THE US-Iran war has started and much is being said written about it here in Pakistan.

There are two critical dimensions to the current geopolitical moment that Pakistan and the world is largely overlooking — and both converge on one figure: Donald Trump. The Domestic Angle: The first dimension is entirely domestic and it is not receiving the attention it deserves. There is a deliberate strategy at play aimed at the 2026 midterm elections. Trump is engineering conditions under which he could declare a national emergency and potentially postpone or disrupt the midterms.

The first attempt involved deploying armed forces into various US states. That effort has been stumped by the people and the courts. So now we appear to be moving to step two — creating a wartime environment on the global stage that would justify declaring a state of emergency at home. Beyond the emergency rationale, there is a well-established historical pattern in American politics: the country rarely removes a sitting wartime president. That political reality is not lost on this administration.

The International Angle: The second dimension is geopolitical and it is where things become far more complex and dangerous. With some regional actors, the calculus has been relatively straightforward — decapitate the leadership and the remainder either collapses or falls into line under pressure, as the US accomplished in Venezuela. But Iran is an entirely different matter.

Iran is not a fragile structure held together by a single leadership tier. It is a deep,........

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