Wednesday 18 March 2026 The effective closure of the Strait of Hormuz – whether by deliberate interdiction, military escalation or the cumulative effects of insecurity – represents the most severe conceivable disruption to the global hydrocarbons trade. In such circumstances attention inevitably turns to the alternative export architecture of the Gulf states, foremost amongst them Saudi Arabia’s east–west crude system terminating at Yanbu on the Red Sea. Yet while the Yanbu r

Wednesday 18 March 2026 The war that erupted on 28 February 2026 when the United States and Israel launched coordinated strikes against Iran has already reshaped the strategic landscape of the Middle East. The initial attacks targeted Iranian military and leadership infrastructure and reportedly killed Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Iran responded with missile and drone strikes on Israel and United States facilities in the Gulf, while Iranian-aligned militias

Tuesday 17 March 2026 For much of the modern era the internet has been assumed to be inherently global. Its architecture was designed during the Cold War by American researchers who wanted a resilient communications system capable of surviving nuclear attack. The network that emerged was decentralised, open and largely indifferent to national borders. Data flows through cables and routers according to technical efficiency rather than political authority. Governments can regul

Tuesday 17 March 2026 In the evolving constellation of Western figures who have moved beyond rhetoric into material engagement with Ukraine’s wartime reality, Brooks Newmark occupies a distinctive position. A former Conservative Member of Parliament for Braintree and Minister for Civil Society, his trajectory since 2022 reflects a transition from public office to direct operational involvement in Europe’s most consequential conflict. His work in Ukraine straddles two domains

Tuesday 17 March 2026 The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps — known in Persian as the Pasdaran — stands today as one of the most consequential, opaque and ideologically driven military institutions in the modern world. It is at once an army, a political movement, an intelligence service, a terrorist organisation and a commercial empire. To understand contemporary Iran, and much of the Middle East’s strategic turbulence, one must begin with the peculiar origins of this institu

Tuesday 17 March 2026 The United Kingdom has, since the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022, assembled one of the most extensive sanctions regimes ever imposed upon a modern state. Russian banks have been cut off from the British financial system, oligarchs’ assets frozen, superyachts impounded in London docks and hundreds of individuals subjected to travel bans and financial restrictions. Yet one proposal appears periodically in political discourse but has not been implement