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TODAY IN HISTORY
March 10, 241 BCE: A Roman fleet under Gaius Lutatius Catulus and Quintus Valerius Falto defeats a Carthaginian fleet at the Battle of the Aegates, just off the west coast of Sicily. The Carthaginians subsequently agreed to the Treaty of Lutatius, which ended the First Punic War by forcing Carthage to abandon Sicily and pay a war indemnity to Rome.
March 10, 1861: The Toucouleur Empire of Omar Saidou Tall conquers the city of Ségou, bringing an end to the already reeling Bamana Empire and consolidating much of West Africa (modern Guinea, Mali, and Senegal) under Omar Tall’s control. Although it was riding high at this point, the Toucouleur Empire’s further expansion was stymied by the Fula Massina Empire to the north, and by the 1890s it was swept aside by French colonization.
March 10, 1916: The British high commissioner for Egypt, Sir Henry McMahon, pens the tenth and final letter in his exchange with Sharif Hussein of Mecca. Over the course of those ten letters the two men established the conditions under which Hussein would lead an Arab revolt against the Ottoman Empire. Britain later reneged on its promises to support the creation of a single “Arab Caliphate” ruled by Hussein.
MIDDLE EAST
LEBANON
Tuesday brought another round of Israeli military (IDF) airstrikes across southern and eastern Lebanon and in Beirut. I haven’t seen any casualty information for Tuesday specifically but Lebanese sources are now putting the death toll in just over a week of Israeli attacks at almost 570, with over 759,000 displaced.
According to Reuters, Hezbollah has been focusing its preparations on guerrilla resistance to a potential large scale IDF invasion that would begin either along the border or in eastern Lebanon. The group is eschewing communications devices that could be tapped by the IDF and has been rationing its heavier munitions so as to maintain stockpiles if/when the invasion comes. This feels like a throwback to a method of fighting the IDF that predates Hezbollah’s previous conflict, in which it suffered heavy losses. The aim here would be to hold out against Israeli pressure until a regional peace deal, which Hezbollah leaders assume would involve it alongside Iran.
ISRAEL-PALESTINE
Al Jazeera reports that food prices in Gaza are beginning to spike and the territory is starting to run out of some types of food, as the Israeli government is maintaining restrictions that it imposed at the start of its war on Iran. Israeli authorities initially closed every checkpoint into Gaza but then reopened one of them, Kerem Shalom, but they still seem to be throttling aid shipments through that conduit. According to the World Health Organization only 200 trucks per day are entering Gaza now, a third of the 600 trucks per day that are supposed to be entering under the ostensible ceasefire.
IRAN
Overnight Monday into Tuesday was apparently the most intense period of Israeli and US attacks on Iran to date, something that US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth noted in his Tuesday morning press briefing and that residents of Tehran recounted to Reuters. I say “residents,” as in civilians, as it seems they’re bearing an increasing share of the bombardment, despite repeated admonitions that this is somehow not a war on the Iranian people.
Donald Trump’s flirtation with ending the war on Monday, followed by a press conference in which he said that the conflict will continue but looked, as Responsible Statecraft’s Trita Parsi notes, very much like a man who is tired of this and would like to change the channel, has had the effect of driving global oil prices down significantly while boosting stock markets. I assume this is deliberate market manipulation but can’t prove that. Energy Secretary Chris Wright got in on the act on Tuesday, tweeting and then deleting a post asserting that the US Navy had begun escorting oil tankers through the Strait of Hormuz. There’s no actual evidence that it had done so, but Wright’s post does appear to have affected the oil market nonetheless.
In the real world the Strait of Hormuz remains effectively closed and Iranian officials are pledging to keep it closed until the war is over. Trump’s threats to bombard Iran “20 times harder” if they don’t allow traffic through the strait doesn’t seem to be having much effect, probably because the Iranians have concluded that they’re going to continue to suffer attacks (20 times worse or not) unless they can establish a genuine deterrent effect via their ability to affect Gulf maritime traffic. There’s no reason at this point for them to stop what they’re doing even if Trump is ready to declare victory and call it a day.
Indeed, after I wrote the above CNN and other outlets reported that the Iranians have begun mining the strait. That effort hasn’t made much headway yet, and the US military has been destroying Iran’s naval minelayers. But if the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps can use its small boat fleet to fill the strait with mines and other improvised explosive devices then the loss of those larger vessels won’t matter. The threat of Iranian drones and anti-ship weaponry has already effectively shut the strait down but this would make the situation quite a bit more dangerous. Trump is threatening retaliation for this on “a level never seen before,” but again it’s likely that the Iranians have concluded that they have nothing to lose.
In other items:
The Guardian’s Patrick Wintour reported on Tuesday that Iranian officials have “spurned two messages from Donald Trump’s special envoy, Steve Witkoff, seeking a ceasefire.” This may reflect a sense that they are not “losing” the war and that Trump is more susceptible to the pressures of an extended conflict than they are. But it probably also reflects a sense that, as I said above, they’re at a point where they have nothing to lose by escalating. Trump hasn’t really given them a reason to think there’s any way out of this conflict.
For what it’s worth Al-Monitor’s Ben Caspit, who is not a writer I generally consult but who does seem to have sources within the Israeli political establishment, seems to think that Israeli officials are readying themselves for a US exit from this conflict and are now trying to inflict as much damage on Iran as possible before that. The Islamic Republic isn’t collapsing, there’s apparently no Kurdish uprising in the cards, so all that’s left is more bombing and more killing.
According to Barak Ravid, the Trump administration has asked the Israeli government to stop attacking Iranian energy facilities, or at least to inform the US before doing so. I guess the feeling in the administration is that poisoning the people the US is still hoping will rise up and overthrow the Iranian government is probably not a coherent strategy. Plus damaging Iran’s energy infrastructure will make it harder for US companies to exploit that infrastructure in a hypothetical “Venezuela 2.0” scenario, which isn’t going to manifest except in Donald Trump’s imagination but even so it’s a concern for US officials.
Reuters reported on Tuesday that the Trump administration has told members of Congress that the US expended $5.6 billion in munitions in just the first two days of this war. Presumably the US military isn’t still blowing through $2.8 billion per day but who knows? That daily rate is well above anything previously reported.
I was remiss in not noting a few days ago that the Pentagon has decided to send a third carrier group, led by the USS George H. W. Bush, to the region to join the war effort. Unless it’s planning to rotate one of the two groups that are currently in the region back to the US this is a massive deployment and surely unsustainable, both from a financial and personnel/materiel perspective.
Reuters also reported on Tuesday that “as many as 150” US service members have been wounded in this war so far. The Pentagon had only acknowledged eight “seriously wounded” personnel to date but after the report it revealed that “approximately 140” service members have been wounded overall but claimed most of those wounds were minor and that 108 of the personnel have already returned to duty.
The war continues to spill over into Iraq. A presumably US airstrike killed at least four members of the Kataʾib al-Imam Ali militia in northern Iraq’s Kirkuk province on Tuesday. Later in the day the IRGC attacked al-Harir airbase in Iraqi Kurdistan, a facility that houses US military personnel. The Washington Post reported still later in the day that an apparent militia drone strike had hit a US “diplomatic” (I’m assuming it also serves military and espionage functions) logistical facility near Baghdad’s international airport. There’s no indication of casualties or damage yet but it sounded at time of writing like the attack was still being assessed.
The Conversation’s Charles Waldorf has written a piece on how uncharacteristically unpopular this war has been in the US, whose populace generally loves wars until they get too long and complicated. Pluralities or majorities, and in some cases large majorities, are already opposed to this conflict and generally everything about Trump’s handling of it. I don’t know if it’s worth dwelling on this because military affairs are generally insulated from public opinion in the US, but it is interesting.
A new piece from MS NOW claims that one of the primary reasons for the breakdown in US-Iran nuclear negotiations, such as they were, was Iran’s Tehran Research Reactor, or more specifically the fact that US negotiators Witkoff and Jared Kushner didn’t understand how that facility works. The TRR produces medical isotopes and is designed to run on 20 percent enriched uranium. Witkoff and Kushner decided that an Iranian request to continue using 20 percent enriched uranium at that facility was a nefarious plot to produce nuclear weapons and somehow figured that the reactor itself could be used to enrich that uranium further, to weapons grade level. Reactors cannot enrich uranium. Even storing enriched uranium in the reactor or on site, another theory that the Witkoff-Kushner braintrust concocted, makes very little sense. The TRR was built with US support in 1967 and is so antiquated and specialized that even the International Atomic Energy Agency doesn’t bother with it because it’s simply not a meaningful proliferation risk. Recall that Witkoff and Kushner participated in these negotiations with minimal entourage and no technical experts.
AFP reports on the depraved rhetoric that several members of the Trump administration, particularly Hegseth and Trump himself, have been using in their comments about the war. I don’t have anything to add to this but I do think it should be pointed out. Spencer Ackerman notes Hegseth’s fondness for disparaging “woke” wars, by which he basically means that he wants to maximize death and destruction.
ASIA
PAKISTAN
The effect of high oil prices and supply shortages has already hit Pakistan, whose government announced late Monday that it is imposing a four day workweek for public employees and putting schools on an extended holiday from March 16 through the end of the month. Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif also announced work from home policies for government employees and optionally for some private sector workers as well, along with cuts to legislator salaries. National and provincial level cabinet ministers will be foregoing their salaries altogether for the time being. Pakistan is a major oil importer and even with these austerity measures it may only be a matter of time before it begins to feel severe impacts from the war.
MYANMAR
Myanmar’s ruling junta is also feeling the pressure of high oil prices and supply shortfalls caused by the war on Iran. But as The Diplomat’s Luke Hunt reports, the situation is a good opportunity for the junta to roll out its new propaganda operation:
Myanmar’s military is feeling the pinch just 12 days after the United States and Israel launched their war against Iran. Access to oil is key to the junta’s survival, and its supply shortages are already being felt at the pump and perhaps on the battlefield.
But that’s not the message that Senior Gen. Ming Aung Hlaing and his senior brass want relayed, and they have established a new propaganda body designed to ensure the rest of us stay on message. A week ago, that message was 492 million liters in reserve, enough for 40 days.
The junta would also like its yet-to-be-named propaganda unit to extol its legitimacy in the wake of the recent elections, in which barely half the population could vote due to a long-running civil war it started.
Even with forced voting and allegations of rigging, barely 11 percent of the population voted for [the junta’s] proxy, the Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP), which won anyway and is expected to do the military’s bidding while disguised as a civilian government.
AFRICA
MALI
Reuters reported on Monday that the Trump administration is close to an agreement with Mali’s ruling junta that would allow the US to resume reconnaissance flights (manned and unmanned) over Mali to track jihadist activity. The administration has been cultivating better relations with the three Sahelian juntas (Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger) and late last month it lifted sanctions on a handful of Malian officials including the country’s defense minister. Its goal in part is apparently to locate and recover a US national who was abducted by Jamaʿat Nusrat al-Islam wa’l-Muslimin (JNIM) fighters in Niger back in October.
NIGER
Speaking of that abduction, World Politics Review’s Tangi Bihan cites that and Islamic State’s late-January attack on Niamey’s airport as indications of a jihadist surge in Niger:
Niamey is not yet fully encircled, but the pressure is mounting. [Islamic State Sahel Province] and JNIM now both operate just a few dozen kilometers outside the city. The capital had not faced a jihadist attack in more than a decade, even as [Malian capital] Bamako and Ouagadougou—Burkina Faso’s capital—have been struck repeatedly since 2015. This was Niamey’s first assault on such a scale, and it has shattered the city’s long-held reputation as a safer haven than its regional counterparts.
Already in October 2025, an American national was abducted just a few hundred meters from the presidential palace. This has heightened anxiety among the remaining Western nationals in the city, especially diplomats and humanitarian workers, who also fear being stranded should the airport be targeted again.
In recent years, media attention had focused more on JNIM, which has expanded rapidly across the Sahel. ISSP had weakened after losing several battles to JNIM from late 2019 onward, but it has since reorganized and strengthened its hold over areas it controls. This is reflected in changes to its governance model: fewer raids and looting, and more direct administration, including the appointment of officials tasked with collecting taxes.
(Foreign Exchanges readers can sign up for WPR’s free newsletter here and try out an all-access subscription free for 30 days, then $35 off—$77/year—after that.)
SOUTH SUDAN
The United Nations has refused to evacuate its peacekeeping forces from the town of Akobo, in South Sudan’s Jonglei state, despite a government order to that effect. The South Sudanese military, which is in the midst of an offensive against rebel factions in Jonglei, ordered the evacuation of Akobo late last week in advance of a potential assault on the town. But Akobo is packed with internally displaced persons as well as its regular residents and the UN mission insisted on remaining in place for their protection. Many of the humanitarian aid workers serving those displaced persons did evacuate over the weekend. The military said on Tuesday that it was back in control of the town and it’s unclear from the reporting whether the rebels put up any sort of fight. It will likely take some time for the aid agencies to resume full operations.
MADAGASCAR
The leader of Madagascar’s ruling junta, Michael Randrianirina, sacked his entire cabinet on Monday for unspecified reasons. It sounds like tensions are once again rising between the junta and the “Gen Z” protesters who somewhat inadvertently helped bring it to power back in October. Those tensions emerged pretty quickly after Randrianirina’s military coup, and activists have started calling for his resignation amid demands for a more transparent and inclusive transition back to something approaching democratic rule. He may be hoping that replacing the cabinet will buy him a bit of time with the protesters.
EUROPE
RUSSIA
The Ukrainian military struck what it called a “military factory” in the Russian city of Bryansk on Tuesday, killing at least six people and wounding 37. The facility allegedly manufactures electronic missile components. Russian officials decried the attack as an act of “terrorism” while downplaying the nature of the target.
UKRAINE
A Russian attack, meanwhile, killed at least four people and wounded 16 others in the city of Sloviansk in eastern Ukraine’s Donetsk oblast on Tuesday. Both the Ukrainian and Russian militaries have been trumpeting recent successes, Ukraine in Dnipropetrovsk oblast and Russia in the Donbas. As ever it’s impossible to verify these assertions.
The UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry on Ukraine has concluded that the Russian government’s forced transfer of potentially “thousands” of Ukrainian children to Russia is a crime against humanity. The commission says that it has confirmed 1205 cases of forced transfer so far and there are many more cases that remain outstanding (the Ukrainian government alleges some 20,000 transfers). According to its findings, some 80 percent of these abducted children have still not been returned to Ukraine. The forced transfer of Ukrainian children was the allegation that earned Vladimir Putin his International Criminal Court indictment back in 2023.
AMERICAS
HAITI
A new Human Rights Watch report alleges that Haiti’s counterinsurgent drone program is also posing a risk to civilians:
Haitian security forces and private contractors working with them have conducted extensive and apparently unlawful lethal drone strikes, Human Rights Watch said today. The strikes, at least some of which appear to be deliberate extrajudicial killings, have been carried out with quadcopter drones armed with explosives in densely populated urban areas, in some cases killing and injuring dozens of people, including children and other residents who are not members of criminal groups.
According to data from multiple sources reviewed by Human Rights Watch, at least 1,243 people were killed by drone strikes in 141 operations between March 1, 2025, and January 21, 2026, including at least 43 adults who were reportedly not members of criminal groups, and 17 children. The data also shows that the drone strikes injured 738 people, at least 49 of whom were reportedly not members of criminal groups.
UNITED STATES
Finally, Foreign Affairs’ Robert Pape argues that the Trump administration may already be “losing control of the war it started”:
The first hours of Operation Epic Fury—the joint U.S.-Israeli military offensive against Iran, launched on February 28—demonstrated the extraordinary reach of modern precision warfare. U.S. and Israeli strikes killed Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, along with senior commanders of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and key intelligence officials, in what Washington and Jerusalem described as a decisive blow intended to cripple Tehran’s command structure and destabilize the regime.
Yet within hours, any hope that the precise decapitation strikes would limit the scope of the war was dashed. Iran launched hundreds of ballistic missiles and drones not only at Israel but also across the Gulf. Air raid sirens sounded in Tel Aviv and Haifa. Missiles slammed into interceptors over Doha and Abu Dhabi. At Al Udeid Air Base, in Qatar—the forward headquarters of U.S. Central Command—personnel took shelter as interceptors streaked overhead. Air defenses flashed into action at U.S. bases at Al Dhafra in the United Arab Emirates and Ali Al Salem in Kuwait. Prince Sultan Air Base in Saudi Arabia reported incoming drones. Near the U.S. Fifth Fleet headquarters in Bahrain, naval forces were placed on heightened alert.
The Iranian response has had enormous ramifications for the Gulf, killing civilians, shuttering airports, threatening shipping and oil exports, and tarnishing the region’s image of stability and safety. An iconic hotel on the waterfront in Dubai caught fire after debris from an intercepted drone fell into its upper floors. Kuwaiti authorities reported damage near civilian airport facilities. According to news reports, several tankers have been struck near the Strait of Hormuz, prompting a spike in insurance premiums for shipping through the Gulf. Soon after the conflict erupted, oil futures jumped sharply as traders priced in the risk of sustained disruption to one of the world’s most critical energy chokepoints.
Iran’s strikes cannot be dismissed as acts of scattered retaliation, the flailing lashing out of a dying regime. Rather, they represent a strategy of horizontal escalation, a bid to transform the stakes of a conflict by widening its scope and extending its duration. Such a strategy allows a weaker combatant to alter the calculus of a more powerful foe. And it has worked in the past, to the detriment of the United States. In Vietnam and Serbia, U.S. adversaries responded to overwhelming displays of American airpower with horizontal escalation, eventually leading to American defeat, in the former case, and, in the latter, frustrating U.S. war aims and spurring the worst episode of ethnic cleansing in Europe since World War II. Decapitation strikes, in particular, create powerful incentives for horizontal escalation: when a regime survives the loss of its leader, it must demonstrate resilience quickly by widening the conflict. Although the United States has hugely battered Iran, it must reckon with the implications of Iran’s response. Otherwise, it will find itself losing control of the war it started.