A High-Stakes Geopolitical Start

In the two major conflicts shaping international affairs - Ukraine and Iran - a trend toward escalation now appears to be prevailing, contradicting, at least on the surface, the relatively positive signs that had marked the end of spring and the beginning of this summer.

The Stalemate in the Persian Gulf

It now seems like a distant memory when, at the G7 summit in Évian (June 16-17), the United States’ key allies heaped praise on Donald Trump for having brokered a truce with Iran after more than four months of conflict. On the 17th, during a bilateral dinner at Versailles, the U.S. president insisted on signing the agreement himself from the Hall of Mirrors, while the Iranian president signed it shortly after from Tehran.

This agreement was supposed to offer immediate benefits to both parties - the unfreezing of some of Iran’s assets abroad and the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz - and to open a two-month period to negotiate a comprehensive settlement. At the time, there were reasons to be skeptical about the agreement’s implementation: we ourselves, in an article for Expressions, outlined a few reasons why its viability seemed doubtful.

The skeptics were proven right even sooner than they had anticipated. Barely three weeks after the agreement was signed, nothing remained of it on the ground: traffic through the strait had once again become impossible, and gunfire between the warring parties could be heard again as early as July 8; on the 14th, the United States reimposed an embargo on the strait.

Starting in September, heavy strikes resumed on both sides, while Washington announced a new policy of economic strangulation against Iran.

In late August and early September, the situation was not looking good for Tehran: under U.S. protection, shipping traffic in the Gulf - fairly light, yet not nonexistent - had resumed; Iran could no longer export its oil; the intensifying economic pressure was having a major impact in a country where inflation is running rampant, economic activity has ground to a halt, and poverty is on the rise. However, the Iranians have just found a countermeasure: in a matter of days, their Houthi allies - duly supplied with weapons by Tehran - managed to seize control of the Bab el-Mandeb Strait on the Red Sea. In doing so, they are cutting off Saudi Arabia’s oil export route, which until now had allowed it to partially circumvent the blockade of the Strait of Hormuz.

Once again, the Americans did not see this coming - at least not the decision-makers in Washington; once again, they refused to come to the aid of their Saudi ally, despite two calls from MBS to President Trump. How did we get here, and what will happen next?

To the first of these two questions, a career diplomat would first respond that the June 17 agreement was particularly poorly drafted; it left too much room for divergent interpretations to hold up for very long: the Iranians did not receive the money they had expected; the two sides did not share the same interpretation of what the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz entailed; on the crucial issue of Lebanon, the tripartite negotiations between Lebanon, the United States, and Israel - along with the continued Israeli strikes against Hezbollah - very quickly rendered part of the agreement irrelevant from Tehran’s perspective; yet the Iranians attached great importance to this aspect of the agreement, since they had made their endorsement of it contingent on the provision stipulating that the ceasefire extended to Lebanon.

Let us also consider the psychology of the actors involved: the U.S. administration, rather than admitting that it had suffered a setback and that it was time to cut its losses, continued to display an out-of-season arrogance; and there is reason to fear that the hard-core nexus governing in Tehran - rooted in a viscerally anti-American tradition, as Farid Vahid has pointed out, and further emboldened by its success - might succumb to a form of hubris.

Where might a possible solution come from? Perhaps from the very gravity of the impasse and its considerable repercussions on the global economy. One can imagine that the Gulf states will renew their pressure on Washington to get the administration to restart genuine negotiations with Iran.

Furthermore, much may depend on Beijing’s attitude: the Chinese can only be pleased to see the United States mired in this Iranian adventure; but the time may be coming when the economic cost to them - if only because of the effect on the global economy and thus on their exports - should prompt them to also favor a resolution; Xi Jinping is not without influence over Tehran and is scheduled to meet with Donald Trump at the White House in late September.

While the scenario of a return to genuine negotiations may ultimately prevail, it remains likely that this will not happen before the midterm elections: despite their country’s exhaustion, the leaders in Tehran are highly likely to want to tip the scales as much as possible in favor of an electoral defeat for the Trump camp. Until then, they will be tempted to pursue a policy of making things as bad as possible.

Another terrible winter for Ukraine.

Here again, let’s go back to early summer: rumors were circulating in newsrooms and government offices alike that, since March-April, Ukraine had been tilting the balance of power in its favor: "Ukraine is having the upper hand," was the refrain at conferences at the time.

Indeed, Russian forces were not advancing on the front lines, despite enormous human losses (about 1,000 men per day); and above all, with or without the green light from its allies, Ukraine was beginning to deal increasingly severe blows to Russian rear areas, first by targeting energy facilities and weapons factories, then civilian targets such as the warehouses of Russia’s equivalent of Amazon.

Here, too, a "narrative" was circulating, according to which "this time, the entire Russian public is involved in the war," implying that this would complicate the Kremlin’s calculations; however, there is no evidence that extending the war into the daily lives of Russians is not having the opposite effect - that of hardening Russian public opinion’s hostility toward Ukraine.

At the same time, a fundamental vulnerability in Ukraine’s defense became glaringly apparent: its ability to intercept Russian missiles and drones was steadily declining, while the Russians, for their part, had focused their industrial efforts on producing missiles capable of striking Ukraine from behind. By spring, it was estimated that 60% of Ukraine’s energy infrastructure had been destroyed; throughout the summer, the Russians continued to intensify these types of attacks and expand them to include civilian targets - suggesting, of course, that this escalation in their attacks was a response to the escalation of deep-strike attacks by Ukraine.

However, even on this front, there were potentially positive signs in the air at the start of the summer: the United States and its allies are running out of interceptors to transfer to Ukraine; perhaps impressed by the Ukrainians’ achievements, President Donald Trump, at the NATO summit in Ankara on July 7 and 8, had pledged to provide Kyiv with the license for the interceptors launched by Patriot batteries. As is well known, Trump is not a man to keep his word when it comes to thwarting Vladimir Putin; he would soon backtrack on transferring the Patriot license to Kyiv. Ukraine’s European allies, however, meeting in Paris on July 13 and 14 as part of the coalition of the willing, promised additional military aid to Ukraine.

It is worth noting in passing that these promises were enough to prompt Russia to intensify its hybrid war against Europe; this war has seen a significant escalation, notably with the incident involving the drone packed with explosives discovered at the Leipzig airport. This time, German authorities were quick to identify the attack for what it was (contrary to the usual pattern whereby hybrid attacks generally remain unattributed); they took some countermeasures; and Europeans expressed their solidarity, notably declaring that this was no longer a hybrid war but an act of state-sponsored terrorism.

However, there is still no sign of a genuine European counter-hybrid warfare strategy against Russia. This is undoubtedly due to the usual pretext: not to fuel escalation by responding at the appropriate level.

This is despite a context in which other troubling signs are emerging: in the race for technological sophistication between Russia and Ukraine in the field of weaponry, Russia - which had previously lagged behind in the area of drones - has just scored a point with the deployment of a new type of drone, one that is harder to intercept than its predecessors; rumor has it a new wave of mobilisation might emerge in Russia; in the spring, whether rightly or wrongly, "signs of restlessness" were discernible on the Russian side, but in reality, the Kremlin’s tone at the start of this new school year has become as uncompromising as ever.

As these lines are being written, the Ukrainian rail network is under full-scale attack, including a train about to cross the Polish border.

What role is there for diplomacy in such a context? In an op-ed in the New York Times in early August, Tom Graham-an expert whose views are heeded in both Washington and Moscow-argued that we were witnessing the beginning of a new escalation in Ukraine; it was therefore essential to give negotiations another chance before it was too late.Perhaps responding to this argument, the Trump administration sent the CIA director, John Ratcliffe, to Moscow on August 25, followed by the two envoys, Witkoff and Kushner, in early September.

For the first time, the two special envoys then traveled to Kyiv, where they met with the national security advisors from Germany, the United Kingdom, and France. What we know about these contacts is that Vladimir Putin has not in any way changed his position on the territorial aspect of his demands, namely the annexation of the entire Donbas, including the areas still controlled by Ukraine. In subsequent public statements, while attending the Yalta European Strategy (YES) conference in Kyiv on September 11, Jared Kushner appeared to sympathize with this demand, considering that acceptance of Putin’s territorial claims was a prerequisite for resolving the war. This is obviously a disastrous signal, as are Trump’s statements on September 13, in which he called on Mr. Zelensky to stop striking Russian oil wells.

What role for the Europeans?

When it comes to Iran, the Europeans are relegated to the role of spectators, at least when it comes to peace and war. This does not mean they should remain inactive: the Gulf states, once again disappointed by the U.S. stance and concerned about Israel’s position, are in the process of rethinking their foreign relations toward greater diversification. It is up to Europeans to offer them assistance, economically and commercially, as well as in certain military niches. More generally, European capitals must remain vigilant regarding the inevitable realignment of power balances in the region.

On the European front, our governments are on the front lines. Moscow perceives Europe as the "strong link" in aid to Ukraine. Europeans - in practice, the E3 (Germany, the United Kingdom, and France) - should have, without any illusions of course, a concept for possible negotiations with Moscow, in the event that the Russians should change their position. But, even more urgently, Europeans must prepare for an intensification of Russian attacks; what has just happened in Leipzig could be a harbinger of such an aggression on a much larger scale, affecting several countries, and also involving information warfare, cyberattacks - in short, the full range of so-called hybrid attacks - possibly supplemented by the seizure of territory to be used as bargaining chips.

We have stated that there is no sign, either within NATO or the EU, of a European counterstrategy taking shape to address the risk of what might be called a "high-intensity hybrid war." Preparing intensely for this threat ought to be just as much of a priority for Europeans as the necessary rearmament underway.

Copyright Mikhail METZEL / POOL / AFP

Moscow, September 5, 2026. Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff standing opposite Vladimir Putin.