Iran after 48 hours: Tactical success, strategic uncertainty

Moscow and Beijing have offered little beyond verbal condemnation, the article says, leaving Iran largely on its own.

“Brett McGurk is a CNN global affairs analyst who served in senior national security positions under Presidents George W”

CNN

Iran’s asymmetric tools — cyber operations, proxy militias, maritime disruption — have so far been dormant, though militias in Iraq have fired drones at Erbil and Iran’s proxy Hezbollah is described as already battered.

CNN

The article records an immediate energy shock: OPEC agreed to increase production by more than 200 thousand barrels per day but oil prices still rose 10% as markets opened on Sunday evening.

Militarily, the United States retains overwhelming conventional superiority, yet the piece stresses that military advantage cannot by itself deliver political outcomes and there is no natural endpoint to the campaign.

The main concern from Washington’s vantage, the author concludes, is that strategic and tactical success coexist with profound uncertainty about where this leads, including whether remnants of the regime will suppress protests with lethal force and whether the U.S. would use air power to deter another crackdown.

That, the article says, is likely the net assessment Trump is receiving.