An awakening question: From Rousseau to Al-Husri

by Karam Nama

Abu Khaldun Sati’ al-Husri [Wikipedia]

On a summer day in 1749, Jean-Jacques Rousseau was walking through the streets of Paris when he stumbled upon a question posted by the Academy of Dijon: Has the progress of the sciences and arts contributed to the purification and elevation of morals? It was meant as an intellectual competition, a polite invitation to philosophers and writers. Yet for Rousseau, it was not an invitation at all—it was a jolt, a moment of existential interruption.

The Iraqi historian and educational reformer Sati’ al-Husri, in his 1951 book “Opinions and Discussions on Science, Morality, and Culture,” describes that moment as a spark that pierced Rousseau’s life. The question, he writes, struck Rousseau not as a scholarly prompt but as a slap that awakened his mind from its slumber. Revisiting al-Husri today is not merely an academic gesture; it is a reminder of how questions can reorder the world. And in a bitter contemporary twist, Iraq’s sectarian decay has tried to recast al-Husri through its own narrow instincts—reducing a man who devoted his life to the idea of a civic nation into raw material for identity conflicts.

This distortion itself is evidence of how modern platforms do more than transmit ideas; they reshape them according to the desires of fragmented communities, turning morality into a tool of struggle rather than a shared value.

Rousseau stood frozen in the street, sensing that the world celebrating the triumph of reason might in fact be drifting away from the human core. From that moment came his famous essay—an intellectual earthquake that unsettled Europe. He argued that scientific advancement does not necessarily elevate moral life, and that knowledge can inflate vanity more than virtue. As al-Husri notes, this was the birth of a new moral question: Can progress be a disguised form of decline?

Nearly three centuries later, the question returns to us transformed. It is no longer about the rise of sciences and arts in the eighteenth century, but about the unprecedented acceleration of technology, the ascent of artificial intelligence, and the spread of personal platforms that have turned every individual into a publisher, influencer, and narrative-maker. Like Rousseau, we find ourselves standing in the middle of the road, confronted with a question larger than our capacity for quick answers: Does technological progress elevate morality—or erode it?

Artificial intelligence is no longer a tool; it is a partner in thinking, a competitor in creativity, and a mediator in human relationships. To understand this shift, we must examine the nature of knowledge when it becomes effortless.

Today, knowledge is available without labour, creativity is reproducible at the click of a button, and opinion is manufactured by algorithms rather than lived experience. In this context, the warning of Harvard philosopher Michael Sandel becomes essential: the danger of technology, he argues, is that it “weakens the sense of moral deservingness,” because people no longer feel that what they produce is the result of effort or virtue, but of a system that works on their behalf.

To grasp how technology reshapes virtue itself, we need another lens—one that explains the moral consequences of speed. Here, the work of Edinburgh philosopher Shannon Vallor is indispensable. Modern technologies, she writes, “reshape human virtues by accelerating everything: judgment, anger, desire, and decision.” Speed is not a technical feature; it is a moral force that rewrites behaviour, turning reactions into decisions and decisions into impulses.

Personal platforms have created a new moral landscape—one in which virtue is measured by follower counts, honesty by virality, and wisdom by its ability to become shareable content. Social psychologist Jonathan Haidt captures this transformation succinctly: social media “turns morality into a public performance,” making people more invested in appearing moral than in being moral. Rousseau feared that virtue would become a social mask; today, it has become a digital one.

Artificial intelligence has no morality, but it has immense power to shape human morality. Technology simplifies life but complicates responsibility. AI produces knowledge but weakens human ownership of that knowledge. Platforms bring people closer but deepen moral fragmentation. As Oxford’s Nick Bostrom argues, AI “forces us to redefine morality—not because the machine is moral, but because humans increasingly rely on it to make moral decisions.”

And so we return to the question from Dijon, the one al-Husri revived in 1951 while trying to build an educated Iraq rather than the threadbare Iraq haunted by historical mythologies. But we return to it in a new form: Has the rise of technology and artificial intelligence refined our moral life? The answer is neither yes nor no. The answer is that morality has become more fragile, more in need of reconstruction. Technology is not an enemy, but it is not an automatic ally. It is a force that requires guidance—just as the sciences did in Rousseau’s time—but today it is faster, more pervasive, and more capable of reshaping the human being.

Perhaps the most important thing we can say in this age is an echo of Rousseau himself: Progress becomes virtue only when it carries the human being with it—not when it leaves him behind.

Beyond Iran: America’s long record of Middle East blunders

by Dr Ramzy Baroud

Pedestrians pass beneath a giant anti-US billboard displayed in Tehran as tensions between Iran and the United States continue, on August 31, 2026 in Tehran, Iran. [Fatemeh Bahrami – Anadolu Agency]

The US government continues to double down, even as its stubbornness costs it dearly—not only in material terms, but also in geopolitical influence. Washington is rapidly losing power and status in the Middle East, a decline that could produce a wider domino effect, reverberating around the world.

The latest expression of this hubris came from US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent. Speaking at a G20 gathering of finance ministers in Asheville, North Carolina, on September 1, Bessent declared that within two years, the Strait of Hormuz would become “a worthless piece of water,” as oil would instead be transported through overland pipelines.

Bessent is now promoting a new narrative that shifts the emphasis from the military war to an economic one. In an August 23 article for the Financial Times, he announced that “an economic D-Day is coming for Iran,” threatening countries that continue to trade with Tehran with severe economic consequences.

This sounds less like a serious foreign-policy strategy than an admission of Washington’s inability to alter the course of the ongoing war.

Two dominant schools of thought have emerged to explain how Washington found itself in this position.

The first, promoted largely by sections of the US media, former officials and retired military commanders, argues that the war on Iran was a mistake from the outset and that Washington lacked the military and logistical preparedness necessary to wage it.

The second explanation places Iran at the center. It argues that Washington fundamentally underestimated Iran’s military capabilities, political resilience and regional reach, treating the country as though it were another Venezuela that could be subdued through sanctions, threats and limited military pressure.

Both explanations contain elements of truth. Neither, however, provides the deeper, less defensive and more historically grounded understanding required to explain the scale of the present American failure.

John J. Mearsheimer, the prominent American political scientist and international relations scholar, has been among the boldest critics of the US war.

“Trump is trapped and has no way out,” Mearsheimer said on July 15, reiterating an argument he had advanced repeatedly since the beginning of the war. “All of this is to say that the decision to attack Iran on 28 February 2026 is one of the greatest blunders in the history of US foreign policy,” he added.

Mearsheimer, like Jeffrey Sachs, Scott Ritter and other critical American voices, often—and understandably—analyzes these “great blunders” from a US-centered perspective. For millions of people in the Middle East, however, this collective analysis is not an intellectual or strategic exercise. It describes their everyday reality. They have lived through these catastrophic miscalculations and paid the human cost of US intransigence, militarism and political failure.

The history of US foreign policy in the Middle East offers countless examples of this destructive pattern. Washington’s support for Israel—the region’s greatest destabilizing force—remains the most enduring example.

Palestinians, Lebanese, Syrians and other peoples of the region require no new strategic framework to reach a conclusion similar to Mearsheimer’s. They have experienced the consequences of US power directly: wars, invasions, occupations, sanctions, political interference and unconditional support for Israel.

The United States also established a disastrous record through its invasion and occupation of Iraq. It succeeded in overthrowing Saddam Hussein’s government in 2003, but failed catastrophically to govern the country, stabilize it or restructure the Middle East according to the ‘vision’ it had proclaimed.

The outcome was not a new American order, but the devastation of Iraq, prolonged instability and the rise of political forces Washington had neither anticipated nor controlled.

Washington’s Western allies were also drawn into what became known as the Iraq quagmire, paying considerable political, military and financial costs for a war whose premises proved false and whose consequences remain unresolved.

Naturally, those former partners have little appetite for participating in a much larger and potentially more destructive war against Iran for an indefinite period—particularly when the crisis is being managed by Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu, two deeply unpopular, impulsive and widely distrusted leaders.

But the Middle East has changed. Regional states now possess greater political agency, more diversified alliances and far more at stake than they did in 2003. They are no longer operating within a regional order in which Washington represents the only meaningful center of global power.

Chinese President Xi Jinping’s recent visit to Egypt provides one of numerous examples. “We must uphold the principle that the people of the Middle East are the masters of their own affairs,” Xi said during his September 2 meeting with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi. He also urged countries to oppose “external interference” and strengthen regional dialogue on peace and security.

Like Egypt, other regional powers are similarly diversifying their partnerships rather than relying exclusively on Washington.

Key Middle Eastern leaders understand that a prolonged war against Iran would not remain confined to Iran. It could destabilize the entire region, devastate economies and infrastructure, threaten vital energy routes and generate interconnected wars whose consequences could endure for decades.

This brings us to Israel. Historically the cornerstone of US strategy in the region, Israel is itself considerably weaker. It is militarily overstretched, politically fragmented, socially divided and unable to decisively conclude any of the wars it has opened, despite Netanyahu’s repeated declarations of victory.

Washington’s present predicament, therefore, cannot be explained solely through depleted arsenals, poor military planning, Trump’s impulsiveness or Netanyahu’s manipulation. Nor can it be understood simply as the result of underestimating Iran.

The deeper failure lies in Washington’s attempt to impose an outdated model of regional domination on a Middle East—and a world—that has fundamentally changed.

by Karam Nama

UK Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband leaves 10 Downing Street following the first cabinet meeting of the new legislative session in London, United Kingdom, on September 08, 2026. [Raşid Necati Aslım – Anadolu Agency]

The United Kingdom’s decision to impose sanctions on Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank was not a routine legal measure, nor a narrow trade restriction. It was a political declaration—clear, deliberate, and unusually blunt—that London, alongside eleven other states, has finally chosen to speak in a language Israel has long resisted: the language of accountability.

For the first time in decades, Britain—historic ally, early sponsor of the Zionist project, and a state that has traditionally avoided any step that might irritate Tel Aviv—issued a condemnation of remarkable clarity. Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband told the House of Commons that Israel’s occupation of the West Bank is “entirely illegal,” and that what is unfolding there amounts to “ethnic cleansing carried out by terrorist settlers.” This is not diplomatic phrasing. It is the breaking of a long-protected silence.

Miliband went further, saying he felt “deep shame at what has happened in Palestine before the eyes of the international community,” describing the past three years as a period of “unimaginable shock and suffering—death, destruction, and dehumanisation on a horrific scale.” Such language signals a Britain no longer willing to stand in the old queue that justified everything Israel did.

But the question remains: what is the real value of this decision in a moment when Israel behaves with a level of impunity that disregards the International Court of Justice and dismisses UN resolutions outright?

The strength of the British sanctions does not lie in the ban on settlement goods, nor in the prohibition on advertising illegal properties, nor in the suspension of arms licences. Its strength lies in who imposed them.

When Britain, France, Canada, Ireland, Denmark, Norway, Finland, Spain, Sweden, Portugal, Poland, and Iceland—twelve states at the core of the Western political and economic system—announce coordinated restrictions on trade with Israeli settlements, the message is not economic. It is political: the international mood has shifted.

These are not marginal states. They are central actors in the global order. And they are not countries accustomed to sanctioning Israel; they are countries that have historically shielded it within the EU and at the UN Security Council.

The significance of the decision is therefore not measured by the sanctions themselves, but by the transformation of political will behind them.

Israel today behaves as though it stands above international law. It dismisses the ICJ, attacks the UN, labels criticism as antisemitism, continues its war of annihilation in Gaza, and allows settler violence in the West Bank to escalate without restraint.

What it cannot ignore, however, is the changing posture of its allies.

Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar’s response was loud—and revealing. Closing the British consulate in Jerusalem, banning British officials from entering Israel, expelling UK representatives from the Gaza aid coordination centre, and terminating British training programmes for Palestinian Authority forces:

These are not the actions of a confident state. They are the reactions of a government unsettled by the possibility that Britain’s move marks the beginning of the erosion of Israel’s long-standing Western immunity.

It was no surprise that Knesset member Gilad Kariv described Sa’ar’s response as “childish and populist,” accusing him of capitulating entirely to the extremist agenda of Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich. Even within Israel, there is recognition that confronting Britain in this manner is not strength—it is a loss of strategic direction.

Why does this decision matter now? Because the West Bank is experiencing its darkest moment in decades: 750,000 settlers, 194 settlements, 400 outposts, daily attacks, constant military raids, and a genocide in Gaza used as a political cover for accelerated annexation.

Israel assumed the world was too distracted to notice. But Britain and eleven other states have signalled otherwise: the West Bank is visible again.

And because this decision opens the door to more consequential steps: trade restrictions, customs duties, full bans on settlement products, and—most importantly—an emerging willingness to redefine Israel politically as a state practicing a system of apartheid.

Will sanctions alone be enough? Certainly not. But they break a barrier that once seemed unbreakable: the barrier of Western silence.

The power of this moment lies not in the sanctions themselves, but in the precedent they establish. When historic allies begin to penalise settlement expansion, the rules of engagement within international institutions can shift, and the political language of Europe and North America can evolve.

Israel, no matter how defiant, cannot afford to lose all its allies. Nor can it withstand deepening isolation while waging a prolonged war in Gaza, facing internal political turmoil, and navigating unprecedented societal fractures.

This decision is not the end of the road. It is the beginning of a new phase. The British sanctions are not administrative measures; they are a political announcement that Israel’s era of unconditional protection is beginning to crack. The settlements are no longer a “detail” in the conflict—they have become the centre of international accountability.

In a world where Israel behaves as though it is above the law, these sanctions deliver a simple but powerful message: even allies have limits.

What Britain initiated may well be the spark that reshapes Israel’s relationship with the Western world—and redefines the meaning of political responsibility in an age where silence is no longer an option.

When the left speaks the language of Empire against Iran

by Sayid Marcos Tenorio

The devastating effects of attacks are seen in eastern Tehran, Iran, amid the ongoing war that began with US and Israeli operations against Iran, on September 03, 2026. [Fatemeh Bahrami – Anadolu Agency]

Amid a war of aggression waged by the United States and ‘Israel’ against Iran, a group of intellectuals identified with the left published in the British newspaper The Guardian a letter addressed to those it described as Iranian political prisoners.

Its signatories include respected figures such as Angela Davis, Judith Butler, Michael Löwy, Rashid Khalidi and Walden Bello. Their prestige, however, cannot place the document beyond criticism.

The letter portrays the Iranian people as trapped between ‘two blades of a pair of scissors’: the Islamic Republic on one side and the United States and ‘Israel’ on the other. This metaphor manufactures a false equivalence between the country under attack and the powers bombing it.

It equates a state defending its sovereignty with those responsible for an illegal war, decades of sanctions and sabotage, the assassinations of the Supreme Leader, military commanders and scientists, covert operations and attempts at regime change.

No government should be considered immune from criticism.

Yet there are historical moments when the choice of words, the intended audience and, above all, the timing of an accusation determine its political function.

When a country is under attack, repeating allegations used by the aggressor to legitimise war is neither neutrality nor intellectual independence. Objectively, it becomes ideological ammunition for the Empire.

The events of the past two days brutally dismantle the notion of ‘two equivalent blades’.

The United States has launched new attacks on southern Iran, striking defensive systems and installations near the Strait of Hormuz.

One of the strikes hit a home in Kuhestak, in Sirik County, precisely as families were celebrating a wedding. According to initial figures released by the Iranian authorities, at least four people were killed, including children, and more than 50 were injured.

A wedding turned into a funeral makes clear who is bombing and who is being bombed. It shows who commands the aircraft, missiles and military power deployed to impose by force what the US and ‘Israel’ have failed to achieve politically or diplomatically.

While civilian bodies are pulled from the rubble, Western intellectuals offer the world a narrative in which the aggressor and its victim appear as morally equivalent parts of the same problem.

The letter does condemn the war and the sanctions, but it dilutes that condemnation by presenting the Islamic Republic as a threat comparable to the military machine attacking its territory.

In doing so, it disregards the conflict’s fundamental asymmetry and reproduces the old colonial formula: first demonise the government of the country selected as a target, then present sanctions, sabotage and bombing as instruments for the ‘liberation’ of its people.

It also deliberately erases Iran’s historic role in resisting imperialism and Zionism.

Since 1979, the Islamic Republic has paid an enormous price for supporting Palestine, rejecting normalisation with the occupation regime and sustaining forces that confront the colonial project in West Asia.

Iran also severed relations with South Africa’s apartheid regime, supported liberation struggles and today participates in the movement to build a multipolar order alongside countries such as China and Russia and organisations including BRICS and the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation.

To call this commitment, built over decades and paid for in blood, ‘hollow anti-imperialism’ is an affront to reality.

What is hollow is an anti-imperialism and anti-Zionism confined to academic manifestos, incapable of recognising the difference between those who resist and those who invade; between those subjected to blockades and those who impose them; between those defending their territory and those firing missiles at a wedding celebration.

The double standard of these ‘left-wing intellectuals’ lies not only in the letter’s content but also in its political timing.

Their accusations against Iran receive privileged space in the media of the same West that silences or downplays the crimes committed by the US and ‘Israel’.

Whatever the individual intentions of the signatories, the document strengthens the narrative that seeks to recast an imperialist war as a supposed campaign in defence of human rights

This is not about demanding silence over Iran’s internal problems. It is about understanding that human rights cannot be instrumentalised to legitimise the destruction of sovereign countries.

The history of Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan and Syria has already shown the outcome of this ‘humanitarian’ rhetoric: devastated societies, millions dead and states reduced to chaos.

In the face of imperialist aggression, there can be no moral equidistance between the missile and the house it strikes, between the bomber and the murdered child, or between the aggressor and the people who resist.

When parts of the left insist on this false symmetry, they cease to speak the language of emancipation and begin to speak, however disguised as criticism, the language of Empire.

Iran and USA – The US shows signs of decline, Iran ascends

by Ranjan Solomon

A large billboard bearing the slogan “Great Victory” in both Persian and English is seen displayed at Rah Ahen Square in Tehran, Iran, on August 25, 2026. [Fatemeh Bahrami – Anadolu Agency]

“The decline of a great power does not begin when it loses its weapons. It begins when its weapons can no longer deliver the political outcomes they were meant to guarantee.”

The relationship between the United States and Iran has for decades been one of the defining conflicts of West Asian geopolitics. It has involved diplomatic rupture, sanctions, covert operations, military confrontation and a continuing struggle over who determines the political future of the region. But the present confrontation raises a question that goes beyond the immediate war: is the balance between the two countries beginning to change?

The United States remains the world’s most powerful military state, with enormous technological capabilities, a vast defence budget and a global network of military bases and alliances.

Yet military power is not measured only by the number of aircraft, ships and missiles a country possesses. It must also be measured by its ability to sustain war, protect its forces, absorb costs and, above all, translate military superiority into political outcomes. It is here that the American position is becoming increasingly uncertain.

Iran has followed a very different path. Its strategy has been one of strategic patience, resilience and asymmetric resistance. It has endured decades of sanctions, developed missile and drone capabilities, cultivated regional relationships and learned to impose costs on a militarily superior adversary without attempting to reproduce the entire American military machine. Iran does not need to become militarily stronger than the United States. It needs to make American military superiority increasingly expensive, increasingly vulnerable and increasingly incapable of delivering a decisive result.

That distinction is crucial.

Warnings from within the American military and strategic establishment about the sustainability of the conflict point towards a problem that Washington cannot solve simply by deploying more force. A prolonged war consumes missiles, aircraft, ships, personnel and readiness. Every American military asset tied down in West Asia is an asset that cannot be used elsewhere. Every interceptor fired against an incoming missile or drone has a financial and logistical cost. Every ship protecting American interests in the Gulf requires fuel, maintenance, personnel and supporting infrastructure. And every additional commitment narrows the strategic flexibility available to Washington as it simultaneously seeks to confront Russia, China and other perceived challenges.

 Yet military power is not measured only by the number of aircraft, ships and missiles a country possesses. It must also be measured by its ability to sustain war, protect its forces, absorb costs and, above all, translate military superiority into political outcomes. It is here that the American position is becoming increasingly uncertain.

This is why the description of America as a “paper tiger” needs to be understood carefully. It does not mean that American military power is imaginary. It plainly is not. Washington still possesses the world’s most sophisticated armed forces and is likely to remain central to any military counterweight to China in the Indo-Pacific. But the term points to the growing gap between the appearance of overwhelming power and the ability to use that power successfully across several theatres simultaneously.

The latest escalation makes this contradiction visible. Iran has responded to American attacks on its oil tankers with attacks around the Strait of Hormuz and ballistic-missile strikes against a US military facility in Jordan. Reuters reports that Iran claimed attacks on ten ships near the Strait after the United States sank five Iranian oil tankers, in the largest wave of attacks on shipping since the six-month-old war began. Iran also fired missiles towards a US military base in Jordan; Jordan said it intercepted most of them.

The significance lies not simply in whether every missile reached its intended target. The strategic impact is that American forces and the enormous network supporting them can no longer assume complete immunity from sophisticated missile and drone attacks. The United States has had to devote increasing resources to defending bases, ships and supply routes across a huge geographical area. Meanwhile, the Strait of Hormuz has become a major point of vulnerability for the global economy. Brent crude has risen above $100 a barrel as shipping disruptions intensifies.

This is where asymmetric warfare becomes strategically important.

Iran does not have to destroy an American carrier fleet to impose a cost on Washington. It can challenge shipping, threaten military installations, disrupt energy flows and force the United States to spend vastly more defending itself than Iran needs to spend creating the threat.

The arithmetic of such warfare can gradually turn conventional superiority into strategic vulnerability.

The American response has included economic sanctions, attacks on Iranian oil tankers and attempts to control the movement of Iranian petroleum. But this too carries consequences. The United States has now moved towards destroying Iranian tankers as retaliation for attacks on its warships. Iran has responded by targeting shipping in and around the Strait of Hormuz. The result is a cycle in which military pressure produces economic disruption, and economic disruption produces further military escalation.

The United States has historically used another form of power when military victory becomes uncertain: the ability to redefine the battlefield itself.

This is what may be called strategic camouflage. It is not merely physical concealment on a battlefield. It is the broader political and strategic practice of shifting the arena of confrontation when conventional superiority becomes less decisive. Economic sanctions, technological restrictions, financial controls, tariff barriers and pressure on allies can be used to weaken an adversary without confronting its military capabilities directly. The objective is to compensate for weaknesses that are more difficult to address through conventional warfare.

Washington’s sanctions regime against Iran is one example. Economic warfare allows the United States to exploit the extraordinary reach of the dollar-based financial system. Restrictions on banking, technology and trade can impose immense costs without requiring American soldiers to occupy another country. The same logic increasingly informs US competition with China through restrictions on advanced semiconductors and other strategic technologies.

But this form of power also has limits.

Sanctions do not necessarily produce political surrender. Iran has survived decades of them. More significantly, the sanctions regime is encouraging alternative economic relationships that reduce dependence upon the Western financial system.

Current reporting indicates that Iran has developed mechanisms to exchange oil for Chinese imports, allowing trade to continue despite American sanctions.

This is one of the most important developments of the changing international order. American economic power remains immense, but its effectiveness depends upon the willingness and ability of other countries to remain inside the structures over which Washington exercises control. As alternative economic relationships grow, the coercive power of sanctions can gradually diminish.

The same problem exists militarily.

Modern warfare has made the traditional assumptions behind military dominance increasingly uncertain. Satellites, drones, artificial intelligence, electronic warfare and precision missiles can expose and threaten installations that were once considered relatively secure. Large military bases, logistical chains and concentrations of expensive aircraft can become liabilities when an adversary possesses the technology to locate and strike them.

The United States has responded by investing heavily in signature-management technologies, electronic warfare and systems designed to confuse or deceive enemy sensors. Such technologies are useful. But they also reveal something important: the military establishment understands that its enormous conventional infrastructure contains vulnerabilities.

There is a deeper irony here. The United States has spent decades constructing a global military architecture designed to demonstrate permanent reach. Hundreds of bases, carrier groups, aircraft fleets, missile-defence systems and logistical networks have projected an image of American omnipresence. Yet that very global presence creates an enormous number of targets and an enormous financial burden.

A country defending its own territory has a fundamentally different strategic problem from a country defending military positions thousands of kilometres from home.

Iran enjoys the advantage of geography. The United States has to cross oceans. Iran does not.

The American problem is therefore not simply Iran. It is the multiplication of strategic commitments. Europe, the Indo-Pacific, Ukraine, the Middle East, the Red Sea and other theatres all demand attention. Washington cannot assume that it can maintain unlimited superiority everywhere simultaneously.

This is precisely why the language of decline needs to be used differently from the conventional meaning of the word. Decline does not necessarily begin with military defeat. A great power can decline while still possessing the world’s most advanced weapons. It begins when the cost of maintaining its global position becomes greater than the political, economic and military resources available to sustain it.

The United States has already experienced the consequences of strategic overextension in Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan. These wars demonstrated that military superiority can destroy infrastructure, overthrow governments and occupy territory without necessarily producing the political order Washington originally intended. The lesson of those wars was not that America had ceased to be powerful. It was that power had become less capable of producing predictable political outcomes.

The current confrontation with Iran carries the same warning.

Washington can inflict enormous damage upon Iran. But destruction is not the same as victory. If Iran continues to resist, continues to launch missiles and drones, continues to threaten shipping and continues to impose economic and political costs, then the United States faces an increasingly difficult choice: escalate further or seek an exit.

Neither option is simple.

Escalation risks a wider regional war and still greater pressure on American military resources. Withdrawal, meanwhile, risks being interpreted as an admission that overwhelming American military power could not force Iran into submission.

This is why the question of how the war ends is more important than who wins individual battles.

Iran’s strength lies precisely in its ability to make the conflict about endurance rather than a single decisive military encounter.

Tehran does not need to defeat the United States in the conventional sense. It needs to survive long enough for the political and economic costs of the war to become more painful for Washington than continued confrontation is worth.

That calculation becomes more significant as the war begins to affect American domestic politics. President Donald Trump has said that he expects the war to end after the November midterm elections, while reports indicate that senior advisers have privately warned that the conflict could continue far longer.

The contradiction is revealing. If the United States possesses overwhelming power and Iran is supposedly incapable of sustaining resistance, why does the duration of the conflict depend upon an American election timetable? The answer is that wars are ultimately political. The capacity to fight is not the same as the capacity to sustain public support for fighting.

The economic consequences are becoming increasingly difficult to conceal. Oil prices have risen above $100 a barrel, shipping through the Strait of Hormuz has been severely disrupted and the conflict is feeding directly into inflationary pressures. Reuters has also highlighted the extraordinary cost imbalance in modern warfare, including the problem of using extremely expensive defensive missiles against much cheaper drones.

This is where Iran’s ascent becomes visible.

Iran has not suddenly become a military superpower. Nor has the United States ceased to be the world’s strongest military state. The transformation is subtler and therefore more consequential. Iran has become increasingly capable of denying the United States the strategic freedom of action that Washington once took for granted.

That is a form of power.

For decades, American strategy was built upon the assumption that the United States could intervene almost anywhere, impose costs upon adversaries and ultimately determine the terms of settlement. That assumption is becoming harder to sustain. The emergence of China, the resilience of Russia, Iran’s endurance and the growth of alternative economic and political relationships across the Global South are contributing to a world in which American power remains enormous but is no longer uncontested.

The United States is therefore being forced towards burden-sharing, regional partnerships and a more selective definition of its vital interests. What is presented as strategic adaptation can also be understood as an acknowledgement of limits. Washington cannot police the entire world simultaneously.

The rhetoric of strength can sometimes conceal this reality. But strategy is ultimately revealed by what a country can sustain, not by what it claims it can do.

Iran understands this.

Its strategy has never required it to reproduce American power. Its objective has been to survive, resist and make domination costly. In doing so, it has demonstrated one of the fundamental truths of asymmetric warfare: the weaker power does not have to destroy the stronger power. It only has to prevent the stronger power from converting its superiority into victory.

That is increasingly what Iran is doing.

The balance is changing

The significance of the Iran–United States confrontation therefore cannot be measured simply by counting aircraft, missiles, ships or dollars spent on defence. The deeper question is whether overwhelming military superiority can still translate into political control. The evidence increasingly suggests that it cannot.

The United States remains enormously powerful, but its power is becoming more expensive to exercise, more difficult to sustain and less capable of producing the decisive outcomes that Washington has historically expected from the projection of military force.

Iran, by contrast, has learnt to fight a very different kind of war. It does not need to match the United States aircraft for aircraft or carrier for carrier. Its strength lies in endurance, geography, missile capability, regional relationships and the ability to impose costs on an adversary whose military presence depends upon vulnerable bases, supply lines and extraordinarily expensive defensive systems.

This does not mean that Iran is invulnerable. It faces severe economic pressures and the dangers inherent in prolonged war. Nor does it mean that the United States has suddenly ceased to be a great military power. Such claims would be as simplistic as the older assumption that American military power is unlimited.

But the central issue has changed.

It is no longer simply whether America can inflict enormous destruction upon Iran. It is whether America can sustain a prolonged conflict while simultaneously maintaining its ambitions elsewhere in the world.

That is where the notion of American decline becomes strategically important. Decline does not necessarily arrive with a dramatic military defeat. A great power can decline while still possessing the world’s most powerful weapons. It declines when the cost of maintaining its global system becomes greater than the political, economic and military resources available to sustain it; when adversaries become capable of denying its freedom of action; and when military superiority produces neither security nor a clear political settlement.

Iran’s ascent should therefore be understood in relative rather than absolute terms. Iran has not become stronger than the United States in conventional military power. It has become increasingly capable of making American military superiority less decisive in the environment in which that power is being used.

That is far more important than a simple comparison of defence budgets.

The world is moving away from the period in which Washington could assume that its military, economic and technological superiority would automatically determine the outcome of regional conflicts. China, Russia, Iran and other states are developing different forms of resistance to American power, while an increasingly multipolar international system is reducing the ability of any one power to dictate the terms of global politics.

The war with Iran is therefore a test not only of Iranian resilience but of the limits of American hegemony. If Washington can neither secure a decisive victory nor withdraw without accepting substantial strategic costs, then the conflict will expose precisely the vulnerability that American power has spent decades attempting to conceal.

The United States may remain a formidable power for many years. But formidable is not the same as invincible.

Iran’s significance lies in showing that distinction in practice.

America still has enormous power. Iran is demonstrating that America can no longer assume that enormous power is enough.

Israel’s plan for forced transfer with international complicity remains on the table

by Ramona Wadi 

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (R) and Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz (L). [GALI TIBBON/AFP via Getty Images]

As Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reiterated that the military would not withdraw from the territory it occupied in Gaza, Defence Minister Israel Katz asserted that the plan for forced displacement was merely frozen.

Speaking at a conference hosted by Ynet and Yedioth Ahronot themed “Decision Time: Democracy and Society”, Katz spoke of forced transfer under the euphemism of emigration as the only solution for Gaza. However, he said, the plan required US support which is currently not forthcoming. According to Katz, Arab countries pressured the US to halt the forced transfer plan in return for agreeing with disarming Hamas. Egypt, Katz said, is refusing to cooperate in the plan. 

According to Katz, although no sources were reported, 80 per cent of Palestinians in Gaza want to emigrate but Hamas and the international community are placing obstacles in their way. “There are no countries in the world willing to take them in,” he said. “What is delaying this is that the countries willing to take them in want US support.”

Palestinians have been unable to leave Gaza freely for decades before the genocide. Leaving under threat of forced displacement does not constitute freedom of movement. Israel wants Gaza emptied of Palestinians by any means necessary – forced transfer dressed up as travel is the option that lends itself to less scrutiny, despite it being classified as a war crime.

But when the international community approved of Israel’s genocide by refusing to acknowledge it, it also approved the forced transfer that happened as a result of the destructive and relentless bombing. If countries eventually cooperate with Israel’s plan and Palestinians are forcibly transferred out of Gaza, the complicity would render even the usual string of condemnations void of any meaning. 

“I think there is no other solution in the end that is in everyone’s interest,” Katz stated. Everyone being anyone except the Palestinian people. Katz’s message is that if enough countries agree to commit war crimes, Palestinians have no say in their forced transfer. 

If, as Katz said, forced displacement is still being discussed, the Board of Peace is merely buying time for Israel. Whether or not Hamas agrees to disarmament, forced transfer remains the ultimate goal for Israel. In the interim, the usual back and forth rhetoric on what happens if Hamas disarms continues as background noise for diplomacy to grasp at. For at the periphery of all the futile diplomatic overtures, there is genocide, Netanyahu and a plan to empty Gaza of Palestinians by all means possible. As Katz said, Israel needs US help, which he said would happen at the right moment. “Then we will get the green light to advance militarily, territorially and in other areas as well,” Katz declared. 

In that scenario, Israel would colonise Gaza, and the UN would have one less item on its agenda to write statements about. No more talk about genocide except perhaps a commemoration in graphic imagery at the UN and a hypocritical statement about human rights and hope.

Hope, elusive and ambiguous, was all the UN offered in return for its complicity in allowing Zionism to colonise Palestine. What hope brought in the end, was genocide.