Iran

Yesterday

Jordan McGillis

Are the chips down for AI thanks to Iran?

While Americans anxiously watch the price of gasoline tick higher as the war in the Middle East squeezes the global oil supply, the conflict has highlighted another energy vulnerability that could prove just as costly: Taiwan’s dependency on foreign natural gas. At first blush, energy issues an ocean away seem peripheral to American interests. They are anything but. Though the effect on the American economy won’t be immediate, energy insecurity in Taiwan is a looming disaster. The reason is that AI – in fact, virtually all modern computing – is highly reliant upon the steady production of semiconductors in the world’s only true hub, Taiwan. Due to the AI boom

Semiconductors

Friday

Freddy Gray

What Signalgate tells us about Iran

Remember Signalgate? It was quite the story, and worth revisiting now in light of Operation Epic Fury, the ongoing crisis in the Strait of Hormuz and its dire implications for the global economy.  In March last year, Donald Trump’s then National Security Advisor, Mike Waltz, somehow added Jeffrey Goldberg, the editor-in-chief of the Atlantic, to a Signal messaging group for senior government officials to discuss top secret military action against the Houthis in Yemen. The group included the Vice President J.D. Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles and deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller,

hegseth signalgate walt

Thursday

Christopher Rufo

The right’s Israel fracture

As the joint American-Israeli military campaign in Iran continues, President Trump’s coalition is starting to exhibit some cracks. The war in Iran has emerged as a proxy battle over a broader, long-simmering conflict within the right about Israel. And the fight over Israel is, in some important ways, a proxy battle about Jews in general. Big picture, what we’re seeing now is that the traditional divisions on the right between paleoconservatives and neoconservatives, between hawks and doves, are being reshaped into a battle over Israel specifically. It’s a very difficult subject; this issue has become highly emotional and personal for those on both sides, and even in my world, it’s

Wednesday

Freddy Gray

‘We don’t know what’s going on or why we’re doing this’: how Trump’s Iran gamble backfired

“Donald Trump is a complicated person with simple ideas,” said Kellyanne Conway, the former White House senior counselor. “Way too many politicians are the exact opposite.” It’s a good way of understanding the 45th and 47th President and his extraordinary success. His turbulent personality causes mayhem, yet his political aims have remained constant, straightforward and popular. Decades ago, as a New York tycoon with a keen eye on international affairs, he identified three priorities for America: tackle the nation’s trade imbalances, force NATO allies to spend more on defense, and destroy terrorists. When it comes to realizing those simple ideas, however, his more complex attributes emerge. Trump believes in mixing

Gavin Mortimer

Revenge of the cheese-eating surrender monkeys

French President Emmanuel Macron’s approval rating rose by six points last week. It will likely continue to climb following his visit to the Charles de Gaulle aircraft carrier on Monday. The pride of the French navy recently arrived in the eastern Mediterranean to protect Cyprus, and Macron was in his element as he strode across the deck of the carrier. A photograph of the occasion appeared in the New York Times underneath the headline: “France Is Sending a Large Naval Force to the Middle East.” The last time there was a great conflagration in the Middle East, France was very much on the sidelines Macron was helicoptered onto the Charles

Jacob Heilbrunn

Trump has been caught flat-footed on Iran

Donald Trump has become something of a sole man. His cabinet members and White House visitors report that the president has developed a penchant for handing out $145 Florsheim shoes in an effort to up their sartorial game. In his Life of Johnson, Boswell reported that Dr. Johnson recoiled at an “eleemosynary supply” of shoes as an impecunious student at Christ Church, Oxford and threw them away with indignation. Trump’s followers have no such freedom of action. “All the boys have them,” one official told the Wall Street Journal, which ran a picture of his administration leaders obediently lined up and wearing the same shiny black leather numbers. The war increasingly resembles a prolonged exercise in folie de

Tuesday

Scott McConnell

I spent 25 years fighting neocons. Then Trump became one

Like everyone, I’m glued to the news coming out of Iran. I’m experiencing some depression, as one might, upon realizing that much of what one has worked on for 25 years has suddenly gone up in smoke, destroyed when Donald Trump discovered he was pretty much a neocon after all. Like everyone else, I have no idea what will happen in Iran, whether Trump’s bombing and perhaps breaking apart a very unpopular regime will lead to something better, or just chaos, a failed state spitting out a cohort of embittered men. But one can’t help but acknowledge the American right really likes bombing foreign countries, despite what had seemed an

neocon

Monday

Tom Switzer

Will the war in Iran really weaken China?

Analogies in international politics are tricky and easily abused, yet they remain irresistible because they can illuminate patterns that are otherwise hard to see. Consider the present moment.  Just as Ukraine has become a growing burden for Washington and its Western allies, Iran is now a strategic burden for Moscow and Beijing. The US, particularly under the Trump administration, appears to be placing less emphasis on supporting Ukraine. Something similar may be happening in reverse with Iran.  Moscow continues to provide Tehran with assistance – most notably intelligence on US military targets – but the broader pattern suggests caution rather than deep commitment. Beijing, despite its close ties with Iran,

China Iran
MAHA
David Mansdoerfer

MAHA, stay in your lane

MAHA (“Make America Healthy Again”) is not a foreign policy doctrine, nor should it become one. Nevertheless this week the movement experienced a split with some members urging Congress to introduce a war powers resolution to curb US military action in Iran. But they should be aware that mission creep – the gradual expansion of objectives beyond the original scope – has derailed many well-intentioned efforts in Washington. For MAHA to entangle itself in the complexities of the Iran war risks diluting its message and alienating supporters who joined for healthier schools, cleaner water and safer vaccines. In fact, MAGA leaders should be creating deliberate distance from the President on

Saturday

Spectator Editorial

The Iran war has exacerbated the failure of European energy policies

The history of the global trading system is a story of narrow and vulnerable waterways: the Suez and Panama Canals, the St. Lawrence Seaway, the Straits of Dover and the Skagerrak, which defends the entrance to the Baltic. But none has the power to seize up the global economy as much as the Strait of Hormuz. Barely 30 miles wide at the narrowest point and bounded on one side by the state of Iran, this passage is used for a quarter of the world’s oil supplies and a fifth of its liquified natural gas (LNG). As we have now discovered, the consequences of disruption are severe: on the day that

energy
iran
Freddy Gray

Iran: is Trump's ultimate target in this war China?

30 min listen

As the crisis in the Middle East has escalated, Donald Trump’s posturing has led many to question his strategy – and if he even has one. Geoffrey Cain, former foreign correspondent, expert on authoritarian regimes – and the author of this week’s cover piece in The Spectator, joins Freddy to explain why Trump’s ultimate target in the war is China. From the Belt and Road development initiative to more tacit bilateral support, President Xi has been playing a game of chess, to try to check America’s power. With Nicolás Maduro arrested and Ayatollah Khamenei assassinated, President Trump is showing his willingness to project American power, at whatever cost – so

Friday

Freddy Gray

Will the Iran war propel Gavin Newsom to the presidency?

“I’m very angry about this war,” said Gavin Newsom, the California Governor, on stage yesterday. Newsom has a memoir, Young Man in a Hurry, to plug, and a serious bid for the presidency in the offing. Like many other ambitious Democrats, he spies in Donald Trump’s new war an opportunity to cause grave damage to the Republicans in November’s midterms – and in the 2028 presidential election, too.  “Six Americans dead, including a young man from Sacramento,” he said, beating his chest in a nauseatingly theatrical manner. “You have a President who still cannot explain the rationale. Why now, and what’s the endgame?” Operation Epic Fury, now into its sixth day,

Michael Karam

Israel wants to destroy Hezbollah once and for all

At around 2:30 a.m. on March 2, Israel bombed Beirut’s mostly Shia southern suburbs in response to a Hezbollah rocket attack on northern Israel. The road heading into Beirut from South Lebanon and the city’s southern suburbs was jammed with cars filled with Lebanese fleeing further reprisals. Some 52 civilians were killed and 154 injured, a hefty butcher’s bill even in this part of the world. Most Lebanese are happy Hezbollah has been defanged, even if they wish it wasn’t thanks to Israel Hezbollah’s actions were a demonstration of their ongoing support for Iran, but goading Israel was a cataclysmic miscalculation. Not only did it guarantee that the Jewish state

neoconservative
Daniel McCarthy

America’s last war in the Middle East

Win or lose, Donald Trump has begun the last war the United States is ever likely to fight in the Middle East. That might sound wildly optimistic, but what it really means is that war with Iran has been decades in the making. If the mission succeeds, it will mark the end of an era. And if it fails, this war will have exhausted what’s left of America’s willingness to remake the region by force. It’s not just that Iran puts the case for regime change to the ultimate test. America’s relationship with Israel is also on trial. That relationship has been strained lately by the war in Gaza –

Thursday

Freddy Gray

Why Iran marks the end of neoconservatism

45 min listen

Spectator columnist and Heritage Foundation fellow Daniel McCarthy joins Freddy to explain how Trump’s war with Iran could mark the end of an era, that of neoconservatism. For Daniel, there is no contradiction between Trump’s “America First” policy and its overseas interventions: Trump is pursuing a version of hegemony that will reduce the need for future interventions. If all goes to plan, this could mark an ideological watershed that stretches back to the first Gulf War in the early 1990s – but it’s a big “if.” What if the conflict spirals out of control? To what extent was this driven by Trump, or by Netanyahu? And what are the dynamics

Wednesday

Tim Shipman

‘Whose side are you on?’: how Keir Starmer alienated Britain’s allies over Iran

The American-Israeli attacks on Iran were publicly called Epic Fury, but behind the scenes it is Britain’s handling of the war which provoked that reaction – not just from Donald Trump but from the UK’s allies in the Gulf. A Labour peer was in Washington when the first missiles slammed into Tehran on Friday evening and Keir Starmer refused to voice support. A member of the Trump administration told the peer: “Britain used to not contribute that much, but you were a good ally. Now you’re contributing nothing and you’re not even a good ally.” A version of events has quickly become established: a Prime Minister with a near-religious belief

starmer
Geoffrey Cain

Trump’s ultimate target in this war is China

The United States and Israel killed Ayatollah Khamenei, and Xi Jinping’s decade-long project to build an alternative to the American-led order died with him. For years, Beijing quietly assembled a network of dictatorships and client states designed to blunt American power. Iran supplied China with cheap oil and kept Washington bogged down in the Middle East. Russia waged war on Ukraine with Chinese materiel support, a gamble that was supposed to cement a powerful anti-western axis but has instead bled Moscow into dependence on Beijing. Regional proxies from Lebanon to Gaza added just enough chaos to stop Washington focusing on China. The Chinese Communist party (CCP) propped up Nicolas Maduro’s

Freddy Gray

Inside MAGA’s meltdown over Iran

When President George W. Bush invaded Mesopotamia in 2003, everybody laughed at Comical Ali, the bespectacled Iraqi information minister who kept insisting that the American “rats” were doomed as Saddam Hussein’s regime collapsed around him. The world moved on. Iran is not Iraq, as President Donald Trump’s supporters are so fond of saying, and Bush-era “forever wars” are no more. Plus, these days the comedy communications come directly from the Commander-in-Chief. At the weekend, as missiles rained across the Middle East, Trump’s cabinet officials mostly avoided attention-grabbing interviews. The boss, however, embarked on his own heroic PR campaign. Taking questions from just about any reporter who happened to call, he

dubai
Rod Liddle

Won’t someone please think of Dubai’s influencers?

The human spirit is incredibly resilient really. Even in the depth of our concern over the Israeli-American war against Iran, the worry about what might come next, we can still find time to feel a warm and comforting sense of schadenfreude over the large number of British women with stapled-on lips who are cowering in their Dubai apartments as the Iranian shells come raining down. The name under which these women collectively labor is “influencer,” a term which, like “content creator” is close to meaningless and both could be usefully replaced by “shitgibbon” or “unemployable.” We laugh at their sense of entitlement, their shock that the real world has intruded

Isabel Oakeshott

I love Dubai. Get over it

I am in Dubai where we are doing our best to keep calm and carry on. Granted, the sudden instruction to “seek immediate shelter’ in the early hours of Sunday morning was unnerving, but with the exception of excitable “influencers,” few people are cowering in their basements. On Saturday evening, I’d hotfooted it to the Palm Jumeirah. When my kids told me the Fairmont hotel had been hit, I didn’t believe them. The idea that the mad mullahs would start lashing out in this direction seemed completely absurd. Though the Emiratis take a far dimmer view of Islamic extremism than our own craven British government, they are careful not to