Jul 16, 2026 · 35 min · 11 segments
Arab Digest editor William Law's guest this week is the Gulf analyst Giorgio Cafiero. Donald Trump blundered into the Iran war. He wants to bully and bluff his way out but Iran is holding firm. This…
Giorgio CafieroGuest
William LawHost
So the war broke out on February 28th, and this had been following a period of time in which analysts were recognizing that The tensions between the United States and Iran were going to go in one of two directions.
One would be a diplomatic direction towards some sort of a new deal, some new agreement or toward war.
And so what we saw on February 28th was really a sign that Israel had finally gotten something that it had been spending so many years pushing for.
From the moment this conflict started, I was convinced it was going to become an absolute disaster.
I, of course, understood that Iran had been weakened in the months and the years leading up to February 28th.
And we all know that in the Hezbollah-Israel conflict of 2023 and 2024, the Israelis had dealt a major blow to the Iran-backed organization in Lebanon.
And so both internally and externally, In the region, Iran was weaker than it had been in previous years.
But that is not to say that Iran was no longer a very powerful actor in the region that had many cards to play and had the ability to fight back in so many different ways, leveraging its capabilities in asymmetric warfare, leveraging its ties with different actors throughout the region, leveraging its geography, so on and so forth.
And therefore, I did not expect the United States and Israel to successfully achieve their objectives in this conflict.
And I saw really at the outset of this conflict that Iran was intent on internationalizing it as quickly as possible.
So the war broke out on February 28th, and this had been following a period of time in which analysts were recognizing that The tensions between the United States and Iran were going to go in one of two directions.
One would be a diplomatic direction towards some sort of a new deal, some new agreement or toward war.
And so what we saw on February 28th was really a sign that Israel had finally gotten something that it had been spending so many years pushing for.
From the moment this conflict started, I was convinced it was going to become an absolute disaster.
I, of course, understood that Iran had been weakened in the months and the years leading up to February 28th.
And we all know that in the Hezbollah-Israel conflict of 2023 and 2024, the Israelis had dealt a major blow to the Iran-backed organization in Lebanon.
And so both internally and externally, In the region, Iran was weaker than it had been in previous years.
But that is not to say that Iran was no longer a very powerful actor in the region that had many cards to play and had the ability to fight back in so many different ways, leveraging its capabilities in asymmetric warfare, leveraging its ties with different actors throughout the region, leveraging its geography, so on and so forth.
And therefore, I did not expect the United States and Israel to successfully achieve their objectives in this conflict.
And I saw really at the outset of this conflict that Iran was intent on internationalizing it as quickly as possible.
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