分类： politics

New reporting from Bloomberg has shed fresh light on the heavy material costs of the ongoing conflict between the United States and Iran, revealing that Tehran has destroyed roughly $1 billion worth of American MQ-9 Reaper drones – equal to approximately 20% of the U.S. military’s pre-war inventory of the advanced unmanned aerial vehicles.

According to Bloomberg’s Friday report, the Iranian military has taken out these high-tech assets in two primary ways: many were shot down mid-flight during surveillance or strike missions over Iranian territory, while others were destroyed on the ground at U.S. military installations across the Gulf region when Tehran launched targeted attacks on those bases.

The MQ-9 Reaper is a dual-capacity unmanned aerial system, designed to conduct long-endurance intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance missions while also being outfitted to carry offensive ordnance – most commonly Hellfire air-to-surface missiles and Joint Direct Attack Munition precision-guided bombs. Bloomberg’s estimate of up to 30 lost Reapers exceeds the 24-drone loss figure published earlier this month by the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service, marking a higher toll than previously acknowledged by U.S. government analyses.

The $1 billion loss from destroyed Reapers adds to the already staggering cumulative cost of U.S. military operations against Iran. Back in May, a senior Pentagon official told Reuters that total war-related spending had already reached $29 billion, a figure that will grow with this latest accounting of lost equipment. While the U.S. military is currently phasing the MQ-9 out of its own active fleet as it develops next-generation unmanned systems, original equipment manufacturer General Atomics still continues production of the Reaper for export to foreign allied militaries.

Iran’s proven track record of downing the sophisticated Reaper drones also undermines previous claims from former U.S. President Donald Trump, who asserted that Iran’s air defense capabilities had been completely “obliterated” by U.S. military strikes. Instead, the repeated successes against U.S. drones demonstrates that Tehran has maintained and expanded functional air defense networks that can threaten high-value American aircraft.

This week, an unnamed U.S. official speaking to The New York Times raised additional security concerns: the report claims Iranian military commanders have likely mapped out consistent flight patterns used by U.S. fighter jets and bombers operating near Iranian airspace, a development that increases the operational risks to U.S. aircrews if any future U.S. administration chooses to resume large-scale offensive operations against Iran.

Tensions peaked in the weeks before the fragile April ceasefire between the two nations: just days before the truce took effect, Iranian air defenses shot down a U.S. F-15E Strike Eagle fighter jet, triggering a large-scale urgent search and recovery operation to extract the downed pilots. Military analysts note that if Iranian forces had captured one or more of these pilots alive, Tehran would have held enormous leverage to pressure Washington in subsequent negotiations.

The New York Times further reported that Russia may have provided critical intelligence support to Iran to help map U.S. flight patterns, allowing Iran to better position its military and air defense assets to intercept American aircraft. This collaboration aligns with the long-standing security partnership between Moscow and Tehran that has been widely documented for years. Multiple U.S. media outlets have previously confirmed that Russia has aided Iran by sharing satellite imagery of U.S. warship movements and positions of American military personnel across the Middle East.

Today, Iran’s integrated air defense network combines domestically produced interception systems with advanced hardware sourced from both Russia and China. Middle East Eye, which first reported that China supplied complete air defense battery systems to Iran after the June 2025 U.S. bombing of three Iranian nuclear sites that brought the conflict to a peak, was the first outlet to break details of Beijing’s military support for Tehran’s air capabilities.

In a sweeping overhaul of U.S. immigration rules announced Friday, the second Trump administration has mandated that all foreign nationals currently residing in the U.S. seeking to adjust their visa status to permanent residency must first leave the country and submit their applications through U.S. embassies or consulates based in their home countries. This sudden, immediate policy shift marks a fundamental break from decades of established immigration practice, with potential impacts stretching across more than 10 million current visa holders in the U.S. — a group that includes international students, temporary skilled workers, humanitarian parolees, and even foreign spouses of U.S. citizens.

In an official statement, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) spokesperson Zach Kahler framed the change as a return to the original text of U.S. immigration law. “We’re going back to the law’s original intent to ensure foreign nationals navigate our immigration system the way it was designed,” Kahler said. “From now on, any temporary visitor in the U.S. seeking a green card must return to their home country to file their application, outside of extraordinary circumstances.”

The policy went into effect the same day it was announced, but critical details remain unaddressed: the administration has not publicly defined what qualifies as an “extraordinary circumstance,” leaving the decision largely to the broad discretionary authority traditionally granted to immigration and border enforcement officials. Kahler defended the vague language, arguing that requiring applications from overseas will cut down on cases where applicants denied permanent residency remain in the U.S. illegally. “When people apply from home, we eliminate the need to track down and remove those who choose to overstay after a denial,” he explained, adding that the change will also free up limited USCIS resources to prioritize high-priority cases including visas for victims of violent crime and human trafficking, and naturalization applications. “Following the law, which has been ignored for decades, will make our system fairer and more efficient,” he added.

But immigration advocates and legal experts warn the new rule will carry devastating human and economic costs. Applications processed through overseas consulates typically face multi-year wait times, forcing applicants to give up pending job offers and spend years separated from their U.S. citizen family members. For nationals of countries where U.S. consular services have been suspended entirely — such as Russia and Afghanistan — the process is effectively impossible to complete.

Immigration attorneys were quick to condemn the policy across social media within hours of its announcement. “This isn’t just an issue for immigrants — it hurts U.S. citizens too,” wrote Adrian Pandev, founder of Pandev Law LLC, on platform X. “Roughly one in five married U.S. couples have one spouse born abroad. This isn’t a small fringe group — that’s 21% of all married households in the country.” Pandev noted that the existing in-country adjustment of status process was created specifically to let spouses of U.S. citizens get green cards without leaving their family behind.

Texas-based immigration attorney Steven Brown pointed out that Congress has explicitly allowed in-country status adjustments since the 1950s, codifying the practice in law for core policy reasons: to save applicants from the financial burden and disruption of international travel, to protect family unity, advance U.S. economic growth by supporting a stable immigrant workforce, and enable humanitarian relief. The American Immigration Lawyers Association emphasized that both Republican and Democratic administrations have upheld the in-country adjustment process for decades, and federal courts have repeatedly ruled it is legal. “Reversing settled law through an unvetted policy memo is legally questionable and creates needless chaos for millions of people,” the association said in a statement.

The policy is already expected to face immediate legal challenges in federal court, and it marks the latest aggressive move in the Trump administration’s broader crackdown on both unauthorized and legal immigration since the administration took office in January 2025.

Advocacy groups have also highlighted that the policy disproportionately targets vulnerable groups who came to the U.S. through humanitarian programs. AfghanEvac, an organization that supports Afghan allies who assisted the U.S. during its 20-year military campaign in Afghanistan and evacuated to the U.S. in 2021, called the timing of the announcement no coincidence. “This policy directly targets people who entered the U.S. on humanitarian parole — which is the entry status for nearly every Afghan ally who arrived after the withdrawal,” said Shawn VanDiver, the organization’s president. “There is no U.S. embassy in Afghanistan, so the administration’s required alternative of applying from home simply does not exist for these people.” VanDiver warned the rule sets in motion a deportation pipeline: “This memo doesn’t deport anyone today, but it starts the chain: a denial leads to removal proceedings, which leads to a deportation order.”

Iranians currently in the U.S. on temporary visas also face identical barriers, as Iran is included in the Trump administration’s existing travel ban, and U.S. diplomatic operations in the country have been shuttered for decades. Tens of thousands of Iranian nationals are currently studying, working, or seeking asylum in the U.S. after building lives legally in the country. The National Iranian American Council called the new rule a “trap” for this community. “The administration is telling Iranians who have built their lives here legally to leave — and once they do, they will never be allowed to come back,” said NIAC president Jamal Abdi. “Does the Trump administration seriously expect Iranian nationals legally in the U.S. to return to their country, in the middle of a war and a naval blockade this administration imposed, to apply for a status adjustment that will likely never be approved?”

NEW DELHI – U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio touched down in India on Saturday, kicking off a four-day trip that will culminate in a high-stakes regional ministerial gathering with top diplomats from the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (Quad), the Indo-Pacific strategic bloc comprising the United States, India, Australia, and Japan.

The trip arrives at a critical juncture for U.S.-India ties, as Washington works to repair bilateral relations strained by former President Donald Trump’s contentious tariff policies, which imposed steep new duties on a range of Indian goods exported to the American market. While mending bilateral friction is a key undercurrent of the visit, much of Rubio’s schedule is dedicated to a multi-city cultural tour and a celebratory event marking a major American milestone.

Before departing for India, Rubio framed the trip as a meaningful moment for deepening cooperation between the two nations, noting, “There’s a lot to work on with India, they’re a great ally and partner. We do a lot of good work with them so this is an important trip.”

Rubio’s first stop after arrival was Kolkata, the bustling eastern Indian metropolis. There, he is slated to visit the Mother House, global headquarters of the Missionaries of Charity, the iconic humanitarian organization founded by Nobel Peace Prize winner Mother Teresa. In the days ahead, he will also travel to Agra, home to the world-famous Taj Mahal, and Jaipur, the fabled “Pink City” renowned for its royal palaces and historic architecture.

Alongside the cultural itinerary, Rubio has a packed schedule of high-level bilateral diplomacy: he will hold formal one-on-one talks with India’s External Affairs Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar, and is expected to meet privately with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi to discuss bilateral and regional priorities.

The centerpiece of the visit will come Tuesday, when Rubio joins his Quad counterparts in New Delhi for the bloc’s latest ministerial meeting. The Quad has repeatedly raised international alarm over what it describes as increased Chinese military posturing in the South China Sea and aggressive pursuit of contested maritime territorial claims in the strategically vital waterway.

China has pushed back firmly against these criticisms and the Quad’s broader regional role. Beijing argues that its military activities in the South China Sea are purely defensive, carried out to protect its recognized sovereign rights. Chinese officials have repeatedly characterized the Quad as a deliberate Western-led effort to curb China’s global economic expansion and diplomatic influence.

For Rubio, the India trip marks a continuation of his focus on the Quad as a core U.S. foreign policy priority in the Indo-Pacific. Shortly after his inauguration as Secretary of State in January of last year, his first formal international engagement was a series of meetings with his fellow Quad foreign ministers, both in group discussions and separate bilateral sessions, underscoring the Biden administration’s commitment to strengthening the bloc.

In a public letter posted to X Friday, former 2020 Democratic presidential candidate and current U.S. Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard announced she will resign from her post in June, after her husband Abraham received a diagnosis of an extremely rare subtype of bone cancer.

Addressed to President Donald Trump, the letter laid out Gabbard’s reasoning for stepping away from the nation’s top intelligence role: “I am deeply grateful for the trust you placed in me and for the opportunity to lead the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. My husband, Abraham, has recently been diagnosed with an extremely rare form of bone cancer. He faces major challenges in the coming weeks and months. At this time, I must step away from public service to be by his side and fully support him through this battle.”

Gabbard also expressed lasting gratitude to Trump for nominating her to the cabinet-level position, making no mention of ongoing tensions over the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran in her public statement.

Beyond the personal health crisis that Gabbard cites as the catalyst for her exit, her departure removes one of the last remaining prominent anti-interventionist, Iran war skeptics from the Trump White House. The vacancy comes two months after her close ally Joseph Kent, former director of the National Counterterrorism Centre, resigned over the administration’s shift toward war with Iran. In his March resignation statement, Kent said he could not “in good conscience” continue in the role, as the White House had “succumbed to pressure from Israel and its powerful American lobby” to launch military strikes.

News agency Reuters, however, has reported that Gabbard was effectively “forced out” by the White House, despite the official framing focused on family health. President Trump pushed back against any implicit suggestion of tension in his own X post acknowledging the resignation, praising Gabbard’s tenure: “Tulsi has done an incredible job, and we will miss her. She rightfully wanted to be with her husband and bring him back to good health.”

Policy analysts and major U.S. outlets including The Wall Street Journal note that Gabbard’s exit is unlikely to shift the Trump administration’s current policy direction on Iran or Israel, as the former congresswoman had already been largely sidelined from key war-related decision-making for months. Even during the U.S. military offensive in Venezuela earlier this year, Gabbard was vacationing at a beach in her home state of Hawaii, far from the White House Situation Room. Gabbard’s most high-profile break with administration policy came in March, when she submitted written testimony to the Senate Intelligence Committee confirming Iran had made “no efforts” to rebuild its uranium enrichment program after U.S. strikes on three Iranian nuclear facilities in June 2025. This assessment directly contradicted public claims from Trump, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, and special envoy Steve Witkoff, who have repeatedly claimed Iran was on the brink of developing a functional nuclear weapon. Notably, Gabbard never presented the testimony in person to Senate committee members.

For his part, Trump has maintained a long-running distrust of the established U.S. intelligence community, and in recent months his appointed CIA Director John Ratcliffe has emerged as the dominant figure in the administration’s national security apparatus, taking on high-profile foreign policy assignments including a recent visit to Cuba, where the Trump administration continues to enforce harsh, economically devastating sanctions and a decades-long blockade.

A veteran of two U.S. military deployments to the Middle East, Gabbard built her political profile around consistent anti-interventionist positions long before joining the Trump administration. She completed a 12-month combat tour in Iraq in 2004, followed by a 2009 deployment to Kuwait where she helped train local counterterrorism forces. She represented a Democratic congressional district in Hawaii from 2013 to 2021, where she was an early advocate for a full U.S. military withdrawal from Afghanistan, calling for a pullout as early as 2011. She has also repeatedly pushed for a full withdrawal of the roughly 900 U.S. troops currently stationed in northeastern Syria, and was a vocal critic of U.S. military backing for the Saudi-led coalition’s intervention in Yemen, co-sponsoring bipartisan legislation to block U.S. arms sales to Riyadh in 2019.

Gabbard’s political trajectory has shifted dramatically over the past decade: after running for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination as a progressive ally of Senator Bernie Sanders, she later endorsed centrist Democratic President Joe Biden before formally switching allegiances to campaign for Donald Trump’s 2024 presidential comeback bid.

In a last-minute, unanticipated move that has intensified partisan friction over executive war authority, the Republican-controlled U.S. House of Representatives scrapped a planned Thursday vote on a war powers resolution that would have curbed former President (now current, per context) Donald Trump’s authority to resume open military hostilities against Iran. This would have marked the fourth congressional attempt to assert legislative oversight of Iran policy under the 1973 War Powers Resolution since February of this year.

The vote had been scheduled as one of the final items on the legislative agenda ahead of the House’s extended Memorial Day recess, and all signs pointed to it passing. Just one week prior, a nearly identical measure tied at 212-212, when three House Republicans broke ranks with their party to join Democrats in supporting the push to reaffirm Congress’s constitutional authority over declarations of war. House Foreign Affairs Committee Ranking Member Gregory Meeks, a Democrat, told reporters Thursday that supporters had already secured enough votes to pass the resolution on the floor. “Every Democrat was on board. We had the sufficient number of Republicans on board,” Meeks said, adding that GOP leaders scrapped the vote solely because they knew the measure would pass. “Republicans pulled this vote because they knew they were going to lose it. They know this war is a political and strategic disaster,” he added.

House Majority Leader Steve Scalise offered a different explanation for the cancellation, telling reporters that the vote would be delayed until June due to a number of absent Republican lawmakers who could not make it to Washington for the vote.

The development follows a similar move in the Senate earlier this week, where a companion war powers resolution advanced by a 50-47 margin after three Republican senators were absent from the chamber. Two of those absent senators have already fallen out of favor with Trump: Thom Tillis, who dropped his re-election bid after facing relentless primary attacks from Trump, and John Cornyn, who lost Trump’s endorsement in his Texas Republican primary this week to a far more pro-Trump challenger.

To contextualize the debate: The 1973 War Powers Resolution was designed to check executive war authority, allowing any senator to introduce a resolution forcing a vote to withdraw U.S. armed forces from unauthorized conflicts. Under the U.S. Constitution, Congress, not the executive branch, holds the explicit power to declare war — a point that constitutional scholars emphasize is unambiguous. “There are some things about the Constitution [that] are not clear [but] this point is crystal, crystal clear,” said Chris Edelson, a constitutional scholar at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, in an interview with Middle East Eye. “The framers of the Constitution debated war power. They gave Congress the power to declare war. The one exception was if the United States is attacked, the president could act to defend the country… and of course that’s not what happened here.”

Since the 9/11 attacks, the open-ended nature of the global “war on terror” has allowed successive presidential administrations to expand executive war-making authority, with the U.S. carrying out hundreds of air strikes in countries ranging from Somalia to Pakistan without ever securing a formal declaration of war from Congress. While the 1973 War Powers Resolution gives presidents 60 days to conduct unilateral military action before requiring congressional authorization, or an additional 30-day extension, Edelson argues the law’s ambiguous wording leaves it too weak to enforce constitutional checks on the executive branch.

The current debate stems from the brief U.S. hostilities against Iran that began in late February. Three weeks after Pakistan brokered a ceasefire between the U.S. and Iran in late March, a senior Trump administration official told Reuters that for war powers purposes, “the hostilities that began on Saturday, February 28, have terminated.” Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth later backed this position during a Senate hearing, arguing that the 60-day unilateral war window outlined in the 1973 law is automatically paused when a ceasefire goes into effect. That interpretation has been firmly rejected by Democrats and a handful of congressional Republicans.

While the ceasefire has held so far, it remains extremely fragile. Just this week, Trump announced he would call off plans for a “full, large scale” military offensive against Iran after Gulf Arab leaders urged him to delay any new hostilities until after the annual Hajj pilgrimage season.

Notably, bipartisan opposition to new hostilities with Iran has shifted dramatically in recent months. At the start of the year, many establishment Democrats were open to military pressure on Iran, with party leadership even attempting to slow down earlier efforts to invoke war powers oversight. Many establishment Democrats have also consistently aligned with hawkish positions on Iran, even as they have declined to condemn Israeli military actions in Gaza that leading international scholars and the United Nations have labeled genocide. But that position shifted as public opinion polls consistently showed broad opposition to a new war with Iran among U.S. voters, and as rising tensions pushed gasoline prices higher just as the peak summer driving season began.

“It’s clear it didn’t go well. Who wants to be seen as supporting this?” Edelson said. “I mean, there are Republicans who do, but even for some Republicans, it’s getting hard.”

The upcoming November midterm elections, which will determine control of Congress alongside dozens of gubernatorial and state local races, will serve as the first major electoral test of public opinion on Trump’s second term foreign policy. This is not the first time Congress has attempted to curb Trump’s Iran war authority: back in 2020, after Trump ordered the drone strike that killed top Iranian general Qassem Soleimani, both chambers of Congress passed a war powers resolution limiting Trump’s authority to take military action against Iran. Trump ultimately vetoed the measure.

This reporting comes from Middle East Eye, an outlet that produces independent, on-the-ground coverage of the Middle East, North Africa and broader global affairs.

An ancient Chinese proverb holds that a master hunter does not waste energy chasing prey — instead, they position themselves where the rabbit is destined to run. For critics and supporters alike, one fact stands out about Xi Jinping’s long-term statecraft: he has moved with extraordinary, deliberate patience. Now, over a single historic stretch of weeks, that patience appears to be paying off, as both Russian President Vladimir Putin and former U.S. President Donald Trump traveled to Beijing for high-level summits in quick succession.

Far from a random confluence of diplomatic schedules, the dual visits are the product of decades of intentional geopolitical architecture. The fact that both Washington and Moscow — two powers that formally occupy opposing poles of the existing global order — have been drawn to Beijing in parallel carries a clear, unignorable message: the center of geopolitical gravity has shifted. China is no longer a passive actor responding to rules set by others; it is now actively, quietly reshaping the global system on its own terms.

Putin’s Visit: A Partnership Framed By Growing Asymmetry
Putin’s trip to Beijing carried a clear, unspoken subtext: what was framed as a meeting of equal partners was in reality a visit from a power increasingly dependent on Chinese goodwill. Since the outbreak of the full-scale war in Ukraine, Russia has faced sweeping Western sanctions, and has pivoted its entire economic infrastructure eastward, redirecting the bulk of its energy and raw material exports to Chinese markets. These sales are made at steeply discounted rates, negotiated from a position of weakness: Russia has few alternative buyers for its vast energy resources, a reality Beijing has leveraged to its full advantage.

Take the long-stalled Second Power of Siberia natural gas pipeline as a case in point. Moscow has pushed aggressively to finalize the project for years, while Beijing has faced no pressure to rush the deal. This dynamic mirrors a broader historical pattern: great powers that allow themselves to become economically dependent on a single major partner gradually, then suddenly, lose their strategic independence. Just as Habsburg Spain, awash in New World silver but reliant on Genoese bankers for financing, saw its foreign policy constrained by financial obligation, modern Russia retains its military standing and nuclear deterrence, but its room for independent geopolitical maneuver has shrunk steadily into a corridor defined by Beijing’s priorities.

This shift has ripple effects across South Asia, where India has long maintained a close relationship with Moscow as a counterbalance to Chinese and Western pressure. Today, every Russian arms deal, energy contract, and diplomatic signal carries an implicit Chinese veto, a reality New Delhi has noted with quiet but growing discomfort.

Trump’s Summit: Exposing American Diplomatic Uncertainty
If Putin’s visit laid bare Russia’s growing structural weakness, Trump’s trip to Beijing revealed a more striking shift: America’s growing diplomatic disorientation. Trump arrived in Beijing accompanied by a cohort of top U.S. corporate CEOs, a choice that read to global observers as a solicitation for Chinese investment and access, a far cry from the image of unrivaled American power that Washington has projected for decades.

Xi received Trump with the calm authority of a leader who already holds the upper hand in setting the terms of engagement. When he invoked the Thucydides Trap — the theory that a rising power and an established hegemon are fated to clash — he framed it not as a warning to avoid, but as an almost settled verdict. China’s posture made clear it has already completed its rise; the open question is whether the U.S. will accept the new global order or exhaust itself trying to reverse it.

The most striking outcome of the summit was what did not happen: there was no joint statement from the two sides. This absence speaks far louder than any negotiated communiqué could. When two leading global powers meet at the highest level and cannot agree on a shared public statement, it confirms that the gap between their core worldviews is too wide to paper over with diplomatic language. The two sides released separate readouts, and the U.S. version was notably muted, stripped of the triumphal rhetoric Trump typically deploys after meetings he claims as a win. A man who once described a brief phone call with a foreign leader as “incredible and productive” only called this meeting “good” — a telling retreat from his usual boosterism.

On core issues from trade and Taiwan to technology restrictions and rare earth exports, China has clearly abandoned its past approach of quietly absorbing U.S. pressure. Today, it retaliates systematically, with growing confidence in its ability to impose meaningful costs on Washington. The 2025 Chinese export restrictions on critical rare earth elements, which directly disrupted U.S. defense supply chains, were not the action of a power afraid of confrontation. They were the calculated move of a state that has modeled its leverage and is confident in its position.

The Push for a G-2 Global Order
Xi’s most consequential move during the Trump summit was not a trade concession or a diplomatic compromise — it was a conceptual shift. By framing the bilateral relationship as a “constructive, stable strategic relationship,” and emphasizing that China and the U.S. share joint responsibility for global peace, Xi advanced a framework Washington has long resisted: the formal recognition of a G-2 world order.

Beyond the headline disputes over tariffs and technology, this is China’s core demand. It is not chasing symbolic equality on paper; Beijing has long moved past that need. Instead, it wants structural recognition that the international system cannot function without Chinese consent, that no global crisis — from the Middle East to Ukraine to the Taiwan Strait — can be resolved without Beijing’s active or implicit cooperation.

The unresolved standoff over Iran underscores this reality. Washington’s failure to decisively end the conflict over the Strait of Hormuz, through neither military pressure nor diplomatic leverage, served as visible evidence to Beijing that American power now overstretches its grasp. Xi did not need to point this out; the global status quo said it for him.

The Quiet Construction of a New Geopolitical Center
The deeper significance of these two back-to-back visits has little to do with Putin or Trump themselves. It is proof of the decades-long, patient project China has pursued to make itself indispensable to every corner of the global system: to energy markets, global supply chains, diplomatic crisis resolution, and the infrastructure ambitions of the Global South.

China did not stumble into its central position in global affairs; it engineered it, through initiatives from the Belt and Road to its deliberate buildup of rare earth market dominance, to the construction of a trade network centered on its own economy. This kind of multi-decade strategic thinking is structurally difficult for Western democracies, bound by short electoral cycles and shifting public attention, to match.

As former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger once observed, great powers rarely announce their dominance openly. Instead, they simply begin making decisions that other powers find themselves bound by. Beijing is increasingly in that position today. When both your primary geopolitical rival and your most prominent Eurasian partner travel to your capital within weeks, each seeking your support for their most urgent challenges, the question of who holds the structural advantage answers itself. Xi Jinping did not need a joint communiqué to declare victory; the visits themselves were the announcement.

The world is not becoming Chinese in culture or ideology. But it is becoming a system where Beijing’s preferences carry a weight that cannot be erased by sanctions, tariffs, or rhetorical pushback. That is the new geopolitical reality that both Washington and Moscow are now forced to reckon with, whether they are willing to admit it publicly or not.

UNITED NATIONS — After four weeks of tense negotiations among 191 global signatories, the latest United Nations review conference for the landmark Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) concluded on Friday with no consensus on a final outcome, derailed by sharp open confrontation between the United States and Iran over Tehran’s contested nuclear program.

Do Hung Viet, Vietnam’s U.N. Ambassador and the chair of the 2025 review conference, confirmed that participating states could not reach agreement even on a heavily compromised, watered-down closing document. While he declined to name which delegation or group of delegations blocked consensus, the entire conference was overshadowed by escalating tensions between Washington and Tehran that intensified ahead of the U.S.-Israeli military campaign against Iran that launched in late February.

This outcome marks the third consecutive failure for a major NPT review conference, a discouraging milestone for the global pact that has stood for more than five decades as the foundational framework for international nuclear nonproliferation and disarmament efforts. The 2022 NPT review also ended without agreement, after Russia blocked consensus over language condemning its invasion of Ukraine and its illegal occupation of Europe’s largest nuclear facility, the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant.

Clashes between U.S. and Iranian delegates dominated the conference from its opening session on April 27. The U.S. opened with sharp accusations that Iran has openly violated its NPT commitments, escalating those attacks in closing remarks that labeled Tehran a “prolific treaty violator” that spent the conference evading accountability for “grotesque violations” of its obligations. U.S. officials point to Iran’s previous enrichment of uranium to near weapons-grade purity, as well as its refusal to grant inspection access to nuclear sites damaged in U.S. airstrikes last June, as evidence of its noncompliance. Under the NPT, all signatory nations are required to grant full, unrestricted access to International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors to verify civilian nuclear activities.

Iran has pushed back aggressively against these claims, rejecting U.S. assertions that it is pursuing a nuclear weapons program and maintaining that all its nuclear activities are strictly for peaceful civilian purposes, including energy production and medical research. Iranian delegates countered that the U.S. and Israel’s repeated airstrikes on Iranian nuclear facilities themselves represent clear violations of international law, and accused the U.S. of leading a “relentless campaign” to frame Iran’s defensive actions and legitimize Washington’s own unlawful military attacks on the country.

The failure to reach agreement has sparked deep concern among arms control experts, who warn that the deadlock signals growing erosion of the global nonproliferation framework. Daryl Kimball, executive director of the Washington-based Arms Control Association, noted that while many nations continue to express rhetorical support for the NPT, the landmark agreement’s foundational pillars are weakening due to persistent inaction, disengagement, and intransigence from major global powers.

“Much more enlightened, engaged, and pragmatic leadership and diplomacy will be needed to guard against the growing risks of an unconstrained nuclear buildup, threats to resume nuclear testing, and the risk of a nuclear-armed Iran,” Kimball said.

Rebecca Johnson, founding executive director of the U.K.-based Acronym Institute for Disarmament Diplomacy, extended criticism to the world’s two largest nuclear arsenals, the U.S. and Russia, arguing that both major powers have consistently refused to uphold their own NPT disarmament commitments. She charged that the two nuclear superpowers continue to double down on explicit nuclear threats, shift blame to other nations, and actively undermine or ignore the disarmament obligations they agreed to under the treaty and related global pacts.