Robert Pape

Reads Iran, the Houthis, the IRGC advisers he places in Yemen since mid-July and the Iraqi Shia militias as running a single coordinated campaign against three targets: the Strait of Hormuz, the Bab el-Mandeb and the Saudi East-West pipeline built precisely to bypass Hormuz. They are, he says, "tightening the noose in a coherent strategic manner increment by increment," and the seizure of the Bab el-Mandeb was "a huge huge move in that direction." Reads the momentum of the war as having shifted to Iran, and expects Riyadh to attempt pipeline repairs within a week or two.

Cheap Ukrainian FPV drones as proof-of-concept for the "second precision revolution" — an analytical read, not a call on who wins the war.

The Israel lobby is real but a secondary driver — it doesn’t explain the timing. A deliberate push-back on the common reflexive "Israel captured U.S. policy" read.

Reframes Taiwan: it could symmetrically interdict China’s own seaborne trade — Beijing’s lesson is caution, not confidence.

Argues the campaign is putting Iran on a path to becoming a fourth centre of world power with global reach rather than a regional one, while Trump's leverage and domestic position weaken. His scholarly frame carries the judgment: since the First World War, economic blockades alone have never won a major war, and a blockade coerces only where the blockading power holds the chokepoints and the target cannot answer in kind. On his account Washington assumed both and has neither.

Oil and gas prices and bond yields have all been spiking since 12 July, with Chinese demand destruction masking a larger shock so far. With crude around $110 a barrel amid the disruption of Saudi exports, he expects it to go higher rather than settle, and reads the structural pressure as building toward a break.