News about the Iran war has been coming thick and fast over the past two days, and most of it is not so good for the United States.
First, the Houthi militants, Iran's "good brothers," seized control of key positions along the Bab el-Mandeb Strait. That blocked the alternative oil route that had been standing in for the Strait of Hormuz and could push oil prices to $120 a barrel. Then AI giant Anthropic dropped a bombshell: the Houthis are using its AI models to accelerate the development of hypersonic missiles, putting US military bases in the region in grave danger. At this point, not only is a swift victory out of reach. Things are going from bad to worse, and everyone is just watching to see how this gets wrapped up.
It was right at this moment that The New York Times broke an exclusive. Vice President JD Vance, who has advocated de-escalation all along, has been bypassing Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. He has been calling US combatant commanders across the regions directly to gather intelligence and hear their "candid assessments," before taking his case to the President. Trump knows all about it. This looks very much like a sign that the White House is seeking an exit from the Iran war.
Vance goes around Hegseth, quizzing generals on the war.
Ever since the war began, these three men, Vance, Trump, and Hegseth, have held three distinct positions. Vance favors peace and has been pushing for talks to end the fighting. Trump has been erratic, acting on a whim and doubling back on himself.
Hegseth has remained hawkish throughout, vowing never to stop until Iran is destroyed. Today, with America stuck knee-deep in the quagmire, the "pro-peace camp" Vance represents is finally on the rise.
Top hawk Hegseth loses the White House power struggle.
Vance Phones the Generals Directly
According to several senior military officials who spoke to The New York Times, Vance has in recent months directly phoned a group of US commanders in the Middle East, Europe, and Asia.
He asked them a series of critical questions about the war: 1. combat objectives and tactics; 2. projections of US casualties; 3. how to respond to Iran's grip on the Strait of Hormuz; 4. how much punishment the Iranian government can withstand; and 5. the true state of US weapons stockpiles. He also asked whether diverting those weapons to the Middle East would erode America's deterrence against China, Russia, and North Korea.
On the munitions question, the paper reported the commanders all painted a grim picture. The most alarming concern is the rapidly dwindling stock of Patriot interceptor missiles. One theater command reportedly has only about 100 left. The war has also exhausted reserves of the Army Tactical Missile System (ATACMS), and stocks of precision-strike missiles are nearly depleted.
After receiving this "hard intel," Vance was said to be deeply worried about the overall strategic picture. He was particularly alarmed to learn just how resilient the Iranian government is, and how much pain it is willing to endure to survive. If Tehran resolves to fight on, US defensive weapons will simply be too scarce to cope. On this assessment, Vance fears America's odds of success will only shrink with time.
Nor did he stop at calling up the generals. He also obtained clearance from CIA Director John Ratcliffe to contact the agency's intelligence analysts directly. He asked them for deeper reporting, including material related to the intelligence briefings sent to the White House.
The main purpose of this unusual maneuver is clear. Vance wants fuller, more truthful assessments straight from the military's top brass, so he can form his own view of the Iran war and advise Trump accordingly. The aim is to offer "unbiased military options" that nudge the President toward ending the war sooner.
A Play for Power and 2028
Analysts say Vance is doing more than trying to shape Trump's decisions. It is also a move in the "White House power game," and part of his groundwork for the 2028 presidential race.
US media have revealed that in the run-up to the war and its early stages, operational planning was confined to a tiny circle: the defense secretary, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the head of Central Command.
Even then, Vance was already demanding access to more information so he could enter the core of military decision-making. By now bypassing Hegseth and going straight to the generals for information, he will only strengthen his position within that core.
Washington political circles all know that Vance and Hegseth have long been at odds. This is not merely a "doves versus hawks" dispute. It is also a bitter feud over personnel. Vance had intended to team up with his old friend at the Pentagon, Army Secretary Dan Driscoll, to jointly press Trump for sweeping Army reform.
But Hegseth struck first and forced Driscoll out, deepening the enmity between the two men. By going over his rival's head this time, dealing with the generals directly and then reporting to Trump himself, Vance will undercut his nemesis's influence over military decisions.
The reality is that Trump has lately grown increasingly suspicious of Hegseth exaggerating battlefield gains and inflating the war news. He is presumably more than happy to hear Vance's "objective assessments." So he is fully aware of what Vance has been up to.
Riding the Anti-War Wave
Vance stands a very good chance of running in the 2028 presidential election. He can certainly see the rising anti-war sentiment among the American public. He also knows that even his own MAGA base has no appetite for letting the Iran war drag on.
If he can broker a ceasefire while flying the "pro-peace" banner, it will pay enormous dividends in winning public support. And if the war can be brought to an early close, he will not have to carry this potentially "fatal" baggage into the election.
Whatever his motives, Vance's unusual moves look like a sign that the Iran war is heading toward its endgame. And that, after all, is what most people around the world are hoping for.
Lai Ting-yiu
What Say You?
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News broke in the small hours of Wednesday that former Chief Executive Tung Chee-hwa had passed away. Many friends in my chat groups shared their condolences. One message read: "Back in the day, he had a grand blueprint for Hong Kong's development. Sadly, the times did not favor him. Britain had planted many landmines, and people on the inside were pulling him back too. His lofty ambitions went unfulfilled. Such a pity." Someone promptly replied: "Mainly because of Anson Chan."
Look back at Mr. Tung's predicament in the early post-handover years, and that verdict holds up. Those dire straits were no accident. The last governor, Chris Patten, nicked name Fat Pang, had long since set a "Trojan horse" trap. The figure hidden inside that horse, bent on tying Mr. Tung's hands, was none other than the then Chief Secretary for Administration, Anson Chan. Fat Pang also went to great lengths to embolden anti-government forces. He conjured up turmoil to drag Mr. Tung back and stymie his governance. That was the seed of even greater unrest in the years to come.
Britain's "Trojan horse" Anson Chan tied Mr. Tung's hands.
Landmines Planted Before the Handover
When Mr. Tung was elected the first Chief Executive before the handover, he was brimming with ambition for governing Hong Kong. A friend who knew him well said he hoped to lead the city into a new era. He wanted to overhaul the entrenched mindset of "AO rule," the model of governance dominated by the administrative officer grade. Yet from the very outset, he ran into obstacle after obstacle. All of them were tied to the landmines Britain had planted, above all Fat Pang's "Trojan horse" ploy.
Those landmines were laid even before the Sino-British Joint Declaration was signed. In July 1984, the colonial government published its Green Paper on the further development of representative government in Hong Kong. A year later, it held the first indirect elections to the Legislative Council, all in the name of "returning power to the people." From then on, electoral politics flourished in Hong Kong. It spawned an increasingly powerful opposition that became a counterweight to the government. That was precisely the outcome the British had engineered from the start.
In the final years before the handover, the last governor, Chris Patten, was sent to Hong Kong to raise hell. He promptly started playing dirty.
Patten devised a system of universal suffrage in all but name and tore up the tracks of the political "through train" meant to carry the legislature across 1997. At the same time, he colluded with the opposition, including Next Media boss Jimmy Lai. Together they whipped up a wave of radicalism and erected barrier after barrier for the future SAR government.
Mr. Tung was, at heart, a businessman. He was untempered by the wiles of politics, and in the early days he did not grasp how treacherous the terrain was. He gave no thought to countering each hostile move as it came, and he failed to rein in the growth of radical politics. All he did was earnestly exhort the opposition not to go astray. Meeting the leading lights of the pro-democracy camp, he urged them to stop holding the June 4 candlelight vigils.
Tung also spoke pointedly to Martin Lee. He had lived in the United States for many years, he said, and some people there harbored ill intent, so they had to be careful. "Don't be so naive," he told them. But they could not have cared less. It shows that he had long seen the United States was secretly plotting to throw Hong Kong into chaos.
The First Detonation: 2003
Mr. Tung was an upright man. As one friend who knew him put it, he did not know how to fight dirty. He failed to strike hard in time to root out the agents of turmoil. By the middle and later years of his administration, the opposition and the radicals had grown ever stronger, battering his governance time and again.
When the then Financial Secretary, Antony Leung, downsize the civil service to bring down the fiscal deficit and shield the financial system from predatory speculators, massive street protests promptly erupted. Reform became an uphill battle.
The tide reached its crest over the Article 23 legislation. Demonstrations swelled ever larger, with rioting ready to erupt at a single spark. The pro-establishment Liberal Party, daunted by the situation, declared it would not back the bill. Caught between pressure from within and without, Mr. Tung had no choice but to withdraw it. The episode dealt him a crushing blow. Trace it to its roots, and the source of the calamity lies squarely with the landmines Britain had planted.
The 2003 Article 23 march: Britain's first landmine detonated.
The Rider Inside the Horse
The other half of Fat Pang's "Trojan horse" ploy was to plant people loyal to him in key posts in the governing team that would straddle the handover. Among them was the government's "No. 2 figure," Chief Secretary for Administration Anson Chan.
Soon after taking office, Fat Pang began picking his "champions" among the senior ranks. He set his sights on Anson Chan, elbowed aside Chinese officials more senior than her, and hoisted her into the seat of chief secretary, the colonial forerunner of today's chief secretary for administration. He also took care to install Donald Tsang as the first ethnic Chinese Financial Secretary.
The governing team of the early post-handover years was made up entirely of colonial-era AOs. They presided over a bureaucracy dominated by the AO grade. As the undisputed "big sister of the AOs," Chan effectively had the government under her thumb. Mr. Tung became a marshal without generals or soldiers at his command.
In these circumstances, Chan grew ever more assertive in decision-making, becoming the chief executive officer who held real power. Mr. Tung may have had a bellyful of grand designs, but not long after the handover, he began hitting walls.
Take long-term development planning. Keen to show he could get things done, Mr. Tung proposed setting up a strategic development commission and chairing it himself. But once the proposal landed on Mrs. Chan's desk, it died a silent death, shelved and left to gather dust. Such episodes were commonplace at the time.
Major policy changes were likewise dogged by Mrs. Chan's obstruction. On mother-tongue education in schools, she saw things differently from Mr. Tung. She also clashed repeatedly with Antony Leung, the Executive Council member then in charge of education reform.
The result: the policy was never fully implemented. What is more, she bristled at the very notion of "one country." She drew a clear line between Hong Kong and the mainland at every turn and repeatedly poured cold water on cross-border cooperation.
On political controversies, too, Mrs. Chan did not stand by Mr. Tung. Take the "Robert Chung affair". Within the government, she pressed hard to have Andrew Lo, the Tung aide embroiled in the affair, shown the door. Worse still, her confidants routinely leaked to friendly media, feeding them stories damaging to Mr. Tung.
Grandpa Finally Stepped In
Such protracted infighting within the government naturally took its toll on Mr. Tung's governance. Faced with this internal crisis, Beijing finally stepped in. When Chan went up to the capital to report on her duties in September 2000, the then Vice Premier Qian Qichen and the then Director of the Hong Kong and Macau Affairs Office, Liao Hui, received her separately. Their message was to support Mr. Tung. In other words, no more infighting.
Beijing's displeasure with Chan could not have been clearer. By early 2001, she knew the game was up. She finally resigned, leaving the government a year ahead of schedule.
Not long afterwards, Mr. Tung brought in Antony Leung as Financial Secretary. Senior financier Frederick Ma followed close behind, joining the government as Secretary for Financial Services and the Treasury. The AO stranglehold on the governing team began to be broken.
Fresh winds may have blown through the government. But the anti-government forces Britain had so painstakingly cultivated before the handover, and the radical tide they rode, were still very much in the ascendant. Battered by the storm of 2003, Mr. Tung finally stepped down in dejection just over a year later.
When Mr. Tung took office as Chief Executive, his heart was set on soaring ambitions. But he fell victim to the last governor Fat Pang's "Trojan horse" ploy. Forces inside and outside the government clung fast to his legs. In the end, his lofty aspirations went unfulfilled. A truly lamentable fate.
Lai Ting-yiu
