Earlier today, I published the Morning Compass briefing. Here I share a few thoughts on what stood out most. The transcript is below for those who prefer to read.
Morning Comments 🎙️ is a video companion to Morning Compass 🧭, my daily briefing. Both are published in More ✍️. If you find this kind of independent analysis useful, consider becoming a paid subscriber:
You can read today’s full Morning Compass briefing here:
Transcript
There is something that puzzles me this week. I covered diplomacy and international affairs for many years as a journalist and a diplomat. I know a thing or two about how negotiations work and how they fall apart. And what happened Monday night in the Gulf region — I simply cannot explain it.
You’ll remember that Trump spent all of Saturday telling the world that a deal with Iran was nearly done. The markets believed him. Oil prices fell. Then the next day, on Sunday, he said, “ Let’s take a bit more time”. Still optimistic. Fine. And then: Monday morning, Iran’s top delegation — the foreign minister, the parliament speaker, the central bank governor — they all landed in Doha for talks about ending the war. All senior people, at a critical moment.
And then, only hours later, the US military struck missile sites in southern Iran.
Iran did not restart the fighting that night. The ceasefire, fragile as it was, had been holding. We now know, from US intelligence assessments, that Iran still has roughly seventy percent of its prewar missile stockpile and access to thirty of its thirty-three missile sites along the Strait of Hormuz.
Now, thirty-eight days of the largest US bombing campaign since Iraq did not change those numbers significantly. Especially since the Iranians managed to dig out the sealed sites much faster than the Pentagon expected.
So why, at that exact moment, with Iran’s delegation already in Doha, did the US launch another strike? What was supposed to be different this time? And would that one attack after thirty-eight days of bombing suddenly make a difference?
I do not have an answer. I have read every analysis I can find this morning, and neither does anyone else.
What I do know is this. When you surround yourself only with people who agree with you, you stop hearing what is actually happening. The New York Times reviewed twelve hours of Trump cabinet meeting footage and found that one in every six sentences was either flattery, credit, or attacks on the previous administration. Not once in the footage did anyone say: Here is a problem with our approach.
Churchill, eighty-six years ago today, stood up after Dunkirk and said wars are not won by evacuations. He named the failure. He named it directly. And then he said what he was going to do about it.
And that combination of honesty about what went wrong, and then followed by clarity about what comes next, is how you make decisions that hold. It is rare, but honesty is essential to achieve your goals.
This morning, Iran’s lead negotiator returned to Tehran. Oil prices rise again, and Iran’s new supreme leader warns that American bases in the region are no longer safe. I do not know how this ends.
What I do know is that we passed the number of one-hundred paying subscribers who read the Morning Compass. I am genuinely grateful for that. We crossed that number this week. It matters to me — not the number itself, but what it means: that this kind of daily honest analysis, from a European perspective, with no agenda other than trying to make sense of a complicated world, has value for you.
Thank you. I will be back tomorrow morning.
Morning Comments 🎙️ is a video companion to Morning Compass 🧭, my daily briefing. Both are published in More ✍️. If you find this kind of independent analysis useful, consider becoming a paid subscriber:
