Diplomacy by Design: How Bangladesh Can Unite the Great Powers Behind a Rohingya Solution

by Ghulam M. Suhrawardi 

 The Rohingya crisis has entered a dangerous new phase. Nearly nine years after the mass expulsion of 2017, Bangladesh continues to shelter approximately one million Rohingya, while further arrivals have added to the pressure on Cox’s Bazar and surrounding communities. Humanitarian funding is declining, insecurity inside the camps is increasing, and conditions in Myanmar remain wholly unsuitable for safe, voluntary and dignified repatriation. The United Nations warns that Rohingya in both Myanmar and Bangladesh face shrinking protection and diminishing prospects for a durable solution.

Bangladesh cannot resolve this crisis alone. Yet it is the country best placed to assemble the international coalition required to resolve it. Dhaka has the geography, humanitarian credibility, regional relationships, and direct security interest that no outside power can match. Its task is not simply to ask the world for assistance but to become the diplomatic architect of a settlement one that gives every major power a practical reason to support the restoration of Rohingya rights in Myanmar.

This will require a departure from conventional diplomacy. Repeating appeals for repatriation, issuing statements at international conferences and presenting lists of refugees for verification have not produced meaningful returns. Bangladesh now needs a coordinated political strategy that engages China, India, the United States, the European Union, ASEAN, Japan, Türkiye and the Muslim world around a common proposition: a stable and inclusive Rakhine State is in the economic and security interests of them all.

A Changing Rakhine Requires a New Strategy

Earlier repatriation initiatives were based on the assumption that Myanmar’s central government and military controlled northern Rakhine State and could therefore guarantee the return of the Rohingya. That assumption no longer reflects realities on the ground. The Arakan Army has gained control over most of Rakhine and the Myanmar-Bangladesh frontier, while the military retains the ability to conduct air attacks and disrupt civilian life. Rohingya communities have suffered abuses at the hands of the military, the Arakan Army, and Rohingya armed groups.

As a result, no deal struck bilaterally with Myanmar’s military leaders will ever guarantee durable returns. Dhaka should continue talking state-to-state with Myanmar.  But it must also engage diplomatically, directly or through partners, with those holding de facto power in Rakhine. Engagement is not the same thing as political recognition. It is how states pursue matters of common interest, such as border security, humanitarian access, civilian protection, and conditions for return.

Bangladesh should simultaneously engage Myanmar’s democratic opposition, including the National Unity Government, ethnic political organizations, and civil-society representatives. The objective should be to establish a broad consensus that any future political order in Myanmar must restore Rohingya citizenship, freedom of movement, access to education and employment, property rights, and representation in local administration.

The Rohingya won’t be able to return safely just because Myanmar says it will accept some number of “verified” refugees. If they’re sent back without rights, it won’t be repatriation. It will be moving refugees out of camps in Bangladesh and into prisons or persecution camps in Myanmar. Citizenship and equal protection before the law therefore need to be treated as prerequisites for repatriation, not bargaining chips to be hashed out later.

Making Enemies Invest in Solutions 

Humanitarian arguments are rarely enough to make great powers cooperate. They’ll come together when a settlement serves their interests, or when a lack of resolution starts threatening them. For that reason, Bangladesh needs to frame the Rohingya problem as much a trade barrier, a threat to maritime security, and a drag on investment and connectivity as a humanitarian crisis.

China has the greatest external leverage over Myanmar’s military and maintains relationships with several ethnic armed organizations. It also has major economic interests in Rakhine, including the Kyaukphyu deep-sea port and oil and gas pipelines connecting the Bay of Bengal to Yunnan. Continued war, communal hostility and displacement threaten these investments and weaken the stability of China’s western maritime corridor.

Dhaka needs to push Beijing to do more than just periodically convene failed repatriation talks. China can facilitate talks on humanitarian access, non-discrimination, and local community security guarantees in northern Rakhine. Bangladesh can incentivize regional trade initiatives that are conditioned on measurable progress on security and Rohingya rights. The message needs to be firm but hopeful: infrastructure will never reach its strategic intent if neighboring communities aren’t prosperous, in place, and at peace.

India must be approached through a different lens. New Delhi views Myanmar as a gateway to Southeast Asia and has invested in the Kaladan Multi-Modal Transit Transport Project. It is also concerned about insurgency, arms trafficking, irregular migration and Chinese influence along its eastern frontier. Bangladesh should argue that permanent Rohingya exclusion will deepen precisely these dangers. A stable Rakhine would protect Indian connectivity projects, support development in India’s northeast and reduce opportunities for criminal and extremist networks.

China and India need not agree on every dimension of Myanmar’s future. Bangladesh only needs to establish a limited area of convergence: neither benefits from a chronically unstable Rakhine State. Dhaka could propose a China-India-Bangladesh working group on humanitarian access, border stability, economic reconstruction and conditions for voluntary return. Even if political rivalry prevents a formal mechanism, parallel consultations built around an identical framework could produce useful pressure.

The United States, European Union, United Kingdom, Canada and Japan each bring different tools of leverage. These governments are donors of humanitarian aid, influential voices in multilateral development banks, and champions of accountability efforts. In 2022, the United States formally declared that Myanmar’s military had perpetrated genocide and crimes against humanity against the Rohingya.

The Gambia has separately filed a lawsuit against Myanmar in the International Court of Justice for genocide. Bangladesh can urge this grouping to provide a united Western response that combines humanitarian aid, targeted sanctions/diplomatic pressure, and positive incentives for action. Targeted sanctions should target military-owned enterprises, arms dealers, and rights abusers- not broad brushstrokes that hurt Myanmar’s civilian population. Simultaneously, a multiyear international package for the reconstruction of Rakhine could be created, with financial releases tied to unbiasedly measured benchmarks on freedom of movement, provision of documents, humanitarian access, and return of land.

The challenge will be balancing sticks and carrots. Sanctions can breed defensiveness; rewards without conditions can sanction discrimination. The negotiating process must make clear that democracy and economic renewal go hand in hand.

Giving ASEAN and the Muslim World Defined Responsibilities

ASEAN cannot be ignored simply because its Five-Point Consensus on Myanmar has produced limited results. Myanmar is an ASEAN member, and the organization provides a regional framework through which Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand and other states can act without appearing to impose a Western solution.

Bangladesh needs to urge ASEAN members to form a Rakhine contact group, instead of seeing the Rohingya problem submerged into the larger Myanmar question. Muslim-majority Malaysia and Indonesia can provide political connectivity; Thailand can help with humanitarian logistics and quiet diplomacy; Singapore could provide experience in funding oversight and reconstruction. Eventually, ASEAN’s humanitarian structure can help monitor return areas, though it will need greater access and autonomy than previously allowed.

Türkiye, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the Organization of Islamic Cooperation should also be assigned concrete functions. Muslim solidarity has too often taken the form of declarations followed by inadequate implementation. The OIC has supported The Gambia’s case at the ICJ, but legal accountability must be supplemented by sustained political and financial engagement.

Türkiye has potential roles in education provision, health care and mediation. Saudi Arabia and Gulf countries could provide long-term development finance for shelter and livelihoods creation in Rakhine, provided sufficient safeguards are in place. Qatar and Oman have previous experience mediating in delicate circumstances and could provide good offices for dialogue between parties who do not yet feel able to meet openly. Malaysia and Indonesia could help strengthen regional protection mechanisms against trafficking and dangerous sea journeys.

The objective should not be to create an exclusively Muslim bloc. That would risk reinforcing Myanmar’s portrayal of the Rohingya as outsiders in a Buddhist-majority country. Muslim states should work inside a wider coalition that also includes Buddhist-majority Asian countries, Western governments and the United Nations. The central principle must be equal citizenship, not religious competition.

Rohingya Participation Without Militarization

No sustainable agreement can be reached on the Rohingya crisis without the Rohingya themselves. Bangladesh should facilitate the formation of an elected, civilian Rohingya consultative council that includes elders, women, youth, civil society leaders, teachers, religious leaders, and Rohingya living abroad. The process should be transparent and designed so that armed groups, criminal elements, or a few self-selected individuals cannot take control.

This council should advise Bangladesh and international mediators on citizenship, documentation, land restitution, education, security and return arrangements. It should also be given a meaningful role in international conferences and negotiations concerning Rakhine.

That being said, political empowerment does not equal militarization. Terror attacks, killings, and forced recruitment in the camps have already been fueled by armed groups and criminal networks. Bangladesh should not allow the camps to become safe havens for insurgents. But it should also not crack down on all Rohingya political activity. Closing civic space only invites extremism.  Allowing armed groups to organize puts Bangladesh’ security at risk. Meaningful civil society leadership accountable under the rule of law is the solution.

Education is another key priority.  Future generations raised without accredited schooling, livelihood training, or hope for the future will be susceptible to trafficking, radicalization, and other forms of crime. Investments in Myanmar curriculum education, language courses, computer literacy, and vocational training would benefit both eventual repatriation and rebuilding efforts. Please do not frame these initiatives as an attempt to permanently integrate Rohingya into Bangladesh. They are opportunities to invest in individuals who will one day need to help reconstruct Myanmar.

A Bangladesh-Led International Compact

Dhaka should present the international community with a detailed “Rakhine Peace, Return and Reconstruction Compact.” Instead of requesting separate and occasionally contradictory commitments from different governments, the compact would organize their contributions around one framework.

It needs to include several components: An immediate humanitarian-cessation of hostilities agreement providing aid to all of Rohingya communities in Rakhine; a monitoring presence by a mutually agreed-upon international or regional body to protect civilians; acknowledgment of Rohingya identity and a legitimate route to citizenship; return of lost land and property, or compensation; voluntary repatriation that starts with pilot returnee communities that are carefully monitored; security assurances that address forced recruitment and violence against civilians; and a multibillion-dollar reconstruction effort that supports both Rohingya and ethnic Rakhine citizens.

Nothing will be given to the Rohingya at the expense of Rakhine citizens. Any agreement must include assistance and development for that state’s deeply impoverished Buddhist majority. If deals are perceived as solely assisting the Rohingya, they will fuel further backlash and risk recreating the crisis. Infrastructure such as roads, hospitals, and schools, as well as electricity, fisheries, and job programs, should be extended to all communities. Envisioned dialectically, the package should offer rights to the Rohingya, development to the Rakhine, and stability to the region.

If there is agreement on such a roadmap, it must be enacted through quantifiable benchmarks. Refugee returns must not be rushed to check a box. Third-party monitoring should confirm conditions on the ground in prospective return areas. Rohingya refugees should be allowed safe passage to voluntarily visit and learn about conditions on the ground prior to making their decision, and upon return should have access to monitoring bodies and clear pathways for grievances. Funding should be dispersed gradually as negotiated benchmarks are met.

The special envoy could head up a permanent Rohingya Response Office in Bangladesh. It should include representatives from the foreign, home, disaster-management, defense, and finance ministries to coordinate international efforts, communicate with Rohingya leaders, release regular progress reports, and help prevent setbacks during political transitions. Effective diplomacy isn’t conducted by seasonal missions built around conferences; it requires an enduring organization.

From Frontline Host to Diplomatic Architect

Bangladesh’s traditional principle of “friendship to all, malice toward none” suits this challenge particularly well. Dhaka need not choose between China and the United States, between India and the Muslim world, or between ASEAN and the United Nations. Its comparative advantage lies precisely in its ability to speak to all of them.

But friendship with all must not mean passivity toward everyone. Bangladesh should use access to markets, ports, connectivity projects, diplomatic cooperation, and regional forums to encourage action. It should make clear that the Rohingya crisis is inseparable from the Bay of Bengal’s future security and prosperity.

The Joint Response Plan for 2026 asks for US$710.5 million to provide aid to 1.6 million Rohingya refugees and people from Bangladeshi host communities. Humanitarian aid is crucial, but yearly emergency appeals are not a replacement for a political solution. The longer the refugee crisis drags on, the more acute the risks of donor fatigue, outbreaks of violence in the camps, trafficking, irregular migration, and friction with host communities. Bangladesh has shown great humanitarian leadership so far. Now it must provide strategic direction.  If Dhaka can align Chinese capital with Indian infrastructure, Western political and economic leverage, ASEAN legitimacy, the goodwill of the Muslim world, and Japanese technical expertise, along with Rohingya feedback, its mediation can focus these divergent agendas toward a diplomatically brokered outcome.

Bangladesh has already shown great humanity.  Now it must show strategic vision.  Withholding Rohingya repatriation until their safety can be guaranteed. By harnessing Chinese investment with Indian connectivity, Western diplomatic and economic weight, ASEAN legitimacy, Muslim-world support, Japanese technical expertise, and Rohingya input itself, Dhaka can focus otherwise divergent interests around a negotiated objective.

There is no guarantee that this diplomacy will quickly overcome Myanmar’s conflict or its deeply rooted ethnic exclusion. But without such an initiative, the Rohingya will remain trapped between persecution in their homeland and permanent dependency in exile. Bangladesh must therefore cease being treated merely as the country that shelters the victims. It must become the country that designs the coalition, defines the conditions and keeps the powers at the table until a just settlement is achieved.

That is how Bangladesh can turn an unbearable national burden into an act of regional statesmanship and ensure that the Rohingya return not simply to Myanmar, but to rights, security and a homeland.

Rohingya crisis deepens amid persecution, displacement, genocide, and international community’s apathy

 By Iqbal Jassat 

The systematic persecution of Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar stands as one of the most definitive moral and human rights failures of our time.

Despite relentless international condemnation, UN declarations, and ongoing proceedings at the International Court of Justice, the stateless Rohingya population continues to endure an unrelenting campaign of state-sponsored terror, forced expulsion, and institutionalized erasure. 

Today, as regional governments increasingly look the other way – or worse, actively deport those fleeing the carnage - the global community must confront a stark, uncomfortable truth: the military junta in Naypyidaw does not act in a vacuum. 

It is sustained, bankrolled, and armed by a network of complicit foreign countries that value geopolitical leverage and economic extraction over human lives.

To understand the depth of this crisis requires looking back at a decades-long architecture of structural exclusion. For generations, the Rohingya have inhabited Rakhine State, yet they have been systematically stripped of their legal identity. 

The foundational turning point arrived with the discriminatory 1982 Citizenship Law, enacted by a previous military regime to render the Rohingya stateless overnight. 

What followed was a deliberate, institutionalized blueprint of apartheid: severe restrictions on freedom of movement, denial of healthcare, and the criminalization of their very existence. 

This state-sponsored hostility exploded into full-scale catastrophe in August 2017, when the Myanmar military launched brutal "clearance operations" consisting of mass killings, systemic sexual violence, and the deliberate burning of entire towns. UN investigators concluded these atrocities were committed with clear genocidal intent.

Today, the catastrophe has reached an even more insidious phase. Trapped in squalid displacement camps or under siege in volatile villages, the remaining Rohingya are caught in the crossfire of an escalating civil war. 

UN fears more than 500 Rohingya died in two suspected shipwrecks off Myanmar

The UN agencies called for "enhanced search and rescue efforts, access to asylum and protection, and actions against smuggling and trafficking networks."

The military junta has resorted to the cruel irony of forced conscription, abducting and forcing young Rohingya men to fight on the front lines for the very military that slaughtered their families. 

Concurrently, the junta’s primary method of warfare has shifted to devastating airstrikes. Military jets and drones routinely rain indiscriminate fire onto marketplaces, hospitals, and schools.

Meanwhile, regional neighbors are also deeply implicated. India has repeatedly renewed community and technology aid programs while cementing border demarcation agreements with the illegal regime. 

Furthermore, regional commercial hubs like Singapore and Thailand have historically acted as financial conduits, allowing junta-linked brokers to bypass sanctions to source raw materials, electronics, and dual-use equipment vital for domestic weapons manufacturing.

The consequence of this international complicity extends beyond Myanmar's borders, driving a severe regional migration crisis. Terrified families who risk their lives on treacherous sea voyages or slip across borders are increasingly met with hostility. 

Regional governments are actively pushing back boats and executing forced deportations under the guise of border control. This is a flagrant violation of non-refoulement – the bedrock principle of international law that strictly forbids returning individuals to a country where they face a credible threat of torture, persecution, or death.

Deporting a Rohingya refugee back to Myanmar is effectively signing their death warrant.

The situation for Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh has indeed reached a critical and agonizing breaking point. Over one million Rohingya refugees currently reside in Cox's Bazar, the largest refugee camp cluster in the world, and Bhasan Char island, living in limbo with virtually no safe, dignified, or realistic prospect of returning home to Myanmar.

Israel provided Myanmar’s junta with arms equipment amid Rohingya genocide: Report

A rights group has revealed that Israel provided Myanmar’s military junta with arms equipment despite a US and European Union embargo imposed over the country

Packed into flimsy, temporary shelters made of bamboo and tarpaulin that offer little protection from the weather, refugees in these camps are highly vulnerable to Bangladesh’s severe monsoon seasons, cyclones, and landslides, which routinely destroy shelters and wash away vital infrastructure.

The government of Bangladesh, which generously opened its borders in 2017, continues to maintain that repatriation to Myanmar is the only permanent solution. However, with the Myanmar military junta escalating its campaign of violence, stripping the Rohingya of citizenship, and enforcing mandatory conscription, returning home remains impossible. 

The international community must refuse to treat the Rohingya crisis as an unfixable tragedy. Condemnation without material consequence has achieved nothing. True accountability requires dismantling the external networks keeping the junta alive.

Global bodies and allied countries must aggressively expand sanctions to target financial institutions like the Myanmar Economic Bank and impose a comprehensive global embargo on aviation fuel and arms transfers. 

Governments providing weapons must be publicly named, shamed, and held legally liable for aiding and abetting war crimes. 

Securing the safety and human rights of the Rohingya is not an isolated political issue; it is an urgent test of our collective humanity. Every country that arms the junta or forces a refugee back has blood on its hands and conscience. 

Despite accountability measures underway at the International Criminal Court (ICC) and International Court of Justice (ICJ), Myanmar’s military has yet to face adequate consequences for its atrocity crimes. 

Upholding the human rights of the Rohingya as well as the entire population of Myanmar depends on achieving justice for the crimes by military commanders. Unless urgent steps are taken to halt the atrocities, the military’s decades-long impunity will continue. 

Iqbal Jassat is an executive member of the Media Review Network, Johannesburg, South Africa.

When genocidaires become heroes by Habib Siddiqui

 You can read my article on how in Europe convicted war criminals are celebrated by clicking any of these links:

 When Genocidaires Become Heroes: The Collapse of Global Morality | Countercurrents ; 

New Age | The world that failed Bosnia, fails again; 

When Genocidaires Become Heroes: The Collapse Of Global Morality - OpEd - Eurasia Review

Slander and Impunity: The World Central Kitchen Killings in Gaza by Binoy Kampmark

 In September 2025, nine countries launched the Declaration for the Protection of Humanitarian Personnel.  Australia explained its important if dark inspiration in pursuing it: the slaying of Zomi Francken, along with six of her colleagues from the World Central Kitchen charity on April 1, 2024 by Israeli forces in Gaza.  All perished to an attack consisting of three missiles fired from a Hermes 450 drone in a stated “deconflicted” zone, despite clear logo markings on the convoy vehicles and extensive coordination regarding their movements with the Israeli authorities.

The declaration, while lacking teeth, is at least a concession that individuals dedicated to protecting and preserving the vulnerable in conflict deserve a heftier shield of protection in international humanitarian law.  It is all the more important given the systematic, weasel-worded libelling that the IDF have pursued against the WCK workers.  Behind the cover of bureaucratic plausibility and spread-sheet analysis, the Israeli authorities have conveniently packaged the charity worker with combat or terrorist groups, giving them equal standing in targeting.

The disgraceful nature of this is evident in the refusal to consider any legal action for the events of that April. On August 19, the IDF announced that it had found “no reasonable suspicion of criminal misconduct that would justify opening a criminal investigation or the taking of additional measures against any of those involved in the incident”. The spokesperson’s remarks initially gave ballast to the worthiness of the General Staff Fact-Finding and Assessment Mechanism (FFAM), charged with making “factual assessments of exceptional operational incidents, while using a range of tools and methodologies.”  It became very clear that these methodologies were heavily slanted to conflating combatants and humanitarian workers on mere inferences.

Consider, for instance, the IDF’s alleged identification of “a gunman on a truck in the humanitarian aid convoy while it was on route to a warehouse for the unloading of the aid.”  The troops had “identified vehicles surrounding the trucks in a manner that, in their assessment, and based on accumulated operational experience, corresponded to a scenario in which the Hamas terrorist organization had taken control of the convoy.”  Despite “serious failures in the process that led to the assessment that Hamas operatives were travelling in the vehicles”, the decision to strike the convoy raised no “reasonable suspicion of criminal misconduct”.  There had been, in the circumstances, a sufficient number of “suspicious indicators”.

Much is done to shift the blame to the humanitarian workers.  They had, for instance, “hired an armed security force to accompany the convoy until the completion of the operation in order to protect it from seizure by armed actors in Gaza.”  This “was not coordinated with the IDF authorities.”  The IDF had also “attempted to contact WCK representatives in order to verify their assessment that the people in the vehicles were indeed not members of WCK.”  These efforts – so it is claimed – were made during the half-hour period that the vehicles were being tracked.  (The assumption had already been made that they were Hamas operatives or workers in league with them.)  The someone sickening insinuation here is that these humanitarians brought it upon themselves.

Much the same view was expressed by the chief commander who ordered the strike, Colonel Nochi Mendel.  He has faced no legal proceedings, merely administrative action in the form of dismissal from his role as chief of staff of the Nahal infantry brigade.  Mendel had been remiss on the IDF’s rules of engagement and standard operating procedures.

In an interview with the Australian Broadcasting Corporation conducted in October 2025, Mendel had not favoured killing the WCK employees but was “not sorry” for what happened.  Echoing the eventual findings of the investigation, the Colonel blamed “an intermingling between the WCK and Hamas operatives” that took place in an environment of evolving complexity.  The suggestiveness, and the euphemisms, are all standard: that WCK had also made mistakes; that it was not “really a neutral organisation.  Not really an organisation you can say is innocent and completely clean.”  This lack of political sanitation was evidenced by “ties to Hamas.”

The apologia is accordingly built up and inflated: operational fuzziness, the expediency that a conflict situation demands.  No mention of the protocols governing such humanitarian convoys seemed to warrant discussion.  Instead, Mendel could see, in a video feed, “armed terrorists getting out and firing from the trucks.”  After the convoy arrived at a warehouse at Deir al Balah to unload the aid, “We see them all mixed together – both the WCK guys and the Hamas terrorists with weapons.”  He cites a claim to being noble: that he could have ordered the attack there and then but preferred to wait “so as not to harm the WCK.”  That turned out to be a cautionary note with little effect.

Mendel then claims that the IDF did contact the WCK – but not those in the convoy.  A WCK representative from Europe was reached.  The answer came: “there aren’t supposed to be armed guards.”  The WCK personnel, after leaving the warehouse, then deviated from a coordinated prearranged route – so says Mendel.  This aided the decision to strike, but an investigation into the events by Australian Air Chief Marshal Mark Binskin suggests that the decision had already been reached by that point.  It came as no surprise that WCK, in a statement on Mendel’s ruminations, regarded them as “slanderous” and lacking “credibility”.

The decision not to initiate criminal proceedings, or to conduct a truly independent inquiry, baffled the governments whose nationals had died in the attack.  The Israeli ambassadors of several countries were called in to give answers.  A joint statement by the foreign ministries of Australia, Canada and the United Kingdom called the decision to close the case “shameful”.  The Polish foreign minister Radosław Sikorski was almost livid.  “Partnership requires respect,” he stated.  “The humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza, as well as the failure of accountability for IDF’s excessive use of force are undermining public support in even pro-Israel nations.”

The goal of these operations, irrespective of the deaths they cause, is ultimately captured in chilling words by Mendel. There was no room to feel remorse here.  The situation was “very complex”.  Besides, the IDF had gone into Gaza “to win, to eradicate this evil from the whole world, not just for ourselves.”  They were doing it for us.  How easily does the righteous rhetoric of civilization justify the unspeakable.

Iran Reverses the Asymmetry by Vijay Prashad

 On 2 September, fragments from a US missile tore through the roof of a wedding celebration in Kuhestak, in Iran’s southern county of Sirik. Four people were killed, including a child, and sixty-eight were wounded. The United States has made a custom of bombing weddings – in Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen, and now Iran. When US Vice-President J. D. Vance was asked about the dead, he shrugged: ‘Things happen’. The sentence should be entered into the record of this war. Imperialism turns other people’s catastrophes into the passive voice.

The attack on the wedding was part of a new round of US strikes along Iran’s southern coast and around the Strait of Hormuz. Washington said that it had targeted missile and mine-laying capabilities. Tehran replied with missiles and drones against US facilities in Jordan, Bahrain, Kuwait, Iraq, and the United Arab Emirates. This was not a ceasefire marred by occasional violations, as much of the North Atlantic press insists on calling it. For six months, the conflict has followed a recognisable cycle: the United States attacks, Iran retaliates, there is a pause and some indirect diplomacy, both sides prepare again, then Washington attacks once more. A pause between blows is not peace.

The Trump administration continues to claim that Iran’s navy, missile forces, and military infrastructure have been destroyed. Yet the evidence of Iran’s repeated retaliation refutes this boast. Iran’s systems have certainly been damaged by ferocious bombardment, but damaged is not disarmed. On 4 September, Iranian army spokesperson Brigadier-General Mohammad Akraminia told IRNA that the first Iranian missiles and drones had been launched within fifteen minutes of the US attack. He said that the army struck four US bases in three countries: two in the UAE, Sheikh Isa Air Base in Bahrain, and a base in Kuwait. In separate communiqués, Iran said it hit satellite communications, equipment stores, and aircraft hangars at Ahmad al-Jaber Air Base in Kuwait, as well as troops and radar systems at Al Minhad in the UAE. The activation of air defences and acknowledgements by regional governments of these strikes establish the central fact: Iran retains both the capacity and the will to reach the US base structure.

This is the war’s most important development. The United States built its power in West Asia on an asymmetry. It could bomb a country from protected airfields and command centres scattered across the region, while the attacked country was unable, or unwilling, to touch those bases. Iraq fired Scud missiles towards Israel in 1991 but did not systematically attack the vast US military architecture in the Gulf. Baghdad feared that striking US bases would bring down even greater destruction. Greater destruction came anyway. Iran studied that lesson.

Iran has now begun to reverse the asymmetry. The expensive network of bases designed to project US power has become a collection of targets. Al Udeid in Qatar, the headquarters of US air operations across the region; the Fifth Fleet facilities in Bahrain; air bases and logistical hubs in Kuwait and the UAE; Camp Titin in Jordan; and installations in Iraq and Syria can no longer be treated as a secure rear. An Arabic-language assessment published after the latest attacks described this precisely: bases in Kuwait and the UAE have become front-line positions, while combined waves of decoy drones, ballistic missiles, and cruise missiles seek to saturate Patriot and THAAD defences and then strike command, radar, communications, and logistical systems. The technique matters because an interceptor costing millions of dollars can be drawn towards a drone costing a tiny fraction of that sum.

The vulnerability is political as well as military. Every US facility sits on another country’s territory. Governments in the Gulf must ask whether Washington’s military presence is a shield or a lightning rod. Iran need not destroy every base, only demonstrate that the bases impose danger on the states that host them. Gulf governments might then restrict the use of their territory for US attacks, pushing US operations towards distant facilities such as Diego Garcia, the UK’s base in Cyprus, and to US aircraft carriers (increasingly vulnerable themselves to long-term deployment fatigue).

Iran’s Escalation Ladder

Iran, moreover, has not climbed far up its escalation ladder. It could increase the volume of its launches, widen its targets to logistical hubs, ports, surveillance systems, and fuel depots, or encourage allied forces in Iraq, Lebanon, and Yemen to enter the conflict fully. It could further obstruct the Red Sea or close the Strait of Hormuz. Any step would deepen the economic crisis produced by the war. This is something that is not wanted by Trump, who faces mid-term elections in November.

Iraq is an especially important hinge. Arabic-language reports describe the government’s 30 September deadline to bring all weapons under state control and the refusal of several armed factions to disarm while US and Turkish troops remain in the country. The factions’ demands are not marginal: they place the continued US military presence at the centre of the dispute. An attempt to coerce these groups into disarmament could produce an internal Iraqi crisis. Failure to disarm them leaves tens of thousands of fighters, including units with missiles and drones, as a latent front against US bases. Washington cannot assume that the geography of the conflict will remain wherever it wishes to draw the line.

Then there is the highest rung: the nuclear question. The last verified figure from the International Atomic Energy Agency was that Iran holds 440.9 kilograms of uranium enriched to 60 per cent, recorded before inspections were disrupted by attacks on Iranian facilities. Nobody outside Iran now knows with confidence where all that material is, what condition it is in, or whether enrichment has advanced. Tehran has not declared that it will produce a weapon. But in August, Ebrahim Rezaei of the Iranian parliament’s National Security and Foreign Policy Committee argued that withdrawal from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty would be the best response to Trump’s intensified economic war. A withdrawal proposal has already circulated in parliament.

This uncertainty is itself a form of deterrence. US planners contemplating a nuclear or overwhelmingly destructive first strike cannot be certain that Iran has no small weapon or capacity to assemble one. Iran may decide to enrich above 90 per cent, test a device, and demand that attacks cease, the path taken by the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea after watching Iraq and Libya. That decision would carry immense dangers and has not been taken. But Washington’s war is making imaginable what decades of US policy was meant to prevent.

Iran’s advantage does not lie in possessing greater explosive power. The United States retains the ability to inflict appalling destruction. Iran’s advantage lies in its capacity to impose costs, disperse its forces, keep Washington guessing, and endure blows without surrendering its sovereignty. The US military, meanwhile, is consuming scarce interceptors and long-range munitions while arming Israel and Ukraine, defending installations spread across an enormous arc, and facing an electorate that does not want body bags or another endless war. Iran has converted the US’s geographical reach from an advantage into an exposure.

This does not mean that Iran has won, nor that escalation is safe. A wounded empire is exceptionally dangerous. Trump wants an Iranian surrender that he can display before the US midterm elections, but coercion has not delivered it. The White House has force without a sequenced political strategy: it can strike harder, but each blow opens additional Iranian options. Tehran, by contrast, can move step by step while presenting each action as retaliation. Iran has informed the United Nations that the United States began the attacks and that its own operations are reciprocal acts of self-defence. The civilians dead at the wedding make Washington’s moral position more threadbare still.

The road out is not mysterious. It would require the United States to stop attacking Iran, end its blockade and coercive sanctions, and return to negotiations based on the June memorandum rather than seek capitulation. It would also depend upon regional states declining the use of their territory for further attacks. A credible diplomatic process would be strengthened by a United Nations investigation into the bombing of the wedding and other attacks on civilians. Otherwise, the institution, which is seeking a new Secretary General, risks becoming an accountant who arrives only after the building has burned down.

Trump is caught between an opponent that will not surrender and an election clock that will not stop. He may yet order another spectacular strike in the hope that violence can manufacture victory. But Iran has shown that US bases are not sanctuaries, that US weapons are not inexhaustible, and that US escalation does not command the final move. The old asymmetry has been reversed. Washington can still destroy. It can no longer dictate.