2. U.S. Security Partnerships Can Make Arab States Targets

Yom highlighted a paradox shaping the strategic environment of Arab states: the closer their security ties with the United States, the more vulnerable they may become in a regional confrontation.

“For the most part,” Yom explained, “the intensity of Iranian counterstrikes and retaliation on Arab states covaries with the degree of their relationship with the United States.”

States hosting American military bases or deeply integrated into U.S. security strategy are more likely to find themselves on the frontlines of Iranian retaliation.

“The more of a client state they are, the more troops they host, the deeper their foreign policies are tied to the demands of American grand strategy — then the more likely they are going to be struck.”

This dynamic creates a fundamental strategic dilemma.

For decades, small and medium-sized states in the region have relied on alliances with Washington to enhance their security. The current conflict illustrates how those same alliances can also increase their exposure to regional escalation.

3. Arab Governments Are Trying to Avoid Being Seen as Participants in the War

Arab governments today face a difficult balancing act: responding to Iranian attacks while avoiding the perception that they are fighting alongside the United States and Israel. Many Arab governments must navigate public opinion that is deeply skeptical of Israel and wary of Western military intervention in the region.

As Sallam put it, these governments are trying to avoid creating “the impression that they are fighting alongside the United States and Israel in this war.”

The result is a diplomatic tightrope: condemning attacks on their territory without being drawn into the broader conflict.

4. A Regional War Threatens the Gulf’s Economic Transformation Projects

A fourth major takeaway concerns the economic stakes of regional stability.

Blaydes emphasized that wars can have far-reaching political economy consequences. Major conflicts reshape investment patterns, redirect state resources toward security priorities, and increase global perceptions of risk.

When governments must divert resources toward defense spending and crisis management, economic diversification plans can quickly lose momentum.

For Gulf regimes that have tied their political projects to visions of economic modernization, prolonged regional instability therefore represents a serious political challenge.

“Suddenly, when you have a conflict that disrupts the flow of investments, tourism, and even trading routes in places like the Strait of Hormuz or the Red Sea,” Sallam observed, “this shakes the foundations of these projects.”

5. The War Is Occurring Amid Deep Divisions Among Regional Powers

The discussion highlighted that the war with Iran is unfolding against the backdrop of a significant regional rift.

According to Sallam, one emerging divide involves different visions for managing instability in fragile states. Some regional actors — including the UAE and Israel — have tacitly or directly promoted fragmentation of political authority in places like Sudan, Yemen, and Gaza.

Others, including Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Turkey, have tended to favor more traditional models of centralized authoritarian stability.

These competing strategic preferences have already clashed in multiple regional conflicts, most recently in Sudan and Yemen.

Thus, Iran’s potential neutralization as a regional power player as a result of the war, Sallam noted, will not necessarily result in regional stability. It will simply intensify these rivalries among the remaining powers.

6. War Strengthens Authoritarian Politics and Weakens the Prospect for Reform and Development

The panel highlighted the negative ramifications of regional conflict for reform and development.

“The constant violence is not productive for the promotion of democracy, development, or the rule of law,” Blaydes noted. “Having a constant stream of weapons, conflict, violence, post-conflict reconciliation, [and] regional rivalries…undermines all three.”

“Anytime a regional conflict breaks out,” Yom argued, “it’s always bad for democratic struggle on the home front.”

The war, according to Sallam, could result in outcomes that would be “catastrophic not only for the people and society of Iran, but also the people and societies of the region at large.”

A full recording of the March 3 panel can be viewed below:

Iran’s Revolution and Economy Are Intertwined

Taking a broad view of Iran’s revolution, Abbas Milani, the Hamid and Christina Moghadam Director of Iranian Studies, says that understanding the country’s future requires understanding its past.

“The 1979 Iranian revolution was no revolution at all. It was a cunning bait-and-switch game cleverly played by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, who put himself at the head of the movement,” Milani writes in the New York Times.

For decades, this regime, first led by Khomeini and until recently his successor, Khamenei, has successfully kept its population under repressive control through a combination of fear, violence, and brutality, says Milani. But that stronghold has shown cracks, and fear of the regime had begun waning prior to the U.S.-Israel attacks. Coupled with frustrations with a failing economy, skyrocketing inflation, and plummeting currency, Milani sees opportunity for real change within Iran.

“The economy is a clear source of constant threat to the regime, and the new secular women and men of Iran are unwilling to accept anything less than what they were initially promised before being deceived nearly half a century ago. The machinery of the regime may survive today. But the counterrevolution of yesteryear is begetting the revolution of tomorrow.”
 

America’s Firepower Is Superior, but Not Infinite

Speaking at a panel discussion hosted by the Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC), FSI Director Colin Kahl, a former under secretary of defense for policy at the U.S. Department of Defense, acknowledged the magnitude and deft execution of the unfolding military operation.

“The U.S. and Israeli militaries are doing things that no militaries in the history of the world have been capable of doing. From a kind of tactical and operational sense, it is extraordinarily impressive,” he said.

But Kahl also warns that an extended military campaign could spell trouble for the United States both in the current conflict and for future readiness.

“Iran has what is basically an inexhaustible supply of short-range, one-way attack drones that only cost about $35,000 apiece. We are shooting them down with $2 million missiles. That is an exchange rate Iran will take any day of the week.”

China and Russia are also watching this conflict and America’s artillery usage, says Kahl:

“We are expending a lot of long range precision munitions and a lot of air interceptors. And a lot of these weapons are exactly the systems you need for a contingency in North Korea, across the Taiwan Strait, or in the Baltics,” he says. “If you're in Moscow and Beijing, you’re counting those, and you know that for the next two or three years, the United States' cupboard is going to be bare and a more confrontational posture will not be viable.”

U.S.-Israel Interests are Aligned but Not Identical

Unlike in previous conflicts when the U.S. was joined in combat with NATO allies or other partners, the strikes on Iran were conducted in tandem with only one other nation, Israel.

Amichai Magen, the director of the Jan Koum Israel Studies Program, believes some of the impetus for the strikes is to send a message to anti-American and anti-Israel actors.

“If you can take out Maduro or undermine the regime in Iran, you are signaling to Russia and China that America is repositioning and re-establishing deterrence against its peer competitors,” Magen told NBC Bay Area.

Or Rabinowitz, a visiting scholar of Israel studies, also points to Iran’s insistence in recent negotiations on keeping its ability to produce advanced centrifuges as being particularly significant in the decision to execute military action.

But there is the possibility of divergence in the United States and Israel’s overarching goals as well, Rabinowitz says, especially when it comes to questions of nuclear capabilities. 

“Take Qatar as an example,” she told the CISAC panel. “Qatar is an actor that the Trump administration is very at home with, even though they are an anti-Israel actor. Something similar could emerge in Iran that feels malleable enough for the U.S. to work with on the nuclear issue, but they don’t forgo their ideology, their anti-Israel rhetoric, or their support for destabilizing Israeli-Arab normalization. The U.S. may choose to live with that even if Israel isn’t happy about it. That’s where you’ll see divergence.”

China Is Likely to Sit This One Out

When it comes to Iran’s partnerships and allies, experts believe Tehran is unlikely to see much help from Moscow or Beijing. Writing for Foreign Affairs, Michael McFaul and Abbas Milani track how Russia’s focus on Ukraine has diverted its ability to engage with players in the Middle East, citing its meager response to the fall of Bashar al-Assad’s regime in Syria and limited engagement with Iran in the aftermath of the airstrikes in June 2025 targeting nuclear facilities.

Lisa Blaydes, an FSI senior fellow, thinks China—Iran’s major trading partner—will take a similar backseat approach to the current conflict. 

“We think that China might have some leverage over Iran. But it's not clear how much will there is in China to get involved in this,” she explained at an event hosted by the The Program on Arab Reform and Development. “We know one of the only planes to land in Tehran recently was a Chinese plane that was bringing weapons to support the Iranian regime. Will this continue? Is it a one-off? Is it a pattern? I don't think we know yet.”

While a majority of Iran’s oil does end up in Chinese markets, China also has important economic and trade interests in the Gulf, says Blaydes, where all six Gulf Cooperation Council nations have been hit by retaliatory Iranian missile strikes.

“The Gulf is an important part of the Belt and Road Initiative. And there's a lot of money at stake. Disturbances in a place like the Strait of Hormuz would cause major disruptions to global supply chains. So I don't know if the Chinese want to weigh in strongly on either side.”
 

The Risk of Global Destabilization Is Real

The question on most people’s minds in regards to the war is, “What happens next?” Hesham Sallam, a senior research scholar at the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law, acknowledges the complexity and gravity of the situation.

“This is a very unpredictable situation. And it is concerning that multiple U.S. officials don’t seem to have a consistent answer about a situation that is so consequential and that puts so many people in harm's way,” says Sallam.

If not handled carefully, Sallam warns that the threat of escalation is very real. Faced with a potentially existential risk, leaders in what remains of the regime may seek broad global destabilization. 

“There’s a logic here for the regime that if you don’t exact more costs and prolong the conflict and make this as inconvenient as possible for everyone, Iran will not be dealt with on equal footing,” he says. “So they may be looking to exact huge costs not just on the U.S. and Israel and countries in the region, but to disrupt global energy markets and the flow of trade as a means of ensuring something like this never happens again.”
 

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For Oleksii Movchan, a member of the Verkhovna Rada (Ukraine’s Parliament) and deputy chair of the parliamentary committee on economic development, his focus is on expanding financing tools for reconstruction. As part of a project he began during his 2025 SU-DD fellowship, he is drafting legislation to reform municipal bond regulations, aimed at increasing the participation of local governments in securities and debt markets and attracting additional resources for rebuilding Ukraine. To accomplish this work, he has relied on the Problem-Solving Framework he learned at Stanford, and shares that his experience in the SU-DD program made him more confident in his values and encouraged him to “stand on [his] principles and values of integrity, openness, and respect to human rights and democracy.” By strengthening municipal access to capital, his work seeks to support infrastructure recovery while reinforcing transparent financial governance.

Maria Golub, a senior political and policy advisor working on EU and NATO integration, is developing a national Coalition for Recovery — an inclusive, cross-sectoral platform designed to unify Ukraine’s defense, reconstruction, and reform agendas. With Ukraine balancing the demands of war and reconstruction, Golub’s 2025 SU-DD project aims to ensure that recovery planning connects security, governance, and innovation rather than treating them as separate tracks. Currently in a pilot, her proposals have already informed the government's 2026 recovery and resilience planning process.

At the regional level, Mykhailo Pavliuk, vice-chairman of the Chernivtsi Oblast (state) legislature in Ukraine, is actively implementing reforms to advance self-government and deepen Ukraine’s decentralization process. His work, initiated during his time at Stanford in 2023, focuses on strengthening “consolidated, self-sufficient communities” by developing political, financial, infrastructure, and social strategies that can be carried out locally, including cross-border regional initiatives in Chernivtsi. He said the most important element is “supporting the potential of people at the local level through the activities of advisory bodies, consultations, and modeling of joint decisions,” bringing citizens closer to decision-making on community affairs. Pavliuk emphasized that decentralization has been critical to Ukraine’s resilience since 2022, while noting that “there would certainly be a greater outcome in peacetime,” without the constraints imposed by war.

In the media sector, Alyona Nevmerzhytska, CEO of the independent outlet hromadske, is actively implementing her 2025 SU-DD project to strengthen the organization’s long-term sustainability and resilience. Her work, she says, “addresses two interconnected challenges: financial vulnerability and the rapid emergence of AI in the media landscape.” By developing diversified revenue strategies and integrating responsible AI tools into newsroom workflows, she aims to “improve efficiency, counter disinformation, and expand audience reach.” Despite ongoing security risks, she shares that the newsroom has maintained consistent production, adapted its operations, and prioritized staff safety, demonstrating what she described as “strong institutional resilience.” During her time on campus, Nevmerzhytska met with Stanford journalism and technology experts, whose guidance enhanced her strategic thinking around AI integration and digital modernization, “providing practical insights and [the] confidence to adopt responsible AI tools for efficiency and multilingual production.” She reports that hromadske continues to serve as a platform for accountability and public debate, reinforcing its role within Ukraine’s civil society.

Iaroslav Liubchenko, currently CEO of Ukraine’s national electronic public procurement system Prozorro, focused his 2023 Stanford project on strengthening transparency, efficiency, and institutional integrity in Ukraine’s defense procurement architecture. Today, that vision has become central to his leadership agenda. Prozorro is advancing three core priorities: deepening European integration through the approximation of EU public procurement directives into national legislation — in cooperation with Member of Parliament Oleksii Movchan — and sharing Prozorro’s digital governance model with EU partners; scaling up defense procurement within the system, including drones, unmanned and robotic systems, electronic warfare capabilities, non-lethal equipment for military infrastructure, and strengthened cooperation with the Defence Procurement Agency; and developing the broader Prozorro ecosystem through new coalitions and markets, advanced digital instruments, and AI integration. Prozorro seeks to ensure that Ukraine’s defense and rebuilding efforts are supported by transparent, technology-driven, and institutionally resilient procurement systems — not only fully aligned with EU standards, but capable of serving as a model for public procurement reform across Europe.

Ukraine’s Path Forward

Together, the fellows describe a future shaped not only by physical rebuilding but by the strength of Ukraine’s institutions and civic life. When asked about the country’s priorities for the next several years, their responses aligned in three areas: securing victory and sustaining defense capacity, advancing EU integration, and rebuilding critical infrastructure. Each emphasized that reconstruction must be paired with governance reforms to ensure public trust and long-term resilience.

Amid the political, economic, and human toll of war, our fellows agreed that the “unbreakable spirit and will of Ukrainians” gives them hope. “I am inspired by the endurance of Ukrainian society,” said Nevmerzhytska. “Despite exhaustion and loss, people continue to volunteer, innovate, and support each other. That civic resilience gives me confidence that Ukraine’s democratic spirit remains strong.”

As we look to the beginning of the fifth year of Russia’s war, Ukraine’s future is still uncertain. But the projects these leaders developed during their time at Stanford have carried into their work in parliament, regional government, civil society, media, and the defense sector. What began as ideas for reform are now being tested and adapted under wartime conditions, as they work to keep institutions functioning and prepare for the country’s long-term recovery.

Introduction and Argument:

Many authoritarian countries hold elections where the incumbent might lose. The odds tend to be quite narrow, however, owing to the autocrat’s asymmetric control over economic resources, security forces, media, and so on. An important practical and theoretical question, then, is how the opposition can beat these narrow odds. 

Some scholars have argued that oppositions can defeat authoritarian incumbents by building broad, multiparty coalitions. Doing so should not only decrease the autocrat’s vote share but should also deter him from deploying state repression against the opposition’s supporters. Indeed, security forces will struggle or be hesitant to shoot at such large numbers of people, and doing so will likely attract international condemnation. All of this sounds intuitively plausible. 

In “When you come at the king,” Oren Samet shows how arguments for building big coalitions overlook a crucial possibility: If the opposition unites and performs well but still fails to defeat the autocrat, he may be “spooked” and react by doubling down on repression. This is because elections provide the government with information about its own and the opposition’s popularity. Too much opposition success further decreases the autocrat’s willingness to tolerate popular elections and freedoms. Therefore, the same strategy enabling oppositions to achieve a “stunning election” can — if the coalition fails to take power — lead to a “nearly stunning” election that further entrenches authoritarianism. Hence the paper’s title, a quote from The Wire’s Omar Little: when “you come at the king, you best not miss.” 

The paper provides both cross-national data and an in-depth case study of Cambodia to show how the logic of nearly stunning elections poses a serious dilemma for democracy promoters: When oppositions cannot defeat autocrats, then they must achieve a “sweet spot” of neither too many votes (which scares the incumbent into autocratizing) nor too few (which fails to threaten the incumbent and compel him to make democratic concessions). Yet deliberately planning to hit this sweet spot is simply not possible. Samet thus offers an important challenge to the claim that bigger is better in authoritarian elections.

Cross-National Findings:

Samet’s argument about the pitfalls of nearly stunning elections implies three hypotheses. First, and as previous scholarship suggests, coalitions should outperform individual opposition parties in authoritarian elections. Second, absent the incumbent’s defeat, autocratization is more likely as the opposition’s vote share increases. And third, absent the incumbent’s defeat, countries with high-performing oppositions should witness (a) an increase in state repression and (b) decreases in the quality of elections in the years following a nearly stunning election. Samet then analyzes all elections from 1990 to 2022 in cases where the same authoritarian leader or party had ruled for at least 10 years. This yields 286 elections: 58 (20%) featured coalitions, and 28 (10%) featured electoral turnovers. These numbers alone paint a bleak picture of the prospects for beating dictators. 

The statistical results broadly support Samet’s hypotheses. Coalitions do in fact perform better at the ballot box, winning a median vote share of 36% (compared to just 13% for individual parties). In addition, and consistent with the idea that hitting the “sweet spot” will encourage autocrats to make concessions, Samet finds a positive association between moderately strong opposition performance and democratic change. Importantly, however, levels of democracy decline sharply as the opposition vote share approaches 50%. Nearly stunning elections thus appear to provoke autocratization, both in the short- and medium-term. Finally, the relationship between nearly stunning elections and repression or electoral fraud is somewhat weaker. This may be because the autocrat has more than just these two tools at his disposal — he might limit the number of seats that can be contested in future elections, prevent the opposition from accessing state media, and so on.
 

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FIGURE 2: Opposition performance in authoritarian elections. Note: Density plots display the frequency of specific opposition (opp.) vote shares (left) and vote margins (right) broken down by coalition status.

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FIGURE 3: Opposition performance and electoral democracy change. Note: Displays elections that did not feature turnovers, plotted along two dimensions: opposition vote share and change in electoral democracy. ∙ (dot) denotes election with coalitions; × denotes election without. The gray lines plot LOESS regressions fit to the data, with gray shading indicating 95% confidence intervals.

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FIGURE 6: Predicted change in repression and electoral manipulation, with controls. Note: Displays predicted post-election changes in (1) V-Dem measure of electoral irregularities, comparing election at t with election at t + 1; (2) V-Dem measure of government intimidation of opposition, comparing election at t with election at t + 1; (3) Fariss (2014) physical integrity rights measure 3 years after election, using the lagged score as a baseline. Includes all elections that did not result in turnovers. Dotted lines indicate 95% confidence intervals.
 

The Cambodia Case:

Samet concludes by showing how his theoretical process — oppositions uniting, nearly winning an election, frightening the incumbent, then increasing authoritarianism — is borne out in Cambodia’s recent political history. Throughout the 2000s, Cambodia’s opposition was fragmented, in part due to deliberate actions by its authoritarian Prime Minister, Hun Sen. Ahead of the 2013 elections, in the face of mounting popular dissatisfaction with the government, the two largest opposition parties coalesced. Hun Sen was confident in his position, in part because Cambodia’s strongest opposition party had won just 22% of the vote in 2008. As such, he pardoned Sam Rainsy, one of the country’s most prominent opposition leaders, whom he invited to return from exile. 

The coalition did remarkably well in 2013, winning around 45% of the vote, but then alleged fraud and refused to take their seats in parliament. Opposition supporters then took to the streets in protest, where they were met with state violence. Yet Hun Sen made a number of concessions to successfully quell the protest crisis, including reforming the election commission.

By 2015, however, signs of autocratization became glaring. Opposition lawmakers were publicly beaten by the personal bodyguards of Hun Sen, who withdrew his prior pardon of Rainsy. Other opposition leaders faced politically motivated legal cases. Ahead of the 2018 elections, Hun Sen’s government hired an external survey firm, which found the opposition had become even more popular among Cambodians since 2013. Hun Sen’s fears were aggravated by a strong opposition performance in the 2017 local elections. 

Samet argues that this was the last straw: the government responded by promptly arresting and exiling opposition leaders and dissolving their coalition. All of this constituted the most dramatic instance of autocratization in Cambodia since the 1990s. Hun Sen’s allies then ran unopposed in the 2018 elections. By this time, the opposition was once again divided — particularly as regards how to face a government whose elections could barely be characterized as anything other than window-dressing. “When you come at the king” offers an important if distressing lesson for practitioners and scholars of democracy.

*Brief prepared by Adam Fefer