“Republicans are considering reductions in federal health spending to help pay for a budget bill containing as much as $200 billion to fund the Iran war and immigration enforcement,” Axios reports.

“New efforts to rein in health programs are sure to be controversial and open the GOP up to election-year attacks that they’re cutting health care to pay for an unpopular war.”

Robert Kagan: “Whenever and however America’s war with Iran ends, it has both exposed and exacerbated the dangers of our new, fractured, multipolar reality—driving deeper wedges between the United States and former friends and allies; strengthening the hands of the expansionist great powers, Russia and China; accelerating global political and economic chaos; and leaving the United States weaker and more isolated than at any time since the 1930s.”

“Even success against Iran will be hollow if it hastens the collapse of the alliance system that for eight decades has been the true source of America’s power, influence, and security.”

Spain closed its airspace to American flights involved in its military operation in Iran, expanding an effort to distance itself from the conflict, Bloomberg reports.

Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson Esmaeil Baghaei said Monday that the U.S.’s 15-point list for halting the conflict contains “largely excessive, unrealistic, and unreasonable demands,” contradicting U.S. President Trump’s earlier claims that Iran had agreed to “most of” of the requests on the list, CNN reports.

Washington Post: “Allies and partners of the United States in Asia are steeling themselves for what they see as the nightmare scenario of a long American war in the Middle East that would distract from their own security concerns about China. From Tokyo to Manila to Taipei to Seoul, officials say they have watched with dread over the last month as the U.S. escalated its conflict against Iran.”

“Beyond the spiking oil prices and natural gas shortages, which are already inflicting economic damage, the war is drawing military assets and tactical focus away from the Indo-Pacific and the challenge of China’s expanding ambitions in the region.”

Bloomberg: “The biggest oil supply shock in history has reached the one-month mark. Prices have surged, growth forecasts are being cut worldwide, and shortages are emerging across Asia, from Thailand to Pakistan.”

“But the energy industry is warning that the crisis is only beginning.”

“In conversations with more than three dozen oil and gas traders, executives, brokers, shippers and advisers over the last week, one message was repeated over and over: The world still hasn’t grasped the severity of the situation.”

Financial Times: “Over four decades, Iran has built what it calls a ‘resistance economy,’ designed to withstand conflict, sanctions and hostility with nations near and far.”

“The Islamic republic manufactures products it struggles to import, including pharmaceuticals, car parts and white goods. Its several hundred power plants are dispersed around the country, a lesson learned after the 1980s Iran-Iraq war in part to make it more challenging to destroy the network. And it uses barter to get around sanctions, exporting oil in exchange for food and machinery. This model, which has helped the regime survive even if it has presided over a deepening economic malaise, is now being put to the ultimate test.”

Playbook: “Trump’s private conversations and public statements reveal a president taking a highly unusual twin-track approach to war — pursuing both a rapid exit from a conflict that he knows is hurting his supporters and damaging his party’s prospects at the ballot box, while at the same time mulling a dramatic escalation that would raise the stakes enormously while potentially extending the conflict for weeks to come.”

“One of these wildly diverging outcomes will set the course for the midterms in November, and likely the rest of Trump’s presidency. And it’s far from clear which way he’ll go.”

“Iran’s sprawling security apparatus isn’t solely held together by ideology. It is underpinned by a system of economic incentives that make the regime’s collapse a direct threat to the livelihood of its acolytes,” the Wall Street Journal reports.

“Since its founding, the Islamic Republic has built a tentacled ecosystem that controls more than half of the economy and acts as a powerful protection policy for the regime. It rewards loyalists with cash and careers and other opportunities in exchange for crushing dissent and staying true to the regime, say academics and analysts who study the Iranian regime.”

“The depth of the social and economic contract is helping the regime maintain cohesion despite the weekslong Israeli and American air campaign eroding its leadership and infrastructure. Only 20% of Iranians support the regime, recent polls show, but they constitute a more cohesive block than the opposition, binding the ruling Shia clerics, paramilitary forces and civilians through economic interests.”