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After months of war with Iran, several of the American missiles most important for fighting a sophisticated adversary have been depleted at extraordinary rates. Here is the inventory.
Neither Washington nor Tehran can afford full-scale war or a lasting stalemate, leaving the Gulf trapped in costly cycles of calibrated escalation and mutual deterrence.
The 2026 war is the violent culmination of eighty years of the US attempts to manage contradictory interests by consistently choosing short-term military and political fixes over coherent, long-term strategic realities.
Kurds are repeatedly cast as instruments of larger powers in the war with Iran, yet their political struggle is better understood as driven above all by the determination to return home on their own terms.
Iranian attacks killed American service members in Jordan, U.S. strikes cut transport links around Bandar Abbas, and Tehran widened its retaliation to Kuwait while threatening major ports and airports in Emirates.
The United States appears to be relying increasingly on older ground-launched ballistic missiles for attacks on Iran.
Iran has changed and moved to the opposite extreme from excessive revolutionary romanticism to excessive pragmatism.
The memorandum outlines a sweeping 60-day path toward a final settlement, including an end to hostilities across all fronts, the reopening of Hormuz, oil waivers, frozen assets, and a binding UN Security Council resolution.
The new U.S.–Iran framework deal marks a major strategic gain for Tehran and a grave setback for the Israeli-American campaign that sought to force Iran into retreat.
Given the complexity of the situation, the two sides may have no practical option except to return to war, each hoping that the other will suffer enough pain to make the first concession.