Iran’s “election circus” — as it is known in Farsi — is in full swing with a total of six candidates being approved by the supreme leader-controlled vetting body, the Guardian Council. These six have not held back in backstabbing each other, and the knives will be on full display in the coming weeks. Indeed, this circus is being tacitly encouraged by...

Welcome to The Adversarial. Every other week, we’ll provide you with expert analysis on America’s greatest challengers: China, Russia, Iran, North Korea, and jihadists. Read more below. *** Iran Following the death of President Ebrahim Raisi in a helicopter crash last month, Iran is gearing up to elect a new president on June 28. Although Iranian policy...

If one word has come to characterize the army that the Duke of Wellington led in the campaign that culminated in the Battle of Waterloo, that word is “infamous.” The description comes from the mouth of the Duke himself, and entered the popular vocabulary when novelist Georgette Heyer adopted it as the title for a Regency romance set against the backdrop...

Napoleon Bonaparte’s Waterloo army was the last he would ever lead into combat. Returning from exile in March 1815 to a country riven by factionalism and exhausted by two decades of almost unremitting warfare, the French emperor managed in only three months to pull together an army that came achingly close to defeating an allied force with almost double...

Michael Kofman dropped into War on the Rocks HQ to chat with Ryan about the war in Ukraine. From Russia’s culminated offensive on Kharkiv, to battlefields of the Donbas, to ongoing fighting in the south, to Russia’s displaced Black Sea Fleet, Mike parses through the data to try and assess where the war is heading next. Image: Ukrainian Ministry of Defense...

Marshall Kosloff talks with Ambassador Robert Blackwill and Richard Fontaine about their new book, “Lost Decade: The U.S. Pivot to Asia and the Rise of Chinese Power.” Image: U.S. Department of State The post The Pivot to Asia Remains Incomplete appeared first on War on the Rocks.