Shashank Joshi on Why the War in the Middle East Won’t End Anytime Soon

You have a brittle regime, a weak regime, but it's not about to fall apart, although I do wish I wish it were, and and it's full of people who in some ways are younger, more radical, more ideological than the people who have been killed in large numbers in pre previous days. And now the good fight. with Yasha Monk. Well, for the last weeks I've been waking up every morning and looking at a few different news sources to try and understand what is happening in the war in the Middle East. And I have to say that I've had a little bit of trouble making heads or tails of it.

I can tell you about all kinds of developments over the last weeks, but I struggle to actually give you the through line, to give you a real assessment of such basic questions as to whether the United States are achieving their war aims, as to whether Donald Trump still is able to end the war if he decides to do that tomorrow, as to how long the disruption of the world economy and of energy markets is going to last. So I invited an old friend onto the podcast to help me make sense of these questions and give me orientation in the world, something that he's uniquely able to do. Shashank Joshi was in my PhD program in political science in Harvard, so I've known him a long time. He is now the defense editor at The Economist.

and just one of the best observers of the world situation military affairs. We talked about all of these questions. He told us about the war of attrition between the United States and Israel on the one side and Iran on the other side, and even made some predictions about how long this war is likely to last. In the last part of this conversation, which is reserved to paying subscribers, I asked Shishank how he actually is covering the war and the ways in which the actions of the combatants is making that harder, from the blackout of the internet in Iran to pressure by the American administration on satellite companies to not publish imagery that would usually be available in peacetime.

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