Iran

Ten days after a US-Iran deal, two tanker attacks have exposed the gap between market confidence and operational reality.

After September 11, Beijing declared a “period of strategic opportunity” created by US military overextension in the Middle East and Central Asia. The Iran war may be creating another such window.

Beijing has sent no ships into combat, lost no soldiers, and taken no side. It is also emerging from six weeks of war as one of its principal beneficiaries.

In six weeks of war in the Gulf, the US and its allies burned through more Patriot interceptors than the West produces in a year. Russia is seeking to take advantage of resulting supply shortfalls in Ukraine, whose government depends on those same missiles for its defense.

The Iraq war remains the standard against which US military adventurism gets measured. The Iran war may be on course to surpass it — not in US casualties, but in the breadth of its global consequences.