It’s Hard & Often Pointless To Regulate War

Posted on March 9, 2026 by Luke Ford

Carl Schmitt argued that law cannot control politics in moments of existential conflict. His famous formulation, “sovereign is he who decides on the exception,” means that real authority belongs to whoever can suspend normal rules when survival is at stake. Schmitt was skeptical that wars could be regulated through humanitarian legal frameworks. When existential conflicts occur, political actors decide based on survival, not legal principle. Survival should be every nation’s first principle. Law won’t tame violence without hard men to enforce it.
The legal order, Schmitt believed, works only in normal situations. Liberal legal systems assume stable conditions where rules apply consistently. But when a state faces a serious threat to its existence, leaders treat rules not as binding constraints but as tools that can be suspended. The political decision overrides the legal framework.
Schmitt also thought humanitarian language often masks political struggle. States justify wars in the language of humanity, peace, or justice, but these universal terms get used to delegitimize enemies and claim moral authority. Humanitarian rhetoric becomes part of the political battlefield.
Beneath all of this sits what Schmitt called the friend-enemy distinction. Politics revolves around identifying a collective enemy that threatens the group’s survival. When that distinction grows intense enough, violent conflict becomes possible. Legal norms can shape how war is fought. They cannot eliminate the underlying conflict that drives it.
This is why wars like the 2026 Iran conflict look Schmittian. Conflicts involving nuclear programs, regional power struggles, or ideological regimes get perceived by the actors involved as existential threats. When leaders believe the stakes involve survival or strategic transformation, the calculus shifts. Strategic necessity outweighs legal caution. Deterrence outweighs reputational concerns. Power determines outcomes more than rules. That pattern is exactly what Schmitt predicted.
Schmitt provides the missing link between Amanda Alexander’s history of humanitarian law and the current reality of the Iran war. Alexander details how the West tried to capture irregular war within a legal cage. Schmitt argues the cage is an illusion that vanishes the moment a sovereign perceives a threat to survival.
The 2026 conflict adds several layers to this analysis. Schmitt’s definition of sovereignty typically applies to physical borders, but the current administration has extended the logic of exception to the digital and logistical sphere. By ignoring international outcries over disrupted global shipping and the cyber fog used to mask operations, the U.S. acts as global sovereign. It decides that the normal situation of global commerce gets suspended to achieve the existential goal of neutralizing the Iranian network.
Alexander’s essay describes a world where humanity became a legal currency the weak used to handicap the strong. Schmitt would say the current administration has simply stopped accepting that currency. When the president asserts that his own morality outweighs treaty obligations, he strips the humanitarian mask from the conflict. He treats the war not as a legal problem to be managed by bureaucrats in Geneva but as a struggle for survival where the only rule is the friend-enemy distinction.
Schmitt warned that when war gets fought in the name of humanity, the enemy ceases to be a justus hostis, a legitimate adversary with rights, and becomes an outlaw who must be destroyed. The 2026 war moves toward that total pole. By targeting the Supreme Leader and aiming for obliteration rather than containment, the U.S. and Israel treat the Iranian regime not as a state actor to be countered but as an existential threat outside the protection of any law.
Alexander shows that the liberal legal order tried to create a world where everyone followed the same rules. Schmitt argued this was never possible because power is never symmetrical. The moment the U.S. decided that the Iranian proxy network could not be stopped by the old rules, it suspended those rules. The unwilling or unable doctrine is a Schmittian exception dressed in legal language, a way for the sovereign to say the rules don’t apply here because I say so. That logic suggests Alexander’s history is not a story of progress but a story of a temporary normal situation that has now ended.

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‘Revolutionary War and the Development of International Humanitarian Law’

Posted on March 9, 2026 by Luke Ford

That’s the title of an essay by Australian law lecturer Amanda Alexander in the 2023 book, Making Endless War: The Vietnam and Arab-Israeli Conflicts in the History of International Law. She writes:

The distinction between civilians and combatants and the protection of civilians are perhaps the central precepts of international humanitarian law today.

…Vietnam served as the archetype of the contemporary conflicts that had prompted the ICRC to draft new laws. When the ICRC began calling for new laws of armed conflict it was concerned by military developments, such as aviation, that had “almost wiped out” the fundamental distinctions between combatants and civilians. It was also troubled by the rise of a “truly enormous tidal wave of guerrilla activity” that had not been anticipated by earlier conventions.

The Vietnam War was the consummate example of these concerns. Moreover, the Vietnam War informed the drafting process by challenging the traditional Western understanding of the laws of armed conflict. The revolutionary writings on people’s war, put into practice in Vietnam, shaped a new language and paradigm of a just war, while advocating for the legitimacy of guerrilla warfare.

This language was adopted by Palestinian movements, which presented their struggle as analogous to the Vietnamese people’s war. Support for the Palestinians and the Palestine Liberation Organization led to a series of United Nations resolutions, proclaiming the rights of national liberation movements and their fighters in a quasi-legal language that would later be repeated at the Diplomatic Conferences.

There was also growing support for the Palestinian and the Vietnamese resistance in the West. Wars against imperial powers were increasingly accepted as just and the means used to oppose them seemed shocking.

Popular and academic commentary in the West questioned the lawfulness of counterinsurgency techniques, in particular attacks on civilians. These discourses were reflected in the debates at the Diplomatic Conference and ultimately in the provisions of the Additional Protocol I.

Before the 1970s, a fighter had to carry arms openly and wear a distinctive sign to receive legal protection. The 1977 Additional Protocols softened that standard. A combatant now only needs to carry arms openly during deployment and the actual engagement, which allows him to blend back into the civilian population the rest of the time. Alexander calls this a “legal and political achievement” for national liberation movements. It was also, from another angle, a legal architecture built to serve a political agenda.
The framework she describes did not emerge from neutral legal reasoning. It came out of a specific historical moment when newly independent states and revolutionary movements pushed to reshape who the law was meant to protect. Anti-colonial fighters gained recognition that professional armies had previously monopolized. Carl Schmitt would not find this surprising. For him, legal arguments are political arguments expressed in juridical language, and the sovereign is the one who decides the exception. The modern laws of war reflect the balance of forces that created them, not some timeless principle of justice.
Iran understood this well. Its gray-zone strategy, built around the Axis of Resistance, exploits every protection the 1977 framework offers. Hezbollah fires missiles into Israel. The Houthis attack shipping. Iraqi militias hit American bases. Under international law, attributing those attacks to Iran is legally complicated, and that ambiguity is the point. Meanwhile, Iran-aligned groups embed themselves in hospitals, schools, and dense urban neighborhoods, knowing that any military response will trigger the disproportionality traps built into humanitarian law. The side with identifiable military forces carries the legal burden. The side blended into the civilian population gains protection from the rules. This asymmetry did not begin with Iran. It appeared in Vietnam, Algeria, Afghanistan, and Iraq. Iran institutionalized it across a regional network.
The 2026 conflict changes something. For decades Iran relied on deniability and the reluctance of its adversaries to pierce that ambiguity. Operation Epic Fury punctured it. The gray zone only works when the opponent accepts the terms. Once the opponent decides to ignore them, the entire model collapses. The U.S. and Israel are now operating under what some call an “illegal but legitimate” framework, bypassing the UN Security Council and targeting Iranian leadership directly. International law scholars call this a collapse of legal constraint. The administration calls it national interest.
Alexander’s framework described how weak actors used the law to survive against strong ones. The 2026 conflict shows a state using those same irregular tactics, proxies, drones, cyber operations, as tools of national power rather than grassroots resistance. This flips the revolutionary war model. Iran is not a peasant movement. It is a state that spent decades dressing its strategy in the language of anti-imperialism while building a transnational militia network. The legal protections designed for the weak became instruments of a regional power.
The quieter tone from the usual critics reflects something real. International law rhetoric works when the targeted government cares about reputational pressure. The current administration has made clear it does not. Diplomatic actors conserve energy when they believe pressure will not change behavior. The old Global South bloc that once dominated UN debates is far less cohesive today. Many states that led anti-imperial rhetoric in the 1970s now have deep economic ties with the United States or the Gulf. That produces caution. The media frame has also shifted toward military and strategic analysis rather than humanitarian outrage, which reduces the oxygen that UN rhetoric depends on.
The legal professionals who devoted careers to refining the 1977 Protocols now watch their work set aside in real time. Some will pivot to defense and security law, where the money follows the military-industrial complex. Others will move into sanctions, trade policy, and export controls, areas where law still produces consequences. The next generation of relevant lawyers will probably focus on autonomous weapon systems and military AI rather than the combatant status of guerrilla fighters. The useful work has moved from the courtroom to the situation room.
Alexander was right that war reshapes law. The 2026 conflict suggests war may now dissolve it. The humanitarian framework assumed that major powers would broadly accept its terms. When they no longer do, the rules still shape language, but not much else.

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Decoding Hybrid War Expert Frank Hoffman

Posted on March 9, 2026 by Luke Ford

Frank Hoffman occupies a specific niche inside the U.S. national security ecosystem. He is not primarily a regional expert like Michael Eisenstadt and not a political advocate like think tank policy entrepreneurs. His role is conceptual architect. His main contribution is the concept of hybrid warfare, which holds that modern adversaries rarely fight in a single mode. Instead, they blend multiple forms of conflict at the same time: conventional military force, guerrilla warfare, terrorism, cyber operations, criminal activity, and information warfare. The innovation is the argument that these elements are not separate phases of war. They run simultaneously. That fusion creates problems for Western militaries built around clean categories.
Hoffman developed the idea during the 2000s after watching conflicts that did not fit traditional military models. Hezbollah’s war with Israel in 2006 was a major influence. Hezbollah combined anti-tank missiles, disciplined infantry tactics, guerrilla operations, media propaganda, and political governance. It behaved partly like an army and partly like an insurgency. Western doctrine at the time assumed enemies would look like one or the other. Hoffman argued that assumption was obsolete.
The concept spread quickly through defense institutions because it explained several contemporary conflicts: Hezbollah in Lebanon, Russian operations in Crimea and eastern Ukraine, Iran’s proxy networks in the Middle East, and ISIS blending insurgency with governance. It gave military planners language to describe what they were encountering. Hoffman writes like a Marine officer who became a strategist. His work is analytical but practical. He focuses on how doctrine and force structure must change rather than engaging in abstract theory.
He also emphasizes that hybrid warfare is not just a military problem but a whole-of-government problem. Because the threats involve criminal activity and information warfare, military force alone cannot solve them. This pushed the U.S. toward concepts like integrated deterrence. Hoffman focuses heavily on the blurring of the line between peace and war. The traditional binary is no longer useful, he argues. Technology now allows small groups to possess lethality previously reserved for nations, which creates a state of perpetual competition.
Hybrid warfare creates a structural problem for advanced militaries. Western forces excel at defeating conventional armies, and they developed counterinsurgency doctrines for guerrilla conflicts. Hybrid adversaries deliberately mix both. They fight conventionally when strong. They disperse into irregular networks when weak. They use terrorism or information warfare to offset battlefield losses. This forces Western planners into constant adaptation.
Of late, Hoffman has focused on the upcoming 2026 National Defense Strategy and a critique of current Pentagon force-sizing models. His recent work argues that the United States faces a defense planning crisis where the cost of its strategic goals far exceeds its available resources. He argues that the Pentagon must abandon the traditional two-theater war construct, the idea that the U.S. should be able to fight two major regional wars at the same time. He views this as financially and strategically unsustainable given the national debt and the rise of what he calls the Axis of Upheaval: Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea.
In its place he proposes Mission-Based Planning, which orders priorities as follows. First, defend the homeland by protecting critical infrastructure from cyberattacks and physical disruption. Second, deter aggression in Asia by working with allies to contain China. Third, modernize the strategic deterrent, including a reconsideration of whether all three legs of the nuclear triad remain affordable. Fourth, conduct unconventional warfare through counterterrorism and security assistance. Fifth, deter aggression in Europe in coordination with NATO.
A major theme in his 2026 commentary is that the U.S. homeland is no longer a sanctuary. He argues that the true second front of any future conflict with the Axis of Upheaval will be domestic critical infrastructure. Chinese and Russian penetration of telecommunications, power, and water utilities amounts to operational preparation of the battlefield. Protecting those domestic assets is now a primary military mission, not a civilian afterthought.
On Iran specifically, Hoffman observes a significant shift. Iran is weaker and more vulnerable than it has been in decades following intense military pressure over the past year. But that vulnerability might increase rather than reduce its reliance on hybrid tactics. Hoffman argues Iran will double down on militant proxies even as proxy inventories are depleted, on the threat of closing the Strait of Hormuz to offset its weakened conventional position, and on a war of attrition rather than the decisive large-scale combat operations Western planners prefer.
Inside the national security ecosystem, Hoffman fills the role of theory provider. Operational analysts like Eisenstadt describe specific threats. Policy advocates argue for particular strategies. Hoffman supplies the conceptual framework that explains why those threats are difficult. Eisenstadt’s work on Iranian strategy often reflects that framework. Iran uses ballistic missiles, proxy militias, cyber attacks, terrorist networks, and political influence operations, which is precisely the mix Hoffman described. Eisenstadt analyzes the specific case. Hoffman explains the general pattern. Together they form part of the intellectual toolkit the U.S. security community uses to understand modern conflict. Hoffman’s influence operates not through media appearances but through doctrine, training, and strategic education at institutions like the National Defense University and the war colleges, where it shapes how officers think about conflict before they encounter it.

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Zineba Riboua: Trump’s Middle East: Operation Epic Fury is the Logical Conclusion of Trump’s Foreign Policy

Posted on March 9, 2026 by Luke Ford

Zineb Riboua’s essay explains Trump’s strategy, legitimizes the war, and frames it as structural rather than impulsive.
Her biggest move it makes is rehabilitating Trump as a coherent actor rather than a chaotic one. The foreign policy establishment tends to describe Trump as erratic. Riboua rejects that frame entirely. Her argument is that Epic Fury is not an improvisation but the logical end point of a regional project that includes the Abraham Accords, the IMEC trade corridor, Gulf sovereign wealth integration, U.S. troop reductions, and the neutralization of Iran’s proxy network. The war, in her telling, is a structural prerequisite, not a reckless escalation.
Her reading of the word “deal” is central to the piece. Under Obama, a deal meant mutual concessions. Under Trump, a deal means the other side accepts his conditions. Once you accept that definition, the war stops looking like a surprise and starts looking like the next step after Iran said no. That is genuine intellectual work. It changes how you read the entire sequence of events.
She builds a vision of the regional order Trump wants to create and calls it “Pax Silica,” a phrase worth examining. The idea is a Middle East organized around trade corridors, logistics networks, technology flows, and Gulf capital, all integrated into American-aligned economic blocs connecting the Indo-Pacific to Europe. Iran, in this framework, is not simply a hostile state but a structural spoiler. Its proxy network, Hezbollah, Hamas, the Houthis, Shiite militias in Iraq, gives Tehran what amounts to a veto over Arab normalization with Israel and the United States. Arab governments might want integration. Iran raises the cost until they hesitate. Epic Fury, she argues, removes that veto.
The Palestinian dimension of her argument is worth slowing down on. She points out that Iran’s leverage over the Palestinian cause is not incidental. Tehran, a Shia, non-Arab regime, captured moral leadership over a cause rooted in Sunni Arab identity by making itself the principal armed sponsor of Palestinian resistance. That gave Iran a propaganda weapon it could deploy against any Arab government moving toward normalization, framing cooperation with Israel as civilizational betrayal. If Iran loses operational control over Palestinian armed factions, that weapon weakens. Stabilizing Gaza becomes politically necessary not just for Gaza but for the entire regional architecture.
Her logic reduces to a clean chain. Trump wants to leave the Middle East. Leaving requires a stable regional order. Iran’s network blocks that order. Therefore Epic Fury breaks the network. She compares this to Nixon’s Vietnam strategy or Reagan’s approach to the Soviet Union, escalation used to enable eventual disengagement.
The essay is well-constructed and aimed at a specific audience, people inside the foreign policy conversation who believe the war is impulsive. She is telling that audience that this is not chaos. It is structural strategy.
The problem is the assumption the entire argument rests on. Riboua assumes that weakening Iran’s proxy network will produce the stable economic order she describes. History suggests that outcome is genuinely uncertain. Power vacuums rarely produce integration. They produce competition for the vacuum. Iraq after 2003 is the obvious counterexample. Removing a disruptive actor does not automatically create the conditions for the order you want. Someone else fills the space, or the space stays ungoverned and becomes a different kind of problem.
She also builds Trump as a more coherent strategist than the evidence might support. The commenters on the piece raise a fair challenge. Does Pete Hegseth think at this level? Does Trump? The essay describes a theory of the campaign that might reflect Pentagon planning, or Riboua’s own analytical framework, or both. That is not a fatal flaw. Governments often pursue coherent strategic outcomes through incoherent decision-making. The question of whether Trump consciously pursues the Pax Silica vision or stumbles toward it matters less than whether the outcome is real. But the essay might overstate the degree to which a single unified vision drives the administration.
The China piece she wrote alongside this is the sharper of the two. Her argument there, that Epic Fury damages China’s ideological positioning as much as its material interests, cuts closer to something genuinely novel. Xi’s narrative of Western decline rested in part on Iran’s endurance under sanctions. If Washington removes an adversary in seventy-two hours, the narrative cracks. Beijing faces a messaging trap: condemn the action and look powerless, accept it and undermine the sovereignty doctrine it sells to the developing world. That is a real dilemma, even if she overstates how dependent China’s global strategy was on Iranian survival.
Taken together, the two pieces represent a coherent argument that the war reshapes not just the Middle East but the terms of great power competition.

Zineb Riboua writes Mar. 4, 2026:

Three Reasons Operation Epic Fury Is Catastrophic for Xi

First, the Iranian counterweight is gone. In 2021, Xi told senior Party officials that “the East is rising and the West is declining,” that America was “the biggest source of chaos in the present-day world,” and that China was entering a period of strategic opportunity. Iran was central to that thesis. Beijing needed a defiant Tehran to keep Washington pinned down in the Gulf, to sustain a sanctions-proof energy corridor, and above all, to stand as living evidence that American power had hard limits. The entire architecture of CCP’s dogma of inevitability, which rested on Iran’s ability to endure, and Epic Fury removed the foundation in a single afternoon…

Second, Xi’s own story is collapsing from the inside. The story he told 1.4 billion people, that America is a declining power incapable of decisive force projection, does not match what happened in seventy-two hours over Tehran…

Third, the energy math turns against Beijing. China bought 1.38 million barrels per day of Iranian oil last year and takes over 80% of everything Iran ships. Half of China’s total oil imports pass through the Strait of Hormuz.

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Decoding Iran’s Gray Zone Strategy

Posted on March 9, 2026 by Luke Ford

The gray zone is the contested arena that sits between routine statecraft and open warfare. It is defined by a paradox: it is an area of intense competition where actors use every tool of national power to achieve strategic gains, yet they deliberately remain below the threshold that would trigger a conventional military response. While the term gained popularity in the mid-2010s—largely in response to Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea—the logic itself is as old as the Trojan Horse.

The Logic of Ambiguity

The primary symmetry of the gray zone is the exploitation of Western legal and political frameworks. Liberal democracies typically operate with a binary view of the world: a state is either at peace or it is at war. Gray zone actors, such as Iran and Russia, treat this distinction as a vulnerability. By using “little green men” without insignia or launching cyberattacks that allow for plausible deniability, they create a state of “neither/nor” that paralyzes traditional decision-making.

Strategists like Frank Hoffman argue that these actors target the “seams” between government departments. A cyberattack on a hospital might be a criminal matter, a public health crisis, or an act of war. Because it is all three, responsibility is diffused, and the response is slowed.

This involves making small, incremental changes to the status quo—such as building artificial islands in the South China Sea—none of which alone justifies a war, but which collectively result in a major strategic shift over time.

Economic Coercion: This includes the weaponization of trade and energy. By creating dependencies, a state can exert political pressure on a rival without ever firing a shot.

Why the Gray Zone is Expanding

The prevalence of gray zone competition is a testament to the effectiveness of conventional and nuclear deterrence. Because a direct conflict between major powers is too costly, competition shifts into the shadows. Technology has accelerated this logic. The internet allows a state to interfere in a rival’s elections or sabotage its infrastructure from thousands of miles away with minimal risk.

In the Iranian context, this takes the form of the “Axis of Resistance.” Iran provides the hardware and doctrine, but the actual friction is generated by proxies. This interplay allows Tehran to project power across the Middle East while maintaining a “buffered” distance from the consequences.

The Defender’s Dilemma

For the United States and its allies, the gray zone presents a “defender’s dilemma.” If a democracy responds to a gray zone provocation with kinetic force, it risks being labeled as the aggressor and escalating the conflict. If it does not respond, it signals weakness and allows the adversary to continue its incremental gains.

Effective defense in this space requires what experts call “whole-of-society resilience.” This means that the defense of a nation no longer rests solely with the military, but also with private tech companies, election officials, and the general public’s ability to recognize disinformation.

Michael Eisenstadt argues that the gray zone is the cornerstone of the Iranian way of war. His recent analysis of Operation Epic Fury suggests that while the United States and Israel focus on the destruction of hardware, the Iranian regime focuses on the gray matter of Western policymakers. He contends that Tehran views conflict as a continuum rather than a binary state of peace or war. This perspective allows the regime to manage risk by pacing its activities so that its adversaries do not overreact or escalate to all-out war.

The Mechanism of Threshold Manipulation

The gray zone works by leveraging a conceptual asymmetry. Eisenstadt observes that American decisionmakers often fear a local clash might spiral into a regional catastrophe. Iran uses this fear to its advantage. By keeping its retaliation—dubbed Operation True Promise IV—within specific bounds, the regime attempts to preserve its survival while imposing costs on its enemies.

Tehran uses a mix of kinetic missile strikes, cyber disruptions, and proxy activations. In the current conflict, they have targeted U.S. bases in Bahrain, Qatar, and the UAE while using drones to saturate air defenses.

Eisenstadt points out that Iran uses massed, low-cost loitering munitions. This forces the U.S. and its partners to deplete limited stocks of expensive interceptors, hitting the “Munitions” constraint mentioned by JP Morgan.

Recent reports indicate the IRGC is dispersing mobile launchers into schools and hospitals. This is a classic gray zone tactic designed to create a “moral hazard” for Western planners who must weigh the military gain of a strike against the political fallout of civilian casualties.

Strategic Culture and the Legacy of War

That Iran avoids a direct conventional fight is a deeply rooted feature of its strategic culture. Eisenstadt traces this back to the Iran-Iraq War. The regime learned that “imposed wars” are existential threats. Therefore, they developed a repertoire of deniable and incremental actions to advance their agenda without triggering a repeat of that trauma.

The Post-Khamenei Logic

The killing of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on February 28 has added a new logic to the gray zone. Eisenstadt and his colleagues at WINEP are now analyzing how a decapitated regime maintains control. They observe that while centralized command and control may be degraded, the “Axis of Resistance” operates with a level of semi-autonomy. This means that even if the head of the state is gone, the proxy network continues to function, potentially escalating on its own terms to avenge the leader.

The “Three M’s” logic from JP Morgan and Eisenstadt’s operational focus converge on one point: the conflict’s end will likely not be a formal surrender. Instead, it might be a gradual reduction in the “rhythm” of strikes as both sides reach the limits of their resources and political will.

Michael Eisenstadt and his colleagues at the Washington Institute are monitoring the transition as Article 111 of the Iranian constitution has been invoked following the death of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. This article establishes a three-person council—composed of the president, the judiciary chief, and a cleric from the Guardian Council—to manage the Supreme Leader’s duties temporarily.

The Rise of Mojtaba Khamenei

That Mojtaba Khamenei is the frontrunner for succession introduces a new logic to Iran’s gray zone posture. Eisenstadt’s recent analysis suggests that while the elder Khamenei was defined by a cautious, deeply rooted strategic culture born from the “meat grinder” of the Iran-Iraq War, Mojtaba may be more risk-acceptant.

Mojtaba’s candidacy is heavily backed by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. Experts like Farzin Nadimi and Patrick Clawson argue that this relationship might lead to “extreme strategic options.” Without the established authority of his father, Mojtaba may feel compelled to authorize high-visibility strikes or rapid nuclear advancement to prove his nationalist credentials and consolidate power.

The transition is not seamless. Hardliners like Ali Larijani, secretary of the Supreme National Security Council, reportedly resist Mojtaba’s rise. In gray zone terms, this internal logic often leads to “outbidding,” where different factions launch uncoordinated proxy attacks to demonstrate their revolutionary zeal.

A new Defense Council created in 2025 to centralize military decision-making was largely decimated alongside the Supreme Leader. This loss of institutional memory creates a serious leadership continuity problem. Eisenstadt views this as a dangerous period where tactical “gray matter” errors by new, untested commanders could inadvertently trigger the “all-out war” that the previous regime spent decades avoiding.

Operational Reality Under Epic Fury

Despite the death of the Supreme Leader, the IRGC’s day-to-day asymmetric operations remain functional. Eisenstadt notes that while the United States and Israel are “winning” by metrics like the destruction of 17 naval vessels and half of Iran’s ballistic missile sites, the regime’s cyber and proxy capabilities remain largely intact.

Cyber remains a key asymmetric tool. WINEP experts warn that the new leadership will likely expand retaliatory cyberattacks against regional energy and logistics networks to mirror the kinetic losses they are suffering.

If the central government fragments, proxies like the Houthis or Iraqi militias might begin to act autonomously. This would break the “pacing and spacing” symmetry that Michael Eisenstadt has long described as the hallmark of Iranian gray zone strategy, leading to a much more volatile and unpredictable regional environment.

Michael Eisenstadt argues that the gray zone relies on a logic of paralysis. By operating in the space between peace and war, Iran forces Western leaders into a state of deliberation that Tehran uses as a shield. Professional strategists and the traditional national security community struggle with this because they view the gray zone as a legal and procedural problem.

The Decisionist Response

Donald Trump does not view the gray zone through a procedural lens. His approach to Operation Epic Fury suggests he views the gray zone as a bluff to be called rather than a puzzle to be solved. While analysts like Eisenstadt describe the gray zone as a sophisticated symmetry of power, Trump treats it as a vacuum that exists only because of American hesitation.

The Trump administration has effectively ended the “neither/nor” state by initiating what he calls “major combat operations.” That he authorized the decapitation of the Iranian leadership on February 28 shows a willingness to skip the incremental escalation ladder that gray zone actors rely on.

Gray zone tactics like “little green men” or deniable cyberattacks depend on the target’s unwillingness to assign blame without absolute proof. Trump’s rhetoric ignores these nuances. He recently stated that the objective is “unconditional surrender,” regardless of whether a specific provocation was deniable or not.

Where the “blob” seeks to manage the gray zone through sanctions and diplomacy, this administration uses what the 2026 National Defense Strategy calls “overwhelming force to maximize deterrence.” The launch of Operation Epic Fury after only weeks of mobilization illustrates a preference for rapid, decisive action over the “slow-motion” conflict that Michael Eisenstadt has long chronicled.

Strategic Risks of the Decisionist Path

Eisenstadt and other WINEP fellows point out that while a decisionist approach can break the gray zone stalemate, it introduces new risks that the previous cautious logic was designed to avoid.

By jumping directly to regime-level strikes, the U.S. may have removed the “off-ramps” that typically allow for a negotiated settlement. If the Iranian regime feels it is facing an existential threat, it may abandon its gray zone restraint and pivot to the “extreme strategic options” that Eisenstadt warns about.

The killing of Ali Khamenei has created a power vacuum. While the “process guys” fear the lack of a clear successor, the decisionist view is that any successor will be too weak to maintain the gray zone architecture. However, as Eisenstadt observes, this can lead to “outbidding” by IRGC factions who may launch uncoordinated attacks to prove their loyalty to the revolution.

That Trump is “ahead of schedule” in dismantling Iranian infrastructure suggests he believes the gray zone only exists when the United States allows it to. He is betting that by applying enough kinetic pressure, the “neither/nor” state will collapse into a clear American victory.

Gray Zone experts observe that the death of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has forced Hezbollah into a choice between ideological suicide and local survival. For years, the group maintained that an attack on the Supreme Leader was a “red line” that would trigger an immediate, unrestricted response. Now that this line has been crossed during Operation Epic Fury, the group’s leadership—currently led by Naim Qassem—finds itself in a strategic trap.

The Survival Paradox

That Hezbollah launched a rocket barrage on March 1, immediately following the confirmation of Khamenei’s death, signals a commitment to its role as the “vanguard” of the Axis of Resistance. However, Eisenstadt and other WINEP fellows argue that this response is more performative than strategic. The group is weaker than at any point in decades.

The collapse of the Assad regime in late 2024 severed Hezbollah’s logistical arteries. Without the Syrian corridor, the group cannot easily replenish the precision-guided munitions it uses during these escalations.

In Beirut, the Lebanese government has taken an unprecedented step by announcing a formal ban on Hezbollah’s military activities. Prime Minister Nawaf Salam is attempting to assert state authority to prevent Lebanon from being pulled into a “wider regional war” while the country is still fragile from the 2024 conflict.

Beyond the loss of their patron in Tehran, Hezbollah’s own mid-level command structure remains severely degraded. WINEP reports suggest that internal disagreements are mounting among the remaining senior figures about whether to follow the “Vilayat-e Faqih” (now in flux under Mojtaba Khamenei) or prioritize their own political standing in Lebanon.

Operational Interpretation: Preemption vs. Retaliation

Eisenstadt identifies a shift in the group’s tactical logic. Hezbollah officials likely believe they are next on the “list” for elimination following the decapitation strikes in Iran. By striking now, they are not necessarily trying to save the Iranian regime—which is already in a state of chaotic reorganization—but are trying to preempt a full-scale Israeli ground offensive.

Despite significant losses, the elite Radwan Unit still maintains approximately 5,000 members. However, they are currently positioned mostly north of the Litani River, reflecting a defensive rather than offensive posture.

WINEP analysts argue that Hezbollah’s intervention depends on whether they view the current campaign as a “regime change” operation. If the United States and Israel continue to state their goal is the fall of the Islamic Republic, Hezbollah may feel it has no choice but to launch its remaining 1,000 suicide drones and missile stockpiles, even if it brings about its own destruction.

The Successor’s Shadow

The potential rise of Mojtaba Khamenei complicates Hezbollah’s calculus. While Ali Khamenei was a known quantity with a predictable strategic logic, Mojtaba’s strong ties to the IRGC suggest he might demand more “extreme strategic options” from his proxies. Hezbollah’s leadership is now watching Tehran to see if the new council will provide the same financial and “spiritual” cover that once justified their existence as a state-within-a-state.

Michael Eisenstadt and specialists at the Sana’a Center for Strategic Studies observe a significant divergence between Houthi rhetoric and Houthi action. While the group’s leader, Abdelmalek al-Houthi, called the killing of Ali Khamenei a “heinous crime” and held a “million-strong” rally in Sana’a on March 1, the group has remained uncharacteristically reticent on the military front.

In the language of alliance theory, this suggests that the Houthis are moving from a “proxy” relationship to a “partner” logic where their own local survival outweighs their ideological debt to Tehran.

The Logic of Strategic Silence

Eisenstadt notes that the Houthis were the only Axis of Resistance member to fully participate in the June 2025 conflict, yet their current inaction during Operation Epic Fury is striking. Several factors define this new Houthi symmetry:

Unlike Hezbollah, which is fighting for its immediate geographic security, the Houthis sit far from the primary theater of the “Epic Fury” strikes. Analysts argue that the Houthis likely view the decapitation of the Iranian leadership as a warning. If they resume Red Sea attacks, they risk becoming the next target for the same high-precision “Roaring Lion” strikes that eliminated the Iranian Supreme Leader.

The Sana’a Center points out that the “fate of Iran” is not a popular cause in Yemen on par with the Palestinian cause. While the Houthis gained massive legitimacy for their Red Sea campaign, they risk losing that domestic support if they drag Yemen into a catastrophic war with the U.S. and Israel just to avenge a foreign leader.

The Houthis are still eyeing a negotiated settlement with Saudi Arabia. Riyadh has used the current chaos to consolidate control over Yemen’s internationally recognized government. If the Houthis strike now, they likely permanently kill the “roadmap” for financial support and reconstruction they desperately need.

Autonomy and the Successor Problem

The rise of Mojtaba Khamenei creates a unique “agency” problem for the Houthis. While the elder Khamenei was the “great mujahid” who provided the technology and spiritual authority, Mojtaba is an unproven figure.

Reports suggest that the Houthis have already used a significant portion of their advanced Iranian-supplied missiles. With the “land bridge” from Iran under heavy fire and the Iranian Navy largely destroyed, the group must decide if they can afford to expend their remaining munitions without a guaranteed resupply from a chaotic Tehran.

Michael Eisenstadt argues that the Houthis are likely waiting to see if the new leadership council in Tehran can maintain its grip. If the Iranian regime fragments, the Houthis may choose to reposition themselves as an independent regional power rather than a subordinate element of an “Axis” that can no longer protect its own head.

The Operational Outlook

WINEP fellows suggest that any Houthi escalation will likely be “calibrated and deniable”—consistent with the gray zone logic they have mastered. They may shift from high-profile missile attacks to sea mines in the Bab al-Mandab strait, which allows them to disrupt global shipping while maintaining a degree of plausible deniability to avoid the full weight of Operation Epic Fury.

While Michael Eisenstadt provides the operational map for Iran’s specific behavior, several other strategists define the broader architecture of the gray zone. These experts often disagree on whether the gray zone is a new form of warfare or simply a rebranding of classic coercion.

The Theoretical Architects

Antulio Echevarria: A professor at the U.S. Army War College, Echevarria argues that the gray zone is an outgrowth of strategies aimed at exploiting the West’s legalist view of war. He suggests that rival powers use the space between peace and war to achieve positional advantages without triggering a formal military response. In his view, the gray zone is a combination of coercion and deterrence where the goal is to outposition rather than subdue the opponent.

Frank Hoffman: A distinguished research fellow at the National Defense University, Hoffman is best known for developing the concept of hybrid warfare. He argues that modern adversaries simultaneously use conventional weapons, irregular tactics, terrorism, and criminal behavior to achieve political objectives. While Eisenstadt focuses on the Iranian application, Hoffman provides the general logic for how these fused threats create a unique planning dilemma for Western militaries.

David Kilcullen: An Australian strategist and former advisor to General David Petraeus, Kilcullen examines the gray zone through the lens of “conceptual envelopment.” He contends that countries like China and Iran do not distinguish between states of war and peace. Instead, they use subversive, hybrid, and clandestine techniques to undermine Western influence over decades. He recommends a Byzantine approach for the West, focusing on resilience and long-term rearguard actions rather than seeking a decisive military victory.

The Operational and Economic Experts

Seth Jones: As a senior vice president at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), Jones focuses on the rise of irregular warfare. His work, particularly in Three Dangerous Men, examines how Russia, China, and Iran use cyber attacks, proxy forces, and disinformation to compete with the United States. He often bridges the gap between Eisenstadt’s technical military focus and the broader geopolitical struggle, highlighting how these gray zone activities strain the U.S. defense industrial base.

Elisabeth Braw: A senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, Braw specializes in “the defender’s dilemma.” She focuses on how gray zone aggression targets the globalized economy and civil society. While Eisenstadt looks at missiles and militias, Braw looks at the subversion of companies, underwater cables, and shipping routes. She argues that the interconnectedness of the modern world provides adversaries with unethical but effective tools to harm liberal democracies without using “bombs or bullets.”

Regional Specialists

Arash Azizi: A historian and author of Shadow Commander, Azizi provides the biographical and political context for Iran’s gray zone operations. He focuses on how individuals like Qassem Soleimani built the institutional framework for proxy warfare. His work is essential for understanding the internal Iranian logic that Eisenstadt interprets through a military lens.

That these experts overlap suggests the gray zone is the primary theater of 21st-century competition. Where Eisenstadt provides the technical briefing on Iranian hardware, analysts like Braw and Kilcullen provide the strategic and economic context for why those tools are used in the first place.

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Decoding Michael Eisenstadt

Posted on March 9, 2026 by Luke Ford

Michael Eisenstadt is a technical military specialist inside the pro-Israel strategic policy ecosystem. He works at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, an institution that sits close to the Israel security perspective but speaks in the language of military analysis rather than political advocacy. He is not a public advocate like Mark Dubowitz, nor a diplomatic conciliator like Ali Vaez. His role is operational interpretation, and his writing focuses on tactics, doctrine, and battlefield logic rather than ideology.
He has long argued that Iranian strategic logic relies on what he calls “the gray zone,” the space between peace and total war where Tehran uses proxies and asymmetric tactics to avoid direct conventional conflict with the United States or Israel. By mapping this specific logic of power, Eisenstadt explains how Iran maintains deterrence without a nuclear weapon or a massive air force.
Since March 1, his analysis has shifted. He now argues that the opening phase of Operation Epic Fury represents a historic collapse of Iranian deterrence, and he has moved from examining the mechanics of the gray zone to what he calls the “postwar questions” facing a decapitated regime. He suggests the U.S. and Israel have navigated the escalation management phase, but now face a landscape where Iranian strategic logic might grow more erratic.
On the current Iranian strategy, widely called Operation True Promise IV, Eisenstadt sees an attempt to salvage the gray zone through graduated pressure that is backfiring. Since the death of Ali Khamenei, Tehran has expanded its missile and drone strikes to hit targets in Qatar, Bahrain, Jordan, Kuwait, and Saudi Arabia. Eisenstadt reads this as a desperate effort to catalyze opposition to the war in the West and among regional partners, but argues it creates more enemies instead, pushing once-hesitant Arab states to integrate more deeply with U.S. and Israeli air defenses. He also notes that U.S. and Israeli forces race to degrade Iranian launch capabilities faster than Iran can replenish them, and that while Iran uses cheap hardware to drain expensive interceptors, the volume of allied strikes has begun to stay ahead of what he calls the unfavorable cost and attrition curve.
That the Supreme Leader was eliminated has upended the pacing and spacing Eisenstadt long identified as the cornerstone of Iranian doctrine. He now focuses on the successor’s dilemma. He and his colleagues suggest that Mojtaba Khamenei’s ties to the IRGC might push him toward extreme strategic options, since a younger, untested leader without his father’s established authority might feel pressure to use Iran’s remaining high-end assets to consolidate domestic power. Eisenstadt also highlights that the Iranian public has limited information and almost no protection from ongoing hostilities, which he sees as a potential breaking point for the regime’s internal legitimacy.
On the nuclear question, he maintains that the program remains the paramount threat and argues that military gains must be translated into sustainable political achievements. The strikes have upended a dangerous status quo, but the long-term goal must be to prevent Iran from rebuilding its program through diplomatic, economic, and covert means.
His analysis of the IRGC emphasizes that they measure military success not through territory held but through psychological attrition. Iran uses missile tests and drone swarms to signal a capability to disrupt global markets. The threat of action often does more work than the action itself. He argues the IRGC builds its entire doctrine around the idea that the West is casualty-averse and sensitive to energy price spikes.
Eisenstadt also points out that Iran has spent decades sanctions-proofing its domestic arms industry. He tracks how Iran’s use of low-cost loitering munitions forces the United States to expend expensive interceptors, creating a cost imbalance that favors a long war of attrition. He has documented how Iran calibrates its strikes to stay just below the threshold that would trigger a full American ground response. He views the Axis of Resistance not as political allies alone but as an integrated military architecture where a strike on Iranian soil might trigger simultaneous responses from Lebanon, Iraq, and Yemen, complicating any U.S. exit strategy.
His credibility comes partly from what he avoids. He does not seek the viral moment. He seeks an accurate assessment of a missile’s circular error probable. When he describes a threat as significant, the defense establishment listens because he does not sell a political outcome. He provides the raw data that advocates then use to build their cases for or against escalation.
Before his career at WINEP, Eisenstadt worked as a military specialist inside the U.S. government on Middle East security issues at the Department of Defense. That background shapes his style. He writes like someone trained to brief military planners rather than persuade the public. His tone stays measured, he avoids emotional language and moral framing, and he emphasizes operational detail. In Washington, that posture increases credibility with military planners and intelligence officials.
Through the lens of alliance theory, he performs three functions. He legitimizes threat assessments by providing technical evidence for the argument that Iran poses serious military risks. He translates Israeli and regional security concerns into language U.S. defense professionals understand. And he stabilizes the hawkish coalition by grounding it in operational reality rather than ideology. Without analysts like him, hawkish arguments would rest more heavily on political rhetoric.
If you mapped the Iran debate as a set of roles, Eisenstadt sits in the technical strategist position. Dubowitz plays the sanctions warrior. Vaez plays the diplomatic engagement advocate. Suzanne Maloney plays the academic policy analyst. Eisenstadt plays the military capability interpreter. His influence comes less from media visibility than from credibility inside the professional national security network.

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Why Do Elites Hate Bibi Netanyahu?

Posted on March 9, 2026 by Luke Ford

Elites do not hate Benjamin Netanyahu for a single reason. They dislike him because he violates several norms that govern the Western foreign policy ecosystem, and those violations cut across policy, style, and power.
Most Western elites operate inside a diplomatic culture that values consensus, predictability, and procedural legitimacy. Netanyahu repeatedly breaks those rules. He openly fights the foreign policy establishment when most allied leaders avoid public confrontation with Washington’s policy class. The clearest example was his 2015 speech to Congress opposing the Iran nuclear deal. From the perspective of the Washington ecosystem, that was a serious breach of alliance etiquette. Leaders are supposed to argue privately and show unity publicly.
He also bypasses elite gatekeepers. He appeals directly to American evangelicals, conservative media, and populist politicians rather than working through traditional diplomatic channels. When leaders bypass the expert ecosystem, that ecosystem loses influence, and lost influence creates hostility.
He embraces hard power more openly than most Western leaders prefer. Foreign policy elites favor the language of diplomacy, multilateralism, and restraint. Netanyahu emphasizes deterrence, military pressure, and preemption. Even when elites privately accept those tools, they want them wrapped in careful language. Netanyahu is blunt.
He is also comfortable with domestic political conflict in a way that unsettles establishment figures who prefer to present themselves as technocratic managers above politics. Netanyahu operates like a political street fighter. He thrives in polarization and builds coalitions around identity, security, and national survival. That style clashes with elite norms of moderation and institutional calm.
His longevity compounds everything. Long-serving leaders accumulate enemies inside bureaucracies, media institutions, and rival political networks. He also carries more institutional memory than the officials he meets across the table. He knows the history of every failed initiative and uses that knowledge to block proposals he considers dangerous. He can outlast the careers of the bureaucrats who oppose him.
There is also a status element that rarely gets named. Elite institutions prefer leaders who speak their language and defer to their authority. Netanyahu speaks that language fluently but refuses to defer. He treats those institutions as political actors to be outmaneuvered rather than as arbiters of legitimacy. That combination makes him nearly impossible to absorb into the normal prestige hierarchy of international diplomacy.
He also challenges the elite belief in a liberal world order. Many diplomats view history as a slow march toward global integration and conflict resolution through international law. Netanyahu argues that the world remains a place where only the strong survive. That worldview insults the professional identity of the people who manage international institutions. They see his realism as a threat to their entire diplomatic architecture.
Perhaps most irritating to elites is that he treats the American public as his own constituency. He understands the logic of the American political system as well as most senators and intervenes directly in internal American debates to secure his objectives. Most leaders fear the consequences of such interference. Netanyahu treats it as a tool for national survival. That refusal to accept a subordinate position in the international hierarchy is what elites find most difficult to forgive.

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Why Is Tucker Attacking Chabad?

Posted on March 9, 2026 by Luke Ford

Why is Chabad getting called a Jewish supremacist cult? Doesn’t every group think it is best?
I have a personal bias here. I love Chabad. Most Lubavitchers I know are happy, healthy, energetic people. On the other hand, some people I know feel traumatized by their experience with Chabad. They were beaten by their teachers in Chabad school, or they say they were abused, or they feel their Chabad childhood robbed them of the chance for a decent secular education.
Different people have different experiences with Chabad. In general, the people I know who are bitter and angry about Chabad, or about any religion, are not thriving in life. The happy people I know are not characterized by rage.
Organized religion is not for everyone. Some people benefit from a more intense religious commitment and others from a less intense one. I’ve seen people become religious and become great, and others become religious and become obnoxious. Religion is not a magic key to life, and no single denomination suddenly makes everything better.
Chabad has become a highly visible Jewish organization. It has thousands of centers globally and strong connections with political leaders in the U.S., Israel, and many other countries. That visibility makes it a target for people who don’t like Jews.
Different groups have different interests. The interests of Chabad are not identical with those of every other group. When strong conflicts of interest arise in a particular place, hatred tends to follow. Orthodox Jews, for example, often have large families and like to build large homes that can clash with the aesthetic preferences of their neighbors.
Jews have enjoyed disproportionate success in American institutions such as universities. Jews often lead these institutions. This looks like a success story until a growing number of Americans begin to resent those same institutions. If you think America’s institutions are on your side, you don’t like Donald Trump. If you feel they are aligned against your interests, you vote for him.
As MAGA goes to war with Big Media, Big Law, and Big Academia, many people in that coalition develop skeptical views of Jews who often embody exactly those institutions. Tucker Carlson’s coalition frames global politics as driven by elite networks. Tucker portrays Chabad as part of an international influence network, and once that narrative takes hold, the language escalates into accusations like “supremacist cult.”
Chabad believes it has a special role to play in the world. But so does every group. Christians historically believed the Church carried universal truth. Muslims believe Islam represents the final revelation. Americans talk about exceptionalism. National movements frequently claim a special historical destiny. Humans build meaning by telling stories about their group’s role in the universe. These narratives bind communities together and justify shared norms.
Chabad-Lubavitch is a Hasidic Jewish movement founded in the late eighteenth century in Eastern Europe. Its core mission today is outreach to unaffiliated Jews. Chabad rabbis establish centers around the world to serve Jews who may not otherwise connect with Jewish religious life. These centers run synagogues, schools, community programs, and holiday events. The movement developed a distinctive leadership model centered on the late Lubavitcher Rebbe, Menachem Mendel Schneerson, whom many followers regard as one of the greatest Jewish leaders of the modern era. Chabad is traditional in religious practice but unusually open in its outreach strategy, which is why it has become globally prominent.
Chabad draws disproportionate scrutiny for a few reasons. Its global network makes it highly visible. It interacts with political leaders in many countries. Some followers believe the Rebbe was the Messiah, or might still be. That last point attracts curiosity and sometimes suspicion from outsiders.
The word cult gets used loosely in arguments. Chabad is not regarded as a cult by mainstream scholars of religion. It is a recognized branch of Orthodox Judaism with millions of supporters and institutions around the world. It has a strong internal culture and leadership traditions, but so do most religious movements. What you are seeing now is less a religious debate than a political conflict where a visible religious movement has become a symbol in broader arguments about power, identity, and influence.
I wonder why Aish HaTorah isn’t getting attacked by populists. The answer has little to do with theology and much to do with visibility, scale, and proximity to public life.Chabad is everywhere. Its rabbis run thousands of Chabad Houses across universities, cities, and tourist destinations. Many political leaders attend Chabad events. White House Hanukkah receptions and public menorah lightings often involve Chabad. That visibility makes Chabad the symbolic face of Jewish religious life in many places. Aish HaTorah, by contrast, runs yeshivas, seminars, and educational retreats. Most of its work happens inside classrooms and study halls rather than public civic rituals. If you want a symbol to attack, Chabad is much easier to see.
Chabad leaders regularly interact with politicians, which makes them easy targets for people looking for institutions connected to power. Aish HaTorah focuses on religious education and intellectual outreach rather than political relationship building. It also lacks a comparable charismatic leader. Movements built around famous leaders attract more attention, both positive and negative.
Chabad rabbis are instantly recognizable. The black hats, beards, and outreach style create a distinctive visual identity. Populist media relies on visual shorthand when constructing narratives about groups. Aish HaTorah students and rabbis look more like other Orthodox Jews and carry no unique visual brand. That difference sounds trivial, but it matters in media politics.When critics want to build a story about Jewish influence or networks, they choose the most recognizable organization. Chabad is simply the easiest symbol available.
Youtuber Vrillium has made a video called “The Goyim’s Guide to Chabad.”
It is a classic example of internet conspiracy storytelling built from half-facts, misunderstandings, and ideological framing. Almost every section follows the same pattern: start with a real element of Jewish theology or history, strip it of context, then reinterpret it through a hostile lens.
The speaker opens by calling the group “dangerous,” “sinister,” and “terrifying.” He jokes about being killed for criticizing them and frames himself as exposing a hidden power. That is the standard structure of conspiracy content. It primes the audience emotionally before any evidence appears. Once that frame is installed, every fact becomes proof of hidden domination.
He portrays Chabad as a powerful hidden organization controlling money, property, and politics. In reality, Chabad is a decentralized religious outreach movement. Each Chabad House is typically run by a rabbi and his family who raise funds locally. There is no central financial pool controlling world politics. Most Chabad institutions struggle financially because they depend on donations from local communities. The claim that Chabad owns most of Brooklyn is simply false.
He describes Chabad outreach as sinister, but the activity is ordinary religious outreach. Christian missionaries do it. Mormon missionaries do it. Evangelical campus ministries do it. Chabad asks Jews whether they want to perform a mitzvah because the goal is reconnecting secular Jews with religious practice. That is the same logic as church evangelism.
He claims Chabad is obsessed with genetics and blood. What he describes is the traditional Jewish definition of Jewish identity: someone is Jewish if born to a Jewish mother or if they convert. It is a tribal and religious membership rule that developed over centuries. Many religions have similar boundaries.
He quotes a concept from the Tanya, an important Chabad philosophical work. The book describes Jews as having both an animal soul and a divine soul. But the text does not say non-Jews are animals or subhuman. The animal soul refers to the basic human drives that everyone has. Jewish mystical literature uses symbolic language about different spiritual levels, and pulling those metaphors out of context makes them sound extreme.
He presents the Noahide laws as a secret plan for Jewish domination. These seven laws come from ancient rabbinic tradition and represent a minimal ethical code for humanity. They include prohibitions on murder and theft, and a requirement to establish courts of justice. They are a theological idea about universal morality, not a political program. The Reagan proclamation he cites was a ceremonial statement praising moral education and the Rebbe’s outreach work. It established nothing.
The structure of the video is very old. For centuries, conspiracy literature has portrayed Jews as secretly controlling politics, undermining Christianity, and manipulating governments. The specific details change. Sometimes it is the Rothschilds, sometimes Freemasons, sometimes Zionists, now sometimes Chabad. But the narrative template stays the same: hidden network, secret theology, plan for domination. It predates the internet by hundreds of years.
What the video reacts to, beneath all of it, is visibility. Chabad is a highly visible Jewish organization. It interacts with politicians, runs public events, and has a large international network. When people already believe in hidden influence, visible organizations become easy targets for projection. The video is less a serious analysis of Chabad theology than an example of how conspiracy narratives reinterpret ordinary religious belief as evidence of secret power.

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SMH: Trump officials ‘asked why Australian Jews aren’t carrying guns’

Posted on March 9, 2026 by Luke Ford

Viewed through Alliance Theory, this story is about competing security cultures and alliance expectations between three different coalitions. The question from Trump officials, why aren’t Australian Jews carrying guns, reflects the American minority self defense model where minority communities have long developed traditions of armed self-protection. Black civil rights groups did it in the 1960s. Korean shop owners armed themselves during the 1992 Los Angeles riots. Jewish institutions routinely employ armed guards. The logic runs like this: the state cannot guarantee protection, minorities face targeted violence, so communities must build their own defensive capacity. From inside that framework, an unarmed minority gathering looks negligent.
Australia works from a different premise. After the Port Arthur massacre, the country built a social contract around two ideas: the state monopolizes legitimate force, and citizens accept strict gun control in exchange for public safety. That arrangement runs deep. Even communities under genuine threat tend to look to police and intelligence agencies rather than arm themselves. When Alex Ryvchin told American officials that arming Jews is not part of Australian culture, he described a genuine difference in how each country distributes responsibility for preventing violence.
Jewish diaspora communities around the world occupy a third position. Because they have faced targeted violence across many countries and centuries, many Jewish organizations maintain their own security infrastructure alongside state protection. Britain, the United States, and France all have versions of this model. Australia’s Community Security Group already reflects it, but within the constraints of Australian gun law. The argument the article describes is really about whether that community should shift slightly toward the American end of the spectrum.
The Trump administration’s interest goes beyond guns. The administration has made antisemitism a foreign policy concern, which means the safety of Jewish communities abroad becomes something Washington monitors and comments on. The Bondi attack became a reference point for American officials evaluating whether allied governments protect Jewish communities adequately. That framing explains the friction. It is not just two countries disagreeing about firearms. It is two different alliance models, each with its own logic about where security responsibility sits, talking past each other.
Ryvchin’s remark about living in an old world matters here. It suggests that some Australian Jewish leaders now wonder whether the traditional model still works when threats become more decentralized and ideological. Relying entirely on police and intelligence services feels less reliable when the threat is diffuse. That is the question the Americans are pressing. Australia has historically rejected the idea that minority communities should take primary responsibility for their own security. Events like Bondi put that assumption under pressure again.

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Tell Me How This Ends

Posted on March 9, 2026 by Luke Ford

JP Morgan on how Operation Epic Fury would end: “Resource risk will begin to outweigh increasingly marginal military gains and the conclusion to the conflict will come down to the three M’s : Munitions, Markets and Midterms.”
That JPMorgan line is a very pure elite-system sentence. It compresses the whole war into the incentives of the governing coalition.
“Munitions, Markets, and Midterms” strips away all the ideological language that normally accompanies war coverage and replaces it with the actual control variables. It is a political economy model of war termination, not a military theory, and it is more honest for that reason. The bank expects a short campaign measured in weeks, and the logic is straightforward: the White House wants a “mission accomplished” moment before the electoral cycle swallows the national conversation.
The munitions constraint is real. Every modern air campaign runs on precision missiles, aircraft sorties, and maintenance capacity, and even American and Israeli stockpiles are finite. Once Pentagon planners start worrying about reserves for other theaters, pressure builds to wind things down. The markets constraint is JPMorgan’s home territory. Brent crude past $108 a barrel, nearly 20 percent of global airfreight capacity idled, gold targets raised to $6,300 an ounce by end of 2026. These numbers signal that the financial system has already begun disciplining the war. The midterms constraint is the oldest one. Vietnam before 1966, Iraq before 2006, Afghanistan shaping 2018. Congress and electoral incentives push toward stabilization before voters reach the polls, regardless of what the president wants.
What JPMorgan quietly concedes is that wars rarely end when operational objectives are met. They end when the political, logistical, and financial systems that sustain them hit enough friction simultaneously.
David Ignatius is doing several alliance moves at once in this column. If you read him through David Pinsof’s Alliance Theory, the piece is less about informing readers and more about managing relationships inside the foreign policy coalition.
The anonymous “senior Israeli official familiar with the planning” is a classic Washington signaling device. Ignatius has long served as a conduit for intelligence and diplomatic networks, and when he cites a worried insider, it usually means one of two things: a faction wants to float a trial balloon, or someone in the American policy establishment wants to legitimize a restraint narrative by attributing it to Israelis.
The message is clear enough. Military goals are nearly achieved. Regime change is unrealistic. It is time to think about a ceasefire. That is not analysis. It is coalition signaling aimed at a specific audience inside the foreign policy establishment.
The phrase “tell me how this ends” does particular work here. In Washington it stopped being a genuine strategic question some time ago and became a loyalty signal, a way of performing membership in the “serious adult” coalition while implicitly contrasting that coalition with leaders portrayed as impulsive. The phrase carries hidden assumptions: that leaders can know the ending in advance, that uncertainty is evidence of folly, that wars without fully articulated end-state scripts are somehow less legitimate than the threats they address. Those assumptions are often false. Many wars begin without clear endings and produce favorable outcomes anyway. Many beautifully theorized endgames collapse the moment they meet reality.
The column’s structure follows a recognizable Blob template. It concedes tactical success while attacking strategic legitimacy. The bombing campaign, Ignatius writes, is nearing its military goals. Then he immediately pivots to unanswered questions and missing planning. This is the establishment’s standard move when events contradict prior expectations: adapt without admitting the shift, protect the credibility of the expert ecosystem by preserving its skepticism even as it quietly updates its stance.
The Israeli internal fracture is the most substantive piece of your analysis. The anonymous official likely represents the strategic planning wing of the IDF, not the political leadership. The defense establishment, linked to IDF Chief of Staff Eyal Zamir, defines victory as the removal of a specific military capability: a destroyed missile factory, a neutralized nuclear site. For that faction, the goal is to bank tactical gains and exit before costs escalate. Netanyahu operates on a different logic entirely. He frames the war as a tool for total regional transformation and the survival of his coalition. He has publicly called for destabilizing the Islamic Republic and authorized the IDF to seize positions deeper into southern Lebanon. His references to “many surprises” and “unconditional surrender” suggest he sees the defense establishment’s push for a ceasefire as defeatist.
The official’s decision to speak to Ignatius anonymously is itself evidence of how outmatched that faction is inside Jerusalem. By going to an American journalist embedded in the foreign policy establishment, they are attempting to use the “adult room” in Washington to restrain their own prime minister. They are feeding the Munitions and Markets narrative to JPMorgan’s audience, hoping that financial and political pressure from Washington will force an exit ramp that Netanyahu has not authorized.
The deepest anxiety in the Ignatius column is not military escalation. It is loss of narrative control. The traditional foreign policy establishment normally sets the terms by which wars are framed, justified, and constrained. This campaign runs through Trump, Israeli operational planning, and a pressure coalition centered on FDD-style hawks. That bypasses the consensus institutions where Ignatius and his sources operate. The column tries to pull the war back into familiar procedural language: experts debate exit ramps, officials express concern, strategists demand to know how it ends. Whether that language still controls anything is a different question.

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