When diplomacy nears the threshold: What two wars in nine months reveal about how the Iran war will end

In February, Ali Larijani shuttled between Muscat and Doha as part of the diplomatic channel between Iran and the United States. On 18 March, Iran confirmed that he had been killed in an Israeli strike alongside his son and several aides. Between those two moments, the channel he had helped sustain was replaced by what officials in Washington and Tel Aviv have described as the most significant joint US-Israeli military operation ever conducted. His trajectory — from negotiating table to target — condenses the central problem of the Iran crisis: twice in nine months, war has arrived not after diplomacy failed, but while it was still producing enough movement to matter. That pattern does not explain everything. But it reveals […]