Assemblage: How American Strategy Is Made

I. A Wartime Hearing You Could Easily Miss

On April 21, 2026, the Senate Armed Services Committee gathered for what was, by the calendar of Washington, a routine annual posture review. Admiral Samuel Paparo, Commander of U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, and General Xavier Brunson, Commander of U.S. Forces Korea, came to discuss the Defense Authorization Request for Fiscal Year 2027.^[1] The senators thanked them for their service. The witnesses thanked the senators for their support. The hearing began.

It was not a routine hearing.

It was week eight of an active war. Operation Epic Fury — the joint U.S.–Israeli campaign against Iran that had begun on February 28 with surprise airstrikes during ongoing nuclear negotiations and the assassination of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei^[2] — was still ongoing. The Strait of Hormuz had been closed by Iran since March 4.^[3] Brent crude was on its way through $100 a barrel toward the $110+ peak it would reach in early May.^[4] Vessel traffic through the world’s most important oil chokepoint had collapsed by 70 percent. The International Energy Agency had already characterized the disruption as the largest supply shock in the history of the global oil market.^[5] A fragile two-week ceasefire mediated by Pakistan was thirteen days old and had already been violated by both sides.^[6]

You could read the hearing transcript without noticing any of this. The senators referenced “Operation Epic Fury” and “the war in Iran” matter-of-factly, as one references something everyone in the room already understands. The witnesses described force-posture changes in measured operational language. The chairman opened with rhetorical force: “China is the leader of the axis of aggressors. The People’s Republic of China intends to and is capable of preventing an American-led 21st century. We cannot ignore the implications of Xi Jinping’s aggression.”^[7] The ranking member led with measured concern: “President Trump’s war of choice in Iran has resulted in significant military posture changes in the Indo-Pacific region… Long-range strike weapons and missile interceptors are not quickly replaced. At current production rates, reconstructing what we have expended could take years.”^[8]

A reader who sits with the full documentary record finds something else: an assemblage in which strategic doctrine, think-tank-developed operational menus, intelligence and special operations, ideological-PAC funding networks, and congressional political mobilization function as a coordinated apparatus that makes particular wars and particular procurement programs politically possible across multiple administrations. The hearing was that apparatus performing — the moment where doctrine articulates itself, on the public record, through senators’ questions and generals’ answers — during the operational execution of one war and the doctrinal preparation for another.

This essay reconstructs that assemblage from the documents themselves.

II. The Thesis in One Paragraph

There is a real United States grand strategy. It is not the strategy printed in the National Defense Strategy. It is not the strategy spoken by senators on the dais. It is not, contrary to the reflex of certain critics, simply Lockheed Martin and Raytheon buying senators by the dozen. It is something more interesting and more concerning: a multi-decade integrated operational menu, developed by think tanks under U.S. government and allied-lobby funding, executed through intelligence and special operations across administrations, politically supported by ideological-PAC infrastructure with measurable correlation to the most hawkish speakers, and framed publicly by doctrine documents systematically written to understate what the operations actually do. What makes this an assemblage rather than a hierarchy is that the components feed back into one another: defense primes fund the think tanks that produce doctrine; senators receiving prime PAC money cite that doctrine to authorize procurement; procurement flows back to the primes. The arrows do not point in one direction. The 2026 IndoPacom hearing is one performance of this assemblage. The 2026 Iran War is another. The thirty-year Russia campaign that culminated in Ukraine is a third. The China track is in infrastructure-build phase, with the IndoPacom hearing as the wartime political mobilization for what comes next.

The argument has six steps. The think-tank pipelines are real and observable. They have produced operational menus that get executed across multiple administrations. The doctrine documents understate what the operations do. The political mobilization function (Senate, donor PACs) reproduces a rhetorical frame that makes integrated procurement justifiable. The “axis of aggressors” framing is the rhetorical glue, and it does not match the legal-evidentiary picture. And the energy market consequences of executing the integrated strategy are already producing crises the strategy itself has no doctrinal answer for.

III. Two Pipelines, Two Documents

In June 2009, the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution published Which Path to Persia? Options for a New American Strategy toward Iran.^[9] The authors are not marginal: Kenneth Pollack, Daniel Byman, Martin Indyk, Suzanne Maloney, Michael O’Hanlon, Bruce Riedel — career diplomats, intelligence professionals, regional specialists. The Saban Center is funded by Haim Saban, the Israeli-American media entrepreneur who has been explicit that his single political issue is Israel.^[10] The document was produced for the incoming Obama administration as it formulated its Iran approach.

The document is structured as a menu of nine options across four parts. Part I covers diplomatic options: Persuasion (Chapter 1), Engagement (Chapter 2). Part II covers military options: Invasion (Chapter 3), Airstrikes (Chapter 4 — “the Osiraq Option,” referencing Israel’s 1981 strike on Iraq’s Osirak reactor), and Leave it to Bibi (Chapter 5 — “Allowing or Encouraging an Israeli Military Strike”). Part III covers regime change: Velvet Revolution / popular uprising (Chapter 6), Insurgency / minority and opposition group support (Chapter 7), and the Coup (Chapter 8). Part IV covers Containment (Chapter 9).

The conclusion (“Crafting an Integrated Iran Policy”) proposes combining options. Persuasion can serve as cover for regime-change preparation. Regime-change options can amplify pressure during Persuasion. Airstrikes become a fallback if Persuasion fails. Israeli action provides cover-via-deniability for U.S. preferences. The authors note, in footnote 88 of the conclusion, that “this kind of ‘poison pill’ stratagem is exactly what some Iranians fear the Obama Administration is doing… These Iranians fear that the United States is not genuine in its pursuit of compromise and cooperation with Tehran, and is simply setting up Iran for much tighter sanctions and/or regime change.”^[11] The authors name the Iranian perception of bad faith. They do not refute it. They proceed to recommend the integrated strategy that would produce exactly that perception.

A decade later, in 2019, the RAND Corporation published Extending Russia: Competing from Advantageous Ground, a 354-page report by James Dobbins and eight co-authors.^[12] The preface states the document’s origin and purpose with unusual clarity:

This report documents research and analysis conducted as part of the RAND Corporation research project Extending Russia: Competing from Advantageous Ground, sponsored by the Army Quadrennial Defense Review Office, Office of the Deputy Chief of Staff G-8, Headquarters, Department of the Army. The purpose of the project was to examine a range of possible means to extend Russia. By this, we mean nonviolent measures that could stress Russia’s military or economy or the regime’s political standing at home and abroad… these steps are conceived of as measures that would lead Russia to compete in domains or regions where the United States has a competitive advantage, causing Russia to overextend itself militarily or economically or causing the regime to lose domestic and/or international prestige and influence.

This is not academic analysis. This is commissioned strategic-option development for the United States Army. The document then proceeds to inventory:

• Economic Measures: hinder petroleum exports; reduce natural gas exports and hinder pipeline expansions; impose comprehensive multilateral sanctions; enhance Russian brain drain.
• Geopolitical Measures: provide lethal aid to Ukraine; increase support to Syrian rebels; promote regime change in Belarus; exploit tensions in the South Caucasus; reduce Russian influence in Central Asia; challenge Russian presence in Moldova.
• Ideological/Informational Measures: pathways for influence operations; policy measures to diminish domestic and foreign support for the Russian regime.
• Air and Space Measures: change air and space force posture and operations; increase aerospace research and development; increase air and missile components of the nuclear triad.
• Maritime Measures: increase U.S. and allied naval force posture and presence; check the Black Sea buildup; shift nuclear posture toward SSBNs.

For each measure the document weighs costs, risks, escalation potential, and likelihood of producing Russian overextension. The summary’s most consequential prediction-or-prescription appears on page xv: “The Ukrainian military already is bleeding Russia in the Donbass region (and vice versa). Providing more U.S. military equipment and advice could lead Russia to increase its direct involvement in the conflict and the price it pays for it. Russia might respond by mounting a new offensive and seizing more Ukrainian territory.” The recommendation ends: “Increasing U.S. arms and advice to the Ukrainian military is the most viable of the geopolitical alternatives considered, but any such effort would need to be carefully calibrated to avoid expanding the conflict.”

That was published in 2019. Russia mounted its new offensive on February 24, 2022.

IV. Pipelines Executed: Russia, 2022–Present

By mid-2026, six of the eight RAND categories have been substantively executed, across the Trump 1, Biden, and Trump 2 administrations.

Western lethal aid to Ukraine reached more than $200 billion since February 2022, climbing the capability ladder in steps the document anticipated: HIMARS, then Patriot, then ATACMS, then Storm Shadow, then F-16s, eventually long-range strike permissions.^[13] The G7 oil price cap and the EU embargo on Russian seaborne crude were implemented in December 2022.^[14] Most strikingly, Nord Stream 2 was cancelled by Germany in February 2022, and the existing Nord Stream pipelines were destroyed by underwater explosions on September 26, 2022 — a destruction whose attribution remains officially unresolved but whose strategic effect maps directly onto RAND’s Economic Measure 2.^[15] The Russian gas share of EU supply collapsed from approximately 40 percent before the invasion to roughly 5 percent within two years.^[16] Comprehensive multilateral sanctions, SWIFT exclusion, and the freezing of approximately $300 billion of Russian foreign reserves followed.^[17] Hundreds of thousands to a million Russians, disproportionately tech-sector and educated, emigrated.^[18]

The geopolitical measures show similar fingerprints. Assad fell in December 2024, costing Russia its Syrian air and naval bases at Khmeimim and Tartus.^[19] Armenia, having watched Azerbaijan retake Nagorno-Karabakh with Russian acquiescence in September 2023, suspended its CSTO participation, joined the International Criminal Court, and tilted decisively westward.^[20] Moldova accelerated its EU accession path. Belarus remained the document’s clear failure case: Lukashenko consolidated rather than fell.^[21]

Three observations matter here.

First, the lag from RAND publication (2019) to operational fruition (2022 forward) is consistent with multi-administration strategic continuity. The lethal-aid posture was being built out under Trump 1, expanded enormously under Biden, and continued through the Trump 2 transition with bipartisan congressional support. The document did not need to predict any particular administration’s actions; it provided a menu durable across administrations.

Second, the document’s “calibrated to avoid expanding the conflict” caveat was not, in the event, the binding constraint. By 2024–2025 the West had crossed many of the escalation thresholds the document urged caution around. The “calibration” language served less as a brake than as a rhetorical hedge for an inherently escalatory strategy.

Third, the document’s stated objective was not to defend Ukraine. It was to extend Russia. Ukrainian defense was the means; Russian overextension was the end. Reading the war as the working-out of the document’s logic produces an uncomfortable but accurate reframe: Ukraine is, in the document’s own terms, the bleeding ground rather than the protected party. That framing should be taken seriously rather than dismissed; it is the framing the strategy authors chose for themselves.

V. Pipelines Executed: Iran, 2009–2026

The Brookings 2009 menu took longer to mature, but its execution by mid-2026 followed the integrated logic the conclusion proposed.

Persuasion (Chapter 1) was executed under Obama 2010–2015, culminating in the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action sanctions architecture; Engagement (Chapter 2) materialized as the JCPOA itself in 2015. Trump 1’s 2018 withdrawal from the JCPOA^[22] was the literal “poison pill” footnote 88 had named: the negotiations were converted, post hoc, into the predicate for a maximum-pressure campaign. From 2018 to 2024, sanctions intensified. Iran’s allies — Hezbollah, Ansar Allah, and Hamas — became the kinetic theater. Iran’s economy, never recovered, dwindled further.

The integrated execution arrived in 2026.

In January, the largest Iranian protests since 1979 produced a regime crackdown that, per multiple international human-rights documentations, killed thousands of civilians.^[23] In early February, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu lobbied President Trump for a joint military strike on Iran, specifically targeting its leadership, citing Israeli intelligence assessments of accelerated Iranian nuclear work.^[24] On February 28, 2026 — during ongoing U.S.–Iran nuclear negotiations — the United States and Israel launched coordinated airstrikes on Iran. The opening strikes targeted military and government sites and assassinated Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei along with several other senior Iranian officials.^[25] This was not Chapter 4 alone (Airstrikes / Osiraq Option). It was not Chapter 5 alone (Leave it to Bibi). It was Chapters 4 + 5 + 8 — regime decapitation by external strike — combined, with Chapter 1 (Persuasion / negotiations) as the cover that put the targets in known locations at known times.

Iran responded with missile and drone barrages on Israeli cities, U.S. bases in the Gulf, and U.S.-allied Arab states.^[26] On March 4, Iran announced the closure of the Strait of Hormuz to all shipping and threatened any vessel that attempted passage.^[27] On March 8 — eight days after Khamenei’s assassination — his son Mojtaba Khamenei was designated as the new Supreme Leader by the Assembly of Experts.^[28] The succession’s speed surprised analysts who had expected the decapitation strike to produce regime fracture; it instead demonstrated that the regime had succession planning ready and that the dynastic principle within Khomeinist clericalism could absorb even a Supreme Leader’s death.

The war ground on. A two-week ceasefire mediated by Pakistan was announced on April 8 but was repeatedly violated by both sides.^[29] The IndoPacom hearing took place on April 21 — week eight of the war, day thirteen of a ceasefire that was already fraying. By early May, Brent crude reached over $110 per barrel.^[30] Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced on May 5 that Operation Epic Fury was “over.”^[31] As of this writing, U.S. and Iranian negotiators are reportedly close to an agreement on gradual reopening of the Strait, but vessel traffic remains catastrophically reduced — approximately three vessels per day against a normal flow of 120–140.^[32]

A useful exercise: read the Brookings 2009 menu while holding the actual 2026 execution in mind.

Chapter 1 — Persuasion — provided cover. The 2025–2026 nuclear negotiations were the framework Khamenei had agreed to operate within when his location and movements were tracked.

Chapter 4 — the Osiraq Option — was executed against nuclear facilities at Fordow, Natanz, Isfahan in Operation MIDNIGHT HAMMER.

Chapter 5 — Leave it to Bibi — was executed via Operation Rising Lion, with Israeli strikes on additional facilities, scientists, IRGC commanders, and the Khamenei-targeting strike. Israel’s lobbying of Washington (per the search-corroborated reporting) was the political-decisional channel the chapter had described.

Chapter 8 — the Coup — was operationally substituted with external decapitation. The 2009 chapter had envisioned U.S. support to Iranian military officers acting against the regime. The 2026 execution skipped Iranian agency entirely and acted directly. Mojtaba Khamenei’s succession indicates the chapter’s premise — that decapitation produces collapse — was wrong; the regime survived.

Chapters 6 and 7 — Velvet Revolution and Insurgency — would have had operational windows during the January 2026 protests, the regime crackdown, and the post-decapitation succession period. The public record on this is no longer fully opaque. Israeli-side reporting has acknowledged Mossad activity: a Hebrew-language Ynet investigation, summarized in international press, described coordinated operations to escalate the protests beyond their economic-grievance origins, including ground-level amplification of violence.^[33] Both Mossad and the CIA ran public-channel mobilization in the same window — the “Mossad in Farsi” X account encouraged street protests on December 29 (“The time has come… We are with you”); the CIA published a Persian-language appeal on its official X account in February 2026 urging secure contact from Iranians.^[34] The kinetic events themselves are confirmed across the reporting spectrum: NBC, CNN, Reuters, and DW all documented mosque fires in Tehran (Al-Rasool on January 9, the Saadatabad mosque on January 8, and additional fires in the Gholhak and Sa’ad neighborhoods) and the casualties at makeshift clinics during the security-force crackdown.^[35] What is contested across the reporting is attribution. Three sets of actors are named in different accounts of specific incidents: protesters acting on their own; security-force provocateurs (with witnesses reporting that valuables were removed from mosques before they burned, suggesting orchestration intended to delegitimize the protests and justify the crackdown); and Iranian-state-named Mossad/CIA operatives. None of the three can be ruled out, and given the established Mossad and CIA activity documented above, none can be confidently distinguished from the others in every case. The triangulated picture: Chapters 6 and 7 were operationally active during the window; the kinetic events were real and severe; attribution of specific incidents is itself part of the contested terrain. The regime’s intact succession demonstrates that whatever pressure was applied did not produce collapse, and that the chapters’ premise — decapitation and street pressure produce fracture — was wrong in this case.

Chapter 9 — Containment — is the post-ceasefire posture. The 2026 NDS frames Iran as “weakened but reconstituting”^[36] — exactly the containment-of-a-rump-regime that Brookings 2009 framed as the fallback when other options failed.

The 17-year execution arc — 2009 menu, 2026 integrated execution, with steps under Obama, Trump 1, Biden, and Trump 2 — is consistent with multi-administration doctrinal continuity. The lesson is not that any one administration secretly planned the war. The lesson is that the doctrine, once deposited in the strategic-thinking institutions of the U.S. policy ecosystem, became durable across partisan transitions and was incrementally executed as conditions permitted.

VI. The 2026 NDS as Cover

Five weeks before the assassination of a foreign Supreme Leader during ongoing diplomatic negotiations, the Department of Defense — which now styles itself the Department of War in official documents and on signage, though the statutory name remains “Department of Defense” pending congressional action — published the 2026 National Defense Strategy.^[37] The presentational rename is itself part of the rhetorical shift the document performs: the Department of Defense (the post-1947 reorganization name) becoming the Department of War (the older name, used 1789–1947) is a return to a martial framing the post-Cold War era had explicitly retired. The document’s introduction invokes a Fall and Restoration narrative: America emerged from the Cold War supreme, “but rather than husband and cultivate these hard-earned advantages, our nation’s post–Cold War leadership and foreign policy establishment squandered them.” The Department, under President Trump, will restore what was squandered.

The document’s four lines of effort are:

1. Defend the U.S. Homeland, including Western Hemisphere “key terrain” — the document names Greenland, the Panama Canal, and the Gulf of America explicitly. The doctrine is termed “the Trump Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine” and threatens force (“we will be prepared to act decisively on our own, as the Joint Force demonstrated in Operation ABSOLUTE RESOLVE”^[38]).
2. Deter China in the Indo-Pacific Through Strength, Not Confrontation. This LOE is conspicuously measured. It explicitly disclaims regime change or domination as goals: “Our goal in doing so is not to dominate China; nor is it to strangle or humiliate them.”
3. Increase Burden-Sharing with U.S. Allies and Partners. Allies handle Russia, Korea, Iran with limited U.S. support; the U.S. handles homeland defense and the China deterrent. The new global standard for ally defense spending: 5 percent of GDP, of which 3.5 percent on hard military.
4. Supercharge the U.S. Defense Industrial Base. Reindustrialization; allied production integration; AI; faster procurement.

The document’s tone is calculatedly modulated. It says peace is the goal. It says strength enables negotiation. It frames adversary cooperation as “potential opponents… in a coordinated or opportunistic fashion” — the disjunction coordinated or opportunistic is doctrinally important: the document does not commit to the harder claim that there is a coordinated axis. Wicker’s hearing rhetoric does. The NDS does not.

The NDS contains no significant energy chapter. There is no operational doctrine for managing the energy-market consequences of operations the document permits. The Strait of Hormuz crisis, then five weeks in the future, is exactly the scenario the document does not engage. Operation MIDNIGHT HAMMER — the U.S. component of what would become Operation Epic Fury — is treated in the document’s “Iran” section in past tense: “Operation MIDNIGHT HAMMER… obliterated Iran’s nuclear program.” In January, when the document was published, this is a strange tense; by April, when senators reference it casually in the IndoPacom hearing, the strategic intent is clearer. The document was written to be readable both before and after the Iran campaign. Its tense choices are not editorial accidents.

The most precise way to read the 2026 NDS: it is the public-facing cover for an operational strategy whose authors are different from the document’s authors and whose operational chapters do not appear in the document at all. The NDS frames the rhetoric. The pipelines (RAND, Brookings, Saban Center, USG-internal strategic planning) provide the menu. The intelligence community and special operations execute. The doctrine document tells a story compatible with the operations after they happen, careful not to commit to predictions about operations before they happen.

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Continued in Part II — Hearing Articulations. Part II reads the IndoPacom hearing itself as wartime political mobilization, examines the donor pattern that supports it, applies symmetric legal scrutiny to the “axis of aggressors” framing, takes seriously the energy-market consequences the doctrine has no answer for, and lays out the structural argument about how the assemblage articulates itself across administrations. References appear at the end of each part.

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1. U.S. Senate Committee on Armed Services, “To Receive Testimony on the Posture of United States Indo-Pacific Command and United States Forces Korea in Review of the Defense Authorization Request for Fiscal Year 2027 and the Future Years Defense Program,” April 21, 2026. https://www.armed-services.senate.gov/hearings/to-receive-testimony-on-the-posture-of-united-states-indo-pacific-command-and-united-states-forces-korea-in-review-of-the-defense-authorization-request-for-fiscal-year-2027-and-the-future-years-defense-program. Witnesses’ prepared statements: Adm. Samuel J. Paparo, https://www.armed-services.senate.gov/download/testimony/paparo-opening-statement; Gen. Xavier T. Brunson, https://www.armed-services.senate.gov/download/testimony/brunson-opening-statement. YouTube video: https://www.youtube.com/live/tS35HiTYQkQ. ↩︎

2. “2026 Iran war,” Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2026_Iran_war. “Timeline of the 2026 Iran war,” Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_the_2026_Iran_war. “Prelude to the 2026 Iran war,” Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prelude_to_the_2026_Iran_war. UK House of Commons Library, “Israel/US-Iran conflict 2026: Background and UK response,” CBP-10521. https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/cbp-10521/. ↩︎

3. “2026 Strait of Hormuz crisis,” Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2026_Strait_of_Hormuz_crisis. U.S. Energy Information Administration, “Amid regional conflict, the Strait of Hormuz remains critical oil chokepoint,” Today in Energy, June 16, 2025. https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=65504. ↩︎

4. Bloomberg, “Iran War: How High Could Oil Prices Get with Strait of Hormuz Closure?” https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2026-iran-war-hormuz-closure-oil-shock/. CNBC, “Oil prices today: Trump, Iran, Strait of Hormuz, US, crude, Brent,” May 7, 2026. https://www.cnbc.com/2026/05/07/oil-prices-today-trump-iran-strait-of-hormuz-us-crude-brent-.html. ↩︎

5. International Energy Agency, Oil Market Report — April 2026, April 14, 2026. https://www.iea.org/reports/oil-market-report-april-2026. The IEA’s April 2026 OMR documents global oil supply having “plummeted by 10.1 mb/d to 97 mb/d in March,” with Strait of Hormuz loadings averaging 3.8 mb/d in early April vs more than 20 mb/d before the crisis, and characterizes the event as “the largest disruption in history.” IEA Executive Director Fatih Birol called it “the biggest energy security threat in history”: CNBC, “‘We are facing the biggest energy security threat in history,’ IEA chief tells CNBC,” April 23, 2026, https://www.cnbc.com/2026/04/23/oil-markets-prices-fuel-shortages-iran-war-iea-chief.html. See also Euronews, “IEA warns of historic oil supply shock as Iran war disruption persists,” April 14, 2026, https://www.euronews.com/business/2026/04/14/iea-warns-of-historic-oil-supply-shock-as-iran-war-chokes-global-markets. U.S. EIA press release, “Hormuz closure and related production outages are key drivers in EIA’s latest forecast,” April 7, 2026, https://www.eia.gov/pressroom/releases/press586.php. Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, “What the closure of the Strait of Hormuz means for the global economy,” March 20, 2026. https://www.dallasfed.org/research/economics/2026/0320. ↩︎

6. “2026 Iran war ceasefire,” Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2026_Iran_war_ceasefire. UK House of Commons Library, “US-Iran ceasefire and nuclear talks in 2026,” CBP-10637. https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/cbp-10637/. ↩︎

7. Senator Roger Wicker, opening statement, IndoPacom posture hearing, April 21, 2026, transcript lines 25–46. ↩︎

8. Senator Jack Reed, opening statement, IndoPacom posture hearing, April 21, 2026, transcript lines 195–296. ↩︎

9. Kenneth M. Pollack, Daniel L. Byman, Martin Indyk, Suzanne Maloney, Michael E. O’Hanlon, and Bruce Riedel, Which Path to Persia? Options for a New American Strategy toward Iran, Saban Center for Middle East Policy, Brookings Institution, Analysis Paper Number 20, June 2009. https://www.brookings.edu/research/which-path-to-persia-options-for-a-new-american-strategy-toward-iran/. ↩︎

10. Connie Bruck, “The Influencer,” The New Yorker, May 3, 2010. (Saban quoted on Israel as his single political issue.) ↩︎

11. Pollack et al., Which Path to Persia?, page 150, footnote 88. ↩︎

12. James Dobbins, Raphael S. Cohen, Nathan Chandler, Bryan Frederick, Edward Geist, Paul DeLuca, Forrest E. Morgan, Howard J. Shatz, and Brent Williams, Extending Russia: Competing from Advantageous Ground, RAND Corporation Research Report RR-3063-A, 2019. https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RR3063.html. ISBN 978-1-9774-0021-5. Sponsored by the Army Quadrennial Defense Review Office, Office of the Deputy Chief of Staff G-8. ↩︎

13. Council on Foreign Relations, “How Much Aid Has the U.S. Sent Ukraine?” https://www.cfr.org/article/how-much-aid-has-us-sent-ukraine-here-are-six-charts. ↩︎

14. U.S. Department of the Treasury, “G7, EU, and Australia announce price cap on Russian seaborne oil,” December 2, 2022. https://home.treasury.gov/news/press-releases/jy1141. ↩︎

15. “Nord Stream pipeline sabotage,” Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nord_Stream_pipeline_sabotage. ↩︎

16. European Commission, “REPowerEU Plan,” May 18, 2022, and subsequent updates. https://commission.europa.eu/strategy-and-policy/priorities-2019-2024/european-green-deal/repowereu-affordable-secure-and-sustainable-energy-europe_en. ↩︎

17. International sanctions and the freezing of Russian central bank reserves are documented across U.S. Treasury OFAC, EU Council, and UK HM Treasury announcements. Consolidated overview: “International sanctions during the Russo-Ukrainian War,” Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_sanctions_during_the_Russo-Ukrainian_War. ↩︎

18. “Russian emigration following the Russian invasion of Ukraine,” Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_emigration_following_the_Russian_invasion_of_Ukraine. ↩︎

19. “Fall of the Assad regime,” December 2024, broadly covered. Reuters: https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/timeline-syrian-rebels-rapid-advance-against-assad-2024-12-08/. ↩︎

20. “Armenia–Russia relations,” Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armenia%E2%80%93Russia_relations. On Armenia and the ICC: https://www.icc-cpi.int/news/armenia-deposits-its-instrument-accession-rome-statute. ↩︎

21. On Belarus and the Union State integration: “Union State,” Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Union_State. ↩︎

22. Donald Trump, “Remarks on the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action,” May 8, 2018. https://trumpwhitehouse.archives.gov/briefings-statements/remarks-president-trump-joint-comprehensive-plan-action/. ↩︎

23. Amnesty International, “What happened at the protests in Iran?”, January 2026 campaign page, https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/campaigns/2026/01/what-happened-at-the-protests-in-iran/ — Amnesty characterizes January 2026 as “the deadliest period of repression by the Iranian authorities in decades of Amnesty’s research.” Human Rights Watch, “Iran: Growing Evidence of Countrywide Massacres,” January 16, 2026, https://www.hrw.org/news/2026/01/16/iran-growing-evidence-of-countrywide-massacres. UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, “Iran: UN experts demand transparency and accountability following nationwide protests,” February 2026, https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2026/02/iran-un-experts-demand-transparency-and-accountability-following-nationwide. Casualty estimates vary widely: the Iranian government acknowledged 3,117 dead (per Al Jazeera, January 21, 2026); Amnesty and HRW reported “thousands”; Iran International’s documentary review claimed approximately 36,500 (https://www.iranintl.com/en/202601255198). The UK House of Commons Library briefing CBP-10462 covers the international response: https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/cbp-10462/. ↩︎

24. “2026 Iran war,” op. cit., and contemporary news coverage. UK House of Commons Library briefing CBP-10521 also reviews the pre-war lobbying campaign. ↩︎

25. “2026 Iran war,” op. cit. Britannica: “2026 Iran war.” https://www.britannica.com/event/2026-Iran-war. “List of attacks during the 2026 Iran war,” Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_attacks_during_the_2026_Iran_war. ↩︎

26. “2026 Iran war,” op. cit. ↩︎

27. “2026 Strait of Hormuz crisis,” op. cit. ↩︎

28. “Mojtaba Khamenei,” Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mojtaba_Khamenei. The Assembly of Experts is also referred to as the Council of Experts; both terms refer to the same constitutional body responsible under Article 107 of the Iranian constitution for designating the Supreme Leader. The post-decapitation succession was approved by the surviving members of the Assembly. ↩︎

29. “2026 Iran war ceasefire,” op. cit. CNN, “Day 67 of Middle East conflict – Marco Rubio says Operation Epic Fury in Iran ‘is over,’” May 5, 2026. https://www.cnn.com/2026/05/05/world/live-news/iran-war-news. ↩︎

30. CNBC, May 7, 2026, op. cit. ↩︎

31. CNN, May 5, 2026, op. cit. ↩︎

32. Euronews, “Oil drops below $100 while markets rise as US and Iran near a deal,” May 7, 2026. https://www.euronews.com/business/2026/05/07/hopes-of-reopening-the-strait-of-hormuz-lift-shares-as-oil-remains-above-100. OilPrice.com, “The Strait of Hormuz May Reopen, But the System Has Already Broken.” https://oilprice.com/Energy/Energy-General/The-Strait-of-Hormuz-May-Reopen-But-the-System-Has-Already-Broken.html. ↩︎

33. The Ynet investigative report was first published in Hebrew and summarized in international press. See intelNews.org, “Opinion: The Mossad’s plan to overthrow the regime in Iran was leaked,” April 6, 2026, https://intelnews.org/2026/04/06/01-3434/; JNS, “Fact vs. fiction: The Mossad’s role in the 2026 Iran uprising,” https://www.jns.org/analysis/fact-vs-fiction-the-mossads-role-in-the-2026-iran-uprising; Middle East Eye, “Strange figures and unexplained killings: The clues Mossad infiltrated Iran’s protests,” https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/strange-figures-and-unexplained-killings-clues-mossad-infiltrated-irans-protests; Jerusalem Post, “How deeply are Israel’s Mossad spymasters involved in Iran protest crisis?” https://www.jpost.com/middle-east/iran-news/article-883524. ↩︎

34. On the “Mossad in Farsi” X account encouragement of protests: The Intercept, “Israel Is Cynically Capitalizing on the Iranian Protests for Its Own Ends,” January 5, 2026, https://theintercept.com/2026/01/05/iran-protests-israel-netanyah/. On the CIA Persian-language X appeal: Iran International, “CIA issues rare Persian-language appeal to Iranians for secure contact,” February 2026, https://www.iranintl.com/en/202602245510. ↩︎

35. On the mosque fires: NBC News, “Mosque burns during protest in Tehran” (video), https://www.nbcnews.com/video/shorts/mosque-burns-during-protest-in-tehran-255766597809; NBC News, “Through carnage of the government crackdown, Iranian protesters looked to Trump,” https://www.nbcnews.com/world/iran/iran-protests-government-crackdown-donald-trump-strikes-d-rcna256364; CNN, “January 10, 2026 — Iran protests spread, death toll mounts amid internet blackout,” https://www.cnn.com/world/live-news/iran-protests-01-10-26; Reuters-verified social-media footage of Al-Rasool Mosque on fire (referenced in Wikipedia, “2025–2026 Iranian protests”). On the security-force-provocateur hypothesis (witnesses reporting valuables removed from mosques before fires): see Wikipedia, “2025–2026 Iranian protests” and “2026 Iran massacres.” On the casualties at makeshift clinics: NBC News, “An artist, a geophysicist and a fruit seller: Accounts of Iran’s brutal crackdown emerge,” https://www.nbcnews.com/world/iran/irans-protest-crackdown-victims-killed-rcna257166. ↩︎

36. U.S. Department of Defense, 2026 National Defense Strategy, January 23, 2026. https://media.defense.gov/2026/Jan/23/2003864773/-1/-1/0/2026-NATIONAL-DEFENSE-STRATEGY.PDF. ↩︎

37. Ibid. ↩︎

38. Ibid., Line of Effort 1. ↩︎