish-a-future-human-lunar-colony/articleshow/113182566.cms?from=mdr 17. https://www.armscontrol.org/factsheets/nuclear-weapons-who-has-what-glance 18. https://www.ucsusa.org/nuclear-weapons/worldwide

The Brusilov Offensive: Russia's Greatest Victory of the First World War

Simon Whistler — Tue, 02 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

By 1916, the eastern front of the Great War was stuck in the mud. After two years of vicious, back-and-forth fighting, the line between the Russian Empire and the Central Powers had more or less settled into the familiar mess of trenches and barbed wire that came to define the First World War. Both sides were essentially at a stalemate, unable to make any serious gains despite the heavy use of artillery. That was about to change. In coordination with British and French operations in the west, Russia prepared to launch its most ambitious plan of the entire war: a gargantuan operation involving nearly two million men across the eastern front. The goal was not merely to gain ground, but to knock the Austro-Hungarian army out of the war for good and cripple the Central Powers. This was the Brusilov Offensive, named for the general who conceived its decisive southern thrust, General Aleksei Brusilov. It became one of the most lethal operations in human history, and one that would change the course of the Great War. It is the story of how a single Russian commander broke the deadlock that had defeated every other army on the continent, how his success was squandered by the men who should have backed him, and how the bloody, inconclusive result helped push an empire toward revolution. ## Key Takeaways - By early 1916 the eastern front had hardened into a stalemate, and a February Russian attack near Vilnius—launched largely to relieve pressure on the French at Verdun—was a catastrophe, with Russia suffering five casualties for every one German. - General Aleksei Brusilov devised a plan that replaced massed frontal charges with wide-front assaults, aircraft-directed artillery, a four-wave attack scheme, a creeping barrage, and intensive rehearsal against replica defenses. - The offensive opened on June 4, 1916, near Lutsk; in two days Austria-Hungary suffered an estimated 130,000 casualties, with 26,000 men taken prisoner on the first day alone. - General Aleksei Evert's repeated delays and his reliance on discredited old tactics let Germany reinforce the line, turning the breakthrough into a grinding, inconclusive campaign by late September. - Both the Central Powers and Russia each suffered close to a million casualties; Austria-Hungary never recovered militarily, Russia's offensive capacity was permanently broken, and the losses fueled the unrest that contributed to the Russian Revolution. ## Smashing the Stalemate The fighting along the eastern front had been deeply unproductive for Russia. Enormous numbers of men had been lost for almost nothing in return, and even the generals had little optimism about a future offensive. In February 1916 the Russian army launched an attack centered on Vilnius, mostly at the request of the French, who hoped such an operation would force the Germans to divert troops away from Verdun in the west. The attack was catastrophic. For every casualty Germany suffered, Russia suffered five. Because the Germans had been so successful in their defense, their confidence remained high after these defensive victories, and the battle did little to draw forces away from the western front. That attitude was a double-edged sword. The Central Powers grew overconfident in the weakness of the Imperial Russian Army, and they were not expecting any sophisticated offensive they could not easily withstand. One Austrian lieutenant colonel said of the Russians: "They attack stupidly, in thick masses. They can do no more because they have no training." ## One General's Different Perspective Similar ideas were shared even on Russia's own side. Many generals in the Imperial Russian Army, such as General Aleksei Evert, wanted to adopt a completely defensive posture, holding whatever land they had and avoiding any further humiliating defeats. One man saw the situation entirely differently: General Aleksei Brusilov. Brusilov believed Russian soldiers were capable of a successful attack as long as they had proper training, weapons, and morale. He stood up and advocated for a renewed offensive, one that would honor a previous agreement with France, Britain, and Italy to divide the strength of the Central Powers across multiple fronts. The timing was favorable. France was occupied mostly with the German assault at Verdun, Italy was fighting in the south, and Britain was planning the massive Somme Offensive for July 1916. There would never be a better moment to strike in the east while the Central Powers were divided. Despite warnings that a failed attack could ruin his reputation, Brusilov refused to back down, and his plan was eventually approved by Tsar Nicholas II. ## A Plan for Two Fronts The plan involved 1.7 million men, divided roughly into two fronts. In the northern sector, General Evert would advance on the German defenses with the goal of reaching Vilnius, where the Russians enjoyed a large numerical advantage. Just ten days before that attack, General Brusilov, in the south-western sector, would advance on the Austro-Hungarian defenses along a 450-kilometer frontline in what is today part of western Ukraine. In Brusilov's sector there was no clearly defined strategic city or objective. The aim was the broad one of crushing as many of the enemy as possible while creating a diversion for the main attack to the north. The two halves of the operation were meant to reinforce one another, with Brusilov's thrust pinning Austro-Hungarian forces while Evert delivered the decisive blow against the Germans. This division of labor would matter enormously. Brusilov never intended his southern push to be the war-winning effort; he intended it to set the stage for someone else's. ## How Brusilov Rewrote the Attack Brusilov was not planning to simply gather hundreds of thousands of men and have them charge straight into enemy territory, an approach that clearly was not working in the new era of machine guns and trenches. Traditionally, Russians had suffered huge casualties as their men bunched together to push through breaks in the barbed wire, allowing defenders to concentrate their fire on a small area. Brusilov intended to avoid this by attacking across larger fronts, spreading out the enemy's attention and creating more opportunities to break through. When a break was achieved, he could flood it with reinforcements. He also assembled new tactics drawn from his enemies, his allies, and Russia's past mistakes. Russia's previous use of artillery had been disorganized and ineffective. Under the new training, artillery would be directed in coordinated movements using information gathered by reconnaissance planes. The aircraft would spot crucial places where barbed wire could be destroyed and vital trenches whose collapse would hamper the defenders' movement. Spotters then relayed the effectiveness of each strike, and gunners adjusted as necessary. It was a major step up from simply taking aim and firing randomly behind enemy lines. ## Four Waves and a Creeping Barrage Once the artillery barrage lifted, four waves of men would jump from the trenches and advance. The first two waves carried not only their rifles but plenty of hand grenades to obliterate the first lines of defense. After that, the third wave brought up the machine guns, clearing the way for the cavalry that would follow in the fourth wave to charge through the opening. All of these tactics and formations were completely foreign to both the officers and the average Russian soldier, but that was anticipated. To prepare for the assault, everyone underwent extensive training. Mock battles were carried out on replicas of Austro-Hungarian defenses to simulate the coming fight, and secret trenches were dug to bring the assault teams ever closer to the enemy, in some places within fifty meters. The men were trained to work together as a team, each with an individual role, ready to improvise and adapt to any challenge rather than charge as one large mass into machine-gun fire. Russian morale on the south-western front skyrocketed throughout this training, and even the officers grew confident in their men's ability to emerge victorious. On the other side of the line, the Austro-Hungarian defenses were expecting the same old strategies. They were in for a shock. ## Summer of Blood The attack date was set for June 4, 1916, a bit earlier than anyone had anticipated, but Brusilov was certain his men were ready. It began with an immense artillery bombardment of the trenches guarding the city of Lutsk. Just as they had trained, the men fired their 76mm guns in careful coordination against the Austro-Hungarian lines. Thanks to the spotter planes, this first rain of fire was a massive success, opening 24 breaches amid the tangles of barbed wire. Heavier artillery then pounded strongholds in the enemy trenches, paving the way for the infantry to come. Instead of a single huge attack, as the defenders expected, they were met with several touch-and-go missions, small pokes and prods into the frontlines that relayed better information back to the artillery units. Then, in the evening, the order was given to charge. The waves of assault troops leapt from their trenches and began a steady walk toward the enemy lines behind a creeping barrage, with the Russian artillery landing just in front of the men as they marched forward, concealing their approach until the very last second. ## The Battle of Lutsk The Austro-Hungarian forces defending the lines in front of Lutsk numbered around 200,000, while Brusilov's Russians came in at around 150,000. The disadvantage was not felt in the slightest. The first waves of assault troops crashed through the heavily defended trenches and gunned down their enemies with stunning success. On the first day alone, 26,000 men were taken prisoner, with thousands more to follow in the coming days. As the Russians stormed through wave after wave, they showed no sign of stopping. They moved so quickly that captured Austro-Hungarian troops often remarked they had no time at all to get back into position after an artillery strike. The moment the shells stopped falling, Russian troops were already on top of them. The Battle of Lutsk was over after just two days. Austria-Hungary had suffered an estimated 130,000 casualties, and while Russia had also lost thousands of men, it was nothing compared to the enemy's losses. It was a monumental success. The blow was so devastating that Archduke Joseph Ferdinand, in command of the now almost entirely destroyed Austro-Hungarian Fourth Army, was relieved of his duties, and an Austrian commander was forced to close down operations in Italy to divert troops and heavy guns eastward. It was exactly what Brusilov had anticipated. He just needed to keep his momentum. ## Riding the Breakthrough For a time, he did. His men continued their march, and by June 7 they had full control of Lutsk and were heading for their next targets, carving a salient nearly 70 kilometers deep into the frontlines. Austria-Hungary attempted several counterattacks, but these were poorly planned, poorly executed, and poorly equipped. Brusilov's men brushed them off like mosquitoes, and Germany began diverting thousands of troops into the region to keep its ally standing. Further south, Brusilov's men captured the city of Chernivtsi and reached the edge of the Carpathian Mountains, raising the grand possibility of marching directly into Hungary through the mountain passes. Things could hardly have gone better. Success on this scale was extraordinarily rare in the First World War, where most frontlines had been static for years, but Brusilov's innovative methods had made his army a force to be reckoned with. This was only the first act of the show. The main push was supposed to come a few days later under General Evert further north. The Central Powers appeared to be on the verge of a major, catastrophic defeat. ## When the Plan Came Apart This is when things started to go awry. A frustrated Brusilov was suddenly informed that Evert's offensive further up the line would be delayed because Evert did not believe his men were trained enough. Or it was the bad weather. Or the strong German defenses. Evert seemed to have a lot of excuses, and it was clear he lacked confidence in the attack, or feared that his reputation would suffer if he could not match the success laid out before him. Whatever his reasoning, Evert requested a delay until June 18, which was eventually pushed all the way to July 3. But time was of the essence. The Russians could not sit idle all summer and allow Germany to consolidate its defenses and patch up Austria-Hungary's army. They needed to capitalize on their momentum, so Tsar Nicholas II switched up the plan. Instead of Evert's attack in the north, Brusilov's already successful push would become the main offensive, and scores of reserves were sent to continue the advance. Brusilov was beside himself. He had not planned for this and was not sure how it would end. He was furious at the other generals for ignoring his success, and he felt the opportunity for a decisive victory slipping away. He knew he would try his best regardless, so he hastily drew up new plans for what was now the main attack under his command. ## Spiraling Downward The new plan was to push forward to the city of Kovel, then advance further north and capture Baranavichy, in modern-day Belarus. Both cities held vital railway junctions that could act as the arteries of the Russian army, pumping resources even further west, where the city of Lviv was ripe for the taking. But just as Brusilov had anticipated, the delays had given Germany crucial days to send reinforcements, and the frontlines grew harder and harder to break. Russian casualties began stacking up, and though they were still making progress, the loss of life was becoming extreme. German counterattacks were far better organized than those of the Austro-Hungarian armies, forcing Russian units to waste crucial manpower and ammunition, and often losing the ground they had just gained. When the beginning of July finally arrived, General Evert was ready to launch his double-delayed attack in the north. It was doomed from the start. To Brusilov's dismay, Evert had trained his men in the old Russian tactics, the ones that did not work, and they did not work here either. Evert launched a massive, full frontal assault, losing nearly a hundred thousand men and gaining almost no land in return. ## A Breakthrough That Bled Out Even Brusilov's own field officers began abandoning his tactics. They had seen how effective the methods were, but time was short, and they did not have weeks to train the reservists arriving by the thousands every day. When they finally reached Kovel, they too ordered a full frontal assault, taking immense casualties and losing the chance to take the city. As German counterattacks struck with considerable force, Russia decided it was best to fortify the land it had taken and cement the new frontline. Sporadic fighting raged on, but with little to show for it. Even in the south, where the Russians managed another breakthrough, they found no strategic target worth claiming as a serious victory, just fields, mountains, and small villages, nothing to anchor a new frontline. As one historian put it: "Attacks continued on until the autumn rains turned the roads to mud, but other than add to the already terrible casualty list, nothing was achieved." By late September, the Brusilov Offensive was over. ## Brusilov's Impact The offensive ended with mixed results. Begin with the good. The attack had decimated Austria-Hungary's morale and much of its fighting capability. It was such a huge defeat that the empire never truly recovered, and Germany had to pick up the slack for the remainder of the war. In total, the Central Powers suffered nearly a million casualties between deaths, injuries, and prisoners of war, a number too large to replace with a quick round of fresh conscripts. It is regarded as Russia's greatest victory of the war, and perhaps one of the greatest of any country involved, because it finally showed that trenches could be taken, that no man's land was not simply a death trap, and that the stalemate could be broken. Its success even convinced Romania to join the war against the Central Powers, further surrounding Austria-Hungary and extending the frontline southward. It also technically achieved its original purpose: drawing the Central Powers' strength away from Verdun. Over the course of the offensive, Germany and Austria-Hungary diverted 30 divisions of men eastward, likely contributing to the eventual French victory at Verdun. ## A Pyrrhic Victory and Its Long Shadow At the same time, many consider it a pyrrhic victory. Russian casualties also neared a million men, including a great many experienced, veteran soldiers. Russia's offensive capabilities would never recover. But this was not really Brusilov's fault. He intended his part of the offensive to be a diversion before the main attack, and things might have gone far better had Evert followed his example in the north instead of clinging to the old playbook. In some respects, the offensive actually made the Central Powers a little stronger. After seeing how badly the Austro-Hungarian forces held their ground, Germany assumed command over many of their armies in an effort to bring them up to par. Brusilov's tactics are also believed to have inspired the emergence of German stormtroopers later in the war, who adopted similar methods on the western front. While the battles failed to achieve a decisive victory on the eastern front, there is one place where the offensive certainly had a massive influence: back home in Russia. The immense loss of life and the palpable incompetence of the country's leadership angered many, and there is no doubt that the inconclusive result of these offensives contributed to the onset of the Russian Revolution. With the growing unrest at home, Russia would eventually be forced to withdraw from the conflict to focus on the Russian Civil War. Brusilov himself would eventually fight for the Bolsheviks, after which he became a crucial part in the founding of the Soviet Red Army. Had Evert cooperated in the north and succeeded, perhaps the population of the Russian Empire would have felt more compelled to support the war, the revolution might not have gained as much traction, and the Soviet Union might never have risen. If this single offensive had gone just a little differently, we could be living in a very different world today. ## Frequently Asked Questions ### What made Brusilov's tactical approach different from previous Russian offensives? Brusilov abandoned the massed frontal charge that had repeatedly failed against machine guns and barbed wire. Instead he attacked across a wide 450-kilometer front to spread the defenders thin, directed artillery using reconnaissance aircraft to open specific breaches, sent infantry in four sequential waves each with distinct roles, and used a creeping barrage that kept shells landing just ahead of advancing troops to conceal their approach until the last moment. He also rehearsed all of this against replica Austro-Hungarian defenses. ### What happened at the Battle of Lutsk that made it such a dramatic success? On June 4, 1916, Brusilov's bombardment opened 24 breaches in the barbed wire. Despite being outnumbered roughly 150,000 to 200,000, his troops overran the lines so quickly that captured Austro-Hungarian soldiers remarked they had no time to get back into position after an artillery strike. On the first day alone 26,000 men were taken prisoner. The battle lasted just two days, cost Austria-Hungary an estimated 130,000 casualties, and led to the relief of Archduke Joseph Ferdinand from command. ### Why did the offensive fail to deliver a decisive victory despite its early success? General Evert, who was supposed to deliver the main blow in the north, repeatedly delayed his attack until July 3 and then launched a full frontal assault using the old tactics that did not work, losing nearly 100,000 men for almost no ground. Those delays let Germany rush reinforcements eastward. When Brusilov's push was elevated to the main offensive, his own field officers—pressed by time and lacking trained reserves—abandoned his methods and resorted to costly frontal assaults as well. ### What were the long-term consequences of the offensive for Austria-Hungary and Russia? Austria-Hungary suffered close to a million casualties and never fully recovered its military capability; Germany was forced to assume command over many Austrian armies for the remainder of the war. Russia also suffered close to a million casualties, including many of its most experienced veterans, and its offensive capacity was permanently broken. Brusilov's tactics are also believed to have influenced the development of German stormtrooper methods on the western front. ### How did the Brusilov Offensive contribute to the Russian Revolution? The immense loss of life and the visible incompetence of Russia's military leadership deepened public anger and eroded support for the Tsar. The inconclusive outcome of the offensive fed the broader unrest that contributed to the Russian Revolution. Russia ultimately withdrew from the war to focus on the civil war that followed, and Brusilov himself eventually went on to fight for the Bolsheviks and help found the Soviet Red Army.

Can Japan Stop China? Tokyo's Remilitarization and the Race for Asia

Simon Whistler — Tue, 02 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Chinese hegemony might be happening. That was the headline of a recent Foreign Policy article by Stephen Walt, the Harvard international relations scholar, warning that China's rise—at least in Asia—now looks inevitable. Walt's argument is blunt: through a series of decisions, including withdrawing from international organizations, imposing tariffs on nearly every country on Earth, and starting a war in Iran that has spiked global fuel prices, President Donald Trump has effectively handed the region to Beijing on a silver platter. As Walt puts it, "Trump has done just about everything someone would do if they consciously wanted China to supplant the United States and establish a dominant position in its immediate region." Walt is not alone. Kishore Mahbubani, the Singaporean diplomat and former President of the United Nations Security Council, has made a similar case for years, including in his book "Has China Won?" What makes this moment notable is that for decades American policy toward Asia was built around a single imperative: to stop, or at least delay, China's rise. For Washington to abandon that goal would be the Trump team's most consequential pivot yet. But even if Walt is right, and the United States is no longer working to contain Beijing, that does not mean nobody is on the case. The region's best hope may now lie with an island nation twenty-five times smaller than China—a former military powerhouse called Japan. This is the story of how Japan is trying to do what Washington may no longer be willing to: stand up to China in Asia, and whether it can possibly succeed. ## Key Takeaways - With Washington's commitment to Asia in doubt, Japan has emerged as the region's leading counterweight to China despite being roughly twenty-five times smaller in landmass. - Japan's remilitarization began with Shinzo Abe—the 2015 collective self-defense law, the 2017 scrapping of the 1% defense-spending cap, and the 2018 creation of the Amphibious Rapid Deployment Brigade—but is being driven hardest by Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi, in office since October. - Takaichi has lifted Japan's arms-export restrictions, raised defense spending to 2% of GDP, and stated in parliament that a Chinese attack on Taiwan could be a "survival-threatening situation" for Japan—infuriating Beijing. - Tokyo is assembling a regional coalition, repairing ties with South Korea, deepening defense links with the Philippines and Australia, and launching a $10 billion energy-security program called POWERR Asia. - China has retaliated with trade restrictions, radar lock-ons, a 7% defense-spending increase, and massed maritime-militia formations in the East China Sea apparently rehearsing for a Taiwan blockade. - By raw metrics—$336 billion in Chinese defense spending versus $62.2 billion for Japan, 234 Chinese warships versus 154 Japanese vessels—Tokyo is clearly the underdog and cannot match Beijing outright. - Japan's more realistic path is not to rival China but to offer regional states a credible alternative, and potentially to anchor a NATO-style alliance capable of collective deterrence. ## The Rising Sun: From Host Nation to Military Actor For most of its post-World War II history, Japan's role in regional security was simple. It hosted American troops, paid a share of the costs, and left the heavy lifting to Washington. The arrangement worked well enough during the Cold War, but it depended entirely on the United States remaining a willing, committed partner. Japan's political class was never fully convinced that arrangement would last forever. The shift began in 2015, when then–Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's government pushed through legislation allowing Japan's Self-Defense Forces to fight in limited cases of collective self-defense—instances where an attack on an allied nation posed a threat to Japan's own survival. Previously, the law permitted force only if Japan itself came under attack. The change was deeply controversial at the time, but it passed, and it opened the floodgates for further reform. In 2017, Abe scrapped Japan's 1% defense-spending cap. Though never enshrined in law, that cap had long been seen as one of the greatest obstacles to meaningful defense reform. The following year, Tokyo created the Amphibious Rapid Deployment Brigade, a force designed to defend and retake remote islands—a not-so-subtle reference to the contested islands in the East China Sea that both Tokyo and Beijing claim. ## The Carrier Question and Abe's Legacy Also in 2018, Tokyo announced plans to modify its Izumo-class destroyers so they could operate F-35B fighter jets, of which Japan planned to buy 147 units. Stretching the term somewhat, this led some observers to declare that Tokyo now possessed its first aircraft carrier since the end of World War II. It was a symbolic milestone as much as a military one: a country whose postwar constitution renounced offensive war was, step by step, rebuilding the tools of one. But while Abe may have started Japan's remilitarization, it is his newly elected protégé who looks likely to finish the job. According to Daisuke Kawai, a professor at the University of Tokyo, no one has been more committed to this shift than Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi, who took office in October last year. Where Abe laid the legal and institutional groundwork over the better part of a decade, Takaichi has moved with a speed that has unsettled both allies and adversaries—turning a gradual evolution into something closer to a sprint. ## Takaichi's Push: Arms Exports and the Taiwan Line This April, Takaichi unveiled the largest overhaul of Tokyo's defense-export rules in decades. Her government removed restrictions on the sale of arms overseas, paving the way for the export of missiles, warships, and other weapon systems. Much of the region welcomed the change, especially the Philippines. Defense Secretary Gilberto Teodoro told the press the move would give Manila access to high-quality weapons to strengthen domestic defense and contribute to regional security through deterrence—a quote many interpreted as a thinly veiled shot at China. Beyond opening its defense industry, Takaichi raised defense spending to 2% of Japan's GDP and pledged to spend more. But nothing raised Beijing's hackles like a statement she made in parliament last November, when she declared that a Chinese attack on Taiwan could constitute a survival-threatening situation for Japan—implying Tokyo might invoke the 2015 collective self-defense law to come to Taiwan's aid. China was, to put it mildly, livid. Beijing accused Takaichi of attempting to revive Japan's colonial past—a highly charged claim given the war crimes Imperial Japan committed in China. It discouraged Chinese tourists from traveling to Japan, suspended seafood imports, and banned the export of dual-use items to 20 Japanese companies it claimed were supplying the Japanese military. ## Beijing's Pressure Campaign and Takaichi's Resolve China's response was not limited to diplomacy and trade. In December last year, Chinese fighter jets locked their radar onto Japanese aircraft, forcing Japan to scramble its own jets in response. The episode marked an escalation from economic coercion to direct military signaling—an unmistakable warning shot delivered in the skies near Okinawa. The entire campaign amounted to an effort to force Takaichi to apologize. So far, she has resisted. Crucially, the pressure does not appear to have cost her at home: polling conducted in December showed 70% of the country backing her, a figure most Western governments would envy. That domestic strength matters, because it means Beijing's coercion has not achieved its central political aim. A leader buckling under 30% approval might have offered concessions; a leader commanding 70% has little incentive to bend. Antagonizing Beijing and revitalizing the defense industry is one thing. Far more consequential in the long run may be Takaichi's attempt to build a regional coalition that can stand up to China—a project that turns Japan from a single rearming state into the potential hub of a broader balancing effort. ## Allies and Partners: Building a Coalition Given the long memories of Japanese wartime atrocities across the region, the identity of some members of Takaichi's coalition is surprising—above all the biggest partner, South Korea. Tokyo and Seoul have a complicated relationship, and even that feels like an understatement. Japan colonized Korea from 1910 to 1945 and committed atrocities so horrific they cannot be detailed here. Those wounds have never fully healed. In 2018, tensions came to a head after South Korea's Supreme Court ordered a Japanese company to compensate South Koreans for forced labor during World War II. The ruling triggered a chain reaction in which both countries downgraded each other's trade status, and Seoul even threatened to scrap an intelligence-sharing agreement with Tokyo—a step that ultimately did not happen, owing to American pressure. Although that crisis unfolded under her mentor Abe, Takaichi has worked tirelessly to change the dynamic. Since taking office, she and South Korean President Lee Jae-myung have met four times in roughly six months, a pace that would have been unthinkable a few short years ago. At their January meeting in Nara—Takaichi's hometown—the two leaders agreed to deepen security ties to counter growing concerns in East Asia, a nod to China reaffirmed in their most recent meeting about a week ago. ## Manila, Canberra, and the Architecture of Cooperation South Korea is not the only piece Takaichi has been methodically slotting into place. Japan's decision to open its defense industry for global exports has drawn attention from Manila, but that is just one strand of a broader partnership. In January, Tokyo and Manila signed an agreement permitting the tax-free provision of ammunition, fuel, food, and other necessities when the two nations' troops train together. The deal was designed to support implementation of the 2025 Reciprocal Access Agreement, which allows both countries to deploy forces to each other's territory for joint exercises, disaster response, and other missions to enhance interoperability. Further south, Tokyo has pursued closer ties with Australia, signing a deal worth $6.5 billion for the delivery of a fleet of Japanese-designed warships. Takaichi has also launched POWERR Asia—a torturous acronym for Partnership on Wide Energy and Resources Resilience Asia—a $10 billion financing program aimed at boosting energy security across the continent. Each of these moves is significant on its own. Taken together, they suggest Japan is actively working to challenge Chinese dominance in the region. That raises two questions: how will China respond, and will Japan's efforts be enough to stop it? ## A Defiant China: From Bilateral Anger to Maritime Muscle Beijing's response to Japan's military resurgence goes well beyond trade restrictions and radar lock-ons. During President Trump's meeting with President Xi in mid-May, Xi criticized Takaichi's defense push. According to the Financial Times, Xi grew agitated discussing Japan's increased military spending—the most heated part of the meeting—and Trump administration officials were caught off guard by his annoyance, as Japan had not been a topic in the talks leading up to the summit. Xi works hard to project the image of a leader who is cool, calm, and always in control. For that mask to slip, even in a private meeting, is a glaring admission that China is worried about Japan's actions. China has done more than complain. According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), Beijing increased defense spending by 7.4% in 2025, bringing its estimated total to $336 billion—though SIPRI and other analysts note China does not fully disclose its military expenditure, meaning the real figure could be orders of magnitude higher. For 2026, Beijing announced another 7% boost. Though Reuters called it the lowest increase in five years, it still outstripped military spending across the rest of the continent. At the opening of China's parliament, Premier Li Qiang said Beijing was focused on improving combat readiness and developing advanced combat capabilities. ## The Fishing-Fleet Armadas and Grey-Zone Tactics Beyond budgets, China has been sending pointed signals about its capabilities. On Christmas Day 2025, roughly 2,000 Chinese fishing vessels abruptly stopped normal activities and assembled into two parallel formations in the East China Sea, each stretching more than 400 kilometers. According to The New York Times, the ships did it again on January 11, forming a rectangle so dense that approaching cargo ships had to skirt around it or zigzag through. They repeated the maneuver in March: Jason Wang, chief operating officer of ingeniSPACE, a firm that analyzes satellite imagery and ship-signals data, told the AFP that around 1,200 boats massed in two parallel lines further east and held position for about 30 hours. These vessels are part of China's maritime militia—fishermen with some military training who can be called up to fight alongside the navy. While the purpose was not immediately clear, Gregory Pauling of the Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative wrote in the Times that he believed it was a test of how civilian vessels would respond if ordered to assemble in a future crisis, such as a blockade of Taiwan. That China can coordinate thousands of civilian vessels at sea, while Japan fields just 154 vessels in its entire navy, underscores the gap between the two—and that is before counting China's 234 warships. Beijing routinely uses this fleet for grey-zone pressure: per the East Asia Forum, in 2025 the Chinese Coast Guard spent 335 consecutive days in waters around the Japanese-administered Senkaku Islands, up from 215 consecutive days in 2024. ## Pressure Across the Region and the Economic Front Such tactics are not limited to Japan. In 2025, China violated Taiwanese airspace more than 3,700 times and, according to Reuters, launched more than 2.8 million cyberattacks per day—up from 2.4 million in 2024. In the South China Sea, Chinese vessels harass Philippine ships, and Chinese aircraft continue to challenge Australian air patrols with unsafe maneuvers. The pattern is consistent: constant, calibrated pressure designed to wear down adversaries below the threshold of open war. Away from the military domain, Beijing also competes with Japan economically, using its Belt and Road Initiative—and the debt attached to those projects—to build an influence network larger than anything Tokyo currently commands. Whether those indebted nations would rush to Beijing's aid in a confrontation with Japan is an open question, especially given how poorly Chinese debt is regarded in many places saddled with it. But that does not mean Beijing lacks the ability to exert influence over them. Money buys leverage even when it does not buy loyalty, and China has spent freely to acquire both. ## Is It Enough? The Verdict on the Numbers Right off the bat: Japan has not done enough to counter China. What Tokyo has built over the past decade is genuinely impressive, but it falls well short of matching Beijing, let alone positioning Japan as China's equal in the region. The main reason is time. China has spent decades shoring up its military, building its economy, coordinating the Belt and Road Initiative, and raising its profile worldwide. Japan only began in earnest in 2015, and even then progress was gradual until Takaichi arrived. Beijing's head start is enormous. China has 234 warships, and its shipyards add more each year. According to a Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) study, between 2019 and 2023 China's four largest shipyards produced 39 warships. Japan is investing in its navy but simply lacks the capacity to match that rate. The spending gap tells the same story: Japan's 2% of GDP comes to about $62.2 billion, while China spent nearly five times more at $336 billion—and may be underreporting. There is also economic might. China is the main trading partner for many regional states, and Japan's economy is nowhere near large enough to absorb that trade or replace what China produces. And there is demography: in 2024 Japan recorded nearly a million more deaths than births, the steepest decline since the government began surveys in 1968. China has its own demographic crisis, but it is less acute than Japan's. ## Reframing the Question: A Credible Alternative Military spending and population alone cannot determine who wins a war. If they could, Russia would be holding victory parades in Kyiv rather than begging President Zelensky not to attack its parades in Moscow, and America would be dictating terms to Iran rather than giving ground in negotiations. Still, these are useful metrics, and by them Tokyo is clearly the underdog. Yet the framing of whether Japan can match China may be the wrong question entirely. Instead of trying to rival Beijing, Japan could position itself as a credible alternative for countries uncomfortable with Chinese dominance but with no one else to turn to. For years, many Asian governments have walked a careful line—accepting Chinese trade and infrastructure investment while resisting Chinese influence and aggression. Consider the Philippines. Despite the clashes between Manila and Beijing in the South China Sea, China is Manila's largest trading partner. The Philippines is also a major buckle in the Belt and Road Initiative, with projects including the Sangley Point International Airport and the Binondo-Intramuros Bridge built with Chinese funding and expertise. If Japan can offer countries like the Philippines a choice between Tokyo and Beijing—rather than a choice between Beijing or rotting infrastructure—that could go a long way toward curbing Chinese influence. Through initiatives like POWERR Asia, Tokyo is already trying. ## Toward a NATO of Asia Perhaps the best thing Tokyo could do would be to assemble the region's countries into a NATO-style alliance capable of standing up to Chinese aggression. The framework is already taking shape. Japan has deepened military ties with nearly every nation in the region, and with its defense industry open for business, those ties are bound to strengthen. Most of these countries are also already bound together, to varying degrees, by bilateral defense agreements with the United States—a latticework that a formal alliance could consolidate. The question is whether the political will exists to form such an organization. Any country that hints at joining or forming one will have to weather unprecedented levels of Chinese harassment. In the worst case, Beijing might refuse to trade with it altogether—a threat that carries real weight given how many regional economies depend on the Chinese market. Still, that may be a price worth paying to build an alliance that can effectively stand up to China. Because, at least in Asia, one country—no matter how powerful—cannot do it alone. Japan's wager is that by knitting its neighbors together, it can achieve collectively what it could never manage by itself. ## Frequently Asked Questions ### Why is Japan, rather than the United States, leading the effort to counter China? A series of Trump administration decisions — withdrawing from international organizations, imposing sweeping tariffs, and starting a war in Iran that spiked fuel prices — has led analysts like Harvard's Stephen Walt to conclude Washington is no longer working to contain Beijing. With that traditional American imperative in doubt, Japan has stepped forward as the region's most committed counterweight. ### What did Prime Minister Takaichi say about Taiwan that angered China? In parliament last November, Takaichi declared that a Chinese attack on Taiwan could constitute a "survival-threatening situation" for Japan, implying Tokyo might invoke Abe's 2015 collective self-defense law to aid Taiwan. Beijing responded by accusing her of reviving Japan's colonial past, discouraging tourism, suspending seafood imports, and banning dual-use exports to 20 Japanese companies. Despite that pressure, 70% of Japanese voters backed Takaichi in December polling. ### Which countries are part of Takaichi's regional coalition? South Korea is the most significant partner — Takaichi and President Lee Jae-myung have met four times in roughly six months, a pace unthinkable a few years ago. Tokyo also signed a logistics agreement with the Philippines supporting the 2025 Reciprocal Access Agreement, inked a $6.5 billion warship deal with Australia, and launched the $10 billion POWERR Asia energy-security program. ### How has China demonstrated its military strength in response to Japan's moves? Beijing raised defense spending 7.4% in 2025 to an estimated $336 billion and announced another 7% for 2026. It locked radar onto Japanese aircraft, kept its Coast Guard in Senkaku-area waters for 335 consecutive days in 2025, and massed roughly 2,000 maritime-militia fishing vessels in the East China Sea on multiple occasions — a maneuver analysts believe rehearses a possible Taiwan blockade. ### What is Japan's most realistic strategy for countering China? Japan cannot match China outright — China fields 234 warships to Japan's 154, and spent nearly five times more on defense in 2025. Japan's best path is to position itself as a credible alternative for countries uncomfortable with Chinese dominance, offering nations like the Philippines a real choice through programs like POWERR Asia, and ultimately assembling regional states into a NATO-style alliance capable of collective deterrence. ## Related Coverage - [Japan's Roadmap to Rearmament](https://warfronts.pub/geopolitics/japan-roadmap-to-rearmament) - [Japan at a Nuclear Crossroads: Pacifism, Deterrence, and a Regional Threat](https://warfronts.pub/geopolitics/japan-nuclear-crossroads-pacifism-deterrence-regional-threat) - [What Would a War Between China and the US Look Like? A Comprehensive Military Analysis](https://warfronts.pub/conflicts/what-would-us-china-war-look-like) - [China and the Philippines: The South China Sea War Risk](https://warfronts.pub/geopolitics/china-philippines-south-china-sea-war-risk) ## Sources 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25.

Could Canada Become Europe's Arsenal? The Case for a New Trans-Atlantic Defense Pact

Simon Whistler — Tue, 02 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The NATO alliance is facing a moment of truth—not because it is on the brink of disaster, but because it is on the precipice of change. Across Europe, governments are working to wake the sleeping giant within their own borders, building up their militaries and bringing dormant defense industries back online as fast as they can manage. At the same time, the United States is rapidly rethinking its role in the alliance, introducing uncertainty, flirting with NATO's traditional adversaries, and forcing European members to step up. Washington might describe that pressure as tough love. Many European leaders, privately, would call it blatant coercion. On the current trajectory, Europe is on track to become strong again. But getting there takes time, and time is the one resource the continent does not have. A month from now, Europe might still enjoy Washington's support. A decade from now, it might be a genuine military superpower in its own right. The problem lies in the gap between those two points—the long, exposed stretch during which Europe is dangerously vulnerable, and during which it cannot simply manufacture its way to safety. But the old continent has an ace up its sleeve: a single, critical partner that could quite literally rescue it in its hour of need. That partner is Canada. It is far from a military powerhouse, and not even a real player on the geo-strategic stage. Yet Canada possesses the one thing Europe desperately lacks. Canada can build. With the right investments, the right vision, and the right trans-Atlantic partnership, Ottawa could build Europe an arsenal that even Vladimir Putin would not dare to challenge. Play their cards right, and Canada and the NATO nations of Europe could grow far stronger together—without the reliance on Washington that so many European leaders have come to regret. It is a risky proposition, and one that would demand a total rethink of trans-Atlantic security. But for Europe and for Canada alike, the rewards could be extraordinary. ## Key Takeaways - Europe has committed to a defense-spending surge—every European NATO nation but Spain has pledged to spend 5 percent of GDP on defense by 2035—but its factories cannot produce hardware anywhere near the rate its budgets demand. - Canada has vast idle industrial capacity, a workforce hungry for orders, and a stated ambition to more than double its domestic defense sector, making it uniquely positioned to build European designs at scale. - The smartest division of labor would have European firms supply the designs, production lines, and training, while Canada manufactures copies at higher rates—focusing on Gripen fighters, the Brazilian C-390 transport, 155mm shells, components, interceptors, and drones. - In December 2025, Canada became the first non-European country to join the European Union's 150-billion-euro Security Action for Europe (SAFE) defense fund, building on a June 2025 Security and Defense Partnership. - The obstacles are real: global supply chains still route through American components, the investment required runs into the tens or hundreds of billions, political leadership could change, and Washington is unlikely to watch quietly. ## Europe's Strange Addiction The twenty-ninth of December, 1940, was among the darkest days of World War II in the European theater. France had fallen, Britain was under indefinite siege, the Axis was growing, and that very night German bombs ignited the Second Great Fire of London. As London burned, US President Franklin Delano Roosevelt addressed his own nation—a country not yet at war, but beginning to grasp that it soon could be. In that address, Roosevelt described the United States in a way its citizens had never heard before. America, he said, was the "Arsenal of Democracy." It had the know-how, the industrial might, and the sheer willpower to build weapons at a scale few other nations could dream of. And when America built weapons and shipped them to allies abroad, those weapons were not merely instruments of war. They were instruments of freedom. Nearly a century later, the Arsenal of Democracy still stands. America remains the world's premier military superpower, fielding weapons systems and fighting machines without equal. Its closest allies in Europe, the Indo-Pacific, and the Middle East enjoy deep military and diplomatic relationships, backed by military-industrial support to match. American missile systems, American armored vehicles, and highly advanced American aircraft form the cornerstone of militaries from Britain to South Korea, from Australia to Israel, and from Japan to Germany. On its face, that arrangement is a risky one. America designs the equipment, America handles production, and America runs the supply chains—meaning that, in theory, America could take all of it away. Yet allied nations accepted the bargain, because Washington had proven, again and again, that it was a strategic partner that prized stability and consistency above all else. American commitments did not change simply because new presidents from opposing parties cycled through the Oval Office. The United States got to lead the Western world on foreign policy, and it paid for that privilege with the guarantee that its allies would always be included in what came next. Today, that is no longer the case. NATO's Article 5, and the guarantee of an American defense of Taiwan, are no longer treated as geopolitical absolutes under the current leadership. Today's Washington pulls funding from Ukraine after years of backing the beleaguered nation, then turns to its NATO allies and threatens to invade Greenland or annex Canada. Where Washington once spurned openly autocratic governments, it now cuts mineral-rights deals and accepts lavish gifts for the commander-in-chief. Where it might once have worked with European allies to craft a shared plan for higher defense spending, it now threatens to ignore even its basic obligation to defend NATO members unless they spend exactly as Washington demands. A casual observer might chalk all of this up to the man in the White House. But allied leaders have come to a harder realization: Donald Trump is both a man and a movement. The man will not lead the United States forever. The movement—or another like it—could upset the balance with America's allies all over again. For that reason, American allies around the globe, and especially in Europe, have begun to regard their own military arsenals with a sense of impending doom. After decades of mutual reliance, the United States and Europe hold all sorts of economic and diplomatic leverage over one another. But when it comes to military industry, the relationship is essentially a one-way street. Many of Europe's richest and most powerful nations depend on American hardware, and most rely on a US-led NATO command structure to engage militarily with the wider world. What was once the ultimate convenience—freeing European budgets and factories to focus on peacetime economies—has curdled into the ultimate liability. And the problem is worse than it sounds. European militaries are in a growth phase right now, even if the continent is more than a little resentful about why. The European nations of NATO, other than Spain, have committed to spend 5 percent of GDP on defense by 2035, and European capitals are already spending more than 50 percent more on defense each year than they did in 2022, the first year of Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine. European leaders would prefer to spend that money on European-made hardware—and, in fairness, Europe has plenty of excellent equipment to choose from. In the air, its fourth-generation fighters are among the best in the world, whether the Eurofighter, the Rafale, or the Gripen. At sea, France, Italy, Germany, Norway, and others can produce top-flight ships. On land, the German Leopard tank series and the French CAESAR howitzer are known to excel. In research and development, European firms rank among the very best, with not one but two sixth-generation fighter programs underway, alongside advanced air defenses and promising work in drone warfare. But none of that technology matters if Europe cannot build it fast enough. The continent is slated to spend hundreds of billions of euros each year, every year, for the foreseeable future on weapons—yet its defense industry is nowhere near able to accept contracts and fill orders on that scale. By the end of 2026, France will be pushing out roughly twelve CAESAR howitzers and maybe three Rafale fighters per month. Germany can build or upgrade around ten Leopard tanks per month. Each of Europe's shipbuilding nations can manage only a small handful of warships or submarines per year. To spend at the rate it intends, Europe would need to build many new factories and production lines, recruit and train entire workforces, and reshape regional economies in several countries at once. It does not have that kind of time. Meanwhile, America watches and waits across the Atlantic, happy to take the orders Europe once gladly placed—except now Europe is acutely aware of the strings attached. Sign on the dotted line with Washington today, and Europe accepts continued American leverage over its militaries for decades. Consider the F-35: the jet is expected to remain in European service through at least the 2050s, serving as the backbone for several major air forces. That means continual American deliveries of spare parts, software upgrades, and maintenance support will be vital to keep those planes flying. Some European nations are already shifting away from the F-35 for exactly that reason, but the problem is bigger than any single machine. Place any order with the United States for the critical hardware Europe needs, and European nations tie themselves to an increasingly unpredictable Washington. Look at how completely the relationship has changed since January 2025, then imagine how it might change across several more decades in a worst-case scenario. Europe has the technology to fix most of its capability gaps on its own. In the end, technology means nothing without the capacity to build. In short, Europe needs a hero—and that is where Canada comes in. ## Elbows Up: Canada's Third Way Strip Europe's military-industrial problem down to its core and it converges on a single question. What matters more: that Europe develops a robust, indigenous defense-industrial base to produce and maintain its own hardware, or that Europe re-arms now, by any means necessary, to keep America relatively close and deter the Russian threat on its eastern flank? For now, European leaders appear to have made their choice. They will build their own defense industries when the chance arises, but rearmament cannot wait. If the continent cannot have both, it is better to ensure there is still a free and united Europe in a decade or two—one with the luxury of worrying about American arms dependence. Canada may be the only nation on Earth able to offer Europe a third way out. Alongside the United States, Canada is the second North American member of NATO, and between the alliance, the Five Eyes intelligence partnership, and a range of economic and strategic ties, its relationship with Europe has long been a cozy one. Those ties have grown so close that, as of early 2026, a full 48 percent of Canadians voiced support for joining the European Union—a four-point jump from the prior year. Brussels has gently pointed out that, technically, Canadian accession to the EU is not possible. But the broader signal is unmistakable: Canada and Europe want to be partners, especially as all sides feel spurned by Washington's conduct over the past year. And if Canada can offer its European allies one thing, it is the sheer industrial capacity of its economy. Canada is far from a real military player on the global stage, and while it has respectable defense research and development, most of that is tied into international partnerships. Its civilian manufacturing, however, is another story. Unlike most wealthy Western nations, Canadian industry remains very much alive. The country is home to massive automobile and auto-parts factories; it builds complex machinery, ships, and commercial aircraft. It runs major steel mills handling over ten million tons a year, ranks among the world's larger oil and gas exporters, and is well acclimated to high-tech industry, including electric vehicles, robotics, and AI-integrated manufacturing. Better still, Canada genuinely wants to produce more than it currently does. The country is working overtime to build up domestic manufacturing and invest in secure, geopolitically stable supply chains. It sees a return to heavy industry as a way to revitalize large parts of the country, and it views the defense sector specifically as the ideal vehicle. In 2025, the Canadian government expressed its desire to more than double its domestic defense sector, where roughly six hundred firms already operate. That doubling is mostly intended to serve Canada's own armed forces—but the country has the capacity to do far more. Right now, Canadian production capacity simply outstrips the orders coming in, whether from its own military, the domestic or global civilian market, or anywhere else. Crucially, the fact that Canada does not produce much military technology today does not mean it cannot make the switch. Canadian defense firms are already active across the sector in ways that suggest Ottawa could pivot to high-volume, high-tech weapons production fairly quickly. Its maritime industry is well accustomed to naval shipbuilding and design. It has delivered many thousands of its LAV III armored vehicles, most prominently to the US Army, where a modified derivative is known as the Stryker. Canada produces rifles, ammunition, artillery shells, and consumer-grade drones, and it can build highly specialized aircraft parts, surveillance equipment, sensor technology, and communications gear—the kinds of hardware that would be far harder to start producing from the bottom up. Ottawa works regularly with major American and European defense companies, and in December 2025 it became the first non-European country to join a major EU defense fund called SAFE. By now the core of the argument should be clear. Europe needs production lines it has no time to build, and hardware it has no time to produce. Canada has immense industrial capacity, wants to grow its defense-industrial sector, and is already in talks to cooperate with Europe on a more limited basis. Ottawa understands the scale of military-industrial spending coming in Europe—roughly 1.25 trillion euros over the next five years alone. Yet for now, Canada seems mostly focused on collaboration within the bounds of today's industry, with existing companies and partnerships primed to scale up and deepen ties with European governments. Why stop there, when Canada could become Europe's arsenal? This is not to suggest Canada could snap its fingers and start producing what Europe needs. That transition would take serious time and serious investment, and both of those challenges deserve a full reckoning. But Canada can build the defense industry Europe needs far faster than Europe can build it itself. Unlike Europe, Canada has production capacity to spare today. It already has much of the physical infrastructure in place. It has a workforce broadly more willing to take part in a rapid defense expansion than most of Europe's, and it has the raw materials and processing capabilities to sustain that industry—for the right price. To their credit, European leaders are talking a better game on defense than they have in generations. But as the continent's defense corporations keep pointing out, those same leaders seem less interested in the hard work of building, or even of getting their countries ready to build at scale. Canada, by contrast, was born ready. If Europe wants Canada to build European hardware, all it has to do is cut a very large check and give the green light. ## Fantastic Beasts and How to Build Them The proposition laid out so far is admittedly abstract. Simply observing that Canada can build more hardware than Europe, at a moment when Canada wants to build and Europe wants to acquire, is not yet a defense-industrial plan. So it is worth getting into the details. What would Canada need to build, how could its industry be put to best use, and what would Europe actually be willing to buy? In broad strokes, Canada's strengths would be wasted if Ottawa simply tried to design and build its own kit from scratch. Both sides would be served far better by partnership: European firms supply the designs, help stand up the production lines, and help train the workforce, so that Canada can produce copies of those designs at higher rates than Europe could match on its own. Nor does Canada need to chase the highest-tech equipment or take full responsibility for any system Europe is already manufacturing. Shutting down European production lines would be a poor decision for the continent right now, and Canada's ability to build quickly evaporates if its labor force must spend months or years adapting to unfamiliar work. Instead, Canada can make the greatest impact by pursuing three tasks at once. First, it can open new production lines for important European designs that are not being built fast enough. Second, it can focus on the designs that take less time to produce at scale—either because they overlap with what Canada already makes, or because they are less complex. Third, it can lean heavily into mass-produced components, spare parts, and munitions, where Canadian industry is more flexible and European governments have already proven too slow. ### Naval: Drones, Not Destroyers Start on the high seas, where shipbuilding is as much of a challenge for European nations as for any country not named China, South Korea, or Japan. Canada does have somewhat greater capacity to build naval vessels than most of Europe's wealthier seafaring nations, but that does not make it great at building ships, nor does it make the logistics easy. Canada's main shipyard for combat vessels, in Halifax, will be occupied for the next couple of decades building fifteen River-class destroyers for the Canadian Navy. In the long term, Canada could expand its naval shipbuilding and take on the large surface warships Europe will struggle to construct. But Europe's timeline does not allow for it: Europe can build new shipyards from the ground up, just as Canada could, yet neither can do so quickly. Instead, Canada can put its capacity to better naval use by filling the need for maritime drone technology. Europe is already moving here—a partnership between Poland, Norway, and Ukraine will soon manufacture Ukrainian sea drones, and Huntington Ingalls Industries in the United Kingdom is set to double its facility in Portchester to build unmanned underwater vehicles. But a massive gap remains between what Europe will need and what it plans to build. Drone-warfare experts worldwide warn that sea drones, on the surface and deep below it, will be especially important in the coming decades—not only as kamikaze attack vectors, but for logistical transport, supply-chain sustainment, and undersea reconnaissance. There is an opening here for Canada to get in early on naval drone warfare, and not just to help itself and Europe, but to compete with the United States. American companies like Saronic, Saildrone, and Anduril are racing to break into the naval-warfare space, raising the prospect that this becomes another domain where the US corners the Western defense market. Canadian private industry, though, is uniquely well placed to catch up. Canada has no firms focused solely on naval drones, but its civilian ocean and undersea drone industry is thriving, with many companies already designing and mass-producing aquatic drones at scale. And to the extent Canada can build larger ships, it has the potential to build icebreakers for Europe in substantial numbers—filling a gap that few nations beyond the Scandinavian ones are ready to address alone. ### Air: Building European Jets Faster In the air, Canada has a considerably greater ability to build copies of existing European hardware, especially fighters. The three main combat jets Europe currently manufactures—the Eurofighter, the Rafale, and the Gripen—are none of them produced with any real speed. France can turn out three Rafales a month at best; the Eurofighter lines are lucky to hit two; Sweden, with new partners in Brazil, will soon reach a steady three Gripens a month. None of those rates come close to what Europe would need to offset losses in a future major conflict. The Eurofighter is probably best left a European project. Its supply and production process is already messy, and Germany—one of the program's most critical members—is also the European nation with the greatest capacity by far to expand its military-industrial base. The Gripen is a different story. Sweden has already shown it will allow Gripens to be built abroad, specifically in Brazil, and Canada happens to be weighing the Gripen for its own fleet right now, as an alternative or complement to American F-35s. Ukraine is expected to need up to 150 of the jets as quickly as possible to deter Russia. That gives Sweden's Saab corporation every reason to partner with Canada, open new lines, and let Canada keep many of the early jets it builds. Saab has already floated the idea, suggesting it could create nearly thirteen thousand new Canadian jobs. The Rafale, made by France's Dassault, is also going international. India will soon open its own production lines, and Rafale output is straining under a serious backlog as the jet grows more popular worldwide. In each case, Canada is the ideal candidate for partially offshored production—not only because it would speed construction and delivery, but because it would free up space in Europe for the pivot to next-generation fighters. Both Dassault and Saab are designing next-gen aircraft they may choose to build entirely in-house, and clearing their existing order books sooner would make that transition far easier. Canada also holds key advantages in non-combat aircraft. The Bombardier corporation produces several ultra-long-range business jets, including a line already incorporated into Sweden's GlobalEye, an airborne early-warning and control aircraft in high demand among air forces worldwide—and another platform Sweden has proposed building in Canada directly. Canada produces aerial surveillance equipment, hosts a national subsidiary of the engine maker Pratt & Whitney, and has production lines for several aircraft types. While it does not currently build designs easily upgraded into the air-to-air refueling tankers or strategic airlifters Europe desperately needs, Canada could open lines for yet another foreign design—this time from Brazil. That would be the C-390, a twin-engine, jet-powered transport that sits between a tactical and a strategic airlifter. It is highly capable, convertible into a refueler, and immensely popular—but Brazil cannot build it nearly as fast as orders arrive. Embraer hopes to reach twelve or more per year by 2030, and like Saab and Dassault, it could benefit greatly from new lines opened elsewhere. Embraer is considering building the C-390 in Portugal, but a Canada interested in producing foreign aircraft could be a far better fit, in both capacity and existing aerospace know-how. ### Ground: Shells, Components, and Interceptors Ground warfare may be where Canada could make the greatest impact of all. Europe has no shortage of high-quality designs—tanks like Germany's Leopard series, mobile artillery like the French CAESAR or the German PzH-2000. Germany is on track to produce 110 PzH-2000s and up to sixty new Leopards a year, with France hitting similar numbers. But the devil is in the details. NATO desperately needs to produce artillery shells at a far higher rate than it currently can. While the US is increasing its own shell output, ammunition is precisely the thing Europe does not want to count on Washington for if there is any doubt about America's commitment. The shell in highest demand is the 155mm NATO standard, and while Canada currently produces only a few thousand rounds per month, it could scale to much higher volumes with relatively little lead time. The real question is investment: Canada already has the technology and expertise to fix Europe's shell shortage, and a large enough check would get the job done. The same logic applies to component parts, a vulnerability laid bare by the war between Russia and Ukraine. In high-volume attritional warfare, equipment wears out fast. Artillery barrels must be replaced every few thousand rounds, recoil mechanisms cannot last forever, and firing pins and drive tracks suffer intense wear. Countries that cannot keep up with the constant need for replacements watch their artillery take itself out of the fight. For nations like France, Germany, Italy, and the United Kingdom, where lines already exist for tanks, artillery, rocket launchers, and armored vehicles, it is easier to expand existing production than to start from scratch in Canada. But Canada can ease that burden by producing an excess of specific components. It is far simpler to learn to build a tank's cannon barrel than the whole tank, and here Canada could stand up early production lines fairly easily, then scale rapidly. A couple of Canadian companies are already preparing for exactly this work, getting ready to reintroduce large-caliber artillery-barrel production to Canadian soil and opening new shell lines with the investment already available. What Canada could do for artillery and armor, it could do for other land equipment that must be replenished quickly and constantly. Air-defense systems stand out. The SAMP/T and IRIS-T systems are already in production across Europe, and the continent is pursuing its Sky Shield initiative and other airspace-defense efforts—but interceptors are another matter entirely. The SAMP/T faces chronic, critical interceptor shortages, and the IRIS-T picture is little better. Again, it is far easier to open third-country lines for interceptors than to build the whole system. Canada could also handle mass production of unmanned aerial drones, which Ukraine has shown to be among the most important technology in modern land warfare. To grasp how critical drones have become, Western military sources estimate that a full 87 percent of combat casualties in Ukraine today are directly attributable to uncrewed systems. Europe is only beginning to build drone capacity, and it has little ability to support the startup-driven, highly adaptive drone industry Ukraine has created. Canada is uniquely equipped to build relatively basic, highly functional drones at scale, and because it is one nation rather than dozens, it is far better placed to tear down the red tape that has held that kind of production back. ### Partnering With Kyiv Canada could also partner directly with Ukraine in the near future, adapting Ukrainian weapons designs and learning to produce them at scale. Ukraine has recently begun opening itself to export deals for the first time since the war began, and for now those deals center on European industry. There is good reason for that: Kyiv wants deep connections with European nations and their military-industrial complexes, both to get Europe into fighting shape so Ukraine does not face future conflicts alone, and to make itself indispensable to its European partners. But where partnering with Europe serves Ukraine geopolitically, Canada is the partner that could match Ukraine's needs in terms of raw output. It is good for Ukraine, Canada, and potential European customers alike to let demand guide the process—for European nations to determine which parts of Ukraine's arsenal are most important to adapt, and how quickly. Once those decisions are made, and Europe must weigh building Ukrainian kit as fast as possible against learning to do it in-house, Canada is the best outside partner to boost the speed of production while minimizing lost ground on defense-industrial sovereignty. Across all these domains, Canada has already shown its willingness to deepen collaboration, and Europe has shown its enthusiasm for welcoming Canada in. In December 2025, the EU agreed to let Canada join the 150-billion-euro Security Action for Europe program, making Canada the first non-European nation ever to take part. Under that arrangement, Canada will be able to jointly finance defense initiatives and bid on procurement deals to supply EU countries. A few months earlier, in June 2025, Canada and the EU agreed to the Security and Defense Partnership, a broader initiative pulling Canada into wide-ranging defense-industrial cooperation. Both sides are clearly interested in being closer friends, and both are focused on trimming the United States out of their defense-industrial supply base wherever possible. Ottawa and Brussels have spent their time eyeing each other across the bar; they have already risen from their seats to talk. Now there is nothing left to do but agree to dance. ## Good for the Goose: Why Both Sides Win Just because something can happen does not mean it should, and that holds here as anywhere. The fact that Canada can step into the gap for Europe does not guarantee it is the most favorable option for both sides. So it is worth asking why this could be such a win-win. Begin with Canada, whose economy faces a problem already noted: the country can manufacture at truly massive scale, whether for defense or anything else, but it can build far more than it is being asked to produce. The Canadian industrial capacity that already exists is partly going to waste. An entire portion of the economy with clear potential to thrive and expand is instead withering. As of early 2025, Canada's actual manufacturing sector had shrunk smaller than Ireland's—not for any lack of capability, but because of red tape and diminishing demand. It is the same problem the European defense industry has spent years trying to explain to Europe's leaders: either governments pony up and place real orders for new hardware, or they should stop berating private industry about the need to produce. For Canada, Europe's defense-spending boom could be the shot in the arm its manufacturing sector needs. National unemployment sits well above 6 percent, manufacturing has been hit especially hard, and there are tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of workers with the skills and the will to get active—if only demand existed to reopen factories or build new lines. Enter Europe, and its defense industry in particular: with substantial foreign investment and a bit of startup time, Canada could solve that problem outright. Once the ball gets rolling, Canada would benefit in many ways from becoming Europe's big new defense partner. When industry does well, it tends to keep doing well: successful investment draws new investment, job creation fosters more job creation, and local economies surge back to life. A defense boom would also let Canadian industry advance its expertise across many areas at once, combining lessons learned from building foreign kit with fresh economic stimulus and a glut of newly trained personnel to seed new companies and projects. On the international stage, Canada would get to distinguish itself from the United States as a military-industrial competitor, unwinding a defense industry that has followed America's lead as a docile partner for generations. The path would also make Canada quite a bit of money, and it would likely give Canada early pick from the production lines on its own soil as it pursues its own rearmament. Finally, in a world where the US really does renege on its most important security ties, Canada would gain a new source of geopolitical backup. If Canada came under threat, a revitalized and mighty Europe would risk losing its most important partner—so protecting Canada, even from America, would become paramount. On the other end, Europe would reap rewards of its own from a comprehensive arrangement. The glaring European problem it would fix has already been named: reliance on American military industry. It is hard to overstate how problematic that dependence is, even as Europe publicly makes nice with Washington when it can. Europe still has a long way to go on rearmament, but it has been a long time since the continent moved this fast, with this much money, on anything. Like anyone in global affairs, European leaders reveal their fears through their actions—and their actions suggest they see continued dependence on Washington as an existential threat that will outlast Donald Trump's exit from politics. Switching to a reliance on Canada, to fill the gaps while European industry lurches into motion, is far from ideal. But it may be the best option Europe has to make the most of the time available and avoid unnecessary risk. The arrangement is also better for the European arms industry itself. Some defense leaders might turn up their noses at letting Canada build their prized hardware, but they would be missing the bigger picture. Yes, Canada would gain access to European designs—but Europe would gain the ability to rebuild the militaries of the continent using hardware entirely under its own control. Some American technologies have no European equal, the F-35 chief among them, but in most areas Europe can match America on quality, just not quantity. There is no fixing that without a drastic expansion in the capacity to build European designs, and Canada offers the quickest, most efficient path. Canada would also introduce flexibility into an arms industry that risks being overstressed and working on tight margins even after dramatic expansion. Europe could lean on Canada for high-volume but relatively straightforward component manufacturing that would otherwise consume badly needed factory space, and offshore the production of earlier-generation systems, while Europe concentrates on the cutting-edge research and development it does best. Geopolitically, it does not go far enough to call Canada a better partner than America right now. Canada is among the best partners any country or bloc could ask for. Set aside the clichés about Canadian politeness: Canada simply lacks the geo-strategic incentives to weaponize its arms relationships the way the US can. It is not a global superpower, nor even a major power on the next tier down. It has its own ambitions, but those rarely involve strong-arming Europe over anything more serious than the workings of global hockey. There is simply no world in which Canada, anytime soon, launches some foreign military expedition and threatens to withhold weapons from France or Britain unless they endorse it. Practically, Canada may be even better suited than the United States to the role of defense exporter, especially as melting Arctic ice opens new sea lanes between Europe and North America. Canada can get hardware to Europe quickly, safely, and even in harsh conditions, just as the United States could—so Europe has little reason to expect a jump in logistical complications by switching suppliers. And just as the arrangement helps Canada secure European protection, the effect runs both ways, particularly in Arctic affairs. Europe has not fully grown into its role as a major player above the Arctic Circle, but Canada is well on its way. Anything Europe can do to keep Canada on-side helps it get ahead of its Arctic security troubles before they arrive. ## Lingering Obstacles No deal is ever perfect, and no geopolitical arrangement comes without downsides. So, having made the case for Canada as Europe's military-industrial savior, there is one task left: to troubleshoot the proposition hard and look for ways around the problems it raises. Of all the obstacles, one stands above the rest. As much as Europe or Canada want to believe they can become independent of the US defense industry, the process is far more complicated than simply refusing to buy American machines. Any fighting machine—ship, tank, fighter, or anything else—is ultimately an assembly of thousands upon thousands of parts, and not all of those parts come from the country that controls the finished product. Take the F-35: it is an American jet, but it is built through a genuinely global supply chain, with more than a dozen countries contributing components through thousands of supplier companies. The same holds for most European hardware. The Saab Gripen relies on an American engine from General Electric and life-support systems from Honeywell. The Eurofighter integrates similar life support, American satellite-navigation systems, and assorted combat avionics. France's Rafale is the least US-dependent of the three, but it still depends on American firms for electronic components and sensors. That does technically mean these designs remain vulnerable to Washington no matter who builds the final product. But a Europe-Canada partnership makes the problem much better. It is a globalized world, and avoiding all reliance on the US may be impossible. The shared goal is to shrink that proportion as far as possible, even if it cannot reach zero. Abstinence is not realistic, but supply-chain cleanliness can always improve. Zoom out, and a partnership of the kind described makes a wide range of European hardware viable when it otherwise would not be—not because the products were bad, but because they could not be built in great enough numbers, fast enough, to meet urgent needs. By helping Europe build its own hardware more often, Canada makes that hardware directly competitive with America's, so Europe can seriously consider stocking its arsenals with its own weapons. And by broadening the range of components both can produce over time, it becomes far easier to prioritize reduced US reliance when the time comes to design new systems. Build a strong, well-rounded defense industry today, bridging Europe and Canada, and the tanks and jets of tomorrow can depend on Washington less than any of their predecessors. The next problem is the sheer magnitude of investment required. Canada's manufacturing sector is currently worth the equivalent of about 930 billion US dollars, and transforming it as Europe would need might take high tens of billions, or even hundreds of billions, more. Canada does not have that money on its own, which means it cannot quickly build these capabilities and then offer them to Europe. Europe, by contrast, does have the money, if its leaders can wrap their heads around so radical a proposal. Europe is slated to spend around 1.25 trillion euros on rearmament within the next half-decade, and depending on where its priorities lie, investment in Canada on this scale is possible. The real catch is that Europe would essentially be working with Canada on faith—trusting that once all the money is committed and the merger of Canadian and European defense is complete, Europe will be rewarded with success. Re-tooling a nation's manufacturing base to create a military-industrial complex from the ground up is extraordinarily complicated, especially when that nation is attempting things it has never done before, across an entire economic sector. It might be a winning bet. But it is hard to make even a winning bet when you are wagering your home and your life's savings without a guarantee. There are political challenges, too. European and Canadian leaders may be working on borrowed time. The current crop of non-US NATO leadership—Mark Carney in Canada, Emmanuel Macron in France, Friedrich Merz in Germany, Donald Tusk in Poland, and others—is broadly aligned in wanting to strengthen European defense. But while each seems to have won a temporary reprieve from rising right-wing challengers, partly thanks to Donald Trump's effect on global right-wing politics, those challengers have been delayed, not vanquished. Political change in Canada or in any major European nation could sink an initiative like this once it has begun, unless it has proven its value to the electorate, enshrined itself in laws and policies that cannot easily be undone, or, ideally, both. Even if Europe and Canada could agree to a full partnership, they would have to spend considerable effort insulating it from inevitable changes in leadership. And then there is the United States. Whatever else one might say about Donald Trump and his inner circle, you certainly could not say they are inclined to sit idly by while American industry comes under threat—and that is precisely what this would represent: an acute threat to the American military-industrial complex, which is so deeply tied to Washington today that the two might as well be one. The US government, certainly under its current leadership, would likely use every tool at its disposal to keep European arms deals from going elsewhere. Given that Trump was already willing to threaten the annexation of Canada, it is hard to know what he would not be willing to do if Canada appeared to be mounting a challenge to American defense-industrial dominance. The great irony is that, by partnering at scale with Canada, Europe would be doing exactly what Trump claims to want: breaking dependence on Washington, taking defense into its own hands, and ensuring Washington cannot be leaned on by weak and underequipped partners. But the grim reality of Washington's position is that if it demands Europe make those changes, it does not also get to decide how. In world politics, inconvenient realities tend to be discarded. By taking this step with Canada, Europe would invite a confrontation with Washington. There is something to be said for Europe finally finding its spine—but whether the risks of that showdown are worth the reward is far from certain. Finally, an alignment of this sort would mark a geo-strategic shift for the entire world, even though Canada and Europe are already aligned under NATO. A Europe that has truly found its footing on military matters, while breaking its dependence on Washington, is a global superpower; there are no two ways about it. And even though Canada would not technically be part of that superpower, it would be along for the ride. A superpowered Europe, hand in hand with Canada, would pose a massive threat to Russia, a counterbalance to China, and a potential rival to a post-Trump, neo-MAGA America—all at a time when Arctic competition is heating up and a Europe aligned with Canada would be a critical player in that part of the world. It is impossible to know how it would shift the global balance, especially since the change would take the better part of a decade at minimum, and there is no telling what else might have shifted by then. By taking these steps, Europe and Canada would commit to a bold adventure into uncharted territory, with no guarantee it works out in the end. That is precisely why hypotheticals like these are worth playing out—not because they are necessarily going to happen, but because they could, and because understanding how such decisions could change the world helps us better understand the changes already underway. Partner with Canada, invest fully in the creation of a world-class Canadian defense industry, and Europe would have a genuine shot at realizing rearmament at a moment when that goal matters more than at any time since the Second World War. Go another way, and Canada might end up a mere footnote in Europe's story. But go all in on Canada's potential, and Europe's quiet trans-Atlantic partner could prove the key to a whole new world. ## Frequently Asked Questions ### What defense-spending commitment have European NATO members made? The European nations of NATO, with the exception of Spain, have committed to spending 5 percent of GDP on defense by 2035. European capitals are already spending more than 50 percent more on defense each year than they did in 2022, the first year of Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine, and the continent is slated to spend roughly 1.25 trillion euros on rearmament over the next five years. ### Why can't Europe simply build the weapons it needs itself? Europe has excellent hardware designs but lacks the production capacity to build them at the required rate. By the end of 2026, France will be producing about twelve CAESAR howitzers and perhaps three Rafale fighters per month, Germany around ten Leopard tanks per month, and Europe's shipbuilders only a handful of warships or submarines per year. Building enough new factories, training enough workers, and reshaping regional economies would take far more time than Europe has. ### Which specific weapons systems could Canada build for Europe? The most promising candidates include the Saab Gripen fighter, which Saab has proposed building in Canada in a deal that could create nearly thirteen thousand jobs; the Brazilian C-390 transport aircraft; Sweden's GlobalEye early-warning aircraft, based on a Bombardier jet; 155mm NATO-standard artillery shells; replacement components such as cannon and artillery barrels; air-defense interceptors for the SAMP/T and IRIS-T systems; maritime drones; icebreakers; and mass-produced uncrewed aerial drones. ### How have Canada and the EU already moved toward defense cooperation? In June 2025, Canada and the EU agreed to a Security and Defense Partnership, a broad initiative for defense-industrial cooperation. In December 2025, Canada became the first non-European nation ever to join the EU's 150-billion-euro Security Action for Europe (SAFE) program, allowing it to jointly finance defense initiatives and bid on procurement deals to supply EU countries. ### What is the biggest obstacle to a fully independent Europe-Canada defense supply chain? The largest obstacle is that modern weapons rely on global supply chains, and many components still come from the United States. The Gripen uses a General Electric engine and Honeywell life-support systems; the Eurofighter integrates American satellite navigation and avionics; even the relatively independent Rafale relies on American electronics and sensors. Complete independence is unrealistic, but a Europe-Canada partnership can substantially reduce that dependence over time. ## Sources 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38.

China's J-36 Reveal: Did Beijing Just Checkmate America's Sixth-Generation Fighter Program?

Simon Whistler — Tue, 02 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Across the entire world of combat aviation, one nation has long laid claim to a legacy of air supremacy that neither ally nor adversary could hope to match. That nation is the United States, a global superpower known for having built the fastest, the best-armed, the most prolific, and the most advanced military aircraft in world history. From the undisputed king of the skies, the F-22 Raptor, to the cutting-edge F-35, to powerhouse aircraft like the B-2 Spirit and the F-15EX, America's claim to the heavens has been unparalleled. Or, that is, it was, until the events of December 26, 2024. On that day, the world received shocking news by way of the rising superpower nation of China. The news didn't come by intelligence leak, nor by some grainy, out-of-focus photograph, nor by some boastful but unverifiable claim from the Chinese government itself. Instead, it arrived in a cascade, a deluge of photographs, audio recordings, and videos taken in and around the city of Chengdu, all showing the same thing: a military aircraft unlike any known to be in the arsenal of any nation, anywhere, across history. Tailless, clearly stealthy, and built in a way that suggested it was meant to serve as a fighter, the new jet looked for all the world like a so-called sixth-generation fighter — more advanced than the F-22, more advanced than the F-35, and more advanced than any other known combat aircraft on the planet. This analysis takes as close a look as possible at the aircraft known, albeit without confirmation, as the J-36. It examines the jet's companion, another previously undisclosed and seemingly advanced aircraft that appeared alongside it, and explores the implications of both as part of what increasingly resembles an air-power renaissance in China. Finally, it turns to the world's leading superpower to ask whether Uncle Sam can recover from what may be the most crushing blow to its air dominance in over half a century. The thesis is blunt: China has not checkmated America, but it has fired the opening move of a sixth-generation arms race that neither side can now ignore. ## Key Takeaways - On December 26, 2024 — Mao Zedong's 131st birthday — videos and photographs from Chengdu showed two previously unknown tailless, stealthy Chinese aircraft flying in broad daylight, in what appears to have been a deliberate public reveal. - The larger aircraft, unofficially designated the J-36 and likely a Chengdu Aircraft Corporation product, is a tailless modified delta-wing design with three engines, internal weapons bays, and a side-looking airborne radar array. - A second, smaller tailless aircraft — likely built by Shenyang Aircraft Corporation — appeared the same day; with no clear view of a cockpit, it may be a drone, an optionally manned aircraft, or a manned tactical jet. - Calling these aircraft "sixth-generation" fighters is premature, since no universal standard defines a fighter generation and the onboard AI, data fusion, and command-and-control systems remain entirely unknown. - The episode may be a 21st-century "Foxbat moment" — and the bigger question is whose: a wake-up call driving the US to overdrive, or the culmination of a Chinese catch-up effort decades in the making. ## A Birthday Tribute of a Very Different Kind December 26 is a significant date for the People's Republic of China: the birthday of Mao Zedong, founder of the Chinese Communist Party, revolutionary architect of the rise of the PRC, and totalitarian leader of his nation until his death in 1976. In China, his legacy is regarded as unimpeachable, a triumph of what Mao insisted would become a great global power. Previous posthumous celebrations of his birthday have ranged from the unveiling of new statues and monuments to nationwide festivals and revelry. But on what would have been Chairman Mao's 131st birthday, China and the world witnessed a tribute of a very different kind. The videos and images surfaced out of Chengdu, the country's fourth-most-populous city at roughly twenty million inhabitants, and the home of the Chengdu Aircraft Corporation, or CAC. The CAC has produced a number of notable military aircraft across modern Chinese history, and its most recent claim to fame is the J-20: the first highly advanced, fifth-generation fighter to enter military service anywhere outside the United States. The people of Chengdu are not exactly unaccustomed to the overflight of new and sophisticated aircraft. But what they saw on Mao's 131st went well beyond anything they had seen before. ## What Flew Over Chengdu Flying in broad daylight, low to the ground and over urban areas, the strange flying triangle above Chengdu was clearly meant to be seen. The aircraft was tailless, with broad, sweeping wings in what appeared to be a double-delta formation, hugging close to the body near the front half of the fuselage before sweeping out to a rear section reminiscent of the tailfeathers of a bird of prey. It was clearly devoid of sharp, ninety-degree angles, a telltale sign of an aircraft built to be stealthy on radar. It featured not one engine, not two, but three — with one air intake on top and two alongside the fuselage. It was loud, highly imposing in flight, and big, something analysts could gauge thanks to the aircraft flying alongside it. In some videos and still images, the larger jet was followed by a J-20 chase plane, believed to be the twin-seat J-20S variant. But in others, it was accompanied by a second aircraft that bore no resemblance to anything known to be in China's arsenal. Also tailless, also clearly built with stealth in mind, this smaller aircraft moved quickly on back-swept wings, powered by what appeared to be twin engines. According to unconfirmed reports out of China, it may be a product of the Chengdu corporation's main rival, the Shenyang Aircraft Corporation, the firm responsible for the fifth-generation J-35. It was followed by an apparent Shenyang-made chase plane, and its role as a medium-weight aircraft would fit Shenyang's recent work, in contrast to the heavier Chengdu lineage that mirrors the heavy J-20. No image or video gave a clear look at the second aircraft's cockpit, leaving open the possibility that it could be a drone or an optionally manned aircraft rather than a dedicated manned fighter. Neither aircraft has been formally acknowledged by China, but given the manner of their display, it appears all but certain the word was meant to get out. Flying over residential neighborhoods on a cloudless day, it was practically assured that Chengdu's many residents would capture footage, and that the resulting media would quickly escape the insular bubble of the Chinese internet. As expected, the clips reached the global West within hours, landing in the headlines of both major news outlets and dedicated flight-focused publications. In a telling indicator of intent, little if any of the content shared by Chinese citizens was censored. Chairman Mao's birthday gift was apparently not just a pair of new jets, but a show of military might directed at the entire world. ## China's Broader Aerospace Renaissance It is worth putting this reveal in context. News of China's rapid aerospace development rarely makes the front page abroad — unless Beijing is unveiling what looks like a hyper-advanced fighter — yet the country has logged a long string of major advances. Images recently circulated of what is thought to be China's new KJ-3000, an advanced early-warning and control aircraft believed to be a step above anything China currently flies. Other footage caught the first known images of what is thought to be a twin-boom unmanned drone, the Wuzhen-9, reportedly designed to detect stealth aircraft. China recently launched an extra-large amphibious assault ship, the Sichuan, featuring an electromagnetic catapult and arresting gear that may let it launch drones or even fighter aircraft. The list continues. China has shown off major design updates to its Collaborative Combat Aircraft, a planned loyal-wingman drone meant to fly alongside fighters, and disclosed that four years earlier it had flown a large aircraft at over six and a half times the speed of sound. At November's Zhuhai Airshow, it displayed its J-35A — its second fifth-generation fighter — as well as a mock-up of a sixth-generation jet called the "White Emperor." On January 6, 2025, images on Chinese social media even showed a large aircraft that may be China's secretive H-20 stealth bomber, flying at altitudes high enough to indicate that, unlike the Chengdu and Shenyang jets, Beijing is not yet ready for a close look. Each of these developments, on its own, involves the kind of technology that would force the US, the EU, and other nations trying to keep pace to stop and take notice. Add them together, and it has been abundantly clear to close observers that China is placing a heavy focus on military aerospace. There is, of course, the caveat that most of these claims remain unverified beyond statements from the CCP. But the emergence of multiple secret, seemingly advanced aircraft over Chengdu puts the whole situation into perspective. Even if not every Chinese claim reflects reality, all of them were made by a nation that could put these strange things into the sky. If that is possible, what else might be? ## A Closer Look at the J-36 Any close look at these aircraft must begin with a caveat. Outside the very tightly closed doors of the Chinese defense-industrial complex, nobody on Earth is known to have studied them directly. Because of their secretive status and China's refusal to acknowledge them, there are no state-provided performance figures, no information on internal capabilities, and certainly no external verification. For context, the true capabilities of China's J-20 remain entirely unknown in the public domain, and that aircraft entered service back in 2017. The same is true of America's F-22 and Russia's Su-57, though the F-35 has been far more widely proliferated and observed. As a result, no concrete statistics on flight performance, onboard technology, or battlefield capability can be offered for either new aircraft. What can be done is to draw on aerospace experts who have used the available footage to reach at least superficial conclusions about design and likely intent. Start with the larger of the two planes, the likely Chengdu product that captured most of the global headlines. Its most obvious feature is also the most striking: a complete lack of any tail. The aircraft is a modified delta-wing, with wide, sloping wings that appear to blend into the body. That body seems to be borrowed, at least in part, from the J-20 — a conclusion reached from clear similarities in the underbelly of both aircraft. The design appears to confirm something Western intelligence has long suspected: that China has been devoting substantial resources to developing and operating roughly diamond-shaped tailless aircraft. Such a configuration is advantageous mainly for its effect on radar signature, producing a far smaller radar return than current fifth-generation fighters. The aircraft lacks vertical stabilizers — the upright or sloped tailfins that the vast majority of modern combat aircraft carry — a decision that probably compromises maneuverability, at least somewhat. But it also overcomes a lasting deficit shared by the world's most advanced warplanes. While the J-20, F-35, and F-22 are very stealthy head-on, they are less so when caught on radar from the sides or rear. A smooth, tailless design — not quite a flying wing, but close to it — should massively benefit the aircraft's radar return from all angles. Other stealthy elements are visible too: wing and fuselage contours that mirror the shaping of established stealth aircraft, and top-mounted engine exhausts that should dramatically reduce the plane's infrared signature when viewed from the ground. Just how stealthy the aircraft really is remains unknown, since nobody outside the CCP's closed circle has been able to paint it with radar. But it is plausible the design is an order of magnitude stealthier than the J-20 once its deficiencies are accounted for. China claims the J-20's stealth is directly comparable to the F-22 and F-35, though, again, verification is lacking. ## Aerodynamics, Engines, and Control Surfaces Beyond radar return, the tailless delta-wing design should have a notable impact on aerodynamics. Almost certainly, the aircraft relies on a sophisticated onboard computer to translate pilot inputs into instructions, since the flight controls of such a design are very different — even counterintuitive — compared to what is usually required of a pilot flying an advanced fighter. The configuration should grant significant reductions in drag, possibly corresponding to higher top and cruising speeds. To compensate for the maneuverability problems inherent to a tailless layout, the plane carries five so-called control surfaces along the trailing edge of each wing, with these flaps intended to claw much of that maneuverability back. Several other control surfaces appear elsewhere on the airframe, for a total of eighteen, though how far each can deflect is unclear. Then there is the unusual three-engine arrangement, with one air intake apparently mounted on top of the fuselage and two others on opposite sides of the underbelly. There are several possible reasons for such a design. The most obvious is simply to provide more thrust, and thus push greater overall weight through the air. It is also possible that not all three engines serve the same function or are meant to run at once — one might have a burst function, or act as a backup if the chosen engines are known to be unreliable. There is some speculation that the third engine could provide a hypersonic scramjet function, but that prospect is unlikely based on the public understanding of scramjets. Currently, the aircraft is thought to use the same WS-10C turbofan as the J-20, although the J-20's engines are soon to be swapped for a more powerful replacement, the WS-15. China says the WS-15 will offer greatly improved fuel efficiency, range, maneuverability, and reliability, and it is likely the new aircraft is intended to incorporate it rather than rely on something less capable. As far as Western analysts can tell from available imagery, the jet does not appear to have thrust-vectoring nozzles — specialized nozzles that adjust the angle of thrust to send a plane veering in different directions. The current engines may have modest thrust-vectoring capability, but nothing like what Russia's Sukhoi fighters offer. That is an interesting omission, since thrust-vectoring is one way to offset the maneuverability limits of a tailless design. ## Size, Sensors, and Mission The other most notable feature is sheer size. Exact measurements are difficult, if not impossible, to obtain, but the aircraft appears to be roughly as long as the J-20, with a significantly broadened fuselage. The forward portion is wide enough that it could probably provide side-by-side seating for two crew members, though direct shots of the canopy are lacking. The fact that it can squeeze in two seats does not mean it would; it could be a single-seater, a conventional tandem two-seater with a pilot in front and a second crew member behind, or even an unusual layout with one seat forward and two behind — though the purpose of such a setup would be anyone's guess. On the nose, analysts have observed two distinct apertures, one on either side. One appears to mount a side-looking airborne radar array, potentially granting a far more expansive radar range than most fighters and opening unique tactical opportunities. The other appears to be a radio sensor of some kind. Moving rearward, the plane is believed to carry internal weapons bays — a critical feature of any properly stealthy aircraft — and its large size suggests significantly better fuel capacity than the J-20. More fuel and more room for weapons means the ability to fly farther, carry heavier payloads, and burst or sustain higher speeds, especially at altitude. Fuselage irregularities indicating an internal bay suggest it will be deeper and longer than the J-20's. As for what it could carry, that is anybody's guess, but expert opinion broadly agrees that, at minimum, it is meant to be a long-range, heavyweight fighter similar to the American F-15 or the Russian Su-30. It could also be intended as a medium-range bomber, with an even longer range. It bears noting that among the world's most advanced combat aircraft, the distinction between a fighter and a bomber is far less meaningful than it once was. Hyper-advanced aircraft traditionally called bombers can now perform most fighter functions, and vice versa. The close-range dogfighting maneuverability of a light fighter matters a great deal less when cutting-edge designs can detect and engage targets hundreds of kilometers away while remaining invisible and controlling a fleet of manned and unmanned companions. ## The "Sixth-Generation" Label and the Second Aircraft A major caveat applies to both designs. Anyone who followed this story before encountering this analysis will almost certainly have seen these aircraft described as sixth-generation fighters — when, in reality, such a classification is premature. There is the overarching point that fighter "generations" are an arbitrary invention of the defense-analysis world, with no universally agreed standard for what defines a given generation. These aircraft might be sixth-generation fighters, but by sufficiently loose criteria, almost anything could be. Beyond the theoretical, there is a practical concern: by any widely accepted definition, a sixth-generation fighter must include far more than a slick, stealthy exterior. Such aircraft are generally understood to feature sophisticated AI and data fusion, battlefield command-and-control technologies, unmanned drone wingmen, and a host of other advanced systems. In this case, there is no way to tell whether any of that hardware or software is present in either aircraft. The second, smaller aircraft offers fewer and lower-quality images, but still enough to draw a few conclusions. The likely Shenyang product was considerably smaller than the Chengdu jet and appears more obviously to be a tactical aircraft of some kind, likely with a more modest range and a payload capacity allowing far fewer onboard weapons. It is a twin-engine design, fed by highly angular air intakes on either side of the underbelly, and analysts have identified another feature between the engines whose function is unknown. Its shaping suggests a very small radar cross-section, and like the Chengdu design it carries no vertical stabilizers or other tail features. There is less documentation of whatever control surfaces it relies on. Little more can be ascertained, but what is visible is enough to place it on par with the most advanced known aircraft designs on Earth. ## What the Reveal Tells Us About China With the general outline of both aircraft in somewhat better view, it is time to consider what they mean — for China's military-industrial might and for the rest of the world. There are limits here, since so little is known beyond the simple fact of the aircraft's existence. But at a minimum, their presence fundamentally challenges the prior understanding of China's advanced tactical air arsenal. Perhaps the most important takeaway is the sheer ambition involved in designing and building them. These are not the first tailless aircraft to fly — see America's B-2 and B-21 stealth bombers — but they appear to be the first tailless aircraft believed to operate in a fighter role, something even the United States is not on record having built. For China to make the leap to its first tailless aircraft says a great deal about the broader state of its aerospace industry: that there is ample time and resources to take risks, explore new technologies, and work through the problems of making them function. The institutional will is there, the technical expertise is there, and the manufacturing capacity is there too. Moreover, these aircraft do not appear vulnerable to the same accusations of intellectual property theft leveled at China's fifth-generation fighters, which some analysts regard as by-products of intelligence theft years ago. At most, the larger Chengdu design might share a common base fuselage and engines with the J-20, but everything else appears indigenously engineered — to say nothing of the smaller Shenyang design, which resembles nothing in any other nation's known arsenal. Whatever may or may not be happening under the surface, the mere fact that China designed and produced airworthy copies is a major statement in itself. ## The Global Implications Then there are the global stakes. Even without assuming anything about the technological or performance features of either aircraft, China has clearly crossed engineering benchmarks of fighter design that competitors like Russia or India almost certainly have not. It is harder to measure China against nations known to have sixth-generation fighters in development — America's Next Generation Air Dominance program, or the collaborative sixth-generation efforts pairing Italy, Japan, and the UK on one project and France, Germany, and Spain on another. Russia and a few others also claim sixth-generation programs, but whether there is any truth to those assertions is unclear, whereas the three Western programs are more concrete. Even if those programs have flown comparable aircraft, China was the first to publicly reveal what it had built, immediately scoring a major public-relations victory. That China has a sophisticated aerospace design capability is no surprise to the West. But the idea that it could build and test not one but two aircraft this advanced — and be confident enough to fly them around in public, without anyone seeming to know beforehand — is a major statement on how far China has progressed relative to the competition. These flights also lend legitimacy to a range of China's other claims. Treat those claims seriously, rather than dismissing them as vaporware, and the obvious conclusion is that China's aerospace programs are further along than previously believed. Existing estimates of where various Chinese initiatives stand — from the anticipated H-20 stealth bomber to the JH-XX regional fighter-bomber, to more sophisticated drone designs and more — will probably all need updating. That, in turn, demands strategic recalibration by nations that may become China's adversaries; it requires re-evaluation of their own spending and technological priorities; and it is an open, obvious invitation to what could quickly become a sixth-generation arms race. ## The Skeptic's Case It would be wrong to entertain only optimistic readings of China's new aircraft without putting on the skeptic's hat. There are alternative explanations for what appeared over Chengdu. One thing the aircraft probably are not is some sort of AI disinformation campaign. Not only would the AI used for such a deception have to be remarkably sophisticated, but disseminating it would have required a large-scale effort to feed clips and images to known sources working with journalists, alongside an intensive effort to design an aircraft that aerospace experts would examine and recognize as legitimate, despite its evident sophistication. Assuming the aircraft are real, neither the Shenyang nor the Chengdu design is likely to have been purpose-built merely to distract or worry the international community. If a nation is going to invest that much effort into a flying distraction convincing enough to pass as a tailless stealth aircraft, it might as well design an actual tailless stealth aircraft with some combat functionality. A more believable alternative is that one or both designs could be technology demonstrators — either for aircraft that have since matured into different forms, or for programs since discontinued. If China happened to have a couple of flyable demonstrators or prototypes lying around, then flying them before the entire world would make for a valuable act of misdirection, forcing global adversaries to respond to one design while another is actually under development. ## The NGAD Contrast Regardless of whether either aircraft enters mainline production, their global reveal sent shockwaves across the world — and in particular to the United States. Here lies what may be the most damning comparison of all, between these new designs and America's sixth-generation NGAD program. At the end of 2024, NGAD suffered a major setback, pausing for internal review by the US Air Force while the service evaluated whether the program, on its current course, was even worth pursuing. The review did come back positive for NGAD, according to Breaking Defense, meaning the Air Force recommended to the incoming Trump administration that the US press ahead with developing a next-generation manned fighter. But even with that verdict, the contrast with China could not be starker. There is Beijing, flying aircraft the world did not know existed, out in public for a global reveal, while its primary adversary takes months to decide whether to scrap an entire program after a decade of work and start from scratch. That telling, however, is only half the story. China's revelations do constitute a great leap forward — that is a Mao pun, for those keeping score — but they do not mean America has been shown up yet. NGAD is widely understood to have produced at least three flying prototypes already, years ago in fact, and is believed to have already advanced a range of relevant technologies on the road to a production-ready aircraft. By contrast, both Chinese jets are believed to have taken their first flights just months, if not weeks, before their big reveal. If true, that would put China several years behind the US on the simple measure of airworthiness — and that is before accounting for whether China has working versions of any of the technologies a next-generation aircraft requires. It is on that technological front that the more important competition is probably taking place. Suppose the reporting is wrong and these aircraft actually first flew six years ago, multiple years ahead of the NGAD prototypes. That would be deeply impressive. But if China's AI systems, data fusion, command-and-control capabilities, and other onboard systems are a decade behind what the US is producing, then China's only real advantage is a cool-looking flying machine. That is not nothing — but it is not a meaningful edge in the overall race to new fighter technology. Of course, the opposite could also be true, and China could be leaps and bounds ahead. There is simply no way to know, since neither nation appears eager to publish a full breakdown of its cutting-edge fighter tech. ## America's Response and the Foxbat Question One lingering question has more to do with NGAD than the Chinese aircraft themselves: how America responds. The potential rethink of NGAD had something to do with technology and development concerns, but far more to do with budgetary constraints that, if erased overnight, could clear the way for a much faster program. The incoming Trump administration has already signaled an interest in surging defense funding, and now, with two unexplained new Chinese aircraft to think about, American legislators and policymakers may be substantially more willing to allocate money to NGAD if it means reclaiming or preserving whatever technological advantage America still holds. This brings us to the final question: did China just hand America a Foxbat moment? A quick history lesson winds the clock back to the Cold War. America was once developing a Mach 3-capable bomber, the B-70 Valkyrie, meant to fly fast and high enough to evade Soviet air defenses. As those defenses improved, flying high and fast without stealth threatened to be insufficient — and the Soviets were working on more than static defenses. America learned of a new plane under development, supposedly fast and powerful enough to intercept and shoot down the Valkyrie. Heavily propagandized by the Soviets, that aircraft would eventually be designated the MiG-25 and known in NATO nations as the Foxbat. In reality, the Foxbat was not nearly as impressive as advertised, but America did not know that at the time. Reacting to what it believed would be a terrifying adversary, the US produced what is widely hailed as the greatest combat aircraft of its generation, the F-15 Eagle. When the US finally got its hands on a MiG-25, it discovered the object of its fear was actually a dangerous-to-fly, very niche interceptor, while the aircraft it had built in response was a high-powered, high-performance, versatile beast that could all but guarantee air supremacy across a range of environments. The Soviets talked a big game, America took them at their word, and in the end America produced something far more impressive than the Soviet aircraft ever was. ## Whose Foxbat Moment Is It? Fast forward to today, and the question returns: is China's big reveal a 21st-century Foxbat moment? And just as importantly, whose? Is this a moment when the United States, caught off-guard by flying machines that could be anything from empty shells to production-ready sixth-generation fighters, goes into overdrive and answers with an aircraft built to beat the most dangerous possible version of these planes? Or have we witnessed the conclusion of a Chinese effort that itself might have begun with a Foxbat moment long ago — Beijing seeing advanced American fighters and resolving that it was of the utmost importance to catch up? Perhaps, when this story is told in history books, it will be clear that neither nation truly saw this as a Foxbat moment. But more likely, both did. And when two global powers scramble at breakneck speed to respond to capabilities each fears the other is developing, the result is an arms race. Did China checkmate America's sixth-generation fighter program? Probably not. Does America retain a dominant edge in fighter aircraft technology? Probably not. But if either nation harbored any illusions about the kind of competition they are mutually engaged in, those illusions should now be gone. The space race and the rush to ICBMs went out of fashion a long time ago. Sixth-generation fighters are the arms race now — and that race is only just getting started. ## Frequently Asked Questions ### What is the J-36, and when did it first appear publicly? The J-36 is the unofficial designation for a large tailless, stealthy Chinese military aircraft that appeared publicly over the city of Chengdu on December 26, 2024 — Mao Zedong's 131st birthday. It is likely a product of the Chengdu Aircraft Corporation. China has not formally acknowledged the aircraft, and the J-36 name has not been confirmed by Beijing. ### Why is it premature to call the J-36 a sixth-generation fighter? Fighter "generations" are an arbitrary classification with no universally agreed standard. By any widely accepted definition, a sixth-generation fighter would need far more than a stealthy exterior — sophisticated AI and data fusion, battlefield command and control, unmanned drone wingmen, and other advanced systems. There is currently no way to tell whether any of that hardware or software is present in the J-36 or its companion. ### Why does the J-36's tailless design matter for stealth and what is the trade-off? A tailless design, without vertical stabilizers, dramatically reduces an aircraft's radar return from the sides and rear — angles where conventional stealth fighters like the J-20, F-35, and F-22 are less stealthy than they are head-on. The J-36 also features top-mounted engine exhausts that should reduce its infrared signature when viewed from the ground. The trade-off is some loss of maneuverability, which the design tries to recover with as many as eighteen control surfaces distributed along the trailing edge of each wing and elsewhere on the airframe. ### How does the J-36 reveal compare to the status of America's NGAD program? At the end of 2024, NGAD paused for an internal US Air Force review, which reportedly came back supporting a manned sixth-generation fighter. NGAD is believed to have already produced at least three flying prototypes years earlier. Both Chinese jets are believed to have first flown only months or weeks before their reveal, suggesting China may be several years behind on airworthiness — though its onboard technology remains entirely unknown and may tell a different story. ### What was the Cold War "Foxbat moment" and how does it apply to China's reveal? During the Cold War, the Soviets heavily propagandized the MiG-25, known to NATO as the Foxbat, as a powerful interceptor capable of downing America's B-70 Valkyrie. Believing the threat, the US responded by building the F-15 Eagle, which proved far superior to the actual MiG-25. The question now is whether China's reveal is a similar moment that spurs America into overdrive — or the culmination of a Chinese catch-up effort that itself began with a Foxbat moment when Beijing saw advanced American fighters and resolved to close the gap. ## Sources 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25.

China's Invisible Navy: How a Fishing Fleet Became a Strategic Weapon in the East China Sea

Simon Whistler — Tue, 02 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Since the war in Iran began, only one waterway has truly dominated global headlines: the Strait of Hormuz. The story matters enormously. But it is not the only maritime development that should command attention right now, and arguably it is not even the most consequential. Several thousand kilometers to the east, a quieter story has been unfolding in the East China Sea, and it may prove equally important. On the 13th of March, the AFP News Agency published the results of an investigation showing that, since Christmas Day 2025, thousands of Chinese fishing vessels have massed in precise geometric formations in the East China Sea. Experts believe these coordinated movements are part of Beijing's preparations for a potential regional crisis or conflict. Jason Wang, chief operating officer of ingeniSPACE, a firm that analyzes satellite imagery and ship-signal data, told the AFP he immediately sensed something was wrong. Thousands of fishing boats had swarmed into two parallel, inverted L shapes, each roughly 400 kilometers long, with individual vessels sitting as close as 500 meters apart. They held those positions for about 30 hours in near gale-force winds, then suddenly scattered. He was not the only one alarmed. Jennifer Parker, a former Australian naval warfare officer, said she had never seen fishing vessels operate in such close proximity. This is the central argument: what is happening in the East China Sea is not random fishing activity but a deliberate test of Chinese power that should concern Japan, Taiwan, the wider Indo-Pacific, and the United States alike. ## Key Takeaways - Since Christmas Day 2025, thousands of Chinese fishing vessels have massed in precise geometric formations in the East China Sea, including inverted L shapes about 400 kilometers long, holding position for roughly 30 hours before scattering. - The vessels belong to the Chinese Maritime Militia, widely regarded as China's third sea force alongside its navy and coast guard, and most appeared to originate from Zhejiang province, home to several militia ports. - Analysts believe the formations may be a readiness test for a Taiwan operation, a power-projection signal, or both. Civilian vessels are considered central to Chinese planning for an amphibious assault the navy alone cannot mount. - The exercises coincided with the worst diplomatic rift between Japan and China in over a decade, triggered by Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi's statement that a Chinese attack on Taiwan could be a survival-threatening situation for Japan. - Japan faces simultaneous pressure: the militia exercises, the Taiwan question, and persistent Chinese coast guard incursions around the disputed Senkaku Islands, where Beijing conducted 134 patrols over five years. - Japan's acute energy vulnerability sharpens the stakes; 90% of its energy imports transit chokepoints China can pressure, and its LNG stockpiles would last only about three weeks. - The war in Iran has drained U.S. interceptor stockpiles and pulled assets, including Patriot and THAAD batteries, from the Indo-Pacific, widening an already unfavorable gap with Chinese maritime forces. ## Straight Lines in the Sea Roughly 1.5 million ships transit the South China Sea every year. According to Joe Wilkins at Futurism, their activity is chaotic, producing GPS profiles that resemble scatter plots rather than tidy line graphs. The Chinese formations were the opposite. Observers described them as constellations, and that geometric precision is precisely what drew regional attention. Beijing did not do it just once. According to the New York Times, on the 11th of January the ships assembled into a rectangle so dense that approaching cargo ships had to skirt around it or zigzag through to pass. They repeated the maneuver in March. Wang told the AFP that around 1,200 boats massed in two parallel lines further east of the December and January events and held position for about 30 hours. The obvious question is why. Answering it requires one crucial fact: these were not ordinary fishermen. The vessels were part of the Chinese Maritime Militia, widely considered by analysts to be China's third sea force, operating alongside the navy and the coast guard. ## The Third Sea Force Beijing describes the militia as little more than patriotic fishermen. The record suggests otherwise. Newsweek reports that the militia is regularly involved in Chinese coast guard missions to blockade a Philippine military outpost at the Spratly Islands. Beyond blockades, it has a long history of being deployed to assert Beijing's territorial claims: it played a role in China's 1974 capture of the Paracel Islands from South Vietnam, the 2009 harassment of a U.S. Navy surveillance vessel, and the 2012 standoff over Scarborough Shoal with the Philippines. The Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) divides the militia into two categories. The first is purpose-built professional ships that receive dedicated funding, often equipped with water cannons and reinforced hulls. The second is commercial fishing boats recruited through government subsidies, crewed by civilians who receive military training and can be called up when Beijing needs them, much like land reservists. AIS data analyzed by Gregory Poling, director of the Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative at CSIS, showed that the vast majority of the massing vessels appeared to come from the eastern province of Zhejiang, where several maritime militia ports are located. Poling told the AFP he believed the exercises were an attempt by Beijing to see whether the militia could muster: whether it could assemble its forces, and whether those forces could do what Beijing might need. ## A Rehearsal for Taiwan What they would be needed for is the heart of the matter. Thomas Shugart, a former U.S. Navy submarine officer, told the AFP that civilian vessels were absolutely central to Chinese military planning for an operation against Taiwan, which lies about 300 kilometers from the location of the incidents. The logic is stark. China's navy does not have enough landing vessels to deliver the troops and equipment an invasion of Taiwan would require. Without the ability to mobilize civilian ships at scale, an amphibious operation across the Taiwan Strait remains beyond Beijing's reach. With it, the calculus shifts, ever so slightly, in Beijing's favor. Jennifer Parker agreed, telling the AFP that China's planning for operations around Taiwan includes the militia as a force multiplier. A readiness test is only one possible reading. The exercise could equally have been an attempt to project power. A fleet of that size, holding formation in near gale-force winds across hundreds of kilometers, is a statement in itself. It signals to every country in the region that Beijing can organize and deploy civilian vessels at a scale and speed most actual navies would struggle to match, and that it can do so without putting a single warship in the water. ## Power, Timing, and the Iran Connection The timing reinforces the power-projection theory. The first formations appeared in December and January, but the most recent came in March, in the middle of the war with Iran. That matters. In February, just days before the attacks began, China had participated in naval exercises with Iran and Russia in the Strait of Hormuz, drills meant to illustrate Iran's capacity to assert calculated control over the strait. Once the war began, however, Beijing effectively told Tehran it was on its own, limiting its involvement to strongly worded statements and diplomatic condemnations. The restraint made strategic sense; China does not want to antagonize the United States or the Gulf states, both vital economic partners. But it raised questions about Beijing's willingness to back its allies, and about its military credibility. For a country positioning itself as a superpower and a direct rival to Washington, that perception is damaging. Mobilizing thousands of vessels in tightly coordinated formations, at the exact moment the world was fixated on the Strait of Hormuz, could serve as a reminder that Beijing's influence extends well beyond diplomatic statements, and that its capacity to project power is unmatched regardless of its choices in Iran. A caveat is essential here: Beijing has not publicly commented on the formations. Every explanation is therefore speculative, grounded in analysis and expert opinion, but speculative all the same. ## The Cost to Commercial Shipping Whatever the motive, the impact has been real. The formations were not confined to some remote patch of open water. They occurred near major shipping lanes branching out from Shanghai, one of the busiest ports in the world. The January 11th formation, dense enough that cargo ships had to dodge around it, is the clearest illustration. Commercial shipping in the East China Sea runs on tight schedules and narrow margins, and any disruption to established routes, even a temporary one caused by a wall of fishing boats, carries costs. Delayed transits, rerouted vessels, and increased fuel consumption all add up. The uncertainty over whether and when it might happen again compounds the problem for shipping companies trying to plan ahead. The deeper question is what happens next time. The East China Sea handles a substantial share of the trade flowing to and from Japan and South Korea, two of the largest economies in the world. If Beijing can park more than a thousand vessels across hundreds of kilometers of open water and hold them for 30 hours, it can do so again, potentially for longer, and potentially closer to critical chokepoints. The effects of that would ripple far beyond the Pacific. ## The Japan Question The militia massing did not happen in a vacuum. It coincided with a sharp deterioration in relations between Tokyo and Beijing. On the 7th of November, Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi told parliament that a Chinese naval blockade or use of military force against Taiwan could constitute a survival-threatening situation for Japan, implying that Tokyo could exercise its right to self-defense to aid Taiwan. Beijing reacted furiously. Senior Chinese officials demanded Takaichi retract her remarks. She refused. The result was the biggest diplomatic rift between the two countries in more than a decade, and it led to a major deployment in the East China Sea. Regional security officials told Reuters that Beijing began dispatching more troops than usual to the region after the 14th of November, when it summoned Japan's ambassador to protest Takaichi's comments. The militia formations followed shortly after. The Institute for the Study of War suggested Beijing may have chosen the location to send a message to Japan and Taiwan. For Japan, a potential invasion of Taiwan is not a distant abstraction. In 2023, former CIA Director William Burns said intelligence indicated President Xi Jinping had instructed the Chinese army to be ready for a successful invasion by 2027, now only nine months away. The U.S. intelligence community has more recently published a new assessment stating that Beijing did not plan to execute an invasion by 2027, nor did it hold a fixed timeline for unification. ## The Senkaku Flashpoint The revised assessment may reassure Washington, whose attention is consumed by Iran and whose missile-interceptor stockpiles are being tested. It offers Japan little comfort, because tensions with Beijing extend well beyond Taiwan. The two countries have long disputed the Senkaku Islands, a group of uninhabited islets that Japan administers but China and Taiwan both claim. The area reportedly holds significant natural resources, including fish, oil, and natural gas, and has been a flashpoint for decades. The scale of Chinese activity around the islands shows how seriously Beijing takes the dispute. In January, Chinese coast guard head Zhang Jianming told state media that Beijing had conducted 134 patrols around the Senkakus over the past five years, deploying a total of 550,000 vessels and 6,000 aircraft. In 2025 alone, patrols covered 357 days of the year, nearly every single day. The pressure carried into 2026. In mid-March, Chinese coast guard vessels entered waters Japan claims around the Senkakus while chasing a Japanese fishing boat. Two ships came within 12 miles of Minami Kojima and stayed for more than 24 hours. The next day, four Chinese coast guard vessels, including the pair that had come close, made another incursion lasting about two hours. A Japanese coast guard spokeswoman told Stars and Stripes magazine the reason was unclear, especially because no fishing boats were operating in the Senkakus at the time. ## Gray-Zone Warfare and the First Island Chain What makes the situation so difficult for Japan is the scarcity of good options. The Senkakus sit within the first island chain, a string of islands stretching from Japan through Taiwan and the Philippines that constrains the expansion of China's growing naval power. Beijing's coast guard operations are persistent enough to challenge Japan's administrative control without crossing into open conflict. Each incursion forces a Japanese response, and each response burns resources and attention. According to Robert Ward, the Japan chair at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, China has expanded its pressure across a far wider range of fronts. Ward told the BBC that Beijing was deploying a strategy similar to the gray-zone warfare it conducts against Taiwan, a tactic aimed at wearing down an opponent and normalizing things that are not normal. China lodged complaints with the UN, postponed a trilateral summit with Japan and South Korea, and tried to pull in outside parties, urging the UK and France to side with it while pressing its allies Russia and North Korea to denounce Japan. The situation grew tense enough that some Japanese officials quietly began asking fishermen to avoid the islands entirely, according to Reuters. The combination of militia exercises, the Taiwan question, and the Senkaku confrontations activates multiple pressure points at once. That is dangerous for Japan because of a deeper vulnerability: energy. ## Japan's Energy Vulnerability Japan depends heavily on imported energy to meet domestic demand. Before the Fukushima nuclear disaster, nuclear power supplied roughly 30% of the country's electricity. After the meltdown, Japan replaced that lost capacity with imported fossil fuels, and the dependency deepened to the point that, by 2023, 22% of global LNG imports were going to Japan. The geography is unforgiving. The Center for Maritime Strategy estimates that 90% of Japan's energy imports transit vulnerable chokepoints, including the Strait of Malacca, the South China Sea, the East China Sea, and waters near Taiwan. Disrupting any of those routes, even partially, would carry severe consequences. Japan has no international oil or gas pipelines, and unlike oil, which it can stockpile for months, LNG can be stored only briefly. Tokyo's trade minister Ryosei Akazawa has said Japan's LNG stockpiles would last only about three weeks, compared with oil stockpiles that could last around 206 days. If the natural gas runs out, Tokyo faces rolling blackouts, shuttered factories, and freezing homes. Every militia formation parked across a shipping lane is, in that light, a reminder of how little margin Japan has. ## The Wider Region and a Distracted America Japan and Taiwan are not the only countries unsettled by China's growing assertiveness. The Philippines has been locked in its own confrontations with the Chinese coast guard in the South China Sea, where Beijing has used ramming, water cannon attacks, and blockades to challenge Manila's presence at disputed reefs. South Korea, which shares maritime boundaries with China in the Yellow Sea and hosts around 28,500 American troops, has watched its relationship with Beijing deteriorate over issues ranging from missile defense to overfishing. Ties have improved somewhat over the past year, especially after the election of Lee Jae-myung, but Seoul still has reason to be wary. All of these countries rely, to varying degrees, on the United States as a security guarantor, and that reliance is now being tested by the war in Iran. American missile-interceptor stockpiles are being stretched thin. The strain has grown severe enough that Washington has redeployed Patriot and THAAD air defense batteries from South Korea to the Middle East. President Lee Jae-myung confirmed this publicly, telling his cabinet that Seoul opposed the move but could do little about it. It is not only interceptors: at least two U.S. destroyers based in Japan have been deployed to take part in strikes on Iran, according to U.S. military photos, and guided bomb kits and Army Tactical Missile Systems have also been pulled from the region. Current and former defense officials across Asia are watching with concern. The fear is that if the war drags on, even more American firepower will be pulled away, and even if fighting ends soon, depleted munitions stockpiles could take years to replace, leaving Taiwan and other flashpoints exposed. ## The Stockpile Math and What Comes Next Washington has tried to calm those fears. At a Senate hearing, Elbridge Colby, the U.S. undersecretary of defense for policy, said top American officials were focused on close alignment with allies and partners in the Indo-Pacific. "We are laser-focused on the First Island Chain," he said. But some problems cannot be fixed with talking points. Rommel Ong, a retired rear admiral in the Philippine Navy, told Bloomberg that the current level of U.S. naval presence was needed to prevent China from achieving total sea control in the South China Sea. He noted that even before the war in Iran, Chinese maritime forces in East Asia already held a numerical advantage over the United States. Pulling assets out only widens the gap. That gap could widen further still. At the time of writing, the war with Iran remains an exchange of air strikes, with no boots on the ground. But if it expands, it could draw in other Pacific-based forces, including Marine Corps battalions in Japan. This has precedent: during previous Middle East conflicts, the U.S. pulled capabilities from East Asia, including the aircraft carrier USS George Washington from Japan for several months during the Afghanistan surge. Back then, China's military was nowhere near as capable as it is today. Hirohito Ogi, a former Japanese Defense Ministry official, told Bloomberg that moving a major asset like the George Washington again would be problematic for Indo-Pacific readiness, though he considered it unlikely. His more immediate worry was the depletion of missiles like Patriot interceptors, which take a long time to manufacture and could take years to replenish. The numbers are sobering. The Payne Institute, a public research institute in Colorado, estimated that more than 300 Patriot and other interceptors were used by U.S. defense systems in the first 36 hours of the Iran war alone, with a further 280 used by Gulf countries. At the time of writing, the war has lasted three weeks and shows no sign of stopping. Lockheed Martin produces around 620 Patriot missiles a year; the Pentagon has announced a seven-year deal to triple that to 2,000, but that target will not be reached until the end of 2030 at the earliest. Even then, with the U.S. having to replenish its own stockpiles and those of its Middle Eastern allies, Indo-Pacific countries will be waiting years for resupply. Grant Newsham, a former U.S. Marine Corps colonel and liaison officer to the Japanese military, called this the result of a just-in-time approach to equipping the military, built on the assumption that Washington would never fight a major war again, much less two at once. The outcome is the same regardless of cause. American allies in the Indo-Pacific feel afraid, and China feels emboldened, emboldened enough to stage 400-kilometer boat swarms that threaten shipping corridors while its coast guard chases Japanese fishermen away from islands Tokyo administers. Washington, for all its talk of being laser-focused on the First Island Chain, looks too distracted by Iran to give the Indo-Pacific the attention it demands. If this continues, the next boat swarm might not be 300 kilometers from Taiwan. It might be right on its doorstep, or parked off the coast of Japan, South Korea, or the Philippines. That is a sobering thought. ## Frequently Asked Questions ### What exactly happened in the East China Sea starting in December 2025? Since Christmas Day 2025, thousands of Chinese fishing vessels have massed in precise geometric formations, including two inverted L shapes each roughly 400 kilometers long and, on January 11, a rectangle so dense that cargo ships had to skirt or zigzag around it. In March, around 1,200 boats held two parallel lines for roughly 30 hours in near gale-force winds before scattering. Experts said they had never seen fishing vessels operate with such geometric precision or in such close proximity. ### Who are these vessels and why aren't they just ordinary fishermen? They belong to the Chinese Maritime Militia, regarded by analysts as China's third sea force alongside its navy and coast guard. CSIS divides it into purpose-built professional ships, often equipped with water cannons and reinforced hulls, and recruited commercial fishing boats crewed by trained civilians who can be called up like reservists. The militia has a documented history of asserting Beijing's territorial claims, from the 1974 capture of the Paracel Islands from South Vietnam to the 2012 Scarborough Shoal standoff with the Philippines. ### Why do analysts connect the formations to a possible Taiwan invasion? China's navy lacks enough landing vessels to deliver the troops and equipment an amphibious assault on Taiwan would require, meaning civilian ships are considered central to any such plan. Former U.S. Navy submarine officer Thomas Shugart said civilian vessels were "absolutely central" to Chinese military planning for a Taiwan operation, and the formations occurred about 300 kilometers from Taiwan. Gregory Poling of CSIS interpreted the exercises as Beijing testing whether the militia could muster on command. ### Why is Japan especially exposed to pressure from China's maritime activities? Japan faces simultaneous pressure from the militia exercises, the Taiwan question, and persistent Chinese coast guard incursions around the disputed Senkaku Islands—where Beijing conducted 134 patrols over five years and in 2025 patrolled 357 days of the year. Japan is also acutely energy-dependent: 90% of its energy imports transit vulnerable chokepoints, it has no international pipelines, and its LNG stockpiles would last only about three weeks. Disrupting key sea lanes could trigger rolling blackouts and shuttered factories. ### How has the war in Iran affected U.S. readiness in the Indo-Pacific? The Iran war has stretched U.S. interceptor stockpiles severely. The Payne Institute estimated more than 300 U.S. interceptors and 280 more used by Gulf countries in the conflict's first 36 hours alone. Washington has redeployed Patriot and THAAD batteries from South Korea, sent at least two Japan-based destroyers to strike Iran, and pulled guided bomb kits and Army Tactical Missile Systems from the region. Lockheed Martin produces around 620 Patriot missiles a year, and the Pentagon's deal to triple that output will not reach its 2,000-per-year target until the end of 2030 at earliest. ## Sources 1. https://www.stripes.com/theaters/asia_pacific/2026-03-12/weapon-shift-asia-to-iran-21046034.html 2. https://archive.is/zMXwp 3. https://militarywatchmagazine.com/article/us-withdrew-1000-guided-munitions-korea 4. https://archive.is/pYEVh 5. https://sg.news.yahoo.com/thousands-chinese-boats-mass-sea-043002479.html 6. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-03-12/us-allies-near-china-on-edge-as-weapons-shift-from-asia-to-iran 7. https://beyondparallel.csis.org/creeping-sovereignty-chinas-maritime-structures-in-the-yellow-sea-west-sea/ 8. https://archive.is/7CElE 9. https://www.news.com.au/world/asia/massive-chinese-flotilla-in-east-china-sea-a-staggering-show-of-force/news-story/602a064987f34ff78a32c64350f463df 10. https://english.news.cn/20260319/b8179779b9fb43cca8d3e4398cb9521c/c.html

China's Population Crisis and the Limits of Its Military Ambitions

Simon Whistler — Tue, 02 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

It is a crisis of China's own making, and one that will not merely reshape the nation's economy. It will also handcuff Beijing's international ambitions at the precise moment the country is reaching for great-power status. China's population is falling, and it is falling fast. Figures from China's National Bureau of Statistics revealed that in 2025 the population dropped by 3.39 million to 1.405 billion. The only other time China's population fell so steeply was during the catastrophic famine of Mao Zedong's Great Leap Forward, between 1959 and 1961. This is now the fourth consecutive year of decline, and if the trend holds, the United Nations estimates the population could fall to 800 million by the end of the century. That is an unprecedented contraction, particularly for a country whose economic growth and superpower ambitions are heavily pegged to its sheer human scale. As things stand, the decline appears irreversible, and the consequences will reach far beyond the economy into the pension system, the labor force, and the ranks of the People's Liberation Army. The central question, then, is whether Beijing can build a military powerful enough and modern enough to achieve its global ambitions before its own demographics undermine those very same goals. ## Key Takeaways - China's population fell by 3.39 million in 2025 to 1.405 billion, the steepest drop since the Great Leap Forward famine of 1959-1961, and the fourth consecutive year of decline. - Registered births hit 7.92 million, down 17% from 2024 and the lowest since records began in 1949, roughly the same raw number as in 1738, when the population was about one-tenth its current size. - The One Child Policy is not the sole cause. Fertility was already falling in the 1970s under an earlier "later, longer, fewer" policy, and ending the one-child rule in 2016 produced no meaningful baby boom. - Collapsing marriage rates are central. Only 6.1 million couples married in 2024, the lowest since 1980 and a 55% drop from the 2013 peak, and in China childbearing is tightly linked to marriage. - The demographic decline threatens China's economy and pensions: the working-age population peaked in 2013, and the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences has warned pension obligations could become unfundable by 2035. - The PLA struggles to recruit the college-educated, STEM-trained personnel Xi Jinping's modernization requires, even though China's youth cohorts remain more than three times the size of America's. - Analysts disagree on whether demographics create a "closing window" pushing China toward a desperate move on Taiwan, with Russia offered as a cautionary parallel. ## The Numbers Behind the Decline Two forces drove the 2025 drop. First, the number of deaths rose from 10.93 million in 2024 to 11.31 million. Second, and more consequentially, registered births fell to 7.92 million, a 17% decline from 2024 and the lowest figure since records began in 1949. That birth number is so low that, according to Yi Fuxian, a demographer at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, it sits at roughly the same level as in 1738, when China's population was only about 150 million. The comparison bears repeating. In 2025, with more than 1.4 billion people, China recorded the same number of births as it did in 1738, when the population was roughly one-tenth the size. This is not a one-year anomaly. It is the fourth straight year of contraction, and the long-run projections are stark. If the trajectory continues, the United Nations expects the population to fall toward 800 million by 2100. For a country that built its rise on abundant labor, the implications run through every part of the national project, from factories to pension funds to the armed forces. ## Why Conventional Wisdom Is Wrong The reflexive explanation for China's demographic collapse is the One Child Policy, the population-planning initiative that ran from 1979 to 2015. The truth is more complicated. The policy did contribute to the fall in the country's fertility rate, the number of children per woman, but it was not the only force at work. According to Feng Wang, a former analyst at the Brookings Institution, China's troubles began in the 1970s, before the One Child Policy was even implemented. Fertility had already been declining under an earlier policy that called for later marriage, longer intervals between births, and fewer births overall. By the time the one-child rule launched, fertility had dropped significantly. The coercive enforcement that followed simply accelerated a trend already underway, one driven by economic development, urbanization, and rising education levels. The most telling evidence came after the policy ended. When Beijing scrapped the rule in 2016, officials expected a baby boom, assuming couples would leap at the chance for additional children. Births did tick up slightly, but the increase made no noticeable difference to the country's demographic trajectory. The constraint, it turned out, was never just the law. ## The Marriage Collapse A large part of the explanation lies in marriage. Fewer people are choosing to marry at all. Only 6.1 million Chinese couples registered marriages in 2024, the lowest number since 1980 and a 55% drop from the 2013 peak of 13.47 million. First marriages fell below 10 million for the first time in a decade, and the unmarried rate among 30-year-olds doubled from about 15% in 2013 to nearly 30% in 2023. In China this matters more than it might elsewhere, because having a child out of wedlock remains extremely unusual. Fewer marriages therefore correlate far more directly with fewer children than they would in the West. As the analysis puts it, without marriage in China, there are no babies. Much of the decline reflects delay. The average age at first marriage climbed from 24 for women and around 25 for men in 2010 to 28 and 29 respectively by 2020. In cities like Shanghai it has gone higher still, reaching 30 in 2024. Others are opting out of marriage entirely, deterred by cost. China's house-price-to-income ratio stands at 29, against 11 in Japan, 9 in the United Kingdom, and 3 in the United States. ## The Economics of Not Marrying That ratio is worth absorbing. Chinese homes are less affordable for young people than homes in Britain, where most people under 35 regard homeownership as a distant fantasy. In first-tier Chinese cities, young people may need decades just to save a down payment. Traditional practices such as bride prices, though officially discouraged, still add to the financial weight. The economy compounds everything. After decades of rapid growth, China's expansion has slowed, dragged down by a real estate crisis and government crackdowns on private industry. Youth unemployment has stayed stubbornly high at 16.9%, as record numbers of college graduates struggle to find work. Many young professionals, especially at startups, face income instability and the fear of unemployment. Others take whatever work they can find, including factory jobs, while they wait for something better. Layered on top is a cultural shift. Young Chinese are increasingly rejecting the relentless pursuit of traditional success markers like marriage and homeownership. A 2022 survey by the Chinese Academy of Sciences found that 42% of college students were single and wanted to stay single, most citing personal freedom and career aspirations over traditional expectations. With social taboos against children outside wedlock still strong, marriage and childbirth remain tightly bound together. ## Beijing's Failed Counteroffensive Beijing has responded with a flurry of pro-natalist measures. After ending the one-child rule in 2016, it progressively loosened restrictions, allowing two children and then three. The national government rolled out a childcare subsidy of 3,600 yuan, about $500, per child per year until age three. Local governments have gone further. Hohhot, the capital of Inner Mongolia, offers 10,000 yuan for a first child and the same amount annually until age five for a second. Shenyang, the capital of Liaoning Province, provides a monthly subsidy of 500 yuan, about $70, to families for a third child until that child turns three. China has also experimented with longer maternity leave, and in May 2025 it revised marriage registration rules to eliminate the need for household registration books and let couples register anywhere nationwide. Campaigns against exorbitant bride prices have been launched in rural areas, and the government even began charging value-added tax on condoms, a not-so-subtle signal that contraception is no longer in the national interest. Some places, such as Tianmen, have seen births rise because of these incentives. They are the exception. The policies have largely failed because they do not address the fundamental drivers of the decline. ## Why the Incentives Do Not Work Harry Murphy Cruise, an economist at Moody's Analytics, told CNBC that the mental hangover from the one-child policy has fundamentally changed young people's perception of families. After decades of state control over reproduction, trust is low. More importantly, the financial incentives remain woefully inadequate. Experts estimate that parental leave will cost companies an average of $2,552 for each new birth, which means government subsidies barely make a dent. The result is workplace discrimination against women of childbearing age, with employers openly preferring to hire men, or women who have already had their children. Despite legal bans, enforcement is weak. Human Rights Watch reported that women were asked about their childbearing status in job interviews, forced to sign contracts pledging not to get pregnant, and in some cases demoted or fired for being pregnant. And then there is the economy, which despite the government's best efforts remains the central concern. Zhou, a 27-year-old engineer, told CNN: "The economy is so bleak right now - people need to be able to earn money first. If you can't make money, how can you dare to have kids? The government needs to find ways to address these economic woes." If these issues go unaddressed, China is staring down the barrel of a crisis that will reshape its economy, military, and global standing. ## The Economic Squeeze The most immediate impact falls on the economy. Beijing built its economic miracle on a foundation of abundant, cheap labor, as millions of young workers migrated from rural villages to coastal factories, producing everything from iPhones to trainers. That era is ending. China's working-age population peaked in 2013 and has been shrinking ever since. By 2050, the United Nations estimates the working-age population will contract by 22%, potentially subtracting half a percentage point each year from GDP growth. Oxford Economics, an independent global advisory firm, projects that China's potential output growth could fall below 3% in the 2040s, down from the double-digit rates of the 2000s. Manufacturing will be hit hardest. Earlier generations were willing to work long factory hours; younger, more educated, more urban Chinese often are not, except as a last resort, and they have other options. Even where they would take such jobs, there are not enough to go around. Rising wages, American sanctions, and labor shortages are pushing companies to automate or relocate production abroad. ## The Pension Time Bomb The pension system faces an equally severe reckoning. China's old-age dependency ratio, the number of people aged 65 and over per 100 working-age people aged 15 to 64, stood at 21% in 2024, up 8 percentage points from 2013. By 2050, more than 30% of the population will be over 60. The burden on workers to fund pensions will become crushing. The Chinese Academy of Social Sciences has warned that China could be unable to meet its pension obligations by 2035, and the demographic decline will only make that crisis worse. The strain is already visible on the streets. In 2023, hundreds protested in Wuhan and Dalian after cities slashed monthly medical benefits for retirees. Those cuts were driven by local government debt, but they pointed to a much larger problem. As the elderly population balloons and the working-age population shrinks, funding pensions and healthcare will become politically explosive. Beijing knows this. The government is racing to automate, investing $200 billion in robotics and artificial intelligence by 2025 to offset labor shortages. It is also raising the retirement age, currently 60 for men and 55 for women in urban areas, with pilot programs aiming for a gradual increase to 65 by 2030. But automation has limits, especially in services, and raising the retirement age meets stiff public resistance because it breaks an implicit social contract: work hard long enough, and you eventually retire young enough to enjoy it. ## The Military Contradiction For Beijing, no consequence matters more than what the decline means for its global ambitions. The demographic collapse directly threatens China's ability to field the modernized, technologically advanced force that Xi Jinping envisions, and the PLA confronts a sharp contradiction. On one hand, recruits are plentiful. China's youth cohorts remain enormous, more than three times the size of America's. On the other hand, the PLA cannot access the right recruits. Xi's vision demands college-educated youth with science and engineering backgrounds, and those are precisely the people with better options. Even amid the slowdown, skilled graduates can pursue lucrative careers in tech or industry rather than a military that has never been an attractive path for young, educated Chinese. Geography compounds the problem. Many PLA recruits still come from relatively underpopulated rural areas where quality education, especially in STEM, is limited, while urban recruits who do possess technical skills increasingly stay home rather than serve. Culture also weighs heavily. Around 70% of Chinese soldiers come from one-child families, with the proportion even higher among combat troops. Parents who sacrificed to educate an only child are understandably reluctant to send them into the military, where safety is not guaranteed, and where children are expected to care for their parents in old age. ## How the PLA Is Adapting The PLA has tried to respond. It now runs two recruitment drives a year instead of one, offers financial incentives matching civil-servant benefits, and promotes improved living conditions for soldiers. Air Force recruits with undergraduate degrees can earn about $1,500 a month, and graduate-degree holders about $1,640. For comparison, the mean salary for undergraduate-degree holders after six months is roughly $850, while the average for new graduate-degree holders in 2023 was $1,832, according to TeamedUp China, one of the country's leading job portals. Recruits with positive annual assessments earn a 10% bonus. The government has waived tuition for student veterans and relaxed age limits. High youth unemployment may also be nudging some graduates toward service simply because they cannot find anything else. Yet the underlying math is unforgiving. Between 2015 and 2040, China's youth labor pool, aged 15 to 29, is projected to shrink by 75 million people, roughly a quarter of its size. By 2030, there will be more than two older adults for every youth, a complete inversion from 1990, when there were more than two youths for every older adult. The PLA will struggle to fill its ranks. ## A Closing Window, or Not? These pressures raise an uncomfortable question about whether China can achieve its geopolitical ambitions at all. Some observers argue the demographic decline creates a closing window, a moment when Beijing must act now or watch its goals slip out of reach. Others reject that framing. Current trajectories suggest China will have more resources to compete militarily with the United States over the next ten years than it has had over the past twenty. The PLA continues modernizing, rooting out corruption, and improving its ability to conduct complex joint operations. Critically, there is no evidence in Chinese political or military writings of a belief that the window is closing. Chinese commentators debate plenty of sensitive topics, but they do not argue that China must take Taiwan now because time is running out. To test the "closing window" theory, it helps to look at Russia, which faces its own devastating demographic decline. Its fertility rate stood at 1.4 in 2023, similar to China's, and its population is projected to fall from 145 million today to 120 million by 2100. The war in Ukraine has made things catastrophically worse: Russia has lost at least hundreds of thousands of young men of working and reproductive age, with indirect losses from the wounded and disabled far higher, and an additional 800,000 mostly young, educated people fled to avoid conscription. ## The Russian Parallel and the Taiwan Question Russia's crisis differs from China's in one critical way. Its economy is smaller and more resource-dependent, leaving it less able to weather demographic shocks. And Moscow has shown a willingness to use aggressive foreign policy as a response to demographic anxiety. Some analysts, such as Daria Synhaievska of the media outlet Ukraine World, argue that Putin's invasion of Ukraine was partly an exercise in demographic engineering, an attempt to seize territory and population to offset Russia's decline. By annexing Crimea in 2014, Putin added 2.4 million ethnic Russians, and the large-scale abduction of Ukrainian children during the war follows the same logic. China could view Taiwan in a similar light. A successful invasion could add more than 20 million people to its population. It must be stressed that this is speculation, since China's actual thinking is unknown, and only those at the highest echelons of the Chinese government would truly know. Beyond Taiwan, the demographic crisis threatens China's broader military ambitions. Beijing has set an explicit goal of achieving great-power status by 2050, yet it faces a 28% decrease in its labor force by 2050 from its 2015 peak. A smaller workforce means less tax revenue to fund defense, and China's ability to pay for aircraft carriers, overseas bases, and advanced weapons will be squeezed by the simple fact that there are fewer people to finance it. The question is not whether demographics will constrain Chinese military power, but when, and by how much. Analysts at Brookings argue that if the West maintains its alliances, time is not on China's side. Others counter that China has 20 to 30 years before the squeeze turns truly severe, ample time to achieve its regional aims. ## Can This Be Reversed? That leaves the final, uncomfortable question: can the decline be reversed? The short answer is no, or at least not within any timeframe that would prevent the worst consequences. International experience offers little hope. No developed country has engineered a sustained fertility rebound once rates fall below 1.5 children per woman. South Korea has spent billions on pro-natalist policies over two decades, yet its fertility rate fell from the 1.1-to-1.2 range in the early 2000s to 0.72 in 2025. Hungary's population has declined by roughly 1.25 million over the past four decades despite enormous government investment. Japan, after decades of effort and substantial spending, saw fertility slide from 1.45 in 2015 to 1.15 in 2024. China's current policies are essentially a scaled-down version of Japan's ineffective response, with smaller subsidies, less comprehensive structural reform, and more severe economic constraints. Wang Feng, an expert on Chinese demographics at the University of California, Irvine, put it bluntly to Think Global Health: "Policy has little, if any, influence on Chinese young people's reproductive choices and behaviors." The YuWa Population Research Institute has warned that under current policies it is impossible not only to raise the fertility rate, but even to maintain it at 1.0. There is also a structural trap. The number of women aged 20 to 34, the group responsible for 85% of Chinese births, is expected to drop from 105 million in 2025 to 58 million by 2050. Even if fertility somehow stabilized, the raw number of births would keep falling simply because there will be fewer potential mothers. Immigration could theoretically help, as it has in the United States, Canada, and Australia, but China prizes cultural homogeneity and has shown little willingness to take that path. For now, China seems destined to be remembered as the country that once held the largest population in human history before losing it to a combination of poorly conceived government policy, bad economic luck, and shifting cultural winds. Whether Beijing can build a military modern and powerful enough to achieve its global ambitions before demographics undermine those very goals will be one of the defining questions of the twenty-first century. All anyone can do for now is watch to see whether China's falling demographics push it toward a desperate play for Taiwan, or for another coveted territory such as the South China Sea, or whether Beijing concludes it has done enough for the PLA to survive the population crisis. ## Frequently Asked Questions ### How steep is China's population decline, and what is driving it? China's population fell by 3.39 million in 2025 to 1.405 billion, the steepest drop since the Great Leap Forward famine of 1959-1961 and the fourth consecutive year of decline. Registered births hit 7.92 million, the lowest since records began in 1949 and roughly the same raw number as in 1738, when the population was about one-tenth its current size. The primary driver is collapsing marriage rates—only 6.1 million couples married in 2024, a 55% drop from the 2013 peak—combined with economic pressures including a house-price-to-income ratio of 29 and youth unemployment at 16.9%. ### Was the One Child Policy the main cause of the decline? Not entirely. China's fertility was already falling in the 1970s under an earlier policy promoting later marriage, longer birth intervals, and fewer births. The One Child Policy accelerated a trend already driven by economic development, urbanization, and rising education. When the policy ended in 2016, the expected baby boom never materialized, demonstrating that the constraint was never just the law. ### How does the demographic decline threaten China's military ambitions? Xi Jinping's modernization requires college-educated recruits with science and engineering backgrounds, but those people have better-paid options in tech and industry. Around 70% of soldiers come from one-child families, making parents reluctant to send their only child to serve. The youth labor pool aged 15 to 29 is projected to shrink by 75 million between 2015 and 2040, and the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences has warned pension obligations could become unfundable by 2035, squeezing the defense budget. ### Can China reverse the decline through policy incentives? The evidence from comparable countries says no. No developed country has rebounded once fertility fell below 1.5 children per woman. South Korea's fertility fell to 0.72 in 2025 despite decades of pro-natalist spending, and Japan slid to 1.15 in 2024. With the number of women aged 20 to 34 set to fall from 105 million to 58 million by 2050, births would keep declining even if fertility somehow stabilized. ### Does China's demographic decline create a "closing window" that could push it toward action on Taiwan? Analysts disagree sharply. Some argue the decline creates urgency for Beijing to act before its goals slip away, noting that a successful Taiwan takeover could add more than 20 million people—drawing a parallel to analysts who argue Putin invaded Ukraine partly as demographic engineering. Others counter that there is no sign in Chinese political or military writing that leaders believe the window is closing, and that China likely has 20 to 30 years before the squeeze becomes truly severe. ## Sources 1. https://edition.cnn.com/2026/01/01/china/china-one-child-anniversary-intl-hnk-vis-dst 2. https://www.hrw.org/news/2022/07/05/how-fix-chinas-population-crisis-say-sorry-womenc 3. https://www.yicaiglobal.com/news/parental-leave-to-cost-businesses-in-china-usd2552-per-child-expert-predicts 4. https://english.www.gov.cn/policies/latestreleases/202507/28/content_WS68875f65c6d0868f4e8f47bf.html 5. https://www.voanews.com/a/east-asia-pacific_china-youth-lie-flat-good-life-seems-unattainable/6207063.html 6. https://www.reuters.com/world/china/chinas-factory-output-retail-sales-weaken-november-2025-12-15/ 7. https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/econographics/chinas-property-slump-deepens-and-threatens-more-than-the-housing-sector/

Now or Never: Why 2026 Could Be Xi's Closing Window on Taiwan

Simon Whistler — Tue, 02 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The invasion will come in 2027. That date has been Western conventional wisdom for years, and for understandable reasons. 2027 marks a century since the founding of the People's Liberation Army, the end of Xi Jinping's third term as China's paramount leader, and the deadline that Xi personally set for the Chinese military to seize the island Beijing considers a rogue province. But buried in the fine print of analysis after analysis there has always been an important caveat: 2027 is a target date, not a hard deadline. China is well aware that realities on the ground are always shifting. Perhaps it will ultimately make more sense to invade in 2029, in 2031, or not at all. Or there is another possibility entirely, that shifting circumstances at home and abroad might cause China to accelerate its timeline rather than delay it. On the day this analysis was released, US President Donald Trump was set to touch down in Beijing for the first visit to Chinese soil by an American leader in nearly a decade. Taiwan is expected to sit at the very top of China's priority list, and depending on what Xi Jinping hears from his Western counterpart, China's calculus on the island could begin to change very rapidly. From events in the Middle East to turmoil inside Taiwan to favorable circumstances in the United States and elsewhere, 2026 may represent the perfect opportunity for Xi to strike. With longer-term problems gathering on the horizon, Beijing may well conclude that an invasion of Taiwan is now or never. ## Key Takeaways - The widely cited 2027 invasion date is a target Xi Jinping set for the PLA, not a hard deadline; shifting conditions could push Beijing to accelerate rather than delay. - A Trump-Xi summit places Taiwan at the center of high-stakes bargaining where the island risks becoming a trade concession, with the danger being hesitation by Washington rather than formal abandonment. - Taiwan's parliament approved barely half the defense funding President Lai Ching-te requested, killing domestic programs like the Strong Bow ballistic-missile defense system. - An invasion of Taiwan would be decided in a very brief window — China would saturate the Taiwan Strait with firepower before US and allied forces from Okinawa or the Philippines could break through. - Every structural advantage Beijing currently enjoys is at its peak and beginning to erode: Trump's influence could be checked after the 2026 midterms, Japan is poised to remilitarize, and the world's crises will eventually wind down. ## Taiwan's Precarious Status Even at the best of times, Taiwan's international status is a source of constant headaches for the island and its allies. For all practical purposes, Taiwan acts as a de facto sovereign nation, with its own standing military, its own domestic and foreign policy, and its own complex trade relationships. Yet the island does not formally pursue global recognition as a sovereign state. It stands by as China classifies it as a renegade province and demands that the world's nations do the same. Many of Taiwan's closest allies do not formally share diplomatic ties with its government, for fear of triggering a crisis with one of the world's most powerful economies. Despite that diplomatic ambiguity, Taiwan is regarded across much of the world, and especially across the wider Indo-Pacific, as a critical bulwark against Chinese ambition. China is a rising superpower, and nobody outside the highest echelons of the CCP can really claim to understand China's long-term vision for the world. But as long as Taiwan still stands, countries like Japan, South Korea, Vietnam, and the Philippines can trust that there is no immediate reason to fear Chinese aggression. The island functions as a barometer for the entire region's security. ## A Defense Budget Cut in Half If that situation was complicated in the best of times, the diplomatic side of the Taiwan-China relationship is now difficult to imagine getting worse. Since 2024, Taiwan has been led by President Lai Ching-te, a man who described himself before taking office as a "practical worker for Taiwan independence." Since the start of his term, Lai has repeatedly referred to Taiwan and China as functionally separate countries, a framing Beijing has seized upon to accuse him of fomenting separatism. Lai still attempts to walk the fine line between Taiwanese self-rule and a push for formalized independence, but he has been working overtime to make the island harder to control, harder to invade, and harder to influence. He has instituted a range of economic and fiscal reforms to move Taiwan away from Chinese influence, and he has invested heavily in mobile missile systems, Ukraine-style low-cost drone systems, and enhanced intelligence measures to deter an invasion. The trouble is that Lai's stance only works if he can back it up with action. By taking a more confrontational posture, he has signed up for a fight that China will try to undermine at every turn. And the rest of Taiwan's leadership has been hesitant to play along. For several months, Taiwan's parliament wrestled over a proposed boost to the island's defense spending. That battle has now ended, and not in Lai's favor. Although Taiwan passed a special budget measure to finance some military hardware, the parliament approved barely half of what Lai and his allies had requested. Taiwan will import American howitzers, ballistic missiles, anti-tank missiles, and eventually a combination of counter-drone systems and Patriot interceptors. But it will not be able to finance the domestic defense programs it has been developing for years, including the Strong Bow, a ballistic-missile defense system that would have been the centerpiece of a new integrated air defense system the island badly needs. Officially, the opposition claimed the rest of the funding was rejected over corruption concerns. ## The KMT's Embrace of Beijing Taiwan's opposition, however, has grown very cozy with Beijing lately. Seeing President Lai's confrontational posture, the opposition has swung hard in the opposite direction. In April, the leader of Taiwan's main opposition party, the Kuomintang or KMT, traveled to Beijing personally to meet with Xi Jinping, one stop on a China tour where the KMT leader made regular appeals to the idea of reunification. According to KMT leadership, the visit was an attempt to reduce tensions. Proponents of Taiwanese self-rule regarded it as little more than collaboration with a hostile rival. At a moment when Xi Jinping and his government refuse even to talk to Lai Ching-te, the warm reception the KMT received was practically impossible to misinterpret. The problem for Lai is that the KMT is not occupying a fringe position. A sizeable proportion of Taiwanese residents believe reintegration is a worthy objective, even after the recent display of what reintegration really looked like in China-controlled Hong Kong. Other voters are less supportive of the KMT's stance on Beijing but back the party for a range of domestic and foreign-policy reasons. The KMT is expected to do quite well in upcoming elections, and the party leader who visited Xi personally in 2026 could very well be the nation's president by 2028. ## The Trump Factor Then there is US President Donald Trump, a mercurial figure whose coming meeting with Xi has placed many Taiwanese citizens on edge. Trump's Republican Party is home to high-profile legislators who staunchly support Taiwanese self-rule and who are lobbying the president to approve a delayed weapons package of some fourteen billion dollars for the island's defense. But Trump's willingness to keep that package on ice, his preoccupation with trade deals and other bilateral arrangements with Beijing, and his tendency to react favorably toward global autocrats from Xi to Putin to Kim Jong-un have left Taiwan and its supporters very concerned about what might emerge from this summit. According to insider sources in the United States, Washington currently assesses that Xi will raise Taiwan-related issues with Trump but treat the island as just another point to be bargained over while working out a larger deal to manage US-China relations. On the less catastrophic end, that could mean Trump agreeing to formally oppose Taiwanese independence, or to take diplomatic or economic measures against the few countries that still take Taiwan's side. On the more catastrophic end, Trump could agree to revoke support for the island's military defense, change how America regards the South China Sea, or break some economic ties with Taiwan to clear the way for new ties with China. The asymmetry is the crux of the danger. The way such an arrangement would be received in Trump's Washington is very different from how it would be received in Xi's Beijing. For the United States, Taiwan becomes a concession to make progress on trade. For China, trade becomes a concession to create as much breathing room on Taiwan as possible. ## Why Taiwan Cannot Fall Back Depending on what happens between Xi and Trump, Taiwan's security situation could become very dicey very quickly, but it is essential to understand why. A Chinese invasion of Taiwan is not like most global invasions, where the country on the receiving end deals with an attack on its borders but can usually fall back into its own territory and mount a coordinated defense. Ukraine offers a clear example of that kind of territorial defense in action. Taiwan, by contrast, faces several problems that combine into a unique strategic disadvantage. China would not be crossing a land border; it would be crossing a narrow strait. Taiwan could not fall back into a complex territorial defense, because it is simply too small for that. China possesses a tremendous arsenal of missiles and aircraft that can hit the island, and likely holds hidden long-range drone capabilities and other weapons it has never revealed. In an all-out invasion, China would use its long-range weapons and aircraft to devastate Taiwan's existing defensive positions, knocking a large share of its military hardware out of the fight immediately while making a mad dash across the sea. Worse still, a combination of China's existing military infrastructure near Taiwan, its investment in dual-use civil and military infrastructure, and the sheer volume of everyday movement in that area would likely allow Beijing to conceal most of its military buildup. ## A Conflict Decided in Hours Taken together, those problems mean an invasion of Taiwan would be decided within a very brief window of time. If China's long-range weaponry can launch and devastate the island as planned, if its aircraft can establish quick control of Taiwanese and regional airspace, and if its ships can cross the Taiwan Strait fast enough, the invasion is over. The United States keeps only roughly five hundred troops on Taiwan itself. Any support from the US or from other regional powers would have to come from elsewhere, like Okinawa or the Philippines. But China has the ability, at least on paper, to push so much naval and aerial hardware into the Taiwan Strait that the area could become too saturated for the US and its allies to risk breaking through. Taiwan's allies would take too long to move their naval assets into position, and any early intervention by their air forces would depend on un-stealthy tankers and relatively small numbers of high-quality but isolated combat jets. If China can saturate the strait during that critical window, then for the rest of the conflict Taiwan's allies would be forced to operate at the periphery of the invasion, trying to punch through an overwhelming concentration of Chinese firepower. If the United States, Japan, South Korea, and other supporters are going to avoid that outcome, time is of the utmost importance. Signs of a Chinese buildup would have to be taken extremely seriously, and as soon as it becomes clear that China has given the go-ahead, Taiwan's allies must react immediately. ## The Real Danger Is Hesitation For Taiwan, the danger of Trump's meeting with Xi, and any bargains the two might strike, is not that Trump would formally abandon the island. The danger is that China would introduce reasons for Trump to hesitate when the moment of truth arrives. Say Trump is willing to give China the benefit of the doubt and ignore signs of an early buildup, when a quick US response would have been most effective. Say he hesitates to listen to military advisors while economic advisors emphasize the importance of good relations with Beijing to preserve bilateral trade deals. Or, worst of all, say China gives the order to invade and Trump hesitates, perhaps by an hour, perhaps by thirty minutes, but enough that China can explode across the gap and seize the corridor it needs to complete the invasion. In another life, Taiwan's big new weapons deliveries, its home-built ballistic-missile defenses, or the actions of a politically unified leadership could have made up that gap, putting a little more time back on the clock so the consequences of American hesitation would not be so catastrophic. But for now, those options are gone. ## A Window That Only Narrows Those are the fundamental conditions at play, but there are other problems for Beijing to consider, and they share one crucial trait. In the long term, each of these problems will only get worse for China, to the point that by 2030, 2028, or even as soon as 2027 they could make an invasion much more difficult. But all of these problems are the least problematic they will ever be right now. If China acts quickly, it will find itself in a far better position than will be possible a few years from now. Start with the United States. Donald Trump presents unique opportunities for Xi. He is a leader willing to make sacrifices on foreign policy and geostrategy for the sake of trade, with a known fondness for global autocrats and strongmen, and one who could conceivably be convinced to disrupt one of America's most important alliances with NATO, and perhaps do the same with an ally like Taiwan. Barring a constitutional crisis, those opportunities disappear in early 2029, with no telling who Trump's successor will be. But Trump's unique influence could be constrained as soon as the start of 2027, depending on the 2026 midterm elections. If he is delivered a legislative defeat on the scale that currently seems likely, even after voter redistricting, he may face new checks on the very power China needs him to wield unpredictably. Then there is Japan, the Indo-Pacific's other economic powerhouse and a dormant military giant. Japan's new leadership is working to remove the pacifist constraints Tokyo has followed faithfully since the end of World War II. If those constitutional reforms proceed as expected, the world's fourth-largest economy will begin an imminent military spending spree. Given the financial power at its disposal, Japan could become a strategic rival to China in record time, and Beijing knows it. The two countries have recently been at loggerheads over the prospect that Japan would come to Taiwan's defense in the event of an invasion. But the specter of a remilitarizing Japan also helps China identify its rapidly closing window: Japanese remilitarization has not happened yet, so better to take Taiwan early and reset the strategic balance before Tokyo can get in the way. ## A World Too Distracted to Respond Just as important, the world is unusually chaotic right now, in ways that make it more likely China could conceal its buildup, face lesser resistance, and avoid the more serious consequences of its actions. Russia and Ukraine remain at war in a conflict that has preoccupied most of Europe. The United States and the Middle East are focused on Iran, a conflict that has created shortages of vital air-defense interceptors and caused some air-defense systems to be relocated away from the Indo-Pacific. The world is dealing with several other major wars, transnational destabilization across several regions, and a range of acute crises, but it lacks the bandwidth to address any of them. Invade Taiwan soon enough, and China can exploit a world that is distracted, divided, and fighting on too many fronts simultaneously. With a quick, open-and-shut invasion, Beijing can argue to the US and Europe that it should be forgiven. After all, the argument would run, its invasion was nowhere near as costly or horrific as the Ukraine war, far more contained than the Iran war, and, by the position China has held for decades, an internal matter of addressing a wayward province. Those might not be good arguments, and indeed they are not. But they do not need to be. They only need to be good enough that distracted nations across the globe can grit their teeth, mutter quiet apologies to their Taiwanese constituents, and accept that swallowing Beijing's narrative is easier than welcoming a trade war, or an actual war, with China. ## The Strategic Clock Runs Against Beijing Hesitate, though, and global geostrategy will shift in ways that put China at a longer-term disadvantage. The US and Iran are engaged in unsuccessful but ongoing peace talks, and the Ukraine war appears as if it may end sooner rather than later. Under Trump, Washington is clearly ticking a few regime-change objectives off its bucket list, but the United States will be pivoting to counter China by the end of this decade. Japan, as noted, will be remilitarizing, and it is also likely to take the lead on a network of growing partnerships with Australia, South Korea, Vietnam, Thailand, India, and other nations that form a ring around Chinese ambition. Europe is slowly finding its backbone, along with a bit of spare change to finance its military expansion, and could achieve effective deterrence of Russia within just a couple of years. When the world calms down, especially with countries like Russia, Iran, Cuba, and Venezuela all severely weakened, China risks becoming the world's top geostrategic priority, with all the scrutiny and all the opposition that entails. This is the strategic logic that points toward now rather than later. Taiwan is vulnerable, America is malleable, Japan and its Indo-Pacific partners are not ready, and the world is badly distracted. None of those advantages will remain for long. ## Now or Never China might not want to invade if it does not have to. It might wait until 2028 to see whether the Taiwanese opposition can gain power and kick-start a process of peaceful reunification. The KMT's strength, after all, offers Beijing a potential path to its goals without firing a shot. But if China wants to achieve a kinetic, military conquest of Taiwan within the next several years, the calculus laid out here suggests the time is now. Every structural advantage Beijing currently enjoys is at its peak and beginning to erode, while every obstacle to a successful invasion is at its weakest and beginning to harden. The events surrounding the Trump-Xi summit may provide all the confirmation Beijing needs. A distracted world, a divided Taiwan, a malleable Washington, and a Japan not yet rearmed all converge into a single, narrowing window. From Beijing's perspective, it is not hard to look around at the world in 2026 and conclude that there is no time like the present. ## Frequently Asked Questions ### Why is 2027 so often cited as the year China might invade Taiwan? 2027 carries significant symbolic and political weight. It marks a century since the founding of the People's Liberation Army, the end of Xi Jinping's third term as China's paramount leader, and a deadline Xi personally set for the Chinese military to seize the island. Analysts stress, however, that it is a target date rather than a hard deadline, and shifting circumstances could push Beijing to act earlier or later. ### Why is Taiwan strategically harder to defend than a country like Ukraine? Unlike Ukraine, Taiwan cannot fall back into its own territory to mount a coordinated defense, because the island is simply too small. China would cross a narrow strait rather than a land border, could use long-range weapons and aircraft to devastate Taiwan's defenses immediately, and could likely conceal much of its buildup using dual-use infrastructure and everyday movement in the region. That combination means an invasion would be decided within a very brief window. ### What role does the KMT play in Taiwan's vulnerability? The Kuomintang, Taiwan's main opposition party, has grown close to Beijing in response to President Lai Ching-te's confrontational posture. Its leader traveled to Beijing in April 2026 to meet Xi Jinping personally and made repeated appeals to reunification. The KMT is expected to perform well in upcoming elections, and the leader who met Xi could become Taiwan's president by 2028, potentially opening a path to reunification on Beijing's terms without a shot being fired. ### Why is hesitation by the United States considered the central danger? With only about five hundred US troops on Taiwan and allied reinforcements forced to come from Okinawa or the Philippines, timing is everything. If China saturates the Taiwan Strait with naval and aerial firepower before allies can break through, the invasion succeeds. The danger of the Trump-Xi summit is not formal abandonment of Taiwan but giving Trump reasons to hesitate — even by thirty minutes — which could be enough for China to seize the corridor it needs. ### How does global instability currently work in China's favor? With Russia at war in Ukraine, the US and the Middle East focused on Iran, and air-defense interceptors in short supply and partly relocated away from the Indo-Pacific, the world lacks the bandwidth to respond forcefully. A quick, contained invasion would let Beijing argue its action was less costly than the Ukraine war, more contained than the Iran war, and an internal matter — arguments that need only be good enough for distracted nations to swallow rather than risk a war or trade war with China. ## Sources 1. https://www.reuters.com/video/watch/idRW965011052026RP1/ 2. https://www.politico.com/news/2026/05/11/trump-xi-taiwan-crisis-00911593 3. https://www.lowyinstitute.org/publications/after-annexation-how-china-plans-run-taiwan 4. https://www.foreignaffairs.com/taiwan/why-china-waits 5. https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/11/us/politics/taiwan-trump-china-xi-jinping.html 6. https://www.cnn.com/2026/05/10/asia/taiwan-us-china-kmt-intl-hnk 7. https://thehill.com/opinion/national-security/5870333-ukraine-iran-taiwan-conflict/ 8. https://apnews.com/article/trump-xi-taiwan-democracy-arms-semiconductors-5c6aed1f1628fee0d381ecbb1ff73d10 9. https://www.pbs.org/newshour/world/the-best-case-scenario-for-taiwan-from-the-trump-xi-summit 10. https://www.reuters.com/world/china/taiwan-confident-us-ties-ahead-trump-visit-china-2026-05-11/ 11. https://understandingwar.org/research/china-taiwan/china-taiwan-update-may-8-2026/ 12. https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/what-is-taiwan-independence-is-taiwan-already-independent-2025-02-17/ 13. https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/trump-says-he-will-discuss-arms-sales-taiwan-with-chinas-xi-2026-05-11/ 14. https://breakingdefense.com/2026/05/taiwans-parliament-passes-pared-back-supplementary-defense-budget/ 15. https://www.reuters.com/business/finance/us-disappointed-taiwans-smaller-defense-budget-official-says-2026-05-10/ 16. https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cj94y87k2ljo 17. https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/chinas-xi-meets-taiwan-opposition-leader-beijing-state-media-says-2026-04-10/ 18. https://www.fpri.org/article/2025/12/the-present-and-future-of-the-kmt-in-taiwan/

Conflicts to Watch in 2026: The World's Flashpoints Go Hot

Simon Whistler — Tue, 02 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Say what you will about the post-Cold-War order, but love it or hate it, that global order completely collapsed in 2025. At the one-quarter mark of the twenty-first century, the world has entered an era of global realignment, where ambitious new players are on the rise and old titans have started to fall. A unipolar world has become multipolar, the old rules no longer apply, and every nation on Earth must make a choice. They can adapt and thrive, or they can stagnate and consign themselves to history. If 2025 was the year the global rule book was rewritten, then 2026 will be the year the new rules are put to the test. Those new rules will shape conflict from the battlefields of Eastern Europe to the multidimensional chaos of the African Horn, from the coasts of Venezuela to the coasts of Taiwan, and from the jungles of South Asia to the jungles of South America. They will decide not only who gets ahead, but what they can get away with, guiding nations not toward peace but toward profit. 2026 may or may not be a year of major world conflicts, but it is practically guaranteed to be a year of chaos. What follows is a region-by-region survey of the places that most demand watching, and an honest accounting of why each one could tip from simmering tension into open war. The thesis is simple: in a multipolar world without an enforcer, the conflicts most likely to define 2026 are the ones already burning at low heat, waiting for an incentive to flare. ## Key Takeaways - Several frozen conflicts turned hot in 2025 — Iran and Israel, India and Pakistan, Pakistan and Afghanistan, Thailand and Cambodia — and each remains a simmering flashpoint where all sides weigh known incentives to return to war. - Washington's escalating pressure campaign against Nicholas Maduro is widely read as regime-change leverage rather than counter-narcotics; a full US invasion of Venezuela is unlikely in 2026, with targeted airstrikes the more probable path. - Ecuador has collapsed from one of Latin America's safest countries into one of the world's ten most violent, with a projected 2025 murder rate near 50 per 100,000 and roughly 40 armed gangs now competing for cocaine and illegal-mining spoils. - Syria's greatest escalation risk lies between Damascus and the Kurdish-led region of Rojava, with Turkey pressing for reintegration by an end-of-2025 deadline and signaling its willingness to go to war. - The Horn of Africa is hardening into two hostile blocs — Ethiopia backed by the UAE, and Eritrea backed by Egypt and Saudi Arabia — with multiple triggers that could ignite a wider East African war. - Sudan's civil war, already the deadliest conflict on Earth with estimates as high as 400,000 killed, is forecast to worsen in 2026, with Kordofan emerging as the new focal point of the bloodshed. - In Ukraine, Russia controlled 19% of the country's territory by December 2025 — only one point more than at the end of 2022 — at a cost cited by CSIS of nearly one million Russian casualties, the hallmark of a grinding attritional war with no clear off-ramp. ## The World's Frozen Conflicts Turn Hot Before looking forward, it is worth paying respects to 2025, a year in which a handful of frozen conflicts recently turned hot. The long cold war between Iran and Israel produced their first major direct military engagement ever during the twelve-day war last June. India and Pakistan, two nuclear-armed enemies, engaged in a large-scale showdown across April and May. Disputes and skirmishes near the historic Durand Line escalated into a proper border conflict between Pakistan and Afghanistan. And Thailand and Cambodia saw all-out fighting break out across four days in July, go quiet for a few months, then roar back to life in early December. Heading into 2026, these are best understood as simmering flashpoints — places where tensions are known to be high, where all sides are balancing known incentives that could send them back into conflict, but where nobody can predict exactly when things will go hot again. None of these combatants is necessarily seeking war. What they share is a structure of incentives that makes a return to violence acceptable, even attractive, if it serves a broader goal. Start with Israel and Iran. Neither nation is currently trying to force a return to war, but both have ample incentives to accept renewed conflict if it suits them. In Israel, the Netanyahu government and its military allies understand that Jerusalem stands on the precipice of total victory — not merely defeating the militant proxy forces of Hamas and Hezbollah, but stamping them out entirely, and collapsing the Iranian regime in the process. With Hamas and Hezbollah largely dealt with, Israel's attention has turned to Iran and its other regional adversaries. It is possible Iran's regime will never recover from the setbacks of the twelve-day war, but Israel is not about to leave that to chance. If Iran appears to be reconstituting its forces, meaningfully rebuilding its proxies, or — worse — making renewed progress on its nuclear program, Israel is likely to take unilateral action. Iran's own calculus is more counterintuitive. Its ruling regime grows weaker by the day, yet it understands that its mandate to lead is strongest when the country is under threat from Israel. As paradoxical as it sounds, the regime may try to maintain its grip on power precisely by continuing to engage Israel in limited conflict. The conflicts among India, Pakistan, and Afghanistan bleed into a single regional mess, and can be discussed together. India and Pakistan routinely accuse one another of sponsoring organized terror campaigns on each other's soil, and both remain quite vulnerable to such attacks. India wants to put Pakistan in its place so it can focus on competing with China, and it wants to reassert its strategic non-alignment and autonomy after perceiving a loss of face when the United States stepped in to broker their recent ceasefire. Pakistan, by contrast, feels emboldened by how that last conflict played out, and it is under the control of a military strongman gaining in both power and international support. Afghanistan is the one nation here that definitely does not want a war, and has little ability to fight a conventional war at all — but it may not have a choice. Its territory is home to the Pakistani Taliban, who are accused of receiving direct support from the Afghan Taliban. Even if no such support exists, Pakistan has proven entirely willing to blame Afghan leadership for the Pakistani Taliban's actions. This is a part of the world where non-state actors operate in all directions, serving many conflicting strategic objectives, and sometimes acting in ways their alleged foreign sponsors cannot control. So even if none of the three governments actively wants war in 2026, the region is liable to be pulled into one by non-state actors — and if any of them does secretly want to return to conflict, those same actors offer a perfect excuse. Finally, the latest round of fighting between Thailand and Cambodia remains volatile, and both sides have given ample indications that the most recent exchange probably will not be their last. Cambodia is clearly the weaker of the two combatants, yet during the long lull between its first 2025 clash with Thailand and its second, the Cambodian military appears to have placed fresh land mines all along the border regions and engaged in other provocative acts that make little sense unless Cambodia was looking to return to conflict. Thailand, meanwhile, is ruled by a new government that has taken a hard line against Cambodia. After its first ceasefire attempt failed, Thailand now seems determined to ensure Cambodia will not be a threat in the coming years. It is entirely feasible that the current violence is resolved through another ceasefire. But if the two enter yet another cycle of escalation afterward, then the next time open conflict breaks out, Thailand will be even less willing to accept a ceasefire than it is today. Major nationalist movements are fanning the flames on both sides of the border zone, and as long as confrontation makes for good politics, neither side's recent behavior suggests it would back down. ## Venezuela Versus Washington "He wants to keep on blowing boats up until Maduro cries uncle," White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles told Vanity Fair in a wide-ranging interview, referring to President Trump. "And people way smarter than me on that say that he will." The remark seemed to confirm what Latin America observers have argued since the Trump administration began striking boats in the Caribbean: that the strikes are less about fighting drug trafficking than about pressuring Venezuelan strongman Nicholas Maduro into resigning. Given that on the 11th of December — five days before the Vanity Fair interview was published — the administration seized an oil tanker off the coast of Venezuela, it seems more than likely the feud will continue to escalate. So what does 2026 hold for the standoff between Caracas and Washington? First, despite President Trump insisting he has not ruled out putting boots on the ground in Venezuela, most experts do not think an actual American invasion is on the cards — at least not in 2026. Beyond cutting against Trump's promise to start no new wars, invading Venezuela would be an unpopular decision that could cost the administration the upcoming midterms. A poll conducted by CBS found that only 30% of Americans would support taking military action against Venezuela. With a full-scale invasion seemingly off the table, the most likely remaining course is targeted airstrikes against strategic targets inside the country. Two outcomes follow from that path. In the first, the airstrikes and any accompanying actions prove so devastating that the Venezuelan people conclude their only option for survival is to oust Maduro. That would mean massive public protests, followed by the military removing Maduro and handing him over to Washington. Alternatively, Maduro could see the writing on the wall and flee before it came to that, spending a deservedly miserable retirement in Moscow. In the second scenario, Washington still carries out airstrikes, but the damage is not sufficient to turn the public and the military against Maduro. In that case, Maduro runs down the clock until 2028, when Trump leaves office, hoping a successor administration more willing to negotiate takes power. Whichever option Washington chooses, Venezuela will remain a place to watch closely throughout the coming year. ## Ecuador Falls Into the Abyss When the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data organization — better known as ACLED — released its 2026 watchlist, few of the featured countries caused much surprise. Ukraine, Sudan, Myanmar, Syria, Pakistan: these are nations now synonymous with insurgency and war. But buried amid the overviews of conflict in places like the Sahel and the Middle East was one name that stuck out like a sore thumb. Just five years ago, Ecuador was one of the safest nations in Latin America — a Nevada-sized strip of the Andes nestled between the far more violent nations of Colombia and Peru. Before the pandemic, its murder rate was roughly equal to that of the United States, and far below that of countries like Honduras, Mexico, or Brazil. What a difference half a decade can make. In 2021, Ecuador's murder rate began to climb dramatically. By 2023 it had reached an eye-watering 46 per 100,000 — higher than Venezuela, higher than Colombia, higher even than Haiti. The violence grew so severe that, following a gangster uprising in January 2024, the government of President Daniel Noboa declared the nation in a state of "internal armed conflict" and launched a military crackdown. That crackdown saw modest initial success, only to be followed by a new wave of even worse violence. The statistics for 2025 are eye-popping. While official homicide data will not be available for some months, projections indicate the murder rate will have reached 50 per 100,000. By comparison, Mexico's murder rate in 2024 was around 19.3. As ACLED's report notes, "Ecuador ranks among the top 10 countries with the most intense violence in the world." The roots of the collapse lie in the fragmentation of Ecuador's criminal landscape. At the height of the 2023 violence, the country was dominated by two armed groups at war with one another — Los Lobos and Los Choneros. But after two years of arrests and police operations, multiple Ecuadorian gangs have shattered, with their remnants turning on each other. After the arrest of their boss Negro Willy, for example, Los Tiguerones splintered, and former comrades began slaughtering one another for control of lucrative trafficking routes. Los Chone Killers likewise broke apart. And with the head of Los Choneros, Fito, recently extradited to the United States, there are fears that group could fragment the same way. In total, there are now thought to be roughly 40 different armed gangs competing for the spoils of Ecuador's cocaine and illegal-mining trades — and all of them are willing to engage in grotesque, almost theatrical violence to come out on top. Hence the overkill of certain gang actions, like shooting up a rival's funeral or hanging headless corpses from bridges. Hence, too, the pervasiveness of the violence. While Ecuador's tourist districts remain relatively safe, the densely populated coastal strip sounds like Miami in the early 1980s. By ACLED's calculation, 71% of the Ecuadorian population has been exposed to at least one violent event — be that witnessing a kidnapping, being near a car bomb, or simply hearing gunshots as someone is cut down one street over. As for the coming year, 2026 is likely to be even worse. The more Ecuador's gangs fracture, the more competition there is, and the greater the incentive for these smaller groups to use extreme violence to get their way. Add in rising instability in neighboring Peru, and it becomes easy to see how Ecuador's internal armed conflict could enter a phase resembling Mexico's Drug War — a phase characterized by growing lawlessness, rising murders, and a creeping sense that nothing can be done. ## Syria Reignites Then there is the risk of a new escalation in Syria. This time last year, the story was the sudden collapse of the Assad dynasty after more than a half-century of continuous rule. Today, Syria is undoubtedly in a better place than it was during its civil war, but calling the nation either stable or unified would be a stretch. Large parts of Syria sit outside the control of the government in Damascus; that government stands accused of complicity in several massacres and mass atrocities targeting Syrian minorities; and the country is shaping up as ground zero for a rising cold conflict between its northern neighbor Turkey and its southern neighbor Israel. Making matters worse, the Islamic State remains active across the country — worming its way into state institutions, gathering strength for a future return to full-scale insurgency, and preparing to break thousands of fighters and loyalists out of vulnerable prison camps. Right now, the greatest potential for escalation lies in the simmering tensions between Damascus and the Kurdish-led autonomous region in Syria's northeast. Protected by the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) and a range of other paramilitary groups, the autonomous region of Rojava has tried to maintain a degree of separation from the Syrian state, despite Damascus's clear intent to compel full reintegration. That reintegration process — along with a critical effort to fuse the SDF with the Syrian military — has stalled in recent months, even though both sides already committed to a compromise plan. And although Damascus and Rojava both appear willing to let negotiations play out, Turkey now seems poised to force the issue. To understand Turkey's role, domestic politics matter. Turkey's own Kurdish paramilitaries are disarming under an amnesty deal, but Ankara regards Syria's Kurdish fighting forces — including the SDF — as armed extensions of those paramilitaries, ones that have not agreed to Turkey's deal. Turkey has intervened directly against Rojava in the past, still holds a large buffer zone on Syrian territory, and has worked tirelessly to prop up pro-Turkish militias contesting Rojava's influence in places like Aleppo and Manbij. In recent weeks, Turkey has ramped up the pressure substantially, insisting that Rojava agree to reintegrate with Syria by the end of 2025. If that does not happen, Turkey has made clear it is willing to go to war. The military picture is ominous. Turkish military convoys are massing in areas under Damascus's control, on Syrian territory. Syrian forces are gathering in the north and in the oil-rich heartland near Deir ez-Zor, suggesting they could readily mount a two-pronged offensive on a "go" order. The SDF has the capacity to resist, but not if Turkey also attacks from across the northern buffer zone — and any such fight would risk losing control of the Islamic State prison camps, where the danger of a breakout would rise exponentially. The United States, long an ally of Syria's Kurds, now appears unlikely to intervene on their behalf. If Turkey holds to its end-of-2025 deadline, this could very well become the first new conflict of 2026, with the potential to destabilize the rest of Syria in the process. ## Gen Z Overthrows More Governments One of the biggest stories of the year has been the Gen Z protests that swept the world from Africa to Asia before landing squarely in Europe, where they recently toppled the Bulgarian government. It is nearly guaranteed that 2026 will bring another tsunami of youth protests. The conditions that made Gen Z angry in 2025 — a lack of opportunities, a spiraling affordability crisis, systems that seem to work for everyone except the young, and elites out of touch with their complaints — will still exist in 2026. So where will the protests hit next? The last attempt to predict this focused on the global south: Madagascar, Kenya, Nigeria, India. This time the lens shifts to the global north, because as Bulgaria proved, no country is safe from the Gen Z wave. First is France. In September, at least 170,000 protesters from the Block Everything movement took to the streets to protest two things: a budget that would significantly reduce public spending, and France's perennial political instability. The government managed to quell the protests, deploying more than 80,000 police officers to do so, but the underlying issues remain unaddressed. The Prime Minister whose government proposed the budget, François Bayrou, was ousted. He was replaced by Sébastien Lecornu, who took office on the 9th of September before resigning a day after appointing his cabinet on the 5th of October — meaning he served less than a month. President Macron then reappointed Lecornu as Prime Minister on the 10th of October, and his government survived a vote of no confidence five days later. Political instability, check. On Friday, the 12th of December, the French government passed a budget supported by Lecornu that suspended an unpopular pension reform. So while the immediate spark for a new wave of protests does not exist, it would take only one unpopular budgetary decision to send French youth back into the streets. Next is Germany, normally the picture of stability, included here for two reasons. First, according to Peter Leibinger, president of the Federation of German Industries (BDI), the German economy is in freefall and the government is not responding decisively enough. The causes are straightforward: high energy costs make it more expensive for manufacturers to produce anything, international demand for German exports is weak in key markets, and American tariffs and the rise of China as an industrial rival are causing endless headaches. Second, the German parliament recently voted to reintroduce voluntary military service for 18-year-olds. Under the new law, all 18-year-olds will receive a questionnaire from January 2026 asking whether they are interested in and willing to join the armed forces. The form is mandatory for men and voluntary for women. Many young Germans oppose the law out of fear it could lead to the reintroduction of conscription, and protests have already erupted in several cities. In Hamburg alone, more than 1,500 people were expected to join. This could become a bigger flashpoint in 2026, especially once the questionnaires go out in January — though it is worth stressing that recruitment at this stage is intended to be voluntary, which may take the edge off. Beyond where the next Gen Z protest will erupt lies the question of what happens in the countries where the youth succeeded in 2025 — specifically Nepal, which heads for an election in March. As Nepal expert Meena Bhatta put it in a piece for The Diplomat, the elections will test whether the political energy unleashed by the youth during the protests can free the country from its past of transactional politics. If Nepal's youth can successfully navigate the elections and win against parties that have spent years building the machinery, loyalty, and patronage networks that win elections, they will prove to young people around the world that it is possible to do more than just protest against unpopular regimes. It is possible to beat them, too. ## The Horn of Africa Could Implode Among people with a passing interest in geopolitics, there are a handful of widely known flashpoints for a future war: Kashmir, where India and Pakistan hold competing claims; the island of Taiwan; the Demilitarized Zone between North and South Korea. But even among those who follow this material closely, one flashpoint is frequently overlooked — the Horn of Africa. Packed with fragile states and bordering others weakened by conflict and insurgency, it is already a source of ongoing instability. Next year it could become something else entirely: the spark for a war that would reverberate not just across Africa, but through the Red Sea, the Middle East, and likely as far afield as Europe. The reasons are too complex to cover fully in one segment, but the basic version is that a series of overlapping and impending conflicts is pushing the region toward crisis. The most worrying involves Ethiopia and Eritrea. Although the two fought alongside one another in the Tigray War, Addis Ababa excluded Asmara from the peace talks that ended the conflict. Since then, Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed has been vocal about restoring his nation's access to the ocean — something most analysts read as a threat to annex parts of Eritrea, given that it was Eritrean independence that robbed Ethiopia of its coastline in the first place. Longtime Eritrean dictator Isaias Afwerki has tried to counter this threat by getting increasingly involved in Ethiopia's internal conflicts. A massive offensive this autumn by the insurgent Fano militias in eastern Amhara is thought to have been possible only with Eritrean backing. But while the Amhara crisis may be Ethiopia's biggest current internal conflict, there are fears a far deadlier one could reignite. The Tigray War, fought between 2020 and 2022 in northern Ethiopia, remains one of the deadliest conflicts of this century. The specifics are extremely complicated, but the relevant point is that the peace agreement kicked the can down the road on a host of key questions — including the fate of Fano-occupied Western Tigray. The failure to resolve those issues led this year to a split in the Tigrayan leadership, with one faction moving closer to Addis Ababa and the other closer to Asmara. Even without a full-blown Ethiopia-Eritrea war, a civil war between Tigrayan factions could become a proxy battle between the two neighbors. Complicating all of this is the ongoing catastrophe in neighboring Sudan, where the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces are fighting the official Sudanese Armed Forces. Because the RSF are backed by the UAE — which also backs Abiy Ahmed in Addis Ababa — Isaias Afwerki has tried to make common cause with the SAF, even visiting the de facto capital of Port Sudan in November. The SAF, who have backers in Egypt and Saudi Arabia, also maintain links to Tigray's regional forces, and might try to intervene if the region falls into civil war. And just in case the picture was not already complex enough, there is Somalia. Last year it briefly looked as though Ethiopia would strike a deal with the unrecognized breakaway state of Somaliland, exchanging recognition for one of its ports. This caused panic in Mogadishu, with Somalia's official government scrambling to forge an alliance with both Eritrea and Egypt to deter the move. While mediation from Turkey eventually killed the proposal, it exposed growing fault lines in the African Horn, with coastal states becoming ever more nervous about Ethiopia's desire to expand. That nervousness is forcing the region into two increasingly hostile blocs: one led by Ethiopia and backed by the UAE, and one led by Eritrea and backed by Egypt and Saudi Arabia. None of this makes a wider regional war inevitable. But the risk is clearly growing, with multiple potential triggers — from a meltdown in Tigray, to a direct confrontation between Addis Ababa and Asmara, to the rising prospect of direct military intervention in Sudan's civil war. 2026 could prove just another year of saber rattling in the region, or it could be the year a widespread East African war finally erupts. ## Myanmar's Civil War Continues Five years after the Myanmar military seized power in 2021, the war between the junta and various rebel groups shows no end in sight. For much of 2025, the story was the military — with China's help — reversing the gains the rebels had made. Beyond leaning on Beijing, the military changed its tactics, introducing conscription and expanding its drone fleet, playing to its strengths and trying to nullify whatever advantages the armed groups had enjoyed. The military's victories arrived at a particularly crucial moment, as Myanmar gears up for elections beginning on the 28th of December that will dominate coverage of the country for the foreseeable future — an election most regional observers believe is nothing more than a sham. The International Commission of Jurists (ICJ), a non-governmental organization of leading judges and lawyers from around the world, believes that should the elections happen, they most likely will not be free, fair, or inclusive. The ICJ points to the amended Political Parties Registration Law, which imposes strenuous membership and financial requirements that effectively block long-established political parties from registering. The junta has also passed several other regulations denying political rights to individuals accused — often without due process — of involvement in "unlawful activities," a catch-all term used to target critics, activists, and members of opposition movements. According to an article in The Conversation by Nicholas Coppel, Australia's former ambassador to Myanmar, citizens who criticize the elections on social media have been sentenced to up to seven years in prison with hard labor. For some offenses, the death penalty applies. So if everyone agrees the elections will be a sham, why is the military pushing ahead? In Coppel's view, the elections are an attempt by the junta to gain legitimacy at home and abroad — a legitimacy it has sought since first seizing power, but which has so far eluded it. When the rebel groups won major victories in 2024, they exposed just how hollow the junta's control actually was. The elections, paired with the recent string of battlefield wins, are meant to reverse that narrative and show that the junta, despite its perceived weakness, remains the country's most dominant ruling faction. That will be a tall order. As Su Mon, ACLED's senior Asia Pacific analyst, noted for the organization, while the military's successes in 2025 were significant, the junta remains in a weakened position compared with where it stood before the rebel advances of 2023 and 2024, and is unable to assert effective control over the areas it has recently retaken. There is also the simple fact that most rebel groups will keep fighting, elections be damned. In Myanmar, then, 2026 is shaping up to be a battle of narratives. For the junta, it is a battle to show the world it can rule the entire country, not just the pockets where its forces are concentrated. For the rebels, it is a battle to show that the victories of 2024 were not a fluke but the beginning of a permanent shift in power that no rigged election can reverse. ## Sudan's War Will Get Even Worse By most measures, Sudan's civil war is already the worst conflict happening anywhere on Earth — deadlier for civilians than Russia's invasion of Ukraine, more chaotic than Myanmar's civil war, and characterized by more starvation and atrocity than Haiti's meltdown. While no one knows how many have been killed, reasonable estimates run as high as 400,000 — a figure calculated before the fall of El-Fasher, where the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces may have slaughtered close to 70,000. This is an apocalyptic conflict, one that makes most wars look like a Sunday picnic. And yet all signs point to 2026 being even more catastrophic. There are many reasons for that pessimism, but the basic one is that the war at this stage is likely unwinnable. The Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) had a spectacular start to the year — recapturing the breadbasket state of Gezira and driving the RSF from the capital, Khartoum — but that success was possible only because the paramilitaries had overstretched themselves. After falling back to their home base of Darfur in the west, the RSF consolidated and captured the last remaining major holdout city of El-Fasher. Now it is the military that finds itself overstretched by its drive into Kordofan, falling back as the RSF once again marches onward. In recent weeks alone, the paramilitaries have captured the strategic oil fields of Heglig — though control was later transferred to neutral forces from South Sudan — taken the SAF base at Babanusa after a long siege, and begun pushing toward the North Kordofan capital of el-Obeid. Cities like Kadugli and Dilling have been placed under siege. But while the RSF is now on the front foot, there is no indication the group has the firepower or stamina to drive back into the central regions and retake Khartoum. That is a problem, because, as analyst Dallia Abdelmoniem told Al Jazeera, RSF leader Hemedti "was never going to be satisfied with just controlling the Darfur region — he wants the whole country." On the other side, the SAF consider the parallel government Hemedti has established in the west to be an affront — one they cannot allow to persist, despite their inability to retake Darfur. So it seems likely the two sides will keep fighting, with Kordofan becoming the main focal point of the bloodshed. Speaking exclusively to WarFronts, senior Africa analyst at ACLED Ladd Serwat noted that violence is unlikely to diminish in 2026 and may even spread to the Northern Region, which has so far been spared the worst of the fighting. With the UN warning that Kordofan may become "another El-Fasher," it appears Sudan's tragedy is set to continue for at least another year. ## South Sudan Could Yet Implode In many ways, South Sudan in 2025 was the dog that didn't bark. As of this analysis, the world's newest country technically remains at peace — the sort of fragile peace in which everyone is tense and paranoid that something awful could happen at any moment, but peace nonetheless. To call this surprising is an understatement. Across the past twelve months, Juba repeatedly seemed on the brink of total collapse. The economy had been battered by a loss of oil exports stemming from the civil war in Sudan. President Kiir was increasingly ailing, purging rivals and allies alike. Ethnic militias like the White Army were seizing whole towns. And, to top it all off, Vice President Riek Machar was put on trial for treason. Given that Machar represents the Nuer ethnicity that fought President Kiir's Dinka group in the civil war between 2013 and 2018 — a conflict defined by ethnic cleansing and massacres — this should have been explosive. As Crisis Group put it, "The trial of South Sudan's First Vice President Riek Machar represents one of the greatest threats to the country's stability since the end of its civil war." And yet, somehow, things just about held together. Even as the country risked being dragged into the civil war in Sudan, the expected fighting never erupted. When WarFronts published its latest update on the situation back in September, it would have been astonishing to learn the country would end the year at peace. And yet it may not be worth celebrating just yet. For all that 2025 proved better than expected for the world's newest country, the conditions for state collapse remain firmly in place. Kiir is elderly and infirm. Soldiers still do not receive regular wages. Pressures from the war in Sudan are still causing cracks; the economy remains a basket case; and more and more elites are being purged. Ethnic tensions are rising, and there is a sense that something, at some point, has to give. Rather than a cause for celebration, it may turn out that 2025 merely postponed the country's crack-up. ## Russia Expands Its War With Ukraine In Eastern Europe, Russia's primary military objective in 2026 should be obvious — barring, of course, a surprise peace deal between Moscow and Kyiv. Assuming no such deal materializes, Russia's focus will remain concentrated mostly on Ukraine until it reaches some kind of resolution there, whether through victory, defeat, or — more likely — a ceasefire arrangement that leaves both nations on edge. But that does not mean Russia's objectives will be limited to its Ukraine invasion, any more than they were in 2025. For one thing, Russia is likely to continue pursuing its hybrid-warfare strategy in Europe, relying on a combination of disinformation, drone surveillance overflights, material sabotage, and at times targeted assassination. Russia's objectives appear straightforward: to probe and analyze NATO defenses and response times, to challenge NATO's resolve and willingness to protect itself, and to sow discord among the alliance's members. Russia tends to probe its adversaries in all directions at once, and while it generally backs down once it meets resistance, it redoubles its efforts wherever it finds an apparent vulnerability. What Russia does across Europe in 2026 will most likely depend on the weaknesses Europe reveals. Then there is the possibility of limited military action by Russia in non-NATO countries — possibly Georgia, possibly Moldova, possibly both. Georgia would be the most likely candidate, already neutered and brought into alignment with Moscow by its pro-Russian government, and now poised to serve as a showpiece for whatever message Russia wants to send. If Russia wants to use Georgia to demonstrate the benevolence and mutual enrichment that supposedly come from an alliance with Moscow, then perhaps Georgia and its elites are about to get a lot richer. If, on the other hand, Russia has been fattening Georgia up for the slaughter — to demonstrate just how powerful it can be when it really wants to capture an entire country — then Georgia's elites may find themselves double-crossed, made an example of for the rest of the world. Moldova would be harder for Russia to attack outright, but could come under threat from disinformation, hybrid-warfare campaigns, or even long-range strikes, especially after Moldova's warnings of Russian interference in its 2025 elections seemed to amount to nothing. Other nations could be on the chopping block too, including Kazakhstan, whose leaders have made clear they view Russia as a long-term threat — though a Russian offensive in Central Asia is far less likely this year. And if Russia and Ukraine do reach a ceasefire, there is a non-zero chance the invasion could conclude, restart, and conclude again, all within the next twelve months. Russia has shown across this recent round of negotiations that it really wants control of the entire Donbas — which would also hand it the rest of Ukraine's fortress belt, the best defensive line left between the front lines and Kyiv. That indicator, along with others from the Kremlin and Western intelligence, suggests that if Russia can get Ukraine to agree to a peace, it probably does not intend for that peace to endure. Instead, the objective would be to rest its troops, refresh its arsenal, and re-invade — betting on the kind of days-long offensive it originally planned for in 2022. But suppose no ceasefire, not even a cynical one, is reached. What happens instead? ## Ukraine's 2026 Looks Bleak According to Orysia Lutsevych, Deputy Director of Chatham House's Russia and Eurasia Programme, a peaceful settlement in Ukraine remains far from reach. In her view, as long as President Putin continues to insist on controlling Ukraine's eastern edge, the American-led negotiations are unlikely to be enough to stop him. Lutsevych is not wrong to be skeptical. Despite the optimistic press conferences and declarations about a peace deal being closer than ever, the fundamentals have not changed. Russia still believes it is winning. Ukraine still cannot accept losing a fifth of its territory. And the Trump administration, for all its deal-making bluster, has not figured out how to square that circle. That means Ukraine will most likely see a continuation of what has unfolded throughout 2025: a grinding, attritional war in which each side exchanges thousands of men for meters of territory. And that is not an exaggeration. According to DW, by December 2025 Russia controlled 19% of Ukraine's territory — only one percentage point more than it controlled at the end of 2022. Yet according to a study by the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), nearly one million Russian soldiers were killed or injured to gain that ground. It is precisely the ratio of mass casualties to minor gains typically associated with the Western Front in World War One. For Ukraine, the situation may be even worse. The country has lost approximately 10 million people — roughly a quarter of its prewar population — mostly through emigration, but also through casualties and plummeting birth rates. Its military, which began the war with volunteers flooding recruitment centers, now sees only 12% of new recruits volunteer. The rest are conscripts, many of them older men. The average Ukrainian infantryman, according to the military outlet War on the Rocks, is 43 years old. So in 2026, if a peace deal cannot be reached — and it looks likely it will not be — Ukraine will continue fighting a war in which survival depends on Western nations maintaining their willingness to fund an indefinite stalemate. Russia, meanwhile, will keep trying to grind forward at massive cost, betting that its larger population and war economy can outlast Ukrainian manpower reserves and Western political commitment. The result will likely be neither dramatic offensives nor decisive battles, but another year of artillery exchanges and drone strikes in which thousands die for villages destined to become forgotten footnotes in history books, while each side hopes the other collapses first. Barring an unexpected change at the top in the Kremlin, things may remain this way for a very long time. ## The Threat of World War Three Finally, no survey of 2026 would be complete without addressing World War Three. As things stand, a true global war appears unlikely for 2026 — though that assessment comes with fingers firmly crossed. As improbable as it is, two major offensives must be acknowledged as remote possibilities: Russia against NATO, and China against Taiwan. In both cases, Western experts have pinned down a likely date for military action around 2027 or 2028, before either the nations of Europe or those of the Indo-Pacific rearm to the point where they could fully deter Russia or China respectively. But rearmament on both sides of the globe is now happening quickly. If Russia, China, or both evaluate that their window of opportunity is closing, that presents a problem. Should Russia and China come to suspect that their window could shut by, say, 2028, will they abandon their wider ambitions? Or will they chase those ambitions in 2026? There is no way to say for certain. What can be said is that the coming year is likely to prove as chaotic and destructive as most of this decade has been so far — and the hope, when it finally comes time to assess 2027, is for a less pessimistic outlook than this one. ## Frequently Asked Questions ### Which frozen conflicts turned hot in 2025, and why do they remain flashpoints? Four stand out. Iran and Israel fought their first major direct military engagement during the twelve-day war last June. India and Pakistan, both nuclear-armed, clashed in a large-scale showdown across April and May. Pakistan and Afghanistan saw skirmishes near the Durand Line escalate into a proper border conflict. And Thailand and Cambodia fought for four days in July, paused, then resumed fighting in early December. All four remain dangerous because each side has a structure of incentives that makes a return to violence acceptable if it serves a broader goal — not because any party is actively seeking war. ### What makes Syria the most likely candidate for the first new conflict of 2026? The flashpoint is the standoff between Damascus and the Kurdish-led region of Rojava, protected by the SDF. Reintegration talks have stalled, and Turkey — which views the SDF as an extension of its own Kurdish paramilitaries — has demanded reintegration by the end of 2025 and signaled willingness to go to war. Turkish military convoys are massing on Syrian territory, Syrian forces are gathering in the north near oil-rich Deir ez-Zor, and the US now appears unlikely to intervene on behalf of the Kurds, raising the risk of a Turkish offensive that could also trigger Islamic State prison-camp breakouts. ### Why is the Horn of Africa hardening into two hostile blocs? The region is splitting between Ethiopia backed by the UAE, and Eritrea backed by Egypt and Saudi Arabia. Abiy Ahmed has been vocal about restoring Ethiopian sea access — widely read as a threat to annex parts of Eritrea — while Eritrea has backed the Fano insurgency to destabilize Ethiopia internally. Somalia panicked over a possible Ethiopia-Somaliland port deal and forged an alliance with Eritrea and Egypt. Sudan's civil war adds further volatility, with the RSF backed by the UAE on one side and the SAF tied to Egypt and Saudi Arabia on the other, potentially pulling the whole region into a wider East African war. ### How much territory has Russia gained in Ukraine, and at what cost? According to DW, Russia controlled 19% of Ukraine's territory by December 2025 — just one percentage point more than at the end of 2022. CSIS estimates nearly one million Russian soldiers were killed or wounded to achieve those marginal gains, a casualty-to-territory ratio reminiscent of the Western Front in World War One. Ukraine, for its part, has lost roughly a quarter of its prewar population through emigration, casualties, and falling birth rates, and only 12% of new recruits now volunteer, with the average infantryman 43 years old. ### How likely is World War Three in 2026? It appears unlikely but not impossible. Western experts generally date the most probable window for a Russian move against NATO or a Chinese move against Taiwan to 2027 or 2028 — before Europe and the Indo-Pacific can rearm enough to deter them. The risk is that rapid rearmament convinces Moscow or Beijing their window is closing sooner, prompting action before they abandon their ambitions. Should Russia and China evaluate that their window is shutting in 2026, the calculus could shift faster than most analysts expect.

Could Iran Become a Failed State? The War's Darkest Endgame

Simon Whistler — Tue, 02 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

How will the Iran war end? At this moment, that is the million-dollar question—or, to be more precise, it is the hundred-dollar-per-barrel question, asked at a time when the world urgently needs an answer. A year from now, it is entirely possible that the Iranian regime could still be in place, more radical than it is today and hell-bent on acquiring a nuclear warhead. Or the regime might be overthrown within twelve months, replaced by a democratically elected government or by the son of Iran's final shah. By then, Iran could fall under the command of a US-friendly, Israel-friendly autocrat installed through a brazen military coup, or be managed by Donald Trump's new Board of Peace. But there is another option lingering in the background, a dark prospect that no leader, in Iran or anywhere else, wants to risk speaking into existence. Spin the clock forward by a year, and there is a real chance that Iran could have devolved into a failed state. Even compared to the rule of the ayatollahs, this is Iran's catastrophic outcome: a solution where nobody wins, everyone suffers, and the future looks closer to the Syrian or Libyan civil wars than to anything remotely resembling reconstruction. It is an Iran where a dying regime tries to control as much territory as it can, where generals of the Revolutionary Guard and commanders within Iranian intelligence choose to live as warlords. It is an Iran where the Kurds, the Balochs, the Arabs, and the Azeris have carved out autonomous states, and where battle-hardened fighters cling to the cities and towns they manage to liberate—a festering hotbed for terrorism, organized crime, splinter factions, and naked self-interest. Worst of all, it is an Iran that everyone can agree is the worst-case scenario—yet one that the very people driving this conflict today might regard as a perfectly acceptable outcome. That uncomfortable gap, between universal dread and quiet incentive, is the subject of this analysis. ## Key Takeaways - A failed Iranian state—divided, chronically unstable, and at war with itself—is widely acknowledged as the worst possible outcome of the current war, yet it may align with the cold strategic incentives of the powers prosecuting it. - The minimum objective the United States and Israel are likely to share is simple: Iran cannot be a threat once the war ends—unable to menace the Strait of Hormuz, the Persian Gulf, Israel, the US, or the wider world. - Iran is not Iraq, Libya, or Syria. It holds the world's seventeenth-largest population, roughly ninety-two million people, the third-largest oil reserves, the second-largest natural gas reserves, and the longest coastline on the Persian Gulf. - A collapse could trigger an exodus of fourteen to thirty million refugees, flood the region with loose weapons and long-range drones, and create an incubator for some of the darkest forms of radicalism. - If Iran does collapse, the likely map resembles Syria at the height of its civil war or Myanmar today: separatist factions, warlord remnants, pro-Western opposition groups, opportunistic neighbors, and jihadist disruptors, none strong enough to conquer the rest. ## The Rationale: Why Anyone Would Want This Start with the obvious question: why would anyone, under any circumstances, want to turn Iran into a failed state? After all, that is plainly the worst possible outcome in a war like this. Nobody wants Iran to become another Syria, or worse yet, another Yemen. The nation leading the offensive against Iran, the United States, is home to more than three hundred million people who have learned the hard way that nation-building in the Middle East is pointless. A failed state in Iran would not even be nation-building—it is one of the few remaining options that is even worse. Iranian state collapse would introduce tremendous instability across the Middle East and Central Asia, drive refugee crises and humanitarian panic, and leave the territory bordering one of the world's most important shipping lanes chronically and dangerously unpredictable. But set aside the global-citizen perspective and adopt a colder, more calculating geo-strategic one. Go fully instrumental: choose a goal, then work out the decisions that would serve that goal before weighing the collateral damage. The two nations leading the charge against Iran are Israel and the United States. What does Israel want out of this conflict? The destruction of the Iranian regime, a permanent end to the Iranian threat to Israel, and, ideally, a transition into the control of an Israel-friendly civilian government. What the United States wants is harder to pin down, largely because America's president and his top brass cannot seem to agree on a straight answer. At a minimum, Washington wants to end Iran's nuclear program and force complete capitulation from the regime. Fudge the details and look at the priorities in broad strokes, and Washington appears mostly aligned with Israeli objectives: if Iran is completely de-fanged for several decades, then great; if the regime is replaced or co-opted by an alternative friendly to the US and Israel, then even better. ## The Minimum Condition: Iran Cannot Be a Threat That leads to a simpler question. What are the minimum conditions the US and Israel are looking to achieve? Distilled to a single sentence, the mission objective both nations are likely to agree on is this: Iran cannot be a threat once this war ends. Iran cannot threaten the Strait of Hormuz, the Persian Gulf, Israel, the United States, or the rest of the world. Washington, Jerusalem, and their allies can argue endlessly about the best way to make that happen. But any outcome where the threat of Iran has been permanently neutralized is fundamentally more acceptable than any outcome where it has not. Hold that thought, and then remember what we are actually talking about: the prospect of an Iranian failed state. No matter how confident Donald Trump, Benjamin Netanyahu, and their closest advisors might be, military campaigns on this scale present a profound quandary. There is no controlling what comes after regime change, especially if the countries involved are unwilling to dedicate immense resources—including the lives of their own citizens deployed abroad—to force a particular result. When the United States envisioned regime change in 2003, it was not picturing modern-day Iraq. When the US ousted Muammar Gaddafi in Libya, the plan was not for Libya to look the way it does now. The same goes for Yemen, Syria, and Afghanistan, among others. ## Why Iran Is Not Iraq In Iran, the stakes are much higher than they were in any of those countries. Iran is home to the world's seventeenth-largest population—bigger than Germany, France, South Korea, or South Africa. Its economy is far more powerful than Iraq's, even under Western sanctions, and many times the size of the economies of Yemen, Libya, or Syria. Iran possesses the world's third-largest reserves of oil, the second-largest reserves of natural gas, and the longest coastline on the critical Persian Gulf. Iran shares land borders with seven other countries and maritime borders with six more. For nearly half a century, it has been led by a regime focused on indoctrinating its people in a fundamentalist, overtly anti-Western ideology. Iran has immense potential and incredible latent economic and geopolitical power—and if those assets fall into the wrong hands, Iran could become a far greater threat to Israel or the US than it is today. So, leaning fully into that cold, calculating persona: what do you do when there is a genuinely potent weapon, and you are not sure you can get your hands on it before your enemies do? Do you roll the dice and accept major risk for major reward? Or do you destroy that weapon, to make sure that if you cannot have it, nobody can? That is the rationale that would, hypothetically, drive the US or Israel to push Iran into failed statehood. Maybe Iran does not become a better place—a free, wealthy, or even safe place—but it also loses the ability to unite, under any leader or government, and pursue goals in any direction. If Iran is divided, rendered chronically unstable and directionless, or even made to go to war with itself, that would constitute one of the greatest human tragedies of the twenty-first century. But it would also turn Iran into an afterthought: a thoroughly manageable threat whose misery is mostly self-contained, and whose fighting factions are too consumed with each other to pose an existential threat to anybody else. ## The Human Cost: Migration, Weapons, and Extremism Pause the thought experiment for a moment and let in some light, to appreciate the gravity of what is being described. If Iran were to devolve into a failed state, catastrophe would almost certainly follow. Consider migration first. During the Syrian Civil War, roughly one-third of the pre-war population fled the country, and a similar proportion fled Libya during its two civil wars. Even in Ukraine, roughly fifteen percent of people have left since the start of Russia's full-scale invasion in 2022. In raw numbers, that meant about six to eight million people leaving Ukraine, a similar number leaving Syria, and about two million making their way out of Libya. Iran is a nation of roughly ninety-two million. If one-third of that population departed, more than thirty million people would stream across Iranian borders into Turkey, Azerbaijan, Afghanistan, Iraq, and beyond. Even if the proportion is closer to Ukraine's, that is an exodus of around fourteen million people, pouring into unstable nations like Iraq or Syria, or into Gulf states that simply lack the infrastructure to receive them. Then there is the weaponry in circulation. Iran is not only a place where, under the right circumstances, a bad actor could get their hands on enriched uranium—it is a land occupied by many hundreds of thousands of soldiers and paramilitaries. Those fighting forces are already organized in a way that lets them fragment easily into smaller, self-contained units outside Tehran's authority. That is before considering the risk that Iran's weapons could be stolen or bought by other groups. Those weapons could be turned against Iranians, but many could also be used in attacks across the region—especially the long-range drones already scattered across Iranian soil. Even granting that any remaining government could not mount a coordinated threat to adversaries abroad, there is a vast distance between that worst case and true peace. The Gulf states cannot accommodate drones intermittently smashing into oil refineries, or striking ships as they pass through the Strait of Hormuz. There are countless other risks—the specter of food and water shortages, the breakdown of the Iranian economy if the fuel and natural gas trade collapses—but one last problem makes the point clearly: extremism. This is already a nation led by a militant theocracy, one that has turned "Death to Israel" and "Death to America" into basic realities of everyday life. Hardliners within that ideology are often the same people with the greatest access to weapons, resources, capital, and vulnerable civilian communities. The Islamic Republic's ideology, dominant as it may be inside Iran, is encircled by a region teeming with Islamic State franchises and other jihadist insurgent groups in practically every direction. And as radicalizing as this war is already likely to be—pushing bitter hardliners into even more extreme stances—the risk grows further if the war ends in state collapse rather than a clear victory or defeat for the ruling regime. The recent civil wars across the Middle East have shown the pattern: many people take to the streets as freedom fighters in the early days, but ideological extremism and battlefield ruthlessness consistently produce brutally effective units that those freedom fighters eventually join. A long, multi-sided internal conflict, in a place like Iran where extreme ideologies are the starting point, has the potential to become an incubator for some exceptionally dark forms of radicalism. ## The Benefits: Cold Incentives for Washington and Jerusalem Nations in the United States or Israel's position do not only have to consider the risks of allowing Iran to descend into failed statehood. They also have to weigh the benefits, to their own interests, that a failed Iranian state could bring. It must be emphasized that neither Washington nor Jerusalem is publicly pursuing an Iranian failed state as a wartime objective—and no American or Israeli leader with any political sense would ever admit to such a thing. This is not an allegation that a failed Iranian state is some hidden goal for either country. The focus here is purely on incentives: are Trump and Netanyahu meaningfully incentivized to pursue state collapse in Tehran, and if so, what do those incentives look like? Many of the potential benefits are geopolitical. For the United States, an Iranian collapse would be a major blow to both China—America's arch-rival across the coming decades—and Russia. Remove the Iranian regime, and Washington strips both Moscow and Beijing of a partner. Turn Iran into a perpetually unstable shadow of a proper country, and the US can force Russia and China to expend resources there, while denying them the chance to work with whatever Iranian state might come after. Given the way the conflict is going, and the Gulf states' interest in ensuring a war like this cannot happen again, the US could even parlay the conflict into a bid to seize control of Iran's energy industry. Washington clearly wants dominion over as much oil as it can grab—just look at America's recent conduct in Venezuela. Israel, meanwhile, can cut the head off the snake once and for all. Iranian proxy forces across the Middle East are weakened but not gone, and any Iranian successor state would probably wield influence with Hezbollah, the Houthis in Yemen, and other non-state partners of the Islamic Republic. Leave Iran's future up for debate, and Israel takes the risk that whatever government comes next could use the Axis of Resistance to advance its own goals—or even carry on the Islamic Republic's mission. But if nobody leads Iran, then nobody can speak for Iran in dealings with the Axis of Resistance, and nobody can direct Iranian resources to prop those proxies up. A failed Iran would pose problems for the rest of the world, but those are problems that could deliver additional benefit to Israel and the US. Israel is well-insulated from any version of Iran that lacks control of its old proxy forces and has no access to ballistic missiles or other long-range warfighting equipment. The US has even less to worry about. While Iranian groups could cause chaos across the Middle East, and especially the Persian Gulf, that chaos could be an opportunity. The Gulf states have just received the wake-up call of a lifetime; they are going to build up their militaries, boost their air defenses, and treat any future version of Iran as a threat. That means Israel has a chance to increase its influence as Iran's arch-rival, the United States has an opportunity to deepen its role as a security guarantor, and both get to sell weapons—lots, and lots, and lots of weapons. Meanwhile, the suffering within Iran stays mostly contained, as the suffering in Syria or Yemen did. ## The Signals: Reading Between the Lines Again, a failed Iranian state is not a known objective for either the US or Israel. But there are subtle signals that both nations might ultimately come around to the idea. For one thing, US and Israeli intelligence are actively coordinating with non-state Iranian groups—the Kurdish population in the northwest and, allegedly, the Baloch population in the southeast. Those are allies that could meaningfully challenge Iranian forces on the ground in some areas, stretching Iran thin and pushing it closer to capitulation. But armed cooperation with Kurdish or Baloch fighting factions would be unthinkable if the US and Israel were genuinely trying to avoid anything that could lead to a failed state. Then there is the notable lack of an endgame. It is not clear what would cause the United States to declare victory and withdraw, and Israel appears focused on continuing the conflict for as long as Washington will tolerate. Mission creep, in operations like these, is a tale as old as the War on Terror. With so little clarity on what a finished mission looks like, there are two ways to reach a failed Iranian state unintentionally. Option one: you bungle your way there, prosecuting an offensive without clear objectives or end conditions, and realize you have destroyed anything resembling a country only once it is too late. Option two: the US and Israel deliberately choose to keep fighting until there is no resistance left—but never get around to planning for the day after. ## The Leaders: Trump, Netanyahu, and the Theories of Power Both Trump and Netanyahu govern through theories of power that would, in principle, suggest they could find a failed state acceptable. Netanyahu's goal is the obliteration of any force that could threaten Israel—and being the prime minister to preside over the destruction of Israel's greatest enemy would be the ultimate accomplishment. Syria, Libya, and other Middle Eastern nations were opponents of Israel before they became failed states, and for Jerusalem, failed statehood in those places has proven quite useful at times. Trump, meanwhile, clearly favors optics over outcomes, a rule he has proven again and again in both foreign affairs and domestic policy. Destruction through American military might equates, in that framework, to strength, security, and a victory for Trump and the MAGA movement. If Iran were reduced to a failed state on par with Yemen or even Somalia, his past behavior suggests he would try to let that failed state disappear into the background. Trump delivers victory, his victory satisfies what he perceives to be the wishes of Americans, and the public's attention shifts elsewhere. Finally, for the career military officers, the defense-intelligence pencil pushers, and everyone else who will have to deal with Iran for decades as administrations come and go, a chronically weakened Iran has its appeal. Failed states have a certain equilibrium to them: they are easy to infiltrate, surveil, and keep tabs on; there are always factions to manipulate or partner with; and when things spiral, the chaos typically shows itself inside that country's own borders first, before it spreads across the globe. If Iran is taken over by ambitious, powerful new leaders, the nation has the economic and military power to become a serious global player, whatever its ambitions. But if Iran in 2029 is the same sort of nation that Syria was in 2019, then more powerful governments can simply monitor the situation and concentrate their attention elsewhere. ## A Necessary Caveat Before turning to what a collapse would actually look like, one point bears repeating. WarFronts genuinely does not want this to happen. An Iranian failed state would be nothing short of complete catastrophe, inflicting endless misery on nearly one hundred million Iranians, and on anyone else close enough, and unlucky enough, to feel its impact. Nor is the suggestion that Trump, Netanyahu, or their inner circles are hell-bent on bringing it about. But the war in Iran is a Middle East intervention by the US and its allies, and if this intervention goes the way the United States is hoping, it will be the first to do so. These kinds of interventions are the place to expect the unexpected, and modern history in the Middle East has shown that instability is, unfortunately, a more likely outcome than an enduring victory by either side. ## The Factions: What a Collapse Would Look Like So a final question: if Iran really did collapse at the end of this conflict, what would that look like? It cannot be answered precisely; it is an outcome defined by instability and unpredictability. But it is possible to describe the factions that would stand a chance at seizing power in their own strongholds. Picture a map of control at the height of the Syrian Civil War, or a map of the situation in Myanmar today: many landholding fighting factions, all with a basic ability to defend themselves, and none with the force to conquer all the others. First come the many Iranian separatist factions that would likely try to secure control in certain areas. Two have already been mentioned: Iran's Kurdish population and its Baloch population. The Kurds are a highly organized, well-motivated faction, with the apparent support of both the United States and Israel, the backing of an entire regional diaspora, and paramilitaries that boast hundreds of thousands of fighters in total. The Balochs, in Iran's southeastern Sistan-Baluchistan region, have fought an insurgency for years on both sides of the Iran-Pakistan border. While Baloch separatists have mostly focused on Pakistan in recent years, they have all the local support and firepower they need to seize control of their homeland while the Iranian state breaks down. Back in the northwest, just south of Iranian Kurdistan, lies the region of Khuzestan, home to a local Arab-majority population that has advocated separatism for over one hundred years. Finally, Iran is home to a large minority of ethnic Azeris, concentrated in the north near the Caspian Sea and in some of Iran's biggest cities. Although they are a minority, Azeris have wielded power and influence in Iranian society for a very long time, and Azeri factions could certainly remain loyal to the regime or some post-collapse remnant. But if the regime falls apart, Azeris have all the firepower and coordination they need to secure a perimeter in the north and lock down their communities. Then there is the high likelihood that even if the Islamic Republic collapsed, its collapse would be incomplete. In the early days of the current conflict, reports suggested Iranian leaders were considering contingency plans to retreat to a rump state—a relatively small portion of the country where they could concentrate enough firepower and soldiers to keep control. That rump state might settle on Azeri-majority territory, around key cities like Tehran, or around critical economic assets the Iranian state could not function without. There is also the risk of warlord factions claiming territory of their own: factions from the Revolutionary Guard or Iranian intelligence that break off into splinter groups. Iranian forces have been preparing to decentralize command and carry out self-contained mini-offensives for decades. Now that those orders have been given, soldiers could very well choose to swear loyalty to their direct commanders in the event of regime collapse. With heavy armor, artillery, thousands of troops and paramilitaries, and entire geographic regions already under their command, it is not hard to see how those warlords could keep control. ## The Opposition, the Interventionists, and the Disruptors Then come the pro-democracy, pro-Western, pro-Shah, and other generally US- or Israel-friendly groups that could become meaningful players in a collapsed Iran. There is precedent for relatively democratic proto-states to take shape in situations like these—just take the Kurdish-led Rojava government in Syria, or Somalia's separatist enclave, Somaliland. But there is also precedent for democracy-oriented groups to fracture, radicalize, and even turn on their own comrades-in-arms, as happened to the Free Syrian Army in the 2010s. In Iran, there appear to be millions of people ready to take up arms against the ayatollahs—just look at Iran's massive protests this January. But those forces are already at a firepower deficit, vastly outgunned by the regime, and prone to major internal strife. Reza Pahlavi, the son of Iran's last shah, seems to draw considerable support within the country. There is also the MEK, the People's Mojahedin Organization of Iran, an exiled group with a long history of assassinations and bombing attacks across Iran. They lack public support inside the country, but as past Middle Eastern civil wars have shown, they have the tactics and the ruthlessness to produce results faster. And that is to say nothing of the many other ways opposition manifests across Iran, outside any support for either Reza Pahlavi or the MEK. Lastly, there are two more categories to consider: the interventionists and the disruptors. The interventionists are the countries surrounding Iran, whose leaders might be interested in carving out buffer zones, acting on long-dormant territorial claims, or simply slicing off a piece of Iran for themselves. Turkey, for example, seized a buffer zone in northern Syria under not-too-distant circumstances in 2019. Azerbaijan's leadership has recently signaled an interest in parts of northern Iran, including a major city. Pakistan, under certain conditions, could welcome the chance to act against Baloch insurgents on the Iranian side of the border. Even the United Arab Emirates lays claim to scattered islands in the Persian Gulf, currently recognized as Iranian territory. Finally, there are the disruptors: jihadist groups like the Islamic State–Khorasan franchise, narcotrafficking syndicates recently pushed out of Syria and other nearby countries, and arms smugglers who would love to get their hands on loose Iranian weaponry. As for how all those groups might interact in a post-regime Iran—it simply cannot be known, and that is the point. If it is allowed to happen, state collapse in Iran would quickly give way to complete chaos, with so many factions looking to carve something out for themselves that unifying the country in any direction would be impossible. There is still time to avoid a failed state in Iran. But if the US and Israel insist on the destruction of the Islamic Republic, then it is on them to figure out what comes after. Nobody wants to see decades of nation-building in Iran, nobody wants a forever war or a US occupation, and for very good reason. But Washington, Jerusalem, and the entire world would be wise to remember: this situation could get a hell of a lot worse than that. ## Frequently Asked Questions ### What is the shared minimum condition the US and Israel are likely to demand? That Iran cannot be a threat once the war ends—unable to menace the Strait of Hormuz, the Persian Gulf, Israel, the United States, or the rest of the world. The two governments can argue over the best method, but any outcome where Iran's threat is permanently neutralized is considered fundamentally more acceptable than any outcome where it is not. ### Why would a failed Iranian state appeal to the powers prosecuting the war? The appeal is strictly about incentives, not stated goals. A divided, directionless Iran loses the ability to unite under any leader and pursue goals in any direction. It becomes a manageable afterthought whose misery is largely self-contained, denies Russia and China a partner, opens the door to Western influence over Iran's energy industry, and creates a lucrative arms market among newly alarmed Gulf states. ### How large could the refugee crisis be if Iran collapsed? Iran has roughly ninety-two million people. If one-third fled, as happened during the Syrian Civil War, more than thirty million would cross into Turkey, Azerbaijan, Afghanistan, Iraq, and beyond. Even at the lower rate seen in Ukraine—about fifteen percent—that is an exodus of around fourteen million people, flowing into already-unstable nations and Gulf states without the infrastructure to receive them. ### Which factions would be positioned to seize power in a collapsed Iran? Separatist groups—Kurds, Balochs, Khuzestan's Arab-majority population, and ethnic Azeris—could secure regional strongholds. A regime remnant could retreat to a rump state. Warlord factions from the Revolutionary Guard or Iranian intelligence could claim territory. Pro-Western and pro-Shah opposition groups, figures like Reza Pahlavi, and the exiled MEK could vie for influence. Neighboring states and jihadist or criminal disruptors round out the picture. ### What signals suggest the US and Israel might ultimately tolerate a collapse? US and Israeli intelligence are reportedly coordinating with non-state Iranian groups, including the Kurds and, allegedly, the Baloch—cooperation that would be unthinkable if a failed state were being carefully avoided. There is also no clear endgame: it is unclear what would prompt a US withdrawal, and Israel appears intent on continuing the conflict for as long as Washington allows. ## Sources 1. https://www.brookings.edu/articles/after-the-strike-the-danger-of-war-in-iran/ 2. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/mar/03/what-next-for-iran-after-the-bombing-four-scenarios 3. https://www.csis.org/analysis/why-decapitation-will-not-solve-united-states-iran-problem 4. https://www.fdd.org/analysis/2026/03/07/separatism-would-hand-the-iranian-regime-a-lifeline/ 5. https://www.foreignaffairs.com/iran/irans-divided-opposition 6. https://warontherocks.com/2026/03/as-war-with-iran-rages-the-axis-of-resistance-is-in-survival-mode/ 7. https://acleddata.com/expert-comment/acled-spokesperson-kurdish-dynamics-irans-western-war-zone 8. https://www.meforum.org/mef-in-the-media/why-tehrans-regional-escalation-may-hurt-the-regime-daniel-pipes-on-india-today 9. https://newlinesinstitute.org/middle-east-center/real-time-analysis-supreme-leader-choice-shows-regime-losing-coherence/ 10. https://www.jurist.org/features/2026/03/01/the-us-israel-war-on-iran-will-not-lead-to-peace-but-even-greater-violence/ 11. https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2026/3/2/us-and-israeli-interests-may-soon-diverge-on-iran 12. https://ecfr.eu/article/a-war-with-no-winners-the-costs-of-us-israeli-aggression-on-iran/ 13. https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cn0z9012291o 14. https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/09/opinion/international-world/iran-supreme-leader-mojtaba-khamenei.html 15. https://theconversation.com/iraq-wars-aftermath-was-a-disaster-for-the-us-the-iran-war-is-headed-in-the-same-direction-277585 16. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/mar/07/chaos-failed-state-iran-israel-war-benjamin-netanyahu 17. https://www.meforum.org/mef-observer/is-iran-heading-to-state-failure 18. https://www.thenation.com/article/world/iran-war-trump-netanyahu-failed-state/ 19. https://www.washingtoninstitute.org/policy-analysis/assessing-us-progress-iran-war 20. https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/usappblog/2026/03/09/us-strikes-may-have-turned-iran-from-a-state-with-latent-nuclear-capability-into-one-with-a-nuclear-grievance/ 21. https://www.wsj.com/world/middle-east/gulf-states-had-a-strategy-of-playing-nice-with-iran-it-failed-8859f84e 22. https://www.foreignaffairs.com/iran/iranian-regimes-existential-crisis-and-what-might-come-after-khamenei-trump 23. https://www.timesofisrael.com/they-wont-specify-it-in-their-war-aims-but-both-israel-and-us-want-iran-regime-change/ 24. https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2026-03-10/us-israel-victory-iran-war 25. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/mar/05/us-israel-war-iran-islamic-republic-theocracy-dictatorship 26. https://www.jpost.com/opinion/article-889172 27. https://www.wsj.com/world/middle-east/netanyahu-finally-got-what-he-wanted-on-iran-by-appealing-to-an-audience-of-one-a0d39c7b 28. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/3/9/what-is-the-us-endgame-in-iran-as-the-war-escalates 29. https://www.foreignaffairs.com/iran/why-escalation-favors-iran 30. https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/israel-ahead-schedule-war-goals-iran-ambassador-france-says-2026-03-10/ 31. https://moderndiplomacy.eu/2026/03/10/israel-says-iran-war-goals-progressing-faster-than-planned/ 32. https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/07/us/politics/iran-war-first-week.html 33. https://www.economist.com/middle-east-and-africa/2026/03/10/americas-war-aims-may-be-diverging-from-israels 34. https://www.latimes.com/politics/story/2026-03-08/what-is-trumps-true-objective-in-iran-war-u-s-targets-provide-clue 35. https://www.politico.com/news/2026/03/06/donald-trump-iran-war-unconditional-surrender-00816361 36. https://www.theatlantic.com/national-security/2026/02/iran-war-trump-us-strikes/686197/ 37. https://nationalinterest.org/blog/middle-east-watch/why-iran-wont-balkanize 38. https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c2k88y1147jo 39. https://understandingwar.org/research/middle-east/iran-update-evening-special-report-march-5-2026/ 40. https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2026/02/24/reza-pahlavi-iran-trump-00793877 41. https://thehill.com/opinion/international/5770705-free-iran-restoration-shah/ 42. https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/09/world/europe/iranians-destruction-bombs-despair.html 43. https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2026/03/01/iran-uprising-trump-khamenei-regime-change-00806179

Could Russia and China Attack America's Allies Together?

Simon Whistler — Tue, 02 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

It is the kind of question defense planners do not like to be asked out loud, because the honest answer is uncomfortable: could Russia and China deliberately coordinate to attack America's allies at the same moment, splitting Washington's attention until it cannot adequately defend either theater? The chance is not high. But it is not zero. And when the scenario in question would draw in six of the world's nine nuclear-armed nations at a bare minimum, a non-zero probability is not a comfort. It is a warning. That warning has been front of mind for global militaries — above all the military of the United States — for years. A significant portion of American defense thinkers have argued that the US force, in its present shape, simply could not sustain major war efforts on two or more fronts simultaneously. Try it, the argument runs, and Washington overextends, left without enough combat power to deter aggression from both directions at once. The thesis is contested, and not narrowly. But it is held by prominent figures, including from America's Heritage Foundation, several of whom have since taken strategically oriented posts in the second Trump administration. This is the analysis behind much of what Washington is currently doing: pressing its allies to rearm, pivoting money toward large-scale procurement, and trying to make itself capable of fighting in parallel rather than fighting alone. The thesis examined here is that the most dangerous moment is not when America is strong, but in the narrowing window before its allies become strong enough to share the load — a window Beijing and Moscow have every incentive to exploit. ## Key Takeaways - A coordinated Russian–Chinese attack on America's allies is judged unlikely but not impossible; such a scenario would involve at least six of the world's nine nuclear-armed states. - Many American defense experts, including voices tied to the Heritage Foundation now serving in the second Trump administration, warn the US military cannot sustain major war on two or more fronts at once. - Washington's push to force European and Indo-Pacific allies to rearm is a direct response to this two-front problem: if allies can fight competently at scale, America can bolster rather than lead in each theater. - China's preference is the long game; the Indo-Pacific's quiet alliance-building is designed to keep it playing that long game indefinitely, which is why those nations refuse to call themselves an "Asian NATO." - In Moldova's late-September election, a heavily funded Kremlin influence campaign failed: the pro-Russian Patriotic Electoral Bloc took just 24.18 percent while the pro-European PAS held a majority of all votes cast. ## The Two-Front Nightmare That Shapes American Strategy Start with the question as it is usually posed: Russia has a decent chance of invading a NATO nation within the next few years. Given the working relationship between Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping, and Kim Jong Un, could such an invasion be paired with a simultaneous move — China against Taiwan, or North Korea against South Korea — designed to split the American ability to respond to either crisis, and to fracture the West as a whole? The unwelcome answer is yes, it could. Not because it is probable, but because the probability cannot honestly be set at zero. That is the entire reason the scenario has consumed so much planning attention. The fear is concrete: if the United States has to battle Russia in Europe while simultaneously confronting China and North Korea in the Pacific — and has to do so essentially by itself — then even a victory would be exceptionally costly. Worse, victory would be far from as certain as Washington would want. This is the structural anxiety that explains a great deal of current US behavior. Under Trump, the United States is trying to offload some of the burdens of collective defense onto partners while funneling money into procurement and military reform. The logic is that a one-superpower, two-theater war is a trap, and the only way out of the trap is to make sure America never has to spring it alone. ## Sharing the Load: Why Washington Is Pushing Allies to Rearm The escape route runs through the allies. If Germany, France, Britain, Poland, Finland, and Italy can fight competently at scale in Europe, and if Japan, South Korea, Australia, Taiwan, and others can rally together in the Indo-Pacific, the strategic picture changes completely. In that world, the United States no longer has to take the lead and operate alone in both theaters at once. Instead it can do the far easier job of bolstering capable allies inside each parallel conflict. That is why Washington's strategic worries translate into pressure — encouragement where possible, coercion where necessary — on its European NATO partners to jack up defense spending, re-arm, and adopt a posture of war-readiness most European states are not currently displaying. The same impulse drives American support for military expansion in South Korea, Taiwan, Japan, and Australia, along with other Indo-Pacific nations that could help hold the line against China. The goal is not abandonment but redistribution. A self-sufficient ally in each theater converts an impossible two-front war for one nation into a manageable set of supported conflicts for a coalition. The unanswered question is whether the allies will build that capability fast enough — and whether America's adversaries will let them. ## The Adversary's Inverse Logic: The Incentive to Act Now Every strand of American strategic logic has a mirror image for the other side, in this case Russia, China, and — mostly as an appendage — North Korea. If the United States is actively shoring up its own military, forcing its allies onto a war footing, and making itself more capable of fighting several conflicts at once, then Moscow and Beijing must assume their respective adversaries will be stronger in a few years than they are today. That assumption puts both into an awkward position, though the pressure is sharper on Moscow than on Beijing. Russia has bought itself short-term strength by pivoting entirely into a war economy, but it is a shadow of the military power the Soviet Union was at its height. It lacks much of the production capacity — especially in sophisticated warfighting equipment — needed to sustain a war against NATO. China is the opposite case: strong and growing stronger, and if its advanced hardware performs as advertised, it could pose a sustained threat to any other Indo-Pacific nation. But even China's calculus has a ceiling. If all those Indo-Pacific nations brought their latent military-industrial might to bear against Beijing together, with the full backing of even a distracted United States, China would face a much harder problem. So if both Russia and China worry — as they probably should — that America and its allies are on a trajectory to grow stronger over time, then both are incentivized to act now, before that transformation is complete. ## Probing NATO and the Critical Window for China This incentive helps explain why Russian attempts to probe and test the NATO alliance have come at an unprecedented rate. If those probes go the way Moscow hopes — if Russia comes to believe it can genuinely challenge NATO or force it to abandon its commitment to collective defense — then China faces a decision of its own. The calculation for Beijing turns on cost and timing. China wants Taiwan, and it would much rather take it expending as little blood and as few lives as possible. But Beijing also understands that taking Taiwan tomorrow will be more costly than taking it today, as the island and its backers grow harder to overcome. Even if America could eventually beat both Russia and China while splitting its attention between them, China's odds of victory are best precisely when Russia is also fighting the United States — and vice versa. The implication is unsettling. Should Russia engage NATO nations, including the US, in a conflict that looked likely to drag out for a while, China might conclude that it had a critical window to strike. The two crises would not need to be planned in lockstep to be mutually reinforcing; each would simply make the other more tempting. ## Manufacturing Chaos: How the Pressure Could Spread The line of thinking extends further still, because a North Korean attack on South Korea is also a live possibility — and that is only the start. The United States currently backs so many nations with so many distinct security guarantees that the most efficient way to break Washington is not a single blow but a flood of simultaneous demands, in more places, all at once. Chaos and confusion are the most valuable assets Russia and China could have, because the goal is not to win any one fight outright but to divide American attention until it frays. The menu of pressure points is long. China and Russia could coordinate with Iran, Yemen's Houthi rebels, or other volatile actors to threaten Saudi Arabia or Qatar, jeopardizing the world's oil supply and forcing Washington to respond. In Europe, Putin and Xi might encourage Hungarian leader Viktor Orban to cause problems, or attempt to cajole Turkish President Erdogan into his own decisive move in the Middle East. In East Asia, China could lean not only on North Korea but on Pakistan, potentially drawing India into the conflict and multiplying the chaos. The list keeps going. Abiy Ahmed in Ethiopia could receive a quiet signal that it is time to pursue his ambitions; Azerbaijan's Ilham Aliyev could be invited to show what he really thinks of a sovereign Armenia. With the clock ticking toward both European and Indo-Pacific rearmament, the danger is that the optimal time for action, from the adversary's point of view, is right now. ## The "Asian NATO" That Must Never Call Itself That This brings us to a question that recurs whenever the Indo-Pacific is discussed: what is the progress on the so-called Asian NATO? Participants openly deny wanting one, yet the web of unilateral and multilateral treaties can make it look inevitable. The key point — and it is a real one — is that for the nations involved, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Australia, the Philippines, Vietnam, and others, it is critically important that they never, under any circumstances, refer to themselves as an Asian NATO. The reason lies in the nature of the adversary each arrangement is built to deter. In Europe, the way collective security is discussed is dictated by Russia, and previously the Soviet Union: brash, highly confident, expansionist states that threaten hostile action, wait to gauge the response, and then proceed if the response does not look frightening enough. Deterring that kind of adversary is like deterring an actual bear — you yell and bang on things to make clear how scary you are. China is a different animal, and so the Indo-Pacific arrangements built to contain it look different too. Beijing reads the world in a fundamentally different way than Moscow does, which means the same loud, demonstrative posture that works against the Russian bear could be actively counterproductive against China. ## Buying Time: The Long Game and the Net to Contain China Beijing excels when it plays the long game, especially under Xi Jinping, and its preference appears to be to keep playing that long game unless forced to move quickly. When China's adversaries strengthen themselves or form new alliances, China adjusts, keeps accumulating power, and waits for better circumstances. America and its allies think in political administrations and fiscal quarters, with strategies that shift to meet the moment; China, by its own apparent logic, thinks in decades and even centuries, and stays focused on its objectives long after its adversaries have been distracted. That difference dictates the strategy. Where NATO is built to scare off the Russian bear through visible, noisy resolve, the alliance-building underway in the Indo-Pacific is aimed at making sure China keeps playing the long game. The objective is not to force China to back down. It is to buy time — and buy time, and buy time — so that Beijing never feels the moment to act aggressively has arrived. Keep convincing China to delay, and it might delay for decades; it might delay forever. This is why the silence matters. The nations of the Indo-Pacific are working quietly, almost invisibly, to weave a net around China's ambitions. Stand up and shout, christen the project the "Asian NATO," and you give the whole game away — you tell Beijing the containment is real and the clock has started. Keep quiet, avoid spooking the thing, and the long-term strategy just might work. ## Moldova: A Kremlin Influence Campaign That Backfired For once, there is also a piece of good news, and it comes from an unlikely place: the former Soviet state of Moldova. A country of 2.3 million people on the periphery of Europe, it is the kind of place most Europeans would until recently have struggled to find on a map. So why would its election matter? The answer is in that phrase, "until recently." In 2022, Moldova became another frontline in Russia's war against the West — one into which the Kremlin has poured staggering resources to keep Chișinău within its orbit. Moldova does not merely sit on the border between NATO member Romania to the west and Ukraine to the east. Since a short 1992 war it has also been partially occupied, with a thin wedge of land declaring itself the unrecognized state of Transnistria, a statelet whose independence is guaranteed by roughly two thousand Russian soldiers. Keeping Moldova from drifting too close to the West has long been in Moscow's interest, and the late-September election was the perfect opportunity to act on it. The conditions favored Moscow. The pro-European ruling party, PAS, had presided over an economic crisis brought on by the war in Ukraine. The Rosa Luxemburg Foundation describes inflation up 60 percent since 2021, soaring living costs, and a third of the population below the absolute poverty line — punishing for a nation already among Europe's poorest. The discontent showed: in an October 2024 referendum on deeper EU integration, the government-backed pro-Europeans squeaked through with a mere 50.35 percent, the pro-Russian-oligarch-backed "No" campaign falling within ten thousand votes of an upset. ## The Full Kremlin Toolkit — and Its Failure That made Moldova fertile ground for a classic Kremlin influence operation. As the Centre for European Policy Studies put it, "Moscow deployed the full toolkit at its disposal: illegal funding, cyberattacks, mass disinformation campaigns, widespread vote-buying practices and even bomb threats on election day – primarily targeting embassies and diaspora voting sites." The violence did not stop at bomb threats: there were arrests of men accused of preparing acts of unrest should PAS win, and the BBC uncovered a Kremlin-linked network paying people to post fake, pro-Russian stories on social media. As election day approached, the fear was that the Kremlin would tip the result to the pro-Russian Patriotic Electoral Bloc. WarFronts had earlier warned of the attempt to rig the vote. So the result came as a genuine surprise. After all that effort — the outright purchase of votes, the bomb threats used to shut down diaspora voting sites — the Patriotic Electoral Bloc won a middling 24.18 percent. PAS took slightly over 50 percent, down from its 52.8 percent in 2021 but still a majority of all votes cast. Far from a close race, it was a blowout for the pro-Europeans. The aftermath was just as deflating for Moscow. Before the votes were even counted, opposition leader Igor Dodon declared victory and called for massive protests outside parliament. In the end, a few dozen pensioners turned up with placards. In a month when Russian drones kept intruding into NATO airspace, it was the good-news story the West needed — and to call it a humiliation for the Kremlin undersells how embarrassing it really was. ## The Bleaker Reading: A Nation Split Into Two Tribes But the story is more nuanced than "the Kremlin lost." While PAS's victory was a major relief, the circumstances around it do not necessarily bode well for Moldova's future, and the campaign rhetoric shows why. As Balkan Insight noted, "Each campaign was marred by alarmist rhetoric, instances of hate speech, and fearmongering from both sides." The opposition claimed a PAS victory would see President Maia Sandu join forces with George Soros and Volodymyr Zelensky to invade Transnistria and drag Moldova into the war. PAS was little better, darkly hinting that an opposition vote could see Moldova occupied by Russian tanks or pulled into the Ukraine war on the Kremlin's side. Then there were the voting controversies. Days before polls opened, five polling stations in Transnistria were summarily closed, forcing residents of the pro-Russian enclave to travel long distances into Moldova to vote — a factor that may have lowered turnout there. These closures stemmed from a very real fear that pro-Russian officials might engage in ballot stuffing, but the overall impression was of President Sandu making it harder for her opponents to vote legally. The overseas vote raised similar concerns: Germany hosted 36 stations for the overwhelmingly pro-EU local diaspora, while a comparable population of Moldovans in Russia had only two, far fewer than the 17 granted in 2021. There is nuance here as well. Around 100,000 Moldovans live in Russia, but the New York Times notes that only six percent of them voted in 2021, far below Western turnout — so seventeen stations for six thousand likely voters would make little sense. Even so, it looked as though Moldovan citizens were being denied the right to vote based on how they were likely to cast it, and that perception is itself the danger. ## Why Even a Win Carries a Warning This is the bleakest part. According to the Centre for European Policy Studies, the Kremlin's main goal may have been to swing the vote, but its secondary aim is to undermine long-term trust in Moldova's democratic process. That can be achieved by buying votes or pushing false narratives — but it can also be achieved simply by pointing to real instances of the ruling party appearing to put its thumb on the scales. None of this is to say PAS was wrong to act as it did. This is not Republicans and Democrats gerrymandering their way to victory. Moldova really is being targeted by a predatory nation more than sixty times its size, one that is not only waging a brutal war of imperial conquest against Moldova's eastern neighbor but is also occupying Moldovan territory. In such circumstances, caution and extraordinary measures are warranted. The flipside is that Moldova's political scene is now split into two major tribes, each viewing the other as an existential threat and each accustomed to framing every single vote in apocalyptic terms. That polarization could cause serious problems down the line. So while it is genuinely good that PAS won so decisively, the September vote was not the end of Moldova's political troubles. With Russia still working to sow division, and with living standards still falling under energy shocks, things from here may only grow more volatile. ## Where the Three Threads Meet Pulled together, these strands describe a single strategic environment. The two-front problem gives Russia and China a shared incentive to move before American allies harden into a coalition that can fight in parallel. The Indo-Pacific's quiet, unnamed alliance-building is a bet that patience and silence can keep China in its long game long enough for that hardening to finish. And Moldova is a reminder that the contest is already being fought — not only with drones over NATO airspace, but with bomb threats, bought votes, and disinformation aimed at the soft target of public trust. The Kremlin's failure in Moldova shows that influence campaigns can be beaten. But the deeper lesson cuts the other way: even a decisive defeat for Moscow left behind a more polarized, more fragile democracy, which is its own kind of victory for an adversary whose secondary aim is corrosion rather than conquest. The window of maximum danger is the one in which allies are not yet strong enough to share the load — and that window is open now. ## Frequently Asked Questions ### How likely is a coordinated Russian and Chinese attack on America's allies? It is judged unlikely but not impossible. The probability is described as not particularly high, yet explicitly not zero — and because the scenario would draw in at least six of the world's nine nuclear-armed nations, those non-zero odds are treated as a very concerning prospect that global militaries, especially the United States military, have studied for years. ### Why do many experts worry the US could not win a two-front war alone? A significant portion of American defense experts have warned for years that the US military, in its current form, could not sustain major war efforts on two or more fronts at once. Forced to fight Russia in Europe and China plus North Korea in the Pacific essentially by itself, Washington would be overextended; even a victory would be exceptionally costly and far from certain. ### Why is the United States pressing its allies to rearm? Because shared capability solves the two-front problem. If European nations such as Germany, France, Britain, Poland, Finland, and Italy can fight competently at scale, and Indo-Pacific nations like Japan, South Korea, Australia, and Taiwan can rally together, the US can focus on bolstering allies in each theater rather than leading alone. This is why Washington pushes partners to raise defense spending and adopt a war-ready posture. ### Why do Indo-Pacific nations refuse to call themselves an "Asian NATO"? Because the strategy against China depends on not provoking it. China prefers to play a long game and waits for favorable circumstances. The Indo-Pacific arrangements aim to keep China playing that long game by quietly buying time. Loudly declaring an "Asian NATO" would signal that containment is real and could prompt Beijing to act, giving away the whole strategy. ### Why is Moldova's pro-European victory still cause for concern? Because the Kremlin's secondary aim is to undermine long-term trust in Moldova's democracy, an aim that survives even a lost election. The campaign featured alarmist rhetoric and fearmongering from both sides, and contested decisions — such as closing Transnistrian polling stations and limiting stations in Russia — created the impression of voters being disenfranchised. The result is a country split into two hostile tribes, leaving its politics fragile and potentially more volatile.

Could the United States Ever Be Invaded? A War-Gaming Analysis

Simon Whistler — Tue, 02 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Imagine a near future in which the entire planet has finally had enough of American power. After decades of unipolar dominance, foreign wars, and economic pressure, every major military on Earth sets aside its rivalries and agrees on a single objective: take America by force and put it back in its place, once and for all. The United Kingdom, China, the European Union, Russia, India, Iran, South Korea, North Korea, and every other armed force on the planet line up in lockstep for the first time in history. It is a deliberately absurd premise, but it frames a serious question. In a hypothetical situation like this, what would actually happen to the United States? Many military analysts consider the country, or at least its forty-eight contiguous states, to be effectively un-invadable, even as the specter of an occupied America haunts the imagination of politicians and ordinary citizens alike. The aim here is to test that claim against the practical realities of moving armies across oceans, seizing coastlines, and holding ground. This analysis works through the feasibility of invading the United States and arrives at a verdict on whether the American eagle could ever truly fall from the sky. The thesis, stated plainly: even granting a unified planet, withholding strategic nuclear weapons, and conceding several US states at the outset, no invading force the world could realistically assemble would be able to overrun and hold the American continent. ## Key Takeaways - The scenario assumes a unified global coalition withholding strategic nuclear weapons, forcing the war to be won by conventional means — landing troops, seizing territory, and holding it. - Geography is the decisive factor: only Mexico and Canada border the US by land, and every other major power must cross thousands of miles of exposed ocean, where American submarines and F-35s can devastate lightly armored transport fleets long before they reach shore. - The United States fields the most robust single military on Earth, including eleven aircraft carriers, nearly a thousand fifth-generation fighters, sixty-four attack and ballistic-missile submarines, and roughly 6,500 main battle tanks — giving it a decisive qualitative edge. - America's gun ownership, millions of military veterans, mountain and desert terrain, and interior highway network make the continental interior ideal for a guerrilla defense backed by advanced hardware. - Across three war-gamed scenarios of escalating difficulty for the invaders, the United States holds the continent every time, though the most favorable scenario for the attackers produces an intensely pyrrhic American victory. ## Setting the Terms: What an Invasion Would Actually Require Before war-gaming anything, one point has to be established clearly. Purely as a technicality, it is possible for the United States to be successfully invaded, at least on some level. One person with a rowboat and a plastic knife obviously could not do it. An army of ten billion well-supplied, futuristic Navy SEAL cyborgs obviously could. A threshold exists somewhere between those extremes, and that is not really up for debate. The genuine question is where that threshold sits, and whether any modern military has a realistic hope of crossing it. To achieve success, the global coalition would have to gain control of the continental United States in full, not merely a piece of it. That means neutralizing American leadership in some fashion, defeating American military power, and, crucially, doing all of this without simply bombarding America with nuclear weapons or triggering a nuclear exchange. If the coalition went nuclear, there would be no America left to invade, and the rest of the world would take catastrophic damage as well. So the scenario rests on a deliberate constraint. The United States is assumed not to launch a nuclear first strike, but to respond proportionally if it is attacked with nuclear weapons. The coalition, in turn, must invade without the use of strategic nuclear weapons, at least until it can neutralize America's ability to fire back. That single rule shapes everything that follows, because it forces the war to be won the hard way, by landing troops, seizing territory, and holding it. ## History Offers Almost No Precedent Foreign powers have attempted or planned to invade the United States before, with varying levels of success, but none of it amounts to a real template. In the War of 1812, Britain pushed hard across the Eastern seaboard, capturing Washington, D.C., and burning down the US Capitol and the Executive Mansion, which today is the White House. A few decades later, the American Civil War saw Union and Confederate armies wage war on each other's claimed soil, culminating in a Union march through the Deep South that leveled several cities. At the end of the nineteenth century, Kaiser Wilhelm II ordered plans drawn up for an Imperial German invasion of the United States. Thousands of soldiers would land on Cape Cod in Massachusetts and march on Boston, while the navy bombarded Manhattan by sea, presumably followed by a march on New York. In the twentieth century, Canada drafted war plans to invade the United States in response to fears about growing American power after World War I, plans that relied on so-called "flying columns," small and highly mobile land units, to seize several cities and the state of Maine. Even Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan understood that attacking the American mainland was implausible without first winning in the European and Pacific theaters, though both weighed strategic bombing and even biological warfare against the US. Japan did land troops on American territory, but only on remote Alaskan islands, far from the mainland. The Cold War's mutually assured destruction meant neither superpower planned a land invasion of the other, and the September 11, 2001 attacks, while devastating on American soil, were nothing like an invasion. ## The Tyranny of Distance History's thin precedent does point to one fundamental and recurring reality: only two countries, Mexico and Canada, share a land border with the United States. The only other large military that could even reach America overland, Brazil's, sits on an entirely separate continent. Every other relevant nation is separated from the US by an ocean. That single fact governs the entire problem. Any amphibious invasion of the United States requires either the immense resources of an oceanic crossing or the cooperation of Mexico or Canada simply to reach the continental US. There is no shortcut around the water. Forces that cannot stage from North or South America must cross thousands of miles of open ocean, exposed the entire way, before they can even begin the fight. The modern coalition does bring twenty-first-century tools that history could never account for, and so does the United States. Both sides would be packing serious firepower. But the geography that frustrated the Kaiser and constrained Imperial Japan has not changed, and it remains the spine of every scenario that follows. To understand whether the coalition can overcome it, the hardware on both sides has to be tallied honestly. ## The Coalition's Arsenal, Counted Honestly Setting aside negligible contributions from small states, the focus belongs on the major hardware the world can bring to bear. Counting active, reserve, and paramilitary forces, the world can field well over sixty million troops across all military branches, though the quality of those troops varies enormously. According to FlightGlobal, the world flies roughly forty thousand military aircraft once the United States is subtracted out. Naval counting methods differ wildly between nations, but it is safe to say the world has at least a few thousand ships of decent quality. According to military consultant Nicholas Drummond, the world's supply of tanks, excluding the US, numbers about 66,000. Raw inventory, however, tells only a small part of the story. A very high proportion of that equipment is out of date or outright obsolete, especially compared to the American arsenal, so the relevant measure is the hardware that would actually matter during an invasion. On the seas, the world outside the US possesses ten aircraft carriers of varying real quality and sixteen helicopter carriers, also of varying quality. Six nations are known or believed to operate ballistic-missile submarines, and the world has well over 300 submarines, though some are far from advanced. In the air, the world holds a large number of Soviet-era and modern heavy-lift aircraft, vital for moving troops and equipment, but only two countries besides the US operate strategic bombers: Russia and China, which together can muster roughly 1,500 long-range bomber craft. Advanced fighters are scarcer, leaning on the roughly 210 Chinese J-20 fifth-generation jets and export versions of the American-made F-35. Factor in fourth-generation fighters and the count climbs to at least several thousand, plus a useful number of attack helicopters. On the ground, modern tanks, heavy artillery, and missile launchers run into the several thousands, but no further. ## The American Military: The Most Robust Single Force on Earth Against that combined arsenal stands the United States, by a wide margin the most robust single military in the world. With over a million uniformed personnel, the US Army and Marines can put hundreds of thousands of soldiers into front-line combat, supported by tens of thousands of rocket artillery pieces, armored vehicles, and self-propelled howitzers, plus roughly 6,500 top-of-the-line main battle tanks. In the sky, the Air Force, Navy, Army, and Marines combine to field over ten thousand aircraft. That includes nearly a thousand fifth-generation fighters split between the F-35 and the F-22, a figure expected to double in the coming years, alongside thousands of less-advanced fighters and attack helicopters. American heavy-lift capacity is formidable, with well over five hundred massive airlifters. The US also operates the most advanced drone fleet on the planet, around sixty advanced strategic bombers, and seventy-four older B-52 bombers. At sea, the Navy sails eleven aircraft carriers, nine helicopter carriers, well over a hundred heavy combat ships, and sixty-four attack and ballistic-missile submarines. Comparing the two sides on paper, the world holds the numerical edge in many categories, but the qualitative gap, especially in stealth aircraft, submarines, and integrated logistics, is enormous. That tension defines the contest. To take it seriously, the strongest arguments for a successful invasion deserve a fair hearing. ## The Case for a Successful Invasion The most basic argument is arithmetic. Line the entire US military up against the rest of the world's combined forces in a single pitched battle, and although both sides would take extreme losses, it is hard to see how the US would avoid being overwhelmed against odds well over thirty-to-one. Nobody is actually proposing one decisive battle, but the point stands that the world, as it exists today, probably does have the raw capability to defeat the US in conventional warfare under the right circumstances. There is also the economic vector. The US conducts hundreds of billions of dollars of trade each year, importing rare metals, semiconductor chips, and other technologies vital to fighting a prolonged war. Cutting those flows would hurt the rest of the world too, but it would leave the United States struggling to prepare for an attack and struggling even harder to repair or replace advanced hardware once it was destroyed. Then there is the strategic vulnerability of Hawaii and Alaska, two American states that could almost certainly be taken with enough force, costing the US massive numbers of personnel along with their ships, aircraft, and bases. The American military also stations large numbers of forces overseas, all of whom could be encircled and likely captured if the entire world turned against them. With those bases and Pacific holdings gone, the US military would be effectively trapped on the mainland, and even America's carriers and stealth warplanes would become too vulnerable to risk offensive operations against Europe or Asia. ## Launch Points, the Power Grid, and Coastal Cities The launch points that make the most sense are America's land borders with Mexico and Canada. If the coalition can establish safe troop-transfer routes to Alaska via the Bering Strait and to South America, potentially as far south as Patagonia to escape the reach of American air raids, it could take its time amassing troops and heavy equipment. The plan would be to march down through Canada and up through Central America before launching a two-pronged assault, with amphibious landings on vulnerable stretches of America's two coasts becoming feasible once enough American power was drawn off to fight the land war. The American power grid is another genuine weakness, one the US Department of Energy itself recognizes as vulnerable to physical attack and cyber-warfare. The grid is segmented into regional distribution systems that are not meaningfully joined together, and any one of them is exposed to attacks on control centers or substations. They are already a frequent target for domestic extremists. American experts have assessed that an electromagnetic pulse, or EMP, detonated over parts of the continental US could conceivably wipe out the electrical grid along with water and wastewater systems, communications, and other critical infrastructure. The likeliest delivery method is a nuclear weapon detonated at high altitude over the central US, but the same effect can be achieved with specialized non-nuclear munitions, sending the country back into the analog age. If the US loses its defenses in the Pacific and abroad, the vast majority of American population centers become vulnerable to aerial, coastal, or land attack. With the world's warships operating freely in international waters, raids on Los Angeles, New York, San Francisco, Miami, Boston, or Washington, D.C., become a far greater risk, capable of inflicting mass casualties if cities cannot be evacuated in time. Seattle, San Diego, and Phoenix sit within reach of a land-based invading force, and with Canadian support, cities normally shielded by the Great Lakes become exposed. Worse, those threats could force American defenders into direct confrontations to protect urban areas rather than retreating to the interior. ## The Question of American Will Finally, there is the American will to fight, where two fair and opposed views are possible. On one hand, the long history of war fatigue among the American public has shown itself repeatedly, in Vietnam, in Iraq, and in Afghanistan. Combine that fatigue with the intense pain of economic isolation, a potential loss of the technology the modern US depends on, and the impact of large-scale civilian casualties, and it is not inconceivable that the American public could choose to capitulate before the bullets run out. On the other hand, there are equally legitimate and forceful arguments for the cultural weight of national defense and resistance to occupation in the American ethos. In this scenario, Americans would not be asked to support a foreign intervention. They would be defending their homes, families, and way of life. The example of Ukraine demonstrates the lengths people will go to in order to protect exactly those things. Which way American resolve would break is genuinely uncertain, and it is one of several pivot points on which the whole campaign turns. ## The Case for a Successful Defense According to most experts, the American defense is more than enough to defeat the individual invading forces of modern adversaries, whether China, Russia, Iran, or all three combined. The calculus shifts when America's own modern allies join the invading force, because the international bases discussed earlier flip from assets into liabilities. Those bases would eventually be overrun, even if they inflicted heavy casualties on the rest of the world first. But then comes the hard part: actually attacking US territory. The issue that begins with Alaska and Hawaii becomes even more acute against the mainland. Any troops participating in an amphibious or land invasion must cross the Atlantic or Pacific to do it, leaving them vulnerable for thousands of miles, exposed to American air power and submarines. Well-armed transport ships are a rare commodity worldwide. China's Yuzhao-class amphibious transports can each ferry sixty armored vehicles and eight hundred troops, but China has only nine of them, plus a few dozen landing ships carrying fewer than a dozen armored vehicles and 350 or fewer troops apiece. That comes from one of the world's best-equipped navies; most navies could not land more than a couple thousand troops if they tried. To make up the deficit, the world would have to requisition civilian vessels, cruise ships and cargo ships, to capture Hawaii, Alaska, or isolated American bases. Those lightly armored ships would be highly vulnerable, especially to air-to-surface missiles launched by American F-35s from dozens of miles away while staying invisible to radar. Cargo planes, meanwhile, are useless for airlifting troops if there is nowhere safe for them to land, so they remain dead weight until ground forces can secure landing zones by other means. ## American Sea Power, Surveillance, and the Mexico Gambit American naval and air power would not merely flay troop transports alive. It could probably destroy a significant number of aircraft carriers, destroyers, and similar vessels before they ever reached Alaska or Hawaii, and inflict even heavier losses as they pressed toward the continent. The strategy of massing troops in South America and marching north has its own fatal flaw: the United States would see it coming. Military buildups on that scale take serious time, as Russia's 2022 buildup on the Ukrainian border demonstrated, and American satellites would be watching the entire process unfold. One striking American counter would be a pre-emptive invasion of Mexico. By claiming that territory first, the US could force a bottleneck in Central America for any approaching land force. American strategic bombers are more than capable of devastating bombing runs over the Central American isthmus, and the likelier outcome is a stalemate for forces coming from the south, especially with American warships operating in the Gulf of Mexico. Unlike almost any other country, even sea-separated states like the United Kingdom or Japan, America can hold out on its own territory and resources almost indefinitely. The continental US does not have everything, but it has more than enough to stabilize its food production, manufacture conventional weapons and military hardware, and protect its heartland. If the power grid stays intact and the world cannot use strategic nuclear weapons, deploying an EMP over the heartland becomes very difficult without first securing the coasts. Otherwise, the full weight of American air defense bears down on any enemy air fleet, which would have to survive a thousand miles of sustained assault before reaching its target, and then maintain reliable supply lines across an entire ocean, an extraordinarily difficult feat. ## The Mainland: Guns, Geography, and Guerrilla Defense Suppose all of that fails. Suppose Hawaii, Alaska, and Mexico fall, and armies mass on America's northern and southern borders. The mainland is a whole other problem. Americans, simply put, like their guns. There are more firearms in America than there are people, and there are 330 million people. Hypothetically, every man, woman, and child could be armed. An untrained civilian can only do so much in a war zone, but that limitation matters far less when there are hundreds of millions of those civilians in the war zone, including millions of military veterans. Mobilized for total war, America would have more than enough of a civilian workforce to sustain a truly massive war effort. Geography compounds the problem for any invader. America spans high mountains, brutal deserts, wide plains, and harsh, below-freezing terrain in the north, a landscape that is genuinely difficult to navigate or survive. Because of the way American rural geography intersects with its politics, those hard-to-cross regions are exactly where well-armed, well-stocked militias would pose the greatest threat, even before the regular military and volunteer fighters arrived to cooperate with them. Urban warfare is no easier. Invading a city is incredibly dangerous for an attacking force in the best of times, and invading somewhere like New York City should be a terrifying proposition. The American interior is also built for rapid troop movement, thanks in large part to Dwight D. Eisenhower's foresight in building the Interstate Highway System, designed in part to keep American troops mobile throughout the country. The Department of Defense has mapped out an even larger Strategic Highway Network. For an invader, the mountains, deserts, and rivers can be lethal on their own, and the rest of the country is hostile ground where, as the grim joke goes, the trees are speaking American. Taken together, these factors make the continental US ideal for guerrilla defense, and a guerrilla defense armed with fifth-generation fighter jets and main battle tanks has clear potential to succeed. ## Why the Interior Wins Wars The continental interior is vital to sustaining a war effort, and not only because troops can pivot rapidly to defend threatened regions. Any prolonged massing of invading troops, and certainly the long battle that would precede the fall of Alaska or Hawaii, would give American civilians ample time to evacuate coastal cities and towns. Once relocated to the heartland, those civilians and the forces protecting them sit at the center of American manufacturing and food production. The terrain itself forms a fortress. The Rocky and Appalachian Mountains shield the western and eastern flanks, while the Great Lakes and the arid southwest add further protection. Even in a worst-case scenario, American forces can operate freely within their coastal cities, leaning on massive armed volunteer support to fight battles of their own choosing. They could sustain a land-and-air counterattack for months before ever needing to fall back to more defensible interior positions. That combination of depth, industry, and armed population is what makes the war-gamed scenarios resolve the way they do. ## Scenario One: The Amphibious Assault In the first scenario, the American coasts are attacked by the forces of the Eastern Hemisphere while forces staged on the American supercontinent attack by land. Hawaii and most remote American bases eventually fall, but only after first serving as forward staging areas for counterattacks that harass the invasion. Many heavy troop transports and major naval vessels are lost in the effort to take Hawaii, taking with them elite troops and some of the best-armored transports, at the cost of several American carriers and dozens of other ships and strategic bombers. Once Hawaii is secured, the amphibious forces have to spread thin along the Eastern and Western seaboards to prevent the US from concentrating overwhelming force at a few beachheads. During this phase, even more troop carriers are lost. Despite attempts to land paratroopers and attack with naval support, very few amphibious assaults manage to establish a beachhead with their limited numbers of soldiers. Those that do are pushed back, and with so many transports destroyed, the coalition has little left to fight at sea or threaten a second invasion. Global naval forces are forced to retreat against the combined onslaught of American naval and air counterattack. On land, the Canadian military pushing from the north and the combined forces of South America pushing up through Mexico are beaten back fairly easily by a mix of active military and volunteer forces. Score one for America. ## Scenario Two: The Overland Push In the second scenario, Alaska falls without much trouble, and South America becomes a viable staging ground for an overland invasion. The US cannot project as much force to defend Hawaii, though submarines keep harassing amphibious landing forces wherever they can. Anticipating an overland push, global navies may establish a blockade or defensive perimeter around the United States. Submarines would be hard to hem in, but surface vessels should be containable. Ground troops mass in Canada and South America and move to attack. The US prevents troop landings in Mexico, relying on Texan and Californian bases and the Gulf of Mexico. To establish a bottleneck, American troops surge into Mexico, pushing the smaller and less-prepared Mexican military back to at least Mexico City, and probably to the edge of Veracruz and Oaxaca, where they can defend a narrow point under two hundred miles wide. The US may also secure Cuba and the Yucatan Peninsula to preserve the Gulf of Mexico as a staging ground for aerial attacks. A combined American naval, air, and ground force holds back the southern invasion while amphibious forces wait, leaving only an overland invasion from Canada as a live possibility. Seattle, parts of New England, and even Chicago could conceivably be lost, but it is unlikely they fall before the US evacuates civilians and organizes a defense. The vast northern border forces attackers to congregate into a few main columns, and once they do, the US counters with guerrilla tactics aided by advanced warfighting equipment. By the time cities like Billings, Minneapolis, or New York come under threat, the invaders are probably beaten back. Should the coalition turn to asymmetric tactics, it would face an asymmetric American force defending its own land with far more robust supply lines and greater manpower. The US goes two wins to zero. ## Scenario Three: The Invader's Best Case In the final scenario, the invading force is handed its best possible chance. The United States fails outright to defend Alaska and Hawaii and is essentially unopposed in moving amphibious assault ships to the East and West Coasts. The Americans hold the Gulf of Mexico, at least at the outset, but enemy troops are allowed to mass at the Mexican and Canadian borders. The United States endures a withering first assault. The major coastal cities are evacuated in time but hit in full force by every troop the world's enemy ships can land. Most cities are defended, but a few on each coast eventually fall, say San Francisco and Portland on the West Coast and Boston, Charleston, and Jacksonville on the East. This lets the coalition begin landing forces at major airports using strategic airlifters, while land forces seize several cities in the American Southwest, most importantly San Diego, at the cost of severe losses. In the south, Phoenix, San Antonio, and Houston fall. Northern New England and roughly eighty to a hundred miles of territory pass under enemy control as forces move south from Canada. By now American forces have taken a proper shellacking. The land west of the Rockies, north of Billings, Montana, south of Albuquerque, and east of the Appalachians is lost, and most major cities in those areas have been destroyed in urban combat. But the cost to the invaders is brutal. A large proportion of the initial attacking force is wiped out, and although the Americans are distracted preparing a second line of defense, there are not enough troops on the southern, eastern, or western fronts to pursue them into the interior. The northern front has been spared most of the urban combat but now stands alone, with many of the world's troop transports and aircraft already lost in the first wave of amphibious landings. This is where the continent's advantage truly comes into play. ## How the Final Scenario Collapses for the Invaders Even if the northern and southern fronts are supplied by land, any force attacking from the coast must sustain supply lines across an entire ocean. Before American submarines even begin harassing those lines, sustaining them is already exceedingly difficult. Reinforcements and supplies cannot arrive quickly enough, and attempts to push into the Rocky or Appalachian Mountains are swiftly beaten back by American guerrilla fighters. American air power, with enough planes in the sky, maintains its claim to the airspace over any territory the US controls. Most US naval power may have been lost, captured, or driven off, but the American submarine fleet remains very much alive. It is here that the first true American counterattack begins, first clearing invaders from the Eastern Seaboard, where they never established a solid foothold, and then from the Pacific coast, while the southern invasion force struggles across harsh desert and bayou terrain. Those that can attack do so in a narrow stretch between Amarillo, Texas, and Shreveport, Louisiana, and are delayed, letting the US pivot most of its forces, including all those battle tanks, to the northern front. Throughout, American manufacturing and agricultural centers keep meeting the military's supply needs. Once the coasts are retaken, the United States pivots to the two remaining fronts and attacks from the flanks, using the Gulf of Mexico against the southern attackers and the Rocky Mountains against the northern one. American submarines, resupplied via the coasts, work to cut off the attackers from resupply by sea, stretching the invaders' logistical lines thinner and thinner along the overland routes. Reinforcements simply cannot arrive from half a world away faster than the American counterattack can defeat them. Despite cataclysmic losses on the American side, the enemy front collapses before the American front does. America goes up three to zero, in the most pyrrhic of pyrrhic victories. ## The Final Verdict None of these realities make an invasion of the United States technically impossible. They make it incredibly difficult under the very best of circumstances. A global invasion has many points of potential failure. If American forces abroad hold out, if Americans hold Hawaii and Alaska, if a land invasion from Mexico or Canada proves infeasible, or if American cities can be evacuated in time, then a successful invasion becomes very, very difficult to achieve. And the United States can force failure at any one of those points, or simply impose delays and protracted military exchanges for as long as it needs to. War-gaming is not prophecy, and these scenarios come from analysts who are explicit that they are not qualified military strategists. Readers are free to game out their own versions of events. But even in the most favorable of favorable conditions, setting aside nuclear weapons and America's strategic allies and conceding several US states, it remains unlikely that any invading force the world could muster would overrun the American continent. Given all of those stubborn real-world constraints, the comforting conclusion is that the theory is unlikely to be tested for a very long time. The American eagle, it seems, is in no danger of falling from the sky. ## Frequently Asked Questions ### Why does the scenario exclude strategic nuclear weapons, and how does that shape everything? A nuclear bombardment would leave no America left to invade and would devastate the rest of the world as well, so the scenario assumes the US will not strike first but will respond proportionally if attacked. This constraint forces the coalition to win by landing troops, seizing territory, and holding it — the hard way — which is exactly what makes the analysis meaningful as a test of conventional military limits. ### Why are amphibious transport ships such a critical bottleneck for the invasion? Landing an army on American shores requires specialized transports, which are extremely scarce worldwide. China's nine Yuzhao-class ships each carry sixty armored vehicles and eight hundred troops, but most navies cannot land more than a couple thousand troops at all. The coalition would have to press civilian cruise and cargo ships into service, and those lightly armored vessels would be highly vulnerable to American F-35s launching air-to-surface missiles from dozens of miles away while staying invisible to radar. ### What makes the American interior so hard to occupy even after coastal cities fall? The Rocky and Appalachian Mountains shield the western and eastern flanks, while deserts, plains, and harsh northern terrain make movement difficult. The Interstate Highway System and the larger Strategic Highway Network allow American forces to pivot rapidly across the continent. There are more firearms in America than its 330 million people, millions of military veterans, and well-stocked rural militias in the regions most difficult to traverse, making occupation costly even for forces that reach the heartland. ### How does the US power grid vulnerability factor into the invasion scenarios? The grid is segmented into poorly connected regional systems exposed to attacks on substations and control centers, and an electromagnetic pulse could theoretically wipe out electricity, water, communications, and other critical infrastructure. However, delivering an EMP over the heartland requires first securing the coasts, and as long as the grid stays intact, America can continue manufacturing weapons and producing food, sustaining a prolonged defense. ### What happens in the most favorable scenario for the invaders, and why does it still fail? In the best-case scenario for the coalition, coastal cities including San Francisco, Boston, and Charleston fall, Phoenix, San Antonio, and Houston are seized from the south, and northern border territories pass under enemy control. But by then, a large proportion of the initial attacking force is destroyed, supply lines stretching across entire oceans become unsustainable under American submarine harassment, and the coalition cannot push reinforcements faster than the American counterattack can defeat them. The coasts are retaken first, then the two remaining fronts are collapsed from the flanks, and the enemy front falls before the American one does. ## Sources - [War of 1812 — Encyclopaedia Britannica](https://www.britannica.com/event/War-of-1812/War) - [The Guardian (Kaiser's invasion plans, 2002)](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2002/may/09/kateconnolly) - [That Time the US Almost Went to War With Canada — Politico](https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2018/06/21/that-time-the-us-almost-went-to-war-with-canada-218881/) - [How Many Fighter Jets Are Flying Across the Globe — The National Interest](https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/how-many-fighter-jets-are-flying-across-globe-198071) - [Aircraft Carriers by Country — World Population Review](https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/aircraft-carriers-by-country) - [Submarines by Country — World Population Review](https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/submarines-by-country) - [Top Trading Partners — US Census Bureau](https://www.census.gov/foreign-trade/statistics/highlights/toppartners.html) - [The Problem With the US Power Grid — Tripwire](https://www.tripwire.com/state-of-security/problem-us-power-grid-its-too-vulnerable-attacks) - [Why US Power Stations Are Vulnerable Targets for Attacks — The Washington Post](https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/energy/why-us-power-stations-are-vulnerable-targets-for-attacks/2022/12/09/cb0f8478-7811-11ed-a199-927b334b939f_story.html) - [Electromagnetic Pulse and Geomagnetic Disturbance — CISA](https://www.cisa.gov/resources-tools/programs/electromagnetic-pulse-and-geomagnetic-disturbance) - [Interstate Highway System — FHWA Public Roads](http://www.fhwa.dot.gov/publications/publicroads/96spring/p96sp2.cfm)

Countdown to War: How Imperial Japan Prepared for the Second World War

Simon Whistler — Tue, 02 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

It is November 1918. Kaiser Wilhelm II has just abdicated his throne; the Ottoman and former Austro-Hungarian empires are quaking in their boots; the Spanish Flu has replaced the Great War as the leading force of misery and death around the world. The Allied Powers of France, the United Kingdom, Italy, the United States, and Japan are beginning the process that will eventually lead to the signing of the Treaty of Versailles, and the establishment of a new, albeit temporary, world order. Although Japan had seen comparatively little action compared to the other nations involved in the war, its support had proven invaluable to the Allies. The spoils — namely a scatter of formerly German territories and the far greater prize of international recognition — sat as a comfortable weight in the Emperor's pocket. But even at treaty negotiations in Paris, even as the dust settled over now-empty battlefields across the globe, the Western powers were already peering over at Imperial Japan, with a distinct suspicion that these new arrivals to the world stage weren't quite done making their impact. And right they were. Japan had already been unafraid to flex its considerable muscle in acquiring that Pacific territory, despite foreign unease about Japanese expansion into China and its clearly greater ambitions. Japan was under no illusions either. The Western nations had made no secret of their feelings on Japanese nationalism, or on the divine right Emperor Hirohito claimed to bring all of Asia together under one central power. The United States, in particular, had already been pushing its luck, and though Japan politely acquiesced to President Wilson's request that it join the League of Nations, it became very clear, very quickly, that the racial equality Japan had hoped for would not be part of this new arrangement. By this point, the writing was already on the wall: between Japan and the West, things were going to go sour. The only questions were just how long that would take, and just how bad it would get. The history that follows is not the story of an "insane" nation lurching toward catastrophe, but of an empire making rational, step-by-step choices to reconcile boundless ambition with crippling material constraints — choices that led, almost inevitably, to Pearl Harbor. ## Key Takeaways - After the Treaty of Versailles, Japan had expanded its territory and gutted Chinese sovereignty, but the Western powers remained suspicious of its ambitions and repeatedly blocked its bid for racial equality at the League of Nations. - The Great War taught Japan that future conflicts would be "total wars" fought across entire societies, and that even a militarily mighty nation — like defeated Germany — could be crushed by the combined weight of the Western powers. - Japan's core, unsolvable problem was resource scarcity: it lacked the oil, iron ore, and material reserves to sustain a long modern war, and expansion to acquire those resources risked triggering the very Western intervention it feared. - A 1927 Cabinet Resources Bureau study, completed under Major General Matsuki Naosuke, concluded by 1931 that Japan's domestic economy alone could not support a modern war effort. - The 1931 seizure of Manchuria — engineered by the Kwantung Army through a false-flag attack — and the puppet state of Manchukuo became the empire's center of heavy industry, while the military steadily eclipsed Japan's civilian government. - A radical economic plan formally approved in 1938 aimed at full self-sufficiency by 1941, dismantling civilian-run sections of government and placing the economy under a national affairs board. - After the United States froze Japanese assets and cut off oil supply in the late summer of 1941, Japan saw no path forward but the "Southward Advance," culminating in the near-simultaneous attacks of December 8, 1941. ## Land of the Rising Sun Japan's Meiji era, lasting from 1868 to roughly the start of the First World War, was a time of incredibly rapid modernization for a nation that, until very recently, had adhered to a feudalistic societal structure with little influence from the outside world. Among other reasons for the change, Japan had learned that it was far outmatched by the power and military abilities of Western nations, making the archipelago a potential target for colonialist ambition. It was this mortal concern, along with a broader desire to achieve equality with Western nations, that guided Japan's transformation and made it into what it was: an all-out cultural, economic, political, and military sprint, one that somehow had to achieve this fundamental need for progress while also preserving the elements of Japanese identity that had been essential for so long. Early attempts by Japan to re-assert its sovereignty, against the Westerners who had already begun to set up shop, were rebuffed. The major Western powers all agreed that they would not negotiate their treaties with Japan until Japan adopted a similar legal structure to their own. After decades of reform during the early Meiji period, Japan was finally able to come to the table and have its demands met. As Japan wrestled for legitimacy among the major global powers of the day, it also turned its attention to neighboring countries, and a rising desire to establish regional hegemony. At this time, China was the other local power to contend with, and both China's and Japan's attention was set first on Korea. After decades of diplomatic wrestling, the Sino-Japanese War of 1894 and 1895 demonstrated Japanese superiority on land and sea. After the war, Japan's conditions for peace were just as harsh as any European power's might have been: massive concessions in territory, tax exemptions, and crippling debt on the shoulders of the Chinese nation. But Japan's conquest, and the resulting arrangements, were not looked on kindly by the Westerners, who strongarmed Japan into ceding some of that territory back to China. Russia even leased out a naval base from China, on what was ostensibly captured Japanese territory. The end of the conflict, then, left Japan with two contrasting takeaways. On the one hand, it had achieved a decisive military victory, one that brought honor and prestige on all of Japan and especially its leaders. On the other, the West was still watching, and Japan was not yet able to shake off its influence. This international order went unquestioned for another decade, until the Russo-Japanese War shook up everything the West thought it knew about the balance of power in Asia. In summary, the war was fought over dueling Russian and Japanese influence in the Korean peninsula and Chinese Manchuria. It saw Japan enter into a defensive pact with the British before attacking the Russians alone and gaining a decisive, albeit costly, victory, from which a treaty mediated by the United States ceded Russian territory and interests to Japan. On the world stage, the impact of this sequence of events cannot be overstated: Japan had honored an alliance with one Western empire, defeated a second in battle, and gained an equal seat at the negotiating table with the third. Although the circumstances of the final peace treaty left Japan responsible for its own war debts, it also granted Japan authoritarian rule over Korea, setting off a wave of expansionism that would persevere through World War I. By the signing of the Treaty of Versailles, Japan had not only dramatically increased its territorial holdings, but gutted Chinese sovereignty in advance of what would almost certainly turn into later conquest. ## Lessons From the Great War In retrospect, the Great War was a moment of reckoning for every world power. War was no longer an opportunity for dukes and archdukes to dance on their ponies and direct infantrymen in neat formations; instead, it would be a business of absolute brutality. Pandora's box had been opened, and it would be impossible to stuff anything back inside with even the slightest hope of a return to the way things were before. For Japan, the war produced one thing above all else: information. Information on the major powers' military and logistical capability; information on the shifts and changes throughout the international order; and information on Japan's current status within that order. Even prior to the Treaty of Versailles, Japanese political leaders were already considering the possibility that total war was the way of the future. If Japan's future wars of expansion were going to be fought under that same, devastating set of rules, then Japan would need to be reorganized, top to bottom, to leverage the archipelago's limited resources and manpower in hopes of victory. Japan had gone out of its way to study the other major powers' own wartime mobilization strategies, and used that knowledge to guide the formation of Japanese society. Though the world, and Japan with it, moved more toward democratic systems of governance in the interwar years, the Japanese approach in particular viewed readiness for total war as a core requirement for the empire's continued survival. In a political system that blurred the lines between military and civilian leadership, Japan began to build itself into nothing less than a total-war state. Another one of Japan's key lessons came from observation of its own shifting position on the world stage. The defeat of Germany in the Great War had been, at least on its face, an event that strengthened Japan, both through the acquisition of territory and the opportunity for Japan to continue its alliances with the winning side of the war. But at the same time, it was a clear indicator to Japan that even with all the budding empire's military might, if the Western powers chose to bore down upon it, Japan wouldn't be able to defend itself. German forces had been better-armed, better-trained, better-supplied, with a culture that had evolved along the lines of European warmaking for centuries, but they had been defeated all the same. So, then, not only did Japan need to shift its thinking toward a future in which total war would be commonplace, but it needed to dramatically upscale its own abilities in order to stand a chance at victory. And finally, the end of the Great War saw Japan's geopolitical standing shift in a number of ways. Japan's closeness to the other Allied powers in the late 1910s had never really been about any Western affinity for Japan, but rather based on unity around a common enemy. With that enemy gone, Japan's attempts in the interwar years to gain racial equality at the League of Nations were consistently unsuccessful. A long history of anti-Asian discrimination informed the United States, France, and the United Kingdom's respective approaches to Japan. All this, not to mention the fresh memory of Japanese victory over the Russians just a decade before, represented a fundamental violation of the race-based world order Western leaders held dear. The League of Nations had already begun to move toward an international culture that would discourage wars of aggression and expansion, and with all Western indications being that the rest of the world wouldn't look kindly on Japan's imperial aspirations, Japan took the hint. While maintaining global diplomatic relations, the Japanese shifted their focus toward the Asian continent for the long term. ## Japan's Core Problem World War I had made Japan aware of one final, central issue, one that would cause innumerable headaches for the empire under the best of circumstances, and might entirely doom it in the worst. Early in the Meiji Restoration, the Imperial military expanded at an unheard-of pace, with little attention paid to rationing resources over time. After all, wars before 1914 were typically brief affairs, especially in East Asia, where Japan could roll over most opposition that tried to stand in its way. The Japanese war machine of that time was built for a quick, basic process: mobilize as much of the military as possible, get to whichever flashpoint needed attention, and win quickly and decisively, so that the broader Japanese economy didn't have to bear the weight of any extended conflict. Now, though, Japan was faced with a deeply unsettling reality: it did not have the excess oil, the excess iron ore, the excess material resources that would sustain any long-term conflict. Even if Japan arranged itself into the perfect total-war society, that would just lead to a lot of sitting around and thinking about how nice it might be to have the materials to build tanks and ships. And even if Japan did come by the necessary resources, that same pan-industrial mobilization capability was the only hope to sustain a war effort on the scale Japan was envisioning. International support might have been a possibility from the other major powers, but they had all made clear their intention to continue subtly interfering with Japanese plans of expansion, and couldn't be trusted to stay out of conflicts even just in Asia, especially with the United States holding the Philippines in its own tight grip. It's worth taking a moment to discuss the United States more directly here, specifically as an expression of the sort of place Japan at this time wished it could be. By the interwar period, America was self-sufficient in terms of energy, material production, food, and just about everything else you could think of, with rare natural resources and specialized machinery. If America were to enter a wartime posture against the world, for years, it would still have been able to sustain itself in almost every material area — and it had gotten this self-sufficiency almost by accident, expanding westward but not finding the bounty beneath its feet until much later. The other major powers, especially France and the United Kingdom, had achieved the same ends via colonial expansion — but while the interwar world order wasn't explicitly against Japan taking new territory, it would certainly be resistant to the kind of conquest that would put Japan alongside the other great powers. The fight to reshape Japan into a peacetime war economy was a slow, protracted affair. For years, the military wrestled with civil leaders over administrative rights, resource allocation, and a wide range of other backdoor political issues. The first major victory for the war planners came in May 1927, when the Cabinet Resources Bureau under Major General Matsuki Naosuke completed a revolutionary study. The Bureau undertook an examination of Japan's capacity for national mobilization, one that took into account every man, woman, and child in the Empire and every single ounce of its economic capacity. The plan expected tight restrictions on labor and direct military oversight of every sector, from healthcare to transportation to agriculture and more. By 1931, the major findings were as clear as they were bleak: Japan's domestic economy alone could not support a modern war effort. The nation had stockpiled oil and manufactured it synthetically; it had begun mining for resources in its recently acquired holdings, most notably the island of Formosa. But it still wasn't enough. The solution? Expansion — but that only brought Japan back to its original problem. If the empire reached outward too quickly, it risked finding itself in a protracted conflict, or worse, incurring the wrath of the Western powers. But if it failed to reach outward at all, its highest aspirations would remain just that. The only path forward lay somewhere in the middle: take just enough territory, to acquire just enough resources, to take a little more territory, to take a few more resources. In that way, the empire could expand — and if it were properly mobilized, it could even expand fairly quickly. But the rate of expansion would remain contingent on the empire's ability to operate within its checks and balances, at least until the time finally came when Japan would be ready to grow outward on its own terms. ## The Growing Empire With Korea, Formosa, and its other scattered holdings accounted for, Japan set its sights on Manchuria as the next target of expansion. Hardline extremists within the Japanese military had already been targeting the region for years, with assassinations and coup plots aimed at replacing the region's civilian government. The Kwantung Army, the major Japanese force present in Manchuria, had been operating outside of the control of Tokyo's civilian government, and several military leaders staged a false-flag attack on a major rail supply line which gave Japan pretext to invade Manchuria. The central government had already been interested in acquiring the territory, but not nearly this soon, as officers within the Kwantung Army had sought to force their leaders' hand. One day after the attack, the city of Mukden was captured by the Kwantung Army at the cost of just two men, and the entire region of Manchuria was overrun within five months. Now governed by the puppet state Manchukuo, the area and its natural resources were firmly in Japanese control. The invasion of Manchuria caused significant issues for Tokyo's leadership, primarily due to the risk of Soviet counteraggression in the northern part of the region. Luckily for Japan, the Soviets didn't seem interested in intervening. Domestically, a new Prime Minister, Inukai Tsuyoshi, took power shortly after the incident and attempted to constrain the military's political power, but this ended with Inukai assassinated within six months. In the aftermath, the military leveraged their power to prevent formation of a new, complete civilian government. However strong the Army and the Navy were in Tokyo, they were stronger on foreign soil, and from this time to the outbreak of World War II, elements in the Japanese military acted with impunity while in the field. This and other internal concerns over the Kwantung Army's actions led to a temporary pause on domestic mobilization, one that lasted until 1933. Japan's movements in China didn't stop there, however. An incident at Shanghai forced China to grant economic leniency to Japan, and the empire moved into the now-former Chinese province of Jehol, also known as Rehe, consolidating territory there. The League of Nations formally attempted to oppose this action, but emboldened by their enhanced capacity for self-defense, Japan left the League in March 1933. Beijing agreed to a truce that left Japan's new gains firmly within its grip, and Manchukuo was developed into the empire's center of heavy industry, led by companies directly under the control of the Japanese military. China wasn't out of the fight just yet, and both via continued skirmishes and economic measures, the worse-equipped nation struggled back against the oncoming Imperial tide. Chinese nationalization of silver in 1935 attempted to force even Manchukuo's banks into compliance with the Chinese government, due to common use of the silver-backed currency yuan, and British overtures suggested that they might be very interested in collaborating with the Chinese to brace against Japan's expansion. But in the end, even this effort backfired on the Chinese, as the Kwantung Army was able to lock down finance within the region and move Manchukuo even further outside China's reach. Japan's run of good fortune nearly came to an end one year later, though, in a one-two punch of domestic turmoil and external threat. To the north, the Soviets had moved massive amounts of troops to the Far East, plus tanks and warplanes that made the Kwantung Army's equipment look obsolete. And in Tokyo, a February coup by military extremists threw the empire into a brief moment of uncertainty. The coup plotters were military hardliners in favor of the full economic mobilization that Japan had been headed toward for decades, and though they were successful in their bid for leadership, it took over a year for them to successfully consolidate their grip over the Empire, while the Russian bear waited nearby and watched for signs of weakness. Again, Japan was at its same impasse: it didn't have the resources it needed, or even the domestic security, to face down the major power that threatened it, and to obtain those tools would require military conquest and expansion that could precipitate major-power involvement. Imperial planners had worked out some steps that might help with the matter — checking the Soviets through closer ties to Germany, surveying more and more of China, and targeting certain much-needed resources. But how this was going to happen, with Japan in yet another scenario that placed their great aspirations just an inch out of reach? ## Threading the Needle: The Plan for Self-Sufficiency Well, there was one way. Japan's continued relationship with China, and by extension Manchukuo, had been profoundly strained, but it was a relationship in which both nations could still exert mutual influence. If Japan were to break this balance, and treat Manchukuo simply as a depot of resources to be mined, the empire could ramp up their production capacity, and then build their military into the kind of deterrent that would make the West think twice before intervening again. It was a hell of a needle to thread, but Japan's War Leadership Section were up to the task. The plan they eventually put forth included more than doubled capacity for iron and steel production, fifteen times the amount of oil output including synthetics, and a pricetag of seven billion yen to get it done. Not only that, but the economy would fall under the direct supervision of a national affairs board, with the goal of full economic self-sufficiency by 1941. The plan was radical, politically dangerous, an immense undertaking, and it called for the dismantling of the remaining civilian-run sections of Japan's government. But after more political upheaval and some slight reductions in scope, the plan was accepted in 1937, and formally approved in 1938. An endeavor to fundamentally reshape Japan was now underway, and with military hardliners now in control of the government, that endeavor wouldn't be stopped. ## National Mobilization On July 7, 1937, Imperial ambitions in China came to a head. For months, China had been preparing its own military for what seemed a more and more inevitable descent into violence, which Japan interpreted as a threat to Japanese interests in Manchukuo and surrounding regions. On the seventh, a skirmish broke out between Japanese and Chinese soldiers at the Marco Polo Bridge, incurring significant losses on both sides. Japan mobilized troops in massive numbers, and both Beijing and the port city of Tianjin fell to the Imperial Army within weeks. The Second Sino-Japanese War was now underway, and Imperial expansion was swift and decisive. Shanghai fell in an intense, three-month battle, and shortly afterward, the Chinese government's seat of power was brutalized in an act that would later become known as the Rape of Nanking. Several other major cities were also captured by the Imperial Army, and massive swathes of territory were secured under Tokyo's control. These events were catastrophic for the people of China, leaving a brutal legacy that still perseveres to this day. In context to Japan's high ambitions, the war with China represented a major mixed bag. On the one hand, military leaders were forced into a conflict much longer than they had hoped, and as such they had to raise a full twenty new divisions for emergency deployment, an expansion of the Army by sixty percent. Even worse, import and export with the West became much more difficult due to international pressure, just as the need for international supply of war material increased. But at the same time, Japan achieved staggering military success, and installed a puppet regime across the captured territories that would oversee the extraction of their material resources. Despite reservations, Japan continued a hardline approach to the Chinese regime even after their massive advances: China could meet the Japanese on the battlefield, or negotiate surrender. At home, Tokyo proposed its national mobilization bill, and the consequences were sweeping. Every subject of the Japanese Empire would be required to register their professional and technical abilities, which they would be compelled to use based on the needs of the government. The Empire was at liberty to seize land and facilities, expand or restrict factories, and reassign civilians at will. Media would be nationalized, and police, schools, and educational materials would be aligned to the goal of promoting a great Japanese empire. The bill came at a moment of high patriotic spirit in Japan, accompanied by an annual budget that more than tripled usual Imperial spending, and the military was able to successfully force it into law. Factions within the Japanese government did attempt to resist the legislation, all too aware of the risk of overextension if Japan continued to fight in China while attempting to be ready for war with the Soviets or other Western powers by 1941. But ultimately, the nationalist fervor of the time, plus the deep hold the military had formed on civil government, was too much to oppose. By this time, Japan was leaning heavily on foreign governments for its imports, especially the United States. That relationship, though, was quickly becoming untenable. During the Japanese attack on Nanking, an American gunboat had been sunk and many of her seamen had been killed. Moreover, the American public and its political leaders were shocked again and again by the Imperial Army's brutal treatment of civilians in China, especially when their aggression was carried out by guns firing American ammunition or by planes built from American steel. From the middle years of the decade until 1940, relations between the United States and Japan slowly devolved, and eventually broke down altogether. ## Filling the Void: The Axis and the Southward Turn But as the Americans left Japan's diplomatic orbit, the Nazis came in to fill the void. In November 1936, Japan had signed the Anti-Comintern Pact with Nazi Germany, in a relationship that would persevere after the Germans exploded through Europe in 1939 and 1940. The Tripartite Pact, also signed in 1940, allied both nations as well as Italy, granting each other a partner in case of a foreign declaration of war. Though the Nazis and the Imperial Japanese were not close allies, their connection helped Japan and the Soviets smooth over their relationship for a critical couple of years, allowing Japan to focus down its continued enemy in China. The Nazi invasion of Poland, though, couldn't have come at a more inconvenient time for Japan. A harsh year of weather in 1939 had contributed to additional, unforeseen resource shortages across the board, and with the inevitable effect of war on the prices of critical materials sourced internationally, Japan was unlikely to be able to fill the production void by paying out of pocket. War elsewhere in the world, though, presented several opportunities. Much like Germany in World War I had been too preoccupied to defend their Far East territories against Japan, so too could the empire seize any number of holdings in the region or even around the world. On top of that, Western powers were likely to lose focus on supporting China's continued resistance. With inflation rising, material reserves falling, and foreign trade minimal, Japan struck southward toward French Indochina, today comprising Cambodia, Laos, and parts of Vietnam. With France having already been overwhelmed by the Nazis, resistance was minimal, and Japan came to an agreement with Vichy France that while the region would remain administratively French, Japan would gain access to the massive material reserves of the territory. This didn't fully offset the ongoing and future trade embargoes coming from the United States, but it was enough to buoy Japan for the times ahead. The empire set its sights on British and Dutch holdings that lay further southward, relying on an eventual Nazi invasion of the British Isles that would, in Japan's best-case scenario, eliminate London's ability to resist Imperial advances. This turn of events would draw American troops to the Atlantic, and maybe, just maybe, Japan could avoid that fight as well. ## The Moment As Japan closed in on the territorial holdings that might finally grant it self-sufficiency, it did so with a relatively clear view of its own abilities. The war in Europe was now in full swing, and if the attack on British and Dutch territories, now called the Southward Advance, did commence, Japan would have to anticipate the worst: war with Britain and the United States. That was a fight Japan could sustain for two years, in its current state, but if it could capture those territories and maintain supply lines to the Japanese mainland, that two-year window could be extended significantly. If the Southward Advance were to happen, though, it would mutually exclude any war with the Soviets. Japan could only withstand them if it had British and American material support — which, of course, the Southward Advance would guarantee as an impossibility. As Japan attempted to find some level of balance in its plans for the Southward Advance, it continued to suffer from the same resource problems that had been a thorn in its side since day one. Production quotas still weren't where they needed to be, and Japanese civilians were bearing as heavy a load as they possibly could. Inter-service bickering between the Army and Navy was a constant in Imperial Japan, and military leaders saw no apparent benefit in putting their differences aside to support Japan's common good. And diplomatically, the United States gave no sign that they would avoid a war on two fronts, while Japan had also caught murmurings that Hitler may be looking to attack the Soviet Union sooner than later. Caught between a rock and a hard place, Imperial leaders decided that if the Southward Advance were going to happen, it would need to happen immediately, and if possible, bloodlessly. This would allow Japan to make their southward gains before the Soviets were brought into conflict, and then swiftly pivot to a north-facing defense and a possible battlefront against the Americans. There were a mess of details to hash out, contingency plans to be put into place, and still the fleeting hope that international matters in the Pacific could still be resolved peacefully. On June 22, the Germans invaded the Soviet Union, causing even more confusion over what would be the right path forward for Japan. But in the late summer of 1941, the Americans put a stop to Japan's internal debate with a freeze on Japanese assets, and a complete cutoff from Japan's supply of American oil. Although the Americans had hoped that this would stop Japan's Southward Advance, they had precisely the opposite effect. With a true lack of any other options to obtain material resources, Japan had only one way forward: defend the north from whatever Soviet advances may come, and take everything they could in the south, no matter what force was necessary. Knowing this would draw the United States and Britain into conflict, Japan began preparations for a pre-emptive strike on both powers by the end of November 1941. It's crucial to note, here, that even as the Japanese military planned invasions into Malaya and the American-held Philippines, their internal doctrines and discussions still seemed to think of these acts as survival measures. In fact, the Japanese Navy Minister referred to them as "final measures for survival and self-defense," to be taken if diplomacy with the West did not achieve any final breakthrough. Internally, Japanese leaders were still fully aware of just how destructive, just how much of an uphill battle a war with the West would be. Japan pushed off its deadline to commence the Southward Advance as long as its inter-service battles and resource depletion would allow. And both Japan and the United States did try to find some sort of nonviolent resolution — but none came. On the eighth of December, 1941, Japan launched a near-simultaneous attack on Pearl Harbor, the Philippines, Guam, Malaya, Thailand, and Hong Kong. From here, the events of the Pacific Theater of World War II would see Japan expand further across Asia and the Pacific, trying desperately to gather the territory and resources it needed to prevent its own war effort from flaming out. Whether or not it ever came close to reaching equilibrium, we won't ever truly know, but in the end, Japan's great gamble would fail. The war would be lost, the empire would fall, and with it, Japan's ambitions of ever reaching true self-sufficiency on its own terms. ## A Rational March to Catastrophe Of all the lessons to be drawn from Japan's preparations for the Second World War, perhaps the most striking is the sheer inevitability of it all. For much of the 1930s and the early 1940s, Japan was regarded as an "insane" nation by the West, one that made irrational choices and pursued unrealistic goals for reasons that Western thinkers couldn't seem to understand. But when observing Japan's core issues and its escalatory response step-by-step, it's much easier to see how one step led to the next, and the next, and the next. No single video — or article — could cover every twist and turn of Japan's internal turmoil in the interwar years. But even in this distillation of history, it's clear that no matter what else Imperial Japan may have been, it wasn't insane. At the close of the first World War, Imperial Japan knew its goal: to be recognized as a self-sufficient, legitimate power on the world stage. It also was acutely aware of the factors opposing it: an internal lack of crucial resources, and an international disdain from Western powers disinterested in welcoming a new, Asian empire into their exclusive club. In the end, it was the attempt to reconcile Japan's goals with its constraints that ultimately led to escalation, first in regional expansion, then diplomatic breakdown, and finally, war with the West. That isn't to diminish the horrific impact of Japanese actions on Asia and the world, before or during the war, or the millions upon millions of lives that were trampled underfoot in the process. But every atrocious act throughout history is, in some way, rational from the perspective of its perpetrators, and so too is Japan's charge toward self-sufficiency. On the eve of Japan's ultimate attack, after both the Army and Navy had agreed that the Southward Advance and the strike on Pearl Harbor were about to commence, a Japanese staffer at Central Headquarters in Tokyo penned the words: "At last, the arrow leaves the bowstring." And for all the carnage of World War II, for all the shock Japan's attack caused the West, the situation was fundamentally different from Japan's perspective. The arrow left the bowstring, yes, but only after it had been drawn back so tightly that the tension could only be resolved in one way. Whether for the best, or for the worst, the arrow would let fly. ## Frequently Asked Questions ### What was Japan's core resource problem, and why did it drive expansion? Japan did not possess the excess oil, iron ore, and material reserves needed to sustain a long modern war. The 1927 Cabinet Resources Bureau study, completed under Major General Matsuki Naosuke, concluded by 1931 that Japan's domestic economy alone could not support a modern war effort, even with stockpiled and synthetically manufactured oil and mining in holdings like Formosa. The only solution was expansion to acquire resources, but expanding too quickly risked Western intervention, while not expanding meant Japan's ambitions would go unrealized—a dilemma with no clean exit. ### How did Japan seize Manchuria, and what role did the Kwantung Army play? Officers within the Kwantung Army, operating outside the control of Tokyo's civilian government, staged a false-flag attack on a major rail supply line, giving Japan a pretext to invade. One day after the attack, the city of Mukden was captured at the cost of just two men, and the entire region was overrun within five months. Manchuria was then governed by the puppet state Manchukuo, developed into the empire's center of heavy industry, and its natural resources were placed firmly under Japanese military control. ### What did Japan's national mobilization bill require of its citizens? Proposed during the Second Sino-Japanese War, the bill required every subject of the Empire to register their professional and technical abilities, which they could be compelled to use as the government dictated. The Empire gained the power to seize land and facilities, expand or restrict factories, and reassign civilians at will. Media was nationalized and schools, police, and educational materials were aligned to promote a great Japanese empire. It passed alongside an annual budget that more than tripled usual Imperial spending. ### Why did the United States freezing Japanese assets make the Southward Advance inevitable? In the late summer of 1941, the United States froze Japanese assets and cut off its oil supply, hoping to stop Japan's expansion. The effect was precisely the opposite: with no other means to obtain material resources, Japan saw the Southward Advance on British and Dutch holdings as the only path forward. Japan estimated it could sustain a war against Britain and the United States for two years in its current state, potentially longer if it captured southern territories and maintained supply lines home—making the near-simultaneous attacks of December 8, 1941, on Pearl Harbor, the Philippines, Guam, Malaya, Thailand, and Hong Kong a calculated, if desperate, gamble. ### Was Imperial Japan acting "insanely," as Western contemporaries believed? No. Though the West viewed Japan as an irrational nation pursuing unrealistic goals, examining its core issues and escalatory responses step-by-step reveals a clear logic. Japan's goal—recognition as a self-sufficient, legitimate world power—collided with its constraints of resource scarcity and Western disdain for Japanese imperial ambitions. The attempt to reconcile these drove escalation from regional expansion to diplomatic breakdown to war. That rationality does not diminish the horrific human cost of Japanese actions, but it shows the path to Pearl Harbor was a deliberate one, not the lurch of an insane nation. ## Sources 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12.

Cuba at Zero Day: How a Fuel Collapse Became Washington's Next Regime-Change Gamble

Simon Whistler — Tue, 02 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Back in March, WarFronts ran an episode arguing that Cuba was next. We didn't miss. The island that long absorbed the world's attention as a Cold War relic has, over the span of a few months, become the front line of a new American pressure campaign — and it is buckling. Yesterday marked Cuba's Independence Day, and Washington was not going to let the date pass without a statement. It marked the occasion by unsealing a criminal indictment of 94-year-old former leader Raúl Castro, charging him over the murder of four civilians killed when the Cuban regime shot down two civilian planes in 1996. If indicting a foreign leader sounds familiar, it should: it is precisely what the administration did before capturing Venezuela's Nicolás Maduro in January. True to form, the White House has abandoned any pretense of subtlety, posting a chart of "neutralized" enemies with Castro's face slotted in beside Maduro and Iran's Ayatollah Khamenei. Meanwhile, the island itself has completely run out of fuel, and the director of the CIA has flown into Havana to meet senior regime officials in person. This is the story of a country that has been squeezed to the point of collapse — and of an American administration that has decided the most dangerous version of that collapse is the one it does not control. The central question is no longer whether the Cuban regime survives, but whether Washington can engineer the way it ends. ## Key Takeaways - On May 13th, Cuban energy minister Vicente de la O Levy announced on state television that the country had exhausted its fuel reserves — the practical arrival of "zero day" after months of intensifying rationing that had reduced much of the island to a pre-electric existence. - The crisis followed America's January capture of Nicolás Maduro in Caracas, which cut off the Venezuelan oil Cuba depended on; Mexico then backed away from sending its own shipments under US pressure. - By April, blackouts were swallowing more than 20 hours of the day as the norm; hospitals lost generator power, and at Havana's main children's heart hospital doctors were rationing care to only patients facing imminent death, with more than 11,000 children on surgical waiting lists by early March. - CIA Director John Ratcliffe flew into a nearly deserted Havana on May 14th, the morning after zero day, presenting a carrot-and-stick offer: $100 million in aid, sanctions relief, and even security guarantees in exchange for fundamental structural reform — or a continued blockade if Cuba refuses. - Washington is courting not President Miguel Díaz-Canel but Raúl "Raulito" Rodríguez Castro, grandson of the former leader, who oversees the GAESA networks dominating the island's economy; the reported transition framework is nicknamed "Cubastroika." - Cuba has called up militias, issued civil-defense guidance, and — according to Axios — acquired roughly 300 Russian and Iranian drones, with internal discussion of targets reportedly including the US base at Guantánamo, though the military balance is starkly lopsided. - The deepest fear in Washington is an uncontrolled collapse that sends a migration wave 150 kilometers across open water toward Florida, dwarfing the Mariel boat lift and landing on an administration built on border security. ## Zero Day Arrives When WarFronts last looked in on Cuba, the island was about a month into the squeeze that followed America's capture of Maduro in January. It already wasn't looking good. The flow of oil from Caracas that the island had long relied on had been cut off entirely, and Mexico had backed away from sending its own shipments under US pressure. The sudden cut to energy imports wreaked havoc on an island dependent on others for most of its oil. The regime began strictly rationing what little it had. Gas stations went dry and stayed dry; what fuel did surface climbed toward forty dollars a gallon. Schools shortened their hours or closed. Without fuel, the generators that kept refrigerators and water pumps running fell silent, food spoiled, and taps stopped. Families were reduced to cooking over firewood and hoarding water in whatever brief window the grid offered when it flickered on. By late April, that window was down to three or four hours on a good day. That rationing is now over — because there is nothing left to ration. On May 13th, Cuban energy minister Vicente de la O Levy went on state television to announce what everyone had anticipated: the country had run out of fuel reserves. For Cubans living through it, "zero hour" came and went almost without notice. Rationing had grown so severe that they were already living, for all practical purposes, in a pre-electric society. The blackouts were not uniform across the island, but nowhere was spared — by April they were already swallowing more than 20 hours of the day as the norm. ## The Hospitals Go Dark Nowhere are the stakes of a fuel-less Cuba clearer than in its hospitals. Facilities across the island had long been running on whatever fuel their generators had left, and with those reserves essentially gone, the consequences are set to accumulate fast. Rations of fuel mean rations of care, and doctors have been triaging to life-and-death cases only. At the William Soler Pediatric Cardiocenter in Havana — the island's main children's heart hospital — doctors have been forced to reserve equipment and supplies for only those patients facing imminent death, turning the rest away. By early March, more than 11,000 children were reportedly on surgical waiting lists across the country, and that number has only grown. That leaves tens of thousands of parents trapped in an agonizing holding pattern, unsure whether their children will receive the treatment they need to survive. Past zero day, even those life-or-death operations grow perilous. When generators cut out in a Cuban hospital — and they were cutting out regularly by May — there is no backup. Nurses in pitch-black wards have been squeezing ventilation bags by hand to keep patients breathing; if they stop, the patient dies. Children undergoing major heart surgery that cannot be postponed are now reliant on the stamina of nurses working in stifling, miserable conditions. One slip, and a family loses a child forever. That image captures what the broader healthcare system has become: nothing functions, and the death toll climbs from conditions a country with electricity would treat without a second thought. ## A Hundred Million Dollars and a Catholic Caveat Washington has not been entirely blind to the suffering. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, himself of Cuban descent, has offered $100 million in humanitarian aid — with the caveat that it must be handled and distributed by the Catholic Church, not the Cuban government. That condition has been the sticking point. After initially signaling openness, Havana has refused to allow distribution through anyone but itself. Even taken at face value, the offer has limits. While $100 million would go a long way at this moment, for an island of ten million people in a crisis this deep it is not transformative. It would fall well short of what is actually required to stabilize the country. The aid is less a solution than a lever — a demonstration of what Washington is willing to provide if the regime moves on its terms, and a measure of how far apart the two sides remain on something as basic as who controls a relief pipeline. ## The Streets Boil Over With the grid gone and care collapsing, the streets have begun to boil over in a way not seen so far in this crisis. The protests on the night of May 13th were the most widespread the capital had seen since 2021, with demonstrations and bonfires erupting across no fewer than twelve municipalities. The regime's response followed a familiar template. It deployed security forces, arrested at least fourteen people, beat demonstrators, and cut the internet to keep the footage from spreading. President Díaz-Canel took to X to address what he acknowledged was a tense situation, chalking it up to what he called a "genocidal energy blockade" by the United States. Whatever one makes of that framing, the regime has made a name for itself knowing how to handle exactly this kind of unrest. After the 2021 protests — the last time the country saw anything close to this scale — more than 1,400 people were arrested and hundreds sentenced to prison terms as long as thirty years, including several under the age of 18. Through that harsh crackdown, the regime had the situation under wraps within days. This time has followed the same script, but in a vastly different situation, against a vastly deeper crisis. And by the next morning, a plane was already on its way to Havana that suggested Washington knew just how bad things had become. ## The Spymaster in Havana On May 14th, the morning after zero day was announced, a US Air Force jet touched down at Havana's José Martí International Airport — a facility all but deserted for months, its jet fuel gone since February. Airlines had long since cut their flights; with no fuel for the return trip, there was no way out. By the time CIA Director John Ratcliffe stepped off the plane, he more or less had the airport to himself. He met senior Cuban officials that day, and the CIA posted a few photographs to X captioned with nothing more than "Havana, Cuba." The optics told the story on their own: the head of American intelligence on Cuban soil, posting about it openly, in a country less than 150 kilometers off the coast of Florida — what devotees of baroque units of measurement call "ninety miles." That proximity is the entire point. If Cuba collapses in a way Washington cannot manage, the consequences do not land in some faraway theater; they wash up on the beaches of Florida. Subsequent reporting filled in the details. Ratcliffe met not with President Díaz-Canel — who has been largely absent from diplomatic backchannels since the start of the year — but with Raúl Rodríguez Castro, known as "Raulito," the grandson of former leader Raúl Castro, alongside the minister of interior and the head of Cuban intelligence. The CIA presented a carrot-and-stick approach: the $100 million offer still stands, and Ratcliffe signaled the US was prepared to engage seriously on the economy — meaning sanctions relief — and even on security guarantees, but only if Cuba committed to fundamental, structural overhaul. If not, the blockade would remain fully in place. Past zero day, that ultimatum lands far closer to home than it would have before. ## The Maduro Template and the Search for an Insider To understand Washington's calculus, you have to go back to January and the capture of Maduro in Caracas. From the American vantage point, it was about as clean as a military operation gets — comparable to the Iran War, only done competently. US forces showed up at Venezuela's equivalent of the White House, blew in the front door, and left with the president. No Americans were killed, and the country's vice president, Delcy Rodríguez, has proven surprisingly cooperative with Washington in the months since. That transition was shaped in no small part by the scars of the Bush-era Iraq war, where ripping out the entire Baathist state left a vacuum that took years — and a civil war — to fill. Put those lessons together and you arrive at the doctrine the Trump administration is now working from: don't tear down the whole apparatus, just find the one insider you can do business with and build the new order around them. In Cuba, that insider already has a name, and it pointedly is not Miguel Díaz-Canel. The man Washington has been quietly courting is Raulito, who has long overseen the GAESA networks that dominate so much of the island's economy. The publicized CIA talks were not his first negotiation either — he has long been the person leading discussions with Secretary Rubio. The reported transition framework, nicknamed "Cubastroika," runs entirely through his circle, around the sitting president and the Party he nominally leads. ## Indicting the Grandfather The Trump administration was not going to let an occasion like Cuban Independence Day pass without a pointed commemoration. Yesterday morning, the Department of Justice unsealed a criminal indictment of Raúl Castro himself — the grandfather, now 94 years old. The charges reach back to February 1996, when Cuban MiG-29s shot down two civilian planes flown by the diaspora group Brothers to the Rescue, killing four. Castro was serving as Minister of Defense at the time, and El Nuevo Herald later reported that he was on tape giving the order to fire. Three of the dead were American citizens; the fourth was a permanent resident. It was a genuine, bipartisan outrage at the time. Congress passed the Helms-Burton Act within days by a wide margin, codifying the embargo into statute and stripping future presidents of the ability to lift it. Clinton signed it almost immediately, and it remains on the books — which is why even Obama's 2014 normalization efforts were so limited. Nobody seriously expects Castro the elder to appear voluntarily in a New York courtroom. There are competing readings of what the indictment is meant to accomplish. It could be a bluff — a way to signal that Washington means business and that the regime needs to get moving on negotiations; that the charge targets Raulito's own grandfather is hardly a coincidence. There is also the domestic angle: it is little secret that Rubio has his eyes on the presidency. If the administration is eyeing a deal that reforms Cuba without radically overhauling it, that will be a hard sell to the ultra-hardliners in Miami — and an indictment of a Castro, with whatever follows, could be a way to shore up support there. ## The Military Question Has an Easy Answer Incentives aside, what matters most in the short term is whether the US actually moves — and as of now, it looks like it very well might. Late last night, Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche left little to the imagination, telling reporters that Castro would show up in the United States "by his own will or by another way." The White House then posted its chart of four figures — Maduro, Khamenei, a recently killed ISIS leader in Africa, and Raúl Castro — under the caption "neutralized." Havana appears to be taking the threat seriously. It has called up its militias, the Civil Defense has issued new guidance on "protection against military aggression," and Díaz-Canel has openly invoked a "Bay of Pigs 2.0" — a reference to the failed 1961 attempt by Cuban diaspora forces, backed by the CIA, to invade and overthrow the Castro regime. According to Axios, Cuba has also acquired roughly 300 Russian and Iranian drones, with internal discussion of targets reportedly including the American base at Guantánamo. Realistically, there is not much Havana could do if Washington moved in. It was Cuba's own elite security forces who were protecting Maduro in January, and the score there ended 32 to 0. Any operation against Cuba would unfold much closer to American turf — 150 kilometers off Florida at the nearest point — and 300 drones is a thin defense. Russia fires more than that at Ukraine on a typical day, and while US drone-interception technology lags well behind Ukraine's, shooting down so small a number is unlikely to make Washington break a sweat. The military question, in other words, has a straightforward answer. The one that does not is what happens the morning after. ## The Cuba That Comes After For all the hardware Washington has assembled in the region — the carrier group, the indictment, the back-channel — none of it solves the most basic problem of what comes next. In Venezuela, opposition parties were repressed but tolerated enough to survive. Hugo Chávez inherited a functioning democracy and hollowed it out from within, which meant the bones of an alternative were still there when his successor was captured. Cuba's history did not work that way. Fidel Castro's 1959 revolution burned down nearly everything from the regime that preceded it and built a system designed to ensure nothing outside of it could ever take root. Sixty-seven years later, nothing has. That is exactly why Washington's talks run not through any dissident or opposition figure but through Raúl Castro's own grandson. For all the discomfort that carries — and it carries a great deal, especially for a Cuban-American exile community that has spent generations demanding an end to the Castro system — Raulito and the GAESA apparatus he effectively controls through family ties may be the only people on the island with both the leverage to force a transition and the institutional weight to keep the country from disintegrating during one. It is, to put it mildly, not the version of regime change anyone who fled the revolution had in mind. The administration does appear to be learning from its approach to Iran. One of the hardest aspects of covering that conflict was the ongoing internet blackout, which left almost no way to get information from Iranian citizens out. In Cuba, as part of the aid package, Washington is offering free Starlink access across the island — though at the time of recording the regime has refused to acknowledge it as part of the offer, and state media went so far as to compare a Starlink antenna to the installation of missile launch bases on Cuban territory. Under Cuban law, possessing the equipment carries three to eight years in jail. ## The Exodus and the Florida Calculus The crisis is compounded by an exodus that has been an on-again, off-again feature of Cuban life since Castro first took power. One of the island's enduring legacies is the sheer number of emigrants it has produced. Between 2022 and 2024 alone, over one million Cubans — roughly ten percent of the entire country — fled as conditions cratered. Many were young; many were educated. For perspective, 12,000 doctors left in a single year. For any nation, that kind of brain drain is a serious problem; on an island of just ten million, it is an all-out crisis. And that was at a time of mere power outages, not a continuous, rolling blackout — which suggests the numbers could skyrocket if things keep falling apart. A genuine collapse — security forces walking off the job, the state unable to provide even the minimum — would send a wave toward Florida that dwarfs anything since the Mariel boat lift: 150 kilometers across open water to the shores of an administration that has built its entire domestic brand on border security. That is precisely what makes the ugly version of this — the Raulito deal — not just the path of least resistance, but the only outcome Washington can actually afford. The pressure campaign Rubio has spent his career championing is, by most indications, working: the regime is out of fuel, out of friends, and visibly running out of time. What maximum pressure cannot do is dictate the way a regime comes apart. A negotiated exit — the kind the Ratcliffe visit was designed to set in motion — gives Washington some say over what follows. A government that simply buckles, the state ceasing to function within days, gives Washington no say at all and drops the consequences directly onto the Florida coast. The same tools capable of producing one outcome are capable of producing the other, and the distance between them is narrower than anyone in Miami might like to think. Which future Cuba actually gets will likely be decided by a handful of top officials in Havana and Washington — and almost no one else is likely to get much of a say. ## Frequently Asked Questions ### What triggered Cuba's fuel collapse? The collapse followed America's capture of Venezuela's Nicolás Maduro in January, which cut off the flow of Venezuelan oil that Cuba had long relied on. Mexico subsequently backed away from sending its own shipments under US pressure. With imports gone, the regime rationed its dwindling reserves until, on May 13th, the energy minister announced on state television that the country had run out entirely. ### How has the fuel crisis affected Cuban hospitals? With generators essentially out of fuel, hospitals have been forced to ration care to life-and-death cases only. At Havana's William Soler Pediatric Cardiocenter, the island's main children's heart hospital, doctors reserve equipment for only those facing imminent death. More than 11,000 children were on surgical waiting lists by early March. When generators fail mid-surgery, there is no backup — nurses have kept patients breathing by squeezing ventilation bags by hand in pitch-black wards. ### Who is the CIA negotiating with, and why not President Díaz-Canel? CIA Director John Ratcliffe flew to Havana on May 14th and met not with President Díaz-Canel but with Raúl "Raulito" Rodríguez Castro, grandson of former leader Raúl Castro, who oversees the GAESA networks dominating Cuba's economy. The reasoning follows a doctrine drawn from Iraq and Venezuela: rather than dismantle the entire state and risk a vacuum, find one insider with the leverage and institutional weight to manage a transition. The reported framework is nicknamed "Cubastroika." ### Why was Raúl Castro indicted, and what are the charges? The Department of Justice unsealed a criminal indictment of the 94-year-old former leader on Cuban Independence Day. The charges stem from February 1996, when Cuban MiG-29s shot down two civilian planes flown by the diaspora group Brothers to the Rescue, killing four — three American citizens and one permanent resident. Castro was Minister of Defense at the time and was reportedly recorded giving the order. The indictment is read as both a pressure tactic against Raulito's circle and a way for Secretary Rubio to shore up support among Miami hardliners. ### Why does Washington fear an uncontrolled Cuban collapse more than a managed one? An uncontrolled collapse — security forces walking off the job, the state ceasing to function — would send a migration wave toward Florida that dwarfs anything since the Mariel boat lift, arriving on the shores of an administration whose brand is built on border security. Between 2022 and 2024, over one million Cubans — about ten percent of the population — already fled under mere power outages. A negotiated transition through Raulito, however distasteful to the exile community, is the only outcome Washington can afford to manage. ## Sources 1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tKKQXt-XwNA 2. https://www.cibercuba.com/noticias/2026-05-20-u1-e199370-s27061-nid329801-eeuu-cuba-negocian-ayuda-100-millones-dolares-plena 3. https://www.cibercuba.com/noticias/2026-05-20-u1-e208933-s27061-nid329830-quienes-son-otros-cinco-militares-acusados-junto 4. https://voz.us/es/mundo/260520/35876/marco-rubio-lanza-mensaje-directo-cuba-esto-revolucion-cleptocracia.html 5. https://www.miamiherald.com/news/nation-world/world/americas/cuba/article290249799.html 6. https://fortune.com/2026/02/20/cuba-nearing-tipping-point-us-weaponizes-venezuelan-oil/ 7. https://www.usnews.com/news/top-news/articles/2026-05-15/cuba-hikes-gasoline-and-diesel-prices-but-filling-stations-remain-shut 8. https://www.cibercuba.com/noticias/2026-05-14-u1-e135253-s27061-nid329283-cuba-acepta-ayuda-millonaria-eeuu-guarda-silencio 9. https://www.cubaheadlines.com/articles/328067 10. https://www.aljazeera.com/economy/2026/2/8/from-blackouts-to-food-shortages-how-us-blockade-is-crippling-life-in-cuba 11. https://newlinesmag.com/reportage/amid-us-pressure-and-a-deepening-crisis-cubans-are-braced-for-change/ 12. https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20260326-cuban-children-s-heart-hospital-makes-tough-choices-amid-us-blockade 13. https://www.sinardaily.my/article/734930/focus/world/cuban-childrens-heart-hospital-makes-tough-choices-amid-us-blockade 14. https://news.un.org/en/story/2026/05/1167524 15. https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/5870984-marco-rubio-cuba-us-humanitarian-aid/ 16. https://www.cubaheadlines.com/articles/329243 17. https://www.cibercuba.com/noticias/2026-05-15-u1-e197721-s27061-nid329309-embajada-eeuu-emite-alerta-seguridad-cuba-apagones 18. https://www.dailysabah.com/world/americas/cuba-slams-us-for-genocidal-blockade-amid-energy-shortages 19. https://www.infobae.com/en/2022/03/17/prison-sentences-of-6-to-30-years-for-128-july-11-protesters-in-cuba/ 20. https://2021-2025.state.gov/the-harsh-sentencing-of-human-rights-defenders-in-cuba 21. https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2026/05/15/cia-director-travels-cuba-fuel-reserves-hit-zero/ 22. https://www.aljazeera.com/amp/economy/2026/2/9/air-canada-suspends-flights-to-cuba-due-to-fuel-shortage 23. https://www.wsj.com/world/americas/cia-director-visits-havana-as-fuel-runs-out-in-cuba-f3ac4286 24. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/castro-family-is-still-central-to-cubas-leadership/ 25. https://www.axios.com/2026/02/18/marco-rubio-cuba-secret-talks 26. https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/united-states-unseals-superseding-indictment-charging-raul-castro-and-five-castro-regime-co 27. https://www.univision.com/local/miami-wltv/audio-avionetas-hermanos-rescata-raul-castro 28. https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2026/05/20/acting_ag_blanche_raul_castro_will_show_up_here_by_his_own_will_or_by_another_way.html 29. https://www.cnn.com/2026/05/16/americas/cubans-prepare-for-us-invasion-latam-intl 30. https://www.cnn.com/2026/04/16/americas/cuba-president-us-bay-of-pigs-invasion-anniversary-latam-intl 31. https://www.axios.com/2026/05/17/us-military-drones-cuba 32. https://www.cnbc.com/2026/01/05/cuba-says-32-citizens-killed-in-us-raid-to-arrest-venezuelas-maduro.html

Cuba Is Next: Inside Washington's Pressure Campaign to Topple Havana

Simon Whistler — Tue, 02 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

In a year that just keeps producing crises, the war in the Middle East has dominated the headlines—but in its shadow, a quieter campaign has been building toward what is shaping up to be the next domino: an American operation against Cuba. President Donald Trump has described what might be coming for Havana as a "friendly takeover," and his administration is laying the groundwork for it methodically. The effective siege Washington has imposed since January is starting to bite in ways that are difficult to overstate. February 2026 was the first month in over a decade in which the island received zero oil imports from any source—not less than usual, not a reduced trickle, but nothing at all. Conditions have reached a point where planes cannot land in Cuba because there is not enough fuel to get them airborne again, and hospitals have indefinitely suspended virtually every non-life-threatening procedure. Yet the fall of the regime in Havana has been unsuccessfully predicted for more than half a century. With the United States preoccupied by the largest military operation it has run since the 2003 invasion of Iraq, the obvious questions are what this pressure campaign really means for the island—and whether Cuba will truly become Trump's next military target. The answer, on current evidence, is that Washington believes it can break the Cuban government without an invasion at all—by starving the regime of fuel, dollars, and escape routes until it either negotiates its own exit or is forced out from below. ## Key Takeaways - February 2026 was the first month in over a decade in which Cuba received zero oil imports from any source, leaving the national grid running at roughly half capacity on its best days. - Executive Order 14380, issued on January 29th, authorized tariffs on all imports from any country that directly or indirectly supplies oil to Cuba—pressure that pushed Mexico, the island's largest supplier, to halt crude shipments. - Washington's strategy is conspicuously non-military: officials are betting that the regime's legitimacy is rotting faster than it can patch the holes, making patience far cheaper than an invasion. - Backchannel talks—dubbed "Cubastroika"—have reportedly explored loosening sanctions in exchange for a negotiated political exit, with Secretary of State Marco Rubio's counterpart being Raúl Castro's grandson. - The regime's survival now hinges on whether its security forces stay cohesive—the same reserves that fund the officer corps are the reserves approaching depletion. ## The Siege Tightens Cuba entered this year already in rough shape: rolling blackouts were a daily fixture of life, the economy was in shambles, and the grid had suffered multiple nationwide collapses over the previous year that the government barely managed to patch back together each time. The turning point came with the arrest of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, which severed Havana's energy lifeline in Caracas. What followed in the months since was an even more expansive campaign to cut off every dollar, every barrel, and every escape route the regime had left. The cutoff of Venezuelan oil turned out to be only the beginning. An island that had spent years scraping by suddenly found its largest remaining supply lines targeted one after another, in a sequence designed to leave no alternative standing. The result is a country running out of nearly everything at once—fuel, hard currency, and food simultaneously. That convergence raises the central question of the entire operation: what, exactly, is Washington's goal? ## Mexico, Oil, and Executive Order 14380 One development that had largely gone unnoticed was that Mexico overtook Venezuela as Cuba's largest oil supplier over the past year. In the immediate aftermath of the Maduro operation, Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum initially committed to honoring existing contracts—not increasing them, but delivering what had already been signed—framing the issue as both a sovereign and humanitarian matter. To her credit, one tanker did arrive in Havana in January. It was still a fraction of what the island actually needed, and even that would not last. On January 29th, the Trump administration issued Executive Order 14380, declaring a national emergency that empowered the president to impose tariffs on any country that "directly or indirectly" sells or provides oil to Cuba. The critical detail was the scope: the order authorized additional duties on all imports from offending countries, not just energy products. For Mexico, that meant continued shipments to Havana risked triggering penalties across the entire USMCA trade relationship almost immediately. Sheinbaum acknowledged shortly afterward that deliveries were "currently halted," describing it as a sovereign decision amid "fluctuations"—but the timing left little mystery about what was really behind the move. Mexico pivoted to humanitarian aid only, shipping food and medicine while zero crude moved to the island. ## Choking the Last Channels Havana is not entirely isolated on the world stage. Russia has made sporadic attempts to run tankers through, but US threats against third-party shippers have deterred anything meaningful, at least so far. The physical infrastructure to process what little might arrive is disappearing as well: a refinery fire on February 13th temporarily put the plant out of commission, and even before that, the island's field reserves had dwindled to the point that commercial flights were largely cancelled as airports simply ran out of jet fuel. The oil blockade has drawn the headlines, deservedly so, but it sits atop a financial strangulation campaign that has in some ways been even more methodical—and much of it was already in motion before Maduro was ever arrested. The Cuba Restricted List, which bars American citizens and entities from transacting with hundreds of military- and intelligence-linked Cuban organizations, was reinstated on day one of the second Trump term. The administration wasted little time expanding it. Orbit, one of the last remaining channels through which US dollars were still reaching the island in the form of remittances, was added—effectively severing the last inflows of foreign currency. ## Doctors, Tourists, and Hard Currency Beyond finance, the administration has also targeted the regime's two biggest non-oil sources of hard currency: Cuba's medical brigade program and tourism. The medical brigade program sends doctors abroad in what critics describe as a forced-labor export scheme. To choke it off, new visa restrictions now target Cuban and third-country officials involved in administering these programs, aiming to cut the pipeline off at its source. Tourism, the other lifeline, has been hit from two directions: travel restrictions that were reimposed and tightened, and the fuel shortages that threw most of the country into chronic rolling blackouts. Together, those make for something well short of a luxury getaway. A destination where the lights go out for the better part of a day, the water stops, and the trash piles up is not one travelers flock to. The combined effect is an economy stripped of nearly every external source of revenue at once. With oil cut off, remittances severed, the medical missions squeezed, and tourism collapsing, the regime has been left with vanishingly few ways to bring in the currency it needs to function. ## The Strategy: A "Friendly Takeover" The speed at which the administration's rhetoric has escalated tells much about where Washington thinks this is headed—and the confidence it has in getting there. On January 3rd, the day of the Maduro raid, when analysts were still scrambling to figure out whether it signaled a broader regional campaign, Trump was almost casual about future relations with Havana: "I think Cuba is going to be something we'll end up talking about, because Cuba is a failing nation right now." A day later, he waved off the idea of military action entirely, saying it would not be necessary because "it looks like it's going down" on its own. By March, the tone had shifted, and the president began using the phrase "friendly takeover" for the first time. What is striking is how little of the strategy behind that rhetoric actually involves the military. That is partly explained by Washington being engaged in its largest military operation since 2003—but only partly. It was clear well before the Middle East buildup that the United States had set its sights on Tehran militarily, which simply is not the case with Cuba. ## The Berlin Wall Bet Representative Carlos Giménez, one of the most hawkish Cuban-American members of Congress, titled an op-ed "Cuba Is Approaching Its Berlin Wall Moment." Part of what made the fall of the Berlin Wall so famous was that it did not involve a military deployment, but rather a popular movement of the people after the system around it had rotted out. That is the bet Washington appears to be making: that the Cuban regime—and its legitimacy—is rotting faster than it can patch the holes, and that patience costs essentially nothing while an invasion would cost a great deal. Based on the numbers, the logic is hard to argue with. With February 2026 the first month in over a decade of zero oil imports, the grid is running at half capacity on its good days, and analysts warn that complete fuel depletion could arrive within weeks. The pressure extends well beyond energy. In late February, Secretary of State Marco Rubio flew straight from Trump's State of the Union address to a CARICOM summit—a bloc that had long been one of Havana's most reliable allies for over fifty years. By day's end, Rubio told reporters that virtually every leader in the room agreed Cuba's status quo was "unacceptable." ## Cubastroika and the Castro Grandson The question, then, is not whether the pressure campaign is working—it clearly is, insofar as it is making life miserable on the island. The real question is whether that pressure can actually produce a change in government. There are indications the administration believes it can. Sourced to officials with direct knowledge of the talks, reporting has described active backchannel negotiations for what some are calling "Cubastroika"—a plan in which the US would loosen sanctions on energy, ports, and tourism and allow direct American investment in exchange for a negotiated political exit for President Miguel Díaz-Canel. The man Rubio has been talking to is none other than Raúl Castro's 41-year-old grandson—believed to be the one set to oversee GAESA, the military conglomerate at the heart of the Cuban economy. GAESA's scale is difficult to overstate: its gross profits represent close to 37 percent of Cuba's GDP, its exports account for roughly a third of the island's total, and its total revenues are more than three times greater than the entire Cuban state budget. Leaked documents have reportedly shown the conglomerate holding as much as 18 billion dollars in hard currency, a sizable portion of the ailing island's total annual GDP. But critically, the plan as described lacked any framework for a democratic transition—no free elections, no opposition parties, no human rights overhaul. The exile community has not been thrilled. José Daniel Ferrer, one of Cuba's most prominent opposition leaders in exile, warned Rubio directly against any Venezuela-style pact that preserves the regime's power structure, saying such a move would be a mistake that invites new crises down the road. ## The Human Toll of "Zero Hour" For most people, "rolling blackouts" call to mind the occasional storm-driven outage—a nuisance, a day without a charged phone. What is happening in Cuba is a different universe. On March 4th, the Guiteras thermoelectric plant—the same aging facility whose collapse in October 2024 plunged most of the island into darkness—went down once again, this time taking two-thirds of the country with it. It was repaired within four days, but the grid that came back online was still running at less than half the country's demand. During the crisis, Cuba was producing around 1,200 megawatts against a need for over 2,200, and blackouts that once lasted 12 to 14 hours have now stretched past 20. In effect, chronic mismanagement and a two-month blockade have done to Cuba's power grid what it took the Kremlin four years of constant bombardment to do to Ukraine's. Daily life has reverted to something closer to pre-industrial. Refrigerators are next to useless, so perishable food often cannot be stored. Most of Havana's garbage trucks sit idle without fuel, so trash piles up for weeks and ultimately gets burned in the streets. Over 80 percent of the country's water-pumping infrastructure runs on electricity, meaning that when the power goes, so does the water—and close to a million Cubans depend on tanker trucks that themselves need fuel to operate. Families fill buckets during the few hours of daily power, racing to finish basic tasks before the lights cut out again. ## A System on the Brink At the institutional level, conditions are as severe, if not worse. Hospitals have more or less suspended non-emergency surgeries nationwide, and the healthcare system once held up as the pride of the regime is operating, by the Health Minister's own admission, on the verge of collapse. The UN's humanitarian office reported that some 16,000 cancer patients awaiting radiotherapy and over 12,000 dependent on chemotherapy are unable to receive treatment, while ambulances across the island struggle to obtain fuel for emergency runs. Analysts have begun using the term "zero hour" for the moment the reserves finally run dry, with reporting pointing toward mid-to-late March 2026 as a likely timeline. Given that this assessment was made on March 11th, that moment was not far off. Washington's bet is that conditions like these will eventually produce one of two outcomes: either the regime negotiates its own exit, or the Cuban people force one. On the surface, the theory makes some sense, even if it is grim for the people there and will almost certainly lead to loss of life. In the days after the March 4th blackout, protests erupted across multiple Havana neighborhoods and spread to cities like Matanzas, with people chanting "Freedom!" and "Down with communism!" ## Why the Regime Is Still Standing For Cubans who might rather leave than fight, that option has more or less dried up. Allowing critics of the government to leave the country was for years a not-so-secret release valve—one fewer potential dissident or rioter in the street. Since 2021, the easiest route was via Nicaragua, whose visa-free policy had been a head-nod to those seeking a foothold on the continent from which they could head north. On February 8th, Managua quietly revoked the arrangement, a move widely read as a concession to Washington after Maduro's capture left the Ortega regime increasingly isolated. That leaves ordinary Cubans with essentially two options: endure, or take to the streets. The regime has spent years making sure they know what the second one costs. The last large-scale protests, dating to 2021, still loom large; over a thousand people were arrested then, and many are still serving sentences of 15 to 20 years for little more than chanting slogans—including children. Cuba watchers sometimes invoke North Korea to explain how a government this battered can still be standing. The analogy is imperfect—the Cuban regime is nowhere near as brutal as the one in Pyongyang—but it offers something. Pyongyang demonstrated decades ago that a regime can survive extraordinary circumstances if its security apparatus remains cohesive, regardless of the population's opinion. Famine may have killed hundreds of thousands, even millions, of North Koreans in the 1990s, but the Kim family did not blink. ## The Men With Guns When it comes to most uprisings against dictators, the fatal blow usually is not a mass protest but the state losing confidence in itself—no longer being willing to pull the trigger on its own people. As of March 11th, there was no credible reporting of defections within Cuba's security services. Part of that comes down to the regime's strategy to insulate itself: a late-2025 decree expanded military benefits, while supplies for defense-related units are explicitly prioritized ahead of civilian needs in the emergency rationing plan. So far it has paid off, with the state's rapid-response units deploying to every protest hotspot without reluctance. Then there is the Iran example. The regime in Tehran showed despots everywhere that you can put down enormous nationwide protests in days, so long as you keep the military onside and are willing to kill in eye-watering numbers. Havana has never yet engaged in a crackdown remotely as brutal, but the overall lesson of reacting harshly will not have passed it by. Still, things may be changing. The Cuban regime has always paid and fed the apparatus first—but this time, the reserves funding the officer corps are the same reserves approaching zero hour. And once that hits, there is nobody coming to replenish them. Every regime that has fallen to popular pressure has shared one thing: a moment when the people holding the guns decided the people giving the orders were not worth dying for anymore. If Cuba does not reach a deal with Washington by "zero day," that commitment will be put to the test—and only then will it become clear whether the next step is a peaceful transition, a revolution, or the seeds of yet another military intervention. ## Frequently Asked Questions ### What was significant about Cuba's oil imports in February 2026? February 2026 was the first month in over a decade in which Cuba received zero oil imports from any source. It was not a reduction or a shortfall—nothing arrived at all, leaving the grid running at roughly half capacity on its best days and pushing the country toward complete fuel depletion. Analysts began using the term "zero hour" for the moment Cuba's reserves would finally run dry, with reporting pointing toward mid-to-late March 2026 as a possible timeline. ### What did Executive Order 14380 do, and how did it affect Mexico? Issued on January 29th, the order declared a national emergency empowering the president to impose tariffs on any country that "directly or indirectly" sells or provides oil to Cuba. Crucially, it authorized additional duties on all imports from offending countries, not just energy products—meaning Mexico's continued shipments risked penalties across the entire USMCA trade relationship. Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum shortly afterward acknowledged that deliveries were "currently halted," while Mexico pivoted to shipping only humanitarian food and medicine. ### What is "Cubastroika" and who is involved in the reported negotiations? "Cubastroika" is the name given to reported backchannel negotiations in which the United States would loosen sanctions on energy, ports, and tourism and permit direct American investment in exchange for a negotiated political exit for President Miguel Díaz-Canel. Marco Rubio's reported negotiating counterpart is Raúl Castro's 41-year-old grandson, believed to be in line to oversee GAESA—the military conglomerate whose gross profits represent close to 37 percent of Cuba's GDP. The plan as described lacked any framework for free elections, opposition parties, or a human rights overhaul. ### Why hasn't the Cuban regime collapsed despite the severe crisis? Its security apparatus has remained cohesive. A late-2025 decree expanded military benefits and prioritized defense units in emergency rationing, and rapid-response units have deployed to every protest hotspot without reluctance. Escape routes have also been closed off: Nicaragua revoked its visa-free policy for Cubans on February 8th, leaving ordinary Cubans with the choice of enduring conditions or taking to the streets—a prospect made stark by memories of the 2021 protests, after which over a thousand people were arrested and many received sentences of 15 to 20 years. ### Is the United States planning a military invasion of Cuba? On current evidence, no. Trump waved off military action early on, saying Cuba "looks like it's going down" on its own, and the administration's strategy has been conspicuously non-military. 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The 21st Century's Deadliest Conflicts, Ranked by Death Toll

Simon Whistler — Tue, 02 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Ours is a world at war. From the battlefields of Ukraine to the jungles of Myanmar, from the deserts of Sudan to the scrublands of Mexico, from the African Horn to the Gaza Strip to Haiti, the Congo, and Yemen, nations across the globe are consumed by conflict. At a moment in history when people can live healthier, happier, and more prosperous lives than at any other time on record, war goes on—and a sober look at the numbers would justify the suspicion that things are only getting worse. What follows is a deep accounting of the wars, insurgencies, and civil conflicts of the twenty-first century, traveling continent by continent and decade by decade until the bodies are counted. This is not a listicle and not a simple top ten. It is an inventory of the sheer human devastation that people living and breathing today have inflicted upon one another, measured as carefully as the available data allows. Counting the dead is a messy business, and ranking conflicts against one another is messier still. The thesis of this analysis is straightforward but unsparing: by direct, deliberate death toll across the 21st century, ten conflicts stand above the rest—and almost none of them are finished. ## Key Takeaways - This ranking includes only conflicts with roughly 50,000 or more cumulative deaths since the year 2000, ordering them by aggregate death toll rather than by percentage of population killed. - Wherever possible the analysis relies on independent commissions and outside organizations that placed researchers on the ground, treating death tolls produced by combatant states as unreliable by default. - A critical methodological line separates indirect deaths deliberately engineered by a fighting faction—blockaded aid, poisoned water, razed crops—from peripheral famine and disease deaths that no party engineered at scale; only the former are counted in the final tally. - Mexico's cartel wars, with an estimated 319,000 deaths since 2006, sit alongside outright civil wars and invasions among the century's deadliest conflicts. - Sudan and South Sudan together account for three separate catastrophes—the Darfur Genocide, the South Sudanese Civil War, and the ongoing Sudanese Civil War—with a combined direct toll well into the high hundreds of thousands. - Ethiopia's Tigray War, with an estimated death toll near 600,000, ranks as the single deadliest conflict of the 21st century to date. - Across the ten ranked wars alone, an estimated 3.7 million people were killed this century, and several of those wars are still raging or could reignite. ## How the Dead Were Counted Calculating death tolls from any single conflict is difficult; aggregating them across the globe demands a precise, consistent methodology. The first decision is which conflicts qualify. This accounting adopts a single hard threshold: roughly fifty thousand cumulative deaths, military and civilian combined, from the start of the year 2000 onward. That threshold excludes wars fought predominantly in the 20th century that trailed off into low-grade fighting after the turn of the millennium—conflicts like the civil wars in Angola, Algeria, or the Philippines, where the great majority of the deaths preceded 2000. The threshold also shapes how overlapping conflicts are handled. Where a single nation faces a multidimensional security crisis—several insurgencies battling one government at once, as in Pakistan or Mexico—the overarching civil conflict is treated as one. But conflicts running in parallel without deep interconnection are not bundled together simply because they share a region. The violence across Africa's Sahel, for instance, comprises distinct conflicts that individually fall below the bar. Then comes the hardest question: how to count the dead. Most conflicts, today and throughout history, do not come with a firm death toll. People killed in remote areas, in long-term war zones too dangerous to survey, or in climates with high decomposition rates may never be accounted for. Combatants downplay their own losses and inflate the enemy's; civilians bury their dead in private or fear the cost of reporting accurately. Some estimates count only violent deaths directly inflicted by combatants; others sweep in vast numbers of indirect casualties from famine, disease, or exposure. ## The Methodology Behind the Ranking To manage those discrepancies, this analysis treats any death toll produced by a state or armed actor directly involved in a conflict as unreliable by default, given the overwhelming incentives to skew the numbers. Exceptions are made only when stringent outside reviews broadly corroborate the figure. The emphasis falls on independent commissions and working groups able to put people on the ground and gather direct evidence after the fact. That rarely yields a single precise number, but it yields a range, and where a range exists, the ranking relies on the median estimate within it. The most consequential methodological choice concerns indirect deaths. There is a meaningful difference between people who die because food and medicine simply cannot reach a war zone, and people who die because a fighting faction deliberately blockaded aid, poisoned water sources, or razed crops. The first category—peripheral famine and disease no one engineered at scale—is excluded from the final ranking, though noted where it appears. The second category—starvation and disease wielded as weapons of war—is counted. This distinction is what separates a war's true willful death toll from the broader misery that surrounds it. Two further choices round out the method. Conflicts are ranked by aggregate death toll, not by the proportion of a pre-war population killed. By percentage, even Russia's invasion of Ukraine would reflect less than one percent of all Russians and under half a percent of all Ukrainians, despite an aggregate toll an order of magnitude greater than Gaza's, where roughly six percent of the pre-war population has died according to Gaza Health Ministry figures. And the ranking counts deaths only—not the wounded, the displaced, or the refugees—because the focus here is strictly on the century's deadliest conflicts. ## Asia and the Pacific: Afghanistan and Pakistan The tour begins in Afghanistan, home to one of the century's most prominent and longest wars. Following the 9/11 attacks, a fast-paced series of covert operations in 2001 escalated into a US-led, full-scale invasion alongside Afghanistan's Northern Alliance and troops from Canada, Britain, France, Germany, Australia, and elsewhere. At the outset, the Taliban controlled most of Afghanistan's population centers and worked closely with al-Qaeda, which had used Taliban-held territory to smuggle weapons, train an estimated ten thousand or more jihadist fighters, and plan global attacks. The conventional invasion lasted barely two months. Coalition special operators and air power joined with northern warlords, and the guerrilla-trained Taliban lost most of the country quickly. Casualties in that phase fell overwhelmingly on the Taliban—roughly eight thousand to twelve thousand fighters killed—and on civilians, estimated between 1,500 and 2,500 dead. The United States lost only twelve troops and one CIA officer. From 2002 onward, the war became a long, intense, asymmetric insurgency met by air-power-dependent counterinsurgency, cycling through surges in 2006, 2015, and 2021, when a US withdrawal collapsed the Afghan government. Aggregating the figures—2,420 US troops and operators, 457 British, 702 other coalition, 3,917 private contractors, sixty-five to seventy thousand Afghan government forces, a median of about 80,000 Taliban, at least five thousand al-Qaeda and Islamic State–Khorasan fighters, and the Costs of War Project's minimum count of 46,319 civilians—yields an approximate death toll near 202,000. That figure is almost certainly an undercount, and it does not include those killed for collaborating with the US after the Taliban's 2021 return. ## Pakistan, Sri Lanka, and the Wars of South Asia Next door, Pakistan's single largest insurgency brushes the fifty-thousand threshold, but its internal conflicts in aggregate go well past it. Pakistan has fought Islamist militants—the Pakistani Taliban, al-Qaeda, the Islamic State in Khorasan, and a shifting array of groups—on its own soil, meaning its soldiers and civilians were in the crosshairs far more often than America's. Combined operations in 2017 left the Pakistani Taliban badly splintered, but a separatist insurgency in resource-rich Balochistan, where ethnic Baloch have fought for sovereignty since the 1940s, intensified from 2000 onward and never calmed. Taken together—roughly 31,000 to 35,000 militants, six thousand to 9,500 troops and police, more than 25,000 civilians by some counts, plus the Balochistan toll—the figures indicate well over sixty thousand dead since 2000. Moving back in time, Sri Lanka's civil war raged from 1983 until May 2009 between the Sinhalese-majority government and Tamil insurgents seeking sovereignty. The focus here falls on the war's brutal final phase, 2006 to 2009. The government acknowledged losing 6,261 troops; international observers estimate fifteen thousand to twenty-two thousand Tamil fighters killed. Civilian deaths are far harder to fix: the government officially recorded 9,000, but a 2011 UN panel concluded up to forty thousand may have died, and a later internal UN report raised the possibility of seventy thousand. At a minimum, the final three years imply upward of sixty thousand dead, with some reports suggesting twenty thousand perished in the closing weeks alone. ## Myanmar and the Hidden War in Papua In Myanmar, a multidimensional civil war has carved the nation into government zones and rebel strongholds. After the military—the Tatmadaw—ended a decade of civilian rule with a 2021 coup, ethnic self-protection militias joined a popular rebellion that sent young people from the cities into the countryside to fight. By mid-2023 the government controlled less than half the country, and rebel offensives brought down regional capitals and bases before the conflict settled into an active stalemate that neither side has the strength to break. According to ACLED, the death toll has climbed above 85,000, with the UN reporting that more than three million people have been displaced since the coup. At least six thousand civilians have died directly, a figure complicated by a disastrous earthquake this year, genocidal violence in some regions, and deaths inside modern-slavery scam centers. Papua—the Indonesian-controlled region also known as Western New Guinea—is the rare conflict whose true toll vastly exceeds what can be documented. Reported deaths run to dozens or hundreds a year, but experts estimate the real figure anywhere from the high tens of thousands to three or four hundred thousand or more; a 2007 estimate placed the reliable bounds between 100,000 and 300,000. Ongoing since 1962, the war is obscured by thick humid jungle where bodies disappear, by extreme remoteness, and by strict Indonesian media controls over who may even enter the combat zone. The fighting appears to be heating up again under President Prabowo Subianto, whose military has poured thousands more troops into the region. Without hard figures, Papua cannot enter the final ranking—but the crisis cannot go unacknowledged. ## The Americas: Mexico's Cartel War Crossing the Pacific, there is no clearer place to begin than Mexico. Cartels and criminal syndicates have exploited a weak federal government, rural production zones, and impunity at the local level for decades, but the drug war reached its modern fever pitch with Operation Michoacan in 2006, ordered by President Felipe Calderon—the largest anti-cartel military offensive in Mexican history to that point. The fighting is asymmetric, multidimensional, and unpredictable: cartels fight one another as readily as the government, and target journalists, activists, doctors, politicians, lawyers, teachers, and the families of the disappeared. Counting Mexico's dead is uniquely hard because the cartels want deaths hidden—their own fighters' and their victims'. Mexico's National Registry of Disappeared Persons lists more than 125,000 missing, the vast majority since 2006, and authorities have discovered thousands of mass graves. Since President Claudia Sheinbaum took office in late 2024, around fifteen thousand more people have vanished. The official UN tally records over 460,000 homicides between 2006 and the start of 2025. Because it is impossible to determine who was killed for what reason, the analysis leans on researchers who estimate the share of homicides tied to organized crime. Human Rights Watch, writing in late 2025, put it at about two-thirds; El Economista placed it near 54 percent in 2023; a 2020 Justice in Mexico study spanned 44 to 80 percent. Applying the Human Rights Watch figure to 460,000 confirmed homicides plus the 18,400 from January to September 2025 yields roughly 319,000 deaths from the cartel wars—excluding the missing. ## Colombia's Long War A few thousand kilometers south, Colombia carries a similar history with two key differences: a far larger role for ideologically driven guerrillas, and the fact that the conflict recently appeared to be ending. The modern war is usually dated to around 1964, when the Marxist-Leninist Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia—the FARC—was founded. Over the following decades the fight metastasized, drawing in drug traffickers like Pablo Escobar's Medellin Cartel and hardline groups on both the left and the right. The 2000s were especially bloody, until a critical ceasefire with FARC's leadership was agreed in 2016. By then Colombia had endured over fifty years of fighting. The Colombia Truth Commission's 2022 final report found about 450,000 people killed between 1985 and 2018, with roughly 40 to 45 percent of those deaths occurring from 2000 onward—especially between 2000 and 2008, during the US-led Plan Colombia. That implies some 180,000 to 200,000 killed in the 21st century alone. The peace did not hold completely: FARC splinter groups and criminal syndicates kept fighting, growing more proficient with explosive-laden drones and exploiting a breakdown of trust between the government and ex-rebel factions. Adding ten to twelve thousand more recent deaths brings Colombia's 21st-century toll to roughly two hundred thousand. Elsewhere in the Americas, Venezuela, Haiti—the worst of the three at twenty-five to thirty-five thousand dead since 2000—and others have each killed thousands without reaching the threshold. ## Africa: The Second Congo War and the Pygmy Genocide In Africa there is no other place to start than the Second Congo War, fought from 1998 through a 2002 peace accord on the Democratic Republic of the Congo's soil but involving nine African nations and dozens of insurgencies. The war erupted shortly after the First Congo War, in which Laurent-Désiré Kabila—backed by Rwanda, Angola, and Uganda—had marched to power and exiled dictator Mobutu Sese Seko. When Kabila's relationship with Rwanda and Uganda collapsed, those neighbors backed a rebel insurgency, and a five-year back-and-forth war followed, fought largely over diamonds, gold, cobalt, and other resources. An estimated thirty thousand child soldiers were used; Kabila himself was assassinated in 2001, likely by one of them, and his son Joseph took power and slowly turned the tide. The most widely cited estimate, from the International Rescue Committee, places the death toll at a staggering 5.4 million—but the overwhelming majority of those were famine, disease, and other non-combat deaths not engineered at scale, and many occurred after the war ended. Combat and engineered killings made up less than ten percent of that total, and much of the violent toll fell in the late 1990s. A conservative 21st-century estimate of direct deaths sits around 150,000. To that must be added the Pygmy Genocide of October 2002 to January 2003, when two Rwanda-backed rebel groups exterminated as much as forty percent of the eastern Congolese Pygmy population in Ituri Province—an estimated sixty to seventy thousand killed amid reports of cannibalism, with survivors enslaved and nearly the entire population displaced. Together, the direct 21st-century toll reaches between 210,000 and 220,000. ## Liberia and the War in Darfur From the Congo, the trail leads to the Second Liberian Civil War, fought from spring 1999 to summer 2003. It followed Liberia's devastating first civil war (1989–1997), which killed roughly two hundred thousand—one in seventeen of the pre-war population—and ended with the rise of Charles Taylor, who had campaigned on the grotesque slogan "he killed my ma, he killed my pa, but I will vote for him." Taylor backed insurgencies in neighboring countries, which retaliated by backing rebels against him. Besieged in a capital shelled relentlessly by advancing rebels, Taylor resigned in August 2003. Defined more by its brutality—drug-addicted child soldiers fixtures on both sides—than its scale, the second war killed around fifty thousand, the great majority of them after 2000. Then comes Sudan, and the first of three major conflicts there: the War in Darfur, from February 2003 through a 2010 ceasefire. It pitted the Sudanese state and the Arab Janjaweed militias against rebels drawn from Black African groups like the Fur, Zaghawa, and Masalit. After a major rebel victory at El-Fasher, the government set the Janjaweed loose, and the Darfur Genocide began. Villages were razed, civilians killed indiscriminately, and sexual violence wielded as a weapon. Crucially, the Janjaweed used scorched-earth campaigns to destroy farmland, livestock, and water infrastructure—deliberately engineered starvation that belongs in the count. The genocide's toll is estimated at roughly three hundred thousand; adding battle deaths through 2010 raises the rough estimate to about 320,000, though a 2010 Lancet study set a range from 178,000 to 461,000. ## South Sudan and the Ongoing Sudanese Civil War The South Sudanese Civil War began in December 2013, less than two and a half years after independence, as a power struggle between President Salva Kiir and his then–Vice President Riek Machar—Kiir's Sudan People's Liberation Movement against Machar's SPLM-IO. Beneath the factional politics ran a bitter ethnic rivalry between Kiir's Dinka and Machar's Nuer. With a young state's military assets easy to divide, government and rebel forces fought on near-equal footing over oil fields and other resources, while tens of thousands of child soldiers were forced into combat. The 2013 Juba massacres alone—four days in which Dinka soldiers are believed to have slaughtered over 47,000 Nuer civilians—were enough to place this war on the list. A 2018 London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine study put the conservative toll at 383,000, of which 190,000 were directly violent deaths; accounting for later fighting, the total estimate lands near four hundred thousand, likely an undercount. Sudan's third catastrophe is the civil war raging now between the military regime and its former allies, the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces—direct successors to the Janjaweed, quietly backed by the United Arab Emirates. The war began in 2023 after a power-sharing dispute following the 2021 coup devolved into open conflict. The capital, Khartoum, fell to the RSF for months before the Sudanese Armed Forces recaptured it and shifted their seat of power to Port Sudan, while the RSF consolidated Darfur. Estimates are stunning and uncertain: Le Monde suggested over 150,000 dead by late 2024, and a November 2024 study found over 61,000 dead in Khartoum State alone between April 2023 and June 2024—a region that was not even the war's most intense front. The ethnic cleansing of El-Fasher, where roughly 260,000 people were besieged before the RSF captured it in October 2025, may be the deadliest episode yet; as Yale's Nathaniel Raymond put it, "more people could have died [in 10 days]… than have died in the past two years of the war in Gaza." The working estimate settles near 250,000, almost certainly a severe undercount. ## Somalia and Ethiopia's Tigray War East of Sudan, Somalia's civil war has run in one form or another since the 1980s, in a nation long regarded as a failed state. The worst modern violence clusters around Ethiopia's 2006 invasion, the rise of al-Shabaab in the late 2000s, and the group's recent resurgence, atop constant lower-grade fighting among the federal government, breakaway states, local militias, the Islamic State, pirate gangs, and the Las Anod conflict in the north. ACLED counts roughly eighty thousand verifiable deaths since the al-Shabaab conflict began; adding Ethiopia's invasion (at least four thousand Ethiopian deaths, thousands of Somali fighters, and 16,200 civilians by a 2008 NGO estimate), the Islamic State's toll, and Las Anod brings the total north of 110,000 since 2000—with the true figure surely higher. The last African conflict may be the most devastating of all: the Tigray War, fought precisely two years, from November 3, 2020, to November 3, 2022. The Tigray People's Liberation Front fought not only Ethiopia's government under Abiy Ahmed but also neighboring Eritrea, after years of the Tigray losing influence following the 2012 death of TPLF founder and Prime Minister Meles Zenawi. Both sides signaled their intent early—TPLF fighters massacred over six hundred mostly Amhara civilians at Mai Kadra, and an Amhara militia, the Fano, soon massacred nearly a hundred Tigrayans. Massacres, indiscriminate attacks, and engineered starvation defined the war. A University of Ghent research group estimated 300,000 to 400,000 civilian deaths plus 200,000 to 300,000 combatants. Even Ethiopia's downplayed figures cluster in the eighty- to one-hundred-thousand range; most experts now place the total between 350,000 and 600,000, with the truth likely on the high end. Reports at the time suggested tens of thousands killed per week, with one specialist estimating one hundred thousand dead in under a month. ## Europe: Chechnya and the Invasion of Ukraine Europe contributes two conflicts, both involving Russia. The first is the Second Chechen War, split between a full-scale invasion from August 1999 to April 2000 and a nearly nine-year insurgency thereafter. After a failed Chechen incursion into Dagestan and a series of Russian apartment bombings—which many experts now suspect were false-flag attacks to justify war and lift the little-known new prime minister, Vladimir Putin, to the presidency—Russia leveled Chechen resistance with bombing and artillery. Grozny fell in early February 2000, and Russia installed Akhmad Kadyrov, whose son Ramzan still rules Chechnya. Counting both the dead and the disappeared, conservative estimates across all sides suggest forty thousand or fewer, while higher aggregations climb well over sixty thousand—an edge case that nonetheless merits inclusion. Russia's ongoing invasion of Ukraine is no edge case. Across the 2014 annexation of Crimea, the low-grade Donbas war, and the full-scale invasion launched in 2022, Russia has over eleven years to answer for. The full invasion, intended as a quick affair, became a grinding war of attrition after Russian columns stalled outside Kyiv and Ukrainian forces—armed with NATO-standard weapons and pioneering drone tactics—held the line for nearly four years, conceding only minor territory while striking deep into Russia. As of late 2025, CSIS placed total Russian casualties above 950,000, with up to 250,000 soldiers killed, and Ukrainian deaths at 60,000 to 100,000 soldiers. The BBC and Mediazona estimated the Russian death toll as high as 317,000 by late October 2025; The Economist suggested as many as five Russian soldiers killed for every Ukrainian this year. UALosses documented just under 80,000 Ukrainian fighters dead plus about 82,000 missing. Combining CSIS war-dead figures with the UN's roughly 14,400 Ukrainian civilian deaths, the total across both sides could be close to or just past 400,000. ## The Middle East: Iraq, Syria, and Yemen America's 2003 invasion of Iraq, a centerpiece of the post-9/11 War on Terror, was justified by claims of weapons of mass destruction that proved a farce. A six-week shock-and-awe offensive captured Saddam Hussein—Iraq losing about 9,200 combatants and 3,750 civilians against 139 US and 33 UK troops—before a long occupation gave way to insurgency, foreign jihadists, the battles of Fallujah, and a full-scale Shia-Sunni civil war until American combat troops withdrew in 2011. Coalition losses are clear: 4,508 US troops, 179 British, 139 other coalition, 3,650 contractors, 17,960 Iraqi security forces, and 139 journalists. Civilian counts are bitterly contested, from the Iraq Body Count project's 113,728 to the Lancet's 400,000–950,000 and ORB International's widely dismissed figure above a million. Following outside analysts toward the Iraq Body Count range yields roughly 200,000 civilian deaths and a total of 250,000 to 275,000. Neighboring Syria's civil war became a hellscape of its own. Sparked by 2011 Arab Spring protests against the Assad dynasty, it spawned more independent factions than nearly any conflict in recent memory—a Kurdish-led autonomous republic, the fracturing Free Syrian Army, a Turkish ground invasion, intervention by Russia, Iran, Europe, and the US, and jihadist groups from al-Qaeda to the Islamic State—until a rebel coalition led by former jihadist Ahmed al-Sharaa overthrew Damascus in December 2024. By 2021 the UN had catalogued a minimum of 580,000 dead; the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights counted 347,000 combatants and nearly 200,000 civilians, plus another 110,000 undocumented. Estimates converge above 500,000 and below 675,000. Yemen's civil war, another Arab Spring product, escalated when the Houthis—Yemen's Zaydi-led Ansar Allah movement—seized the presidential compound in 2015. A Saudi-led coalition intervened, the Houthis deepened ties with Iran, and famine and the collapse of health infrastructure followed, with both sides—especially the Houthis—weaponizing the withholding of food aid. The UN estimates over 377,000 dead from 2014 through 2021, more than 150,000 from direct combat and the rest from engineered famine, cholera, and other consequences—a heavy share of them young children, with a Yemeni child under five dying every nine minutes in 2021. ## Israel, Iran, and the Top Ten The final stop is Gaza and the wider proxy war between Israel and its backers on one side and Iran and its proxies—Hamas, Hezbollah, and others—on the other. The Israel-Hamas War began on October 7, 2023, when Hamas fighters killed nearly 1,200 Israelis, including 815 slaughtered civilians, and took 251 hostages. Israel's overwhelming response—aerial bombardment, a progressive ground invasion, and routine restriction of aid—has drawn widespread expert characterizations of genocide, while Hamas has used Gaza's civilians as human shields. As of late October 2025, the Gaza Health Ministry reported over 69,000 Gazans killed, with independent sources estimating 60 to 80 percent civilians—roughly 48,000 at a median estimate of 70 percent. Factoring in the brief 2025 Israel-Iran war (33 Israelis and roughly 1,200 Iranians killed), operations against Hezbollah in Lebanon, and earlier exchanges, the long proxy war is responsible for approximately 85,000 to 95,000 deaths. The final accounting, ordered by direct 21st-century death toll, runs as follows. Tenth is the **Second Congo War** at 210,000 to 220,000. Ninth is the current **Sudanese Civil War** at around 250,000, almost certainly a severe undercount. Eighth is the **US invasion of Iraq** at 250,000 to 275,000. Seventh is **Mexico's cartel wars** at about 319,000. Sixth is the **War in Darfur** and its genocide at roughly 320,000. Fifth is **Yemen** at 377,000. Sharing third and fourth are **South Sudan** and the **invasion of Ukraine**, each at about 400,000. Second is **Syria**, conservatively above 500,000. And first—the deadliest conflict of the century to date—is **Ethiopia's Tigray War**, at an estimated 600,000. ## A World That Could Get Worse Across these ten conflicts alone, an estimated 3.7 million people were killed this century—before counting the other wars surveyed here or the smaller conflicts elsewhere. The optimistic comparison is cold comfort: the Second World War killed over ten million in some single years, and the present is not that. But the trend is grim. According to the Global Peace Index, 2022 was the first year since the 1994 Rwandan genocide in which over 200,000 people were recorded killed in battle, and 2023 and 2024 sustained those numbers, with ACLED counting 233,597 killed last year. Had every year from 2000 to 2025 been as violent as 2024, the cumulative toll would not be 3.7 million but nearly 6.1 million. None of these wars is safely consigned to history. Three—Ukraine, Sudan, and Mexico—still rage today. Two more—Yemen and Syria—only recently transitioned into new phases that may not truly be over. And two of the deadliest, South Sudan and Ethiopia's Tigray War, show clear signs they could reignite. There is no guarantee that Ukraine will claim fewer lives than Tigray did before it ends, nor that a renewed South Sudanese war would not add another four hundred thousand to the toll. Beyond them looms the specter of far larger wars: a Chinese invasion of Taiwan that could draw in the United States, Japan, Australia, and much of the Indo-Pacific; a Russian confrontation with NATO; a full-scale war between India and Pakistan; or a regional war in the Horn of Africa fed by Ethiopia's internal conflicts, its hunger for sea access, and its control over the Nile. The lesson of this grim inventory is that peace is not a resting state but an active, ongoing process that must be earned—because the alternative, as these 3.7 million deaths attest, is apocalyptic. The list can be just another top ten, or it can stand as a chronicle of lives that should never have been cut short, and deaths the world failed to understand, anticipate, and prevent. ## Frequently Asked Questions ### What death-toll threshold qualifies a conflict for this ranking? A conflict must have caused roughly fifty thousand or more cumulative deaths—military and civilian combined—from the start of the year 2000 onward. Wars fought predominantly in the 20th century that wound down with low-grade fighting after 2000, such as the civil wars in Angola, Algeria, or the Philippines, are excluded because too few of their deaths fall within the century. ### How are deliberately engineered famine deaths treated differently from other indirect deaths? The ranking counts indirect deaths only when they result from concrete actions by a fighting faction—blockaded humanitarian aid, poisoned water sources, razed crops, or destroyed sanitation infrastructure. Deaths from unintentional famine or disease that no party engineered at scale are noted but excluded, because such figures are far less precise and would make cross-conflict comparison unreliable. ### Which conflict ranks as the deadliest of the 21st century, and what is its estimated toll? Ethiopia's Tigray War, fought from November 2020 to November 2022, ranks first with an estimated death toll near 600,000, caused by massacres, indiscriminate attacks, and deliberately engineered famine. Most experts now place the figure between 350,000 and 600,000, with the true number likely on the high end. ### Why is Mexico's cartel war included alongside conventional wars? Mexico recorded over 460,000 homicides between 2006 and early 2025, plus more than 125,000 people listed as missing. Because it is impossible to determine exactly who was killed for what reason, the analysis applies Human Rights Watch's estimate that about two-thirds of homicides are tied to organized crime, yielding roughly 319,000 deaths from the cartel wars—enough to rank seventh among the century's deadliest conflicts. ### How many people were killed across the ten ranked conflicts combined? An estimated 3.7 million people were killed across the ten ranked wars this century. Had every year from 2000 to 2025 been as deadly as 2024—when ACLED counted 233,597 battle deaths—the cumulative 21st-century toll would instead be nearly 6.1 million. ## Sources 1. https://www.uu.se/en/department/peace-and-conflict-research/research/ucdp/ 2. https://acleddata.com/series/acled-conflict-index 3. https://www.dw.com/en/global-conflicts-death-toll-at-highest-in-21st-century/a-66047287 4. https://www.iwm.org.uk/history/timeline-of-20th-and-21st-century-wars 5. https://www.britannica.com/list/8-deadliest-wars-of-the-21st-century 6. https://www.vox.com/world-politics/2024/1/25/24049551/war-increasing-ukraine-gaza-sudan-ethiopia 7. https://www.wilsoncenter.org/article/explainer-roots-and-realities-10-conflicts-middle-east 8. https://www.brookings.edu/articles/the-grave-new-world-terrorism-in-the-21st-century/ 9. https://www.crisisgroup.org/global/10-conflicts-watch-2024 10. https://www.newsweek.com/map-reveals-deadliest-wars-2025-2113951 11. https://www.cfr.org/timeline/us-war-afghanistan 12. https://costsofwar.watson.brown.edu/costs/human 13. https://www.cfr.org/global-conflict-tracker/conflict/islamist-militancy-pakistan 14. https://satp.org/datasheet-terrorist-attack/fatalities/pakistan-balochistan 15. https://www.hrw.org/news/2024/05/14/15-years-sri-lankas-conflict-ended-no-justice-war-crimes 16. https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2025/jan/31/why-is-myanmar-embroiled-in-conflict 17. https://www.hrw.org/news/2025/05/29/indonesia-renewed-fighting-threatens-west-papua-civilians 18. https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/mexicos-long-war-drugs-crime-and-cartels 19. https://www.hrw.org/world-report/2025/country-chapters/mexico 20. https://www.eleconomista.com.mx/politica/Vinculan-70898-homicidios-con-crimen-organizado-20230517-0010.html 21. https://www.voanews.com/a/colombia-truth-commission-gives-scathing-report-on-civil-war-/6637556.html 22. https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/colombias-civil-conflict 23. http://conflict.lshtm.ac.uk/media/DRC_mort_2003_2004_Coghlan_Lancet_2006.pdf 24. https://www.cfr.org/global-conflict-tracker/conflict/violence-democratic-republic-congo 25. https://reliefweb.int/report/burundi/forgotten-people-batwa-pygmy-great-lakes-region-africa 26. https://blackpast.org/global-african-history/second-liberian-civil-war-1999-2003/ 27. https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/darfur 28. https://www.aljazeera.com/features/longform/2023/6/30/between-two-wars-20-years-of-conflict-in-sudans-darfur 29. https://www.ushmm.org/genocide-prevention/countries/south-sudan/case-study 30. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/26/world/africa/south-sudan-civil-war-deaths.html 31. https://www.lemonde.fr/en/le-monde-africa/article/2024/11/11/war-in-sudan-death-strikes-at-every-corner-in-devastated-khartoum_6732461_124.html 32. https://www.science.org/content/article/how-many-have-died-sudan-s-civil-war-satellite-images-and-models-offer-clues 33. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/11/1/thousands-missing-new-horrors-emerge-after-rsf-taking-of-sudan-el-fasher 34. https://acleddata.com/country/somalia 35. https://english.elpais.com/international/2023-01-27/ethiopias-forgotten-war-is-the-deadliest-of-the-21st-century-with-around-600000-civilian-deaths.html 36. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-63275598 37. https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2014/12/11/chechnya-russia-and-20-years-of-conflict 38. https://www.csis.org/analysis/evening-one-million-russian-casualties-us-have-slower-growth-truckin-and-more 39. https://en.zona.media/article/2025/11/07/casualties_eng-trl 40. https://www.cfr.org/global-conflict-tracker/conflict/conflict-ukraine 41. https://www.cfr.org/timeline/iraq-war 42. https://www.cfr.org/article/syrias-civil-war 43. https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20211123-yemen-war-will-have-killed-377-000-by-year-s-end-un 44. https://www.cfr.org/global-conflict-tracker/conflict/war-yemen 45. https://costsofwar.watson.brown.edu/sites/default/files/2025-10/Human-Toll-in-Gaza_Costs-of-War_Crawford_7-October-2025.pdf 46. https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/how-many-palestinians-has-israels-gaza-offensive-killed-2025-10-07/ 47. https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/menasource/twenty-questions-and-expert-answers-on-the-israel-iran-war/ 48. https://www.economicsandpeace.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/GPI-2024-web.pdf

Death of the Tank? The Ukraine War's Biggest Myth

Simon Whistler — Tue, 02 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

It was the hot take that took over the internet. Back in the spring of 2022, you could hardly read about the Ukraine War without finding someone confidently asserting that the carnage inflicted on Russian forces showed that tanks were now obsolete. That the future of warfare lay not in expensive platforms, but in cheap, hi-tech weaponry fielded by small units. While much of that discourse has grown quieter since those early months, it is still out there, seemingly backed up by vast, ongoing tank losses. The open-source intelligence group Oryx confirmed in late March that Russia had lost at least 1,900 tanks, well over half of Moscow's pre-war operational fleet. Ukraine, too, has seen significant losses, somewhere between 450 and 700. For many casual observers, Elon Musk likely summed up the prevailing mood when he tweeted in January that "tanks are a deathtrap now." Yet for all the persistence of this take, there is one major problem with it. It is utter nonsense. Since March 2022, experts and military analysts have been cautioning against declaring the death of the tank. Somehow the idea has stumbled on regardless, a zombie take that refuses to die, born of the incredibly specific circumstances of Russia's unprovoked invasion. Those circumstances reward close analysis, because they reveal a very different story than the one that went viral. The collapse of Russian armor in Ukraine was not the death of a weapons system. It was a demonstration of what happens when an army abandons the fundamentals of combined arms maneuver warfare. ## Key Takeaways - Oryx documented at least 1,900 confirmed Russian tank losses, more than half of Moscow's pre-war operational fleet, while Ukraine lost somewhere between 450 and 700 tanks. - The "death of the tank" narrative was primed by pre-war NATO disarmament trends, the falling cost of military drones, and Azerbaijan's destruction of an estimated 255 Armenian tanks in the 2020 Nagorno-Karabakh War. - The majority of early Russian tank losses around Kyiv were actually inflicted by old-fashioned artillery, not the shoulder-fired Javelin missiles that dominated social media perception. - History shows the pattern repeating: the 1973 Sagger and the 9M133 Kornet of the Second Lebanon War both prompted obituaries for the tank, only for technology and tactics to adapt. - Russia's catastrophe stemmed from treating the invasion as a military demonstration, with no logistics, no combined arms planning, and secrecy so extreme that commanders were not warned in advance. - Defense figures including Ben Wallace, Ben Hodges, and Antony Beevor agree the main battle tank retains an irreplaceable role, especially for offensive operations and retaking captured territory. - Ukraine's own counteroffensives, from Kharkiv to Kherson, relied on armor, which is why the international coalition rushed to deliver over 100 NATO-standard tanks including Leopard 2s. ## Primed to Believe Even now, well over a year into the Ukraine War, most people still remember those first weeks. The images of Russian tanks burning in the suburbs of Kyiv. The videos of Ukrainian irregulars unleashing hell with shoulder-mounted Javelins. The sight of Russia's 64-kilometre-long armored convoy trapped and under heavy fire, smoke billowing as drivers tried desperately to escape. Coming at the beginning of a war many pundits had predicted Russia would win in mere days, these images seared themselves onto the collective consciousness. They were evidence not just of Ukrainian bravery, but also of the shocking flaws in Moscow's once-vaunted army. Yet while there were indeed serious tactical failures on display in those videos, they were not what most casual observers took away. Rather, many were convinced the Ukraine War had spelled the end of the tank. The reality of Russia's failed assault on Kyiv comes later. First, it is worth answering a more fundamental question: why? Why were so many otherwise bright people ready to accept this conclusion at face value? Why were scores of armchair experts primed to believe that the era of the tank had gone the way of the mounted cavalry charge? To understand, you have to look back at the years immediately before the war. This was a period when politicians were pushing hard to phase out what they saw as old-fashioned military concepts. The oldest of them all was the main battle tank. In the run-up to Russia's invasion, many NATO countries were shedding their heavy armor capabilities, instead preferring to focus on lighter, faster armored fighting vehicles. For America, that meant downsizing tank formations as part of an overhaul of the Marine Corps. For the British, it meant announcing plans to mothball the Challenger 2 and focus instead on the Ajax fighting vehicle. For the Dutch, it meant giving up on heavy armor altogether. While controversial, these decisions were often backed by both the defense establishment and the political elite. As late as November 2021, then-UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson was able to sit before a Defence Select Committee and declare that "the old concepts of fighting big tank battles on European landmass are over." That he was not immediately laughed out of the room was down to what many had recently seen with their own eyes: the arrival of new, disruptive technologies that seemed to have scrambled old certainties about warfare. ## The Rise of the Cheap Drone The most disruptive of these new technologies were cheap military drones. The keyword there is "cheap." While well-funded militaries like the US had been fielding drones for decades, those had been expensive, hi-tech machines out of the reach of most. As the 2010s progressed, though, prices started falling. While top-end Reapers might cost over $32 million, Turkish TB2s were going on sale for less than a sixth of that. At the same time, the possibility of turning commercial drones into mini-weapons was becoming obvious. ISIS, for example, deployed bomb-holding drones in its battles. Although these were mostly ineffective, they pointed to a coming era when even non-state actors could easily exploit the vulnerability of modern tanks to top-down attacks. For those whose job it is to worry about such things, the warning signs were stacking up alarmingly. In Libya, TB2s made mincemeat of General Haftar's forces. In Syria, they took out regime tanks with ease. But it was what happened in the autumn of 2020 that really shook up military planners. The Second Nagorno-Karabakh War between Armenia and Azerbaijan was a shock to everyone. In six short weeks, Azerbaijan used Turkish drones to annihilate Armenian forces, destroying an estimated 255 tanks. Videos of helpless tank crews being obliterated by fire from the heavens convinced many that warfare had been transformed, that the calculus had fundamentally shifted between expensive and inexpensive weapons platforms. It was material like this circulating in the background as Russia made plans for its invasion. A mood music that primed everyone to believe that relying on tanks could lead a modern army to disaster. And the Kremlin was about to give them exactly the kind of disaster they had been waiting for. ## Russian Catastrophe By now, the sheer catastrophe of Moscow's initial run at Kyiv is almost legendary. When morning dawned on February 24, 2022, with Russian armor pouring over the border, it seemed safe to assume that this was it, that the Kremlin's overwhelming firepower would quickly shatter Ukraine's defenses. Instead, pretty much the exact opposite happened. The level of losses Russia suffered in northern Ukraine that March remain head-spinning. Before the month was out, intelligence services were estimating that Moscow had already lost more troops than in the entire ten-year Soviet-Afghan War. Images circulated of dead Russian soldiers, their bodies abandoned in the snow. If anything, the tank losses were even more striking. By March 14, the Telegraph was reporting that Moscow had lost over 200 tanks. By the time of the retreat in early April, that figure may have been as high as 400. Just as with the human casualties, emblematic pictures of this disaster appeared online. Explosions rocking the trapped Russian armor column. Ukrainian troops walking calmly through the skeletons of dozens of tanks outside Bucha. Unlike in Nagorno-Karabakh, though, it had not been drones that unleashed such devastation. Rather, the Ukrainians had seemingly created this hellscape with anti-tank guided missiles. The word "seemingly" matters, because it would later turn out that the majority of losses had been inflicted with good, old-fashioned artillery. But perception is what shaped the narrative. And the perception, fueled by videos on TikTok, was of small Ukrainian units using cheap, shoulder-mounted weapons to send their invaders to hell. The king of these was the "fire and forget" Javelin missile. Like a drone, it comes down from above, adjusting its trajectory to hit the weak spot at the top of a tank. Able to lock on and automatically home in, it allows units to fire and quickly move away. Most importantly, a single Javelin in 2022 cost just $176,000. A great deal of money for most of us, but a mere fraction of the cost of the T-72 tanks they were taking out. Just as with drones in Nagorno-Karabakh, the opening weeks of the Ukraine War only seemed to confirm that an epochal shift was underway, one towards inexpensive, hi-tech kit. Just three years prior, Dominic Cummings, then chief adviser to the UK prime minister, had pooh-poohed spending money on aircraft carriers, declaring that "a teenager will be able to deploy a drone from their smartphone to sink one of these multibillion-dollar platforms." Now it looked like, where ground-based expensive platforms were concerned, he had been right. ## The Losses That Kept Coming If you have only been keeping one eye on the war since, you might still have that impression. Although dramatic images of burning Russian tanks faded from the news after the retreat from Kyiv, that does not mean losses tapered off. By early 2023, Oryx had documented over 1,000 confirmed Russian tank losses, a number that would soon be supercharged by a series of dramatic failures. The most dramatic of all was likely the Battle of Vuhledar, which has been called "one of the most embarrassing defeats suffered by Moscow in the entire war." Across January and February, Russian forces attempted to advance on the Donetsk mining town of Vuhledar, only to suffer catastrophic losses. Funnelled into a "kill zone" between two minefields, the tank columns became sitting ducks as the Ukrainians picked the lead and rear vehicles off with Javelins and then let artillery do the rest. Up to 130 of Moscow's tanks are thought to have been lost in this single action. Then there was the similar assault the Kremlin tried on the city of Avdiivka. That attack led the UK's Ministry of Defence to declare, with remarkable understatement, that "Russia's 10th Tank Regiment has likely lost a large proportion of its tanks while attempting to surround Avdiivka from the south." The pattern is clear. Time and again, Russian heavy armor has rolled into battle, only to be annihilated by Ukrainian defenders. Even the state-of-the-art T-90 main battle tank has recorded around 56 losses. Yet despite the eye-watering numbers, there is a good reason nearly all experts disagree with the idea that we are witnessing the death of the tank. Instead, they argue that we are witnessing something less sensational but still vital: a real-time lesson in the continued importance of combined arms maneuver warfare. ## Inside the Errors If you want to understand tracked killing machines, you could do worse than asking David Willey. As curator at Britain's Tank Museum, Willey is a font of knowledge about mechanized maneuver warfare, and not afraid to share his opinions. So when the BBC interviewed him about the death of the tank, he was bluntly dismissive. "This is a story that comes around every time a tank gets knocked out," he told the broadcaster. "Because the tank is such a symbol of power, when it's defeated people jump to the conclusion it's the end of the tank." History bears this analysis out. Back in 1973, the Yom Kippur War terrified global militaries when the Sagger anti-tank guided missile turned dozens of tanks into rolling death traps. Twenty-three years later, another Israeli conflict, the Second Lebanon War, shocked everyone with the sight of 9M133 Kornets zooming five kilometres to punch flaming holes in armor with laser precision. In both cases, the arrival of a cheap, easy-to-use weapon seemed to have rendered tanks as suddenly useless as muskets or men carrying pikes. Quickly, though, changes in technology and tactics caught up with these breakthroughs. Units operating Saggers could be taken down by supporting fire. The Trophy active protection system could intercept Kornets. Perhaps more importantly, armies could learn to adapt to and prepare for a new threat. It is worth returning to the war that really worried all those NATO planners: the 2020 Nagorno-Karabakh War. Respected military analyst Rob Lee did a piece on the conflict and concluded that, rather than spell the death of the tank, it in fact showcased its utility. Over the course of six weeks, Azerbaijan retook hundreds of square kilometres of territory from Armenia. The key to this devastating victory was a tank breakthrough that smashed Armenia's defensive lines and allowed Azeri armor to cover and hold swathes of land. Of course, Azerbaijan was also the side fielding the drones. Perhaps you could argue that, had Armenia been equipped with TB2s, the Azeri tanks would also have been obliterated. But Lee's piece does not think so. In it, he notes how Azeri forces destroyed 60 percent of Armenian air defenses around Nagorno-Karabakh within an hour of the war starting. With air superiority achieved, Baku could then send in the TB2s. Lacking air defenses, Armenia's tanks became sitting ducks. The correct conclusion from that war, then, was not that drones are some sort of tank-killing superweapon, any more than Saggers were in the 1970s or Javelins are today. Rather, the conflict showed the ongoing importance of combining layered air defense with heavy armor formations. The Azeris were able to do this effectively, and thus won the war. ## The Real Lesson From Ukraine All of this is a roundabout way of coming back to the lessons from Ukraine. Lessons based not on the superiority of new, cheap weapons, but on the Russian military's spectacular incompetence. When planning to drive columns of armor deep into enemy territory, you need to be prepared for that enemy to try and take your heavy armor out. That means having backup to protect your tanks. It means air support and artillery fire that can suppress units wielding Javelins. It means infantry formations who can take out survivors, allowing your army to safely proceed. As War on the Rocks wrote in disbelief of the failed Russian advances: "Where is the accompanying infantry with the tank formations, who are supposed to bust the ambushes executed by Ukrainian forces? Where are the suppressive mortar, artillery, and close air support fires?" The publication summed up Moscow's problems with a single damning phrase: "The Russian Army has shown that it is not competent in combined arms fire and maneuver." The strangest part is that all of this is exactly what Russian military doctrine calls for. There is no part of Russia's doctrine that says, in effect, "just drive a bunch of unsupported tanks at the enemy. It'll probably be fine." Yet that is exactly what happened. And figuring out why is key to understanding how the lessons from this particular war may not be applicable to many future conflicts. ## How the Kremlin Got It So Wrong Toward the end of March 2023, the analysis group RUSI published a long-format report into Russian preparations for war with Ukraine, and how the Kremlin got things so catastrophically wrong. It is a fascinating piece that goes deep on the agents Moscow had planted throughout Ukrainian society and the jaw-dropping assumptions made by Putin's circle of advisers. The most interesting part, though, covers the sheer incompetence of the full-scale invasion. The RUSI report concludes that "the lack of proper logistics, the lack of fuel and ammunition, the vulnerability of long Russian convoys (...) all indicate that Russia carried out the invasion as a military demonstration, without seriously considering the need to conduct full-fledged long-term combat operations." In other words, the invasion force was just a bigger version of the parades that drive through Red Square. Intimidating, sure, but not intended to actually engage in a shooting match. Moscow thought it had infiltrated Ukrainian society to such a degree that its agents would be able to spread enough chaos that the government would collapse on its own. It was from this original, mistaken belief that all of Russia's other failures flowed. With the Kyiv government expected to collapse, and Ukrainians in the east and south expected to welcome the Russians as liberators, no planning was put in place for combined arms operations. Because surprise was a key component, the Kremlin's planners kept it secret even from their own military commanders. That meant logisticians were given no advance warning to prepare for high-speed tank advances. This is vitally important, because tanks are, to quote Rob Lee, "among the most logistics-intensive pieces of equipment. They require routine maintenance, spare parts, and substantial fuel to keep them operational." Good preparation is therefore essential. The Russians did not have it, and so the world was treated to the sight of tanks running out of fuel and breaking down, snarling up roads. The surprise component explains other failures, too. Where the Russians did have assets like artillery and air defense, tank commanders were often ordered to move so fast that they left those assets behind, leaving heavy armor exposed and vulnerable. Where they did have support infantry, in the form of motorized rifle battalions, those units were often operating at only two-thirds strength, on top of suffering recent personnel cuts. Basically, if a military analyst had sat down to plan the most reckless, kamikaze way to invade a country, they might have come up with something like the Kremlin's war plan. The entire thing hinged on the Ukrainians not fighting back. When they did, it fell apart. ## What the World Saw Instead That, however, is not what the world saw on social media. No, the world saw tanks trapped and being blown apart on clogged-up roads. It saw lone Ukrainians with cheap missiles taking out heavy weapons platforms without breaking a sweat. In our hyper-visual culture, it is perhaps no surprise that what most people took from these videos is exactly what Elon Musk later tweeted: that tanks are deathtraps, and that we are in a new era of warfare. The same dynamic applies to the other major Russian screw-ups at Vuhledar and Avdiivka. In the Vuhledar debacle, Russian armor repeatedly drove into a narrow kill zone between two minefields where the Ukrainians could pick them off at leisure. In such circumstances, any vehicle would be a death trap. As a disbelieving former British tank commander told The Telegraph of the Vuhledar disaster: "Repeating the same thing time after time and hoping for a different outcome is a sign of madness, or deficiency in capability and initiative." Avdiivka offered a similar lesson. The 10th Tank Regiment of the 3rd Army Corps was decimated in a series of head-on tank assaults. Shortly after, Ukrainian intelligence claimed most of those in the regiment were undisciplined, suffering from low morale, and, most stereotypically Russian of all, drunk. These are very specific circumstances. They were born of Putin's micromanaging of the war from afar, of political pressure trumping military doctrine, and of the psychological toll that a year of fighting had taken on an unprepared Russian army. That means anyone hoping to draw conclusions for future conflicts needs to keep in mind that the American or Chinese militaries are unlikely to operate like this. Which means tank losses are unlikely to be so catastrophic in a better-fought war. And, as it turns out, that is probably for the best, because tanks still have a specific, vital role to play in warfare. ## The Tank Is Dead, Long Live the Tank To gauge the future of the tank, post-Ukraine War, just look at what important people in the national security community are saying about it. According to UK Defence Secretary Ben Wallace: "Ukraine has shown that armor is important." Or, as retired US general Ben Hodges told the BBC: "There will always be a need for protected mobile firepower." Perhaps the best line goes to Australian Major General Kathryn Toohey. Originally made in 2019, it has since been reposted by military analysts commenting on the Ukraine War: "Tanks are like dinner jackets. You don't need them very often, but when you do, nothing else will do." These quotes pile up not because the analysts are secretly on the payroll of some Big Tank lobby, but because those who know anything about warfare will happily tell you that, far from being obsolete, main battle tanks have an irreplaceable role to play. Former US Marine Corps colonel Mark Cancian put it this way when speaking to Insider: "Tanks provide mobility, firepower, and protection (...) offering soldiers the luxury of moving and shooting at the same time." Writing in the Washington Post, Antony Beevor explained their utility in even starker terms: "Offense is the realm where main battle tanks, when used correctly, can produce unrivaled results. Much depends on how they are deployed in combined arms operations, preferably with drone support and air cover from fighters." These are all people who know warfare. And what they are saying is that, when it comes to offensive operations, there is simply nothing else that does what main battle tanks can do. Armored fighting vehicles like Bradleys can provide speed and protection to quickly move infantry around the battlefield, but they lack the heavy firepower and punch that a main battle tank like an Abrams can bring. That makes such tanks ideal for retaking captured territory. We have already seen this in the Ukraine War. While the Kharkiv counteroffensive was characterized by fast-moving armored vehicles breaking through thin Russian lines, Ukraine's liberation of Kherson required heavy armor backed by artillery and infantry to grind forward. Future Ukrainian counteroffensives might help put the "tank is dead" myth to bed once and for all. As of mid-2023, Russia's spring offensive appeared to be petering out, and most observers were waiting for a major Ukrainian counteroffensive to begin. To have any chance of succeeding, analysts agree, Kyiv would need to field an enormous number of heavy tanks. Tanks that would be instrumental in liberating fortified cities in key locations in the east and south. Hence the pressure campaign in January for Germany to deliver Leopard 2s. Hence the international tank coalition trying to boost Ukraine's stocks with over 100 NATO-standard main battle tanks. No one thinks the tank is so dead that Ukraine can retake all its territory with just some light armor and a bunch of TB2s patrolling the skies. Instead, Kyiv's forces will need to master the sort of combined arms warfare the Russians failed so spectacularly at. With enough support and enough massed armor, they might just punch a hole through Moscow's defenses. If that happens, it would obviously be a major cause for celebration, a sign that Ukraine may be able to expel the Russians for good. It might also, at last, puncture the myth that the tank is obsolete. Rather than ruined Russian T-72s outside Bucha, our social media feeds might fill instead with videos of Leopard 2s and Challengers rolling across the Ukrainian steppe, bringing liberation to millions now suffering under Moscow's tyrannical rule. ## Why the Myth Matters It could be those images, more than anything else, that finally kill this zombie idea about the death of the tank. In today's visual age, it is breathtaking how quickly distortions and bad takes can grip the public imagination. How filtering the world through an algorithm can give us a warped idea of what our military priorities should be. While it is comforting to know that experts are not usually suckered in by this, it is sobering how easily everyone else is. And not just regular people, but those with power and influence. People like Elon Musk. People like politicians. People who can sway the public, and even make decisions on what money should be spent on which weapons systems. In this way, it is of vital importance to try and dispel such myths. To fight back against lazy narratives that would prefer to talk up the utility of Javelins and drones, or the failure of tanks, rather than focus on the harder lessons of tactics and logistics. Because, like it or not, there may come a time when it is our own societies fighting a war against some genocidal power. And if that does come to pass, it is better that we go in with our eyes open, and not clouded by myths spread on social media. ## Frequently Asked Questions ### How many tanks has Russia lost in the Ukraine War? The open-source intelligence group Oryx confirmed at least 1,900 Russian tank losses, well over half of Moscow's pre-war operational fleet. By early 2023, Oryx had documented over 1,000 confirmed losses, a figure that climbed further after disasters at Vuhledar and Avdiivka. Even the state-of-the-art T-90 main battle tank has recorded around 56 losses. Ukraine, too, has lost somewhere between 450 and 700 tanks. ### Why did Russia's tanks perform so catastrophically in Ukraine? Russia treated the invasion as a military demonstration rather than a serious combat operation. According to the RUSI report, there was a lack of proper logistics, fuel, and ammunition, and the Kremlin kept the plan secret even from its own commanders. Tanks ran out of fuel, outran their artillery and air defense, and advanced with support infantry operating at only two-thirds strength. The entire plan hinged on Kyiv collapsing on its own; when Ukraine fought back, the improvised invasion force fell apart. ### What is combined arms warfare and why does it matter here? Combined arms warfare means using tanks alongside protective backup: air support and artillery to suppress anti-tank units, and infantry to clear ambushes and take out survivors so armor can advance safely. War on the Rocks concluded that the Russian Army was "not competent in combined arms fire and maneuver." When armor operates without this support, as at Vuhledar where Russian columns were funneled into a kill zone between two minefields, almost any vehicle becomes a death trap. ### Has the tank been declared obsolete before? Yes, repeatedly. In 1973, the Yom Kippur War terrified global militaries when the Sagger anti-tank guided missile turned dozens of tanks into rolling death traps. In the Second Lebanon War, 9M133 Kornets punched holes in armor from five kilometres away. Each time, technology and tactics adapted. Saggers could be suppressed with supporting fire, and the Trophy active protection system could intercept Kornets. Tank Museum curator David Willey told the BBC: "This is a story that comes around every time a tank gets knocked out." ### Why does Ukraine still need heavy tanks if they are so vulnerable? Because nothing else does what a main battle tank can do on offense. Ukraine's liberation of Kherson required heavy armor backed by artillery and infantry to grind forward, while the faster Kharkiv counteroffensive relied on armored vehicles breaking through thin lines. To retake fortified cities in the east and south, analysts agree Kyiv needs an enormous number of heavy tanks, which is why the international coalition rushed over 100 NATO-standard main battle tanks, including German Leopard 2s, into the fight. As Antony Beevor wrote, "Offense is the realm where main battle tanks, when used correctly, can produce unrivaled results." ## Sources 1. Elon Musk tank tweet: https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1611669863097069569 2. Washington Post: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/02/20/tanks-ukraine-war-missiles-mobility/ 3. War on the Rocks: https://warontherocks.com/2022/04/the-tank-is-dead-long-live-the-javelin-the-switchblade-the/ 4. Rob Lee, War on the Rocks: https://warontherocks.com/2022/09/the-tank-is-not-obsolete-and-other-observations-about-the-future-of-combat/ 5. Telegraph, kill zone at Vuhledar: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2023/03/02/how-ukraine-used-mines-fool-russia-humiliating-defeat/ 6. Politico: https://www.politico.eu/article/why-tanks-are-back-in-fashion-in-21st-century-warfare-ukraine-russia/ 7. Insider: https://www.businessinsider.com/russia-ukraine-tank-force-western-dumb-mistakes-tip-scales-2023-3 8. Stephen Biddle, War on the Rocks: https://warontherocks.com/2022/11/ukraine-and-the-future-of-offensive-maneuver/ 9. RUSI overview of all Russian combat operations: https://static.rusi.org/202303-SR-Unconventional-Operations-Russo-Ukrainian-War-web-final.pdf.pdf

Desert Storm: How Saddam's Army Was Crushed in the Gulf War

Simon Whistler — Tue, 02 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

After the dust had settled from the devastating Iran-Iraq war, Saddam Hussein was in dire straits. Iraq had gone into serious international debt to finance the conflict, and although the fighting eventually ended in a stalemate, that money still needed to be paid back. One nation in particular that he owed a great deal to was Kuwait, which had loaned Iraq 14 billion US dollars over the previous decade. Along with the debt, Kuwait was also producing a surplus of oil, driving down global prices and, in turn, hurting Iraq's economy. To top it all off, Kuwait stood accused of slant drilling, allowing it to siphon crude from Iraqi oil fields. Looking at all of this, Saddam decided to take matters into his own hands, and on August 2nd, 1990, Iraq invaded Kuwait, annexing the smaller nation in just two days. Despite Iraq's old sovereign claims to Kuwait, dating back to the end of the Ottoman Empire, the rest of the world was not amused, and plans were soon underway to take back Kuwait by force. What would form in response was the largest military alliance since the Second World War, embarking on one of the most successful military operations of the 20th century. This is the story of how that coalition assembled, how it broke the back of one of the largest armies in the region, and the long shadow the war still casts over the Middle East. ## Key Takeaways - Iraq invaded Kuwait on August 2nd, 1990, driven by 14 billion dollars in war debt owed to Kuwait, Kuwaiti oil overproduction that depressed prices, and accusations of slant drilling into Iraqi fields. Kuwait was annexed in two days. - The coalition that formed to expel Iraq numbered 39 nations, with 35 sending troops to Saudi Arabia. It was the largest alliance since the Allies of the Second World War, with the troop buildup eventually reaching 956,000 men, roughly 70 percent of them American. - Operation Desert Storm opened on January 17th, 1991, with a five-week air war in which coalition members flew over 100,000 sorties and dropped nearly 90,000 tons of bombs, rapidly establishing air supremacy. - Saddam fired 42 ballistic missiles at Israel hoping to provoke it into the war and fracture the Arab members of the coalition. Israel was repeatedly talked down by President Bush, who promised missile defenses. - The ground war, launched February 24th, lasted only four days and produced some of the largest tank battles in American history, including 73 Easting, Medina Ridge, and Norfolk, all of them lopsided coalition victories. - The coalition suffered 292 deaths, half from accidents or friendly fire; Iraq lost as many as 50,000 killed, 75,000 wounded, and more than 100,000 prisoners of war. - The war's overwhelming success left a lasting impression of Western military dominance, while devastating Iraq, fueling anti-Western sentiment, and helping set the stage for the far costlier 2003 invasion. ## The Road to War The grievances that pushed Saddam Hussein toward Kuwait were as much economic as territorial. Iraq emerged from eight years of war with Iran financially exhausted, owing enormous sums abroad, with no obvious way to repay them. Kuwait was both a major creditor and, in Saddam's eyes, an economic saboteur. Its oil surplus drove down the global price of crude at precisely the moment Iraq most needed revenue, and Baghdad accused its southern neighbor of slant drilling across the border to steal from Iraqi fields. Iraq layered these complaints atop an older claim that Kuwait had historically belonged to it, a claim it traced to the final years of the Ottoman Empire. When diplomacy and intimidation failed to extract relief, Saddam chose force. The invasion on August 2nd, 1990, was swift and decisive, and within two days the entire emirate was under Iraqi control. Whatever the merits of the historical argument, the international response was immediate and hostile, and the machinery of a counter-coalition began to turn. ## Operation Desert Shield The first Western move was defensive. After the annexation of Kuwait, the United States began deploying troops to Saudi Arabia under the framework of the Carter Doctrine, a posture meant to protect allies in the Persian Gulf. As American forces stacked up, the buildup took the name Operation Desert Shield, the title itself affirming that this was, at least initially, a defensive measure intended to ward off any further Iraqi aggression until the situation in Kuwait could be resolved. That defensive premise collapsed on August 8th, 1990, when Saddam Hussein declared Kuwait to be Iraq's 19th province and appointed his cousin as its new military governor. The annexation was now formal and, Saddam signaled, permanent. Abandoning the purely defensive idea, US President George H.W. Bush and UK Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher began sending forces to Saudi Arabia and urged their allies to do the same. An anti-Iraq coalition was forming, and Washington wanted as many nations as possible inside it. ## Building the Largest Coalition Since WWII American representatives traveled across the globe on diplomatic missions to recruit for the coalition, and they had surprising success. Argentina, Bangladesh, Czechoslovakia, Niger, and a long list of others signed on. Even Afghanistan sent 500 fighters to participate. Syria and Egypt committed huge forces, eager to tame Saddam before they became his next victims. In total, an alliance of 39 nations formed the coalition, the largest since the formation of the Allies in the Second World War. Of these, 35 would actually send troops to Saudi Arabia, while others, such as Germany, played only a defensive role in case the war spread to Turkey. Over the following months, coalition forces piled up in Saudi Arabia, and extensive training got underway. One training exercise, Operation Imminent Thunder, was so massive that it involved the aircraft carrier USS Midway, 15 other ships, a thousand aircraft, and more than a thousand marines. The scale of the rehearsal foreshadowed the scale of the war to come. ## The Buildup and the Deadline Eventually the troop buildup reached 956,000 men. About 70 percent of these were from the United States, with the other most significant contributors being the United Kingdom, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia. More than 2,000 aircraft arrived on the scene, along with thousands more tanks, five aircraft carriers with one more on the way, and dozens of other ships. It was an accumulation of combat power on a scale the region had never witnessed. Diplomacy ran in parallel. Negotiations were tried and failed, several UN resolutions were passed condemning the annexation, and Saddam said he would leave only if a long list of political and trade demands was met. No one agreed to them. He also pressed grievances with Israel, trying to use his position in Kuwait to negotiate for Palestine or to dismantle Israel's nuclear arsenal, but that gambit went nowhere either. In November 1990, the UN Security Council passed Resolution 678, giving Saddam a deadline: leave Kuwait by January 15th, 1991, or face the authorized use of force. This was no vague threat. The force in question was already on his doorstep, but Saddam was not the kind of man to back down. By December, with only a month remaining, the world held its breath. Asked whether Iraq would attack its neighbors if invaded, Iraq's Foreign Minister answered: "Yes. Absolutely. Yes." War was on the horizon, and the only man who could stop it had no intention of doing so. ## Phase One: The Air War Opens When the last diplomatic efforts failed and Saddam's deadline passed, the coalition struck exactly as promised. The Gulf War had officially begun, kicked off under the codename Operation Desert Storm. The plan involved two main stages: first, an air war to achieve aerial supremacy and strike ground targets, followed by a ground invasion. The air war would last more than five weeks, during which coalition members would fly over 100,000 sorties and drop nearly 90,000 tons of bombs. On January 17th, 1991, Desert Storm began with a helicopter group called Task Force Normandy. Eight Apache helicopters led by four Pave Low helicopters crossed into Iraqi territory and struck radar sites near the border at 2:38 AM. These were a critical first target, slowing Iraq's response time to the assault that was about to break over it. Minutes later, missiles and bombs began landing on air bases in western Iraq, courtesy of 22 F-15s. No sooner were these strikes underway than Baghdad itself was already under attack. Ten F-117 Nighthawks were over the capital, their stealth technology protecting them from more than 3,000 anti-aircraft guns searching for them in the dark. ## Striking from Sea and Sky While this was unfolding, the navies got involved as well. Dozens of Tomahawk missiles were fired from coalition ships, striking targets in and near Baghdad and taking down oil refineries, power plants, and factories. Along with the missiles, naval gunfire struck targets along the Kuwaiti coast. Several ships from the Iraqi navy tried to make a run for the open ocean during these first hours, but they were spotted by a highly advanced P-3 Orion called Outlaw Hunter, which dispatched strike units that ended up sinking 11 Iraqi ships. Outlaw Hunter was so capable that at one point it used infrared imaging to detect Iraqi markings beneath a recent coat of paint that showed Egyptian markings on one vessel. Alongside airfields, bases, factories, and energy infrastructure, one of the main targets on the opening day was Iraq's air defense system. Iraq fielded an extensive anti-air network, consisting of thousands of surface-to-air missile systems, mobile anti-air units, and fixed anti-aircraft guns. Taking these out was of the utmost priority to secure the skies. On day one, the coalition air force consisted of more than 2,000 fixed-wing aircraft, and in just the first 24 hours they ran 2,775 sorties. ## Shock, Awe, and Iraqi Resolve Perhaps the most remarkable single mission was a group of seven B-52 bombers, which flew all the way from Louisiana to launch 35 cruise missiles before heading back home. Their trip was 35 hours of non-stop flying and covered more than 14,000 miles, or 22,500 kilometers. The air war demonstrated, in just a few hours, how incredibly powerful the coalition was, and this was one thing the alliance was banking on. If they could overwhelm the Iraqi defenses and convince them that they were hopelessly outgunned against a superior, almost futuristic enemy, the thinking went, they might give up the fight. This was the whole idea behind the iconic concept of "shock and awe": break the enemy's will in the opening battles, and the ones down the road become far easier. It did not exactly work, at least at first. Despite the immense damage they were taking, Iraqi resolve remained strong, aided especially by the belief that this was a war of destiny, a final battle with the West. Just five hours after the airstrikes began, Iraqi state radio announced: "The great duel, the mother of all battles, has begun. The dawn of victory nears as this great showdown begins." But the showdown was seriously one-sided. Iraqi aircraft stood no chance against coalition forces, scoring only one kill while losing 36 in the first few days. Recognizing they could not fight in the air, Saddam ordered most aircraft moved to hardened bunkers, and some fled to Iran. ## The Missile War Against Israel Iraq still fought back. On the second day of Desert Storm, Iraq fired eight ballistic missiles at Israel, and over the following weeks fired a total of 42. There were only two direct casualties from these attacks, though a number of elderly people died of heart attacks during them. But casualties were not the real purpose of the rockets. What Saddam truly wanted was to provoke Israel into joining the conflict. If Israel entered the war, there was a chance the Arab nations in the coalition would withdraw, or even switch sides, and a chance it could drag previously neutral countries onto Iraq's side for a shot at striking Israel. It was, honestly, a sound strategy, and it nearly worked. After the first missiles hit, Israel had already scrambled fighters and was preparing to retaliate. Just in time, President Bush convinced Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir to hold back, promising to send missile defense systems. Israel cooperated, though fear lingered that Iraq might load its missiles with chemical weapons, as it had done against Iran the previous decade. For this reason, Israeli citizens were issued gas masks and the drug atropine to counteract nerve agents. Fortunately, such an attack never came. ## Hunting Scuds and the Wider Missile Threat Israel came very close to joining the war over the following weeks, at one point even loading helicopters with special forces and preparing to fly into Iraq before being convinced to stand down at the last moment. To minimize the ballistic missile strikes, US and British special forces infiltrated Iraq on Scud-hunting missions. This, combined with an increased focus from the air, drastically decreased the rocket attacks. Israel was not the only target. Iraq also launched 47 Scuds at Saudi Arabia, one at Qatar, and another at Bahrain. The deadliest single strike hit US army barracks in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, killing 28 Americans and injuring more than 100 when missile defense systems failed to detect the incoming rocket. It was the worst loss of American life from a single enemy action in the war, and a sober reminder that even a degraded Iraqi military could still inflict serious harm. ## The Battle of Khafji On January 29th, Iraq lashed out again, this time by launching a ground attack into the Saudi city of Khafji, which sits right on the border with Kuwait. The attack involved around 60,000 troops organized into five divisions, with a few hundred tanks. The more advanced mechanized divisions had Soviet-made T-72s, but the rest made do with older T-62s and T-55s. Many of these older tanks had been upgraded with modern armor, but it would not save them from the coalition air force. The four-pronged offensive had three goals: capture Khafji, inflict heavy casualties on the coalition, and take as many prisoners of war as possible, which Saddam hoped to use as a bargaining chip later. At 10:00 PM on January 29, Iraqi forces moved into Saudi Arabia and quickly reached Khafji, where they engaged US Marines stationed there. The marines had only a few anti-tank weapons and barely held their position, slowly retreating while they waited for air support. It came in the form of F-15s, A-10 Warthogs, and Harrier jets. Due to tragic miscommunication, these air strikes resulted in 11 friendly fire deaths at the first point of battle, but they succeeded in repelling the Iraqi advance. ## False Surrender and the Fall of Khafji A couple of miles from Khafji, a column of Iraqi T-55s rolled up to the border, signaling their intention to surrender to coalition troops. When Saudi troops responded and began making their way to the tanks, the Iraqis revealed their true intention and opened fire. This caught the attention of a nearby AC-130, which quickly moved to cover the Saudi troops and destroyed 13 Iraqi tanks in the process. For the rest of the night, coalition air strikes pummeled Iraqi columns, but driving them out of Khafji proved difficult, as the buildings obstructed views of the tanks and there was a large risk to civilians. Coalition ground forces moved in. The fighting in the streets was intense, and a couple of Americans were taken prisoner in the chaos. By the next day, the city was soon to be recaptured, and Iraqi forces were on the run. Reinforcements were on the way in the form of an Iraqi amphibious assault, crossing the Persian Gulf and hoping to catch the enemy by surprise, but they were spotted, and US and British aircraft sank 90 percent of their boats. By February 1st, Khafji was retaken. The battle cost the coalition 43 fatalities, one downed aircraft, and two destroyed Saudi tanks. The Iraqis lost nearly 100 tanks, almost entirely to air strikes, showcasing the deadly potential of air supremacy and just how powerful ground units become when supported from the sky. Despite the retreat, Iraqi morale was still boosted by the momentary occupation of Khafji, which was heavily broadcast back home. ## The Air War's Toll Meanwhile, the air war ground on. Iraqi infrastructure had been decimated, and the destruction of roads prevented an estimated 400,000 more Iraqi troops from reaching the frontlines. Hundreds of vehicles, missile sites, and military bases had been turned into dust. This was not without collateral damage. In the five weeks of bombing, around 2,000 to 3,000 Iraqi civilians were killed, often in brutal circumstances, such as when a British missile originally fired at a bridge malfunctioned and struck a busy marketplace, or a US bombing of an air raid shelter with more than 400 people inside. The deaths of civilians only served to invigorate the Iraqi cause, and they grew even more determined to hold their ground against the coalition. But soon, the true test of their army was arriving. After more than a month of air strikes, the air war was finished, and the ground invasion was about to begin. ## Phase Two: The Ground Invasion Just as before the air war, the coalition sent Saddam an ultimatum: withdraw from Kuwait by February 24th, 1991, or face a full-scale invasion. Saddam treated this demand exactly as he had the previous ones. He ignored it. The assembled coalition forces were colossal. Organized into five corps, the coalition was bringing every available man to the fight. The center of the line held the heaviest of the allied forces: US and British armored divisions consisting of more than 1,400 main battle tanks, ready to thunder deep into enemy territory with overwhelming force. To their right was an assortment of Egyptian, Kuwaiti, Saudi, and Syrian tanks, and on the right flank were Saudi and American units. The left flank held multiple French divisions, including the French Foreign Legion, hundreds of American tanks and armored vehicles, 16,000 paratroopers, and more. In total, more than 700,000 troops were ready to move in, not counting the naval assets offshore and the hundreds of aircraft that would provide close air support. Facing them were around 200,000 Iraqis who were not only outnumbered and outgunned, but starting to go hungry as their supply lines had been ripped to shreds. ## The Plan and the Opening Assault The plan was for the flanks to advance first and draw in the bulk of Iraqi fire. As they pushed forward, paratroopers would land far behind enemy lines to set up a forward base for the rest of the coalition. Next, the center formations would advance, spearheading the main assault directly into Iraqi lines. Once accomplished, the whole operation would shift west into Kuwait, where the final showdown would decide the war. On February 24th, Saddam's deadline passed and the ground war began, originally nicknamed Operation Desert Sabre. The advance was preceded by an overwhelming artillery barrage, which fired more than 90,000 rounds at the Iraqi lines and caused immense damage. The marine advance on the right flank did not hesitate to follow, overwhelming the first line of Iraqi defenses so quickly that no US losses were taken. While they cleared minefields to enter Kuwait, more than 100 helicopters began airlifting paratroopers deep behind enemy lines, flying just above the sand to avoid detection. Wave after wave of transport choppers took thousands of troops just south of their target, a base codenamed Objective Cobra. As the men jumped into the sand, more helicopters arrived with artillery and ammunition, and within minutes they were blasting Iraqi fortifications. Combined with air strikes, particularly strafes from A-10s, the Iraqis started to surrender. ## Collapse on the Flanks A similar story played out on the far-left flank, as the French and American divisions thundered into Iraq and smashed through the western defenses, though a nasty sandstorm slowed them considerably. When they reached their first objective, led by French attack helicopters, the Iraqis there also surrendered en masse. The Arab forces advancing had the same fortune, taking thousands prisoner while suffering minimal losses. Overall, the Iraqi forces across the frontline were hungry, tired, and starting to lose hope against the superior coalition. It seemed that "shock and awe" was doing its job. But this success came with a drawback. Despite having the worst equipment of the whole coalition, the right flank advanced so quickly that it was hours ahead of schedule. Because the center was not going to advance until the following day, this rapidly advancing flank would be vulnerable to Iraqi counterattacks. For this reason, the center advance was pushed up a whole 15 hours, and the troops there were given just two hours' notice to prepare to move. Another massive artillery bombardment prepared the way for the center units, who crossed into Iraqi territory at 3 PM on February 24th. ## Burying the Frontline The units the center encountered were some of Iraq's best, and although they did not surrender like their peers on the flanks, they still did not stand much of a chance. Hiding in trenches they had dug into the sand, they watched with horror as a horizon of enemy vehicles moved steadily toward them. Instead of engaging in the conventional sense, the coalition simply used armored bulldozers to push sand into several of the trenches, allowing tanks to drive right over them and leaving hundreds buried alive beneath them. The frontline had been pulverized with little to no casualties on the coalition side, but the real challenge came the next day as Iraq moved to counterattack. The trench-clearing tactic remains one of the war's grimmer episodes, a stark illustration of the lethal asymmetry between the two forces. Where Iraqi units had expected a costly assault that might inflict the casualties Saddam was counting on, they instead faced an enemy that could neutralize fixed positions almost mechanically, without ever entering close combat. ## The Last Great Tank Battles What followed in the center advance are arguably three or four of the largest tank battles in American history, often referred to as the last great tank battles of the 20th century. First was the Battle of 73 Easting, fought by around 300 British and American tanks against 400 or so Iraqi tanks. As the coalition tanks moved through the desert, they engaged a couple of lone targets, such as a cluster of bunkers and a few scout vehicles, when suddenly they were faced with a huge armored force. Without hesitation, the coalition tanks formed up and opened fire, making excellent use of TOW missiles, which they guided into Iraqi tanks with deadly accuracy. By the time the smoke had cleared, only a single coalition vehicle had been destroyed, an M2 Bradley. Six people had been killed and 19 wounded. On the Iraqi side, 160 tanks had been destroyed, along with 180 other armored vehicles, amounting to more than 1,000 casualties. In addition, more than 1,300 prisoners were taken in the aftermath of the battle. ## Medina Ridge and Norfolk The next day saw the Battle of Medina Ridge, when once again hundreds of tanks faced off against each other. This time, the coalition lost four tanks, a few armored vehicles, and two helicopters, but Iraq lost nearly 200 tanks and more than 250 other vehicles. These were simply unsustainable losses, and then it happened again. The Battle of Norfolk, fought on February 27th, was unbelievably massive, with more than 550 Iraqi tanks destroyed along with more than 400 other vehicles. You might think that by now there would be literally nothing left in the Iraqi army, but there were still a few thousand vehicles rumbling around. These, though, were retreating out of Kuwait. Knowing the war was a lost cause, Iraqi armored divisions began the drive back to Iraq on Highway 80, the same highway they had used to invade Kuwait in the first place. The retreat would turn that road into one of the most infamous scenes of the entire conflict. ## The Highway of Death When the coalition noticed this escaping convoy, they struck immediately, using airstrikes to disable the lead and rear tanks and trapping the rest in between. A traffic jam of thousands of military vehicles had been turned into nothing more than sitting ducks for coalition aircraft. Between February 25th and 27th, dozens of bombing runs blasted the convoy, shredding it with every munition available. The results were so gruesome that the road earned the nickname the Highway of Death: nearly 3,000 destroyed vehicles and well over a thousand casualties. Eyewitnesses reported scores of charred corpses, blood covering the sides of the road as people were hit trying to flee, and stolen Kuwaiti goods littered about as the occupiers tried to carry home some of what they had pillaged. It remains an incredibly controversial attack, with some calling it a disproportionate use of force, or arguing that the column was retreating in accordance with the original UN resolution. The US military stood by its actions, saying there was a great deal of military equipment destroyed and that there were no signs of refugee casualties as posited by some journalists. The casualty numbers may also not be as high as originally thought, as post-war investigations found that most Iraqis had learned to simply flee their vehicles the moment they heard aircraft overhead. ## Saddam's Defeat On the 28th of February, just four days after the start of the ground war, Iraq surrendered, and a unilateral ceasefire was signed in coalition-occupied territory. The coalition had suffered just 292 deaths, half of which were due to either accidents or friendly fire. Iraq, on the other hand, had suffered as many as 50,000 deaths, 75,000 wounded, and more than 100,000 prisoners of war. The disparity was so stark that it defied historical comparison among modern conflicts. Not only had the coalition shown the power of a modern, well-organized force, the United States and the United Kingdom were able to flex their muscles. The US obviously dominated, constituting the bulk of the operation, but the British showed up with the Challenger 1 tank, which destroyed several hundred Iraqi tanks and did not suffer a single loss. The Challenger is also credited with the longest-range kill not just of the Gulf War but perhaps in history, when it struck a T-72 from around 5,000 meters away, a little over three miles. This absolute power displayed by NATO's top dogs left an impression that is still around to this day, especially when one considers the possibility of a war with the likes of Russia or China, who have not come close to displaying such prowess on the battlefield. After all, this was the US and its allies fighting a war on the other side of the globe, while Russia, by comparison, has struggled in its own backyard. ## An Ideal War and Its Long Shadow It was a modern war that, apart from the civilian casualties, did not really attract many critics as a whole. Public support across coalition nations was incredibly high, and the conflict seemed to come to an ideal end by achieving the liberation of Kuwait, immediately ending the fighting, and withdrawing from the region just a few weeks later. It was at the time considered an option to continue the advance to Baghdad and occupy Iraq, but this was dismissed as too dangerous, both for the troops and for public image. Iraq, on the other hand, was on a steep downward spiral following the war. Saddam tightened his grip on his people, killing as many as 100,000 civilians during a series of uprisings against his regime later that year. This came on top of the at least 3,000 civilians killed during Desert Storm, in a country so war-torn that the UN described it as having been "bombed into the pre-industrial age." Widespread international sanctions cut Iraq off from global trade in several sectors, and the debt problem only worsened. Anti-American and anti-Western sentiment skyrocketed as a result, likely contributing to the hasty decision a little over a decade later to invade Iraq once again and take down Saddam Hussein for good. But that war would not go nearly as well as Desert Storm had, and the idea of a successful and justified war in the Middle East would be tainted forever. ## Frequently Asked Questions ### Why did Iraq invade Kuwait in 1990? Iraq emerged from the Iran-Iraq war buried in international debt, much of it owed to Kuwait, which had loaned Baghdad 14 billion US dollars over the previous decade. Kuwait was also overproducing oil, which depressed global prices and damaged Iraq's economy, and Iraq accused Kuwait of slant drilling into its oil fields. Saddam invaded on August 2nd, 1990, annexing Kuwait in two days, also citing old sovereign claims dating to the Ottoman era. ### How large was the coalition that fought Iraq? An alliance of 39 nations formed the coalition, the largest since the Allied powers of the Second World War. Of these, 35 sent troops to Saudi Arabia, while others such as Germany played a defensive role in case the war spread to Turkey. The buildup eventually reached 956,000 men, about 70 percent of them American, with the UK, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia as the next-largest contributors. ### Why did Iraq fire ballistic missiles at Israel during the air war? Saddam launched a total of 42 ballistic missiles at Israel hoping to provoke it into the conflict. If Israel joined, the Arab nations in the coalition might withdraw or even switch sides, and it could draw previously neutral states onto Iraq's side. President Bush repeatedly convinced Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir to hold back, promising missile defense systems, and Israel ultimately stood down. ### What were the major tank battles of the Gulf War ground campaign? The center advance produced what are often called the last great tank battles of the 20th century: 73 Easting, where roughly 300 coalition tanks destroyed 160 Iraqi tanks while losing a single M2 Bradley; Medina Ridge, where Iraq lost nearly 200 tanks; and Norfolk on February 27th, with more than 550 Iraqi tanks destroyed. All were overwhelmingly one-sided coalition victories. ### How did the war end and what were the final casualties? Iraq surrendered on February 28th, just four days into the ground war, and a unilateral ceasefire was signed in coalition-occupied territory. The coalition suffered just 292 deaths, half from accidents or friendly fire, while Iraq lost as many as 50,000 killed, 75,000 wounded, and more than 100,000 prisoners of war. A coalition advance to Baghdad was considered but rejected as too dangerous for both troops and public image.

Did China Help Pakistan Fight India in the 2025 Conflict?

Simon Whistler — Tue, 02 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Earlier this year, India and Pakistan lunged for each other's throats, and the rest of the world held its breath until the exchange between two nuclear-armed nations had passed. The fighting spanned four days of back-and-forth air assaults. But of all the parties involved, one nation sitting on the sidelines had more at stake than any of the combatants themselves. To hear Beijing tell it, any violence between India and Pakistan takes place in China's own backyard, in a part of the world where China believes it calls the shots—if, that is, China's own leaders are to be believed. In the wake of the 2025 India-Pakistan conflict, it is now an open question whether China chose to put its finger on the scales and directly influence the outcome of the contest in Pakistan's favor. And there is more to it than that. Whatever successes Pakistan achieved, it created through the use of Chinese military hardware and, by some allegations, with the help of Chinese intelligence. If China is going to be the world's next superpower, then it will start by deciding the outcome of battles close to home. If Beijing really did come to Islamabad's aid, that would be a clear indicator of what is to come in the battles ahead. The central question is not only whether China acted, but what the mere accusation of Chinese involvement means for the relationship between Beijing and New Delhi as it slides toward open rivalry. This is one of those stories where a rock-solid conclusion is impossible: neither Pakistan nor China has any incentive to admit collaboration, and no hard public proof has emerged. But the suspicion alone is reshaping South Asian geopolitics, and that suspicion deserves a careful accounting. ## Key Takeaways - The 2025 India-Pakistan conflict began after a 22 April terrorist attack in the disputed region of Kashmir killed 26 men—most of them Hindu civilians—at a resort town, prompting India's Operation Sindoor. - India's Lieutenant General Rahul Singh, deputy chief of the Indian Army, publicly accused China of providing Pakistan "all possible support" and "live inputs"—real-time intelligence on Indian assets—during the fighting. - Both China and Pakistan deny the claims, insisting Pakistan acted on its own intelligence; the allegation also contradicts India's earlier statements that China had not helped directly. - Pakistan claims its Chinese-built J-10C fighters, aided by China's unproven PL-15 air-to-air missile, downed several Indian Rafale jets, an outcome China is reportedly leveraging to discredit French jets and promote its own. - Even if direct support is unproven, China unequivocally preferred a Pakistani outcome: Islamabad is a close strategic and economic partner and a battle-test bed for advanced Chinese hardware. - Backing Pakistan as a proxy lets China keep India tied down in a long hot-and-cold rivalry while avoiding a direct war it does not want—a dynamic that may keep the India-Pakistan conflict alive for decades. ## What Actually Happened in the 2025 Clash The exchange of hostilities began on 7 May 2025 in South Asia, but its trigger came two weeks earlier. On 22 April, a terrorist organization in the disputed region of Kashmir killed 26 men—most of them Hindu civilians—at a resort town. India claimed that Pakistan was directly complicit in the attack and had supported the terror group that carried it out. Pakistan denied those claims. A couple of weeks later, India launched Operation Sindoor, a major response that drew Pakistan into back-and-forth exchanges of drones, missiles, and airstrikes. The two nations reportedly got into a fairly large air battle, firing weapons at each other from long distance while staying safely behind their own territory. Pakistan claimed to have shot down no fewer than six Indian aircraft, including modern combat jets. India, in turn, claimed to have destroyed the headquarters of terror groups in Kashmir, while both sides asserted they had struck each other's bases and other military targets. As is typical of a modern war, both sides were keen to claim victory and reluctant to admit defeat. Neither was eager to open the floodgates to third-party fact-finders unless the other did the same. The brief conflict ended without devolving into a major war, and both sides appear to have landed blows. Determining a clear winner and loser is difficult—but for the question of Chinese involvement, who got the better of things is largely beside the point. The more consequential story unfolded behind the curtain. ## The Inflammatory Allegations There is an important caveat at the outset: no one can offer a rock-solid conclusion here. Neither Pakistan nor China has any incentive to openly admit that they collaborated against India during the recent exchange, and as of this writing, no hard proof has emerged into the public domain. But that does not mean there is no reason to believe China may have played a significant role—and the most direct allegations of all come straight from India's own leaders. The central allegations were levied against China by Lieutenant General Rahul Singh, the deputy chief of the Indian Army, speaking to representatives of India's defense industry at an event. According to Singh, India was fighting against two adversaries in the recent crisis, not just one. Pakistan was the primary aggressor—what Singh called the "front face"—while China provided, in his words, "all possible support." Specifically, Singh explained that China had provided "live inputs" during the conflict: real-time intelligence to Pakistan's forces about which Indian assets were deployed, where they were, and how close they were to being used. Singh said China's involvement became clear during high-level talks between Indian and Pakistani military officials trying to draw down the conflict. By his account, Pakistan said: "We know that your such and such important vector is primed and it is ready for action." In other words, China was telling Pakistan which of India's weapons were about to be used against it, and Pakistan was telling Indian officials directly about its advance knowledge of the military action they had planned. ## A Second Accusation, and a Web of Contradictions Singh's was not the only allegation of Chinese involvement to emerge from Indian leaders. Ashok Kumar, the Director-General of India's Centre for Joint Warfare Studies, specifically claimed that China moved satellites in orbit to help Pakistan deploy air-defense radar to the correct positions in order to observe incoming military aircraft. China rejected that claim, and so did Pakistan, with both nations insisting that Pakistan operated on its own intelligence. The accusations are also tangled in contradictions. Singh did not specify just how India determined that China was feeding intelligence to Pakistan, rather than Pakistan simply collecting that knowledge on its own. More striking, the claim contradicts earlier statements from India itself—that China had not helped directly, and that Pakistan could have obtained commercially available satellite imagery to guide its actions. That leaves two readings. Singh may be telling the truth. Or he may be setting India up to challenge China more directly. Accusations of military involvement in another nation's conflict, leveled at China by name, are all but guaranteed to create major headaches in the India-China relationship going forward—and they are something India usually goes well out of its way to avoid. This kind of allegation does not come out of the mouths of high-level Indian military leaders unless the nation is ready for that sort of fight. Right now, it appears India is about to square up. ## A Potent Partner: Why the Claim Matters More Than the Truth There are some geopolitical incidents where the truth is of absolute, ultimate importance. This is not one of them. Here, the thing that really matters is not whether China actually lent real-time military support to Pakistan, but whether the claim of Chinese involvement leads to a larger diplomatic showdown between Beijing and New Delhi. On that front, there is reason to start paying attention fast. The relationship between China and India has never been a simple one, and now more than ever there is reason to believe trouble lies ahead. China is widely seen as a candidate to become the next global superpower, standing opposite the United States and perhaps even rising to eclipse America on the world stage. But India is a rising powerhouse in its own right, with a booming economy, growing relevance in global affairs, and the only population on the planet that can rival China by the numbers. If India sits in China's geopolitical backyard, then as a next-door neighbor it is less a sweet old lady than a standoffish, fiercely competitive figure who may or may not keep a baseball bat by his door. China and India only recently de-escalated a four-year dispute over their 3,500-kilometer border. But ever since India's conflict with Pakistan, New Delhi has been sending clear signals that it is ready to fight over a new set of issues. ## New Delhi Pokes the Dragon In the span of just a couple of weeks, India accused China of directly supporting Pakistan, promised safe harbor and political backing to the exiled Dalai Lama, called out China's growing closeness to Indian neighbor Bangladesh, and proposed a plan to challenge China's near-monopoly on rare earth metals. On the day this episode was written, and just after snubbing the annual gathering of the BRICS economic collective it shares with India, Chinese leader Xi Jinping welcomed Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif to Beijing. A few weeks ago—let alone a few years ago—India poking at China so rapidly and in so many different directions at once would have been unthinkable. But add the context of direct Chinese support for Pakistan's military endeavors, and the decision begins to make more sense. India is growing fast, but it is not ready to challenge Beijing outright for dominance in Asia. With China seemingly more focused on the United States, Russia, and international development efforts, India could try to keep things fairly calm with its powerful neighbor. But in a hypothetical situation where India had received direct evidence that China was backing its arch-rival, that would change the game. If India came to believe China had already chosen its side in South Asia's decades-long conflict, then it is not much of a leap to see how India would decide it is time to show China its strength rather than its willingness to cooperate. ## China's Side: A Clear and Unequivocal Yes Shift the question from "did China directly support Pakistan against India?" to "did China have a side it preferred in the India-Pakistan conflict?" and the answer becomes a clear and unequivocal yes. China and Pakistan have a very close strategic and economic relationship, with China supplying a large portion of Pakistan's modern military kit while simultaneously running large-scale industrial and resource-extraction projects on Pakistani soil. Those operations are not always smooth sailing, but China and Pakistan have more than proven that their collaboration can withstand intermittent setbacks. When it comes to military engagements specifically, Pakistan's value to China is clear. In this most recent exchange of hostilities, the performance of Chinese fighter aircraft and air-to-air missiles took on a level of international importance. Pakistan alleged that Chinese-built, advanced J-10C fighters were responsible for downing several copies of France's Rafale in India's arsenal, with the help of China's unproven PL-15 air-to-air missile. Pakistan's foreign minister, Ishaq Dar, openly told his nation's parliament that he called the Chinese ambassador and his team to Pakistan's Foreign Ministry in the early hours of the morning to keep them apprised of real-time developments that supposedly made the Chinese delegation quite happy. ## The Arms-Export War Behind the Air War According to the Associated Press, China has been using those purported air-to-air victories to forcefully lobby other nations against buying France's fighter jet and to instead place large orders for Chinese fighters. According to French intelligence officials who spoke to the AP, China has been actively cultivating disinformation campaigns to harm the reputation of France's jets and promote its own. As a retired senior colonel from the Chinese military told the BBC, "The aerial fight [above Pakistan] was a big advertisement for the Chinese weapons industry. Until now, China had no opportunity to test its platforms in a combat situation." That single line captures why the conflict matters far beyond South Asia. For China, supporting Pakistan's military directly would confer several benefits at once. For one thing, it would allow China to do exactly what it claims to have done: to battle-test and prove the worthiness of some of its more advanced military hardware, while simultaneously avoiding direct conflicts that do not happen at a time or place of its own choosing. China is trying to cement itself as a major arms exporter and overcome past reports of shoddy workmanship and poor product quality in some of its earlier fighter aircraft. A high-profile combat win, real or amplified, is worth a great deal in that competition. ## The Proxy Logic: Keeping India Tied Down Beyond marketing, supporting Pakistan offers China the chance to better protect its own economic interests inside the country and ensure that India cannot meddle there in an effort to undermine China. And perhaps most important of all, by directly supporting Pakistan's military, China could ensure that India remains tied up in a long hot-and-cold conflict against Pakistan for the long term, freeing China from ever having to worry about India as a direct rival. That is a dynamic seen play out in other ways during various great-power conflicts—with the Soviet Union, for example, funding and supporting Cuba on America's doorstep during the Cold War. A Pakistan with China on its side is far more capable than a Pakistan trying to fight all by itself. Pakistan's capabilities in intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance, or ISR, are believed to be relatively weak when it comes to gathering real-time, actionable intelligence, whereas China is believed to have the ability to keep watch over a large part of the world simultaneously. China brings a similar advantage in information and cyber-warfare, where it is already known to offer some technologies and capabilities for Pakistan's benefit. China obviously supplies advanced warfighting equipment to Pakistan that Pakistan cannot produce by itself, and Pakistan is clearly willing to use it against a relatively modern peer adversary that China would rather not have to go to war with directly. That makes it far easier for China to oppose India through a willing, well-armed proxy than through a direct war it very clearly does not want. As for what China could have provided Pakistan during this most recent conflict, the most likely answers are exactly what Lieutenant General Singh specified: warfighting equipment supplied ahead of time, and then the requisite knowledge to put that equipment to good use. ## Taking Sides in South Asia So, did China really assist Pakistan directly in its war against India? The jury is still out. India says yes, China and Pakistan say no, and the rest of the world shrugs in public while keeping any secretive intelligence findings private. But it would certainly be in China's interest to ensure both a neutral-to-favorable outcome for Pakistan instead of a defeat, and an ideal set of circumstances for Chinese military kit to be put to the test. China's preference would be to provide intelligence and hardware rather than contribute its own fighting forces or formally enter the fight, and Pakistan would be glad to take all the help it could get from its close ally. And if India were to know that China had directly supported Pakistan in an armed conflict, then India would need to think very carefully about whether it was time to stop appeasing China and start pushing back. If it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, and swims like a duck, there is still no confirming it is a duck based on publicly available information. But what does the evidence suggest? Quack, quack. As for how China could lend military support to Pakistan in the future, any direct involvement will likely broadly resemble what India claims happened here. Beijing is known for being very militarily cautious on the world stage: it does not do invasions, it does not do armed interventions, and it does not even fight a proper war against its adversaries if that can be avoided. If it can ensure that Pakistan has the tools to fight its own battles against India, while China feeds it the requisite information to make those battles more efficient and effective, then China does not need to worry about a large-scale war with India in the near future. ## What This Means for South Asia's Future As long as Pakistan remains militarily potent, India and China are not likely to engage in any military conflict bigger than a border skirmish—and that means China can delay the chaos and consequences of war while amassing its capital and power in the ways Beijing prefers. For South Asia, that dynamic probably means the India-Pakistan conflict will not be going away for at least several decades more. India has the economic power to take care of its own side of the conflict, plus a growing relationship with Western powers. It was Pakistan that was more likely to fold at some point—via economic means, regime change, or something else. But China both has the economic power to ensure Pakistan can hold its own in the coming decades and the incentives to ensure India continues to regard Pakistan as an adversary. The mere fact that an India-Pakistan cold war will continue does not preclude India from growing into the geopolitical major power it could become. But it does impose a very meaningful set of constraints on how India realizes that potential. Its relationship with China could grow more competitive, more oppositional, and even outright hostile. Yet if China is going to keep helping Pakistan in its battles against India, then any direct face-off between India and China will have to be postponed indefinitely. Whether the allegations of Beijing's involvement are ever proven, that suspended confrontation may be the most durable legacy of the four days of fighting in May 2025. ## Frequently Asked Questions ### What triggered the 2025 India-Pakistan conflict? The conflict traces to a 22 April 2025 attack in the disputed region of Kashmir, in which a terrorist organization killed 26 men—most of them Hindu civilians—at a resort town. India claimed Pakistan was directly complicit and had supported the terror group; Pakistan denied it. Two weeks later, India launched Operation Sindoor, and open hostilities began on 7 May 2025. ### What exactly did India accuse China of doing? Lieutenant General Rahul Singh, deputy chief of the Indian Army, said India fought two adversaries, with Pakistan as the "front face" and China providing "all possible support." He specifically alleged China gave Pakistan "live inputs"—real-time intelligence on which Indian assets were deployed, where, and how close they were to being used. Separately, Ashok Kumar of India's Centre for Joint Warfare Studies claimed China moved satellites to help Pakistan position air-defense radar. ### What role did Chinese weapons play in the air battle, and how is China exploiting the outcome? Pakistan alleged that Chinese-built J-10C fighters—aided by China's unproven PL-15 air-to-air missile—were responsible for downing several of India's French-made Rafale jets. According to the Associated Press, China has since used these purported victories to lobby other nations against buying France's Rafale and to promote Chinese fighters instead, with French intelligence officials reporting active Chinese disinformation campaigns to damage the Rafale's reputation. ### Why would China prefer to back Pakistan as a proxy rather than confront India directly? Backing Pakistan lets China battle-test advanced hardware, protect its extensive economic projects inside Pakistan, and keep India tied down in a long rivalry—all while avoiding a direct war it does not want. Supporting a willing, well-armed proxy is far easier than direct conflict, mirroring how the Soviet Union backed Cuba on America's doorstep during the Cold War. A Pakistan with Chinese intelligence and hardware support is far more capable than one acting alone. ### What does the episode mean for South Asia's future? As long as Pakistan remains militarily potent with Chinese backing, India and China are unlikely to fight anything larger than a border skirmish, and the India-Pakistan rivalry will probably persist for decades. China has both the economic power to keep Pakistan viable and the incentive to ensure India regards Pakistan as an adversary. For India, the episode has prompted a rapid series of signals of pushback toward Beijing—including accusations of Chinese support, backing for the Dalai Lama, and proposals to challenge China's near-monopoly on rare earth metals. ## Sources 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14.

Ethiopia Has Entered Sudan's War: How Two of the Century's Worst Conflicts Could Merge

Simon Whistler — Tue, 02 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

"All the ingredients are there for a much wider regional blow up — really, a regional mega-war." Those were the words of International Crisis Group expert Alan Boswell, weighing the prospect that two of the worst wars seen this century might merge into a single conflict. On one side sits the Tigray War in northern Ethiopia, which plausibly killed 600,000 people between 2020 and 2022 and now looks set to reignite. On the other sits the ongoing meltdown in Sudan, a meltdown defined by mass killings, the destruction of entire cities, and what increasingly appears to be a genocide. Boswell was speaking about a resurgent Tigray War drawing in neighboring Sudan. But there is another, more immediate possibility — one demonstrated just two weeks before this account was filmed. Ethiopia may not be pulled into Sudan's war at all. It may enter of its own accord. On March 23rd, fighters from the allied Rapid Support Forces and the Sudan People's Liberation Movement–North routed the Sudanese army at the strategic town of Kurmuk in Blue Nile State. This was no ordinary victory. The rebels had crossed over from Ethiopian territory, where the government of Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed had been sheltering them. With Sudanese military officers now briefing that they regard Addis Ababa as an active participant in the war, the chance of these two conflicts merging has shifted from theoretical to a terrifying possibility. ## Key Takeaways - On March 23rd, allied RSF and SPLM-N fighters overran the strategic town of Kurmuk in Sudan's Blue Nile State, crossing from Ethiopian territory where Abiy Ahmed's government had sheltered them. - The Kurmuk province governor described the assault as an invasion supported by Ethiopia, and Sudan's military-led government now privately treats Ethiopia as an official combatant. - A massive RSF training and logistics camp was built in Ethiopia's Benishangul-Gumuz region late last year with financing, trainers, and logistics from the UAE, according to a Reuters investigation. - Ethiopia's entry is driven less by direct incentives than by pressure from the UAE — whose weapons let Addis Ababa win the Tigray War — and by fear of an encircling alliance of Egypt, Eritrea, Sudan, and Tigrayan rebels. - A web of rivalries — over the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam, Nile water, Red Sea access, and the al-Fashaqa borderlands — links Sudan's war to the threat of a far wider Horn of Africa conflagration. - Three years into Sudan's war, the RSF-SPLM-N bloc and the SAF each field roughly half a million fighters, neither can land a knockout blow, and atrocities such as the El-Fasher massacre keep mounting. ## The Fall of Kurmuk The governor of Kurmuk province, in Sudan's Blue Nile State, is not a man to mince words. After a combined force of fighters from the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces and the Sudan People's Liberation Movement–North overran the strategic town on March 23rd, he told the media that "the forces that attacked Kurmuk set out from inside Ethiopian territory and are supported by Ethiopia," adding bluntly, "We're dealing with an invasion." This was not a sudden suspicion. Privately, leading figures in Sudan's military had been briefing journalists for months that Ethiopia was becoming actively involved in the nation's civil war. As Arab Weekly reported in January, "The current consensus within Sudan's military-led government is that Ethiopia is now an official combatant." Yet the magnitude of the joint attack still seems to have caught the Sudanese Armed Forces off guard. When the combined RSF and SPLM-N force struck, it humiliated the defenders. According to the Sudan War Monitor, equipment was seized and senior army officers taken prisoner amid a chaotic retreat. By the time the dust settled, the strategic town of Kurmuk was in rebel hands. ## The Camp in Benishangul-Gumuz The fighters who took Kurmuk crossed over from Ethiopia's Benishangul-Gumuz region, where a massive training and logistics camp had been established late the previous year. Its existence was no closely guarded secret, and neither was the sheer number of fighters drilling there. The Sudanese military had even moved additional troops into Blue Nile State to guard against precisely this kind of attack. It made no difference. The financing tells its own story. In a recent in-depth investigative piece, Reuters uncovered diplomatic cables and internal security memos indicating that "the United Arab Emirates financed the camp's construction and provided military trainers and logistical support to the site." The camp was, in effect, a foreign-built launchpad sitting on Ethiopian soil — and it opened an entirely new front in Sudan's war. The Blue Nile offensive arrived at a pointed moment. The bulk of the fighting has been concentrated in Kordofan in central Sudan, a front where the paramilitaries had expected an easy victory only to absorb a series of setbacks earlier in the year. Opening a new campaign in the south is most likely an effort to draw SAF troops away from the main fight and force the army to spread itself thin. ## An Unlikely Alliance The Blue Nile front is also a direct product of the RSF's surprise alliance with the SPLM-N, which has long maintained a presence in Sudan's south, including Blue Nile State. The word "surprise" is warranted. From 2013 onward, the RSF was one of the principal forces responsible for crushing the SPLM-N's rebellion against Khartoum — a job it carried out with gleeful violence. The historical record is brutal. As al-Jazeera described it: "Even after the RSF turned its guns on its former ally, the SAF, in 2023, its fighters massacred villagers across the Nuba Mountains. According to Human Rights Watch, RSF forces committed war crimes in the Nuba between December 2023 and March 2024, including murder, sexual violence, looting, sexual slavery, gang rape, and the deliberate targeting of civilians." Little wonder, then, that the alliance forged in 2025 raised eyebrows — including within the two groups themselves. As the Sudan War Monitor has explained, "The two rebel groups still look upon each other warily, and their forces have not integrated." Whatever the motives, the offensive worked. The SAF now fights on an additional front precisely when it most needs to concentrate forces in Kordofan. Capturing the Blue Nile state capital of Damazin, which the military is rushing to reinforce, seems unlikely — but the loss of Kurmuk is still a major blow to SAF leader General al-Burhan. ## Why Ethiopia Chose a Side The obvious question is why. Why would Ethiopia — itself a fragile state fighting multiple insurgencies — be so keen to join what may be the world's worst ongoing war? Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed had spent the early years of the conflict trying to keep both sides guessing. He provocatively received RSF chief Mohammad Dagalo, universally known as Hemedti, as a head of state in Addis Ababa, then flew to the temporary military capital of Port Sudan, where he arranged a direct call between General al-Burhan and the RSF's chief backer, UAE leader Mohammed bin Zayed. For Ethiopia to suddenly swing so decisively behind the RSF appears counterintuitive. Why labor so hard to preserve a veneer of neutrality only to abandon it? The answer is bound up in the shifting geopolitics of Africa and the wider MENA region, but the most obvious driver is Ethiopia's heavy reliance on the UAE. Since Abiy came to power in 2018, Abu Dhabi has bankrolled his regime — funding government projects and sinking money into a gigantic palace the prime minister is building for himself. More importantly, it was Emirati weapons shipments that allowed Addis Ababa to win the Tigray War, a war in which the Tigray People's Liberation Front came close to marching on the capital and toppling the government before being driven back by withering drone fire. Abiy sees UAE backing as essential to his political survival, especially as he battles an insurgency in Amhara Region and braces for another potential war in Tigray. As Africa expert Cameron Hudson put it, "Ethiopia is less motivated here by incentives, which seem absent, than by pressure from the UAE." ## The Tigray War's Long Shadow The UAE's leverage is only part of the story. Addis Ababa has its own grievances, and they too trace back to the Tigray War. While most of the devastation was confined to Tigray region in the north, or to regions such as Amhara that the TPLF invaded during its counteroffensive, the war was also traumatic for the federal government. As the crisis erupted, Sudan's military exploited the distraction to move into the disputed al-Fashaqa borderlands, seizing ninety percent of a territory Addis Ababa considers rightfully Ethiopian. Khartoum's meddling did not stop there. When the war ended, scores of Tigrayan fighters sought refuge in Sudan. The SAF always denied harboring them — until those denials collapsed in early 2025, when the TPLF's Army 70 helped Sudan's military liberate Khartoum. The deeper fear is alignment. Ethiopia worries that the Sudanese army is drawing ever closer to its mortal enemies. For tangled reasons, a large faction of the TPLF is now warming to its old foe Eritrea. Asmara believes, with some justification, that Abiy intends to annex part of its territory to secure access to the sea — something the prime minister has called an existential issue for landlocked Ethiopia. So Eritrea now arms the same Tigrayan rebels with which the Sudanese army is deepening and formalizing ties, hoping to build a deterrent. The SAF, in turn, is being pulled into a direct alliance with Eritrea. Sudan's military believes the war would already be over were it not for the UAE keeping the RSF afloat, and Eritrea — fearful of Ethiopia — is part of a coalescing anti-Emirati bloc. The two share a common enemy. This is no longer theoretical: Eritrean airfields shelter Sudanese fighter jets from RSF drone strikes, while Asmara trains and arms anti-RSF groups in Darfur that are aligned with the SAF. ## The Egypt Factor To grasp what is truly at stake requires sketching yet another rivalry — this one between Addis Ababa and Cairo. As one Fronts piece described the regional tangle, plotting it on a corkboard "would wind up looking like something designed by an obsessive detective tracking a serial killer: endless lines of string crossing maps like spiderweb, while printed mugshots of the main players stare impassively out." The root of the Egypt-Ethiopia feud is the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam, or GERD. Spanning the Blue Nile, the dam is meant to transform Ethiopia by generating enormous quantities of hydroelectric power, and in Addis Ababa it stands as a symbol of national pride. In Cairo, it looks like theft — an Ethiopian hand on Egypt's water supply. As a nation that is essentially one vast desert, nearly all Egyptian life clings to the coasts or the Nile. Dam the Blue Nile, and you gain the power to control Egypt's access to the one thing it cannot live without. Egypt therefore treats the GERD as a potential threat. The Lowy Institute argues that Cairo's growing alliance with the SAF is entirely rooted in the fear that an RSF-controlled Sudan would cripple its Nile diplomacy. That may overstate matters, but the GERD is plainly a major driver of Egyptian decision-making, alongside the fear that a wider Sudanese collapse would push enormous refugee flows across the shared border. Cairo makes no secret of wanting the SAF to win. Egypt recently reinterpreted a years-old joint defense agreement with Sudan as a pact specifically with the SAF, while the Egyptian air force has begun using Turkish-supplied drones to bomb RSF supply convoys leaving eastern Libya — where the warlord General Haftar sits firmly in the UAE's pocket. ## Two Blocs and a Tightening Noose The strikes on RSF supply routes from Libya are part of a broader pattern. An alliance headed by Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Turkey is working to hobble the ambitions of a rival bloc coalescing around the UAE and Israel. Both blocs remain somewhat informal, and some alignments have been scrambled by the Iran War, but they represent an underreported driver of affairs across the African Horn. The consequences are concrete. Somalia, long a UAE client, recently cancelled Abu Dhabi's access to its ports over fears surrounding Israel's recognition of the breakaway state of Somaliland — and over Ethiopia's offer, roughly two years ago, to recognize Somaliland in return for access to one of its ports. The cumulative result is that the UAE now finds it harder than ever to move weapons to the RSF, with multiple routes closed. That has left Ethiopia as one of the few friendly countries Abu Dhabi can still rely on to supply the paramilitaries. As Cameron Hudson told the Africa Report, "Ethiopia has become the last natural place to do that." Addis Ababa is thus entering Sudan's war both because of UAE pressure and because it perceives a tightening regional noose — old foes like Eritrea joining with Egypt, Sudan, Somalia, and Tigrayan rebels that threaten both the GERD and Ethiopia's quest for the sea. Its neighbors, meanwhile, see an expansionist power aligning itself with genocidal paramilitaries while gearing up to attack Eritrea. ## Is a Wider War Inevitable? The implications spill outward still further. South Sudan is sliding into civil war, with the SAF backing one faction while the government under Salva Kiir increasingly supports the RSF — a dynamic that risks dragging in Uganda, which has already deployed troops to keep Kiir in power in Juba. Were a wider conflict to pull in South Sudan, it could merge the Sudan War and the Tigray War with yet another bloodbath; South Sudan's earlier civil war, fought along the same fault lines, is believed to have killed an estimated 400,000 people. The flashpoints are easy to enumerate. Even indirect Ethiopian involvement in Sudan risks a reaction from Eritrea, which could destabilize its southern neighbor by backing rebels in Amhara or Tigray. Addis Ababa, for its part, seems intent on finishing Tigray's rebels once and for all; at the end of February the Ethiopian military moved heavy armor to the region's borders. Widespread fighting never erupted, a restraint theorized to stem solely from an Iran War–driven fuel crisis that would have hampered the army's mobility. Should Ethiopia ultimately attack Tigray, the SAF might well enter the war on the TPLF's side. And should the SAF retaliate for Blue Nile with direct strikes on Ethiopia — perhaps to destroy the RSF training camp — Egypt could conceivably join the fray. None of these flashpoints exists in isolation, and that is what makes the moment so dangerous. There are thousands of potential triggers across the region; one wrong move and suddenly everyone is fighting. If 2026 was jokingly compared to 1939, the wider MENA region looks more like 1914 — a year in which a complex web of alliances pulled an entire continent into war. ## The War That Will Not End Even if the feared mega-war never ignites, the news out of Sudan remains a grim reminder that the world's worst war continues unabated. This April, Sudan's war marks its third anniversary — three years since a standoff between the SAF and the RSF turned Khartoum into a warzone and spread fighting across the entire country. The stalemate is brutal in its symmetry. Together, the RSF and SPLM-N are thought to still field perhaps half a million men under arms, while the SAF holds slightly more. Both have scored victories in recent months, yet neither can deliver a knockout blow. And as the war drags on, the atrocities mount. In October, the RSF overran the Darfur city of El-Fasher, unleashing mass killings that may rank among the worst atrocities of the century. Death tolls vary wildly, but a commonly accepted middle-range figure is 60,000 dead in slightly over a week — a toll that, by comparison, took the Hamas-run health ministry 21 months to announce in Gaza. Whatever happens next, Sudan's tragedy seems set to continue: a catastrophe fueled by outside actors and ignored by the wider world, even as it threatens to plunge the Horn of Africa into a crisis that would make the Iran War look like child's play. ## Frequently Asked Questions ### What happened at Kurmuk on March 23rd? Allied fighters from the Rapid Support Forces and the Sudan People's Liberation Movement–North overran the strategic town of Kurmuk in Sudan's Blue Nile State. According to the Sudan War Monitor, the attackers seized equipment and took senior Sudanese army officers prisoner amid a chaotic retreat. Crucially, the fighters had crossed over from Ethiopian territory, and the Kurmuk province governor described the assault as an invasion supported by Ethiopia. ### Why would Ethiopia back the RSF against Sudan's army? The most obvious driver is pressure from the UAE, which bankrolled Abiy Ahmed's regime and supplied the weapons that won the Tigray War. Because Abu Dhabi also backs the RSF, it leaned on Abiy to do the same. Ethiopia additionally fears an encircling alliance of Egypt, Eritrea, Sudan, and Tigrayan rebels, and resents Sudan's wartime seizure of the disputed al-Fashaqa borderlands. ### What is the RSF-SPLM-N alliance, and why is it surprising? The two groups allied in 2025 despite a bitter history: from 2013 onward, the RSF was a principal force in crushing the SPLM-N's rebellion against Khartoum, committing war crimes in the Nuba Mountains between December 2023 and March 2024 per Human Rights Watch. As the Sudan War Monitor notes, the groups still regard each other warily and have not integrated their forces. ### How does Egypt factor into Sudan's war and the wider regional crisis? Egypt has reinterpreted a joint defense agreement with Sudan as a pact specifically with the SAF, and its air force has used Turkish-supplied drones to bomb RSF supply convoys leaving eastern Libya. The Lowy Institute argues Cairo's alliance with the SAF stems largely from fear that an RSF-controlled Sudan would cripple Egyptian Nile diplomacy, given Egypt's overwhelming dependence on the Blue Nile's waters. ### What is the current state of Sudan's civil war after three years? This April marks the war's third anniversary. The RSF-SPLM-N bloc fields roughly half a million fighters and the SAF holds slightly more, yet neither can deliver a decisive blow. Atrocities continue to mount: the RSF's seizure of El-Fasher in October produced an estimated 60,000 deaths in just over a week, making it among the worst atrocities of the century. ## Related Coverage - [The UAE's Covert War: Funding the RSF in Sudan](/article/uae-covert-war-funding-rsf-sudan-genocide) - [Sudan's Ignored Genocide and the Tragic Fall of El-Fasher](/article/sudans-ignored-genocide-and-tragic-fall-of-el-fasher) - [Why the World Ignored Ethiopia's Tigray War, the Deadliest of the 21st Century](/article/why-world-ignored-ethiopias-tigray-war-deadliest-21st-century) - [Ethiopia and Eritrea: On the Brink of War Again](/article/ethiopia-eritrea-brink-of-war-again) - [South Sudan Is on Fire: Here's Why](/article/south-sudan-is-on-fire-heres-why-and-more) ## Sources 1. https://www.reuters.com/investigations/ethiopia-builds-secret-camp-train-sudan-rsf-fighters-sources-say-2026-02-10/ 2. https://thearabweekly.com/why-ethiopia-betting-sudans-rsf 3. https://www.newarab.com/analysis/ethiopias-secret-rsf-camp-dangerous-new-phase-sudans-war 4. https://www.thenewhumanitarian.org/analysis/2026/03/23/regional-mega-war-renewed-conflict-ethiopia-sudan 5. https://sudanwarmonitor.com/p/sudanese-rebels-overrun-army-garrison-ethiopia-border 6. https://www.theafricareport.com/412812/sudan-accuses-ethiopia-of-aiding-rsfs-latest-conquest/ 7. https://www.lowyinstitute.org/the-interpreter/spillover-sudan 8. https://fronts.co/article/horn-of-africa-meltdown-is-a-terrifying-possibility/ 9. https://sudanwarmonitor.com/p/sudans-widening-war-the-regional 10. https://www.dw.com/en/sudan-civil-war-ethiopias-uaes-role-under-scrutiny/a-75913225 11. https://www.economist.com/middle-east-and-africa/2025/11/13/ethiopia-is-perilously-close-to-another-war 12. https://www.theafricareport.com/407980/is-ethiopias-abiy-helping-rsf-in-sudans-civil-war/ 13. https://www.aljazeera.com/features/longform/2025/8/19/inside-the-nuba-mountains-and-the-alliance-reshaping-sudans-civil-war 14. https://adf-magazine.com/2026/03/report-cargo-flights-arm-sudanese-paramilitary-group/

Make European Defense Great Again: Inside the EU's Plan to Rearm

Simon Whistler — Tue, 02 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Just a few years ago, it would have been unthinkable. As recently as the start of 2025, the safe bet on any European defense summit was that it would end with platitudes and no observable action. Not this time. On Thursday, March 6, 2025, an emergency summit brought together all 27 leaders of the European Union for crunch-time talks on raising defense spending. The backdrop was the Trump administration's escalating cutoffs of Ukrainian capabilities, and loud signals from Washington about refusing to protect fellow NATO members. Those signals have convinced much of Europe that the United States will not just abandon the continent, but may become actively hostile. Politico called it "one of the biggest geopolitical crises to hit the continent in decades" — a crisis that required an equally strong response. To the world's amazement, it got one. After spending three years of war on their own continent treating it as no big deal, Europe's leaders finally seemed to wake up. Leaders endorsed the European Commission's aim to mobilize about 800 billion euros — roughly $860 billion — for defense spending, and signed off on a conclusion, agreed by all EU members, that was practically gung-ho by the bloc's standards: that Europe must become more sovereign, more responsible for its own defense, and better equipped to act and deal autonomously with immediate and future threats. For all the unity on display, however, significant questions remain about whether the rearmament plans will actually work. This is the story of what was agreed, what was merely promised, and why the gap between the two may decide whether Europe genuinely wakes from its slumber. ## Key Takeaways - At an emergency summit on March 6, 2025, all 27 EU leaders endorsed the European Commission's aim to mobilize roughly 800 billion euros (about $860 billion) for defense. - The bulk of that headline figure rests on a "national escape clause" letting member states spend up to an extra 1.5% of GDP on defense — outside the Stability and Growth Pact's debt limits — for four years, which the Commission hopes will free 650 billion euros in fiscal headroom. - A separate 150-billion-euro special fund would offer EU-backed loans for critical domains such as air and missile defense, artillery, strategic enablers, and infrastructure protection, while steering money toward Europe's own defense industry. - In practice, leaders committed only to "examine as a matter of urgency" the loan proposal — they did not sign off on the special fund, leaving the hardest decisions for a later defense white paper. - National momentum is already real: Germany's largest parties moved to ditch strict debt rules, the UK targeted 2.5% of GDP by 2027, Poland surged from just over 2% in 2021 to nearly 5% today, and the Baltics are heading toward 6%. ## An Emergency Summit and a Genuine Sea Change The March 6 gathering in Brussels was not business as usual. For years, European promises to raise defense budgets had been mealy-mouthed and vague. This time the rhetoric matched the moment. Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen distilled the mood into a slogan — "Spend, spend, spend on defense and deterrence — that is the most important message." President of the European Parliament Roberta Metsola, speaking of the proposed 800-billion-euro increase, was blunter still: "It is about damn time. We are ready to put, finally, our money where our mouth is." That shift in tone marked a genuine sea change for a continent that had spent the war years treating the fighting on its eastern flank as someone else's problem. And it did not happen in isolation. The summit followed quickly on from a series of major pivots at the national level — moves that, taken together, suggested European capitals were finally treating their own defense as an existential priority rather than a budgetary afterthought. ## National Pivots: Germany, Britain, and France The most consequential of these national moves came not in Brussels but in Berlin. On March 5, Germany's two largest political parties announced they would ditch the country's strict debt rules to support defense outlays. As the Center for European Policy Analysis noted, that single decision could free up about $500 billion for Berlin to spend on its military over the coming years — a staggering reversal for a nation long defined by fiscal caution. Germany was not alone. Outside the EU, the United Kingdom announced increased spending designed to take its defense budget up to 2.5% of GDP by 2027. In Paris, President Emmanuel Macron both called for a spending surge and floated the idea of extending France's nuclear deterrent to cover the whole bloc — a proposal with profound implications for European strategic autonomy. Each of these national pivots reinforced the summit's central message: that the era of European free-riding under the American security umbrella was ending, whether by choice or by necessity. ## The 800 Billion Euros: How the Math Actually Works The headline number is enormous, but it is not what it first appears. Commission President Ursula von der Leyen did not write a check for 800 billion euros and tell everyone to go nuts. Instead, the figure relies mostly on member states surging their own defense spending by an extra 1.5% of GDP over the next four years. The reason individual countries need the EU to coordinate this lies in the strict fiscal rules adopted in the previous year's Stability and Growth Pact, which require member states to keep debt below 60% of GDP and deficits under 3%. Those who drafted the pact, however, built in a potential opt-out — a "national escape clause" that allows the debt rules to be suspended in exceptional circumstances. Exceptional circumstances are precisely what Europe now faces. The proposed rule tweak would exempt defense expenditures of up to 1.5% of GDP from the pact's limits for a period of four years, letting each EU nation hike its defense spending by that amount and pay for it through borrowing. ## The Heroic Assumption Behind 650 Billion Euros Here is where the sums start to get hazy. Von der Leyen's calculations assume that all 27 countries would take advantage of the relaxed rules, creating what she called "fiscal headroom" of 650 billion euros. As Paul Dermine, a professor of European Union law, pointed out on Verfassungsblog, that is a pretty heroic assumption. With public debt levels already high across much of the bloc, it is far from certain that every member state will be able to take full advantage of the relaxed rules — and not all of them will necessarily want to. The mechanism relies entirely on individual capitals choosing to opt in, and the countries furthest from Russia may simply conclude it is not worth the added debt. As Dermine wrote, "the Commission's expectation to create additional national fiscal space of 650 billion euros over the next four years might prove overly optimistic." In other words, the largest single component of the rearmament plan is also its most speculative, dependent on 27 separate political decisions that may never all line up. ## The 150-Billion-Euro Loan Fund and the Push to Buy European Activating the escape clause was not the only tool on the table. The Commission also pushed forward a related plan to create a 150-billion-euro special fund that would provide loans to member states wishing to rearm — on the condition that the money is spent on critical defense domains such as air and missile defense, artillery systems, strategic enablers, and critical infrastructure protection. Crucially, the loans would also encourage investment in Europe's own defense industrial base. That is no small matter at a moment when buying American kit is starting to look like a dangerous gamble. Journalist Yaroslav Trofimov captured the new logic on X, writing in reference to Washington disabling targeting for weapons donated to Ukraine: "Some two-thirds of European defense procurement is spent on American weapons. If the U.S. indeed switched off the targeting of HIMARS in Ukraine — a country fighting a war that not just Kyiv, but most of Europe, consider existential — buying any American technology will soon be considered a security risk." Taken together, the escape clause and the loan fund could unlock up to 800 billion euros for spending in Europe, on European defense. ## More Ideas on the Table: A Rearmament Bank and the Next EU Budget Those two mechanisms were not the only games in town. Several further ideas, all still firmly in the proposal stage, were floated to unlock additional funding. They ranged from a rule tweak at the European Investment Bank to allow lending for defense projects, to the creation of a special "rearmament bank" that could be used not only by EU countries but also by close partners such as the United Kingdom and Norway. The appeal of such a bank lies in how it would be financed. As EuroNews explained, it "would not impact national borrowing capacity, as it would issue triple-A bonds backed by shareholder nations," enabling "rapid investment in defense procurement and technology without adding to public debt." Beyond that, there were discussions about ensuring the next European budget — which will run from 2028 to 2034 — includes a 100-billion-euro fund for defense, a major increase from the 15 billion euros allocated today. But since that budget will not take effect for another three years, it, along with the rearmament bank, remains a longer-term prospect rather than an immediate commitment. ## What Was Actually Agreed — Versus What Was Merely Promised Strip away the proposals and the rhetoric, and the first thing to note is that what was actually agreed at the summit amounted, in practice, to very little. In a classic bit of EU doublespeak, heads of state did not sign off on the special fund. They merely committed, in the words of France24, "to examine 'as a matter of urgency' the proposal to provide members with EU-backed loans of up to 150 billion euros." If there is anything more quintessentially European than responding to an existential threat by promising to examine a proposal to save yourself in more detail, it has yet to surface. To be fair, this outcome was expected. Ahead of the summit, the Atlantic Council noted that the hard decisions would likely be postponed until after the publication of the bloc's upcoming defense white paper — likely because those decisions really will be hard. ## The Legal, Bureaucratic, and Financial Obstacles The hurdles are not merely political. The EU budget is forbidden from "covering expenditures with defense implications." As Paul Dermine argued on Verfassungsblog, the Commission will likely try to get around this by using the emergency clause in Article 122 to set up the special fund. The problem is that Article 122 is only meant to be linked to economic policy, which raises the prospect of legal battles over whether creating a special defense fund is even constitutional. Even if the fund clears those hurdles, it is debatable whether 150 billion euros comes anywhere close to enough. The Financial Times reported on a study by Alexandr Burilkov and Guntram Wolff finding that Europe would need 300,000 more troops and an additional 250 billion euros a year to defend itself without American help. There are problems with the escape clause too. For bureaucratic reasons, it can only be activated one year at a time. Although the Commission can renew it — and von der Leyen says it will be repeatedly renewed across the four-year window — that kind of uncertainty does little to encourage arms manufacturers to make the long-term investments in new production capacity that real rearmament demands. ## Cause for Cynicism, Cause for Hope All in all, the summit was that most European of events: a moment both groundbreaking in its implications and dogged by the feeling that reality might not measure up to the high-flying rhetoric. It is easy to be cynical — to expect that nothing will change, and that European leaders will still be debating in committee rooms even as the bombs eventually fall on Brussels. But to conclude there would be unfair. The current situation offers genuine grounds for hope — hope born of dark and desperate times, but also hope that Europe's ability to act in a crisis is only growing. Look at Poland, where defense spending has surged from a little over 2% of GDP in 2021 to nearly 5% today, or the Baltics, where budgets are soaring toward 6%. The familiar American refrain about Europe shirking its NATO commitments has been broadly untrue since 2022: today only nine alliance members fail to hit the 2% threshold, one of them the non-European Canada, and another, Iceland, banned by treaty from even having a military. And there are signs that incoming German chancellor Friedrich Merz is willing to do what his predecessor refused to do, and turn Germany into a defense colossus. As the Financial Times put it, "Europe is a rich continent, and the signs are that its leaders can move fast when they have a knife against the throat." ## A Waking Giant Aware of Its Own Power Taken altogether, the summit and the individual spending surges of member states resemble a beginning — the moment when Europe, at long last and three years too late, wakes from its slumber. This is a continent with a GDP that dwarfs Russia's, a population more than three times the size of the one the Kremlin can call on, and a home to world-class defense companies, two nuclear powers in France and Britain, and heavily armed, willing nations like Poland and Finland. By rights, it should be Vladimir Putin who lives in terror of crossing Europe's red lines, not the other way around. The summit could mark the start of a process whereby Europe finally becomes aware of its own latent power. Threatened in the east by an imperialist warlord and feeling abandoned in the west by what was once its closest ally, the continent now has the opening to emerge as a Europe that understands the need for military strength. Much could still go wrong. Merz may fail to scrape together the votes to exempt defense spending from Germany's ruinous debt brake; the EU's special fund may get bogged down in red tape; the waking giant may simply roll over and go back to sleep. But if Europe has truly chosen to stand tall, the beginning might look exactly like this — 27 leaders agreeing to a proposal that had once been unthinkable. A proposal that really might make European defense great again. ## Frequently Asked Questions ### What did the EU summit on March 6, 2025 actually agree to? At the emergency summit, all 27 EU leaders endorsed the European Commission's aim to mobilize roughly 800 billion euros for defense. But in concrete terms, leaders committed only to examine "as a matter of urgency" the proposal for EU-backed loans of up to 150 billion euros. They did not formally sign off on the special fund, with the harder decisions postponed until after the bloc's upcoming defense white paper. ### Where does the headline figure of 800 billion euros come from? It is not a single pot of money. The bulk of it relies on member states surging their own defense spending by an extra 1.5% of GDP over four years under a relaxed fiscal rule, which the Commission estimates could create 650 billion euros in "fiscal headroom." A separate 150-billion-euro loan fund makes up the rest, for a combined potential of around 800 billion euros. ### What is the "national escape clause" and why is it needed? The EU's Stability and Growth Pact requires member states to keep debt below 60% of GDP and deficits under 3%. The escape clause lets those rules be suspended in exceptional circumstances. The new tweak would exempt defense expenditures of up to 1.5% of GDP from the pact's limits for four years, letting each nation raise defense spending and fund it through borrowing. ### Why are analysts skeptical the plan will raise as much as promised? The 650-billion-euro figure assumes all 27 countries opt in. As EU law professor Paul Dermine noted, that is a heroic assumption: many states already carry high public debt, the mechanism is voluntary, and countries far from Russia may decide it is not worth it. The escape clause can also only be activated one year at a time, creating uncertainty for arms manufacturers weighing long-term investments. ### Why does the plan emphasize buying European weapons? About two-thirds of European defense procurement is currently spent on American weapons. After Washington disabled targeting for some weapons donated to Ukraine, journalist Yaroslav Trofimov warned that buying American technology may soon be seen as a security risk. The 150-billion-euro loan fund is therefore designed to steer investment into Europe's own defense industrial base. ## Sources 1. EuroNews: https://www.euronews.com/my-europe/2025/03/05/how-can-the-eu-unlock-up-to-800bn-for-its-rearmament-plan 2. Financial Times: https://www.ft.com/content/4c15d3b7-cb0c-44bd-aa70-57672c38da31 3. CEPA: https://cepa.org/article/a-firehose-of-money-panicked-europe-races-to-mend-defenses/ 4. Atlantic Council: https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/new-atlanticist/how-europe-wants-to-rearm-itself/ 5. Verfassungsblog: https://verfassungsblog.de/rearm-europe-law/ 6. France24: https://www.france24.com/en/europe/20250307-eu-leaders-vow-to-re-arm-europe-amid-us-retreat-on-ukraine 7. Bloomberg: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2025-03-07/why-viktor-orban-likes-europe-s-new-defense-spending 8. Guardian: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/mar/06/watershed-moment-eu-leaders-close-to-agreeing-800bn-defence-plan-ukraine 9. Yaroslav Trofimov, X: https://x.com/yarotrof/status/1897342552983916963 10. NYTimes: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/06/world/europe/europe-trump-ukraine-defense.html

The Firebombing of Tokyo: The Deadliest Air Raid in History

Simon Whistler — Tue, 02 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

When the moral debates of the Second World War are recounted, almost nothing draws as much argument as the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. To some, they were a necessary act that forced a surrender and, in the longer accounting, spared more lives than they took. To others, they were a cruel and inexcusable use of the deadliest weapon ever built. The argument has run for eighty years and shows no sign of resolving. The central charge against the atomic bombs is the appalling number of civilians they killed, and that charge is fair. Yet the focus on those two cities has quietly buried a separate American operation that produced even more civilian death and destruction in a single night: the firebombing of Tokyo in the early hours of March 10th, 1945. It is considered the single deadliest air raid in history. For a few hours the sky over one of the world's most densely populated cities filled with bombers, incendiaries punched through rooftop after rooftop, and a firestorm grew so large that it scorched and flattened nearly a quarter of one of the largest cities on Earth. This is the story of how the United States reached the Japanese mainland, why it abandoned precision bombing for an inferno, and why the raid that killed more people than either atomic strike came so close to being forgotten. ## Key Takeaways - The firebombing of Tokyo on March 10th, 1945, is regarded as the single deadliest air raid of all time, killing more civilians in one night than either atomic bomb. - Reaching Tokyo required two breakthroughs: the long-range B-29 Superfortress, the most expensive program of the war at roughly 3 billion dollars, and the capture of Saipan in the Mariana Islands, which finally allowed a full round trip. - Major General Curtis LeMay deliberately abandoned precision bombing for low-altitude, nighttime, largely indiscriminate incendiary attacks, stripping the B-29s of nearly all their guns to carry more napalm. - Operation Meetinghouse sent 325 bombers against Tokyo's Shitamachi district, each carrying 6.4 tons of incendiary cluster bombs onto a wooden city packed with workshops and homes. - US estimates placed deaths around 87,000, but later figures climbed past 105,000 registered remains, and some historians argue the true toll reached 200,000 or more. - American losses were light: 12 B-29s and 96 airmen, with not a single bomber lost to a Japanese fighter. - The attack never produced the controversy it might have, overshadowed by the atomic bombs and complicated by Japan's own earlier firebombing of Chongqing, China. ## Reaching the Mainland The incendiary raid was not the first American attempt to strike Japan's largest city. In April 1942, the United States launched the Doolittle Raid, 16 B-25 Mitchell bombers that took off from an aircraft carrier and flew to Tokyo with no fighter escort. The physical damage was minor, but the psychological effect was enormous. For the first time, the Japanese population understood that even the home islands lay within their enemy's reach. Until that moment, Japan itself had been largely spared the horrors that other civilian populations were already enduring. The non-stop blitz over the United Kingdom, the ferocious Allied bombing of German cities, and the destruction of Soviet population centers had all seemed a distant worry to the residents of Tokyo. The Doolittle Raid ended that illusion. But the same raid that delivered the psychological blow also exposed how difficult such operations were. Launching from carriers limited the number of aircraft, and the distance to the target meant the bombers did not carry enough fuel for a full return trip. The plan was to strike Tokyo and then run for China. ## The Cost of the Doolittle Gamble Many crews did reach safe ground in free China, but several did not. Eight men landed in Japanese-occupied China and were taken prisoner; three of them were later executed. Another bomber came down in Vladivostok, in the Soviet Union, which created its own crisis. The Soviets were not at war with Japan and held an official neutrality pact. They could not afford to break it and invite an invasion from the east while the bulk of their strength was committed against Germany. Sheltering American bombers that had just attacked Japan risked sparking exactly that conflict. Stalin escaped the dilemma by ordering the airmen interned and the bomber impounded. Then, in an affair entirely orchestrated by the Soviet secret police, the American prisoners "miraculously" escaped, were smuggled across the border into Iran, and made their way to a British embassy. The Doolittle Raid was, in short, a technical success but an elaborate, risky, and in some ways suicidal one. On entering the war, the United States simply lacked the means to strike the Japanese heartland on any consistent basis. ## The B-29 and the Mariana Solution Everything changed as the war progressed, and two factors made strategic bombing of the mainland possible. The first and most important was the B-29 Superfortress, a bomber with an operating range far beyond its predecessors. The B-29 was more than a large aircraft; it was the most expensive program of the entire war, with a design and production price tag of 3 billion dollars, making it even costlier than the Manhattan Project. It featured a pressurized cabin, externally mounted machine gun turrets controlled from inside, and a range of 3,250 miles, or 5,230 kilometers. It was the machine that would finally let the United States reach Japan. Yet even that range was not enough. In theory the bombers could lift off from Midway Atoll and reach Tokyo, but there would be nowhere near enough fuel for the return, and no one wanted to repeat the Doolittle Raid. The answer came as American forces rolled back the islands Japan had conquered earlier in the war. Most important was the capture of Saipan, in the Mariana Islands, which happened to sit at the ideal distance from Japan to give B-29s the luxury of a full round trip. The logistics had been solved. It was now only a matter of time before American bombers filled the skies over Tokyo. ## Preparing the Inferno Preparations for the firebombing began years in advance. As early as 1943, the United States was testing incendiary bombs against Japanese-style buildings constructed in the Utah desert, working out the most effective way to start what planners openly called "uncontrollable fires." Eventually they settled on the M69 incendiary, a six-pound bomb filled with napalm. Because Tokyo, like many Japanese cities, was built almost entirely of wood, a firestorm carried the potential to be more devastating than anything previously imagined. Experiments were one thing; the tactic had to be proven against the real target. In November 1944, a small raid dropped a few incendiaries on the edge of Tokyo without causing much damage. Smaller raids hit other cities, including Nagoya and Kobe. Finally a larger test was flown, with 172 bombers reaching Tokyo in formation high above the clouds. That attack proved far more destructive than the earlier attempts, damaging more than 28,000 buildings. The lesson was clear: the true destructive power of incendiary bombing only appeared when the bombs were dropped in sufficient quantity. ## LeMay Changes the Rules Convinced that large-scale incendiary raids would work, Major General Curtis LeMay ordered a full shift in American bombing doctrine. The traditional approach, precision bombing of specific military targets, gave way to widespread and largely indiscriminate attacks. Too often, raids aimed at a particular factory had failed, and the strong winds over Tokyo made accuracy from high altitude nearly impossible. Under the new plan, weather and wind mattered far less, because accuracy was no longer the priority. That alone multiplied the windows of opportunity to attack. There was a further advantage to treating an entire city as the objective: the bombers could now strike at night and still see their target clearly, while ground-based air defenses struggled to see them. LeMay made another change as well. The B-29s no longer had to hold strict formation and could attack on a more individual basis. That seemingly minor adjustment significantly cut fuel consumption, since pilots no longer had to make the constant small engine corrections needed to stay tightly aligned across a long flight. The final change was to the aircraft. LeMay had nearly every gun stripped from the bombers except for two at the rear, judging that Japan's night fighter squadrons posed little threat and that the saved weight could carry more incendiary payload. These changes and the final attack plan were approved in March 1945, and the operation was nicknamed Operation Meetinghouse. ## Operation Meetinghouse Launches On the evening of March 9th, the B-29s began lifting off from Saipan. It took more than two hours, but eventually all 325 bombers were airborne, each carrying 6.4 tons of incendiary cluster bombs. Their target was a section of northeastern Tokyo, the Shitamachi district. Home to well over a million people, it was packed with the small factories and workshops that supplied critical parts to Japan's military industry. Eight minutes after midnight, the attack began, and the city was about to witness true hell. Tokyo's defenders had been expecting a raid of this kind. The Americans had been probing for months, and Japanese listeners had even intercepted radio transmissions discussing the operation. Yet the city still lacked an adequate air raid detection system, relying largely on spotters in small boats off the coast. Some of those boats did spot the incoming bombers, but poor radio connections meant many warnings never got through. Worse, Japanese radar had no idea the bombers were flying lower than usual, leaving the defenses effectively blind. ## Scorching the Heart With no time to run or hide, people on the ground watched in horror as the bombers appeared overhead one after another. The first B-29s arrived from two directions, flying perpendicular to one another as they released their payloads and laying a burning X across the district for the bombers behind them to aim at. Only after those first bombs fell did the air raid sirens finally sound, far too late to matter. A handful of Japanese fighters scrambled into the sky but were useless without coordination from ground radar, and not a single B-29 was lost to a fighter that night. One after another, the bombers unleashed several tons of cluster incendiaries onto the buildings below. Each bomb worked the same way: on hitting the ground, a small charge detonated and threw flaming napalm several hundred feet in every direction, igniting intense, hot fires wherever it landed. Because the houses were mostly wood, those fires tore through them faster than anyone had anticipated. Driven by moderate winds, even small fires quickly grew into enormous blazes. Tokyo's fire departments had neither the resources nor the manpower to fight an inferno on this scale. They tried, losing nearly 100 fire engines in the process, and after roughly an hour the fire department gave up. ## A City Without Escape As the flames swelled and engulfed nearly the entire eastern half of Tokyo, panicked radio broadcasts urged citizens to evacuate at once. Many could not, or believed it was safer to stay where they were. Staying was a fatal mistake. As one historian put it, "the key to survival was to grasp quickly that the situation was hopeless, and flee." Anyone who remained at home was quickly trapped, doomed by heat that turned their house to ash. But being outside offered little more safety. The firestorm sucked the oxygen out of the air, suffocating thousands in the streets. Tokyo had never really built bomb shelters, so the only cover many people could find was a hastily dug foxhole outside their home, which accomplished nothing but trapping them in the fire. One of the most gruesome moments came on a bridge over the Sumida River, where a full bomb load fell on thousands of people trying to cross, killing them all in an instant. Across the city the heat grew so intense that clothing burst into flame without ever touching the fire. Windows melted into liquid glass that swirled into the air and rained back down into the streets, sticking to skin, clothing, and hair. Smoke was so thick that many people could see no farther than their outstretched hands. Knowing the housing zones were a deathtrap, thousands upon thousands fled toward what they imagined were safer parts of town, only to meet the same horrifying fate. In one case, several hundred gathered in a park far from any buildings, only for the flames to surround and then scorch the park itself. In another, thousands fled to a school basement; the stone building did not burn, but it trapped smoke flowing in from outside and asphyxiated everyone within. Most horrifying of all, over a thousand people took refuge in a large swimming pool and were boiled alive when the flames finally reached them. The death was unparalleled. So many bodies were incinerated that the bomber crews overhead put on their oxygen masks to escape the stench of burning flesh rising from below. The firestorm finally died down around noon the next day, fizzling out as it exhausted its fuel. The nightmare was over, and the damage was unprecedented. ## Counting the Dead Establishing the exact consequences of the raid is no easy task. The Americans regarded it as a monumental military success. They lost only 12 B-29s, 5 of which reached the sea, where their crews were rescued by US Navy submarines waiting offshore. In all, 96 airmen were killed or went missing, and in return the raid had dealt irreparable damage to the heart of Japan's military economy. Police records indicate that 267,171 buildings were completely destroyed, almost one-fourth of every building in Tokyo. Most were residential, but a significant share were the critical factories and workshops that had made the district a target. That destruction of industry and property was what American newspapers emphasized, with almost no mention of the death toll, and probably for good reason, because the human cost was appalling. At the time, the United States estimated about 87,000 deaths and 40,000 injuries, a figure close to the Tokyo Fire Department's own. In the years that followed, the number only climbed. By 2011, the official Japanese memorial honored 105,400 people registered as deaths, and that count reflects only verified human remains. Countless bodies were incinerated completely and never recovered, so the true toll could be well above 105,000. Many historians believe the actual number was as high as twice the original estimates, or higher still. Edwin Hoyt, writing in 1987, estimated more than 200,000 dead. In 2009, Mark Selden argued the true figure could be several times the original 100,000. This was an immensely populated region, and it was almost entirely annihilated. Whatever the precise count, what is certain is that the attack left over a million people homeless, creating a refugee crisis as survivors had to be rehoused elsewhere, a consequence also largely omitted from media on both sides. ## The Controversy That Never Came Both governments had reasons to downplay the death, destruction, and homelessness. Japan may have underreported for propaganda, to keep citizens from losing faith in the war effort and to shield them from the possibility that the war was unwinnable. For the Americans, underreporting meant less of a moral reckoning at home, because anyone who grasped the casualty figures might well have called the attack a war crime. Yet the expected outrage never really arrived. Japanese newspapers labeled the raid "slaughter bombing," but that was about as far as it went, for two reasons. First, Japan would have found it awkward to formally protest the use of firebombs, having done the very same thing to Chongqing, China a few years earlier. Second, just months later the atomic bombs were dropped, and although neither individually caused anything like the same death and destruction, the shock of an entirely new weapon seized the public's attention and its criticism. What might have become a serious controversy was overshadowed almost immediately, especially once the war ended. The only real legal challenge came much later. In 2007, a group of survivors sued for compensation, arguing the firebombing was a war crime and that the Japanese government had failed its citizens by signing a treaty waiving the right to seek compensation for wartime damages. When the case reached the Tokyo District Court, it was ruled in favor of the government. According to one analyst, the deeper reason Tokyo continues to reject such claims is that paying out would open the floodgates, reminding the region that Japan had inflicted the same kind of attacks on others first and inviting fresh international claims from China, the Philippines, and South Korea. ## What Might Have Followed A measure of solace can be found in the fact that this raid was the only one of its kind on such a scale. But had the war not ended later that summer, there could easily have been a sequel. With the Allies actively planning a land invasion of the Japanese mainland to force an unconditional surrender, it is not hard to imagine another round of firebombing used to clear the way for ground forces, given how effective the tactic had just proven and how difficult and expensive atomic bombs remained to manufacture. That second campaign never came. A few similar bombing runs were later flown against Tokyo and surrounding cities, but the stockpiles of incendiaries eventually ran low, and with the war drawing to a close, a firebombing raid of this caliber was never seen again. ## Frequently Asked Questions ### How did the United States finally reach Tokyo with bombers? Two developments made it possible. The first was the B-29 Superfortress, the most expensive program of the entire war at roughly 3 billion dollars, with a range of 3,250 miles. The second was the capture of Saipan in the Mariana Islands, which sat at exactly the right distance to give B-29s a full round trip to Tokyo and back — something no earlier base had offered. ### What changes did General LeMay make to the bombing strategy? LeMay abandoned high-altitude precision bombing in favor of low-altitude, nighttime, largely indiscriminate incendiary attacks, judging that the strong winds over Tokyo made accuracy from altitude nearly impossible. He allowed bombers to attack individually rather than in tight formation to save fuel, and stripped nearly all their defensive guns except two at the rear so the aircraft could carry more incendiary payload. ### What was the death toll, and why is it uncertain? At the time, the United States estimated about 87,000 dead; by 2011, the official Japanese memorial had registered 105,400 deaths. Many historians believe the true figure was higher still — Edwin Hoyt estimated more than 200,000 dead in 1987, and others have argued the toll could be several times the original 100,000. Countless bodies were entirely incinerated and never recovered, making a precise count impossible. ### Why did Tokyo's population have so little chance of escape? Tokyo had almost no bomb shelters, so residents had nowhere to take cover. The firestorm consumed oxygen and asphyxiated thousands in the streets; anyone who stayed indoors burned, and those who fled often ran into the advancing flames. The city's fire departments lost nearly 100 engines trying to fight the blaze before giving up after roughly an hour. The key to survival, as one historian noted, was to grasp immediately that escape was necessary — those who hesitated died. ### Why didn't the raid become a major controversy like the atomic bombs? Several factors muted the reaction. American newspapers emphasized industrial destruction rather than the death toll, and Japan was reluctant to protest firebombing after conducting similar raids against Chongqing, China. Most importantly, the atomic bombs dropped months later seized the public's attention and its criticism, overshadowing what might otherwise have become a serious moral reckoning. A 2007 survivors' lawsuit was ruled in favor of the Japanese government.

The Gaza Disarmament Deadline: Why the Ceasefire Could Split the Strip in Two

Simon Whistler — Tue, 02 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The deadline is here, and the ceasefire is not looking promising. While the world's attention has been fixed for six weeks on the US-Israeli war against Iran, a second looming deadline has been quietly counting down, one that also pulls in Washington and Jerusalem: Gaza. The ceasefire that ended the war there last October is now entering a mission-critical stress test. The strip itself is roughly 80 percent rubble, with nearly two million people still displaced into makeshift tents and overcrowded shelters. The diplomats have drawn up their plans; the deadline is closing; and almost none of it matches the reality on the ground. What happens in the coming days will determine whether Gaza gets to rebuild, or instead gets split in two: one half under Israeli control and receiving aid, the other blockaded under Hamas and left to deteriorate. The cycle of negotiation, agreement, and collapse that has defined this conflict for two decades is about to be tested again, against a deadline neither side trusts. ## Key Takeaways - The October 2025 ceasefire flowed from the Trump administration's 20-point plan, with Phase 1 (hostage releases, aid, halt to hostilities) completed on paper by January, when the last hostages were returned; the UN Security Council endorsed the framework in November via Resolution 2803. - Phase 2 is where it breaks down: it demands full demilitarization of Hamas and every armed faction, a transitional government, and reconstruction estimated at over $70 billion, with a deadline falling on Saturday, April 11th. - There is a genuine dispute over whether Hamas ever agreed to disarm. The White House and UN resolution say yes; senior Hamas official Musa Abu Marzouk insists it "was never even presented to us." - The Board of Peace, Trump's quasi-replacement for the UN with Trump as chair, oversees the process; the leaked plan demands "one authority, one law, one weapon" and front-loads Hamas's concessions before any reward. - The plan requires every armed group to disarm, yet Palestinian Islamic Jihad, the Popular Front, and the Democratic Front have all already refused, making compliance structurally impossible even if Hamas agreed. - On the ground, the governing committee operates from Cairo, the transitional police force has zero recruits deployed, and Hamas retains de facto control everywhere outside direct Israeli occupation. - The fallback being gamed out in Washington would skip disarmament entirely and rebuild only Israeli-controlled areas, producing the "two Gazas" outcome mediators have warned against. ## Where Things Stand For the past six weeks, most of the world's attention has been locked on the US-Israeli war against Iran, and understandably so. But 2026 has not been a year content to deliver a single major crisis. While the Iran war unfolded, Gaza continued to evolve in dramatic ways. Back in September last year, the Trump administration unveiled a 20-point plan to end the war. Israel and Hamas both agreed to at least its initial stage, and the ceasefire took effect in early October. Phase 1 covered the immediate priorities: hostage releases, increased humanitarian aid, and a halt to major hostilities. The UN Security Council endorsed the whole thing in November with Resolution 2803, and by January this year, the last hostages had been returned. Phase 1 was done, at least on paper. Phase 2 is where things get complicated, and where matters now stand. This phase includes the harder questions: full demilitarization of Hamas and every other armed group in Gaza, the establishment of a transitional government, and large-scale reconstruction estimated at over $70 billion. The deadline for Phase 2's implementation comes due Saturday, April 11th. ## A Dispute Over What Was Agreed If demilitarization sounds wildly ambitious, given that it involves Hamas voluntarily surrendering its weapons, that is precisely because there is a genuine dispute over whether Hamas ever agreed to it. The White House has repeatedly stated that the 20-point framework Hamas endorsed in October encompasses disarmament as a Phase 2 requirement, and the UN resolution backing the plan includes it. Hamas sees things very differently. Senior officials, including Musa Abu Marzouk, have insisted that disarmament "was never even presented to us," and that while they have agreed to cede governance of the strip, they never agreed to lay down their arms. They blame the variations on edits made after the fact, pointing the finger at Netanyahu. Whether that is true comes down to who you ask. It is a familiar pattern: two sides reading the same document and finding two incompatible agreements inside it. And it is this ambiguity, more than any single clause, that the entire process now hangs on. ## The Board of Peace The mechanism created to oversee all of this, including the disarmament Hamas says it never signed up for, is the Board of Peace. Previously covered here on WarFronts, it is essentially Trump's quasi-replacement for the United Nations, built by and for a friendlier audience, with Trump himself as chair. The Board has notable sign-ups, including Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Qatar, and the UAE. It features figures like Nickolay Mladenov as High Representative, with Tony Blair and Jared Kushner handling portfolios across governance and security. Most of the G7 and NATO allies declined to join, with Bulgaria and Hungary the exceptions, citing concerns that the charter could sideline the UN or expand the body's mandate beyond Gaza. Mladenov has been pushing this for weeks, shuttling between Cairo, Ankara, and the Security Council. On Saturday, the deadline he set for Hamas's formal answer arrives. He is not optimistic. Few observers are. ## The Plan On March 26th, Al Jazeera published the leaked text of a document that had been circulating between mediators for weeks. It represents the Board's attempt to turn the originally agreed-upon plan into something they can actually action. At its heart is a five-stage, eight-month sequence built around one core principle: "one authority, one law, one weapon." The National Committee for the Administration of Gaza, usually called the NCGA, would take security control. Heavy weapons and tunnel networks would be promptly destroyed. Only then would Israel proceed with a phased withdrawal tied to verified demilitarization milestones. Ultimately, if all goes to plan, Israel would complete its pullout after independent confirmation that Gaza is entirely weapons-free, though the plan carves out an exception allowing the IDF to maintain a presence in a security perimeter. Reconstruction, including the concrete, steel, and fuel Gaza desperately needs to begin rebuilding, would then be released only in areas verified as demilitarized. The thinking is to prevent Hamas from siphoning supplies off for its own purposes, a concern Jerusalem holds given the group's longstanding practice of doing exactly that. ## Why Hamas Says No The document was not well received by Hamas, who saw it as a new demand amounting to political surrender rather than anything they ever signed onto. Looking at the incentive structure, it is not hard to see why. The plan does offer real carrots, including amnesty for fighters, reintegration programs, and other points representing meaningful concessions from Jerusalem's perspective, concessions that have not gone over well with the more hardline members of Netanyahu's government. But the plan also leans heavily on Hamas to act first and be rewarded only later. To be fair, Hamas is not famous for honoring the terms of agreements it makes. But their trust in Israel to uphold its end of the bargain after they have laid down their weapons and surrendered their ability to fight back is close to zero. At the Security Council on March 24th, Mladenov made the case directly to skeptics on both sides. Israel has conducted multiple military operations in Gaza over the past two decades, he noted, and the weapons have always returned, no matter what was agreed. Only verified decommissioning combined with a professional police force, he argued, breaks that cycle permanently. To Israeli hawks who insist military control is the only option, he said the evidence of the last twenty years shows the complete opposite. ## Every Faction Must Disarm The plan demands participation not just from Hamas, but from every armed faction in Gaza, and three of them have already said no. Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), the Popular Front, and the Democratic Front all issued statements declaring that the "weapons of the resistance" belong to the Palestinian people, not Hamas, and will not be surrendered before a Palestinian state exists. Islamic Jihad went further, calling the plan a formula for ensuring Israeli aggression can proceed unchecked. PIJ is particularly interesting because, despite being smaller than Hamas, one of its claims to fame is that it considers Hamas too moderate. "Moderate" is not a term usually associated with Hamas, but this moment does present a vulnerability: if Hamas is seen to have caved to Israel, PIJ might convince others there was something to its hardline argument after all. That dynamic feeds a broader split widening between Gaza's two main armed factions. Hamas has been broadening its international connections, especially by cozying up to Turkey, which has reciprocated, hosting senior leadership this month and pushing for the group's political wing to be involved in any post-war governance. This is a departure from Hamas's long-standing allegiance to Tehran. Last month the group even criticized Iran for targeting neighboring states like Turkey and Qatar, a remarkable moment. PIJ has shown zero interest in any of that. It remains completely loyal to Tehran, receiving roughly $70 million a year in direct Iranian funding plus IRGC training. PIJ has said it will "cooperate" with the transitional committee and "monitor its work," which is about where the cooperation ends. The plan requires every group to disarm; even if Hamas's entire leadership agreed tomorrow, it still would not work unless PIJ and the others followed. ## On the Ground All of this, the plans drawn up between diplomats and the conditions for aid, feels almost as if it is being written in a parallel universe. On the ground in Gaza, almost none of it exists, and some of what does exist directly contradicts it. Consider who is supposed to be running things. The National Committee for the Administration of Gaza, consisting of 15 Palestinian technocrats thoroughly vetted by Israel, formally launched on January 15th and proceeded to set up shop, in Cairo, some 360 kilometers away. Part of this comes down to the security situation in the strip, which is far from iron-clad. One unnamed Arab diplomat said the committee will not enter Gaza until it is "equipped to govern." It would not receive a warm welcome anyway. While Hamas has publicly said multiple times that it is "ready to transfer governance," it has privately done nearly everything possible to ensure that transfer never happens. The group ran incitement campaigns against the committee's internal security appointee, Sami Nasman, accused him of collaboration, tried and convicted him in absentia, and allegedly threatened to execute him if he returns. The Palestinian Authority is not thrilled either, given its claim to be the legitimate governing body for all Palestinian lands. The result of this mutual sabotage: the one tangible step the committee has taken, opening recruitment in February for a 5,000-person transitional police force, has produced zero boots on the ground. Hamas retains de facto control everywhere outside direct Israeli control. The international stabilization force meant to backstop the whole arrangement has no troops deployed either; its rollout was postponed indefinitely when the Iran war kicked off in late February. ## A Militia Israel Helped Create The one armed group active lately runs contrary to the agreement itself, and Israel helped get it started. The Popular Forces, a militia of roughly 500 to 700 men under a former Salafi-jihadist fighter named Ghassan Duhine, who has alleged past ties to Islamic State, has been conducting anti-Hamas raids in eastern Rafah and guarding parts of the crossing with Israeli backing. It is a striking contradiction. A plan built on the principle of "one authority, one law, one weapon" is unfolding alongside an Israeli-backed armed faction operating outside any of the structures the plan envisions. The disorder on the ground does not just lag the diplomacy; in places, it points in the opposite direction. ## A Physical Reality Words Struggle to Capture All of this plays out against a physical reality difficult for words alone to convey. Around 81 percent of all structures in the Gaza Strip have been damaged or destroyed, including 58 percent of housing, 87 percent of farmland, and a similar share of school buildings. Only 18 of the 36 hospitals still function beyond basic triage. The rubble alone is staggering: between 55 and 61 million tonnes of it, concentrated heaviest in Rafah, Khan Younis, and Gaza City, which works out to roughly 30 tonnes for every person still living there. The UN Development Program estimates that clearing this under optimal conditions would take five to seven years, and these are not optimal conditions. Realistically, the reconstruction period will likely last over a decade. The ceasefire has brought the killing down dramatically, though strikes have continued. But 1.9 million people remain displaced, many of them ten or more times over, crammed into makeshift tents and overcrowded shelters that do not hold up well over the long haul. This is the human ledger against which every clause of the plan must be weighed. ## What Happens When the Deadline Passes Nothing in the Middle East is simple, and Hamas does not appear inclined to change that. The group is highly likely to deliver something between a clear yes and a no. It has been doing exactly this for weeks: at the April 3rd Cairo meeting, Hamas "refrained from outright rejecting" the framework, which is legal-speak for dragging its feet as long as humanly possible. Hamas's counter-proposal, calling for three years instead of eight months and a carve-out allowing it to keep lighter arms, is essentially dead on arrival. The Board of Peace has said it will consider minor amendments but not fundamental ones, and it is clear which camp this falls into. The formal deadline is Saturday, but Mladenov was in Turkey on Thursday to receive Hamas's answer, and Israel is not waiting on the weekend. The pro-Netanyahu outlet Israel Hayom reported that preparations are already underway to resume combat operations. Yet rolling back into Gaza heavy-handedly is not the most realistic near-term prospect, because Israel's hands are full elsewhere. ## A Stretched IDF and the "Two Gazas" Fallback The ceasefire with Iran has eased the pressure on the IDF for now, but it rests on an unstable foundation and is time-limited to just two weeks, so it is not hard to imagine Israel resuming waves of attacks on the Islamic Republic. While its strikes on Iran were air-based only, IDF ground forces have been deploying elsewhere: they have operated for several weeks in southern Lebanon, where a semi-permanent "buffer zone" has repeatedly been floated, and reservist service has been extended from six to nine weeks. The IDF is stretched, so the more likely near-term outcome is an intensification of what is already happening rather than a full-scale return to Gaza. There is a fallback being discussed in Washington that tells you where this might actually land. According to Reuters, the alternative would simply skip the disarmament clause entirely and proceed with reconstruction only in Israeli-controlled areas behind the Yellow Line. Netanyahu has publicly called this a non-starter, but it is clearly being gamed out as a plan B, and it would produce exactly what Mladenov and others have warned against: two Gazas. One side under Israeli military control, receiving reconstruction and aid; the other under Hamas's de facto authority, blockaded, and left to deteriorate. ## Riding Iran's Coattails Hamas's own bet, according to Asharq al-Awsat, is that the Iran ceasefire talks could reshape the disarmament conversation entirely. The wager is that Tehran will link any deal to all "axis of resistance" fronts, and that Hamas can ride Iran's coattails out of this mess without having to make the choice itself. There may be something to it: Iran has so far been willing to stake the entire ceasefire agreement on the condition that Israel stop attacking Lebanon. But Hamas field sources fear the opposite. Once Iran settles, Israel could turn its full attention back to Gaza with nothing left to distract it, and with the Islamic Republic in a far weaker position to respond conventionally than it otherwise would be. Mladenov, who may have the most difficult job on Earth right now, has been arguing that this time has to be different, that the cycle of violence can be broken if both sides commit to the process. He is probably right. But he is negotiating one severe crisis under a looming deadline, with two sides notorious for their stubbornness. Whatever answer Hamas gives, the people living here, the ones who will feel the consequences, are not the ones who get to decide. ## Frequently Asked Questions ### What is Phase 2 of the Gaza ceasefire plan, and why is it so difficult? Phase 2 requires full demilitarization of Hamas and every other armed group in Gaza, establishment of a transitional government, and reconstruction estimated at over $70 billion. The deadline for implementation was Saturday, April 11th. It is difficult because Hamas disputes ever agreeing to disarm, three other factions have already refused, and the governing committee set up to manage the transition has not yet entered the strip. ### Did Hamas actually agree to disarm? This is genuinely disputed. The White House says the 20-point framework Hamas endorsed in October includes disarmament as a Phase 2 requirement, and UN Resolution 2803 includes it. Hamas disagrees: senior official Musa Abu Marzouk insists disarmament "was never even presented to us," arguing the group agreed to cede governance but never to lay down arms and blaming post-agreement edits on Netanyahu. ### What is the Board of Peace, and who runs it? The Board of Peace is the mechanism overseeing the ceasefire and disarmament process, essentially Trump's quasi-replacement for the United Nations, with Trump as chair. Member states include Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Qatar, and the UAE. Nickolay Mladenov serves as High Representative, while Tony Blair and Jared Kushner handle governance and security portfolios. Most G7 and NATO allies declined to join. ### Why might the plan fail even if Hamas agrees? Because the plan requires every armed faction to disarm, and three have already refused. Palestinian Islamic Jihad, the Popular Front, and the Democratic Front all declared that the "weapons of the resistance" belong to the Palestinian people and will not be surrendered before a Palestinian state exists. Even total Hamas compliance would leave the plan structurally unsatisfied. ### What is the "two Gazas" fallback scenario? It is the alternative being gamed out in Washington, reported by Reuters, that would skip disarmament entirely and proceed with reconstruction only in Israeli-controlled areas behind the Yellow Line. One Gaza would be under Israeli military control, receiving aid and reconstruction; the other would remain under Hamas's de facto authority, blockaded and left to deteriorate. Mladenov and other mediators have specifically warned against this outcome. ## Sources 1. https://studies.aljazeera.net/en/policy-briefs/trump%E2%80%99s-plan-promises-and-pitfalls-peace-gaza 2. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/israel-gaza-hamas-war-remains-last-hostage-ran-gvili-recovered-ceasefire/ 3. https://press.un.org/en/2025/sc16231.doc.htm 4. https://www.jns.org/israel-news/senior-hamas-official-we-did-not-discuss-disarmament-for-a-single-moment 5. https://www.timesofisrael.com/senior-hamas-official-we-never-agreed-to-disarm-no-ones-raised-it-with-us-directly/ 6. https://www.timesofisrael.com/8-muslim-countries-including-saudi-arabia-accept-invite-to-join-board-of-peace/ 7. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/1/16/trump-names-tony-blair-jared-kushner-to-gaza-board-of-peace 8. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/3/26/details-revealed-of-board-of-peace-plan-for-gaza-disarmament 9. https://www.timesofisrael.com/text-of-board-of-peace-gaza-plan-calls-for-hamas-to-disarm-over-period-of-eight-months/ 10. https://www.thenationalnews.com/news/mena/2026/04/03/hamas-refuses-to-discuss-disarmament-until-israel-fulfils-obligations-under-first-phase-of-trumps-gaza-plan/ 11. https://www.cnn.com/2025/10/01/middleeast/netanyahu-defends-trump-gaza-plan-intl 12. https://www.longwarjournal.org/archives/2026/03/israel-continues-operations-against-hamas-in-gaza-diplomats-push-for-disarmament-as-shaky-ceasefire-continues.php 13. https://www.jns.org/news/israel-news/mladenov-lays-out-framework-for-trumps-gaza-peace-plan-progression 14. https://www.jpost.com/middle-east/article-883859 15. https://english.aawsat.com/arab-world/5230339-sami-nasman-hamas-foe-returns-run-gaza-security 16. https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/gaza-technocratic-panel-unlikely-to-enter-gaza-this-week-with-no-date-set-for-start-of-operations/ 17. https://www.fdd.org/analysis/2026/02/19/gazas-new-police-force-must-exclude-hamas/ 18. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/12/8/who-is-ghassan-al-duhaini-abu-shababs-successor 19. https://www.statista.com/statistics/1616491/gaza-war-infrastructure-damage-destruction/ 20. https://news.un.org/en/story/2025/10/1166141 21. https://www.israelhayom.com/2026/04/09/hamas-disarmament-deadline-expires-israel-prepares-resume-gaza-war/ 22. https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/troops-have-moved-deeper-into-lebanon-to-create-buffer-against-hezbollah-idf-says/ 23. https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/idf-to-present-plan-to-establish-south-lebanon-buffer-zone-to-political-leadership/ 24. https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/netanyahu-stresses-no-gaza-reconstruction-before-disarmament-and-no-palestinian-state/ 25. https://www.thenationalnews.com/opinion/editorial/2026/02/25/gaza-palestine-israel-board-of-peace-middle-east/ 26. https://english.aawsat.com/arab-world/5260258-hamas-counting-iran-talks-resolve-disarmament-crisis 27. https://www.al-monitor.com/originals/2026/01/how-israel-moved-its-yellow-line-deeper-shattered-gaza-city-neighbourhood

Germany's Plan to Become a Defense Superpower

Simon Whistler — Tue, 02 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

In Germany, it is known as the "fiscal bazooka" - a defense spending package so explosive that it threatens to detonate the old national order. Voted through the outgoing Bundestag on March 18th, the bazooka seeks to unlock half a trillion euros in spending on national infrastructure and the green transition. But for those tracking the balance of military power on the continent, it is the second part of the package that matters most. With a constitutional amendment that allows defense spending to be exempted from Germany's strict debt laws, the vote stands to unlock a surge in German military power unseen since 1945. While precise details remain pending, there is talk that the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) wing of the incoming coalition government wants to hike defense spending all the way to 3.5% of GDP. If that happens, it will be the single most transformative moment in European defense in decades - a decision that would set Germany on the path to becoming a global military power. But the key part of that description is the conditional: "if it happens." Because even turning on the money taps will not guarantee that Germany becomes a defense superpower. While the fiscal bazooka may help blast obstacles out of Berlin's path, the road ahead remains incredibly hard going. And whether Germany makes it to the end or not will have enormous implications not just at home, but for the whole of Europe. ## Key Takeaways - On March 18th, 2025, an emergency session of Germany's outgoing Bundestag passed a constitutional amendment by 512 votes—more than the required two-thirds majority—reforming the "debt brake" and exempting defense spending above 1% of GDP from its restrictions. - The CDU under likely incoming chancellor Friedrich Merz is pushing to raise defense spending to 3.5% of GDP, which would make Germany the world's largest military spender outside the United States and China, roughly equal to Russia. - Decades of neglect have hollowed out the Bundeswehr: fighter jets fell from over 430 to 226, main battle tanks from nearly 2,400 to 339, and artillery from almost 1,000 pieces to slightly over 100. - The Kiel Institute estimates that at current procurement speeds it would take Germany a century to buy enough howitzers to reach 2004 capability levels, and 40 years to procure 2,000 tanks. - The deepest obstacle is manpower: troop numbers are stuck around 181,000 against a 2030 target of 203,000, and only 23% of Germans told Gallup in 2023 they would be willing to fight for their country. ## The Fiscal Bazooka The reaction across the financial and defense press bordered on euphoric. For the BBC, the vote was a "seismic shift." The Financial Times declared that it could "jolt the Eurozone's largest economy out of years of stagnation." But perhaps the biggest hype came from Wall Street Journal journalist Bojan Pancevski, who declared on X that it was "the single most important thing that has happened or will happen regarding defense and Ukraine in Europe." The cause of all this hyperbole was the vote that took place during an emergency session of Germany's Bundestag on March 18th. On that day, 512 MPs - over a two-thirds majority - backed a constitutional amendment that would reform the nation's "debt brake." Introduced under Angela Merkel in 2009, the brake fixed annual structural deficits at 0.35% of GDP. While the March vote did not get rid of it, it did create two important exceptions. The first was to create a special, 500-billion-euro fund for infrastructure investments over the next decade. The second, more important change was to exempt defense spending over 1% of GDP from debt brake restrictions. That exemption would also include any military aid sent to, in the language of the amendment, "states attacked in violation of international law" - a clear reference to Ukraine. As the Economist noted, these reforms will now likely lead to "the biggest fiscal expansion in Germany's post-war history." ## The Trump Shock The background for this surge in spending will be familiar to anyone even vaguely following the news. Donald Trump's return to power has upended the transatlantic relationship. NATO unity has been questioned; the leader of a European nation under attack was publicly berated in the White House; overtures have been made to Russia; and peace talks on Ukraine have been held to which European nations were not even invited. While analysts can debate whether President Trump's actions are justified, the key point is that - from a European perspective - it almost does not matter. Nations like Germany believe America is about to throw the entire post-war order on the continent under a Putin-shaped bus. And that means drastic action is required. You can see this shift in mindset just by looking at public polling. Research by the German Council on Foreign Relations shows that a public once wary of increased defense spending now actively supports it. As IP Quarterly noted, "Seventy-five percent of Germans and backers of all parties represented in the new Bundestag think it is necessary that the EU's member states increase defense spending." This includes 66 percent of voters for the far-left Die Linke party, and even 57 percent of voters for the far-right AfD - two parties whose leadership explicitly wants to block increased military spending. ## A Quirk of German Politics In fact, the desire by Die Linke and the AfD to block the fiscal bazooka is what led to one of the most controversial parts of March's vote. After elections on February 23rd, the new parliament gives the two parties a blocking minority that would make constitutional amendments impossible. But by a quirk of German politics, the old parliament continued to sit for a short while after elections. So, rather than wait for the new parliament to be seated, the center-right CDU, the center-left SPD, and the Greens teamed up to ram their changes through the outgoing Bundestag, where the AfD and Die Linke were helpless to stop it. This was both controversial and amusingly ironic. Prior to the election, the CDU under Friedrich Merz had repeatedly snubbed attempts by outgoing SPD chancellor Olaf Scholz to reform the debt brake. It was only after the CDU topped the polls that Merz did a complete 180. For some, this was a sign that Merz is about as trustworthy as a talking snake offering you a delicious apple. For others, it was a sign of just how totally the return of Trump has upended European politics. As the Financial Times wrote, "Merz has justified his U-turn by pointing to the dramatic deterioration of the transatlantic relationship under Donald Trump, who has been rushing to reach a peace settlement with Vladimir Putin over Ukraine, without initially consulting EU NATO allies." Whatever the truth behind Merz's motivations, the fact is that Germany is now in a position to spend on defense like never before. Yet, even with the debt brake off and Merz seemingly determined to floor the gas, one awkward question remains: will it be enough? ## Decades of Neglect Although the German spending package has been touted as being worth "one trillion euros" in the press, the reality is that the exact figure remains uncertain. As the likely incoming chancellor, Merz is pushing to raise defense spending to 3.5% of GDP, but Politico reports that his coalition partners, the SPD, have so far balked at the figure. There are historic reasons for this timidity. Were Germany to commit to 3.5%, it would be transformed in an instant into one of the world's top military spenders. For those used to hearing of Germany as a laggard in defense, that might seem surprising. But it really just highlights the sheer size of the German economy - the third-largest on the planet. In 2023, Berlin allocated a miserly 1.5% of GDP to defense, yet still managed to break into the global top ten of military spenders in pure dollar terms, far ahead of more militarized societies like Poland or Israel. Among European nations, only the UK and Ukraine spent more, and then only by a few billion dollars - at the cost of 2.3% of Britain's GDP, and an eye-watering 36.7% of Ukraine's. The implication is clear. If Germany in its "deadbeat moocher" mode is still one of the world's top military spenders, then a Berlin that annually plows 3.5% of GDP into defense will leapfrog every nation except the United States and China, and draw more-or-less equal with Russia. One model predicts that hitting the target will unlock an extra 600 billion euros across ten years - above and beyond the 400 billion euros the FT reports the country needs to deter Russia from attacking. The bad news is that military spending is not a static thing. If you neglect your defense sector for decades, you cannot just switch the money pump back on and expect to be back where you were when you started cutting. And Germany has been underfunding its military for a hell of a long time. ## A Hollowed-Out Bundeswehr Here are some figures. In 1989, just before the end of the Cold War, West Germany was spending 2.53% of its GDP on defense. By 1992, that figure had dropped below two percent. It would not reach over two percent again until 2024. Nor was this similar to the way France also dropped below two percent but still kept bumping along at 1.9 or 1.8 percent. At its lowest point, in 2005, German defense spending was a mere 1.1% of GDP. And that neglect has had massive knock-on effects. Last September, the Kiel Institute released a report into the deep impacts of cuts on German military spending. The decline was startling. From over 430 fighter jets at the dawn of the new millennium, the Bundeswehr had been reduced to just 226. From nearly 2,400 main battle tanks, the number had dropped to a mere 339. Look at any significant piece of hardware, and the sums are similar. In 2004, Germany could field almost a thousand artillery pieces. Today, it can muster slightly over one hundred. Berlin's forces once commanded over two thousand Infantry Fighting Vehicles. Now, there are fewer than 700. Air defense systems, too, are missing - in this case because they have been donated to Ukraine and not yet replaced. And military infrastructure is in such poor shape that it should be a national scandal. When the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Armed Forces released her annual report, she noted that many of the 1,500 properties the Bundeswehr owns were in "a disastrous state." Highlights include barracks that were water damaged, and soldiers forced to sleep in mold-infested quarters. The cost of simply getting all the barracks in the country up to a reasonable standard is estimated to be 67 billion euros - a sum that would eclipse France's entire annual military budget. As the Kiel report summed up its findings: "After decades of military downsizing, German military spending is woefully inadequate to meet the new strategic challenge posed by Russia." ## Eastern Threats This is the crux of the problem. While a cash injection of the scale that Merz is planning is more than enough to turn Germany into a military colossus, the impact of decades of underinvestment means that the time horizon required is relatively long. Sadly, a long time horizon is exactly what Germany does not have. In the east, Russia is attempting to rearm at a dizzying rate. While its forces are currently bogged down in Ukraine, a ceasefire - especially if combined with a lifting of sanctions - could see Putin freed up to invest spectacular sums in his war machine. And that could leave Berlin in an incredibly dangerous spot. If you spend long enough reading about the Ukraine War online, you will eventually encounter some version of the following argument: "Western countries are claiming that Russia is underperforming and losing insane amounts of men and materiel in Ukraine. But they're also claiming that Russia is an existential threat to Europe. Both can't be true at once." Although the argument seems neat, it falls apart the moment it comes into contact with logic. Because, of course, both things can be true at once. Just as America losing the Vietnam War did not mean that no country ever needed to fear Uncle Sam's military again, so too Russia's humiliation in Ukraine does not mean the Kremlin is not capable of sparking a Europe-wide inferno. The Bruegel think tank puts some firmer numbers on this. In a September report, they wrote that "Russia's defense budget is estimated to amount to more than 30 percent of the Russian federal budget, i.e. at least \$120 billion. When adjusted for differences in prices between Russian and US defense (...) Russian defense spending is estimated at the equivalent of around \$400 billion annually." According to the authors, this means that "Russia's substantial resources make it possible for it to scale up the forces fighting in Ukraine and create new reserve armies that can eventually be deployed in Ukraine or elsewhere." The "or elsewhere" part of that sentence is key. Because if those forces deploy to fight in Europe, then Germany will struggle to help. To quote the Kiel Institute report, "Russia is radically increasing its capacity to produce armaments, including advanced systems, and is now in a position to produce as many weapons in six months as all of Germany's armed forces currently field." Now, the likelihood of the Kremlin opening a second front against NATO while still bogged down in Ukraine is - to be clear - extremely low. But the worry is that Moscow will take any ceasefire as a chance to pour even more money into its military, then attack in five to eight years with a completely reconstituted, massively upgraded army. Although that may sound like a long time, it is almost nothing in military terms. As the Bruegel report authors write, "Our findings do not suggest that Germany will be ready to provide the deterrence that is expected from it, should Russia decide to confront NATO in five to eight years." ## The Procurement Nightmare To be fair, the Kiel report was written before the recent vote to reform the debt brake. But it highlights issues that will plague any German rearmament plan. The first is ammunition production. While Rheinmetall is opening new plants, Berlin still cannot compete with Moscow in terms of shells and rockets. At 2024 fire rates along Ukraine's frontlines, the Kiel report estimates that Germany would burn through a year's worth of ammunition production in a little over two months. That is if it had anything to fire them with. Because they were forged in peacetime, Germany's military procurement processes are legendarily slow. In 2022, DW reported that procuring new helmets for parachutists had taken over ten years, thanks in part to testing designed to ensure the foreign-made helmets "fit on German heads." Although just one example, it is representative of the utter nightmare doing even basic stuff has become in the Bundeswehr. Using the current procurement system, the Kiel report estimates that it would take Germany a century to buy enough howitzers to bring its capabilities back up to 2004 levels. With numbers like that, the mere 40 years it would take to procure 2,000 tanks would pass like a breeze. And these are just systems the Bundeswehr already has. For other equipment critical to fighting a modern war, Berlin is effectively blind. Take drones. A mere 1,800 km from Berlin, Ukraine and Russia are both developing drones at a vastly accelerated pace - drones that tip burning thermite from the sky in a rain of fire, and drones piloted by ultra-thin fiber optic cables that are immune to jamming. So hi-tech have the two nations' drones become that recent estimates suggest they cause 70 percent of all battlefield fatalities. But Germany not only lacks cheap offensive drones, it would also require years to procure them. Drone defense systems, too, are nowhere to be seen. Less visible, but no less important, cyber capabilities are also thin on the ground in the Bundeswehr. The hope is that some of the money in the fiscal bazooka will go into funding the newly upgraded Cyber and Information Space Command, but that remains to be seen. As the Economist has noted, one of the biggest challenges is "how to use rearmament funds wisely." ## The Spending Impact on Europe But it is not just in Germany itself that the money's impact will have to be carefully measured. There is also the question of what it will do to the rest of Europe. As Europe's largest economy, anything Germany does has ripple effects across the entire bloc - and that includes firing a gigantic fiscal bazooka. As a recent Financial Times headline declared: "Germany's spending push drives up borrowing costs across Eurozone." Because it is so economically powerful, Germany's debt functions as a de facto benchmark for the entire bloc. So, when a massive surge of spending pushes up Bund yields, it does the same for other nations. And that is a problem. Because, unlike Germany, other major European countries already have high borrowing costs - costs that are now getting pushed even higher. As Reuters explains, "Borrowing costs in Italy, France and Spain have mostly matched the 20 basis-point rise in benchmark Germany, the bloc's largest economy, since it agreed on a historic debt-rule overhaul." This matters, because the recent EU plan to juice defense spending across the continent by 800 billion euros mostly relied on tweaks to borrowing rules that would have allowed countries to take on more debt, provided it was used to fund defense. Now, that is still the plan, but Fitch Ratings believes that the rise in borrowing costs brought on by Germany's bazooka will severely cut into that headroom. Rather than 800 billion euros, the EU as a whole may wind up spending only 500 billion. In this scenario, France's defense outlays will max out at 2.5% of GDP, while Italy's will not even breach two percent. And this is not the only negative scenario in play. Using modelling by hedge fund Point72, the FT suggests that France's debt-to-GDP ratio could rise from 115 percent to 122 percent, while Italy's could cross the 150 percent mark. The upshot is that, while Germany uses its spending splurge to rearm, the effect across the wider bloc could be to dampen defense spending - the exact opposite of what Europe wants to achieve. ## The Case for Positive Spillover However, we should be clear that this is only one set of potential outcomes, one focused on the negatives. There is also a case to be made that the spillover effects could be more positive. That is especially the case in Italy. Although spending costs for Rome may already be rising, they could be more than offset by potential economic growth. The reason is that northern Italy's manufacturing base is deeply integrated with Germany's. And with demand likely to be red hot for new military kit, Italian factories can expect vast new orders from Berlin. This is the outcome that Italy's minister for industry, Adolfo Urso, told the FT he is counting on. Likewise, something similar could play out for France, which is home to several world class defense companies. Such positive spillover is the outcome Goldman Sachs predicted in a recent forecast. Following the announcement of the fiscal bazooka, the group raised its growth forecasts for the eurozone. As their memo noted, "One reason is that we expect stronger growth in Germany to spill over into neighboring countries. Another reason is that we now expect the rest of the euro area to step up military spending somewhat more quickly in response to the German announcement." This second part could be key. While the Baltic States and Poland have been ramping up defense spending since the beginning of Russia's invasion - and states like the UK have pledged more spending since Trump's return to power - many other European countries are likely to wait to follow Germany's lead. If they see Berlin spending big on its military, they may be encouraged to follow suit. Signs are that this might already be happening. On March 26th, about a week after the German vote, Sweden announced it would increase defense spending to 3.5% of GDP by 2030. Shortly after, on April 1st, Finland announced a hike to 3% by 2029. As President Alexander Stubb wrote on X, "This is a part of Finland's contribution to Europe taking greater responsibility for our own defense." The best-case scenario would be that this triggers a domino effect, one that sees governments pumping money into arms manufacturers across the continent. In a report speaking to industry insiders, the Economist noted that "the (current) bottleneck is not so much manufacturing capacity as a dearth of big orders from governments. Some firms are not challenged at all to [their] maximum capacity." This is backed up by research from the Bruegel think tank, which told the magazine that "this comes down to the political will to put through orders, rather than industrial problems (...) Europe could massively ramp up production of critical systems in two years if enough orders were placed." Of course, "political will" is a difficult thing to overcome. And there are already signs that not all EU states are rising to the challenge. Over in Spain, the government of Pedro Sanchez seems determined to fake its way into NATO's good books. While Madrid currently spends a pathetic 1.28% of GDP on defense, Sanchez recently announced a plan to reclassify attempts to cut carbon emissions as military expenditure, since his government believes climate change is a bigger threat to Spain than Russia. Needless to say, this would allow Sanchez to claim his nation is among NATO's top spenders, without actually doing anything to boost readiness or help fellow Europeans unfortunate enough to live closer to Moscow. By and large, though, the hope is that most nations will be inspired to engage in good faith efforts to juice their defense industrial bases, and thus raise European growth overall. ## Fight or Flight Yet, for all the potential good news on the financing side of things, there is one major problem Germany will still need to overcome if it wants to become a military giant: manpower. Since 2018, the Bundeswehr's official goal has been to have 203,000 active troops in place by 2030. Well, over halfway to the deadline, and Berlin is not even close to hitting the target. Lackluster recruitment and high dropout rates mean that German troop numbers remain stubbornly stuck at around 181,000. And those who are serving are getting older. As CNN reports, the average age of German servicemen and women today is 34. It was not always like this. During the Cold War, West Germany had half a million active-duty soldiers, with 800,000 more in reserve. Conscription kept a steady stream of fresh young faces pouring in. Today, though, the reserve force has reduced to a rump of just 60,000. And conscription has not been the law of the land since it was ended in 2011. This is important because, without necessary troop numbers, it does not matter how much you spend on kit. Unless you can back your hi-tech military up with manpower, you will only ever have a hollow army. In the context of modern geopolitics, it gets even more urgent. Should American forces completely withdraw from Europe, the Bertelsmann Foundation estimates that Germany alone would need to field 270,000 active-duty troops - with another 260,000 in reserve - to make up the credibility gap. Yet, there is little evidence that this is going to be possible. ## The Will to Fight For one thing, there is the lack of appetite among Germans to actually fight a war. In 2023, Gallup found a mere 23% of Germans answered yes to the question: "If there were a war that involved your country, would you be willing to fight for your country?" By way of comparison, the share of Poles who answered yes was almost double, at 45%. Now, that was two years ago, when Germans could assume that any war on European soil would involve NATO and the USA swooping in to save them. Signs are that attitudes have shifted since then. A recent YouGov poll found that 58% of Germans support reintroducing conscription. Crucially, though, the incoming government seems to have little appetite for such a move. While Merz favors a form of one-year conscription that allows non-military options, the Bundeswehr is clear that it could not handle an annual influx of tens of thousands of young Germans. Not that the Bundeswehr seems to have much grasp on young people in general. The BBC recently reported on a visit to their drop-in center in Berlin which can only be described as cringe. As they put it: "The Bundeswehr only has one permanent drop-in center, a small unit sandwiched between a pharmacy and a shoe store beside Berlin's Friedrichstrasse station. With camouflage-clad dummies in the window and slogans like 'cool and spicy' it aims to attract men and women to serve, but only gets a handful of callers each day." This is a problem we see time and again in the Western world: an inability to bring in enough new soldiers. Britain is going through a similar recruitment crisis, while the US is just emerging from one that lasted years - and even now the American military is suffering extraordinary dropout rates. As far as Germany is concerned, it raises the worrying specter of a Bundeswehr that is flush with cash but without anyone to man the gear it is spending those euros on. And, really, this may be the biggest problem Germany faces in its plan to become a military superpower: the unwillingness of its own people to pick up arms. ## A Nation Finally Trying Still, we do not want to end on an unnecessarily bleak note. Because, while Berlin's drive to become a serious defense player is littered with obstacles, at least Germany is finally doing something. For much of the last three years, the story out of Germany has been a government that makes promising sounds on defense - and then dithers, or obfuscates, or just plain fails to do anything. Well, with the incoming change of government, Berlin at last seems ready to become the leader much of Europe wants it to be: to stand up against Russian aggression in the east, and provide the financial muscle needed to kickstart a European defense revolution. Will it succeed? We will not know for several years. But at least the Germans are now trying to play their part. What that means for the future is something we will just have to wait to find out. ## Frequently Asked Questions ### What is Germany's "fiscal bazooka"? It is the nickname for a major spending package voted through the outgoing Bundestag on March 18th, 2025. The package reforms Germany's constitutional "debt brake," creating a 500-billion-euro infrastructure fund and, more significantly, exempting defense spending above 1% of GDP from debt restrictions. That exemption also covers military aid to "states attacked in violation of international law," a clear reference to Ukraine. ### How badly has the Bundeswehr declined, and why does it matter? Decades of underfunding—spending as low as 1.1% of GDP in 2005—have hollowed out Germany's armed forces. Fighter jets fell from over 430 to 226, main battle tanks from nearly 2,400 to 339, and artillery pieces from almost a thousand to slightly over a hundred. Many of the Bundeswehr's 1,500 properties are in a disastrous state, with water-damaged and mold-infested barracks. The Kiel Institute warns that Russia can now produce as many weapons in six months as all of Germany's armed forces currently field. ### Why can't Germany just spend its way back to military strength quickly? Military capability is not static, and decades of neglect cannot be reversed simply by switching the money pump back on. Procurement is legendarily slow—new parachutist helmets once took over ten years to acquire because of tests to ensure foreign-made helmets fit on German heads. The Kiel Institute estimates it would take a century to buy enough howitzers to reach 2004 levels and 40 years to procure 2,000 tanks under the current system. Germany also lacks cheap offensive drones, drone-defense systems, and robust cyber capabilities. ### How does Germany's borrowing surge affect the rest of Europe? Germany's debt acts as a de facto benchmark for the eurozone, so its borrowing surge has pushed up bond yields in Italy, France, and Spain. Fitch Ratings believes this could shrink the EU's planned 800-billion-euro defense push to around 500 billion. Conversely, Goldman Sachs forecasts positive spillover, with Italian and French defense industries winning bulk orders, and Sweden and Finland have already announced spending hikes after the German vote. ### What is Germany's biggest obstacle to becoming a military superpower? Manpower. Troop numbers are stuck around 181,000 against a 2030 target of 203,000, the reserve has shrunk to just 60,000, and conscription ended in 2011. Only 23% of Germans told Gallup in 2023 they would be willing to fight for their country, versus 45% of Poles. The incoming government has little appetite for reintroducing conscription, and the Bundeswehr has stated it could not handle a large annual influx of recruits even if it were mandated. ## Sources 1. BBC: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c62z6gljv2yo 2. Economist: https://www.economist.com/europe/2025/03/20/the-bundestag-approves-the-biggest-fiscal-expansion-in-post-war-history 3. Kiel Institute: https://www.ifw-kiel.de/publications/news/germany-is-rearming-too-slowly-to-stand-up-to-russia/ 4. Financial Times: https://www.ft.com/content/bf9dde37-2dc8-44df-b5f5-ef5dece888f6 5. CNN: https://edition.cnn.com/2025/03/23/europe/germany-military-investment-intl/index.html 6. FT, manpower issues: https://www.ft.com/content/30594f17-6a55-4189-afda-57cdf0176841 7. Guardian: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/mar/18/german-mps-approve-500bn-spending-boost-to-counter-putin-war-of-aggression 8. FT, impact on Italy: https://www.ft.com/content/12dbf839-1889-4810-89ba-44a30b38a14d 9. Economist, European armsmakers: https://www.economist.com/europe/2025/03/20/europes-armsmakers-have-ramped-up-capacity 10. Goldman Sachs: https://www.goldmansachs.com/insights/articles/defense-spending-to-boost-german-and-european-gdp-growth 11. Bojan Pancevski, X: https://x.com/bopanc/status/1903036068921770149 12. FT, German spending pushes up bond yields for others: https://www.ft.com/content/72e04ce4-e54a-4ccc-bf36-4be61eebbabb 13. DW: https://www.dw.com/en/germany-bundeswehr-defense-spending-weapons-drones-infrastructure-personnel/a-72048164 14. IPQ, polling on German public opinions: https://ip-quarterly.com/en/germans-back-merz-whatever-it-takes-debt-and-defense 15. Politico: https://www.politico.eu/article/germany-government-deal-migration-policy-cdu-friedrich-merz-spd/ 16. France24, Sweden defense spending: https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20250326-sweden-to-boost-defence-spending-30-bn-over-a-decade 17. Al-Jazeera, which countries are top military spenders: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/2/17/which-countries-are-the-top-military-spenders-and-where-does-europe-rank 18. Reuters: https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/50-battle-ready-germany-misses-military-targets-despite-scholzs-overhaul-2025-02-13/ 19. YouGov poll: https://yougov.co.uk/international/articles/51741-where-does-western-europe-stand-on-ukraine-donald-trump-and-national-defence

Germany's Rearmament: Has the Fiscal Bazooka Fixed the Bundeswehr?

Simon Whistler — Tue, 02 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

'I will probably be the first Polish foreign minister in history to say so, but here it is: I fear German power less than I am beginning to fear German inactivity.' When Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski said those words in 2011, during his first mandate, he was naming a paradox that has shadowed European security for more than a decade: a Germany with the economic, financial, and industrial foundations of a great power, yet unwilling to translate that mass into military weight. As of 2026, Sikorski's worry still holds. Berlin's chronic failures to meet NATO defense-budget quotas, and its slowness to modernize its armed forces, have long threatened to weaken the alliance's eastern members and the European continent as a whole. But in the past year a new factor entered the picture: the so-called 'fiscal bazooka,' a constitutional reform that finally unlocked the money to rearm. One year on, it is worth checking back in with the European Union's most populous nation. Has the bazooka set the German military on a credible path to rearmament, or has it gone off with all the explosive power of a wet fart? The answer is that the money is now real and historic in scale, but money alone cannot fix the things a generation of neglect has broken. ## Key Takeaways - Chancellor Friedrich Merz, elected on May 6, 2025, has framed German rearmament as a 'strategic cultural shift' and created a National Security Council within the Federal Chancellery, a first for post-war Germany. - German defense officials judge that NATO may face war with Russia from 2029 onward, with Germany's principal assigned role being a logistics hub channeling 800,000 troops and supplies east under 'Operation Plan Germany' (OPLAN DEU). - Real-world stress tests have exposed deep infrastructure fragility: one fifth of the Autobahn and more than a quarter of bridges need repairs, and the 'Red Storm Bravo' exercise convoy managed less than 10 kilometers in two hours. - Germany spent roughly €92 billion on defense in 2025, making it the world's fourth-largest military spender, with 26% going to research and equipment—beating NATO's 20% equipment target. - The Bundeswehr is wrestling with a personnel shortage; a December 2025 law aims to grow the force to 260,000 active and 200,000 reserve troops by 2035, with conscription held in reserve as a fallback. - German public opinion remains ambivalent: only 29% believe military means may be necessary to resolve conflicts, and just 11% of adults under 50 say they would take up arms—though that 11% still equals about 1.8 million people. ## A Moral Endeavour The fiscal bazooka reform was initiated in March 2025 by Friedrich Merz, then leader of the opposition. On May 6, more than two months after federal elections, Merz was elected Chancellor at the head of a coalition of the Christian Democratic Union and the Social Democratic Party. From the outset he made security and defense central to his agenda, framing the project as a 'strategic cultural shift'—a transformation of Germany from a reactive, middling regional power into a leading, proactive, and reliable military actor in Europe. To signal that commitment, Merz created a National Security Council within the Federal Chancellery, a first for post-war Germany. More substantively, he and his cabinet moved to ensure the military would receive the funding needed to meet NATO targets. The shift was as much rhetorical as fiscal, and Merz used the largest stage available to make the case. On February 13, 2026, Merz opened the 62nd Munich Security Conference with a speech that amounted to a redefinition of Germany's role in continental security. The international order based on rights and rules, he argued, had been 'openly defined by power and great power politics,' and that order, 'however imperfect it was even at its best, no longer exists in that form.' In plainer terms: we now live in a world where might makes right. That has arguably always been true, at least since the first sharpened stick. But the underlying point was sharper. Since the end of the Cold War, Merz argued, European powers had delegated much of their 'might' to their larger NATO ally across the Atlantic. He still extended a hand to Washington, inviting the United States to 'repair and revive transatlantic trust together.' At the same time, he made clear that Germany was serious about investing in its own defense and becoming a regional power able to fight effectively alongside its allies, with or without American intervention. The point was driven home by General Carsten Breuer, Inspector General of the Bundeswehr, who cast the build-up as a moral imperative. 'Rearmament is not warmongering,' he said. 'It is the responsible action of nations determined to protect their people and preserve peace.' Together, Merz and Breuer signaled an unambiguous political will to rearm, and the fiscal bazooka—which required a constitutional amendment—was meant to ensure the money would, in theory, be there. But intent and funding leave the harder questions open. What role is Germany expected to play if war returns to the continent, and does it have the capacity to fulfill that role? As billions of euros pour into the Bundeswehr, can Germany muster the troops and the industrial base it needs? And even if every material element falls into place, will Germans be willing and motivated to take up arms? The future of NATO's European pillar may hinge on those answers. ## Operation Plan Germany According to German defense officials, the alliance's continental members may find themselves at war from 2029 onward, with the most likely adversary being Russia. By that date, Moscow's military may have rebuilt enough strength to attack one of the Baltic republics, Finland, or Poland—a move that would trigger Article 5 of the NATO treaty and require every member state to come to the victim's defense. In such a scenario, the Bundeswehr would have several roles. The Navy would likely see action in the Baltic Sea, engaging Russian naval units or blockading vital ports such as Baltiysk. The Air Force would protect German airspace and join allies closer to the Russian border for forward strikes. In the very unlikely event that Russian forces overran Poland, the Army would defend the western banks of the Oder and Neisse rivers; otherwise, Army units would deploy closer to the front to support NATO partners. One small German unit is already positioned in Lithuania as part of an Enhanced Forward Presence. But the central role Germany is expected to play is that of a logistical hub and staging ground, coordinating and allocating reinforcements and supplies to NATO's eastern borders. This is the purpose of 'Operation Plan Germany,' or OPLAN DEU, unveiled in November 2025. Its blueprints define in minute detail how 800,000 German and allied combat troops and support personnel would be mobilized and transported east, along with an enormous load of supplies, mapping every port, river, road, and railway needed to move that mass of people and equipment, and identifying the major nodes and how they would be protected from attack or sabotage. OPLAN DEU was finalized in March 2023 by a team of planners under Lieutenant General André Bodemann, head of Territorial Command and the officer in charge of all homeland operations. The plan was initially kept secret, but there were good reasons to make it public. As one unnamed senior officer told the Wall Street Journal, 'The goal is to prevent war by making it clear to our enemies that if they attack us, they won't be successful.' The deterrent logic is straightforward: convince an adversary that any attack will fail, and the attack may never come. The snag is that OPLAN DEU's meticulously crafted 1,200 pages may not survive contact with reality. Military exercises in September and November 2025 exposed serious flaws in Germany's transport infrastructure and in the Bundeswehr's ability to respond to unforeseen obstacles—flaws that no plan, however detailed, can paper over. ## Crumbling Arteries: Roads, Ports, and Railways Much of the infrastructure on which OPLAN DEU depends dates back to the Cold War. Berlin itself estimates that one fifth of the Autobahn network and more than a quarter of its bridges are in serious need of repair. Part of the fiscal bazooka is earmarked for infrastructure, but those improvements will take years to deliver, and a pothole that can stall a column of supply trucks is no abstraction. Resupply by sea offers little relief. According to the federation of German seaports, the government would need to invest more than €15 billion to upgrade and reinforce docking facilities at Germany's North Sea and Baltic Sea harbors. The railway network, meanwhile, is prone to serious mishaps—a point made not by exercises but by real-world events. On February 25, 2024, a Dutch cargo ship accidentally rammed a railway bridge crossing the Hunte river in northwestern Germany. Operator Deutsche Bahn swiftly erected a temporary bridge—only for a second ship to ram the replacement that July. The damaged bridges carried the only rail link serving the harbor of Nordenham on the North Sea, at the time the only terminal in the region licensed to receive munitions shipments bound for Ukraine. The dual ramming incidents choked vital supplies to Ukraine's military for weeks. If a network depends on so few chokepoints in peacetime, the implications for a large-scale confrontation on NATO's borders are alarming. That fragility makes sabotage an ever-present nightmare. In recent years German railways have suffered acts of arson that may not be random vandalism: in October 2025, a Munich court jailed a man for planning to sabotage the rail network on behalf of Russia. Such attacks no longer require saboteurs on the ground—they can be carried out with drones. Responsibility for shooting down suspicious or hostile drones over German territory long fell to police authorities, but a February 2026 amendment to the Aviation Security Act reassigned that duty to the military. Under the new law, the Bundeswehr is authorized to 'shoot down drones if necessary in support of the federal states and state police forces if this is the only way to avert a particularly serious accident.' The armed forces can do so thanks to recent acquisitions in November 2025 and February 2026—the DefendAir missile system, formerly the Small Anti-Drone Missile, and the laser-guided, low-cost 'DroneHammer' missile. ## When the Convoy Walks: Lessons from Red Storm Bravo At the end of September 2025, the Regional Territorial Command Hamburg conducted 'Red Storm Bravo,' a drill simulating the landing of NATO troops and their rapid deployment eastward. The military column was meant to travel continuously without a hitch. Instead, cracks appeared almost immediately. Long gaps opened between vehicles every time they crossed an intersection, delaying the entire convoy, while planners threw additional obstacles at the troops on the ground, including a simulated drone strike and a staged protest by anti-war activists. The result was sobering: the Red Storm Bravo column covered less than 10 kilometers in two hours—a pace of about 5 kilometers per hour, the average walking speed of a healthy adult. A logistics operation meant to rush 800,000 troops to the front moved no faster than a brisk stroll. And the exercise omitted one very realistic complication. If Russian forces made progress in, say, Poland, thousands upon thousands of refugees would likely cross into Germany, clogging its transport network. Railways, roads, and bridges would have to carry masses of armed personnel moving west-to-east while panicked civilians fled in the opposite direction. As Claudia Major, head of trans-Atlantic security initiatives at the German Marshall Fund, put it: 'Refugees and reinforcements would be pouring in from opposite directions. The flows would need channeling, which the Bundeswehr alone can't do, especially while it's fighting.' Major's point is that the Bundeswehr cannot do everything itself. That is why General Bodemann, the architect of OPLAN DEU, has taken preventive measures by enlisting the civilian sector. Hospitals, police forces, disaster-relief agencies, and the Autobahn operator will all cooperate with the military to ensure the smooth transit of both troops and civilian refugees in a worst-case scenario. Private contractors have also been brought on board. Arms-manufacturing giant Rheinmetall, for example, will supply the government with €260 million worth of temporary camps equipped with showers, fuel stations, and field kitchens. Clearly the Bundeswehr will need far more than mobile showers to defend its territory—which raises the question of whether Berlin can foot the bill at all. ## Big Bucks vs. Red Tape Defense spending has always been a sore point for Germany, which has consistently failed to meet NATO's targets. Through 2024, alliance members were expected to commit 2% of GDP to defense, with one fifth of that going toward equipment investment. After the Hague summit of June 2025, that benchmark was raised dramatically, from 2% to 5%. For years Germany had not just fallen short of the old target—it had barely roused itself, committing just 1.49% of GDP in 2022. Russia's invasion of Ukraine changed the trajectory. Then-Chancellor Olaf Scholz announced the 'Zeitenwende,' or turning point, in foreign and security policy, pledging to raise defense investment and launching a special fund worth €100 billion. Thanks to that fund, Germany allocated €76 billion to defense in 2024—1.9% of GDP, very close to the NATO target—with some €15 billion going to equipment, satisfying NATO's requirement. The momentum has only built. According to the International Institute for Strategic Studies, Germany had spent €92 billion on defense by the end of 2025. More striking still, a full €24 billion went to research, technology, and equipment—26% of the budget, smashing NATO's 20% equipment target. The top beneficiary was the Air Force, with some €10 billion for procuring and maintaining aircraft; the Army and Navy shared a further €7 billion in new kit. A substantial €4.2 billion went to a line item labeled 'Command & Digitalisation,' covering AI, quantum technology, satellite communications, and unmanned vehicles. These sums may be dwarfed by Washington, Beijing, and Moscow, who spend in the hundreds of billions. But Germany now ranks as the world's fourth-largest military spender, and the rearmament drive shows no sign of slowing. According to the Federal Ministry of Defense, the 2026 budget will exceed €108 billion, and by 2029 defense coffers are expected to hold €152 billion—roughly 3.5% of GDP. The ultimate goal is to hit the 5% ratio by 2035. It is an ambitious plan, and a fair question is whether Berlin can deliver, given that Scholz's special fund is due to run out by the end of 2027. Merz has addressed this through the fiscal bazooka itself. By reforming the so-called constitutional debt brake, which capped borrowing for defense, his government created a new Special Fund for Infrastructure and Climate Neutrality, known as SVIK, to keep the money flowing. ## Can German Industry Keep Up? Money is one thing; the capacity to spend it on real hardware is another. In theory, Germany's formidable industrial sector should be able to supply the Bundeswehr with everything it needs. In practice, strong and proactive government intervention is required to ensure that legendary German engineering is put to good use. On December 4, 2024, the government adopted the National Security and Defence Industry Strategy, designed to strengthen the national defense industry by encouraging independence, self-reliance, and innovation. As Defence Minister Boris Pistorius put it, 'It is crucial for Germany's defence capability to have our own innovative and efficient defence companies.' The strategy unfolds across six fields of action: strengthening key technologies such as AI and unmanned weapons systems; linking civilian and military R&D and start-ups; diversifying supply chains while promoting procurement from local and EU vendors; reducing bureaucracy; attracting talent to the defense sector; and securing access to capital. Yet commentators such as the Royal United Services Institute warn that the strategy may not quickly overcome Germany's still-insufficient industrial capacity. The push to procure from German or European vendors makes strategic sense—a sustainable military benefits from a native defense base—but current capacity may not be able to deliver the quantity and quality the Bundeswehr requires. For now, that gap is being filled by purchasing material from, and expanding manufacturers' operations into, other EU countries. Another way to keep production at home would be to repurpose automotive assembly lines for weapons systems. That is appealing given that Germany's once-legendary carmakers have been buckling under Chinese imports, which could tempt investors to divert capital away from the likes of Volkswagen and into weapons factories. But it is not so easy to kill two birds with one stone. Skilled automotive labor would need extensive retraining to shift from assembling Golfs and Cayennes to building Leopard tanks, factory conversion is far from cheap, and investors seeking bank support face a further obstacle—current regulation prevents many lenders from investing in defense companies. Dr. Robert Brull, CEO of advanced-materials company FibreCoat, has highlighted a deeper flaw in a piece for The European: the procurement system itself may degrade the quality of equipment supplied to the Bundeswehr. In his view, the system is skewed toward a small group of well-established contractors with strong lobbying power. Public officials accustomed to working with these firms may award contracts on the basis of familiarity rather than quality. 'It's not unusual for people to trust those they know well,' Brull wrote, 'but this moment calls for procurement decisions to be made on the basis of what will work best, not what feels familiar.' The result is a system that can shut out creative, innovative, cost-effective newcomers before they ever become players—and even those allowed to compete may be discouraged by glacial testing and approval timelines and kilometers of red tape. ## The Human Element As it wrestles with procurement, the Bundeswehr also faces a chronic personnel shortage—though the military is working to fix it. In 2023, about 43,000 men and women enlisted. In 2024, the number of new applicants rose above 51,000, an increase of 18.5%, bringing the total of active troops to 181,174 by year's end. That figure was actually a slight decline from the end of 2023, which sounds counterintuitive given the surge in recruits. The explanation is attrition: several thousand troops retired in the intervening period, and the fresh intake could not entirely make up the shortfall. Germany's is a voluntary force—it abolished conscription in 2011—and new generations may not be drawn to a life in fatigues. That is why the government has considered reintroducing mandatory service, after a fashion. On December 5, 2025, the Bundestag approved a bill to boost the Bundeswehr's numbers. Under the new law, voluntary service will be rewarded with better pay to make it more attractive. The aim is to grow the force from the current 183,000 to at least 260,000 active personnel and 200,000 reservists by 2035. Only if the Bundeswehr fails to meet those quotas would parliament be able to activate conscription—and even then it would not be a universal call to arms. The idea is to ask all men within a certain age group to indicate their interest in service; only those who do so would face aptitude tests and recruitment interviews. That leads to a deeper concern: is German society actually interested in, and willing to contribute to, defense? The political spectrum is divided, with parties opposing rearmament on both sides of the aisle. The most committed are Merz's CDU and its sister party, the Christian Social Union. But their coalition partner, the center-left Social Democratic Party, is split between hawk and dove currents. The dove current is best represented by MP Ralf Stegner, who argues that a larger defense budget will crowd out social programs—and that disgruntled voters may then turn to the far right. The most popular party in that space is AfD, Alternative für Deutschland, commanding 26% of the vote. Fiercely nationalist, AfD should have no objection to Germany becoming a regional military power, and its MPs did not oppose the December 2025 conscription bill. But the party objects to military aid for Ukraine and generally favors improved relations with Russia, including lifting sanctions on Moscow. It does not oppose rearmament per se, but rather rearmament against Russia. ## A Nation Without a War Mindset Even centrist voters may be lukewarm toward Merz's reforms, as retired colonel Sönke Marahrens, now a fellow at Kiel University's Institute for Security Policy, explains: 'Germany's strategic culture has been not to have a strategic culture. There is no war mindset, and many young people still don't understand why we need a strong military.' German voters, in his telling, care more about domestic issues than foreign and security policy, and even when aware of international threats they remain 'ambivalent about the use of force.' The data bear him out. A 2025 survey by the non-profit More in Common found that 74% of German respondents were concerned about war erupting in Europe in the coming years, and 66% believed Germany could and should no longer rely on US military assistance. Yet those same respondents were skeptical of Germany taking a leading military role in Europe, and only 29% felt that 'military means may be necessary to resolve international conflicts.' For Eastern Europe, watching from the front line, that is a frustrating disconnect. A separate survey by the Bundeswehr Centre of Military History and Social Sciences found that just 11% of adults under 50 would be willing to take up arms to defend their country. One in ten sounds alarmingly low—but the cold arithmetic offers a counterpoint: 11% of Germans under 50 equals roughly 1.8 million people, nearly four times the combined active and reserve target set for 2035. The general mood, then, can be summarized as a somber realization that trouble may lie ahead. If it comes, most Germans will hope for a peaceful solution, and failing that, most will not take up arms enthusiastically. It is hard to blame them. ## Conclusion: Prepare for War, Preserve the Peace The honest accounting cuts both ways. Germany has, for the first time in the post-war era, married unmistakable political will to historic levels of funding—enough to make it the world's fourth-largest military spender, with equipment investment that beats NATO's benchmark. Yet that money runs into hard limits: crumbling roads, ports, and railways that no plan can wish away; an industrial base and procurement system riddled with red tape and favoritism; a force still short of troops; and a public that, while anxious about war, has little appetite to fight one. The strategic case for rearmament, though, is not really about appetite. Building up a nation's defensive capacity and capabilities—and letting a potential adversary know about it—remains the best way to prevent a war and preserve the peace. The fourth-century Roman writer Flavius Vegetius put it plainly: 'Let him who desires peace prepare for war.' German society and its representatives may stay divided on rearmament, and the nation as a whole may have no stomach for conflict. But if Germany can stomach preparing for one—seriously committing to it, and letting both its European allies and Russia see that it is serious—then it may never have to fight one at all. ## Frequently Asked Questions ### What is Germany's 'fiscal bazooka' and what did it change? The fiscal bazooka is a constitutional reform initiated by Friedrich Merz in March 2025 that amended the so-called debt brake, which had capped borrowing for defense. The reform created a new Special Fund for Infrastructure and Climate Neutrality, known as SVIK, unlocking the money needed to rearm and fund infrastructure improvements. Germany spent about €92 billion on defense by the end of 2025—making it the world's fourth-largest military spender—with the 2026 budget set to exceed €108 billion. ### What is OPLAN DEU and why does it matter? OPLAN DEU, or Operation Plan Germany, is a roughly 1,200-page logistical blueprint finalized under Lieutenant General André Bodemann and unveiled in November 2025. It details how 800,000 German and allied troops and support personnel would be mobilized and transported east to NATO's borders, mapping every port, river, road, and railway. Germany's central NATO role is as a logistics hub and staging ground, and the plan was made public deliberately to deter Russia by demonstrating that an attack would fail. ### What infrastructure weaknesses did military exercises expose? A September 2025 exercise called Red Storm Bravo, simulating rapid eastward deployment of NATO troops, found that a convoy covered less than 10 kilometers in two hours—walking pace—after gaps opened between vehicles at intersections and planners added simulated drone strikes and a staged protest. Separately, Berlin estimates one fifth of the Autobahn and more than a quarter of its bridges need serious repairs, and upgrading North Sea and Baltic Sea port facilities would require more than €15 billion. ### Is Germany bringing back conscription? Not immediately. A Bundestag bill from December 5, 2025, aims to grow the Bundeswehr from roughly 183,000 to at least 260,000 active and 200,000 reserve personnel by 2035 by making voluntary service more attractive with better pay. Only if those quotas are missed could parliament activate conscription, and even then it would not be universal — men of a certain age would be asked to register their interest, with aptitude tests only for those who do. ### How do Germans feel about rearmament? Public opinion is ambivalent. A 2025 More in Common survey found 74% of Germans concerned about war erupting in Europe and 66% believing Germany can no longer rely on US military assistance, yet only 29% felt military means may be necessary to resolve conflicts. A Bundeswehr Centre survey found just 11% of adults under 50 would take up arms to defend their country — though that 11% still equals roughly 1.8 million people, nearly four times the combined 2035 active and reserve target. ## Related Coverage - [Can Germany Become Europe's Great Military Power?](https://warfronts.pub/military/can-germany-become-europes-great-military-power) - [Germany's Plan to Slash Ukraine Military Funding and the Debt Brake Crisis](https://warfronts.pub/geopolitics/germany-plan-slash-ukraine-military-funding-debt-brake-crisis) - [Poland: Europe's Next Military Superpower?](https://warfronts.pub/military/poland-europe-next-military-superpower-defense-spending) - [Europe's Defense Dilemma: Too Little, Too Late](https://warfronts.pub/military/europes-defense-dilemma-too-little-too-late) - [Why Estonia Could Be Russia's First NATO Target](https://warfronts.pub/geopolitics/why-estonia-could-be-russias-first-nato-target) ## Sources 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29.

The Gulf State Militaries Are a Joke — For Now

Simon Whistler — Tue, 02 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Nobody wants to find out that their nation is a paper tiger, but when it comes to the oil-rich nations of the Persian Gulf, military impotence is a problem entirely of their own making. For decades, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Oman, Bahrain, Kuwait, and the United Arab Emirates operated on a shared assumption: that even though Iran talked a big talk, and even though Yemen and Syria existed in a state of constant breakdown, major war across the Middle East was borderline impossible in the twenty-first century. Whatever problems cropped up, America would handle them, leaving Riyadh, Abu Dhabi, Doha, and Dubai free to focus on their transformation into glimmering cities of the future. Then the calendar turned over to 2026, and, for lack of a more delicate way to put it, everything went to hell. From Latin America to the Indo-Pacific to Europe, much of the world got a wake-up call this year. But while other nations merely learned that some of their security assumptions were wrong, the Gulf states learned that they had been building a fantasy world — one that failed to survive its first contact with geopolitical reality. Now those states face the very real prospect that they will have to respond. Their militaries will have to be dusted off and reimagined for a modern age in which open warfare is still possible. Their factories will have to be repurposed and expanded to cope with the reality that having fancy weapons matters far less than having a lot of weapons. They will have to re-evaluate old friendships, secure new partners, and reckon with the possibility that they could come under threat not just from Iran or even Israel, but from each other. This is the story of how the Gulf's gilded illusion collapsed, and the difficult, decades-long project of turning six display-piece militaries into forces that can actually fight. ## Key Takeaways - For decades the Gulf states built militaries as instruments of diplomacy rather than defense — buying redundant, prestige hardware to signal loyalty to arms-supplier nations, never expecting to fight a real war. - During Iran's 2026 retaliatory campaign, "impossible" attacks struck the UAE, Qatar, and neutral Oman, hitting targets like Saudi Arabia's East-West Pipeline and Qatar's Ras Laffan, which produces one-fifth of the world's LNG. - American protection proved weaker than advertised: U.S. bases across the region were devastated and American-made air defenses ran critically low on interceptors, while the Gulf faces a brutal cost imbalance with Iranian drones costing low five-figures against a $4 million Patriot interceptor. - In response, the UAE and Saudi Arabia carried out their first known kinetic strikes on Iran, signed ten-year defense deals with Ukraine, and Saudi Arabia accepted 8,000 Pakistani troops, with Pakistani sources suggesting the deployment could grow to 80,000. - Saudi Arabia has floated a regional nonaggression pact modeled on the 1975 Helsinki Accords to include Iran and all Gulf states, though the UAE has emerged as the most likely dissenter. ## Shattered Illusions Turn back the clock to late January 2026 — several decades' worth of history ago, by the standards of this year — and the Gulf states were obviously on the rise. Overflowing with oil and gas revenue, the region had funneled its wealth into gargantuan sovereign wealth funds, building itself into a global player in tourism, transport, logistics, business, and media. It raised monuments to its own ambition, from Dubai's Burj Khalifa to the fantastical Saudi gigaproject Neom, and poured hundreds of billions of dollars into projects worldwide. The Gulf was a favored partner of the United States, China, Russia, Japan, and the European Union all at once. Even better, its leaders had matured past their early excesses. Gigaprojects like Neom were being drawn down in favor of more realistic investments, and sovereign wealth managers had accepted that they had not, in fact, discovered an infinite-money glitch. Large-scale regional war was supposed to be impossible, yet the Gulf states were already moving into an era of intense competition with one another. The Emirates worked with Israel, Morocco, Ethiopia, and others to manipulate proxy conflicts in a shadowy global game, while Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Egypt, and Pakistan joined forces to oppose them. When violence did flare — an Emirates-backed separatist takeover of Yemen, quickly reversed by Saudi-backed rivals, or Israel's brazen 2025 strike on Hamas political leadership in Qatar — it all fit a larger logic. Wealthy Middle Eastern powers were entering a new era of regional competition, but their battles would be fought through diplomacy, innovation, and proxy rivalry: a true cold war, in which all sides understood that direct conflict on one another's soil simply wouldn't be profitable. The principle at the very heart of this geopolitics, though, was more fragile than anyone seemed to realize. In Riyadh, Doha, Muscat, and especially Abu Dhabi, sovereign leaders promised their people that no matter what happened across the rest of the Middle East, these countries were safe — so safe that people from all over the world should relocate their families and fortunes to take advantage of an environment found nowhere else. Embedded in that promise was a deeper assumption: that the Gulf had gained some measure of control. Foreign powers, and the United States most of all, would have neither motive nor incentive to put the region at risk. The chaos beyond the borders could be contained. And as for Iran, well, that was a dying theocracy, a rogue and failing state with nothing left to do but endure a slow collapse. In hindsight, they could not have been more wrong. When it became clear that Washington intended to take direct, large-scale action against the Iranian regime, the Gulf states responded with fear and warnings of the destruction that would follow. Those warnings were ignored by a White House that did not seem to grasp the near-certainty of an Iranian response — against the Gulf states themselves, and against the critical shipping lane running through the Strait of Hormuz. The Gulf's calculus, that the incentives of profit and stability would override any lingering appetite for war, fell apart under pressure. The results were devastating. Over the course of Iran's retaliatory campaign, the region weathered attacks that were supposed to be impossible. Iran struck the Emirates, where the region's money was kept; Qatar, where its proxy allies were given safe harbor; and Oman, one of the most persistently neutral nations on Earth. It went after Saudi Arabia's East-West Pipeline, the kingdom's best route to export oil outside the Strait of Hormuz, and Qatar's Ras Laffan Industrial City, where one-fifth of the world's liquefied natural gas is produced. It hit Emirati cities directly, shattering the illusion of safety the Emirates had cultivated for so long. Worst of all, American protection turned out to be considerably less than advertised: U.S. bases across the region were devastated, American-made air defenses ran critically low on interceptors, and at times it seemed as though the needs of the Gulf states weren't even being weighed. ## Lessons in Blood and Oil Shocking as 2026 has been for the Persian Gulf, the past few months have also been deeply educational — and, to their credit, the Gulf states are starting to learn. According to reports by Reuters and the Wall Street Journal, both the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia carried out direct, secretive retaliatory strikes against Iran at the height of the conflict, the first known occasions either country has taken kinetic action against Iran at all. Smaller states like Kuwait and Bahrain shook their sleepy internal security services into action, intercepting and dismantling Iran-backed cells on their territory. Saudi Arabia even struck Iran's proxy missiles on Iraqi soil. When interceptor shortages bit, they reached out to Ukraine. Abu Dhabi, Riyadh, and Doha signed ten-year defense agreements with Kyiv and welcomed hundreds of Ukrainian air-defense experts onto Gulf soil. The Emirates accepted direct military support from Israel and deepened the relationship, then agreed to what will soon become a comprehensive strategic partnership with India. Saudi Arabia accepted eight thousand troops from its ally Pakistan, along with fighter-jet and drone squadrons — and Pakistani sources suggest that in time the deployment could grow as large as eighty thousand. So the assumptions the Gulf states made were proven catastrophically wrong, and they paid the price in both blood and oil. But their miscalculations were followed, eventually, by adaptation. The region recognized its vulnerabilities and moved to fix them. More important still, the early signals suggest the Gulf states understand they face two choices: patch the most urgent problems and then go back to sticking their heads in the sand, or embark on a much larger mission to ensure this never happens again. From Kuwait in the north to Oman in the south, all of them appear to be choosing option two — meaning that, for each, it is time to build a world-class military. ## Chronic Problems: Why Gulf Militaries Became Display Pieces The Gulf states are far from a monolith. The rivalry between Saudi Arabia and the Emirates, the strategic neutrality of Oman, and Qatar's controversial status as a regional black sheep all fracture the region. But on national defense, they have walked the same path for decades: foreign bases on their soil, foreign hardware in their arsenals, and militaries designed on the assumption that they wouldn't really have to fight. Each Gulf-state military is essentially a display piece, like a giant medieval sword meant to hang on a wall but unfit to hack apart a watermelon in the park. Each is equipped with high-tech, high-octane gear — advanced fighter jets bought in Washington and Paris, tanks and artillery from London to Brasília and Ankara to Seoul. All are very good at parade marching and patrolling, and on paper all are vastly more sophisticated than their rivals in Iraq, Yemen, or even Iran. Each maintains units that are genuinely capable, whether Saudi assault units blooded in Yemen, Emirati special-forces with histories in Libya and Sudan, or air-defense operators who can reliably handle the occasional rogue drone. Overall, though, they have earned a reputation as nonsense militaries in many ways at once. Some have bought far more hardware than they have troops to operate; others have invested in equipment that is plainly redundant. Their force structure is utterly conventional — a standard army, air force, and navy — despite unique geographical challenges and advantages that a normal-looking military will struggle to address. They are known for troops with questionable judgment and worse discipline, the product of trying to fill the ranks with citizens who treat service as a route to personal prestige rather than a profession. They are horribly inexperienced in full-scale conflict — a blessing until it absolutely isn't — and they have largely declined to build their own military-industrial complex. WarFronts dedicated an entire episode last September to why Saudi Arabia's military in particular could be so awful. Yet the poor state of these militaries is no accident. They were designed this way because, in more peaceful times, the design served a purpose. Domestically, Gulf rulers kept their militaries weak and disorganized so the armed forces couldn't threaten the dynastic royal families that govern much of the region. Toward one another, weak militaries were a signal from each capital: nobody here intends to fight, so let's not waste money on an arms race when we could all be making a profit together. Toward adversaries, the militaries were meant as a deterrent — it would look like a poor decision on paper for Iran's outdated forces to challenge Gulf air power and American-made air defenses directly. Toward allies, they let the Gulf states claim they were partnering with foreign militaries, not merely sheltering behind them. Most important was the message the Gulf sent to its arms dealers, above all the United States. When a nation buys, say, an F-16, it isn't just buying a jet; it is buying a platform expected to stay in service for decades. That means a constant stream of replacement parts and software updates, seats in foreign training programs for pilots and ground crews, and a place near the top of the list when modernization packages come around. It is purchasing a relationship — and signaling that it can be relied upon as a strategic ally for decades, because a country dependent on American weapons can't push too hard against American objectives without putting its own military in jeopardy. For that reason, the Gulf states have treated military procurement as a form of supplication. The Saudi Army, for example, fields four different multiple-rocket-launch systems: one American, one Russian, one South Korean, and one Brazilian. That isn't because Saudi Arabia needs four kinds of rocket launcher — in fact it makes the force much less efficient. The goal was never to be good at launching rockets in a full-scale war; it was to promise the United States, Russia, South Korea, and Brazil all at once that Saudi Arabia is a trusted partner who won't go off the rails. Each Gulf state does the same, buying weapons for their geopolitical value rather than their tactical value, and sweetening the deal by buying more than they need at less-than-competitive prices. That approach is one piece of a broader diplomatic strategy that runs through Gulf finance, energy exports, and bids for global influence in culture and sport. But applying it to military hardware was always riskier than applying it to money. In the unlikely event the Gulf states actually needed a functioning military, they were always going to be exposed. That was never a surprise to them; the only surprise was that someone might finally call their bluff. ## 99 Problems: The Threat Landscape After the War The Gulf's next move is obvious: rearmament. Each country now faces a far more serious threat from Iran than it realized, and each has learned the hard way that the partner it relied upon in a worst-case scenario underperformed. The answer is to take self-defense into their own hands — regardless of whether they should have been doing so all along. There is no excuse to let well-understood problems keep festering. The solutions will be dictated by the threats. The most immediate is Iran. For all the longer-term rivalries the Gulf states have with one another, with Israel, and with powers further afield, Iran is the present danger. Only Iran has shown the willingness to attack critical energy targets, threaten desalination and telecommunications infrastructure, and cultivate a network of proxies able to strike the Gulf from the north, in the militia hideouts of Iraq, and from the south, in Houthi-controlled Yemen. The first problem is long-range aerial bombardment. Iran has demonstrated the ability to combine one-way kamikaze drones, subsonic cruise missiles, and high-arcing ballistic missiles in coordinated salvos designed to overwhelm localized air defenses — forcing batteries to fire interceptors faster than they can reload. Overwhelm an interceptor-based system like the American Patriot, the Israeli Iron Dome, or the South Korean Cheongung-II, and some threats will inevitably get through. Worse, Iran can attack from multiple directions at once with proxy help, and fly drones low and slow to evade detection. Even when intercepts succeed, the Gulf sits on the wrong side of a brutal cost imbalance: most Iranian drones cost somewhere in the low five-figures in U.S. dollars, while a single Patriot interceptor runs about $4 million apiece, before maintenance and export support. The second problem is the Strait of Hormuz and maritime security across the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman. Iran has proven it can shut the strait — not merely by attacking individual ships, but by changing the risk calculus that shipping companies and, crucially, their insurers face. As a result, the vast majority of ships caught in the strait at the start of America's Operation Epic Fury are still there. It is not enough for a maritime power like the United States to organize a mass blockade run and promise cover. The mere possibility that a ship might be attacked by an organized national military is enough to create intolerable risk for insurers and their clients. Nor is Iran a conventional naval threat. Most of its proper navy was destroyed over the course of this conflict, with many vessels sunk or disabled before making any meaningful contribution. Instead Iran sustains the threat in the strait through three weapons at once. First, missiles, drones, and even shore-based artillery pose a land-based risk to maritime traffic, forcing ships to accept that Iran will take potshots until they reach safer water. Second, Iran retains hundreds or even thousands of small speedboats capable of swarming, conducting area denial, or boarding ships. Third, those same boats can lay sea mines — and they need not lay many to grind regional shipping to a halt. Ideally, the Gulf states will eventually move from a purely defensive posture into a deterrent one: developing the capability to retaliate against Iran so forcefully and reliably that Iran wouldn't contemplate an attack in the first place. For all the reasons already described, the Gulf unintentionally signaled to Iran that it was easy pickings. The Gulf states sit closer to Iran than Israel or most U.S. targets, yet lacked both the expertise and the will to join a U.S.-Israeli offensive and keep themselves safe. To change that, they will need not only long-range strike capability but quick-reaction forces, aerial sustainment infrastructure, and the credibility to prove they could carry out a reprisal alone — shifting their reputation from states that avoid conflict by any means necessary to a serious multinational force willing to get its hands dirty. Iran is only the short-term threat. To the south, Yemen's Houthi rebels remain a persistent danger even amid internal strife. To the north, Iraq hosts a range of Iran-backed militias that aren't guaranteed to stay aligned with Tehran and could menace the Gulf even after Iran is deterred — and Iraq itself, perpetually unstable for two decades, could one day pose a threat of its own. The Gulf of Aden and the waters off Somalia are vulnerable to piracy, and the Red Sea along Saudi Arabia's other coast is integral to the same shipping lanes the Gulf depends on. Finally, there is the long-term threat the Gulf states pose to each other. The Saudi-Emirati rivalry is hardly a secret, and with the UAE leaving OPEC, drawing closer to Israel, and making other bold moves, Riyadh and Abu Dhabi are unlikely to reconcile soon. Israel struck sovereign Qatar just last year, so the Emirates' deepening ties to Jerusalem create friction there too. Qatar, less than a decade removed from being blockaded by its neighbors, knows it could be isolated again. Oman, proudly neutral for decades, must now consider building military strength simply to protect its claim to neutrality. Tiny Kuwait faces an especially high risk of Iraqi or Iranian ground attack, while Bahrain depends on America's Fifth Fleet for both economic and security reasons. Eventually, the Gulf states' approaches will have to diverge, even if they follow similar paths to rearmament or collaborate in some areas. ## Building Up: The Solutions on Paper None of the Gulf's security challenges are insurmountable, but charting a path forward is a two-step process. Step one is the easy part: identify the right solution on paper for each threat. Step two is harder: modify those solutions so the Gulf states can actually implement them given their unique constraints. Start with airspace. The last several months demonstrated the sheer saturation of air defenses needed to keep U.S. bases, energy installations, and other key targets safe — and even that wasn't always enough. Before Operation Epic Fury, satellite imagery showed dozens of Patriot launchers at airbases in Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and Qatar. Those were American launchers, but they represent a density of defenses the Gulf must learn to replicate with hardware it controls, troops it operates, and placement it chooses. That likely means looking beyond the United States, at least in part. Building a single Patriot battery takes a long time, let alone enough to fill the massive orders the Gulf would need to place at once. Replenishing spent interceptors, growing stockpiles, and then getting far enough down the export waiting list that 2026 orders come due could take years. The world offers alternatives: the French-Italian SAMP/T, the German IRIS-T, Israel's Iron Dome and Arrow-3, South Korea's Cheongung-II, and China's HQ-9 and HQ-22. Each carries drawbacks — limited combat track records, slow production, export controls, or geopolitical barriers — and countries shouldn't mix and match if they can secure larger orders of a single reliable type. But there are enough options for the Gulf states to pursue different systems rather than all queuing for the same product. The UAE appears interested in Israeli kit, having accepted an Iron Dome during the hot phase of the war; Saudi Arabia already uses South Korean systems while hosting Pakistani forces who operate a Chinese alternative. The Gulf need not confine itself to traditional air defense. Several capitals have already signed long-term defense collaboration with Ukraine, where interceptor drones have proven a low-cost, high-efficacy alternative on the modern battlefield. In the short term, the Gulf can import Ukrainian interceptor drones — especially once Russia's invasion concludes — and lean on Ukrainian expertise to train its forces. In the longer term, it would do well to build its own production lines, since drone interceptors are easier to produce in volume than most other hardware. Just as important are directed-energy systems: lasers and microwave weapons that several Gulf states are already moving to procure. While they lack the defense-industrial knowledge to build such weapons themselves, they can pour funding into existing projects abroad or buy up promising startups. And the Gulf has a special reason to want lasers fast: those weapons struggle in overcast, rainy, or foggy conditions, but the Gulf rarely sees such weather. An average day there offers ideal conditions for the technology. Beyond acquiring weapons, the Gulf must decide where to put them. Iran's wartime conduct showed Tehran will strike beyond the strait — the Emirati port of Fujairah, the Saudi East-West Pipeline's Red Sea terminal, targets across Oman. Those are especially worth protecting because, if Iran blockades the strait, they are the only remaining export routes. The Gulf states must identify their most critical refineries, petrochemical plants, and export terminals and take a maximalist approach to defending them — which means many more well-trained operators, raising both recruitment and training demands. The region should also build far better monitoring and surveillance, especially across the vast Saudi interior, where drones from Yemen and Iraq can skulk undetected before closing on their targets. Saudi Arabia would likely lead on static surveillance, while other states build streamlined intelligence-sharing protocols; Kuwait and Oman, bordering Iraq and Yemen respectively, may develop their own capabilities or plug into a Saudi-led network. ## Taking the Seas: Maritime Security and the Strait Then there is maritime security, where the Gulf states can barely project power across the Gulf itself. Between all six of them, they possess just nine naval frigates — operated mostly by Saudi Arabia — along with thirty-one corvettes, a handful of minesweepers and fast-attack craft, and not a single submarine. They have relied instead on the United States and on the assumption that if the strait were ever closed, the world's navies would spring into action for their own sakes. With that approach now exposed as entirely ineffective, the problem is too large to solve in a few years: ships take too long to build, and the world has no spare military shipbuilding capacity. What the Gulf can do is overhaul its tactics in the short term while expanding its fleets over time. Many Gulf navies lack the personnel to crew the ships they already have, so large-scale recruitment alone could ease the strain. The Gulf also has the money to outbid competitors for warships being phased out by modern militaries in Europe, North America, and elsewhere. Those hulls would arrive with deficiencies and wear, but it is faster to overhaul onboard weapons and electronics than to build shipyards from scratch. The goal is to get ships and sailors in the water by any means necessary, building enough presence to matter if the strait closes again. As Iran has shown, closing the strait is about risk perception more than the destruction of individual ships. So it falls to the Gulf states to demonstrate they can minimize that risk. Some of that comes on the water — training large-scale naval responses to drone and missile threats, proving they can interdict fast boats. But aerial capability matters just as much: maritime patrol aircraft and, ideally, space-based surveillance to watch the coast and flag threats. The Gulf can also field static equipment to detect mine-laying and undersea operations, guard sensitive undersea cables, and monitor offshore energy extraction. In peacetime, aggressive patrolling across the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman would keep them constantly visible and active. Managing risk means managing perceptions — and the best thing Gulf navies can do is show, constantly, that they are capable of responding once threats are identified. They may also choose a course that would make most Gulf leaders uncomfortable today: proactively and unilaterally asserting control of the strait, whatever Iran says. Ideally they would set aside internal divisions to build a maritime coalition — even one narrowly limited to maritime security, with the understanding that members will bicker over everything else. If such an arrangement is achievable, the time is now, after every Gulf state has been reminded that Iran threatens them all. It is also an ideal moment to lay claim to the strait while Iran reels from the destruction of its navy. Rebuilding will be hard for Iran, but there is no telling what its fleet could look like in a decade or two. In any peace settlement, armistice, or ceasefire, the Gulf's best bet is to assert control quickly and deny Iran the opportunity to rebuild. It may provoke an international incident — but control of the strait is arguably worth the price. ## A Deterrent of Their Own Finally, the Gulf needs a substantive deterrent against Iran — not because any state seeks a return to open war, but because sometimes the best way to stop someone from hitting you is to make sure they know you can hit back. Saudi Arabia and the Emirates have shown they grasp the value of retaliatory strikes, but their retaliation rode the coattails of a much larger American and Israeli campaign. To build an independent deterrent, they need independent arsenals of longer-range weapons and independent air forces capable of striking Iran, Iraq, Yemen — or, hypothetically, each other — without an outside sponsor. To a degree, the Gulf can simply do what Iran does: stockpile ballistic missiles, long-range drones, and other weapons that can fly across the strait and hit their targets. Saudi Arabia already stockpiles ballistic missiles across at least four, and probably five, bases, and is said to produce its own missiles on Saudi soil. The other states would do well to acquire their own, and all of them would benefit from one-way attack drones. Here again wealth is an advantage, especially in a world where the Ukraine war has ended: Ukrainian drone manufacturers are expected to enter a golden age of military exports, and the Gulf can outbid competitors for contracts or acquire Ukrainian manufacturers outright. Beyond munitions, the Gulf can turn its air forces into genuine tools of power projection. These countries aren't starving for fighters — Saudi Arabia and Qatar in particular operate advanced F-15 variants. Their problem is a lack of non-combat support aircraft: the air-to-air refuelers and the airborne early-warning and control planes needed to coordinate and sustain offensive air operations. That is a problem nearly every U.S.-partnered military shares, because American refueling, command-and-control, and reconnaissance are so well developed — and it is one that America's European and Indo-Pacific allies are only now confronting. Around the world, nations compete over refuelers like the Airbus A330 MRTT and control aircraft like the E-7 Wedgetail and the Saab 2000. Once again, money talks, and few customers can argue louder than the Gulf. On the air and on the water, the Gulf can also invest in larger, more capable rapid-response forces, especially amphibious capability. In a world where the Gulf states could react to Iranian hostility by immediately seizing the oil-export terminal on Kharg Island or the smaller islands near the strait, Iran would be forced to rethink a renewed conflict. Saudi and Omani forces likewise need to be ready to repel ground infiltrations from Iraq and Yemen, and all Gulf nations have reason to ensure they can defend Kuwait — the one Gulf state Iran could realistically threaten on land, with ground forces that have been mostly irrelevant in its war against the U.S. and Israel. And even if Gulf ground and amphibious forces wouldn't play much of a role in a future war, they serve another purpose: as long as quick-reaction forces could pose an urgent threat, an adversary would have to strike them first, before turning to energy or infrastructure. Perhaps their only practical role is to be a missile sponge in the opening days of a conflict — but those are missiles that aren't used to destroy oil refineries or desalination plants. ## From Zeroes to Heroes: The Gulf's Unique Constraints Laying out a wish list of capabilities is the easy part. On paper, these new weapons and strategic principles would give the Gulf powerful advantages in a future conflict, both in defending their territory and in posing a credible deterrent. But the Persian Gulf is a unique place, where countries face specific limits most others never have to think about. The most obvious is geography, especially for the three smallest states — Qatar, Bahrain, and Kuwait. Kuwait is the most vulnerable of all: like many small countries it lacks the depth to retreat from a ground invasion, and unlike its neighbors, a ground invasion is a real possibility. Bahrain is less exposed, because attacking it means practically attacking the United States directly — though that didn't deter Iran last time. Qatar faces little threat of a ground attack unless it badly angers the rest of the Gulf again, but it too has little territory to hide in. Each of the three can look to nations in similar positions, like Israel or Taiwan, that prioritize their ability to retaliate and impose costs on an aggressor before it ever reaches their soil. Sometimes it is acceptable, even best, for a military to be unbalanced. Qatar doesn't really need the hundred main battle tanks it has on order from South Korea and Turkey as much as it needs the ballistic-missile and drone arsenal it currently lacks. When arms purchases were primarily tools of diplomacy, the tanks made sense; that is no longer the reality these nations live in. Then there is population — specifically, the share of it a country is willing to put in uniform. The UAE's total population is nearly twelve million, but only 1.4 million, about twelve percent, are Emirati citizens. Qatar's distribution is similar; citizens make up roughly thirty percent of Kuwait's population, and less than sixty percent each in Saudi Arabia, Oman, and Bahrain. Understandably, these countries avoid recruiting expatriates into their militaries where they can, but that leaves a very small recruiting pool — made worse by citizens who enjoy a high standard of living far more appealing than military life. When nations are very rich but short on citizens to fill their armies, they tend to arrive at the same solution: mercenaries. While much of the world is skeptical of soldiers of fortune, the Gulf is well accustomed to the idea, if at limited scale. The Emirates maintain connections to mercenary organizations recruiting from across the globe, especially Latin America and Africa. Former U.S. and European officers receive lucrative advisory contracts, while lower-wage migrants are recruited into support roles like maintenance, logistics, and food services. While each country might want its weapons systems and warplanes in citizen hands, it can offload other burdens onto private military contractors — operating air defenses, manning radar stations, even serving in enlisted roles aboard ships, plus guard duty, electronic warfare, and cyber-operations. The Gulf states are already believed to be actively recruiting foreigners for many of these roles. According to sources interviewed by Middle East Eye, they are prioritizing contractors from Muslim-majority nations like Pakistan and Egypt, while keeping specialist roles open for experts from Europe and elsewhere. A conclusion to the Ukraine war could be especially useful, as tens of thousands of Ukrainian combat veterans leave service at home — bringing exactly the drone and air-defense expertise the Gulf needs most if they can be recruited into comfortable contracts abroad. Nor must the Gulf recruit only combat veterans. One underappreciated effect of the global drone revolution is that drones can be operated by all sorts of people who would never otherwise reach military service. Drone operators behind the front lines don't need to pass physical requirements of age, sex, or strength, and they don't face the same risk to their lives — they can work from nearly untraceable points in apartments and disguised locations, or from hardened bunkers Iranian munitions can't penetrate. If the Gulf states stockpile long-range attack drones, logistics drones, unmanned ground vehicles, and sea drones, those non-traditional operators become a force multiplier, whether drawn from citizens, expats, or contractors — and they further reduce the need to put citizens in the highest-risk fighting roles. ## Strategic Cohesion: Competing Without Colliding The last problem is cohesion. Over the coming decades, the Emiratis and the Saudis are going to have their rivalry. Oman will reaffirm its neutrality, Bahrain will hug the U.S. Fifth Fleet as tightly as it can, and Qatar will probably get up to some type of mischief, whatever that mischief turns out to be. But whether they like each other or not, each Gulf state is safer if it can call on the others for mutual defense — or, at minimum, trust that its neighbors don't pose an active threat. When they want to compete, they can do it economically, technologically, diplomatically, or, if they must, through proxy conflicts on someone else's soil. The Persian Gulf itself, and all the nations that depend on it, must remain secure. There has already been movement here. In mid-May, the Financial Times revealed that Saudi Arabia had floated a nonaggression pact to be signed by all the Gulf states — including Iran — modeled on the 1975 Helsinki Accords between the Cold War American and Soviet spheres. The proposal quickly drew support from the European Union and most of the Gulf, though the Emirates emerged as the most likely dissenter. Even if a total regional pact proves impossible, the Gulf benefits by sealing as large a nonaggression deal as it can, and by negotiating more specific agreements all sides can accept — for instance a pact to respect and defend Oman's neutrality, or a commitment for all to come to Kuwait's defense as the most invasion-prone state. It would be unusual, in global diplomatic terms, to settle on a patchwork of limited agreements rather than a broad security pact. But the idea that the Gulf states would all sign a single regional security pact right now is implausible at best. These nations plan to compete, to diverge strategically, and eventually to establish superiority over one another. If the one thing they can all agree on is that their region should be kept safe from an Iranian or other outside threat, there is real value in working out an agreement on that principle alone — because the alternative might be nothing. In the years and decades to come, the Gulf states will have to reconsider everything they thought they knew about geo-strategy, diplomacy, deterrence, and, most of all, power. Their predicament is the result of choices they made, after decades of military policy that failed to take the rest of the world seriously. It is impossible to establish true national security simply by signing checks, and that misunderstanding delivered the wake-up call of a lifetime. But now these countries have a job to do — and, it must be admitted, that infinite-money glitch will be a big help with whatever they do next. ## Frequently Asked Questions ### Why are the Gulf state militaries considered so weak despite their expensive hardware? Their militaries were designed as instruments of diplomacy rather than defense. Gulf rulers deliberately kept their forces weak and disorganized so the military couldn't threaten the royal families, signaled to neighbors that nobody intended to fight, and treated arms purchases as a way to buy long-term relationships with supplier nations. The result is redundant, prestige-driven procurement — like the Saudi Army's four different rocket-launch systems from America, Russia, South Korea, and Brazil — chosen for geopolitical value rather than tactical value, often bought in greater quantities than needed and at non-competitive prices. ### What did Iran attack in the Gulf during the 2026 conflict? Iran's retaliatory campaign struck targets across the region, including the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, and the historically neutral Oman. Specific targets included Saudi Arabia's East-West Pipeline, its primary route to export oil outside the Strait of Hormuz, and Qatar's Ras Laffan Industrial City, where one-fifth of the world's liquefied natural gas is produced. Iran also struck Emirati cities directly and devastated U.S. military bases across the region, while American-made air defenses ran critically low on interceptors. ### Why can't the Gulf states simply buy more American Patriot systems? Building a single Patriot battery takes a long time, and the Gulf would need enough batteries to fill massive orders simultaneously. The United States must also replenish interceptors spent during the war and grow its own stockpiles, leaving Gulf orders far down a long export waiting list. There is also a severe cost imbalance: an Iranian drone may cost in the low five-figures, while a single Patriot interceptor runs roughly $4 million. As a result, the Gulf is looking to alternatives like France and Italy's SAMP/T, Germany's IRIS-T, Israel's Iron Dome and Arrow-3, South Korea's Cheongung-II, and China's HQ-9 and HQ-22, plus drone interceptors and directed-energy weapons. ### How does Iran threaten the Strait of Hormuz without a strong navy? Most of Iran's conventional navy was destroyed during the conflict, but it sustains the threat through three weapons used together. Land-based missiles, drones, and shore artillery pose a constant risk to passing ships. Hundreds or thousands of small speedboats can swarm, conduct area denial, or board vessels. And those same boats can lay sea mines — without needing many to make the strait too dangerous to transit. The strategy works through risk perception: it changes the calculus of shipping companies and their insurers, so most ships caught in the strait at the start of Operation Epic Fury are still there. ### What is the nonaggression pact Saudi Arabia proposed? In mid-May, the Financial Times reported that Saudi Arabia had floated a nonaggression pact to be signed by all the Gulf states, including Iran, modeled on the 1975 Helsinki Accords between the Cold War American and Soviet spheres of influence. The proposal won support from the European Union and most of the Gulf, though the UAE emerged as the most likely dissenter. Even if a full regional pact fails, the Gulf could pursue narrower deals — such as agreements to defend Oman's neutrality or to jointly protect Kuwait, the state most vulnerable to a full-scale invasion. ## Related Coverage - [America and Israel Attack Iran: Operation Epic Fury](https://warfronts.pub/geopolitics/america-israel-attack-iran-operation-epic-fury) - [All the Ways the US Could Intervene in Iran](https://warfronts.pub/geopolitics/all-the-ways-the-us-could-intervene-in-iran) - [Power Projection: How Nations Extend Military Force Beyond Their Borders](https://warfronts.pub/military/power-projection-how-nations-extend-military-force-beyond-borders) ## Sources 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40. 41. 42. 43. 44. 45. 46. 47. 48. 49. 50. 51. 52. 53. 54. 55. 56. 57. 58. 59. 60. 61. 62. 63. 64. 65. 66. 67. 68. 69. 70.

Haiti Between Anarchy and Autocracy: A Crisis That Keeps Getting Worse

Simon Whistler — Tue, 02 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

In the war-torn nation of Haiti, the grim local shorthand holds that you are either a gangster or you are a hostage. Ever since the 2021 assassination of the country's then-president, this Caribbean nation of eleven and a half million people has lived in a state of never-ending crisis. Its capital is trapped in perpetual urban warfare, its citizens are forced to witness extraordinarily violent atrocities on a daily basis, and many of its most vulnerable people stand at the edge of total humanitarian breakdown. Through years of that madness, Haiti retained one bleak saving grace: at a bare minimum, its horrendous excuse for a civil government remained far too weak to even contemplate becoming a dictatorship. That faint reassurance has now evaporated. Over a span of weeks, it has become clear that Haiti is teetering between two genuinely terrible outcomes — anarchy or autocracy. What little government Haiti had has fallen apart, and what little international support it received has proven incapable of improving the country's situation. Two factions now vie for power. One is a council of corrupt elites, propped up by the very gangs and criminal syndicates they once swore to destroy. The other is an unelected leader with no mandate to govern except the one conferred on him by American warships idling off the Haitian coast. The nation and its people are wedged between two deeply troubling options, and by rejecting either one, they may simply be forced into the other. ## Key Takeaways - Haiti has been in continuous crisis since the 2021 assassination of President Jovenel Moise, with its capital now under the control of an alliance of gangs that hold up to ninety percent of the city. - In early February, the Presidential Transitional Council — created under an internationally backed plan after gangs forced out Prime Minister Ariel Henry — voted five-against-two to remove sitting Prime Minister Alix Didier Fils-Aime less than two weeks before it was due to dissolve. - The council, led by chairman Leslie Voltaire, framed its move as a Haitian solution free of foreign interference, but several of its members face accusations of corruption and suspected ties to the gangs. - Backed by Washington and US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Fils-Aime prevailed; the council stepped down on the seventh of February after the US revoked four members' visas and parked the guided-missile destroyer USS Stockdale off Port-au-Prince. - Fils-Aime is now the only Haitian politician holding executive power, leaving the country one assassination away from total anarchy and burdened by his image as a foreign-backed figure. - A UN-approved Gang Suppression Force of more than 11,000 troops from fifteen nations is slated to begin arriving on the first of April, augmenting US-led mercenaries under former Blackwater head Erik Prince and his firm Vectus Global. - Critics warn the force is a half-measure: it carries no anti-corruption measures, no long-term presence, no plan to train Haiti's police, and no path toward elections — at a moment when the UN itself warns of financial collapse. ## How Haiti Reached the Brink To grasp the peril Haiti faces today requires turning back the clock to a few of the moments that delivered the country to its current predicament. Life in Haiti has never been easy, but the present crisis began with the rule of President Jovenel Moise, who led a highly corrupt, economically disastrous government from 2018 to 2021. In 2021, Moise was assassinated by a group of mostly foreign mercenaries in what appeared, at least partially, to be an inside job. When a sitting head of state is gunned down yet none of his security detail is killed or injured, there is good cause for suspicion. Many people were charged after the killing, including Moise's wife, but the more pressing problem was succession. Power passed to a man named Ariel Henry. The country's economic crisis subsequently grew even worse, and amid food shortages and a cholera outbreak, an alliance of powerful gangs rose up against the government. By 2023 those gangs had effectively seized control of the Haitian capital. ## The Gangs Take the Capital In 2024, the gang alliance pulled off a decisive move. After Ariel Henry traveled abroad, they prevented his return by overrunning Haiti's main airport and breaking more than four thousand inmates out of prison. That same alliance has shown itself, both then and since, to be unbelievably violent and sadistic. Its figurehead goes by the nickname Barbecue — a moniker whose most horrific possible origin is, by most accounts, the correct one. Once the takeover was complete, the newly exiled prime minister was forced to resign in disgrace. Under an internationally supported plan, control of Haiti passed to a Presidential Transitional Council with a mandate running a bit under two years. In theory, the council would appoint a prime minister, and everyone would govern Haiti together while hauling it out of its long national nightmare. In practice, the council and its chosen prime ministers proved unbelievably ineffective and ultimately made the crisis worse. The gangs only grew stronger and expanded into the Haitian countryside, the economy deteriorated further, and the humanitarian emergency became more intractable. ## A Stalled International Response The outside world's intervention has so far failed to move the needle. A multinational stabilization force — built mostly around a few hundred elite police officers sent from Kenya — did no better than the council it was meant to assist. International aid actually slowed down. Most of the nations that pledged to contribute police forces never delivered them. The pattern points to a broader collective shrug. The entire global community acknowledges that Haiti's situation is an obvious problem, yet every nation insists it should be some other nation's problem to solve. The result is a country left to its own collapse. The numbers underline how far that collapse has progressed. Haiti's gangs now control up to ninety percent of the nation's capital. They are leveraging sexual violence in ways that can only be accurately described as mass acts of terrorism. And across much of the country, even basic subsistence has become nearly impossible for ordinary civilians to achieve. Into that wreckage, the last thing Haiti needed was a fresh political crisis — which is, of course, exactly what arrived. ## The Council Refuses to Leave In early February, the transitional council was scheduled to relinquish its power and dissolve at the conclusion of its mandate. Once it did, the nation would fall under the leadership of Alix Didier Fils-Aime, who had served as prime minister since November 2024. This was not a formal plan so much as a default outcome; the council had refused to map out a succession as expected, so Fils-Aime stood to become Haiti's sole leader by inheritance. But the council — which had already pushed back the end of its mandate multiple times — signaled in late January that it had zero intention of surrendering power. Made up of seven voting members and two observers, the body voted five-against-two to remove Fils-Aime less than two weeks before it was set to disband. The tactical logic was straightforward. According to chairman Leslie Voltaire, who led the effort, the council needed thirty days to identify and choose Fils-Aime's replacement — which meant overstaying its mandate, ostensibly so that Haiti's political groups could draft a workable concession plan. ## Voltaire's "Haitian Solution" If Haitian leaders could not reach consensus — an outcome the council had every incentive to engineer — then the council itself would decide on the structure for Haiti's future governance. Voltaire was explicit about who held the cards. "We are the ones who appointed Didier Fils-Aime in November 2024," he told a press conference. "We are the ones who worked with him for a year, and it is up to us to issue a new decree naming a new prime minister, a new government and a new presidency." According to Voltaire and his colleagues, this was a moment of Haitian self-determination — Haitians making decisions for Haiti rather than bowing to foreign powers, as has so often been the case across the country's history. "Everyone is looking for a Haitian solution to the crisis," Voltaire added, "but when we start to find a Haitian solution to the crisis, the international community comes in with all its claws." That framing does not survive much scrutiny. Straightforward as the maneuver was, the council was very obviously manufacturing a reason not to disband and to claim greater power with the prime minister out of the way. ## Corruption, Gang Ties, and Washington's Hand Context sharpens the picture. While the transitional council was staffed by long-time civil officials who had once worked to Haiti's benefit, those same figures have since earned a reputation for brazen corruption. The previous year, three of them were summoned to court on graft charges, though the charges were dropped on grounds of executive privilege. Worse still, many are suspected of having formed ties with the gangs running roughshod across Haiti. Fils-Aime seized on those accusations. Speaking publicly, he insisted that Haitian law would not be dictated by "criminals wearing ties or criminals wearing flip-flops." And though he was a single prime minister facing a bloc of nine councilors, he had Washington firmly behind him. US Secretary of State Marco Rubio — known for a heavy hand in Caribbean and Latin American affairs — let it be known through a spokesman that it was very important to the United States that Fils-Aime keep his post and that the council dissolve on schedule. ## Gunboat Diplomacy off Port-au-Prince The next week and a half became a deeply tense standoff, as both sides stared each other down over a contest for control of roughly ten percent of Haiti's overrun capital. The US revoked the visas of four council members. Then, in a thoroughly twenty-first-century display of gunboat diplomacy, it parked a literal gunboat in the waters near Port-au-Prince: the USS Stockdale, a guided-missile destroyer, backed by a pair of US Coast Guard cutters. After a string of failed attempts to cling to power — largely by arguing in meetings that they should be allowed to remain in political posts — the councilors who had spearheaded the move against Fils-Aime finally appeared to grasp that none of them had a political future at this moment. On the seventh of February, the transitional council stepped down as expected and handed the reins to Fils-Aime. That handover installed an unelected, foreign-backed businessman with no government around him and a track record of presiding over Haiti's continued deterioration. It resolved the immediate power struggle without resolving anything that actually ails the country. ## One Man, No Mandate Fils-Aime's elevation to sole leader does not mean Haiti is out of the woods. He holds no mandate from the Haitian public to rule, and he assumed office under the cover of American warships — an arrangement that looks bad anywhere in the region and worse given Haitian history. He is opposed by former transitional councilors who still wield considerable influence and who allegedly maintain dangerously close ties with the gang coalition that, one could argue, is actually in charge. He is also, as of now, the only Haitian politician with executive power. That makes him one bullet, one improvised explosive device, or one kamikaze drone away from plunging Haiti into true anarchy. This is the predicament at the heart of the crisis: Haiti can be led by a man with no real checks on his power who can credibly be described as a foreign-backed puppet kept in office only because the US wants him there — or that man can vanish, the last traces of a Haitian civilian government can disappear, and some of the most murderous people in the Western Hemisphere can drag the country into a new and uncharted circle of hell. ## The Gang Suppression Force Replacing Fils-Aime with a genuinely legitimate alternative would require a vote. An election is technically slated for August, but international experts widely agree it simply will not happen on schedule. Haiti lacks the resources to even secure its own capital, let alone run a safe, legitimate election. Any path toward a credible ballot therefore runs through national security first. The international community's answer is the Gang Suppression Force, a UN-approved coalition of military and police drawn from fifteen contributing nations, scheduled to begin arriving on the first of April. The force will number more than 11,000 troops, roughly half of which have already been cleared to deploy, with the full contingent expected to be present and operational in Haiti by September. At that point, it is to shift into a role supporting Haiti's embattled police. In doing so, it will augment the work of US-led mercenaries already on the ground, led by former Blackwater head Erik Prince and his new firm, Vectus Global. Those mercenaries have drawn heavy international criticism for their use of kamikaze drone tactics, which have often killed civilians, and they are likely to partner with the Gang Suppression Force once it deploys. It is not even guaranteed the force will show up and perform as intended — particularly given how spectacularly the last stabilization effort failed. ## A Half-Measure by Design Haitian and international advocates are already sounding the alarm, warning that dropping eleven thousand armed personnel into Haiti and hoping for the best is far from a real solution. The US and other nations have unlocked somewhat more funding than was previously flowing in, but humanitarian relief remains vastly short of what is needed — at a time when the UN warns it faces financial collapse if member states, the US among them, keep withholding the contributions it depends on. The Gang Suppression Force carries no measures to reduce corruption, making the siphoning-away of any renewed aid all but inevitable. It does not plan a long-term presence, nor does it intend to provide meaningful training to build up Haiti's own police. America's envoy to Haiti, Henry Wooster, told lawmakers in Washington that of the roughly twelve thousand armed gangsters in Haiti's alliance, only about three thousand are responsible for the lion's share of the crisis — an assessment that itself appears to underestimate the gangs' true strength and to ignore how Haiti's broader problems have driven recruitment and entrenched gang power. There is, likewise, no specific plan to build up the civilian government or to move the country toward free and fair elections. ## Stability on the Lowest Bar In its current form, the force looks like a best-case scenario in which eleven thousand armed foreigners descend on Haiti, kill some gangsters, and declare victory — allowing foreign powers to wash their hands of the issue without improving Haiti's broader situation. The country's history has clearly shown this is not enough. Killing gangsters without addressing Haiti's underlying stability is just killing gangsters, clearing the way for whatever new security crisis follows. The United States, in particular, has its own incentives to push for a quick win. The country is home to more than three hundred thousand Haitians living under Temporary Protected Status, whom the Trump administration appears keen to deport once it can. Wooster framed the mission as essentially open-and-shut: "The U.S. objective in Haiti is one word, stability. We define that as A, no collapse of the state; and B, no mass illegal migration onto US shores. Everything we do to implement the President's Haiti policy is anchored to that singular objective." That is an incredibly low bar. It implies Washington does not regard the Haitian state as currently collapsing — which suggests that as long as Fils-Aime holds power and the basic US goals are met, Washington has little appetite for building longer-term stability. There is little room here for optimism about Haiti's future. As it stands, the Gang Suppression Force appears to be a tool to prop up Haiti's ghost of a government for as long as possible, by any means possible, with practically zero consideration for the country's future, its 1.5 million displaced people, or the hundreds of thousands at risk of being caught in the crossfire. No world nation is meaningfully advocating a better alternative, and if this new force fails, the fallback is anarchy. Perhaps Haiti can avoid that outcome for at least a little while longer. ## Frequently Asked Questions ### What event set Haiti's current crisis in motion? The present crisis began with the corrupt, economically disastrous government of President Jovenel Moise, who ruled from 2018 to 2021, and escalated sharply after Moise was assassinated in 2021 by a group of mostly foreign mercenaries in what appeared, at least partially, to be an inside job. None of his security detail was killed or injured, raising suspicions that endure to this day. ### Who is Alix Didier Fils-Aime, and how did he end up as Haiti's sole leader? Fils-Aime had served as prime minister since November 2024. When the Presidential Transitional Council reached the end of its mandate in early February and failed to arrange a succession, he stood to become Haiti's sole leader by default. After the council tried and failed to remove him, it stepped down on the seventh of February and handed him power — leaving him an unelected, foreign-backed figure with no government around him. ### Why did the transitional council try to remove Fils-Aime? The council voted five-against-two to remove Fils-Aime less than two weeks before it was due to disband. Chairman Leslie Voltaire said the council needed thirty days to choose a replacement, which would have required overstaying its mandate. Critics saw this as a transparent bid to avoid dissolving and to seize greater power, especially given that several council members face corruption accusations and suspected gang ties. ### How did the United States influence the outcome? Washington backed Fils-Aime. Secretary of State Marco Rubio signaled it was very important to the US that he keep his post and that the council dissolve on schedule. The US revoked the visas of four council members and stationed the guided-missile destroyer USS Stockdale, supported by two Coast Guard cutters, in the waters near Port-au-Prince. ### Why do critics consider the Gang Suppression Force inadequate? The force carries no measures to reduce corruption, no plan for a long-term presence, no meaningful training to build up Haiti's police, and no path toward free and fair elections. Humanitarian relief remains vastly short of what is needed, and the UN warns it faces financial collapse as nations, including the US, withhold contributions. Advocates argue that killing gangsters without addressing stability merely clears the way for the next crisis. ## Sources 1. https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/two-top-haiti-leaders-signal-pm-could-be-removed-after-us-threats-2026-01-23/ 2. https://apnews.com/article/haiti-transitional-council-ousts-prime-minister-filsaime-5ed3d85bdf798b13171ce894ebeca66a 3. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/2/7/haitis-transitional-council-hands-power-to-us-backed-pm 4. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/1/23/haiti-officials-announce-plan-to-oust-prime-minister-deepening-us-standoff 5. https://www.dw.com/en/haitis-transitional-council-steps-down-hands-power-to-pm/a-75858493 6. https://apnews.com/article/haiti-presidential-council-steps-down-us-prime-minister-ab6bc808fc31833038638a76a667d7ed 7. https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/06/world/americas/haiti-crisis-leadership-gangs.html 8. https://www.miamiherald.com/news/nation-world/world/americas/haiti/article314658185.html 9. https://americasquarterly.org/article/haitis-political-crisis-deepens-amid-a-slide-into-criminal-governance/ 10. https://www.rfi.fr/en/international/20260207-haiti-s-transitional-council-disbands-with-nothing-to-replace-it 11. https://www.americasquarterly.org/article/ending-haitis-criminal-governance-crisis/ 12. https://www.irishtimes.com/world/2026/02/11/donald-trumps-deportations-could-devastate-haiti/ 13. https://www.miamiherald.com/news/nation-world/world/americas/haiti/article314559715.html 14. https://www.chathamhouse.org/2026/02/haitis-vicious-circle-funding-needed-end-violence-violence-means-funding-doesnt-come 15. https://www.thenewhumanitarian.org/news-feature/2026/01/21/haiti-depth-gang-violence-breeds-hunger-haitians-seek-homegrown-solutions 16. https://abcnews.com/International/wireStory/haiti-faces-sexual-violence-abuse-crisis-gang-violence-129634489 17. https://www.africanews.com/2026/01/24/haitis-crisis-deepens-after-transitional-council-votes-to-oust-prime-minister/ 18. https://www.jurist.org/news/2026/01/un-warns-haiti-at-breaking-point-as-powerful-gangs-expand-control/

The Crisis in Haiti, Explained: How Gangs Captured a Nation

Simon Whistler — Tue, 02 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

It is a crisis that, for all intents and purposes, has disappeared from the global consciousness, even as the United Nations describes it as an unending horror story. For much of the past year, the world's attention has been fixed elsewhere: on Venezuela, where in January U.S. special forces captured President Nicolás Maduro during a daring raid on Caracas; on Iran, where negotiations between Washington and Tehran inch forward even as the spectre of open war grows larger by the day; and, briefly, on Sudan, where the city of El Fasher fell to the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces, leaving behind what UN experts later described as a ghost town. These are understandable preoccupations. They are among the largest crises the world has seen in a decade, and each represents a profound failure of the international community's ability to manage and resolve conflict. But while attention has been concentrated on these wars, Haiti, the Caribbean nation of roughly 12 million people, has slipped further and further into a catastrophe with no end in sight. And unlike those other conflicts, which at a fundamental level pit a state against military forces, whether rebel groups, paramilitaries, or foreign armies, Haiti's government has been fighting gangs. So far, the gangs are winning. In July 2025, the UN announced that gangs controlled more than 90 percent of the capital, Port-au-Prince, and were pushing their reach into once-peaceful regions of the country. The result has been a humanitarian collapse of staggering scale, with millions facing hunger, more than a million driven from their homes, and a state whose authority is evaporating in real time. This is the story of how a nation lost control of itself, why its gangs grew so powerful, what the international community has tried to do, and whether any realistic path back from the brink still exists. ## Key Takeaways - By July 2025, gangs controlled more than 90 percent of Port-au-Prince, a city of over three million people, in what amounts to one of the most complete collapses of state authority anywhere in the modern world; even at the height of cartel violence, Mexican gangs never controlled 90 percent of Mexico City. - The roots of the crisis stretch back decades, from the Duvalier dictatorship's Tonton Macoute militia, which was disbanded but never disarmed in 1986, to a recurring pattern in which politicians financed gangs to intimidate rivals, only to lose control once the gangs grew more powerful than their patrons. - The 2021 assassination of President Jovenel Moïse and the 2024 rise of the Viv Ansanm coalition, led by former police officer Jimmy "Barbecue" Chérizier, marked the turning points that pushed Haiti from chronic instability into near-total state collapse. - The humanitarian toll is immense: at least 5,601 people killed in gang violence in 2024, more than 1.4 million displaced, a 1,000 percent rise in sexual violence against children, and six consecutive years of economic contraction. - The international response, anchored by a Kenya-led Multinational Security Support mission, has been chronically underfunded, understaffed, and beset by language and capability gaps; just 400 of a planned 2,500 officers were on the ground months after deployment began. ## A Coalition Turns on Itself On Tuesday, December 9, at around 4 a.m., gunshots tore through Bel-Air, one of Port-au-Prince's most notorious gang strongholds. For years, Haitians woken by gunfire have learned to read it as one of two things: a police raid against a gang position, or gangs targeting the police. This time it was neither. It was gang members shooting at each other, raising the spectre of an all-out gang war that could plunge the city into even deeper chaos. Dozens of gunmen died in the firefight. Bodies littered the streets, some burned where they fell. Footage and images circulating online showed the aftermath in graphic detail, including a picture of the severed head of a high-ranking gang figure identified as Dede. According to the Associated Press, dozens were killed, including 10 children. What made the episode remarkable was not the bloodshed itself but the combatants: these were not rival gangs but members of the same coalition, Viv Ansanm, turning their weapons on one another. Viv Ansanm, which translates from Haitian Creole as "Living Together," was formed when Haiti's two most powerful gang factions united under a single banner, bringing together dozens of gangs that had spent years fighting brutal turf wars. For a nation accustomed to gang violence for decades, the merger was unprecedented. Thousands of heavily armed fighters were suddenly operating in concert, a far larger threat to the government than the sum of their parts. According to the Miami Herald, the December clash was triggered by a dispute within the coalition over kidnappings, which had surged in recent months. One faction wanted to keep kidnapping, a major source of revenue, while another wanted it stopped. In a video released that day, Jimmy "Barbecue" Chérizier, a former police officer and the coalition's spokesman, stood flanked by six people he claimed were former hostages, including a 12-year-old girl. He said that one of Viv Ansanm's generals had ignored repeated warnings to halt kidnappings, prompting another faction to intervene and free the captives. "We don't want the matter of kidnapping," Chérizier declared. "Today, Viv Ansanm decided to be done with the kidnapping issue." Sources told the Herald that the general in question was Kempes Sanon, a former police officer turned gang leader sanctioned by both the United States and the UN for supporting Viv Ansanm's terror campaign. Until very recently a close ally of Chérizier, Sanon was in hiding after being shot. Two ironies stood out: former allies, both once police officers, had turned on each other, and a coalition responsible for thousands of deaths, mass displacement, and systematic terror was claiming the moral high ground on kidnappings. The episode laid bare what many observers had long suspected, that Viv Ansanm, for all its success in uniting Haiti's warring factions, remained fragile, held together by common enemies rather than genuine ideological unity. The violence was not confined to internal feuds. Earlier that month, heavily armed gang members attacked Haiti's central region over a weekend, killing men, women, and children as they torched homes and forced survivors to flee into the darkness. A government official in Pont-Sondé, in the Artibonite department, confirmed that nearly a dozen people had been killed. Many survivors fled to the coastal town of Saint-Marc, where one resident told the Associated Press they would no longer rely on the government and would instead take justice into their own hands. The gangs do not, however, hold the entire country uncontested. The Haitian National Police have pushed back and scored notable wins, most recently on February 21, when an overnight operation in Kenscoff, a commune in the Port-au-Prince area, killed 16 suspected gang members. But in a country with hundreds of gangs and thousands of fighters, such victories are barely a drop in the bucket. ## How Haiti Got Here: From Papa Doc to the Macoute's Long Shadow By July 2025, gangs controlled more than 90 percent of the capital. The figure is worth dwelling on: nine out of every ten neighborhoods in a city of more than three million people were under the control of armed criminal groups rather than the government. Even at the height of cartel violence, Mexican gangs never controlled 90 percent of Mexico City. What happened in Port-au-Prince represents one of the most complete collapses of state authority anywhere in the modern world. The conventional explanation points to 2021, when President Jovenel Moïse was assassinated, a 7.2-magnitude earthquake struck, and armed violence became commonplace. But that account misses the deeper layers of history. To understand the present, one must return to 1957, when François "Papa Doc" Duvalier seized power to become one of Haiti's most feared dictators. The country was already in dire straits, ravaged by a succession of revolutions, dictatorships, crushing debt payments to France, 20 years of U.S. occupation, and the Great Depression. Beyond economic misery, Black Haitians chafed at being ruled by the mulatto minority, a group with one white and one black parent that, despite making up less than 5 percent of the population, has historically wielded outsized political influence. Duvalier's 1957 opponent, Louis Déjoie, was a wealthy mulatto businessman, and Duvalier rode anti-mulatto sentiment to victory. Two years later, Duvalier created a paramilitary outfit called the Militia of National Security Volunteers, better known as the Tonton Macoute, named after a Haitian bogeyman, to serve as his enforcers. Haiti at the time was a deeply superstitious place, and, according to John Henley, the Guardian's Europe correspondent, Duvalier weaponized that belief, convincing many Haitians that the Macoute were not merely named after the bogeyman but were zombies he had raised from the dead. Over the 28 years that Papa Doc and his son Jean-Claude "Baby Doc" Duvalier ruled, Henley writes, the Macoute killed between 30,000 and 60,000 Haitians and raped, beat, and tortured countless more. While the Macoute committed massacres on a grand scale, the Duvaliers robbed the national treasury blind. According to historian Alex von Tunzelmann, they embezzled up to 80 percent of Haiti's international aid, while the debts they signed accounted for almost 50 percent of what the country owed. When Baby Doc fled in 1986, some experts estimated he left with as much as $900 million. Many hoped his ouster would usher in a golden era, but it did not. Stephen Keppel, a former Economist editor for Latin America, told the Guardian that for all their faults, the Duvaliers knew how to keep control; without them, Haiti fell prey to coups, ousters, and social unrest. The most enduring damage lay in the Macoute themselves. After the dynasty fell in 1986, the militia was disbanded, but, crucially, never disarmed. According to a report by the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime, its members continued to operate informally and re-emerged as far-right vigilantes, used by politicians to intimidate opponents and voters and to disrupt rallies and elections. It would not be the last time a Haitian government, handed an opportunity to address the armed-group problem, failed to do so. ## A Powder Keg: How Politicians Built the Gangs In 1994, President Jean-Bertrand Aristide returned to power after being deposed in a 1991 coup. One of his first acts was to outlaw the pro-Duvalier paramilitaries and even the Haitian armed forces. But because he never fully tackled disarmament, military pensions, or the retraining of former soldiers, those men once again morphed into armed gangs. From 1994 to 2004, gangs of former soldiers waged an anti-Aristide insurgency. In response, young people from working-class neighborhoods in the capital formed self-defense groups, which eventually merged with local police into a force loyal to Aristide and Fanmi Lavalas, the social-democratic party born of his movement. Aristide used them extensively. In December 2001, when police officer Guy Philippe attacked the presidential palace in an attempted coup, Aristide called on the gangs to defend him. Journalist Michael Deibert, who was in Haiti at the time, told PBS: "It wasn't the police defending their government's Palais National. It was thousands of armed civilians." Yet the gangs that once protected Aristide would eventually engineer his fall, establishing a recurring Haitian pattern in which politicians and elites financed gangs to spread chaos and intimidate rivals, only to lose control once the gangs realized they had grown more powerful than their patrons. The 2003–2004 unraveling illustrates the dynamic. One pro-Aristide militia, the Lame Kanibal, or Cannibal Army, was led by Amiot Métayer. When Métayer was killed in September 2003, gang members widely believed, according to the local outlet AlterPresse, that Aristide had ordered his death. The gangs responded not with petitions but with a violent campaign that culminated in the president's ouster. After the 2010 earthquake, according to the Global Observatory, a platform of the International Peace Institute, younger, less ideological, and more predatory gangs seized territory once held by the self-defense groups, showing far less hesitancy to cross neighborhood lines, assassinate enemies, and prey on the vulnerable. The earthquake mattered for more than chronology. It nearly tore the country in two. Alex von Tunzelmann spoke with aid workers who described Haiti as "down there with Somalia, as just about the worst society on earth. Even in Afghanistan, there's a middle class. People aren't living in the sewers." By 2012, conditions had not improved; as donor funding dried up and youth unemployment stayed high, the gangs found an easy recruitment pipeline. The pattern held through the 2010s, including in 2016, when Jovenel Moïse of the Tèt Kale party was elected president. Moïse's tenure was, in a word, complex. To some he was a reformer who fought the oligarchs' grip and corruption; to others he was just as corrupt, having become an oligarch himself. His harshest critics included Harvard Law School's International Human Rights Clinic, which accused his government of funding, supporting, and arming gangs that committed what amounted to crimes against humanity. In a report analyzing three attacks between 2018 and 2020 that killed at least 240 civilians in neighborhoods vocal about government accountability, the clinic documented gangs arriving to shoot residents indiscriminately, rape women, and burn and loot homes. "Moïse's government has been pushing the story that the attacks are merely gang infighting," said Mario Joseph of the Bureau des Avocats Internationaux, "but the evidence demonstrates high-level government involvement in the planning, execution and cover-up of the attacks." Moïse's government denied any links, and the then-acting prime minister claimed antidemocratic forces were using the gangs to destabilize the state, but the weight of evidence pointed the other way. About three months after the report's release, on July 7, 2021, Moïse was assassinated, and the crisis spiraled further. Months later, the New York Times reported that he had been killed because he was compiling a dossier of powerful politicians and businesspeople involved in Haiti's drug trade, intending to hand it to the American government. The reporting validated what Jimmy "Barbecue" Chérizier had claimed in the immediate aftermath: that police, opposition politicians, and the business community had colluded to kill the president in what he called a conspiracy against the Haitian people. ## The Major Players: Barbecue, the G9, and Their Rivals No figure looms larger over Haiti's gang landscape than Jimmy "Barbecue" Chérizier. A former police officer, he served in a riot squad whose members have been accused of killing protesters. According to a Guardian biography, he was expelled from the force in 2018 over alleged involvement in several crimes, including a horrific massacre in La Saline in which 71 people were killed, seven women raped, and 400 homes burned. Chérizier denied wrongdoing, but his expulsion from a police force that is, at times, more gang than police speaks volumes. He made the leap from officer to gang leader, the Associated Press reports, by multitasking, building an armed group while still in uniform and, by 2017, controlling the Delmas 95 in the impoverished Lower Delmas neighborhood. In June 2020, he formed the G9 Family and Allies, uniting nine major Port-au-Prince gangs allegedly tied to the ruling Tèt Kale party. By 2022, a UN Security Council report found, the G9 had grown to more than a dozen gangs and ranked among the most powerful coalitions in the country. Part of the G9's strength came from Chérizier's charisma. Sky News correspondent Stuart Ramsay described him as engaging, a natural politician, and a force to be reckoned with, traits that let him win local hearts even as his gang committed atrocities. Vice dubbed him the "Gangster King" of Haiti's chaos, and Washington agreed, posting a $5 million bounty for information leading to his arrest. "He gives women presents on Mother's Day. He gives money to families that don't have the means to send their kids to school," International Crisis Group analyst Diego Da Rin told the Guardian. "But people are aware that he is also one of the main people responsible for the nightmare they are living." Beyond charisma, the gangs grew powerful through arms-trafficking networks supplying AK-47s, AR-15s, and Israeli Galil rifles. According to a UN panel of experts, their firepower exceeded that of the police, creating a deadly cycle: gangs expanded their reach, seized strategic locations, and imported still more weapons to expand further. Nor was the G9 alone. According to Haitian expert Djems Oliver, more than 200 armed groups operate in Haiti, with 95 in Port-au-Prince. Most are small, neighborhood-level outfits, but some rival the G9. The chief rival is G-Pèp, led by Gabriel Jean Pierre, known as Ti Gabriel, and formed in response to G9 violence. According to Crisis Group, after the G9's creation Chérizier invited other gangs, especially in the densely populated Cité Soleil commune, to join. Those that refused, including Ti Gabriel's Nan Brooklyn, faced coordinated attacks in which members were decapitated, corpses torched in the streets, and homes burned, partly to intimidate residents into not collaborating with other gangs. The attack backfired. Rather than submit, the targeted gangs rallied around Ti Gabriel, who a month later announced G-Pèp, quickly drawing in gangs uneasy about the G9's growing power. "A two-party gang war on numerous fronts has thus superseded the old local rivalries," Crisis Group wrote, "as the G9 and Gpèp vie for overall ascendancy. Fighting has spread, with civilians stuck at home to stay out of the crossfire." Though most expected the better-armed, better-connected G9 to overwhelm G-Pèp, the latter held its own with help from 400 Mawozo, which by April 2022 was the most powerful gang in the country. 400 Mawozo gained international notoriety in 2021 for kidnapping 17 missionaries, but within Haiti it was already feared for thousands of kidnappings targeting ordinary citizens. The consensus is that it backed G-Pèp to keep the G9 from becoming too dominant. Another major player is the 5 Segond gang, led by rapper Johnson André, known as Izo. Based in the Village de Dieu slum, it controls key transport routes, including stretches of the western coast and a major highway linking Port-au-Prince to the south, giving it a central role in arms and gun trafficking and a history of hijacking shipments by land and sea. The BBC's Vanessa Buschschlüter wrote that Izo is one of the few leaders who wields more power than Chérizier, with a $1 million U.S. bounty to match. A final figure is less a gang than an individual: former police officer Guy Philippe, who has long coveted the presidency and once tried to seize it by coup. After that failure, according to InSight Crime, he turned to crime, laundering money, trafficking cocaine from Colombia into the United States through Haiti, and taking bribes to protect drug shipments. Elected senator in 2016, he was arrested days before being sworn in and gaining immunity, then extradited to the United States, convicted, and imprisoned for nine years; he served six before being repatriated. Haiti expert Michael Deibert called his return "pouring gasoline on an already raging fire." Though Philippe commands no gang of his own, InSight Crime reported he was often seen with armed members of the Protected Areas Security Brigade, or BSAP, a rogue government unit nominally tasked with guarding national parks that analysts say has effectively become a gang. A spokesman for demobilized soldiers told a local outlet that many BSAP members were former soldiers who fought alongside Philippe in the 2004 coup, helping explain how a government agency became his personal protection unit. There is also a countervailing force: the vigilantes who have risen to defend their communities. The most famous, the Bwa Kale, first mobilized in 2023, according to Romain Le Cour of the Global Initiative against Transnational Organized Crime, as a movement of several hundred citizens determined to restore order and punish enemies, gang members or otherwise, through violence. Rather than a formal organization, Le Cour describes it as the re-emergence of old practices of community surveillance and patrolling, a fluid mob response activated in specific circumstances such as gang attacks. Any group of citizens can form a Bwa Kale within their neighborhood. When a threat appears, residents mobilize, often via WhatsApp, gather whatever weapons they can, increasingly guns alongside sticks and stones, and chase down and frequently summarily punish suspects. The vigilantes often work with police, who offer firepower and tactical support that machetes cannot match, and who in turn gain community support, intelligence, and a proxy presence. ## A Crisis Plays Out: Fuel, Fury, and the Fall of the State The collapse accelerated in March 2018, when Venezuela stopped shipping subsidized oil to Haiti, ending the Petrocaribe program that had supplied cheap fuel for over a decade. Under Petrocaribe, Haiti could defer payment on 40 percent of its oil bill for up to 25 years at just 1 percent interest, effectively a cheap loan meant for development. Losing it forced Haiti, dependent on imports for nearly all its energy, to buy oil on the open market at far higher prices. By July, under pressure from the International Monetary Fund, which had promised a $96 million loan package, the government announced it would eliminate fuel subsidies. Prices soared, protests erupted nationwide, and Prime Minister Jack Guy Lafontant resigned, but the damage was done. The protests had already evolved from anger over prices into a broader indictment of Moïse's government and its failure to tackle the corruption that had let those who embezzled Petrocaribe funds escape prosecution. In 2019, a 600-page Senate report released in May implicated both Moïse and his predecessor Michel Martelly in the mismanagement and theft of Petrocaribe funds. According to Time, at least $2 billion had gone missing, roughly a quarter of Haiti's entire 2017 economy, and the issue became a rallying cry because Haitian taxpayers would still owe Venezuela billions for the borrowed oil. Thousands marched demanding Moïse's resignation and were met with heavy-handed police responses. By December, when the protests waned, more than 80 people had been killed and over 200 injured, according to Freedom House. Several journalists, including Rospide Pétion and Néhémie Joseph, were killed after criticizing the government; Joseph's death came amid a spike in violence that claimed 20 lives and paralyzed the country for weeks. The protests carried into 2020 before the COVID-19 pandemic briefly suppressed street demonstrations, but the grievances remained. Moïse was ruling by decree, having dissolved parliament in January 2020 after October 2019 legislative elections were postponed; there were no checks on his power. Kidnappings, including by state-linked gangs, surged 200 percent between 2019 and 2020, and many feared a slide back toward Duvalier-style dictatorship. By early 2021, Haiti was on the brink. Protesters argued Moïse's five-year term had ended on February 7, 2021, since elections were held in 2015; Moïse countered that, because the 2015 vote was disputed and he took office in 2017, his term ran to February 2022. The dispute sparked mass demonstrations, met with tear gas and rubber bullets, and in February authorities claimed to have foiled a coup, arresting 23 people, including a Supreme Court judge. Then, on July 7, 2021, armed men burst into the president's private residence and assassinated him, and Haiti, as observers put it, jumped off a cliff. After a brief power struggle, Ariel Henry, a neurosurgeon Moïse had named prime minister days before his death, took office with international backing. Many Haitians viewed his installation as unconstitutional, arguing the absence of a functioning parliament made it illegitimate. Nominally in charge, Henry presided over a power vacuum the gangs eagerly filled, expanding operations with little resistance as already-weakened state institutions grew more ineffective. The gangs seized neighborhoods, captured key roads linking the capital to the rest of the country, and blocked ports holding fuel, triggering devastating shortages and still more protests. By 2022, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet warned that armed violence had reached unimaginable levels; between April and May 2022 alone, at least 92 civilians were killed in coordinated attacks. On September 11, Henry announced the end of fuel subsidies, spiking prices and igniting violent protests within days, as demonstrators pillaged UNICEF warehouses, attacked politicians' homes, and set fires across the city. But it was the gangs' reaction that proved decisive. On September 12, Chérizier and the G9 blockaded the Varreux fuel terminal, the country's largest depot, storing over 70 percent of national fuel, demanding Henry's resignation and lower prices for fuel and basic goods. Gas stations and schools closed, hospitals warned their generators were running dry, and as cholera cases appeared, UN officials pleaded for a humanitarian corridor. The blockade held for nearly two months until the Haitian National Police retook the terminal on November 3 after heavy gunfire. Days later, Chérizier posted a video telling drivers and employees they could approach without fear, though he denied negotiating with Henry's government. By 2023, violence reached unprecedented levels. In January, a Haitian human rights group reported that 78 police officers had been killed since Henry took power; by year's end, 37 more had died, 1,800 had fled the country, and the homicide rate more than doubled to 40.9 per 100,000 inhabitants. The gang emergency was compounded by a deepening political one. ## An Unpopular Choice and the Rise of Viv Ansanm Henry had come to power promising a return to constitutional order and democratic elections, but he oversaw repeated electoral delays as the security crisis worsened, arguing that credible voting was impossible amid rampant gang violence and limited state capacity. The public did not accept this, especially given the lingering questions over his rise. As conditions deteriorated, with nearly half the population facing acute hunger, according to the World Food Programme, and more than 165,000 people displaced, regional observers increasingly doubted Henry would last. Two developments in late 2023 set the stage for what followed. First, in September, Chérizier announced the formation of Viv Ansanm, a united front of rival gangs including the G9 and G-Pèp. According to Romain Le Cour, the coalition formed because Chérizier and the G9 were losing momentum while independent rivals and G-Pèp-affiliated gangs were rising. Initial attempts to consolidate failed after key leaders championing the merger were killed, but the idea of a unified gang force endured. Second, in late November, Guy Philippe returned, deported after six years in a U.S. prison. The former coup leader wasted no time organizing demonstrations and declaring his political ambitions, and on February 7, 2024, the date Haitian leaders are traditionally sworn in, he posted a video calling for a rebellion to oust the prime minister. The rebellion failed, Le Cour says, because Philippe could not secure support from key allies in the public, private, and gang sectors, but it foreshadowed what was coming. Later that month, Henry attended a Caribbean Community summit in Guyana focused on the Haitian crisis. Although several representatives viewed him as part of the problem, a CARICOM press release on February 28 stated that Henry would remain in power until elections in August 2025. The next morning, Port-au-Prince erupted in flames, and that afternoon Chérizier formally announced the resurrection of Viv Ansanm. The gangs had united. What followed was unlike anything Haiti had seen. Coordinated attacks struck police stations, hospitals, and the international airport, and the gangs stormed the country's two largest jails, freeing more than 4,000 inmates. The scale and coordination indicated planning and inter-group cooperation impossible to arrange overnight, meaning that at some point after September 2023 Viv Ansanm had overcome the obstacles to its formation and solidified its partnership. Henry, who had been in Kenya pushing for a UN-backed, Kenyan-led security force, found himself locked out of his own country. His plane was barred from the Dominican Republic, and he landed in Puerto Rico as U.S. officials called mid-flight urging him to expedite a political transition. Chérizier warned that if Henry did not resign and the international community kept backing him, Haiti would head straight for civil war and genocide. By early March, according to UNICEF's Catherine Russell, Port-au-Prince was almost completely sealed off by air, sea, and land, with nearly 100,000 people fleeing the capital in under three weeks and those who remained trapped in overcrowded shelters with minimal food, water, or sanitation. On March 11, Caribbean leaders convened an emergency meeting in Jamaica, attended by U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, signaling Washington's willingness to move past Henry. That evening, Henry announced his resignation, saying his government would cede power to a transitional presidential council tasked with selecting a new interim prime minister and preparing for elections. It was meant to be a new beginning, but as Michel St-Louis, a 40-year-old Haitian, told the press in front of a burned-out police station: "Haiti is now under the control of the gangs. The government isn't present." The gangs had won. ## The International Response: A History of Mixed Results The international community has long been involved in Haiti, with mixed results at best. In September 1993, the UN deployed its first peacekeeping mission, the United Nations Mission in Haiti, the first of a succession of missions with varying mandates and strength over the next seven years. Then, in 2004, after Aristide fled, the Security Council established the UN Stabilization Mission in Haiti, known as MINUSTAH, which began with 8,000 personnel and grew to 13,000 after the 2010 earthquake. MINUSTAH was tasked with supporting the transitional government, monitoring and restructuring the Haitian National Police, assisting with disarmament, and protecting civilians. But scandal dogged the mission from the start. Nepalese peacekeepers introduced cholera to Haiti in 2010, ultimately killing more than 9,000 people. UN troops were implicated in sexual abuse: in 2012, two Pakistani peacekeepers were jailed and dismissed for raping a 14-year-old boy, and a leaked 2015 report found UN peacekeepers had engaged in transactional sex with at least 229 women who traded sex for money, food, and medicine. Though credited with helping stabilize Haiti's security and supporting its police, MINUSTAH saw its military contingent withdrawn in 2017 and its police contingent in 2019, forced out by the United States as part of a global effort to cut peacekeeping costs. Many in Haiti and abroad called the withdrawal premature given the still-precarious security situation. The mission was replaced by the much smaller UN Mission for Justice Support in Haiti, which ended in October 2019, and then by the UN Integrated Office in Haiti, which lacked the active components the country needed for security and stability. That gap became glaring by 2022, when Henry was forced to ask the UN to deploy specialized forces to support an overwhelmed police. Haiti had first requested help earlier that year as violence surged but could find no country willing to lead a mission, with many governments wary of backing Henry's unelected administration and of intervening where previous missions had been marred by abuses. Then, in July 2023, Kenya stepped forward, saying it acted in solidarity with a brother nation. On October 2, 2023, the Security Council authorized a Kenya-led Multinational Security Support mission for an initial 12 months. The deployment immediately ran into trouble. In January 2024, a Kenyan opposition politician petitioned the Nairobi High Court, which ruled that deploying police to Haiti was unconstitutional and invalid. Kenyan President William Ruto countered by signing a reciprocal agreement with Henry in Nairobi on March 1, 2024, ironically the very moment Viv Ansanm put Port-au-Prince under siege. Even then, delays persisted. Sources in Kenya's Interior Ministry told the Global Initiative that an exploratory team found Haiti ill-prepared, with the barracks meant to host the contingent still incomplete. The first 400 Kenyan officers finally arrived on June 25, 2024, but the mission immediately faced operational problems. According to the New Humanitarian, some officers said they received about $155 a month, roughly a fifth of what they had been promised. The force was also badly understaffed: though slated for 2,500 officers and soldiers, the 400 Kenyans deployed in late June were largely left alone. They lacked resources, struggled with language barriers since most spoke neither French nor Haitian Creole, and faced doubts about their suitability for urban counter-gang operations they had never conducted. In September 2025, the Security Council authorized transforming the mission into a Gang Suppression Force with a more forceful mandate including arrest authority, but it faces the same challenges, including slow deployment. ## A Transitional Council Plagued by Crisis The military effort was only one part of the international response. Just as important was support for Haiti's governments, including the Transitional Presidential Council that succeeded Henry, meant to exercise presidential powers until an elected president was inaugurated or until February 7, 2026, whichever came first. It was plagued with problems from the start. In October 2024, Haiti's Anti-Corruption Unit accused three members, Smith Augustin, Gerald Gilles, and Emmanuel Vertilaire, of abuse of function, bribery, and corruption, alleging they had demanded $750,000 in bribes from the chairman of the National Bank of Credit to secure his appointment. All three denied wrongdoing and refused to resign. The council also became entangled in a public power struggle with Garry Conille, its pick for interim prime minister. According to the Security Council Report, disagreements arose over the division of responsibilities, the appointment of certain cabinet ministers, and the handling of corruption allegations against the three council members, with Conille resisting a cabinet reshuffle amid the bribery claims. The conflict came to a head in November 2024, when the council replaced Conille with businessman Alix Didier Fils-Aimé. The move drew fire from legal experts; former Justice Minister Bernard Gousse called the dismissal illegal, citing both the council's overreach and the corruption allegations against it. The International Crisis Group reported that violence rose as news of Conille's ouster spread, with gangs ramping up attacks in October 2024, emboldened by the security forces' apparent weakness and the government's distracting infighting. The council also faced accusations of links to the very gangs it was meant to combat. In January 2026, the U.S. State Department imposed visa restrictions on two council members and their families over involvement in gang operations. Washington imposed further restrictions on four council members and a minister after the council tried to oust Fils-Aimé in what was widely seen as an attempt to prolong its grip on power. Secretary of State Marco Rubio stressed the importance of Fils-Aimé's continued tenure to combat the gangs and stabilize the island, and soon after, Washington deployed a guided-missile destroyer and two U.S. Coast Guard boats to patrol the bay of Port-au-Prince. Coming barely a month after the U.S. capture of President Maduro in Venezuela, the move read as a statement of how far Washington would go to keep Fils-Aimé in power. On February 7, the Transitional Presidential Council dissolved as scheduled, transferring its remaining powers to the prime minister. France 24 reported that Fils-Aimé was the only politician with executive power in the country, left with the unenviable task of organizing elections in a violence-gripped nation, with a fractured political class and a public that has lost faith in the system. ## The Human Toll: Displacement, Children, and Economic Collapse The casualty figures, grim as they are, barely scratch the surface of what every regional observer agrees is one of the worst humanitarian crises in recent history. In 2024 alone, at least 5,601 people were killed in gang violence, an increase of more than 1,000 over 2023, according to figures verified by the UN Human Rights Office, with more than 2,000 injured and 1,400 kidnapped. In October 2024, the Gran Grif gang killed at least 115 people in Pont-Sondé in what ACLED described as the deadliest incident in Artibonite since it began collecting Haitian data in 2018, likely a retaliation for locals allying with the Jean Denis self-defense coalition. A few months later, at least 207 people were killed in a massacre orchestrated by the leader of the Wharf Jeremie gang in Cité Soleil; many victims were older people accused of killing his son through alleged voodoo practices, and gang members mutilated and burned most of the bodies or threw them into the sea. The violence has produced what World Relief called the worst displacement crisis in the Western Hemisphere. In October 2025, the UN estimated that more than 1.4 million people had been forced from their homes that year alone, the highest figure ever recorded in the country and a 36 percent increase since the end of 2024, making Haiti the country with the largest number of crime-related displacements globally. The UN estimates that 83 percent of displaced Haitians rely on already-overstretched host communities of acquaintances, friends, and family, while the rest struggle in spontaneous sites. Compounding the strain, more than 270,000 Haitians have been deported back to the country, further burdening its overwhelmed social services. Children bear the heaviest burden, making up over half the displaced population, and the education system is near collapse. In January 2025 alone, armed groups destroyed 47 schools in Port-au-Prince, adding to 284 destroyed in 2024, and more than 1,600 schools across four departments have closed, disrupting learning for over 243,000 students. UNICEF estimated that one in seven Haitian children was out of school, with nearly a million more at risk of dropping out. UNICEF also reported that child recruitment into armed groups surged 70 percent, with children making up as much as half of all members; spokesperson James Elder said most were taken by force, while others were manipulated or driven to join by extreme violence. There has also been a staggering 1,000 percent rise in sexual violence against children, coinciding with a spike in the gangs' use of sexual violence overall. Between January and October 2024, nearly 4,000 girls and women reported sexual violence. Humanitarian workers told Human Rights Watch that many survivors are reluctant to report or seek care for fear of retaliation, and that those who do often cannot reach help within the critical 72-hour window for post-exposure prophylaxis and emergency contraception, because public medical facilities are closed by violence or because they cannot afford private care. The economic damage has been equally catastrophic, with Haiti enduring six consecutive years of economic contraction and GDP declining 4.2 percent in 2024. Agriculture saw the steepest fall at 5.6 percent, hitting the poor hardest, while industry shrank 4.7 percent amid worsening conditions and mass textile-sector layoffs. The IMF projected a further 2.2 percent contraction in 2025 and a 1.2 percent contraction in 2026, with investment and consumption dampened by insecurity and inflation. Foreign direct investment is near total collapse: the UN Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean reported FDI inflows fell to $23.6 million in 2023 from $39.4 million in 2022, while the neighboring Dominican Republic, which shares Hispaniola, received $4.75 billion in 2023, a 17.3 percent increase. The only thing keeping the economy from complete collapse is remittances, which reached $4.1 billion in 2024, roughly 20 percent of GDP, though even that lifeline is strained as deportations surge. The country's infrastructure, already poor, has deteriorated further; of a road network with only about 1,000 kilometers paved, much has been damaged by floods and landslides. An engineer in Haiti's public works ministry told the World Bank that the absence of basic infrastructure was so severe it limited access to basic services and denied farmers access to markets. Taken together, the picture is of a country where, even if the gangs laid down their arms today, rebuilding would take decades of sustained effort and investment. ## What Will It Take to End the Crisis? Observers have proposed several solutions, from military intervention to negotiating with the gangs. One controversial idea is to include the gangs in any political settlement. Some see this as capitulation to criminals, but proponents argue the gangs are already deeply embedded in Haiti's political system, and any solution that excludes them is doomed. The International Crisis Group has noted that gangs increasingly portray themselves as defenders of the poor to improve their image and pursue political recognition, and that Viv Ansanm, despite lacking legal status, presents itself as a political movement capable of fielding candidates in future elections. The coalition has worked to rebrand, distributing money and gifts, installing electricity in underserved neighborhoods, and handing out school supplies, all while still using violence to maintain control. Negotiating with armed groups is not as outlandish as it sounds; governments throughout history have done so to end conflicts, especially when victory by force is unlikely. The question is whether such talks would bring genuine peace or simply entrench the gangs' power. Crisis Group analysts believe it would likely be the latter, with gangs hoping to use negotiations to install allies in government and secure amnesty, but the group also argues that talks aimed at protecting civilians and disarming the gangs would serve Haiti as a first step on the long path to stability. Any solution must also address the economic incentives driving young people into gangs. The New Humanitarian reported that children and teenagers can earn anywhere from a few dollars for errands to roughly $40 or more a week for other tasks, a princely sum where most Haitians live on less than $2 a day. As long as gangs offer better economic opportunities than the state, recruitment and the crisis will continue. Fixing the economy so those incentives vanish is essential but daunting, given six years of contraction, dwindling foreign investment, and crumbling infrastructure. The government must also address the cycles of vengeance that drive recruitment; one 17-year-old told UN officials he had joined a gang to avenge his father, killed by a rival gang. Without reconciliation processes that acknowledge harm on all sides, Haiti risks generation after generation seeking retribution. A well-funded, properly equipped police force will be crucial. According to the Center for Strategic and International Studies, the Haitian National Police has shrunk from more than 15,000 officers in 2021 to fewer than 13,000 in 2024, less than half what a country of 11 million needs, and many officers live in gang-dominated neighborhoods, leaving the force vulnerable to intimidation and collusion. Haiti will need to invest heavily in retaining, recruiting, and training officers while ensuring they are better armed and protected than the gangs they fight. The justice system also needs significant investment. As of November 2025, 82 percent of detainees were in pre-trial detention under conditions the UN called inhuman and degrading. William O'Neill, the UN's Designated Expert on human rights in Haiti, described prisons as unbelievably crowded and hot, with too little food and scant medical care; 52 people died in detention in the last three months of 2025, many from diseases that should not have killed them. Conditions in juvenile facilities are especially alarming, with some children waiting more than five years to see a judge while held in cells that sometimes hold 40 to 60 minors. Kettly Julien, who runs a human rights organization working in correctional facilities, told the New Humanitarian that although juvenile facilities provide schooling and counseling, they are also breeding grounds for reinforcing gang systems. Without addressing these systemic failures, Haiti will keep radicalizing the very people it should be rehabilitating. The best approach, analysts suggest, is a dual-track strategy: the Haitian police and their international partners using force to degrade the gangs' military capabilities, seize weapons, and arrest leaders, while the government creates exit pathways for rank-and-file members willing to disarm, because purely military solutions historically fail in urban gang environments. Haiti has tried such programs before. During MINUSTAH, it attempted traditional disarmament, demobilization, and reintegration, which proved unsuccessful, prompting a shift to a more community-focused armed-violence reduction and prevention program; even these adapted programs faced significant challenges in urban settings. Most importantly, the government must aggressively pursue disarmament, because allowing the gangs to keep their weapons is a recipe for future chaos. Without both the stick of enforcement and the carrot of reintegration, Haiti risks prolonging the conflict. Finally, the international community must do more, particularly on funding. According to the International Rescue Committee, Haiti's crisis is among the most underfunded in the world; by the end of 2025, only 24 percent of the necessary funding had been secured, leaving 1.7 million people potentially without critical humanitarian services. Dr. Christopher Sabatini, a senior research fellow at Chatham House, warned that with USAID abolished and subsequent cuts to development assistance by the UK, Canada, and the EU, many of the steps needed to reduce gang power will have scant resources. Projects to reintegrate gang members and rebuild communities will likely go unfunded, as will the basic development assistance that could boost the economy and generate jobs, and jobs are critical to offering a legal alternative to former or future gang members. Without such an alternative, many will simply return to crime, the worst possible outcome for a nation that, in the words of 45-year-old Orné Derilia, has already endured too much: "Too much blood has been shed, we've had too many dead, we have gone through too much." Haiti has been through too much. ## Frequently Asked Questions ### How much of Haiti's capital do the gangs control, and how did it get this bad? By July 2025, the UN reported that gangs controlled more than 90 percent of Port-au-Prince, a city of over three million people, and were expanding into previously peaceful areas. The roots reach back to the Duvalier dictatorship, whose Tonton Macoute militia was disbanded but never disarmed in 1986 and re-emerged as political enforcers. A recurring pattern followed in which politicians financed gangs to intimidate rivals, only to lose control once the gangs grew more powerful than their patrons. The crisis accelerated after President Jovenel Moïse was assassinated in July 2021, leaving a power vacuum the gangs quickly filled. ### What is Viv Ansanm, and who leads it? Viv Ansanm, meaning "Living Together" in Haitian Creole, is a coalition formed when Haiti's two most powerful gang factions, the G9 and G-Pèp, united under a single banner, bringing together dozens of previously warring gangs. Its spokesman and de facto leader is Jimmy "Barbecue" Chérizier, a former police officer expelled from the force in 2018, who carries a $5 million U.S. bounty for his arrest. The coalition formally announced itself in early 2024 with coordinated attacks that freed more than 4,000 prisoners and sealed off the capital. ### How bad is the humanitarian toll? At least 5,601 people were killed in gang violence in 2024, with more than 2,000 injured and 1,400 kidnapped. More than 1.4 million people were displaced in 2025 alone, the highest figure ever recorded in the country. Children make up over half the displaced, child recruitment into gangs rose 70 percent, and sexual violence against children rose 1,000 percent. The economy has contracted for six straight years, with GDP falling 4.2 percent in 2024, while remittances of $4.1 billion—about 20 percent of GDP—are nearly all that prevents total collapse. ### What has the international community done, and why has it fallen short? The UN has deployed peacekeeping missions in Haiti since 1993, most notably MINUSTAH from 2004, which was credited with stabilizing security but was tarnished by introducing cholera that killed over 9,000 people and by sexual abuse scandals. After MINUSTAH's withdrawal, a Kenya-led Multinational Security Support mission was authorized in 2023. Its first 400 officers arrived in June 2024, far short of the planned 2,500, and faced underfunding, language barriers, and capability gaps. By the end of 2025, only 24 percent of the necessary humanitarian funding had been secured. ### What would it take to end the crisis? Analysts argue for a dual-track approach combining military pressure to degrade the gangs with reintegration pathways for members willing to disarm, alongside economic reform to remove the incentives that drive recruitment, a larger and better-equipped police force, and justice-system overhaul to address mass pre-trial detention. The international community must also significantly increase funding; the abolition of USAID and cuts to development assistance by the UK, Canada, and the EU threaten the reintegration and development projects most needed to break the cycle of violence. ## Sources 1. https://archive.is/opVRg 2. https://www.france24.com/en/americas/20260207-haiti-transitional-council-transfers-power-prime-minister-fils-aimé-us-gang-violence 3. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/2/7/haitis-transitional-council-hands-power-to-us-backed-pm 4. https://www.ksat.com/news/world/2026/02/07/haitis-presidential-council-dissolves-after-rocky-tenure-as-unelected-us-backed-ruler-remains/ 5. https://www.americasquarterly.org/article/haitis-political-crisis-deepens-amid-a-slide-into-criminal-governance/ 6. https://www.caribbeannationalweekly.com/news/caribbean-news/haitis-transitional-council-steps-down-handing-power-to-prime-minister-fils-aime/ 7. https://www.crisisgroup.org/anb/latin-america-caribbean/haiti-united-states/us-gunboats-patrol-haitis-waters-amid-wrangling-over-new-government 8. https://www.crisisgroup.org/rpt/latin-america-caribbean/caribbean/haiti/107-locked-transition-politics-and-violence-haiti 9. https://www.npr.org/2024/11/11/g-s1-33654/haiti-prime-minister-garry-conille 10. https://haitiantimes.com/2024/11/10/gary-conille-ousted-as-prime-minister-by-haitis-transitional-council-but-argues-legality-of-move-breaking-news/ 11. https://www.securitycouncilreport.org/about-security-council-report 12. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/11/10/haitis-transitional-council-moves-to-replace-pm-in-contentious-move 13. https://haitiantimes.com/2024/10/15/haiti-presidency-the-presidential-council-verge-implosion/ 14. https://www.haitiresponse.org/haiti-reports/sep-23-2025 15. https://www.diplomatie.gouv.fr/en/country-files/haiti/news/article/haiti-end-of-the-transitional-presidential-council-mandate-09-02-26 16. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/3/1/kenya-haiti-sign-reciprocal-agreement-on-police-deployment-ruto 17. https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/06/world/americas/haiti-crisis-leadership-gangs.html 18. https://www.chathamhouse.org/2026/01/roadmap-security-and-governance-reform-haiti 19. https://www.chathamhouse.org/2026/02/haitis-vicious-circle-funding-needed-end-violence-violence-means-funding-doesnt-come 20. https://www.thenewhumanitarian.org/news-feature/2022/2/14/can-Haiti-gangs-help-build-better-future-country

How a Harris Presidency Would Reshape the World's Conflicts

Simon Whistler — Tue, 02 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

An American election is, among other things, a wager about the rest of the world. The winner does not inherit a clean slate; they inherit a planet already at war, and every campaign promise about restraint or resolve is immediately tested against conflicts that will not wait. When the question is how a President Kamala Harris would govern foreign policy, the stakes are unusually high, because the choices in front of her run from the hypothetical to the catastrophic. The difficulty is that Harris arrives without a long, legible record on the hardest files. Australia's Lowy Institute called her "largely a blank slate on China policy," and something similar could be said about much of her thinking on Gaza, Ukraine, and the wars almost nobody talks about. What we have instead are fragments: votes she cast as a senator, the role she played as vice president, lines from a campaign platform, and the assessments of analysts who have studied her closely. This is an attempt to assemble those fragments into a picture. WarFronts looks at four of the most consequential conflicts a Harris administration would face — a potential war over Taiwan, the war in Gaza and the wider Middle East, the war in Ukraine, and the war in Sudan — and asks what her instincts, her record, and the experts suggest she would actually do. The thesis is simple: on most of these fronts, Harris would represent continuity and the center ground of American foreign policy, with Ukraine the one conflict where caution itself could prove disastrous. ## Key Takeaways - US defense circles have identified 2027 as the year of Xi Jinping's notional deadline for an invasion of Taiwan, making Beijing — not Moscow, Gaza, or Tehran — the likely defining foreign policy challenge of the next administration. - Harris has a Senate record of confronting Beijing on human rights, co-sponsoring bills sanctioning Hong Kong officials in 2019 and countering the persecution of the Uyghurs in 2020, yet analysts place her in the Democratic mainstream rather than among China hardliners. - On Gaza, a Harris administration is expected to bring a change in tone but not a substantive break from Biden-era policy; she has ruled out suspending weapons shipments, the one major piece of leverage Washington holds over Israel. - Ukraine is the conflict where delay is most dangerous: with Kyiv's manpower pool projected to run dry before Russia's, analysts argue a new president would have only weeks to decide whether she genuinely wants Ukraine to defeat Russia. - In Sudan, where an estimated 150,000 people have been killed and genocide may be underway in Darfur, Harris may focus on protecting civilians and could pressure the UAE — the Rapid Support Forces' main backer and a close US ally. ## China Syndrome: The Defining Challenge The number that hangs over the next administration is 2027 — the year US defense circles have identified as Xi Jinping's deadline for a Chinese invasion of Taiwan. Some China experts have told Defense News that the date's importance is overstated, but even the skeptics concede the underlying point: the biggest foreign policy challenge of the coming years is more likely to sit in Beijing than in Moscow, Gaza, or Tehran. That makes Harris's thinking on China, Taiwan, and the wider Indo-Pacific the single most important thing to understand about her — and also the hardest, given the Lowy Institute's verdict that she is "largely a blank slate." Still, a blank slate is not a void. Over her years as a senator and then vice president, Harris bumped up against Beijing repeatedly, and how she reacted offers a guide to how she might govern. For those worried about the rise of the Middle Kingdom, her Senate record offers reassurance. Harris was one of 56 senators who co-sponsored a bill sanctioning officials in Hong Kong over the 2019 crackdown on peaceful protesters. In 2020, she co-sponsored a similar measure intended to counter China's persecution of the Uyghurs in Xinjiang. On human rights, at least, she has been willing to name Beijing's abuses directly. Her record as vice president gives the China hawks more to work with. A significant part of her platform involved her role in organizing freedom-of-navigation operations through the South China Sea. As the Council on Foreign Relations notes, she also played an active part in Biden's effort to knit America's East Asian allies — Japan and South Korea among them — into ever-closer alliances. On paper, that is a posture of containment. ## Competitor, Not Enemy: Harris's China Instincts It would be a mistake, however, to read these stances as evidence that Harris is a hardliner on China. Foreign Policy magazine argues that she essentially represents the Democratic Party consensus — which, in practice, makes her more moderate than Joe Biden ever was. The contrast is sharpest on Taiwan. Biden repeatedly said US forces would defend the island in the event of a Chinese attack, a statement directly at odds with America's official policy of "strategic ambiguity." Harris, by contrast, has stuck to the script. When asked, her frequent reply is that she supports "Taiwan's ability to defend itself" — a formulation far closer to the official line, and one that deliberately leaves the question of direct US intervention unanswered. The same pattern holds on trade. Harris has accused China of "stealing" US intellectual property, yet she has also claimed that Washington lost the trade war that ignited under Trump. There is no suggestion she would scrap the Trump and Biden tariffs on Chinese goods, but her instincts seem to treat China as a competitor rather than an enemy. Foreign Policy characterizes her position as "pursuing competition and cooperation simultaneously." Whether Beijing perceives that nuance is doubtful. Speaking to the Financial Times, Zhao Minghao — a professor at the Institute of International Studies and the Center for American Studies at Fudan University — was blunt: "Trump and Kamala Harris are two bowls of poison for Beijing. Both see China as a competitor or even an adversary." From the Chinese vantage point, the subtle difference between the candidates may simply not register. ## The Choices Harris Is Unlikely to Make If the downward trend in US-China relations continues, the Lowy Institute argues, Harris would soon face some genuinely consequential choices. As the Institute frames it, "A Harris administration can decide to invest in the US military-industrial base so that the United States can match Chinese shipbuilding rates, and it can boost defense spending to correct the tilt away from US dominance in Asia. A Harris administration can elect to leave European security to the Europeans so that the United States can concentrate its forces in Asia." These are the radical options — a wholesale reorientation of American power toward the Pacific, paid for in part by stepping back from Europe. And the Institute's assessment is that Harris is unlikely to take them. Instead, it predicts she would build on her vice-presidential work to contain China incrementally: expanding US bases in the Philippines, deepening Asian alliances, and managing the rivalry rather than racing to reshape the entire force posture. Depending on one's worldview, that incrementalism may be no bad thing — particularly because conflict with China remains hypothetical. The wars in Europe and the Middle East, by contrast, are already happening, and already demonstrating their capacity for disaster. ## Middle East Inferno: Tone Without a Break No current war divides the Democratic coalition quite like Gaza. In the year of fighting since the horrors of October 7, the party has been split between its moderate wing's instinct to back Israel and its more radical base's demand to stand up for Palestinians. Under Biden, the result was staunch pro-Israel rhetoric paired with behind-the-scenes pressure on Netanyahu to prosecute the war less aggressively — an approach that managed to alienate almost everyone while having little visible effect on the conflict itself. The question is whether Harris would do anything different. Those hoping for a clean break are likely to be disappointed. During her campaign, she largely repeated boilerplate talking points that could have come from any generic Democrat. Her campaign platform pledged that "Vice President Harris will always stand up for Israel's right to defend itself and she will always ensure Israel has the ability to defend itself," while also working to end the war "such that Israel is secure, the hostages are released, the suffering in Gaza ends, and the Palestinian people can realize their right to dignity, security, freedom, and self-determination." If that reads as vague and light on specifics, it is partly by design. Harris aides briefed the New York Times that — with the conflict expected to look completely different within months — the campaign did not want to be tied to unworkable promises that events might quickly overtake. ## Flashes of Sympathy, Limits of Policy Still, Harris has at times spoken about Gaza with greater force and detail than the campaign boilerplate suggested — enough to hint at a divergence from Biden, if not an outright break. After a July meeting with Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, she declared: "What has happened in Gaza over the past nine months is devastating. The images of dead children and desperate hungry people fleeing for safety, sometimes displaced for the second, third or fourth time." She added: "We cannot allow ourselves to become numb to the suffering and I will not be silent." Foreign Policy reported that these comments tracked with rumors that Harris had been privately pushing Biden to take a firmer stance on the civilian death toll. Nor was this the only such signal. The New York Times reported that at the Dubai climate conference in December 2023, she spent her time huddled with leaders of Arab nations, discussing Gaza. How that sympathy translates into policy is far less clear. Her stated positions — an immediate ceasefire, the release of hostages, and a return to the two-state solution — look remotely achievable at best. Her plan for a "revitalized" Palestinian Authority to govern postwar Gaza strains credulity given how little authority the PA wields even in the West Bank. Her call to hold extremist settlers who target Palestinians to account is a smaller ask, but still hard to imagine implementing. The deeper constraint is that Harris has ruled out the one real lever Washington holds over Israel: suspending weapons shipments. Instead she has pledged to continue American military aid, emphasizing Israel's right to defend itself. The reasonable expectation, then, is a Harris administration that changes the tone on Gaza while leaving the substance largely intact. Her own advisors told the Times that "the empathy she has expressed [towards Palestinians] as vice president should not be confused with willingness to break from American foreign policy toward Israel." The same continuity is likely on Iran. In her campaign, Harris pledged only to "ensure that Iran never achieves the ability to be a nuclear power" — a line consistent with longstanding US policy. That, in the end, is the through-line of her pitch: she would occupy the center ground, pulling back where Biden grew too gung-ho on China or too cozy with Israel, and holding the line where the two parties already moved in lockstep, as on Iran. ## Ukraine: Where Caution Becomes Catastrophe There is one conflict where a "steady as she goes" approach is not available — where urgent decisions must be made quickly, and where caution itself invites disaster. That conflict is Ukraine. Discussing the candidates before the election, the Lowy Institute wrote that on foreign policy "the choice couldn't be starker." It called Trump "the first president since the Second World War to denounce American global leadership," casting Harris as "the last champion of American foreign policy exceptionalism, the final redoubt for those who believe that the United States has global interests which must, if necessary, be protected by a military force that is second to none." Harris's own promise to "strengthen — not abdicate — our global leadership" is, the Institute warned, likely to be sorely tested on day one by Ukraine. That is also the view of retired Australian major-general Mick Ryan, who has written at length on the challenges Harris would face in Eastern Europe. His central thesis is that the Biden administration's strategy is not working — that the White House has no theory of victory in Ukraine beyond giving Kyiv just enough backing to stay in the fight and keep bleeding Russian forces. The Brookings Institute described the same dynamic as "Biden's policy of providing Ukraine with enough support so that it does not lose, but not with the wherewithal to win." Such a track, in Ryan's view, is unsustainable. "A Harris administration will have little time to decide whether it really wants Ukraine to defeat Russia," he writes. "Its decision will have profound consequences for the future of Ukraine and for America's stature and global influence." ## The Arithmetic of Attrition The urgency is grounded in battlefield arithmetic that most observers can see for themselves. Ukraine is now a war of attrition, with Russia absorbing spectacular casualties to grind out slow gains in the Donbas. Moscow is, for now, just about managing to replace those losses with new recruits each month. That practice is likely unsustainable even into next year — at least without an extremely unpopular mobilization — but Kyiv's own manpower pool is projected to run dry first, despite Ukraine suffering fewer battlefield losses. And that is before accounting for the weapons systems and ammunition on which Kyiv depends almost entirely on its Western allies. The implication is stark: simply staying the course leads to eventual Ukrainian defeat. Dragging out the decision compounds the danger, because a long delay would let problems accumulate to the point that they can no longer be surmounted. Harris would therefore have to decide within her first few weeks whether she truly wants to back Ukraine to the hilt. That decision carries hard trade-offs. As Ryan describes it, backing Ukraine fully "will [...] require trade-offs in scarce military resources that might be required to confront China, a tougher approach on China's support for Russia, and a different strategy for dealing with Russian nuclear saber rattling. Russia will be sure to escalate its campaign of sabotage, misinformation, and general mischief around the world in the wake of such a decision." In plain terms, it would force Harris to weigh whether American resources are better spent preparing for a possible war with China or winning the current war with Russia. ## NATO's Iron Commitment Which way Harris would ultimately fall is genuinely difficult to predict. For those who want Ukraine to win, the encouraging quotes are easy to find: as a candidate she promised to "stand strong with Ukraine and our NATO allies," and the Council on Foreign Relations notes she has argued that a failure to respond to Russian aggression "would embolden other countries considering invasions." Against that, Ryan points out that when asked during the presidential debate whether she wanted Ukraine to win the war, Harris talked around the subject without ever saying yes or no. Her thinking in this area — as with so much — remains a mystery. Where the ambiguity lifts is NATO itself. Whatever her Ukraine strategy, Harris is judged highly likely to remain committed to the alliance. Foreign Policy catalogs her warm words for it: calling America's commitment "ironclad" in 2022, describing the Article Five collective-defense clause as "sacrosanct," and in 2024 calling NATO "the greatest military alliance the world has ever known." That record suggests a Harris administration would not sit by if Russia attacked Poland or moved to annex the Baltic States — a sharp contrast with Trump, whose commitment to the alliance was always shaky and transactional at best. ## The Sudan War: Hell on Earth There is one final conflict that any new president would have to confront, and it is among both the largest and the least reported on Earth: the war in Sudan. An estimated 150,000 people are thought to have been killed, genocide may be underway in Darfur, and entire cities have been reduced to rubble. Yet it is largely absent from the front pages of mainstream outlets — and that neglect extended to the campaign trail, where neither Harris nor Trump spent many words on it. On Harris's side, the silence may partly reflect Biden's own last-ditch effort to secure an African legacy by stopping the fighting. Analysts have not been optimistic. Speaking to Fox News, Sudan expert Cameron Hudson described "an 11th hour attempt to put the situation on a better footing, not least because the humanitarian situation is so desperate," warning that "there could be 2 million Sudanese dead from famine by the time he [Biden] leaves office." Should that come to pass, anything a successor did would amount to rearranging deck chairs on a Titanic that has already sunk. Even so, a new president would not be powerless. One plausible focus for Harris is reducing harm to civilians — specifically the women and girls who have reported brutal assaults and sexual degradation at the hands of the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces, or RSF. In a series of remarks over the summer, Harris singled out Sudan — alongside the civil war in the eastern DRC and the collapse of law and order in Haiti — as places where sexual violence has exploded. "Thanks to the leadership of our administration," she said, "we have made it the policy of the United States to use all of our diplomatic, financial, and legal tools to punish those who commit sexual violence." ## The UAE Question and the Limits of Leverage That is not a detailed policy pledge, but it signals that Harris may take a real interest in protecting civilians in Sudan and elsewhere. Levying sanctions against individual, high-profile perpetrators — RSF leadership among them — would be well within her purview as president. The harder question is what to do about those arming the catastrophe. Both sides in Sudan are supplied by outside actors. Some, like Iran and Russia, will not bend to American diplomatic pressure. But the RSF's main backer is one of Washington's closest allies: the United Arab Emirates. Investigations by the UN, the US State Department, and multiple media organizations have traced a flow of weapons from the UAE to RSF forces in Darfur — the same forces a recent UN report accused of large-scale sexual violence. The Biden doctrine has been to keep the UAE close, even designating it a "major defense partner." Sudan, however, may be one area where Harris is willing to upend long-standing policy and try to bring Abu Dhabi to heel. Foreign Policy judges her likely to take a hard line, possibly leveraging Abu Dhabi's desire to buy F-35 fighter jets and American drones — a deal first signed off by then-President Trump. "Under Harris," the magazine writes, "this deal may face further delays or stricter conditions, particularly given the UAE's involvement in conflicts in Yemen and Libya, and more recently, Sudan." Whether such pressure would change anything is uncertain. Abu Dhabi has told Reuters it does not plan to reopen negotiations over the jets any time soon. But Harris could still pressure the country simply by publicly calling out how its weapons are fueling a campaign of genocide. ## The Wider Map and the Unknowable Beyond Sudan's borders lies a broader test: whether Harris can perform outreach to African nations drifting away from American influence. Both Biden and Trump failed to set foot in sub-Saharan Africa while in office, an absence that sent a signal to capitals across the continent. Meanwhile China's influence is growing, as is that of middle powers such as Turkey. Harris may hope to reverse the trend, but it could prove far harder than she imagines. The list of conflicts could go on — Myanmar, the crisis in Haiti, the insurgency in the Sahel, Ecuador's internal armed conflict with its gangs. No survey can be exhaustive. What this analysis offers is a read on four of the most important: Gaza and the wider Middle East, Ukraine, Sudan, and a potential war with China. These are predictions, and some will inevitably prove wrong. It is equally certain that fate will throw curveballs no president is prepared for — perhaps, four years on, the conversation will be about some utterly unexpected clash between two countries nobody is watching today. The point is not to forecast the future precisely, but to map the terrain a new commander-in-chief would inherit. It is going to be a turbulent stretch for the next American president, in a world that is already on fire. ## Frequently Asked Questions ### How does Harris's stance on Taiwan differ from Biden's? Biden repeatedly said US forces would defend Taiwan against a Chinese attack, directly contradicting the official policy of "strategic ambiguity." Harris has stuck closer to the official line, saying she supports "Taiwan's ability to defend itself" without committing to direct US intervention — a formulation that deliberately leaves the question of American troops unanswered. ### Would a Harris administration break from Biden's policy on Gaza? Analysts expect a change in tone rather than substance. Harris has expressed sympathy for Gaza's civilians and privately pushed Biden to take a firmer stance on the civilian death toll, but she ruled out suspending weapons shipments to Israel and pledged to continue American military aid while emphasizing Israel's right to defend itself. Her own advisers told the New York Times that her empathy toward Palestinians should not be confused with willingness to break from American foreign policy toward Israel. ### Why is Ukraine considered the most urgent decision a new president would face? The war is one of attrition and Kyiv's manpower pool is projected to run dry before Russia's, while Ukraine depends almost entirely on Western weapons and ammunition. Retired major-general Mick Ryan argues that a new president would have only weeks to decide whether she genuinely wants Ukraine to defeat Russia before accumulated problems become insurmountable, because the Biden strategy of providing enough support to avoid defeat but not enough to win is, in his view, ultimately unsustainable. ### How committed is Harris to NATO? She is judged highly likely to remain firmly committed. She called America's commitment "ironclad" in 2022, described Article Five as "sacrosanct," and in 2024 called NATO "the greatest military alliance the world has ever known." That record suggests she would not stand by if Russia attacked Poland or moved to annex the Baltic States — a sharp contrast with Trump, whose commitment to the alliance was always shaky and transactional. ### What is the UAE's role in Sudan, and how might Harris respond? The United Arab Emirates is the main backer of the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces. Investigations by the UN, the US State Department, and media organizations have traced weapons flowing from the UAE to RSF forces in Darfur — forces a UN report accused of large-scale sexual violence. Foreign Policy judges Harris likely to take a hard line, possibly leveraging Abu Dhabi's desire to purchase F-35 fighter jets and American drones as conditions or delays tied to the UAE's conduct in Sudan. ## Sources - Lowy Institute, national security: https://interactives.lowyinstitute.org/features/2024-us-presidential-election/kamala-harris/article/harris-and-national-security/ - Lowy Institute, China: https://www.lowyinstitute.org/the-interpreter/kamala-harris-china-competition-antagonism-continued - Foreign Policy, hi-tech threats: https://foreignpolicy.com/2024/08/23/kamala-harris-foreign-policy-generational-shift-us-election/ - Council on Foreign Relations, China: https://www.cfr.org/election2024/candidate-tracker/kamala-harris#china - Mick Ryan, Ukraine: https://www.lowyinstitute.org/the-interpreter/kamala-harris-ukraine-us-truly-committed-ukrainian-victory - Brookings, Ukraine: https://www.brookings.edu/articles/how-would-trump-and-harris-handle-the-russia-ukraine-war/ - Council on Foreign Relations, Ukraine: https://www.cfr.org/election2024/candidate-tracker/kamala-harris#russia%E2%80%93ukraine - CFR, Israel and Gaza: https://www.cfr.org/election2024/candidate-tracker/kamala-harris#israel%2C-gaza%2C-and-the-middle-east - NY Times, Gaza: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/18/us/politics/harris-israel-gaza-war-biden-trump.html - CSIS, Cameron Hudson, Africa policy: https://www.csis.org/analysis/what-us-elections-could-mean-africa - Kamala Harris, remarks on sexual violence: https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/remarks-the-vice-president-conflict-related-sexual-violence - Fox News, Sudan: https://www.foxnews.com/world/biden-harris-admin-accused-too-little-too-late-save-people-war-torn-famine-stricken-sudan - Foreign Policy, Harris and UAE: https://foreignpolicy.com/2024/10/24/trump-harris-election-saudi-arabia-uae-mbs-mbz-iran-yemen-sudan/ - Kamala Harris campaign website: https://kamalaharris.com/issues/ - Washington Post, brief overview: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/interactive/2023/presidential-candidates-2024-policies-issues/kamala-harris-foreign-policy/

Henry Kissinger: American Statesman or Unconvicted War Criminal?

Simon Whistler — Tue, 02 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Regardless of where you stand on the man, Henry Kissinger was a true political legend. In a life that stretched slightly past 100 years, he had a hand in more world-changing decisions than perhaps anyone in the history of politics. Few figures of the twentieth century inspired such fierce admiration and such bitter condemnation from the same set of facts. In the light of his passing, WarFronts takes a deep dive into just who this man was: why he has been described by many as an American hero, and, just as importantly, why some of the decisions he made during a long and illustrious career led others to brand him a war criminal. Kissinger's career bridged the Treaty of Versailles and the modern era, the liberation of Nazi concentration camps and the carpet-bombing of neutral nations, the Nobel Peace Prize and accusations of complicity in genocide. The question worth answering is a simple one with no simple answer: who exactly was Henry Kissinger? ## Key Takeaways - Henry Kissinger was born Heinz Alfred Kissinger on 27 May 1923 in Bavaria, Germany, into an orthodox Jewish family that endured escalating anti-Semitism before fleeing to the United States in 1938. - Drafted into the U.S. Army in 1943, he fought in the Battle of the Bulge, served in the Counter Intelligence Corps, and took part in the liberation of the Ahlem concentration camp. - The GI Bill helped fund his education at Harvard, where he earned a PhD in history in 1954 and built a career as an academic and government consultant before entering Richard Nixon's administration as national security advisor. - Kissinger is credited with the diplomatic opening to China, landmark U.S.-Soviet arms control talks, and a shared Nobel Peace Prize nomination for negotiating an end to the Vietnam War with Le Duc Tho. - He also ordered or supported secret bombing campaigns in Cambodia and Laos, with Laos becoming the most heavily bombed country in the history of warfare. - His record includes tacit support for Indonesia's invasion of East Timor, the destabilization of Chile, backing for Argentina's military junta, and complicity in the 1971 killings in East Pakistan. - The world remains split between two diametrically opposed verdicts: George W. Bush's tribute to a beloved statesman, and Ben Rhodes's condemnation of a foreign policy "drained of concern for the human beings left in its wake." ## A Childhood Shadowed by Anti-Semitism Born on 27 May 1923 in Bavaria, Germany, Heinz Alfred Kissinger did not have an easy time growing up. Although the child of relatively well-off parents, he was raised as an orthodox Jew at a moment when Germany was still reeling under the debilitating conditions imposed by the Treaty of Versailles. Many Germans had already begun to isolate Jewish citizens, blaming them for the country's deteriorating social and economic conditions. The young Kissinger and his family became frequent targets of anti-Semitism. By one account, Kissinger was an avid soccer fan. Although Jews had already been banned from attending such sporting events, he and his friends would defy the ban, often paying for it with beatings administered by stadium guards. As if that were not enough, they were regularly subjected to verbal and physical abuse by gangs of Hitler Youth members. A friend from the period later recalled the toll it took: "You can't grow up like we did and be untouched. Every day there were slurs in the streets, anti-Semitic remarks, calling you filthy names." As the brutality intensified, Kissinger withdrew into himself, becoming more insular and spending much of his time alone with his books. ## From Refugee to American Soldier That solitary study paid dividends. Kissinger excelled academically at the local Jewish school and harbored hopes of attending a respected state-run high school. By the time he was old enough, however, the school in question, and indeed all state-run high schools, had stopped accepting Jewish applicants. In 1938, fully aware of which way the wind was blowing and fortunate enough to have the means to leave, the Kissinger family departed Germany for the United States. Arrival brought hardship. With very little money, the fifteen-year-old Heinz immediately took work at a shaving brush factory to supplement his family's meager income. Even so, he enrolled in high school and his scholastic brilliance shone through. He learned English with remarkable ease. One former teacher described him as "the most serious and mature of the German refugee students," adding that those students "were more serious than our own." He still struggled to connect with his peers. In notes written during school and published years later, he criticized "the casual approach to life" he saw in America, where "no one has the courage to look life squarely in the eye." Given everything he had already endured in his first seventeen or eighteen years, his difficulty relating to the average carefree American high schooler is perhaps understandable. After graduation, Kissinger studied accounting at university, another field at which he proved naturally gifted. In an alternate timeline, the story might have ended there: a young, gifted refugee settling into a successful but uneventful career as an accountant. That future was not to be. In 1943, shortly after obtaining American citizenship, the now Henry Kissinger was drafted into the United States Army. ## The Soldier Who Returned to Germany About three months after he was drafted, and five years after fleeing Germany, Kissinger was assigned to G Company, 2nd Battalion, 335th Infantry Regiment, and sent back toward the place of his birth. In a turn rarely experienced by the academically inclined, he took to army life as easily as he had to scholarship. "The significant thing about the army," he later wrote, "is that it made me feel like an American." Well respected among his fellow soldiers, he was promoted to "education officer" and developed a knack for explaining complicated matters clearly and simply, a skill that would serve him for the rest of his career. Shortly after arriving in Germany he participated in the Battle of the Bulge before becoming the special agent in charge of the regimental Counter Intelligence Corps (CIC) team. At first the work was mundane, described as "rounding up and evacuating German civilians considered unreliable and poring through mail and paperwork left behind." It soon grew more complex, giving Kissinger his first taste of dealing with members of government. In a CIC report he wrote: "For twelve years, the Nazis have had a stranglehold on those in public office... It becomes the duty, therefore, of the occupying authorities to clean the city administration of these cliques of Nazis." A German-speaking Jew who had grown up in the country, Kissinger was ideally suited to this denazification task. While still engaged in active duties, including the liberation of the concentration camp at Ahlem, he remained in Germany until 1947, determined, in his words, to "do in our little way what we could to make all previous sacrifices meaningful." ## The Making of a Scholar-Statesman When Kissinger returned to America, his accounting ambitions were gone. He wanted to teach. His time in Germany had shaped a conviction he carried for the rest of his life: "High office teaches decision-making, not substance. It consumes intellectual capital; it does not create it. Most high officials leave office with the perceptions and insights with which they entered." With his blend of real-world experience and academic knowledge, he believed himself almost uniquely placed to improve the world. The GI Bill, signed into law by President Roosevelt while Kissinger was still in Germany, gave returning servicemen tuition-free education and a cost-of-living stipend. That funding, paired with his abilities, carried him to Harvard, where he earned a PhD in history in 1954 and almost immediately joined the faculty, working for the Department of Government and the new Center for International Affairs. He published his first two books, *A World Restored: Castlereagh, Metternich and the Restoration of Peace, 1812-1822* and *Nuclear Weapons and Foreign Policy*, while also consulting for the National Security Council, the Council on Foreign Relations, the Rand Corporation, the State Department, and the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency. Through this work he met Nelson Rockefeller, then governor of New York, who hired him as his foreign policy advisor across three unsuccessful presidential bids in 1960, 1964, and 1968. Among those watching Kissinger's meteoric rise was the man who beat Rockefeller for the presidency in 1968: Richard Nixon. Having promised "peace with honor," Nixon needed serious help, and he brought Kissinger into his government as national security advisor. ## Vietnam, Cambodia, and the Bombs Over Laos It is here that the first real controversy begins. Kissinger is widely credited with helping end the Vietnam War through secret negotiations during the stalled Paris peace talks with Le Duc Tho, talks that eventually brought the conflict to a close and saw both men nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. Yet many lay the blame for thousands of unnecessary deaths squarely at his feet. Although the United States was not at war with Cambodia, Kissinger believed a massive bombing campaign was necessary to stop the Khmer Rouge from aiding the communist North Vietnamese army. As one account put it, "The fissures from the disastrous military campaign led to an eight-year civil war between the Cambodian government and the genocidal Khmer Rouge regime led by Pol Pot. The war killed an estimated 275,000–310,000 people, displaced millions, and destroyed a fifth of the country." Declassified telephone transcripts show Kissinger ordering these attacks, known as Operation Menu, in strikingly callous terms. After speaking directly with Nixon, he relayed the order to his deputy Alexander Haig: "He wants a massive bombing campaign in Cambodia... It's an order, it's to be done. Anything that flies, on anything that moves. You got that?" The order stands in stark contrast to his later claims that the raids struck only sparsely populated areas. Cambodia was not the only country to suffer. Kissinger was also deeply involved in organizing the bombing of Laos. This neutral nation remains, to this day, the most heavily bombed location in the history of warfare, with some 2,093,100 tonnes of ordnance dropped on it. An estimated third of those bombs never detonated, and civilians continue to suffer the consequences daily. Because these campaigns were concealed from the public and, in some cases, from Congress, many people remain unaware of Kissinger's involvement. ## East Timor, Chile, Argentina, and Bangladesh Similar undisclosed maneuvering surfaced in the case of East Timor under Kissinger and President Ford. In 1975, the small island nation in Southeast Asia declared independence from Portuguese colonial rule. Its bid for autonomy met immediate resistance. Kissinger was accused of tacitly supporting Indonesia's invasion of the territory; the U.S. government valued its strategic alliance with Indonesia as a bulwark against communism in the region, and that alliance shaped American policy. As Indonesia moved to annex East Timor, allegations grew that Kissinger and the administration were aware of, and even supportive of, the aggression. In 1995, asked directly whether the suspicions were true, Kissinger categorically denied any involvement. That denial was exposed as a lie in 2001, when declassified documents revealed that during a visit to Indonesia with President Ford, a green light for the invasion had been given. The records show Kissinger telling Indonesian dictator Suharto, "It is important that whatever you do succeeds quickly." The invasion succeeded, and East Timor did not gain independence until 2002. Reflecting after Kissinger's death, the President of East Timor said: "Those who follow history, who follow international politics — they know about this past, which was tragic and ugly." Comparable revelations emerged elsewhere. In Chile, Kissinger led the Nixon administration's efforts to destabilize the democratically elected president after he reestablished diplomatic ties with Cuba and the Soviet Union. In Argentina, Kissinger backed the military junta of General Jorge Rafael Videla, which by one account "led to the infamous Dirty War between 1976 to 1983, where Argentina's military rulers killed or 'disappeared' between 10,000 and 30,000 citizens." And in 1970, in East Pakistan (later Bangladesh), Kissinger and Nixon supported a genocide that killed an estimated 400,000 people by illegally shipping military hardware to the perpetrators. ## The Case for the Defense Grim as that record is, Kissinger's proponents argue, and continue to argue, that almost everything he did in service of the United States government was meant to benefit the country he called home. Even though his actions in Vietnam cost the lives of thousands of American servicemen and women, many have contended that the "shock and awe" tactics he favored helped project American toughness on the world stage. His defenders also point to achievements that are hard to dispute. It is undeniable that his efforts produced the U.S. diplomatic opening with China, landmark U.S.-Soviet arms control talks, and expanded ties between Israel and its Arab neighbors. These were the foundations of détente and a realignment of Cold War power that reshaped the second half of the twentieth century. Although he officially retired from politics in 1977, Kissinger never truly left the arena. He founded his own consultancy firm, weighed in publicly on diplomatic issues around the world, and served as a personal advisor to nearly every president who followed. ## Two Verdicts, No Middle Ground The way Kissinger was perceived around the world can be captured by two very different statements released after his death. The first, from former President George W. Bush, reads: "America has lost one of the most dependable and distinctive voices on foreign affairs with the passing of Henry Kissinger. I have long admired the man who fled the Nazis as a young boy from a Jewish family, then fought them in the United States Army. When he later became Secretary of State, his appointment as a former refugee said as much about his greatness as it did America's greatness... I am most grateful for his friendship." The second, from Ben Rhodes, former deputy national security advisor to Barack Obama, is its mirror image: "At turns opportunistic and reactive, his was a foreign policy enamored with the exercise of power and drained of concern for the human beings left in its wake... He wrote a shelf of books, many of which polished his own reputation as an oracle of global affairs; after all, history is written by men like Henry Kissinger, not by the victims of superpower bombing campaigns, including children in Laos, who continue to be killed by the unexploded bombs that litter their country." These two diametrically opposed opinions seem to encapsulate the views of almost everyone who speaks about him. To the eyes of the world, Henry Kissinger is either an American hero or an unconvicted war criminal; there is not much middle ground. As ever, the verdict is left to the reader. ## Frequently Asked Questions ### What diplomatic achievements is Kissinger credited with? Kissinger is credited with engineering the U.S. diplomatic opening with China, conducting landmark U.S.-Soviet arms control talks that formed the foundation of détente, and helping negotiate an end to the Vietnam War with Le Duc Tho, an effort that earned both men a shared Nobel Peace Prize nomination. He also worked to expand ties between Israel and its Arab neighbors, reshaping the Cold War balance of power in the second half of the twentieth century. ### What did Kissinger do during World War II? Drafted into the U.S. Army in 1943, Kissinger served with the 335th Infantry Regiment, fought in the Battle of the Bulge, and became the special agent in charge of the regimental Counter Intelligence Corps team tasked with denazification. He participated in the liberation of the Ahlem concentration camp and remained in Germany until 1947, determined, in his own words, to "do in our little way what we could to make all previous sacrifices meaningful." ### Why do critics call Kissinger a war criminal? Critics point to his ordering of Operation Menu — the secret bombing of Cambodia, recorded in declassified transcripts where he relayed Nixon's command to hit "anything that flies, on anything that moves" — and his organization of the bombing of Laos, which became the most heavily bombed country in the history of warfare. He also tacitly supported Indonesia's invasion of East Timor, helped destabilize the democratically elected government of Chile, backed Argentina's military junta during the Dirty War, and supported the perpetrators of the 1970 killings in East Pakistan. ### What was Operation Menu and why was it controversial? Operation Menu was the secret U.S. bombing campaign against Cambodia, a country with which the United States was not at war. The campaign was concealed from Congress and the public. Declassified telephone transcripts show Kissinger relaying Nixon's order to Alexander Haig: "He wants a massive bombing campaign in Cambodia... Anything that flies, on anything that moves." The bombings contributed to a civil war that killed an estimated 275,000–310,000 people and helped bring the genocidal Khmer Rouge to power. ### How is Kissinger remembered after his death? Opinion is sharply divided and offers little middle ground. Former President George W. Bush praised him as a dependable statesman, a man whose appointment as a former refugee said "as much about his greatness as it did America's greatness." Former Obama deputy national security advisor Ben Rhodes offered the opposing verdict, condemning a foreign policy "enamored with the exercise of power and drained of concern for the human beings left in its wake," citing children in Laos still killed today by unexploded ordnance from Kissinger's bombing campaigns.

Hiroshima and Nagasaki: War Crime or Necessary Evil?

Simon Whistler — Tue, 02 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

"The force from which the sun draws its power has been loosed against those who brought war to the Far East." With those words, US President Harry Truman announced the atomic bombing of Hiroshima. Three days later, Nagasaki was struck by a second weapon. These two strikes, delivered at the very end of the Second World War, remain among the most contested military decisions in history. To this day they are condemned for the horrific civilian casualties they caused, and for the simple fact that they were the only wartime uses of such a weapon ever recorded. Yet many also point out that they swiftly ended the brutal Pacific theatre against an empire prepared to fight until the last man. The question has never been fully settled, and it sits at the intersection of ethics, strategy, and historical counterfactual. Were the world's only atomic attacks necessary in the long run, and perhaps even justified, or were they simply the first instance of the United States flexing its nuclear muscles? WarFronts takes an objective look at both sides of that debate. ## Key Takeaways - On August 6, 1945, the B-29 Enola Gay dropped the uranium bomb nicknamed Little Boy on Hiroshima; an estimated 80,000 people were killed and another 70,000 injured, with thousands more dying later from radiation exposure. - Three days later, the B-29 Bockscar dropped Fatman on Nagasaki after its primary target, Kokura, was obscured by smoke; an average estimate puts Nagasaki's toll at around 40,000 deaths and 60,000 injured. - Japan's defense plan, Operation Ketsugo, aimed to mobilize the entire population, including 28 million civilian militia members and armed children, under the propaganda banner of "The Glorious Death of 100 Million." - Operation Downfall, the planned Allied invasion of mainland Japan, was forecast to produce more than a million American casualties and Japanese casualty estimates well into the tens of millions. - American public opinion has remained roughly steady on the question of justification near 60%, but approval of the bombs themselves fell from 80% in 1945 to 56% in 2005. ## Destroyer of Worlds Early in the morning on August 6, 1945, a B-29 Superfortress nicknamed Enola Gay took off from the island of Tinian. After meeting two other bombers over Iwo Jima, it began its journey toward mainland Japan. Roughly six hours into the flight, the crew caught their first glimpse of the target: the industrial port city of Hiroshima. Hiroshima had been selected for several reasons. It mattered as a center of manufacturing, but it was also a transport hub for the Imperial Japanese Military, making it a target with genuine strategic value alongside its dense civilian population. As the bomber passed over the city, the payload was released. Years of work by the world's best physicists in the top-secret Manhattan Project had led to this single moment. The atomic bomb nicknamed Little Boy, containing 64 kilograms of uranium, began plummeting toward the ground. It fell for more than 44 seconds before detonating in the air above the city. ## The Scale of the Blast Little Boy was, by any technical measure, an inefficient weapon. Less than 2 percent of its fissile material actually underwent fission. Even so, it produced the largest explosion in human history up to that point. A blinding flash of light and a thundering boom preceded the destruction. The blast ripped through Hiroshima, annihilating almost everything within a radius of an entire mile, or 1.6 kilometers. At double that distance, intense fires raged across anything remotely flammable, and steel support beams bent from the shockwave, collapsing many buildings and damaging many more. Even districts spared the initial explosion were not safe. A firestorm spread across much of the city, and the population was powerless to stop it. By the time the fires burned out, as much as two-thirds of Hiroshima's infrastructure had been destroyed or severely damaged. An estimated 80,000 people were killed and another 70,000 injured. Thousands more would die in the following months as they succumbed to the high levels of radiation to which they had been exposed. In the wake of the bombing, Truman announced the weapon's use and declared that the Allies had spent "two billion dollars on the greatest scientific gamble in history, and won." The Japanese Empire was again urged to accept terms of surrender, but it had no intention of doing so. ## The Second Bomb and Japan's Surrender Three days after the first A-bomb fell, a second weapon, named Fatman, was en route, carried by a B-29 nicknamed Bockscar. This time the target was Kokura, again chosen for its military and industrial significance. When the crew arrived, however, they found the city obscured by thick smoke, the result of a nearby Allied bombing run the day before, compounded by Japanese factories burning coal tar to produce a screen of dark smoke. Bockscar lined up three separate runs on Kokura but could never get a clear drop. By the third pass, Japanese anti-aircraft guns were getting close to hitting the plane, so the crew turned back and headed for their secondary target: Nagasaki. When Bockscar and its weather-spotting escort appeared on Japanese radar, an air raid siren sounded throughout Nagasaki. Just 40 minutes later the all-clear was given. Seeing only two American planes overhead, observers assumed it was reconnaissance and sounded no further alarms. Those two bombers proved as deadly as an entire army. Fatman was released minutes later. Nagasaki's geography meant less of the city was destroyed than expected, and a crosswind blew the bomb slightly off target, but the city suffered a fate broadly similar to Hiroshima's. Casualty estimates vary wildly, but an average figure is around 40,000 total deaths and another 60,000 injured. Following the news of a second city devastated by an otherworldly weapon, the Japanese government accepted terms of unconditional surrender, marking the official end of the Second World War on September 2, 1945. The deadliest war in human history had been brought to a close. ## Public Opinion, Then and Now The debate over the bombings began almost immediately and has never fully cooled. A Gallup poll taken right after the war found that around 60 percent of Americans believed the use of the atom bombs was justified, a figure that has changed little in the decades since. The numbers shift, however, when the question is phrased differently. Asked whether they approve of the use of the bombs, rather than whether the bombs were justified, Americans show a clear decline in support, from 80 percent in 1945 to only 56 percent in 2005. That gap between justification and approval helps explain why the topic remains so controversial. It is possible to believe a decision was defensible in context while still recoiling from the act itself. ## A Heinous War Crime The first perspective holds that the atom bombs were little more than two war crimes that devastated entire cities. The central argument is the immense loss of civilian life. At Hiroshima, around 20,000 of the casualties were military personnel. At Nagasaki, the number of soldiers immediately killed was only 150. The bombs did inflict significant damage on military industry, including the destruction of the Mitsubishi Steel Works plant, but the collateral damage was immense. In downtown Hiroshima, the bomb exploded almost directly over the Shima Surgical Clinic, one of the largest hospitals in the city, wiping out medical staff in an instant. As much as 90 percent of the city's medical workers were killed in the blast or the resulting fires, leaving the survivors with almost no doctors to treat their injuries. Massive lines formed at the clinics that remained, and thousands died of their burns or other wounds while waiting. Most of these deaths were neither quick nor painless. ## The Nature of the Dying Near ground zero, death was effectively instantaneous, an immediate vaporizing. Further out, it was anything but. The heat was so intense that the patterns of people's clothing were seared into their skin. Thousands were covered from head to toe in blistering burns, and thousands more suffered the effects of radiation exposure. Radiation sickness is among the worst ways to die. Victims drift in and out of consciousness while their skin feels as if it is on fire, accompanied by intense nausea, vomiting, and diarrhea, until they eventually lose the battle to internal bleeding or infection. Those who survive the exposure are often left with permanent injuries. The story of Tsutomu Yamaguchi captures the experience. Depending on one's view, he was either very lucky or very unlucky: he is credited as one of the few people to survive both atomic bombings. The explosion at Hiroshima ruptured both of his eardrums, left him temporarily blind, and gave him radiation burns across his entire upper body. Yamaguchi was less injured by the Nagasaki blast, but the radiation caused him to vomit violently for more than a week. His wounds required several years of treatment, and his daughter recalled that for the better part of a decade he was covered in bandages. Though much of his body eventually recovered, he permanently lost hearing in his left ear, and his wife suffered similar symptoms. Yamaguchi at least had a home to return to. With most of the city destroyed or structurally unsafe, tens of thousands more were left homeless, many of them children orphaned that same day. ## Was the Bomb Even Necessary? Beyond the human cost, critics question whether the bombs were necessary at all. It is easy to draw a clean timeline in which Japan capitulated immediately after the atomic strikes, but some historians argue the empire was already contemplating surrender. The strategic picture had collapsed. The United States had steamrolled across the Pacific and destroyed most of Japan's navy. The Soviet Union, no longer tied up in Europe, had turned its attention eastward. After the first atom bomb fell, the Soviets invaded Japanese-occupied Manchuria and seized it within a couple of weeks. Manchuria had been a major source of coal, iron, and wood for the empire, and losing it was a devastating blow. Perhaps not decisive on its own, but the writing was on the wall. By this reasoning, the bombs were overkill, and Japan might instead have been besieged into surrender. A further argument concerns a possible second agenda. As the war wound down, it was already becoming clear that the Soviet Union would be America's primary global rival, and dropping two futuristic city-killers was a powerful way to demonstrate to Moscow who held the upper hand. If that was the motive, a non-combat demonstration might have sufficed to intimidate both Japan and the Soviets, such as detonating a bomb over open Japanese fields rather than a densely populated city. ## The Ends Justify the Means The opposing view holds that the bombs were a necessary evil. It rests on the belief that, despite killing around 200,000 people, the atomic strikes ultimately saved lives. The Pacific Front was one of the bloodiest and nastiest theatres in human history. The island combat rivaled the ferocity of the eastern front, as the United States fought to liberate territory held by Imperial Japan. One of the ugliest engagements was the Battle of Okinawa, in which more than 100,000 Imperial soldiers were killed alongside around 50,000 Americans. The most horrifying aspect of Okinawa was the mass civilian suicide that occurred as Allied victory neared. Imperial propaganda had been working overtime for years, convincing civilians that the Americans were "white devils" intent on a rampage of raping, torturing, and slaughtering, a picture drawn to resemble what Japan itself had done when it conquered Nanjing. The fear was so intense that thousands of fathers killed their families before taking their own lives, and waves of people threw themselves off the cliffs at the southern end of the island. Not all of these deaths were voluntary, as Japanese soldiers coerced many into the act. The Allies had no intention of treating civilians this way, but in an era long before the internet, civilians knew only what their government told them. ## Operation Downfall and the Glorious Death of 100 Million With the Japanese navy annihilated and the mainland all that remained, the Allies drafted plans to defeat the final Axis power. The result was Operation Downfall, a multi-nation amphibious assault designed to use the full force of the Allies to reach and capture Tokyo. After the experience at Okinawa and similar islands, there were grave fears that a conventional invasion would provoke the same civilian reaction on a far larger scale, and those fears were not unfounded. The Japanese government knew its time was running out. It understood it could not win, especially after Germany had been knocked out of the fight. Its plan instead was to make any invasion seem so unbelievably costly that the Allies would prefer to negotiate a treaty. The centerpiece was the defense of Japan, codenamed Operation Ketsugo. The plan committed the entire population to resistance, including roughly 28 million men and women in civilian militias, while conscripting any able-bodied person into the weapons factories. Thousands of kamikazes were readied in aircraft, boats, and even submarines, and any boy capable of holding a gun would be trained to use it. There were not enough guns for everyone, so many were told to use knives, bamboo sticks, or makeshift bombs and simply hurl themselves at the Americans, instructions that extended even to children. This vision of total war was packaged in a propaganda campaign called "The Glorious Death of 100 Million," implying it would be better for all of Japan to be wiped out than to surrender. ## The Invasion That Never Came British intelligence had picked up much of this, so the Allies knew what to expect. Operation Downfall was anticipated to be one of the bloodiest operations of the entire war, with more than a million American casualties forecast. Japanese casualties could not be predicted with precision, but estimates easily overshot 20 to 30 million. Bracing for the slaughter, the American military began producing hundreds of thousands of Purple Heart medals to award the killed and wounded. The stockpile readied for an invasion that never happened was so large that it covered all recipients in the wars in Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq, with many to spare. The glorious death of 100 million and the world's largest amphibious invasion never took place. The atom bombs were the deciding factor in Japan's surrender. Viewed through this lens, the loss of 200,000 lives in the world's only wartime use of nuclear weapons potentially saved tens of millions. The relief was captured by a 21-year-old American preparing for Operation Downfall: "When the bombs dropped and news began to circulate that [the invasion] would not, after all, take place, that we would not be obliged to run up the beaches near Tokyo assault-firing while being mortared and shelled, for all the fake manliness of our facades we cried with relief and joy. We were going to live. We were going to grow up to adulthood after all." ## A Debate Without a Verdict We can never know for certain whether dropping the atom bombs truly saved lives in the long run, or whether Japan would have surrendered regardless. Nor can we know whether the Glorious Death of 100 Million would have unfolded as catastrophically as its planners promised. It is easy to criticize the decisions of the past from a modern vantage point, but doing so often yields little more than speculation. The past cannot be changed; it can only be studied. The world has come to the brink of nuclear Armageddon on more than one occasion since 1945, and has always managed, so far, to step back. If tensions between global powers continue to rise in the coming years, the horrors that atomic weapons inflicted on Japan more than 80 years ago remain a warning worth remembering, and a reason to hope that no third city is ever added to the fateful list shared by Hiroshima and Nagasaki. ## Frequently Asked Questions ### Which aircraft dropped the bombs, and what were the bombs called? A B-29 Superfortress named Enola Gay dropped the uranium bomb nicknamed Little Boy on Hiroshima on August 6, 1945. A second B-29, Bockscar, dropped the bomb nicknamed Fatman on Nagasaki three days later after its primary target, Kokura, was obscured by thick smoke from a nearby Allied bombing run and Japanese coal-tar screens. ### How many people were killed in the two bombings? At Hiroshima, an estimated 80,000 people were killed and 70,000 injured, with thousands more dying in the following months from radiation exposure. At Nagasaki, an average estimate is around 40,000 deaths and 60,000 injured. Combined, the strikes are associated with roughly 200,000 deaths. ### What was Operation Ketsugo and "The Glorious Death of 100 Million"? Operation Ketsugo was Japan's planned defense of the home islands. It committed the entire population to resistance, including roughly 28 million men and women in civilian militias, conscripted factory workers, kamikaze aircraft, boats, and even submarines, with children armed with knives and makeshift bombs. The accompanying propaganda campaign, "The Glorious Death of 100 Million," framed total annihilation as preferable to surrender. ### What was Operation Downfall, and why did its projected casualties matter? Operation Downfall was the planned Allied amphibious invasion of mainland Japan, designed to reach and capture Tokyo. British intelligence had obtained detailed knowledge of Ketsugo, and the invasion was anticipated to produce more than a million American casualties, with Japanese casualty estimates easily exceeding 20 to 30 million. The American military stockpiled hundreds of thousands of Purple Heart medals for the anticipated killed and wounded — a supply so large it was still being drawn down through the wars in Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq. ### Were the bombs necessary, or was Japan already close to surrendering? Critics argue that Japan's strategic situation had already collapsed — the United States had destroyed most of its navy, and the Soviet invasion of Manchuria cut off a major source of coal, iron, and wood — suggesting siege and diplomacy might have achieved surrender without the bombs. Supporters counter that Japan showed no sign of capitulating after the first bomb fell, that Operation Ketsugo demonstrated genuine intent to fight to the last civilian, and that the bombs prevented the far greater bloodshed of Operation Downfall. The counterfactual cannot be resolved with certainty.

How Yemen's Houthi Rebels Could Decide the Iran War

Simon Whistler — Tue, 02 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

If Iran had a secret weapon, you would think it would have used it by now. Roughly four full weeks into the latest war in the Middle East, the Islamic Republic still rules over Tehran, but it has taken one hell of a beating to get this far. An entire generation of Iranian leaders has been killed off by foreign air power, and a fair share of their replacements have been wiped out, too. Iran has managed to close the Strait of Hormuz, it has caused chaos across the Middle East, and it has taken the global energy market hostage. In return, it has suffered devastation across the whole of society. But on the opposite side of the Arabian Peninsula, Tehran has one critical ally it can still rely upon: the powerful Houthi rebel organization in the nation of Yemen. Positioned along one of the most important shipping routes in the world, and armed with all the drones and missiles that a decade of Iranian support could provide, the Houthis have the potential to turn this entire conflict on its axis. They are not Iran's secret weapon, because Iran lacks the means to control them, but they have their own reasons to want a piece of the action. The United States, Israel, and the nations of the Persian Gulf are watching the Houthis closely, reassured by their decision not to enter the war until now. Yet there is a very real chance that the Houthis do not intend to sit this war out. Instead, they may be waiting for the perfect moment to enter the conflict and cause maximum devastation when they arrive. The central question is not whether the Houthis can hurt the world, but whether they are simply biding their time to do the most damage at the lowest cost. ## Key Takeaways - The Houthis, officially known as Ansar Allah, control most of western Yemen and have enjoyed Iranian patronage since the mid-2010s, but they are not a true proxy — they run their own proto-state, economy, and ideological movement, placing them somewhere between a proxy and a partner. - Their arsenal includes long-range ballistic missiles, cruise missiles, one-way attack drones, and sea drones, much of it produced inside Yemen, making them impossible to permanently suppress by destroying an arms shipment or two. - During the Israel-Hamas War, Houthi strikes on Red Sea shipping affected over one trillion US dollars' worth of maritime traffic, forced ships to reroute around Africa, and sank or hijacked roughly half a dozen vessels. - The Houthis appear to be waiting for the optimal moment to maximize disruption, with their target list spanning Saudi and Emirati oil infrastructure, Qatar's Ras Laffan LNG facility, and the Bab al-Mandeb Strait. - A well-timed Houthi entry at the right pressure points could make the conflict economically untenable for the rest of the world — and senior Houthi spokesman Mohammed al-Bukhaiti has confirmed that joining the conflict is "only a matter of time." ## A Movement That Answers to Itself Officially known by the name Ansar Allah, Yemen's Houthi rebels have enjoyed Iran's patronage since the mid-2010s, when they exploded to prominence and seized Yemen's capital city. Today, the Houthis control most of the territory of western Yemen, where the vast majority of the country's population resides. Fundamentally opposed to the nation of Israel as well as the United States, the Houthis engaged in what they described as a solidarity campaign during Israel's war in Gaza, building on their prior conflicts alongside Iran and other pro-Iran proxy forces. Their connection to Tehran requires a degree of nuance to understand properly. Unlike the loose coalition of militia groups Iran can rely on in Iraq, or the Lebanon-based Hezbollah organization, the Houthis are not simply a weapon Iran can point and shoot at its enemies. They oversee their own proto-state in western Yemen, their own religious and ideological movement, their own state-sized economy, and more. They have their own ambitions, their own geopolitical goals, and their own incentive structure driving their decisions. The Houthis existed long before their partnership with the Iranian regime, and they clearly intend to exist for a very long time afterward. They are generally in alignment with Iran, but they are not a true proxy force; instead, they sit somewhere between a proxy and a partner. They are also a proxy-ish partner that Iran would like to keep well-armed, well-trained, and capable of causing havoc across the Middle East. ## An Arsenal Built at Home The true size and limitations of the Houthi arsenal are unknown to most of the world, largely because Israeli, American, and other global intelligence services mostly dismissed the group as irrelevant, until the world was caught off-guard by their campaign in the Red Sea. That said, the group is known to possess multiple types of long-range ballistic missile, mostly based on equivalent designs from Iran, as well as a smaller but equally potent arsenal of cruise missiles. Like other groups that work alongside Iran, the Houthis are experts in the use of modern one-way attack drones, and they also possess a growing arsenal of sea drones. Even more challenging for their foreign adversaries, the Houthis have their own internal production capacity, meaning they can build more missiles and drones on their own rather than relying solely on shipments from abroad. Even American military leaders have praised the Houthis for their innovation as weapons developers and their resilience as a fighting force, despite years of US and Israeli airstrikes. That self-sufficiency is a major problem for the rest of the world, because even in ordinary times, the Houthis are one of those rare non-state actors who can cause chaos far beyond their own territory. They are not a threat that can be permanently suppressed by destroying an arms shipment or two; they are a movement with the industrial base to keep rearming itself. ## What One Trillion Dollars of Disruption Looks Like During the Israel-Hamas War, Houthi strikes on Red Sea shipping forced global trade traffic to avoid the waterway almost completely, compelling ships to undertake a much longer voyage around the entire African continent. The Red Sea is no minor channel: it handles more than a tenth of global sea trade, and it brushes up against the Houthi-controlled coast of Yemen. According to global trade experts, the Houthi campaign affected a total of over one trillion US dollars' worth of maritime traffic. That figure included many tens of billions in losses, damage to dozens of ships, the sinking or hijacking of half a dozen more, and the cost of a multinational, sustained air and sea campaign mounted in response. This was the work of a group that the world's intelligence agencies had previously written off. Now take that uncomfortably recent chapter of Houthi history and imagine the implications of a similar campaign in a far less stable moment for the Middle East. The current war between Iran, Israel, the United States, and anybody else Iran happens to shoot at has weaponized the entire global economy, and the conditions that made the Red Sea campaign so painful have only grown more severe. ## A Trade System Already on the Brink Iranian attacks have focused on oil refineries, liquefied natural gas processing hubs, extraction operations, and other targets that have caused havoc across global energy markets. Iran has created such danger in the Strait of Hormuz that it is too risky, and too expensive, for ships to attempt a crossing. As a result, a sea lane that handles about forty percent of the world's seaborne crude oil, and a fifth of its LNG, has been taken out of the global market indefinitely. World nations are preparing for shortages to last months or even years, while global industry leaders are signaling that they expect energy prices to keep rising. The United States and its allies are doing their best to mitigate the economic impact, and to downplay that impact when it cannot be mitigated, but the damage to the global economy is only getting worse. Iran has proved its ability to strike essential energy facilities despite the presence of Western air defenses, and those strikes carry an implicit threat that Iran can escalate further still. What all of that means for the Houthis is that the world is already dealing with an extremely vulnerable, extremely unstable trade environment. As the Strait of Hormuz and the Persian Gulf are taken out of action, pressure only rises everywhere else. Other sea lanes become even more important, and the cost of disruption in another spot would not simply add to the world's headaches; it would compound the entire problem. That is precisely where the Houthis come in: an outside faction with the military capability, the geopolitical allegiance, and the proven will to take action against one of the most important trade routes on the globe. ## Why the Houthis Would Want In Say what you will about Iran's surprising success in this conflict, its ability to blockade access to the Persian Gulf, to hit well-defended regional infrastructure, and to keep the Iranian regime intact despite round after round of decapitation strikes. As impactful as Iran's wartime strategy has been, the other side of the equation is impossible to ignore: for Iran, its leadership, its military, and its ordinary people, this conflict has been a catastrophe. Whatever successes Iran has achieved have come from the wrong end of a vast military imbalance with the US and Israel. Iran has been bombarded relentlessly, and it has witnessed the deaths of far too many innocent civilians. A couple of weeks before this analysis was published, strikes on Iranian oil infrastructure were so devastating that cities experienced toxic black rain. Given that level of destruction, why would the Houthi rebels ever want to get involved? Unfortunately for the rest of the Middle East, the Houthis are quite similar to Iran in the way they think about risk and reward. When a foreign adversary shows up in warplanes over Houthi territory, the group expects that their fighters, their loyal civilian supporters, and even parts of their leadership will be lost. Like Iran, Houthi doctrine prioritizes the survival of the wider organization in a way that dismisses some rather extraordinary costs as the price of martyrdom. The Houthis made that very clear during their prior strikes against the Red Sea and Israel, continuing their campaign long after Israel and its allies had imposed severe costs upon them. Just as important, the Houthis have specific reasons to be interested in taking part in this particular conflict. They have a longstanding relationship with the Iranian regime at a moment when that regime appears not only likely to survive, but to grow more hardline, more militaristic, and more dependent on the Revolutionary Guard Corps that has sustained the Houthis for years. Not only would that state of affairs be helpful for the Houthis, but the group hardly wants to make itself look bad by sitting on the sidelines during Iran's moment of truth. The Houthis also have selfish incentives to act. Even though their Red Sea campaign drew the outrage of world nations, it also legitimized their claim to power in Yemen, both for domestic audiences and the wider Middle East. The Houthis want to be recognized by the entire world as the sole, sovereign rulers of Yemen, and when a group like the Houthis forces the world to bend to their will and gets away with it, their importance is much harder to deny. Right now, because of the sheer vulnerability of the global trade system, they have the potential to make an impact on a scale that would otherwise be impossible. If they can close down the Red Sea while the rest of the world relies on that shipping lane, one can only imagine what they could demand of the international community in exchange for reopening the strait. ## The Case for Patience If that is the case for Houthi action, then the opposing question must also be asked: why have the Houthis not attacked already? Despite their willingness to accept heavy losses, the Houthis would not want to welcome a battle they were certain to lose. Their forces are diminished after prior rounds of airstrikes, they would be dealing with a multinational maritime security mission in the Red Sea, and it is possible that Houthi leadership does not believe it is ready for a fight like this. They have also been occupied by missions closer to home, trying to consolidate their control over Yemen after some recent upheaval in the last few months. But although there is a chance the Houthis believe an attack is not worth the risk, their risk acceptance in prior rounds of conflict suggests that this explanation is incomplete. Instead, the answer may come down to the Houthis' expectations about where this conflict will go next. As much as they could cause havoc across the globe by acting now, they may believe they can achieve even more by waiting for the conflict to play out a little while longer. Houthi leadership is entirely aware of the cautionary contrast here: Hezbollah, a fighting faction that seems to have entered the conflict at the worst possible time. Hezbollah did not react immediately when this war broke out, and it failed to maximize the value of what could have been a surprise attack. Instead, it launched a relatively small aerial attack against northern Israel and immediately drew the wrath of a full-scale Israeli response. That response now includes a ground invasion and possibly a long-term occupation of Lebanese lands south of the Litani River, an area more than twice the size of the Gaza Strip, where Hezbollah used to be at its very strongest. While no one can claim to know what is going on inside the heads of Houthi leadership, it would not be surprising to learn that the Houthis regard Hezbollah's action as an avoidable strategic blunder. From their vantage point across the Arabian Peninsula, the Houthis have already been rewarded for their strategic patience, and their situation just keeps getting better. Every day that this conflict continues is a day that global markets become more vulnerable to disruption. Right now, nations are still working through their existing supplies of oil, LNG, and other petrochemical products that would usually have been replenished in a few days' time. Wait another week or two, and nations will start dipping into their reserves, rationing supply, and otherwise trying to balance their situation until things return to normal. Every day in which the Strait of Hormuz is blockaded is a day when the strategic importance of other trade routes will rise. For the Houthis, there is no reason to act now if they believe the blockade will still be in place in a few weeks' time. Allow shortages to get worse, allow global panic to rise, and the Houthis will be able to achieve greater disruption with fewer strikes. Their missile and drone stockpiles are far from unlimited, and they would do well to maximize the strategic value of each piece of hardware in their arsenal. If they happen to get lucky and the war wraps up before that moment arrives, then even better; they will have sat out the conflict and avoided any real damage, while arguing to their friends in Iran that they were trying to play their hand as effectively as possible. ## The Military Window Is Widening There is also the matter of military power swinging back in the Houthis' direction, where, again, their patience may yet be rewarded. A US Carrier Strike Group that was meant to be stationed on the Red Sea, led by the carrier Gerald R. Ford, was forced to return to a port in the Mediterranean after an onboard fire, meaning it is no longer available to punish the Houthis for an attack. Then there are America's regional allies. Had the Houthis tried to threaten the Gulf states in the first few days of the conflict, they would have encountered well-stocked air defenses and Western intelligence that was just waiting for new threats to pop up. Now, air defense stockpiles appear to be at risk of running critically low, and air-defense systems have been repositioned to optimize for a defense against Iran, when the Houthis would be attacking the Gulf states from the opposite direction. US and Israeli intelligence have their hands full, tracking targets, identifying missile and drone launch points, and trying to figure out who is in charge in Tehran on a given day. If the Houthis wait just a little while longer, their situation could improve even further. Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, two of the states most vulnerable to Houthi attacks, are on the verge of joining the war against Iran. The Saudi and Emirati militaries are powerful, and they can deliver heavy damage to an adversary in an initial attack, but they have only a limited ability to carry out a sustained air campaign, as the Houthis found out directly in the 2010s. Had the Houthis joined the conflict a couple of weeks ago with an attack on easy-to-hit oil infrastructure in the Emirates or Saudi Arabia, they would have run the risk that the US and Israel might have invited the Saudis and Emiratis to handle the Houthis directly, with their support. But if the Houthis bide their time until the Gulf states enter the conflict against Iran, then they will ensure that the Gulf states' first few days of military operations, when they are at their most effective, would be directed elsewhere. After that, any pivot to suddenly fight the Houthis would be clumsy at best, while the Houthis would have an even easier time attacking the Gulf states once their militaries are focused elsewhere. In short, there is a real argument for the Houthis to keep biding their time, targeting an entry to the conflict at the moment of maximum impact. ## The Target List At the end of a calculation like this, one question matters most of all: if the Houthi rebels did choose to get involved in the war in the Middle East, then just how bad could things get? The Houthis' relative impact would depend on every other factor already explained, from the trade vulnerability when they strike to the military capacity that nations can spare to deal with them. But in broad strokes, if the Houthis do make a well-timed entrance to the conflict, the results for the entire Middle East could be catastrophic. Across the last decade, the Houthis have proved their ability to attack oil infrastructure across the Arabian Peninsula, particularly in Saudi Arabia and the Emirates. Those targets include vital oil and natural gas fields, refineries, ports, and pipelines, all of which the Houthis could choose to damage or attempt to destroy, depending on whether they want to send a message or deliver maximum harm. Specific targets include the Saudi port city of Yanbu on the Red Sea coast, where Riyadh has redirected most of its crude oil exports in a desperate attempt to ship off as much as possible, as quickly as possible, before the war gets any worse. Iran has already attacked the Yanbu refinery, indicating that Tehran and its allies are all too aware of the value of Yanbu to Saudi leaders. Or, if the Houthis cannot hit Yanbu directly, they can hit the cross-country pipeline that supplies it: 1,200 kilometers along a mostly undefended route, capable of transferring five million barrels of oil per day. The Houthis are also well within range of targets in Bahrain, Qatar, Oman, Kuwait, and Iraq, where limited air defenses are already starting to struggle with the sheer volume of incoming projectiles. In particular, the Houthis can target Qatar's Ras Laffan LNG facility, where a full one-fifth of the world's natural gas is exported. Iran has already knocked out about a sixth of Ras Laffan's capacity for the next several years, essentially disappearing about three and a half percent of all global LNG from the market. Even after Qatar and its allies have beefed up Ras Laffan's defenses, the Houthis have the ability to target the facility with greater capacity, and from different angles, than Iran can currently manage. ## Closing the Red Sea Then there is the possibility of a Red Sea blockade, something the Houthis have partially achieved already over the past couple of years. When a nation like Iran, or a non-state actor like the Houthis, tries to blockade a global waterway, they do not do it by using ships; they do it by manipulating risk, making a crossing so dangerous that maritime insurance will not cover ships when they make an attempt. No insurance generally means no ship crossings, and the few ships that do try to run the blockade are at even greater risk of being targeted because they cannot hide in a crowd. The Houthis can threaten the northern entrance to the Red Sea at the Suez Canal, but they can exert direct control over the Red Sea's southern entrance, the Bab al-Mandeb Strait. Hit a few ships with missiles, sea drones, or even raiding attack parties on open water, and the Houthis can cause such a market panic that the Bab al-Mandeb becomes impassable. Also on the target list could be Egypt, American bases in nearby Djibouti, energy targets across the African Horn, or even Israel itself. Time its attacks just right, and the humble Houthi rebels of Yemen might have the power to end this entire conflict. They would hardly be conquering Israel or the United States, but they would not have to. Global trade, finance, energy, manufacturing, and other key sectors are already pushing themselves to the brink, trying to find a way to reconcile this war with their day-to-day business and working overtime to absorb losses as gently as possible. Close down the Red Sea, devastate Gulf energy installations in an attack from behind, and leaders from across global industry and world governments may decide they have simply had enough. Whether or not Jerusalem would react to those pressures by calling off the war is up for debate, but Washington is a different story. Hit the world hard enough, across all the right pressure points, at just the right moment, and the Houthis have the ability to make this conflict untenable for the rest of the world. Worst of all, the Houthis know it. In the words of senior Houthi leader and spokesman Mohammed al-Bukhaiti: "Our finger is on the trigger. Yemen joining the conflict is only a matter of time." ## Frequently Asked Questions ### Who are the Houthis, and how are they different from other Iranian proxies? The Houthis, officially known as Ansar Allah, are a Yemeni rebel organization that has enjoyed Iran's patronage since the mid-2010s, when they seized Yemen's capital and rose to prominence. They now control most of western Yemen, where the bulk of the population lives. Unlike Iraq's militias or Lebanon's Hezbollah, they are not a weapon Iran can simply point and shoot. They run their own proto-state, economy, and ideological movement, giving them their own incentives and decision-making independence that places them somewhere between a proxy and a partner. ### What makes the Houthi weapons arsenal especially difficult to suppress? The group fields multiple types of long-range ballistic missile based largely on Iranian designs, a smaller but potent arsenal of cruise missiles, modern one-way attack drones, and a growing fleet of sea drones. Crucially, the Houthis have their own internal production capacity, allowing them to build more missiles and drones without relying solely on shipments from abroad. Even American military leaders have praised them for their innovation as weapons developers, meaning they cannot be permanently suppressed by destroying an arms shipment or two. ### Why have the Houthis stayed out of the current Iran war so far? Their forces are diminished after prior airstrikes, they face a multinational maritime security mission in the Red Sea, and they have been consolidating control over Yemen after recent upheaval. But their proven willingness to absorb heavy losses suggests their restraint is mostly about timing. They appear to be waiting for global vulnerability to worsen — as Iran's Hormuz blockade strains alternative trade routes further — so they can achieve greater disruption with fewer strikes from their finite stockpiles. ### What specific targets could the Houthis strike, and how damaging could it be? Their target list spans Saudi and Emirati oil and gas fields, refineries, ports, and pipelines. Named targets include the Saudi port of Yanbu and its 1,200-kilometer cross-country pipeline capable of moving five million barrels of oil per day, and Qatar's Ras Laffan LNG facility, which exports a fifth of the world's natural gas. They are also within range of Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Iraq, Egypt, US bases in Djibouti, and Israel — a breadth that makes a coordinated strike campaign nearly impossible to fully defend against. ### How could the Houthis close the Red Sea, and what would that accomplish? Blockading a global waterway is done by manipulating risk, not by deploying ships. By making a crossing dangerous enough that maritime insurance will not cover vessels, the Houthis can effectively halt traffic, and the few ships that try become easier to target. They can threaten the northern entrance at the Suez Canal and exert direct control over the southern entrance, the Bab al-Mandeb Strait. Combined with Iran's existing closure of the Strait of Hormuz, a Houthi Red Sea blockade could compound the global trade crisis to the point of making the entire conflict economically untenable for world governments and industry. ## Sources 1. https://www.wilsoncenter.org/article/houthi-arsenal 2. https://www.twz.com/news-features/houthi-weapons-arsenal-remains-a-mystery-to-the-u-s 3. https://www.iiss.org/online-analysis/missile-dialogue-initiative/2025/04/made-in-yemen-assessing-the-houthis-arms-production-capacity/ 4. https://www.axios.com/2024/11/14/laplante-houthi-antiship-missiles-iran 5. https://www.brookings.edu/articles/the-danger-of-calling-the-houthis-an-iranian-proxy/ 6. https://www.wilsoncenter.org/article/houthis-iran 7. https://www.cfr.org/articles/irans-support-houthis-what-know 8. https://mei.edu/ar/publication/houthis-iran-and-tensions-red-sea/ 9. https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/what-did-houthis-achieve-18-months-attacks-global-shipping 10. https://www.csis.org/analysis/global-economic-consequences-attacks-red-sea-shipping-lanes 11. https://english.elpais.com/economy-and-business/2025-01-13/the-suez-canal-crisis-how-houthi-attacks-are-crippling-egypts-revenue.html 12. https://abcnews.com/Business/big-concern-closure-strait-hormuz-drive-prices-gasoline/story?id=131322577 13. https://www.washingtoninstitute.org/policy-analysis/military-options-reopening-strait-hormuz-limitations-and-imperatives 14. https://www.cnbc.com/2026/03/22/iran-war-strait-of-hormuz-trump-oil-prices-economy.html 15. https://www.axios.com/2026/03/22/iran-war-oil-trump-hormuz-strait-threat 16. https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c78n6p09pzno 17. https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/middle-east-oil-shipping-costs-surge-all-time-high-us-iran-conflict-intensifies-2026-03-02/ 18. https://www.csis.org/analysis/no-one-not-even-beijing-getting-through-strait-hormuz 19. https://www.wsj.com/world/middle-east/irans-houthi-allies-lie-in-wait-on-another-key-oil-route-the-red-sea-9c0c38f5 20. https://www.thearabweekly.com/yemens-houthis-issue-threats-over-iran-war-hold-back-action 21. https://www.investing.com/news/stock-market-news/iran-conflict-latest-saudi-arabia-uae-reportedly-mulling-joining-war-on-iran-4576964 22. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/us/news/2026/03/19/iran-closure-another-waterway-bab-el-mandeb/ 23. https://www.newarab.com/news/could-houthis-close-bab-al-mandab-amid-war-iran 24. https://www.nbcnews.com/world/iran/red-sea-choke-point-global-economy-rcna264045 25. https://thesoufancenter.org/intelbrief-2026-march-19/ 26. https://www.navytimes.com/news/your-navy/2026/03/23/uss-gerald-r-ford-docks-in-greece-for-port-call-after-fire/ 27. https://www.intellinews.com/houthi-join-the-fight-threaten-to-close-red-sea-straits-432958/ 28. https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20260313-houthi-leader-vows-support-for-iran-says-group-ready-for-any-escalation/ 29. https://www.mef.org/mef-observer/the-houthis-can-survive-iranian-regime-change 30. https://www.thetimes.com/world/middle-east/article/houthis-assist-iran-war-red-sea-oil-hdqc2bsl2 31. https://www.tradewindsnews.com/tankers/coalition-warns-houthi-threat-to-close-bab-el-mandeb-strait-may-constitute-a-heightened-risk-/2-1-1963770 32. https://www.dw.com/en/iran-war-what-role-will-yemens-houthi-group-play/a-76216075 33. https://foreignpolicy.com/2026/03/11/iran-war-houthis-yemen-military-operations-calculus-ground-force-mobilization/ 34. https://www.axios.com/2026/03/12/iran-war-houthis-yemen-gulf-red-sea 35. https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/why-yemen-houthi-are-hesitating-join-iran-war-now 36. https://nationalinterest.org/blog/middle-east-watch/why-are-the-houthis-sitting-out-the-iran-war 37. https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20260320-yemens-houthi-leader-signals-military-readiness-amid-regional-escalation/ 38. https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/why-havent-houthis-irans-allies-yemen-stepped-into-war-2026-03-13/ 39. https://apnews.com/article/yemen-houthis-iran-war-gulf-us-israel-1fc2a646d0cc4213385e7e61c409565 40. https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20260323-yemens-houthis-warns-of-action-as-regional-tensions-escalate/ 41. https://www.stimson.org/2026/the-houthis-must-decide-join-irans-war-against-the-us-and-israel-or-abandon-iran/

The Houthis Enter the Iran War: Bab al-Mandeb, a Failed Kurdish Plan, and a Regime Fracturing

Simon Whistler — Tue, 02 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The war on Iran has just acquired a new front, and it sits astride one of the most important waterways on the planet. Slightly over a month into the conflict, Yemen's Houthis formally entered the fight on a Saturday in late March, firing ballistic missiles at what they called "sensitive military positions" in southern Israel and following up hours later with a second wave of cruise missiles and drones. All of it was intercepted. None of it killed anyone. And yet the move sent a tremor through nearly every capital on Earth—because the danger the Houthis pose has very little to do with the missiles they launched, and everything to do with their geography. From their positions in Yemen, the Houthis sit over the Bab al-Mandeb, the narrow maritime gateway at the southern mouth of the Red Sea. With the Strait of Hormuz already in a state of semi-closure thanks to Iran, the prospect of a second chokepoint going dark at the same time is the kind of scenario that moves oil markets and rattles governments. The group has not pulled that trigger—not yet—but its leadership has made clear it understands exactly what the threat is worth. Layered underneath the Houthi escalation is a second revelation that surfaced over the same weekend: this war had a secret ground component all along. According to a detailed Israeli investigative report, Mossad spent years developing a plan to use Kurdish fighters as the boots on the ground that an air campaign alone could never provide—a force meant to push "all the way to Tehran." It did not go according to plan. What follows is a picture of a conflict that is metastasizing in several directions at once: a maritime crisis waiting to happen, a collapsed regime-change gambit, a diplomatic process that may be partly fictional, and an Iranian government turning on itself even as it continues to project power abroad. This is what the Iran war looks like roughly a month in. ## Key Takeaways - The Houthis formally entered the war in late March with intercepted missile and drone strikes on southern Israel, opening a second front against Iran's adversaries. - The real strategic danger is the Bab al-Mandeb strait; with the Strait of Hormuz already semi-closed, a simultaneous Houthi closure could send oil prices past the 2008 record of $147.50 a barrel, per a Goldman Sachs warning. - Iran shut down Hormuz without laying a single mine—the credible threat of striking tankers, backed by an actual early-war strike on one, was enough to halt most traffic. - A secret Mossad-developed plan to send tens of thousands of Iranian Kurdish fighters across the border under US and Israeli air cover collapsed after a March 4th Fox News leak and a lack of US guarantees. - The US is building toward a larger footprint: roughly 2,500 Marines arrived, the 82nd Airborne is en route, and the Pentagon is reportedly weighing another 10,000 troops. - Iran's leadership is fracturing publicly, with President Pezeshkian reportedly clashing with the IRGC while Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei has not been seen since the war's opening strikes. - Even amid internal chaos, Tehran is projecting power abroad—most visibly in Lebanon, where its ambassador is defying an expulsion order with Hezbollah and Amal backing. ## Late to the Party: The Houthis Open a New Front WarFronts had argued only the previous Friday that the Houthis could badly tip the scales if they chose to go all-in on the Iran war—and to severely understate the case, the outcome would not be great for the rest of the world. The very next day, the group threw its hat into the ring. Saturday marked the formal entry. Ballistic missiles aimed at "sensitive military positions" in southern Israel triggered sirens across Beersheba, followed hours later by a second wave of cruise missiles and drones. Every one of these was fully intercepted, with no casualties or damage reported on the Israeli side. Sunday, by contrast, was quiet—no additional launches and no fresh claims from Houthi media—which pushed the all-out war scenario off to the side, at least for the moment. But the missiles were never the point. The concern that rippled through world capitals had almost nothing to do with the projectiles themselves and far more to do with the Bab al-Mandeb strait, and what happens to the global oil supply if the Houthis decide to shut it down. So far they have not moved in that direction. Dozens of tankers were still transiting the Red Sea daily as of early Monday. The question is whether that holds. ## Why the Bab al-Mandeb Matters More Than Ever The Red Sea matters for global trade in the best of times. With the Strait of Hormuz in a state of semi-closure for weeks, it matters a great deal more. And the way Hormuz was shut down is worth understanding, because Iran never actually had to physically blockade it or lay a single mine. The threat of launching on tankers—backed up by the fact that Iran did, in fact, strike a tanker in the war's early days—was enough to effectively close the whole thing. Within days, the risk climbed so high that most ship owners simply stopped sailing altogether. That has turned the Bab al-Mandeb, a 26-kilometer gap between Yemen and the Horn of Africa, into something close to indispensable. Saudi Arabia has maxed out its East-West Petroline at seven million barrels a day to push crude across the peninsula to Red Sea ports. Egyptian oil is funneling through pipelines to the Mediterranean, and refineries along the coast are pumping out hundreds of thousands of barrels of diesel and jet fuel bound for Europe and North America. Nearly six million barrels a day are now transiting the strait—and that volume had been growing. Or at least, it was growing. The Houthis know precisely what that is worth, because they have already proven they can bring this corridor to a halt. Their 2023–2025 campaign against Red Sea shipping drove major carriers to reroute around the Cape of Good Hope, collapsed Suez Canal traffic from 70 ships a day to under 30, and surged insurance premiums twentyfold—all without shutting the strait entirely. ## The Nightmare Scenario the Markets Are Pricing Fast forward to today, and roughly 30 tankers near the Saudi port of Yanbu sit within Houthi strike range. Elisabeth Kendall at Cambridge called a simultaneous closure of both chokepoints "a nightmare scenario" that would "disrupt, if not cripple, trade toward Europe." Goldman Sachs has warned that if flows stay depressed for another two months, oil prices could blow past the 2008 all-time high of $147.50 a barrel. That scenario has not materialized—yet. What the Houthis' deputy information minister, Mohammed Mansour, said on Saturday is that the group is "conducting this battle in stages," and that closing the strait is "among our options." It is, in effect, the geopolitical equivalent of admiring a nice shipping route and noting that it would be a shame if something happened to it. That is not to say the Houthis are guaranteed to use what amounts to their nuclear option. Unlike their attacks of a few years ago, the Red Sea now carries a newfound importance not just for the US and Israel but, at this point, for most of the world. Closing it really would be the closest thing to a nuclear option the group has—and once that line is crossed, there is no uncrossing it. Analysts at various think tanks have agreed that while they cannot rule out the Houthis making such a move, the Bab al-Mandeb is more valuable as a threat than as a weapon, especially given the years of back-and-forth the group has been locked into with Saudi Arabia. A standing threat preserves leverage; a closure spends it. ## A Diplomatic Process That May Be Partly Fiction That logic of leverage extends to what has allegedly been going on between the White House and Iran. As a quick recap: the previous Monday, Trump posted on Truth Social claiming "very good and productive conversations" with Iran and announced a pause on strikes against Iranian energy infrastructure until the end of the day on Friday. That deadline was extended again, now running through April 6th—and it remains very much up in the air whether he will make good on it the third time around. There was always something a little off about the negotiations Trump described. For one, they were remarkably well timed: announced right before markets opened, with a deadline set for after markets closed for the weekend. The suspicion deepened given that Iran has steadfastly denied, the entire time, that any such negotiations were happening at all—across every layer of government, from the political class like Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi down to the IRGC itself. A bit more clarity arrived courtesy of US Representative Jim Himes, the top-ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, who went on CBS's "Face the Nation" and did not mince words. Speaking about Trump, Himes declared: "Last Sunday, he realized, 'I've got a financial cataclysm in the market,' so he just made that statement up." That claim cannot be independently verified, and there may be more happening behind the scenes than members of the House are read into. There are at least indirect channels: Pakistan has emerged as something of a would-be peacemaker, hosting several regional powers for talks over the weekend. Still, Himes's accusation stands out. What is left is a diplomatic process real enough to point to but nowhere near advanced enough to produce results. The current deadline—April 6th, 8:00 p.m. Eastern—appears to be the next indicator of where things head from here. ## The Best Laid Plans: A Secret Kurdish Ground War Going into this war, there was considerable debate in analyst circles about whether the coalition could topple the Islamic Republic through an air campaign alone. It was a genuine uncertainty. Analysts skewed slightly toward skepticism, but this was uncharted territory: the regime had just carried out a barbaric crackdown on its own people, killing an estimated 36,500 over the span of 48 hours alone. The US and Israel together field, quite literally, the most advanced weapon systems on Earth, and were clear that they were bringing what they believed would be needed. Had technology, precision strikes, and drone warfare advanced to the point where such a mission could, at least theoretically, succeed? On the other side of the argument, regime change from the air alone is almost unheard of, in no small part because bombing campaigns can only do so much to change the situation on the ground. Trump's thinking largely seemed to be that the previous "forever wars" in the Middle East—the ones he had himself complained about—needlessly committed boots on the ground, and that he could deliver something more effective. Then came the weekend's revelation. Israel's Channel 12 aired a detailed investigative report confirming that Mossad had spent years developing a plan to use Kurdish fighters as the ground force the air campaign could not provide. Tens of thousands of armed fighters from a coalition of Iranian Kurdish opposition groups would cross the Iran-Iraq border under massive US and Israeli air cover in the war's opening days, link up with Kurdish networks inside the country, and push deep into Iran to ignite a broader uprising. This was not some provincial plan to set up shop in Kurdish-dominated areas. The plan was that they would go "all the way to Tehran." ## How the Plan Came Together—and Came Apart Mossad chief David Barnea reportedly briefed Netanyahu directly before the operation kicked off, then traveled to Washington in January to pitch it to Trump's team. Netanyahu was an enthusiastic backer; this was the low-footprint regime-change operation he had long been dreaming of. According to the report, it was also an influential factor in convincing Trump to greenlight the February 28th strikes. IDF military intelligence, however, was skeptical from the start, giving it slim chances—though the report noted that if things did kick off, they were confident "the Kurds would do their part." As the strikes began, the CIA went into overdrive. Trump was on the phone with Kurdish leaders. US and Israeli jets hammered Iranian security forces and Basij sites in the northwest to clear the corridor, and there were reports that some fighters had already begun limited cross-border operations. This remains a breaking story that military historians will likely study for years. But from what can be told so far, the full-scale invasion never launched—in large part because the Kurdish factions wanted assurances that were not coming: a no-fly zone overhead, ground support to keep their fighters from becoming cannon fodder for the IRGC, and political commitments from an administration unwilling to promise enough. On March 4th, Fox News broke the story that thousands of Iraqi Kurds had launched a ground offensive into Iran. The Kurdish groups were horrified that the operation had been made public, and whatever momentum existed collapsed almost immediately. Iran reinforced the northwest border. Erdogan pressured Trump to shut the whole thing down. And the Kurds—who got burned by Trump back in 2019, when he pulled out of Syria and left them without support—were not going an inch further. ## What's Left: A Larger US Footprint and a Wary Public So if Plan A collapsed, what is left? By all indications, the answer is the extended April 6th deadline, as vague as that may be. But unlike past deadlines, when this one rolls around there will be significant numbers of US forces in theater: roughly 2,500 Marines arrived Friday, the 82nd Airborne is en route, and the Pentagon is reportedly weighing another 10,000 on top of that. For context, that is still a fraction of the 250,000 troops that invaded Iraq—though it is unclear whether that distinction will register in public perception. A slight majority of Americans have opposed the war since day one, but it has not exactly been a top-of-mind concern; fewer than 20 percent told CNN they cared "a great deal." After years of military operations, bombing the Middle East is not exactly new. Republicans, for their part, have consistently backed the campaign, with more than 80 percent expressing support. Any form of invasion would be an entirely different proposition. Trump is the president who ran on "peace through strength" and "no new wars." Pivoting from that to an air campaign against Iran is one thing; escalating to a full, boots-on-the-ground operation—especially after explicitly guaranteeing that the war would not involve such a deployment—is something else entirely. With the midterms looming, it would be one enormous gamble. ## The Wreckage Inside Tehran It is against this backdrop that a simmering tension between President Pezeshkian, who has stayed remarkably out of the headlines since the war began, and the Revolutionary Guards broke into the open. Opposition outlet Iran International, citing sources inside the regime, reported on Saturday that Pezeshkian has been continuously criticizing the IRGC's policy of escalating attacks across the region and demanding that control of the government be returned to the civilian side. Defense Minister General Ahmad Vahidi rejected this outright and turned the blame back on Pezeshkian, accusing his administration of failing to implement the structural reforms needed before the war to ensure stability. If the report is to be believed, the Islamic Republic's governance structure has descended into a finger-pointing competition between the civilian parts of the government and the IRGC-linked parts. That is not entirely new; the two sides clashed in early March when Pezeshkian apologized to Iran's neighbors for the attacks, which infuriated the Guards and prompted them to launch even more strikes simply to send a message. Netanyahu, speaking at IDF Northern Command in Safed, framed all of it as vindication that the campaign is working, describing "visible cracks in the terror regime in Tehran." Whether that is an intelligence assessment, political messaging, or a combination depends on whom you ask. But the leak is significant, because it offers a fresh look at how Iran is—or is not—being governed. Given the widespread uncertainty about the whereabouts and health of Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei—who has not been seen in public or on video since reportedly being injured in the war's opening strikes—the question of who actually holds the reins in Tehran remains unclear. Parliament Speaker Ghalibaf has emerged as one potential figure trying to hold things together, but even he cannot paper over a government where nobody is sure who is actually in charge. And yet, for all that internal chaos, Tehran is still finding the bandwidth to project power abroad. ## Lebanon: The Stand Tehran Refuses to Abandon The clearest example is Lebanon. Beirut's government set a March 29th deadline for Iran's ambassador, Mohammad Reza Sheibani, to leave the country, declaring him "persona non grata." Sheibani did not merely ignore the deadline—he rejected it outright, with staff informing AFP that he had no plans to leave, in direct defiance of Beirut's orders. The showdown may look inconsequential, given that it concerns a single man, but it will help determine much of what comes next for Lebanon. Tehran has long viewed Lebanon as being "in their pocket" through the influence that Hezbollah and their Shia allies, the Amal party, hold over the country. Even with a literal war going on at home, Tehran is focused on making a stand here, betting that the Lebanese state will not have it in them to unify and expel the ambassador—a demonstration of who is really in charge when push comes to shove. They may have a point. Hezbollah's decision to support the ambassador staying is no surprise, but Amal has backed his continued presence as well, boycotting the cabinet meeting where the expulsion was to be discussed in order to freeze the process entirely. An Iranian diplomatic source told AFP that the ambassador "will not leave Lebanon, in accordance with the wishes of the speaker of parliament Nabih Berri and of Hezbollah." ## Sovereignty on Paper, Power in Practice That gap between what the state enacts on paper and what it can actually enforce is the story of modern Lebanon in a nutshell—and it is especially unfortunate given the initial progress Beirut made in early March. To be clear, the Lebanese state did implement the expulsion legally. Foreign Minister Raggi intentionally went around Berri to avoid Amal's stalling. Under the Vienna Convention, a foreign minister can declare an ambassador persona non grata on his own authority—no cabinet vote, no parliamentary sign-off, no input from a Speaker required. And yet the ambassador remains on Lebanese soil. Only time will tell how that plays out, but if Lebanon wants to demonstrate that it is a sovereign country, what has to follow is clear. While the standoff unfolded in Beirut, the IDF has been pushing deeper into Lebanon's south. Netanyahu ordered the 146th Division to drive the "buffer zone" deeper into southern Lebanon, explicitly closer to the Litani—and expanded evacuation zones north of the Litani, which has no historical precedent. This is not yet a full-scale Israeli invasion, but it is another step in that direction. With much of the world's attention fixed a few countries to the east, the assault on Lebanon may yet prove one of the most consequential acts of the entire war. ## Frequently Asked Questions ### When and how did the Houthis enter the Iran war? The Houthis formally entered on a Saturday in late March, firing ballistic missiles at what they described as "sensitive military positions" in southern Israel, which triggered sirens across Beersheba. A second wave of cruise missiles and drones followed hours later. All of the projectiles were fully intercepted, with no casualties or damage reported on the Israeli side. ### Why is the Bab al-Mandeb strait so important in this conflict? The Bab al-Mandeb is a 26-kilometer gap between Yemen and the Horn of Africa that controls access to the Red Sea. With the Strait of Hormuz already in semi-closure, the Red Sea has become close to indispensable, carrying nearly six million barrels of oil a day. The Houthis have demonstrated, during their 2023–2025 campaign, that they can paralyze the corridor—and a simultaneous closure of both chokepoints could send oil prices past the 2008 record of $147.50 a barrel. ### What was the secret Kurdish ground plan and why did it collapse? According to a Channel 12 investigative report, Mossad spent years developing a plan to use tens of thousands of Iranian Kurdish opposition fighters as a ground force to cross the Iran-Iraq border under massive US and Israeli air cover, link up with Kurdish networks inside Iran, and push "all the way to Tehran." The full-scale invasion never launched because the Kurdish factions demanded assurances—a no-fly zone, ground support, and firm political commitments—that never materialized. After Fox News broke the story on March 4th, momentum collapsed, Iran reinforced its northwest border, and Erdogan pressured Trump to shut it down. ### What is happening inside Iran's government? President Pezeshkian has reportedly been criticizing the IRGC's policy of escalating regional attacks and demanding that control return to the civilian side, while Defense Minister General Ahmad Vahidi has blamed Pezeshkian in return. Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei has not been seen since reportedly being injured in the war's opening strikes, leaving the question of who holds power in Tehran unresolved, with Parliament Speaker Ghalibaf among those trying to hold things together. ### What is the standoff over Iran's ambassador in Lebanon about? Beirut declared Iran's ambassador Mohammad Reza Sheibani "persona non grata" with a March 29th deadline to leave, but Sheibani rejected the order outright and remained in the country. Hezbollah and Amal both backed his continued presence—Amal even boycotted the cabinet meeting where the expulsion was to be discussed—demonstrating Tehran's ability to project power through proxy influence even while fighting a war at home. ## Sources 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29.

The Houthis Enter the Iran War: A New Front and a Buried Ground Plan

Simon Whistler — Tue, 02 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Just before the weekend, on a Friday night, we put out a video about how much the Houthis could tip the scales if they decided to enter the Iran war. Apparently someone in Houthi high command was watching, because the very next day the group threw its hat into the ring. And with that, all hell once again broke loose in the Middle East. While it is still early hours in terms of what the Houthis' grand plan is, none of the signs so far are exactly good. The group is almost the perfect complement to the regime in Tehran. Where Iran can close the Strait of Hormuz, the Houthis' position in Yemen means they could potentially also shut down Red Sea shipping, a move that would pile even more pressure on the global economy. Beyond the Houthis entering the chat, this weekend brought confirmation that there had been a secret ground component of this war all along: Kurdish fighters, backed by Mossad, with the goal of pushing all the way to Tehran. Suffice it to say, things did not go according to plan. Slightly over a month into the Iran war, the picture is one of widening fronts, a collapsed regime-change gambit, and a fragile diplomatic process that may not be real at all. ## Key Takeaways - The Houthis formally entered the war on Saturday, firing ballistic missiles and then cruise missiles and drones at southern Israel; all were intercepted with no casualties, but the real threat is their potential closure of the Bab al-Mandeb strait. - The Bab al-Mandeb, a 26-kilometer chokepoint, has become close to indispensable now that the Strait of Hormuz sits in semi-closure; nearly six million barrels of oil a day transit the corridor, and Goldman Sachs warns prices could blow past the 2008 high of $147.50 a barrel if flows stay depressed. - A secret Mossad plan to use tens of thousands of Iranian Kurdish fighters as a ground force — pushing all the way to Tehran — collapsed after media leaks, withheld assurances, and Turkish pressure, leaving the coalition without a viable regime-change path. - Trump's claimed US-Iran negotiations are disputed by both Iran and a senior House Democrat, while the extended April 6th deadline, 2,500 Marines in theater, and the 82nd Airborne en route signal that military escalation remains very much on the table. - Iran's governance has fractured between President Pezeshkian and the IRGC, Supreme Leader Khamenei has not been seen since the war's opening strikes, and in Lebanon Iran's ambassador is defying an expulsion order backed by Hezbollah and Amal. ## Late to the Party: The Houthis Open a Second Front The Houthis are here. Just last Friday, WarFronts released an episode covering what the group could do if it went all-in on the Iran war, and to severely understate the case, it is not great for the rest of the world. Saturday marked their formal entry. Ballistic missiles aimed at what they described as "sensitive military positions" in southern Israel triggered sirens across Beersheba, followed by a second wave of cruise missiles and drones hours later. All of these were fully intercepted, with no casualties or damage reported on the Israeli side. Sunday, by contrast, was quiet, with no additional launches or claims from Houthi media. That put the all-out war scenario from the earlier episode off to the side, at least for now. The concern that rippled through nearly every capital in the world had almost nothing to do with the missiles themselves and far more to do with the Bab al-Mandeb strait, and what happens to the global oil supply if the Houthis decide to shut it down. ## The Bab al-Mandeb: A Chokepoint Turned Indispensable So far, the Houthis have not moved to close the strait. Dozens of tankers were still transiting the Red Sea daily at the time of recording, early on a Monday. But the Red Sea matters for global trade in the best of times, and with the Strait of Hormuz in a state of semi-closure for weeks, it matters a great deal more. The way Hormuz was shut down is worth understanding, because Iran did not have to physically blockade it or lay a single mine. The threat of launching on tankers, backed by the fact that they did launch on one in the early days of the war, was enough to effectively close the whole thing. Within days, the risk was so high that most ship owners simply stopped sailing. That turned the Bab al-Mandeb, a 26-kilometer gap between Yemen and the Horn of Africa, into something close to indispensable. Saudi Arabia has maxed out its East-West Petroline at seven million barrels a day to push crude across the peninsula to Red Sea ports. Egyptian oil is funneling through pipelines to the Mediterranean, and coastal refineries are pumping out hundreds of thousands of barrels of diesel and jet fuel for Europe and North America. Nearly six million barrels a day are now transiting the strait, and that volume was growing. ## The Nuclear Option: What Closing the Strait Would Mean The Houthis know exactly what that corridor is worth, because they have already demonstrated they can bring it to a halt. Their 2023 to 2025 campaign against Red Sea shipping drove major carriers to reroute around the Cape of Good Hope, collapsed Suez Canal traffic from 70 ships a day to under 30, and surged insurance premiums twentyfold, all without shutting the strait entirely. Today, roughly 30 tankers near the Saudi port of Yanbu are already within their strike range. Elisabeth Kendall at Cambridge called a simultaneous closure of both chokepoints "a nightmare scenario" that would "disrupt, if not cripple, trade toward Europe." Goldman Sachs has warned that if flows stay depressed for another two months, oil prices could blow past the 2008 all-time high of $147.50 a barrel. That scenario has not materialized yet. The Houthis' deputy information minister, Mohammed Mansour, said on Saturday that the group is "conducting this battle in stages," and that closing the strait is "among our options." It amounts to the geopolitical equivalent of: that is a nice shipping route you have there; be a shame if something happened to it. The Houthis are not guaranteed to use that option. Unlike the attacks of a few years ago, the Red Sea now carries newfound importance not just for the United States and Israel, but for most of the world. Closing it really would be the closest thing to a nuclear option the group has, and once you cross that line, there is no uncrossing it. Analysts at various think tanks agree that while they cannot rule out such a move, Bab al-Mandeb is more valuable as a threat than as a weapon, especially given the years-long back-and-forth the Houthis have had with Saudi Arabia. ## Negotiations That May Not Exist The question of the strait leads to what has allegedly been happening between the White House and Iran. As a quick recap: last Monday, Trump posted on Truth Social claiming "very good and productive conversations" with Iran and announced a pause on strikes against their energy infrastructure until the end of the day on Friday. That deadline has again been extended, now through April 6th, and it remains very much up in the air whether he will make good on it the third time around. There was always something a little off about the negotiations Trump described. For one, they were remarkably well timed, announced right before markets opened with a deadline after markets closed for the weekend. That timing looked all the more suspicious because Iran has steadfastly denied the entire time that any such negotiations took place, across every layer of government, from the more political class like Foreign Minister Abbas Aragchi to the IRGC itself. A bit more clarity arrived when US Representative Jim Himes, the top-ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, went on CBS's "Face the Nation" and did not mince his words. Speaking about Trump, Himes declared: "Last Sunday, he realized, 'I've got a financial cataclysm in the market,' so he just made that statement up." That claim cannot be independently verified, and there may be more going on behind the scenes than members of the House know. There are indirect channels at the very least; Pakistan has emerged as something of a would-be peacemaker, hosting several regional powers for talks over the weekend. But Himes's quote still stands out. What is left is a diplomatic process real enough to point to, but, as far as anyone can see, nowhere near advanced enough to produce results. The current deadline, April 6th at 8:00 p.m. Eastern, appears to be the next indicator of where things head from here. ## The Best Laid Plans: A Secret Kurdish Ground Force Going into this war, there was considerable debate in analyst circles about whether the coalition could topple the Islamic Republic through an air campaign alone. It was a genuine uncertainty. Analysts skewed slightly toward skepticism, but this was uncharted territory: the country had just carried out a barbaric crackdown on its own people, killing an estimated 36,500 over the span of 48 hours. The United States and Israel together field, quite literally, the most advanced weapon systems on Earth, and were clear they were bringing what they thought would be needed. Had technology, precision strikes, and drone warfare advanced to the point where such a mission could, at least theoretically, succeed? On the other side of the argument, regime change from the air alone is almost unheard of, in no small part because bombing campaigns can only do so much to change the situation on the ground. Trump's thinking largely seemed to be that the previous "forever wars" in the Middle East, which he had himself complained about, needlessly committed boots on the ground, and that he could deliver something more effective. Over the weekend, a fascinating insight emerged into what Washington and Jerusalem had up their sleeves on the ground. Israel's Channel 12 aired a detailed investigative report confirming that Mossad had spent years developing a plan to use Kurdish fighters as the ground force the air campaign could not provide. Tens of thousands of armed fighters from a coalition of Iranian Kurdish opposition groups would cross the Iran-Iraq border under massive US and Israeli air cover in the war's opening days, link up with Kurdish networks inside the country, and push deep into Iran to ignite a broader uprising. This was not a provincial plan to set up shop in Kurdish-dominated areas. The plan was to go "all the way to Tehran." ## How the Ground Plan Came Apart Mossad chief David Barnea reportedly briefed Netanyahu directly before the operation kicked off and traveled to Washington to pitch it to Trump's team in January. Netanyahu was an enthusiastic backer; this was the low-footprint regime-change operation he had been dreaming of. According to the report, it was also an influential factor in convincing Trump to greenlight the February 28th strikes. IDF military intelligence was skeptical from the start, giving it slim chances of success, though the report noted that if things did kick off, they were confident "the Kurds would do their part." The CIA went into overdrive as the strikes began. Trump was on the phone with Kurdish leaders, US and Israeli jets were hammering Iranian security forces and Basij sites in the northwest to clear the corridor, and there were reports that some fighters had begun limited cross-border operations. This remains a breaking story that military historians will likely study for years. But from what can be told so far, the full-scale invasion never launched, in no small part because the Kurdish factions wanted assurances that were not coming: a no-fly zone overhead, ground support to ensure their fighters would not become cannon fodder for the IRGC, and political commitments an administration unwilling to promise enough never made. On March 4th, Fox News broke the story that thousands of Iraqi Kurds had launched a ground offensive into Iran. The Kurdish groups were horrified the operation had been made public, and whatever momentum existed collapsed almost immediately. Iran reinforced the northwest border, Erdogan pressured Trump to shut the whole thing down, and the Kurds, who got burned by Trump back in 2019 when he pulled out of Syria and left them without support, would not go an inch further. ## After Plan A: Boots on the Ground? So if Plan A collapsed, what is left? That is the million-dollar question. By all indications, the picture returns to the extended April 6th deadline, as vague as that might be. Unlike past deadlines, though, when this one rolls around there will be significant numbers of US forces in theater. Roughly 2,500 Marines arrived on Friday, the 82nd Airborne are en route, and the Pentagon is reportedly weighing another 10,000 on top of that. For context, that is still a fraction of the 250,000 troops that invaded Iraq, but it is unclear whether that distinction will matter much in public perception. A slight majority of Americans have opposed the war since day one, yet it has not been top-of-mind for many; fewer than 20 percent told CNN they cared "a great deal." After years of military operations, bombing the Middle East is not exactly new. Republicans, for their part, have consistently backed it, with more than 80 percent expressing support. Any form of invasion would be a completely different situation. Trump is the president who ran on "peace through strength" and "no new wars." Pivoting from that to an air campaign against Iran is one thing. Escalating to a full, boots-on-the-ground operation, especially after explicitly guaranteeing it would not involve such a deployment, is something else entirely. With the midterms looming, it would be one enormous gamble to take. ## The Wreckage: Cracks Inside Tehran It is against this backdrop that a tension between President Pezeshkian, remarkably out of the headlines since this war broke out, and the Revolutionary Guards broke into the open this weekend. Opposition outlet Iran International, citing sources inside the regime, reported on Saturday that Pezeshkian has continuously criticized the IRGC's policy of escalating attacks across the region and has demanded that control of the government be returned to the civilian side. Defense Minister General Ahmad Vahidi rejected this outright and turned the blame back on Pezeshkian, accusing his administration of failing to implement structural reforms before the war to ensure stability throughout the country. If the report is to be believed, the Islamic Republic's governance structure has descended into a finger-pointing competition between the civilian and IRGC-linked parts of the government. That is not entirely new; they previously clashed in early March when Pezeshkian apologized to his neighbors for the attacks, which angered the Guards and prompted them to launch even more strikes to send a clear message. Netanyahu, speaking at IDF Northern Command in Safed, framed all of this as vindication that the campaign is working, citing "visible cracks in the terror regime in Tehran." Whether that is intelligence assessment, political messaging, or some combination depends on whom you ask. But the leak is significant because it offers a fresh look at the way Iran is, or is not, being governed. Given widespread uncertainty about the whereabouts and health of Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei, who has not been seen in public or on video since reportedly being injured in the war's opening strikes, the question of who actually holds the reins in Tehran remains unclear. Parliament Speaker Ghalibaf has emerged as one potential candidate trying to hold things together, but even he cannot paper over a government where nobody is sure who is in charge. ## Lebanon: A Sovereignty Test in Beirut And yet, for all of that internal chaos, Tehran is still finding the bandwidth to project power abroad. Lebanon's government had set a deadline of March 29th for Iran's ambassador, Mohammad Reza Sheibani, to leave the country, declaring him "persona non grata." Sheibani did not just ignore the deadline; he rejected it outright, with staff informing the AFP that he had no plans to leave, in direct defiance of Beirut's orders. This showdown may seem inconsequential given that it concerns one man, but it will determine much of what is to come for Lebanon. Tehran has long viewed Lebanon as being "in their pocket" through the influence Hezbollah and their Shia allies, the Amal party, hold over the country. Even with a literal war raging back home, Tehran is making a stand here, betting that the Lebanese state will not have it in them to unify and expel the ambassador, showing who is really in charge when push comes to shove. They may have a point. Hezbollah's decision to support the ambassador staying may be no surprise, but Amal has backed his continued presence as well, boycotting the cabinet meeting where the expulsion was to be discussed in an attempt to freeze the process entirely. An Iranian diplomatic source told the AFP the ambassador "will not leave Lebanon, in accordance with the wishes of the speaker of parliament Nabih Berri and of Hezbollah." That gap between what the state officially enacts on paper and what it can actually enforce is the story of modern Lebanon in a nutshell, and it is especially unfortunate given the initial progress the state made in early March. The Lebanese state did implement the expulsion legally; Foreign Minister Raggi intentionally went around Berri to avoid Amal's stalling. Under the Vienna Convention, a foreign minister can declare an ambassador persona non grata on his own authority, with no cabinet vote, no parliamentary sign-off, and no input from a Speaker required. And yet the ambassador remains on Lebanese soil. ## The Quiet Escalation in the South While that played out in Beirut, the IDF has been busy pushing deeper into southern Lebanon. Netanyahu ordered the 146th Division to push the "buffer zone" deeper, explicitly closer to the Litani, and actually expanded evacuation zones north of the Litani, which has no historical precedent. This is not a full-scale Israeli invasion just yet, but it is another step in that direction. While much of the world has its eyes busy a few countries to the east, the assault on Lebanon may wind up being one of the most consequential acts of the entire war. Only time will tell how the standoff plays out, but if Lebanon wants to demonstrate that it is a sovereign country, it is clear what has to follow. ## Frequently Asked Questions ### How did the Houthis formally enter the Iran war? On Saturday, the Houthis fired ballistic missiles at what they described as "sensitive military positions" in southern Israel, triggering sirens across Beersheba, then followed hours later with a second wave of cruise missiles and drones. All were fully intercepted, with no casualties or damage reported on the Israeli side. Sunday was quiet, with no further launches or claims. ### Why is the Bab al-Mandeb strait so important right now? With the Strait of Hormuz in semi-closure, the Bab al-Mandeb, a 26-kilometer gap between Yemen and the Horn of Africa, has become close to indispensable. Nearly six million barrels of oil a day now transit the strait as Saudi Arabia maxes out its Petroline and Egypt routes crude through pipelines to the Mediterranean. Goldman Sachs has warned that if flows stay depressed for another two months, oil prices could blow past the 2008 all-time high of $147.50 a barrel. ### What was the secret Mossad-Kurdish ground plan and why did it collapse? Israel's Channel 12 reported that Mossad spent years developing a plan to use tens of thousands of Iranian Kurdish opposition fighters as the ground force the air campaign lacked, pushing "all the way to Tehran." The full-scale invasion never launched because the Kurdish factions wanted assurances — a no-fly zone, ground support, and political commitments — that were not forthcoming. Fox News leaking the operation publicly, combined with Turkish pressure on Trump and memories of the 2019 Syria withdrawal, caused the plan to collapse almost immediately. ### Are the US-Iran negotiations real? It is disputed. Trump claimed "very good and productive conversations" and paused strikes on Iranian energy infrastructure, with the deadline now extended to April 6th. Iran has denied any negotiations across all layers of government. Representative Jim Himes, the top-ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, alleged on CBS that Trump "made that statement up" to calm markets, though that claim cannot be independently verified. ### What is the standoff over Iran's ambassador in Lebanon? Lebanon declared Iran's ambassador, Mohammad Reza Sheibani, persona non grata with a March 29th deadline to leave, but he rejected it outright and remains in the country. Hezbollah and Amal both back his stay, with Amal boycotting the relevant cabinet meeting to freeze the process. The expulsion was legally enacted by Foreign Minister Raggi under the Vienna Convention without a cabinet vote, yet the state has been unable to enforce it, illustrating who really holds power in Lebanon. ## Sources 1. https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/media-leaks-misjudgments-and-lack-of-trust-doomed-plan-for-kurdish-invasion-to-help-bring-down-irans-regime-report/ 2. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/jim-himes-trump-lying-iran-egotiations/ 3. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/3/29/as-war-on-iran-enters-second-month-yemens-houthis-open-new-front 4. https://www.timesofisrael.com/yemens-iran-backed-houthis-threaten-to-join-war-our-fingers-are-on-the-trigger/ 5. https://fortune.com/2026/03/28/saudi-arabia-east-west-oil-pipeline-strait-hormuz-bypass-7-million-barrels-yanbu-red-sea/ 6. https://www.lloydslist.com/LL1147965/Red-Sea-war-risk-rates-see-huge-jump-in-wake-of-Yemen-airstrikes 7. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/3/29/houthis-open-new-front-in-iran-war-will-yemeni-group-block-bab-al-mandeb 8. https://www.cnbc.com/2026/03/20/goldman-sachs-oil-price-iran-war.html 9. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/trump-extending-pause-strikes-iran-energy-plants-april-6/ 10. https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/menasource/will-the-houthis-join-the-iran-war/ 11. https://www.usnews.com/news/world/articles/2026-03-29/pakistan-hosts-regional-powers-for-iran-talks-with-focus-on-hormuz-proposals 12. https://www.iranintl.com/en/202601255198 13. https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog-march-28-2026/ 14. https://yalibnan.com/2026/03/23/israels-mossad-thought-it-could-ignite-rebellion-inside-iran-that-hasnt-happened/ 15. https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/fox-news-reports-thousands-iraqi-235931999.html 16. https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/cbp-8710/ 17. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/us-troops-uss-tripoli-centcom-middle-east-arrive-iran/ 18. https://www.stripes.com/theaters/middle_east/2026-03-27/82nd-airborne-10000-troops-iran-21196096.html 19. https://www.stripes.com/branches/army/2026-03-25/82nd-airborne-iran-deployment-21175729.html 20. https://maristpoll.marist.edu/polls/war-with-iran-march-2026/ 21. https://www.foxnews.com/politics/trump-dominates-cpac-poll-conservatives-rally-behind-agenda-back-iran-action 22. https://www.i24news.tv/en/news/middle-east/iran-eastern-states/artc-pezeshkian-clashes-with-irgc-over-iran-s-war-strategy-and-economy-report 23. https://www.timesofisrael.com/pezeshkian-apologizes-for-attacks-on-gulf-neighbors-even-as-iran-forces-step-up-strikes/ 24. https://www.timesofisrael.com/pm-says-israel-to-expand-south-lebanon-buffer-zone-as-idf-pushes-deeper-into-territory/ 25. https://www.fdd.org/analysis/2026/03/25/lebanon-declares-iranian-ambassador-designate-persona-non-grata-before-iranian-missile-explodes-over-lebanese-airspace/ 26. https://english.alarabiya.net/News/middle-east/2026/03/29/iran-s-ambassador-won-t-leave-lebanon-despite-expulsion-diplomatic-source-says 27. https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/source-irans-ambassador-will-defy-lebanon-expulsion-order-wont-leave-country-today/ 28. https://www.longwarjournal.org/archives/2026/03/lebanon-declares-iranian-ambassador-designate-persona-non-grata-before-iranian-missile-explodes-over-lebanese-airspace.php 29. https://www.jns.org/israel-news/idf-orders-southern-lebanon-residents-north-of-zahrani-river

How Powerful Is Turkey? Inside Ankara's Military and Geopolitical Rise

Simon Whistler — Tue, 02 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

From the start of the twentieth century to the start of the twenty-first, Turkey traveled a brutal road, from empire to afterthought. The journey began with the collapse of the entire Ottoman world and only worsened from there. By the early twenty-first century, Turkey was a shadow of its former self, and the whole world knew it. It was NATO's southern wall in a Cold War that had already ended, a fickle friend that Moscow and the Europeans traded back and forth. It wasn't European enough to be part of Europe, it wasn't Asian enough to be part of Asia, and it wasn't Middle Eastern enough to be part of the Middle East. But somewhere, deep down, Turkey's grand ambitions never died. Today, those ambitions are back with a vengeance. As the world moves from the post-Cold-War order into uncharted waters, Turkey ranks among the most fascinating actors anywhere on the global stage. Its badly outdated military is becoming modern, and its halls of power have been ceded to a new-age strongman. It is a nation making new friends and picking new fights, whose leaders have learned the art of balance between Russia and Europe, between America and China, and between the Middle East and the Global West. At a moment in history when rising regional powers have the opportunity to walk their own path, Turkey has accepted the challenge. So if Ankara is looking to scrap with its rivals and assert its geopolitical dominance for the world to see, the ultimate question demands an answer: how powerful is the nation of Turkey, and will its highest ambitions be realized, or blow up in its face? ## Key Takeaways - Turkey pursues power along two parallel tracks: soft diplomatic **influence** and hard militaristic **authority**, both anchored by a relentless drive for strategic **autonomy**. - Despite NATO membership since the early 1950s, Turkey runs an independent foreign policy, keeping ties with Russia, China, and Iran while refusing to do any single superpower's bidding. - Turkey fields NATO's second-largest land army after the United States and is in the midst of sweeping modernization, anchored by the indigenous Altay main battle tank and a heavy emphasis on drones. - An ambitious air-power program could see Turkey eventually fly more than 140 fifth-generation stealth aircraft, including the F-35 and the indigenous Kaan, plus 84 advanced fourth-generation fighters. - Turkey's navy is built for control of the Black Sea, the eastern Mediterranean, and the Bosporus Strait rather than global power projection, with an indigenous aircraft carrier and Tepe-class destroyers on the way. - Control of the Bosporus gives Ankara enormous leverage over Russia, Ukraine, NATO members, and global grain and energy flows, a chokepoint it can throttle for individual nations at will. - Turkey is a clearly ascendant middle power, aligning with Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, and possibly Egypt while sharpening rivalries with Israel and, in the long term, Russia. ## What Power Means to Turkey Turkey is not alone in being shaped by its ambitions. Some nations chase wealth, others chase order, others chase uniformity, and still others chase a future where no one bothers them. Whatever a nation wants, one thing is certain: through its goals, its limitations, and the resources at its disposal, it arrives at its own definition of what power means and what it means to pursue that power. To judge how powerful Turkey is, the first question must be more fundamental: for Turkey, what is power? No analyst has yet sat down with President Erdogan over Turkish coffee to settle the matter, but the clues modern Turkey provides are abundant. Right now, Ankara appears to be working along two parallel tracks at once. It is cultivating greater influence, and it is building greater authority. The distinction is simple: influence is the power wielded on the diplomatic stage, in conference rooms and cultural exchanges, whereas authority is what shows up in trade wars, military posturing, and, if necessary, on the battlefield. By every outward indicator, Turkey wants both. As Erdogan framed it in a 2025 speech aimed at a global audience, "Our goal is a great and powerful Turkey. Our mission is to build the Century of Turkey in all its glory." To acquire the geopolitical power it craves, Turkey needs both international clout and military might, not one or the other. Any honest assessment of Turkish power has to account for both at once. ## The Centrality of Autonomy Turkey's core calculus reveals one more thing that cannot be left out: the grand vision it chases prioritizes not just power but autonomy. For Turkey's leaders, it is not enough to hold the kind of power that modern France or Britain possesses, nuclear-armed and very rich, yet ultimately beholden to the will of a single global superpower like the United States. Turkey is hardly unique among rising powers in wishing to avoid that fate. India treats strategic autonomy, and the right to handle its own business, as a principle worth going to war over. Brazil and Saudi Arabia are classic examples too, keeping open, generally positive relations with Washington, Beijing, Moscow, and Brussels all at once while making clear they will do nobody's bidding. For Turkey, strategic autonomy is a tricky thing to maintain. It has belonged to NATO since the early 1950s, meaning it is fundamentally oriented toward the United States and Europe and against the alliance's adversary, Russia. Yet Turkey has shown that it never had to take a drastic step like leaving NATO to preserve its independence. It pursues its own foreign policy regardless of membership, maintaining relatively close ties to Russia, China, and even Iran, and at times refusing to call upon NATO when it gets into its own regional dust-ups. That same spirit runs through its economy, where Turkey leans on its role as a bridge between East and West and a gateway to European and Black Sea markets. It has used military force where its NATO allies would not follow, whether in its long campaigns against the region's Kurdish population, its involvement in the civil conflicts in Libya and Syria, or its 2015 decision to shoot down a Russian jet in its airspace despite the risk of one-on-one conflict with Moscow. NATO membership aside, Turkey thinks of itself as an ultimately independent actor, and now more than ever it tries to demonstrate that independence through bold, self-serving action. ## Four Fronts, One Strategic X If Turkey conceives of power as a combination of soft influence and hard authority that it must wield autonomously, the next question is where it wants to apply that power. Militarily and strategically, Turkey splits its attention across four key fronts. Each is represented by an adversary, or at least a frenemy, in Turkey's immediate geographic vicinity. Draw a great X through Turkish territory, and its lines point toward all four. In Turkey's northwest sits the Bosporus Strait, a critical sea lane that dictates access to the Black Sea, lets Turkey control the flow of trade, commerce, and raw goods, and grants it significant leverage over every country that relies on its own Black Sea shores or values trade with a Black Sea nation. To the southwest lies Cyprus, currently split between a Turkish-backed area and a Greek-backed area, emblematic of Turkey's long-running disputes with Greece over control of the eastern Mediterranean. To the southeast is the Middle East, especially Syria and Iraq, where Turkey works to maintain outsize influence, battle its Kurdish adversaries, and pivot into a new rivalry with Israel. To the northeast is Russia, a nation Turkey was once close with, serving as a sort of interpreter bridging the communication divide between Russia and NATO and as a trade partner. More recently the two have become increasingly adversarial competitors, with Turkey often seeming to pick that fight voluntarily so it can prove to itself, to Russia, and to the world that it is a true rival rather than a mere subordinate. These priorities matter because the technical military picture that follows is informed by them. Turkey's problems are regional, its acute threats are local, and it operates on the premise that if any adversary challenges it, at least some Turkish territory will be within range. ## The Land Forces: NATO's Second Army To understand Turkey's ability to fight future wars, start with what Turkey actually fields. The Turkish Land Forces are NATO's second-largest land army, behind only the United States. In peacetime they boast roughly 400,000 active-duty troops, though reporting discrepancies put the real figure anywhere from 350,000 to more than 450,000. Well over 200,000 are professional career soldiers, with the remainder conscripts. Turkey holds a similar number of reservists, usually placed between 350,000 and 400,000, and hosts a range of paramilitary groups, some operating abroad in places like northern Syria, others focused on domestic Kurdish adversaries across recent decades. Turkish soldiers carry a reputation for being highly disciplined, well-trained, and experienced, though they have been politicized in recent years, including in government and in abortive coup attempts. The composition of its land equipment makes Turkey's core objective clear: this is a nation that expects to defend itself, or assert its will abroad, through full-scale ground engagements, with tanks and heavy artillery serving a critical function. The centerpiece of the future armored force is the Altay, a highly advanced main battle tank based on South Korea's K2 Black Panther. Like the Black Panther, the Altay brings advanced armor, internal electronics, and weapons systems, and the shared base design is widely regarded as one of the best main battle tanks on Earth. Turkey has just a handful in service now but plans to operate a thousand. Filling the gap are German Leopard 2 and Leopard 1 tanks, modernized US-based M60s, and roughly 1,400 legacy tanks better suited to fighting insurgencies or holding territory than frontline combat. Turkey is also building indigenous mobile rocket launchers, the Sakarya, and self-propelled howitzers based on South Korea's K9 Thunder. Its version, the Firtina, is already available in over 300 copies, a number expected to rise dramatically, while older German and US towed and self-propelled artillery fill the gap. Turkey fields American-made ATACMS tactical ballistic missiles, produces most of its own infantry fighting vehicles and armored personnel carriers, and operates close to 1,000 dedicated tank-destroyer vehicles. That last detail signals a distinctive approach. Facing a Russia that relies on armored warfare and Middle Eastern powers leaning on high volumes of legacy tanks, Turkey's arsenal is built less to win all-out tank battles than to force adversary tanks into open engagements, where they can be identified, flanked, and destroyed by units dedicated to that purpose. ## A Drone-First Force Few aspects of Turkey's military reveal its forward thinking more than its embrace of unmanned systems, on the ground, in the air, and at sea. The Land Forces emphasize deploying high volumes of affordable, high-impact unmanned assets into combat. On the ground, Turkey uses versatile models like the Kaplan, autonomous fighting models like the Aslan, and even heavy unmanned fighting vehicles like the long-awaited Shadow Rider and others expected to follow. In the air, Turkey flies several combat-proven drones of the Bayraktar line: the long-endurance TB2, the carrier-capable TB3, and the high-altitude, relatively heavy-payload Akinci. Each has been proven in combat with Turkey and with other militaries across the Middle East, Asia, and Africa. For air defense, Turkey is building a so-called Steel Dome, a layered defense apparatus similar to Israel's Iron Dome, and it has invested heavily in anti-drone protection and interception technologies, many still in prototyping or early production. This drone-first posture is not accidental. Turkey is not merely building strike or reconnaissance models. It is pursuing both low-cost, mass-produced kamikaze drones and expensive, highly sophisticated loyal wingman drones, and it treats drones not just as aerial technology but as ground-based, seaborne, and undersea assets. Rather than settle on a handful of designs and lock them into lengthy procurement, Turkey has aimed a firehose of research-and-development funding in as many directions as possible, on the apparent understanding that some designs will excel, others will fail, and all will need continual amendment as technology and tactics evolve. ## The Air Force: Today Versus Tomorrow The Turkish Air Force comprises roughly 50,000 personnel and just short of 300 fixed-wing aircraft, making it the largest European NATO air force by aircraft numbers alone. Its current backbone is the American-designed F-16, with most of Turkey's roughly 240 copies built domestically rather than imported. Those jets undergo continual upgrades but range from middle-aged to genuinely elderly by combat standards, even when packed with new hardware. Turkey is also one of the only countries still flying the F-4 Phantom, a decisively Cold War-era jet that first flew in 1958, though its copies have been heavily modified into a variant called the Terminator, optimized to carry heavy firepower in engagements where enemy aircraft are not a concern. The air force Turkey wants in the near future is worlds away from this. Its open orders already signal an appetite for upgrade. Turkey awaits 40 copies of the F-16C/D Block 70, a newly built, highly modernized variant known as the Viper, built to operate alongside fifth-generation fighters with modern radar, sensors, and computing. Alongside it come 44 Eurofighter Typhoons, including 20 from the Typhoon's Tranche 4, intended to fly well into the 2060s. Both the latest F-16s and the Tranche 4 Eurofighters use open systems architecture and modular principles, allowing aging systems to be swapped out with minimal headaches. Even those acquisitions undersell the ambition. Turkey appears on the verge of acquiring America's F-35 Lightning, resolving a long-running dispute with Washington rooted in Turkey's refusal to surrender Russian-made S-400 missile defense systems, which could be used to study how the F-35 appears on non-Western radar and pass that data to Moscow. If the deal goes through, Turkey will obtain at least 40 copies and may seek more to keep pace with Israel, which has 75 on order. Alongside the F-35, Turkey is on track to become the first non-global power in half a century, and the world's first non-nuclear power, to introduce its own indigenous fifth-generation fighter, the Kaan. It first flew in 2024, with the first 20 copies wanted in service by 2028 and a total fleet of 100 planned, the later 80 being fully capable, top-flight aircraft. Taken together, Turkey's orders and anticipated orders could put more than 140 fifth-generation stealth aircraft in the sky, plus 84 advanced fourth-generation fighters, before counting current aircraft it may retain. ## The Supporting Fleet and Naval Power The unglamorous side of air power matters just as much to real warfighting. Turkey flies four Boeing E-7 airborne early warning and control aircraft, marketed globally as the Wedgetail but known in Turkey as the Peace Eagle. They are being upgraded with Turkish-made intelligence systems and backed by a pair of refitted business jets supplied by the United States. Turkey relies mostly on drones for reconnaissance and operates eight KC-135 air-to-air refuelers, enough to enable prolonged air operations in localized combat zones, if not full power projection across the Middle East. Its strategic airlift centers on ten A400M Atlas aircraft, eighteen C-130 Hercules, and forty CN-235s, with a dozen C-130J Super Hercules on order and Brazil's C-390 Millennium under consideration. The Anka and larger Aksungur drones round out the inventory, and Turkey is procuring the Anka-3, a flying-wing, stealthy, AI-enabled loyal wingman drone set for limited service this year, potentially the first loyal wingman drone to see combat. The Turkish Navy, about 45,000 active personnel and several dozen combat vessels, is not a tool of power projection. Charged with securing the Black Sea, the eastern Mediterranean, and the Bosporus, it is stuck at the far end of a well-protected inland sea with few ambitions beyond it. Its submarine fleet consists of fourteen attack submarines, purpose-built to hunt and sink other vessels, with five more on the way to round out the German-derived, Turkish-built Reis class. On the surface, seventeen frigates anchor the fleet, led by the new Istanbul class, armed with over a dozen vertical launch cells, sixteen anti-ship missiles, torpedo tubes, and main guns, ideal for enforcing blockades and stopping suspect ships for inspection. The flagship is the Anadolu, an amphibious assault ship that can carry nearly 50 tanks, up to 30 helicopters, or 50 or more UCAVs, AI-powered drones small enough to launch and fight from the ship like aircraft from a carrier. The navy of tomorrow will put today's to shame. Turkey is already building its first aircraft carrier, an entirely Turkish design capable of carrying up to 50 aircraft or more drones, expected in the 2030s. The Tepe class, eight guided-missile destroyers armed with 96 vertical launch cells, anti-submarine capabilities, and anticipated directed-energy weapons, will accompany that carrier on expeditionary missions. Turkey is also pursuing newer attack submarines and a separate line of nuclear-powered boats. Learning from Ukraine, several of its sea drones are kamikaze types optimized to coordinate in armed swarms that have proved devastating in Black Sea warfare. ## In the Field: A Record of Competence Possessing fancy military kit is irrelevant if a nation cannot use it, and Turkey should assume that one day its skills will be tested. It is surrounded by too many rivals at too many cross purposes for Ankara to assume otherwise. Yet because of the sheer scale of modernization underway, assessing readiness means discussing two separate Turkish militaries: the one that exists today and the one taking shape for tomorrow. The current arsenal can be analyzed, but Turkey is moving away from it so completely that present aptitude cannot simply be copied and pasted onto the force it will operate in a decade or two. Recent history speaks well of the present force. Since the 1970s, Turkey's performance has been impressive. Its defining modern conflict was the counterinsurgency against the Kurdistan Workers' Party, or PKK, and allied separatist groups, a fight that spanned nearly forty-six and a half years before concluding with a ceasefire and the PKK's dissolution in 2025. As an asymmetric war it produced no clean, unequivocal victory, but it kept the Turkish military constantly sharp, demanding high, consistent quality, discipline, tactical and technical skill, and operational flexibility. Turkish warplanes and drones grew well-practiced at airstrikes, ground forces alternated between armored and infantry fighting, and units rotated in and out of combat, so today's military leadership carries that experience with it. Those operations extended Turkey into northern Syria, where its troops demonstrated high competence against the more organized, heavier-armed, Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces. After Washington abandoned the SDF in 2019, Turkey led an offensive to carve out a buffer zone in Syrian Kurdish territory, which it controlled continuously until the SDF was pushed back further in early 2026. Turkish forces and allied paramilitaries played a major role across northern Syria for years before shifting to a supporting role behind Syria's new post-Assad government. Beyond Syria, Turkey has joined multinational counterinsurgency efforts against Boko Haram in West Africa, the JNIM terror group and other factions across the Sahel, and the internationally recognized Libyan government in support of warlord Khalifa Haftar. It has also taken part in NATO actions including the Gulf War, the Bosnian War, the Kosovo War, the Afghanistan War, and the intervention against the Islamic State, often in aerial roles, reaffirming its reputation as a well-trained, highly effective professional force. In aggregate, these engagements speak well of Turkey's current warfighting capability. Its forces have worked counterinsurgency roles, gone head-to-head with proper militaries and well-armed landholding paramilitaries, and deployed air power across varied settings. They have not proved their mettle against a true peer adversary, but that is true of nearly every advanced military besides Russia and Ukraine. What the record suggests is a country able to use its military competently, efficiently, and adaptably, with reason to believe it can adjust to future conflicts. ## Reading the Tea Leaves on Future Warfare Turning to the medium-term future means abandoning many data points. Turkey's record against the PKK still illuminates its counterinsurgency potential, but its 2010s intervention in Syria says little about fighting 2020s warfare, let alone the 2030s variety. What remains is to read its strategic decision-making, its procurement choices, and the early performance of its newest technology. On force design, the picture is consistent: Turkey is concerned mainly with regional challenges, regional adversaries, and the threat of regional chaos. It is not projecting power like Washington, conquering like Russia, or proving superpower status like China. Its primary objective is protecting its territory, sea lanes, airspace, and geopolitical position, though it also wants a growing global role through exports, limited deployments, and eventually its own carrier strike group. Whether Turkey can handle the rigors of operating so much advanced hardware at once is uncertain. What is clear from its investment and procurement decisions is that Turkey understands what the next phase of global warfare will bring, arguably better than most nations and certainly better than many established NATO institutions. It has heavily prioritized the transition to drone warfare across land, sea, air, and undersea, balancing cheap mass-produced kamikaze drones with sophisticated loyal wingmen. That foresight should be no surprise given Turkey's front-row seat to four years of drone warfare in Ukraine, yet many other countries with the same vantage point have responded far less impressively. Turkey's broader defense-industrial choices inspire confidence for several reasons. It grasps the global shift away from protective superpowers watching over subordinate states and toward a multipolar, chaotic world where countries fend for themselves, so it produces as much as possible in-house using indigenous designs at global standard, leaving its defense beholden to as few outside powers as possible. It values maximizing leverage, ensuring it can throttle the Bosporus or take quick, decisive regional action when needed. And it understands that high-volume attritional warfare remains very much in vogue, especially against a nation like Russia. Notably, Turkey emphasizes that cost-effective, attritional approach with its land forces, where it faces the stiffest competition, while investing in big, powerful ships that rivals are unlikely to match and stealthy jets that will let it compete with Israel in particular. Early indicators are promising. TB2 drones have seen extensive use against the PKK and across Syria, while the Akinci has joined strike and reconnaissance efforts. The navy has grown more active in patrolling and locking down nearby waters. Turkish troops in Syria appear to use both strike and kamikaze drones, with some indications, though little direct confirmation, that advanced systems are being tested in real combat as they support Syria's transitional government. It remains too early to say with confidence that future capabilities will hold up under fire, but for now things seem to be on the right track. ## The Bosporus and the Art of Leverage If military power is one side of the coin, Turkey's geo-strategic power, its influence on the diplomatic stage and its ability to exploit pressure points, is arguably even more important. Wield those tools fully and Turkey can avoid war when it does not want to fight, create war at a time and place of its choosing, and get away with the strategic decisions it deems necessary to build and protect its power. Its most obvious lever is the Bosporus Strait. Control the strait and you control access to Russia, where Russian oil is delivered by sea to China, India, and others, and where Russia ships coal, chemicals, and semi-refined goods. Both Russia and Ukraine need it to export grain on which millions in developing nations depend. NATO members Bulgaria and Romania, and the flashpoint of Georgia, all rely on it too. By controlling the strait, Turkey occupies a uniquely powerful position. If it simply locked the strait down, it could single-handedly throw the world into an economic and energy crisis, trigger a humanitarian disaster, and create simultaneous crises for both NATO and the nations opposed to it. Turkey is unlikely to make life hell for the whole world at once, but it can make life hell in the Bosporus for individual nations or factions at a time. That deters others from starting conflicts against it, interfering with its objectives, or siding against it in peacetime disputes. The more military power Turkey acquires, the more it can assert that leverage, because of the deterrent weight of its hardware. The end goal is simple and effective: create a world in which everyone understands it is a bad idea to cross Turkey. Turkey wields leverage in other ways too, especially inside NATO, an alliance that requires consensus. It has happily used its veto, most recently delaying Sweden's accession for more than a year over accusations of harboring Kurdish militants and consistently blocking collaboration with Israel over Gaza and the wider Middle East. Many of the world's most powerful economies and its most powerful alliance operate within a framework beholden to Turkey. Because Ankara is closer to Russia and China than most NATO members, it can also exert leverage in the opposite direction, advancing Russian or Chinese interests in the West, but only if Moscow or Beijing give it ample reason. ## The Geopolitical Interpreter More broadly, Turkey has positioned itself as a bridge between East and West, staying neutral not only to keep out of fights but because intentional strategic autonomy lets it offer itself as a geopolitical interpreter. Living at the intersection of Europe, Asia, and Africa, it plays the part to the hilt, helping Western nations understand and gain what they need from Asia and Africa and vice versa. It is an overwhelmingly Muslim nation with deep inroads among predominantly Christian ones and a credible economic partner for developed and developing states alike. Turkey has brokered negotiations across several continents in the 2020s, in the Israel-Hamas War, the Russo-Ukrainian War, and flashpoints between Ethiopia and Somalia or Armenia and Azerbaijan. It brokered the deal that let Ukrainian grain flow out of the Black Sea and the 2010 framework for Iran's nuclear program, and it remains a key partner for often-ignored states in Central Asia and sub-Saharan Africa. When Turkey does take sides, it usually defends a maligned but valuable partner, as it did for Qatar during the Gulf blockade, or weighs in where others hesitate, as it did in Syria after the fall of Bashar al-Assad. Recently it has emerged as a leader in efforts across the Islamic world to build new collective security arrangements outside the US-led order. Turkey was among the nations stunned by Israel's 2025 airstrike on Qatar, where Hamas officials had lived with the world's full knowledge for years. That strike confirmed Turkey's growing suspicions about Israel, once a relatively close partner now seen as an increasingly rogue chaos actor, a judgment sharpened by the fact that Turkey was the only other nation hosting a Hamas delegation. Turkey called for greater Islamic unity after the strike, and though early attempts at a regional security pact failed, it did not quit. In early 2026, Turkish officials leaked that Ankara was trying to join a new collective security arrangement between Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, itself agreed after the Qatar strike, with rumors that Egypt too may join. Such a pact would unite four powerful militaries, four powerful economies, and a combined population larger than the European Union. Each member views Israel as a troublesome actor needing containment, each mistrusts the United Arab Emirates, and each keeps positive relations with both the US-led and Chinese-led spheres. It would let Turkey further lock down the Mediterranean alongside Egypt, and because Turkey has easily the most advanced military-industrial complex of the four, Pakistani, Saudi, and Egyptian investment could soon pour into Turkish industry. ## A Middle Power Ascendant For all its strengths, there are limits to Turkey's power. This is not a nation with a clear path to global superpower status. It will not become a United States or Soviet analogue within the next half-century, nor reach the rising-superpower status of China or the eventual-major-power status that India, Brazil, and a unified Europe might achieve. Economic struggles, internal divisions, limits on available money, and the absence of a nuclear arsenal will all remain enduring barriers. But if that top tier represents an S-tier of world nations, Turkey is a clear member of the next tier down, with the military power, diplomatic clout, and geo-strategic savvy to chart its own path. The answer to the title question, then, is that Turkey is quite powerful indeed. It is among the most formidable regional powers on the globe, an autonomous actor able to guarantee its independence, and it is putting in the work to become a modern military powerhouse. It absolutely has problems: internal repression, an ongoing economic crisis, cost-of-living strain, and more. But none of those appear likely to bring Turkey down in the near term, and across years and decades it is clearly a middle power ascendant. The friends Turkey is choosing reveal its direction. In its emerging security arrangement it aligns with Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, and quite possibly Egypt. To its south, post-Assad Syria has become so dependent that its government could accurately be called a Turkish client state. In Africa, Turkey strengthens ties with Ethiopia despite its connection to Ethiopia's rival Egypt, and may even seek to bring the two together against the United Arab Emirates. It grows closer to Azerbaijan, which it backed against Armenia from 2020 onward, bridges into Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, and Kyrgyzstan, and works to repair strained ties with Iraq. In Europe, Turkey remains as much a part of NATO as ever and an increasingly active partner to Donald Trump's Washington, but it plainly does not treat NATO as an entity that can set Turkish policy. ## The Fights Ahead: Israel and Russia The clearest rivalry to watch is Israel. Turkey has grown deeply distrustful of a nation it sees as an agent of regional chaos, and that contest is likely to center on Syria, where their visions clash. Turkey backs the government in Damascus and wants a strong, centralized Syria, while Israel prefers a fragmented, weak Syria that can be a perpetual thorn in Turkey's side. The two support rival factions, and as Damascus breaks apart Kurdish territory in the northeast, future proxy conflicts with Israel and Turkey on opposite sides are easy to anticipate. Gaza will be another flashpoint, with Turkey eager to place troops, diplomats, and stabilizing assets into post-war reconstruction, both to serve Turkish interests and to capture the optics: Israel cannot control Gaza, so big, strong Turkey must come in and manage the chaos. In the longer term, Turkey clearly chases military parity with Israel, especially through its renewed drive for F-35s and other fifth-generation fighters, and rhetoric in Turkey has even begun shifting toward discussion of nuclear weapons that would grant real strategic parity against its nuclear-armed rival. Then there is Russia, a country that outwardly seems capable of grinding Turkey into the dust. Turkey today cannot compete on sheer numbers, wartime economics, or nuclear matters, and a near-term, one-on-one battle remains a loser's game. But in a couple of decades, that calculus shifts. Russia has suffered a huge setback in Ukraine, is overheating its economy by throwing away its future, and can mass-produce basic equipment but no longer compete in the high-tech areas where Turkey is poised to surge ahead. Worse for Moscow, its access to global sea lanes depends on Turkish goodwill, with its refineries, ports, and export infrastructure reliant on the Bosporus. Turkey is also building influence among countries long partnered with Moscow, some of which may soon listen to Ankara over Moscow. A Turkey that moves into careful but growing opposition to Russia stands to gain massively. On optics alone, it can elevate its standing by appearing to take on a major power and win, something it has already been doing. It was Turkey that let Russian forces stay safe in Syria after Assad's fall, Turkey that forced Russia to allow Ukraine to resume grain shipments, and Turkey that has sought to break any remaining economic reliance on Russia. Its remaining goodwill is what kept Ankara from imposing sanctions and allowed Russia's shadow fleet to keep functioning in wartime, and all of that can be taken away. If, as a growing number of analysts suggest, China may seek to capture parts of Russia outright in the coming decades, it would likely find an enthusiastic partner in Turkey, which will command the military power, economic leverage, and defense-industrial strength to take what it wants from a Russia forced to concentrate on deterring Beijing. Turkey is not just a powerful regional player; it is a powerful nation with a real outlook for the future, militarily, strategically, and diplomatically on the rise, increasingly aligned with partners that share its vision and respect its ambition. Its nearby rivals are real, but none are both too big to defeat and willing to make Turkey their priority. The battles before it are winnable. During a coming century defined by the United States, China, India, and, if it can get itself together, Europe, Turkey will not be dominant. It is, however, going to be essential in the period of global chaos that comes next. ## Frequently Asked Questions ### How does Turkey define power, and what makes its pursuit of it unusual? Turkey pursues power along two parallel tracks simultaneously: soft, diplomatic influence wielded in conference rooms and cultural exchanges, and hard, militaristic authority that shows up in trade wars, military posturing, and on the battlefield. What makes this unusual is Turkey's insistence on wielding both as a fully autonomous actor. Unlike France or Britain, which are nuclear-armed and rich but ultimately beholden to the United States, Turkey keeps ties with Washington, Beijing, Moscow, and Brussels while making clear it will do nobody's bidding, even as a NATO member since the early 1950s. ### How large and capable is Turkey's military today, and what is the Kaan? Turkey fields NATO's second-largest land army after the United States, with roughly 400,000 active-duty troops, the largest European NATO air force by aircraft numbers at just under 300 fixed-wing aircraft, and a navy of about 45,000 personnel focused on the Black Sea, eastern Mediterranean, and Bosporus. The Kaan is Turkey's indigenous fifth-generation stealth fighter, which first flew in 2024, with the first 20 copies wanted in service by 2028 and a total fleet of 100 planned. If successful, Turkey would become the first non-global power in half a century, and the world's first non-nuclear power, to field its own fifth-generation fighter. ### Why is Turkey's control of the Bosporus Strait such a powerful geopolitical lever? The Bosporus controls access to and from the Black Sea, meaning Russia depends on it to ship oil to China and India and to export coal and chemicals, while both Russia and Ukraine need it to export grain on which millions in developing nations depend. NATO members Bulgaria and Romania and the flashpoint of Georgia also rely on it. By simply throttling the strait against individual nations or factions, Turkey can trigger economic and energy crises, create simultaneous problems for NATO and its adversaries, and deter others from starting conflicts or interfering with its objectives. ### What is Turkey's drone-first military posture, and why does it signal strategic foresight? Turkey has invested heavily in unmanned systems across land, sea, air, and undersea environments, fielding combat-proven Bayraktar TB2, TB3, and Akinci drones and pursuing a mix of cheap mass-produced kamikaze drones and sophisticated loyal wingman designs. Rather than locking into a handful of designs, Turkey has directed research-and-development funding across as many directions as possible, on the understanding that some will excel, others fail, and all will need amendment as tactics evolve. Given Turkey's front-row seat to four years of drone warfare in Ukraine, this emphasis on attritional, cost-effective unmanned systems reflects an understanding of modern warfare that many other nations with the same vantage point have failed to match. ### What is the emerging Saudi-Pakistan-Turkey security arrangement, and why does it matter? In early 2026, Turkish officials leaked that Ankara was seeking to join a collective security pact between Saudi Arabia and Pakistan that was agreed after Israel's 2025 airstrike on Qatar, with Egypt also rumored to be interested. Such an arrangement would unite four powerful militaries, four powerful economies, and a combined population larger than the European Union. Each member views Israel as a troublesome actor needing containment, each mistrusts the UAE, and each maintains positive relations with both the US-led and Chinese-led spheres. Because Turkey has easily the most advanced military-industrial complex of the four, Pakistani, Saudi, and Egyptian investment could soon pour into Turkish defense industry. ## Sources 1. https://www.globalfirepower.com/country-military-strength-detail.php?country_id=turkey 2. https://www.aei.org/op-eds/is-turkeys-military-the-worlds-latest-paper-tiger/ 3. https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/content-series/ac-turkey-defense-journal/turkiye-and-the-russian-military-threat-to-nato/ 4. https://www.lesclesdumoyenorient.com/Turkiye-the-new-regional-power-in-Africa-3-3-A-military-presence-that-is-now.html 5. https://www.ft.com/content/1de61da8-2481-4371-a0cd-b24ffba8b210 6. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/3/17/heres-a-look-at-turkiyes-booming-defence-industry 7. https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/content-series/ac-turkey-defense-journal/turkeys-global-military-footprint-in-2022/ 8. https://nationalinterest.org/blog/silk-road-rivalries/turkeys-dangerous-defense-pivot 9. https://www.reuters.com/article/world/factbox-turkeys-armed-forces-idUSTRE79I5G2/ 10. https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/in-depth-research-reports/issue-brief/turkeys-emerging-and-disruptive-technologies-capacity-and-nato-defense-policy-prospects-and-limitations/ 11. https://www.csis.org/analysis/strategic-ambiguity-erdogans-turkey-multipolar-world 12. https://www.hoover.org/research/turkiye-and-west-between-geopolitical-risks-and-strategic-roots 13. https://www.brookings.edu/articles/turkey-managing-an-unfriendly-ally/ 14. https://ecfr.eu/article/no-easy-choices-how-europe-can-write-a-new-chapter-with-turkey/ 15. https://www.iiss.org/research-paper/2024/11/turkiyes-defence-industry-which-way-forward/ 16. https://www.iiss.org/online-analysis/military-balance/2025/01/turkiyes-defence-industry-charts-a-course-for-european-growth/ 17. https://www.rusi.org/explore-our-research/publications/rusi-newsbrief/turkey-rising-drone-power 18. https://www.rusi.org/explore-our-research/publications/commentary/russias-options-naval-basing-mediterranean-after-syrias-tartus 19. https://www.rusi.org/explore-our-research/publications/commentary/black-sea-significance-european-security 20. https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/turkish-firms-sign-65-bln-contracts-reinforce-steel-dome-air-defence-system-2025-11-26/ 21. https://apnews.com/article/steel-dome-erdogan-air-defense-5775dac0c3c8461478937bf32dccb398 22. https://nationalinterest.org/blog/middle-east-watch/turkeys-regional-power-push 23. https://www.foreignaffairs.com/turkey/turkeys-middle-power-dilemma 24. https://www.chathamhouse.org/2023/06/how-will-geopolitics-shape-turkeys-international-future 25. https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2018/6/5/why-turkeys-military-is-not-what-it-used-to-be 26. https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/turkeys-military-still-one-middle-easts-best-92816 27. https://www.iiss.org/globalassets/media-library---content--migration/files/research-papers/2024/11/trk-5/iiss_turkiyes-defence-industry-which-way-forward_13112024.pdf 28. https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/turkeysource/how-turkeys-strategic-ambiguity-became-an-advantage-in-a-multipolar-world/ 29. https://apnews.com/article/hamas-turkey-israel-threat-b9207ce3ca90e2364c68d1eedb20175f 30. https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/peace-prepare-war-how-turkey-sees-israel-attack-qatar 31. https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/pakistan-saudi-turkey-defence-deal-pipeline-pakistani-minister-says-2026-01-15/ 32. https://www.forbes.com/sites/guneyyildiz/2026/01/11/turkey-saudipakistan-pact-and-the-security-market-thats-replacing-old-certainties/ 33. https://theconversation.com/turkey-is-an-incredibly-powerful-broker-in-the-current-world-crisis-and-a-masterful-negotiator-253084 34. https://www.gmfus.org/news/long-view-turkish-russian-rivalry-and-cooperation 35. https://www.chathamhouse.org/2025/07/understanding-russias-black-sea-strategy/05-russia-turkey-competition-cooperation-and 36. https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/europpblog/2025/07/30/turkeys-adaptive-opportunist-diplomacy-with-russia-putin-erdogan/ 37. https://www.stimson.org/2026/turkey-israel-rivalry-in-the-new-syria/ 38. https://www.rusi.org/explore-our-research/publications/commentary/turkey-navigates-escalating-israel-iran-rivalry 39. https://www.wsj.com/world/middle-east/israel-clashes-with-u-s-over-turkey-qatar-involvement-in-gaza-oversight-8bfaf05b 40. https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20260109-israel-and-turkey-are-no-longer-feuding-allies-they-are-strategic-rivals/

How Ukraine Lost and Retook Snake Island

Simon Whistler — Tue, 02 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Lying just a few dozen kilometers from Odessa, tiny Snake Island appears an unprepossessing place — a mere speck of rock amid the waters of the Black Sea. Yet in the first six months of Russia's 2022 invasion of Ukraine, this barren outcrop featured at the heart of some of the war's biggest stories. It was here that Ukrainian defenders uttered the now-immortal line, "Russian warship, go f--k yourself." It was in the nearby sea that the cruiser Moskva was sunk while the ship was defending the island's airspace. And it was here that Ukraine scored one of its great propaganda victories, when Russian forces were eventually pressed into retreat and the yellow-and-blue flag was raised once again. Yet despite all the coverage, mysteries remain. With Russian equipment losses across the campaign estimated at close to $1 billion, why did Moscow expend so much materiel holding this lump of rock? And how did Snake Island come to occupy such an important place in both nations' narratives? This is the story of the Battle for Snake Island — and of how this tiny place came to have such an outsize impact on the war in the Black Sea. ## Key Takeaways - Snake Island, properly Zmiinyi Ostriv, is a roughly 0.2 km² (just under 50 acres) barren, flat outcrop sitting about 35 km from the coasts of both Ukraine and Romania, with no minable deposits, no fresh water, and — ironically — no snakes. - Its strategic value lies in position: 289 km from Crimea, it commands the sea lanes near Ukraine's grain-export ports of Odessa and Kherson, and whoever holds it influences the surface and air picture across southern Ukraine. - Russia seized the island on February 24, 2022, the first day of the invasion, after the cruiser Moskva radioed a surrender demand and border guard Roman Hrybov replied with the defiant phrase that became a national rallying cry. - The sinking of the Moskva on April 13, 2022 — the first Russian flagship lost in wartime in nearly 120 years — stripped Snake Island of its naval air-defense umbrella and exposed the garrison. - Ukraine's Turkish-made Bayraktar TB2 drones systematically destroyed Russian boats, helicopters, and the island's Tor air-defense system, while Danish-supplied Harpoon missiles made resupply suicidal. - Russia abandoned the island on June 30, 2022, calling it a "gesture of goodwill." Ukrainian special forces re-raised the flag on July 7 in a top-secret night operation before retreating under incoming fire. - Over five months, WarFronts estimates Russia lost almost $1 billion in equipment defending the island — the sunk Moskva, a destroyed helicopter, and multiple air-defense systems — plus incalculable leverage over Odessa. ## A Rock With a Sacred Reputation Although Snake Island only exploded into global consciousness following the 2022 invasion, the signs had been building for years that this unimpressive rock was a future flashpoint. In Russia, prominent ultra-nationalists such as Alexander Dugin had begun to wax lyrical about its "sacred geography" — a supposed mystical quality that allowed its owners to influence history. In the West, meanwhile, military analysts were already wargaming invasion scenarios and noting that Russian weapons stationed there could cut Ukrainian ships off from the Black Sea. People invested in the futures of both Ukraine and Russia were paying close attention to this island. Which raises the most basic question of all: what is it, really? The answer is: not much. At a mere 0.2 km², Snake Island is barren, flat, and historically useless. Sitting 35 km from the coasts of both Ukraine and Romania, it spent much of history being ignored. With no deposits to mine, no fresh water to sustain life, and nothing in the way of local wildlife — including snakes — there was simply no point in settling there. ## From Achilles' Shrine to Soviet Outpost That is not to say the island never drew human attention. Way back in ancient times, a shrine to Achilles stood there, and the rock occasionally hosted lighthouses built to guide ships into the Greek city of Olbia. In modern times, though, it was used mostly as a pawn for warring powers to trade. In the early 19th century, that meant the Ottoman Empire handing it to Imperial Russia. In 1878, it meant the newly created Kingdom of Romania taking ownership — an arrangement that lasted, technically, right up to 1948. In reality, the Second World War saw the USSR chase away the Romanian garrison and establish its own control over Snake Island. This history is likely why ultra-nationalists like Dugin venerate the place. The Soviets used their wartime occupation to dominate the northwest Black Sea, thereby linking the island to Russia's patriotic war narrative. Still, that bond did not stop the island from following Kyiv out of the USSR's collapse in 1991 — not that newly independent Ukraine had much use for it. ## How a Useless Island Became a Flashpoint The only real advantage Snake Island conferred on Ukraine was to extend the country's exclusive economic zone further into waters known to be rich in undersea oil and gas deposits. That alone was enough to make it contested: in the early 2000s, neighboring Romania tried to have the outcrop reclassified as a mere "rock," and therefore too small for any nation to lay claim to the surrounding seabed. Then came 2014, and Russia's illegal annexation of Crimea. A mere 289 km from the stolen peninsula, Snake Island suddenly became both an advantage to Kyiv and a major vulnerability. It was an advantage because it could be used as an outpost for monitoring Russian activity in Crimea, complete with a radar station and air-defense systems. It was a vulnerability because it now represented the key to keeping Ukraine's ports open. Ukraine is a major exporter of grain, most of it shipped via the Black Sea. Among the most important ports are Odessa and Kherson — ports that require vessels to pass near Snake Island to reach the open sea. That geography prompted Western analysts to warn that Russia might one day try to seize the island. It also prompted a 2021 visit by President Volodymyr Zelensky, who declared: "This island, like the rest of our territory, is Ukrainian land, and we will defend it with all our might." Little could the former comedian have known that Moscow would soon put his promise to the test. ## "Russian Warship, Go F--k Yourself" Despite Zelensky's fighting words, the size of the garrison actually stationed on Snake Island revealed how Kyiv truly felt about defending it. As the sun set on the tense evening of February 23, 2022 — with war now mere hours away — the island was held by fewer than 100 people. The likely reason is that no one realistically expected the garrison to repel an attack. Well within range of fighter jets launched from Crimea, the island was predicted to fall within hours of any conflict starting. That is exactly what happened. At 5 a.m. on February 24, Vladimir Putin appeared on television to announce a "special military operation" against Kyiv — a euphemism for a mad, imperial war of conquest. Minutes after he finished speaking, missiles struck Ukrainian cities. At the borders, Russian tanks, trucks, and helicopters poured across in an all-out assault. On Snake Island itself, all the guards could do was wait for the inevitable. That afternoon, a giant appeared on the horizon. The Russian Black Sea Fleet's flagship cruiser, Moskva, was approaching, backed by the patrol ship Vasily Bykov. The pair was to provide cover while the 810th Independent Marine Guards Brigade overran the island, which had already been hit with airstrikes. As far as anyone can tell, taking it was considered a small, formal step in Russia's larger plan to stage a landing at Odessa. ## A Surrender, a Legend, and the Truth Between Them As the Moskva closed in, it sent the Ukrainian garrison a blunt message: "I suggest you lay down your weapons and surrender to avoid bloodshed and needless casualties. Otherwise, you will be bombed." In response, 31-year-old Ukrainian border guard Roman Hrybov took the radio and declared: "Russian warship, go f--k yourself." It became not just a meme but a catchphrase, a motto, a slogan — one that showcased Ukraine's defiance in the face of an overwhelming enemy. That defiance is all the more remarkable given that Hrybov subsequently surrendered. Despite initial reports that all of Snake Island's border guards had been killed flipping the Moskva the bird, it later emerged that 82 of them had agreed to lay down their arms — a fact that came to light only after they had been posthumously declared Heroes of Ukraine. Nobody could accuse them of cowardice. Hrybov later described his time as a prisoner of war, and the border guards plainly suffered for their defiance. Initially held in a tent encampment through the bitter Ukrainian winter, the men were subjected to cruel psychological games. At one point, their Russian captors tied nooses around their necks so tight that some could barely breathe, then drove them into the countryside, leaving Hrybov certain they would be executed. "We were treated worse than dogs," he later said. Thankfully, none of his jailers knew exactly who had told the Moskva to do unspeakable things to its own backside; had they known, his captivity would likely have been worse. In the end, Hrybov was freed alongside some of the other border guards in a prisoner swap. By then, his words were famous. It is remarkable that the last stand on Snake Island became such a powerful piece of propaganda. After all, it was a failure: Russia seized the island on the first day of the invasion, and this was no Ukrainian Alamo — the defenders surrendered and were captured. Yet, like other noble failures before it, such as Dunkirk, that evening went down in legend, not as the tale of a minor Ukrainian defeat but as a symbol of defiance in the face of Putin's war machine. Now Kyiv just needed to win the island back. ## Eating a Porcupine With the island in their possession, the invading Russian force set about turning it into a fortress bristling with weapons. That meant installing powerful Tor and Pantsir air-defense systems to knock down Ukrainian counterattacks, capable of swatting drones and planes from the sky with ease. It also meant keeping the Moskva close. Sending a massive warship to take one tiny island was always overkill, but the Moskva continued to patrol the waters near Snake Island, adding its own air-defense umbrella. And what an umbrella it was. Armed with an S-300F missile system, the ship was essentially a floating double battery, lurking 55 km offshore and providing cover not just to Snake Island but to the other ships gathering in the area. With the Moskva's protection, there was little chance of Ukraine's drones damaging any Russian vessel — and that effectively handed Putin control of the northwest Black Sea. As Ukraine's defense intelligence chief despairingly noted, whoever controlled Snake Island controlled "the surface and to some extent the air situation in southern Ukraine." For Russia, that meant the ability to enforce a blockade, strangling the Ukrainian economy and sowing chaos in the world's grain markets. ## Odessa on the Menu The blockade was not projected to last long. From the moment Snake Island fell, Russian forces began preparing for a landing at Odessa — one they believed would see the port city quickly capitulate. These were still the early days of the war, when the world assumed the armored column driving toward Kyiv would force the city's surrender rather than become target practice for Ukraine's forces, and when it was still taken for granted that Russia would overrun the entire country. In the northwest Black Sea theater, that meant Odessa was next on the menu. Ropucha-class landing ships soon appeared near Snake Island, and Admiral Grigorovich-class frigates began patrolling the Odessa shore. Exercises were undertaken in preparation for an assault — one the Ukrainians could do little about. The Ukrainian Navy had been unimpressive even at the outset of war. Now it was mostly lying on the seabed, either sunk or deliberately scuttled. The only card left to play was to mine the waters around Odessa. That gamble paid off in the sense that the anticipated Russian landing never came, but it did not solve the fundamental problem of the blockade. Worse, intelligence indicated that Russia would soon install a long-range S-400 air-defense system on Snake Island — one that could command the skies over Ukraine's entire southern coast. In short, it was a desperate situation. ## A Spectacular Russian Error Luckily for Ukraine, it was a situation in which Russia had already made a spectacular error. The Moskva's role in taking Snake Island was overkill: here was a massive cruiser designed to destroy aircraft carriers 1,000 km away with P-1000 Vulkan anti-ship missiles, instead slumming it offshore and being sworn at by border guards. But "overkill" was not the only way to describe the cruiser's presence. It was also an unnecessary risk. On March 24, Ukraine penetrated Russia's air defenses and blew up the smaller ship Orsk while it lay in port in the occupied city of Berdyansk. At the time, it was Russia's biggest naval loss in decades and a serious embarrassment. Rather than respond by keeping their expensive warships farther from Ukrainian lines, Russian commanders apparently dismissed the threat entirely. With nothing in Ukraine's arsenal thought capable of taking down the flagship, the Moskva was allowed to keep patrolling near Snake Island — as confident in its invulnerability as a bristling porcupine. But when the wolves are desperate enough, even porcupines can become prey. ## Death From Above On May 27, 1905, Japanese torpedo boats did the unthinkable. During the Battle of Tsushima, they sank the Knyaz Suvorov, the flagship of Imperial Russia's Second Pacific Squadron. That afternoon marked the last time a Russian flagship was sunk in wartime for a very long time — until April 13, 2022, the day Ukraine at last managed to destroy the Moskva. The precise details remain sketchy. Russia insisted that a storm at sea and a fire combined to cause a horrific accident, an explanation so implausible that Moscow might as well have blamed the sinking on witches. The genuine controversy is whether Ukraine, as Kyiv claimed, hit the warship with its own Neptune anti-ship missiles, or whether longer-range Western weapons were used. Either way, the result was the same. The Moskva went under the waves — the biggest Russian naval loss since the Second World War, and the country's first flagship sunk in wartime in nearly 120 years. With her went an unknown number of sailors, possibly as few as one and possibly as many as 250, along with something else: the navy's sense of invulnerability. The destruction generated a tsunami of memes, but it also forced a change in naval strategy, as the Black Sea Fleet pulled away from Ukraine's coastline and back toward the safety of Crimea. That meant the Moskva's air-defense umbrella was never replaced, and the Russian garrison on Snake Island would have to rely on its own anti-aircraft systems. ## Enter the Bayraktar TB2 In theory, that should have been fine. The Tor system the garrison had — also known as the SA-15 "Gauntlet" — was famous as a drone killer. Or, at least, it had been. Ukraine was about to challenge that reputation with one of its newest weapons: the Bayraktar TB2. Made by Turkey, the TB2 falls into the category of Medium Altitude, Long Endurance drones, with the slightly odd abbreviation MALE. Effectively an attempt to do for Turkey's UAV industry what the MQ-9 Reaper did for America's, the Bayraktar is less sophisticated than its American counterpart. It is slow-moving, with a smallish payload, and lacks much of the Reaper's advanced communications software. What it does have is an excellent combat track record. While the US has mostly used its drones to target militants — and, on occasion, to accidentally bomb weddings — Turkey's have been deployed to serious warzones. Ankara sent them after Kurds in Syria and used them to harass Russian air-defense systems in Libya, where Moscow was backing a rival warlord. Most strikingly, TB2s helped Azerbaijan win the 2020 Nagorno-Karabakh War against Armenia as decisively as could be imagined. Ukraine clearly had high hopes when it signed an agreement with Turkey to produce 48 of the drones, deploying the first in combat against Russian-backed separatists in the Donbas in October 2021. Even so, nobody anticipated how decisive they would prove in the Battle for Snake Island. ## Plucking the Garrison Equipped with anti-jamming gear and armed with lightweight MAM-C smart micro-munitions capable of traveling 8 km, TB2s were soon buzzing over the Black Sea. Their first strike came on May 2, 2022, when missiles slammed into a pair of Raptor-class boats near the island, destroying them both. The twin strike was another embarrassment for the Russian Navy and a warning that its air-defense systems were not up to the task of replacing the Moskva's powerful umbrella. It seems likely that the Russians simply assumed this was another fluke — another infuriating instance of Ukraine getting lucky. It was only after four more days had passed that the Snake Island garrison realized how exposed it was. On May 6, TB2s struck the island itself, obliterating the Tor air-defense system, the very weapon supposedly excellent at taking down drones. Suddenly, Russian forces on the island were unprotected. They were not just sitting ducks but ducks that had plucked themselves, seasoned their own skin, and climbed into the oven. Now all the Ukrainians had to do was turn up the temperature. ## The Battle for Snake Island With the island's air defenses knocked out, the central challenge was stopping Russia from simply installing replacements. Ukraine's TB2s proved spectacularly successful at this. Now effectively free to operate as they pleased, the drones hovered over the waters out of sight, striking only when assured of maximum damage. On May 7, that meant waiting until a boat carrying a new SA-15 was on the island's only landing ramp before blowing it to smithereens, leaving a burning wreck blocking the sole unloading point. On May 8, it meant striking a Russian helicopter in the midst of unloading troops, causing not just material damage but panic among the survivors. For the best part of a week, Ukraine softened the island's defenses this way, tormenting the occupying force and refusing it a moment's respite. As TB2s sank assault boats and resupply craft, Su-27 fighter jets bombed the buildings on the island, exploiting the undefended skies to obliterate all possible shelter. Yet that week ended not with a Russian retreat but with a new air-defense system finally being installed. By May 12, the Russian Navy had cleared the destroyed boat from the landing ramp and managed to rearm Snake Island. For all of Ukraine's successes, the situation was almost back to where it had been the day after the Moskva sank. ## A Garrison That Could Not Be Held This was far from a Russian victory. In reinforcing Snake Island, Moscow had lost swathes of materiel — and for what? With the Moskva gone and no other warship taking over its role, the garrison remained highly vulnerable. It is tempting to assume there was a practical reason for persisting, but the math does not add up. While holding the island meant choking off the Odessa port, Russia had other options for maintaining a blockade, and with the island now so hard to defend, the cost of keeping a presence there far outweighed the benefit. Perhaps the navy was simply too proud to abandon something captured from an enemy it deemed inferior. Perhaps the leadership in Moscow was too enamored of the island's "sacred geography." Certainly, there was no sign in late May and early June that a retreat was on the cards. Pro-Kremlin media spent those days pumping out domestic propaganda calling Snake Island vital to the war effort, and government-aligned military experts gave interviews claiming that pro-Moscow rebels in Transnistria could be overrun by NATO forces if the island fell to Ukraine. In the end, the decision on retreat would not be Putin's to make. It would be decided more than 1,500 km away, in Copenhagen. ## The Harpoon Changes the Math Around the same time Ukraine's Turkish-made drones were making mincemeat of the island's air defenses, Denmark was signing an agreement to supply Kyiv with Harpoon anti-ship missiles. Capable of traveling farther and more accurately than Neptunes, they would make Snake Island more vulnerable than ever — something the Ukrainians were only too happy to demonstrate. The Harpoon systems arrived around mid-June. On the 17th, two missiles were used to annihilate the Russian Navy vessel Vasiliy Bekh as it approached the island. The destruction of the Vasiliy Bekh changed the calculation in ways even the sinking of the Moskva had not. Beforehand, Snake Island had merely been dangerous to resupply. Now, the act of getting ships there crossed the line from "extremely risky" to "actively suicidal." As drones menaced the island's defenses and Harpoon missiles thudded into supply boats, the Kremlin appears to have finally stopped believing its own propaganda. Shortly before the end of the month, the messaging explaining the necessity of holding the rock disappeared from Russian media. On June 30, the Russian garrison likewise vanished from the island. Moscow naturally tried to spin it, claiming Snake Island had been abandoned as a "gesture of goodwill" — but even this cynical lie could not hide the truth. Ukraine had won. Snake Island could at last be recaptured. ## Re-Raising the Flag Recapture proved easier said than done. After the last Russian troops left the burnt and blasted island, there was a week of emptiness — seven days of stillness in which the only movement came from grass twisting in the breeze and waves lapping at the scorched landing ramp. Peaceful as it was, it represented a problem for Kyiv. Russia had retreated, but its warships still patrolled the nearby waters, and Snake Island remained without adequate air defenses. Were the Ukrainians to reoccupy the site, they would find themselves stuck in the very position the Russians had been in: sitting ducks, waiting to be bombed. So the decision was made simply to keep the island abandoned — to focus on denying it to Putin rather than setting up a whole new garrison like the one that existed before the war. Yet the Ukrainian side also knew this alone would not be enough. Some symbolic act was needed to confirm that the island was back in their hands. That is how the top-secret operation to re-raise the flag over Zmiinyi Ostriv was born. For a mission with no purpose beyond propaganda, it was remarkably difficult to pull off. Knowing Russia would drop missiles on any units that went ashore, Ukraine's 73rd Naval Special Purpose Center had to do nearly everything under cover of darkness. The elite of the navy's elite, the Special Purpose Center — Ukraine's Spetsnaz — is essentially Kyiv's version of America's Navy SEALs: the operators called in for the highly dangerous, highly specialized work no one else can do. ## July 7: A Flag, and a Hasty Retreat On July 7, 2022, the operation meant crossing dozens of kilometers to Snake Island on underwater vehicles, moving carefully in case the Russians had mined the waters as a parting gift. With the special forces traveled combat engineers of the 59th Separate Motorized Infantry Brigade, who had perhaps the most terrifying job of all: going ashore and disabling any booby traps. It was an intense operation that began at night and concluded only when the sun was already high in the sky. It was also a success. That day, soldiers from the Special Purpose Center were photographed raising the Ukrainian flag over Snake Island for the first time since February 24. Taken from the air, the image was not quite as spectacular as that of US Marines raising the flag at Iwo Jima, but it carried as much meaning. Here, at last, was evidence that the island belonged once again to Kyiv, that Russia's forces had been driven out and the occupation ended. The visit could not last long. Even as they raised the flag, the soldiers were alerted to incoming Russian warships. Rather than linger, the Ukrainians retreated. As they entered the water, Russian missiles slammed into the pier, and it was only through sheer luck that the special forces returned to shore unscathed. ## The Cost of a Speck of Rock In the months since that moment, Snake Island has remained roughly where it was after the Russian retreat: back in Ukraine's hands, but too dangerous to garrison again. In one sense, that makes its recapture look like a minor victory — a small island denied to a country that already controls the much larger Crimea. But that framing misses the point. In the five months it held Snake Island, Russia lost almost $1 billion's worth of equipment: the sunk Moskva, a destroyed helicopter, and multiple knocked-out air-defense systems. That is a staggering sum, and it does not even include the soldiers killed and wounded in Ukrainian drone strikes, nor the incalculable leverage lost over Odessa. Like so much of Russia's war of aggression, the Battle for Snake Island shows how overconfidence and a lack of preparation can turn even the easiest victory into a costly defeat. Had you told a military analyst on February 23, 2022 that Moscow would not even be able to hold Snake Island in an all-out conflict, you would have been dismissed as hopelessly naive. And yet, here we are. The war is far from over, and it is not inconceivable that Russia could retake this speck of rock at some future point. For now, though, that looks unlikely — and for that, the wider world can be grateful. It may be one tiny piece of territory in a much larger conflict, but Snake Island has become a symbol of everything that has happened so far: of Russian blunders and Ukrainian heroism, of a Slavic David giving Goliath a well-deserved bloody nose. ## Frequently Asked Questions ### How big is Snake Island and why does it matter strategically? Snake Island, or Zmiinyi Ostriv, covers a mere 0.2 km² — just under 50 acres — of barren, flat rock about 35 km from the coasts of both Ukraine and Romania. It has no deposits to mine and no fresh water. Its importance is purely positional: it sits 289 km from Crimea near the sea lanes ships must use to reach Ukraine's grain-export ports of Odessa and Kherson, making it both a monitoring outpost and a chokepoint for keeping those ports open. ### Who said "Russian warship, go f--k yourself," and what happened to him? The line was spoken by 31-year-old Ukrainian border guard Roman Hrybov on February 24, 2022, in response to a surrender demand radioed from the cruiser Moskva. Hrybov and 82 fellow defenders subsequently surrendered and were taken prisoner. Held through the bitter winter and subjected to cruel psychological abuse — at one point with nooses tied around their necks — they were initially declared posthumous Heroes of Ukraine before it emerged they were alive. Hrybov was eventually freed in a prisoner swap. ### When and how was the cruiser Moskva sunk? The Moskva was destroyed on April 13, 2022, making it the first Russian flagship sunk in wartime in nearly 120 years. Russia claimed a storm and an onboard fire caused an accidental detonation, but Ukraine said it struck the warship with Neptune anti-ship missiles; some accounts suggest longer-range Western weapons may have been involved. Its loss removed the air-defense umbrella that had protected the Snake Island garrison. ### What role did the Bayraktar TB2 drone play in the battle? The Turkish-made Bayraktar TB2, a Medium Altitude, Long Endurance drone armed with MAM-C smart micro-munitions, proved decisive. On May 2, TB2s destroyed two Raptor-class boats near the island; on May 6, they obliterated the garrison's Tor air-defense system. The drones then picked off resupply boats and a troop-carrying helicopter, effectively stripping the island of protection and making Russian reinforcement suicidal. ### How did Ukraine ultimately reclaim the island? Russia abandoned the island on June 30, 2022, calling it a "gesture of goodwill." Ukraine chose not to re-garrison it, judging any permanent force too vulnerable. Instead, on July 7, operators of the 73rd Naval Special Purpose Center, supported by combat engineers of the 59th Separate Motorized Infantry Brigade, crossed by underwater vehicle at night, raised the Ukrainian flag, photographed the moment, and then withdrew under incoming Russian missile fire. ## Sources - CNN, overview of Snake Island: https://edition.cnn.com/2022/05/13/europe/snake-island-ukraine-strategic-war-cmd-intl/index.html - The Insider, detailed overview: https://theins.ru/en/politics/252850 - BBC, why Russia retreated: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-61992491 - Profile of the border guard behind "Russian warship, go f--k yourself": https://english.nv.ua/nation/ukraine-border-guard-speaks-of-capture-on-snake-island-by-russia-warship-50239636.html - Turkish drones — effect on Snake Island: https://www.navalnews.com/naval-news/2022/05/surprising-success-of-ukraines-bayraktar-tb2-the-ghost-of-snake-island/ - First aerial kill of the drones: https://www.overtdefense.com/2022/05/10/ukrainian-tb2-destroys-russian-mi-8-helicopter-on-snake-island-in-first-reported-aerial-kill/ - How the tide was turned at Snake Island: https://www.navalnews.com/naval-news/2022/07/how-ukraine-is-turning-the-tide-against-russian-navy-in-black-sea/ - How Ukrainian special forces replanted their flag: https://www.navalnews.com/naval-news/2022/07/ukrainian-navy-special-forces-spearhead-daring-snake-island-mission/ - Classical history of Snake Island: https://classicalstudies.org/scs-blog/christopher-stedman-parmenter/blog-you-will-never-visit-snake-island

Hungary's 2026 Election: Why a Contested Vote Could Fracture NATO

Simon Whistler — Tue, 02 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

This Sunday, the Central European nation of Hungary goes to the polls in what promises to be one of the most consequential elections in the country's modern history. At the head of the ruling Fidesz Party is Viktor Orban, who has led Hungary as Prime Minister continuously since 2010. His principal rival, Peter Magyar of the Tisza Party, appears to be the toughest challenge Orban has ever faced. The race has been plagued by an almost incomprehensible volume of political scandals, constant allegations of foreign interference, and so much external pressure from Europe, Russia, and the wider world that it is a wonder Hungarian voters have not already had a collective nervous breakdown. Looming above the contest is the most dangerous prospect of all: that the outcome on Sunday, and specifically a victory by Peter Magyar, could be the final nail in the coffin for Europe's most important alliance. The United States has taken a keen interest in the Hungarian vote, as the hard-right Trump administration seeks to protect a European leader who has been both a critical ally and an example that America's MAGA movement has followed for a decade. Both sides clearly understand the stakes, and outside observers agree that, no matter who wins, a peaceful transfer of power is far from guaranteed. When Hungary goes to the polls this weekend, the result will not just determine the country's future. It will set the stage for a showdown that could tear the NATO alliance to shreds. ## Key Takeaways - Hungary votes this Sunday in a 2026 election that both Orban's Fidesz and Magyar's Tisza describe as existential, with the pollster Medián showing Tisza on track for a two-thirds parliamentary majority while Fidesz could win, at best, a bit over a quarter of available seats. - Viktor Orban has governed continuously since 2010, plus an earlier stint from 1998 to 2002, and faces accusations of democratic backsliding, judicial weakening, cronyism, and what he himself calls "illiberal democracy." - Peter Magyar, a conservative who broke from Orban's party in 2024 over a children's home scandal that implicated the Hungarian President, turned the small Tisza party into an electoral powerhouse. - A cascade of recent Russia-linked scandals has hit Orban's government, including Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto's backchannel briefings to Sergei Lavrov, an alleged false-flag pipeline plot, and a leaked Orban-Putin call. - The Trump administration has thrown its weight behind Orban, with Vice President JD Vance visiting Budapest days before the vote and Trump praising Orban by phone at a rally. - Analysts at CSIS and Politico have mapped multiple post-election scenarios, ranging from "flooding the zone" to a "Maidan-style uprising" to Orban ruling as an outside puppeteer even in defeat. - A contested result could collide with an already strained transatlantic relationship, potentially pushing US-NATO tensions past the point of reconciliation. ## A Vote Like No Other It is worth pausing to measure the stakes against the most consequential votes living audiences have personally witnessed. American readers might think back to Donald Trump's shock victory in 2016, or the 2000 contest between George W. Bush and Al Gore decided by a mere 537 votes. British observers will recall Brexit; Brazilians, Lula versus Bolsonaro in 2022; Indians, Modi's landslide in 2014; Ukrainians, the 2004 Orange Revolution; and Turkish viewers, the 2018 election that cleared the way for President Erdogan. Now take the bitterness, partisanship, vitriol, and muckraking of whichever election comes to mind, multiply it by a factor of ten, and you begin to approach the political environment in Hungary today. This is not a routine European election. It is a referendum on two irreconcilable visions of what Hungary is and where it belongs, conducted under intense scrutiny from capitals far beyond Budapest. ## The Orban Era History matters enormously here. Across his cumulative two decades in power, Orban has become one of the most divisive figures in all of European politics. His opponents at home and his critics abroad accuse him of consistent democratic backsliding: weakening the Hungarian judiciary, clearing the way for corruption and cronyism, and constructing what Orban himself proudly describes as "illiberal democracy." His supporters tell a different story. They credit him with persistent economic growth across his tenure, a fierce defense of Hungarian sovereignty against European meddling, and a staunch conservatism on both religious and social grounds. He has become an inspiration for a new generation of far-right leaders across Europe and North America. Critically, after a slow and steady expansion of control over Hungarian media, Orban's supporters now inhabit an information environment that is almost completely distinct from that of his critics. The structural advantages run deeper still: after redrawing voter districts, experts estimate that an opposition party would have to beat Orban by at least three to six percentage points in the popular vote just to secure a parliamentary majority, according to The Economist. ## Peter Magyar and the Rise of Tisza Yet Orban's domestic opponents have never been stronger than they are right now. His main challenger, Peter Magyar, is far from an ideological opposite to Orban. He is a conservative figure in his own right, critical of Europe in many ways. Instead of running on ideology, his campaign is built entirely around the corruption and rot of the Orban era, and he is making that argument at a moment when Hungary's corruption problem has become impossible to ignore. In 2024, Magyar left Orban's party and resigned his post in protest after a major scandal at a state-run children's home implicated Hungary's President, a key Orban ally. He then took over what had been a small political party, Tisza, and turned it into an electoral powerhouse. Unlike Orban's previous challengers, who were generally establishment insiders carrying their own electoral baggage, Magyar is young, dynamic, credible, and a genuine force on the campaign trail. Though socially moderate, he has positioned himself as a direct opposite to Orban on matters of policy and has promised to take the nation in a completely different direction if elected. ## An Existential Showdown Both sides can agree on precisely one thing: Hungary's 2026 election is existential. According to Orban and his supporters, a Magyar victory would mean Hungary's absorption into the globalist, anti-nationalist, liberal European Union, with Hungarian national identity, national values, and national pride all undone. According to Magyar and his supporters, an Orban victory would be a catastrophe in which the Prime Minister's corruption becomes entrenched, Hungary completes its final transformation into an authoritarian mafia state, and the nation ends up more akin to Belarus than to any European democracy. But high stakes alone do not make a real showdown. A showdown happens when both sides have a credible path to power. Although they are the outside opposition, Magyar's Tisza is leading the polls by a wide margin; this week, the pollster Medián found Tisza on track to win a two-thirds majority in parliament, with Fidesz positioned to win, at best, a bit over a quarter of available seats. Orban, however, holds the institutions of the state and of the Hungarian elite. He has the media, the local political infrastructure, the security services, the judiciary, and the military. That asymmetry, between a popular challenger and an entrenched incumbent who controls the machinery of governance, is precisely what makes a clean outcome so uncertain. ## A Cascade of Russia-Linked Scandals Unfortunately for Orban, he has one more asset in abundance: scandal. The controversies plaguing his government could fill an episode of their own, so consider only a narrow subset: scandals that surfaced within the past month, and only those involving Russia. Start with Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto, who admitted this March, after a Washington Post report, that he had made a habit of contacting Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov before and after sensitive EU meetings on foreign affairs. According to the Post, Szijjarto provided Lavrov with regular, in-depth reports on EU discussions that were supposed to be confidential and were often about Moscow itself. In April, Hungarian investigative outlets obtained leaked recordings of one such call, in which Szijjarto leaves a 2023 EU summit, during Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine, to brief Lavrov, who responds with advice: "sometimes good-willed direct blackmailing is the best option." Nor was that Szijjarto's only entanglement. He apparently offered to provide direct support to Iran through the Hungarian secret service after Israel's 2024 attack on Hezbollah using explosive devices concealed in pagers. A Hungarian company had reportedly been licensed to manufacture those pagers, though Szijjarto claimed otherwise in a call with Iranian leadership. ## The False-Flag Plot On March 21, a separate Washington Post report carried an even more alarming claim: that Russian intelligence was considering "the staging of an assassination attempt on Viktor Orban" to drum up support for the embattled Prime Minister. The claim came from a leaked internal Russian intelligence report, supposedly authenticated by a European intelligence agency, and was intended to "shift the perception of the campaign out of the rational realm of socioeconomic questions into an emotional one, where the key themes will become state security and the stability and defense of the political system." After the report surfaced, the Hungarian opposition began sounding the alarm about a possible staged, false-flag attack to boost Orban's chances. Then, just a couple of weeks later, an apparent false-flag attack really did take place, though not in the form predicted. Instead of an assassination attempt, Orban alleged that "explosives of devastating power" had been found near a pipeline carrying Russian natural gas to Hungary. He said one of his key allies, Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic, had warned him of the attack. Since February, Orban had been claiming that Ukraine was plotting to disrupt Hungary's energy system, part of a much larger feud with Kyiv. With the stage set to pin a sabotage attack on Ukraine, the implication seemed obvious. But the episode ended strangely: the day after the explosives were found, the leader of Serbia's counterintelligence service stated that Ukraine was not behind the plot. Whether that was part of the plan or represented Serbian military leadership going off-script is difficult to say. It is also possible Orban realized that staging a false-flag attack, after the world was already expecting one, may not have been the wisest move. ## The Putin Phone Call There is one more scandal worth noting, this time via Bloomberg News. On Tuesday, Bloomberg reported on a phone call between Orban and Vladimir Putin, catalogued in a transcript held by the Hungarian government. During that call, Orban did not just offer Hungary's help to Putin "in any matter where I can be of assistance." In a particular blow to his nationalist messaging and his self-styled status as an avatar of Hungarian national pride, Orban drew a direct comparison to Aesop's Fables, suggesting Hungary could be the "mouse" helping a Russian "lion." For a leader who has built his brand on sovereignty and national dignity, the optics of casting his country as a small creature serving a Russian predator could hardly be worse. Whoever is running opposition research for Peter Magyar has had a remarkably productive month. ## The Western Right Rallies Even as Orban's controversies dragged him down, the European and North American right wing worked to prop him up, adding another layer of international intrigue. In late March, at Hungary's version of America's Conservative Political Action Conference, Orban was surrounded by a who's-who of the European right: Marine Le Pen of France, Geert Wilders of the Netherlands, Santiago Abascal of Spain, Matteo Salvini of Italy, and several others. This week, just days before the election, Orban welcomed American Vice President JD Vance, who spent the trip lambasting the European Union, accusing it of interfering in Hungary's election, and throwing the full support of America's MAGA movement behind Orban and his allies. Vance even got Donald Trump on the phone to express his support during a rally. "I love that Viktor," Trump said. "I'll tell you, he's a fantastic man, we've had a tremendous relationship. Remember this, he didn't allow people to storm your country and invade your country, like other people have, and ruin their countries. He's kept your country good. He's kept Hungarian people in your country, and he's done a fantastic job." ## Collision Course By now the trajectory is clear. Orban controls Hungarian institutions of power that he has made subservient to his personal and political will. He has the clear backing of Russia and appears willing to play dirty, with Russia's help, to retain power. He also enjoys the transatlantic support of a very powerful ally in Washington, led by an administration especially sympathetic to allegations of electoral theft and manipulation by liberal rivals, even if calling Orban's opponents liberal is a stretch. What Orban does not have, at least on paper, is the support required to win. If the polls are accurate, it is Magyar and Tisza who are set to win in a landslide, with their lead widening as election day approaches. Both sides accuse the other of foreign interference, both inhabit media environments unrecognizable from the other's perspective, and given Orban's closeness to figures like Putin and Vucic, who are known to put a finger on the scales when it suits them, there is an implicit expectation that Orban might do the same. He has long been accused of vote-buying and other electoral manipulation, and in 2022 he won a two-thirds supermajority despite an opposition coalition that had seemed to have a real shot. All signs point to a contested result in which the losing party, whoever it is, disputes the outcome. If Orban loses, he and his party will likely claim Europe rigged the vote for Magyar, echoing allegations Vance has already made this week, and insist that loyal, proud Hungarians were targeted by a globalist plot, using instruments of state power to support those claims while they remain under his control. If Magyar loses, his argument will be simpler: look at the polls. How could he have held a commanding, expanding lead only to lose an election overseen by an authoritarian, corrupt rival? Compounding the danger, both sides have assembled teams of Hungarian and international vote-monitoring organizations, each of which will be accused by the other of fabricating observations to favor a preferred candidate. ## Four Scenarios, and a Fifth In an analysis published last week, the Center for Strategic and International Studies laid out four ways the election could unfold, two of which amount to more than "the winner wins and the loser concedes." In the third scenario, the vote is close enough that it cannot be called by the end of election day, and then, in CSIS's words, "Orban and his allies flood the zone." Orban spreads narratives that a Fidesz victory is likely, claims irregularities, leverages emergency powers, and either controls the vote count or lays the groundwork to annul the entire election. The United States and Russia each weigh in on Orban's side. The fourth scenario is worse still: both sides claim victory, the results are disputed in their entirety, Orban accuses Europe or Ukraine of interfering, Magyar relies on public outrage to advance his cause, Orban initiates crackdowns, and "a Maidan-style uprising unfolds in the streets of Budapest." In a separate analysis, Politico identified a fifth possibility. Using Hungary's existing governmental mechanisms to retain power, Orban concedes the election but relies on loyalists in key positions to run the government as an outside puppeteer, thwarting Magyar despite the result. Orban's allies control the indirectly elected post of President, the Constitutional Court, the public prosecutor, the Fiscal Council overseeing the national budget, and the Hungarian national bank. Depending on the outcome, Orban could even be installed as President by friendly parliamentarians, potentially transforming Hungary from a nation led by its premier into a nation led by Viktor Orban regardless of the title he holds. ## When Hungary's Crisis Goes Continental It is in any of these contested scenarios that Hungary's problems risk going continental. The election arrives at a very difficult moment for the transatlantic relationship, especially the NATO alliance. On Wednesday, as Vance continued his visit to Hungary, Trump hosted NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte at the White House and once again floated the possibility that the US could soon leave NATO. In reality, Trump cannot do that without two-thirds support from the Senate or an Act of Congress, ironically due to a resolution his own Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, put forward in 2023. But Trump has other ways to pull the US out of the alliance in practice, by refusing to engage with it, withdrawing key protections for NATO members, and more. From NATO's defense spending, to its support for Ukraine, to the recent standoff over Greenland, Trump's relationship with the bloc has been consistently adversarial. A showdown over Hungary's election might finally be a bridge too far for Trump and his NATO allies to reconcile. Trump and his administration are staunch supporters of Orban, openly opposed to the spread of left-of-center politics in Europe, and Trump still openly acknowledges old wounds from America's 2020 election, which he claims was stolen from him. Conversely, most NATO members are also EU members, and in both blocs those European governments have been deeply frustrated with Orban for years. As of writing, Orban and his allies have yet to produce evidence that EU nations are trying to influence the vote, but the allegations have already been made, most recently by Trump's own right-hand man. Add Trump's other known sore spots, from his sensitivity to election-related allegations toward Putin, to his business connections in Hungary and Serbia, to his desire to shift focus away from the conflict in the Middle East, and a disputed Hungarian election this weekend could be the perfect storm for US-NATO tensions to finally come to a head. ## The Hope for a Clean Result There is also a good chance that Hungary's election resolves peacefully and decisively in either direction, with no need for a crisis in Hungary or across NATO. Despite the distractions of European and global geopolitics, and despite the vitriol flying in all directions, this is fundamentally a vote, and the will of the Hungarian people must be respected no matter which way the tally ultimately falls. We may not be confident that is what will happen. But we certainly hope it does. ## Frequently Asked Questions ### Who is Peter Magyar and how did he build Tisza into an electoral force? Magyar is a conservative who broke from Orban's party in 2024, resigning his post in protest after a scandal at a state-run children's home implicated Hungary's President, a key Orban ally. He took over the small Tisza party and turned it into an electoral powerhouse, running entirely on the corruption of the Orban era rather than on ideology. The pollster Medián found Tisza on track for a two-thirds parliamentary majority, with Fidesz positioned to win, at best, a bit over a quarter of available seats. ### What are the Russia-linked scandals that have damaged Orban's government? Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto admitted briefing Russia's Sergei Lavrov before and after sensitive EU meetings, with leaked audio capturing a 2023 instance in which Lavrov advised that "sometimes good-willed direct blackmailing is the best option." Russian intelligence was also alleged to have considered staging a false-flag assassination attempt on Orban to boost his standing, and a leaked Orban-Putin call showed Orban comparing Hungary to the "mouse" helping a Russian "lion." ### How is the Trump administration involved in Hungary's election? Trump and his administration are staunch supporters of Orban. Vice President JD Vance visited Budapest days before the vote, lambasting the EU and accusing it of election interference. Trump praised Orban by phone during a rally as a "fantastic man" who kept his country "good," throwing the full weight of the American MAGA movement behind the incumbent. ### What scenarios have analysts mapped for a contested result? CSIS outlined scenarios including Orban "flooding the zone" with fraud claims and leveraging emergency powers, and a worst case in which both sides claim victory and "a Maidan-style uprising unfolds in the streets of Budapest." Politico added a fifth scenario: Orban conceding but ruling as an outside puppeteer through loyalists controlling the presidency, Constitutional Court, public prosecutor, Fiscal Council, and national bank. ### Why could a disputed Hungarian election fracture NATO? A contested result collides with an already strained transatlantic relationship. Trump has floated leaving NATO, supports Orban against frustrated EU and NATO member governments, and is sensitive to election-fraud allegations. His administration has already made election-interference accusations on Orban's behalf. 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India vs Pakistan: Four Wars, a Nuclear Standoff, and a Cycle of Terror

Simon Whistler — Tue, 02 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

On 15 August 1947, one country became two. The partition of British India into India and Pakistan was supposed to ease tensions and allow the much-maligned peoples of the subcontinent — whether Hindu, Sikh, Muslim, or Christian — to live in peace, free from persecution. The reality could not have been further from that promise. The largest single partition of a populous land the world had ever seen lit the fuse on a powder keg that detonated almost immediately. Ethnic violence raged on both sides of the newly drawn border. Between 14 and 18 million people are thought to have moved from India to Pakistan or in the opposite direction, and excess mortality recorded during that dark period puts the number killed at over one million. The bloodshed did not stop in 1947. In the decades since, the two nations have fought four separate wars and traded countless cross-border skirmishes that continue to take lives. Deep suspicion runs between them and, in many cases, outright hatred — sentiments hardened not only by open warfare but by repeated accusations that each side funds or directs terrorist attacks on the other. This is the story of how partition seeded a rivalry that has spanned more than three-quarters of a century, escalated into the only war ever fought between two nuclear-armed states, and mutated into a long, covert campaign of gunmen, car bombs, and recrimination that shows no sign of ending. ## Key Takeaways - The 1947 partition of British India triggered one of history's largest mass migrations, with 14 to 18 million people displaced and more than one million killed in communal violence. - India and Pakistan have fought four wars since 1947 — over Kashmir in 1947-49, Operation Gibraltar in 1965, the 1971 war that created Bangladesh, and the 1999 Kargil Conflict. - The princely state of Jammu and Kashmir remains the central dispute; Maharaja Hari Singh's Instrument of Accession in October 1947 brought it into India and set off the first war. - The 1971 war birthed Bangladesh but also a genocide in East Pakistan that killed between 300,000 and 3 million people and displaced more than 30 million. - Kargil in 1999 was the first and only war between two nuclear-armed states, both of which had fielded usable weapons by the mid-to-late 1990s. - Cross-border terrorism has replaced open war: Lashkar-e-Taiba was blamed for the 2008 Mumbai attacks, and Jaish-e-Mohammed for Pathankot in 2016 and Pulwama in 2019. - Pakistan accuses India's intelligence agency, RAW, of fuelling the Balochistan insurgency, mirroring Indian accusations against Pakistan-based militant groups. ## A Bloody Partition The partition led to one of the largest mass migrations in history, accompanied by horrific communal violence and a humanitarian crisis on a scale that still has not been repeated. The now-infamous Radcliffe Line had divided British India — in theory, with the majority-Muslim areas to the west and the majority-Hindu regions to the east. In reality, it was never that simple. The subcontinent had been under colonial rule, but many of its smaller states were effectively run as their own mini-monarchies, known as the Princely States. The process of all these states joining either India or Pakistan was not concluded until 1949. That patchwork of competing loyalties, hurried borders, and unresolved allegiances ensured that independence arrived not as a clean break but as a contested, violent reordering of an entire region. One of the most contentious holdouts was Jammu and Kashmir, a state with a majority-Muslim population but a Hindu ruler who initially chose neither India nor Pakistan — a situation the British, along with almost everyone else, considered utterly unacceptable. Tensions rose quickly, and war became inevitable. ## The First Kashmir War The conflict began in earnest in October 1947, when tribal militias from Pakistan's North-West Frontier Province, supported by elements of the Pakistani military, invaded Kashmir in an effort to annex the territory. The invasion saw rapid advances and was marked by significant violence, particularly against the Hindu and Sikh minorities of the region. Faced with an overwhelming force and the prospect of losing control over his kingdom, Maharaja Hari Singh sought military assistance from India. India agreed to intervene on the condition that Kashmir accede once the job was done. Hari Singh signed the Instrument of Accession on 26 October 1947, legally integrating Kashmir into India. The very next day, Indian forces were airlifted into Srinagar, the capital of Kashmir, marking the beginning of active military engagement between the two new states. The war was fought on multiple fronts, but the most significant battles took place around Srinagar, Poonch, and Uri. Indian forces managed to halt the advance of the tribal militias and the Pakistani military in several vital areas, securing Srinagar and pushing the invaders back in other parts of the princely state. The war officially ended on 1 January 1949, when a UN-brokered ceasefire came into effect. The ceasefire line — eventually known as the Line of Control — divided Kashmir into Pakistan-administered areas, referred to as Azad Kashmir and Gilgit-Baltistan, and the Indian region of Jammu and Kashmir. The resolution satisfied neither party, and the seeds of further conflict were already sown. ## Operation Gibraltar and the 1965 War In August 1965, Pakistani army troops from the Azad Kashmir Regular Force, disguised as locals, crept across the Line of Control into Indian-administered Jammu and Kashmir. This covert operation — named after the historic Islamic conquest of Gibraltar — marked the beginning of the second Indo-Pakistani war. Its aim was to infiltrate forces into the region to carry out sabotage, attacking military installations and communication lines and spreading propaganda, in the hope of inciting an insurgency among the Muslim population against Indian rule and, ultimately, the region's accession to Pakistan. Pakistani planners believed the predominantly Muslim local population would rise in support of the infiltrators, producing a widespread uprising that would compel India to relinquish control over the territory. The operation, however, did not unfold as anticipated. The expected uprising failed to materialise, owing to the unexpectedly high loyalty of a significant portion of the Kashmiri populace to the Indian government, effective counter-insurgency measures by Indian security forces, and a lack of coordination among the infiltrating units. India's response was swift and fierce. Forces swarmed into Kashmir, stalling Pakistan's operation while also launching a full-scale offensive across the international border into Pakistani Punjab, in what became known as Operation Grand Slam. Intense fighting erupted both in Kashmir and along the India-Pakistan border, but again there were few positive outcomes for either side. The war ended with a United Nations-mediated ceasefire on 23 September 1965 and was formally concluded with the signing of the Tashkent Agreement in January 1966. ## Bangladesh Emerges When the subcontinent split, one glaring anomaly was East Pakistan. While the bulk of the new nation lay west of India, one small section sat more than 1,600 kilometres (1,000 miles) away on the other side of the country — a geographic arrangement that was, at best, going to be difficult to sustain. By 1971, the Bangladeshi independence movement was gathering pace, with plenty of support from around the world. The refusal of the Pakistani military regime — then headed by General Yahya Khan, alongside West Pakistan's political establishment — to transfer power to Sheikh Mujibur Rahman led to widespread protests and civil disobedience in East Pakistan. In response, on the night of 25 March 1971, the Pakistani military launched Operation Searchlight, a brutal crackdown aimed at quelling the independence movement. It led to the arrest of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman and the indiscriminate killing of civilians, students, intellectuals, and political activists, sparking a full-scale war for independence. The atrocities that followed — mass killings, rapes, and the displacement of millions — drew international condemnation and produced a significant refugee crisis, with millions of Bengalis fleeing to neighbouring India. The conflict intensified in December 1971, when India officially entered the war in support of the independence movement following a pre-emptive air strike by Pakistan on Indian airbases. The Indo-Pakistani War of 1971 lasted just 13 days, one of the shortest wars in history, but it was decisive. It culminated in the Pakistani military's surrender in Dhaka on 16 December 1971, creating Bangladesh as an independent nation. This may have looked like just another chapter in the back-and-forth between India and Pakistan, but what happened in East Pakistan was almost unfathomable. The minimum number killed during the genocide that swept the region was 300,000, with an upper figure of 3 million. Soldiers or militia members raped between 200,000 and 400,000 Bengali women, and more than 30 million people were displaced. In raw numbers, what occurred in what would become Bangladesh was far worse than the much more widely discussed Rwandan genocide. ## The Nuclear Club and Kargil With such a chaotic half-century of conflict behind them, it is no surprise that huge animosity remains between the two nations. In 1999, tensions exploded once again during the Kargil Conflict, when Pakistani soldiers and militants infiltrated the Kargil district in Indian-administered Kashmir. The conflict caused extensive military and civilian casualties and ended, like the others, with India regaining control of the territory. One enormous difference set Kargil apart from the three wars before it: Pakistan and India were now members of the nuclear weapon club. Both nations had begun their nuclear programmes in the 1970s, but usable weapons did not arrive until the mid-to-late 1990s. The Kargil Conflict therefore represented the first and only time two countries possessing nuclear weapons have gone to war. It heightened nerves around the world, as decades of hatred bubbled to the surface in the presence of weapons capable of killing millions in seconds. ## Terrorism Replaces Open War It has now been a quarter-century since India and Pakistan last went head to head in large-scale open conflict, but that does not mean the fighting has stopped. Instead, it has become more covert, often striking directly at the citizens of either country rather than at the military. Terrorism — both state-sponsored and non-state — has become a significant tool for asserting political agendas and destabilising the region. Gunmen storming facilities, car bombs, train derailments, kidnappings, and mass shootings make for a long and bloody list, and the bad blood runs deep. The shift to covert warfare has made attribution harder and accountability rarer. Attacks are claimed, denied, and counter-claimed across the border, each one feeding the next round of recrimination. What follows is a record of some of the deadliest incidents on both sides — and the competing narratives of blame that surround them. ## Attacks on India There is a long list of terrorist attacks on Indian soil for which Pakistani-based militants were thought to be responsible. In 2000, an attack on the Red Fort in Delhi killed three. In 2001, a car bomb detonated outside the Jammu and Kashmir State Legislative Assembly complex in Srinagar, killing 38. Two months later, in December 2001, a group of armed militants attacked the Indian Parliament in New Delhi, leaving nine people dead, including security personnel. On 11 July 2006, 11 separate bombs went off on different trains across Mumbai's rail network during the afternoon rush, killing 209 people and injuring more than 700. The 2008 Mumbai attacks, a series of coordinated assaults, claimed 166 lives and injured over 300. The attackers, armed with automatic weapons and grenades, targeted multiple locations and held India's financial capital under a three-day siege. Investigations pointed towards Lashkar-e-Taiba, a Pakistan-based militant group, as the orchestrators, with evidence suggesting support and facilitation by elements within Pakistan. In early 2016, the Pathankot Air Force Base came under attack by heavily armed gunmen, triggering a prolonged security operation that left seven security personnel and all the attackers dead. The assault was quickly linked to Jaish-e-Mohammed, another group operating from Pakistani territory. The incident derailed diplomatic dialogue that had been gaining momentum, with India insisting on actionable intelligence and concrete measures from Pakistan against the groups responsible. The Pulwama attack in February 2019 marked another escalation, when a suicide bomber struck a convoy of Indian paramilitary personnel in Jammu and Kashmir, killing 40 soldiers. The attack, again claimed by Jaish-e-Mohammed, sparked widespread outrage in India and calls for punitive action. In response, India conducted an airstrike in Balakot, Pakistan, targeting what it said were terrorist training camps — the first time since the 1971 war that aerial bombings had crossed the Line of Control. The subsequent downing of an Indian aircraft and the capture of its pilot by Pakistani forces escalated the situation further, though the pilot's quick release was read as a de-escalatory gesture. ## Attacks on Pakistan Just as in India, there is a painfully long list of attacks carried out inside Pakistan, with fingers often pointed back toward India. The insurgency in Balochistan, a province of Pakistan, has been a long-standing conflict in which a series of uprisings and armed struggles has killed many. The region's discontent stems from demands for autonomy, control over natural resources, cultural and linguistic rights, and economic disparities. Baloch nationalists have often accused the Pakistani government of exploitation and marginalisation, fuelling repeated cycles of insurgency since the area became part of Pakistan in 1948. Pakistan has repeatedly accused India of supporting the Baloch insurgents, alleging that India's intelligence agency, the Research and Analysis Wing (RAW), is involved in funding, arming, and training separatist groups to destabilise the country. In March 2016, Kulbhushan Jadhav, an Indian national, was arrested by Pakistani authorities and charged with espionage and sabotage. The Pakistani military released a video in which Jadhav confessed to being a RAW agent tasked with organising espionage and sabotage in Balochistan and Karachi. India denies that he is a spy, maintaining instead that he is an ex-navy officer whom Pakistan kidnapped. There are almost too many attacks to count, but in recent years Balochistan has become a deadly place. The most recent large-scale attack came on the eve of the Pakistani election on 7 February 2024, when two IED bombs planted on motorbikes killed more than 30 people in Pishin District and Killa Saifullah. ISIL claimed both attacks, yet that has done little to dissuade those who suspect Indian involvement. In 2021, a suicide bomber detonated an explosive at a police checkpoint in Lahore, killing four people. The attack was thought to have targeted the house of Hafiz Saeed, founder of a militant Islamist group blamed for the deadly 2008 Mumbai attack. Saeed is already serving a 31-year prison sentence but has never been tried for the Mumbai attacks. After arresting several members of the terrorist cell behind the Lahore bombing, Pakistani authorities said they had uncovered a pay trail leading back to India that funded the cell to the tune of $800,000. ## Perpetual Enemies At this stage, it is difficult to see how these two nations disentangle themselves from this death dive and cycle of recrimination. The rise of China as a regional power and its strategic partnership with Pakistan, the changing dynamics of US involvement in Afghanistan, and India's ever-closer relationship with Russia have all added new dimensions to an already complex and tortuous relationship. The India-Pakistan disputes are rooted in deep-seated mistrust, historical grievances, and complicated domestic politics intertwined with international diplomacy. Yet, as in many parts of the world, the hatred is often driven by governments who need a frightened population in order to remain powerful and stay relevant. Most Indians and Pakistanis are thoroughly tired of this never-ending dispute between two groups who, less than 70 years ago, were one. The problem did not begin in 1947, however. The British knew full well how to play groups against each other, and when independence became a possibility, certain factions were more than happy to stoke the tension and hatred that can still be felt today. This is a narrative of violence and recrimination that is not about to end any time soon. ## Frequently Asked Questions ### When did partition happen, and how many people died? The partition of British India into India and Pakistan took effect on 15 August 1947. It produced one of the largest mass migrations in history, with between 14 and 18 million people moving across the new border in both directions. Excess mortality during the period put the number killed at over one million. ### Why is Kashmir at the centre of the conflict? Jammu and Kashmir was a princely state with a majority-Muslim population but a Hindu ruler, Maharaja Hari Singh, who initially chose to join neither India nor Pakistan. After tribal militias backed by elements of the Pakistani military invaded in October 1947, Hari Singh signed the Instrument of Accession on 26 October 1947, legally integrating Kashmir into India and triggering the first war between the two nations. ### How did the 1971 war create Bangladesh and what were its human costs? East Pakistan lay more than 1,600 kilometres from the rest of Pakistan. When the military regime refused to transfer power to Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, it launched Operation Searchlight on 25 March 1971, sparking a war that India joined in December after a Pakistani air strike on Indian airbases. The 13-day conflict ended with Pakistan's surrender in Dhaka on 16 December 1971. The genocide killed between 300,000 and 3 million people, soldiers raped between 200,000 and 400,000 Bengali women, and more than 30 million people were displaced. ### Why was the 1999 Kargil Conflict so dangerous? By 1999, both India and Pakistan possessed usable nuclear weapons, having begun their programmes in the 1970s and fielded operational arsenals by the mid-to-late 1990s. When Pakistani soldiers and militants infiltrated the Kargil district in Indian-administered Kashmir, the resulting war became the first and only conflict ever fought between two nuclear-armed states, raising alarm around the world. ### Which militant groups were blamed for major cross-border terrorist attacks, and what does Pakistan accuse India of in return? Lashkar-e-Taiba was identified as the orchestrator of the 2008 Mumbai attacks that killed 166 people, while Jaish-e-Mohammed was linked to the 2016 Pathankot assault and the 2019 Pulwama suicide bombing that killed 40 Indian paramilitary personnel. Pakistan has responded by repeatedly accusing India's Research and Analysis Wing of funding, arming, and training Baloch separatists, and claims to have traced an $800,000 pay trail back to India behind a 2021 Lahore bombing.

What If India and Pakistan Went to War Again?

Simon Whistler — Tue, 02 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

To many observers, a war between India and Pakistan is not a hypothetical at all. Some treat it as inevitable. That fatalism has a basis in the record: although the two countries have existed as independent states for just over 75 years, they have already gone to war with each other on four separate occasions. That tally does not even count the many smaller border skirmishes that have killed thousands more along the disputed frontier. What makes the present moment different is scale. Both nations have grown and modernized considerably over the last several decades, fielding larger armies, more advanced aircraft, and — most consequentially — nuclear arsenals. If a modern war were to erupt between India and Pakistan today, it now carries the potential to become one of the most devastating conflicts in all of human history, with consequences reaching far beyond South Asia. This analysis examines what could plausibly ignite the next full-scale Indo-Pakistani conflict, how the two militaries stack up against one another, and just how destructive such a war might be — not only for the roughly 1.6 billion people who live in the two countries, but potentially for billions more around the globe. The thesis is sobering but straightforward: the disputes that have driven four wars remain unresolved, the hesitancy that once restrained both sides is eroding, and the nuclear dimension has transformed a regional rivalry into a threat to global food security and climate stability. ## Key Takeaways - India and Pakistan have fought four declared wars since independence in 1947, plus near-constant border skirmishes, and the partition alone displaced over 10 million people and killed more than a million. - Kashmir remains the most likely trigger for a new war, but water disputes over the Indus Waters Treaty, cross-border terrorism, and the risk of Pakistani state collapse are all credible flashpoints. - India holds a clear conventional advantage, fielding roughly 650 fighter jets, over 1,000 T-90 tanks, 1.4 million active troops, and the only aircraft carrier in the pair against Pakistan's smaller and less modern forces. - India's "Cold Start" doctrine keeps forces near the border for an immediate deep strike — racing against both the diplomatic clock and the nuclear clock before Pakistan can resort to tactical nuclear weapons. - A conventional war could produce one to two million casualties at minimum; a Rutgers University study found that even a limited nuclear exchange could kill 125 million instantly and nearly 2 billion in the following weeks through nuclear winter and global famine. ## A Rivalry Forged in Partition The modern conflicts of this region began right after World War II, and like so many other conflicts of the era, they stemmed directly from the dissolution of the British Empire. At the time, most of South Asia was administered as a single territory — British India, an enormous colony under the administration of the British Raj. During the war, Britain had agreed to grant British India its independence once the fighting ended, and when the moment came, it was prepared to follow through on that promise. Granting independence, however, proved far easier said than done. British India was not a single nation or people that had been colonized. There were dozens of ethnicities and languages spread across the region, and the British feared that leaving the area to govern itself overnight could collapse into infighting and general chaos. As officials worked through possible solutions, it became clear that the gravest threat to an independent British India was neither language nor culture, but religious tension — specifically between the large populations of Hindus and Muslims. The minority Muslim consensus held that without British rule they would face discrimination at the hands of the Hindu majority. Many Hindus, in turn, feared that Muslims would riot and revolt to seize power where they could. The prospect that this would spiral into outright civil war was all too real, since such tension had already been building between the groups for decades. A civil war would have been catastrophic — not only for the hundreds of millions of people involved, but for Britain, which was banking on an alliance with its strong former colony. ## The Bloody Logic of the Radcliffe Line The solution brought to the table was partition. The plan was to divide the territory into two separate regions, giving Muslims and Hindus their own independent nations. Implemented in the summer of 1947 — launched a full year earlier than originally anticipated — it carved the subcontinent into two domains: the Domain of India for the Hindus and the Domain of Pakistan for the Muslims, the latter split into two sections, West and East Pakistan. The boundary was drawn along what became known as the Radcliffe Line, etched into maps wherever the British judged best, which, as events would prove, was not very good at all. The first problem arose immediately. What were you supposed to do if you woke up on the morning of partition and found yourself in the wrong dominion — say, a Muslim now living in the Domain of India? Under what was called the Mountbatten Plan, the answer was that you should simply gather your family, pack a bag, and move across the border. Draw a line where it best separates the religions, the thinking went, and anyone left behind is free to relocate as soon as they wish. This might have gone more smoothly if only a few outliers had been stranded on each side. There were not a few. There were millions. As they began migrating across the new frontier, chaos erupted and violence on an unprecedented scale was unleashed against men, women, and children, perpetrated by both sides — so suddenly and so intensely that no outside force had the time, or the ability, to stop it. By the time it subsided, more than a million people had been killed in the madness. Estimates place the total number of migrants at well over 10 million, with some figures climbing higher than 20 million. That number can seem abstract against the more than a billion people who live in India today, but 20 million migrants would equal the combined populations of Norway, Sweden, and Finland. It is these staggering figures that have earned the partition of India a place among the worst refugee crises in all of history. ## Four Wars and Counting The worst part was that partition did not even resolve the underlying dispute. Just a few months later, in the autumn of 1947, the new dominions of India and Pakistan went to war for the first time, fighting for control of the disputed province of Kashmir and Jammu. This First Kashmir War produced nearly 30,000 casualties and a "Line of Control," or LoC, roughly dividing the contested region. It was far from a permanent solution. By 1965 the Second Kashmir War was underway, this time escalating into a massive conflict that destroyed hundreds of tanks, dozens of aircraft, and inflicted tens of thousands of casualties. Despite both sides claiming victory, by the time a UN ceasefire took hold there were no territorial changes to show for the bloodshed. The third war came just six years later, in 1971, when East Pakistan declared its independence from the West and became the country of Bangladesh. Pakistan launched a series of preemptive air strikes on India after learning that the Indian military was assisting the revolution in East Pakistan, and India responded in full force — combat on land, in the air, and at sea. Once again the fighting produced thousands of casualties, though this war is unique in that Pakistan actually ordered an official surrender. That made three wars. Border skirmishes then continued nearly every year for the next couple of decades, until in 1999 Pakistani troops crossed the Line of Control disguised as Kashmiri insurgents, sparking the Kargil War. Only a few thousand casualties emerged from that battle, but it was perhaps the most frightening of them all: it could now be described not merely as a war between India and Pakistan, but as a war between two nuclear powers. The stakes had never been higher, and that may explain why each side was hesitant to go all out. That hesitancy has been steadily eroding in the years since, and with every passing year there are more and more opportunities for the next big war to light the fuse. ## Kashmir, Terrorism, and the Next Spark As one might expect, the disputed province of Kashmir remains the likeliest culprit for the next war — though it is not the only one. Throughout the 21st century there have been several terror attacks carried out on Indian soil, many of which India has traced back to Pakistani intelligence operations, an allegation Pakistan denies. One such attack, a bombing of the Indian Parliament in 2001, led both sides to pile up tens of thousands of troops in Kashmir, ready to attack at a moment's notice. The world held its breath as peace talks were brokered, and fortunately each side agreed to calm the situation and withdraw its armies — but not before a few hundred were killed in minor skirmishes. Another standoff followed the 2008 Mumbai attacks, a series of assaults that killed 175 people and wounded more than 300. After the lone surviving attacker revealed that the responsible group was the Pakistani Islamist terror organization Lashkar-e-Taiba, India again accused Pakistani intelligence of funding the operation and began massing forces in Kashmir. Pakistan responded in kind, and the two armies were staring each other in the eyes once more. This time the brink of war was as close as ever. Some US senators even called for a joint US-Indian invasion of Pakistan as part of the ongoing War on Terror. Both air forces were placed on maximum readiness and deployed to frontline air bases, tens of thousands of troops moved near the front, and both leaders remained in constant communication with their nuclear command teams. The private intelligence firm Stratfor noted that Pakistan had already prepared detailed forward operations and was merely awaiting the green light. Even the terrorist organization responsible for the attacks claimed it had hundreds of operators in suicide vests ready to deploy at a moment's notice. The situation was eventually defused, but it demonstrated just how easily the tension can snap. In the event of another attack on the scale of Mumbai, India could very well respond with a show of military force that quickly turns into all-out war. ## Water, Collapse, and the Dragon Next Door The next most likely cause of war would be either side encroaching once again in Kashmir — but this is more complicated than it was the first time, because China also administers part of the disputed region, roughly 30 percent of it. If either side pushed across the Line of Control or funded insurgencies on the other side, it would have to be careful not to wake the dragon sleeping next door. The Kashmir conflict appears poised to worsen in the coming years, with increasing reports that the Taliban plans to arm and fund Islamist militants in the disputed state. Kashmir is also responsible for another point of friction between the two nations: water. Various river tributaries are claimed by both sides, in a dispute that should have been settled by the Indus Waters Treaty of 1960, which allocated the water between the two nations. Pakistan alleges that India has broken this treaty through its recent dam construction — a grievance with existential weight for a downstream country dependent on those rivers for agriculture and drinking water. The final possible trigger is the collapse of Pakistan itself. The country has recently been in an extraordinarily unstable political state, with its prime minister receiving a no-confidence vote in April 2022 and surviving an assassination attempt later that year. This instability is fueled by rampant terrorism, sky-high inflation, and systemic corruption among military leaders. There is a real fear that if Pakistan collapses, it could become a kind of "nuclear Somalia." A breakdown of that magnitude could easily prompt an Indian military incursion to secure Pakistan's nuclear arsenal before it falls into the wrong hands and is either used or sold to a foreign buyer such as Iran. ## Weighing the Odds: The Conventional Balance If a war broke out in the near future, which side would hold the advantage? Begin with the air forces. As of early 2023, India fielded around 650 fighter jets, while Pakistan had somewhat fewer at around 450. But raw numbers are not the only measure — quality matters as much as quantity. India operates more than 200 Su-30s, an exceptional Soviet-designed multirole fighter, alongside more than a hundred MiG-21s and a few dozen French-made Rafales. Pakistan, by contrast, relies on just a few dozen American-made F-16s, which, while highly capable, are not modernized within the Pakistani Air Force. The bulk of Pakistan's fleet consists of Chinese fighters such as the JF-17 and F-7, aircraft that would struggle to compete with their Indian counterparts. India also holds the upper hand in transport aircraft, crucially including hundreds of transport helicopters that would allow troops and supplies to move through the highly mountainous terrain separating the two countries. On the ground, India's tank inventory is built mainly around aging Soviet T-72s, but the last decade has seen a huge influx of T-90 imports, a newer Russian design. India operates over a thousand T-90s and has already ordered a few hundred more, plus upgrades. Pakistan is outmatched in armor, fielding Chinese refits of old Soviet designs and a few hundred T-80s purchased from Ukraine in the 1990s. This firepower gap means Pakistani armor would have to stay on the defensive, since facing Indian tanks in direct combat risks losing hundreds of vehicles. In active personnel, India again leads with 1.4 million troops — the largest volunteer army on the planet — against Pakistan's roughly 600,000. India also outguns Pakistan in towed artillery, multiple rocket launch systems, and overall defense budget. Its navy is far more powerful, fielding 10 destroyers to Pakistan's zero, and India is the only one of the two with an aircraft carrier. At the end of the day, India holds the clear advantage. But that does not mean Pakistan would fail to put up a ferocious fight, and if India played its cards wrong, the campaign could go south very quickly. ## Cold Start and the Race Against the Clock After the 2008 Mumbai attacks, the Indian military was unable to respond militarily to Pakistan, despite considerable domestic appetite for such a response. By the time India had gathered its forces on the border, Pakistan had already assumed defensive positions, and an Indian push would have meant significant casualties. That failure prompted India to rewrite its military doctrine for a war with Pakistan. Its known strategy is now called "Cold Start," which involves keeping a significant force near the border at all times. If a similar terror attack happens again, India is positioned to respond immediately with a spearhead advance into Pakistan. The objective is to slice so quickly and so deeply into Pakistani territory that strategic goals are achieved before the international community can step in to demand a ceasefire — and, critically, before Pakistan has the chance to use tactical nuclear weapons. Cold Start is, in essence, a race against two clocks at once: the diplomatic clock and the nuclear clock. That design reveals the central dilemma of any future war. The very speed that makes Cold Start attractive to Indian planners is also what makes it dangerous, because it compresses Pakistan's decision-making window. A Pakistani command that fears being overrun before it can mount a defense has a powerful incentive to reach for tactical nuclear weapons early, precisely the outcome the doctrine is meant to forestall. The strategy assumes escalation can be controlled. The history of this rivalry offers little assurance that it can. ## Armageddon: The Nuclear Arithmetic Studies have produced a range of estimates for a direct conflict between the two powers. One to two million casualties is considered the bare minimum if each country fully commits its armed forces, with many of those deaths coming from missile strikes on densely populated Indian cities. But simply because both countries are nuclear-armed, a war here has the potential to kill not just millions, but billions. A study at Rutgers University found that even a small-scale nuclear exchange would instantly kill 125 million people and, in the weeks that followed, lead to the deaths of nearly 2 billion. The researchers reached these conclusions by modeling the effects on crop yields, fresh water supplies, climate, and animal products. Because this region of the world is responsible for so much of the planet's food production — especially rice, cereals, and sugar — hunger would spread through the supply chain like wildfire. The damage would be devastating for countries such as Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Sri Lanka, which rely heavily on India to feed their populations, while disrupting the global food market on an unprecedented scale. Another consequence would be the near-inevitable nuclear winter. If the two countries detonated a significant portion of their warheads, the blasts would loft an estimated 37 million tons of soot into the atmosphere. That pall could plunge global temperatures by several degrees Celsius — potentially to levels not experienced since the end of the last ice age. The lesson is stark: a conflict between two mid-sized regional powers could reorder the climate and food supply of the entire planet. ## The Uneasy Equilibrium When all is said and done, another Indo-Pakistani war is unlikely to produce a true victor now that nuclear weapons sit on the table — and that, paradoxically, is the reason there is some cause to rest easier that it likely will not happen soon. Mutual vulnerability is the strongest restraint either side has. That restraint, however, is conditional. The situation is likely to remain a tense standoff only until one of the underlying disputes is resolved or one side miscalculates. Unless India grows confident that it can steamroll its neighbor before the conflict escalates past the conventional threshold, deterrence should hold. But none of the core grievances — Kashmir, water, cross-border terrorism, Pakistani instability — show any sign of resolution. The fuse is long, but it has not been pulled, and as of mid-2026 it remains intact. The danger is not that war is imminent, but that the conditions which have produced four wars in 75 years are all still in place, waiting on a single spark. ## Frequently Asked Questions ### How many wars have India and Pakistan fought? India and Pakistan have fought four declared wars since independence in 1947: the First Kashmir War in 1947, the Second Kashmir War in 1965, the 1971 war that created Bangladesh, and the 1999 Kargil War. These are in addition to near-annual border skirmishes that have killed thousands more along the frontier. ### Why is Kashmir the most likely flashpoint for a new war? Kashmir has been disputed since the first war in 1947 and remains divided by the Line of Control. It is the focus of repeated military standoffs, cross-border terror attacks that India attributes to Pakistani intelligence, and a water dispute over the Indus Waters Treaty. The situation is further complicated because China administers roughly 30 percent of the disputed region, and reports suggest the Taliban plans to arm Islamist militants there. ### What is India's "Cold Start" doctrine? Cold Start is India's military strategy developed after the 2008 Mumbai attacks exposed India's inability to mobilize quickly. It keeps a significant force near the border at all times so India can launch an immediate spearhead advance into Pakistan — slicing deep enough to achieve strategic goals before the international community calls for a ceasefire and before Pakistan can use tactical nuclear weapons. The doctrine assumes escalation can be controlled, though the history of this rivalry offers little assurance. ### How does the conventional military balance compare? India holds a clear advantage. It fields roughly 650 fighter jets to Pakistan's 450, including over 200 Su-30s and French-made Rafales; over 1,000 T-90 tanks against Pakistan's older Chinese and Soviet designs; 1.4 million active personnel — the world's largest volunteer army — to Pakistan's 600,000; and a far stronger navy including 10 destroyers and an aircraft carrier, against Pakistan's zero destroyers. ### How deadly could a nuclear exchange between India and Pakistan be? A conventional war could produce one to two million casualties at minimum. A Rutgers University study found that even a small-scale nuclear exchange would kill 125 million people instantly and nearly 2 billion in the following weeks, largely through collapsing crop yields and global famine, since the region produces much of the world's rice, cereals, and sugar. An estimated 37 million tons of soot lofted into the atmosphere could trigger a nuclear winter, depressing global temperatures to levels not seen since the last ice age.

Inmate 4859: The Spy Who Volunteered to Be Imprisoned in Auschwitz

Simon Whistler — Tue, 02 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

In the entirety of the Second World War, there was perhaps no place quite so dark as Auschwitz. It was a death camp, one that claimed the lives of some 1.1 million Jews, Poles, Romani, and Soviet prisoners of war by means of gassing, starvation, execution, medical experimentation, and more. The infernal brainchild of Nazi officer Rudolf Höss, Auschwitz ranked among the most brutal expressions of Nazi ideology, and gained a reputation for unbelievable, comprehensive cruelty toward the people whose lives it was designed to end. Consider a thought exercise. Picture the Auschwitz concentration camp in all its horror, the unbelievable pain and suffering that went on there, and now picture making the decision to try and stop it, all by yourself, by willfully being captured and interned there in order to carry out a mission. If you cannot fathom mustering the courage it would take to walk into one of humanity's darkest chapters, no one could blame you. But that is exactly what one Witold Pilecki did. This is the story of Pilecki's daring mission to infiltrate Auschwitz: how he did it, what he experienced inside the camp, how he managed to escape and bring word of the camp to the Western Allies, and how he was ultimately rewarded for his trouble with a bullet to the back of the head. ## Key Takeaways - Witold Pilecki was a Polish officer who, in 1940, deliberately got himself captured by the SS in a Warsaw street round-up so he could be sent to Auschwitz, gather intelligence, and build an internal resistance network. - Inside Auschwitz, Pilecki built an underground network organized into small cells of five men, each ignorant of the others, designed to survive betrayal and to be ready to seize the camp if Allied help ever arrived. - His network smuggled out reports, distributed stolen food, cobbled together a radio transmitter, and at one point deliberately spread typhus-infected lice onto SS officers' coats. - After nearly three years, Pilecki escaped through the camp bakery with two companions in 1943 and authored a detailed final report on Auschwitz that survives and is publicly available today. - Arrested by communist authorities in 1947, tortured, and convicted of espionage in a show trial, Pilecki was executed on May 25, 1948; his writings were suppressed for decades and only revealed after the fall of communism in the 1990s. ## In Defense of Poland By the summer of 1939, the entire world understood that Europe was on the brink. Nazi Germany's supreme leader, Adolf Hitler, had long since crossed from a curious, nastily eccentric figure into a hateful, warmongering tyrant, and it had become crystal-clear that his vision for Germany extended far beyond the German border. Outmanned and outgunned in any hypothetical brawl with Nazi Germany, Hitler's next-door neighbors in Poland were dismayed to find that such a brawl would not be hypothetical for long. Worse, since the Nazis would likely have the support of Poland's other neighbor, the Soviet Union, it was a fight from which Poland almost certainly would not emerge victorious. That did not mean the Poles were about to back down. On the contrary, the nation recognized the importance of a valiant defense, one that would set the tone for the years of partisan resistance that would follow. It was in these most difficult of circumstances that Witold Pilecki found himself taking up arms in defense of his country, and not for the first time. Thirty-eight years old as he stared down the barrel of Nazi Germany, Pilecki had cut his teeth two decades earlier as a partisan fighter behind Soviet lines after the end of the First World War. He later fought for Poland's Volunteer Army during the Polish-Soviet War of 1919 to 1921, served in the Battle of Warsaw, and was present at several of that war's other inflection points, eventually transitioning to a role as an officer after the war's end. A poet and painter in his spare time, Pilecki spent the interwar years farming and tending to his family estate while supporting the Polish military as a reservist, and possibly as a member of Poland's military intelligence service. He had been mobilized as the commander of a cavalry platoon just a few days before the German invasion, and at least outwardly, he was more than happy to take up arms for his nation no matter the cost. When the war kicked off, Pilecki used his cavalry unit to support the Polish infantry. But after the division he was attached to was defeated in the first few days of battle, he broke off and worked in support of a range of other units for as long as he could. From this vantage point he witnessed the fall of Warsaw, the rise of the Polish government-in-exile in Paris, and the invasion of his nation by the Soviets as well as the Nazis. Eventually the Polish military was forced to capitulate and Pilecki's unit was disbanded. That did not mean the end of his fight. Instead, he moved underground alongside many of Poland's surviving troops and became one of the founding members of the Secret Polish Army. Far more than a foot soldier, Pilecki immediately assumed a leadership role, overseeing the organization's expansion into several of Poland's major cities. Leading a double life as the manager of a cosmetics warehouse, he served in senior roles across the Secret Polish Army and worked hard to ensure the group did not take on too overtly a Christian, anti-Semitic, or nationalist tone, so as not to alienate what allies it had. Before long, Pilecki found a group that fit more closely with his own vision of what a successful resistance had to be: the Union of Armed Struggle. This resistance organization counted equal rights for Jews, a mission to document Nazi atrocities, and a responsibility to get information to the Allied Powers among its critical objectives. After some work to convince his colleagues in the Secret Polish Army, Pilecki was able to merge the two organizations. As he did, the resistance became aware of a new threat to investigate: a facility of some kind that had cropped up near the town of Oświęcim. The resistance knew its name, Auschwitz, and knew it was a place from which people did not return, but they did not know its purpose. They figured it was some sort of prison or POW camp, and they needed somebody to infiltrate it. According to Pilecki's own later statements, he had been chosen for the job as a kind of punishment for refusing to support a Secret Polish Army leader's attempts to push the group toward ultranationalism. He agreed to take the job anyway. His mission: get arrested by the Nazis, try not to get killed, get taken to Auschwitz, figure out exactly what was going on inside, and then find a way out. ## Inside Auschwitz Pilecki and his allies did not know it at the time, but the camp they were sending him into was far worse than any ordinary wartime prison. When he began laying the groundwork for his capture, a year after the invasion of Poland in September 1940, Auschwitz was still being used primarily to detain Polish political prisoners and suspected members of the underground resistance. The first set of prisoners had only been there a couple of months by the time the infiltration began, and the camp was still finding what would become its terrible rhythm. Yet it already housed thousands of souls. Although the facility already had operational crematoriums, they were not yet intended for use in mass murder, but for the disposal of bodies of prisoners who had died by other means. The Auschwitz that Pilecki was walking into was already a despicable place, but it had not yet evolved into the death camp it would become. That transformation was one Pilecki would watch from a front-row seat. The moment came on the 19th of September, 1940, when Pilecki ensured he was present at a street intersection in Warsaw for what would be the second in a long series of street round-ups of Poles carried out by the Nazi SS. He was captured using the name and identification papers of Tomasz Serafiński, a Pole who was, by that time, assumed to already be dead. He was not, but Pilecki did not know that yet. After his capture, he was transported to Auschwitz with about 1,700 other prisoners. In his reports after the fact, Pilecki described being annoyed by his fellow Poles, who seemed to go almost passively into the maw of whatever the Nazis had waiting. About the moment he arrived at the camp, Pilecki wrote in his final report: "I consider this place in my story to be the moment when I bade farewell to everything I had hitherto known on this earth and entered something seemingly no longer of it." Like any prisoner arriving at Auschwitz, Pilecki was immediately set upon by spotlights and SS soldiers swinging the butts of their rifles. He and the other arrivals were forced to watch one man be told to run to a post a few meters away, then be chased with automatic weapons fire and quickly mown down. As punishment for that man's actions, which he had been instructed to perform by the SS, ten other men were selected at random and shot. The corpses were mutilated by dogs and dragged behind the prisoners, for all to see. After that first demonstration, Pilecki was given prison clothing, photographed, and assigned prisoner number 4859. As he told it, the two thirteens hidden in his number, formed by adding together the outer numbers and adding the inner numbers, were taken as a bad omen by his fellow prisoners, although he himself found a wry bit of amusement in it. The new arrivals were given a brief explanation of why they had been brought to Auschwitz. According to the guards, they were a gang of Polish bandits who had been attacking peaceful Germans. They also received a grim warning from the camp's then-deputy commandant, Fritz Seidler: "Let none of you imagine that he will ever leave this place alive. It has been worked out that you will survive for six weeks; anyone who lives longer must be stealing, and anyone who is stealing will be sent to the penal colony, where you won't live very long." After the chilling ordeal of his arrival, after he was shaved head to toe and had his front teeth knocked out, and after he met the fellow prisoner who would brutally keep order on his own cell block, a German known as Bloody Aloiz, Pilecki got to work. His first few days were spent figuring out essential rules for survival: avoid excess liquid consumption to avoid developing edema; keep clean feet to avoid beatings in the evening hours; stay at the center of every pack rather than fighting for the limited food and water; and never, ever miss roll call. Then he turned his mind to resistance, happy to find that those same docile Poles who had seemed to accept their fate were now starting to get angry. In his words: "I felt that finally we were all united by the same anger, a desire for revenge. I felt myself in an environment perfectly suited to begin my work here and discovered within me a semblance of happiness, above all because I wanted to start work and so I had not cracked." Pilecki's main objective was to set up an organization within the camp, uniting prisoners into a system where they could receive news from the outside world, distribute extra food and clothing to those who needed it, and get information out whenever possible. Underlying all of that was another mission: to lay the groundwork for the moment help eventually arrived, so the prisoners could be ready to take over the camp and assist an Allied assault. His plan was to arrange prisoners into small cells of five men, each of which knew nothing of the others and had the task of building a network as if each cell sat at the head of an internal resistance operation. That way, if one cell were sniffed out and annihilated, its members would have no ability to give up the others inside the camp. Pilecki risked an incredibly painful death if he trusted the wrong inmates with that responsibility and was sold out to the guards. But luckily for him, he had other resources within the camp, specifically other members of the Polish resistance who had been rounded up and were known to be trustworthy. From a group of twenty-five resistance fighters, Pilecki built five cells, which each developed on their own for a while before eventually running into one another. When that happened, the person bringing him the news would generally get the equivalent of a pat on the head and a "don't worry about it." Keeping that wry, impossibly optimistic air about himself was integral; how could he ever hope to inspire the prisoners in his network if he himself faded into despair? ## A Cursed Spy All the while, Pilecki was watching the goings-on of the camp, not just as an academic observer, but as someone who was as much a prisoner at Auschwitz as anybody else. Forced to work crushing manual labor amid death, torture, and disease, he was more able than most to navigate the ins and outs of the camp, partly owing to his military training and experience, and partly to his physical hardiness relative to others interned there. More than once in his writings, Pilecki discussed the people who had been doctors, lawyers, or held other roles in society that had demanded no exertion of the body or survivalist instinct of the mind. Invariably, he documented the extraordinary pain they experienced at Auschwitz, even relative to other prisoners. He also emphasized the sheer number of deaths on a daily basis, often the deaths of people he had come to know and respect, only to haul their bodies back to roll call at the day's end. Pilecki's first big break came in December of his first year, when he charmed his way into an indoor job as a carpenter. Not only did this get him out of the camp's most dangerous forms of forced labor, it gave him the opportunity to recover the strength he would need to run a resistance network, increased his chances of survival, and gave him a place to think in peace. Because the role demanded he complete numerous jobs around the camp, Pilecki found his way into restricted zones like the hospital and became a fly on the wall for conversations his camp superiors did not care if he overheard. Thanks to the extra food he could collect in his position, and his renewed strength compared to the ordinary Auschwitz prisoner, he survived a bout of pneumonia and continued forward. All the while, he was writing: taking notes, compiling reports, and smuggling them as best he could until he could figure out how to get one out. Occasionally, as in the case of an ally named Tadek Burski, somebody he trusted would be released after family or friends found a way to get them out. When they left, it was with immensely valuable intelligence on their person. Another prisoner in Pilecki's network had been chosen to work in a nearby town and established lines of communication with locals, who sent letters that eventually reached the Polish Underground's high command. A third was released with the help of a college friend who had become a German military officer, and when that inmate, one of Pilecki's most trusted associates, got out, he carried a substantial report back to Warsaw. Running so many parallel networks demanded constant work, not least to replenish the cells quickly to compensate for the high daily death tolls. Members of Pilecki's cells generally had a better chance of survival than most, not just because they had some measure of purpose to keep them from complete despair, but because, in addition to their intelligence work, the cells organized the capture and distribution of stolen and scavenged food. As the cells grew, the prisoners among their number slowly took over certain work detachments, giving themselves some degree of safe haven even when assigned to the most brutal forms of work. Often, Pilecki found himself in the position of mediator, trying to force collaboration between Poles who had been political enemies in the outside world. In his own words: "One had to show Poles daily a mountain of Polish corpses in order for them to reconcile." Then there were Pilecki's efforts to worm his way upward through the camp structure, including among the guards. At Auschwitz, the torture of inmates was not optional for the guards; they were expected to regularly and proactively participate in the beatings and manual punishment of prisoners, and those who chose not to use those particular methods had better find some other way to express their sadism. Failing to do so, or refusing to take part in the torture at all, was tantamount to treason against the Nazi state. The guards, being prisoners of the system themselves, were thus exposed to the entire world of pain from which they had been spared. But Pilecki could see that some guards engaged in it unwillingly, or looked for ways out of the violence when possible. Several such guards eventually fell under Pilecki's sway, although by and large none of them had any idea a broader underground movement existed. Instead, they would be approached by specific members of a cell who requested help for a friend or some support with a personal matter, and generally they would be willing to help out. Sometimes that meant assigning certain inmates to a certain work group; other times it was to ensure prisoners struggling to survive their outdoor work were moved indoors. Other guards found ways to get second portions to particularly exhausted prisoners, while still others tried to make the camp hospital a little less fatal for those sent there. One guard in particular made sure not to stand in the way of prisoners who made contact with the outside world, and before long that guard was even helping to facilitate contact with other members of the Polish resistance, though it is unclear whether he understood the full scope of what he was doing. What was perfectly clear is that he withstood a brutal beating from the camp overseers after "failing to notice" that locals were providing extra bread to the inmates, and even after that punishment, the guard showed no intent to stop helping his fellow prisoners. During this time, Pilecki cheated death on numerous occasions: by sweet-talking enraged camp guards in just the right way to avoid being shot over a minor slight; by battling through pneumonia; and by happening to be summoned to an SS administrative office on the same day several other inmates on his block were led away to be executed. When a person recognized him from Warsaw and addressed him by his real name rather than the false one he had come under, he was lucky enough to be surrounded exclusively by trusted allies. When it happened a second time, an inmate completely unknown to him had overheard, but that inmate would eventually join the ranks of the underground cells. Perhaps most critical of all, Pilecki was repeatedly passed over when a camp supervisor selected the craftsmen who would build the neighboring Birkenau concentration camp, a decision akin to receiving a death sentence. He caught other lucky breaks more than once: mass transfers of new Polish civilians into the camp, while obviously devastating for those civilians, would invariably deposit a few more members of the Polish resistance into his lap. He found his way into the horse stables, where inmates had figured out how to make something resembling a cake, and could drink horse milk to sustain themselves. It is worth taking a moment to emphasize just how fragile this entire structure was. Leaders of cells were recruited almost exclusively on Pilecki's personal judgment of their character, with no wiggle room to trust the suggestions of cell members he did not know well. Trust was everything; if it were misplaced even once, Pilecki and an entire cell might have been found out, and if the wrong few people had broken under interrogation, the whole thing could have come collapsing down. Somehow, by the same inescapable luck that seemed to surround him, he chose correctly every time, and was never once sold out by a single person under his networks of command. ## The Camp Becomes a Death Machine Things in the camp grew more strained in August of 1941, when, shortly after the outbreak of war against the Soviet Union, the first mass gassings of camp inmates began. At first these were used only on handfuls of Soviet POWs, but by November Pilecki was witnessing columns of hundreds of Soviet prisoners stripped naked and ushered into the crematorium. Within a couple more months, this treatment was no longer reserved for the Soviets, who had come in large numbers unexpectedly and whom the SS had wanted to deal with quickly. The year 1942 was even worse. Not only did gas execution rates skyrocket, especially against Jews in the camp, but camp authorities began to post mailboxes where prisoners could provide tips and anonymous disclosures. Luckily, Pilecki and his network were able to crack these boxes open and remove any problematic tips, while not obstructing those that might get rid of their own enemies. The camp also weathered increased rates of disease, especially typhus brought in by Soviet prisoners. Here too, Pilecki and some of his associates tried to take advantage of the outbreak, cultivating infected lice and releasing them onto the coats of SS officers whenever they could. The effort proved successful, with many SS men killed as a result. As 1942 wore on, the SS began zeroing in on possible resistance members, and Pilecki began making his own preparations for the network to survive in the event of his death. As he did, the resistance reached higher numbers than ever, with well over a hundred operatives inside Auschwitz that Pilecki personally kept track of, and probably more he had never encountered. In February of that year, he had another breakthrough, finally accumulating the parts to cobble together a radio transmitter. Once it was operational, the resistance used it to broadcast details about the numbers of new arrivals and camp deaths, and to explain the state of the camp and the inmates there. Although the SS could hear the reports on the radio, they proved unable to find the source of the transmissions. On other lines of communication, run through in-person contact with locals, the resistance received anti-typhus medication and sent out German cipher keys. As conditions got tougher, Pilecki endured a bout of typhus himself, but took his weeks of recovery as an opportunity to focus on organizing his resistance for military action. By October 1942, the camp's resistance was organized into four battalions, each with several platoons of men beneath them, and unified under a single military commander, one of Pilecki's close allies. At all times, one battalion was kept "on duty," ready to drop everything at a moment's notice if a signal came to strike. All the SS guards' keys had been stolen and copied, and even some of the guards themselves had made clear they would be on the inmates' side in the event of a riot. By this point, as Pilecki himself wrote: "For some months now we had been able to take over the camp on more or less a daily basis." The prisoners at Auschwitz had been so worn down, for so long, that all the Nazis believed they needed to control them was a handful of small watchtowers and a squadron of SS enforcers. But without any support to hold the camp once it was captured, or to get everyone out of Nazi-controlled territory safely, there was little use in taking it over. For the rest of 1942 and into 1943, things only got worse. Medical doctors and students descended on the camp, carrying out human experimentation, something Pilecki's organization made sure to investigate, but were horrified to learn about once they understood what was taking place. More and more inmates were being shot, not at random, but because of accusations that they were beginning to organize, and in general, the SS began gaining aptitude as sniffer dogs trying to root out Pilecki's spiderweb of allies. Thousands of Poles were removed from the camp entirely and sent elsewhere in attempts to shake up whatever networks existed. On the brighter side, inmates were allowed for the first time to receive small parcels of food, which arrived in crushing amounts once families on the outside got word of the opportunity to help their loved ones. But even this was small consolation, in a place where incredible human depravity was still finding new ways to reveal its darkest nature. ## Escape For Pilecki, the question of escape was one he would eventually have to face. Smuggled letters could only convey so much, and could have been altered, but his testimony and detailed intelligence, presented in the flesh, could prove crucial to liberating the camp. Escape also came at high cost. Beginning in the spring of 1941, the Auschwitz guards instituted a policy that would see ten prisoners shot for every one who escaped, a harsh reality that changed Pilecki's own outlook. As he wrote when the policy came into effect: "At that time we, as an organization, took a clear position against escapes. We organized no escapes and opposed any thought of them, as evidence of extreme egoism, until there were major changes in this area. For the time being all escapes were lone ventures having nothing to do with our organization." That changed in February of 1942, when orders came down from Nazi high command after the policy of killing ten for every escapee had apparently prompted reprisals in Allied camps. And when, a year later, the SS threatened to bring escapees' families to Auschwitz as punishment and displayed two doomed women as an example, they were found out for having selected random women from the nearby camp of Rajsko. This meant escape was now on the table, and it was sorely needed, at a time when the wanton brutality of the camp's early years had been replaced by something almost worse: a cold, clinical, processional effort to end lives at an astonishing rate. Adding to the risk, infiltrators had started to appear, collaborators sent into the camps to join, then expose, resistance networks on behalf of the SS. Early escapes consisted of small pockets of resistance associates carrying out Pilecki's reports, including one group of four that managed to steal and don SS uniforms and escape in the camp commandant's car. Others made mass escape attempts when they were selected for particularly harsh forms of internment, with a small handful successfully getting out, in exchange for the lives of dozens of their comrades. In Pilecki's case, his first idea came via the sewers. His friends in Auschwitz's construction office had been able to procure a map of the camp's sewer network, from which he charted the best entry and exit points. But this plan proved too risky, and he set to work finding another route. As he did, he encountered a prisoner called Jasiek, whom he chose as an ally, and together they formed a plan to escape through the Auschwitz bakery while working a night shift. After they got Jasiek assigned to the bakery, he was so successful and well-liked by the floor boss that he was made a deputy supervisor and given the run of the night shifts. Then Pilecki himself feigned typhus, getting assigned to the quarantine block, where he was helped by a couple of members of the resistance. He extended one of them, a twenty-year-old named Edek who had come to Auschwitz barely a man, an opportunity to join the escape, and Edek quickly accepted. The young Pole threw what amounted to a temper tantrum against his current boss, only to graciously accept a transfer to the bakery. He brought a transfer card for Pilecki, too. When the time for their night shift came, they were just barely able to time their escape to avoid the bakery guards, who spotted their departure but were unable to find a clean shot with their sidearms. After days spent fleeing through the countryside, dodging civilians, relying on the help of a few seemingly trustworthy strangers, and getting shot in the shoulder while running from a German soldier they had stumbled upon, Pilecki and his associates made it to the home of one of their Auschwitz allies' own parents. In one last, incredibly strange twist of fate, when it came time for that elderly couple to put Pilecki in touch with the local commander from the Polish underground, the person he encountered was one Tomasz Serafiński. That was the exact name and identity Pilecki himself had been using during his years in Auschwitz, after Serafiński's papers had been provided to him under the false assumption that the man was dead. Pilecki chronicled the exceptional conversation in his writings: "I introduced myself with the name I had used in Auschwitz. He replied: 'I'm also Tomasz.' I said, 'but I'm Tomasz.' 'I'm also Tomasz,' he said in surprise. Leon listened to this exchange in astonishment, as did the man's wife. 'But I was born here.' I now proceeded to name the day, year, and month, which I had repeated so many times in Auschwitz at every change of block or commando, and for the notes drawn up by the kapos. The man almost leapt from his chair. 'What's going on here? Those are my personal details.' 'Yes, they are, but they have gone through far more with me than with you.'" Pilecki ended up staying for months with the real Tomasz, forming a resistance unit with the goal of attacking and liberating Auschwitz, while writing to several of his contacts to update them on his status and that of the camp. He was lucky enough to miss a visit from the SS, who spoke to the real Tomasz and immediately dismissed him as someone who had had his identity stolen. Eventually he made his way to Warsaw, presenting his plans for a liberating operation. In the course of his work, Pilecki wrote his final report on Auschwitz, a document that survives and is available for public consumption. It chronicles his experiences in the camp in detail, not just what he saw, but how he had made the people there ready to resist. The first page, in an incredibly understated admission of the gravity of what he had witnessed, reads in part: "I am to write down the driest of facts, which is what my friends want me to do. They have told me: 'The more you stick to the bare facts without any kind of commentary, the more valuable it all will be.' Well, here I go, but we were not made out of wood, let alone stone, though sometimes it seemed as if even a stone would have broken out in a sweat. One was not made out of stone, though I often envied it; one still had a heart beating, sometimes in one's mouth." ## Back Into the Fray After he found his way back to the resistance, Pilecki joined a sabotage unit while coordinating the resistance inside the camp as best he could from afar. In that double role, he participated in the Warsaw Uprising, first as a common soldier under a false identity, and then, when too many officers were killed for the operation to sustain itself, he came forward to take command of a battalion himself. In the lead-up to the uprising, he had also become a member of an anti-communist secret organization, fully expecting that when the Nazis finally fell, he and his resistance would have to pivot and oppose the Soviet Union rather than taking much more than a day off. His role there was to put together a structure of people to plan combat operations, in the event that they were indeed forced back underground. But the Warsaw Uprising was no kinder to Pilecki than to any other Pole. Despite good success with his own unit, he was powerless to stop the collapse of the broader insurgency, and in October 1944 he was taken captive and sent to a POW camp called Murnau. There he lay far lower than he had at Auschwitz, mostly taking care of young freedom fighters who had never been in such a situation before. When he was let out, it was because the camp had been liberated, not because of any daring escape on his part. By then Auschwitz had been liberated too, and not by a Polish operation. It is here that we have to acknowledge that despite the incredible value of Pilecki's acts inside Auschwitz, despite the countless lives he undoubtedly saved by orchestrating the delivery of food, resources, and hope, and despite the contents of his report, his ultimate goal inside the camp was never realized. The cavalry, the Polish winged hussars of legend, never came to liberate Auschwitz, a task that instead fell to the Soviet Union. How Pilecki himself felt about that is difficult to say, although it seems a fair bet that the good he did in the meantime was more than enough to make his ordeal worth it. After the war's conclusion, Pilecki was briefly dispatched to Italy to convalesce, where he wrote out his memories and worked with Polish military commanders about what would come next. By December of 1945 he was back in Poland, this time under another false name. But this version of Poland, while thankfully unlike the one that had been occupied by Nazi Germany, was nonetheless unrecognizable from the nation where Pilecki had spent his early adulthood. With Soviet secret police and their local militias taking over, the anti-communist organization Pilecki had joined had been dissolved, but its former leaders were hard at work, spawning guerrilla units and widely scattered cells that were trying hard, though not always successfully, to stay a step ahead of the Soviets. In this environment, Pilecki built a new network from the ground up, calling on his surviving contacts and cobbling together an intimate knowledge of the new Soviet regime. At the same time, he devoted significant personal resources to compiling memories and accounts of the Auschwitz resistance, frustrated by fabricated stories that Soviet propagandists were spreading about the camp. But before long, he received word that his identity had been uncovered by the Soviets. Faced with the decision to leave Poland and his family, as well as leaving his resistance network with no suitable replacement at its head, Pilecki resolved to stay for as long as he could. ## A Bullet to the Back of the Head As long as he could turned out to be the eighth of May, 1947, when Pilecki was taken into custody by communist authorities. Kept in complete isolation from his fellow prisoners, he was interrogated by a pack of Soviet-backed secret police known for their brutality, who tortured him for a long six months and elicited a number of forced confessions and endorsements of statements the Soviets had prepared. Even in this most impossible of circumstances, Pilecki still managed to avoid revealing any genuinely sensitive information. In March of 1948, Pilecki was convicted of espionage, conspiracy to assassinate Polish officials, and a number of other charges in what amounted to a show trial. Two months later he was sentenced to death, despite pleas to the communist regime from many Auschwitz survivors. On May 25, 1948, an agent named Piotr Śmietański did the one thing the Auschwitz concentration camp never could: he executed Witold Pilecki with a gunshot to the back of the head. The location of his burial remains unknown, although he is memorialized today in several locations across Poland. In one last blow to his work, Pilecki's writings and accounts of what happened in Auschwitz were suppressed for decades after his death, in order to prevent his example from being used to inspire further resistance. It was not until the 1990s, after the fall of communism in Eastern Europe, that his efforts were finally revealed to the world. In the years since, he has been posthumously honored with Poland's highest decoration, the Order of the White Eagle, and commemorated all across his country in monuments and media. To this day, he is believed to have been the only person ever to voluntarily enter Auschwitz as an inmate, and it is impossible to truly quantify the continued results of his work in the descendants of people who would not have survived without him. What can be quantified is the simple fact that Witold Pilecki was one of one. When faced with one of the darkest and most apocalyptic places humanity has ever created, he, and he alone, chose to look it in the eye and force it to back down first. He was a man who did the unthinkable, whether for love of country, love of freedom, or, perhaps most likely of all, love of humanity. He may not have been the spy who liberated Auschwitz, but he was the spy who brought word of it to the whole world, from inside a place no other person would ever have dared to go. ## Frequently Asked Questions ### Why did Witold Pilecki volunteer to be sent to Auschwitz? The Polish resistance had become aware of a mysterious facility near the town of Oświęcim, known as Auschwitz, a place from which people did not return. They believed it was some kind of prison or POW camp and needed someone to infiltrate it to learn its purpose. Pilecki was chosen for the mission, by his own later account partly as a punishment for refusing to support a Secret Polish Army leader's push toward ultranationalism, and he agreed to take it on. His orders were to get arrested, get taken to the camp, find out what was happening inside, and find a way out. ### How did Pilecki organize resistance inside the camp? He built an underground network arranged into small cells of five men each. Crucially, each cell knew nothing of the others, so that if one cell were discovered and destroyed, its members could not betray the rest under interrogation. The cells received news from outside, distributed extra food and clothing, smuggled out intelligence reports, and laid groundwork to seize the camp if Allied help ever came. At its height, the network numbered well over a hundred operatives that Pilecki personally tracked, eventually organized into four battalions with one kept on permanent standby. ### What were some of the network's most audacious operations? Pilecki's network cracked open the SS tip mailboxes to remove disclosures that threatened them while letting through those that hurt their enemies. During a typhus outbreak, they cultivated infected lice and released them onto the coats of SS officers, killing many. They cobbled together a working radio transmitter to broadcast arrival and death figures that the SS could hear but never trace. They also stole and copied the guards' keys and smuggled out German cipher keys to the Polish underground. ### How did Pilecki escape Auschwitz? After abandoning an early plan to flee through the camp's sewers, he engineered an escape through the Auschwitz bakery. An ally named Jasiek got himself installed as a deputy supervisor on the bakery night shift, and Pilecki feigned typhus to reach the quarantine block, recruiting a young prisoner named Edek along the way. Transferred to the bakery, the three timed their break to slip past the guards, who spotted them but could not get a clean shot. After days on the run, including a gunshot wound to Pilecki's shoulder, they reached safety. ### What happened to Pilecki after the war? He returned to a Poland under Soviet control, where he built a new intelligence network and worked to document the truth of the Auschwitz resistance against Soviet propaganda. Arrested by communist authorities on May 8, 1947, he was tortured for six months, convicted of espionage and other charges in a show trial in March 1948, and executed on May 25, 1948, with a gunshot to the back of the head. His writings were suppressed for decades and only revealed to the world after the fall of communism in the 1990s, after which he was posthumously awarded the Order of the White Eagle. ## Sources 1. *The Auschwitz Volunteer* by Witold Pilecki (contributors: Norman Davies, Michael Schudrich, Jarek Garliński) 2. [England's Poles in the Game: WWII Intelligence Cooperation, Institute of World Politics](https://www.iwp.edu/papers-studies/2007/03/01/englands-poles-in-the-game-wwii-intelligence-cooperation/) 3. [The Remarkable Story of the Man Who Volunteered to Enter Auschwitz, TIME](https://time.com/5635746/the-remarkable-story-of-the-man-who-volunteered-to-enter-auschwitz-and-tell-the-world-about-it/) 4. [Military Review, Army University Press](https://www.armyupress.army.mil/Portals/7/military-review/Archives/English/MilitaryReview_20131231_art015.pdf) 5. [Zagłada Żydów (journal article)](https://www.zagladazydow.pl/index.php/zz/article/view/720) 6. [Rotmistrz Witold Pilecki, Institute of National Remembrance (IPN)](https://biogramy.ipn.gov.pl/bio/wszystkie-biogramy/106001,Rotmistrz-Witold-Pilecki.html) 7. [Witold Pilecki, Holocaust Memorial Day Trust](https://www.hmd.org.uk/resource/witold-pilecki/) 8. [Witold Pilecki, Jewish Virtual Library](https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/witold-pilecki) 9. [NPR coverage of Witold Pilecki](https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=129956107) 10. [The Auschwitz volunteer the Nazis couldn't break, The Washington Post](https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2020/01/26/pilecki-auschwitz-polish-resistance/)

The Invisible Purges in Venezuela: How Delcy Rodriguez Remade a Regime

Simon Whistler — Tue, 02 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Remember Venezuela? When President Trump sent special forces into Caracas to snatch former President Nicolas Maduro in the middle of the night in early January, most observers assumed this would be the biggest story of the year. There was breathless coverage of what the arrest meant for Latin America — especially since, just months before the operation, Washington had released a National Security Strategy document placing renewed emphasis on the region. It read as a return to the Monroe Doctrine that guided the United States in the 19th century: the Americas were Washington's backyard, and all other powers should butt out. The implication was that the United States would now pivot to Latin America. US oil companies moving into Venezuela, the ongoing feud with Cuba — these would become the priority, rather than starting new wars in the Middle East. And then you all know what happened next. Venezuela disappeared from the headlines, replaced first by Trump's spats with Europe, and then by the war with Iran. But even as the media cycle moved on, things did not stay still in Venezuela itself. Under Vice President Delcy Rodriguez, the government has begun a quiet but sweeping purge of Maduro's inner circle, removing his loyalists from positions of influence — apparently with Washington's knowledge and, at times, at its implicit urging. The impact has been a silent reshaping of Venezuelan society, one that would have been unthinkable only four months ago. This is the story of how a transitional leader consolidated power in plain sight, and why the very stability the United States now prizes may be the thing that keeps Venezuela from becoming a democracy. ## Key Takeaways - After Maduro's January capture, Vice President Delcy Rodriguez inherited an untenable balancing act: appease Washington while preventing a Chavista fracture or military coup. Within four months, she chose Washington. - Since Maduro's arrest, Rodriguez has replaced seventeen ministers, overhauled military leadership, appointed new diplomats, and overseen the detention of at least three businessmen linked to her predecessor, according to the New York Times. - General Vladimir Padrino López, Maduro's longest-serving defense minister of more than eleven years and a plausible threat to Rodriguez, was demoted to run the agriculture ministry. - Interior Minister Diosdado Cabello — a man with a $25 million bounty on his head — has survived the purge because he commands the repression apparatus and carries deeper ties to Hugo Chávez than even Maduro did. - The opposition has been left fractured and sidelined after Trump declined to back it; Nobel Peace Prize winner Maria Corina Machado remains in exile but plans to return before the end of 2026. - Washington's stated three-step plan — stabilization, recovery, transition — currently prioritizes stability and oil access over elections, leaving Rodriguez free to entrench what some observers call "Maduroism without Maduro." ## The Balancing Act After Maduro's Capture In the immediate aftermath of Maduro's January capture, Iria Puyosa, a senior research fellow at the Atlantic Council, wrote that his replacement, Delcy Rodriguez, faced an untenable balancing act. On one hand, she had to appease Washington, because Trump had made clear she would pay a bigger price than Maduro if she did not do what he expected. On the other, she had to maintain the unity of the Chavista regime Maduro left behind, to prevent an internal fracture or a military coup. In the early days, Rodriguez appeared to thread this needle carefully — mollifying Trump while not upsetting the hardliners. She delivered a fiery speech hours after Maduro's arrest, demanding his release and insisting that he was the country's only president. More tellingly, she delivered the address flanked by what she called Venezuela's National Defense Council, which included the defense minister, the attorney general, and the heads of the legislature and judiciary — all close allies of Maduro. The staging was the message: she was still one of them, and the regime was still united. A few hours later, her tone had shifted. On the messaging platform Telegram, she wrote that it was a priority for the United States and Venezuela to move toward a balanced and respectful relationship, inviting Washington to work together on an agenda for cooperation aimed at shared development. Saying mutually exclusive things to different audiences can sometimes work for politicians when the stakes are low enough. But no one believed Rodriguez could keep it up. At some point she would have to throw out the needle and thread altogether and directly embrace either Washington or the remaining Chavistas in Caracas. In Puyosa's view, the choice was obvious: given Washington's overwhelming military capabilities, Rodriguez would have to purge the hardliners and consolidate power around a circle of loyalists willing to work with the United States. A little under four months later, that appears to be exactly what she has chosen to do. ## A Who's Who of the Maduro Era, Dismantled According to the New York Times, since Maduro's arrest Rodriguez has replaced seventeen ministers, overhauled military leadership, appointed new diplomats, and overseen the detention of at least three businessmen linked to her predecessor. The list of those pushed out reads like a who's who of the Maduro era. General Vladimir Padrino López — once considered one of the most powerful men in Venezuela and Maduro's longest-serving defense minister — was removed from his post and reassigned to run the agriculture ministry. It was a massive demotion for a man who had controlled Venezuela's sprawling military for more than eleven years and who had widely been seen as one of the most plausible threats to Rodriguez's grip on power. To curtail his influence further, Rodriguez replaced the country's senior military leadership. One general told the Times that many within Venezuela saw the dismissal of senior commanders as the start of a much deeper, US-guided overhaul of the armed forces. Away from the military, Rodriguez targeted other Maduro allies. Tarek William Saab, the former attorney general who had stood beside her during the January speech, was fired, given a consolation post, and then fired again. Alex Saab — a Colombian-born businessman who has made billions from preferential food and oil trade contracts and was indicted by the United States on corruption-related charges — was removed as industry minister and later detained at Washington's request. Washington and Caracas are now negotiating his fate, which may include extradition to the United States to stand trial. Rodriguez has also reportedly overseen the detention of two other prominent businessmen close to Maduro: Raúl Gorrín, president of a local 24-hour news network, and Wilmer Ruperti, an oil magnate who rose to prominence after helping move fuel into the country during a 2002–2003 strike at the state oil company. ## Who Replaces Them — and Why It Matters The officials who have been fired have been replaced by Rodriguez's own allies. These include younger Chavistas with weaker connections to the movement's roots, and the scions of the governing party's aristocracy — figures more interested in reaping the fruits of a market economy than in preserving the legacy of Hugo Chávez. The composition of the new guard tells you something about the direction of travel: this is not a generation steeped in revolutionary ideology, but one comfortable with commerce and accommodation. Caracas would argue that the purges are meant to make Venezuela a more democratic country and to eliminate the corruption that has been a feature of its history for much of the past century. The Venezuelan opposition disagrees. They view Rodriguez's actions as an attempt to solidify her own position ahead of any upcoming elections. Both things can be true at once. While it is undeniable that Rodriguez is using the purges to shore up her standing, it is equally clear that Washington exerts enormous influence over her decision-making. Sources close to the government confirmed as much, telling the Times that Rodriguez was coordinating some replacements with Washington. Others described that influence as so pervasive that it was as if Rodriguez were governing with Uncle Sam holding a gun to her head. The purge, in other words, serves two masters at once — and for now, their interests happen to align. ## The Man Who Survived: Diosdado Cabello All of which makes the survival of one former regime figure even more interesting. Diosdado Cabello Rondón is the nation's interior minister, controlling the governing party's repression apparatus — the thugs in masks and on motorbikes who made publicly challenging Maduro's rule a dangerous aspiration. On paper, Cabello looks like exactly the kind of figure Washington would demand Rodriguez remove, and one she might relish the chance to go after. He carries a $25 million bounty on his head for links to drug trafficking organizations, and according to the Miami Herald, he may have even put out an order to kill US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who at the time was a senator representing Florida. So why has he not been ousted, or at the very least moved to a different position? There are two plausible reasons. First, Cabello has closer ties to Hugo Chávez than perhaps anyone else in the country, even Maduro. The two were friends at university and both were involved in the failed 1992 coup. They were so close that, according to Geoff Ramsey, a Venezuela analyst at the Atlantic Council, Cabello saw himself as the rightful successor to Chávez, not Maduro. Keeping him in office signals to other Chavistas that, despite the purges, Rodriguez retains some loyalty to the old guard. Second, Cabello controls the ruling party's repression apparatus. His cousin, Alexis Rodríguez Cabello, currently heads the Bolivarian Intelligence Service — described as the secret police force of the Bolivarian government. Since taking office, Rodriguez has not dismantled that apparatus. Rather, according to the UN, she has allowed it to adapt to the new reality in the country. Long story short: rather than a democratic transition, Rodriguez may well be planning to keep her grip on Caracas for a long time to come — and for that, she will need Cabello. For Washington, given that the priority is stability in Venezuela, it is likely that no one really cares who maintains that stability, or how unsavory they are. It is not as though Washington has never before supported a despotic Latin American government kept in power by a secret police network. For his part, Cabello seems to have realized the political winds have shifted, recasting himself from ruling-party pit bull to a patriotic guarantor of stability. During a government rally he urged the public to fully support Rodriguez: "Let's accompany our sister Delcy. Let's confide completely in the ability, work ethic and conscience of comrade Delcy." How long that will keep him in power is anyone's guess, but for now it seems to be enough. ## The Opposition: Fractured and Frozen Out Away from the purges sits the opposition — which most people expected would be ruling Venezuela following Maduro's ouster. The fact that it is not in power right now is primarily because President Trump declined to back it, telling the press that the opposition did not have the necessary support to govern. As a result, the opposition has been left fractured and sidelined, with Rodriguez moving to make the most of those disagreements. She appointed Oliver Blanco, who had worked as a personal assistant to an opposition leader, as envoy to North America and Europe. And it is not only Rodriguez approaching the opposition; the channels appear to run both ways. According to the Spanish-language outlet El País, some parties are already exploring lines of communication with the Chavistas to gain ground. This pragmatic shift indicates that they have accepted power will rest in Rodriguez's hands for the foreseeable future — and that it would be better to collaborate with her than to be left out in the cold. Rodriguez has taken other steps to endear herself to the opposition, including passing an amnesty law that has benefited nearly 5,000 people, who have been released from prison or had their pretrial detention measures lifted. But here is the crucial caveat: the law excludes those prosecuted or convicted of promoting military action against the country — a category that could include opposition leaders like Maria Corina Machado, who has been accused by the ruling party of calling for international intervention. The amnesty, in practice, is generous to the harmless and pointed at the threatening. ## Machado, Marquez, and an Engine for Change Machado, who won a Nobel Peace Prize for her work promoting democracy in Venezuela, was widely seen as the most likely contender to take over after Maduro. Yet she has found herself frozen out of the country's political future. She is currently in exile after slipping out of Venezuela to receive her Nobel Peace Prize — a prize she later gifted to President Trump. In her absence, new contenders for the opposition's leadership are emerging. One is Enrique Marquez, a former presidential candidate in the 2024 elections who had been endorsed by Trump. Once seen only as a stand-in candidate because Machado could not run, Marquez has steadily gained support inside the country, especially after his arrest. The crackdown that was meant to neutralize him appears instead to have raised his profile. Despite these headwinds, Machado plans to return to Venezuela before the end of 2026. She remains the most popular opposition figure according to opinion polls, and her return could significantly shift the country's political landscape — especially because Venezuela is passing through one of the most turbulent periods in its history. Maduro's arrest alone would be a major destabilizing event for any country. But since then, according to El País, the country has seen several events that would have been unthinkable a few years ago: a transportation strike paralyzed Caracas; a released opposition member held a press conference to denounce Chavista repression; and a union march proceeded toward the National Assembly with signs demanding better wages and greater freedoms. Geoff Ramsey told El País that "Venezuelans are fed up with a corrupt and inefficient system, and that discontent could become a real engine for change." If Machado returned, she could unite the opposition behind a single figure and harness that public dissatisfaction to push for elections — particularly because Rodriguez has remained in charge past the 90-day point at which her interim government was authorized by the National Assembly. ## Elections Deferred: Stability Over Democracy In a recent interview with El País, Rodriguez's brother — the powerful national assembly chief, Jorge Rodríguez — declined to say when fresh elections might be held, stating that the government's main priority was the economy. His comments echo the feeling in Washington, where the priority is to keep the government in place for as long as possible to ensure a stable transition, and not to rock the boat so much that it scares away investors. By sidelining Machado and instead working with Rodriguez — who was previously the country's Minister of Economy and had earned praise for managing the oil industry despite sanctions — Washington has signaled that it has a greater interest in stability than in immediate democratic gains. Rubio has described a three-step plan for Venezuela: stabilization, recovery, and transition. At the moment, the country seems to be in the stabilization and recovery phase, and it may be a while before transition arrives. Rubio also told the Senate that while elections are important, they cannot be held as long as the government controls all the levers of power and the opposition has no access to the media, with candidates routinely dismissed and unable to appear on the ballot. On one hand, this is understandable. Stability and rescuing a fragile economy matter not only to Washington but to the Venezuelan people, who have lived through repeated economic crises — and it takes time to build democratic institutions. As Dr. Christopher Sabatini, director of Chatham House's Latin America program, wrote recently, Venezuela has a lot of work to do to lay the groundwork for free and fair elections. On the other hand, observers fear that Rodriguez remaining in power could entrench the very systems that drove Venezuela away from democracy in the first place — Maduroism without Maduro. Tom Shannon, a veteran US diplomat who has worked on Venezuela since the 1990s, told the Guardian that every day Rodriguez stays in power is a day Venezuela lacks a true democratic opposition. The pressure, he added, was off: "The pressure's off now because all of our military attention is directed elsewhere and there just isn't the bandwidth to keep the pressure on in Venezuela." ## Why the Pessimistic Case Wins for Now Taken together, the picture is a dire one for anyone hoping to see Venezuela transition to democracy. As long as Rodriguez is willing to play ball with Washington — to remove the individuals it asks her to remove, arrest those it asks her to arrest, and grant American companies access to Venezuela's oil wealth — Washington seems content to let her rule. Rodriguez knows this, which is why she is appointing loyalists to powerful positions. She is betting on one of two outcomes. Either, when it comes down to brass tacks, the Trump administration will not actually care much about elections — or she can simply outlast the current team in the White House, eventually becoming seen as Venezuela's legitimate leader by dint of being there and being willing to work with the United States. It is entirely possible this reading is too pessimistic, and that the Trump administration will eventually pressure Rodriguez to hold free and fair elections. That is the best-case scenario, and the one to hope for, because the Venezuelan people deserve the opportunity to choose their own leaders — especially after the stolen 2024 vote. But if working in geopolitics teaches one thing, it is that it is better to be pessimistic and proven wrong when the worst case does not come to pass than to be too hopeful and disappointed when it does. So, for the sake of the Venezuelan people, the hope here is to be wrong. Only time will tell either way. ## Frequently Asked Questions ### What happened to Nicolas Maduro and who is now running Venezuela? In early January, President Trump sent US special forces into Caracas to arrest former President Nicolas Maduro. Vice President Delcy Rodriguez then took over as interim leader. A former Minister of Economy praised for managing the oil industry under sanctions, she has remained in charge past the 90-day point at which her interim government was authorized by the National Assembly. ### How has Rodriguez dismantled Maduro's inner circle? According to the New York Times, Rodriguez has replaced seventeen ministers, overhauled military leadership, appointed new diplomats, and overseen the detention of at least three businessmen linked to her predecessor. Defense Minister Vladimir Padrino López — who controlled Venezuela's military for more than eleven years — was demoted to run the agriculture ministry, while figures like Tarek William Saab and Alex Saab were removed from their posts. ### Why has Diosdado Cabello, with a $25 million US bounty on his head, kept his position? Cabello has survived for two reasons. He holds closer ties to Hugo Chávez than even Maduro did — the two were university friends who took part in the 1992 coup together — so keeping him signals residual loyalty to hardline Chavistas. He also controls the ruling party's repression apparatus, with his cousin heading the Bolivarian Intelligence Service, a network Rodriguez has chosen to preserve rather than dismantle. ### Why is the Venezuelan opposition fractured and sidelined rather than in power? President Trump declined to back the opposition, telling the press it lacked the necessary support to govern. As a result parties have been left fragmented, with some already exploring channels of communication with the Chavistas. Nobel Peace Prize winner Maria Corina Machado, widely seen as Maduro's likeliest successor, remains in exile and is excluded from Rodriguez's amnesty law, which exempts those accused of promoting military action against the country. ### What is Washington's stated plan for Venezuela, and what do critics fear? Secretary of State Marco Rubio has outlined a three-step plan — stabilization, recovery, and transition — but Venezuela appears stuck in the first two phases, with Washington prioritizing economic stability and oil access over near-term elections. Critics, including veteran US diplomat Tom Shannon, fear that every day Rodriguez stays in power is a day Venezuela lacks a true democratic opposition, entrenching what some observers call "Maduroism without Maduro." ## Sources 1. https://www.nytimes.com/2026/04/18/world/americas/delcy-rodriguez-maduro-allies-venezuela.html 2. https://www.state.gov/releases/office-of-the-spokesperson/2026/01/secretary-of-state-marco-rubio-before-the-senate-committee-on-foreign-relations-on-u-s-policy-towards-venezuela 3. https://boz.substack.com/p/delcy-rodriguez-is-like-javier-milei 4. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/apr/18/venezuelas-machado-to-hold-madrid-rally-as-opposition-frozen-out-after-maduro-capture 5. https://www.americanprogress.org/article/marco-rubios-deal-trading-venezuelan-democracy-for-oil/ 6. https://www.npr.org/2026/01/18/nx-s1-5678974/venezuela-maduro-enforcer-cabello 7. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/4/20/spain-venezuela-opposition 8. https://www.chathamhouse.org/2026/04/democratic-elections-venezuela-wont-happen-overnight-heres-groundwork-thats-needed-first-2

Iran's Attack on Israel: Is the Middle East About to Go to War?

Simon Whistler — Tue, 02 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

In the dark, calm hours of the night on Saturday, the thirteenth of April 2024, air raid sirens sounded off across Israel. Around the world, alerts chimed and cell phones flared to life, warning any person with even the most basic access to modern media that an attack was coming. Dozens of drones had lifted off from Iran and were on their way, on a long, slow march across the Middle East, with Israel directly in the crosshairs. For people just tuning in, the attack was both perplexing and deeply worrying. It was launched by a far stronger and more fearsome adversary than the Hamas organization Israel had been fighting in Gaza. For those who had watched the conflict closely, it was the moment that observers had been dreading for months: the moment when posturing, rhetoric, proxy warfare, and even direct attacks on each other inside third nations boiled over into a strike that could become the opening salvo in a new international war, with Israel on one side and Iran on the other. What follows is a close and comprehensive look at Iran's strike on Israel: what happened, why it happened, what has been going on below the surface of Middle Eastern affairs, and what may come next. The attack was unprecedented in scope, largely unsuccessful in its tactical aims, and revealing in what it exposed about the alliances, calculations, and red lines that now govern one of the world's most dangerous standoffs. This is the central question that hangs over the entire episode, the one rightly on the minds of world leaders, global analysts, and ordinary people watching the exchange play out: is the Middle East on the brink of war? ## Key Takeaways - Iran launched roughly 170 Shahed-136 suicide drones, more than thirty cruise missiles, and over 120 ballistic missiles at Israel on the evening of April 13, 2024, in the largest drone strike in recorded history. - Israel's multi-layered air defense, supported by the United States, the United Kingdom, France, and Jordan, intercepted nearly the entire barrage; no drones or cruise missiles reached their targets, and only a small handful of ballistic missiles struck. - The attack was a direct retaliation for an April 1 Israeli airstrike on an Iranian consulate building in Damascus that killed senior Quds Force commanders, including Brigadier General Mohammad Reza Zahedi. - Damage inside Israel was limited, and there were no deaths; experts concluded the strike was meant to succeed, not merely to make a show, and that it failed. - The barrage marked the first time since 1991 that Israel had been attacked directly by the military of another nation, shattering a decades-old veneer of indirect conflict. - International reaction broke largely against Iran, with even Tehran's partners urging restraint and declining to back further escalation. - Israel faced three broad choices in response: draw the conflict down, respond proportionally, or escalate; at the time of analysis, no decision had been announced. ## The Attack Iran's assault commenced on the evening of Saturday, April 13, local time, with the launch of roughly 170 drones from Iranian airspace. The drones were a widely used, Iranian-designed model called the Shahed-136, a suicide drone that attacks in waves against ground targets. Each is equipped with up to 50 kilograms, or 110 pounds, of explosives, intended to crash directly into a target and detonate in the process. Cruising at a top speed of just 185 kilometers per hour, or not much faster than 100 miles per hour, they would take several hours to reach Israel. The Israel Defense Forces, or IDF, sounded the alarm, and not only Israel but several surrounding nations either closed their airspace at that time or had already done so in anticipation of the attack. As the drones closed in, Iran launched a second wave: over thirty cruise missiles, which fly in a relatively straight shot over long distances, and over 120 ballistic missiles, which climb high into the atmosphere before falling downward toward their targets. Both ballistic and cruise missiles fly far faster than the Shahed drones, and Iran had timed its launch to bring those missiles crashing down on Israel slightly after the arrival of the drones. This is a tactic rising rapidly in popularity among 21st-century warfighters, and one that the Institute for the Study of War has described as a near-carbon-copy of methods Russia has used against Ukraine in its ongoing war. The incoming drones and cruise missiles are meant to occupy an enemy's air defense systems, costing them valuable interceptor rockets that take time to reload, while the faster, harder-to-hit, and deadlier ballistic missiles arrive during a critical moment of vulnerability, surging through and hitting the intended targets. As the Institute put it: "The Iranians very likely expected that few if any of the cruise missiles would hit their targets, but likely hoped that a significantly higher percentage of the ballistic missiles would do so." Worth noting, too: Iran-allied groups, from Hezbollah in Lebanon to the Houthis in Yemen to militias in Iraq, all launched their own rockets at Israel, according to IDF spokesman Daniel Hagari. ## Israel's Multi-Layered Shield When the combined attack came within range, Israeli air defenses roared to life. Standing against the missiles and drones was Israel's vaunted, multi-layered defensive shield, a highly advanced interlocking system of long-, medium-, and short-range systems meant to bring down a wide array of aerial threats in and around Israeli airspace. At long range, Israel's Arrow-2 and Arrow-3 systems used detachable warheads to intercept Iran's ballistic missiles, doing so at altitudes high enough that even if a nuclear warhead were mounted to one of the missiles, it would have been disposed of far enough from the Earth's surface to render its effect harmless. In medium range, Israel used David's Sling, a system that can launch interceptors against all of the munitions Iran used, at a range of 100 to 200 kilometers, or 62 to 124 miles. The drones and missiles that made it through Arrow and David's Sling had to face the Iron Dome, Israel's globally exalted last line of aerial defense, which fires missiles to dispose of short-range threats in midair. Also at Israel's disposal were American-made Patriot air defense systems and the aircraft of the Israeli Air Force, including over two hundred F-15 and F-16 fighters and dozens of advanced F-35s. A final element of Israel's defense, the so-called Iron Beam laser defense system, has not yet gone operational and so was not used in this case. Israel's allies took part as well: the United States, the United Kingdom, France, and Jordan each took down numerous incoming targets using warplanes and air defenses, while the French Navy provided radar coverage for the affected area. ## A Barrage That Failed Against such a comprehensive air defense, Iran's assault was largely unsuccessful. Of the roughly 200 Shahed drones and cruise missiles, not a single one is believed to have impacted its intended target inside Israel, and of Iran's ballistic missiles, just a small handful were claimed as successful hits. According to Iran itself, the intended targets were Israel's Nevatim Airbase and an intelligence center in a mountain cluster called Mount Hermon, as well as the Ramon Airbase in Israel's south. According to Israel, five Iranian ballistic missiles struck the Nevatim airbase and four hit the Ramon airbase, but the extent of the damage was limited to a hit on a parked C-130 transport aircraft, a runway that had not been in use, a few empty storage hangars, and scattered locations around the airbases where not much was happening. Iran has claimed far more substantial damage, but as of yet, no evidence of that sort has been made public. There were no deaths due to the attack, in Israel or anywhere else, although several people sustained minor injuries from shrapnel, and a seven-year-old Bedouin girl living in Israel was seriously injured. By any measure, the strike inflicted little of consequence on the country it was aimed at. ## Show of Force, or the Real Thing? In the early hours following the attack, the relatively limited destruction led many news outlets to conclude that the strike had been meant for show, making brazen flyovers of third nations but choosing points of impact where not many people would be put at risk. It is not an uncommon feature of global flashpoints to see that sort of attack, designed to pacify hardliners at home and defuse tensions abroad at the same time. There was real potential for a less dangerous strike, one that Iranian leaders could show their people to say "see, we're doing something," while crafting it in a way that would let Israel repel it easily, signaling that Iran did not want to take the matter further. Critically, though, most international experts have concluded that this particular attack was not meant to be a simple expression of token retribution. The tactics Iran chose, the weapons it relied on, and the sheer scale of the assault all indicate that this was real. Although Iran chose slow-flying, easy-to-spot Shahed drones for its attack, the addition of large numbers of ballistic missiles indicates that Iran telegraphed its attack not to give Israel a chance to repel it, but to soak up Israeli air-defense capability and allow at least some missiles to get through. The attack was not meant to do massive or disproportionate amounts of damage, but it was meant to work, and it failed. ## The Spark: The Damascus Consulate Strike To make sense of the attack, one has to work backward across the timeline, beginning with the Israeli action that directly preceded it. On the first of April 2024, Israel launched an airstrike against an Iranian consulate building in Damascus, Syria, part of a larger compound that also housed the Iranian embassy there. The consulate that was struck included the living quarters of Iran's ambassador to Syria, but that was only collateral damage. The real target was a meeting happening inside the building, between several members of non-state militias allied with Iran and seven members of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, or IRGC. Among their number was Brigadier General Mohammad Reza Zahedi, alongside his deputy, Brigadier General Mohammed Hadi Haji Rahimi. All seven IRGC soldiers were killed, alongside seven other associates of military organizations that Israel considers its enemies, and two civilians. The attack was a major blow to Iran, not just because it directly targeted an Iranian diplomatic target in a third nation, flagrantly breaking one of the few rules of the international order that most of the world actually sticks to. Even more important were the deaths of Brigadier Generals Zahedi and Rahimi, two senior commanders of Iran's Quds Force. The Quds Force is Iran's premier special-operations, military intelligence, and unconventional warfare branch, and it props up a range of Iran-allied organizations around the world, from Hamas in Gaza to the Houthi rebels in Yemen to Hezbollah in Lebanon and more. Zahedi and Rahimi are the most senior Revolutionary Guard Corps members to be killed since America's 2020 assassination of Quds Force leader Qasem Soleimani, a strike whose ripple effects many international observers have cited as directly leading to Israel's current war against Hamas. ## A Retaliation Foretold Since Israel's strike, it was no secret that an Iranian retaliation would hit sooner rather than later. Iran publicly vowed revenge, and Israel-allied nations around the world, including the United States, took care to express to Iran and the global public that they had not had any advance notice of the strike. Western nations applied intense pressure on Iran to deter an attack, while Israel threatened direct retribution on Iranian soil if Israelis were made the targets of a retaliatory strike. Iran directly cautioned the US against intervening in any way, passing a threat through Iran's Swiss embassy to America's that US military bases could be attacked in the Middle East if the US took part in an Israeli defense. That is a sore spot for the US, after three American reservists were killed and thirty-four were wounded in a strike on an American base near the Jordan-Syria-Iraq border in January. Regional nations that host American bases also lodged requests that America not use their territory to launch a counterattack, in the event that a strike did come. Finally, Iran warned nations of the region three days before the attack, knowing full well that those warnings would eventually make it back to the Americans and the Israelis. So, when looking at the Iranian attack that ultimately did strike Israel, it is hard to miss the retaliatory nature of the assault, and that was intentional on Iran's part. Although Iran appears to have meant this attack to be a major success, it was also a direct response to the Israeli strike on that consular building in Damascus. Even the targets Iran chose were ones that had been directly involved: the airbase where Israel's warplanes took off in order to launch the strike, and the intelligence station believed to have tracked the Quds Force generals. The intent was to make Israel pay, but it was not meant to start a war, at least not yet. It is the geopolitical equivalent of elbowing back and forth with a sibling in the back of a car: neither side really wants to break the other's nose, but each means every bit of those elbows, and neither is about to let the other get the last shot in. ## The Shadow War and the Axis of Resistance To really make sense of this attack, one has to understand the longer recent history between Iran and Israel. The history of religious, ethnic, and geopolitical tensions in the Middle East goes back a very long time, but among the by-products of that long and troubled history is a shadow war between Iran and Israel that has gone on for decades. WarFronts has dedicated extensive coverage to the long-running, three-way cold war in the Middle East, between Israel, Iran, and Saudi Arabia. To give the short version, all three nations have battled economically, diplomatically, and via proxy warfare to build their control and influence over the Middle East as a whole. While Israel tends to fight that cold war through mostly economic and diplomatic means, relying on its strong relationship with the global West and its immense military strength relative to the rest of the region, Iran has taken a different tone, building what it and its own proxy forces refer to as the Axis of Resistance. That axis is made up of numerous non-state actors: Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Houthi rebels in Yemen, and a network of other militias in Iraq and Syria. The Syrian government also relies heavily on Iran, and the Iraqi government is getting increasingly cozy with Iran as time goes on. Iran provides those groups with financial, military, and intelligence support, primarily relying on its Quds Force, the same organization that the prominent Iranian generals killed in Israel's first-of-April airstrike helped to lead. Introduce that context, and the attack starts to come into focus for what it really was: the clearest indication that this long, cold war is at risk of going hot. Iran has pulled the strings behind attacks on, and resistance against, Israel for years, and especially since the start of the Israel-Hamas War. Hamas solicits strong, direct support from Iran, while Hezbollah in southern Lebanon has traded near-daily fire with Israel since that war kicked off, and the Houthi rebels in Yemen have embarked on a large-scale campaign against global maritime shipping. Israel has fought back, retaliated, and launched a large-scale counteroffensive against Hamas in the wake of its terror attack on October 7, 2023. But even Israel's direct strike on the Quds Force leaders took place in a third nation and could be interpreted as something other than a direct attack on Iran on its own soil. Now, Iran has chosen to shatter the thin veneer of indirect conflict that still existed. ## An Unprecedented Strike In the aftermath, an accounting of Iran's attempted strike revealed not only its unprecedented scope but its major effect in disrupting the international order of the last several decades. Given how many Shahed drones were used, Iran has now blown past the historical record for the biggest drone strike ever, even if it was largely unsuccessful in achieving its tactical aims. Not only that, but it was the first time since 1991, thirty-four years earlier, that Israel had been attacked directly by the military of another global nation. With Iran's attack now concluded, it fell to Israel to decide what to do next. Here, there are three basic options: Israel could draw down the conflict, respond proportionally, or escalate. Drawing down would involve launching either a less severe strike than Iran's in response, such as a limited attack on low-level Quds Force members operating abroad, or no military response at all. According to conventional geopolitics wisdom, that would signal to Iran that Israel would like to take steps toward both nations deciding not to attack anymore. A proportional response would see Israel attempt to craft an attack that basically matches what Iran did, sending the signal that this is not over but that Israel does not intend to go to war over it. An escalation would involve an even larger retaliatory response by Israel, basically telling Iran to brace for full-scale hostilities. ## The Global Reaction Iran, Israel, and the entire rest of the world have reason to care which response Israel decides. In the wake of the attack, most of the global response focused on both telling Iran how bad an affront to the international order its attack was, and telling Israel just how bad it would be if the situation escalated further. Iran's strike was strongly condemned by Israel's allies, including the UN, the UK, Canada, Japan, and the nations of Europe. Nations generally more open to engaging with Iran declined to offer any support, with China and Russia both urging restraint, and Turkey and Saudi Arabia exerting pressure on Iran to wrap up its retaliation rather than carrying it on further. The United Nations, too, came down hard against Iran, and even direct allies of Tehran held off on calling for further escalation. But although Israel's allies remained committed to its national defense, with the US insisting that its commitment to the country's military defense is "ironclad," even the US stressed that its active support did not include backing for further Israeli strikes against Iran. The US flatly denied that it would participate in an Israeli retaliation. Quoting a senior American official who spoke to ABC: "We believe Israel has freedom of action to defend itself, in Syria or elsewhere. That's a long-standing policy and that remains. But no, we would not envision ourselves participating in such a thing." In private phone calls, US President Joe Biden reportedly emphasized to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that Israel could claim its successful defense against the Iranian assault as a victory, and that it does not stand to gain anything further by continuing to engage in a cycle of escalation. ## Reading Israel's Next Move At the time of analysis, Israel's decision was not yet made. As it pursued a broad counteroffensive in Gaza and worked to establish favorable terms for both a possible ceasefire and a possible assault against the city of Rafah, it was under pressure to exercise care with how it selected a response. Israel reconvened its war cabinet for two consecutive days to discuss potential responses, indicating that a decision was not yet made on whether, or how, Israel would act next. One fairly good indicator came from Israeli war cabinet minister Benny Gantz, a man who is both a longtime political opponent of Prime Minister Netanyahu and a current ally in the political coalition governing Israel's military action in Gaza and abroad. The day after the attack by Iran, Gantz stated that Israel would indeed respond to Iran "in a way and at the time that suits us." Although Gantz is a war hawk in his own right, he is generally perceived to be less inclined to these sorts of major military actions than Netanyahu, implying that if he is on board, the prime minister probably is too. Israel and Iran traded barbs at an emergency meeting of the UN Security Council, seeming outwardly unmoved by any talk of a complete drawdown. There, Israel's UN ambassador called Iran both "the number one global sponsor of terror" and a "pirate state," while Iran's ambassador defended his country's actions as a proportional response that it had no choice but to undertake. Israel further claimed that it "reserves the right to retaliate." On Iranian state TV, IRGC generals were careful to express that any retaliation to this strike, not just an escalatory response, would prompt a much larger attack from Iran. Iran had, in effect, indicated in advance how it intended to interpret an Israeli response, drawing a hard line in the sand and signaling that Israel's next move would decide just how big this thing gets. ## The Political Calculus Behind Escalation At the same time, Israel appeared to be banking on the idea that at least some of its allies' resistance to a retaliation was just talk. The Israeli government appeared to be working toward the assembly of a larger regional coalition that would allow it to strike, potentially on a scale that would suggest escalation rather than proportional response. And as for why Israel would be willing to take that chance, the international support given to it to defend against this attack indicated to both Israel and global observers that its partner nations were not willing to leave it isolated in the face of a major threat. For months, many experts have speculated that Prime Minister Netanyahu's motivations for pursuing such a massive and heavy-handed retaliation against the Hamas organization are at least partially political in nature. Netanyahu is unpopular among the Israeli public, especially at this phase of the war, and he is likely to face political challenges once the war ends. In order to stay in power at all, he has to both placate partners within Israel's hard right who want an even bigger military response, and work with Israel's larger opposition movement toward a ceasefire and the return of hostages still being kept prisoner by Hamas. The US and other close allies have put on their own increased pressure recently, in the wake of mass-casualty incidents killing Gazan civilians, an emerging famine, and the killing of several international aid workers in a recent Israeli drone strike against a humanitarian convoy. But what this latest attack has shown is that Israel's support gets a lot less qualified when it enters into larger hostilities with Iran. The West rallied behind the Netanyahu government after the Iranian attack in a way that has been rare to see since the start of the Israel-Hamas War. While it is unlikely that a wider war would see America, the UK, the European Union, Egypt, or Jordan bombing Tehran directly, it is very likely to keep those same nations arrayed on Israel's side of the conflict, and thus on Israel's side of the war against Hamas. For a consummate political survivalist like Netanyahu, that would be a massive boon to his future prospects, if his motivations are indeed what global-affairs analysts tend to agree they are. ## Iran's Miscalculation As for Iran, it is likely that the nation is coming to grips with a miscalculation around just how effective its aerial weapons were going to be. Unlike Russia's use of similar tactics against Ukraine, these hundreds of drones and missiles were not enough to overwhelm Israel's much more robust system of air defenses. And while the involvement of other nations certainly made Israel's job easier, there is no clear indicator that Iran would even have been successful if Israel was defending alone. A majority of Iran's aerial weapons were dealt with outside Israeli airspace, and those that came closer did relatively little damage even with their shrapnel, when measured relative to the size of the attack Iran launched. It is unknown just how many drones Iran has in its arsenal, but it just burned nearly two hundred of them in this assault, along with almost a hundred ballistic missiles. If it is going to launch a more successful attack, it is going to need to devote a great deal more firepower. And then there is the foreign-relations angle. After months of posturing, Iran finally presented a situation to the nations of the world that would force them to show where their loyalties lie, and the result, at least broadly, was not in Iran's favor. The participation of nations like Jordan and France in Israel's defense, and the active involvement of the US after it was warned about potential retaliation against its own bases by Iran, indicate that Israel would have major military support on its side if it and Iran choose to make this conflict bigger. Meanwhile, Iran's friends and acquaintances on the global stage have not come to its defense with nearly the strength Tehran might have hoped. Make no mistake: Tehran does have the ability to cause immense upheaval across the Middle East, and would almost certainly have the support of its many non-state-actor allies in the case of larger hostilities. But the idea that it could pose major problems to Israel on Israel's own territory is rather hard to believe. ## What a Wider War Could Look Like As for what a potential war between Israel and Iran could look like, that could take many forms, but none of them are particularly encouraging to think about. At a bare minimum, both nations have the capacity to inflict major damage upon the other, drawing in elements from across the Middle East for a war that would turn very bloody, very fast. Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, and Jordan all risk being drawn in directly, while the wealthy Gulf states and Turkey could be forced to take part too. Finally, there is the potential for a war to rapidly accelerate the nuclearization of Iran, where Tehran is believed to have the breakout capability to assemble multiple fission bombs in the span of weeks if it chose to do so. That would pit two nuclear-armed nations on either side of an active conflict, and set off a regional arms race that could quickly draw in Saudi Arabia and Turkey as well. The shape of such a conflict remains speculative, but its potential to spiral well beyond the two principal combatants is not. ## Is the Middle East on the Brink of War? The answer, well, it would certainly appear that way. As unsatisfying as it is, no ironclad prediction about the future of this conflict can be issued yet. After all, Israel does not even seem to know what it is going to do yet, and no analyst can see inside Bibi Netanyahu's head. But at the very least, there are some broad indicators of which way Israel appears to be leaning, and there is data to extrapolate just what could happen next, if Israel decides to either draw hostilities down or ratchet them upward. In the coming weeks, the world will have to wait and see what Israel will choose to do in response to this attack, and until that retaliation comes, it will be impossible to pinpoint just how bad all of this is going to get. Hopefully, Israel and Iran will be able to commit to a drawdown once the intense heat of this moment begins to cool, but that is not particularly likely, at least not right now. Will the Middle East see a full-scale war in 2024? That cannot be known for sure, and not even a reasonable guess is possible until a few more chess moves play out in either direction. But is the region sitting on the brink? Absolutely, and for the sake of all people across the region, the hope is that this reality changes very soon. ## Frequently Asked Questions ### How large was Iran's April 2024 attack on Israel, and what weapons did it use? Iran launched roughly 170 Shahed-136 suicide drones, more than thirty cruise missiles, and over 120 ballistic missiles — the largest drone strike ever recorded. The drones flew slowly to soak up Israeli air-defense capacity while the faster ballistic missiles were timed to arrive during the resulting window of vulnerability, mirroring tactics Russia had used against Ukraine. ### Why did Iran attack Israel? The strike was a direct retaliation for an April 1, 2024, Israeli airstrike on an Iranian consulate building in Damascus, Syria. The attack killed seven IRGC members, including senior Quds Force commanders Brigadier Generals Mohammad Reza Zahedi and Mohammed Hadi Haji Rahimi — the most senior Revolutionary Guard deaths since the US assassination of Qasem Soleimani in 2020. ### How did Israel stop the attack, and how much damage was done? Israel used a multi-layered shield — Arrow-2 and Arrow-3 for long-range ballistic missiles, David's Sling at medium range, and the Iron Dome as a last line of defense, backed by Patriot systems and F-15, F-16, and F-35 fighters. The US, UK, France, and Jordan also intercepted incoming weapons. Not a single drone or cruise missile reached its intended target; only a handful of ballistic missiles struck, causing limited damage to two airbases and no deaths. ### Was the attack meant to be symbolic, or a genuine military strike? Most international experts concluded it was a genuine attempt to cause significant damage, not a show of token retribution. The tactics — using slow drones to overwhelm air defenses followed by a large ballistic-missile salvo — indicate Iran intended the missiles to get through, and Iran chose targets directly linked to the April 1 airstrike. The attack failed; it was not designed to fail. ### What options did Israel face in responding, and what did the global reaction look like? Israel weighed three choices: draw the conflict down with a limited or no response, respond proportionally, or escalate. Its allies strongly urged de-escalation — the US called its defense commitment "ironclad" but flatly refused to join any retaliation. Even China, Russia, Turkey, and Saudi Arabia urged restraint. Israel's war cabinet met for two consecutive days without announcing a decision, and war cabinet minister Benny Gantz stated Israel would respond "in a way and at the time that suits us." ## Sources 1. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/feb/02/deadly-cheap-and-widespread-how-iran-supplied-drones-are-changing-the-nature-of-warfare 2. https://www.rferl.org/a/iran-shahed-drones-israel-attack/32904882.html 3. https://armscontrolcenter.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/Ballistic-vs.-Cruise-Missiles-Fact-Sheet.pdf 4. https://apnews.com/article/israel-iran-missile-defense-iron-dome-arrow-bbf6330918da036f2e000360556a81f6 5. https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/what-are-israels-iron-dome-arrow-missile-defences-2024-04-14/ 6. https://www.euronews.com/2024/04/14/what-are-israels-air-defences-and-why-are-they-so-effective 7. https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/russia-calls-restraint-after-iranian-strikes-israel-2024-04-14/ 8. https://www.france24.com/en/middle-east/20240414-serious-escalation-world-reacts-to-iran-s-strikes-on-israel-amid-fears-of-a-widening-conflict 9. https://www.un.org/sg/en/content/sg/statement/2024-04-13/statement-the-secretary-general-regarding-attacks-the-islamic-republic-of-iran-targeting-israel 10. https://www.axios.com/2024/04/12/iran-israel-attack-us-troops-warning 11. https://www.wired.com/story/iran-israel-drone-attack-iron-dome/ 12. https://abcnews.go.com/International/live-updates/israel-gaza-hamas-war/minor-damage-reported-at-2-israeli-air-bases-109221472?id=108860743 13. https://www.axios.com/2024/04/13/iran-israel-attack 14. https://www.britannica.com/biography/Benny-Gantz 15. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/apr/15/iran-israel-attack-world-leaders-caution-us-un 16. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/4/15/israel-iran-trade-barbs-at-un-meeting-as-guterres-urges-maximum-restraint 17. https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2024/04/14/mapping-wide-scale-iranian-drone-missile-attacks/ 18. https://www.cnbc.com/2024/04/13/iran-has-launched-drone-attacks-at-israel-idf-military-says.html 19. https://foreignpolicy.com/2024/04/13/iran-israel-drone-strikes-retaliation-damascus/ 20. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-68811273 21. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/apr/14/how-irans-attack-on-israel-was-stopped 22. https://isis-online.org/isis-reports/detail/how-quickly-could-iran-make-nuclear-weapons-today 23. https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2024/04/10/iran-nuclear-bomb-iaea-fordow/ 24. https://carnegieendowment.org/2024/03/19/playing-with-proliferation-how-south-korea-and-saudi-arabia-leverage-prospect-of-going-nuclear-pub-91978 25. https://www.brookings.edu/articles/a-way-forward-on-a-us-saudi-civil-nuclear-agreement/ 26. https://www.chathamhouse.org/2024/04/irans-attack-israel-was-not-failure-many-claim-it-has-ended-israels-isolation 27. https://theconversation.com/irans-unprecedented-attack-on-israel-was-a-strategic-miscalculation-can-all-out-war-now-be-averted-227872 28. https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/iranian-notice-attack-may-have-dampened-escalation-risks-2024-04-14/ 29. https://apnews.com/article/iran-israel-mideast-consulate-drones-attack-f3c5ba6491d9c01a84456a2ef3faeb6c 30. https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/iran-attack-israel-adds-airline-troubles-middle-east-2024-04-15/ 31. https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/14/world/middleeast/iran-israel-drones-attack.html 32. https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/live-blog/iran-attack-live-updates-rcna147781 33. https://www.cnbc.com/2024/04/15/world-leaders-react-to-irans-unprecedented-air-assault-against-israel.html 34. https://www.cnbc.com/2024/04/15/israel-vows-to-retaliate-after-irans-attack-what-could-happen-next.html 35. https://www.npr.org/2024/04/14/1244693369/iran-israel-middle-east-what-to-know 36. https://www.vox.com/2024/4/15/24130346/israel-iran-attack-regional-war-april-drone-missile 37. https://foreignpolicy.com/2024/04/14/israel-iran-attack-drone-missile-middle-east-war/ 38. https://foreignpolicy.com/2023/11/02/how-iran-really-sees-the-israel-hamas-war/ 39. https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/iran%E2%80%99s-attempt-hit-israel-russian-style-strike-package-failedfor-now 40. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-68811276 41. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/apr/14/bullish-iran-hails-attack-israel-success-operation-over 42. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/apr/14/why-israel-attack-on-iranian-consulate-in-syria-was-a-gamechanger 43. https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/israel-edge-iranian-retaliation-after-embassy-strike-2024-04-12/ 44. https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/israel-bombs-iran-embassy-syria-iranian-commanders-among-dead-2024-04-01/

Three Deals, No Agreement: Why the US-Iran Ceasefire Collapsed in Twelve Hours

Simon Whistler — Tue, 02 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Twelve hours. That is about how long the ceasefire—announced at the very last minute, just ahead of a self-imposed deadline—lasted before it began to fall apart. At the time of recording, the war between the United States and Iran has not fully reignited. But the trajectory is not promising. And if Washington and Tehran cannot even hold a two-week pause together, the odds of anything more durable are not something to take to the bank. What has made the past 24 hours so chaotic is that both sides appear to have very different ideas of what they actually agreed to. Multiple competing versions of the deal are circulating, with no single signed document for anyone to point to. And caught in the middle once again is Lebanon, whose government and population have watched Iran, Israel, and the United States argue over the country's fate with almost no say in the matter themselves. The ceasefire is barely a day old, and it is already coming apart at the seams—not over a single disputed point, but over the fact that the parties involved appear to have agreed to fundamentally different deals. ## Key Takeaways - A US-Iran ceasefire announced Monday night began unraveling within roughly twelve hours, with no unified signed document and at least two—possibly three—competing versions of Iran's proposal in circulation. - The central fracture is Lebanon. Pakistan's prime minister said it was included; Netanyahu said the deal "does not include Lebanon," and Trump publicly backed him, saying Hezbollah "will get taken care of, too." - Israel launched its largest assault yet on Hezbollah, codenamed "Operation Eternal Darkness"—roughly 50 fighter jets and sustained strikes that reportedly killed over 250 Lebanese and wounded as many as 800 in a single day. - Tehran has all but re-closed the Strait of Hormuz, warning that vessels transiting without permission could be destroyed; per Lloyd's List, only two or three crossings occurred in 24 hours, none of them oil tankers. - The shooting did not actually stop: Iranian drones and missiles struck five of the six Gulf monarchies, including a hit near Saudi Arabia's east-west pipeline—the line built specifically to bypass Hormuz. - High-level US-Iran talks are set for Saturday in Islamabad—the most senior direct meeting since 1979—with Vance, Witkoff, and Kushner for Washington and Ghalibaf and Aragchi for Tehran. - Both delegations have boxed themselves into positions where the concessions needed for a deal are precisely the ones they can least afford to make publicly. ## Three Deals, No Agreement What the world got on Monday night was not a single ceasefire so much as a buffet—three different countries each separately picking the parts they liked and leaving the unappetizing bits untouched. The spark was a post on X from Pakistan's prime minister, made before Trump's self-imposed deadline, declaring that the United States and Iran had "agreed to an immediate ceasefire everywhere including Lebanon and elsewhere, EFFECTIVE IMMEDIATELY." For a very brief moment, it looked like this might hold—at least for the two weeks the ceasefire called for. It was never going to end the war itself, but it could have bought time to negotiate. The cracks emerged fast. In the hours after the announcement, Iran kept launching attacks on its neighbors, and the strikes did not let up through most of Wednesday. But the single biggest hang-up was not, directly, about Iran at all. It came down to Lebanon—and whether or not it was covered. ## Lebanon and the Missing Document Pakistan's prime minister made clear in his announcement that Lebanon was included. But that wording did not appear to rest on any single signed document agreed by both Iran and the United States. Then the situation hardened on the ground. Israel launched nearly 50 fighter jets, followed by sustained strikes through the afternoon—the largest attacks on Hezbollah positions across Lebanon. In a single day, it appears that over 250 Lebanese were killed. Netanyahu's statement was unambiguous: the US-Iran ceasefire "does not include Lebanon." Israel, he said, has "more goals to complete" against Hezbollah, with no intention of letting up. Amid the confusion—no formalized agreement was ever released—President Trump publicly backed him: "Because of Hezbollah, they were not included in the deal… That'll get taken care of, too." This is where things really began to fall apart. Tehran was forced to choose between its own security at home and defending its allies in Lebanon—and chose the latter, reportedly threatening to collapse the whole ceasefire by once again closing the Strait of Hormuz if Lebanon was not included. ## The Competing Proposals Parliament speaker Mohammad Ghalibaf—repeatedly cited as leading the Iranian negotiations—went on the record claiming that three of the conditions Iran had outlined were already being broken. Those conditions are worth understanding, because they reveal how far apart the two sides actually are, and how hastily the deal was assembled. Back in late March, the US sent Iran a 15-point plan through Pakistani channels. It was maximalist: limits on Iran's missile program, full dismantlement of the nuclear program—terms Tehran found wholly unacceptable. Iran's reply was its own maximalist, 10-point plan that went just as far in the other direction: full sanctions relief, recognition of Iranian control of the Strait of Hormuz, and reparations for war damages. As the deadline neared—on Trump's threat to destroy Iran's infrastructure—Tehran reportedly sent a revised version. That version has not been publicly released, so its exact contents are unknown. But it was apparently enough for Washington to sign on to a two-week ceasefire and prepare for real negotiations, describing it as "a workable basis on which to negotiate." This was diplomacy by frantic late-night deadline submission, and the quality showed. ## Lost in Translation While the rest of the world tried to clarify who was even covered by the ceasefire, Iran took a victory lap—casting the deal as proof of its military endurance against American aggression and publicizing a version of the plan that was essentially the original maximalist proposal already set aside. The White House was not having it. Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt slammed the plan as "fundamentally unserious, unacceptable, and completely discarded," saying it had been "literally thrown in the garbage" by Trump's team. The result is that, at time of recording, there are at least two—and quite possibly three—versions of Iran's proposal in circulation. Tehran backed its rhetoric with action. It has more or less re-closed the Strait to maritime traffic, which had only barely begun to trickle through overnight before grinding to a halt as demands over Lebanon tightened. Per Lloyd's List, there have been two or three crossings in the past 24 hours—not one of them an oil tanker. Iran has issued radio warnings that any vessel transiting without permission could be destroyed. ## Was the Ambiguity an Accident? So, back to square one? At the time of writing, the US has not formally re-entered the war—though that is heavily subject to change. From Washington's perspective, the entire point of the ceasefire was to get traffic flowing again while negotiations resumed. If Iran holds this posture another day, it is difficult to see how the peace survives. Trump has already threatened to restart the war if Iran does not comply with what he calls the "real agreement." There is a real question of whether the Lebanon ambiguity was more than an accident. The New York Times reported that the White House had seen and signed off on at least one of the Pakistani prime minister's public statements before he posted it—the one requesting Trump extend his deadline, not the ceasefire announcement itself. If Washington was approving Islamabad's messaging in real time, the idea that Pakistan went rogue by including Lebanon becomes a harder sell. CNN separately cited an Israeli source saying Jerusalem had "worked overnight with the US to ensure it wouldn't accept the Iranian demand to have Lebanon be part of the ceasefire." Still, much remains unclear. Iran's own foreign minister, Abbas Aragchi, did not even mention Lebanon in his initial ceasefire statement—an odd omission given the emphasis Tehran has since placed on it. Vice President JD Vance chalked the dispute up to a genuine misunderstanding, while maintaining that Lebanon was never part of the agreement. Whether it was a trap or a miscommunication, the effect was the same: nobody was on the same page, and that confusion could now reignite the entire war. ## Caught in the Middle Whether Lebanon actually was part of the ceasefire is impossible to say with certainty—it comes down to "he said, she said, and then he bombed Beirut." But technicalities aside, the mood in Lebanon, at first, felt like inclusion. Hezbollah stopped shooting. Some displaced families took it as permission to head home, though the Lebanese Armed Forces urged them not to. That was the right call. With over 250 killed, reportedly as many as 800 wounded by nightfall, and bodies still being pulled from rubble in Beirut's southern suburbs, what came next was given the Israeli code name "Operation Eternal Darkness." Absent throughout has been the Lebanese government, again relegated to the sidelines as Hezbollah, Iran, and Israel decide the country's future. President Joseph Aoun condemned the strikes as "barbaric." Prime Minister Nawaf Salam reportedly said Lebanon would not accept anyone negotiating on its behalf, and the Foreign Ministry echoed it with a pointed line: Lebanon "speaks with one voice—its own." That message was aimed in two directions at once: at Iran, which folded Lebanon into its demands not out of concern for ordinary Lebanese but to salvage its proxy forces, and at the US and Israel, who are deciding Lebanon's status without Beirut at the table. Notably, Aoun has repeatedly offered to negotiate with Israel directly—a major shift given Lebanon's longstanding refusal to even sit down with Jerusalem. ## Why Iran Cannot Walk Away From Hezbollah Israeli officials have told reporters for weeks that they see a window to degrade Hezbollah before any broader framework forces them to stop. While they speak of establishing a semi-permanent "buffer zone" in the south, the chance to strike Hezbollah-dominated areas of Beirut will not last indefinitely. For Tehran, Hezbollah is not someone else's fight—or at least Iran cannot afford to let it become one. The group is the last functioning piece of a regional security architecture the Islamic Republic spent decades and billions of dollars constructing, and which for years served as the crown jewel of its defense strategy against Israel. Things have not played out the way Tehran imagined, but it is unwilling to let Hezbollah be fully destroyed in Lebanon. That is the bind Iran carries into Islamabad: wanting a ceasefire, but seemingly unwilling to accept one that writes off one of its last remaining allies. Whether anyone at the table Saturday can square that circle remains to be seen. ## Two Weeks to Nowhere Saturday morning, if all goes to plan, will feature the highest-level direct meeting between American and Iranian officials since 1979. Representing Washington: Vice President JD Vance, special envoy Steve Witkoff, and Jared Kushner. Representing Tehran: Parliament Speaker Mohammad Ghalibaf and Foreign Minister Abbas Aragchi. There is also the long-standing elephant in the room. Since Mojtaba Khamenei was elected Supreme Leader, he has not been seen or heard from since the war broke out on February 28th. Written statements attributed to him have been released, but they did more to fuel theories that he was unconscious or dead than to dispel them. Now there may be clarification: Axios reported that Mojtaba was personally involved with Iran's negotiators on Monday night—the strongest sign yet that he is alive and functional enough to weigh in at critical moments. The IRGC appears to be running significant portions of the country's security operations in the meantime, but whatever emerges from Islamabad will likely need his blessing—and the fact that he may have signed off on the ceasefire suggests there is some hope. That is about where the good news ends. These are two sides that cannot even agree on what was actually agreed a day earlier, which does not bode well for far more complicated discussions ahead. ## The Issues That Will Not Bend The goal is to convert the two-week pause into something durable—but the list of issues required to get there is staggering, and on virtually every one, the distance between the sides has not meaningfully narrowed since before the war started. The nuclear question will be the centerpiece. Tehran's position is that enrichment is a sovereign right. Leavitt let slip that the US has received indicators that "they will turn over the enriched uranium"—almost certainly referring only to stockpiles of highly enriched uranium, not the country's entire collection. Iran responded that any handover would be on the table only if all 10 of its original conditions were met. The rest of each side's wish list is no easier. Washington wants curbs on Iran's missile and drone programs. Tehran wants recognition of its right to enrich uranium and a withdrawal of US combat forces from all bases and positions in the region. They are talking past each other. ## A War That Never Actually Stopped Just making it to the weekend looks like a battle. In the hours after the ceasefire announcement, Iranian drones and missiles hit five of the six Gulf monarchies, with only Oman spared. Kuwait faced 28 drone attacks. The UAE took 35 drones and 17 ballistic missiles, with a fire breaking out at Abu Dhabi's Habshan gas complex—one of the country's most critical processing facilities. Most concerning of all was Saudi Arabia, where a strike on the kingdom's east-west oil pipeline—built specifically to bypass the Strait of Hormuz—hit a pumping station along the route. Bloomberg has since reported the damage was limited and oil is still flowing, but it was far too close for comfort. That pipeline has been carrying roughly five million barrels a day. Whether these were deliberate violations or holdovers from a very decentralized IRGC acting independently of any central command remains unclear. Either way, the message is not great—and that backdrop, an active shooting war that did not stop when the ceasefire started, is what makes the structural problem in Islamabad so acute. ## The Bind on Both Sides Both delegations have boxed themselves into positions where the concessions that would produce an agreement are the ones they can least afford to make publicly. Iran cannot concede on Hormuz without admitting the blockade was leverage rather than principle. Trump faces his own version of the same trap: he sold the ceasefire as proof his maximum-pressure approach worked, and accepting an outcome that wins even fewer concessions from Tehran than Obama's 2015 JCPOA did would be hard to celebrate. At home, Trump has seemed eager to close this whole thing out—and that cuts both ways. It gives him reason to push hard in Islamabad, but he also needs to take something away from the campaign to sell it as a win. So far, his claims of "total and complete victory" are not especially convincing. Saturday will tell us whether there is a deal to be had here, or whether the next two weeks are merely a countdown to the war exploding back into the open. ## Frequently Asked Questions ### How long did the ceasefire last before it began to fall apart? About twelve hours. The ceasefire was announced Monday night, and within roughly half a day it had begun to come apart—chiefly because the parties appeared to have agreed to fundamentally different deals, with no single signed document to point to. ### Why is Lebanon at the center of the dispute? Pakistan's prime minister announced the ceasefire covered Lebanon, but no signed agreement confirmed that. Netanyahu stated the deal "does not include Lebanon," and Trump backed him. Israel then launched its largest assault yet on Hezbollah—killing over 250 Lebanese in a day—while Tehran threatened to collapse the ceasefire unless Lebanon was included. ### What happened with the Strait of Hormuz? Iran has more or less re-closed the Strait to maritime traffic, tightening its posture over the Lebanon dispute. According to Lloyd's List, only two or three crossings occurred in 24 hours, none of them oil tankers. Iran issued radio warnings that any vessel transiting without permission could be destroyed. ### What are the competing ceasefire proposals? In late March the US sent a maximalist 15-point plan demanding missile limits and full nuclear dismantlement. Iran countered with a maximalist 10-point plan seeking full sanctions relief, recognized control of Hormuz, and war reparations. Iran later sent a revised, unreleased version that Washington called "a workable basis on which to negotiate." ### Who is attending the Islamabad talks, and why are they significant? The Saturday talks would be the highest-level direct US-Iran meeting since 1979. The US side includes Vice President JD Vance, special envoy Steve Witkoff, and Jared Kushner; Iran is represented by Parliament Speaker Mohammad Ghalibaf and Foreign Minister Abbas Aragchi. ## Sources 1. https://www.criticalthreats.org/analysis/iran-update-evening-special-report-april-8-2026 2. https://www.nytimes.com/2026/04/08/world/middleeast/trump-pakistan-tweet-iran.html 3. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/4/8/trump-says-lebanon-not-included-in-us-iran-ceasefire-amid-israeli-assault 4. https://www.trtworld.com/article/1fa6b38b764e 5. https://x.com/AlArabiya_Eng/status/2041932812123562463 6. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-04-08/hormuz-stays-blocked-for-now-as-hundreds-of-ships-seek-escape 7. https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/116372694697146221 8. https://x.com/atrupar/status/2041963943753548041 9. https://x.com/CMShehbaz/status/2041665043423752651 10. https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/idf-says-50-fighter-jets-dropped-160-bombs-on-100-hezbollah-targets-in-10-minutes/ 11. https://english.aawsat.com/gulf/5260255-iran-attacks-gulf-states-continue-despite-ceasefire-announcement 12. https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/whats-irans-10-point-plan-end-us-israeli-war 13. https://edition.cnn.com/2026/04/08/middleeast/us-iran-ceasefire-explainer-war-intl-hnk 14. https://www.i24news.tv/en/news/israel/artc-israeli-defense-minister-katz-today-hezbollah-has-suffered-its-heaviest-blow-since-the-2024-beeper-operation 15. https://english.aawsat.com/arab-world/5260050-nawaf-salam-asharq-al-awsat-no-one-state-negotiates-lebanon 16. https://english.aawsat.com/arab-world/5260239-lebanon-rejects-iran-negotiating-its-behalf 17. https://www.timesofisrael.com/idf-launches-largest-airstrikes-yet-against-hezbollah-after-truce-with-iran/ 18. https://apnews.com/article/iran-us-war-lebanon-israel-hezbollah-negotiations-421cdb3123b43e5bb91b14f8954dec45 19. https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/israel-security/2026-03-25/ty-article/.premium/netanyahu-says-israel-expanding-lebanon-buffer-zone-as-death-toll-hits-1-000/0000019d-2600-dc71-a7ff-e75ab4f00000 20. https://www.timesofisrael.com/vance-to-lead-us-negotiators-at-first-round-of-islamabad-talks-with-iran-on-saturday/ 21. https://www.axios.com/2026/04/08/exclusive-how-irans-supreme-leader-reached-a-truce-with-trump 22. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/4/8/uae-kuwait-bahrain-report-attacks-despite-iran-us-ceasefire 23. https://www.axios.com/2026/04/08/us-iran-peace-talks-vance-pakistan-saturday 24. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/4/3/at-least-one-killed-at-uaes-habshan-gas-facility-after-intercepted-attack 25. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-04-08/saudi-arabia-s-crucial-east-west-pipeline-hit-by-drone-attack 26. https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/trump-afp-iran-deal-total-025352791.html

The Iran Ceasefire: What We Know and What We Don't

Simon Whistler — Tue, 02 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

On Tuesday, the 7th of April, President Trump wrote on Truth Social, "A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again. I don't want that to happen, but it probably will." In a war that had seen both sides constantly lob threats at each other across social media, this was among the most severe yet. Had Trump followed through and destroyed Iran's power plants and infrastructure, it would have represented the single greatest use of American military power since perhaps World War II and fundamentally reshaped the global order. The threat landed as the clock wound down toward an 8 pm Eastern deadline Trump had imposed on Iran to make a deal and reopen the Strait of Hormuz. Tehran seemed more than happy to answer in kind. In a statement shared with the press, it promised to target the infrastructure of America and its allies in the region with such destructive force that they would be unable to access the Middle East's oil for years. According to the state-run Tehran Times, Iran also cut off all diplomatic and indirect communication channels with Washington. As the hours ticked by, the world waited. Then, at 6:32 pm Eastern, with less than ninety minutes to spare, Trump posted again, this time announcing a ceasefire. After a conversation with Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, and subject to Iran reopening the Strait of Hormuz, he had agreed to suspend the bombing for two weeks. The central question is no longer whether cooler heads prevailed, but whether this fragile pause will actually hold. ## Key Takeaways - President Trump announced a two-week, double-sided ceasefire at 6:32 pm Eastern on 7 April, suspending strikes on Iran subject to the complete, immediate, and safe reopening of the Strait of Hormuz. - Two competing plans anchor the talks: a 15-point US proposal demanding Iran dismantle its three main nuclear sites, and a 10-point Iranian plan insisting on continued uranium enrichment and control of the Strait. - Crushing pressure drove both sides to the table: economic collapse, military losses, and diplomatic mediation led by Pakistan and backed by China for Iran; political, economic, and electoral risks for Washington. - Israel's continued operations against Hezbollah in Lebanon, which Netanyahu insists are excluded from the deal, remain a major sticking point because Iran demanded a ceasefire on all fronts. - The human cost has been staggering: 3,540 killed in Iran, 1,461 in Lebanon, around 30 in Israel, 13 US service members, and dozens more across the Gulf. ## A Double-Sided Ceasefire, Two Conflicting Stories In his Truth Social post, Trump said America had met and exceeded its military objectives, that it had received a 10-point proposal from Iran, and that it considered that proposal a workable basis from which to negotiate. He added that almost all the various points of contention between Iran and the United States had been agreed during the ongoing talks. That framing matters, because Iran told a very different story. The Supreme National Security Council, the country's top security body, claimed it had forced the United States to accept its 10-point plan and described the ceasefire as an enduring defeat for Washington. Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi was more measured, saying Washington had accepted the general framework of Iran's 10-point proposal while Iran in turn weighed a 15-point proposal from the US. These two competing documents sit at the heart of the negotiations now underway. From what is publicly known, they are vastly different, and each contains points the other side has previously rejected. According to Axios, a US official who saw the 10-point plan called it maximalist, diplomatic shorthand for unrealistic and extreme. Al Jazeera reported that Iran used the same word for the 15-point American plan, with sources in Tehran describing it as extremely unreasonable, deceptive, and misleading. ## Inside the Two Plans The full details of America's 15-point plan are not public, but reporting outlines its core. The deal calls on Iran to dismantle its three main nuclear sites and end all enrichment on Iranian soil, suspend its ballistic-missile programme, curb support for proxies, and fully reopen the Strait of Hormuz. In return, Iran would see nuclear-related sanctions lifted, and the US would assist in monitoring the country's civilian nuclear program. The plan broadly mirrors the proposal Washington discussed with Iran before the war began on 28 February, when Trump accused Tehran of not negotiating in good faith. Iran's plan is publicly available, shared by Nour News, an outlet supported by Iran's Supreme National Security Council. Its proposals include a fundamental US commitment to non-aggression, Iranian control over the Strait of Hormuz, the lifting of sanctions against Iran and against foreign entities doing business with it, and the payment of reparations for damages incurred during the war. Most importantly, the plan demands that Washington accept Iran's right to enrich uranium for its nuclear program. ## The Gulf Between Them You don't have to be a genius at pattern recognition to spot the gaps. The first is the nuclear programme. Washington's best-case scenario sees Iran completely dismantle it; failing that, the US would accept a civilian programme heavily monitored from Washington. For Iran, such monitoring is a major breach of the sovereignty that has been a core component of how Tehran has framed this entire war. Second is Iran's ballistic-missile programme. Iran's 10-point plan does not mention missiles at all, while Washington has signaled it wants, at minimum, to limit the number and range of missiles Iran can field. Tehran is likely to read this as an attack on its sovereignty and an attempt to blunt its ability to retaliate if the ceasefire, or any future agreement, collapses. That fear is real. America and Israel previously struck Iran in the middle of negotiations the Iranian side believed were going well. Tehran has also watched Israel violate its ceasefire with Hamas in Gaza multiple times, taking it as proof that the two parties cannot be trusted to keep their word. ## Lebanon: The Unresolved Front Israel's conduct in Lebanon has become another flashpoint between Washington and Tehran. In his statement announcing the ceasefire, Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif said it would include Lebanon. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu refuted that, insisting the ceasefire did not cover Lebanon, where Israel has been conducting operations against Hezbollah. Before the ceasefire was announced, the IDF issued evacuation warnings for Lebanese residents in Tyre and Shabriha as it prepared strikes against Hezbollah, instructing residents to move north of the Al-Zahrani River. Complicating matters, Al Jazeera reported that Hezbollah announced it would abide by the ceasefire. Yet according to the Jerusalem Post, the IDF's 98th Commando Division had joined ground operations in Lebanon before the announcement, an indication that Israel has little interest in ending those operations soon. For Iran, this is a major sticking point, because it explicitly called for a ceasefire on all fronts, including Lebanon. For now, how Israel's continued operations there will affect the broader deal remains unknown. ## The Question of US Troops Iran has also demanded that American forces in the region be withdrawn. From Tehran's vantage point this makes obvious sense; few would want their most hated enemy living next door. For Washington, however, keeping troops in the region is essential to ensuring Iran does not back out of the deal. There is also the matter of the neighbors. It is hard to imagine the exit of US troops being welcomed in the Gulf States, which still regard the American presence as something of a security guarantee, even after the events of the last few weeks. The competing plans may be miles apart, but what is not in doubt is that both Tehran and Washington have agreed to a ceasefire and are actively weighing each other's proposals. The question is why. ## The Pressure on Iran To understand the shift, consider the pressure each side was under. For Iran, Trump's previous threats had proven credible despite the times he walked them back, so Tehran treated his most recent threats, to destroy its bridges, power plants, and other infrastructure, as a promise of what would follow if it did not play ball. The threat was so severe that some observers, including an X account linked to Kamala Harris's failed 2024 presidential bid, declared Trump was signaling the potential use of nuclear weapons, particularly after Vice President JD Vance said during a visit to Hungary that the US had tools in its toolkit it had not yet decided to use. The White House swiftly rejected the idea of a nuclear strike, but the ambiguity underscored the scale of what Washington was prepared to threaten. The military pressure was not only American. Tehran was also absorbing Israeli attacks on its transport infrastructure, including bridges and railways. ## Economic Collapse Beyond the immediate military danger, Iran faced mounting economic pressure. Even before the war, its economy was in such a poor state that it had triggered one of the largest public protests in the country's history. Miad Maleki, a senior advisor at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and a former Treasury Department official, wrote on X that Iran's liquidity crisis had grown so severe that banks were running out of physical banknotes daily, with informal withdrawal caps of just $18 to $30 per day. The war only accelerated the collapse. According to Fortune, prices continued to spiral as the conflict boosted demand for cash. Inflation grew so severe that the government issued its largest-ever currency denomination, the 10 million rial note, worth roughly $7.40. Analysts at Chatham House estimated Iran's GDP would shrink by 10 percent because of the war. Economically and militarily, in other words, Iran was looking at a situation experts have termed FUBAR. ## Diplomatic Pressure and the China Factor Tehran was also facing pressure from its closest partners. Pakistan, which maintains long-standing ties with both Washington and Tehran, had been working behind the scenes for weeks to bring the two to the table. According to Al Jazeera, Islamabad led a multinational effort that included the foreign ministers of Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and Egypt, who met in Islamabad on 30 March. The meeting produced a joint five-point initiative calling for an immediate ceasefire, urgent diplomatic engagement, and the restoration of normal maritime traffic through the Strait of Hormuz. More importantly, China threw its weight behind Pakistan's mediation. On 31 March, Pakistani Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar traveled to Beijing to meet Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi, and according to Axios the five-point proposal came together during that visit. China's special Middle East envoy also traveled to the region, with Beijing framing the war as a structural shock to the world economy and pressing for an immediate halt to operations. As Iran's top trade partner and the largest importer of Iranian oil, China holds considerable sway in Tehran. Two Chinese officials told the Associated Press that Beijing had stayed in contact with Tehran throughout, carrying one consistent message: the war needed to end. ## The Pressure on Washington For Washington the pressure was different but no less real. The economic costs were mounting, with oil prices surging and inflation concerns growing. There was also the diplomatic reality that rejecting a Pakistan-China mediated proposal would have handed Beijing a major geopolitical victory, casting it as the responsible actor seeking to prevent escalation while Washington appeared inflexible. The political calendar weighed heavily. With midterm elections months away, the war had become a liability for Trump's Republican Party. According to Emerson College Polling, 47 percent of likely voters opposed US military action in Iran while only 40 percent supported it. Trump's approval rating had fallen to 42 percent, with 51 percent disapproving, and Democrats led the generic congressional ballot 49 to 42. According to CNN, roughly 24 percent of Trump's 2024 voters disapproved of his handling of Iran, with 15 percent strongly disapproving. Veteran Republican pollster Neil Newhouse warned of an ugly November. Party leaders who had seen a path to preserving their narrow House majority now privately conceded the House was all but lost and that Democrats had a realistic shot at the Senate. The war had also split the Republican coalition, with influential conservatives questioning whether the conflict was being fought on Israel's behalf rather than for American interests. ## Retaliation, Perception, and the Cost of Escalation Washington also had to weigh Iranian retaliation. Despite America and Israel's best efforts, Tehran retained its ability to strike US allies across the region and disrupt global energy markets. Iran proved it by hitting the Ras Laffan gas plant in Qatar, taking more than 3.5 percent of the world's LNG supplies offline, in response to an Israeli strike on Iran's South Pars gasfield. An American escalation would have pushed Iran to the edge. There was also a perception problem. Trump had built his brand on projecting strength and securing deals, yet the war had dragged on for more than five weeks with no clear end. His threat that a whole civilization would die risked undermining his credibility if he failed to follow through, while actually carrying out such an attack would have reshaped the global order and likely triggered widespread international condemnation. A ceasefire with mutual concessions was, in this light, the best available outcome for everyone. The remaining question is whether it was worth it. ## Was It Worth It? For the US and Israel, the answer depends on how you measure success. Both significantly degraded Iran's military. According to Al Jazeera, hundreds of Iranian missile launchers have been rendered inoperable, with some reports suggesting 80 percent of Iran's capacity to strike Israel has been eliminated. Iran's naval assets, including fast-attack craft, midget submarines, and mine-laying capabilities, were destroyed, and the campaign suppressed air defenses to the point where the US was flying non-stealth B-1 bombers over Iranian airspace by mid-March. Washington and Jerusalem also eliminated senior Iranian figures who had long been thorns in their side, including Ali Khamenei, the former Supreme Leader; Ali Larijani, secretary of Iran's Supreme National Security Council; and Gholamreza Soleimani, commander of the paramilitary Basij forces. For Israel, the war created an opening to expand operations in Lebanon and build a security zone along its northern border. Iran, for its part, struck American allies across the region, hitting military bases, embassies, and energy infrastructure. Those attacks raised questions about America's ability to protect its regional partners and whether Gulf states might one day seek security guarantees elsewhere. ## The Strait, the Regime, and the Human Cost Then there is the Strait of Hormuz. Before the war, it was open, with hundreds of ships transiting annually. Closing it was meant to make the war as economically painful for the world as possible, and Iran achieved that. More importantly from Tehran's perspective, Iran can now levy tolls on transiting ships, a revenue stream that may outlast the war itself. According to Reuters, Iran could make as much as $120 billion a year until oil and gas producing nations build pipelines to bypass the Strait. Danny Citrinowicz, a non-resident fellow at the Atlantic Council, wrote on Twitter that relinquishing control of it is increasingly seen as comparable to giving up the nuclear program or missile capabilities, something Tehran would go to any length to protect. Perhaps most importantly, the regime survived. Despite the deaths of Khamenei, Larijani, and other senior officials, the Islamic Republic appointed a new supreme leader, Khamenei's son Mojtaba Khamenei, and maintained its command structure. The system Washington and Jerusalem hoped to topple remains intact. The human cost has been staggering. According to the US-based organization Human Rights Activists In Iran (HRANA), 3,540 people have been killed in Iran since the war began. In Lebanon, authorities report 1,461 killed in Israeli strikes since 2 March. Across Iraq, Kuwait, the UAE, and other countries, dozens more died in Iranian attacks and related incidents. In Israel, about 30 people have died, including 10 soldiers killed in Southern Lebanon, and Washington has lost 13 service members. ## A Chance, If Diplomacy Is Given Space So, was it worth it? It depends entirely on who you ask. For Washington and Jerusalem, key military objectives have been achieved, and Tehran is unlikely to pose a threat for years. For Tehran, the regime's survival and its control over the Strait are significant victories. But for the people caught in the middle and the economies battered by soaring fuel prices, the answer is almost certainly no. Had Washington, Jerusalem, and Tehran negotiated in good faith back in February, the worst of this could have been avoided. Oman's Foreign Minister, Badr bin Hamad Al Busaidi, a key mediator throughout, told CBS that a peace deal was within reach and that the world needed to give diplomacy the space to get there. It is hard not to wonder how different the Middle East would look today had the powers that be heeded his call. Even so, the ceasefire offers a chance to end the fighting before further escalation. Whether it holds depends entirely on whether all the warring parties negotiate in good faith when talks begin in Islamabad on Friday. If they do not, then the world is, to borrow a phrase, FUBAR. ## Frequently Asked Questions ### What exactly did President Trump announce on 7 April? At 6:32 pm Eastern, Trump posted on Truth Social that, following a conversation with Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif and subject to Iran agreeing to the complete, immediate, and safe reopening of the Strait of Hormuz, he had agreed to suspend the bombing and attack of Iran for two weeks. It was framed as a double-sided ceasefire to give the warring parties time to formalize a peace deal. ### How do the US and Iranian peace plans differ? The US 15-point plan calls on Iran to dismantle its three main nuclear sites, end all enrichment, suspend its ballistic-missile programme, curb support for proxies, and fully reopen the Strait, in exchange for sanctions relief and a monitored civilian nuclear program. Iran's 10-point plan demands a US commitment to non-aggression, Iranian control of the Strait, lifted sanctions, war reparations, and acceptance of Iran's right to enrich uranium. ### Why did both sides move toward a deal despite months of escalation? Iran faced converging military, economic, and diplomatic pressure: Israeli and American strikes, a liquidity crisis with banks running out of banknotes, record inflation, and mediation pushed by Pakistan and China. Washington faced surging oil prices, the risk of handing Beijing a geopolitical win, falling poll numbers, a fracturing Republican coalition, and the danger of Iranian retaliation against US allies across the region. ### Is Lebanon covered by the ceasefire? That is disputed. Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif said the ceasefire would include Lebanon, but Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu insisted it did not, and Israel continued operations against Hezbollah. The IDF issued evacuation warnings for Tyre and Shabriha and its 98th Commando Division joined ground operations there, even as Hezbollah announced it would abide by the ceasefire. ### How significant is Iran's control of the Strait of Hormuz? Iran can now levy tolls on ships transiting the Strait, potentially earning as much as $120 billion a year, according to Reuters, until other nations build bypass pipelines. Analysts say relinquishing control is increasingly viewed in Tehran as comparable to surrendering its nuclear program or missile capabilities, making it one of the hardest points for any final deal to resolve. ## Sources 1. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/liveblog/2026/4/8/iran-war-live-trump-announces-truce-tehran-agrees-safe-transit-in-hormuz 2. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/liveblog/2026/4/7/iran-war-live-trump-warns-of-devastating-attacks-as-deal-deadline-nears 3. https://edition.cnn.com/2026/04/08/world/live-news/iran-war-trump-us-ceasefire 4. https://www.reuters.com/commentary/breakingviews/trump-may-have-given-iran-500-bln-money-spinner-2026-04-01/ 5. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/us-iran-war-death-toll-israel-lebanon-kuwait-b2952925.html 6. https://www.chathamhouse.org/2026/03/how-will-iran-war-affect-global-economy 7. https://fortune.com/2026/04/05/iran-economy-postwar-reconstruction-regime-survival-sanctions-relief-irgc/ 8. https://fortune.com/2026/03/23/iran-rial-largest-ever-currency-denomination-inflation-financial-sector-ponzi-scheme/ 9. https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/white-house-shuts-down-nuke-162541248.html 10. https://time.com/article/2026/04/07/trump-iran-war-threat-steps-back/ 11. https://www.wsj.com/livecoverage/iran-war-2026-trump-deadline-latest-news/card/what-s-in-iran-s-proposed-peace-plan-aXNBQUWI65SI0wCOtUVf 12. https://www.axios.com/2026/04/06/iran-trump-peace-plan-ceasefire 13. https://www.barrons.com/articles/oil-prices-iran-ceasefire-trump-43b90c7e?mod=livecoverage_web

The Iran Ceasefire: What We Know and What We Don't

Simon Whistler — Tue, 02 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

On Tuesday, the 7th of April, President Trump wrote on Truth Social: "A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again. I don't want that to happen, but it probably will." In a war that had seen both sides constantly lob threats at one another across social media, this was among the most severe. Had Trump followed through, destroying Iranian power plants and infrastructure, it would have represented the single greatest use of American military power since perhaps World War II, and would have fundamentally reshaped the global order. The threat landed as the clock wound down on the 8 p.m. Eastern deadline Trump had imposed on Iran to make a deal and reopen the Strait of Hormuz. For its part, Tehran seemed more than happy to answer in kind, promising to target the infrastructure of America and its allies with such destructive force that the region's oil would be inaccessible for years. More ominously, according to the state-run Tehran Times, Iran cut off all diplomatic and indirect communication channels with Washington. Then, at 6:32 p.m. Eastern, with less than ninety minutes before the deadline elapsed, the President made a post that changed everything. After a conversation with Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, and subject to Iran agreeing to the complete, immediate, and safe reopening of the Strait of Hormuz, he had agreed to suspend the bombing and attack of Iran for two weeks: a double-sided ceasefire to give the warring parties time to formalize a peace deal. For the moment, cooler heads appeared to have prevailed. But there is a great deal in this announcement to unpack, not least the question of whether the ceasefire will actually hold. ## Key Takeaways - At 6:32 p.m. Eastern on 7 April, with under ninety minutes left before his 8 p.m. deadline, Trump announced a two-week double-sided ceasefire conditioned on Iran reopening the Strait of Hormuz, brokered after a call with Pakistani PM Shehbaz Sharif. - Two rival peace plans sit at the heart of negotiations: an Iranian 10-point proposal Washington called a "workable basis," and an American 15-point plan; each side has separately branded the other's plan "maximalist." - The US plan demands Iran dismantle its three main nuclear sites, end enrichment, suspend its ballistic-missile programme, curb proxies, and reopen Hormuz, in exchange for sanctions relief and a monitored civilian nuclear programme. - Iran's publicly released plan demands US non-aggression, Iranian control of Hormuz, sanctions relief, war reparations, and acceptance of Iran's right to enrich uranium, while omitting any mention of its missile programme. - Both sides were forced to the table by converging pressures: a collapsing Iranian economy and a Pakistan-China mediation effort on one side, and surging oil prices, sliding poll numbers, and a fracturing Republican coalition on the other. - The human cost has been staggering: HRANA reports 3,540 killed in Iran, Lebanon reports 1,461 killed in Israeli strikes since 2 March, roughly 30 dead in Israel, and 13 US service members killed. - Despite the deaths of senior officials including Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, the Iranian regime survived and appointed Khamenei's son, Mojtaba Khamenei, as the new supreme leader. ## The Announcement and the Two Rival Peace Plans One caveat: this account reflects what was known as of 2 June 2026, and any major developments after that date fall outside it. With that said, in his Truth Social post, Trump said America had met and exceeded its military objectives, had received a 10-point proposal from Iran, and considered it a workable basis from which to negotiate. He added that almost all of the points of contention between Iran and the US had been agreed during the ongoing talks. That framing matters, because Iran sold the same moment as a Tehran victory. The Supreme National Security Council, the country's top security body, said it had forced the US to accept its 10-point plan and described the ceasefire as an enduring defeat for Washington. Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi was more measured, saying that while Washington had accepted the general framework of Iran's 10-point proposal, Iran was in turn weighing a 15-point proposal from the US. These two competing plans are the negotiation's core, and from what is public, they are vastly different. Each contains points the other side has previously rejected. A US official who saw the 10-point plan told Axios it was "maximalist," diplomatic shorthand for unrealistic and extreme. Al Jazeera reported Iran used the same word for the American 15-point plan, with Tehran sources calling it extremely unreasonable, deceptive, and misleading. ## What the Plans Demand The full text of America's 15-point plan is not public, but reporting sketches its shape. It calls on Iran to dismantle its three main nuclear sites and end all enrichment on Iranian soil, suspend its ballistic-missile programme, curb support for proxies, and fully reopen the Strait of Hormuz. In return, Iran would see nuclear-related sanctions lifted, and the US would assist, while monitoring, the country's civilian nuclear programme. The plan broadly mirrors the proposal discussed with Iran before the war began on 28 February, when Trump accused Tehran of not negotiating in good faith. Iran's plan, by contrast, is public, shared by Nour News, an outlet backed by Iran's Supreme National Security Council. Among its provisions: that the US fundamentally commit to non-aggression, that Iran retain control over the Strait of Hormuz, that sanctions against Iran and against foreign entities doing business with it be lifted, and that reparations be paid to Iran for wartime damages. Most importantly, the plan demands Washington accept that Iran can enrich uranium for its nuclear programme. The gap between the two visions is not subtle. On the nuclear question, Washington's best case is Iran fully dismantling its programme; failing that, a civilian programme heavily monitored by Washington. For Tehran, that reads as a major breach of the sovereignty around which it has framed the entire war. ## Sovereignty, Missiles, and the Question of Trust The second fault line is Iran's ballistic-missile programme. Iran's 10-point plan does not mention it at all, while Washington has signaled it wants, at minimum, to limit the number and range of missiles Iran can field. Tehran will likely read that as an attack on its sovereignty and an attempt to strip its capacity to retaliate should the ceasefire, or any future agreement, collapse. That fear is not abstract. America and Israel previously attacked Iran in the middle of negotiations the Iranian side believed were going well. Tehran has also watched Gaza, where Israel violated the ceasefire with Hamas multiple times, and drawn the conclusion that the two parties cannot be trusted. For a regime weighing whether to surrender its missiles, the recent record argues against doing so. The third demand is the withdrawal of American forces from the region. From Tehran's vantage, the logic is plain: no one wants their most hated enemy living next door. But for Washington, troops in the region are essential leverage to keep Iran from backing out of any deal. Nor would a US withdrawal be welcome in the Gulf States, which still regard American forces as a security guarantee, despite the events of the past weeks. ## The Lebanon Problem Israel's conduct in Lebanon has become its own point of contention between Washington and Tehran. In his statement announcing the ceasefire, Pakistani PM Shehbaz Sharif said it would include Lebanon. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu refuted that directly, saying the ceasefire did not include Lebanon, where Israel has been conducting operations against Hezbollah. The facts on the ground reinforce Netanyahu's position. Before the ceasefire was announced, the IDF issued evacuation warnings for Lebanese residents in Tyre and Shabriha as it prepared for strikes against Hezbollah, instructing residents to evacuate north of the Al-Zahrani River. According to the Jerusalem Post, the IDF's 98th Commando Division had also joined ground operations in Lebanon. Taken together, these moves indicate Israel has little interest in ending its Lebanese operations any time soon. The picture is complicated further by Hezbollah itself. According to Al Jazeera, the group announced it would abide by the ceasefire, even as Israel pressed on. For Iran, Lebanon is a major sticking point, because Tehran explicitly called for a ceasefire on all fronts, Lebanon included. How Israel's continued operations there will affect the wider deal remains unknown. Still, the competing plans aside, what is not in doubt is that both Tehran and Washington have agreed to a ceasefire and are actively weighing each other's proposals. The question is why. How did Washington go from calling Iran's plan maximalist to calling it a workable basis? How did Iran go from calling Washington's plan unreasonable to seriously considering it? The answer is pressure. ## The Pressure on Tehran For Iran, Trump's previous threats had proven credible, even on the occasions he walked them back. So Tehran treated his most recent threats, to destroy Iran's bridges, power plants, and other infrastructure, as a promise. The language grew so severe that some observers and critics, including an X account linked to Kamala Harris's failed 2024 presidential bid, declared Trump was signaling the potential use of nuclear weapons. The reading sharpened after Vice President JD Vance said during a visit to Hungary that the US had tools in its toolkit it had not yet decided to use. The White House swiftly rejected any suggestion of a nuclear strike, but the ambiguity underscored the scale of the threat Washington was prepared to level. The military pressure was not Washington's alone. Tehran was also absorbing Israeli attacks on its transport infrastructure, including bridges and railways. Beyond the immediate danger, Iran faced mounting economic collapse. Even before the war, its economy was so distressed it had triggered one of the largest public protests in the country's history. Miad Maleki, a senior advisor at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and a former Treasury Department official, wrote on X that Iran's liquidity crisis was so severe that banks were running out of physical banknotes daily, with informal withdrawal caps of just $18 to $30 per day. The war only accelerated the collapse. According to Fortune, prices kept spiraling as the war boosted demand for cash. Inflation grew so severe that the government issued its largest-ever currency denomination, the 10 million rial note, worth roughly $7.40. Analysts at Chatham House estimated Iran's GDP would shrink by 10 percent because of the war. Economically and militarily, Iran was staring at a situation experts have termed FUBAR. ## Diplomatic Pressure and the China Factor Tehran was also facing pressure from some of its closest partners. Pakistan, with long-standing ties to both Washington and Tehran, had worked behind the scenes for weeks to bring the two sides to the table. According to Al Jazeera, Islamabad led a multinational effort that included the foreign ministers of Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and Egypt, who met in Islamabad on 30 March. That meeting produced a joint five-point initiative calling for an immediate ceasefire, urgent diplomatic engagement, and the restoration of normal maritime traffic through the Strait of Hormuz. Crucially, China threw its weight behind Pakistan's mediation. On 31 March, Pakistani Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar traveled to Beijing to meet Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi; according to Axios, the five-point proposal came together during that visit. China's special Middle East envoy also traveled to the region. Beijing framed the war as a structural shock to the world economy and pressed for an immediate end to military operations. As Iran's top trade partner and the largest importer of Iranian oil, China holds considerable influence in Tehran. Two Chinese officials told the Associated Press that Beijing had been in contact with Tehran throughout the negotiations, delivering one consistent message: the war needed to end. ## The Pressure on Washington For Washington, the pressure was different but no less real. The economic costs of the war were mounting, with oil prices surging and inflation concerns growing. There was also a diplomatic reality: rejecting a Pakistan-China-mediated proposal would have handed Beijing a major geopolitical victory, casting it as the responsible actor trying to prevent escalation while Washington looked inflexible. Then there was the political calendar. The midterm elections are months away, and the war had become a liability for Trump's Republican Party. According to Emerson College Polling, 47 percent of likely voters opposed US military action in Iran, while only 40 percent supported it. Trump's approval rating had dropped to 42 percent, with 51 percent disapproving. On the generic congressional ballot, Democrats led 49 to 42. The numbers within Trump's own base were just as concerning. According to CNN, roughly 24 percent of those who voted for Trump in 2024 disapproved of his handling of Iran, with 15 percent strongly disapproving. Veteran Republican pollster Neil Newhouse warned Republicans were looking at an ugly November. Party leaders who had believed they could preserve their narrow House majority now privately conceded the House was all but lost, and that Democrats had a realistic shot at the Senate. The war had also driven a wedge through the Republican coalition, with some influential conservatives questioning whether the conflict was being fought on Israel's behalf rather than for American interests. ## The Risk of Retaliation and the Perception Problem Beyond domestic calculation, Washington had to weigh the danger of Iranian retaliation. Despite America and Israel's best efforts, Tehran retained the ability to strike US allies across the region and disrupt global energy markets. Iran proved as much when it struck the Ras Laffan gas plant in Qatar, taking more than 3.5 percent of the world's LNG supplies offline, in response to an Israeli attack on Iran's South Pars gasfield. An American escalation would have pushed Iran to the edge. There was also a perception problem. Trump had built his brand on projecting strength and securing deals, but the war had dragged on for more than five weeks with no clear end. His threat that a whole civilization would die if Iran did not comply was so extreme that failing to follow through risked his credibility, while actually carrying it out would have reshaped the global order and likely triggered widespread international condemnation. With all of this in view, a ceasefire in which both sides make concessions was the best available outcome for everyone. The only remaining question is whether it was worth it. ## Was It Worth It? For the US and Israel, the answer depends on how you measure success. Both countries significantly degraded Iran's military. According to Al Jazeera, hundreds of Iranian missile launchers have been rendered inoperable, with some reports suggesting 80 percent of Iran's capacity to strike Israel has been eliminated. Iran's naval assets, including fast-attack craft, midget submarines, and mine-laying capabilities, were destroyed. The campaign also suppressed Iran's air defenses so thoroughly that, by mid-March, the US was flying non-stealth B-1 bombers over Iranian airspace. Washington and Jerusalem also eliminated Iranian leaders long regarded as thorns in their side: Ali Khamenei, the former Supreme Leader; Ali Larijani, secretary of Iran's Supreme National Security Council; and Gholamreza Soleimani, commander of the paramilitary Basij forces. For Israel specifically, the war opened an opportunity to expand operations in Lebanon, which Jerusalem plans to use to build a security zone along its northern border. The ledger is not one-sided. Iran managed to strike American allies across the region, hitting military bases, embassies, and energy infrastructure. Those attacks raised real questions about America's ability to protect its regional partners, and whether Gulf states might turn to other powers for security guarantees in the future. ## The Strait of Hormuz and the Survival of the Regime Then there is the Strait of Hormuz. Before the war, the strait was open, with hundreds of ships transiting annually. Closing it was meant to make the war as economically painful for the world as possible, and Iran achieved that. More importantly from Tehran's perspective, Iran now has the ability to levy tolls on ships transiting the strait, a capacity that may outlast the war itself. According to Reuters, Iran could earn as much as $120 billion a year until oil and gas producers build pipelines to bypass the strait. The strait has become so central to Tehran that Danny Citrinowicz, a non-resident fellow at the Atlantic Council, wrote that relinquishing control over it is increasingly seen as comparable to giving up its nuclear programme or missile capabilities, something Tehran would go to any length to protect. Perhaps most consequentially, the regime survived. Despite the deaths of Khamenei, Larijani, and other senior officials, the Islamic Republic appointed a new supreme leader, Khamenei's son Mojtaba Khamenei, and maintained its command structure. The system Washington and Jerusalem had hoped to topple remains intact. ## The Human Cost and an Uncertain Peace Finally, the human toll, which has been staggering. In Iran, according to the US-based organization Human Rights Activists in Iran (HRANA), 3,540 people have been killed since the war began. In Lebanon, authorities report 1,461 people killed in Israeli strikes since 2 March. Across Iraq, Kuwait, the UAE, and other regional countries, dozens more have died in Iranian attacks and related incidents. In Israel, about 30 people have died, including 10 soldiers killed in Southern Lebanon. For Washington, 13 service members have been killed. So was it worth it? It depends entirely on whom you ask. For Washington and Jerusalem, key military objectives were achieved, and Tehran is unlikely to pose a threat for years. For Tehran, the regime's survival and its control over the strait are significant victories. But for the people caught in the middle, and the economies battered by soaring fuel prices, the answer is almost certainly no. Had Washington, Jerusalem, and Tehran negotiated in good faith in February, the worst of this could have been avoided. Oman's Foreign Minister, Badr bin Hamad Al Busaidi, one of the key mediators of that period, told CBS that a peace deal had been within reach and that the world needed to give diplomacy the space to get there. One is left to wonder how different the Middle East would look today had the powers that be heeded his call. Still, the ceasefire offers a chance to end the fighting before further escalation. Whether it holds depends entirely on whether the warring parties negotiate in good faith when talks begin in Islamabad on Friday. If they do not, then the world is, to borrow a phrase, FUBAR. ## Frequently Asked Questions ### What triggered the ceasefire, and what are its terms? At 6:32 p.m. Eastern on 7 April, less than ninety minutes before his 8 p.m. deadline, Trump announced on Truth Social that after a conversation with Pakistani PM Shehbaz Sharif, and subject to Iran fully reopening the Strait of Hormuz, he would suspend the bombing and attack of Iran for two weeks. It is a double-sided ceasefire meant to give both parties time to formalize a peace deal. ### How do the two rival peace plans differ? The US 15-point plan calls on Iran to dismantle its three main nuclear sites, end all enrichment, suspend its ballistic-missile programme, curb proxies, and reopen Hormuz, in return for sanctions relief and a monitored civilian nuclear programme. Iran's 10-point plan demands US non-aggression, Iranian control over the strait, sanctions relief, war reparations, and acceptance of Iran's right to enrich uranium — and makes no mention of its missile programme. Each side has called the other's plan "maximalist." ### Why did both sides agree to negotiate despite the vast gap between their positions? Converging pressures forced both to the table. Iran faced a collapsing economy — banks rationing banknotes at $18–$30 per day, a projected 10 percent GDP contraction — plus a Pakistan-China-led mediation effort it could not easily dismiss. Washington faced surging oil prices, an approval rating of only 42 percent, a fracturing Republican coalition ahead of the midterms, and the risk that rejecting the Pakistan-China mediation would hand Beijing a major geopolitical win. ### Why is Lebanon a sticking point in the ceasefire? Pakistan's PM said the ceasefire would include Lebanon, but Israeli PM Netanyahu refuted this directly, stating it did not, as Israel continues operations against Hezbollah. Before the announcement, the IDF issued evacuation warnings for Tyre and Shabriha and its 98th Commando Division had joined ground operations. Hezbollah said it would abide by the ceasefire, while Iran had explicitly demanded a ceasefire on all fronts, Lebanon included. ### Did the war achieve its military and political objectives for the US and Israel? Partially. Hundreds of Iranian missile launchers were destroyed, with some reports suggesting 80 percent of Iran's capacity to strike Israel was eliminated, and senior Iranian leaders including Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei were killed. But the Islamic Republic survived, appointing Mojtaba Khamenei as the new supreme leader, and Iran now controls the Strait of Hormuz — potentially earning up to $120 billion a year in tolls. Meanwhile, Iran struck US allies across the region and raised questions about Washington's ability to protect its partners. ## Sources 1. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/liveblog/2026/4/8/iran-war-live-trump-announces-truce-tehran-agrees-safe-transit-in-hormuz 2. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/liveblog/2026/4/7/iran-war-live-trump-warns-of-devastating-attacks-as-deal-deadline-nears 3. https://edition.cnn.com/2026/04/08/world/live-news/iran-war-trump-us-ceasefire 4. https://www.reuters.com/commentary/breakingviews/trump-may-have-given-iran-500-bln-money-spinner-2026-04-01/ 5. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/us-iran-war-death-toll-israel-lebanon-kuwait-b2952925.html 6. https://www.chathamhouse.org/2026/03/how-will-iran-war-affect-global-economy 7. https://fortune.com/2026/04/05/iran-economy-postwar-reconstruction-regime-survival-sanctions-relief-irgc/ 8. https://fortune.com/2026/03/23/iran-rial-largest-ever-currency-denomination-inflation-financial-sector-ponzi-scheme/ 9. https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/white-house-shuts-down-nuke-162541248.html 10. https://time.com/article/2026/04/07/trump-iran-war-threat-steps-back/ 11. https://www.wsj.com/livecoverage/iran-war-2026-trump-deadline-latest-news/card/what-s-in-iran-s-proposed-peace-plan-aXNBQUWI65SI0wCOtUVf 12. https://www.axios.com/2026/04/06/iran-trump-peace-plan-ceasefire 13. https://www.barrons.com/articles/oil-prices-iran-ceasefire-trump-43b90c7e?mod=livecoverage_web

The Iran-Iraq War: Eight Years of Trench Warfare, Human Waves, and Chemical Weapons

Simon Whistler — Tue, 02 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

On September 22nd, 1980, air strikes suddenly rang out across Iran's air bases. As the country's armed forces scrambled to put together a response, reports came in of a full ground invasion of the western border, spearheaded in three separate locations. The picture assembled almost instantly. The long-running tensions with Iraq had finally snapped, and Saddam Hussein was now launching a full-scale invasion of his neighbor. What followed was not the swift, decisive campaign Saddam had imagined. It became eight years of tank battles, trench warfare, and human wave tactics on a scale not seen since the First World War, capped by the use of chemical weapons against soldiers and civilians alike. By the time it ended, the conflict had drawn in superpowers, redrawn no borders at all, and left somewhere near two million people dead. This is the story of the Iran-Iraq War, the devastating eight-year struggle between two of the Middle East's most populous nations, and the long shadow it cast across the region for decades afterward. The war that began in 1980 was not an isolated event. It grew out of a revolution that upended one of the West's closest regional partners, and it ended by setting in motion a chain of consequences that ran all the way to the 2003 invasion of Iraq and the execution of Saddam Hussein himself. ## Key Takeaways - The revolution and Ayatollah Khomeini's subsequent purge stripped the Iranian military of more than 12,000 officers and countless trained pilots and mechanics, reducing a force once rated fifth or sixth most powerful on Earth to near-collapse — the vulnerability Saddam sought to exploit. - Iraq's September 22nd, 1980 invasion opened a 400-mile front and concentrated four of six divisions on Iran's oil-rich Khuzestan province, where the port city of Khorramshahr fell only after weeks of brutal close-quarters fighting. - Iran's revolutionary fervor turned the invasion into a recruiting drive; its human wave tactics broke through defensive lines but at staggering human cost, while Operation Ramadan gained roughly 50 square kilometers at the price of more than 20,000 dead. - The war spread to the sea in the Tanker War, where attacks on shipping drew in the US Navy, and to the air in the "war of the cities," with mustard gas, Scud missiles, and the bombing of population centers killing tens of thousands of civilians. - Iran accepted UN Resolution 598 in 1988 after Iraqi missile threats emptied much of Tehran; the war ended with no territorial change, around two million casualties, and debts that pushed Iraq toward its 1990 invasion of Kuwait. ## Iran's New Path From a 21st-century vantage point it sounds almost implausible, but Iran was once among the strongest allies of the Western world. Viewed as a crucial bulwark against Soviet expansion in the Middle East, it was armed to the teeth with some of the West's best weapons, tanks, and aircraft — including the supersonic American F-4 Phantom and the advanced F-14 Tomcat. This was no minor regional player. Through the 1970s, many military experts rated Iran as possessing the fifth or sixth most powerful armed forces on Earth. The relationship ran deep. Around 25,000 American technicians were sent to teach their Iranian counterparts how to maintain the foreign equipment, while Iranian pilots traveled to the United States for training. It was growing into an alliance for the ages. But that friendship was about to be shattered, essentially overnight. In the late 1970s, Iran was gripped by a national revolution. What began as demonstrations escalated over the following months as businesses were burned and fighting broke out with the government. At the heart of the unrest was widespread anger at the way the Shah — the king — had run the country as an authoritarian monarch, and the people wanted him gone. His 26-year reign came to an end in 1979 when guerrilla fighters defeated the Shah's troops in vicious street fighting in Tehran. That cleared the way for a referendum to establish a new constitution, this one centered on a particular interpretation of Shia Islam. The new head of state, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, now commanded an Islamist theocracy — one that rapidly turned anti-Western in character, severing many of the ties and agreements that had bound Iran to its former allies. ## A Military Hollowed Out The revolution carried a steep military cost. The chaos drove large numbers of trained pilots and engineers out of the country, leaving numerous complicated foreign vehicles in the hands of understaffed and undertrained teams. The aircraft and tanks that had made Iran so formidable were only as good as the people who could keep them running, and those people were leaving. Khomeini, now the country's Supreme Leader, made matters considerably worse. He quickly ordered a purge of the armed forces. Dozens of high-ranking officials were executed, and many more were imprisoned or exiled. In total, more than 12,000 officers were removed from their positions. Combined with the skilled pilots and mechanics killed or exiled during the revolution, and the thousands who deserted the ranks to flee the purges, the effect was catastrophic. Iran's once-invincible army was now on the verge of crumbling from neglect. The whole world had its eyes on Iran at the time — this was enormous news around the globe. But one country was more concerned with the turn of events than anyone else: Iran's neighbor to the west, Iraq. ## The Road to Invasion Iran and Iraq had been at each other's throats for quite a while by this point. Border clashes over the Shatt al-Arab River throughout the early 1970s had already led to more than a thousand deaths. That dispute was supposed to have been resolved by the 1975 Algiers Agreement, which carved up the area, splitting it between the two nations, and called for a ceasefire. The friction ran beyond the border. Iran had long been wary of Saddam Hussein's dictatorship, and for years had supported Kurdish rebels fighting the Iraqi government, sending them both financial and military aid. The Algiers Agreement was meant to end that interference as well, and was part of the reason Iraq signed it, despite the terms slightly favoring Iran. But the treaty fixed little. Kurdish rebels resumed their struggle a short while later, leading to years of brutal fighting that drove a hundred thousand Kurdish refugees into Turkey. Iraq, for its part, was never pleased with how the negotiations had gone in the first place — but for a time, it was in no position to do anything about it. That changed when the Iranian Revolution succeeded in overthrowing the government. Iran was in chaos and its army was weakened. Saddam could now justify military action as a way to prevent the ideology of the Islamic revolution from spreading into Iraq. And a quick defeat might cause Iran's fragile new government to collapse altogether. Taken together, it formed a near-perfect basket of excuses for war. ## The Invasion Begins On September 22nd, 1980, the Iraqi invasion began. Iraq was confident that its men and ground equipment were superior, but its main worry was the Iranian Air Force. So, in an effort to cripple Iran's aircraft before they could get off the ground, Iraq opened the war with a surprise bombing run against Iranian airfields — a move perhaps inspired by Israel's success in the Six-Day War. Ten air bases were the main targets, but Iraq failed to do much damage, largely because it lacked aircraft capable of striking so deep into enemy territory. Even at airfields that were hit — among them one in Tehran, bombed by three Iraqi MiG-23s — Iran's jets emerged mostly unscathed, having been safely hidden inside hardened aircraft shelters that protected them from the blasts. The only real damage was to runways, which were quickly repaired. On the ground, the picture was very different. Later that day, Iraqi divisions began their assault, crossing the border into Iran in a three-pronged attack that created a frontline measuring 400 miles, or 640 kilometers, in length. Across the three groups, Saddam's army numbered an estimated 150,000 soldiers and as many as 2,000 tanks. Iran had just as many or more, but as established, much of its equipment was in poor condition or simply inoperable. ## Designs on Khuzestan The northern advance pushed only a few kilometers into Iran before setting up defensive positions, as that group was largely meant to protect Iraq's oil pipeline in the event of a counterattack. At the same time, the central advance quickly occupied the provincial capital of Mehran and continued to the edge of the Zagros Mountains. But of the six divisions Iraq deployed in the opening stage, four were sent to the southern front, into Iran's Khuzestan province. Already at this point analysts began to speculate that the true motive for the invasion was to annex this province — which happens to be rich in oil. The professed fear of Iranian revolutionary ideology may well have been a convenient cover for a far more material objective. On the evening of the invasion's first day, Iraqi tanks rumbled into Khuzestan, pushing ahead at full speed and aiming for a blitzkrieg-style punch into the region. Their forces quickly reached the province's capital, Khorramshahr, which sat on the right bank of the Shatt al-Arab River. But instead of a steamrolling victory, the Iraqi divisions met a fierce, determined defense. ## The Battle for Khorramshahr First, Iraqi forces surrounded the city, forming a crescent around it, and began blasting it with artillery. When the bombardment finished, the entire city lay shrouded in smoke and rubble. Thousands of civilians were killed on the city's western edge, electricity and water were completely cut off, and the train station was annihilated. There was no time to admire the work of the guns. Immediately after the last shell fell, 500 Iraqi tanks were already heading down the main road, looking to enter the city. Somehow, these tanks were held off by Iranian recoilless rifles, which disabled dozens and forced the rest to take a more cautious approach. By dawn the next day, most of these anti-tank outposts had been neutralized — but it had bought precious time. By then, the Iranian forces inside the city had already prepared layers of defenses. Iraqi forces finished encircling Khorramshahr, cutting it off completely from reinforcements, and began sending in thousands of troops. The defenders fought ferociously in close quarters with small arms, concentrating lethal fire on tanks with rocket-propelled grenades and even Molotov cocktails. The real game-changer was Iran's use of dozens of British-made Chieftain tanks, which almost always came out on top against the T-62s they faced. Despite heavily outnumbering the defenders, the Iraqis took such high casualties in this first attack that they withdrew entirely and reassessed. After regrouping, they concentrated their attacks on critical infrastructure — the city's main bridge and its river ports. Using heavy shelling and quick commando units, Iraq took control of these fairly quickly, coming one step closer to seizing the city. Day after day, the thunder of artillery shook Khorramshahr as Iranian snipers fired from windows and threw whatever they could at the advancing armor. But by November 1980, ammunition was low, exhaustion was high, and casualties were higher still. Once Iraqi forces reached the center of the city, Iranian tanks struggled to fight in the narrow streets, and the defenders began fleeing. By November 10th, Khorramshahr had fallen, and Iraq was poised to take full control of Khuzestan. ## Iran Strikes Back Saddam had hoped that the pressure of an invasion would be enough to make the Iranian people turn on their new Islamist government. To his surprise, he achieved quite the opposite. Iran viewed the war as a holy defense of their nation, and people lined up by the thousands to protect their land. The armed forces that had seemed so weakened before the war were now filling their ranks so quickly the military struggled to keep up. Iran was not entirely on the defensive in those first weeks either. Immediately after Iraq's surprise bombing, Iran whipped up its own retaliatory air strikes. In total, more than 200 Iranian aircraft took to the skies, including 58 F-4s, 88 F-5s, and 60 F-14s. At least 140 of these crossed into Iraq and bombed eleven air bases, including Baghdad International Airport. To avoid radar detection, the aircraft flew as close to the ground as possible on their way to their targets — so low at times that power cables became one of the biggest risks to the pilots. In one case, a billboard caught on the tail of an F-4 and was not discovered until the jet had landed. These strikes were followed by several more aerial operations, including the daring Operation Scorch Sword, in which four Iranian F-4s flew deep into enemy territory and bombed Iraq's Osirak nuclear reactor. The stated aim was to prevent Iraq from developing nuclear weapons for use in the conflict, though the raid did only minor damage. For failing to detect the Iranian jets, Saddam ordered the execution of Colonel Fakhri Hussein Jaber, the head of Iraq's Western Defense Zone, along with anyone above the rank of major associated with the failure. All the while, Iran's air strikes kept coming. By the time Iraq had occupied Khorramshahr, Iran had reportedly reduced its air capabilities by 50 percent. The strange result was a war split in two dimensions: Iraq dominated on the ground, while above it, Iran held air superiority. There was no telling which way the tide would turn — only that the war was doomed to rage on. ## Operation Victory and the Battle of Dezful By late 1980, the Iraqi invasion had slowed nearly to a standstill. Iran's leaders saw the opening, and before the opportunity could slip away, they launched a counteroffensive codenamed Operation Victory, with the goal of expelling the Iraqis and perhaps pushing further still. The main engagement of Operation Victory was the Battle of Dezful, fought near a city in Khuzestan province. It turned out to be the largest tank battle of the entire war, with 330 Iranian tanks facing off against 350 Iraqi tanks. The Iranian armor was mostly of US and British origin, while the Iraqi tanks were mostly Soviet — but the real factor that decided the battle was strategy. Iran launched several diversionary attacks before the main operation began in January 1981, but the Iraqis were not fooled. They had placed their tanks in critical locations along important roads and had even dug some of their T-72s into the muddy hillsides. Once the armored divisions came into sight of each other, the battle proved remarkably one-sided. Iranian tank formations were disorganized and their infantry inexperienced. Iraq, by contrast, had infantry equipped with various anti-tank weapons and attack helicopters on standby. In the slaughter that followed, 214 Iranian tanks were destroyed along with 100 infantry fighting vehicles. Iraq emerged having lost only 45 tanks to combat, 50 infantry fighting vehicles, and 3 helicopters. ## Crimson Sand: The War Becomes the Western Front Iran suffered a major defeat at Dezful, but fortunately for it, Iraq was unable to capitalize on the momentum. As both sides dug in along defensive lines and launched pointless attacks on one another, a strange pattern emerged — miles and miles of trenches, lined with barbed wire. Each side lost thousands of men in vain attempts to cross no-man's-land, but the trenches were too hard to crack, and tanks were too vulnerable during the advance to be of much use. Frustrated with the deadlock, Iraq began using chemical weapons, including mustard and chlorine gas. These were illegal under the Geneva Convention, of course, but Saddam did not seem to care. If this picture sounds oddly familiar, it is because it is eerily reminiscent of the First World War. Imagine the Western Front in 1916, except instead of France it is the desert, with supersonic fighter jets soaring overhead instead of biplanes. This anachronistic scene would last for much of 1981. Iraq hoped such brutal combat would tire out its enemies, but stories from the frontline only invigorated more Iranians to enlist. With so many fresh soldiers at its disposal, Iran began using its most horrifying tactic yet: human waves. Huge crowds of lightly armed Iranian soldiers would flood a weak point in the Iraqi trenches, and despite absolutely massive casualties, they would often overpower the defenders by sheer numbers. After these waves reached their target, they would be followed by reinforcements of mechanized divisions. Thousands upon thousands of Iranians died in these bloody charges. They were ultimately successful in breaking through several defensive lines, but the frontline did not shift much overall. The most notable event of this period was Operation Opera, a risky airstrike carried out by the Israeli Air Force that finished destroying Iraq's nuclear reactor. ## Operation Undeniable Victory and the Liberation of Khorramshahr By 1982, Iran was ready for another counteroffensive. Since Iraq had denied them their first Operation Victory, they assembled a sequel — Operation Undeniable Victory — with the lofty goal of liberating Khuzestan province. The battle began with Iran thundering forward in a two-pronged attack, aiming for a pincer movement around the Iraqi forces. The ensuing fighting was some of the bloodiest and most chaotic of the 20th century — thousands of tanks facing off in the desert, the deafening screams of jets overhead, and the horror of human wave attacks. But this time there would be no stalemate. Within just six days, Iran had encircled and annihilated three entire Iraqi divisions, inflicting the staggering loss of 25,000 men, with 20,000 more captured. 361 Iraqi tanks had been destroyed, along with 18 aircraft and more than 300 other vehicles. Iraq's southern corridor had been smashed in, and a retreat was ordered. The Iraqi forces fell back to Khorramshahr, which they had taken in the early months of the war nearly two years earlier. But this time Iran had the upper hand. After another unbelievably brutal battle in May 1982, which produced 20,000 more casualties and another 500 destroyed tanks, Khorramshahr was liberated. Iraq was forced to retreat once again, pushed almost all the way back to the pre-war border. Saddam was so enraged by his army's failure that he executed anyone deemed responsible for the retreat — which ended up being more than 200 individuals. Operation Undeniable Victory had been a huge success, and with their enemies now retreating at full speed, Iran showed no signs of stopping. ## Shifting Tides and Saddam's Defiance The invasion of Iran had become an overall failure, and the tide was now turning against Iraq, as Iranian forces continued building up along the border, poised to invade at any moment. In a somewhat desperate move, Saddam announced that he was suing for peace, offering an immediate ceasefire and a complete withdrawal from Iranian territory within 14 days. But the Supreme Leader of Iran was no longer interested in peace. He declared that Iran would not only invade Iraq, but that it would not stop fighting until Saddam's regime had been toppled and replaced with an Islamic Republic. Back in Baghdad, the Iraqi government scrambled to come up with a response. Some suggested new military offensives, but the army was in far too poor a condition for that. The Minister of Health suggested that Saddam could momentarily step down to appease Iran, and after peace had been negotiated, return to power. Saddam asked if anyone else in the cabinet agreed with the proposal, and when no hands were raised, he escorted the man into the next room and shot him in the head with his pistol before resuming the meeting. The message was clear: it did not matter how bad things got — Saddam would never back down. He had reason to be confident in his army. Despite losing tens of thousands of soldiers so far, he still had an active force of more than 200,000 men and was receiving plenty of international aid. Countries supporting Iraq included the United States, which provided information from spy satellites after declaring that it could not, under any circumstances, let Iraq lose the war. France sold various helicopters and Mirage F-1 fighter jets, and the Soviet Union — displeased with Iran for destroying its local communist party — began selling tanks and spare parts to Iraq. Iran, by contrast, remained under strict economic sanctions and had to rely on importing ammunition and weapons from China, Pakistan, and North Korea. ## Operation Ramadan: A Criminal Failure Despite the economic disadvantage, Iran did hold one trump card — morale. Propaganda across the country depicted the war as a holy conflict, promising glory in martyrdom for Allah and bringing boys as young as 12 to sign up by the thousands to prove their allegiance. With so many soldiers at its disposal, Iran was ready to follow through on its promise to overthrow Saddam's regime. Initially, the plan was to launch an all-out attack on Baghdad, but Iranian leadership rejected the idea as too risky. Instead, they decided it would be more effective to capture smaller provinces, push slowly through the country, and hopefully turn the population against Saddam. On July 13th, 1982, Iran's offensive began, codenamed Operation Ramadan. More than 100,000 Iranian troops charged forward in huge waves, throwing themselves at the weak points in Iraqi defenses. But Iraq was ready for the waves this time, having entrenched artillery and tanks to counter the human floods, and Iran suffered unimaginable losses in the first days of fighting. Iraq also deployed large amounts of tear gas, sending entire battalions into disarray as they choked on the fumes, making them easy targets for artillery and helicopter strikes. But Iran had plenty of men to spare, and those who fell were quickly replaced. After three days, they had pushed 16 kilometers deep into Iraqi territory before Iraqi air strikes forced them back near the border. A few days later, they pushed 13 kilometers in and were driven back once again, this time on the verge of total annihilation, narrowly escaping encirclement. A couple of weeks later, they attacked for a final, desperate time, capturing a small amount of Iraqi land before the fighting died down. Operation Ramadan lasted only a few weeks, but it produced more than 20,000 deaths, 80,000 wounded, and thousands of destroyed vehicles — all to occupy just 50 square kilometers of Iraqi territory. As one historian put it, the operation was "by any standard, a criminal failure of leadership and strategy." Iran had gained essentially nothing of strategic value, save for destroying a good number of Iraqi tanks, but at a price far too high. ## The Marshes and the War of Attrition Following the failed offensive, the war shifted back to one of attrition, as both sides continued to launch attacks across the vast frontline to no avail. Iran's human wave tactics were even used to clear minefields, which, as one can imagine, resulted in unbelievable loss of life. Throughout 1983 and 1984, Iran launched 10 separate Operation Dawns, most of which achieved very little, except Operation Dawn 4, which retook some territory in the north. Over these months, Iran began shying away from human wave tactics and started trying new approaches, such as the marsh battles, where forces would engage Iraqi troops while wading through thick water and mud, often at night. It was hoped that these wetlands would offer a favorable way to sneak through the Iraqi defenses. But as Iranian forces advanced through the wet terrain, they encountered mustard gas, underwater electrical wires, and poisoned water. The marshes quickly became one of the deadliest places in the war — a near-certain death sentence for any soldier assigned there. ## The Tanker War In 1984, Syria — which was on Iran's side throughout the conflict — closed a crucial pipeline that killed off Iran's oil exports. Losing those exports was catastrophic for the country's economy, which was now hemorrhaging billions of dollars every month. Saudi Arabia and Kuwait stepped in to provide economic assistance, but the situation had given Saddam a new idea. If he began attacking Iranian merchant ships, he might provoke Iran into closing the Strait of Hormuz, a crucial waterway for oil tankers that provides the only route from the Persian Gulf to open sea. If that strait closed, foreign superpowers would almost certainly intervene, and the war could be ended in no time at all. So, in 1984, Iraq began targeting Iranian ships, civilian and military alike. Generally using helicopters and attack planes purchased from France, dozens of Iranian ships were struck, set ablaze, and even sunk over the following year. Iran responded with similar attacks, and in what became known as the Tanker War, ships from all nations were targeted. Just as Saddam had hoped, the world's eyes turned to the region's oil supplies, and several Western nations deployed warships to protect their commerce. The United States, under President Ronald Reagan, went above and beyond the rest, allowing friendly tankers to be reflagged with the American stars and stripes, granting them the protection of the US Navy. It was an extremely risky decision, courting the total involvement of the United States, but even the presence of powerful navies was not enough to stop the attacks. The closest the US came to direct involvement was when the USS Stark was targeted by an Iraqi jet, which fired two missiles at the vessel, striking its port side. The second missile penetrated the hull and exploded in the crew quarters, killing 37 and injuring 21. It was never determined whether the attack was intentional, and the pilot went unpunished back in Iraq. Saudi Arabia was also nearly pulled into the conflict when it scrambled two F-15 fighters to protect one of its shipping vessels and ended up shooting down two Iranian F-4s. ## The War of the Cities While the Tanker War raged at sea, Iraq had finally begun to dominate the skies over Iran. The lack of spare parts and engineers was taking its toll, and as the war progressed, Iran could no longer seriously compete for air superiority. Saddam ordered the so-called "war of the cities" to begin, in which huge squadrons embarked on bombing runs across Iranian cities. These included some of the largest-scale bombing missions since the end of the Second World War, and civilian deaths skyrocketed into the tens of thousands across 11 major cities. Iraq also began importing Soviet-made Scud missiles and launched them at civilian targets wherever it pleased. Iran responded with its own bombing runs, specifically targeting Baghdad. Iraq's use of mustard bombs also increased as it imported more of the necessary chemicals. In one attack on the city of Sardasht, more than 100 civilians were killed and 5,000 were burned and injured by the toxic substance. ## The Final Months Throughout 1986 and 1987, while each side continued various attacks along the frontline, Saddam sent multiple offers for a ceasefire. Iran rejected all of them, determined to win the war. Both sides were enacting policies of total war, and Iraq had even started drafting university students. But the attitude really began to change in 1988, when Iraq stepped up its terror attacks. Fueled by massive weapons imports, Iraq's army had nearly doubled in size over the previous couple of years, and since it was now spending more than 50 percent of its entire GDP on the war, its military industry was booming — especially missile production. More than 500 missiles in total were fired at Iranian cities, and Iran struggled to respond. Saddam then threatened to begin arming the long-range missiles with chemical weapons, causing 30 percent of Tehran's population to flee the city immediately. The Supreme Leader of Iran, now facing the prospect of weapons of mass destruction and a second Iraqi invasion stronger than the first, accepted UN Resolution 598 and began working toward a ceasefire. It was signed in August 1988, ending all hostilities between the two countries. ## The Ghost Left Behind The Iran-Iraq War had resulted in almost no territorial changes whatsoever, with both sides returning to their pre-war boundaries. It had, however, decimated hundreds of cities, and the total number of casualties is somewhere in the ballpark of 2,000,000 people — more than half of which came from the vicious combat on the frontlines. Both nations were severely in debt after the war ended. While Iran would slowly work on rebuilding, it was this debt, combined with a newly strengthened army, that would lead Iraq to make another terrible decision: the invasion of Kuwait in 1990. This time, however, Iraq would be no match for the coalition forces it faced. Iraq's use of chemical weapons against Iran was met at the time with international scorn. But the condemnation did not end there. The experience of the Iran-Iraq War added serious credibility to later accusations that Saddam possessed weapons of mass destruction in the 21st century — accusations that ultimately led the United States to invade Iraq in 2003. In the end, Saddam's invasion of Iran in 1980 had not only sparked one of the deadliest wars in recent history, but perhaps set off a domino effect that ended with his regime destroyed and with him executed by his own people. ## Frequently Asked Questions ### Why did Saddam Hussein invade Iran in 1980? The 1979 revolution had thrown Iran into chaos and gutted its military, presenting what appeared to be an easy opportunity. Saddam could justify the attack as stopping the spread of the Islamic revolution's ideology into Iraq, and he hoped a quick defeat would collapse Iran's fragile new government entirely. Analysts also suspected the real motive was to annex the oil-rich Khuzestan province, where four of Iraq's six invading divisions were concentrated. ### How had Iran's once-powerful military become so vulnerable before the invasion? Through the 1970s, Iran was rated among the fifth or sixth most powerful armed forces on Earth, armed with advanced US aircraft including the F-4 Phantom and F-14 Tomcat. The 1979 revolution drove out trained pilots and engineers, and Khomeini's subsequent purge removed more than 12,000 officers, leaving sophisticated foreign equipment in the hands of understaffed and undertrained teams. The result was that Iran's once-formidable army was on the verge of collapse precisely when Saddam chose to strike. ### What were Iran's human wave tactics, and what did they achieve? Huge crowds of lightly armed Iranian soldiers would flood a weak point in Iraqi trenches, overpowering defenders by sheer numbers despite massive casualties, and were then followed by mechanized reinforcements. The tactic broke through several Iraqi defensive lines but at staggering human cost — Operation Ramadan alone produced more than 20,000 deaths and 80,000 wounded to gain just 50 square kilometers of Iraqi territory. Iran even used human waves to clear minefields. ### What was the Tanker War, and how did it draw in the United States? Beginning in 1984, Iraq began attacking Iranian merchant and military ships, hoping to provoke Iran into closing the Strait of Hormuz and forcing superpower intervention to end the conflict. Iran retaliated, targeting ships from all nations. The United States under President Reagan reflagged friendly tankers with the American flag and deployed the US Navy to protect them; the USS Stark was subsequently struck by two Iraqi missiles, killing 37 and injuring 21. ### How did the war end, and what were its long-term consequences? Iran's Supreme Leader accepted UN Resolution 598 after Iraqi missile barrages and threats to arm long-range missiles with chemical weapons drove 30 percent of Tehran's population from the city. A ceasefire was signed in August 1988, ending the war with no territorial changes and around two million total casualties. Iraq emerged deeply in debt, a financial strain that contributed directly to Saddam's 1990 invasion of Kuwait — and Iraq's documented use of chemical weapons during the war later lent credibility to accusations that led to the 2003 US invasion.

Iran's New Supreme Leader: Mojtaba Khamenei and the War's Second Week

Simon Whistler — Tue, 02 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Fire, and fire everywhere. Those were the scenes in Tehran on a Saturday night following an Israeli Defense Forces attack that targeted 30 fuel depots and other areas the IDF claimed were affiliated with the Iranian armed forces. In video shared with the outlet Iran International, oil depots burned in three corners of the city, with flames visible to the west, east, and south of the capital. The resulting fires were so bright that one resident told the BBC it was as if night had turned into day. Then came the rain. Black clouds of toxic smoke gathered over Tehran, and rain saturated with what appeared to be oil fell on the city. Residents reported difficulty breathing, and the Iranian Red Crescent Society warned that the rain could be contaminated with toxic compounds that cause acid rain and carry the potential to inflict chemical burns and lung damage. It was not only Tehran that burned over that weekend in early March 2026. Flames ravaged a Kuwaiti government building in the early hours of a Sunday following an Iranian drone strike. And in Israel, while the nation was not on fire, six people were injured, one of them seriously, after an Iranian ballistic missile attack that apparently used a cluster warhead struck on a Sunday afternoon. These were the opening scenes of the second week of the war between Iran, Israel, and the United States—a war that, for the moment, shows no end in sight. The thesis of this second week is plain: as Iran installs a more hardline Supreme Leader and the fighting spreads from missile factories to the water systems of the Gulf, a conflict already entangling Washington and Jerusalem is hardening rather than winding down. ## Key Takeaways - Mojtaba Khamenei, son of the late Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has been chosen by Iran's 88-member Assembly of Experts as the country's next Supreme Leader, despite his father's stated wish that the role not become hereditary. - Mojtaba is widely expected to be a hardline figure, owing both to his close ties with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and to the deaths of his mother, wife, and one sister in the strike that killed his father. - President Masoud Pezeshkian apologized to Iran's neighbors for recent strikes, then walked it back hours later under intense criticism from hardliners—a sign of his powerlessness within a military-dominated system. - Israeli strikes hit Iran's Aerospace Headquarters and two central ballistic missile production sites at Parchin and Shahrud, which the IDF said set Iran's missile production back years. - A deep Israeli special-forces incursion near Nabi Chit in Lebanon's Bekaa Valley to recover the remains of pilot Ron Arad triggered a Hezbollah ambush and at least 40 retaliatory airstrikes that killed more than 40 people. - US and Iranian strikes on desalination plants across the Gulf have opened a dangerous new front against civilian water infrastructure in a region that produces about 40 percent of the world's desalinated water. - Washington and Jerusalem disagreed sharply over the fuel-depot strikes while jointly weighing a far more ambitious operation: sending special forces into Iran to secure an estimated 450 kilograms of highly enriched uranium. ## Infighting, Succession, and a Contested Apology On the first day of the war, the biggest story was the death of former Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in the war's opening salvo. At the start of the second week, the biggest story is the appointment of his son, Mojtaba Khamenei, as his successor. The question of succession had become a particularly contested issue within Tehran over the preceding days, with the infighting even spilling over onto social media—one cleric apparently created a fan page for Mojtaba on the Iranian messaging app Eitaa that was eventually taken down. According to Iranian democracy activist Mehdi Yahyanejad, the infighting created a seemingly irreparable divide between the political and military factions within Tehran, increasing the likelihood that a hardline figure would be chosen to bring both sides under the same umbrella. That logic helps explain the outcome. Vali R. Nasr, an expert on Iran at Johns Hopkins University, told the New York Times that Mojtaba fit the bill because, of all the candidates, he was the most ready to quickly consolidate power and assert control over the system. ## Why the Assembly of Experts Chose Mojtaba This is the most likely reason the Assembly of Experts—an 88-member clerical body elected by the public every eight years—chose Mojtaba as the next Supreme Leader. The choice came despite the fact that, according to the Times, the late Ayatollah had indicated to close advisers that he did not want his son to succeed him because he did not want the role to become hereditary. In its analysis, the Times noted that Mojtaba's ascension suggests Iran's circles of power—the senior clerics, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, and influential politicians such as Ali Larijani, head of the National Security Council—had closed ranks at a time of acute crisis. Mojtaba is widely expected to be a hardline figure even by the standards of ayatollahs, not only because of his close ties to the IRGC but also because his mother, wife, and one of his sisters were killed in the strike that killed his father. News of the younger Khamenei's ascension was greeted with jubilation among regime supporters in Tehran, who in one video were recorded chanting, "God is great, Khamenei is the leader." ## A Successor Who May Not Survive to Rule Beyond the issue of selection, there is the question of whether Mojtaba will even survive long enough to rule. The IDF warned that it would target Khamenei's successor, and President Donald Trump said that the next Supreme Leader needed to get approval—otherwise, he warned, the new leader would not last very long. Regardless of these threats, it appears that Mojtaba will be Iran's next Supreme Leader. His selection happened at a particularly sensitive time for Tehran because of President Masoud Pezeshkian's apology to Iran's neighbors for recent strikes against them. Given that apologies between states are rare, and apologies during wartime are an even rarer event, Pezeshkian's apology—and his wording—stood out. In his words: "I deem it necessary to apologize to neighboring countries that were attacked. We do not intend to invade neighboring countries." He also said that Iranian forces would not attack any country unless it was used as a staging ground for attacks on Iran, blaming past attacks on the "fire at will" policy that the army had been operating under. According to several analysts, the apology was an attempt to contain the widening regional fallout and avoid a broader regional conflict. ## The Apology Walked Back While analysts were trying to work out the possible motives behind the message, Tehran was angry it had gotten out in the first place. In one of the most open criticisms of Pezeshkian, and a sign of the growing divisions within the ruling class, hardline cleric and lawmaker Hamid Rasai called the apology unprofessional, weak, and unacceptable. Another lawmaker, Mohammad Manan Raeisi, described the remarks as humiliating. Even Gholam-Hossein Mohseni-Ejei, a cleric who serves alongside the president in a three-man transitional leadership council, openly criticized and contradicted him, saying the attacks would continue. Hours later, after facing intense criticism, President Pezeshkian issued another statement asserting that Iran had not attacked its neighboring countries—and omitting any apology at all. Sanam Vakil, Director of the Middle East and North Africa Program at Chatham House, told the New York Times that this was a sign of Pezeshkian's powerlessness within a military-dominated system. More broadly, the back-and-forth between the reformist president and the hardliners in the government represents one of the most important challenges Mojtaba will face in his new role: balancing between the moderates and the hardliners. ## A Claim That Could Damage the Regime Away from the politics of factions and succession, a separate claim demands scrutiny. Ali Larijani alleged that several American soldiers had been captured but that Washington had reported them as killed in action to conceal the incident. US Central Command denied the claim, calling it another example of Iranian lies and deception. This is a significant allegation, and if it ends up being false—which it so far appears to be—it would not only dent Larijani's credibility but that of the entire regime. For a ruling class that is already deeply unpopular, losing what little trust remains with both domestic and international audiences could prove more dangerous than any military setback. ## On the Battlefield: Missile Factories and a Half-Billion-Dollar Radar On a Sunday, the IDF attacked Iran's Aerospace Headquarters, which had been used for launching satellites including the 2022 launch of the Khayyam satellite aboard a Russian rocket. According to the Jerusalem Post, the site and Iran's growing space cooperation were viewed as a serious national security and intelligence concern for Israel and the West. Israel was particularly concerned that space cooperation between Moscow and Tehran would increase Iran's capability to launch intercontinental ballistic missiles, as well as reduce Israeli spies' ability to penetrate the Islamic Republic's borders. The Post also reported fears that Iran could incorporate the satellites into a future nuclear weapons program to develop a weapon capable of hitting the US mainland. Israel also targeted what the IDF described as Iran's two most central ballistic missile production sites—one at the Parchin military complex south of Tehran, and the other in the Shahrud area, some 2,000 kilometers from Israel. The strikes on Shahrud were particularly significant because it was where most of the missiles fired at Israel were manufactured. The IDF said the recent strikes caused significant damage to Iran's missile production capabilities, setting Iran back years, and claimed the attacks significantly limited Tehran's ability to arm its proxies. Another notable strike hit Mehrabad Airport in Tehran, destroying 16 aircraft that the IDF claimed were being used to supply weapons to Hezbollah. In Jordan, analysts were finally able to confirm the extent of the damage from an earlier Iranian strike targeting facilities associated with the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense, or THAAD, system. Satellite imagery showed that a radar unit belonging to a THAAD battery stationed at the Muwaffaq Salti Air Base had been destroyed. The radar is believed to be the AN/TPY-2, a highly sophisticated missile detection system manufactured by Raytheon that costs close to $500 million according to US defense budget documents—an indication of just how much this war is costing not only the Middle East but also Washington. ## The Hunt for Ron Arad: Israel's Deepest Lebanon Incursion The Mehrabad strike, aimed at Hezbollah's supply lines, leads to Lebanon, where Israel carried out a major operation over the weekend to locate the remains of Ron Arad, an Israeli pilot who went missing in Lebanon in 1986. The Guardian reported that two Israeli helicopters landed outside the towns of Nabi Chit and Khraibeh along the Syrian-Lebanese border in the eastern Bekaa Valley at 10 p.m. on a Friday night, dropping off Israeli soldiers. The soldiers then headed to a cemetery in Nabi Chit and began to dig up a grave where they suspected the remains of Ron Arad were held. Both the Lebanese army and Hezbollah claimed they had detected the incursion, and that is when, to borrow a phrase, all hell broke loose. Hezbollah claimed its fighters ambushed the soldiers outside the cemetery, supported by residents of the area, with the fighting lasting until 3 a.m. Videos of the incident showed a constant stream of tracer bullets flying through the air, and residents calling for people from other villages—most of whom are heavily armed and support Hezbollah—to come and help repel the Israelis. In response to the attacks, the Israeli military launched at least 40 airstrikes on the town, leaving more than 40 people dead and scores more injured. The Nabi Chit operation was the deepest Israeli forces have penetrated into Lebanon since November 2024, when special forces apprehended a Hezbollah operative from the northern city of Batroun. It represents the growing reach of Israeli operations as the conflict with Hezbollah intensifies across multiple fronts in Lebanon. ## Water as a Weapon: Strikes Across the Gulf American operations also continued throughout the weekend, with US forces targeting a freshwater desalination plant on Iran's Qeshm Island in the Strait of Hormuz. Abbas Araghchi, Iran's foreign minister, said the strikes had cut into the water supply of 30 villages and warned that the US had set a dangerous precedent. Regional observers have long feared that desalination plants could be targeted because they supply water to millions of people across the region and present an easy target for any government looking to put pressure on its enemies. There are about 400 desalination plants in the Middle East, which combined produce roughly 40 percent of the world's desalinated water. Knock them offline for long enough, and normal life suddenly becomes extremely hard for a great many people. That is true of the Gulf states as well. Iran retaliated with a drone strike against Bahrain that damaged a desalination plant and injured three people. Despite the damage, the nation's electricity and water authority said supplies remained online. Bahrain is particularly vulnerable to attacks on its water infrastructure because it has no natural aquifers and relies almost entirely on desalinated water and a pipeline from Saudi Arabia to supply its residents. Neil Quilliam, an associate fellow with the Middle East and North Africa program at Chatham House, described the attack as a major escalation in an interview with The National. In his words: "Iran is moving on from striking assets that hurt Gulf economies and global energy markets to ones that will have a material effect on the livelihoods of Gulf citizens." ## The UAE Front and a Crack in the Alliance Iran also targeted the United Arab Emirates over the weekend, attacking several targets including Ben Zayed Airport in Abu Dhabi, a residential building, and a hotel. The UAE's ministry of defense announced that it had intercepted 16 ballistic missiles launched toward the country and that another missile fell into the sea. There had been reports that the UAE struck an Iranian desalination plant in retaliation, in what would have been its first retaliatory attack since the beginning of the war, but a senior official speaking to the Jerusalem Post denied those claims. Another source close to the UAE that spoke with the Post accused Israel of leaking reports of its attack in Iran and claimed that Abu Dhabi was struggling to understand Israeli conduct and the nature of briefings coming out of Jerusalem. Such a statement indicates one of two things: either an attempt by the UAE to distance itself from strikes on civilian infrastructure, or a sign of growing tension between Abu Dhabi and Jerusalem over how the war is being conducted and communicated to the public. ## Washington and Jerusalem: A First Significant Rift Two stories could shape the outcome of the war, or at least its shape in the coming weeks. First, according to Axios, Israel's strikes on 30 Iranian fuel depots on a Saturday went far beyond what the US expected when Jerusalem notified it in advance, sparking the first significant disagreement between the allies since the war began. While Israel claimed the fuel depots were used by the Iranian regime to supply fuel to different consumers including its military organs, an American official told Axios that Washington did not think it was a good idea. Washington's concerns were twofold. First, the US was concerned that Israeli strikes on infrastructure serving ordinary Iranians could backfire strategically, rallying Iranian society to support the regime. While the regime is extremely unpopular for its violent excesses, including a deadly crackdown on protesters in January, there is a long history of unpopular regimes using foreign attacks to rally the nation behind them. In a previous interview with the WarFronts team, available on Fronts.co, Professor Rockford Weitz of Tufts University's Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy estimated that about 40 percent of the nation supported the regime. Attacks targeting public infrastructure, or hitting too close to home for civilian populations, could see that number increase significantly. The other concern was oil prices. Footage of burning depots could spook oil markets and push energy prices even higher than they already are. A Trump adviser told Axios that the president does not like the attack—that he wants to save the oil and does not want to burn it because it reminds people of higher gas prices. It is a valid concern, as the average price of gas in the US has shot up from about $3 per gallon before the strikes to $3.45, with more increases expected. Some analysts predict prices could hit all-time highs before the end of March. ## The Uranium Question and a War Decided "by Mutual Consent" Washington's backlash to the strikes was so intense that Lindsey Graham—a long-time Iran hawk who coached Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on how to lobby President Trump for action in Iran—publicly criticized Israel's choice of targets, urging Israel to be more careful to ensure the Iranian people could rebuild once the regime collapses. Coming from someone whose defining foreign policy position is pushing for an even closer relationship with Israel, the fact that he said it publicly highlighted just how concerned the administration was about the strikes. Second, while Washington and Jerusalem argued over the oil depots, both governments have been discussing an even more ambitious operation. According to Axios, the US and Israel have discussed sending special forces into Iran to secure its stockpile of highly enriched uranium—estimated at about 450 kilograms—at a later stage of the war. American Secretary of State Marco Rubio alluded to the possibility during a congressional briefing when he said that people would need to go in to secure Iran's enriched uranium. Any operation to seize the material would require US or Israeli troops on Iranian soil, navigating heavily fortified underground facilities in hotly contested areas. Sources told Axios that such a mission would likely only take place after both countries are confident Iran's military can no longer mount a serious threat to the forces involved. Even then, unless they killed or disarmed every member of Iran's armed forces and their associated militias, such a mission would still carry major risks. For now, the mission remains hypothetical, but the fact that it is being discussed at all shows how confident America and Israel are that they will win the war. President Trump said as much during an interview with the Times of Israel, declaring that the war would end by mutual consent between him and Prime Minister Netanyahu. For now, the conflict grinds on, with WarFronts continuing to monitor developments. ## Frequently Asked Questions ### Who is Iran's new Supreme Leader and why was he chosen? Mojtaba Khamenei, son of the late Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, was chosen by Iran's 88-member Assembly of Experts. The late Ayatollah had reportedly told close advisers he did not want the role to become hereditary, but infighting between political and military factions in Tehran created pressure to find a unifying hardline figure. Analysts say Mojtaba was selected because he was seen as the most ready to quickly consolidate power, and his ties to the IRGC—along with the deaths of his mother, wife, and a sister in the strike that killed his father—make him expected to be especially hardline. ### What happened with President Pezeshkian's apology to Iran's neighbors? Pezeshkian publicly apologized to neighboring countries that had been struck, saying Iran did not intend to invade them and blaming attacks on a prior "fire at will" policy. Hardline lawmakers and clerics responded furiously, calling the apology unprofessional, weak, and humiliating. Hours later, Pezeshkian issued a second statement asserting that Iran had not attacked its neighbors—removing any apology—a reversal analysts described as evidence of his powerlessness within the military-dominated system. ### What Iranian military sites did Israel strike during the second week? Israel struck Iran's Aerospace Headquarters, used to launch satellites including the 2022 Khayyam satellite. It also hit what the IDF called Iran's two most central ballistic missile production sites—at the Parchin military complex south of Tehran and in the Shahrud area roughly 2,000 kilometers from Israel—and attacked Mehrabad Airport, destroying 16 aircraft the IDF claimed were supplying Hezbollah. The IDF said the combined strikes set Iran's missile production back years. ### Why are desalination plants being targeted and why does it matter? The Middle East hosts about 400 desalination plants producing roughly 40 percent of the world's desalinated water. US forces struck a plant on Iran's Qeshm Island, cutting water to 30 villages; Iran retaliated with a drone strike that damaged a Bahraini plant—a country with no natural aquifers that relies almost entirely on desalinated water and a Saudi pipeline. Regional analysts described the strikes as a major escalation because they threaten the daily livelihoods of civilian populations rather than just military or economic assets. ### Why did Washington and Israel clash over the fuel-depot strikes, and what are they planning next? Israel's strikes on 30 Iranian fuel depots went further than the US expected, sparking the first significant disagreement of the war. Washington worried the attacks on infrastructure serving ordinary Iranians could rally public support for the regime, and a Trump adviser noted that burning depots were pushing gas prices from about $3 to $3.45 per gallon—the opposite of what the president wanted. Meanwhile, both governments have discussed a more ambitious follow-on operation: sending special forces into Iran to secure an estimated 450 kilograms of highly enriched uranium, though any such mission would require confidence that Iran's military could no longer mount a serious threat. ## Sources 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11.

Iran's Sleeper Cells Weren't Real. The Alternative Is Worse.

Simon Whistler — Tue, 02 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

In the weeks before Operation Epic Fury opened, pundits and security analysts across the United States, Europe, and beyond tried to sound the alarm. Start a war with Iran, the warning went, and there was no telling what kind of chaos Tehran could unleash. For decades, and with rising intensity in recent years, the threat of Iranian sleeper cells had kept policymakers and ordinary citizens awake at night, as politicians pointed to porous borders and mass migration as a vector for Iranian agents to slip into Western societies. But when Operation Epic Fury began, those sleeper cells did not attack. Judging by how little impact they made, they may never have existed at all. There were no Revolutionary Guard soldiers rampaging through New York, Paris, or Berlin. That absence, however, did not mean Iranian infiltration simply failed to happen. After three months of on-and-off combat and continuous global uncertainty, a clearer picture emerged: the Iranian threat was not imagined, but misunderstood. From the United States to the European continent, known or suspected Iranian operatives have been busy hacking sensitive systems, sabotaging symbolic targets, and recruiting lone wolves to carry out violent attacks. Iran did have a plan to strike the Western world on its home turf. But instead of fielding sleeper cells, Tehran chose to wage a campaign of true, asymmetric hybrid warfare. ## Key Takeaways - The long-feared Iranian sleeper cells never launched coordinated attacks during Operation Epic Fury; the real campaign was a decentralized hybrid-warfare effort run through proxies and paid recruits. - The first suspected Iran-linked attack came one day after the war began, when a gunman wearing clothing reading "Property of Allah" and an Iranian-flag-style design opened fire in an Austin, Texas beer garden, killing two and wounding fourteen. - Iran-linked operations spanned continents: shootings, firebombings, and IED attacks against US consulates, embassies, banks, synagogues, and Jewish institutions in cities including Toronto, Oslo, Amsterdam, Paris, Liège, and London. - A pro-Iran group calling itself HAYI surfaced online in March with no prior digital footprint and claimed responsibility for many European attacks, functioning as a likely façade for deniable Iranian operations. - HAYI ran what one outlet called "gig-economy" spying, paying teenagers, the disillusioned, and people in psychological distress small sums to plant devices or film detonations, mirroring tactics Russia has used across Europe. - US prosecutors charged Iraqi national Mohammad Baqer Saad Dawood al-Saadi, identified as a senior Kataib Hezbollah commander, in connection with at least eighteen attacks and planned attacks across North America and Europe. - Experts warn this model amounts to "terrorism as a service," a threat that is harder to detect, easier to replace, and may force a wholesale rethink of Western counterterrorism. ## A Necessary Caveat on Sourcing Before laying out the evidence, a word on what can and cannot be claimed here. The information below is accurate, to the best of available knowledge, as of the end of the day on Thursday, the twenty-first of May, local time in the United States. These Iran-linked asymmetric attacks against the US and Europe remain an ongoing problem, still being exposed through a constant stream of indictments and investigations. That means any attacks taking place after that date are not captured here, and neither is evidence that surfaced afterward. The campaign described below is a snapshot of a moving target, drawn from public reporting, court documents, and intelligence assessments as they stood in mid-to-late May. Readers should treat it as a status report on an unfinished story, not a final ledger. ## What the West Expected, and Why Long before the Iran War began, the specter of Iranian sleeper cells was well established across the Western world, in both security circles and broader public debate. As a Wall Street Journal piece explained, the Quds Force, the external arm of Iran's IRGC, has in recent years recruited proxies among organized-crime groups and Shia Muslim communities in Europe, including motorcycle gangs and migrants from Afghanistan and Syria. These were not abstract fears. Raids across several countries had led to the arrests of Hamas and Hezbollah operatives, some of whom had stockpiled weapons and ammunition. According to the Journal, over the past year Iran had pre-positioned arms and ammunition for proxy cells in countries including Germany and Austria, as well as along migrant routes in the Balkans. So the building blocks of a conventional infiltration threat genuinely existed. But once the fighting started, authorities quickly realized that Iran's true campaign would look different from what they had braced for. The pre-positioned weapons and embedded operatives were part of the story, yet the attacks that followed pointed toward a more diffuse and disposable model. ## Attacks on America The campaign struck the United States almost immediately. The first suspected Iran-linked attack came just one day after Operation Epic Fury began, when a gunman walked into a beer garden in Austin, Texas, and opened fire. Two people were killed and fourteen wounded. The attacker wore clothing reading "Property of Allah" and a design resembling the Iranian flag. He was a fifty-three-year-old man from Senegal, and he was killed at the scene. The timing was sudden but not entirely surprising. Just after the death of Iran's late Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei, the Revolutionary Guard Corps had warned that its enemies "will no longer be safe anywhere in the world, not even in their own homes." The Austin shooting made that threat very real, very quickly, and from there Iran-linked attacks were reported with stunning frequency. In mid-March, two people in Toronto stepped out of their car and fired a handgun at the US consulate before driving away in the pre-dawn hours. By then, Toronto had already endured three separate shooting attacks against synagogues, on March 2, 6, and 7. A day after the consulate attack, three unnamed brothers were arrested in Norway for carrying out what authorities called a "terror bombing" on the US embassy in Oslo, using a large improvised explosive device hidden inside a backpack. The pattern spread fast. A few days later, the Amsterdam offices of the Bank of New York were struck in an improvised explosive attack. In April, an Iranian operative tried to hire a Mexican cartel member, who was in fact an undercover US law enforcement officer. That agent was offered ten thousand dollars to carry out arson attacks against a synagogue in New York City and two Jewish centers in Los Angeles and Scottsdale, Arizona. ## A Bomb at CENTCOM's Doorstep One of the most alarming American incidents struck at the heart of the military command running the war. In March, a Chinese-born brother and sister, both US citizens, planted a bomb in the visitors' center at MacDill Air Force Base, which hosts the headquarters of US Central Command. The device went undiscovered for several days. During that window, the two siblings fled to China, though the sister eventually returned and was detained. The bomb was located before it could detonate. US officials have not publicly disclosed any links to the war in Iran, but the connection is hard to ignore: US Central Command is the command unit that has overseen the war since it began. The MacDill plot underscores a recurring feature of the campaign. Targets carried symbolic and strategic weight, the perpetrators did not fit a single profile, and the line between a state-directed operation and an opportunistic strike was deliberately blurred. ## The Digital Front American digital infrastructure was not spared. In the earliest days of Epic Fury, Iran-linked hackers hit several oil and gas sites in the US, focusing on the logic controllers that let machines communicate with each other and forcing several companies to revert to manual controls. During the war's second week, the medical technology company Stryker was hit with a major cyberattack, carried out by hackers who claimed to be retaliating on Iran's behalf. In mid-May, US officials revealed that Iran appeared to be behind a series of breaches of fuel storage monitoring systems, particularly those tracking how full gas station fuel tanks are. Officials told CNN anonymously that the hacks could have allowed Iran to cause gas leaks that would have gone undetected, quite possibly until an explosion. In their highest-profile cyber operation to date, Iran-linked hackers breached the personal emails of FBI Director Kash Patel, posting photos and documents stolen from his account. A telling detail runs through all of it: in each case, the hacker groups claimed credit rather than trying to hide their origin. The goal was not stealth but intimidation. ## The White House Correspondents' Dinner Shooting Perhaps the highest-profile incident of all was the attempted assassination of US President Donald Trump and other administration officials at the White House Correspondents' Dinner in April. The sourcing here demands care. WarFronts draws on an exclusive report from Reuters, which in turn drew on an intelligence report from the Department of Homeland Security, sent to US law enforcement at the local, state, and federal levels. The report indicated that the suspect, a man named Cole Tomas Allen, was acting on "multiple social and political grievances," and that the war in Iran "may have contributed to his decision to conduct the attack." To support that, the report cited Allen's recent social media posts criticizing Washington's wartime conduct. Crucially, as of late May, there is no publicly known evidence that Allen was recruited or paid directly. That ambiguity is itself instructive. It captures how difficult it has become to draw a clean line between a grievance-driven lone actor and a deliberately cultivated proxy, a distinction that the rest of this campaign would only blur further. ## A Larger Network: The Rise of HAYI The United States was far from the only nation under attack. Across Europe, Iran-linked attacks came in several forms at once, and many were tied to a pro-Iran group known as HAYI. The group first appeared online after the war had already started, releasing a statement on Telegram on March 9 announcing that "military operations" against American and Israeli interests across the globe had begun. According to the International Centre for Counter-Terrorism, HAYI had no digital footprint before that statement. That suggested it was either created just before or after the war began, or had been kept secret as a cultivated asset for some time. The center was blunt about the uncertainty, noting it was unclear "whether HAYI is a genuine terrorist group or merely serves as a façade for Iranian hybrid operations that enable plausible deniability." The group's branding and messaging aligned clearly with Tehran, but it was harder to tell whether Iran built and managed it directly or whether it operated in Iran's global periphery, further from direct control. Even its logo appeared to be AI-generated, raising suspicion that HAYI, as a concept, had been thrown together by Iranian operatives at the last minute. ## HAYI's European Campaign Clarity on HAYI's true nature never fully arrived, but the world witnessed enough attacks to start documenting patterns. In Amsterdam, where the local Bank of New York branch was firebombed, two synagogues and a Jewish school also came under attack. In Belgium, the group attacked a synagogue in Liège and set a car on fire in Antwerp's Jewish quarter. In northwest London, three people were charged with an arson attack that burned out four ambulances owned by a volunteer-led Jewish emergency medical service. In late March, French authorities implicated HAYI in a plot to attack Bank of America offices in Paris, days after the group released a propaganda video threatening Jewish interests and communities across Europe. In that incident, a five-liter petrol can was attached to a commercial pyrotechnic explosive to make an improvised bomb. French investigators said it was the work of one adult suspect and three teenagers, each paid between five hundred and one thousand euros to plant the device and film its detonation. The recurring targets, Jewish institutions and symbols of American financial and diplomatic power, and the recurring method, cheap improvised devices placed by paid amateurs, were becoming a signature. ## Escalation in Germany It was in Germany, starting in late April, that HAYI's tactics began to escalate. German domestic intelligence warned that the group was looking to step up its attacks across Europe and to advance toward more dangerous and destructive methods. Until that point, HAYI's work had mostly involved arson and vandalism, even though, after decades of terror attacks across Europe, the potential for deadly attacks was hardly a secret. Days later, a thirty-three-year-old German man drove his car through a crowded pedestrian area in Leipzig, killing two people and severely injuring two others. As of late May, HAYI has not been formally connected to the attack, and German authorities indicated the attacker may have suffered from psychological problems. Nor has HAYI been formally linked to charges Germany announced on Thursday, May 21, against two men accused of plotting to kill prominent Jewish and Israeli community leaders on behalf of Iran. One was a Danish citizen with close ties to the Quds Force, the Revolutionary Guard's unconventional arm, who had allegedly scouted targets in Berlin the previous year. The other had promised to procure a weapon and help kill the leader of the prominent German-Israeli Society. Three other targets were named in the indictment. ## The Saadi Indictment The biggest global break on HAYI, as of late May, came from American investigators in mid-May. The US Department of Justice unveiled charges against Mohammad Baqer Saad Dawood al-Saadi, a thirty-two-year-old Iraqi national identified as a senior commander for the Iran-backed militia Kataib Hezbollah. According to US authorities, al-Saadi was involved with at least eighteen attacks and planned attacks across North America and Europe. He had been arrested in Turkey and extradited to the United States. The FBI accused him of maintaining relationships with Iranian Revolutionary Guard commanders, including the now-deceased Qasem Soleimani. The criminal complaint says Saadi worked to coordinate retaliatory attacks against US and other Western interests after the war began, often recruiting teenage suspects to do part or all of his dirty work. The list of attacks attributed to him reads as a map of the entire campaign: the firebombing of the Bank of New York in Amsterdam, the US consulate shooting in Toronto, the attempted bombing of the Bank of America in Paris, the stabbing in London, and the simultaneous plots against Jewish targets in New York, California, and Arizona. His arrest confirmed what experts had already begun to suspect about how this network actually functioned. ## "Gig-Economy" Spies and Terrorism as a Service The Saadi indictment validated what analysts had noticed about HAYI's operations, recruitment, and intent. Where security experts typically imagine asymmetric saboteurs as ideologically motivated or loyal to the regime they serve, HAYI operated very differently. The outlet The I Paper described its members as "'gig-economy' Iranian spies," people offered cash to carry out an attack or simply to be in the right place at the right time with a camera. The implication is stark: many of these people did not particularly care about Iran. They cared about getting paid. As indictments and detentions became public, it grew clear that HAYI recruits an unusually high share of teenagers, along with disillusioned people, those struggling psychologically, and those with little to their name. In short, people without much to lose. This mirrors the tactics Russia has used in its own sabotage campaign across Europe, carried out, according to CNN, by "non-Russian nationals for small amounts of money and without full knowledge of who the operations serve." The distinction from a traditional sleeper cell matters enormously. Other than al-Saadi himself, none of these attackers appear to have received formal, direct training from the Revolutionary Guard. Some learned to build improvised explosives, or found that knowledge on their own, and all received orders on where, when, and how to strike. But these were not military operations. They exploited vulnerable people, or people willing to do dangerous things for the right price. That is not necessarily better. It is simply a different kind of threat. ## Why the Alternative Is Worse A militarized sleeper cell might have carried out larger, more coordinated, and more destructive attacks, from sabotage against critical infrastructure to coordinated terror strikes. But such cells would also have been easier to detect. Once identified ahead of time or intercepted during or after an attack, the threat could be contained. The HAYI model offers no such reassurance. Al-Saadi may face a very long prison term in the US, but his online role can easily be filled by the next recruiter, and the one after that. Unlike a military cell with defined tactics and a degree of operational rigidity, these lone-wolf attackers can come from anywhere. They can be tasked with almost any mission, even if they are less effective, and they tend to be people society is not paying much attention to, or chooses to ignore. As The Guardian put it, spies or their proxies "can now just put out a call on social media and recruit, for a few hundred pounds, euros or dollars, someone who may not even have any sympathy whatsoever with their cause." The Iran War has been a deeply educational experience for much of the world, delivering many hard lessons at once. On asymmetric threats, the most important is clear. When Iran, Russia, or others engage in this behavior in 2026, they do not waste months sneaking their own soldiers across borders, nor do they risk exposure building traceable smuggling chains for weapons or cash. They find people willing to throw their lives away, offer to pay them, and see whether those people will take the chance that they might get away with it. As terrorism expert Peter Neumann described it to The Guardian, "we are now entering an era of terrorism as a service. It is still terrorism, it still has a political agenda and is an attack meant to terrorize a particular community, whether that is the Jewish community or an entire nation, but the perpetrator is not necessarily radicalized as such." For the US, for Europe, and for the rest of the world, that is going to be a problem, and to address it, the West's entire understanding of counterterrorism may be due for a rethink. ## Frequently Asked Questions ### Did Iranian sleeper cells attack the West during the Iran War? No. The long-feared sleeper cells did not launch coordinated attacks once Operation Epic Fury began. Judging by their negligible impact, they may never have existed as imagined. What materialized instead was a decentralized hybrid-warfare campaign run through proxies and paid recruits. ### What was the first suspected Iran-linked attack on the United States? One day after the war began, a gunman opened fire in a beer garden in Austin, Texas, killing two people and wounding fourteen. The fifty-three-year-old attacker, from Senegal, wore clothing reading "Property of Allah" and a design resembling the Iranian flag, and was killed at the scene. ### What is HAYI and how does it operate? HAYI is a pro-Iran group that surfaced online with a Telegram statement on March 9, after the war had started, declaring "military operations" against American and Israeli interests. It had no prior digital footprint and even appeared to use an AI-generated logo. Analysts could not determine whether it was a genuine terrorist group or a façade enabling plausible deniability for Iranian hybrid operations, though its recurring targets — Jewish institutions and symbols of American financial power — and its method of paying amateurs to plant cheap improvised devices became a signature. ### Who is Mohammad Baqer Saad Dawood al-Saadi and what was his role? He is a thirty-two-year-old Iraqi national identified by US authorities as a senior commander for the Iran-backed militia Kataib Hezbollah. The Department of Justice charged him in connection with at least eighteen attacks and planned attacks across North America and Europe, including the Amsterdam bank firebombing, the Toronto consulate shooting, and the Paris Bank of America plot. Arrested in Turkey and extradited to the US, he was accused of maintaining relationships with IRGC commanders and recruiting teenagers to carry out attacks. ### Why do experts consider the gig-economy proxy model harder to counter than traditional sleeper cells? A military sleeper cell could be detected and, once identified or intercepted, contained. The proxy model offers no such reassurance: recruiters like al-Saadi are easily replaced, attackers can come from anywhere and be tasked with almost any mission, and they tend to be people society overlooks. Terrorism expert Peter Neumann described it as "terrorism as a service," an approach that may force a wholesale rethink of Western counterterrorism doctrine. ## Sources 1. https://www.wsj.com/articles/stryker-hit-with-suspected-iran-linked-cyberattack-52f6615c 2. https://www.cnn.com/2026/05/15/politics/iran-hackers-tank-readers-gas-stations 3. https://www.cnn.com/2026/04/07/politics/iran-linked-hackers-disrupt-us-industrial-sites?source=sub_web_wall-met 4. https://www.cnn.com/2026/03/27/politics/iran-linked-hackers-fbi-director-patel 5. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/3/3/qatar-announces-arrest-of-iranian-irgc-sleeper-cells 6. https://www.al-monitor.com/originals/2026/04/france-suspects-pro-iranian-group-hayi-was-behind-foiled-attack-bank-america 7. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/5/16/us-charges-alleged-iran-backed-%E2%81%A0kataib-hezbollah-suspect-what-we-know 8. https://www.jpost.com/international/islamic-terrorism/article-890114 9. https://www.nytimes.com/2026/04/01/world/europe/bank-of-america-attack-pro-iranian-group.html 10. https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cwyj1p49gdpo 11. https://www.nytimes.com/2026/04/04/world/europe/london-arson-attack.html 12. https://www.reuters.com/world/car-rams-into-crowd-people-german-city-leipzig-focus-online-reports-2026-05-04/ 13. https://www.agenzianova.com/en/news/German-intelligence-warns-of-attacks-by-pro-Iranian-group-Hayi/ 14. https://theweek.com/crime/hayi-pro-iran-terror-group 15. https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/man-suspected-planning-nyc-terrorist-attack-court-rcna345356 16. https://time.com/article/2026/03/13/iran-war-us-attacks-threat-cyberattacks-drones-terrorism-proxies/ 17. https://time.com/7382024/austin-shooting-suspect-victims-investigation-reactions-potential-terrorism-iran-shirt/ 18. https://www.jpost.com/middle-east/iran-news/article-896386 19. https://www.tps.ca/media-centre/stories/suspects-sought-in-consulate-investigation/ 20. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/3/11/three-brothers-arrested-in-norway-over-bomb-attack-on-us-embassy-in-oslo 21. https://www.wsj.com/world/europe/iran-suspected-of-directing-attacks-in-europe-creating-bogus-group-to-claim-responsibility-7ebd8188 22. https://www.reuters.com/world/us/iran-conflict-may-have-motivated-trump-dinner-shooting-suspect-us-intelligence-2026-05-06/ 23. https://fortune.com/2026/03/30/france-probe-bank-of-america-bomb-attack-iran/ 24. https://www.reuters.com/world/germany-charges-two-with-plotting-kill-jewish-leaders-iran-2026-05-21/ 25. https://apnews.com/article/france-bank-of-america-attack-thwarted-paris-a5a5bf12b6422ad7e658b6cbaad5bda8 26. https://www.reuters.com/technology/stryker-shares-fall-after-report-suspected-iran-linked-cyberattack-2026-03-11/ 27. https://www.euractiv.com/news/exclusive-german-intelligence-warns-iran-could-expand-terror-operations-in-europe-after-war/ 28. https://x.com/burweila/status/2057025083286200632 29. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/may/18/disposable-terrorists-for-hire-menace-western-countries 30. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/mar/27/macdill-air-force-base-explosive-device-florida 31. https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/15/nyregion/hezbollah-arrest-nyc-jewish-targets.html 32. https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/iran-war-puts-many-us-high-alert-synagogue-attack-shows-limits-2026-03-13/ 33. https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/07/us/austin-bar-shooting-gunman-iran-fbi-investigation.html 34. https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/austin-gunman-was-lone-actor-bar-attack-killed-3-fbi-says-rcna344149 35. https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/shooting-suspect-white-house-correspondents-dinner-cole-thomas-allen-rcna342146 36. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/apr/26/trump-news-at-a-glance-white-house-press-dinner-thrown-into-disarray-by-lone-wolf-attack 37. https://www.washingtoninstitute.org/policy-analysis/deniable-disposable-disruptive-irans-hybrid-warfare-europe-demands-proactive 38. https://jamestown.org/hayi-iranian-proxy-targeting-jewish-and-israeli-sites-in-europe/ 39. https://www.cnn.com/2026/04/11/europe/iran-linked-hybrid-attacks-europe-intl 40. https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2026/apr/23/iran-low-level-hybrid-warfare-arson-attacks-uk-europe 41. https://thesoufancenter.org/intelbrief-2026-april-17/ 42. https://smallwarsjournal.com/2026/05/20/kataib-hizballah-commander-with-ties-to-iran-arrested-for-terror-campaign/

Iran Strikes the UAE and US Warships as the Hormuz Blockade Bites

Simon Whistler — Tue, 02 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

If you have been thinking that the Iran war has gone a little too quiet lately, you are not alone. By the look of things, that is exactly what has been going through the minds of Iran's leaders as well. Within a single Monday, Tehran launched no fewer than fifteen missiles and four drones at the United Arab Emirates and at US warships transiting the Strait of Hormuz. The ceasefire, at least at the time of recording, is not officially dead. President Trump has insisted there was no "heavy firing." Meanwhile, in Lebanon, Hezbollah made it abundantly clear over the weekend that it has no intention of disarming. The group has been moving both fighters and munitions into the south during the ceasefire, and it is now producing its own drones domestically. And in Europe, the Iran war has reached NATO: the United States is making good on its threats and has begun withdrawing 5,000 troops from Germany after Chancellor Friedrich Merz publicly called the conflict humiliating for Washington, with Spain and Italy possibly to follow. And it is only Tuesday. What ties these three crises together is a single fact: the hardliners are winning the argument in Tehran, in Beirut's southern suburbs, and even, in its own way, in Washington's relationship with its allies. The pressure that the US blockade has placed on Iran is producing escalation, not surrender. ## Key Takeaways - Iran fired fifteen missiles and four drones at the UAE and at US warships in the Strait of Hormuz on Monday, with several landing in the Emirates and Oman and one striking the Fujairah Oil Industry Zone, the Emirates' only facility located outside the Persian Gulf. - The strikes were triggered by "Project Freedom," a US plan announced Sunday to guide roughly 900 stranded ships through the Strait, though without a formal naval escort. - The US blockade that began on April 13 has brought Iranian oil exports to a near halt, leaving storage above 60 percent full overall and above 75 percent on Kharg Island, forcing production cuts and the return of rusted, decommissioned tankers to service. - Hezbollah has declared it is "prepared for a long battle," refuses to disarm, and is now manufacturing fiber-optic guided drones domestically that are immune to Israeli jamming. - Ukraine has emerged as the go-to expert on countering cheap drones, signing deals with Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE and deploying over 200 counter-drone specialists across the region. - The Pentagon is withdrawing 5,000 troops from Germany and has cancelled a Tomahawk-and-hypersonic artillery battalion, a move one analyst calls "operationally more serious than the troop number." - Trump has signaled Spain and Italy could be next, while the eastern flank deployments in Poland, Romania, and the Baltics remain untouched. ## Never a Dull Moment: Iran Strikes Hormuz and the UAE On Monday morning, Iran launched at American warships in the Strait of Hormuz. US Central Command reported that no US vessel was hit, but a South Korean cargo ship was not so lucky. That ship caught fire after being struck by an Iranian projectile and is now being towed to Dubai. The attacks were not confined to the Strait. Most were aimed at the UAE. The majority were intercepted, but several landed in both the Emirates and Oman. One struck the Fujairah Oil Industry Zone, the Emirates' only facility located outside the Persian Gulf. It was built specifically so that the UAE could bypass the Strait of Hormuz in case access through the chokepoint ever became an issue. This attack was nowhere near the scale seen at the height of Operation Epic Fury, when Iran was throwing just about everything it could at just about everyone it could reach. But the message was clear: any attempt to bypass Iranian control of the Strait would not be tolerated. ## Project Freedom and the Trigger for Escalation The trigger was an operation the White House announced on Sunday evening, dubbed "Project Freedom," under which the United States would guide some 900 stranded ships through the Strait of Hormuz. That operation will not include a formal naval escort, so at the time of recording it remains unclear exactly what it will involve. Iran, for its part, was not waiting around to find out. That naturally raises the question of why the United States has not simply restarted its bombing campaign. The answer is that the blockade has become Washington's central strategy against the Islamic Republic, and it is beginning to produce real results. Throughout most of Operation Epic Fury, Iran was exporting oil fairly consistently and at elevated wartime prices. The blockade that went into effect on April 13 has not stopped every ship, but it has stopped the vast majority of them, bringing Iranian oil exports to a screeching halt. ## The Blockade Bites: Iran's Oil Storage Crisis Because Iran cannot ship the oil it is still drilling, it is running out of places to put it. Total storage now sits roughly north of 60 percent full, and above 75 percent of capacity on Kharg Island. Once these tanks are full, Iran will quite literally have nowhere to put the oil it is producing. Tehran understands how serious this is and has taken steps to ease the pressure. Bloomberg has reported that Iran has already begun cutting oil production. The Wall Street Journal reported that the regime has been dragging decommissioned containers and tankers that sat idle for years back into service to buy some breathing room. Many are in poor shape and some are largely rusted out, but they are something. Separately, Iran has tried to move excess oil by rail to just about anyone willing to take it. That can only go so far. If Iran cannot ship its oil, it is only a question of when its storage runs out, because once that happens the regime will be forced to shut down production entirely. And oil drilling is not like flipping a switch. A hard shutdown causes permanent damage that makes future operations enormously difficult, if not impossible. ## Diplomacy in Deadlock: Two Incompatible Frameworks As the blockade's impact set in, Tehran appeared to soften its diplomatic tone slightly, even as these strikes make clear it will keep enforcing what it sees as red lines. The details of Iran's latest fourteen-point plan became public late last week. They included the usual security guarantees and demands for sanctions relief, but the document was most notable for what it left out: a demand that Washington lift the blockade before Tehran would come to the table. That omission was a genuine shift, because the odds of Washington lifting the blockade just to begin another round of talks were about as good as Tehran agreeing to rename Hormuz the Strait of Trump. Beyond that, nothing changed on Iran's demand to maintain control over the Strait, or on its nuclear program, so Trump's rejection over the weekend came as no surprise. He spent the week saying Iran had not paid a big enough price, told reporters Friday that he was "not happy" with the offer, and by Sunday formally called it "not acceptable" in comments to Israel's Kan broadcaster. Washington's own framework, currently about equally unlikely to be accepted wholesale by Iran, demands the opposite: the enrichment program dismantled entirely, the nuclear stockpile shipped abroad, no enrichment going forward, Iran's proxy network cut off, and Hormuz reopened under international control. ## Who Is Running Tehran? All of this is unfolding at a time when it is unclear who is actually in charge in Tehran. Foreign Minister Abbas Aragchi, one of the men conducting the back-and-forth on the Iranian side, is reportedly in trouble with both President Masoud Pezeshkian and Parliament Speaker Bagher Ghalibaf over accusations of "subservience" to the hardline IRGC. Early Friday morning, the opposition outlet Iran International reported that "Aragchi has acted over the past two weeks without informing Pezeshkian, in full coordination with Vahidi," adding that "Pezeshkian has told people close to him that he will dismiss Aragchi if it continues." The Vahidi named there is Ahmad Vahidi, commander in chief of the IRGC. He is hardline even by IRGC standards and has consistently resisted any attempt to moderate negotiations with the United States. He has reportedly grown displeased with what he sees as President Pezeshkian's eagerness for a deal at any cost. To Vahidi, no deal is better than a bad deal, a phrase that may sound oddly familiar to British listeners. ## Made in Lebanon: Hezbollah Refuses to Disarm Iran is not the only place in the region where the hardliners are calling the shots. Lebanon has been locked in a state of semi-ceasefire, semi-war for weeks. The Lebanese government and Israel have been holding talks in Washington, but Hezbollah has made clear it will not recognize any deal that emerges from them, and given its sizable munitions stockpile, that has badly undercut the entire notion of a ceasefire. Israel has largely stopped its strikes across much of Lebanon, including Beirut, but kept its military presence south of the Litani River in full force. The Lebanese government, meanwhile, has crossed political bridges no Lebanese government previously thought possible: banning Hezbollah's military activities outright and holding direct negotiations with Israel, a country it has officially never made peace with. For a moment, Lebanon looked as though it might come out ahead, with a disarmed Hezbollah finally bringing peace after decades of sectarian conflict. Three days ago, Hezbollah made absolutely clear that this was not going to happen. ## The Briefing That Buried the Ceasefire Youssef al-Zein, the group's media relations director, sat down with reporters in Beirut for a rare on-the-record briefing and said, in terms that left very little room for interpretation, that Hezbollah's military wing "is prepared for a long battle" and has no plans to disarm. In case anyone might mistake this for the last act of a dying organization, he brought the receipts: Hezbollah had been moving both its forces and munitions into the south during the ceasefire, using routes that bypassed roads controlled by the Lebanese army. And it is now making its own drones, domestically. That last detail hit hardest, because it came just days after a fiber-optic guided drone struck an armored IDF unit near the city of Taybeh, killing at least one soldier. When a medevac helicopter arrived, two more drones came in after it. Soldiers ultimately had to fire their rifles at the drones, because they had nothing else to counter them. A few days later, a drone hit an artillery position near Shomera on the border, which caught fire and set off multiple artillery shells. ## Fiber-Optic Drones and the Search for a Counter The fiber-optic component is what makes these drones unlike anything Hezbollah has fielded before. Fiber-optic cables provide a hardwire link straight back to the operator, making the drones effectively immune to any jamming equipment the IDF has previously relied on. Israeli forces have publicly acknowledged that they lack an effective counter and only began searching for solutions last month. Ukraine has been making the rounds lately as the go-to expert on combating these weapons, with cheap but surprisingly reliable interceptors. President Zelensky has signed agreements with Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE, deploying over 200 counter-drone specialists across the region. The sales pitch is simple: why spend millions on a Patriot missile to shoot down a cheap drone when a Ukrainian interceptor can do the job for ten thousand dollars? It would not be surprising if Jerusalem soon starts making calls to Kyiv. Back in Lebanon, the disarmament process is clearly not going to plan. The question has shifted from how to disarm Hezbollah to whether anyone believes it can be done at all, and right now the answer is not encouraging. The Lebanese army cleared some of Hezbollah's hardware south of the Litani during "phase 1" last year, but that was the low-hanging fruit. The group's real infrastructure, command structure, and production capacity sit further north, in territory it is far less willing to concede. ## A State Outranked: The Dahiyeh Funeral What that looks like in practice became disturbingly clear in Beirut's southern suburbs, Dahiyeh. During funeral processions for people killed in recent Israeli strikes, Hezbollah members and supporters fired into the air repeatedly, first with small arms and then reportedly with heavy weapons. One report said this included an RPG, which is quite a thing to bring to a funeral procession. The shooting caused panic, and the Lebanese army had to deploy to try to restore order. The soldiers arrested at least one person, and the crowd then turned on them. The army did not fully restore control. Hezbollah's message was unmistakable: this is our territory, and you are not in charge here. For the rest of Lebanon's sectarian factions, scenes in which the state is the second power to Hezbollah are a grim reminder of the dynamic at play. Every major militia disarmed after the civil war, including the Christians' Lebanese Forces, the Druze, and Palestinian groups. Hezbollah, which dragged the country into yet another war with Israel on Tehran's behalf and left over a fifth of the population displaced, is not exactly popular. ## Patience Erodes Across the Spectrum The responses now spilling across the political spectrum show how far patience with the group has eroded. On Saturday, the Sunni parliamentary bloc publicly endorsed the government's direct negotiations with Israel, something that would have been political suicide a decade ago. The Christian Lebanese Forces, meanwhile, have reportedly floated the idea of rearming their own militia. A rearmed Christian militia is not particularly likely to materialize, but none of this is a healthy sign for a country that spent fifteen years in civil war. Nobody is predicting a full-scale return to the conflict that defined late-twentieth-century Lebanon, but the ingredients for at least a sustained civil conflict are very much present. The current ceasefire expires in less than two weeks, and Israeli politicians are in no mood to extend it again. Beirut has never been closer to a consensus that Hezbollah has to go, and never further from having the means to make it happen. ## American Withdrawal: The Iran War Reaches NATO The Iran war has now reached Europe as well. On Friday, the Pentagon announced that 5,000 American troops would withdraw from Germany over the next six to twelve months. With some 36,000 troops currently stationed there, this is hardly a unilateral pullout. But the unit being pulled is a Stryker brigade that has been stationed in Germany for decades and is responsible for serving as the first line of ground defense in the event of a Russian incursion. That, as it turns out, was the smaller of two announcements buried in Friday's order. The more significant one drew less attention. An American artillery battalion that was supposed to deploy to Germany this year, carrying Tomahawk cruise missiles and a brand-new hypersonic weapon, was cancelled in the same order. The unit had been unveiled at the 2024 NATO summit as the alliance's direct answer to Russia's expanding arsenal of intermediate-range missiles in Europe. Christian Moelling, one of Europe's more cited defense analysts, put the implication bluntly: the United States "holds a factual monopoly within NATO" on long-range hardware, and the European programs that would have to close the gap are all years away. In his framing, the cancellation is "operationally more serious than the troop number." ## The Merz Comment and a Possible Revenge Campaign All of this traces back to German Chancellor Merz's criticism of the Iran war. He is neither alone in Europe nor the most critical voice, but his comments last week particularly irritated President Trump. During a school visit in Marsberg, Merz told an audience that the United States had no strategy on Iran and that Washington was being "humiliated." It was exactly the kind of criticism European leaders had, for the most part, carefully avoided for over two months. Most of them agreed with the substance but kept their public rhetoric far more restrained. British leader Keir Starmer, for example, repeatedly insisted that this was "not our war," a line echoed across much of the continent. Trump did not appreciate Merz's comments. His response escalated from an initial dismissal into a tirade on Truth Social, telling Merz to fix his own country. Germany may turn out to be the opening act of a broader revenge campaign. When reporters asked whether Italy and Spain were next, Trump's answer was "yeah, probably." ## Spain, Italy, and the Eastern Flank Exception Both Spain and Italy had refused to support the Iran war in ways Washington took personally, though through very different approaches. Spain has been more openly hostile, with Prime Minister Sánchez a consistent critic of both the war and Trump more broadly. Italy's refusal was quieter but more personal. Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni has long had a close relationship with Trump, but it has recently soured as she blocked American access to bases on Italian soil. Neither government has shown any sign of backing down, and the question of whether Germany's withdrawal order was a one-off punishment or the first in a series now hangs over every US base on the continent. It is worth noting that none of this touches the American buildup further east. The countries hosting those forces have long had better relationships with Trump than their Western European counterparts. The rotational deployments in Poland, Romania, and the Baltics, which have expanded significantly since 2022, remain very much in place, and Washington is not hinting at any change. In that light, Friday's announcement may signal less an American withdrawal from Europe overall than a reprioritization of which allies this administration considers worth investing in. The withdrawal from Germany will take months to execute, and Italy and Spain are still waiting to learn what is coming. But on a higher level, the defense-industrial timelines that European governments are now racing toward were all built on a single assumption: that the alliance would hold together long enough for them to get there. Whether that proves true is a question that cannot yet be answered, and that uncertainty is a genuine cause for concern. ## Frequently Asked Questions ### What triggered Iran's missile and drone strikes on the UAE and US warships? Iran launched fifteen missiles and four drones at the UAE and at US warships in the Strait of Hormuz after the White House announced "Project Freedom," a plan to guide roughly 900 stranded ships through the Strait without a formal naval escort. Iran viewed this as an attempt to bypass its control of the chokepoint. Several projectiles landed in the Emirates and Oman, with one striking the Fujairah Oil Industry Zone, the UAE's only oil facility located outside the Persian Gulf. ### How is the US blockade squeezing Iran's economy? The blockade, in effect since April 13, has brought Iranian oil exports nearly to a halt. Total storage sits above 60 percent full nationwide and above 75 percent on Kharg Island. Iran has responded by cutting production and pressing decommissioned, largely rusted tankers back into service. If storage fills entirely, Iran would be forced to shut down production, a step that causes permanent damage to oil wells. ### Why won't Hezbollah disarm, and what capabilities has it built during the ceasefire? Hezbollah's media relations director Youssef al-Zein stated on the record that the group's military wing is "prepared for a long battle" and has no plans to disarm. During the ceasefire, Hezbollah moved fighters and munitions into southern Lebanon using routes that bypassed the Lebanese army. It is now manufacturing fiber-optic guided drones domestically—drones that are immune to Israeli jamming equipment—and a strike near Taybeh killed at least one IDF soldier. ### What does the US withdrawal from Germany involve, and why does it matter? The Pentagon is pulling 5,000 troops, specifically a Stryker brigade, from Germany over six to twelve months. The same order cancelled an artillery battalion that was to carry Tomahawk cruise missiles and a new hypersonic weapon—the alliance's direct answer to Russia's intermediate-range missiles in Europe. Analyst Christian Moelling called that cancellation "operationally more serious than the troop number," since the US holds a factual monopoly on such long-range hardware within NATO and European alternatives are years away. ### Could Spain and Italy face similar US troop reductions, and what explains the eastern flank exception? Trump indicated Spain and Italy could be next, citing their refusal to support the Iran war—Spain through open criticism and Italy by blocking American access to bases on Italian soil. However, the rotational deployments in Poland, Romania, and the Baltics remain untouched, suggesting Washington is reprioritizing which allies it considers worth investing in rather than withdrawing from Europe as a whole. ## Sources 1. https://www.criticalthreats.org/analysis/iran-update-evening-special-report-may-2-2026 2. https://www.iranintl.com/en/202604302117 3. https://www.elnashra.com/news/show/1768621/ 4. https://www.wsj.com/world/middle-east/trump-says-u-s-will-guide-stranded-ships-through-strait-of-hormuz-09e0d7cf?mod=hp_lead_pos1 5. https://www.ukmto.org/-/media/ukmto/products/20260503-ukmto_warning_attack_052-26.pdf?rev=377076fea20141b49aeb81cf508a1ba4 6. https://www.jpost.com/middle-east/iran-news/article-894984 7. https://www.axios.com/2026/05/01/iran-peace-plan-response-trump 8. https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/trump-says-irans-latest-offer-is-not-acceptable-to-me/ 9. https://www.aljazeera.com/economy/2026/4/29/is-irans-oil-storage-nearly-full-and-will-it-have-to-cut-production 10. https://www.energypolicy.columbia.edu/iran-crude-oil-storage-levels-are-rising-but-production-shut-ins-may-not-be-imminent/ 11. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-05-02/iran-juggles-oil-cuts-and-storage-strain-to-resist-us-blockade 12. https://www.wsj.com/world/middle-east/iran-is-flooded-with-so-much-unsold-oil-that-its-stashing-it-in-derelict-tanks-ed8e62b1 13. https://www.newsweek.com/irans-leaders-turn-to-old-supertanker-to-survive-us-blockade-11897673 14. https://www.axios.com/2026/05/03/trump-us-navy-iran-ships-strait-hormuz 15. https://english.aawsat.com/arab-world/5268590-hezbollah-says-reinforced-fighters-south-lebanon-despite-disarmament 16. https://www.naharnet.com/stories/en/319920-hezbollah-says-reinforced-fighters-in-south-lebanon-during-war 17. https://today.lorientlejour.com/article/1505518/lebanese-army-will-not-engage-in-confrontation-with-hezbollah-party-official-says.html 18. https://www.timesofisrael.com/idf-soldier-killed-in-south-lebanon-drone-attack-as-israel-hezbollah-trade-blame/ 19. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/3/28/zelenskyy-signs-air-defence-deals-with-uae-qatar-on-gulf-tour 20. https://www.lbcgroup.tv/news/lebanon-news/929667/lebanese-army-arrests-suspect-after-gunfire-at-funeral-in-beirut-subur/en 21. https://x.com/beirutwire/status/2050642725410582904 22. https://www.pbs.org/newshour/world/u-s-to-withdraw-5000-troops-from-germany-in-next-6-to12-months 23. https://www.stripes.com/theaters/europe/2026-05-01/trump-withdraw-5000-troops-germany-21550153.html 24. https://www.usnews.com/news/world/articles/2026-05-02/us-troop-drawback-underlines-european-defence-responsibility-german-minister-says 25. https://www.al-monitor.com/originals/2026/04/germanys-merz-says-iran-humiliating-us-talks-stall 26. https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/uk-keir-starmer-not-our-war-iran-british-bases 27. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-04-30/trump-says-he-s-open-to-reducing-us-troops-in-spain-italy

Iran War Update: The Diego Garcia Strike, the Hormuz Ultimatum, and a War Slipping Out of Control

Simon Whistler — Tue, 02 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Welcome to the fourth week of the war in Iran. In the last update, the assessment was that this conflict could drag on for a long time. President Trump quickly contradicted that read, posting on Truth Social that he was considering winding down the war in the Middle East because Washington was close to achieving its military objectives. The post came just hours after he had told reporters outside the White House that he did not want a ceasefire because the United States was, in his words, "literally obliterating the other side." Contradictory statements are nothing new from this president, given a well-documented history of saying mutually incompatible things in the span of a single news cycle. But for the first time since the war began, there is reason to believe Washington is seriously weighing an off-ramp. On March 20th, Axios reported that the Trump administration believed it needed roughly a month to further weaken Iran with strikes, seize Kharg Island, and hold it as a bargaining chip in future negotiations. A day later, the same outlet broke the news that Washington had opened initial discussions on what peace talks with Iran might actually look like. Yet the word defining this weekend has been escalation, and it is a discipline the Iranians are practicing all too well. From a failed ballistic missile strike on a base 4,000 kilometers away to an ultimatum over the Strait of Hormuz, the war is no longer behaving like one anyone fully controls. This is an account of a conflict whose participants keep discovering, often at the worst possible moment, that they are not the only ones capable of escalating. ## Key Takeaways - Iran launched two intermediate-range ballistic missiles at Diego Garcia, a US-UK base roughly 4,000 km away, doubling its publicly declared 2,000 km range cap. One missile failed mid-flight; the other was intercepted by a US warship. - Washington's six-point demand list for peace includes no missile program for five years, zero uranium enrichment, decommissioning of bombed nuclear facilities, strict outside monitoring, a regional arms treaty capping Iran's missiles at 1,000, and zero funding for proxies. - US and Israeli intelligence appears to have underestimated both the size and range of Iran's missile arsenal, with roughly 2,410 ballistic missiles fired by day ten against pre-war estimates of about 2,500 total. - Trump issued a 48-hour ultimatum to reopen the Strait of Hormuz or face strikes on Iran's power plants; Iran threatened to make regional energy, IT, and desalination infrastructure legitimate targets in response. - Russia, and possibly China, has been providing Iran with intelligence on US and allied force locations; Moscow offered to stop in exchange for Washington halting intelligence sharing with Ukraine, an offer the US rejected. - Ukrainian air-defense officers deployed to the Gulf found allied crews firing $3 million Patriot and $6 million SM-6 interceptors at $70,000 Shahed drones, a cost imbalance Ukraine has spent four years learning to avoid. - Israel ordered the destruction of all crossings over Lebanon's Litani River; Lebanon's president called it a prelude to ground invasion as the IDF announced a prolonged operation against Hezbollah. ## A Possible Off-Ramp, and Six Demands For the first time, the contours of an American exit are visible. The administration's reported plan was straightforward: spend about a month grinding down Iranian capabilities with additional strikes, take Kharg Island, and use that prize as leverage at the negotiating table. The diplomatic groundwork followed immediately. Axios reported on March 21st that initial discussions had begun on the shape of eventual peace talks. According to an American official who spoke to the outlet, Washington wants Iran to make six commitments. No missile program for five years. Zero uranium enrichment. Decommissioning of the nuclear facilities bombed last year. Strict outside monitoring of the creation and use of centrifuges and related machinery that could advance a weapons program. An arms control treaty with neighboring countries that would cap Iran's missile stockpile at 1,000. And zero financing for any of Iran's proxies. It is an ambitious list, and whether Tehran would accept any single item, let alone all six, remains an open question. The demands assume an Iran negotiating from weakness. The events of the weekend suggested an Iran still very much willing to demonstrate strength, and a missile program no longer bound by the limits it once advertised. ## The Strikes on Diego Garcia Sometime between Thursday night and Friday morning, Iran launched two intermediate-range ballistic missiles at Diego Garcia, a joint US-UK military base on a remote atoll in the Indian Ocean, roughly 4,000 kilometers from Iranian territory. The Wall Street Journal first reported the attempted strike, later confirmed by a UK official source who told CNBC it had failed. According to CNN, one missile failed mid-flight while the other was intercepted by a US warship. An Iranian official denied that Iran was behind the launch at all. The significance is hard to overstate. Diego Garcia hosts around 2,500 mostly American personnel and was deliberately built in a location meant to sit beyond the reach of most adversaries. For years Iran insisted its ballistic missile range was capped at 2,000 kilometers. As recently as March 8th, Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi stated publicly that Tehran had intentionally limited its range to 2,000 km because it did not want to be perceived as a threat beyond the region. That cap, it turns out, was a political choice, not a technical ceiling, and it has now collapsed. ## How the Cap Collapsed The 2,000 km limit had been imposed by former Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, reportedly over the objections of the IRGC, as a signal to Europe that it was not in Iran's crosshairs. Jeffrey Lewis, a distinguished scholar of global security at Middlebury College, told CNN that the IRGC had been waiting for Khamenei to change his mind or die so it could ignore the limit. Khamenei was killed in the war's initial strike. With him gone, the IRGC now has free rein over the missile program. How Iran doubled its declared range to roughly 4,000 km remains a matter of debate. Former IDF air defense chief Ran Kochav told the Jerusalem Post that Iran likely adapted its satellite launch technology, redirecting multi-stage orbital rockets onto a ballistic trajectory. Justin Bronk of the Royal United Services Institute offered a similar theory, pointing to Iran's Simorgh space launch vehicle, though he noted such an improvised adaptation would sacrifice accuracy. Decker Eveleth of the CNA Corporation suggested a Khorramshahr missile with a reduced payload, trading destructive power for distance. All are plausible. The honest answer is that no one knows for certain, and short of a remarkable feat of journalism, the truth may stay hidden for a long time. ## A Threat Landscape Redrawn The collapse of the cap changes the calculus for countries far from the Middle East. Trita Parsi, co-founder of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, told CNN that US bases once thought safely out of range may now be exposed, along with American warships stationed 3,000 km away on the assumption that distance equaled safety. For a country like Romania, which has let the US use its airbases for refueling, surveillance, and satellite communications, that arrangement has become considerably riskier. Parsi also raised a harder question: how did Iran target the base at all? Tehran lacks its own satellite coverage over much of the Indian Ocean. That intelligence, he said, most likely came from Russia and China, an element of the war that has caught the Trump administration by surprise. There is also the matter of Iran's denial. Given how outspoken Tehran has been throughout the war, most observers would expect it to claim even an intercepted strike. Dr. Aniseh Tabrizi of Chatham House told Al Jazeera that Iranian denials tend to surface precisely when attacks cross new red lines or hit targets that could provoke a wider response. The denial is less about rejecting responsibility than about containing the consequences of what was just demonstrated. ## The Intelligence Gaps Keep Widening Diego Garcia fits a broader pattern. Before Operation Epic Fury began on February 28th, most international estimates put Iran's ballistic missile stockpile at 2,000 to 2,500. The IDF entered the war estimating roughly 2,500, with ACLED arriving at a similar figure. Yet by day ten, the Jerusalem Post reported that about 2,410 ballistic missiles had already been fired, with Iran still launching, and that figure does not count those destroyed in American and Israeli strikes on storage sites. There are three explanations. Either even the most aggressive estimates badly underestimated Iran's production and stockpiles; or, despite extensive Israeli efforts to infiltrate Tehran, the government successfully concealed a large share of its arsenal; or, as the IRGC claims, missile production has continued during the war. That last claim deserves skepticism given the damage inflicted on Iran's military infrastructure, but the fact that Tehran is still firing, and still attempting strikes as ambitious as Diego Garcia, makes it worth weighing. Step back and the picture is stark. US and Israeli intelligence appears to have underestimated how many missiles Iran had, underestimated their range, and failed to anticipate how far Russian and possibly Chinese support would extend Iran's reach. These are not small gaps. ## Escalation and De-escalation Against this backdrop, Trump posted late Saturday night that if Iran did not fully reopen the Strait of Hormuz within 48 hours, the United States would "hit and obliterate their various POWER PLANTS, STARTING WITH THE BIGGEST ONE FIRST." The ultimatum landed barely 24 hours after he had floated winding the war down entirely. As Axios noted, the reversal signaled that the Hormuz crisis has become the one issue he cannot walk away from, even while searching for an exit. Gas prices in the US hit $3.94 per gallon over the weekend, per AAA, up more than a dollar in a month, and Brent crude has surged nearly 50 percent since the war began. And again, the United States and Israel are not the only ones capable of escalating. Following Trump's threat, the Speaker of Iran's parliament posted on X that if Iranian power plants and infrastructure were targeted, energy and oil facilities across the entire region would become legitimate targets and would be irreversibly destroyed, which, he noted, would keep oil prices elevated for a long time. The spokesman for the Khatam al-Anbiya Central Headquarters, the unified combatant command of Iran's armed forces, confirmed the threat: an American attack on Iranian fuel or energy infrastructure would draw Iranian strikes on US and allied energy, IT, and desalination infrastructure across the Middle East. The IRGC warned the Strait would close completely and stay shut until any destroyed power plants were rebuilt. Iran's semi-official Tasnim News Agency published a list of US tech firms operating in Israel and the Gulf that it said would be targeted, naming Google, Microsoft, Palantir, IBM, Nvidia, and Oracle. ## Who Actually Pays for Escalation Iranian threats stay rhetorically fixed on Israel and America, but the countries actually at risk are the ones already absorbing the heaviest fire. The UAE has faced more projectiles than any other belligerent in the war, with the Jerusalem Post reporting 1,468 directed at the Emirates by day ten. Bahrain, which hosts the US Navy's Fifth Fleet headquarters and was struck on the first day, is small enough that even a limited campaign against its infrastructure could be devastating. Kuwait's Mina Al-Ahmadi refinery, one of the largest in the region, has already been hit multiple times by Iranian drones. Desalination is the true red line, because the plants, even more than oil, are the lifeblood of the Middle East. Targeting them could cause a catastrophic humanitarian crisis. Bahrain is especially vulnerable: an island nation with no natural aquifers, it relies on desalination for roughly 90 percent of its drinking water, and one of its plants has already been struck by an Iranian drone. Even a blockade of Kharg Island would not force Iran to capitulate. Danny Citrinowicz of the Atlantic Council, writing on X, argued that despite roughly 90 percent of Iran's crude exports passing through Kharg's terminals, choking it would not reopen the Strait. "For Tehran, control over the Strait is not just economic leverage," he wrote. "It is a core component of regime survival and deterrence. Under pressure, Iran is more likely to escalate than concede." At the time of recording, the 48-hour deadline had not elapsed. If it passes and Trump follows through, the war enters its most dangerous phase yet. If he does not, Iran can claim a strategic victory, badly undercutting any Washington or Jerusalem narrative of winning. ## Restraint at the Margins The weekend was not all escalation. The Jerusalem Post reported that Iran has decided to limit attacks on Saudi Arabia, worried that continued strikes could trigger a direct Saudi military response. Iranian officials reportedly believe the Saudis are on edge and that large-scale attacks could push Riyadh to do what it has so far avoided, striking Iran directly. Saudi officials have made clear, including to Tehran, that their red line is any attack on electricity generation and water desalination facilities. A Saudi strike would raise a further question: whether Pakistan follows suit, given the much-hyped defense pact the two countries signed in 2025. Iran has also decided to avoid targeting Qatar after a strike on the Ras Laffan plant took out roughly 3.5 percent of the world's entire gas supply and was seen as extremely escalatory. Strikes against Kuwait, Bahrain, and the UAE, however, will continue as usual, according to the Jerusalem Post's sources. ## Russia's Bargaining Chip Russia has been feeding Iran intelligence to support its strike campaign. According to the Wall Street Journal, Moscow has supplied precise locations of American military forces and those of regional allies. The Kremlin denies it, but the evidence keeps mounting, and this week brought the clearest sign yet that Moscow views its role as leverage. Politico reported on March 20th that Russian envoy Kirill Dmitriev proposed a quid pro quo to Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner during a March 11th meeting in Miami: Moscow would stop sharing intelligence with Iran if Washington stopped sharing intelligence with Ukraine. The US rejected it. Dmitriev called the report fake on X, yet Trump appeared to confirm the arrangement, telling Fox News, "I think he might be helping them a little bit, yeah, I guess, and he probably thinks we're helping Ukraine, right?" That Russia is helping Iran surprised few regional observers; the two are longtime allies. But that a Russian envoy would make such a proposal alarmed European diplomats, who fear Moscow is trying to drive a wedge between Europe and the US at a fragile moment for transatlantic relations. Axios had previously reported a separate Russian proposal to move Iran's uranium to Russia, which Washington also rejected. That America rejected both offers is encouraging. It shows that despite Trump's public frustration with European allies, the administration is not yet willing to hand Moscow a win on Ukraine in exchange for cooperation on Iran. ## Europe Sits This One Out Trump has raged against what he calls cowards in NATO who refused to send ships to the Strait of Hormuz. European leaders have shown little appetite for the war. German Defence Minister Boris Pistorius put it bluntly: "This is not our war; we did not start it." No NATO ally was consulted before Operation Epic Fury began, and EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas told Reuters that European countries simply do not understand Washington's recent moves. The resentment runs deeper than this conflict. Former US deputy assistant secretary of defense Jim Townsend told CNN that many countries are stung by how Trump and his administration have treated them, only to return demanding help when convenient. Europe is also rightly wary of putting its sailors and ships in harm's way so that Trump can claim he is not risking American lives. ## What Ukraine Brought to the Gulf While Trump told NBC News that the last person they needed help from was Zelenskyy, Kyiv has quietly become central to defending American allies in the Middle East. According to Middle East Eye, Washington was stonewalling Gulf requests to replenish interceptor stockpiles, with pressure mounting on Gulf states to join the war as a precondition for resupply. Without interceptors, these countries are essentially defenseless against Iranian ballistic missiles. Ukraine, by contrast, has spared officers it badly needs at home to help. A senior Ukrainian air force officer told The Times that around 200 Ukrainian personnel have deployed to Kuwait, Qatar, the UAE, and Saudi Arabia to help defend against the same Shahed-type drones Ukraine has shot down for years. What they found alarmed them. The officer was astonished to hear of Gulf crews firing as many as eight Patriot interceptors, each costing over $3 million, at a single target, and in some cases using SM-6 missiles at roughly $6 million a shot to down a Shahed worth about $70,000. Ukrainian crews typically use one or two missiles to down a Russian ballistic missile, relying on vintage aircraft, interceptor drones, and electronic warfare against the drones. Ukrainian Patriot mission data had been shared with allies who use the system, but the US and its Gulf partners do not appear to have absorbed the complex calculations Ukraine made to improve intercept rates. "I don't understand what they had been doing, what they have been looking at for the four years we've been fighting," the officer said. Analysts trace the gap to operational method: Gulf crews reportedly leave batteries in automatic mode while taking cover, while Ukrainian operators stay at the controls and fire manually, a difference that matters when distinguishing a $70,000 drone from a manned aircraft and stretching scarce interceptors. The Ukrainians also criticized how Gulf systems were stored, faulting it for allowing cheap drones to inflict over a billion dollars in damage. If those lessons are adopted, the cost of defending against Iranian drone swarms could fall sharply, freeing the most expensive interceptors for the ballistic missiles that genuinely require them. ## Lebanon and the Litani Over the weekend, Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz ordered the military to destroy all crossings over the Litani River and homes near the Lebanese border. Israel framed it as preventing Hezbollah from moving fighters and weapons south, but Lebanon's President Joseph Aoun called it a prelude to ground invasion. IDF Chief of Staff Lieutenant General Eyal Zamir announced that the operation against Hezbollah was just beginning and would be prolonged. The Israeli military had already destroyed three bridges in southern Lebanon over the previous ten days; Sunday's order extended that to every remaining crossing. Israeli warplanes struck the Qasmiyeh Bridge, a key highway link connecting Tyre district villages to the north, leaving large craters. Ramzi Kaiss, a Lebanon researcher at Human Rights Watch, told Reuters that if every Litani bridge is destroyed and the south is isolated, the civilian harm would be immense, cutting people off from food, medicine, and basic needs. As this unfolded, Hezbollah ramped up its own strikes, killing one person in northern Israel, the first such death from an attack originating in Lebanon. Hezbollah said it had targeted a gathering of Israeli soldiers in the northern community of Misgav Am. Only one person died in that strike, but thousands have died across the region, and the number is set to climb as the war drags on. The hope remains that some form of deal can be struck before the Middle East slides further into the abyss. ## Frequently Asked Questions ### What happened at Diego Garcia and why does it matter? Sometime between Thursday night and Friday morning, Iran launched two intermediate-range ballistic missiles at Diego Garcia, a joint US-UK base in the Indian Ocean roughly 4,000 km from Iran. One failed mid-flight and the other was intercepted by a US warship. The strike matters because it demonstrated Iran can reach roughly 4,000 km, double its publicly declared 2,000 km cap, threatening US bases and warships previously assumed to be safely out of range. ### How did Iran's missile range cap collapse? The 2,000 km limit had been imposed by former Supreme Leader Khamenei, reportedly over IRGC objections, as a signal to Europe that Iran was not a threat beyond the region. Khamenei was killed in the war's initial strike, freeing the IRGC to ignore the cap. Analysts suggest Iran adapted satellite launch technology or used a Khorramshahr missile with a reduced payload to extend its range, though no definitive explanation has emerged. ### What does Washington want from Iran in peace talks? Per an American official cited by Axios, Washington wants six commitments: no missile program for five years, zero uranium enrichment, decommissioning of the bombed nuclear facilities, strict outside monitoring of centrifuges and related machinery, an arms control treaty capping Iran's missiles at 1,000, and zero financing for Iran's proxies. ### What is the Strait of Hormuz ultimatum and how did Iran respond? Trump posted that if Iran did not fully reopen the Strait within 48 hours, the US would strike and obliterate Iran's power plants, beginning with the largest. Iran's parliament speaker and the IRGC responded that targeting Iranian energy infrastructure would make regional energy, IT, and desalination facilities legitimate targets, that the Strait would stay closed until any destroyed plants were rebuilt, and that US tech firms operating in Israel and the Gulf would be targeted. ### What lessons are Ukrainian forces teaching Gulf states about air defense? Around 200 Ukrainian personnel deployed to Kuwait, Qatar, the UAE, and Saudi Arabia and found Gulf crews firing $3 million Patriot and $6 million SM-6 interceptors at $70,000 Shahed drones. Ukrainian crews typically use cheaper methods, staying at the controls and firing manually rather than leaving batteries in automatic mode, and rely on interceptor drones and electronic warfare against cheaper drones. Adopting Ukraine's approach could cut defense costs sharply and preserve expensive interceptors for the ballistic missiles that genuinely require them. ## Sources 1. https://edition.cnn.com/2026/03/21/politics/iran-missiles-diego-garcia 2. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/3/22/did-iran-launch-missiles-at-us-uk-base-on-diego-garcia-heres-what-to-know 3. https://apnews.com/article/diego-garcia-iran-missiles-what-to-know-d51bd9c3bcd83ee0300288221bff5614 4. https://www.wsj.com/world/middle-east/iran-brings-europe-into-range-with-missiles-fired-at-diego-garcia-bdc71ab2 5. https://x.com/sentdefender/status/2035525345412088260 6. https://x.com/citrinowicz/status/2034965629271195994 7. https://www.axios.com/2026/03/20/iran-invasion-kharg-island-strait-hormuz 8. https://www.axios.com/2026/03/21/trump-peace-deal-iran-kushner-witkoff 9. https://archive.is/Swuy0 10. https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2026/03/22/marines-hormuz-strait-decisive-battle-iran-trump/ 11. https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cpd5l00z7n6o 12. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/3/22/hezbollah-attack-kills-one-in-north-israel-as-assault-on-lebanon-continues

The Iran War's Energy Threshold: South Pars, Ras Laffan, and the Point of No Return

Simon Whistler — Tue, 02 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

There are wars that get worse slowly, and there are wars that get worse in the span of a single afternoon. Over the last twenty-four hours, the conflict raging across the Middle East has done the latter, jumping from very, very bad to somehow even worse. Yesterday, Israel, Iran, and the United States crossed an extremely dangerous threshold, one that both sides had been carefully avoiding for the entire war, until now. It is a strange thing to admit, but until this week the three principal combatants had been taking it easy on one another. That sentence feels almost absurd to write, given that Israel and the United States killed Iran's Supreme Leader on the first day of the war, and given that Iran has since retaliated against nearly the entire Middle East. And yet it is true. Everything that happened in the conflict up to this point involved both sides pulling their punches, escalating along some axes while deliberately leaving others untouched. That tacit understanding collapsed in a few short hours. An Israeli airstrike on Iran's most important natural gas field, carried out with American approval, broke the unwritten rule that had kept core energy infrastructure off the target list. Iran answered in kind, and now the war has entered uncharted territory. On day twenty of the conflict, the entire campaign that came before may turn out to have been merely the opening act. ## Key Takeaways - For its first twenty days, the Iran war was fought with both sides pulling their punches; energy strikes had been symbolic, limited, or of minimal real consequence, signaling capability without actually destroying it. - An Israeli airstrike on South Pars — the world's largest natural gas deposit and Iran's primary domestic energy source — broke the unspoken rule against destroying core energy infrastructure; Israel acted alone but with US approval. - Iran retaliated with its most significant missile strikes of the war, causing "extensive damage" to Qatar's Ras Laffan, which supplies roughly 20% of all global LNG exports and a third of the world's helium for semiconductors. - Iran also claimed strikes on a Saudi oil plant at Yanbu and UAE energy sites including the Habshan 5 gas complex and the Murban Bab oil field, extending the retaliation across three nations. - Trump reversed course and demanded "no more attacks" on South Pars, while the Gulf states reacted with outrage and insider sources reported that hopes for peace with the current Iranian regime had evaporated. ## The Line You Don't Cross To understand what just went down, you have to accept a premise that feels deeply counterintuitive: as destructive and destabilizing as this war has been, Israel, the US, and Iran were still going easy on each other. The point is not hyperbole. Killing the Supreme Leader on day one and shutting down the Strait of Hormuz were enormous escalations—but they were escalations along familiar axes. The combatants had been climbing the ladder while silently agreeing not to step onto a different, far more dangerous one. The obvious question is what kind of escalation could possibly be worse than killing Iran's Supreme Leader or closing the Strait of Hormuz. The good news, such as it is, is that the answer is not nuclear. As of this writing, the warheads and radioactive materials on all sides remain neatly stored away. The trouble instead comes from both sides' attacks on energy infrastructure—a category of target that, until now, had been handled with surprising restraint. ## Pulling Punches on Energy Neither Israel and the United States nor Iran had been shy about attacking energy targets. Just days ago, the US bombed military targets on Kharg Island, where a single sprawling refinery handles roughly ninety percent of all Iranian oil exports. Iran, for its part, has repeatedly attacked energy targets across the Persian Gulf and beyond, hitting facilities belonging to Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Bahrain, and others. But up to this point, those attacks fell into one of three categories: symbolic strikes, limited strikes, or strikes of minimal real consequence. The Kharg Island operation is the clearest illustration. US CENTCOM claimed to have destroyed about ninety military targets on the island while completely sparing its energy infrastructure. The message was unmistakable: keep pushing, and next time Washington will not be so discerning. America's objective was to issue the threat, not to wipe out ninety percent of Iran's oil export capacity in a single blow. The same logic governed other strikes. Direct hits on Iranian oil and gas infrastructure either caused relatively minor damage or struck targets that were not very important on their own. The US and Israel hammered away at the margins of Iran's energy industry precisely to remind Iranian leaders that they could destroy the whole thing if they chose to. Iran played the mirror image of the same game. ## Iran's Restraint—and Its Latent Capacity Iran's leaders made the highly questionable decision to strike energy infrastructure across the Gulf, but even so they did not seek to fully destroy it. By this point in the conflict, Iran had repeatedly penetrated Gulf air defenses, and its military could have followed those early, probing breakthroughs with much larger swarms of drones or missiles, overwhelming vulnerable energy targets and inflicting damage that would take months or years to repair. Iran chose not to. It sparked large fires, forced temporary shutdowns, and attacked trade vessels—but it stopped short of the kind of destruction that cannot be undone quickly. If the war had ended before this week, the world could have been most of the way back to normal in little more than a month. In short, both sides operated within an unspoken agreement about the ways they had chosen to escalate and the ways they deliberately had not. That balance was about to vanish. ## South Pars: Attacking the Thing That Keeps the Lights On The spark, quite literally, was an Israeli airstrike on an Iranian natural gas field known as South Pars. It is an undersea deposit straddling the maritime border between Iran and Qatar, and when both nations' shares are combined it is the largest natural gas deposit in the entire world. On Iran's side of the border alone there is an estimated fifty-one trillion meters of natural gas. What makes South Pars different from any other target is how Iran uses it. While Qatar converts most of its share into liquefied natural gas for export, Iran's domestic energy system is heavily dependent on natural gas, and the vast majority of the gas Iran burns to keep its lights on comes directly out of South Pars. That makes it arguably Iran's single most important energy deposit of any kind. The distinction matters enormously. Strike an Iranian oil field, a refinery, or even Kharg Island, and however catastrophic the impact, you are essentially targeting the Iranian economy. Attack South Pars, and you attack a facility that makes daily life in Iran possible. It is the kind of target Iran's enemies would only ever hit in one of two situations: either they were prepared to escalate the whole war to an unprecedented intensity, or they did not grasp the gravity of what they were doing. ## A Warning Shot That Missed Which of those two explanations applies will not be clear until more information emerges from Jerusalem and Washington. What is known is that Israel carried out the South Pars strike alone, but with the awareness and, crucially, the approval of the United States. According to White House insiders speaking to the national press, President Donald Trump intended the strike as a warning shot, punishing Iran for blockading the Strait of Hormuz and signaling the consequences if Tehran did not reverse course. Unfortunately for the Trump of Wednesday morning, the Trump of Thursday afternoon has the benefit of hindsight—and in hindsight, Iran clearly did not receive the message the way Trump intended. A strike meant to deter instead detonated the most dangerous escalation of the war. The logic of the warning shot assumed Iran would read it as a controlled threat; Iran read it as the crossing of the one line that demanded an answer in kind. ## Ras Laffan and the Retaliation Heard Around the World Iran responded with what appears to have been its most significant missile barrage since the war began. The strikes were concentrated primarily on the installation handling Qatar's side of the shared deposit: the liquefied natural gas facility known as Ras Laffan Industrial City. The significance of that single site is hard to overstate. It supplies roughly twenty percent of all LNG exports on Earth, and it exports about a third of the purified helium the world needs to build advanced semiconductors. LNG is in extremely high demand, especially in Asia and Europe, and Iran had threatened Ras Laffan on multiple prior occasions. But earlier Iranian strikes had only been enough to force temporary shutdowns—Qatar had committed to keeping the facility shuttered through the end of the war, plus the two weeks it would take to restart production afterward. This time was different. Tehran bombarded Ras Laffan with a barrage of ballistic missiles, scoring multiple apparent direct hits and sparking fires and explosions on a scale far beyond most of the destruction seen in this conflict. QatarEnergy, the state-owned company overseeing the site, reported "extensive damage"—damage that went far beyond anything the facility had previously endured. The symmetry was deliberate. Israel had escalated by striking Iran's most important gas reserves; Iran retaliated against the same source of energy, against a target whose destruction would hurt the rest of the world as much as a strike on South Pars hurt Iran. ## Widening the Circle: Saudi Arabia and the UAE Ras Laffan was not the limit of Iran's response. Though unconfirmed at the time of writing, Iran claimed to have struck a critical Saudi oil processing plant at the port city of Yanbu—located not on the Persian Gulf but on the coast of the Red Sea. That detail carries its own weight. Over the previous weeks, Saudi Arabia had been urgently shifting its crude oil to export out of Yanbu precisely because all sides had seemed to treat it as safely distant from the epicenter of the conflict. Striking it erased that assumption. The United Arab Emirates was hit as well. Iran's strikes reportedly landed on a key gas processing complex called Habshan 5—one of the largest installations of its kind in the world—and on the Murban Bab oil field, the largest onshore source of oil in the entire country. Taken together, the retaliation reached across the Gulf and beyond it, touching the most important energy nodes of three different nations in a single coordinated response. Even within the context of this war, the scale was exceptional. Iran demonstrated that it still possesses highly meaningful missile launch capabilities, and it chose to respond in a way that could not possibly be misread: if South Pars was a legitimate target, then Iran was willing—and, more importantly, able—to cripple global energy to an extent the world had been desperately hoping to avoid. ## Washington's Reversal and the Gulf's Outrage Washington got the message. With this version of the White House there is always a layer of bluster to filter through, but beneath the fire and brimstone the shift was immediate. It took Trump almost no time to announce, in all caps, "NO MORE ATTACKS WILL BE MADE BY ISRAEL pertaining to this extremely important and valuable South Pars Field." For a president who had just approved a strike on that very field, the reversal was striking in its speed. The Gulf states reacted with pure outrage. Qatar and Saudi Arabia both threatened direct military retaliation, and according to insider sources from both nations, any lingering hopes of making peace with the current Iranian regime appear to have evaporated. As of now there is no clear measure of how bad the damage might be, particularly at Ras Laffan. But if the destruction is as extensive as video from the strikes suggests, the global energy market is already guaranteed to face a great deal of pain. ## Offramps and the Logic of Escalation After the strikes on South Pars, Ras Laffan, and the other installations hit this week, the war is plainly heading toward a series of worst-case scenarios. There are still ways for the situation to get even worse—and one sincerely hopes those outcomes will be avoided—but the conflict has already entered territory that career students of the Middle East had been trying not to speak into existence. It is worth distinguishing degrees of catastrophe. A merely bad outcome might have involved a months-long blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, choking off a high share of the world's energy supply from reaching customers. That outcome was already on the horizon before this week. A truly catastrophic outcome is one where energy attacks go beyond interdicting, blockading, or deterring shipments and instead destroy the infrastructure itself. That is the line that was crossed. Losing a tanker's worth of energy is, at worst, a rounding error in a single day's trade. Destroying something like Ras Laffan—or the installations that extract gas from South Pars—condemns the entire market to severe and persistent disruption. And because this is a war, the loss of key installations is never an isolated event. Retaliation begets retaliation, and there is a great deal left for any side to destroy. ## Standing on the Edge of the Cliff Israel, the US, and Iran have reached a point of no return, standing shoulder-to-shoulder on the edge of a cliff and contemplating a jump from which there is no easy return. What needs to happen now is simple to state and difficult to achieve: every nation party to this conflict needs to demonstrate, loudly and consistently, that it is ready to de-escalate, and to accept that however rewarding escalation might feel, the risk of miscalculation and catastrophe is not worth the potential payoff. Each party would have to swallow something hard. For Israel, that means backing off at the very moment its arch-enemy is more vulnerable than ever. For the United States, it means swallowing Washington's pride, standing up to its partners in Jerusalem, and using all its leverage to seek a path away from the brink. For the Gulf states, it means giving up the chance to retaliate and absorbing both the insults and the immense economic pain this week delivered. And for Iran, it means resisting the urge to use its most powerful tool—the ability to inflict pain on the entire world—at a moment when it cannot win in the air or force a battle on the ground. ## Why De-escalation Is Unlikely Will that de-escalation actually happen? The early indicators are not encouraging. In Washington, Trump's moment of concern appears to have been exactly that: a moment, quickly forgotten and replaced by fresh threats in the same social media tirade, this time to "massively blow up the entirety" of South Pars if Israel were to attack Qatar again. The instinct to de-escalate was immediately overwritten by the instinct to threaten. Iran, meanwhile, understands that it is in a difficult position either way, and seems to have noticed that in this war it is either getting beaten up or attacking energy infrastructure and achieving some success of its own. That calculus does not push toward restraint. And Israel's conduct—across this war, its prior exchanges with Iran, and its conflicts against Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthis—all point the same direction: Israel is willing to absorb regional instability, economic pain, diplomatic headaches, and bad press, so long as Iran and its allies emerge weakened, or ideally destroyed, when the fighting ends. That combination does not lead toward de-escalation. Israel's attack on South Pars and Iran's retaliation are not, by themselves, enough to make this escalation permanent—but they are enough to bring the conflict to the brink. Could the three nations recognize the danger and back down? Of course they could. But a trio of nations inclined to handle this with a calm pivot toward de-escalation probably does not end up in a war like this in the first place. ## Frequently Asked Questions ### What was the unspoken rule that broke this week? Through the war's first twenty days, Israel, the US, and Iran all attacked energy targets, but only with symbolic, limited, or low-consequence strikes designed to signal capability rather than to actually destroy core infrastructure. The Israeli strike on South Pars and Iran's retaliation against Ras Laffan broke that tacit restraint by targeting the infrastructure that extracts and processes energy itself. ### Why is South Pars so important to Iran specifically? South Pars is the largest natural gas deposit in the world, with an estimated fifty-one trillion meters of gas on Iran's side of the border. Unlike Qatar, which converts most of its share into LNG for export, Iran depends on South Pars for the vast majority of the natural gas it uses domestically — making it the facility that, in effect, keeps daily life in Iran running. ### What is Ras Laffan and why does its damage matter globally? Ras Laffan Industrial City is the LNG facility handling Qatar's side of the South Pars deposit. It supplies roughly twenty percent of all LNG exports on Earth and about a third of the purified helium the world needs to build advanced semiconductors. QatarEnergy reported "extensive damage" after Iran's missile barrage, meaning severe and persistent disruption for the global energy market. ### What other countries did Iran strike in its retaliation? Beyond Ras Laffan in Qatar, Iran claimed to have struck a critical Saudi oil processing plant at Yanbu on the Red Sea coast — a target Saudi Arabia had considered safely distant from the conflict. Iran also hit the UAE's Habshan 5 gas processing complex, one of the world's largest, and the Murban Bab oil field, the UAE's largest onshore oil source. ### Why is de-escalation considered unlikely after this exchange? Iran appears to have concluded that attacking energy infrastructure is its most effective remaining lever, and Israel's overall conduct across the war shows a consistent willingness to absorb diplomatic and economic costs as long as Iran emerges weakened. 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