Iran’s war hasn’t followed the US/Israeli script
The mess and disaster that has emerged from the attack on Iran by the United States and Israel, in uneasy stasis at the time of writing in mid-May, now appears to be developing in ways outside all previous calculations and expectations. Certainly, the hubristic and childish beliefs of Donald Trump— ‘this will be over in a few days’—deriving as they do from the long-held beliefs of Benjamin Netanyahu and others as to the inferiority of Muslim cultures, are no longer countenanced by anyone. In fact, the humiliation of the United States and Netanyahu’s Israel is now available for all to see. While many will cling to their beliefs about the invincible powers of the United States, the world is now privy to its substantial vulnerabilities. How did this happen, and what does it mean?
Iran has a particular and long-established history. Situated on the Persian Gulf it is easy to forget that it is in no sense similar to the Gulf states that emerged after the First World War from the residue of the Ottoman Empire. Formed by the British Empire and the victorious European powers of that time, the Arab states have been marked by their fragility, in large part because they were dependent on outside powers. Their slim history has given little basis for true independence; Iran is a different case entirely.
Iran has an unusual geographical setting, not only around the Gulf of Hormuz but also due to Iran’s mountainous terrain, which frames much of its territory and has long supported its defensive capacities. This has allowed Iran to develop its internal culture relatively securely. Its culture is deep, and it will not be relinquished easily. While the social order continues to hold attitudes towards women that can in no sense be defended, and a capacity to resort to extreme violence towards citizens when that order is challenged, these are not the reason it is so demonised by the West. Nor does that demonisation logically emerge from the charge against Iran of exporting terrorism. That charge lacks substantial evidence and may rather be seen as a self-defensive construct of the West, which feels revulsion towards what it cannot understand. Even the Western critique of the theocracy that sits at the core of the Iranian social order today is not predominantly a call for democracy. It is a way of avoiding engagement and understanding, by converting the Supreme Leader merely into an autocrat.
The United States cannot forget its humiliation more than forty years ago when it attempted to rescue hostages held in Tehran. But even this humiliation is a coating upon a deeper concern, which cannot be spoken. It is a way of disavowing the fact that parts of Shia Islam seek a different social order than that of the West and other Middle Eastern nations, in their rejection of the centrality of the market and of the type of individualism associated with it. Although there is major opposition to the regime that emerged from the 1979 revolution, there is also substantial support for it, which has ensured its survival. Many see it as a resistance to the market-obsessed regimes of the West.
Indeed, those currents within Shia Islam that emphasise resistance have a complex strategy that attempts to place the Other at the centre of the concerns of the individual. It finds the excessive individualism formed by markets (shallow, lacking substantial empathy), which typifies and distorts Western culture, deeply offensive. No matter how this social order is misshapen by sanctions and Western hostility or even co-opted by its own leaders for strategic purposes, theirs is an undoubtedly multi-levelled challenge to the West. As Pankaj Mishra concludes in a recent New York Review of Books article, the Western attitude towards Iran is one of ‘fear and loathing underpinned by near-total ignorance’. This gross ignorance also stands as a barely perceived threat to Western ideas of order.
The ‘surprise’ attack on Iran by the United States and Israel was no real surprise to the Iranians. They had been preparing for it in some form ever since the 2003 invasion of Iraq. However, they did not do so in the usual way, even though their ground forces, estimated at one million fighters, are substantial. Rather than develop a navy and air force in the conventional way to project power, they have sought to defend themselves via an intelligent and novel deployment of an asymmetric strategy using missiles and drones, as framed by their unique geography. This required building defence centres deep underground, taking advantage of their mountainous terrain, and of course, the contours of the Persian Gulf, including Hormuz. Nor did they build their defences according to a crude formula. They developed the capacity to build a range of weapons internally with an approach, outlined by Alastair Crooke, that allowed inquiry and constant development. When it came to the main attack against them in February 2026, they were able to respond in stages with an astonishing precision that actually threatened the US Navy, especially its aircraft carriers, and physically destroyed the multiple US bases installed throughout the Persian Gulf—bases built to project US power in the Gulf and, supposedly, to defend those states against Iran.
Iran suffered substantial casualties during the first two months of this war but has held its ground. It did not start the war, but now that it has happened, it is determined to break out of the straitjacket imposed on it by the West since the revolution of 1979. To that end, it expects and is prepared for a further round of warfare. On many accounts, including those of Iranian authorities, if the West does not back off, Iran will inflict such damage on the productive infrastructure of the Gulf states that the world economy will no longer need to prepare for recession—it will be launched into depression. And Trump, for all his ground cunning, is too opinionated and fundamentally ignorant to realise or even care where his mate Benjamin Netanyahu has taken him. As that messianic view now dominant in Israel, and ever wider in Trump’s own administration, dictates, utter destruction should not be feared; it is a step towards the End Times. Held by significant numbers, literally, this messianic view now encompasses the thinking of many with their hands on the levers of power.
What circumstances are sufficient for an unravelling of a superpower are not clear. The United States is supremely powerful militarily. So too was the Soviet Union. Iran has shown itself to have real power, but it cannot confront the United States directly. But that is not the only way to trigger an unravelling. All the former allies of the United States have now experienced its real weakness. It is no longer simply a claim; it has been demonstrated. Some of them, especially around the Gulf, have suffered. Confidence in the promise of US support is in radical decline. As well, US military power now begins to look outflanked by new developments in drones and missiles. In this respect, it is in a situation like that of the nuclear submarines at the centre of the AUKUS agreement: once powerful technologies, like submarines, are being outflanked by new, simpler and more nimble technologies.
Even more to the point, the United States has been undergoing an unravelling of its core social relations for decades: that upheaval caused by powerful global markets, which have not only decimated domestic industry but also undermined and continue to destabilise the underlying order of social relations essential for people to live well and renew each subsequent generation. This includes the emergence of social media and now the ‘promise’ of AI. These are all fracturing tendencies, undermining the cultural ground that otherwise might have restricted and shaped leadership. In this emerging vacuum, the United States finds itself steered by an administration completely lacking wisdom and devoid of social grounding. On the geopolitical front, Trump appears to listen only to one person outside of himself, his friend Bibi. Many resources are being turned into the Trump family plunder. The former allies of the United States are looking on: fearful, silent and mesmerised before an incessant flow of transparent lies about the ‘success’ of the US campaign and the weakness of Iran.
Now, as with the oil crisis of the 1970s, a lack of confidence in the US dollar is developing. In this case, the championing by Iran of the Yuan at the expense of the Petro dollar in the Gulf begins to unwind the structures set in place to handle the oil crisis of the 1970s. When combined with the wild and unsustainable rise in US debt the growing uncertainty about US finance is poised to trigger a run on the US dollar.
This is a volatile situation that may unravel with a bang or may yet have a long way to run. What is distinctive about this world disorder is the degree to which it has occurred as an oscillation between vast contending powers and the narcissism and caprice of a man elevated to the US presidency. Far from the recognisable political triumphalism of the Iraq invasion, today we inhabit a world in which the pathologies produced by a hyper-modern US culture are now carried by the man leading it. Such a situation cannot be assimilated to conventional geopolitical and political-economic interpretations of interest and gain, nor addressed by any cool realist assessment directed outwards.