How to tell the rebels have won: the structural defeat of the US empire

Iran’s defiance marks a turning point in global power, signalling a structural shift away from US dominance and exposing the limits of empire.

By PROFESSOR JUNAID S. AHMAD

The writer argues that Iran’s victory did not signal the ‘end of American power’. In fact, he adds, it was ‘far more consequential: [it was] the moment [the US] lost the ability to write the rules by which the world must live.’ Alongside this, he adds, the myth of Israeli invincibility was shattered.

Eqbal Ahmad, one of Pakistan’s finest public intellectuals of the 20th century, offered a ruthless litmus test for imperial decay in ‘How To Tell The Rebels Have Won’: ignore what power says — watch what its enemies dare to do. When those once expected to kneel begin to set terms, the empire’s fate is no longer a question. It is a conclusion. Empires are not undone by declarations but by disobedience — by the moment their threats stop working. What we have just witnessed is precisely that moment: not drift, not error, but rupture — the most concentrated defeat of American power in the post-war era, compressed into weeks.

For years, decline was discussed in abstractions: deficits, deindustrialisation, multipolarity, China’s rise. These were polite euphemisms for something more destabilising — that the West’s five-century monopoly on global authority, born in 1492, was weakening. But abstraction comforts. It delays recognition. What has now occurred is something harsher: decline rendered visible, undeniable, and irreversible.

The United States did not recalibrate; it retreated. It began with ultimatums and ended inside the strategic framework of its adversary. That is not diplomacy. That is capitulation, bureaucratically arranged.

Empire, when functioning, disguises violence as virtue — ‘order’, ‘stability’, ‘deterrence’. This time, the disguise collapsed. The language was raw: annihilation, erasure, civilisational death. It was empire without grammar. And yet, stripped of euphemism, it revealed its own weakness: its words no longer compelled behaviour. Iran did not panic, plead, or perform submission. It absorbed the threat — and imposed terms.

The significance of the ‘ten-point plan’ lies not in its clauses, but in its existence: the United States operating within a framework it neither authored nor controls.

Call this what it is: reversal. Power was not merely resisted; it was turned. Washington negotiated under constraint — responding rather than dictating. The significance of the ‘ten-point plan’ lies not in its clauses, but in its existence: the United States operating within a framework it neither authored nor controls.

Alongside this collapse stands another: the myth of Israeli invincibility. For decades, Israel functioned as the enforcement arm of Western supremacy — a state that could strike anywhere and impose outcomes through force. That illusion is now fractured. In Gaza, resistance endures. In Lebanon, it persists. Against Iran, it failed decisively. What remains is not dominance but repetition: bombing without victory, escalation without resolution, violence without authority.

Even ceasefire has lost credibility. The expectation that Israel may resume bombardment at will is not strength; it is an indictment. A system unable to translate force into finality becomes trapped in perpetual violence. It can destroy endlessly, but it cannot conclude anything. That is not power. That is strategic exhaustion.

Together, these failures — American coercion and Israeli enforcement — mark a historic break. US dominance rested not only on force, but on the credibility of its threats. War worked because it was feared. That fear has now collapsed. When threats of total destruction produce neither submission nor compliance, but negotiation on the adversary’s terms, they cease to discipline. They become spectacle.

The comparison with Pakistan in 2001 is revealing. Then, faced with the blunt threat to be ‘bombed back to the Stone Age’, a nuclear-armed state collapsed almost instantly. That moment entrenched the myth of absolute American dominance. Today, that myth is shattered. Iran faced the same threat — ‘bomb you to the Stone Age’ — and refused it outright. The difference is not capability but consciousness. One elite internalised empire’s authority. The other rejected it — and proved it could be rejected.

None of this means American or Israeli power has vanished. They retain immense destructive capacity. They can devastate, punish, and destroy. But that is no longer sufficient. The equation has changed. Destruction no longer produces submission. Violence no longer guarantees obedience. The machinery of empire still operates — but it no longer determines outcomes.

This is why this moment exceeds a single conflict. It is not merely a policy failure; it is a structural breach in Western hegemony itself. For five centuries, the global order rested on a simple premise: that Western power ultimately prevails. That premise has now been broken — materially, not rhetorically.

The consequences are already visible. States are recalibrating. Alliances are loosening. Even traditional intermediaries act with new awareness: the enforcer is no longer omnipotent. In the background stands China — not as ideology, but as reality — ensuring that unilateral domination is no longer possible.

Return, then, to Ahmad’s insight — no longer theoretical, but proven. The measure of empire is not its weapons or its rhetoric, but whether those it seeks to dominate still obey.

What makes this rupture so devastating is its speed. Empires usually decay slowly, protected by illusion. Here, illusion collapsed instantly. In weeks, the United States moved from threatening annihilation to accepting terms it could neither dictate nor refuse. A war meant to demonstrate supremacy exposed limitation. A campaign meant to enforce submission legitimised defiance.

Return, then, to Ahmad’s insight — no longer theoretical, but proven. The measure of empire is not its weapons or its rhetoric, but whether those it seeks to dominate still obey.

They do not.

This is not the end of American power. It is something far more consequential: the moment it lost the ability to write the rules by which the world must live.

Prof. Junaid S. Ahmad teaches Law, Religion, and Global Politics and is the Director of the Center for the Study of Islam and Decolonization (CSID), Islamabad, Pakistan. He is a member of the International Movement for a Just World (JUST – https://just-international.org/), Movement for Liberation from Nakba (MLN – https://nakbaliberation.com/), and Saving Humanity and Planet Earth (SHAPE – https://www.theshapeproject.com/).