标签： Asia

Amid widespread global energy market volatility triggered by the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran, the United States is actively negotiating a landmark power-sharing agreement aimed at unifying oil-rich Libya under the control of its two most influential rival political families, multiple informed sources including current and former Western officials, regional Arab insiders, and independent analysts have confirmed to Middle East Eye.

The proposed framework would restructure Libyan governance by aligning the western-based Dbeibeh family and the eastern-based Haftar clan, while transitioning leadership from the older generation of political strongmen to a new cohort of younger leaders. Though negotiations have been ongoing for months, the initiative has gained urgent new momentum in recent weeks as rising oil prices driven by the Iran conflict have rekindled interest from U.S. energy firms in accessing Libya, which holds the largest proven crude oil reserves on the African continent.

Libya’s existing ruling factions have already seen a dramatic surge in revenue amid the Brent crude price rally: the country’s National Oil Corporation reported April oil revenues hit $2.9 billion, a three-fold increase from the start of 2025, and Libya’s oil minister traveled to Washington for high-level talks last week.

“This process has been in the works for several months, and the U.S. is actively laying the groundwork for a comprehensive agreement between the two families,” explained Riccardo Fabiani, North Africa director at the International Crisis Group. “There is enormous profit to be gained from expanded upstream oil exploration, so Washington has enormous stake in this outcome—especially now with the ongoing conflict in Iran.”

Leading the U.S. diplomatic push is Massad Boulos, U.S. President Donald Trump’s special envoy for Africa. While the proposed deal has been acknowledged in limited public discourse and faces widespread opposition from Libyan civil society groups, it has received little mainstream attention in Western capitals, overshadowed by the regional focus on the war against Iran.

Under the terms of the draft arrangement, the Trump administration is pushing for Ibrahim Dbeibeh, a veteran western Libyan powerbroker, to replace his cousin, incumbent prime minister Abdul Hamid Dbeibeh, who has struggled with ongoing health issues in recent months. An Arab source familiar with negotiations and a former senior Western official confirmed that Boulos coordinated this leadership reshuffle with Turkish officials as recently as April during the Antalya Forum, which hosted a high-level Libyan delegation.

As previously reported and confirmed by *The New York Times*, Ibrahim has built an unusually close relationship with Boulos, and the pair have held private discussions about unlocking billions of dollars in Libyan sovereign assets that have been frozen in Western financial institutions for decades. On the eastern side of the proposed power split, 35-year-old Saddam Haftar—son of 82-year-old eastern Libyan strongman General Khalifa Haftar, who has controlled the eastern half of the country for more than a decade—would be appointed as Libya’s president.

Saddam Haftar currently serves as deputy commander of his father’s Libyan National Army, and has already moved to rework the Haftar family’s diplomatic ties, building new relationships with former rivals including Turkey. He is widely viewed as the U.S.’s preferred successor to his aging father, and the Arab source confirmed Saddam met with the Central Intelligence Agency’s deputy director during an official visit to Washington last year. As part of Boulos’s negotiating process, Ibrahim Dbeibeh and Saddam Haftar held high-level unity talks at the Élysée Palace in Paris earlier this year.

This latest effort to unify Libya comes after more than 14 years of fragmented governance following the 2011 NATO-backed uprising that ousted and killed long-time dictator Muammar Gaddafi. Since 2011, the country has been split into two competing political blocs: an internationally recognized government based in the western capital of Tripoli, and a parallel administration in the east led by Khalifa Haftar. The two sides fought a brutal civil war in 2019, when Khalifa Haftar launched an assault on Tripoli that devolved into a full proxy conflict: Turkey backed the UN-recognized western government, while Russia, Egypt, and the United Arab Emirates provided military and financial support to the Haftar-led eastern bloc. Abdul Hamid Dbeibeh was appointed prime minister in 2021 as part of a UN-backed initiative to lead the country toward unified democratic elections, which have been repeatedly delayed and ultimately collapsed.

“Outside powers, including the U.S., have effectively abandoned any pretense of pushing for democratic elections in Libya,” said one former senior Western official. “Their preference is to cut a deal with the already entrenched ruling families and split the country’s energy wealth between the two most corrupt factions. But the Haftar name is toxic in western Libya, and the Dbeibeh family does not exert full control over the west. This entire process bypasses the Libyan people entirely, and it could easily backfire.”

The Dbeibeh family has built alliances with powerful militias in western Libya but faces persistent opposition from other regional factions. Any power-sharing deal that includes Saddam Haftar is expected to face fierce pushback in Misrata, a key Mediterranean coastal city with a large, influential network of independent business families. Libya’s highest religious authority, Grand Mufti Sadiq al-Ghariani, publicly came out against any power-sharing agreement between the two families in late April.

Even within the rival clans, internal divisions threaten to derail the deal: while Saddam Haftar has consolidated control over the eastern military, he is locked in a bitter power struggle with his brothers, most notably Belqasim Haftar, who controls the lucrative Benghazi-based Fund for Development and Reconstruction.

“Neither the Dbeibeh family nor the Haftar clan currently operate as cohesive, unified political blocs,” said Jalal Harchaoui, a Libya expert at the Royal United Services Institute. “That fragmentation could actually make this change possible. The status quo is completely unsustainable, so if a new unified government is announced, it would mark the start of a new political process for the country.”

A former U.S. official familiar with the Libya initiative noted that the Trump administration is building on gradual reconciliation efforts first launched by the Biden administration, but the current White House’s willingness to negotiate unlocking frozen assets and approve new commercial deals has accelerated diplomatic progress. “This is not just a personal initiative from Boulos—it is a whole-of-government effort designed to open Libya up to U.S. oil companies and create new economic opportunities for Libyan stakeholders,” the former official said. “Let’s be honest: the UN-led election process never delivered on its promises.”

Negotiators have already notched limited tactical wins: in early April, Libya’s Central Bank announced the country’s first unified national budget in more than a decade. Last month, eastern and western Libyan military units conducted joint training exercises in Sirte as part of the U.S.-led Flintlock security drills, a surprise development for many long-time Libya analysts.

U.S. energy firms had already begun scouting investment opportunities in Libya before the outbreak of the Iran war: Chevron won an exploration license for Libya’s Sirte Basin back in February, and Exxon Mobil signed a memorandum of understanding with the National Oil Corporation to re-enter the Libyan market by August 2025. Libya’s National Oil Corporation reported oil exports hit 1.2 million barrels per day in April, a 10-year high, though some analysts question the accuracy of those figures and argue the Iran conflict has not meaningfully altered the country’s long-term investment climate.

Most of Libya’s oil infrastructure is more than 50 years old, and official national data remains notoriously unreliable due to the lack of transparent governance across the country. Jason Pack, founder of Libya-Analysis and author of *Libya and the Global Enduring Disorder*, argues that Washington and its allies will be disappointed if they expect Libya to replace the oil volumes lost from global markets amid the Iran conflict.

“Libya’s inability to ramp up oil production stems from deep internal governance failures, not a lack of U.S. or external support,” Pack explained. “The idea that Libya can deliver globally significant volumes of additional oil over the course of the Iran war is completely unrealistic.” Pack noted that a similar debate emerged after Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, when policymakers claimed Libya could replace Russian natural gas supplies to Europe— a goal Libya never came close to meeting. “At the start of the Ukraine war, everyone claimed Libya would become the new Algeria for European energy, and they failed to deliver. They will fail again this time,” he said.

That said, most experts agree that a power-sharing deal that unites the two ruling families under U.S. mediation to divide Libya’s current energy profits is a far more achievable short-term goal, in large part because the external powers that once turned Libya into a proxy battleground have significantly reworked their regional alliances. Saddam Haftar has actively courted Turkey and has begun receiving new weapons shipments from Pakistan under Saudi auspices, while Egypt—once a staunch backer of Haftar and opponent of the Tripoli government—has built closer ties with the western administration and mended relations with Turkey, its former rival in Libya.

“Turkey and Egypt are both willing to support a deal between the two sides because the regional political context is completely different than it was even a few years ago,” Pack said. “This dynamic has nothing to do with the current U.S. administration.” Harchaoui added that the U.S. already has formal backing from Turkey, which remains one of the most influential military actors on the ground in Libya. “There are clear signs that Turkey is comfortable with whatever major announcement is coming, and that carries a lot of weight,” he said. “Saudi Arabia will likely back whatever Turkey agrees to, largely because of shared strategic interests in Sudan.”

The initiative also gives Washington an opportunity to push Russia out of its foothold in eastern Libya: Russia has deployed private mercenary forces to support Haftar for years and has long sought permanent port access in the country. With a Russian-backed military regime in neighboring Mali on the brink of collapse amid an advance by al-Qaeda-linked militants, U.S. officials see an opening to shift Haftar away from Moscow. “It is not just energy money drawing U.S. policymakers to this initiative. Russia is already retreating in Mali, so it is not unreasonable to think they could be pushed out of Libya too,” Harchaoui said.

Tensions remain high in the strategically critical Strait of Hormuz one month after the Trump administration secured a ceasefire agreement with Iran, with top U.S. defense officials confirming Tuesday that the truce still stands while outlining an aggressive new U.S. naval presence in the global oil chokepoint.

Speaking alongside Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman General Dan Caine, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth told reporters that the ceasefire has held despite expected fluctuations in security, noting that U.S. forces have operated with robust deterrence in the waterway. “The ceasefire is not over,” Hegseth said. “We expected there would be some churn, which happened, and we said we would defend and defend aggressively, and we absolutely have.” He added that while the U.S. is not seeking wider conflict, the administration retains full authority to resume major combat operations against Iran if President Donald Trump judges it necessary.

At the center of the new U.S. posture in the strait is Project Freedom, an initiative formally launched Monday that frames the U.S. military presence as a boon to global commerce. Hegseth described the U.S. deployment as a metaphorical “powerful red, white, and blue dome” over the key shipping route, calling it a “direct gift from the U.S. to the world.” The operation, which he emphasized is separate from the ongoing U.S. military campaign to eliminate Iran’s missile and nuclear capabilities that launched February 28, involves U.S. naval forces guiding commercial vessels through the strait.

The closure of the Strait of Hormuz dates back more than two months, when Iran blocked the waterway in retaliation for the unprovoked U.S.-Israeli military assault on the country. In response, the U.S. Navy has imposed its own blockade on vessels traveling to and from Iranian ports.

Fresh violence erupted in the area Monday, on the first day of Project Freedom’s formal operations. U.S. Central Command commander Admiral Brad Cooper told reporters that U.S. warships intercepted and shot down Iranian cruise missiles fired by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) at convoys the U.S. was escorting out of the strait. U.S. Army attack helicopters also sank six Iranian military speedboats in the engagement, Cooper said.

However, conflicting accounts of the clash have emerged. Common Dreams reported Tuesday that an IRGC commander told Iranian state media that U.S. forces actually struck two small civilian vessels carrying passengers traveling between Oman’s Khasab coast and Iran, killing five civilians, and hit no IRGC craft.

Hegseth rejected any suggestion of U.S. responsibility for escalation, labeling Iran the sole aggressor in the standoff while repeating that the Trump administration will not hesitate to resume large-scale combat operations if required.

The briefing also touched on a contentious constitutional question: whether the administration would seek congressional authorization before restarting major combat against Iran. Last Friday, ahead of a 60-day deadline set by the 1973 War Powers Act, which requires presidents to end unauthorized military hostilities within that timeline, Trump notified Congress that hostilities with Iran had been terminated following the April 7 ceasefire.

Hegseth argued that the War Powers Act’s 60-day clock stops ticking while the ceasefire is in place, meaning any resumption of combat would fall within the president’s existing authority as commander-in-chief, rather than requiring a new congressional sign-off. “If it were to restart that would be the president’s decision. That option is always there and Iran knows that,” he said.

Critics have pushed back hard against this legal interpretation. NBC News senior national politics reporter Jonathan Allen noted that the administration’s reasoning has no precedent in U.S. political practice. Fred Wellman, a Democratic congressional candidate in Missouri, called the framing a deliberate end-run around congressional war powers. “Understand that what he is doing here is desperately trying to avoid the War Powers Act,” Wellman said. “They made up a new interpretation that says the 60-day clock is ‘paused’ for a ceasefire. Now they are lying and saying this is an all-new, shiny war and not the same one.”

Next week, when U.S. President Donald Trump travels to Beijing for a high-stakes meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping, the diplomatic choreography will follow the familiar, carefully scripted playbook for top-level bilateral encounters. Behind the polished ritualistic exchanges, crafted public reaffirmations and statesman-like rhetoric, however, lies an unavoidable reality: this meeting is not aimed at reconciling deep-seated differences, but at managing a rivalry that has become fundamentally structural, with the modest overarching goal of preserving fragile global stability.

The United States and China together account for more than 42% of the world’s total gross domestic product, making them the dual anchors of the global supply chain network. This interconnected system is already reeling from disruptions triggered by protracted geopolitical conflicts in Europe and the Middle East, which have sent shockwaves through global commodity markets and threatened livelihoods and food security across every region of the world. Even so, analysts do not expect the upcoming summit to deliver any sweeping, utopian resolution to the U.S.-China rivalry. At most, the two leaders are expected to openly acknowledge the structural nature of their competition and commit to joint efforts to keep it contained.

### Moving Beyond Détente to Building Tacit Guardrails

Cold War-era comparisons between current U.S.-China relations and 20th-century U.S.-Soviet ties often confuse rather than clarify the current dynamic. There is no path to the kind of wide-ranging détente that defused tensions between Washington and Moscow in the 1970s. Today, Washington and Beijing lack mutual strategic trust, have seen no ideological softening toward one another, and share no overlapping long-term strategic vision.

Instead of formal détente, the two powers are now focused on developing unwritten “guardrails” — informal limits to escalation that can prevent small crises from spiraling into open, catastrophic conflict. Unlike the formal, codified arms control agreements that structured U.S.-Soviet relations in the Cold War, these new mechanisms will not be written into public treaties or celebrated in joint announcements. They will exist only as quiet, tacit understandings between the two sides.

This incremental approach reflects a far more complex reality than the dominant narratives of either full détente or total decoupling can capture. Since 2022, Washington has built an extensive export control regime targeted directly at China, restricting access to cutting-edge semiconductors, artificial intelligence technology and other frontier technologies critical to future great power competition. Beijing has responded by leveraging its global dominance in critical raw materials including gallium and germanium, key inputs for semiconductor and clean energy manufacturing. Even amid this escalating technological standoff, however, deep economic interdependence between the two economies remains intact. Bilateral trade continues to flow at massive scale, financial linkages remain strong, and cross-border production networks remain deeply integrated by design.

What has emerged from this dynamic is a stratified, complex form of interdependence: high, fortified barriers around technologies that will define future global power, while maintaining open trade and investment in sectors where mutual economic benefits still outweigh strategic risks. Full decoupling is neither economically feasible nor politically desirable for either side, so the core challenge now becomes restructuring guardrails to allow this limited interdependence to survive.

### Geo-Economics as the New Face of Geopolitical Rivalry

In recent years, the center of gravity of the U.S.-China rivalry has shifted decisively from the military domain to the economic sphere. Export controls, targeted sanctions and the reorganization of global supply chains now serve as core instruments of strategic coercion, replacing traditional military posturing as the primary tool of competition. Economic tools are now regularly deployed to advance geopolitical goals, and the line between commercial policy and national security strategy has blurred almost beyond recognition. Trade policy is now inextricably tied to each side’s core national security doctrines.

This transformation has created acute dilemmas for third countries across the globe. Governments now must carefully navigate between two competing great power ecosystems, each with constantly evolving rules of conduct and demands for strategic alignment. The choice is no longer a simple binary between aligning with Beijing or Washington; instead, states operate in a complex landscape where their policy autonomy is constrained, and the boundaries of strategic flexibility grow increasingly hard to define.

Given this context, any lasting outcome from the Beijing summit will not take the form of a grand bilateral bargain or a formal, public treaty. Following the pattern of the previous Xi-Trump meeting in Busan, the summit is expected to produce a set of technical, opaque, yet highly consequential mutual understandings that leave room for varying interpretations by both sides.

Recent frictions in the South China Sea and around Taiwan underscore the constant risk of inadvertent escalation between the two powers. The lack of a formal, codified crisis management mechanism only amplifies these risks. In this context, even the most modest agreements — for restored direct communication channels, shared operational protocols, or agreed thresholds for escalation — could have a transformative impact on regional and global security. After the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, the U.S. and Soviet Union moved quickly to establish de-escalation mechanisms to prevent accidental war. Today, U.S.-China relations require a similar, even if less formalized, framework of mutually accepted guardrails to reduce risk.

### The Impact of Divergent Leadership Styles

The contrasting personal leadership styles of the two presidents add an extra layer of complexity to summit negotiations. Trump’s diplomatic approach is inherently transactional, focused on securing immediate, visible, tangible outcomes that can be marketed as political wins back home. By contrast, Xi’s approach is rooted in long-term strategic planning, embedded in a broader vision for China’s continued rise as a global power. This fundamental disconnect in negotiating priorities will shape the final outcomes of the Beijing meeting.

Trump will arrive pushing for demonstrable, short-term gains: adjustments to bilateral trade balances, symbolic concessions from Beijing, or explicit security assurances on contentious issues. As host, Xi will calibrate his responses to ensure any concessions made align with China’s long-term strategic trajectories, and do not undermine core national interests.

As a result, even the most successful agreements emerging from the summit are likely to be tactical, reversible arrangements. They will deliver useful short-term stabilization but will be insufficient to build a durable, long-term framework for managing competition. Any deals will also remain contingent on the personal dynamics of the two leaders, rather than being rooted in institutionalized cooperation that can outlast changes in leadership.

The most consequential dimensions of the U.S.-China rivalry also extend far beyond their bilateral relationship. Across Asia, Africa and Latin America, states are increasingly being pulled into competing visions of development, governance and global connectivity. China’s Belt and Road Initiative has already built a significant physical and institutional presence across the developing world, embedding Chinese infrastructure standards and financing models in dozens of countries. The Trump administration has struggled to articulate a coherent alternative vision to the BRI, and has often resorted to coercive hard power tactics to counter Chinese influence, as seen in recent actions in Venezuela and Iran.

For countries across the global south, the question is no longer which great power vision is normatively preferable, but which can deliver tangible, reliable economic benefits. In the end, the outcome of the U.S.-China rivalry will be determined not by deals struck in summits, but by the long-term global credibility of each power’s model.

### Selective Coordination for Competitive Coexistence

Paradoxically, even amid deep structural rivalry, global systemic shocks can open limited space for targeted cooperation between the two powers. Issues including volatile global energy markets, emerging pandemic risks, transnational terrorism, and nuclear proliferation are all areas where Washington and Beijing share overlapping priorities, even as they compete in every other domain.

The ongoing market disruptions tied to conflicts in the Middle East illustrate this dynamic clearly. For different strategic and economic reasons, both the U.S. and Chinese economies depend on stable global energy markets, and both are deeply vulnerable to extreme price volatility. Even without broader strategic alignment, these shared vulnerabilities can open narrow corridors for transactional, issue-specific cooperation.

This dynamic aligns with what international relations scholars term “competitive interdependence”: a relationship marked by intensifying strategic rivalry alongside persistent economic and technological entanglements that neither side can fully unwind without inflicting massive damage on itself.

The cumulative effect of these overlapping dynamics is that bilateral engagements will continue to face regular setbacks, full containment of China’s rise is practically impossible for the U.S., and full convergence of interests between the two powers has proven illusory. What remains is selective coordination to enable competitive coexistence.

In this framework, bilateral stability does not come from deep mutual trust or shared ideological values. Instead, it emerges from a clear recognition of mutual vulnerability and the catastrophic costs of unconstrained escalation. The U.S.-China relationship today follows a simple logic: rivalry will persist, but it must be bounded by mutual necessity.

### What to Expect From the Beijing Summit

Against this backdrop, the upcoming Beijing summit is not expected to resolve the core tensions at the heart of the U.S.-China rivalry. The Taiwan question will remain a deeply contested flashpoint, technological competition will continue to intensify, and long-standing mutual strategic suspicion will endure. What the summit may achieve is a modest, yet highly consequential outcome: it will buy valuable time for both sides to adjust to the new reality of structural competition.

In an international system marked by widespread uncertainty and growing fragmentation, time is a critical strategic resource. Managed rivalry, for all its imperfections, is unquestionably preferable to unconstrained competition that risks open conflict.

Trump and Xi do not view each other as reliable partners, and there is little prospect that this meeting will change that fundamental dynamic. At a deeper level, they are rivals by design: leaders of two great power systems whose long-term trajectories are fundamentally at odds, but whose peaceful coexistence is the only viable option for both sides and for the world. The understandings they reach in Beijing will not end their rivalry. At best, they will clearly define its boundaries. For now, that is likely the most the world can hope for from this high-stakes meeting.

*This analysis is by Swaran Singh, Professor of International Relations at Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi.*

For decades, outside observers have pored over every small clue emerging from North Korea’s closed political system to unpack the country’s long-term leadership plans. Today, a new focal point of speculation has emerged: the public presentation of Kim Jong Un’s daughter, and what subtle clues in her public appearances and wardrobe reveal about a potential coming succession.

In recent months, the teenage daughter of North Korea’s supreme leader has made increasingly frequent high-profile public appearances alongside her father, joining him at military parades, state events, and on-site inspections of key national facilities. What has drawn particular attention from regional security analysts and Korea watchers is not just her growing visibility, but the careful curation of her public image – from the formal, authoritative clothing choices she has worn at state occasions to the measured, poised demeanor she displays in front of state media cameras.

These analysts argue that the intentional styling of Kim Jong Un’s daughter is far more than a matter of personal taste. Rather, they frame it as a deliberate, gradual process of political grooming, laying the groundwork for a eventual transfer of power that would continue the Kim family’s three-generation grip on North Korean governance. Where previous generations of the Kim leadership maintained strict secrecy around family members until late in the succession process, the gradual, incremental public rollout of the leader’s daughter marks a noticeable shift in how the North Korean regime is preparing for its next chapter.

While no official confirmation of a succession plan has been released by Pyongyang, the pattern of public appearances and curated image has led many experts to conclude that North Korea’s elite is already laying the institutional groundwork for a transition. This slow, visible preparation is being read as a signal that the regime is focused on ensuring stability and continuity of the ruling family’s control, even as it faces mounting international pressure over its nuclear program and ongoing economic challenges.

For regional powers and global observers, these subtle shifts in North Korea’s public political landscape carry significant implications. Any long-term leadership transition in the reclusive nuclear state carries the potential to reshape regional security dynamics on the Korean Peninsula and across Northeast Asia more broadly. As such, every new public appearance, every detail of presentation, continues to be scrutinized for insight into what comes next for one of the world’s most isolated nations.

More than two months of coordinated military strikes by the United States and Israel against Iranian nuclear infrastructure have failed to meaningfully slow Tehran’s nuclear development, leaving the timeline for Iran to build a nuclear weapon unchanged from last summer, according to a declassified US intelligence assessment cited in reporting from Reuters.

Per Reuters’ Tuesday reporting, which drew on two anonymous sources familiar with the intelligence, US agencies previously estimated that prior to Washington’s June 2025 pre-war airstrikes, Iran could produce enough weapons-grade uranium and assemble a functional nuclear device in a window of three to six months. Following those initial June attacks on key Iranian nuclear sites at Natanz, Fordow, and Isfahan, intelligence analysts adjusted that timeline to between nine months and one year. Despite the full-scale air campaign that began in late February, that projection has not shifted, indicating the sustained bombing has not delivered the strategic outcome US and Israeli leaders promised.

The conflict itself kicked off on February 28 while the Trump administration was still in nuclear negotiations with Tehran. From the moment of the June 2025 preemptive strikes, the impact of the attacks has been a subject of sharp public dispute. Then-President Trump claimed the operation, codenamed “Midnight Hammer”, had completely “obliterated” Iran’s nuclear program, declaring the issue effectively resolved ahead of his planned post-strike policy shift.

When asked about prospects for restarting nuclear negotiations in mid-2025, Trump downplayed the need for a new diplomatic deal, telling reporters: “We may sign an agreement…I don’t care if I have an agreement or not…We destroyed the nuclear… It’s blown up to kingdom come. I don’t care very strongly about it.”

Even within the Trump administration, his sweeping claims faced immediate pushback. The Pentagon contradicted his assertion that the entire program had been destroyed, instead stating the June strikes had set Iran’s nuclear progress back by up to two years — double the timeline adjustment confirmed by the latest intelligence reviewed by Reuters. This new assessment confirms what independent analysts have argued since the start of the campaign: that repeated US and Israeli airstrikes have failed to deliver a lasting, substantive setback to Iran’s nuclear ambitions.

Speaking with Middle East Eye, regional security experts note that any path to a diplomatic resolution will require Washington to offer substantial sanctions relief to Tehran in exchange for new limits on its nuclear activities. The US has offered a shifting set of justifications for launching the full-scale war, from protecting anti-government protesters inside Iran to eliminating Tehran’s ballistic missile arsenal and disabling its nuclear program. But in a Tuesday interview with conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt, Trump centered the conflict on the nuclear issue, downplaying the urgency of the ballistic missile threat.

“Look, missiles are bad, but yeah, and they do have to cap it, but this is about they cannot have a nuclear weapon,” Trump said, adding that any end-of-war deal would require Iran to completely remove its stockpile of highly enriched uranium from the country.

While the air campaign launched February 28 has targeted a broad range of Iranian assets including conventional military units, state government institutions, and core industrial infrastructure, Israel has prioritized additional strikes on dispersed nuclear-related sites. The current crisis traces its roots back to 2018, when Trump unilaterally withdrew the US from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), the multilateral nuclear agreement reached with Iran three years earlier. Under the terms of the JCPOA, Iran had agreed to cap uranium enrichment at 3.67 percent — a level suitable for civilian energy production — and open all its nuclear facilities to rigorous international inspections from the United Nations, in exchange for broad relief from crippling economic sanctions.

After withdrawing from the deal, the Trump administration reimposed and tightened sweeping sanctions on Iran. In response, Tehran gradually abandoned its JCPOA-enforced limits, building up a stockpile of uranium enriched to 60 percent, just a short technical step away from weapons-grade material. Iran has repeatedly stated that its entire nuclear program is intended for peaceful civilian purposes, including energy production and medical isotope manufacturing. The late Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei also issued a formal religious fatwa prohibiting the development and possession of nuclear weapons. Many independent analysts, however, argue Iran has deliberately positioned itself as a nuclear threshold state, maintaining the technical capacity to rapidly develop a nuclear weapon should it choose to do so.

This reporting comes from Middle East Eye, an independent outlet covering global affairs focused on the Middle East and North Africa region.

For 15 consecutive years, Mamata Banerjee and her regional Trinamool Congress (TMC) party held unbroken control over India’s West Bengal state, defying every political challenge to reinforce their grip on power. That long streak of political survival came to an abrupt end on Monday, when Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) handed Banerjee a decisive defeat, ending her bid for a fourth straight term as chief minister. A fourth term would have positioned the 71-year-old firebrand populist alongside India’s most long-serving regional political heavyweights, such as Jyoti Basu and Naveen Patnaik. Instead, her loss throws one of contemporary India’s most extraordinary political careers into profound uncertainty, closing a chapter that began as a grassroots street protest movement and culminated in the collapse of the political stronghold she built from scratch.

Few would have predicted Banerjee’s path to power when she first entered the political scene. A diminutive figure often seen in plain cotton saris and rubber sandals, she did not fit the mold of the elite politicians who had long dominated West Bengal. Yet in 2011, she pulled off one of the most shocking upsets in Indian electoral history: she ended the 34-year uninterrupted rule of the Communist Party of India (Marxist), overturning a political order that had defined the state for generations. Once India’s intellectual and commercial heart, West Bengal had spent decades mired in industrial stagnation and widespread public weariness of Communist rule. At the time, The New York Times famously described Banerjee as “the blunt instrument knocking down their own Berlin Wall”, and Time magazine included her on its list of the world’s 100 most influential people.

Banerjee’s rise was forged in West Bengal’s notoriously combative political culture, where elections often play out like prolonged street-level conflicts. Her supporters affectionately dubbed her the “fire goddess”, and later “Didi” — the Bengali term for elder sister — a name that encapsulated the fiercely protective maternal persona she cultivated for decades. Born into a lower-middle-class Kolkata family, she cut her political teeth in the student wing of the Indian National Congress, emerging as one of the state’s most prominent anti-Communist voices by the 1980s before splitting from Congress to found the TMC.

Decades of street-level conflict shaped her political identity permanently. In 1990, during a protest march, she was allegedly assaulted by Communist cadres, suffering a fractured skull that required hospitalization. The incident solidified the public image she would maintain for decades: that of a street fighter and political martyr, a perpetual insurgent even after she took power. Her political ascent accelerated sharply in the mid-2000s, when she led mass opposition to the Communist government’s plan to acquire farmland for a Tata Motors car factory in Singur and a chemical hub in Nandigram in 2007. Casting herself as a champion of smallholder farmers against forced industrialization, she earned fierce loyalty among rural and low-income voters. But the movement also alienated much of the state’s urban middle class and business elite, who accused her of driving away much-needed private investment from West Bengal.

Unlike most high-profile women in Indian politics, Banerjee built her political career without dynastic backing or a powerful patron. “No-one set up their own party, took on an invincible force like the Communists, ousted them after 34 years and then held power for three terms,” explains Mukulika Banerjee, an anthropologist at the London School of Economics. The LSE scholar notes that the state’s ruling elite, upper-caste, educated bhadralok Communist men, long dismissed Banerjee for her dark skin and rejection of upper-class social norms, which only deepened her commitment to advocating for working-class and marginalized Bengalis. “Those early battles made her fearless, realising she could make others feel the same, if she stood by them,” Mukulika Banerjee says. She also actively elevated other women in politics; her party fielded 52 women candidates in the 2026 election, a marked departure from the male-dominated status quo of regional Indian politics.

For years, Banerjee’s unique personal charisma, targeted welfare programs for women and rural poor, and fierce defense of Bengali regional identity blunted the impact of anti-incumbency sentiment, widespread corruption allegations, and the gradual rise of the BJP across the state. Political analysts note her success rested on a carefully crafted balance: she positioned herself as both an uncompromising street fighter and an austere, maternal figure delivering lifelines to economically vulnerable Bengalis. Even critics acknowledged her innate ability to connect with the emotional needs of her electorate. But charisma alone cannot sustain a political machine indefinitely.

Political scientist Dwaipayan Bhattacharyya once described Communist-ruled Bengal as a “party society”, where the organization became deeply embedded in everyday rural life and livelihoods. Banerjee’s TMC inherited this structure but reorganized it around a new model: unlike the Communists’ disciplined, hierarchical cadre system, the TMC revolved almost entirely around Banerjee’s personal charisma and authority. Bhattacharyya labeled the system a political “franchisee model”: local strongmen and grassroots leaders were allowed to expand their personal influence and often their private business interests in exchange for unwavering loyalty to Banerjee. As early as 2023, Bhattacharyya presciently warned that this model left the TMC deeply vulnerable. “Its leaders’ voracious appetite for material gains has made transactional interests undermine even a pretence of ethical politics, straining the party’s bonding with the people,” he wrote.

During Banerjee’s third term, the state also grappled with a growing fiscal crisis. West Bengal’s public debt ballooned, with the central bank estimating that just four of Banerjee’s flagship women’s welfare schemes consumed nearly a quarter of the state’s own-source revenue. Widespread anger over thousands of vacant government posts, a massive corruption scandal in teacher recruitment, and growing public concern over rising violence against women further eroded public trust in her government.

Now, in the wake of defeat, Banerjee faces an existential challenge: securing her own political survival, and holding the TMC together. West Bengal’s political history has long been unforgiving to ousted ruling parties, with local leaders and power brokers quickly shifting their allegiance to the new incumbent. Political analyst Sayantan Ghosh warns that many sitting TMC leaders may drift to the BJP — some voluntarily, others under mounting pressure — raising the real prospect of a full split within the party. Proma Raychaudhury of Krea University adds that the TMC’s apparent lack of strong ideological cohesion leaves the party and its leader particularly vulnerable after a defeat of this scale. For Banerjee personally, the shift will be jarring: she has held public office since the late 1980s, and a life without executive power is almost unprecedented in her decades-long career.

Writing off the 71-year-old leader entirely, however, may be premature. Even so, this defeat marks a far more fundamental rupture than the many crises she weathered during her time in power. Mukulika Banerjee argues that leaders like Mamata thrived in an era of relatively level political competition, a condition that no longer exists amid the growing national dominance of Modi’s BJP. Monday’s election result, she suggests, reflects not just voter discontent, but a systemic imbalance that has reshaped Indian electoral politics.

The question now hangs over Indian politics: can Mamata Banerjee reinvent herself once again, returning to her roots as a fiery grassroots outsider that first captured the imagination of Bengal’s voters? Or will she slowly fade into the same status she spent her career fighting against: a remnant of an outdated old political order?

As Mukulika Banerjee puts it: “Where will she go next? She knows no other life other than politics.”

Raychaudhury suggests one likely path is a return to the oppositional street politics that first made Banerjee a force to be reckoned with. That transition appears to already be underway. Just one day after her defeat, Banerjee told reporters she was now a “free bird, a commoner” without the trappings of office, and vowed to work to strengthen the national opposition INDIA alliance against the BJP. She has levied allegations of favoritism against the Election Commission, warned against the danger of one-party rule, and claimed the election mandate was effectively stolen from her party. “We didn’t lose the election. They forcefully took it from us,” she said, a charge the state’s Chief Electoral Officer has said he will examine in context. When asked what comes next, she gave an answer that echoed the fiery leader Bengal first met decades ago: “I can be anywhere, I can fight anywhere. So I’ll be on the streets.”