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The Iran war’s growing tempo

The past 12-24 hours suggest a war that remains intensely active at the operational level, with Israel pressing high-value targets in Iran, Iran sustaining missile pressure on Israel, Iraqi militias reopening a sharper front around Baghdad, and Gulf states struggling to keep aviation and critical infrastructure functioning under intermittent attack.

In Tehran, Israeli strikes overnight appeared to focus less on conventional military assets than on the regime’s command and coercive machinery. That is consistent with Israel’s recent pattern inside the capital: an effort not merely to damage missile sites or nuclear facilities, but to weaken the organs through which the regime maintains internal control. No authoritative public battle-damage assessment has yet emerged from the latest wave. Even so, one conclusion is hard to escape: Israel retains the capacity to reach high-value targets in and around Tehran, including senior command figures.

Iran, for its part, continued missile fire against Israel on 16-17 March. Shrapnel and interceptor debris reportedly fell inside Jerusalem’s Old City, including near the Al-Aqsa compound and the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. Israeli police said there were no casualties and no major damage to the holy sites. But the episode was a reminder that even successful interceptions carry risks in densely populated urban areas. More broadly, the available reporting suggests that Iranian missiles are still getting through the defensive screen often enough to trigger repeated civil-defense alerts and cause localized damage, even when the main warhead fails to strike its intended target.

In Iraq, while there were several drone and rocket attacks on the Kurdish regional capital Erbil, the sharpest deterioration came in Baghdad. Early on 17 March, rockets and at least five drones were launched at the U.S. embassy from areas around the capital. Witnesses saw at least three drones heading toward the compound. Two were shot down by C-RAM, but one struck inside the embassy perimeter, causing visible fire and smoke. The attack followed another incident last night, when a drone hit the European Union Advisory Mission office in Baghdad’s iconic Al-Rasheed Hotel. Iraq’s Interior Ministry said there were no injuries and no significant damage; security sources also reported that two Katyusha rockets were fired at the U.S. embassy earlier that day. The U.S. responded with a heavy strike on the home of a powerful militia leader and political power broker, Abu Ala Al Waeli. It is unclear if he survived the strike. The Iraq front thus appears locked in a growing cycle of retaliation: militia strike, U.S. or Israeli-aligned counterstrike, then renewed militia fire on diplomatic or military targets.

The UAE, meanwhile, remains under direct pressure. Early on 17 March it temporarily closed its airspace after the Defense Ministry said it was responding to incoming Iranian missile and drone threats. Later, the authorities reopened the airspace and said operations had returned to normal. On the ground, however, the pressure has not lifted. Fresh attacks were reported on 17 March, with Fujairah’s oil facilities apparently struck again. Separate reporting said debris from an intercepted missile landed in Abu Dhabi, killing a Pakistani resident. Another report said a tanker east of Fujairah was hit by an unidentified projectile, suffering minor structural damage but no casualties.

The strain on aviation remains considerable. Dubai International Airport was hit on 16 March by a drone strike that caused a fuel-tank fire and a temporary shutdown, with flights only gradually resuming thereafter. Some services were diverted to Al Maktoum and Al Ain, while Emirates and flydubai restarted limited operations. More broadly, the war has disrupted the region’s main aviation hubs, including Dubai, Doha, and Abu Dhabi, and the effects continue to ripple through international schedules. British Airways has extended cuts to Bahrain, Doha, Dubai, and Tel Aviv, and has suspended Abu Dhabi for longer. As for the precise number of missiles and drones fired at Dubai and Abu Dhabi in the latest wave, the clearest publicly available estimate is six ballistic missiles and 21 drones on 16 March.

Elsewhere in the Gulf, the picture is less precise but no less worrying. Qatar remains under threat and has been identified as one of the Gulf states exposed to Iranian retaliation during this phase of the war. Missile strikes and drone interceptions have reportedly taken place there, but there is no reliable overnight count for the latest salvo, nor confirmation of a fresh strike on Doha airport comparable to the disruption seen in Dubai. What is clear is that Doha has been badly affected by the wider airspace crisis.

Saudi Arabia also remains in the target set. Reporting on 17 March said Iran had renewed attacks on Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, and the UAE. One account said Saudi Arabia intercepted a dozen drones, but that figure appears in rolling coverage rather than in a standalone official statement. No confirmed overnight report has emerged of a fresh infrastructure strike in the kingdom.

Bahrain, too, remains exposed. It has been identified as a likely target of Iranian retaliation since the opening strikes of 28 February, and reporting on 17 March said attacks on Bahrain had resumed alongside those on Saudi Arabia and the UAE. But here again the operational data are incomplete: there is no trustworthy public breakdown of how many missiles or drones were fired in the latest cycle. What can be said is that Bahrain, like the rest of the Gulf, remains caught up in the regional air-traffic crisis, with international carriers extending cancellations.

Kuwait is somewhat clearer because recent reporting points to direct strikes there, including attacks that affected Kuwait International Airport’s radar system on 14-15 March. U.S. intelligence had reportedly warned that Kuwait could be targeted, and subsequent reporting suggests it has indeed seen missile and drone activity. But even here the latest operational detail remains patchy. Kuwait is plainly within the Iranian target set, and airport-related disruption has already occurred. What cannot be established with confidence is whether a new strike wave hit the country on the night of 16-17 March.

The broad operational picture is therefore one of sustained multi-front pressure rather than dramatic breakthrough. Israel continues to hunt leadership and internal-security targets in Tehran. Iran continues to fire at Israel, with enough penetration to keep the civilian threat real. Baghdad has become more dangerous, with militia attacks now again reaching the U.S. embassy compound itself. The UAE remains exposed to both direct attack and severe aviation disruption. Across the wider Gulf, Iranian pressure continues, but the public record remains incomplete, especially when it comes to precise same-night missile and drone counts for Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, and Kuwait.

Strikes on Iran’s inner circle

Israel appears to have carried out a decapitation-style strike aimed at the regime’s internal-security apparatus, with Ali Larijani and Basij chief Gholamreza Soleimani among the intended targets.

Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz said that Larijani had been killed in the strike.

Larijani, a former nuclear negotiator, and a close ally of the late Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, was Iran’s most powerful surviving politician. He had a central role in the installation of the new Supreme Leader, Mojtaba Khamenei. If his death is confirmed, he would be the most senior Iranian official killed since Khamenei died on the first day of the war.

Israel deepens its Lebanon offensive

Israel’s campaign in southern Lebanon has clearly moved beyond the sort of narrow border raids that might once have been dismissed as temporary probes. Israeli ministers and military spokesmen now describe the operation as a broader ground effort, and troops have pushed into new areas while reinforcing the northern front.

Foreign governments, including Britain, France, Germany, Canada, and Italy, have warned against a “major” Israeli ground offensive, suggesting that this operation should be seen as something larger, and potentially more enduring, than a short punitive incursion.

At the same time, Israeli forces have expanded evacuation orders as far north as the Zahrani River, the broadest such directive since 2006 by some accounts. The affected area is about 1,470 square kilometers (568 square miles), or roughly 14% of Lebanese territory.

Israel says the purpose is defensive: to dismantle Hezbollah infrastructure, prevent rocket and anti-tank fire into northern Israel, and make it safe for displaced Israelis near the border to return home.

Defense Minister Israel Katz has said that displaced Lebanese residents south of the Litani will not be allowed to return until Israel’s own northern communities are secure, and military spokesmen have said the army is preparing for an extended campaign.

Taken together, this looks less like a brief clearing action and more like the creation of facts on the ground that could evolve into a de facto buffer zone, even if Israel stops short of formally declaring one.

That does not prove that Israel intends a permanent occupation south of the Litani, still less that it plans to hold territory as far north as the Zahrani. But it does mean the operation can no longer be described easily as limited. The combination of wider evacuation orders, deeper troop movements, a growing number of Israeli-held positions, and public preparation for a longer campaign has made the risk of a prolonged occupation far more plausible than it seemed even a few days ago.

In effect, Israel is still speaking the language of tactical necessity, while the scale and shape of its actions invite strategic interpretations that go well beyond immediate border defense.

It’s the U.S. vs China, everyone needs to pick a side

Trump-Xi summit may slip

President Donald Trump said on 16 March that the U.S. had "requested that we delay it a month or so", referring to his planned trip to China to meet Xi Jinping. That amounts to a clear indication that Washington has asked Beijing to push the summit back by roughly a month.

White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt was more guarded in her wording. She said: "The president looks forward to visiting China. The dates may be moved." In other words, she did not say the summit had been postponed, only that a delay was possible and that the schedule remained fluid.

The administration’s public explanation is that any postponement would be linked to the war with Iran, not to a rupture with Beijing. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said that any delay would reflect President Donald Trump’s desire to remain in Washington to manage the war effort. He added that it "would have nothing to do" with any failure by China to satisfy U.S. requests concerning the Strait of Hormuz.

The new Monroe Doctrine & the Trump Corollary 

Blackout adds to Cuba’s strain

Cuba has suffered another island-wide blackout, leaving millions without electricity as the country’s energy and economic crises deepen. Officials said the national grid collapsed on 16 March, apparently because of transmission problems, and warned that restoration efforts remained fragile. The outage, affecting roughly 10m-11m people, is the latest sign of a power system buckling under age, fuel shortages, and chronic underinvestment. On Tuesday, the pressure was compounded by a magnitude-6.0 earthquake, which struck the island at a depth of 15 kilometers (9.3 miles). There were no immediate reports of major damage from the tremor, and no clear evidence that it caused the blackout. Taken together, however, the two shocks added to the sense of a country confronting simultaneous infrastructure failure and economic exhaustion.

The blackout has come at a moment when Cuba appears to be edging, cautiously and under duress, toward something resembling an economic opening. Havana has recently moved to allow Cubans living abroad, including exiles, to invest in and own businesses on the island, a notable departure from decades of official orthodoxy. That follows a broader shift in which the non-state sector has expanded rapidly, accounting for a majority of retail sales last year. Cuba has also confirmed talks with the U.S. over its worsening energy crisis and announced the release of 51 prisoners in what officials described as a goodwill gesture.

None of this amounts to a Cuban version of Soviet-style glasnost and perestroika in any full political sense. The regime remains authoritarian and tightly controlled. But the combination of economic improvisation, outreach to the diaspora, limited prisoner releases, and direct talks with Washington does point to a system under enough strain to test ideas that would once have seemed politically far harder to contemplate.

Airstrike rattles Kabul

The explosions reported in Kabul on Monday night were not an isolated security incident, but part of a far graver escalation: an apparent Pakistani airstrike on the Afghan capital.

Afghan officials say the strike hit the Omid drug rehabilitation hospital, a large civilian facility, killing at least 400 people and injuring roughly 250 more. Pakistan denies targeting civilians and says its aircraft instead struck military and terrorist infrastructure in Kabul and Nangarhar.

That matters because Kabul is not merely another city hearing distant war. It is a capital shaped by decades of invasion, insurgency, bombings, and state collapse, where each new blast hits a population already worn down by prolonged conflict. Witnesses described a city shaken late at night, with rescue crews digging through rubble into Tuesday morning as officials struggled to account for the dead and injured.

The strike marks one of the gravest moments in the latest Afghanistan-Pakistan confrontation, which has intensified since February. Islamabad says it is responding to militant threats based on Afghan soil; the Taliban authorities reject that claim and describe the strike as a major violation of Afghan sovereignty. The immediate effect is a greater risk of retaliation, and with it the possibility that a long-running border conflict could broaden into something more sustained and more destructive.

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