Two wrongs don't make a right in the Iran war & Anthropic and the Pentagon

Following the United States and Israel’s strikes against Iran last weekend, PWH Non-Resident Senior Advisor Hussein “Huss” Banai wrote a piece for The Globe and Mail discussing what led to the strikes.

“What ultimately produced this war was not the Islamic Republic’s cruelty but the Trump administration’s inability to decide what it actually wanted,” writes Banai. “Containment treats a hostile government as a permanent feature of the landscape and works to modify its behavior through pressure and negotiation. Regime change treats every negotiation as a performance and every concession as a lifeline to a system that deserves to fall.”

Last week, PWH Faculty Director Michael C. Horowitz spoke to PBS News Hour’s William Brangham on the tensions between the AI company Anthropic and the Pentagon, following the Pentagon’s labeling Anthropic a supply chain risk.

“This was a theoretical dispute about future possibilities that between Anthropic and the Pentagon that has now really escalated. The president’s order, in combination with the order from Secretary Hegseth, could not just be devastating to the Pentagon’s ability to use Anthropic’s technology, but could be devastating to Anthropic’s core business, depending on how it’s interpreted by the markets and whether Anthropic is able to get stay of the supply chain designation,” said Horowitz.