Pakistan: BLA Rampage In Balochistan – Analysis

June 2, 2026 
SATP
By Tushar Ranjan Mohanty

On May 24, 2026, at least 30 people were killed and 50 were injured after a blast caused by a vehicle-borne suicide bombing tore through a shuttle train near Chaman Phatak in Quetta, the provincial capital of Balochistan. The shuttle service was travelling from Quetta’s cantonment area to connect with the Jaffar Express long-distance train when the blast occurred, a Railways Ministry statement disclosed. Immediately after the blast, BLA spokesperson Jeeyand Baloch declared that the group accepted responsibility for what it called a “highly organized fidayeen attack” on a train carrying Pakistani military personnel.

On May 25, 2026, BLA released a detailed statement to the media, claiming the death of at least 82 military personnel and injuries to more than 121. According to the statement, the dead and wounded include junior commissioned officers (JCOs), non-commissioned officers (NCOs), soldiers, and newly recruited personnel. Spokesperson Jeeyand Baloch stated that this successful operation was a severe blow to the ‘enemy’ Army’s new and secret travel protocol, which was introduced after the March 11, 2025 Jaffar Express hijacking and the November 9, 2024, attack on Quetta Railway Station carried out by Majeed Brigade suicide bomber Rafiq Baloch.

On May 16, 2026, BLA cadres killed six SF personnel during a clash in the Bypass area of Dalbandin town in Chagai District. According to a statement issued by BLA ‘spokesperson’ Jeeyand Baloch, the SFs attempted to advance into the area after militants seized control of parts of Dalbandin town. Two military vehicles were disabled during the exchange of fire, forcing SF personnel to retreat from the area.


On May 16, 2026, BLA cadres killed three SF personnel in an ambush on a military convoy in the Abad area of Kanak in Mastung District. While claiming responsibility for the attack in a statement, BLA spokesperson Jeeyand Baloch asserted that several other SF personnel were injured and one military vehicle was disabled during the attack on the Quetta-Taftan Highway.

On May 15, 2026, BLA cadres killed two SF personnel during a clash in the Mal area of Nushki District. In a statement claiming responsibility for the attack, BLA spokesperson Jeeyand Baloch said that BLA cadres had blocked the Quetta-Taftan Highway and conducted snap checking for several hours, during which four persons associated with the Saindak Project were also detained for interrogation.

On May 13, 2026, five SFs personnel were killed when the BLA cadres launched a heavy ambush on a SF checkpoint in the Kardgah area of Mastung District. In a BLA statement, spokesperson Azad Baloch claimed responsibility for the attack.

On May 12, 2026, two SF personnel were killed while one sustained injuries when BLA cadres attacked a SF checkpoint in the Mangochar area of Kalat District. According to a statement issued by BLA spokesperson Azad Baloch, the attack was carried out at around 10:00 AM. The outfit further claimed that surveillance cameras installed at the SF camp were destroyed during the attack.

According to partial data compiled by the South Asia Terrorism Portal (SATP), at least 60 BLA-linked incidents have already been recorded in 2026, and at least 222 persons, including 48 civilians, 71 SF personnel and 103 militants, have been killed (data till May 31, 2026). During the corresponding period of 2025, 59 such incidents resulted in 245 fatalities, including 32 civilians, 159 SF personnel and 54 militants. The whole of 2025 recorded 134 incidents in which 454 persons were killed, including 54 civilians, 339 SF personnel and 61 militants.


Since the beginning of the Baloch insurgency, 2025 has recorded the highest levels of violence, driven largely by BLA, which carried out the majority of militant attacks. In the deadliest attack of 2025, BLA militants hijacked the Jaffar Express on March 11, after blowing up a section of the railway track near Dhadar in the Bolan District, disrupting the train’s journey from Quetta (Balochistan) to Peshawar (Khyber Pakhtunkhwa). More than 400 passengers were on board when the train was seized. In response, the Pakistan Army launched a rescue operation on March 12 and announced its conclusion on March 14, stating that all 33 militants involved had been killed. According to the Army, 26 hostages – including 18 SF personnel, three railway employees, and five civilians – were killed by the attackers before the retaliatory operation commenced. The military further reported that 354 hostages, including 37 injured passengers, were successfully rescued, while five Frontier Corps (FC) personnel lost their lives during the operation. BLA, however, disputed the official account, claiming that its fighters had inflicted a significant blow on the Pakistani military and had executed all 214 military personnel allegedly held hostage during the train siege.

While releasing its annual operations report for 2025, on January 7, 2026, BLA claimed at least 521 attacks across Balochistan, resulting in the deaths of more than 1,060 SF personnel. The report, titled Dhak, claimed that more than 556 personnel and informants were also injured in various attacks. BLA also claimed that it killed 75 people it labelled as informants, saying some were detained during raids and “sentenced to death” by a body it referred to as the “Baloch National Court.” The group said it carried out 15 “special operations” in 2025, four by the Majeed Brigade, six by the Fateh Squad and five by the Special Tactical Operations Squad (STOS). It added that its intelligence wing, the Zirab (Zypher Research and Analyses Bureau), played a key role in identifying targets and planning operations. The report claimed that BLA fighters conducted 212 explosions, including 112 improvised explosive device (IED) attacks, and destroyed 215 military vehicles and motorcycles, 35 quadcopters and surveillance drones, seven communication and surveillance towers, and three railway tracks. The group also said it seized 208 weapons from security forces and their collaborators, and further, that its members took control of 48 locations during the year, including what it described as military camps, Police and Levies stations, and the towns of Zehri, Mangochar, Surab, Mastung and Panjgur, and established more than 42 highway blockades across Balochistan. It claimed to have detained 366 people it referred to as “agents,” including some members of Pakistan’s armed forces.


Since August 1, 2004, when the first BLA-linked incident was recorded by SATP, at least 1,596 persons, including 353 civilians, 832 SF personnel, 391 militants, and 20 in the Not Specified category, have been killed (data till May 31, 2026). The first BLA-linked incident was recorded on August 1, 2004, when five soldiers and a civilian were killed in a targeted attack on SF vehicles in the Khuzdar District.

The persistence of enforced disappearances and extra-judicial killings by state agencies has contributed to the cycle of violence in Balochistan, fostering deep-seated grievances and fuelling retaliatory attacks by Baloch insurgent groups against SFs and state institutions. Civilians accused of collaborating with the State, including members of pro-government armed groups often referred to as “death squads,” have also been frequent targets of insurgent violence. The resulting security vacuum and instability have created conditions conducive to the growth of Islamist militant outfits, some of which have operated alongside or in parallel with Baloch insurgent groups. The principal insurgent groups active in the province include the BLA, Balochistan Liberation Front (BLF), Balochistan Liberation Tigers (BLT), Baloch Republican Guards (BRG), Baloch Republican Army (BRA), Baloch National Army (BNA) and United Baloch Army (UBA). Among these, BLA has emerged as the most active and lethal insurgent formation, accounting for a significant proportion of major attacks in recent years.

Composed predominantly of members of the Marri and Bugti tribes, BLA emerged amid growing resentment in Balochistan over the exploitation of the province’s natural resources by the Pakistani state and the persistent neglect of its socio-economic development. The group is estimated to maintain a strength of approximately 6,000 cadres operating across Balochistan and in adjoining border regions of Afghanistan. Among its ideological and political forebears was Sardar Akbar Khan Bugti, the former Chief Minister and Governor of Balochistan, who was killed during a military operation on August 26, 2006 – a defining moment in the evolution of the contemporary Baloch insurgency. Following Bugti’s death, the leadership of BLA passed to Balach Marri, who remained at its helm until his death in Afghanistan on November 21, 2007. Thereafter, his brother, Hyrbyair Marri, assumed the leadership of the organization from exile in London, where he has continued to serve as its principal political figure. The group’s military operations are reportedly directed by current ‘commander-in-chief’ Bashir Zeb Baloch, who assumed command in 2018, following the death of its earlier leader Aslam Baloch.

Among the various Baloch insurgent groups, BLA is distinctive for maintaining a dedicated suicide unit known as the Majeed Brigade. The brigade is named after Majeed Langove Senior and Majeed Langove Junior, who are revered within the organization for carrying out suicide missions in August 1974 and March 2010, respectively. Majeed Senior attempted to assassinate then Prime Minister Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto during an official visit to Quetta, reportedly in retaliation to the dismissal of the National Awami Party (NAP) Government in Balochistan. The attempt failed, and he was killed during the operation. Decades later, Majeed Junior died while resisting an SF raid on a militant hideout in Quetta’s Wahdat Colony, enabling his associates to escape. Following his death, senior BLA ‘commander’ Aslam Achu formalized the group’s suicide warfare capability through the creation of the Majeed Brigade, which is currently led by Hammal Rehan Baloch.


The brigade conducted its first vehicle-borne suicide attack on December 30, 2011, targeting tribal elder Shafiq Mengal, son of former acting Chief Minister and Federal Minister Naseer Mengal, on Arbab Karam Khan Road in Quetta. Shafiq Mengal had long been accused by Baloch nationalist circles of leading a pro-state militia “death squad,” involved in counter-insurgency activities against Baloch insurgents. While the intended target survived the attack unharmed, the bombing resulted in the deaths of 14 people, including women and children, and injured another 35, underscoring the significant civilian toll associated with the insurgency’s evolving tactics.

Beyond the Majeed Brigade, BLA also maintains a specialized operational wing known as STOS, reportedly under the command of Bashir Zeb Baloch. The unit is tasked with conducting intelligence-led operations against military personnel and the members of “death squads.” STOS primarily functions as the BLA’s intelligence and reconnaissance arm, focusing on surveillance, target identification, intelligence collection, and operational planning, to facilitate precision attacks against designated targets.

In May 2021, BLA established an elite combat unit known as the ‘Fateh Squad’, composed of highly trained and experienced cadres selected for their demonstrated battlefield proficiency and operational capabilities. The squad was named in honour of Fateh Qambrani, a prominent BLA militant who was killed during an assault on an Army camp in the Meshdari area of Shahrag tehsil in Harnai District in September 2018. According to the organization, Qambrani’s actions were instrumental in facilitating the capture of the military installation and he had previously played a significant role in several other insurgent operations. The Fateh Squad is reportedly tasked with spearheading high-risk assaults, with its cadres drawing on extensive combat experience to lead attacks on military and paramilitary installations. Acting as the vanguard of such operations, the unit is intended to breach defensive positions and create opportunities for follow-on forces to penetrate and secure targeted facilities.


On April 13, 2026, BLA announced the creation of a new maritime wing, the Hammal Maritime Defence Force (HMDF), and claimed responsibility for what it characterized as its first naval operation. The unit was named after Hammal Jiand Baloch, a historical figure associated with resistance against Portuguese incursions along the Makran coast during the sixteenth century, whom the organization portrays as a symbol of maritime resistance. In a statement issued to the media, BLA spokesperson Jeeyand Baloch asserted that HMDF had been established to safeguard what the group described as Baloch maritime interests, particularly in response to the alleged exploitation of coastal resources and the expanding security presence along the province’s coastline. The announcement followed an attack reportedly carried out on April 12, 2026, near the Jiwani area of Gwadar District, in which three personnel of the Pakistan Coast Guards (PCG) were killed after their patrol vessel came under fire at sea. The incident marked a notable development in the BLA’s operational evolution, suggesting an effort to expand its insurgent activities into the maritime domain.

Earlier, on February 12, 2026, BLA announced the operationalization of its dedicated aerial warfare and drone unit, QAHR (Qazi Aero Hive Rangers), marking a significant expansion of the organization’s technological and operational capabilities. In a statement issued to the media, BLA spokesperson Jeeyand Baloch stated that the unit had successfully completed its initial missions during the second phase of Operation Herof(Operation Dark Storm). According to the organization, the establishment of QAHR reflected an effort to adapt the Baloch insurgency to the evolving requirements of modern warfare through the integration of unmanned aerial systems and advanced operational technologies. The unit was named after senior BLA commander Abdul Basit Zehri, also known as Qazi, who was credited with promoting technological innovation, research, and institutional development within the movement and is regarded as a key figure in the unit’s creation. The spokesperson further claimed that QAHR’s inaugural operational deployments were conducted during Operation Herof II, with coordinated drone strikes targeting Gwadar Port highlighted as the most significant of these actions. The announcement underscored BLA’s growing emphasis on technological adaptation and the diversification of its insurgent capabilities beyond conventional guerrilla tactics.


BLA’s increasing strength and sophistication are reflected in the execution of Operation Herof, a two-phase coordinated campaign carried out in August 2024 and subsequently in February 2026. The first was conducted on August 25-26, 2024, with coordinated and simultaneous attacks across seven Districts. This was the largest act of retribution by any Baloch insurgent group. In the early morning of August 26, 2024, BLA cadres offloaded passengers from trucks and buses in the Rarasham area of Musakhail District and shot them after checking their identities. At least 23 Punjabi travellers were killed. The armed men also set fire to 10 vehicles. As the day progressed, Balochistan recorded multiple attacks across the province, which left at least 38 people dead, including the 23 in Musakhail. In response, SFs neutralised 21 terrorists and injured several others. BLA cadres then targeted Levies Forces and Police Stations in Mastung, Kalat, Pasni, and Suntsar, resulting in numerous casualties. Explosions and grenade attacks were reported in Sibi, Panjgur, Mastung, Turbat, Bela, and Quetta, with militants blowing up a railway track near Mastung. The ISPR issued a statement later in the day, claiming that 21 terrorists had been killed, while 14 SF personnel, including four from law enforcement agencies, were killed during ‘clearance operations’.

However, in a statement released on its official media, Hakkal, BLA announced the successful completion of its fidayeen Operation Hereof, claiming to have killed 130 military personnel during a series of coordinated attacks across Balochistan. BLA spokesperson Jeeyand Baloch claimed that the group’s elite fidayeen unit, the Majeed Brigade, had maintained control over the Bela Army Camp for 20 hours, during which 68 military personnel were killed and dozens more injured. After achieving the objectives of Operation Herof, the roadblocks on all highways were lifted.

The second part of Operation Hereof was launched on January 31, 2026, when BLA cadres launched coordinated attacks at 48 locations across 14 cities in Balochistan, killing 84 personnel of the Army, Police, intelligence agencies and CTD. BLA spokesperson Jeeyand Baloch stated that BLA had “taken control of multiple enemy posts, including central military headquarters,” and that movement of Pakistani forces had been “severely restricted.” According to the group, several units, including the Fateh Squad, the Majeed Brigade, the intelligence wing ZIRAB and STOS, were operating jointly across different Districts. On February 6, BLA said that the second phase of its campaign had successfully concluded. Jeeyand Baloch added that the operation began at 5 a.m. on January 31 and ended at 4 p.m. on February 6 after, according to the group, its “predefined objectives” were achieved, and the campaign had targeted 14 cities across Balochistan – termed the group’s “largest, most intense and most organised military operation.” He said 93 Baloch fighters were killed, including 50 from the Majeed Brigade, 26 from the Fateh Squad and 17 from STOS, while more than 362 Pakistani security personnel from the Army, Frontier Corps, Police and state-backed armed groups were killed.

Horrified by the continuous and escalating BLA attacks, security personnel have started hesitating to serve in Balochistan. After the first phase of Operation Hereof (August 25-26, 2024), while chairing the Provincial Apex Committee in Quetta on August 30, Prime Minister (PM) Shehbaz Sharif emphasized the need for the deployment of capable and talented officers in Balochistan, acknowledging that, due to security concerns, some officers hesitate to serve in the province. Announcing the policy, PM Sharif said half officers of the 48th Common Group of both Police and Civil side would be posted to Balochistan immediately for one year. The remaining half of the officers of the 48th Common Group would be posted after six months from their initial deployment, and would also serve for one year. Similarly, he said after one year, the first half of the officers from the 49th common group would be posted to Balochistan for one year. After one and a half years, the remaining half of the officers from the 49th group would be posted to Balochistan for one year. PM Sharif also announced that special incentives would be provided to officers deployed in Balochistan, including four air tickets for their families every three months. There is no readily available public evidence confirming implementation of these announced incentives.


With rising BLA attacks and roadblocks on all highways, security personnel and state functionaries no longer feel safe on Balochistan’s roads. Former Chief Minister and ex-speaker Jan Muhammad Jamali noted, on September 28, 2025, that Government ministers and party leaders could no longer travel safely by road, as armed groups expand their dominance over the region’s highways. On May 15, 2026, Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) parliamentary leader Sadiq Umrani emphasised that the security situation in Balochistan had deteriorated to the point where Ministers were unable to travel to their own areas by road. On May 22, 2026, Deputy Director and Commanding Officer of the Airport Security Force (ASF), Waseem Ahmed, was detained by BLA cadres during a snap-checking operation in Kalat District. In a brief statement issued to the media, BLA spokesperson Jeeyand Baloch confirmed that Waseem Ahmed was in the group’s custody.

Notwithstanding the Balochistan Government’s enforcement of Section 144 across the province on May 17, 2026, BLA demonstrated its operational capability by carrying out a large-scale attack in Quetta. BLA’s trajectory demonstrates a significant transformation from a conventional insurgent outfit into a highly adaptive and increasingly sophisticated militant outfit. Through the expansion of specialized units such as the Majeed Brigade, STOS, Fateh Squad, HMDF, and QAHR, the group has diversified its operational capabilities across land, maritime, and aerial domains. Its ability to conduct coordinated, large-scale attacks, impose highway blockades, target critical infrastructure, and challenge state authority across vast areas of Balochistan underscores a deteriorating security environment across and beyond the province.

Tushar Ranjan Mohanty
Research Associate, Institute for Conflict Management

The Kautilyan Spy As A Model For Modern Espionage – OpEd

May 4, 2026 
By Ishmeet Kaur and Anushka Padmanabh Antrolikar


Espionage has always occupied a powerful place in the public imagination. Its appeal lies not only in intrigue and secrecy, but in its central role in shaping political outcomes. Contemporary cinema often draws on this fascination, but its deeper roots lie in a long intellectual tradition of statecraft. Dhurandhar, a spy-action film written and directed by Aditya Dhar, reflects this continuity. While it presents a contemporary account of espionage, it also echoes principles articulated centuries ago in the Arthashastra by Kautilya.

At its core, the film centres on espionage- the systematic training of individuals to infiltrate hostile territories and extract intelligence in service of the state. This raises a broader question: why does espionage continue to resonate so strongly? The answer lies in its historical depth. The practices depicted on screen are not new; they draw from a structured and enduring tradition of intelligence thinking. To understand this, one must move beyond contemporary narratives to the political and intellectual milieu of ancient Magadha, where Kautilya developed a systematic theory of espionage and governance.

Long before the architecture of modern intelligence took shape, Indian soil had already produced a formidable mind in covert strategy and statecraft– Kautilya. He was a master strategist and realist of extraordinary insight; he is widely credited with orchestrating the fall of the Nanda dynasty and laying the foundations of the Maurya Empire under Chandragupta Maurya. His political treatise, the Arthashastra, constitutes a vast repository of knowledge on governance, statecraft, diplomacy, and social order. Within this framework, Kautilya reconceptualises kingship not as dominance but as responsibility centred on the protection and stability of the state. Central to this vision is the institutionalisation of espionage through extensive network of gūḍha-puruṣa (गूढपुरुष). These includes agents such as kāpaṭika (कापटिक, fraudulent student), udāsthita (उदास्थित, ascetic), gṛhapatika (गृहपतिक, householder), vaidehaka (वैदेहक, merchant), along with specialsied operatives like tīkṣṇa (तीक्ष्ण, assassins) and rasada (रसद, poisoners), each trained in deception, manipulation, and intelligence-gathering to serve the interest of the state.

In this sense, the Kautilyan framework does not purely belong to the past but offers a conceptual vocabulary through which the art of espionage continues to be imagined and reinterpreted through a new lens. In its modern cinematic portrayal of espionage, Dhurandhar presents spies not as one-dimensional operatives but as composite figures who embody multiple layers of strategy, deception, and psychological depth. The film’s effectiveness is therefore not entirely the function of cinematic craft; rather, it appears to draw, perhaps unconsciously, from a much older reservoir of strategic thought rooted in the Indian subcontinent where a spy is envisioned not simply as an agent of action but as a carefully cultivated instrument of statecraft.

Set in the volatile landscape of Layari, Pakistan, the story follows Hamza, portrayed as an Indian spy on a covert mission, who infiltrates hostile territory and embeds himself in the town’s social and political fabric. His objective is clear: to dismantle the authority of the local goon/strongman Rehman Baloch, not through the pursuit of overt force or warfare, but rather through calculated intelligence, deception, and psychological manoeuvring. In doing so, Hamza’s character begins to mirror the sophisticated espionage framework articulated by Kautilya in the Arthashastra where the destabilization of adversarial structures is achieved through covert means rather than direct confrontation.


The typology and organization of Kautilya’s spies finds a striking resemblance in Hamza’s methods. He operates as a sanchāra (संचार), a wandering agent who moves across regions, gathering intelligence while maintaining fluidity of identity; an approach that enables deep infiltration into unfamiliar socio-political terrains.

Simultaneously, he embodies the qualities of a tīkṣṇa (तीक्ष्ण), a sharp and decisive operative willing to undertake high-risk missions, even at the cost of personal safety, reflecting the Kautilyan view of an ‘assassin spies’ for dangerous and decisive interventions. His adept use of disguise, manipulation, and strategic alliances further aligns him with the kapātika (कपाटिक), the deceptive agent skilled in embedding himself within enemy structures and gaining trust.

The film foregrounds the nuanced skill of disguise as Hamza assumes multiple roles such as camaraderie among his fellow gang members, bodyguard of Rehman Baloch and that of a husband strategically navigating intricate human relationships to establish his network in a more subtle yet resilient manner. This layered performance of identity reflects the Kautilyan emphasis on veṣa-dhāraṇa (वेषधारण), the deliberate adoption of disguised as suited to context, enabling spies to penetrate diverse social spaces without suspicion. His association with the Mohammad Aalam also known as the sodawala, who operates under the guise of a local vendor in Karachi’s Layari, function as a covert node of communication; a discreet meeting point where encoded messages are exchanged. This dynamic closely parallels with Kautilya’s conception of clandestine communication through saṃjñā (संज्ञा, coded signs) and gūḍha-lekhya (गूढलेख्य, secret writing), aṅgavidyayā (अङ्गविद्यया, communication through gestures and bodily signs), ensuring intelligence flows without detection. Much like the spies (gūḍha-puruṣa) described by Kautilya in the Arthashastra, who infiltrate society as merchants, ascetics, or householders, Hamza leverages proximity, trust, and familiarity as instruments of statecraft. His actions also echo the Kautilyan insistence on multi-layered espionage networks, where information is not only gathered but circulated, verified, and operationalised through interconnected agents.


Yet, the parallels extend beyond typology in the very institution of statecraft. Kautilya’s spies were not passive informants but were active instruments in reshaping politics. Hamza, similarly, does not observe the existing orders in Layari; by cultivating trust, embedding himself within circles of power, he embodies Kautilya’s emphasis on proximity to authority as a decisive tool of influence. In the Arthashastra, espionage is inseparable from political engineering; in Dhurandhar, this principle is cinematically reimagined. At the same time, Kautilya’s framework is anchored in a broader ethical vision of dharma, within which artha, derived from the root arth (to seek, to aim) is pursued not merely as a material gain, but as a means towards a stable and just order.

In contemporary terms, Dhurandhar brings espionage into public discourse, but it also reveals something more enduring: the persistence of Kautilya’s strategic imagination. The film’s depiction of surveillance, deception, and infiltration reflects principles articulated centuries ago in the Arthashastra. This convergence points to a deeper continuity in strategic thought. It is not a new concept; India has engaged with the practice of espionage for centuries. What is required, therefore, is a more conscious recognition of this intellectual legacy, one that moves beyond cinematic representation to acknowledge and highlight India’s long-standing contributions to the theory and practice of statecraft.

About the authors: Ishmeet Kaur, Post Graduate Scholar, School of Hindu Studies, Nalanda University.

Anushka Padmanabh Antrolikar, Post Graduate Scholar, School of International Relations and Peace Studies, Nalanda University.

Baloch Strike After Talks Stall: Gwadar’s Security Crisis Deepens – OpEd

Gwadar city, Balochistan, Pakistan. Photo Credit: Shayhaq Baloch, Wikipedia Commons

April 22, 2026 
By Ashu Mann


Strategic projects are supposed to be measured in decades. Roads take years to build. Ports take longer to fill. Diplomatic relationships require sustained investment over time. China, better than most, has been willing to play the long game in Balochistan — absorbing setbacks, extending timelines, and repeating that CPEC and Gwadar remain strategic priorities. April 2026 has tested that patience in two distinct and serious ways.

The China-mediated trilateral talks between Pakistan and Afghanistan, held in Urumqi from April 1 to 7, concluded without a ceasefire or any verifiable commitments on the TTP. Both sides exchanged diplomatic language — pledging to “refrain from actions that escalate the situation” and to “explore a comprehensive solution” — but the fundamental disagreement remained intact: Pakistan demanding verifiable Taliban action against TTP militants operating from Afghan soil, the Taliban refusing any arrangement that implies external oversight of its territory.

China described the process as “substantive” and said it would continue, but the talks produced no mechanism for enforcement and no agreement on the core issue. Then, on April 12, BLA fighters using a speedboat attacked a Pakistan Coast Guard patrol boat on a routine patrol near Jiwani, killing all three personnel on board.

The BLA claimed the operation under its newly announced naval wing, the Hammal Maritime Defence Force — a formal declaration that the insurgency has extended its theatre from land and air into the sea. It was the first maritime attack of its kind in the region. Both events strike directly at Gwadar’s viability: one cutting at the diplomatic foundations of the port’s regional purpose, the other introducing a new military threat to the waters surrounding it.

The long game China has been playing requires certain conditions to hold. Regional stability, at least at a functional level, is one. Some degree of Pakistani state capacity to manage the security environment is another. Progress, however slow, in Baloch-Pakistan relations is a third. None of these conditions are being met adequately right now. Pakistani-Afghan relations are at their worst point in years, frozen by the February strikes and the failure of the Urumqi talks to produce any binding thaw. Pakistani security forces are capable but stretched, now confronting a threat that has extended from land through the air — the BLA launched a drone unit earlier this year — and now to sea.

Baloch communities remain alienated from CPEC’s development model, and the group that channels that alienation into violence has just demonstrated a significant expansion of its operational reach. For Beijing, recalibrating timelines is manageable. Recalibrating the fundamental strategic logic is harder. The Urumqi outcome is worth dwelling on, because it exposes something about Chinese regional influence that BRI’s promotional literature tends to obscure. China’s economic leverage over Pakistan is substantial and real. But leverage is not unlimited.

When Islamabad attends talks in Xinjiang, it does so partly because Beijing asks and partly because Pakistan genuinely wants the TTP issue resolved — the two objectives align. That alignment has limits, however: Pakistan cannot accept an arrangement that provides only symbolic progress on TTP, because symbolic progress has not reduced violence in the past. China’s leverage over the Taliban is weaker and more transactional. Beijing is one of the few governments maintaining economic engagement with Kabul, and that provides some influence. But the Taliban’s primary audience is Afghan domestic opinion, and conceding to Pakistani demands under Chinese pressure is politically toxic in Kabul. No amount of Chinese economic inducement can easily change that calculus. The talks stalled because the conditions for a durable agreement do not currently exist, and Chinese mediation — however well-resourced — cannot manufacture conditions it cannot control.

The maritime attack changes the threat calculus in a specific and lasting way. Before April 12, the security challenge around Gwadar was serious but bounded: a land-based insurgency attacking infrastructure and personnel, supplemented more recently by drone strikes, requiring a defined land-and-air security response. That response was expensive and imperfect, but it had a recognisable shape. The BLA’s new naval wing changes that. Maritime insurgency requires maritime counterinsurgency — different equipment, different training, different intelligence architecture.

Pakistan does not have these in place for this environment. Building them takes time and resources that are already strained. In the interval before adequate maritime security capacity exists, the waters around Gwadar are operating in a threat environment without an adequate response. With diplomacy producing process but not outcomes, and the BLA demonstrating that its reach now spans land, air, and sea, Gwadar is under pressure from multiple directions simultaneously. The port’s future depends on conditions that none of the relevant parties are currently in a position to deliver.

Ashu Mann is an Associate Fellow at the Centre for Land Warfare Studies. He was awarded the Vice Chief of the Army Staff Commendation card on Army Day 2025. He is pursuing a PhD from Amity University, Noida, in Defence and Strategic Studies. His research focuses include the India-China territorial dispute, great power rivalry, and Chinese foreign policy.

The Third Gulf War And The World It Is Already Remaking – Analysis

March 26, 2026 
By Dr. Mohamed Chtatou

A war that began with an assassination is reshaping energy markets, security architectures, and global geopolitics in ways that will not simply reverse when the shooting stops.

On the morning of February 28, 2026, the United States and Israel launched coordinated airstrikes against Iran in operations codenamed “Epic Fury” and “The Roaring Lion.” The war got bombastic names: “Operation Epic Fury” (United States) and “Operation The Roaring Lion” (Israel). The Times of Israel The opening salvo was spectacular and deliberate: the most dramatic aspect was the death of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, an event which elicited celebrations among some Iranians but dark and angry responses among regime loyalists. University of Oxford Within hours, Iran retaliated, launching missiles at American bases in Qatar, Kuwait, the UAE, and Bahrain. Additional missiles landed in Abu Dhabi, Doha, Kuwait City, and Riyadh. Iran also fired missiles at Israel, though these were largely intercepted by US naval forces and local air defense systems. University of Oxford

Four weeks later, the war has not ended. A ceasefire remains elusive. But even before the guns fall silent, the Third Gulf War — the name has already stuck among analysts, distinct from both the 1991 liberation of Kuwait and the 2003 invasion of Iraq — has produced effects so vast and so structural that they are already irreversible in their outlines. Energy systems have been shattered. A regional security architecture built over decades has collapsed. A food crisis is threatening to tip into famine. And the geopolitical map of the Greater Middle East is being redrawn not in diplomatic chambers but in the rubble of refineries and the wreckage of missile interceptor magazines. What follows is an attempt to reckon, domain by domain, with what this war is already doing to the world.

The Energy Shock That Broke All the Models

The most immediate, quantifiable, and globally consequential aftereffect of the Third Gulf War is energy. The US-Israeli war on Iran has already sent the price of benchmark Brent crude soaring to nearly $120 per barrel, close to its highest point of $147 recorded in July 2008. Al Jazeera But price alone understates the severity of what has happened. The 2026 US–Iran war has resulted in a physical chokepoint, taking offline part of the supply of oil and gas due to the closure of the Strait of Hormuz. Tanker traffic disruptions have forced Gulf producers to curtail output as they have run out of storage capacity. Al Jazeera

The Strait of Hormuz — that narrow seam of water between the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman, barely 33 kilometers wide at its narrowest — carries roughly 20 percent of global oil and gas daily. The war has effectively erased the 20 million barrels of petroleum that used to traverse the waterway each day, according to a report released by the International Energy Agency. Now, only “a trickle” is passing through, the IEA said, and the implications for global oil markets are historic. Fortune

The human geography of this disruption is staggering. The oil production of Kuwait, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates collectively dropped by a reported 6.7 million barrels per day by March 10, and by at least 10 million barrels per day as of March 12. It is the largest supply disruption in the history of the global oil market. Wikipedia The IEA’s executive director Fatih Birol put it in historical context at the National Press Club in Canberra: the fallout from the Iran war is equivalent to the two major oil crises of the 1970s and the 2022 gas crisis combined. CNBC That is not hyperbole from a bureaucrat seeking attention. It is a sober accounting of what physics and geography have conspired to produce.

The damage to infrastructure compounds the chokepoint problem in ways that will outlast any ceasefire. On March 18, Israeli drone strikes targeted facilities at Iran’s Asaluyeh complex, damaging four plants that treat gas from the offshore South Pars field. Tehran vowed to retaliate by hitting five key energy targets in Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the UAE. Hours later, Iranian missiles caused “extensive damage” to Ras Laffan, the heart of Qatar’s energy sector. Separate suspected Iranian aerial attacks caused damage to oil refineries in Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, and led to the closure of gas facilities in the UAE. The Conversation

Ras Laffan is not just Qatar’s gas hub; it is responsible for approximately one-fifth of global liquefied natural gas supply. Its damage is not merely a Gulf problem. Europe, which had turned to LNG imports instead of Russian pipeline gas after the invasion of Ukraine, has been left needing to replenish low gas stockpiles while major exporter Qatar is offline. World Economic Forum At the 2026 Nuclear Energy Summit, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen described the crisis as a reminder of the vulnerabilities created by relying on other regions for oil and gas, calling for more investment in nuclear energy alongside renewables.

Even beyond the physical destruction of facilities, the operational consequences of shut-ins will persist. “Shut-ins don’t just happen and then you turn a switch and everything’s back together. You have to get production back online, and that can be pretty time-consuming,” Richard Nephew of Columbia University’s Center on Global Energy Policy noted. Fortune Corrosion, structural wear, and the logistics of restart mean that even a prompt ceasefire and reopening of Hormuz would not immediately normalize supply. Unlike sanctions-driven disruptions, a sustained blocking of the Strait of Hormuz obstructs not only trade routes but the very ability of producers to export, pushing markets beyond adjustment mechanisms into forced demand destruction and structural reconfiguration. Al Jazeera

The tools that managed the 2022 Russia-Ukraine energy shock — rerouting, sanctions workarounds, diversification — simply do not apply here. There is no alternate route when the strait is mined and contested. The shock is physical, not financial.

Food, Water, and the Anatomy of a Humanitarian Crisis

Oil prices are legible to markets. Food and water shortages are legible to human bodies. The Third Gulf War has generated both in parallel.

The maritime blockade triggered a concurrent “grocery supply emergency” across GCC states, which rely on the Strait for over 80% of their caloric intake. By mid-March, 70% of the region’s food imports were disrupted, forcing retailers to airlift staples, resulting in a 40–120% spike in consumer prices. Wikipedia Gulf states have quietly built up strategic food reserves over recent years, but none were dimensioned for a siege of indefinite duration.

The water crisis is even more acute, because it has no easy international substitute. The crisis shifted toward fears about a humanitarian catastrophe following Iranian strikes on desalination plants — the source of 99% of drinking water in Kuwait and Qatar. Wikipedia These are not marginal utilities. In Kuwait and Qatar, there is no groundwater to fall back on, no river to tap. The desalination plant is the faucet. When it goes dark, people go thirsty within days, not weeks.

The global food system is implicated far beyond the Gulf’s borders. The Strait of Hormuz is not just a shipping lane for oil tankers; it is a critical artery of the global food system. Key food staples — including wheat, corn, rice, soybeans, sugar, and animal feed — travel through the Strait on their way to Gulf countries, and farmers around the world depend on the fertilizers and fuel that flow out of it. Project Syndicate The Fertilizer Institute stated that nearly 50% of global urea and sulfur exports, as well as 20% of global LNG — a key feedstock for nitrogen fertilizers — transit through the strait. Wikipedia When fertilizers stop flowing, the damage to next year’s harvests is not speculative. It is arithmetic.

A prolonged closure could disrupt agriculture worldwide and place more than 100 million people at risk of a humanitarian catastrophe, analysts warned. Project Syndicate Afghanistan is already bearing these costs disproportionately: much of Afghanistan’s limited trade with the world goes through Iran’s Chabahar port, and Iran is also a major conduit for humanitarian aid into Afghanistan. Crisis Group With the conflict disrupting Iranian transit infrastructure, one of the world’s most aid-dependent populations faces additional strangulation.

The Collapse of the Gulf Security Architecture

The Third Gulf War has not simply damaged the Gulf states. It has shattered the political logic on which their security rested for half a century.

For several decades, the region’s security architecture has rested essentially upon the guarantee provided by the United States to protect the monarchies of the Arab Peninsula. Today this strategy has largely failed and seems already called into question by these countries’ ruling elites. The Gulf rulers, who had linked their security to the promise of Western protection by welcoming on their soil many military bases, discover today that those installations mainly served to support Israel’s military operations. Orient XXI

The resentment is concrete and documented. In the UAE, an open letter to President Trump from businessman Khalaf Ahmad Al Habtoor questioned Washington about the reasons that led it to transforming the whole region into a battlefield when the Gulf States had warned of the chaotic consequences of such a war. Orient XXI The Gulf rulers see the stocks of munitions required for their own anti-missile defense gradually diminishing, while Israel’s needs seem to be given priority. Orient XXI In effect, the Gulf states’ own air defense systems are being depleted in a war they did not choose, against an adversary who now targets them precisely because of the American bases they host.

The security guarantee, it turns out, was a trap. The bases that were supposed to deter aggression became the targeting coordinates for Iranian missiles. The weapons that were supposed to protect Gulf populations were being quietly redirected to protect Israeli military operations. The monarchies are reckoning with this reality in real time, and the calculations they are making — about future basing arrangements, about the reliability of American security umbrellas, about the wisdom of strategic autonomy — will define Gulf foreign policy for a generation.

The logic of an “Arab NATO” — a formalized GCC collective defense structure — has gained currency in several Gulf capitals as a hedge against American unpredictability. The Gulf Kingdoms, with the possible exception of the UAE, might consolidate their military forces under the GCC, placing their regional integration group on the path to becoming an “Arab NATO” over time. South24 Center This is not merely a theoretical exercise. The war has created the political conditions for a structural reform that peacetime diplomacy never could.

Iran’s Internal Crisis and the Regime Question

No analysis of the Third Gulf War’s lasting consequences can avoid the question of what happens to Iran itself. The Islamic Republic entered the conflict already structurally weakened. Thousands of Iranians poured onto the streets in protest against collapsing public services, corruption, and years of oppression University of Oxford in the period following earlier 2025 strikes. Now, with the Supreme Leader killed and the regime’s military architecture systematically dismantled, the internal dynamics are volatile and unpredictable.

The 2026 Iran War has effected the effective dismantling of Iran’s Axis of Resistance — the network of non-state armed actors that Tehran had cultivated across the Levant, the Persian Gulf littoral, and South Asia to project power and raise the costs of any strike on Iranian territory. Eurasia Review By late 2024, Hezbollah’s leadership had been decapitated. Hamas was functionally dismantled militarily. Syria’s Assad had fallen in December 2024, severing the land corridor through which Iran supplied arms to Lebanon. The Houthis remained operational but supply-constrained. Iran entered this war with its strategic depth already excavated.

Three broad scenarios for Iran’s post-conflict trajectory circulate among analysts. In the first, the Islamic Republic survives in attenuated form: militarily degraded, territorially intact, economically ruined, but politically still in the hands of regime loyalists. In the second, a US-facilitated transition — a “Venezuelan scenario” — yields a compliant successor government. In the third, the country fractures along ethnic and regional lines: Kurdish, Azeri, Arab, and Baloch pressures, exploited by neighboring powers, produce something closer to a Balkanization. Any significant Kurdish uprising could prompt a Turkish military intervention, while a significant Azeri uprising in the north could prompt the same by Azerbaijan. Pakistan could intervene in Sistan and Balochistan on the pretext of fighting cross-border Baloch separatists. South24 Center

The nuclear question remains unresolved and constitutes perhaps the most dangerous long-term legacy of the conflict. The IAEA said that it did not have the access it needed to ensure that the Iranian nuclear program was exclusively peaceful, but that there was no evidence of a structured nuclear weapons program at the time of the strikes. Wikipedia The US and Israel launched a war, in part, to prevent Iranian nuclear proliferation. Whether they have succeeded, stalled, or paradoxically accelerated the proliferation logic — by demonstrating to every regional power the strategic value of a nuclear deterrent — is a question history will answer, but perhaps not soon.
Geopolitical Realignment: The Multipolar Moment

The Third Gulf War did not create the multipolar world, but it has dramatically accelerated its crystallization. The United States has demonstrated overwhelming kinetic superiority — its ability to destroy Iranian military infrastructure is not in question. What the war has simultaneously revealed is the cost of that superiority: in munitions, in alliance credibility, in the economic damage inflicted on partners and adversaries alike.

The economic architecture of the conflict exposes a fundamental contradiction. The US has imposed enormous costs on many of the same economies it relies on as trading and strategic partners. The damage to allied economies will complicate the coalition politics that will likely be needed for post-conflict stabilization, not to mention addressing future crises elsewhere. World Economic Forum

China’s position is particularly instructive. Beijing finds itself simultaneously threatened and potentially advantaged by the conflict. Beijing was unable to shield Tehran from either the 2025 or 2026 US-Israel attacks, exposing the limits of its cautious approach to regional security. While avoiding direct intervention, Beijing mobilized to protect its nationals by arranging the evacuation of more than 3,000 Chinese citizens from Iran. Middle East Council on Global Affairs The disruption of Gulf energy supplies, on which China depends for roughly half its crude imports, is economically painful. Yet the relocation of US military assets from East Asia to frontline service in West Asia temporarily alters the balance of power in China’s geopolitical perimeter Geopolitical Monitor — a strategic windfall that Beijing has noted without acknowledgment.

Russia’s calculus is similarly double-edged. In partial compliance with an emerging bilateral defense partnership, the Russians have apparently assisted the Iranians with intelligence on US targets, but Moscow does not support bellicosity toward Israel or the GCC states. Geopolitical Monitor Higher oil prices benefit Russia’s battered energy revenues. The diversion of US military attention from Europe and the Pacific relieves pressure on multiple fronts. Russia did not ignite this war, but it is not unhappy it burns.

Europe, meanwhile, has been reduced to something approaching irrelevance. Whatever posture they take, Washington’s European allies are consigned to a largely reactive role, with limited clout they can use to help bring the war to an end. Former French ambassador Pierre Vimont put it bluntly: “Brussels has slipped into a starkly paralyzed role as a mere commentator on the geopolitical upheaval on its southern flank.” Crisis Group

The Legal and Normative Rupture

Beyond the material consequences, the Third Gulf War carries a normative legacy that may prove equally durable. Critics of the war, including legal and international relations experts, have described the attacks as illegal under US law, an act of imperialism, and a violation of Iran’s sovereignty under international law. Wikipedia The assassination of a sitting head of state — Khamenei — raises questions under international humanitarian law about the lawful targeting of political leadership. Iran’s strikes on Gulf desalination plants and civilian airports raised equivalent questions from the other direction.

The UN Security Council’s response was revealing in its selectivity: the Council passed a resolution condemning Iran’s retaliatory strikes on Gulf states, a formulation that implicitly accepted the US-Israeli campaign as the legal baseline — a normative determination with significant long-term consequences for the permissibility of preemptive strikes against nuclear programs. Eurasia Review In other words, the Security Council, under American pressure, has effectively blessed the principle that a state may strike another’s nuclear facilities preemptively, without Security Council authorization. This precedent will not remain in the Gulf. It will travel.

The Structural Acceleration

Wars of this scale do not merely destroy; they accelerate. The 1973 oil embargo accelerated France’s nuclear energy program. The 1979 Iranian Revolution drove Japan’s push for energy efficiency. The current crisis, which simultaneously exposes Asia’s dependence on oil and LNG imports and the fragility of fertilizer supply chains, may prove to be a powerful accelerant for diversification, redundancy, and stockpiling. But structural adjustment takes years. In the interim, the damage is accruing. World Economic Forum

Asia’s energy-importing economies — Japan, South Korea, India, the countries of Southeast Asia — have received the starkest possible reminder that their industrial civilizations rest on a narrow maritime corridor that can be closed by a single belligerent. Japan relies on the region for about 95% of its crude oil and 11% of its LNG imports, roughly 70% and 6% respectively shipped through the Strait of Hormuz. World Economic Forum The political will to accelerate domestic energy transition, nuclear expansion, and strategic stockpiling that has been intermittently present in these capitals for decades will now be sharply concentrated.

The Gulf states themselves face a forced reckoning with the fragility of their economic models. Their sovereign wealth funds, their diversification programs, their tourism industries, the aviation hubs that connected the world through Dubai and Doha — all have been interrupted or degraded by a war they were told, by the ally hosting his forces on their soil, was not their concern. The reconstruction of credibility, not just infrastructure, will take years.

Conclusion: An Unfinished Reckoning

The Third Gulf War is not over. As of today, the Strait of Hormuz remains effectively closed. Energy infrastructure across nine countries is damaged. Desalination plants have been struck. A regional security architecture built over fifty years has been discredited in four weeks. The Islamic Republic of Iran, its Supreme Leader dead and its military materiel systematically destroyed, faces an uncertain political future whose contours no one can reliably predict. And the global economy — already stressed by tariffs, inflation, and the lingering derangements of the pandemic years — has absorbed an oil shock that the IEA’s own director calls the worst in history.

As the aftermath of the First Gulf War brought about an international peace conference in Madrid in October 1991, which put in motion the peace processes of the 1990s, the aftermath of the Third Gulf War should bring about the convening of another international peace conference — this time, perhaps, in Riyadh. The Times of Israel Whether the political will for such a gathering exists, whether Washington is interested in the architecture of peace rather than merely the achievement of military objectives, remains to be seen.

What is already certain is that the world of February 27, 2026 — the world before “Epic Fury” — will not return. The energy systems are cracked. The security guarantees are discredited. The normative architecture governing when states may attack other states has been rewritten by force. The Gulf’s decades-long transformation from petrostate backwater to global hub has been interrupted, perhaps permanently redirected. And a Middle East in which Iran’s Axis of Resistance structured conflict across the Levant, the Gulf, and South Asia for forty years has been dismantled — not replaced by stability, but replaced by a vacancy whose filling will be bloody and contested.

Wars have aftereffects. This one is still making them.

You can follow Professor Mohamed Chtatouon X : @Ayurinu

Dr. Mohamed Chtatou

Dr. Mohamed Chtatou is a Professor of education science at the university in Rabat. He is currently a political analyst with Moroccan, Gulf, French, Italian and British media on politics and culture in the Middle East, Islam and Islamism as well as terrorism. He is, also, a specialist on political Islam in the MENA region with interest in the roots of terrorism and religious extremism.

The Accession Debate: History As A Weapon – OpEd

History, in Balochistan, is not the background to the conflict. It is the argument sustaining it.

Pakistan's Muhammad Ali Jinnah with Ahmad Yar Khan, the Khan of Kalat. 

Photo Credit: Author unknown, Wikipedia Commons (image cropped and remastered with Grok)


March 26, 2026

By Ashu Mann


On March 27, 1948, in Kalat, Ahmad Yar Khan, the Khan of Kalat, signed an instrument of accession bringing the Khanate of Kalat into Pakistan. Pakistani authorities have held that signing as the constitutionally final resolution of Balochistan’s incorporation into the state ever since. The Khan wrote in his own memoirs that Pakistani troops were already positioned near Kalat when he put pen to paper. His brother, Prince Abdul Karim, launched an armed rebellion within weeks and was arrested and imprisoned. Seventy-seven years later, both sides still cite the events of those months as proof that their reading of them is the correct one.

Pakistan’s legal argument is straightforward. The Khan signed the instrument. The document is valid. The accession is constitutionally settled. The Baloch nationalist argument draws from the same period and reaches the opposite conclusion: the signature was extracted under military pressure, and an agreement made under those conditions carries no legitimate authority.

The pre-accession record does not resolve the dispute cleanly. In August 1947, Pakistan and Kalat concluded a Standstill Agreement that acknowledged Kalat as an independent state. A separate document from the same period described both entities as sovereign and equal. Baloch nationalists cite both as evidence of a prior commitment to independence that the 1948 accession reversed. Pakistani officials argue that the March 1948 instrument supersedes those earlier agreements and constitutes the legally operative fact.

British archival records from the negotiating period, publicly accessible, show the Khan resisted accession through most of the preceding months. They also show Pakistani forces deployed near Kalat before the accession document was signed. They do not establish whether the signature was given freely or under compulsion. No independent body has ever been constituted to make that determination.

That absence has a measurable political cost. Armed Baloch nationalist movements have used the accession’s contested origins as their central mobilizing argument across five insurgency cycles. The argument retains force precisely because its documentary basis has never been subjected to authoritative, neutral examination. Pakistan’s official position classifies any public challenge to the 1948 accession as separatism rather than historical inquiry, foreclosing the kind of examination that might produce a shared factual baseline.


Contested accession disputes elsewhere have followed two trajectories, and which one they took depended largely on whether any party engaged the legitimacy question directly.

Tibet’s political status has been disputed between China and the Tibetan government-in-exile since 1959. Both sides cite documents from the early 1950s. No independent adjudication has been conducted. No political settlement has been reached across seven decades.

Kashmir presents the same pattern. Maharaja Hari Singh signed the instrument of accession to India in October 1947 under disputed circumstances, with armed incursion already underway. India and Pakistan have fought three wars over the territory. The accession’s legitimacy has never been reviewed by an independent authority, and the dispute is now in its eighth decade.

Northern Ireland followed a different course. The 1998 Good Friday Agreement did not require the British government to concede that its historical conduct in Ireland was wrong in every particular. It required acknowledging that Irish nationalist political grievances had legitimate historical roots. That acknowledgment opened political negotiations that had no prior foundation. The agreement has held for more than 25 years.

The distinction is not about which side’s historical account is accurate. It is about whether a state is willing to acknowledge that a grievance exists and that its origins are genuinely contestable. Pakistan has not made that acknowledgment on Balochistan. The legal position, maintained without variance since 1948, is that the accession was valid and the matter is closed.

Armed groups in Balochistan recruit from a population that has heard, across three and four generations, that the foundational act establishing Pakistan’s presence in their province was illegitimate. The documentary basis for that argument has never been examined by a neutral party.

A political settlement negotiated on that foundation carries a liability no subsequent agreement can fully address. The party claiming the settlement lacks legitimacy will have the same documents to point to that it has always had. History, in Balochistan, is not the background to the conflict. It is the argument sustaining it.


Ashu Mann

Ashu Mann is an Associate Fellow at the Centre for Land Warfare Studies. He was awarded the Vice Chief of the Army Staff Commendation card on Army Day 2025. He is pursuing a PhD from Amity University, Noida, in Defence and Strategic Studies. His research focuses include the India-China territorial dispute, great power rivalry, and Chinese foreign policy.

Is Trump’s Iran War the US Version of the Suez Crisis?

The crisis saw Britain’s aura of imperial power had evaporated, and its global empire headed for extinction. Trump may have similarly hastened US decline.


Iranian military personnel take part in an exercise titled “Smart Control of the Strait of Hormuz,” launched by the Naval Forces of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, which is being carried out in the Persian Gulf and the Strait of Hormuz on February 16, 2026.
(Photo by Press Office of Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps / Handout/Anadolu via Getty Images)

Alfred W. Mccoy
Mar 17, 2026

TomDispatch


In the first chapter of his 1874 novel The Gilded Age, Mark Twain offered a telling observation about the connection between past and present: “History never repeats itself, but the… present often seems to be constructed out of the broken fragments of antique legends.”

Among the “antique legends” most helpful in understanding the likely outcome of the current US intervention in Iran is the Suez Crisis of 1956, which I describe in my new book Cold War on Five Continents. After Egyptian leader Gamal Abdel Nasser nationalized the Suez Canal in July 1956, a joint British-French armada of six aircraft carriers destroyed Egypt’s air force, while Israeli troops smashed Egyptian tanks in the sands of the Sinai Peninsula. Within less than a week of war, Nasser had lost his strategic forces and Egypt seemed helpless before the overwhelming might of that massive imperial juggernaut.

But by the time Anglo-French forces came storming ashore at the north end of the Suez Canal, Nasser had executed a geopolitical masterstroke by sinking dozens of rusting ships filled with rocks at the canal’s northern entrance. In doing so, he automatically cut off Europe’s lifeline to its oil fields in the Persian Gulf. By the time British forces retreated in defeat from Suez, Britain had been sanctioned at the United Nations, its currency was at the brink of collapse, its aura of imperial power had evaporated, and its global empire was heading for extinction.

Historians now refer to the phenomenon of a dying empire launching a desperate military intervention to recover its fading imperial glory as “micro-militarism.” And coming in the wake of imperial Washington’s receding influence over the broad Eurasian land mass, the recent US military assault on Iran is starting to look like an American version of just such micro-militarism.

Washington’s fading influence across Eurasia will undoubtedly prove catalytic for the emergence of a new world order, which is likely to move far beyond the old order of US global hegemony.

Even if history never truly repeats itself, right now it seems all too appropriate to wonder whether the current US intervention in Iran might indeed be America’s version of the Suez Crisis. And should Washington’s attempt at regime change in Tehran somehow “succeed,” don’t for a second think that the result will be a successfully stable new government that will be able to serve its people well.
70 Years of Regime Change

Let’s return to the historical record to uncover the likely consequences of regime change in Iran. Over the past 70 years, Washington has made repeated attempts at regime change across the span of five continents—initially via CIA covert action during the 44 years of the Cold War and, in the decades since the end of that global conflict, through conventional military operations. Although the methods have changed, the results—plunging the affected societies into decades of searing social conflict and incessant political instability—have been sadly similar. This pattern can be seen in a few of the CIA’s most famous covert interventions during the Cold War.

In 1953, Iran’s new parliament decided to nationalize the British imperial oil concession there to fund social services for its emerging democracy. In response, a joint CIA-MI6 coup ousted the reformist prime minister and installed the son of the long-deposed former Shah in power. Unfortunately for the Iranian people, he proved to be a strikingly inept leader who transformed his country’s oil wealth into mass poverty—thereby precipitating Iran’s 1979 Islamic revolution.

By 1954, Guatemala was implementing an historic land reform program that was investing its mostly Mayan Indigenous population with the requisites for full citizenship. Unfortunately, a CIA-sponsored invasion installed a brutal military dictatorship, plunging the country into 30 years of civil war that left 200,000 people dead in a population of only 5 million.

External intervention, whether covert or open, seems to invariably be the equivalent of hitting an antique pocket watch with a hammer and then trying to squeeze all its gears and springs back into place.

Similarly, in 1960, the Congo had emerged from a century of brutal Belgian colonial rule by electing a charismatic leader, Patrice Lumumba. But the CIA soon ousted him from power, replacing him with Joseph Mobutu, a military dictator whose 30 years of kleptocracy precipitated violence that led to the deaths of more than 5 million people in the Second Congo War (1998-2003) and continues to take a toll to this day.

In more recent decades, there have been similarly dismal outcomes from Washington’s attempts at regime change via conventional military operations. After the September 2001 terrorist attacks, US forces toppled the Taliban regime in Afghanistan. Over the next 20 years, Washington spent $2.3 trillion—and no, that “trillion” is not a misprint!—in a failed nation-building effort that was swept away when the resurgent Taliban captured the capital, Kabul, in August 2021, plunging the country into a mix of harsh patriarchy and mass privation.

In 2003, Washington invaded Iraq in search of nonexistent nuclear weapons and sank into the quagmire of a 15-year war that led to the slaughter of a million people and left behind an autocratic government that became little more than an Iranian client state. And in 2011, the US led a NATO air campaign that toppled Colonel Muammar Gaddafi’s radical regime in Libya, precipitating seven years of civil war and ultimately leaving that country divided between two antagonistic failed states.

When Washington’s attempts at regime change fail, as they did in Cuba in 1961 and in Venezuela last year, that failure often leaves autocratic regimes even more entrenched, with their control over the country’s secret police strengthened and an ever-tighter death grip on the country’s economy.

Why, you might wonder, do such US interventions invariably seem to produce such dismal results? For societies struggling to achieve a fragile social stability amid volatile political change, external intervention, whether covert or open, seems to invariably be the equivalent of hitting an antique pocket watch with a hammer and then trying to squeeze all its gears and springs back into place.
The Iran War’s Geopolitical Consequences

By exploring the geopolitical implications of Washington’s latest intervention in Iran, it’s possible to imagine how President Donald Trump’s war of choice might well become Washington’s very own version of the Suez crisis.

Just as Egypt snatched a diplomatic victory from the jaws of military defeat in 1956 by shutting the Suez Canal, so Iran has now closed off the Middle East’s other critical choke point by firing its Shahed drones at five freighters in the Straits of Hormuz (through which 20% of global crude oil and natural gas regularly passes) and at petroleum refineries on the southern shore of the Persian Gulf. Iran’s drone strikes have blocked more than 90% of tanker departures from the Persian Gulf and shut down the massive Qatari refineries that produce 20% of the world supply of liquafied natural gas, sending natural gas prices soaring by 50% in much of the world and by 91% in Asia—with the price of gasoline in the US heading for $4 a gallon and the cost of oil likely to reach a staggering $150 per barrel in the near future. Moreover, through the conversion of natural gas to fertilizer, the Persian Gulf is the source for nearly half the world’s agricultural nutrients, with prices soaring by 37% for urea fertilizer in markets like Egypt and threatening both spring planting in the Northern Hemisphere and food security in the Global South.

The extraordinary concentration of petroleum production, international shipping, and capital investment in the Persian Gulf makes the Straits of Hormuz not only a choke point for the flow of oil and natural gas but also for the movement of capital for the entire global economy. To begin with the basics, the Persian Gulf holds about 50% of the world’s proven oil reserves, estimated at 859 billion barrels or, at current prices, about $86 trillion.

Time is not on Washington’s side if this war drags on for more than a few weeks.

To give you an idea of the scale of capital concentration in the region’s infrastructure, the national oil companies of the Gulf Cooperation Council invested $125 billion in their production facilities in 2025 alone, with plans to continue at that rate for the foreseeable future. To keep the global oil tanker fleet of 7,500 vessels that largely serves the Persian Gulf afloat, it costs nearly $100 million for a single large “Suezmax” tanker—of which there are about 900 normally on the high seas, worth a combined $90 billion (with frequent replacements required by the corrosion of steel in harsh maritime conditions). Moreover, Dubai has the world’s busiest international airport at the center of a global network with 450,000 flights annually—now shut down by Iranian drone strikes.

Despite all the White House media hype about the terrible swift sword of America’s recent airstrikes, the 3,000 US-Israeli bombing runs against Iran (which is two-thirds the size of Western Europe) in the war’s first week pale before the 1,400,000 bombing sorties over Europe during World War II. The striking contrast between those numbers makes the current US air attacks on Iran seem, from a strategic perspective, like shooting at an elephant with a BB gun.

Moreover, the US has limited stocks of about 4,000 interceptor missiles, which cost up to $12 million each and can’t be rapidly mass-produced. By contrast, Iran has an almost limitless supply of some 80,000 Shahed drones, 10,000 of which it can produce each month for only $20,000 each. In effect, time is not on Washington’s side if this war drags on for more than a few weeks.

Indeed, in a recent interview, pressed about the possibility that Iran’s vast flotilla of slow, low-flying Shahed drones might soon exhaust the US supply of sophisticated interceptor missiles, Pentagon leader General Dan Caine was surprisingly evasive, saying only, “I don’t want to be talking about quantities.”
Whose Boots on the Ground?

While economic and military pressures build for a shorter war, Washington is trying to avoid sending troops ashore by mobilizing Iran’s ethnic minorities, who make up about 40% of that country’s population. As the Pentagon is silently but painfully aware, US ground forces would face formidable resistance from a million-strong Basij militia, 150,000 Revolutionary Guards (who are well-trained for asymmetric guerrilla warfare), and Iran’s 350,000 regular army troops.

With other ethnic groups (like the Azeris in the north) unwilling or (like the Baloch tribes in the southeast, far from the capital) unable to attack Tehran, Washington is desperate to play its Kurdish card, just as it has done for the past 50 years. With a population of 10 million astride the highland borders of Syria, Turkey, Iraq, and Iran, the Kurds are the largest ethnic group in the Middle East without their own state. As such, they have long been forced to play the imperial Great Game, making them a surprisingly sensitive bellwether for larger changes in imperial influence.

Since the rise of Donald Trump’s America First foreign policy in 2016, major and medium powers along that entire Eurasian rimland have been actively disengaging from US influence.

Although President Trump made personal calls to the top leaders in Iraq’s Kurdistan region during the first week of the latest war, offering them “extensive US aircover” for an attack on Iran, and the US even has a military airbase at Erbil, Kurdistan’s capital, the Kurds are so far proving uncharacteristically cautious.

Indeed, Washington has a long history of using and abusing Kurdish fighters, dating back to the days of Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, who turned their betrayal into a diplomatic art form. After he ordered the CIA to stop aiding the Iraqi Kurdish resistance to Saddam Hussein in 1975, Kissinger told an aide, “Promise them anything, give them what they get, and f… them if they can’t take a joke.”

As Iraqi forces fought their way into Kurdistan, killing helpless Kurds by the hundreds, their legendary leader Mustafa Barzani, grandfather of the current head of Iraqi Kurdistan, pleaded with Kissinger, saying, “Your Excellency, the United States has a moral and political responsibility to our people.” Kissinger did not even dignify that desperate plea with a reply and instead told Congress, “Covert action should not be confused with missionary work.”

Last January, in an amazingly ill-timed decision, the Trump White House betrayed the Kurds one time too many, breaking Washington’s decade-long alliance with the Syrian Kurds by forcing them to give up 80% of their occupied territory. In southeastern Turkey, the radical Kurdish PKK Party has made a deal with Prime Minister Recep Erdoğan and is actually disarming, while Iraq’s Kurdistan region is staying out of the war by respecting a 2023 diplomatic entente with Tehran for a peaceful Iran-Iraq border. President Trump has called at least one leader of the Iranian Kurds, who constitute about 10% of Iran’s population, to encourage an armed uprising. But most Iranian Kurds seem more interested in regional autonomy than regime change.

As Trump’s calls upon the Kurds to attack and the Iranian people to rise up are met with an eloquent silence, Washington is likely to end this war with Iran’s Islamic regime only furthe

r entrenched, showing the world that America is not just a disruptive power, but a fading one that other nations can do without. Over the past 100-plus years, the Iranian people have mobilized six times in attempts to establish a real democracy. At this point, though, it seems as if any seventh attempt will come long after the current US naval armada has left the Arabian Sea.
From the Granular to the Geopolitical

If we move beyond this granular view of Iran’s ethnic politics to a broader geo-strategic perspective on the Iran war, Washington’s waning influence in the hills of Kurdistan seems to reflect its fading geopolitical influence across the vast Eurasian land mass, which remains today the epicenter of geopolitical power, as it has been for the past 500 years.

For nearly 80 years, the United States has maintained its global hegemony by controlling the axial ends of Eurasia through its NATO alliance in Western Europe and four bilateral defense pacts along the Pacific littoral from Japan to Australia. But now, as Washington focuses more of its foreign policy on the Western Hemisphere, US influence is fading fast along the vast arc of Eurasia stretching from Poland, through the Middle East to Korea that scholars of geopolitics like Sir Halford Mackinder and Nicholas Spykman once dubbed the “rimland” or “the zone of conflict.” As Spykman put it succinctly once upon a time, “Who controls the Rimland rules Eurasia; who rules Eurasia controls the destinies of the world.”

Just as Sir Anthony Eden is remembered ruefully today in the United Kingdom as the inept prime minister who destroyed the British Empire at Suez, so future historians may see Donald Trump as the president who degraded US international influence.

Since the rise of Donald Trump’s America First foreign policy in 2016, major and medium powers along that entire Eurasian rimland have been actively disengaging from US influence—including Europe (by rearming), Russia (by challenging the West in Ukraine), Turkey (by remaining neutral in the present war), Pakistan (by allying with China), India (by breaking with Washington’s Quad alliance), and Japan (by rearming to create an autonomous defense policy). That ongoing disengagement is manifest in the lack of support for the Iran intervention, even from once-close European and Asian allies—a striking contrast with the broad coalitions that joined US forces in the 1991 Gulf War and the occupation of Afghanistan in 2002. With Trump’s micro-militarism in Iran inadvertently but clearly exposing the limits of American power, Washington’s fading influence across Eurasia will undoubtedly prove catalytic for the emergence of a new world order, which is likely to move far beyond the old order of US global hegemony.

Just as Sir Anthony Eden is remembered ruefully today in the United Kingdom as the inept prime minister who destroyed the British Empire at Suez, so future historians may see Donald Trump as the president who degraded US international influence with, among other things, his micro-military misadventure in the Middle East. As empires rise and fall, such geopolitics clearly remains a constant factor in shaping their fate–a lesson I try to teach in Cold War on Five Continents.

In difficult times like these, when events seem both confused and confusing, Mark Twain’s “broken fragments of antique legends” can remind us of historical analogies like the collapse of the power and influence of Great Britain or of the Soviet Union that can help us understand how the past often whispers to the present—as it indeed seems to be doing these days in the Straits of Hormuz.

© 2023 TomDispatch.com


Alfred W. Mccoy
Alfred W. McCoy is professor of history at the University of Wisconsin-Madison is the author of "In the Shadows of the American Century: The Rise and Decline of U.S. Global Power". Previous books include: "Torture and Impunity: The U.S. Doctrine of Coercive Interrogation" (University of Wisconsin, 2012), "A Question of Torture: CIA Interrogation, from the Cold War to the War on Terror (American Empire Project)", "Policing America's Empire: The United States, the Philippines, and the Rise of the Surveillance State", and "The Politics of Heroin: CIA Complicity in the Global Drug Trade".
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