The Jurisdictional Wars: Alliance Theory and the Battle for Power Among America First Think Tanks

Posted on March 9, 2026 by Luke Ford

Nobody in this world says they want power. They say they are fixing a failure. The America First think tank ecosystem of 2026 is no different. Its organizing myth is a diagnosis: we won the election but lost the state. From that diagnosis flows everything else, the policy factories, the personnel databases, the legal justifications, the philosophical training programs, the judicial pipelines. Each piece covers a different layer of the state. Together they form something that has no real precedent in American political life: a parallel governing apparatus built to bypass the machinery that defeated the first Trump term before it could fully begin.
The America First Policy Institute opened in 2021 with a $20 million headquarters a few blocks from the White House. Brooke Rollins, Larry Kudlow, and Chad Wolf are among its leaders, all former senior administration officials. It does not function like a traditional think tank because it was not designed to. Traditional think tanks produce long-form papers and wait for influence. AFPI drafts executive orders and ready-to-sign legislation. By its own account, over 86 percent of its drafted policies were advanced or enacted in the first hundred days of the current administration. That number is not primarily a metric. It is a status signal directed at the coalition: we are not theorists, we are operators. The distinction matters enormously inside this world. Status flows to whoever can move an idea from draft to enactment fastest. AFPI claims jurisdiction over that pipeline.
The Heritage Foundation under Kevin Roberts represents a different but complementary jurisdictional claim. Heritage has moved away from its Reagan-era identity as a producer of policy white papers toward something more structural: control over personnel. The premise is simple and was proven by the first term’s failures. Ideas without people to implement them produce nothing. A hostile mid-level bureaucracy can slow, distort, or quietly bury any policy initiative regardless of how well-designed it is. Heritage responded by building a database of ideologically vetted lawyers, regulators, and administrators ready for placement across federal agencies. Status inside this coalition no longer comes from being cited in a policy debate. It comes from being placed. The most powerful figures are those who can deploy a loyal cadre into positions that actually run the machinery of the state.
The Center for Renewing America, led by Russ Vought, fills a third role. It supplies the legal and cultural arguments that justify the dismantling project: ending birthright citizenship, restructuring the administrative state, expanding executive authority. Vought functions as a permission-giver. His coalition does not merely interpret existing law. It claims jurisdiction over what the state is permitted to do and provides the moral vocabulary to make those claims stick. Without this layer, the policy factory and the personnel machine lack the legal cover to operate at full speed. With it, actions that might otherwise face immediate challenge arrive pre-justified.
The broader network extends beyond these three nodes. The Claremont Institute provides philosophical grounding and trains a rising intellectual class to understand this moment not as normal politics but as a regime-level struggle. That framing matters because it raises the stakes of every policy fight to something existential, which justifies the urgency and the methods. The Federalist Society runs the judicial pipeline, securing long-term institutional permanence through clerkships and judgeships in a way that no single administration can easily reverse. Together these institutions cover every layer of the state: the drafting of policy, the staffing of agencies, the legal justification of action, the philosophical interpretation of the moment, and the long-term shaping of doctrine through the courts.
David Pinsof’s Alliance Theory illuminates what this ecosystem is actually doing beneath the surface of its nationalist language. Every coalition presents its preferred definition of legitimate authority as the obvious description of what effective governance requires. AFPI claims that policy matters only if it can be implemented immediately. Heritage claims that implementation requires personnel alignment. The Center for Renewing America claims that restructuring requires legal justification. Claremont claims that action requires philosophical grounding. The Federalist Society claims that gains require judicial permanence. None of these claims acknowledges that institutional interests, the pre-positioned drafts, the databases, the donor networks, the training pipelines, shape the definitions themselves. Each presents its version of effective governance as a patriotic necessity visible to anyone serious about restoring sovereignty.
Stephen Turner’s critique of expertise cuts deeper still. What looks like a coherent governing philosophy is also a jurisdictional war over who gets to count as the legitimate operator of the state. The America First ecosystem does not compete for status through citations or conference panels. It competes through implementation. The goal is not to influence the gatekeepers at the Council on Foreign Relations, Brookings, or the Atlantic Council. It is to replace them entirely, with a parallel structure that has its own donor base, its own media, its own fellowships, and its own conferences. The claim underlying the whole project is that existing institutions are captured and biased, which justifies building an alternative system and declaring it the authentic one.
What makes this ecosystem stable, and what Turner would find most analytically significant, is the sincerity of its participants. These are not cynical operators who understand themselves to be constructing a rival elite hierarchy. They believe they are restoring democracy and reclaiming sovereignty from a class of unelected technocrats who captured the state over decades. That belief allows the status competition to operate without self-awareness. The personnel database feels like patriotism. The policy factory feels like service. The legal justifications feel like constitutional fidelity. The incentives of the game run beneath the surface of the conviction, invisible to the players precisely because the conviction is genuine.
The lesson the first term taught was structural. Winning an election is not the same as controlling the governing machinery. The America First ecosystem was built to close that gap. Whether it succeeds or produces its own form of captured governance, a rival elite replacing the one it displaced, is the question the next several years will answer. Turner would note that revolutions in who counts as the legitimate expert do not automatically produce better governance. They produce new gatekeepers who believe, with equal sincerity, that their authority is different in kind from the authority they replaced.

Posted in America | Comments Off on The Jurisdictional Wars: Alliance Theory and the Battle for Power Among America First Think Tanks

The Jurisdictional Wars: Alliance Theory and the Battle for Status at the Foreign Policy Research Institute

Posted on March 9, 2026 by Luke Ford

Nobody at the Foreign Policy Research Institute says they want to shape American strategy because it gives them power. They say they see reality clearly. They read maps without moral distortion. They understand the system at a level that moralizers and ideologues do not. That is the move. Strategic authority is a status claim wrapped in the language of necessity, and the institute has spent seven decades perfecting it.
FPRI was founded in Philadelphia in 1955, and the location is not incidental. Physical distance from Washington signals something. Think tanks on K Street must respond to the news cycle to stay relevant to donors and the executive branch. FPRI leans into the long view instead. It claims to rest on permanent geographic and historical truths rather than the shifting priorities of whichever administration currently occupies the White House. That signal carries real weight with military professionals and intelligence analysts who harbor deep skepticism toward the partisan churn of the capital. Distance becomes a status asset. The institute is not captured by Washington, or so the signal runs, so its analysis can be trusted in ways that Brookings or the Atlantic Council cannot quite manage.
The institute’s core move, visible throughout its history and sharpened in the current Iran war, is to strip away the moralizing language of neoconservatism and replace it with the logic of maritime chokepoints and energy corridors. A neoconservative institution argues for intervention on the grounds of spreading democracy or defending human rights. FPRI argues for the same intervention on the grounds of preventing regional hegemony or protecting sea lanes. The policy conclusion is often identical. The justification travels differently. It recruits military planners who distrust crusades. It tells skeptics to ignore values and focus on logistics. It makes intervention feel like a cold business necessity rather than an ideological project, which lowers emotional resistance among exactly the professionals whose support matters most.
David Pinsof’s Alliance Theory identifies this as a coordination mechanism. By framing geopolitics as quasi-scientific, rooted in hard geography and structural pressures rather than moral preferences, FPRI presents its conclusions as inevitable rather than chosen. States behave the way they do because of geographic constraints. Iran is not primarily an ideological actor. It is a geographic entity subject to expansionist pressures in the rimland of Eurasia. Russia is not primarily a moral threat. It is a continental power seeking access to warm-water ports. If this is simply how the system works, then opposing these pressures becomes necessary rather than optional, and those who understand the necessity become the natural guides to policy.
Stephen Turner would apply his deflationary method here. Geopolitics does not derive from a neutral philosophy that settles which chokepoints count as vital, which rival expansions count as inevitable, or which interventions count as system-preserving. These are choices made by people with institutional interests, dressed in the language of structural necessity. The institute selects its frames. It shapes its conclusions. It aligns with certain policy outcomes. Its claim to neutrality is not a description of its actual position. It is part of its authority. The detachment is performed, and the performance is part of what makes the institution credible to the audience it most needs to reach.
The journal Orbis does the deepest work. A white paper from a Washington think tank might shape a news cycle for three weeks. An article in Orbis might be taught at the Naval War College for a decade. This is concept circulation, which runs at a different level than job placement or policy drafting. The institute moves frameworks into the minds of people who will eventually hold significant positions, not just people into the positions themselves. By the time a colonel reaches a command that requires strategic judgment about Iran or Ukraine, the categories he uses to think about those problems may already have been shaped by something he read in Orbis a decade earlier. That is long-cycle power, and it is harder to trace and harder to contest than any single policy recommendation.
In the current war, FPRI frames the Iran operation not as a moral confrontation with a fanatical regime but as a cleanup of a failed geopolitical status quo, a necessary correction to a rimland imbalance that threatened American maritime and economic interests. Ukraine, similarly, is not a local border dispute but a system-level stress test for the post-1945 security architecture. Honor and reputation appear in this framework not as sentimental abstractions but as hard strategic assets. Abandoning a partner signals to Taiwan and Japan that American commitments are conditional, which pushes those allies toward their own nuclear programs or toward accommodation with rivals. The argument does not ask the public to love Ukraine. It asks the public to fear a world where Russia and Iran jointly control the energy and food corridors of Eurasia.
The restraint schools challenge this logic directly. The Quincy Institute invokes John Quincy Adams: America goes not abroad in search of monsters to destroy. The Cato Institute argues that a large military and an activist foreign policy threaten domestic liberty and fiscal health. Defense Priorities argues that the United States is overstretched and that a Fortress North America posture makes more strategic sense than managing the Middle East indefinitely. FPRI uses the restraint school’s own language against it. Where the restraint school says America should not go to war for values, FPRI responds: fine, ignore the values entirely and focus on logistics. The energy corridors are at stake. The food corridors are at stake. The system that generates American prosperity requires someone to defend its rules, and if the United States pulls back, the vacuum fills with rivals whose rules benefit them rather than us.
Turner would note the uncomfortable symmetry underneath all of this. FPRI presents itself as objective, analytical, and historically grounded. It is also selecting frames, organizing elite attention around the concept of a closed global system, and reaching conclusions that align naturally with the interests of the defense sector without requiring a check from any defense firm. The framework leads there on its own. If geography and power are the only things that matter, and if American prosperity depends on the ability to set the rules for global trade and security, then billions spent maintaining that system are always cheap relative to the cost of losing it. That conclusion serves certain institutional interests without those interests needing to make themselves visible. The logic does the work invisibly, which is precisely what makes it so durable.
The institute wins when decision-makers stop experiencing its preferred conclusions as choices and start experiencing them as facts. That is not the same as being right. It is something more powerful: being the institution that defines what right looks like before the argument begins.

Posted in Blob | Comments Off on The Jurisdictional Wars: Alliance Theory and the Battle for Status at the Foreign Policy Research Institute

The Jurisdictional Wars: Alliance Theory and the Battle for Status Through “Structural Conspiracy Theories” in Elite Media

Posted on March 9, 2026 by Luke Ford

Nobody in elite media says they promote conspiracy theories. They say they explain systems. They trace historical legacies. They map incentive structures. That is the move. It turns causal claims into status claims, and it defines who gets to interpret reality for the governing class.
The pattern is visible once you look for it. Elite media outlets are perfectly comfortable with structural racism, systemic sexism, disinformation ecosystems, and climate influence networks. They are deeply uncomfortable with claims that name specific actors coordinating specific outcomes. The distinction is not purely epistemic. It is partly legal, partly professional, and partly a matter of who controls the prestige conversation.
Structural explanations solve several problems at once. You cannot sue a historical legacy. You cannot sue an algorithm. Libel law does not reach impersonal forces. A claim that institutions generate unequal outcomes through embedded incentives carries none of the legal exposure that comes with alleging that a particular person did a particular thing on a particular day. This produces a selection effect across elite newsrooms and academic departments. Theories that work without naming actors rise in status. Theories that require naming actors sink, unless the evidence is overwhelming and the legal team is satisfied. The preference for systemic explanation is not only intellectual. It is a rational response to institutional risk.
David Pinsof’s Alliance Theory identifies what this preference actually does inside the prestige ecosystem. Structural explanation is a status filter. If you speak the language of systems, incentives, and historical legacies, you belong to the conversation. If you point to coordinated intent without ironclad proof, you get labeled conspiratorial and dismissed. This is boundary enforcement dressed as epistemology. It defines who is serious and who is not, and the definition happens to align with who carries institutional credentials and who does not.
Stephen Turner would apply his deflationary method here without mercy. Structural racism does not derive from a neutral philosophy of history that settles which outcomes count as embedded bias. Disinformation ecosystems do not derive from a neutral theory of networks that settles which algorithmic effects count as systemic versus which count as coordinated. Each of these frameworks is a coordination mechanism that recruits allies, expands the defining coalition’s jurisdiction, and presents that expansion as the natural acknowledgment of how serious analysis works. The language sounds like science. The institutional interests underneath it are invisible to the people reproducing it, which is exactly what makes the system stable.
The irony Turner would most enjoy is that structural theories can function as conspiracy theories by another name. They explain outcomes through mechanisms that are hidden from ordinary view. They are difficult to falsify. They scale to explain everything. If outcomes are unequal, the system is biased. If outcomes become more equal, the system still contains bias that produced the improvement. The loop closes on itself. The difference between a structural theory and a conspiracy theory is not logical form. It is social standing. Who makes the claim determines the label it receives.
Elite discourse also excludes a middle category that Turner would find analytically significant. Power does not operate only through impersonal systems or through secret plots. It operates through informal networks, shared educational backgrounds, mutual professional favors, and soft alignment among people who have never sat in a room together and agreed on anything explicitly. This middle ground is neither a formal conspiracy nor a faceless structural force. It is where a great deal of actual influence gets exercised. By choosing strictly between the systemic and the conspiratorial, elite media protects itself from the most accurate description of how its own world works.
The counter-coalition understands this, even if its version of the critique is usually too crude to be analytically useful. Populist and dissident media say the elite hides agency behind systems. They name names. They allege coordination. This is a direct challenge to epistemic authority, a bid to define reality through intentional actors rather than impersonal forces. Both sides are making the same underlying move: we should explain power because we see it clearly, and you should trust us rather than them. The fight is not primarily about truth. It is a jurisdictional contest over who gets to be believed.
What makes the elite preference so durable is that it genuinely solves real problems while also serving real interests. Structural explanations are legally safe, professionally rewarded, academically validated, and institutionally stabilizing. They allow moral critique without personal accusation, which is a powerful combination for institutions that need to appear both rigorous and responsible. The people who use this language are not cynical operators. They believe they are being careful. That belief is what allows the status game to run beneath the surface of the intellectual commitment, invisible to the players, which is, as Turner would note, precisely the condition under which such games run best.

Posted in Journalism | Comments Off on The Jurisdictional Wars: Alliance Theory and the Battle for Status Through “Structural Conspiracy Theories” in Elite Media

High-Brow New York Times Op/Ed By Iran Expert Destroyed By Reality

Posted on March 9, 2026 by Luke Ford

Eyal Yakoby posts: “BREAKING: Mojtaba Khamenei was reportedly severely injured, one of his legs has been amputated, and he may not even be aware that he is the Supreme Leader.”

I spent my weekend reading the 2025 book “Iran’s Grand Strategy: A Political History” by Vali Nasr (a professor of international affairs and Middle East studies at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies). Between bursts of news about the devastation of Iran, I learned in the professor’s book that an exhausted America was leaving the Middle East to the rising hegemon Iran.

What a stunning and brave opinion!

He must be bummed that his wish was destroyed by reality. But that doesn’t stop the New York Times from publishing him.

Now Professor Nasr is back with another brilliant point in the Times:

But Iran is not about to surrender to the president’s plans. On Sunday, Iran chose Mojtaba Khamenei, a son of the slain Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, as the new supreme leader. It was a clear signal that Tehran is determined to resist. Mr. Trump had warned Iran against choosing him, a leader who symbolizes defiance and someone best placed to lead Iran in continued resistance to the United States. Mr. Khamenei is a man of the regime, closely associated with its core values and institutions and his father’s legacy. He has been selected not to break with all that but to preserve it.

Last night I watched the news about Iran’s plucky new supreme leader and wondered why nobody asked if the bloke was even alive? It wasn’t even mentioned. Sometimes the news is at war with reality. It reminds me of the BBC insisting for hours on March 1 that because Iran said the Supreme Leader was going to speak to the nation, that proved he was alive and that America and Israel were making false statements about his death.

The news doesn’t want to report things that official sources haven’t told them. Most journos are stenographers for power.

The New York Times put three reporters on a profile that doesn’t bother to ask if the latest Ayatollah is alive. It doesn’t even mention he might be out of it. Instead, we get: “Iran’s Choice of New Leader Signals Defiance to Foes”

Perhaps a better head might be:

“Is the new leader alive and conscious?”

Or: “Why did the media skipped the ‘verify he exists’ step?”

Or: “Step one in geopolitical analysis: confirm the subject is alive.”

Or: “How the moon landing signals defiance to gravity.”

Or: “Bold analysis for someone whose pulse hasn’t been independently verified.”

Or: “Now let’s check if the Supreme Leader is ruling Iran or Weekend at Bernie’s.”

The collapse of a high-status narrative often reveals more about the architecture of elite expertise than it does about the geopolitical event itself. When a figure like Vali Nasr anchors an entire thesis to a single, unverified data point, the resulting structural failure offers a window into how “expertise” is manufactured and maintained in the prestige media ecosystem.
Nasr’s central flaw is his assumption of a “signal.” In the logic of international relations scholarship, every move by an adversary gets treated as a calculated piece of communication. By framing the elevation of Mojtaba Khamenei as a “clear signal” of defiance, Nasr transforms a potentially chaotic, desperate, or even fictional succession event into a masterstroke of Iranian agency. This creates a symmetry of rationality that comforts Western analysts. It is much easier to write a column about a regime making a “bold choice” than to write about a headless bureaucracy panicking in the dark. If Mojtaba is incapacitated or dead, the “signal” was never sent. The expert was interpreting static as a symphony.
There is a specific relationship between academic credentials and media accountability. As a professor at Johns Hopkins SAIS, Nasr holds credibility capital that functions as insurance against being wrong. In the world of elite op-eds, the penalty for a failed prediction is negligible as long as the failure stays within the bounds of conventional professional theory. If a fringe blogger makes a false claim, editors dismiss him as a conspiracy theorist. If a high-status academic builds a column on a false premise supplied by a state news agency, it gets framed as a “developing situation” or an “unfolding intelligence gap.” The New York Times shields the writer from consequences because he followed the conservative norm of quoting official sources, even when those sources belong to an opaque revolutionary autocracy.
Nasr’s consistent tilt toward Iranian durability is a feature of his intellectual brand, not a bug. By arguing that Iran is hard to break, he positions himself as the sober realist correcting naive Western hawks. But this framework creates a massive blind spot. When you commit to the idea that a system is resilient, you ignore the signs of brittleness. If the regime props up a mangled or deceased figurehead to maintain the illusion of continuity, that is not strength or sacred defense. It is a system so fragile it cannot withstand the truth of its own leadership vacuum. By ignoring the rumors about Mojtaba’s condition, Nasr did not just miss a scoop. He missed the possibility that his entire theory of Iranian stability is being falsified in real time.
The role of the prestige pundit is to provide sense-making for an anxious elite audience. The New York Times reader wants to believe the world is a chessboard where moves are understood and outcomes are predictable. Nasr provides that service. He replaces the terrifying possibility of geopolitical chaos with a legible story of defiant continuity. When reality fails to coordinate with the narrative, the essay does not just lose its force. It becomes a historical artifact of how the expert class prefers a coherent lie to a messy, uncertain truth.
Mainstream outlets rarely raise the possibility that a newly announced leader might be dead or incapacitated, and the reasons are structural. Journalism norms are conservative about reporting deaths or medical incapacity without hard confirmation. Major outlets almost never speculate unless they have a confirmed intelligence leak, a hospital record, credible witness testimony, or an official announcement. The legal and reputational risk is high. If the claim turns out false, the outlet looks reckless. So editors default to the safe assumption that the announced leader is alive and functioning.
Iran compounds this problem. Very few foreign journalists operate inside the country. Reporting relies on state announcements, diaspora sources, Western intelligence leaks, and think tank analysts. If the Iranian state announces that someone is the new Supreme Leader, that becomes the baseline fact until something clearly contradicts it. Elite media also carries a structural bias toward coherent narratives. Foreign policy analysis tends to assume intentional strategic decisions. If the reality is chaotic power struggles among IRGC factions, clerical councils, and security services, the story becomes much harder to narrate. There is also an institutional fear of looking conspiratorial. Speculating that a newly announced leader might already be dead can easily sound like internet rumor culture, and editors avoid it unless the evidence is overwhelming.
History shapes this caution too. Authoritarian regimes have concealed leadership deaths and incapacity before. Stalin’s final days, Mao’s long medical decline, Kim Jong-il’s disappearance rumors, Brezhnev governing while severely impaired, the health secrecy around Turkmenistan’s Saparmurat Niyazov. Because these regimes are opaque, rumors circulate constantly, and most turn out wrong. So professional media ignores them until confirmation appears. The absence of coverage does not mean journalists ruled out the possibility. It means they lack enough evidence to publish it.
The question of whether Nasr pumps out pro-regime propaganda is worth taking seriously, though the answer is more complicated than deliberate dishonesty. He comes out of the diplomatic engagement school of Iran policy and has long argued that the Islamic Republic is durable and that outside pressure tends to strengthen nationalist resistance rather than produce regime collapse. That position predates the current war by many years. What looks like propaganda to critics is often just the consistent worldview of that policy camp. Their core claim is that regime change strategies backfire.
His intellectual framework also explains the pattern. Nasr argues that the Iran-Iraq war fundamentally shaped the modern regime and that the institutions and narratives of sacred defense taught the system to endure pressure and mobilize nationalism. Once you adopt that framework, most events will look like evidence of resilience rather than weakness. He also sees himself as correcting a Western analytical bias. A lot of Western commentary portrays Iran as unstable or close to collapse. Nasr’s project runs almost as a mirror image, emphasizing that Iranian behavior often reflects long-term strategic thinking and a desire to preserve sovereignty.
That said, op-ed writing operates under a completely different incentive system than peer-reviewed research. Academic caution applies inside journals and conferences. In the media market, speed beats accuracy. When a war breaks out, newspapers want instant explanation. The scholar who provides a confident narrative gets invited back. The scholar who says we do not know yet disappears from the media circuit. Experts build brands around a theory and rarely abandon their core framework during fast-moving events. Their reputation depends on applying that framework consistently. The reputational penalty for being wrong is also low. Foreign policy commentary has weak accountability mechanisms. Analysts can publish interpretations that later prove wrong and remain respected as long as they hold affiliations with elite institutions. The audience rarely tracks prediction accuracy over time.
So the pattern is real. Nasr sits firmly in the camp that sees the Iranian system as resilient and adaptive. The opposite camp exists too, and analysts like Mark Dubowitz and Behnam Ben Taleblu argue the system is brittle and vulnerable. Both sides accuse the other of misreading Iran. The productive question is not whether someone is pumping out propaganda. It is whether the assumptions driving the analysis hold up against what is actually happening on the ground.

Posted in Blob, Expertise, Iran, Journalism, Pundits | Comments Off on High-Brow New York Times Op/Ed By Iran Expert Destroyed By Reality

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.

Posted in Carl Schmitt, Human Rights, International Law, International Relations | Comments Off on It’s Hard & Often Pointless To Regulate War

‘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.

Posted in Human Rights, International Law, War | Comments Off on ‘Revolutionary War and the Development of International Humanitarian Law’

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.

Posted in War | Comments Off on Decoding Hybrid War Expert Frank Hoffman

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.

Posted in Iran | Comments Off on Zineba Riboua: Trump’s Middle East: Operation Epic Fury is the Logical Conclusion of Trump’s Foreign Policy

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.

Posted in Iran | Comments Off on Decoding Iran’s Gray Zone Strategy

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.

Posted in Iran, Israel | Comments Off on Decoding Michael Eisenstadt