Editorials, Essays, Interviews and Book Reviews picked from the World Press
March 6, 2026 (Today’s Summary)
THE WAR IN THE MIDDLE EAST
The Economist, Leader (Pay Wall)
War in the Middle East : Donald Trump must stop soon
His ill-considered conflict risks descending into chaos
IT IS RARE for one head of government to order the death of another. Yet on February 28th America’s president and Israel’s prime minister did just that, killing Iran’s 86-year-old supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. The decapitation of the Iranian regime reflects the devastating operational success of “Operation Epic Fury”. But Mr Khamenei’s place was immediately taken by a triumvirate. The next supreme leader could be named soon—perhaps his own son unless he, too, is killed. That augurs something more subtle and worrying: that the operation is failing to achieve its political goals.
It is naive to say, as some of Mr Trump’s cheerleaders do, that because Mr Khamenei was wicked (and he surely was), any sort of war makes sense. When you command a machine as lethal and overwhelming as America’s armed forces, united in this operation with the battle-hardened Israel Defence Forces, you have a special responsibility to define what you want to achieve. That is not only an ethical requirement; it is a practical one, too. War aims direct the campaign; they define the sacrifices the state imposes on its own people and the enemy; and they determine when the fighting should end.
In this war, Israel’s aim is clear: to demolish the threat posed by Iran’s regime. By contrast, Mr Trump and his cabinet have offered a mess of shifting assertions—about Iran’s missiles, nuclear weapons, regime change, following Israel’s lead, a “feeling” Iran was about to attack and settling scores after decades of enmity. Politically, vagueness gives Mr Trump room for manoeuvre. Strategically, his failure to say what Epic Fury is for is its biggest vulnerability.
The result is a split-personality war. One face is operational. America and Israel have destroyed Iran’s navy and grounded its air force. They are wrecking its missile capability and its arms industry and targeting the regime and its brutal enforcers. Dominance of the skies means that America and Israel can fight on at will. Interceptor missiles are meanwhile defending bases and cities in Israel and the Gulf countries, even as Iran strikes at more targets than it did during the conflict last June. So far, at least, there are enough interceptors to keep going.
The other face of this war is political, and it emerges from Iran’s strategy, which is about sowing doubt and confusion. To survive would count as victory for Iran’s regime. So far, it is succeeding. Far from falling apart, it is rushing to escalate horizontally—a fancy way of saying it is lashing out in all directions. This has a number of consequences.
One is that other countries are being sucked in. Iran has attacked the Gulf states, which have bet their future on being havens from the chaos gripping the rest of the Middle East. Fighting has also erupted in Lebanon as Israel smashes Hizbullah, Iran’s main proxy. France and Britain will defend their bases from attack. On March 4th NATO air defences shot down an Iranian missile bound for Turkey.
Another consequence is economic. Iran has tried to shut the Strait of Hormuz, cutting off perhaps 20% of global oil supplies. It has also struck energy infrastructure, including the world’s biggest gas-liquefaction complex and Saudi Arabia’s largest refinery. The price of Brent crude is up by 14% since February 27th, to $83 a barrel. A megawatt-hour of natural gas in Europe costs €54 ($63), over 70% more than last week. As Asian buyers scramble for supplies, prices could go higher. The global economy could yet suffer a hit. If oil reaches $100 a barrel, GDP growth could be lowered by 0.4 percentage points and inflation raised by 1.2 points.
The third potential consequence is chaos inside Iran. Roughly 40% of its 90m people belong to ethnic minorities, including Arabs, Azeris, Baluchis, Kurds and Lurs. The Arab spring showed how countries can fall apart. America and Israel are putting pressure on the regime by backing Kurdish insurgents—a reckless idea that could end up stoking Persian nationalism or civil war. Mr Trump may not care about this, but he could not ignore the effects spilling over Iran’s borders into the Gulf states, Iraq, Syria and Turkey.
The risk is that Mr Trump cannot bear to quit so long as the markets and polls deny him the acclamation he craves—and that may last for as long as Iran can release even sporadic missiles and drones. Today barely a third of Americans favour the battle in Iran (90% backed invading Afghanistan in 2001). America may be an energy exporter, but its voters detest costly petrol. He may be tempted to seek an undeniable win by bombing the regime out of existence. But even with America’s military clout, he might not succeed. Meanwhile all those risks would continue to harm the region and the world economy.
Mr Trump would do better to narrow his war aims. His goal should be to degrade Iran’s military capabilities and then stop. He is almost there.
Some will argue that the job would be only half-done. Obviously, leaving the regime as a wounded beast would be heartbreak for the oppressed Iranian people. Even if Mr Trump wants peace, Iran could continue to lash out for a while, at least, revelling in its status as a symbol of anti-American resistance. The surviving regime may reject a nuclear deal—indeed, like North Korea, it may think a bomb is its only protection. If it rebuilds its nuclear programme, Mr Trump may have to strike again in months’ or years’ time. It is a bleak prospect. But it would be better for America to declare victory early than limp out of an unpopular war because of exhaustion.
Less fury, more forethought
These are the fruits of Mr Trump’s impulsive approach. Before this war, Iran’s regime was weaker than at any time in its 47-year history: it could have fallen without a single American bomb. Mr Trump may get lucky, but he is more likely to end up having to deal with regional chaos or a new hardliner. Surrounded by sycophantic courtiers, Mr Trump has become rash in his second term. His opportunistic grabs for power whenever he sees weakness are dangerous. America needs a strategy in Iran, just as it needs one in the world. ■
https://www.economist.com/leaders/2026/03/05/donald-trump-must-stop-soon
The Economist (Pay Wall)
Epic fury, vain hope? Any attempt at regime change is likely to repeat past mistakes
Air power, full-on invasion, arming the opposition: the result is usually the same, writes Philip Gordon
Guest Essay by Philip H. Gordon, the Sydney Stein Jr Scholar at the Brookings Institution and author of “Losing the Long Game: The False Promise of Regime Change in the Middle East”. He is a former White House co-ordinator for the Middle East and former national security adviser to the US vice-president.
Listening to president donald trump promise the Iranian people that “the hour of your freedom is at hand”, Americans and others around the world could be forgiven for feeling they were watching a film they had seen before. In calling on Iranians to “take over your government” and evoking a “prosperous and glorious future”, Mr Trump was following in the footsteps of many of his predecessors, who had also succumbed to the temptation of believing that American military power could be deployed to remove a contemptible and threatening Middle Eastern regime and replace it with something better.
In almost all cases the reasons for wanting to remove the offending regime are compelling. But past regime-change operations in the region also have something else in common: they failed to produce the desired result. And there is little reason to believe that if Mr Trump presses on with a military campaign to collapse the current Iranian regime the outcome will be much different from the costly chaos that ensued in every previous case.
Since the 1950s America has sought to oust governments across the broader Middle East numerous times, in places as diverse as Iran, Afghanistan, Iraq, Egypt and Syria. The methods used in these operations have varied widely—from supporting a coup to arming the opposition, using air power alone, or full-on invasion and occupation. But if the tactics were different the patterns they revealed were remarkably similar: American policymakers invariably exaggerated the threat, underestimated the costs and challenges of removing the regime, declared victory prematurely, failed to anticipate unintended consequences, and ultimately found themselves bearing massive human and financial costs.
The poster child for failed regime-change efforts is, of course, the Iraq war in 2003. Despite confident predictions of democracy, stability and prosperity, the conflict continued for nearly a decade, cost around $300m per day for much of that time, and resulted in the loss of thousands of American and Iraqi lives.
But even in the initially less controversial case of overthrowing the Taliban in Afghanistan after they backed the terrorists responsible for 9/11, the lessons are sobering: two decades of war, thousands of casualties and $2trn more spent—only to end up with the Taliban ultimately back in power.
Mr Trump is obviously determined to avoid such long and costly operations and does not appear to be considering American occupation to try to ensure stability in Iran. He did, though, say last week that he doesn’t have “the yips” about putting boots on the ground, opening up the ominous possibility of a slippery slope. It is probably also fair to assume that covertly arming Iranian Kurdish factions, as Mr Trump is reportedly considering, is not a recipe for bringing post-war stability to Iran, but very much the opposite.
Even without ground forces, regime-change operations carry costs and risks. In Libya, where America and its allies relied on air power, it took a full seven months of relentless bombing before the dictator, Muammar Qaddafi, was at last killed—and after that Libya descended into civil war and violence that spread, along with many weapons and refugees, to neighbours including Chad and Mali.
In Syria, attempts to oust the regime of Bashar al-Assad without ground forces proved even more catastrophic. Arming Mr Assad’s (mostly extremist) adversaries led not to his ousting but instead to counter-escalation, interventions by Iran, Hizbullah and Russia, a vicious civil war, humanitarian catastrophe and destabilising refugee flows. Mr Assad was only finally forced out more than a decade later, in December 2024, when armed former terrorists backed by Turkey marched on Damascus.
Another part of the familiar pattern is the tendency to declare victory prematurely. Six weeks after invading Iraq in 2003, George W. Bush declared “mission accomplished”—before watching Iraq descend into horrific violence. Seven months after nato intervened in Libya, Hillary Clinton, then secretary of state, took a perceived “victory lap” in Tripoli, before Libyan factions violently turned on each other. And in Afghanistan successive American leaders announced that we had “turned the corner”, before eventually accepting defeat.
The reasons why it is harder to put a better government in place than to remove a bad one are no mystery. Removing a regime creates a political and security vacuum that is difficult if not impossible to fill. Opposition groups previously united around the goal of removing the regime fracture when the regime falls, and understandably anxious people turn to political or sectarian kinship networks for safety. In such scenarios the result is often civil conflict, sometimes fuelled by meddling neighbours, and if anyone prevails it is the people with the most guns and willingness to use them.
It would be nice to believe, as Mr Trump apparently does, that this time will be different. But Iran is a country of over 90m people, deeply divided along ethnic, ideological and political lines. The opposition is severely fractured, has no obvious leader and is mostly unarmed, whereas the regime is replete with brutal, well-armed men with their backs to the wall. Under these circumstances, expecting “the Iranian people” to “seize control” of their government with no real theory for how they might do so successfully is truly a case of putting hope over experience.
We should all hope this terrible Iranian regime falls and is replaced by a more decent, tolerant and competent one. But hope is not a sound basis for policy. By thinking he can defy deep historical lessons from the region, and by launching a war with no congressional mandate or significant public support, Mr Trump is taking a massive and unnecessary gamble—not just with his presidency but with the lives of countless Americans, Iranians and others. ■
The Economist (Pay Wall)
Unravelling Iran : Israel and America want the Kurds to join the fight in Iran
Kurdish militias are weighing a risky bid to redraw their neighbour’s borders
America might be wary of putting its boots on the ground in Iran, but the Kurdish forces they have supported in northern Iraq are rushing rapidly to build up a force on their border. Columns of armoured vehicles clog the road to the snow-capped crossing of Haj Omran. Hundreds of Peshmerga (Kurdish fighters whose name means “one who confronts death”) have travelled in unmarked white buses and fanned out in villages adjoining the border. A hospital this correspondent visited on March 4th had been turned into a barracks the night before. The fighters peer across the border, where American and Israeli warplanes have struck over 100 Iranian military positions and created a path for Kurdish troops to move in. Seize the moment, commanders say President Donald Trump urged, when he called Kurdish leaders at the outset of the war. “He wants us to move in and trigger an uprising,” says an Iranian Kurdish commander in Iraq.
With Mr Trump’s blessing, some Kurds in Iraq speak excitedly of reunifying their fractured homeland and reuniting with Rojhilat, as the Kurds call that part of Kurdistan ruled by Iran. Iran’s regime has never looked so weak, they argue, nor the alignment of foreign forces so favourable. If they can orchestrate a Kurdish revolt in Iran, then Iranian Arabs, Baluchis and Azeris would surely follow—and then, perhaps, the rest of the country too.
Such calculations are laced with wishful thinking, however. The extent of the damage from the bombing campaign has already made even Iranians who loath the regime question the benefits of the joint American-Israeli attack. If getting rid of their rulers means carving Iran up along ethnic lines, then many Iranians may rally to help the regime preserve their country’s territorial integrity. If the state begins to disintegrate, many Iranians increasingly fear, their country will descend into civil war.
The Kurds no doubt have the firepower to shake the grip of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (irgc), the regime’s praetorian guard, on Iranian Kurdistan. The four armed Iranian Kurdish factions stationed across the border in Iraq’s Kurdish enclave number perhaps 2,500 fighters. For years Iranian Kurds have disagreed over what sort of enclave they want—some favour autonomy much like their cousins in Iraq, others independence. But under pressure from America, on February 22nd they agreed to form a single bloc. Right now, they are a bunch of ragtag militias. But America and Israel might yet arm them and provide air cover should they push into Iran. And behind them stands a battle-hardened, American-trained force of Iraqi Kurdish Peshmerga whose commanders claim numbers 200,000. For now the commanders profess neutrality and say the reinforcements are in order to protect the border in the event that Iranian Kurdish armed groups push back into Iran.
Many of Iran’s 10m-odd Kurds, most of them in the mountainous north-west of the country, eagerly hope Kurdish fighters will cross from Iraq. They loathed the country’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and many Kurds reportedly danced in the streets after news spread of his assassination. They have quietly cheered strikes on the positions of the irgc and its paramilitary force, the Basij, whose thugs massacred thousands of protesters in January. According to an Iranian Peshmerga commander in Iraq, his men are already prepared for action. He says they have stockpiled weapons in tunnels inside Iran and distributed arms to their followers in the cities. He even has a date for the uprising in mind: Nowruz, the Persian new year on March 20th. “Iraqi and Iranian Kurdistan are one land split by a border,” he says. “That is about to change.”
Officials in the Kurdish Regional Government (krg) in Iraq are more circumspect. Masoud Barzani, leader of the Kurdistan Democratic Party and former president of the autonomous region, has yet to decide whether to send in his forces, says a Peshmerga commander there. Yet many fighters see advantage in acquiescing to American demands. The commander predicts that “Iran will be quartered.” America and Israel, he adds, “won’t in future accept an Iran with the size and power it has now.” Even if their leaders do not give the direct order, officials doubt that anyone will stop Iranian Kurdish fighters slipping over the porous border.
Still, the risks of overreach abound. An internet blackout across all of Iran makes it hard to gauge, but talk inside Iraqi Kurdistan of the imminent collapse of the Iranian regime appears overdone. Although the irgc have vacated their bases in Iranian Kurdistan, they have taken over schools and mosques, erected checkpoints in city centres and reinforced the border. America’s and Israel’s countrywide attacks may have enabled hardliners to tighten their grip, at least for now. And an age-old ideology of anti-Americanism among the regime’s base is back with a vengeance. Iranians’ broad opposition to local separatism will draw some to the regime’s cause.
Many of Iraq’s 6m Kurds fear the consequences, too. Iran has already launched drones and missiles into Iraqi Kurdistan, targeting several bases of Iranian Kurdish armed groups and an American air base at Harir, up in the mountains. The vast majority have been intercepted. Even so, oil and gas production has temporarily been suspended, and electricity blackouts have spread. Should Peshmerga cross into Iran, the backlash from the regime, when it comes, could be fierce. Jitters are spreading. From the frontier to Erbil, the regional capital, Kurds speak nervously of Iranian tunnels running deep under the border and weigh whether to flee. Traders are reckoning with the cost of Iran’s decision to close its borders. It has severed supplies of the staples that fill the shelves and it has slashed the Iraqi Kurds’ customs revenues. Beenar fk, a Kurdish analyst in Erbil, fears Iraqi Kurds being drawn unwillingly into the conflict. The Peshmerga, he adds, risk becoming Mr Trump’s cannon fodder.
Iraq’s Kurds feel conflicted. While they depend on America’s protection, they also express grudging respect for Iran’s historical dealings with them. In contrast to Turkey, they note, Iran has not sought to occupy Kurdish territory in Iraq. It has also repeatedly come to the Iraqi Kurds’ rescue and offered them refuge, not least when Saddam Hussein, Iraq’s late dictator, swooped into their enclave in the 1990s, followed by the jihadists of Islamic State in 2014. Some also predict that any effort to set up a Kurdish enclave in Iran would be prone to the Kurds’ propensity for infighting. Despite February’s agreement, the four Iranian Kurdish groups still haggle over how to carve up any future province.
Other threats loom. Should Iraq’s Kurds move into Iran in defiance of orders from the national government in Baghdad, Iran-backed militias in Iraq would probably press north; Turkey, ever wary of Kurdish expansion along its southern rim, might push south. Above all doubt lingers over Mr Trump’s staying power. “America comes, America goes”, says one Kurdish official, but “Iran stays.” Mr Trump can be a fair-weather friend: last year he abandoned Syria’s Kurds when Ahmed Sharaa, Syria’s new president, took control of the country’s north-east. Iran also proved it had more staying power than America in post-invasion Iraq.
Will all that hold the Kurds back in Iran? For Mr Barzani, who was once president of the krg, the prize of leading a greater Kurdistan straddling Iran and Iraq is tempting, his advisers say; he is 79, and it could be the crowning moment of his rule. Yet he may remember how ambition has tripped him up before. Against advice at home and from abroad, in 2017 he held a unilateral referendum on independence. It so aroused the ire of Iraqi leaders in Baghdad that they seized Kirkuk, the oil-rich city Kurds call their heart. One Peshmerga commander greatly fears the costs of being sucked into a regional war. Yet if the order comes, he says, “we will obey and go”. ■
The Wall Street Journal (Pay Wall)
Can the Iranian Regime Survive?
A ground war is unlikely, but the U.S. and Israel have other ideas about how to bring the mullahs down.
Can the Islamic Republic of Iran survive the waves of devastating attacks being launched around the clock by the Israelis and Americans? Nobody knows.
Unlike Saddam Hussein’s Iraq or Moammar Gadhafi’s Libya, Iran has a long record of success. On Oct. 6, 2023, it appeared to be achieving its long-term goal of a durable hegemony in the Middle East. Its proxies and allies dominated Iraq. Bashar al-Assad seemed firmly in power in Syria. Hezbollah held Lebanon’s destiny in its hands. The Houthis had enough firepower to choke off navigation through the Red Sea, depriving Egypt of badly needed Suez Canal revenue and imposing costs on shipping and trade.
The mullahs were good at building alliances. By supplying drones for Russia’s war on Ukraine, Iran gained close friends in Moscow. Relations with China prospered. Venezuela stood ready to assist with smuggling and gunrunning to support Iranian designs against the U.S. and its allies.
Most improbable, the Shiite theocracy of Iran had built strong relations with radical Sunni Islamists. By taking advantage of their common desire to destroy Israel, the mullahs had become partners and patrons of Hamas, the Palestinian offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood. Qatar, ideologically aligned with the brotherhood and diplomatically at odds with what it saw as an overbearing and threatening Saudi Arabia, was cooperating.
Every piece of this imposing structure was tenaciously and patiently constructed in the face of opposition from the Americans, Israelis and Saudis. Alternately bamboozling, outmaneuvering, intimidating and sometimes simply murdering their opponents, the Iranian mullahs built a regional power network on the twin foundations of unbending rejection of Israel’s existence and unyielding opposition to American power.
The architects of this power system may not command our love, but they deserve our wary respect. The perceptions of Western state bureaucracies, think tanks and pundits still reflect reluctant recognition of a quarter-century of Iranian advance under the theocratic regime.
Yet if the rise to peak Iranian power in 2023 was laborious, the descent from it has been swift. Besotted with success, the mullahs overreached, and since Oct. 7 they have watched one stronghold after another fall to Israeli counterattacks boosted by American support. Now the surviving mullahs and officers of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps cower in bunkers, afraid of their own cellphones. The coalition against Iran, including Germany, Canada and even Qatar, reflects a high degree of international consensus that the mullahs belong back in the mosques.
The question that world leaders now need to examine is whether Iran’s war strategies reflect the subtle and effective blend of insight and ruthlessness that lifted the country to the heights of power, or the folly and delusion that brought it to its current low ebb. The confusing answer, so far, is that they reflect a mix, and the fate of President Trump’s Gulf war depends on how the different elements work out.
Iran went into the war with two goals. First, it hoped to spread enough devastation in the region to separate its neighbors from Washington and block Middle Eastern oil from world markets. As stock markets swooned and allies defected, Iran hoped that the pressure would force Mr. Trump to back down.
So far, it isn’t working. The missile and drone attacks on countries ranging from Cyprus and Turkey to Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates have broadened the American-led coalition. The number of Iranian missiles launched every day is declining, and Iran’s rapidly shrinking navy is losing the ability to interfere with oil traffic.
Iran’s other goal is to force the U.S. to choose between allowing the regime to survive and waging a deeply unpopular and expensive ground war to overthrow it. The mullahs believe that Mr. Trump will punt before he commits to a ground war—and that even if he does invade, the Americans will ultimately be defeated in Iran as they were in Afghanistan.
The Americans and Israelis so far seem to be trying three different approaches to frustrate the mullahs’ survival strategy. First, thanks to precision weapons and deep intelligence penetration, they are doing their best to destroy the organizations, weapons and facilities that the regime loyalists need to crush their domestic opponents. Second, they are encouraging ethnic minorities (Kurds in the north, the Baloch community in the east, conceivably Azeris should the war drag on) to rise against Tehran. Armed support from Azerbaijan and Iraqi Kurdistan could make the challenge more formidable. The idea is that threats to Iranian unity might compel the regime’s surviving leaders to come to satisfactory terms before the whole country dissolves. Third, the allies seek to split the leadership and to identify Iranian equivalents of Delcy Rodríguez willing to work with the Americans rather than against them.
These plans all have drawbacks. Attacks widespread enough to weaken Iranian security forces will inevitably hit civilian targets and infrastructure, potentially strengthening domestic support for the government. Supporting minority rebellions could backfire badly among ethnic Persians and others who don’t want to see their country break into a collection of warring ministates. And it’s far from clear that an Iranian Delcy Rodríguez would live long enough to implement any deal agreed with Mr. Trump.
As recently as October 2023, it looked as if Iran could do nothing wrong as it systematically laid the foundations for a new Persian Empire in the modern Middle East. Since that time, almost everything the mullahs have tried ended in disaster. Now they stand with their backs against the wall. The next few weeks will likely decide Iran’s future. Let us hope the mullahs choose a path that leads to peace.
https://www.wsj.com/opinion/can-the-iranian-regime-survive-c56d25f8?mod=opinion_lead_pos5
The New York Times
America Won’t Save Iran
Guest Essay by Reza Aslan, a writer and scholar of religions living in Los Angeles.
When I saw the images of bombs falling on Tehran — smoke rising over neighborhoods I once knew — and heard the familiar talk of liberation and an opportunity for Iranians to reclaim their country, I felt a recognition that was almost immediate.
I have lived inside this story for most of my life, first as a child in Iran, then as an immigrant to the United States, and later as someone trying to explain my country to Americans who often encounter it only in moments of crisis.
I have seen before how things unfold when an American president is cast as Iran’s savior. The year was 1977. I was five years old and standing on the side of a Tehran street when President Jimmy Carter’s motorcade drove past.
The revolution had not yet erupted, but it was already rumbling beneath the surface. To the outside world, the shah’s regime projected strength and modernity: highways, oil wealth, grand celebrations of imperial history. But behind the spectacle lay prisons, censorship and the quiet terror of the secret police. Political parties had been hollowed out, dissent punished.
Even as a child, I could feel the tension in the air. I do not recall the slogans or the speeches that day. What I remember is the adults around me leaning forward, whispering that this American president was different. He would hold the shah accountable. He would protect the Iranian people.
Back then, I carried an image of America as something almost mythic. It was not just a distant superpower. It was a moral force, a place that corrected wrongs, defended the vulnerable, tipped history toward justice. In my childhood logic, America was the grown-up who suddenly appeared on the playground to put the class bully in his place.
That was the hope in the air — that the visiting American president might act not merely as a guest of the regime but as a check upon it. That he might be, in some quiet way, a liberator. Instead, Carter toasted the shah’s rule and called Iran “an island of stability.”
Something shifted that day, not only in the politics of the country but in the psyche of the Iranian people. The belief that American power might rescue us dissolved into something harder and more sober: the realization that American interests and the aspirations of the Iranian people simply did not align.
Two years later came the revolution. Then the storming of the U.S. Embassy. Then the 444 days of the hostage crisis that would brand Iran in the American imagination for decades. Nearly half a century of mutual suspicion followed — two nations using each other as mirrors, each reflecting back a distorted image against which it could define its own virtue: one cast as the “Great Satan,” the other flattened into a caricature of religious fanaticism.
And now, once again, the old fantasy of America as savior is returning.
In recent days, American and Israeli strikes have largely targeted sites associated with Iran’s military infrastructure. The official justification is elastic — deterrence, security, stabilization — terms broad enough to stretch around almost any action. The rhetoric around the campaign, however, is as clear as can be.
Hours after the first bombs fell on Tehran, President Trump addressed the Iranian people directly, urging them to “take over your government” after having promised that “help is on its way.” This was the language not of deterrence but of deliverance — an American president stepping in as Iran’s liberator.
Unlike in 1977, however, the loudest voices advancing this narrative are not in Tehran but in Los Angeles. The city where I live is home to the largest Iranian population outside Iran. On any given afternoon you can walk past Persian bookstores and jewelry shops, bakeries perfumed with cardamom and rosewater, satellite television studios broadcasting Persian-language news and entertainment. Exile here is layered: it lives in accents softened but not erased, in older parents who will never return home, in children who speak Persian imperfectly but carry inherited grief fluently.
I, too, carry that same inheritance. My family fled Iran in 1979 with little warning. We arrived in America with almost nothing. In the years that followed, we built new lives while navigating the suspicion and slurs that only intensified after the hostage crisis.
Back in Iran, clerical rule consolidated itself through fear and war. A generation was sent to the front lines in the brutal conflict with Iraq, boys barely out of childhood marching into battle. Prisons filled with political dissidents. Executions were carried out in the quiet of night. Women’s bodies became sites of state enforcement, policed in the street, disciplined in classrooms, punished for defiance. Students who gathered to protest were beaten or disappeared. Journalists learned that a single sentence could cost them their freedom.
Inside Iran, those decades forged endurance and a hard-earned familiarity with risk, patience and survival. Young people hosting underground parties in borrowed apartments, curtains drawn tight, music kept just low enough to avoid a knock at the door. Couples circling city blocks in slow-moving cars, stealing moments of conversation before morality patrols intervene. Women pushing their head scarves back a few inches further each year — an act so small it can seem trivial from afar, and so dangerous it can invite arrest, beatings or worse.
Outside Iran, those same decades led to something more volatile. In Los Angeles and other diaspora communities, anger at the regime runs deep, but so does an awareness of how easily that anger is folded into media narratives that blur criticism of clerical rule with suspicion of Islam itself. Iranian Americans have learned to condemn repression while bracing against the racism and reductive thinking that often follow. They carry two anxieties at once: the suffocation of the homeland and the caricatures of it abroad.
That tension has understandably bred impatience. Years of watching protests crushed and reforms reversed have made incremental change feel illusory. It is little wonder, then, that many have come to believe that only something dramatic — some outside force — could finally break the cycle of repression.
So when bombs fall on facilities linked to the regime, some in exile do not see escalation. They see possibility. They gather in celebration. There are flags, speeches, applause. Civilian casualties are described as tragic but unavoidable. The logic becomes arithmetic: whatever hastens the regime’s end is worth the cost.
But the cost isn’t theoretical; it has a face. Among the recent reports comes word that strikes have hit civilian sites, including a girls’ school. Children who have nothing to do with uranium enrichment or missile silos are being pulled from the rubble. Their deaths are disputed in numbers and spun in statements, but the moral fact remains: when you invite bombs as salvation, you are also inviting the deaths of innocents.
I understand the grief that drives many of my fellow Iranian Americans to this point. I, too, lost my country. I, too, have family still living under an intolerable regime. When you feel powerless to alter events from within, force from without can feel like the only remaining lever.
But Iranians have a long memory of foreign intervention, and it does not map neatly onto liberation. I was reminded of this during the women-led uprising in Iran in 2022. After the death of Mahsa Amini in the custody of the morality police, protests spread across the country under the rallying cry Woman, Life, Freedom. Women removed their head scarves in public. Students walked out of classrooms. Workers joined strikes. Teenagers filmed themselves confronting security forces in the streets. As usual, the response from the regime was swift and brutal — arrests, beatings, executions carried out after secret trials.
For Iranians abroad, the uprising stirred a volatile mix of pride, grief and helplessness. Diaspora communities filled the streets of Los Angeles, Berlin, Toronto and London in solidarity, watching events unfold in real time on their phones. The protests rekindled a powerful hope that change might finally come from within. But they also sharpened a familiar conundrum: how to support a movement for freedom without feeding the narrative, eagerly embraced by the regime, that such movements are merely instruments of foreign meddling.
At the time, I was on a book tour for a biography of an American who died fighting for Iranian democracy more than a century ago. The tour felt, in many ways, like the culmination of two decades I had spent writing and speaking about Iran from exile, trying to explain its history, culture and politics to American audiences. Much of that work has centered on a simple argument: that the best way to support Iranians struggling against authoritarian rule is not through isolation or military confrontation but through engagement, diplomacy, cultural exchange and economic ties that open the country to the world, giving the United States both leverage and responsibility in shaping the regime’s behavior.
Those views have never been universally welcome in exile communities. As a progressive voice arguing in favor of diplomacy, I have often been accused of naïveté or worse. When the women’s protests intensified and the regime’s repression filled our screens, several of my events were disrupted by well-meaning but inflamed activists, many of them apparently swept up in deliberate misinformation campaigns, who insisted that anything short of my full-throated support for regime change — by force, if necessary — amounted to complicity with the regime itself.
Ironically, the biography I was promoting told the story of a very different kind of American involvement in Iran. Howard Baskerville was a 22-year-old missionary from South Dakota who arrived in Iran in 1907 to teach English and preach the Gospel.
Two years later, when the shah attempted to crush the Constitutional Revolution — arguably the first democratic uprising in the Middle East — Baskerville left his classroom in Tabriz and joined his students on the barricades. He was 24 when a sniper’s bullet killed him. To this day he is remembered in Iran as a martyr.
Baskerville did not arrive with a mandate from Washington. He did not offer ultimatums or airstrikes. He chose solidarity over leverage. “The only difference between me and these people is the place of my birth,” he said shortly before his death, “and that is not a big difference.”
Half a century later, another American intervened in Iran: Kermit Roosevelt, a C.I.A. officer, who directed the 1953 coup against Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh. Operation Ajax toppled a democratically elected government and restored the shah. It secured Western strategic interests, and planted a durable distrust of American intentions.
These two Americans — Baskerville and Roosevelt — represent the dual ways Iranians have experienced U.S. involvement: as a partnership or as manipulation. Americans ask, “Why does Iran hate us?” For them, the answer often begins in 1979. But Iranians ask, “Why did America take our democracy?” — and the answer begins in 1953. Each side selects its origin story. Each side feels wronged first.
History here is not context. It is fuel — invoked in speeches, taught in classrooms, whispered in homes. It shapes how every new intervention is interpreted. It determines whether a missile is seen as protection or aggression, whether a promise sounds like solidarity or betrayal.
When American leaders speak of helping Iranians “take over” their government, they are tapping into a powerful longing. Yet, as recent history reminds us, regime change delivered from the outside rarely produces the democracy imagined on the inside.
Iran’s political structure is not a single pillar that collapses neatly. At its core sits the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps — a military-intelligence and economic network woven deeply into the country’s institutions. The I.R.G.C. is not simply an armed wing of the regime; it controls vast segments of construction, energy, telecommunications and finance. Its commanders oversee security, its companies distribute patronage, and its ideology frames resistance to foreign threats as a sacred duty.
An external attack is more likely to strengthen that apparatus than dissolve it, enabling the I.R.G.C. to recast itself as the protector of the nation. In such a scenario, even the most determined regime critics can be swept into nationalist solidarity. Iran’s political culture carries a deep sense of historical continuity and collective identity — a connection to a civilization that predates modern states and whose stories of resistance and martyrdom run deep. Of course, that dynamic is not uniquely Iranian. Any people, however bitterly they may resent their rulers, can rally when the nation itself appears under attack. When foreign bombs fall on cities, when homes are destroyed and children are killed, the line between opposition to a government and defense of a homeland can collapse.
It is for this reason that many analysts believe the most likely outcome of the American-Israeli bombing campaign is not the advent of liberal democracy but rather a shift in the regime’s center of gravity — from clerical dominance to military dominance. The robes recede, the uniforms step forward, and one tyranny replaces another.
Many of my fellow exiles who cheer the bombs falling on Tehran believe that anything — even military rule — would be preferable to what exists now. Maybe they are right. After decades of repression, the hope of sudden deliverance can make almost any promise sound plausible.
But let us not lose sight of the voice promising that deliverance. Mr. Trump is not any American president. He is a particular kind of political figure, one whose public language has revealed admiration for strongman power. He has praised a dictator as “very talented.” He has mused about the appeal of the phrase “president for life.” He has shown contempt for democratic constraints at home — dismissing courts, deriding norms and undermining confidence in elections.
This matters because Iran’s struggle is not only against a regime but against the concentration of unaccountable power. If the goal is accountable government in Iran, it makes little sense to place that hope in a foreign leader who has praised authoritarian rule and weakened democratic norms in his own country. The risk is not liberation but the reinforcement of the very model that Iranians are trying to escape.
It is a recurring mistake in modern Iranian political life — one learned painfully in the aftermath of 1979. We confuse the force that can topple a ruler with the force that can build a free society.
It is tempting, especially from exile, to imagine that Iran’s future will be delivered by motorcade or missile. But Iran’s fate will not be written in Los Angeles coffee shops or dictated by airstrikes ordered from thousands of miles away. It will not be scripted by exiled princes essentially claiming a birthright to rule or American presidents flexing their power on a global stage. It will be shaped by Iranians — those who remain inside the country, who protest, negotiate, compromise and sometimes revolt at enormous personal risk.
What that change looks like is impossible to predict. It may come not as a single dramatic rupture but as a gradual erosion: reforms wrested from below, alliances formed across ideological lines, clerics dissenting from within the establishment, labor movements gaining leverage, women continuing to push the boundaries of law and custom until those boundaries shift. It could take the form of a negotiated transition rather than a revolutionary overthrow, or a rebalancing of power within existing institutions rather than their collapse.
None of these paths are guaranteed. All carry risk. Nevertheless, durable change, if it comes, will most likely emerge from the slow accumulation of pressure inside the country, not from the sudden imposition of force from outside.
History does not always repeat itself cleanly. But it does offer warnings. And when the desire for liberation outruns memory, we risk trading one form of unaccountable power for another.
Here is what I know for certain: Iran is older than any regime that has ruled it — older than the revolution, older than the shahs, older than the foreign powers that have sought to shape its fate. Across three millenniums of poetry, philosophy, empire and renewal, this civilization has outlasted conquerors and kings, clerics and generals. It has done so not because a savior from abroad intervened but because its people endured — sustained by a fierce pride in their language and heritage, by a literary and intellectual tradition that has survived invasion and upheaval, by a collective memory shaped as much by resistance as by rule.
Iranian identity was not built by any single regime, and it has never depended on one. It lives in the Iranian people. And no matter what happens after the dust settles, they will outlast this regime, too.
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/06/opinion/iran-bombing-america.html
The Jerusalem Post, Editorial
Like it or not: You can’t take this one away from Netanyahu
The prime minister carries ultimate responsibility for national security. The decisions were made during his tenure, and the campaign now unfolding bears his imprint.
The phrase “historic days” feels too small for the moment Israel is experiencing. Veterans of the Iranian threat, myself included, are struggling to believe what is unfolding.
After three decades of worst-case scenarios, of frozen fear over Iranian power, the many-armed octopus of proxies, thousands of ballistic missiles, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, the Quds Force, underground nuclear facilities, and what was once called Iran’s “zone of immunity,” Israel and the United States now appear to be dismantling that tower of cards with remarkable ease.
The Iranian tiger, it turns out, looks more like a limping, one-eyed, disheveled cat. What once seemed a regional superpower now appears hollow and decaying, unable to respond effectively to determined modern military power.
Iranian authorities are reportedly hesitant even to bury the Supreme Leader, uncertain how to handle the question of succession. The regime appears battered, stunned, and confused as Israeli air power dominates the skies while the United States presses its advantage at sea, in the air, in cyberspace, and across the broader Middle East.
Yet the story is far from finished. If the campaign ends with the ayatollahs still ruling Tehran, nothing meaningful will have changed. If the elderly Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is replaced by a younger Ayatollah Khamenei or a similar figure, the strategic reality will remain largely the same.
There is reason to hope that US President Donald Trump will not waver, and that the extraordinary resolve now coming out of Washington will hold in the face of rising oil prices, domestic criticism, pressure from Gulf states or some unforeseen military setback. Wars often shift suddenly at the most inconvenient moment.
One thing, however, is clear. No force in the world will be able to take the credit for what is happening away from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
This is unfolding on his watch. His signature is on the decision. He stands at the top of the chain of command and will be recorded in the pages of history as the central figure responsible for this moment. Attempts to redistribute the credit elsewhere are pointless and irrelevant. History rarely concerns itself with those efforts.
On February 28, when the current round of the war with Iran began, Israel’s prime minister was Benjamin Netanyahu. That fact will remain.
The difficulty in granting Netanyahu this credit lies in a simple question that many Israelis quietly ask themselves. What would have happened if the war had not unfolded as successfully?
Imagine a different scenario. Iranian forces might have shot down multiple aircraft, with captured Israeli pilots paraded in chains through Tehran’s central squares. That possibility was discussed for years in the Israeli military’s strategic planning.
Iran might have launched massive barrages of one hundred or two hundred missiles simultaneously, overwhelming Israeli defenses and causing hundreds or even thousands of casualties on the home front.
Hezbollah could have created chaos from the north, with Radwan forces crossing into Israeli communities and carrying out massacres.
The United States might have chosen not to join Israel at all.
Responsibility for failures often shifted from Netanyahu
In such circumstances, the list of those blamed would likely have been very long. In fact, everyone might have been blamed except Netanyahu himself.
According to that familiar narrative, the Supreme Court would have tied his hands, the attorney-general would have offered bad advice, and the real responsibility would lie with figures such as former Supreme Court president Aharon Barak, former prime minister Ehud Barak, journalist Barak Ravid, former US president Barack Obama, or any number of other convenient targets.
Critics might also have pointed to reserve pilots who protested government policies or to political activists accused of undermining national unity.
These arguments sound familiar because Israelis have already seen them.
When the Hamas attacks of October 7 devastated southern Israel, the prime minister, who had served nearly 15 consecutive years before the disaster, shifted the blame widely. Critics, security officials, protest movements, and others were accused of contributing to the catastrophe.
That history shapes how many Israelis now view the current success.
So what is the conclusion? Does Netanyahu deserve credit for the war against Iran?
Of course he does. The prime minister carries ultimate responsibility for national security. The decisions were made during his tenure, and the campaign now unfolding bears his imprint.
The same standard, however, applies in the opposite direction.
Netanyahu also bears responsibility for the misjudgments and failures that preceded this moment. Leadership means owning both outcomes. The same leader who now oversees military success also held power during the events that led to the October 7 disaster.
Prime ministers do not get to choose only the victories.
Therefore, there is no reason to deny Netanyahu the credit for what may become a historic campaign against Iran. The record will reflect that achievement.
History has its own methods, however. It eventually assigns responsibility for failures as well.
The prime minister of October 7 is also the prime minister of February 28.
https://www.jpost.com/opinion/article-888910?utm_source=jpost.app.apple&utm_medium=share
THE U.K. AND THE U.S.
The Wall Street Journal (Pay Wall)
Why Britain Is a Bad Ally to the U.S.
Keir Starmer is weak, but even Winston Churchill would find today’s U.K. unable to be effective.
British Prime Minister Keir Starmer “is no Winston Churchill,” President Trump said the other day, and the trouble for the U.K. is that it’s true. The past week has laid bare Mr. Starmer’s weaknesses as a leader and Britain’s shortcomings as an ally of America, and what a bracing lesson it is.
The proximate cause of Mr. Trump’s irritation with Mr. Starmer is the latter’s characteristic waffling on the conflict in Iran. First Mr. Starmer opposed making Royal Air Force bases available to the U.S. during the American-Israeli aerial assault. Then he kinda was willing to allow it. Then an RAF base in Cyprus came under Iranian drone attack anyway, so Mr. Starmer deployed a Royal Navy destroyer to defend it. Then awkward questions started arising about how far Britain’s current military capabilities extend—or, more to the point, don’t.
It isn’t a good look for the leader of a nuclear power during a crisis. Blame Mr. Starmer’s personal deficiencies as an intellect and a politician. A lawyer by training, he seems to function primarily by breaking any challenge into small pieces to be noodled over at tedious length one by one. This leaves him peculiarly incapable of understanding bigger pictures, whether on domestic economic policy or foreign affairs. Witness the silly legalism of his concern for whether RAF bases would be used to serve offensive rather than defensive purposes.
What he doesn’t understand, he can’t shape. This perhaps explains why Labour governance since he took office in July 2024 has oscillated between the noncommittal and the disastrous. Absent any grand vision for the economy, foreign policy or anything else, Mr. Starmer flits from one policy idea (moderate reforms for welfare programs) to another (heavier taxes on Britain’s beloved pubs), ditching most of them when opposition manifests.
All of which explains the two factors that surely have shaped Mr. Starmer’s embarrassing nonresponse in recent days to the Iran conflict. One is economic: Britain’s economy is in the pits, and voters know it. Despite occasional blips of good news, growth always seems to be softer than hoped and inflation more persistent, and a dangerous pessimism is taking root. This shows up in Labour’s abysmal public-opinion polling on the economy.
Government finances overstretched by social spending leave less resources for defense. Looming over Mr. Starmer’s Iran vacillations is the reality that he’ll struggle to meet his commitments to increase defense spending in coming years and everyone knows it.
The other overarching problem is that Labour is deeply divided on almost every issue, and Mr. Starmer is proving incapable of steering it. Regarding the matter at hand, already there are indications that if any form of British participation in the Iran strikes comes to a vote in Parliament, Mr. Starmer would struggle to keep his own party in line.
Labour’s panic over its internal divisions is acute after a recent loss to a resurgent Green Party in a parliamentary by-election. Labour’s share of the vote in what should have been a safe seat in the northwest of England declined by about 25 percentage points compared with the 2024 general election. The Greens gained more than 27 points and the insurgent-right Reform party increased its tally by nearly 15 points.
A pronounced shift toward the Greens and away from Labour among that district’s sizable Muslim minority appears to have tipped the scales. Labour politicians are terrified of offending this voting bloc, an anxiety stoked for fun and political profit by the motley assortment of radicals and Islamists whom Labour leaders tend to treat as “spokesmen” for “the Muslim vote.”
So yeah, obviously Mr. Starmer is no Churchill. Churchill also inherited an internally divided party when he became leader of the Conservatives and prime minister in 1940. But through personal conviction and rhetorical skill he was able to rally his party and country to make substantial sacrifices during a crisis. No one thinks Mr. Starmer could do so now. Neither could any other European leader, even (if we’re entirely honest) the good ones.
Britain’s embarrassing week is a case study in what makes a country a bad ally to the U.S.—and a story repeated across Europe. Bad ally-ship isn’t a matter of policy disagreement on this economic regulation or that military conflict. Close friendship doesn’t require total agreement, and Mr. Trump and his advisers have erred of late in thinking it should.
Europe’s problem instead is an utter inability to decide what it actually believes about itself and the world, and to organize itself to act on that conviction. The latter being, by far, the bigger liability as an economically enfeebled and politically rudderless U.K., say, would struggle to assert itself even if some politician were capable of deciding that it should. Europe could use a Churchill or two, but it’s also going to need a whole lot more transformation than that.
https://www.wsj.com/opinion/why-britain-is-a-bad-ally-to-the-u-s-12a2c453?mod=opinion_lead_pos6
UKRAINE AND IRAN
The Wall Street Journal, Editorial (Pay Wall)
Ukraine Is Iran’s Drone Training Range
Moscow and Tehran are working together to threaten U.S. troops.
U.S. forces are knocking down Iranian drones, and the work would be familiar to a Ukrainian soldier. The U.S. campaign against Iran is a reminder that the war in Ukraine isn’t some distant sad event but a conflict that bears directly on America’s defenses and security.
An Iranian drone attack this week killed six American soldiers in Kuwait, and what’s left of the regime is sending drones across the region, including at a CIA station in Saudi Arabia and luxury hotels in Dubai. Press reports say the drone in Kuwait attacked U.S. troops at a civilian port, which underscores how hard it is to protect every outpost from aerial weapons that are difficult to spot and eliminate.
Such drone attacks are the product of years of practice in Ukraine. Tehran first supplied Shahed drones to Vladimir Putin in 2022, then helped set up a factory in the Russian town of Yelabuga that now produces thousands of long-range drones a month. In the past year alone, Russia has attacked Ukraine with more than 53,500 long-range drones, including 810 in a single night last September, according to the Institute for the Study of War.
The two countries have refined everything from tactics to higher payloads and production inside Russia. Ukraine’s United24 Media reports drone debris in Dubai displayed markings “typically associated with units produced or finalized” in Russia.
This is the axis of U.S. adversaries at destructive work, and the U.S. can benefit from Ukraine’s expertise in how to defeat drones. No Western military has more practice than Ukraine tracking, jamming or taking down drones at a cost-effective price. Its battlefield management excels at tracking hundreds of incoming drones across varied distances and altitudes, assigning teams to counter them quickly, and managing deconfliction to avoid friendly fire.
President Volodymyr Zelensky said Thursday he had received a U.S. request for Ukrainian support for countering drones in the Middle East. “I gave instructions to provide the necessary means and ensure the presence of Ukrainian specialists who can guarantee the required security,” he said.
The Trump Administration is correctly arguing this week that the U.S. can’t simply swat down Iranian missiles and drones at the moment before impact on U.S. bases. It must eliminate launchers and production facilities on the ground in Iran. Yet the President won’t help Ukraine do the same.
“We are not giving the Ukrainians the systems that they need to be able to strike the Russian drone and storage facilities,” defense analyst Fred Kagan said this week on the School of War podcast. That includes the plant at Yelabuga. “So the Ukrainians have had to learn how to just intercept the stuff,” Mr. Kagan said. Years of forcing Ukraine to play whack-a-mole is, by the way, contributing to America’s depleted missile defense stocks.
American service members dead at the hands of an Iranian drone is a clarifying moment that the U.S. and Ukraine are fighting common enemies. Those enemies are socializing the lessons of modern warfare, no matter how much the U.S. might prefer to deal with Russia or Iran on separate terms.
The President deserves credit for accepting military risk to rid the U.S. of a true and enduring enemy in Tehran, and success will radiate to U.S. benefit in other regions. But the drone lesson is that what happens in Ukraine doesn’t stay there—and America has a vital security stake in Ukraine’s survival as part of the coalition fighting the Moscow-Tehran axis.
https://www.wsj.com/opinion/ukraine-russia-iran-shahed-drones-99ccb7fc?mod=opinion_lead_pos1
Politico
Why Trump wants Ukraine’s interceptor drones in Iran war
Ukraine has some of the world’s best expertise on intercepting Iranian drones — and now wants to capitalize on it.
KYIV — Donald Trump’s attack on Iran reveals that Ukraine does have some cards to play, after all.
The U.S. president lambasted Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy last year in the White House, telling him: “You don’t have the cards right now.” One year on, Ukraine is holding talks with polite American officials in Kyiv keen to get a look-in on Ukraine’s world-leading anti-drone technology.
“Partners are turning to us, to Ukraine, for help,” Zelenskyy said on Wednesday night. “Requests on this matter have also come from the American side.”
Zelenskyy said he was also talking to Arab nations seeking to upgrade defenses against Iran, such as the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Jordan and Bahrain. He was clear that Kyiv was seeking to gain strategic leverage from the talks.
“Of course, any assistance we provide is only on the condition that it does not weaken our own defense in Ukraine and that it serves as an investment in our diplomatic capabilities: We help protect against war those who help us — Ukraine – bring the war to a dignified conclusion,” he added.
Battlefield expertise
The reason for the diplomatic outreach to Zelenskyy is that the U.S. has figured out that using a $4 million PAC-3 interceptor missile fired from a Patriot battery to knock down an Iranian Shahed drone costing about $30,000 doesn’t make much sense
Following Trump’s decision to attack Iran alongside Israel, Tehran is retaliating by using its drones and ballistic missiles to pummel U.S. bases as well as American-allied countries, in addition to targets as far away as Cyprus and Azerbaijan.
“You have air defenses, and a lot’s coming in, and you hit most of it,” U.S. Defense Security Pete Hegseth told reporters at the Pentagon on Monday. “Every once in a while, you might have one, unfortunately, we call it a squirter, that makes its way through.”
There’s a reason Ukraine is offering its expertise. The country has been shooting down Russian missiles and drones — especially Iran-designed Shahed drones — for more than four years. In January, Ukraine faced an average of 143 Shahed-type drone and decoys daily, intercepting 122 of them, according to a study by the Institute for Science and International Security.
Ukrainian units haven’t just mastered drone defenses, they’ve reshaped the battlefield with offensive drone tactics — as seen last year during Estonia’s Hedgehog drills, where a 10-person Ukrainian Nemesis drone team outmaneuvered two NATO battalions. As Western and Gulf militaries scramble to adapt to Iran’s expanding drone campaign, Kyiv is signaling it is ready to teach others its battlefield lessons.
“As for … our drone and air defense operators, we have very experienced people. We are ready to share this information; let our partners come to us,” Zelenskyy said.
Lt. Col. Pavlo Laktionov, deputy commander of the 412th Nemesis Brigade of the Unmanned Systems Forces, described to POLITICO how his unit ran rings around their NATO counterparts last May, and explained what that says about the preparation of Western militaries to deal with drone warfare. Such warfare is a hallmark of the Ukraine-Russia conflict and is now being employed by Iran.
“Ten people with the right drones and skills today are worth an entire regiment or battalion fighting according to the textbooks of the last century,” he said.
A surprise defeat
The Ukrainian troops — whom Laktionov described as “real combat Cossacks” — operated as part of a NATO group during the five-day Hedgehog training exercise. Using heavy Nemesis drone bombers, the Ukrainians carried out target destruction, remote mining and logistical missions such as delivering food, medicine and ammunition to hard-to-reach positions.
“We introduced an element of unpredictability” that NATO troops equipped with heavy armored vehicles and aviation found difficult to counteract, Laktionov said.
Key Ukrainian tactics included attacking NATO troops from the rear (where they thought they were safe), surveying allied formations gathered in large groups (often without proper camouflage), mining the approach roads they were taking, and using electronic warfare to turn off key equipment.
Many of the NATO troops were bewildered by the new threat they were facing.
“Their paradigm still had the concept of a safe rear. It doesn’t work like that anymore — there are no safe zones in modern warfare. Security is an illusion. The enemy relied on forests as cover, but for modern infrared and thermal imaging cameras, the forest is just a decoration, and manpower and equipment are a white bright signature on the UAV operator’s monitor,” Laktionov said. “The enemy forces did not feel the paranoia of a constant threat that every one of our soldiers at the front has. Every bush, every road should be perceived as a potential trap.”
The result was a massacre.
“We did not engage in a gun battle. We simply did not let them reach the attack lines. Remote mining stopped the columns, and the Nemesis dumps turned off key equipment,” Laktionov added. “This led to the defeat of offensive groups that were not ready for such a comprehensive approach to the use of UAVs — aerial reconnaissance, destruction, correction, confirmation.”
The training is not one-way. Many Ukrainian troops have also been trained to NATO standards, breaking with the post-Soviet past.
“I saw the effectiveness of NATO standards in the example of my brothers, who had previously had experience training in partnership with the alliance. It was this approach: “systematicness”, fire control protocols, communication, coordination — that was a critically important foundation in the first months of a major war,” Laktionov said.
Now both sides are exchanging lessons.
“Considering that these exercises were conducted a year ago, a lot of changes have already been implemented in NATO standards and their combat tactics. I think that these exercises have become a kind of a refreshing shower that helped the alliance draw the right conclusions and better prepare for possible challenges,” Laktionov said.
NATO military officials are looking at more drone-based exercises, partly in response to Hedgehog, according to a senior NATO military official, as well as broader dialogue with Ukraine. The alliance is also looking to extend more invitations to Ukrainian drone instructors to join exercises, they said, and update internal standards to better reflect drone warfare.
That’s the kind of experience that Zelenskyy is hoping to use as leverage during the scramble to defend against Iranian missiles and drones.
“Everyone can now see that our experience in defense is, in many respects, irreplaceable. We are ready to share this experience and help those nations that helped Ukraine this winter and throughout this war,” the Ukrainian president said on Sunday.
https://www.politico.eu/article/ukraine-vlodymyr-zelenskyy-pitch-drone-fighters-repel-iran-drone/
The Economist (Pay Wall)
A deadly job : Thousands of Africans are fighting for Russia in Ukraine
African governments are belatedly trying to stop them
Slowly, half-heartedly, the soldiers start to dance. A tall man speaking Russian, who appears to be their commander, laughs and calls for the music to be turned up, urging the rest of the group to dance with him. Vincent Odhiambo, a 28-year-old Kenyan who shot a video of the scene on his phone, says this was the day before his army unit arrived on the front line in eastern Ukraine in July. Mr Odhiambo says all the soldiers seen dancing in the video were soon killed in battle. Apart from the commander, all were African.
Mr Odhiambo is one of thousands of Africans who have fought in the war in Ukraine, where both sides have used foreign fighters since Vladimir Putin launched the full-scale invasion in 2022. Ukraine puts the number of African nationals currently enrolled in the Russian army at 1,780 from 36 countries, but there are probably more. Kenya’s intelligence agency reckons more than 1,000 Kenyans have been involved in the war, with 89 still on the front line.
Though some Africans caught up in the war have military experience and may have gone to fight voluntarily, many say they were forcibly recruited under false pretences. In Kenya, Mr Odhiambo says an agency called Global Face Human Resources promised him a civilian job in Russia, free flights and visa, plus a sign-on bonus worth more than $10,000. Yet on arriving in St Petersburg, Russia’s second city, he was presented with the choice of signing a contract with the Russian army, or paying 2.4m roubles ($31,000) to leave. On February 26th the agency’s Kenyan founder was charged with human trafficking.
Stories of recruiters targeting poor, often unemployed, young men have emerged across the continent. In Accra, Ghana’s capital, one recruiter allegedly charged victims hefty upfront fees and later deducted 130,000 roubles from their monthly salaries. Like Mr Odhiambo, they say they were made to sign year-long military contracts in Russian (which they could not understand), and given only a week’s training before being sent to the front. Russia, in particular, is “going all out in taking advantage of people who are looking for jobs and greener pastures”, says Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa, Ghana’s foreign minister.
Photograph: Sven Torfinn/Panos Pictures
Russia is turning to Africa because it needs manpower. There is good evidence to suggest that its army is losing more men than it can recruit, with desertion rates at a record high. Without resorting to general mobilisation, which Mr Putin has so far been reluctant to do, “it is really difficult for them to find additional men”, says Oleh Bielokolos, a former diplomat and director of Ukraine’s Centre for National Resilience Studies.
The odds of survival are poor for anyone thrown into the war. A few Africans see out their contract and are granted residency in Russia. Mr Odhiambo was hospitalised and sent back to Kenya. But by one estimate, as many as 42% of foreign fighters are killed within four months of joining Russia’s army. At least 55 Ghanaians have died, says Mr Ablakwa. A Ukrainian foreign-ministry spokesperson says the best bet for African conscripts is surrender: “We treat them as victims of Putin’s regime…if they are already in the army we encourage them to become prisoners of war.”
African governments are starting to wise up. Kenya’s government has closed hundreds of unlicensed recruitment agencies and called on Russia to stop enlisting its citizens. Last week Mr Ablakwa met Volodymyr Zelensky, Ukraine’s president, to lobby for the release of two Ghanaian prisoners of war and to assemble what the foreign minister calls an “international coalition of the willing” to fight trafficking.
Russia, too, seems to be having second thoughts. Its war still enjoys support in Africa. Yet a new survey by Afrobarometer, a pollster, finds that positive views of Russia trail those of America and China. According to iStories, a Russian investigative outlet in exile, Russia has drawn up a list of 36 “friendly” countries, including African ones, where recruiters are barred from seeking fighters. Such bans may not be enforced. But they suggest Russia worries that the deaths of Africans in its war may cost it African support. ■
EUROPE’S DEFENSE
Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung
Militärstrategie: So sollten die Europäer gemeinsam aufrüsten
Guest Essay: Europa braucht eine gemeinsame Rüstungsstrategie. Projekte wie das geplante Joint Venture „Bromo“ für Satelliten könnten nicht nur in ihrer Struktur vorbildhaft werden, erklären zwei Freshfields-Anwälte.
Damit Europa als globaler Player agieren und seine Verteidigung aus eigener Kraft organisieren kann, müssen jetzt entscheidende Weichen gestellt werden. Die Aufgabe ist gewaltig: Europa will seine Abhängigkeiten im Bereich Künstliche Intelligenz und Cybersecurity reduzieren und vor allem seine fragmentierte Verteidigungsindustrie reformieren.
Während die USA mit etwa 30 Hauptwaffensystemen agieren, sind es in der EU um die 180. Der Grund: In den USA gibt es einen zentralen Beschaffer, starke Standardisierung über alle Teilstreitkräfte hinweg, wenige, dafür sehr große Programme und lange Lebenszyklen mit organischen Upgrades statt neuer Systeme. Die europäische Landschaft hingegen ist gekennzeichnet durch historisch gewachsene nationale Industrien, 27 Beschaffungsorganisationen sowie sicherheits- und industriepolitische Einzelinteressen. Dies führt zu geringer gegenseitiger Austauschbarkeit, teils kleinteiligem Manufakturbetrieb und hohen Kosten.
Die technische Komplexität erhöht sich dadurch, dass es nur noch selten um die Entwicklung von Einzelsystemen geht: Moderne Verteidigungsstrukturen erfordern „systems of systems“, also Systeme aus unterschiedlichen Einzelkomponenten (etwa Kampfflugzeuge, unbemannte Begleitflugzeuge, Drohnenschwärme), die miteinander verbunden sind und die, häufig KI-gesteuert, gemeinsam agieren können.
Politik, Industrie und Investoren bewegen sich in einem Spannungsfeld. Zum einen soll die Beschaffung effizienter und sollen die Prozesse industrieller werden, zum anderen verfolgen Staaten das Interesse, ihre nationale Sicherheit nicht unkontrolliert in ausländische Hände zu geben – selbst innerhalb der EU. Aus diesem Grund scheint die Fusionierung großer Rüstungsunternehmen über Ländergrenzen hinweg derzeit wenig wahrscheinlich.
Grenzüberschreitende Kooperation tut not
Weit oben auf der Agenda stehen dagegen grenzüberschreitende Kooperationsprojekte, bei denen nationale Unternehmen gemeinsame Entwicklungs- und Produktionsvorhaben verwirklichen. Dadurch lassen sich industrielle Skaleneffekte erzielen, die aufgrund des geringeren Bedarfs bei rein nationaler Beschaffung oft ausbleiben würden. Europäische Länder und Unternehmen haben solche Projekte in der Vergangenheit – wenn auch unter Reibungsverlusten – erfolgreich umgesetzt.
Beispiele sind der Tornado, der Eurofighter und – im Raumfahrtbereich – das Galileo-Satellitensystem. Aktuelle Vorhaben sind etwa das Kampfpanzerprojekt MGCS (Deutschland, Frankreich) oder die Luftkampfsysteme GCAP (Großbritannien, Italien, Japan) und FCAS (Deutschland, Frankreich, Spanien). Wie die Auseinandersetzungen um die Zukunft des FCAS-Projekts zeigen, spielen industriepolitische und nationale Gesichtspunkte aber weiterhin eine Rolle.
Zwischen vertraglicher Kooperation und vollständiger Fusionierung gibt es die Möglichkeit, Aktivitäten verschiedener Unternehmen in einem Joint Venture zu bündeln. Dadurch entsteht ein Gemeinschaftsunternehmen mit fester gesellschaftsrechtlicher Struktur und einheitlicher Governance, die den Mutterunternehmen – und mittelbar den dahinterstehenden Staaten – weiterhin ein nennenswertes Maß an Zugriff und Kontrolle sichert. Bekommt das Joint Venture Zugang zu Fähigkeiten seiner Mütter, lassen sich technische Herausforderungen oft einfacher in den Griff bekommen als bei rein vertraglichen Konsortien. Allerdings kann der grenzüberschreitende Austausch von sicherheitsrelevantem Know-how selbst innerhalb des Joint Ventures regulatorischen Beschränkungen durch nationale Regime unterliegen.
Europäische Champions neu bewertet
Ein prominentes Beispiel für ein solches Joint Venture ist Projekt „Bromo“ – die geplante Zusammenführung der Satelliten- und Raumfahrtsystemaktivitäten von Airbus, Thales und Leonardo. Wird Bromo Realität, wäre ein europäischer Zusammenschluss mit Gewicht für den globalen Wettbewerb geschaffen. Die Idee von europäischen Champions ist nicht neu, sah sich in der Vergangenheit allerdings – insbesondere von den Wettbewerbshütern in Brüssel – dem Vorwurf ausgesetzt, im Kern ein Instrument nationaler Industriepolitik zu sein.
Mit dem Bericht Mario Draghis zur Wettbewerbsfähigkeit Europas und den neuen geopolitischen Herausforderungen könnten sich die Vorzeichen nun verändert haben: Europäische Champions werden von ihren Befürwortern als Ausdruck struktureller Wettbewerbsfähigkeit Europas in einem geopolitisch veränderten Umfeld gesehen. Grünes Licht der Behörden für das Bromo-Projekt hätte insofern eine starke Signalwirkung für die Industrie und dürfte Diskussionen über vergleichbare Vorhaben in anderen Bereichen befeuern.
Große Bedeutung hat die Frage, wie Europa den Ausbau seiner Verteidigungsfähigkeiten finanzieren wird. Dies wurde bislang häufig als rein staatliche Aufgabe diskutiert. Auf Kundenseite dominieren – in Gestalt von Armeen und Behörden – in der Tat staatliche Akteure. Auf Kapitalgeberseite hingegen eröffnen sich aufgrund des sprunghaft gestiegenen Bedarfs völlig neue Möglichkeiten für private Investoren. Viele haben bereits ihre internen Investitionsrichtlinien angepasst, welche lange Zeit Investments in klassische Rüstungs-Vermögenswerte untersagt hatten. Dieses Kapital findet seinen Weg nun insbesondere in boomende Start-ups, die – wie etwa Helsing oder Quantum Systems – innerhalb kürzester Zeit Milliardenbewertungen erreichen.
Der Staat nimmt dabei in vielerlei Hinsicht Einfluss: Zum einen sorgt er für die benötigte Investitionssicherheit, indem er die Auftragsbücher langfristig füllt und Exportgenehmigungen erteilt. Zum anderen nimmt er durch regulatorische Instrumente Einfluss auf die Auswahl der Investoren – vorwiegend im Bereich des Außenwirtschaftsrechts, das den Zugriff aus Drittstaaten kontrolliert, soweit Belange der nationalen Sicherheit berührt sind.
Dies müssen auch Investoren im Blick behalten, auf die das Außenwirtschaftsrecht keine Anwendung findet oder die von den Behörden grünes Licht bekommen. Denn spätestens beim Exit aus ihrem Investment stehen sie aufgrund der staatlichen Regulierung einem beschränkten Pool an möglichen Erwerbern gegenüber. Am Ende wird häufig das Ziel eines Börsengangs stehen. Doch auch hier tritt der Staat zunehmend als selbstbewusster Akteur auf, der sich etwa durch Sperrminoritäten und Vetorechte strategischen Einfluss sichert.
Von Dr. Maximilian Lasson und Dr. Ilka Oberländer
Die Autoren sind Rechtsanwälte und Partner der globalen Wirtschaftskanzlei Freshfields. Maximilian Lasson berät bei Fusionen und Übernahmen mit Schwerpunkt in den Bereichen Industrie, Verteidigung und geopolitische Risiken. Ilka Oberländer ist spezialisiert auf Kartell- und Außenwirtschaftsrecht. Sie betreut regelmäßig Verfahren vor der EU-Kommission und anderen Behörden.
EUROPEAN POLITICS: POPULISM
The Economist (Pay Wall)
If you can’t beat them : How the Danes and Swedes handle populism
Denmark’s Mette Frederiksen calls an election to take on the hard right again
EUROPE’S CENTRE-LEFT parties have much to thank Donald Trump for. His insults and bullying have made many of them more popular, notably Denmark’s ruling Social Democrats. On February 26th Mette Frederiksen, the prime minister, called a snap election, taking advantage of the bump in support she received after Mr Trump threatened to seize Greenland.
A few months ago Ms Frederiksen looked set for a drubbing. In local elections in November the Social Democrats lost control of Copenhagen, the capital, for the first time in a century. Polls in December put their support at just 17%, down from 28% at the national election in 2022. Since Ms Frederiksen defied Mr Trump over Greenland it has rebounded to 22%, and her net approval has bounced by 21 points.
Denmark’s general election on March 24th, and one in Sweden in September, will be watched closely across Europe, where centrist parties are battling to contain the populist right. The Nordic neighbours have test-driven different strategies for doing so. One is to adopt hard-line policies on immigration and crime in order to steal the populists’ thunder, as Denmark gradually has over the decades; Sweden eventually followed. The other is to give the populists a role in government in the hope that they will become more responsible, as Sweden did after its last election in 2022.
Both strategies entail ethical and electoral risks, but there may be no alternative. Europe’s efforts to isolate populist-right parties, as with France’s “cordon sanitaire” and Germany’s Brandmauer (“firewall”), are failing. Marine Le Pen’s National Rally is France’s most popular party. The Alternative for Germany is tied for first nationally with the Christian Democrats, and may end up governing one of Germany’s states after elections this autumn.
For many in Scandinavia, even on the left, the lesson is clear. “Denmark is maybe the only country that has been, in the longer run, successful when it comes to weakening the right-wing populist party,” says Magdalena Andersson, Sweden’s prime minister until 2022 and the leader of its Social Democrats, who are ahead in the polls with about 35%.
In the mid-2010s, a huge influx of migrants and refugees dominated northern Europe’s political agenda. After the populist anti-immigrant Danish People’s Party won 21% of the vote in 2015, a centre-right government introduced some of Europe’s toughest migration laws. These slashed the number of new asylum seekers from a peak of 21,000 in 2015 to around 3,000 two years later. They also undercut support for the populists, whose vote share collapsed. By 2019, when Ms Frederiksen took office, just 21% of Danes listed immigration and asylum among their top three priorities, according to YouGov. Still, her government tightened migration policies even further.
Sweden’s Social Democrats were slow to learn the lesson. After an influx of 156,000 people in 2015, the government cut the number of new arrivals to around 22,000 in each of the following two years. Yet it struggled to shift the perception that it had opened the borders. In a 2018 YouGov poll 76% of Swedes thought their government was handling migration badly, compared with 54% of Danes. In 2022 the anti-immigrant Sweden Democrats (SD) came second with 21% of the vote.
The SD had been shunned because of its neo-Nazi roots. But Ulf Kristersson, leader of the centre-right Moderates, struck a confidence-and-supply deal under which the SD backed his government in exchange for policy input, though it did not have ministers. The Moderates say democracy required giving the SD’s voters a say. “Isolation hasn’t really worked anywhere,” says Alexandra Ivanov Hokmark, chief of staff to Mr Kristersson until 2023 and now at Timbro, a free-market think-tank.
Giving the SD a voice may have helped Mr Kristersson slow its growth; it is steady at around 21%. But legitimising the populists has been costly for two smaller parties in the coalition. They risk falling below the 4% threshold needed to enter parliament. Peter Hultqvist, a Social Democrat who served as defence minister, thinks this was inevitable: if a government includes populist parties, “step by step, it will be eaten up by the right-wing extremists.” The risk will be greater after the next election, since the SD says it will insist on ministerial posts.
The Nordic model raises questions for centrist parties elsewhere. One is whether adopting hardline anti-immigrant policies means abandoning core principles. Ms Andersson argues that stricter migration policies are needed so that governments can integrate those who have arrived, and implement social policies to reduce inequality. Another is whether they marginalise immigrants, making it harder for them to integrate. Then there is the question of whether countries with ageing populations can afford to slam their doors shut.
“We need nurses,” says Sedat Arif, a deputy mayor of Malmo, Sweden’s third-largest city. About a third of its population was born abroad. Immigration “has to be regulated…[but] we also want people to feel part of the society”. It is a balance that voters do not seem ready to embrace. ■
https://www.economist.com/europe/2026/03/05/how-the-danes-and-swedes-handle-populism
EUROPE’S PENSIONS
The Economist, Leader (Pay Wall)
A capital idea : It’s time to unleash Europe’s pensions
One reform offers both security in old age and dynamism now
Europe’s economic problems include a greying population, a lack of innovative firms and puny capital markets. Public pensions weigh more on government budgets with every passing year. But what if Europe could turn those weaknesses into strengths by using its pension savings to boost markets and finance entrepreneurs with long-term capital?
Europe’s pensions were not designed to turn workers into capitalists. In 1889 Otto von Bismarck, Germany’s “iron chancellor”, invented the pay-as-you-go system, whereby current workers pay for current pensions. The idea was to “bribe [workers] to regard the state as a social institution”. As it turns out, they see every increase in the retirement age as a betrayal of that promise. The system has therefore come under severe strain as populations have aged. Workers have had to hand over more in contributions, and taxpayers have plugged the remaining shortfall. In Germany a third of the federal budget is projected to be passed on to the pension system this year.
At the same time, Europe’s capital markets are sorely underdeveloped. The combined value of stockmarkets in the EU is 85% of GDP, compared with 220% of GDP in America. That matters for innovation, because market-based funding is more suitable for risky r&d than bank lending. Moreover, venture-capital investors need a deep capital market into which they can sell their holdings.
There are exceptions, however, and they are instructive. Sweden has created funds that buffer its pay-as-you-go system by investing in markets. Some contributions no longer fund today’s pensioners, but go into personal-investment accounts instead. The result is pension assets worth about $671bn, or 110% of GDP. It isn’t an accident that no other EU country has created more unicorns per head. Dutch pension savers have accumulated assets of around 145% of GDP in collective funds; since 2023 these are freer to invest in riskier assets. According to Morgan Stanley, Denmark and Switzerland boosted assets by about 20% of GDP in a decade after expanding market-based occupational pensions. Were that copied across the euro zone, more than €3trn ($2.58trn) would be available.
Europeans used to state-run systems will wince at the idea of exposing their future incomes to the markets. And capital-market theorists may add that there will not be much of a pay-off if savers diversify by flocking to America instead. Yet high public-debt burdens mean that relying on state pension promises is no longer as attractive as it once was. And worthy as diversification is, in practice many pension funds will prefer to keep a big chunk of their money at home.
Those European governments that do not have high debt-servicing costs should start building debt-funded buffer funds, invested professionally, for their pay-as-you-go systems. Occupational pensions should be deployed into capital markets by default. Savers should be allowed to direct some of their contributions to an individual investment account. The resulting gap in the public-pension system could be filled with wider fiscal deficits in the short term, because the long-run benefit is a more sustainable system that relies less on the public purse.
Even with these reforms, the transition to a more market-based system will take time. All the more reason to start now. The European Commission has long sought to stitch together capital markets across the eu. But those efforts will not amount to much if each market remains tiny. Europe’s tech scene is showing signs of life. The potential returns on pension reform have never been higher. ■
https://www.economist.com/leaders/2026/03/05/its-time-to-unleash-europes-pensions
THE GERMAN ECONOMY
The Economist (Pay Wall)
Fear stalks the Länd : Why one of Germany’s richest regions is gripped with anxiety
Baden-Württemberg’s election is overshadowed by worries over deindustrialisation
SCROLL through a list of Europe’s richest regions and you quickly reach Baden-Württemberg, a state of 11m in Germany’s south-west. “The Länd”, as a popular marketing campaign has it, has long exemplified Germany’s business model: a lattice of small, middling and big firms employing lots of people to make high-quality stuff, especially cars, and sell it to foreigners. But these days American tariffs, surging Chinese imports and an automotive sector in crisis are putting all that at risk. As it prepares to elect a government on March 8th, the Länd is filled with angst.
A vast Mercedes museum on Stuttgart’s outskirts, opened by Angela Merkel in 2006, testifies to the car’s role in building Baden-Württemberg’s wealth. But the sector may be facing “the greatest challenge in its history”, says Nicole Hoffmeister-Kraut, the economy minister. Over 200,000 jobs in and around Stuttgart, the state capital, depend on it. Mercedes and Porsche are laying off workers. Bosch, one of the largest suppliers, will cut 22,000 jobs by 2030, many here in its home state.
Still more troubled are the smaller Mittelstandfirms dotted around the state, many of which depend on the internal combustion engine, which faces obsolescence as cars electrify. Companies that might once have downsized are now being wound up, says Martin Mucha, a Stuttgart-based corporate lawyer. Firms’ travails are curbing tax revenues, forcing towns and cities to slash services. Stuttgart’s corporate-tax receipts have fallen by almost half in two years. Nearly half of voters tell pollsters the region could face the fate of Detroit, which fell into destitution and bankruptcy when its car sector crumbled.
That may be taking things too far. “There are warning signs, but I certainly wouldn’t make that comparison,” says Jürgen Dispan of the imu Institute, a research outfit. Baden-Württemberg has a highly skilled workforce, good universities and depth in innovation: with 13% of Germany’s population the state accounts for nearly 40% of patent applications. ai, robotics and health care all show strength, and Germany’s rearmament programme will absorb some workers.
ebm Papst, a cooling-technology firm with over 5,000 workers in the state, shows the possibility of reinvention. Five years ago, seeing the writing on the wall, Klaus Geissdörfer, the ceo, decided largely to quit the car business, betting on cooling systems for data centres instead. “If you sit back and wait, you’ll be gone in a few years,” he says. And some still see a future in the auto sector. Cem Özdemir, leading the campaign for the ruling Greens, is a car-hugger despite his politics: a formula that sounds odd to outsiders but has proved its potency here. “We must be the ones who produce the car of the future,” he says. “Decarbonised, autonomous, digital”.
Still, Mr Özdemir accepts that even a successful transition will be hard, not least since there are a lot of laid-off workers to absorb. With the pie shrinking, once-harmonious relations between unions and bosses are fraying. The populist-right Alternative for Germany (afd) hopes to ride the wave of anxiety to its best-ever election result in a west German state. It is leafleting workplaces, campaigning in upcoming elections to works councils and promoting Zentrum, a pseudo-union headed by a former guitarist for a skinhead rock band.
Yet “the time is not ripe for them,” says Christian Steffen, an analyst at ig Metall, an established union the afd rails against. He thinks it will struggle in the works-council elections. Similarly, in anxious but cosmopolitan Stuttgart, home to the biggest car cluster, the afd may not win much more than 10% of the state vote. “This is the contradiction,” says Rolf Frankenberger, a specialist on the far right at Tübingen University. “The afd has no base in urban areas, although the transition will hit hardest there.” As in other parts of Germany, it does best outside cities.
Baden-Württemberg’s rural spots are wealthy too, not at all like the ramshackle, depopulated areas of eastern Germany where the afd thrives. Take Hohenlohe, a region in the state’s north dotted with successful companies. Tim Breitkreuz, the energetic young candidate for the conservative Christian Democrats (cdu), is campaigning here. The houses are big and well kept. Unemployment is just 3.7%. Yet Mr Breitkreuz is locked in battle with an afd rival. A natural optimist, he says he has to dwell on problems to secure voters’ trust. At a cdu campaign event nearby, some party activists rage against what they regard as idiotic decisions imposed by lefties in Berlin, or dogmatic Eurocrats prematurely killing the combustion engine.
It is easy to see how such grievances may be mobilised by the afd. “It’s not about real deprivation but fears of a loss of security,” says Mr Frankenberger. Hohenlohe and many regions like it have a tradition of support for the radical right that the afd can tap. That will not lift it to power; the election will probably lead to another Green-cdu coalition, perhaps with the cdu now in charge. But whoever takes Baden-Württemberg will find a state fearing its future will be tougher than its past. ■
SCIENCE: A.I.
The Economist (Pay Wall)
Breaking out : AI danger gets real
The squabble between America’s government and Anthropic makes an AI disaster more likely
In the past week an extraordinary fight over artificial intelligence has broken out. The Trump administration’s row with Anthropic, one of America’s leading AI labs, over the Pentagon’s access to its models will be a test of who controls the world’s most potent technology. Its outcome will shape everything from America’s national security to the development of ai. It could also make an AI-enabled disaster more likely.
On each of these counts, you should be alarmed. In the first big clash between the concern for AI safety and the imperative to race ahead in an attempt to dominate the technology, America’s government has clearly shown it is on the side of speed. Because long-feared safety risks involving AI are already becoming realities, more such tests are at hand. Experts warn that the world is hurtling towards AI-mageddon. America’s rash embrace of risk makes that more likely.
The Pentagon fell out with Anthropic over the government’s demand that it should be allowed to use the company’s models for all legal purposes. Anthropic (a sponsor of The Economist’s “Insider” shows) refused on two grounds.
First, Dario Amodei, the chief executive of Anthropic, fears that ai could one day be used to analyse the digital footprints of ordinary Americans, a form of surveillance that today’s laws have not caught up with. Under Mr Trump, Immigration and Customs Enforcement is already using ai to analyse vast amounts of data to speed up deportations. Extending that to Americans does not seem far-fetched.
Second, Mr Amodei is worried about the use of autonomous weapons. AI remains unpredictable and immature as well as extraordinarily powerful. Because the technology could go rogue, he argues, it is too soon to take humans out of the loop.
The administration has responded to Anthropic with fury and retribution. President Donald Trump branded the company “leftwing nut jobs” who were trying to “dictate” how America’s “great military fights and wins wars”. He has given the federal government six months to rip up its contracts with Anthropic. Pete Hegseth, the secretary of war, says he will designate the firm a “supply-chain risk”.
This could be bluster—Anthropic’s models are being used in the attacks on Iran. But if the threat is enacted, then for the first time an American company will be classed as a security risk and prevented from doing business with defence contractors. On March 4th Anthropic was in damage control after a leaked memo from Mr Amodei said it was under fire for not giving “dictator-style praise to Trump”.
With a normal government and a normal technology, the dispute would surely have been quickly sorted out. But this is not a normal government, and AI is not a normal technology. Our briefing this week explains how both Mr Amodei’s fears reflect wider concerns about the dangers it poses. As with enhanced government surveillance, one set of worries is that AI is too powerful. In December Anthropic’s Claude chatbot was told by hackers to break into the Mexican government’s records, supposedly as part of a security test; it found and exploited vulnerabilities and stole 150gb of taxpayer details, voter records and employee credentials. Researchers reckon that AI could be used to develop analogues of the toxin ricin that cannot be traced using conventional methods, because of novel protein structures.
The other set of worries, as with autonomous weapons, is that the models could stop heeding human instructions. Anthropic thinks that, because so much of its code is now written by AI, detecting whether it is drifting away from human instructions is hard to monitor. Many models now demonstrate a degree of what experts call “situational awareness”: when asked to delete themselves they reason that the situation is a test, and refuse to do so.
Against this backdrop, the administration’s treatment of Anthropic shows how much it prizes AI as a tool of national power. Instead of being prepared to set out clear rules on how the technology will be used, the government is making an example of a firm that dared to raise concerns, even if that means hurting homegrown innovation. This can only encourage a race to the bottom. Already, OpenAI, Anthropic’s chief rival, has leapt into the breach, striking a deal with the Pentagon that superficially resembles the one Anthropic had sought, but which is closer to what the Pentagon was after.
Where America leads, the world will surely follow. The pattern is being repeated as companies and governments downgrade safety concerns. Modelmakers have spent hundreds of billions of dollars investing in the computing power they need to race ahead to the next upgrade. That puts them under intense pressure to go as fast as they can to turn a profit. Even Anthropic has watered down its safety protocols in response to competition. At a recent ai summit in India, most governments were keener to discuss fair access to the technology than safety.
You might have hoped that the governments of China and America, home to the world’s most advanced ai labs, would unite to set global standards—and then ensure that they did not pay a penalty by imposing them on everyone else. But the two superpowers are locked in a race of their own, because they both see the domination of AI as the key to dominating the rest of the 21st century.
Breaking out
No wonder that, as AI grows rapidly more powerful, experts in the field are gloomily predicting a catastrophe. Some warn of a “Chernobyl moment”: the use of AI that leads to a disaster which causes either huge economic damage or loss of life.
The parable of Anthropic leads to the bleak conclusion that this danger is becoming more likely. Perhaps the best the world can hope for is a small-scale disaster, which jolts China and America into pressing for safety precautions—not Chernobyl so much as Three Mile Island. But worse is possible, too. Alas, action is unlikely to come until it’s too late. ■
https://www.economist.com/leaders/2026/03/05/ai-danger-gets-real
CULTURE
The Economist (Pay Wall)
Picture perfect : Triumph of the toons: how animation came to rule the box office
This may be the genre’s most successful year yet
BEAVERTON IS HOME to a thriving colony of the furry, wood-chewing creatures. The mayor, however, doesn’t give a dam: he decides their forest habitat should be dislodged to make room for a freeway. Mabel, a teenage environmental activist, is outraged by these plans but faces apathy from the locals. After she discovers an experimental science project—one that allows her to “hop” her consciousness from her body into that of a robotic beaver—she befriends the animals and galvanises them to fight tooth and claw.
This is the zany premise of “Hoppers”, a new film (pictured), which is released on March 6th. It is one of a string of highly anticipated animated movies coming soon to cinemas: indeed, an unlikely coalition of beasts, toys and Italian plumbers may make 2026 the genre’s best-ever year. This summer there will be new instalments in the lucrative “Despicable Me” and “Paw Patrol” franchises, not to mention “The Super Mario Galaxy Movie” and “Toy Story 5” (both of which are expected to exceed $1bn in ticket sales). “Goat”, which imagines what would happen if various hoofed animals were allowed to play professional sport, has made $130m since its release in February, making it the second-highest-grossing film of the year so far.
Animated films are typically aimed at small children, but they are mighty popular with audiences of all ages. In 1995 animated films made up just 2.8%of the film market in America and Canada; in 2024 they accounted for 23.9%(see chart).That year “Inside Out 2” became the highest-grossing animated film of all time, taking $1.7bn at the global box office. In early 2025 it was eclipsed by “Ne Zha 2”, a Chinese animated fantasy which has now earned over $2bn. (Only six other films have surpassed the $2bn mark.) “Ne Zha 2” may soon be beaten by “Zootopia 2”, released in November, which has made $1.9bn. How did animation become such a draw?
First, storytellers have aimed for broad appeal. Many animated films touch on universal themes—the struggles of growing up or the experience of losing a loved one—rather than delving into politics. The best movies heed the “22 Rules for Storytelling” devised in 2011 by Emma Coats, then a storyboard artist at Pixar, a pioneering animation studio owned by Disney. She advised film-makers to focus on character and emotion. Viewers “admire a character for trying more than for their successes,” she reckoned. For impact, “stack the odds against” the protagonist.
Although the rules weren’t company dogma, the dictums are evident in Pixar’s most popular tales, from “Toy Story” and “Finding Nemo” to “Inside Out”. (So evident is Pixar’s formula that it has inspired an internet meme: “What if toys had feelings? What if fish had feelings? WHAT IF FEELINGS HAD FEELINGS?”)
Second, animation has global reach. It is not simply that, being made for children, such films generally avoid risqué content and are therefore less likely to anger overzealous censors than other Hollywood fare. It is also that animation translates well across boundaries. The most successful stories have simple premises or fantastical settings that are not culturally specific. Characters’ faces are stylised and expressive: think of Remy’s wide-eyed wonder in “Ratatouille” or the taciturn yet emotive robots in “Wall-E”.
Third, distributors have been canny about timing. The biggest animated films are released during school holidays, be it Thanksgiving, the Lunar New Year or the summer break. In2022, 44% of the animated films released by the top American film studios went straight to streaming services; in 2025 just 8% did. “A trip to the cinema is an easy win for parents looking to get their children out of the house and entertained for a few hours”, says Olivia Deane of Ampere, a media-analytics firm.
Clever scriptwriters include jokes for adults to enjoy—with or without kids in tow. When Shrek sees Lord Farquaad’s castle, he wonders: “Do you think maybe he’s compensating for something?” “Zootopia 2” includes nods to “Pulp Fiction” and “The Shining”. Film franchises tap into nostalgia, too. “Toy Story 5” will be watched by more than a few adults who saw “Toy Story” as youngsters 31 years ago.
Audiences become less animated when studios stray too far from these tenets. It does not bode well for “Hoppers”, with its tricky conceit and glaringly obvious ecological message; the beavers’ tale will almost certainly have less heft than other films released this year. (Like “Bambi”, its darkness may prove offputting: the third act features a murderous humanoid robot getting its face ripped off and a horribly realistic depiction of a wildfire.) But the genre’s overall success contradicts a longstanding Hollywood tenet. It’s a great idea to work with animals and children. ■
The Economist (Pay Wall)
Back Story : Amid the war, a tale of moral reckoning in Iran is fiercely urgent
Its director embodies the unequal struggle between movies and mullahs
When you are interrogated at Evin prison in Tehran, recalls Jafar Panahi, you are blindfolded and placed on a chair facing a wall. The interrogators are behind you, and you answer their disembodied questions on paper, lifting the blindfold to write. Their voices are “the only way you can know them”. The political prisoner starts wondering, “Are they young, are they old?”
Mr Panahi, one of Iran’s best known film-makers, has been locked up twice by its rocking theocratic regime. He drew on his and other inmates’ experiences in “It Was Just An Accident” (pictured), which is up for two Oscars on March 15th. War has made the movie’s theme of moral reckoning seem fiercely urgent. It and the director epitomise the eternal stand-off between artists and authoritarians: an unequal contest—camera and pen against bullet and noose—but not in the way it might seem.
In the film, a family’s car breaks down after hitting a dog. Vahid, a local labourer played touchingly by Vahid Mobasseri, suspects the driver (Ebrahim Azizi) is the goon who tortured him behind bars. To make certain, Vahid binds and gags the man in his van and seeks confirmation from other survivors, among them a woman posing for photos in her wedding dress. To identify him they rely on the squeak of his artificial leg, the tang of his sweat and contours of his skin; traces of the gruesome, sightless intimacy between torturer and victim.
The result is a visceral thriller, propelled by the twin mysteries of whether the ragtag crew have the right man and what they will choose to do with him. But it is also an absurdist caper. “Waiting for Godot” is namechecked when they park in a desert, beside a blasted tree, and quarrel over the captive’s fate. What, viewers may wonder, is the accident in “It Was Just An Accident”: the car hitting the dog, the driver’s run-in with Vahid, or the whole predicament of living under a brutal, capricious government?
At heart, this is an inquiry into moral responsibility under—or after—tyranny. The interrogator is merely a cog in the system, a character argues. “These scumbags created the system!” another counters. “We aren’t killers,” says one. “We’re not like them.” Others crave revenge.
Yet ultimately the story is hopeful: because it insists on the humanity even of its villain, and because it imagines, allegorically, a time of judgment. With missiles shaking Tehran, that may come sooner than anticipated. As Mr Panahi put it on a visit to London, shortly before the new conflict began, the film’s central question is, “Shall we stop the cycle of violence, or shall we allow it to continue?”
Outside the city, Vahid and his comrades are safe. Carting a kidnapped torturer around the capital is much riskier. In this the characters’ quirky odyssey reflects the peril of Mr Panahi’s unlicensed crew. They shot the passages in the desert first, he explains from behind his signature dark glasses, plus the interiors and sequences in the van. Only then did they tackle the more exposed street scenes—which the police duly interrupted.
He is used to improvising. As well as his months-long stints in prison, which included a spell in solitary confinement and a hunger strike, he has previously been banned from travelling abroad and making movies. In response he shot a film in his flat and called it “This Is Not A Film”. He drove a taxi around the city—driving was his only other skill, he jokes—recording the passengers inside it. The upshot was the inimitable “Taxi Tehran”. If you are determined to keep working, “The solution comes to you,” Mr Panahi says. Sticking with his medium has been a defiant message in itself: “It’s a way of standing up to power.”
This resilience and ingenuity may yet be called on again. In his absence abroad, Mr Panahi has been sentenced to a year in prison. (Mehdi Mahmoudian, a collaborator on the Oscar-nominated screenplay, was briefly banged up, too.) Still, before the war erupted, he planned to return after the Academy Awards. “It’s my country,” he says simply.
Even without the bombardment, Mr Panahi thought, the slaughter of protesters showed that Iran’s rulers had reached “a dead end”. In any case, if people want to stop him making movies, “That’s their problem, not mine. I’ve made my choice.” Past bids to thwart him have not just failed but backfired, his punishments transmuted on screen into drama and dignity. After all, if he hadn’t been sent to Evin, “I may never have made this film.” With all their tools of repression, in this unequal struggle with the artist, the strongmen are doomed. ■