THE BRIEFING 

Here’s what’s happening in geopolitics today.

From South Asia to the Middle East and Eastern Europe, today’s headlines span elections, airstrikes, prisoner swaps and rising regional tensions.

Nepal closes polls in its first election since last year’s uprising, Israel pounds Hezbollah targets in Beirut, Russia and Ukraine conduct one of their largest POW exchanges, Kosovo heads toward yet another election, and Azerbaijan pulls diplomats from Iran after a suspected drone strike.

In today’s deep dive, we cover some of the insights gained in the last seven days regarding the largest conflict in the region since 2003.

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This weeks topics:
Geopolitical shift: Leaders increasingly suggest the post–Cold War order is fading, with Trump’s foreign policy reflecting a move toward a more unstable and competitive era.
Conflict reality: The U.S.–Israel war with Iran is becoming more complex than expected, with no rapid collapse of the Iranian system despite the scale of strikes.
Changing battlefield: Ballistic missile barrages have declined, while Shahed drone attacks have expanded, exposing strain on air defences, jamming, and coordination systems.
Escalation risk: Kurdish militant activity in western Iran raises fears of a proxy ground war, with the possibility of troops on the ground not fully ruled out.

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THE LAST 24 HOURS IN GEOPOLITICS 

1. Polls close in Nepal’s first election since deadly uprising forced out government
Polls have closed in Nepal’s first nationwide election since a deadly youth-led uprising in 2025 forced the government from power and triggered early elections. Millions of voters cast ballots to elect the 275-member House of Representatives, with the vote widely seen as a test of whether traditional parties can withstand growing support for newer anti-establishment movements. Vote counting has now begun across the country, with final results expected in the coming days.
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2. Israel launches huge strikes against South Beirut
Israel launched large-scale airstrikes on the southern suburbs of Beirut, targeting areas the Israeli military says are used by Hezbollah for command centres, weapons storage, and other military infrastructure. The strikes followed evacuation warnings issued to residents in the Dahiyeh district, prompting widespread panic and mass displacement as civilians fled the area ahead of the attacks.
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3. Russia and Ukraine release hundreds of POWs with US and UAE mediation
Russia and Ukraine have released hundreds of prisoners of war in a large exchange mediated by the United States and the United Arab Emirates, one of the biggest swaps in recent months. The deal unfolded over two days, with 200 prisoners from each side exchanged first, followed by another 300-for-300 swap, bringing the total to roughly 500 soldiers returned by each country. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy confirmed the exchange, saying the returns were part of ongoing efforts to bring captured personnel home amid the continuing war.
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4. Kosovo President dissolves Parliament, calls for early elections
Kosovo’s President Vjosa Osmani has dissolved the country’s parliament and called early elections after lawmakers failed to elect a new head of state within the constitutional deadline. The political impasse emerged after the ruling party led by Prime Minister Albin Kurti was unable to secure the required quorum or opposition backing for its presidential candidate in the 120-seat assembly. The move sends Kosovo to another snap election as the Balkan state grapples with ongoing political deadlock.
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5. Azerbaikan says it is evacuating its diplomates from Iran for their own safety
Azerbaijan said it is evacuating staff from its embassy in Tehran and its consulate in Tabriz, citing safety concerns following a suspected Iranian drone attack on the Azerbaijani exclave of Nakhchivan. The incident, which reportedly damaged infrastructure at Nakhchivan International Airport and injured several people, has sharply escalated tensions between the two neighbours. Baku has condemned the strike as a violation of its sovereignty and warned that it may take further diplomatic or military measures in response.
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IRAN-USA CONFLICT DAY 7

We are one week into the conflict and there’s a lot to be said. I’ll try not to regurgitate and repeat the same information I’ve been saying over the last few days. Instead, I’ll offer some of my own personal comments about where this is going.

The endgame here is regime change. That is the reality of it. And historically, regime change has never been simple or worked well in the long run. But for Israel, this is a primary goal. In what can be described as their last direct regional rival, anything less than regime change will likely not achieve their strategic objectives. The U.S. has pretty much admitted that its casus belli in this conflict was essentially: “Israel is going to attack anyway, so we might as well join in since our bases would be targeted even if we didn’t attack.”

Operationally, Iran seems to have been degraded significantly — something I had expected given the sheer scale of the buildup for this operation. The question now is how much of the slowdown we are seeing is Iran deliberately reducing its tempo, and how much is the result of actual damage inflicted — or a combination of both.

What I would say to that is this: if the drone strikes had not seen such a sharp drop, we could lean toward the idea of a shift in Iranian tactics. But the large drop in drone numbers suggests Israeli–U.S. air power is simply overwhelming at the moment. Overall, we have seen more than 1000 targets hit with over 3,000 munitions — unprecedented in modern times.

So why the sad faces all of a sudden?

Well, the ironic part is that they are nowhere closer to regime change than they were before the attacks began. And this is the ultimate concern inside the administration. There appears to have been very naively optimistic thinking in the Situation Room that a large-scale bombing campaign would force the Iranian population to revolt, or trigger some kind of internal coup — something Trump continues to hint at publicly.

So from the administration’s perspective, the question becomes: at what point does a continuous bombing campaign become more trouble than it’s worth?

The war is largely unpopular in the United States and the administration knows this. The President knows this.

One factor is the cost. We’re looking at billions of dollars — potentially every single day. Another factor is the long-term sustainability of the campaign. The United States does not currently have the industrial capacity to rapidly replenish some of these critical munitions in the near term — meaning it could take several years to rebuild stocks.

And with no regime change on the horizon, forcing a kind of Balkanisation of Iran through ethnic fragmentation appears to be the strategic pivot the administration may be considering. But this brings its own set of problems: will it actually work? Will it simply lead to greater instability? More violence, more suffering? And perhaps most importantly for Washington — will American voters tolerate funding a potentially long and expensive conflict?

And at this point we can clearly see the Iranian strategy taking shape: create as much chaos as possible and drag this conflict out indefinitely in something resembling a quasi–regional guerrilla war (using missiles, drones, proxy forces, economic disruption) and put pressure on regional energy flows to stretch the coalition’s patience and resources over time.

This weekend we will discuss Iran's ground forces.

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TODAY IN HISTORY

(March 6, 1869): Dmitri Mendeleev's periodic table is first presented

On this day in 1869, Dmitri Mendeleev's paper, “The Dependence Between the Properties of the Atomic Weights of the Elements” was presented to the Russian Chemical Society. It was the first to show a periodic table organized horizontally and vertically by element property. Sixty elements were known at the time, but they had not been organized successfully. Mendeleev noticed periodic patterns and left gaps for elements that had not yet been discovered. Although his table did not initially receive widespread attention, the discovery of predicted elements gallium (1875), scandium (1879), and germanium (1886) brought his periodic table widespread acceptance.