Just days after President Trump's Fourth of July weekend, Iran held a massive funeral for its slain leadership — and millions turned out. In this week's installment of our ongoing series on the war with Iran, Robert Pape, Professor at the University of Chicago and one of the leading scholars on coercion, airpower, and political violence, argues that the funeral marks a turning point that has nothing to do with capability and everything to do with will.
Pape lays out his case that four and a half months of decapitation strikes, blockade, and bombing have not broken Iranian public resolve — and why that matters for the ongoing negotiations set for July 11th. We cover Kuwait and Bahrain's complaint to the UN Security Council, why Iran is reportedly turning down financial offers from Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff, the risk of Washington falling into an "echo chamber" on Iran policy, and why Pape believes pressure could build toward further escalation as soon as August.
Pape publishes ongoing analysis of the conflict in his Substack, The Escalation Trap: https://escalationtrap.substack.com/
This is a weekly recurring conversation tracking the Iran war in real time. New episodes drop every week.
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