It appears that the Iranian regime is not busy enough. Even as it remains preoccupied with conflict at home, it continues to devote considerable effort to exporting terrorism abroad. Consider the complaint filed by the U.S. Department of Justice against Mohammad Baqer Saad Dawood al-Saadi. According to the government, al-Saadi, a 32-year-old commander in Kataib Hezbollah, was responsible for several plots and attacks in Europe and North America claimed by the Islamic Rightful Owners Movement, a front organization allegedly operating on behalf of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). He was arrested in Turkey while en route to Moscow and pleaded not guilty last week.

The arrest of al-Saadi and the rise in attacks carried out by the “HAYI” movement underscore that the West remains a battleground for rogue states waging covert warfare. Russia has employed similar tactics for years, relying heavily on the recruitment of low-level operatives through “gig economy” arrangements facilitated via Telegram. Reports indicate that Russian intelligence services have recruited more than 800 Ukrainians for missions involving arson, infrastructure sabotage, and espionage in recent years. Similar schemes have also spread to Britain, Poland, Germany, and the Baltic states.

Tehran has adopted a comparable approach, mirroring Moscow’s hybrid warfare model by using disposable agents—some of them minors—to conduct targeted retaliatory operations in Western countries. The HAYI movement, allegedly linked to al-Saadi, emerged in March, only days after the escalation of U.S. and Israeli operations against the regime. The group has claimed responsibility for at least 18 attacks across Europe, targeting Jewish synagogues, Jewish schools, ambulances, and community centers. The organization and its supporters have openly flooded pro-Iranian channels with videos of their attacks, amplifying fear and intimidation in real time.

Many of these attacks are explicitly antisemitic and intended to intimidate Jewish communities. Yet the broader objective is likely far more expansive. Terrorism, often carried out by Muslim migrants, fuels fear among Jews, resentment among Muslims, and suspicion throughout the wider public. Such activity deepens existing social divisions, sows discord, and undermines the stability of European societies. It represents an unconventional form of terrorism designed to provoke unrest, and Europe appears thus far to be responding with a troubling degree of leniency.

One case in particular illustrates the problem. In December 2025, three Serbian citizens in Smederevo were convicted on charges of espionage and incitement to racial and religious hatred. Their alleged activities included placing pig heads in front of nine mosques across Paris, spraying Jewish sites with green paint, and posting flyers in the French capital referencing the mass killings committed by the Ottoman Empire against Armenian Christians. Court records later confirmed that Russian intelligence services had directed and financed these operations. According to the rulings, the stated objective was to inflame religious and ethnic tensions and destabilize France. Yet the three defendants received sentences ranging from six to eighteen months of house arrest under electronic monitoring. In other words, the punishment was remarkably lenient for a foreign intelligence-directed destabilization operation.

The strategy behind such attacks is to exploit the vulnerabilities of the targeted state. Once an operative ignites a crisis, the host country often does the rest. It is therefore unsurprising that Europol warned earlier this year about these threats across the continent. Political polarization, antisemitism, and challenges related to migrant integration, among other factors, provide fertile ground for manipulation.

So-called “hybrid threats”—a term less severe than terrorism—should be treated with the same seriousness that governments applied to jihadist extremism during the height of the Islamic State’s self-proclaimed caliphate. This includes prioritizing public awareness campaigns to warn vulnerable individuals within diaspora and refugee communities about recruitment efforts. European capitals should also strengthen cross-border cooperation among intelligence and law-enforcement agencies. These institutions must devote greater resources to disrupting network hubs both online and offline, including those coordinating low-level operatives throughout Europe.

Washington could use these developments to reinforce its defenses against threats on American soil. Al-Saadi, for example, is alleged to have attempted to coordinate attacks against a prominent synagogue in New York City, as well as Jewish community centers in Los Angeles and Scottsdale, Arizona. The case also presents an opportunity for the United States to deepen cooperation with its allies in order to prevent similar plots from materializing in the future.

Equally important, rogue states must understand that they will face consequences for conducting hybrid aggression. Cyber campaigns aimed at exposing recruitment networks can disrupt their activities, while banning the platforms used by HAYI and similar front organizations would slow the spread of their propaganda. Additional sanctions on state sponsors would send a clear signal that the West is serious about countering such operations while simultaneously cutting off the financial resources that sustain them.

The arrest of al-Saadi may reduce the pace of HAYI’s activities in the short term, but Western capitals should not expect this strategy to disappear. Tehran understands the effectiveness of disposable operatives, and such attacks are likely to continue until the West develops a more effective counterterrorism strategy.

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If America won’t finish the job in Iran, leaving the Gulf Arab states would turn a failure into a rout.

It’s called the Persian Gulf for a reason. Iran has dominated this crucial waterway except when in internal disarray or checked by an outside power, namely Portugal, the Ottoman Empire, Great Britain and, after 1971, the U.S.

Oman, which has tried to improve relations with the Islamic Republic for years, has always stood apart from Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. So it wouldn’t be surprising to see Oman agree to establish a tolling regimen with Tehran for ships passing through the Strait of Hormuz, the choke point to the Persian Gulf.

Iran’s limited attacks on Omani territory in March and May signaled to Muscat that Washington can no longer protect the country. Unless the Trump administration soon realizes how precarious the American and Gulf Arab positions are, the Islamic Republic may do what Saddam Hussein only dreamed of.

The U.S. was always a reluctant hegemon in the Gulf. After the departure of the British in 1971, a Vietnam-weary America enlisted its local allies to protect the waterway. The policy was called “twin pillars,” meaning Saudi Arabia and Iran would do the heavy lifting. In reality, there was only one proxy: Iran. The Islamic Revolution in 1979 ended the experiment.

America was obliged to take charge. In 1980 Jimmy Carter announced a new doctrine: “Let our position be absolutely clear: An attempt by any outside force to gain control of the Persian Gulf region will be regarded as an assault on the vital interests of the United States of America, and such an assault will be repelled by any means necessary, including military force.” The Gulf was now menaced by the Soviet Union and revisionist regional actors. During the Iran-Iraq war (1980-88), the U.S. Navy kept both parties at bay and the waterway open. The cost: two frigates badly damaged, 37 sailors killed and 31 wounded.

Saddam tested Washington again when he attempted to extinguish Kuwait in 1990. If the Iraqi dictator had been allowed to digest that city-state, he probably would have invaded other neighbors or reorganized the region as a cash machine for his aggression.

The Islamic Republic doesn’t yet have a military that would allow it to invade its neighbors; it does, however, have the armed forces and the ideology to extort them if no Western power is there to prevent it. Washington may be tempted to move its bases from the Persian Gulf region since many of them sustained substantial damage, and our Arab allies can be fair-weather friends. Militarily and morally, it makes some sense; strategically, it would be a disaster.

Amid President Trump’s hesitancy to thwart Tehran’s bid for supremacy over Hormuz, Iran’s rulers sense the end of American hegemony. The Israeli-American wars against the clerical regime have ironically shown it a way to shatter the anti-Iran regional order. Saudi Arabia and the U.A.E. may hope they can circumnavigate the Islamic Republic by moving oil through new pipelines, but those pipelines will remain vulnerable to missiles and drones. Tehran’s offensive capacity has proved more effective than the combined aerial defense of the Gulf kingdoms and the U.S. And if Washington’s ability to produce interceptors swiftly and in sufficient quantity is in question, what remains of Arab fortitude will likely collapse.

The clerical regime is willing to absorb severe punishment—far more than the militaries of Saudi Arabia and the Emirates could ever dole out by themselves. Even if Mr. Trump doesn’t understand that the region’s development—what he called its “gleaming marvels”—has depended on the U.S., on the unchallengeable awe that has sailed with American warships, the Islamic Republic and the Gulf Arabs do.

Mr. Trump has repeatedly shown since 2019, when Iran attacked Persian Gulf shipping and the Saudi oil facilities at Khurais and Abqaiq, that he doesn’t see attacks on the Arabs as a casus belli for Washington. His 2026 National Defense Strategy sought “to empower regional allies and partners to take primary responsibility for deterring and defending against Iran and its proxies,” signaling America’s unreliability as a strategic partner. The current war has, so far, confirmed that.

Whatever credibility Washington still has in the Middle East depends on its willingness to maintain bases in the Gulf and in Iraq—and that places U.S. forces in harm’s way. Given our failure so far to fight the Battle of Hormuz and our inability to defend our allies adequately, this lever has lost some of the deterrence that once scared the Islamic Republic’s rulers. But it’s all we have now in an otherwise deteriorating situation.

If the Trump administration is unwilling to try to win this war militarily—which could entail losing destroyers, placing ground troops on Iranian islands in the Persian Gulf, and running convoys under fire for an indefinite period—then it needs to think about how to minimize America’s losses, to keep the failure at Hormuz from turning into a regional, if not global, rout.

The first step is to make clear that American bases in the most dangerous parts of the Middle East aren’t going anywhere. The Islamic Republic has profound internal problems. We should commit to waiting them out.

Mr. Gerecht is a resident scholar at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. Mr. Takeyh is a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.

The post Opinion: The U.S. Needs Its Mideast Bases.. appeared first on Ontime+.

The region is moving between cautious optimism and growing concern as Washington and Tehran edge toward an initial understanding to end the war.

The signals remain mixed: progress in negotiations on one side, and new U.S. strikes in southern Iran on the other, along with leaks about additional conditions that could complicate or derail the agreement.

According to leaks from the talks, the Pakistan-sponsored memorandum would include a 60-day halt to hostilities, an extension of the ceasefire announced on April 8, and direct negotiations over Iran’s nuclear program and the future of its enriched uranium.

Details:

• U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said President Trump is ready to reach “a good deal or no deal,” adding that the understanding may need a few more days.

• As de-escalation talks continued, U.S. forces carried out new strikes in southern Iran targeting missile sites and boats that U.S. Central Command said were attempting to plant mines in the Strait of Hormuz.

• Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baqaei said an agreement is “not imminent,” despite progress in the talks.

• Iran’s Fars News Agency, which is close to the IRGC, said one of the main sticking points is the mechanism for releasing frozen Iranian funds. It quoted a source in the negotiating team as saying there would be “no final agreement before the agreed funds are deposited.”

• President Donald Trump added a new condition that alarmed mediators, demanding that Gulf states and Pakistan join the “Abraham Accords” as part of the understanding with Iran.

• Reports point to the growing influence of “middle powers” in the Middle East, especially Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Qatar, Kuwait, Turkey, Jordan, and Pakistan, which are pushing to contain the war because of its huge economic and security costs.

• Qatar hosted Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi and Iranian Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf in Doha this week, signaling the return of Qatari mediation despite Doha having previously been targeted by Iranian attacks during the war.

• Gulf officials told +ontime that full normalization with Israel remains difficult for now because of Israeli policies in Gaza and the West Bank, and because of concerns that the region could appear to be part of an “Israeli axis” against Iran.

• Gulf states also believe they will have to coexist with Iran after the war ends, especially because the United States could later redirect its attention to other regions.

What next?

• The current negotiations look closer to a de-escalation framework than a comprehensive final settlement.

• Any failure over the frozen Iranian funds, or over the “Abraham Accords” condition, could collapse the understanding before it is officially signed.

• Gulf states are trying to pursue two tracks at once: preventing the war from widening, while preparing militarily for any new Iranian escalation.

• Regional assessments suggest all sides have taken losses, without any party achieving a decisive strategic victory.

Analysis

What stands out in this track is not only the possibility of a U.S.-Iranian agreement, but the shift in how Middle Eastern crises are being managed.

For the first time in years, Gulf states, Turkey, Qatar, and Pakistan appear to be moving like a political bloc trying to shape the pace of the war, instead of waiting for decisions from Washington or Tehran.

At the same time, the leaks reveal a widening gap between the Gulf vision for ending the war and the Israeli view, which still leans toward continued pressure and confrontation.

Adding the “Abraham Accords” condition at this stage may be a U.S. attempt to turn any de-escalation with Iran into a broader reshaping of regional alliances.

But it also risks blowing up the understanding itself, because several Gulf states do not want to appear as part of an axis directed against Tehran.

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In an article published by The Atlantic, writer Arash Azizi says the Trump administration’s narrative that talks are stalled because of a split in Tehran between military hard-liners and civilian diplomats contains only part of the truth, but fails to capture the real map of power inside Iran.

Details

• Azizi argues that conflict inside the Iranian regime does exist, but it is not simply divided between the IRGC on one side and the Foreign Ministry on the other.

• The clearest example is Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf, Iran’s parliament speaker, who led the Islamabad talks with U.S. Vice President JD Vance.

• Qalibaf combines influence across parliament, the Supreme National Security Council, the Defense Council, and old power networks inside the IRGC.

• According to the article, Qalibaf has effectively become the first among equals inside the Defense Council, making him one of the key managers of Iran’s war effort.

• Qalibaf’s power comes from his history inside the IRGC: he was a regional commander during the Iran-Iraq war, then held roles in the IRGC’s construction wing, air force, and missile program.

• At the same time, Qalibaf presents himself as a strong and effective technocrat, despite his harsh reputation and corruption allegations from his time as Tehran mayor.

• The article notes that the new supreme leader, Mojtaba Khamenei, remains outside public view because of his delicate health condition, creating more room for figures such as Qalibaf to operate inside security and decision-making circles.

• In this sense, Qalibaf shows that power in Iran cannot be read through a simple military-versus-civilian lens, but through overlapping networks of the IRGC, parliament, security, economy, and loyalty to the leadership.

• Azizi argues that the IRGC, given its current size and spread across the economy, politics, and security, no longer represents a single bloc with one unified position on negotiations.

• Notably, according to the article, no senior IRGC commander has publicly opposed Qalibaf’s handling of the talks. In fact, Tasnim, which is close to the IRGC, criticized hard-liners who tried to undermine diplomacy.

• The clearest opposition to negotiations comes from political hard-liners such as Saeed Jalili, a member of the Supreme National Security Council who previously opposed the path that led to the 2015 nuclear deal.

• Jalili is backed by lawmakers such as Ali Khezrian and Mahmoud Nabavian. Khezrian called for an end to all forms of message exchanges with the United States, while Nabavian described the Islamabad talks as unsuccessful and undesirable.

• But this faction’s influence appears relatively limited, as 261 out of 290 lawmakers signed a statement supporting Qalibaf and the negotiating team.

• One point of confusion, Azizi says, came after Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said the Strait of Hormuz would remain open during the ceasefire, before IRGC media clarified that this did not mean a full opening of the strait.

• Washington interpreted this discrepancy as evidence of internal division, but the writer argues that the Iranian statements were not really contradictory. Rather, they were an attempt to prevent Trump from portraying the issue as a major Iranian concession.

• Since then, the Iranian regime has tried to intensify the image of unity through Qalibaf’s remarks and joint messages insisting that Iranians, in the regime’s rhetoric, are not moderates and extremists, but revolutionaries behind one leader and one path.

• Still, institutional support for negotiations does not mean the road is fully open. Hard-liners can still mobilize their grassroots base, especially since Saeed Jalili won 13.5 million votes in the 2024 election.

• On the other hand, negotiations also have a broad base of support: the Reformist Front, former President Hassan Rouhani, Sunni cleric Molavi Abdulhamid, and even some opponents of the Islamic Republic support a fair agreement with Washington.

What’s Next?

The bottom line is that Washington may be making a mistake if it bets that internal division will paralyze Tehran. Yes, there are power struggles inside the Iranian regime, but they are not necessarily struggles that prevent a deal. The more serious issue for the United States is that those leading the negotiations are not weak diplomats trapped by the IRGC, but figures who hold keys inside security, the IRGC, and parliament at the same time.

In other words: Iran does not appear unable to make a decision. It is trying to raise the price of that decision.

The post Iran’s Leaders Want to Reach a Deal But Washington Does Not Fully Understand How Decision-Making Works Inside the Regime! appeared first on Ontime+.

As the prospect of the Iranian regime’s collapse emerges amid recent military escalation, questions are intensifying over the future of political Islam as a dominant force in the Middle East, following decades of failed ideologies that once shaped the region.

From the rise of Arab nationalism to socialism and ultimately political Islam, sweeping promises of revival were made but ultimately gave way to compounded political, economic, and security crises.

Details
The region has experienced three overlapping ideological waves:

• Arab nationalism: Led by Gamal Abdel Nasser, it championed dignity and unity but centralized power and weakened economies, with similar outcomes in Syria and Iraq.
• Socialism: Inspired by Soviet-style systems, it resulted in economic decline and long-term developmental failure.
• Political Islam: Emerged as an alternative after earlier failures, capitalizing on political vacuums, peaking with Iran’s 1979 revolution and the rise of groups like al-Qaeda, Hezbollah, and Hamas.

Despite their differences, these movements relied on mobilizing, conflict-driven narratives and often used regional causes to mask internal shortcomings. Over time, their promises devolved into prolonged crises, from wars and terrorism to economic deterioration.

In contrast, countries such as Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates have begun pursuing a different path, emphasizing economic openness and reducing the politicization of religion while maintaining religious identity within a more flexible framework.

What’s Next?
The question to be raised: will Iran as the pivotal test case. Observers are watching whether internal change could push it toward the region’s emerging path of openness, and whether a post-ideological model can take root by delivering both political stability and economic growth beyond the failures of grand ideological projects.

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An experiment conducted and shared by writers and technology specialists has sparked debate over artificial intelligence’s ability to uncover authors’ identities through writing style, even in unpublished or anonymous texts.

The experiment, carried out by a technology columnist at The Washington Post, showed that an advanced AI model successfully identified the author of literary and personal texts based solely on short excerpts, without any external search, relying instead on linguistic style and narrative structure analysis.

Details

• In the first test, around 1,000 words from an unpublished novel were input, and the model correctly identified the author based on stylistic fingerprints.
• In other cases, the model required progressively shorter passages, down to around 124 words in one instance, to make an accurate identification.
• The analysis relied on linguistic features such as rhythm, vocabulary, narrative structure, and descriptive style rather than database lookup.
• The experiment included diverse texts: novels, science fiction, and eulogies, all producing similarly strong identification results.
• The model indicated that each writer’s patterns form a linguistic signature that can be traced even in small text samples.

What’s Next?
The findings raise broader questions about the future of digital privacy as AI-driven text analysis becomes more powerful. Experts warn that anonymous writing online may become increasingly difficult to protect as stylistic tracing tools evolve and improve.

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On the surface, the region is witnessing a flurry of mediation. Pakistan is leading an indirect channel between Washington and Tehran. Oman is working the file of Hormuz and Gulf security. Egypt, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Russia are reportedly involved in efforts to reduce tensions or shape a wider negotiating framework. Araghchi has returned to Pakistan, visited Oman, spoken with counterparts in Saudi Arabia, Qatar and France, while Moscow has emerged as a station for the nuclear file.

But the deeper meaning is not explained by the number of mediators alone. It is that Tehran can no longer swallow Trump’s deal in one piece. So it is cutting it into smaller political fragments.

This is the strategy of deal fragmentation.

Iran knows that a direct agreement with the United States, especially under the pressure of war, blockade and threat, would open a lethal domestic front: the Revolutionary Guards, the conservatives, Parliament, a public fed for years on the language of resistance, and the entire legitimacy machine built on the idea that retreat before Washington is betrayal.

So the solution is to distribute the concession geographically. What is said in Moscow is not said in Muscat. What is discussed in Islamabad does not appear as a direct American-Iranian agreement. What is negotiated with Saudi Arabia and Turkey looks like a regional arrangement, not an American diktat.

In this way, the regime does not appear before its public as one that went to Washington submissive and defeated. It appears instead as one managing a network of capitals, forcing the world to negotiate with it through several doors.

That is the great trick.

Iranian diplomacy is not merely seeking an end to the war. It is seeking a stage on which the ending can be performed. If a final agreement matures, Tehran wants it to emerge not as a central concession, but as the result of international recognition that Iran is a regional actor that cannot be bypassed.

Form, therefore, becomes part of substance. The location matters. The sequence of capitals matters. The names and diversity of mediators matter. Even the absence of a direct meeting becomes a narrative: We did not go to the Americans; the world came to us.

At this moment, Iran is recovering an old imperial instinct: when victory is no longer possible, manufacture the image of victory.

This is where the analogy with Salamis becomes useful. Xerxes was able to burn Athens, but he lost at sea the battle that broke the momentum of his empire. The image he wanted to sell was simple: We punished the Greeks and burned their city. The strategic reality was harsher: the Persian fleet had suffered a blow that shifted the balance of initiative. He needed the fire of Athens to obscure the waters of Salamis.

Iran may now attempt something similar.

It may tell its people: We endured. We imposed mediators. We put Hormuz on the world’s table. We forced Washington to recognize our weight. We protected the nuclear program from total destruction. We prevented the fall of the regime. These are symbolic fires, useful for television screens and street chants.

But the sea — the true balance of power — says something else. When you are forced to circulate your files among Moscow, Muscat, Islamabad, Riyadh and Beijing, you are no longer commanding the scene alone. You are looking for a safe corridor out.

The problem is that Iran cannot concede without cover, and it cannot continue escalating without cost. The Strait of Hormuz is a dangerous card, but not a free one. Closing it, or imposing tolls on it, would alarm the entire world, including China, not just the United States. The nuclear file remains a sovereign symbol in Tehran’s rhetoric, but it becomes a liability if it serves as a pretext for stripping Iran of its military and economic infrastructure. A long war, meanwhile, is more dangerous to the regime than any incomplete agreement.

That is why the grand bargain, if it is born, will not be a peace deal in the romantic sense. It will be a mechanism for managing the rhythm of losses.

This also gives political meaning to Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf’s reported stay in Tehran, if that assessment is correct. The domestic front needs a guardian of the narrative as much as the external front needs a negotiator. Araghchi tours capitals to shape the framework. Ghalibaf remains inside to keep contradictions from exploding before the stage is fully built.

For the most dangerous moment for the regime is not the signing ceremony. It is the moment before the signature, when factions begin to smell concession before it has been perfumed as victory.

Iran’s moves, then, should not be read as pure confusion. They are confusion being organized. Tehran knows it is trapped between the cost of war and the cost of a deal. Its familiar answer is the third path: no full war, no naked bargain, but a multi-capital framework that allows every party to sell its audience a different version of the truth.

That is the old Persian lesson, from Salamis to Tehran: when you lose the sea, set fire to something else — then tell the people they are looking at victory.

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AI tools have become a core part of daily life, with more than half of Americans relying on them for personal use. This rapid adoption has enabled these systems to build detailed profiles of users through everyday conversations, capturing their interests, styles, and preferences.

Experiments show that simply asking a chatbot what it knows about you can reveal surprisingly precise personal information, including lifestyle patterns and interests. Some users have found that these systems can construct near-complete profiles based on ongoing interaction.

Details

• The Wall Street Journal reports that AI systems analyze text inputs to tailor responses, meaning they retain recurring patterns in behavior and preferences, such as favorite foods, thinking styles, and ways of asking questions.
• The report also highlights how AI applications are expanding into other areas, including the electric vehicle market, where hundreds of users have shared experiences ranging from praise for low operating costs to warnings about hidden expenses.
• At the corporate level, major tech companies are betting on AI to strengthen investor confidence despite mounting legal pressures. Some firms have seen stock gains after launching new models, aiming to offset the impact of ongoing lawsuits.
• The most sensitive aspect appears in cases of emotional interaction with AI. One striking example involved a man who developed an intense emotional relationship with a chatbot over a matter of weeks, which ended tragically—underscoring the psychological risks tied to such technologies.

What’s Next?
Attention is shifting toward regulating AI use and protecting user data, alongside closer scrutiny of its psychological and social impact as adoption continues to grow.

The post What Does AI Know About You? Surprising Personal Insights From Daily Chats! appeared first on Ontime+.

The core idea is that the relationship is no longer defined by oil in exchange for protection. It has become a broader partnership covering investment, technology, infrastructure, education, healthcare, and long-term capital. With Iranian attacks, disruption to shipping, and the declaration of a naval blockade, the question of stability has returned to the center of major economic calculations in the region.

The paper says the UAE’s March 2025 pledge to invest $1.4 trillion in the United States reflects the depth of the two sides’ interlinked interests. But the war also made clear that commitments on this scale ultimately rest on a security and political foundation that cannot be ignored.

Details

• The article, written by researcher Badr Jafar, presents the UAE as the clearest example that the relationship with Washington has become deeper than the traditional security umbrella and closer to a multi-layered strategic partnership.

• It argues that the war has made the economic cost of any regional disruption much more visible, after the region was hit by Iranian missiles and disruptions in energy and shipping.

• The newspaper stresses that the UAE is a strategic partner in shared prosperity across artificial intelligence, semiconductors, clean energy, and future infrastructure.

• It cites figures showing that the UAE has remained the top destination for U.S. exports in the Middle East for 17 consecutive years, and that bilateral trade in 2025 generated a $23.8 billion surplus for the United States.

• It expands the meaning of the partnership beyond trade, into education, healthcare, culture, and technology, from New York University Abu Dhabi to Cleveland Clinic Abu Dhabi and advanced technology partnerships.

• It notes that the UAE has borne the cost of the war directly, with its airports, ports, and cities exposed to thousands of strikes, yet it continued to defend the home front, keep its economy open, and maintain its investment commitments.

• The political conclusion of the piece is that the partnership will endure, but managing it through the old mechanisms is no longer enough, because its value has grown too large to leave on autopilot.

What next?

The real test now is whether both sides will reorganize the relationship as a long-term strategic asset, rather than treat it as a legacy understanding inherited from an earlier era.

(Analysis)

What stands out in this reading is that the UAE is presented here as the Gulf state that sees itself as most deeply invested in building the economic order led by the United States, and also as one of the most exposed to the cost of that order being shaken.

In that sense, the war reveals that the nature of the relationship has grown larger than the old formula that once managed it. That is the key shift: the UAE has become the trusted partner in any future regional arrangements.

Source

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• The war showed that bombardment alone is not enough to bring down a regime built from the start on surviving siege and pressure.
• Iran relied on old internal tools: crushing protests, imprisoning opponents, and reinforcing a narrative that the country is under foreign attack and must rally around the state.
• In Russia, Vladimir Putin has used a mix of anti-Western rhetoric, selective economic incentives, and direct repression to contain the effects of war and sanctions.
• In North Korea, the Kim dynasty has survived for decades despite famine, abuses, and isolation through strict information control, glorification of the leadership, and criminalizing any deviation from the official narrative.
• The article suggests that the absence of a free press, institutional checks, and peaceful channels of dissent gives such regimes the ability to conceal fractures and delay internal rupture.
• But the paper also notes that this kind of rule is not without weaknesses, since closed systems of control can blind leaders to elite divisions or the buildup of public anger until it suddenly turns into a real threat.
• The analysis recalls the lessons of the Arab Spring as evidence that protests can at times outpace security institutions, as happened in Egypt, Tunisia, Libya, and later Syria.
• Yet Iran, Russia, and North Korea have since developed harsher and more effective tools, including internet shutdowns, social surveillance, criminalization of dissent, and severe punishment of opponents.
• In Russia, this has not been limited to suppressing protests. It has also included banning major media and social platforms, pursuing antiwar voices, and even criminalizing small daily acts of dissent.
• In North Korea, the state imposes close surveillance over society, from workplaces to residential neighborhoods, while criminalizing foreign content and portraying it as a threat to the regime.
• The newspaper adds that these regimes are now cooperating more closely with one another, especially in exchanging tools of control and endurance.
• During Iran’s winter protests, Tehran used Russian technology, according to analysts cited by the paper, to make internet shutdowns more effective without disrupting state services.
• It also points to growing security and legal cooperation between Moscow and Tehran, including Russian training for Iranian police forces.
• The paper argues that North Korea’s deployment of around 15,000 troops to Russia’s Kursk region reveals a new form of this coordination, with losses being sold at home as sacrifice in the face of a U.S.-led international order.

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