Attention to the Unseen

Mohammad Yaghi writes: War between the United States, Israel, and Iran has now moved from threat to reality. What had been framed as coercive diplomacy backed by calibrated force has crossed into open interstate confrontation. Yet the underlying logic that produced this outcome has not changed. The road to war was not paved by a sober calculation of costs and benefits, but by an illusion of control: the belief that Washington could coerce Iran into submission through threats, deployments, and…

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Orly Noy writes: The siren shattered the silence of Saturday morning across Israel. Not to urge civilians to rush to shelters, but rather to announce the outbreak of war itself — almost like a triumphant fanfare. After more than a week of nerve-wracking uncertainty, tossed between tense anticipation of a war we were told repeatedly was unavoidable, and faint hopes that diplomacy might yet prevail, it was finally upon us. “You can’t step in the same river twice,” goes the…

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The Washington Post reports: President Donald Trump launched Saturday’s wide-ranging attack on Iran after a weeks-long lobbying effort by an unusual pair of U.S. allies in the Middle East — Israel and Saudi Arabia — according to four people familiar with the matter, as Israeli and U.S. forces teamed to topple Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei after nearly four decades in power. Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman made multiple private phone calls to Trump over the past month advocating…

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Ellie Geranmayeh writes: The US and Israel have jointly launched an unprecedented military campaign against Iran, in violation of international law. President Donald Trump’s announcement of the war leaves no doubt that his end-goal, at least for now, is regime change. He has left no off-ramps but complete surrender for Iran’s leadership. A cornered Iran is now fulfilling its threats to respond with widespread counter-strikes on targets across the Middle East. This is Trump’s war of choice. But that does…

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Nicole Grajewski writes: For decades, Tehran calibrated its enrichment activities as a form of what strategists call “coercive ambiguity,” maintaining a threshold position that was threatening enough to matter politically without being unambiguous enough to justify an overwhelming response from adversaries. The logic was straightforward: Stay below the red line, use the program as leverage in negotiations, and extract concessions from a West that preferred a deal to a war. This approach worked, up to a point. The JCPOA [Joint…

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The Guardian reports: Donald Trump’s likely casus belli for an attack on Iran – which would be the largest US intervention since the Iraq war – is fraught with contradictions, and his top advisers have been left to cover for him as the White House makes the case for intervention. In his State of the Union address this week, Trump alleged that Iran posed a direct threat to the US and that the country was “working to build missiles that…

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Shaun Walker writes: William Burns had travelled halfway around the world to speak with Vladimir Putin, but in the end he had to make do with a phone call. It was November 2021, and US intelligence agencies had been picking up signals in the preceding weeks that Putin could be planning to invade Ukraine. President Joe Biden dispatched Burns, his CIA director, to warn Putin that the economic and political consequences if he did so would be disastrous. Fifteen years…

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The Washington Post reports: As the Trump administration weighs an attack on Iran, the Pentagon’s top general has cautioned President Donald Trump and other officials that shortfalls in critical munitions and a lack of support from allies will add significant risk to the operation and to U.S. personnel, according to people familiar with internal discussions. Gen. Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, expressed his concerns at a White House meeting last week with Trump and his top…

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