Energy markets breathed a sigh of relief on Monday after President Donald Trump suggested he could declare victory over Iran at any time. “I think the war is very complete, pretty much,” he told CBS News. In a press conference later in the day he suggested several times that the war had achieved its basic objectives of rolling back Iran’s weapons programs and that it would be over “very soon.”

As I listened closely, however, I could hear Trump circling back to a rationale for staying in the fight long enough to ensure the United States doesn’t find itself back where we started in a few short years. Let me explain why I believe Trump is more likely than not to listen to his instinct to “finish the job,” as family members of recently fallen U.S. service personnel beseeched him this weekend, even if it means weeks (not days) of war still lay ahead.

“If you think I have been brainwashed and I am secretly miserable, I simply do not know what to tell you.”

So proclaims the final chapter of Adult Braces, a new memoir by Lindy West that is half-travelogue, half–polyamory memoir, and 100 percent privilege-disclaiming self-deprecation of the doth-protest-too-much variety. Perhaps you recall the moment in Girls where Lena Dunham snaps, “No one could ever hate me as much as I hate myself, okay? So any mean thing someone’s gonna think of to say about me, I’ve already said to me, about me, probably within the last half hour.”

Even as the world’s attention is focused on the Middle East, Beijing’s looming threat to Taiwan poses less immediate but potentially catastrophic risks to the world economy. Well aware of the danger, Taiwan is beginning to make extraordinary strides in breaking its dependence on China. In the process, it could help us break ours, too.

I’m deeply pessimistic about U.S.-China competition. The war in Iran will help determine the global order of the next decades. But the battle for supremacy with China will be at least as important, and it rests on our ability to keep China’s global economic influence in check. Unfortunately, in key sectors of the global economy, China is increasing its lead. Already dominant in industrial production, China is expected to increase its global share of manufacturing to 45 percent by 2030.

Columbia University’s leadership has managed to largely restore calm and resolve its battle with the Trump administration over allegations of campus antisemitism. But all that would be threatened if the graduate students who teach courses, serve as teaching assistants, and conduct research go on strike.

The union, representing about 3,500 student workers, has asked them to authorize a strike. The results of that vote could be announced as soon as Tuesday. If enough members vote yes, leaders of the Student Workers of Columbia (SWC) could launch a walkout anytime.

Of the many questionable decisions President Donald Trump has made with regard to Iran, one of the strangest was his declaration last Friday that the United States would demand “unconditional surrender” from Tehran. When Trump launched the attack with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, he was obviously hoping for a quick victory, something like the outcome he achieved when he snatched President Nicolás Maduro of Venezuela in January. But the war expanded across the Middle East, with Iran shooting missiles and drones at American allies and bases all over the Persian Gulf. It was clear that what remained of the Iranian leadership was not about to capitulate, and that the conflict could drag on—as Trump himself admitted—for weeks.

Normally, a smart leader in such a situation would try to lower expectations and declare an achievable objective in the war, such as degrading the better part of Iran’s ability to strike targets with ballistic missiles and drones. This would offer an opportunity for Trump to declare victory and disengage. Instead, Trump did the opposite.

If I were advising the newly appointed Supreme Leader of Iran, Mojtaba Khamenei, I’d suggest that he avoid texting in the days ahead. Or really, any kind of personal tech—tablets, laptops, and so on. Also using the fridge—keep an eye out for “smart” features. Riding in a car manufactured in the past 15 years or so is risky, especially in the vicinity of traffic cameras. Or going outside at all. Or being inside, if in the presence of anything that collects data. Every exposure to one of the sensors that now saturate our world adds to the chances that his specific location at a given time will become known to Israeli or American targeters.

Full-on paranoia has never been more justified than for Iran’s new hard-line top man. Mojtaba’s father and predecessor met his end in an Israeli air strike just over a week ago, as have numerous other senior leaders of the Islamic Republic since the hostilities commenced. The ability of the Israeli and U.S. militaries to target specific people on the battlefield and kill them has entered a kind of golden age, enabled by the same digital revolution that makes possible all of the non-murderous aspects of the new world emerging around us.

Events in Iran are unfolding across my screen. The flash of air strikes followed by rising plumes of smoke—now the country’s bleak daily rhythm—streams remorselessly onto my feed. Mullahs howl. Politicians gesticulate. Washington and Jerusalem threaten and promise. Fragments of Persian, half learned and half forgotten, return to me. Gar sabr koni ze ghure halva sazi—“If you are patient, you can make halvah from sour grapes”: encouraging words once offered by my long-suffering Persian teacher as I butchered verb conjugations. Now I cautiously wonder if the phrase might be apt. Are we seeing the possible—if not immediate—end of a regime that has held one of the world’s oldest civilizations hostage for nearly half a century?

But then my mind flicks to darker memories: the sadistic crackdowns and the long history of crushed uprisings. I watch Iran strike its Gulf neighbors. Another proverb surfaces: Mar-e zakhmi khatarnak-tar ast—“A wounded snake is more dangerous.”

Twenty years ago, I lived in the foreigners section of the student dormitories (Kuye Daneshgah) of Tehran University, a dense complex of concrete blocks just off Enghelab Street where arrivals from across Iran crowded into functional rooms for the duration of their studies. Like almost everywhere in the country, the regime’s violence had struck these buildings. Only a few years earlier, security forces and Basij militia had stormed them during the 1999 student protests, beating them in the corridors and throwing some off balconies. As an older student told me matter-of-factly one day: Inja bud. It was here.

The government as a functioning entity doesn’t really exist anymore. Things are falling apart.

Two decades on, the violence has never really stopped. In January, the regime murdered around 30,000 of its own people; weeks later, the United States and Israel began pounding its facilities, trying, finally, to end it for good. For now, Iranians can only wait. Many hope the war will not last, and that it might herald the birth of something better. In the meantime, explosions are constant. Tehran’s night skies flare with ordnance as cell phones light up with rumor. So far the strikes have largely hit regime facilities, although 153 people, including children, were killed when a reported U.S. strike hit a school in southern Iran.

As the war rolls on, I try to speak to the people who matter most in all this: Iranians. These days, checking in on those I care about is a valuable exercise in more ways than one. Only by understanding what is happening inside the country, and in the minds of its people, can we begin to judge whether this war—and the colossal gamble it represents—has any chance of succeeding.

I have a clear memory, from when I was about 4 years old, of an errand with my mother to The Bon Marché, a department store in Seattle, where I grew up. A friendly saleslady asked me my name. “Arthur,” I replied, at which she burst out laughing. Apparently, a little boy being named Arthur seemed discordantly funny to her—like naming your dog “Steve.” My mom was not amused. “He is named after his grandfather,” she answered dryly, as we hurried away.

Actually, I am named after both of my grandfathers, Arthur Hansen (a Dane, whom I therefore called “Bedstefar”) and Charles Brooks (a good old-fashioned American “Grandpa”). Bedstefar was a joker; he had a bumper sticker custom-made for his Buick that said, “Be Alert! The World Needs More Lerts!” Grandpa was a serious man: a preacher and an academic.

I have positive memories of them, even though, despite both living within three hours of us, I didn’t see either very often: a couple of times a year at most, for maybe a day at a time. If you asked me to tell you the biggest life lesson they gave me, I’d have to think on it. I think one of them taught me the rules of croquet.

Much the same could be said of the relationship between my three kids, who grew up on the East Coast of the U.S., and their grandparents in Seattle and Barcelona. My children’s memories of the old folks are happy, but hazy: Sometimes they saw our parents at Christmas or during a summer trip, but not often enough to establish any sort of intergenerational intimacy.

With war raging in the Middle East, we want to bring you as many trusted voices on the news as we can. One such voice is the Israeli journalist Amit Segal. Here’s Amit’s daily newsletter, It’s Noon in Israel, which we’re pleased to publish in The Free Press.

Deep beneath the ground near the Iranian city of Isfahan lies the ayatollahs’ lead-lined treasure chest. It contains the country’s most valuable asset: nearly 900 pounds of 60 percent enriched uranium.

The world’s most radioactive buried treasure was entombed by the U.S. and Israel during the June war and is thought to be inaccessible without a large excavation effort. But according to a recent American intelligence report, there remains a “very narrow access point” through which the Iranians—or the U.S.—could potentially retrieve the prize.

It’s Monday, March 9. This is The Front Page, your daily window into the world of The Free Press—and our take on the world at large. Today: Terror on the Upper East Side—and an unbothered mayor. The cities vying to become the next Dubai. Lessons from a musician living under a dictatorship. And much more.

But first: The latest on the war in Iran.

The conflict in the Middle East has entered its second week. On Saturday, a week since the U.S. and Israel struck Iran and killed its leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Israel targeted regime-controlled oil refineries near Tehran and black smoke filled the city’s skyline. The next day, the regime announced its new leader: Mojtaba Khamenei, the 56-year-old son of the slain Supreme Leader Khamenei. Here’s what else is new:

• The Pentagon announced the seventh U.S. casualty of the war. The service member was seriously injured in a strike on a Saudi military base on March 1 and died of those injuries.

• Oil prices have surged to more than $100 per barrel.

• Israel did not rule out targeting Iran’s new leader.

• Iran’s president Masoud Pezeshkian announced Saturday that the Islamic Republic would no longer attack neighboring countries, but the strikes resumed soon after.

• An Iranian drone struck a water desalination plant in Bahrain, marking the first time the war has impacted the most essential resource in the Gulf.

As Iranian oil burns and Mojtaba takes the reins of a teetering regime, the question of what will come next for Iran remains as uncertain as it was a week ago. One crucial factor will be the Kurds. But what sort of role will they play in the fight for Iran’s future? After reports that the CIA were arming Kurdish forces, Trump said on Saturday, “I don’t want the Kurds to go into Iran.”

Trump’s words echo in Eli Lake’s latest reporting. He talks to a senior Kurdish leader about the likelihood that Kurdish fighters will enter the war. Read his report on why Iran’s Kurds won’t march on Iran.

The Kurds may not be about to take up arms and fight, but Roya Hakakian argues that they remain central to this crucial chapter in Iranian history. Why? Because they are the Islamic Republic’s most defiant opponents. And no one serious about change in Iran can do it without them. Read Roya on the ayatollahs’ oldest opponents.

From Kurdistan to the Strait of Hormuz, which is ground zero for an emerging energy crisis. The shipping lane off the coast of Iran ordinarily transits 20 million barrels of oil a day, but is now effectively empty after Iran has threatened to target any tankers that use it. Ellen R. Wald breaks down the global impact of the blockage of the strait, and explains why we are approaching the “worst-case scenario” in the world’s most important maritime choke point.

Farther up the Persian Gulf sits another strategically vital site for the Iranian regime: Kharg Island, where 90 percent of Iranian oil exports are processed. Jay Solomon talks to officials in the Trump administration and Arab governments who say that the U.S. and Israel have the island in their sights. “It’s amazing they’d place so many of their oil eggs in one basket,” says one. Read Jay’s full report on the tiny island at the center of the conflict.

For more on the conflict in the Middle East, listen to the latest episode of our new podcast, School of War. Today, host Aaron MacLean talks to Mark Montgomery, a retired U.S. Navy rear admiral and senior director of the Center on Cyber and Technology Innovation at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. Aaron and Mark go deep on everything from the situation in the Strait of Hormuz to the growing parts Ukraine and Russia are playing in the war.

Glamorous Gulf cities like Dubai and Doha have long been sold as the go-to for the world’s richest, promising the fruits of Middle Eastern oil money without the sectarian violence of the northern countries like Iraq and Syria. Those illusions were shattered after these cities came under attack from Iran in retaliation to Operation Epic Fury. Now Singapore is preparing to take their place as an offshore financial hub. Jeevan Vasagar thinks the Southeast Asian island nation could be the war’s biggest winner. Read his piece for us to find out why:

Free Press columnist Tyler Cowen has a less likely candidate to fill the gap. Writing from South Africa, he makes the case for Cape Town. Yes, it has a serious crime problem, but the sights, weather, food, and culture are world-class and crucially, no belligerent militarized neighbors threaten its millions of residents. Read Tyler’s latest:

• At least six are dead and a dozen are injured after a trio of tornadoes ripped through southern Michigan and Oklahoma on Saturday. The tornadoes claimed the lives of a mother and daughter in Oklahoma, and a 12-year-old boy in Michigan.

• The United States government issued a license on Friday that authorizes dealings with a Venezuelan state-owned gold mining company—the latest sign of the Trump administration’s deepening economic ties with the Venezuelan government under Delcy Rodríguez. In January, Rodríguez signed a law that opened Venezuela’s oil sector to privatization.

• Norwegian police are investigating an explosion outside the U.S. Embassy in Oslo early Sunday morning. Police received reports of a “loud bang” around 1 a.m., Oslo police said in a news release. No injuries were reported.

• A federal judge ruled Saturday that Kari Lake, President Trump’s pick to lead the U.S. Agency for Global Media, did not possess legal authority to dismantle the Voice of America, a long-lauded form of American soft power that broadcasts news in regions with regime-controlled media. The ruling voided all action taken by Lake since she assumed the CEO role in July 2025.

• Team USA baseball defeated Great Britain by a score of 9–1 on Saturday, securing its second blowout win in Pool B of the World Baseball Classic. Kyle Schwarber blasted a two-run go-ahead homer in the second inning, after Great Britain jumped out to a one-run lead early. Team USA faces Mexico tonight at 8:00 p.m. ET in Houston, Texas.