Here’s a very perceptive look at the current fun and games in Iran, and the U.S. strategy behind them:
This isn’t one war, but two.
There is a regional chessboard, on which Israel, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the other Gulf states all play. Iran’s proxies, its drones and ballistic missiles, its nuclear ambitions, its funding of Hezbollah and the Houthis. All of that belongs primarily to this smaller game. Israel has always understood this board. So have the Saudis. So has everyone in the neighbourhood.
But there is a second chessboard, vastly larger, on which the United States and China are the primary players. On this board, the central question of the next 30 years is being worked out: whether the American-led global order survives, or whether China displaces it. Every American foreign policy decision, from the pivot to Asia to the tariff wars to the posture in the Pacific, is ultimately a move on this board.
America is in this fight because of China. Specifically, it is about dismantling the most significant Chinese forward base outside of East Asia.
Read the whole thing, I beg you, because it shows that far from being a silly cowboy playing with a loaded gun, Trump’s grasp of global strategy is so far removed from that of his political opponents (and even of most of his nominal political allies in the West) that it defies belief.
We often joke about Trump playing four-dimensional chess while his opponents are stuck to a chessboard. The above article shows exactly how that 4-D chess game actually works.
I am very impressed that this appeared in the normally-silly Daily Mail. As far as I can tell, not one American news publication has come close to this succinct analysis, instead busying themselves with the minutiae of the campaign.