Events From 17 July to 10 September
The US/Israeli war against Iran began in earnest in 2024 and reached a peak in March 2026.
Iran defeated both of them.
It was the first major defeat suffered by the US/Israeli combination.
After the MOU was signed in Versailles on 17 June by Trump — a surrender document — the White House, in reality, had no intention of honoring the deal and was buying time to restock its depleted inventories.
It was a 60-day pause.
The most critical piece of information was not put on paper but was verbalized in various statements by senior Iranian officials.
After the 60-day period was over, Iran would begin charging tolls.
And they did from 20 August onwards.
This is the absolute key part, which has received hardly any mention in either the mainstream media or alternative media.
The tolls charged by Iran would be around 3–5% of the cargo value, and that toll must be paid in yuan.
As this would be a death sentence for Rockefeller’s petrodollar system, the White House has no other choice but to stop this — by hook or by crook.
What are the implications of this move by Iran?
Go back to August 1971, when the White House closed the gold-dollar window.
Foreign central banks could no longer exchange their dollars for gold.
Over the next two years, the dollar fell by 40% against other major currencies.
It was the October 1973 war and the subsequent move to establish the petrodollar that changed the situation.
The second example was when Iraq began selling its oil for euros in October 2000.
Over the next two years, the dollar fell by 20% against major currencies.
It stopped when the US invaded Iraq in March 2003 and brought Iraq back onto the dollar standard by the end of June 2003.
Iraq’s oil sales were about 1.6 million barrels per day (BPD), roughly 4% of globally traded oil at the time, which was approximately 40 million BPD.
In 2000, global oil consumption was roughly 80 million BPD.
Now, imagine 21 million BPD of oil being sold for yuan.
What would the effects be on the dollar?
Definitely not a 20% or even 40% collapse in the dollar’s value.
No one can predict what the outcome would be, but it signals the death knell of the petrodollar.
Iran has been selling oil to China and other nations in currencies other than the dollar since 2020 — roughly 1 million BPD, by one estimate.
Add to this the recent sales of Iranian oil in yuan, crypto and gold.
Russia has been under Western sanctions since March 2022.
Yet Russian oil sales have held up, albeit at lower prices.
Average daily Russian oil exports are around 4 million BPD.
Add the two together and we get roughly 4 million BPD for Russia and 2 million BPD for Iran.
That comes to roughly 6 million BPD.
Out of globally traded oil of approximately 52 million BPD — with global production at around 104 million BPD in 2026 — this represents roughly 12%.
This has been going on for nearly four years.
Track the status of the dollar over these past four years, especially the last six months.
The dollar’s fundamentals are weakening by the month.
International investors, foreign central banks and others are watching all this extremely closely, and some have moved to protect their dollar holdings.
This worry and stress are reflected in the US bond market.
Iran has authorized the northern route for transits of shipping.
It is through this route that Iran keeps exports flowing out of Hormuz.
Most of the oil shipments are coming from Iran and Iraq.
Iraq got a pass because it was not a participant in the war against Iran.
Roughly 5 million BPD are going out through Hormuz, with Iran’s permission.
Oil from “hostile” countries — Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Abu Dhabi — is not being allowed through.
These countries are under the American yoke, and, according to this analysis, are too scared to go against US orders.
Thus, they attempt to use the southern route.
These oil tankers are provided US air cover, but it is of no help as Iran attacks these ships.
Then, in response, the US attacks Iranian radars, coastal defenses and other targets.
Iran then hits back even harder.
Let us explain the four attacks between 2 September and 10 September.
Tanker Wars
Ever since the British Empire became a dominant global power, its Navy controlled maritime trade and wrote the rules.
Over the past two centuries, this system worked well for the British Empire and its alleged overlord — the Rothschild family.
Today, most of the largest commercial shipping fleets are based in Europe, and most of them are described here as being within the Rothschild orbit.
The Rothschild Empire has weaponized Lloyd’s insurance to ostracize any nation acting contrary to imposed imperialism.
London has aggressively and illegally boarded and detained ships, as witnessed against Russian ships on a weekly basis in recent times.
Whenever the rules are abused and violated by the two families to their advantage, it is simply treated as “part of the game”.
But when other nations begin to level the playing field by following the same set of “unspoken rules” accorded only to privileged Western nations, suddenly the world’s largest, oldest and most esteemed consortiums cry foul.
The revolt spawned by the West’s alleged criminal hypocrisy has resulted in the world’s “shadow fleet” — mostly belonging to Russia and Iran — growing to one-fifth the size of the entire global tanker fleet.
At the same time, US, EU and UK sanctions on Russia and Iran have caused the rapid growth of a shadow fleet of oil tankers that now amounts to more than 1,500 vessels, almost a fifth of the global tanker fleet.
Nearly all of these lack traditional insurance policies.
The West should be careful about further provoking the entire world.
At this rate, the “shadow” could soon grow larger than the thing casting it — at which point it may be the West itself reduced to a kind of shadow empire, flailing futilely against the coming Eastern dawn.
Oil tankers have become the latest targets in the US-Israel war on Iran, with Tehran repeatedly warning vessels against using unauthorized routes through the Strait of Hormuz.
Iran’s armed forces have stopped 30 vessels from passing through the Strait of Hormuz between 22 and 30 August, and many more over the following 10 days, after they tried to use a route that was not approved by Iran.
Ships using the strait during this period were allowed to use only a route designated by Iran.
They also had to inform Iranian authorities in advance about their passage and pay the required transit fees.
Attack #1
Iran was air-launching mines into the Strait.
This is a new technology.
The purpose was to make sure that the US and its allies did not use routes that had not been approved by Iran.
Then, a Saudi oil tanker hit a mine.
On Sunday, 3 August, US forces struck two Iranian launchers on Larak Island — the first known American attack on Iranian soil since late July.
Striking Larak degraded a specific IRGC capability and, more importantly, signaled that Washington would not sit still while Iran and Oman institutionalized a control regime that made the claim of “total control” look like what it was.
The mine threat was the stated cause.
The maritime-governance question was the strategic one, and it would still be there long after the rubble on Larak was cleared.
Iran’s Response: Back to the Base-Hitting Playbook
Iran answered quickly, and not in a manner consistent with a decimated force fleeing an unbreachable wall.
The IRGC announced a combined ballistic-missile and drone operation against US positions, naming the King Hussein Air Base and Al-Azraq Air Base in Jordan among its targets.
It also reported that Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar — CENTCOM’s forward headquarters — had been hit.
Iranian state television reported launches from multiple sites across the country.
Air-defense activity lit up over Jordan, with alerts in Qatar, Kuwait and Dubai.
The official reason for the Larak strike was counter-mining.
The more consequential context was the Iran–Oman moves to institutionalize control of Hormuz — a move the strike may have been intended to disrupt and deter.
Iran’s retaliation against Al Udeid and the two Jordanian bases fits its established, calibrated pattern.
But its real payoff is strategic: it compounds the pressure on the Pentagon to pull its forces westward, away from the chokepoint and out of range.
One of the two bases in Jordan was secret.
The Americans assumed that Iran did not know about it.
But Iran did know, and it struck the base with many ballistic missiles, causing extensive damage to US military infrastructure.
Reports emerged that there were hundreds of American casualties from the attack, both dead and wounded.
In its own statement, Iran said it hit Washington’s Muwaffaq Salti Air Base, referred to as Al-Azraq, and the King Hussein Base in Jordan.
The IRGC said:
“The zealous fighters of the IRGC Aerospace Force, in response to the US-Zionist enemy’s aerial aggression on Lark Island, launched a combined missile and drone operation … to destroy technical and maintenance infrastructure and enemy fighter jet bases at the two American air bases, King Hussein and Al-Azraq, in Jordan, causing significant damage.”
It also stated:
“Several hours ago, a violating super tanker that intended to pass through the illegal route south of the Strait of Hormuz caught fire in massive blazes after hitting two sea mines, and came to a complete stop.”
The IRGC warned that the “fate” of all vessels that ignore Tehran’s warnings in the critical waterway “will be no different.”
Attack #2
The US military strike targeted a wedding celebration, turning the event into a funeral after a residential building was bombed and destroyed.
Iran launched a missile-and-drone attack against a US military base in Kuwait at dawn on Wednesday, targeting the headquarters and residence of a US commander at Ali Al Salem Air Base.
The IRGC said its missile-and-drone operation against the Kuwait base was carried out simultaneously with other attacks.
It then revealed that the strike on Ali Al Salem Air Base resulted in the deaths of several US personnel.
IRGC fighters set fire to a drone hangar and a staging platform used by drones involved in attacks, adding that several drones were destroyed.
After this attack by Iran, Trump called Pakistan’s army chief, Asif Munir.
Both are close friends.
Trump was using Munir as an intermediary between the White House and Iran.
They used to talk almost daily.
This time, Munir refused to take the call from Trump but returned it later.
Trump was begging Munir to go back to the Iranians and negotiate a halt to Iran’s attacks.
Munir refused, saying:
“Twice you called, begging me to intervene and bring the Iranians back to the negotiating table. Twice I did your bidding. And twice you broke your word. Now, don’t call me in the future to go and talk to the Iranians.”
Trump then called the Qataris, who called Tehran and asked Iran to “pause the war for 10 days”.
The answer was no.
Then Qatar said that Trump wanted to carry out a bombing with no effective damage to Iran, and that this was meant to quell critics in the US.
This time, the Iranians reportedly responded angrily and ended the call.
Attack #3
For weeks, this war stayed on land — strikes on radar sites, air-defense batteries and mine depots, answered by Iranian missiles at American bases.
On 5 September, that boundary broke.
IRGC ballistic missiles targeted a US carrier and destroyer directly.
Both evaded the attack, according to CENTCOM.
Hours later, the US struck three Iranian tankers.
It was the first time both categories — warships and oil vessels — had been live targets at once.
Iran may have hit three tankers and three US Navy vessels.
The aircraft carrier George Washington and another warship were targeted by Iran.
As these missiles were about to hit the ships, the Iranians reportedly pushed a button and allowed them to explode directly over the vessels.
The two warships fled the scene as quickly as possible.
Iran’s National Security head, Mohsen Rezaei, revealed that Iran had test-fired, for the first time, a domestically developed anti-destroyer missile above a US aircraft carrier 48 hours earlier.
He described it as a warning that the US naval blockade was vulnerable.
“The special missile created a hell for the Americans, and they fled,”
he said.
Attack #4
On 9 September, Iran said it had seized, a day earlier, a submarine drone from the United States military in the strategic Strait of Hormuz.
The IRGC naval forces claimed to have captured one of the most modern unmanned underwater vehicles in the US military at the entrance to the Strait of Hormuz in a complex intelligence and operational action.
The statement claimed that the underwater vehicle had been delivered to the US military fleet in 2025.
The unmanned underwater vehicle’s main capabilities included:
- Subsurface reconnaissance and surveillance
- Seabed mapping
- Mine detection
- Inspection of submarine cables and pipelines
The source argues that Iranian engineers would subsequently reverse-engineer the technology and potentially share it with partners including China, Russia, North Korea and Yemen.
In response, the US military struck targets near Kharg Island and Jask.
The targets included Iranian oil tankers.
This was part of a larger effort to squeeze Iran economically.
The strategy included sinking and disabling Iranian crude-oil tankers.
The warning came after Iran reported earlier that a small Iranian oil tanker had been struck by a US missile approximately four nautical miles from Kharg Island in the Gulf.
The US military also attacked a second Iranian oil tanker near the coast of Jask in southern Iran.
This is the location of Iran’s Hormuz bypass pipeline.
The US strikes on the Iranian tankers were carried out in response to the seizure of the submarine drone and the downing of an “MQ-1” combat drone by Iran’s air defenses.
In total, the US struck five oil tankers, one of which was empty.
Most of Iran’s oil tanker fleet is old, while the tankers being struck are described as relatively modern.
Iran Attacks US-Linked Bases in Jordan and Hits Fighter-Jet Hangars
Jordan hosts a significant US military presence, with the Muwaffaq Salti Air Base serving as an important hub for US operations in the region.
The base has previously been targeted amid the broader conflict.
The IRGC said it carried out intensive missile strikes against the US base in response to Washington’s attacks on Iranian oil tankers.
It said the operation targeted facilities used to maintain, prepare and deploy US fighter jets.
The IRGC specifically said it targeted hangars housing F-35, F-16 and F-15 fighter aircraft at the base.
In addition, the IRGC’s aerospace force carried out a massive missile strike against a second airbase — Al-Azraq Air Base in Jordan, where American forces are deployed.
The barrage targeted maintenance and repair hangars, aircraft preparation facilities and shelters housing F-35, F-16 and F-15 warplanes.
On 10 September, it was revealed that the strike on Jordan damaged nine US warplanes: one A-10 and eight F-15s.
This brings the total aerial losses suffered by the US to more than 210 jets, planes and drones, according to the source.
Much more has been damaged, it claims, but the true losses are censored.
A total of 40 ballistic missiles hit the two bases.
The damage caused was extensive, and many fighter jets and helicopters were damaged.
Some of these have been sent to Israel by road transport.
Reports are also emerging that many US soldiers were killed and wounded, with the wounded being flown out to Germany.
This was the second attack by Iran on these bases in the past week.
In the first attack, the US fired more than 60 Patriot interceptors, and in the second attack, more than 100 interceptors were fired.
According to the source, almost all failed to intercept the incoming missiles.
With a serious shortage of Patriots in the US inventory, the question becomes:
How can the US maintain this burn rate of such weapons?
The United States’ attempt to deter Iran by attacking its tankers has failed miserably, according to this analysis, with the Islamic Republic responding more strongly than before.
The IRGC said that it did not attack one warship, but two:
- USS Delbert D. Black
- USS John Paul Jones
Both are guided-missile destroyers.
On 9 September, the IRGC said it had targeted two US vessels, eight oil tankers and ten other ships that it said were attempting to pass through a prohibited zone of the Strait of Hormuz.
Despite the losses, the US refrained from responding, possibly due to fears of a more serious Iranian missile strike amid a shortage of interceptors.
The US attempt to deter Iran by attacking its tankers has not only failed but has arguably backfired.
Currently, Washington seems incapable of inflicting a military defeat on Tehran, or even deterring it.
Meanwhile, Iran’s grip on the Strait of Hormuz is stronger than ever.
Iran to Draw New “Restricted Zone” in Hormuz
Iran has previewed a new “restricted zone” in the Gulf, which it says will be announced in the coming days.
The announcement is expected to include maps of the new shipping corridor through the Strait of Hormuz, likely beginning where the US blockade of Iran starts and extending into areas of the Gulf, according to Iran’s Supreme National Security Council.
“We will only commit to the Strait of Hormuz being open when they — the Americans — stop the sabotage, threats and attacks on Iran.”
In a latest warning, Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf put US energy firms on notice, saying they could be targeted if Iranian tankers continue to be attacked.
According to Ghalibaf:
“It’s simple: the oil and gas production chain here is sprawling, accessible, and exposed. American oil and gas companies across these waters and facilities share that exposure. Strike our assets and you get struck. We’ve already proven it. Ask the bases that are no longer viable.”
The top Iranian negotiator also said:
“The Americans must have understood that the era of proportionate responses has come to an end.”
He added:
“Any aggression against Iran’s interests and security will receive a faster, more intense and more painful response.”
Secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, Mohsen Rezaei, said that his country would announce a restricted zone outside the Strait of Hormuz in the coming days and place any ship attempting to transit the area on Tehran’s sanctions list.
Iran has added 11 new vessels to its list of sanctioned ships charged with violating its new regulations in the Strait of Hormuz.
The decision was announced via the Persian Gulf Strait Authority (PGSA), formed earlier this year.
“In light of violations by certain vessels of the Iranian arrangements for transiting the Strait of Hormuz, these vessels will face restrictions in their future transits through the Strait of Hormuz, such as fines, seizure, or confiscation,”
Iran’s PGSA said on 2 September.
The announcements follow Tehran’s listing of dozens of vessels on its new blacklist the previous month.
Rezaei said the zone would extend from:
“the line where the U.S. naval blockade begins to the Strait of Hormuz region and inside the Persian Gulf on the other side of the strait.”
Ships entering the zone without coordination with Iran, he added, would face sanctions affecting their insurance coverage and future passage through the waterway.
Rezaei framed the move as part of a broader strategic shift in Iran’s approach to war and diplomacy, aimed at increasing pressure on Washington.
He stressed that the Strait of Hormuz is completely closed, dismissing the US claim that ships and oil tankers are crossing the waterway as a “lie”.
While acknowledging that some vessels attempt to cross the strait via a route near Oman, often switching off their navigation systems to evade detection, Rezaei said most of those ships “receive blows”.
Yet he added that Iran does not intend to sink them for now due to environmental concerns.
In the coming days, he added, a new international corridor designated by Iran and Oman for passage through the strait would be announced, emphasizing that the corridor would be under Iranian management.
“We will only commit to the Strait of Hormuz being open when they [the Americans] stop the sabotage, threats and attacks on Iran.”
Secondary Sanctions
Washington declared an “Economic D-Day” against Iran.
But such extreme economic sanctions have little chance of being successful, according to this analysis.
China buys 90% of Iranian oil and has firmly opposed any such “illegal unilateral sanctions that lack international law basis and are not authorized by the UN Security Council”.
As one of Iran’s neighbors, Russia is also an important trading partner.
Given that Russia has already suffered those same American penalties, including the seizure of its dollar assets, Russia would certainly not break its trading links with Iran.
The UAE borders Iran and, by hosting Iranian banks, has provided another crucial Iranian link to the outside world.
But Iran has warned that if the UAE complied with American demands and cut all economic ties, it would regard this as an outright act of war.
With the Emiratis completely vulnerable to Iranian missiles, they would obviously be very reluctant to take such a provocative step.
The US now fears escalation more than Iran does.
As for Trump’s latest “sanctions” and newly laid strategy of suffocating Iran through gradual economic means, this analysis considers the strategy to be rank delusion.
The idea that, having survived both military strikes and sanctions, Iran will now succumb to sanctions alone is described as equally deluded.
The regime emerging from the war is being reorganized by men who believe that Iran survived an American-Israeli attempt to destroy it and that defiance, not compromise, produced victory.
Russia, China, Pakistan and a growing number of countries are breaking ranks with Washington in order not to cut economic ties with Iran.
Besides military help coming from Russia and China, even North Korea is standing with Iran.
Over the past week, North Korea reportedly sent highly advanced underwater drones to Iran.
The Changing Global Order
Putin has described the conflict in stark anti-imperialist terms:
“The West is prepared to make any sacrifice to preserve the neocolonial system that effectively colonizes the world through the power of the dollar and enjoys undeserved prosperity through hegemonic rents.”
He continued:
“What is critical for them is that all countries surrender their sovereignty to the United States. While the ruling elites of some states voluntarily accept vassalage, others are forced to submit through bribery or threats. When this fails, entire nations are destroyed; leaving behind humanitarian disasters, devastation, and ruins.”
And:
“Millions of ruined lives, terrorist enclaves, areas of social catastrophe, protectorates, and semi-colonies… This is why they are waging a hybrid war against Russia. They want to see us as a colony.”
These are very strong anti-imperialist statements from Vladimir Putin from 2022.
Recent Chinese statements have been even harsher.
We are living in very interesting times.
Superpower heads of state are openly saying what activists, intellectuals and others who have studied these issues have been saying for decades.
This is a major “end of times” scenario in which there are two sides:
Those who seek to enslave all humanity, and the rest of the world who stand against it.
8. The US Military Is “Broken”
The US war in Iraq between 2003 and 2012 broke the back of the US military.
They have not recovered from it yet.
Low funding for maintenance and upgrades has taken a toll on infrastructure and equipment.
Currently, the Pentagon is having money problems.
Add to this the loss of its military infrastructure in the Middle East.
The value of those losses exceeds $100 billion, according to the source, and the damage is expected to cost billions to repair.
This comes amidst new reports that the US Navy is running out of funds due to the disastrous war.
The war on Iran has driven the US military into a severe financial crisis, with the US Navy reportedly forced to transfer money from its payroll and other sources to cover the costs of combat.
Expect the US military to look increasingly run-down in the future as the repercussions of this situation slowly spread, with the usual delayed effect of a gargantuan organization.
Besides the loss of their bases in the region, the IRGC stated that, amongst the losses suffered by the US, Iran destroyed 200 aircraft of all types, including around 50 MQ-9 drones.
These aircraft are difficult to replace.
Something has been not-so-quietly brewing in the Pentagon.
Called by some the “revolt of the generals”, a leak has exposed that a handful of senior US commanders have formally dissented against Hegseth while warning that US Middle East plans are unsustainable.
There is reportedly a “revolt of the generals” at the Pentagon over the Iran war, with four senior US commanders pushing back against what they view as endless Middle East entanglement.
The heads of European, Indo-Pacific and Southern Command, plus the Chief of Naval Operations, formally “non-concurred” with Defense Secretary Hegseth’s push to keep more than 50,000 troops in the Middle East.
They warned that the extended deployment is unsustainable and is gutting US readiness elsewhere, including at home.
Commanders flagged depleted stocks of Patriot, THAAD and Tomahawk missiles.
The US has also burned through roughly a quarter of its MQ-9 Reaper drone fleet.
The chaos does not stop there.
Army Secretary Dan Driscoll reportedly resigned after months of turf wars with Hegseth.
The US Navy is facing a serious logistics problem in the Middle East.
Around 20 ships carrying roughly 20,000 sailors and Marines need more than 420,000 meals and about 40 million liters of fuel every week.
The situation became much harder after Iran destroyed a key Navy logistics base in Bahrain and made other nearby ports too dangerous to use.
Supply ships now have to travel approximately 2,200 miles to Diego Garcia, or even farther to Singapore, before returning to the fleet.
The Strategic Cost: Iran Is Pushing the US Westward and Further Away
The Pentagon is actively weighing a pullback from the Gulf, examining a dispersed posture that would move forces farther west — toward Prince Sultan Air Base near Riyadh, deeper into Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Israel, southern Europe and more distant Indian Ocean facilities — and out from under Iran’s shortest-range fires.
Iran is expelling US forces from the region by using ballistic missiles and drones.
It is making the current map expensive enough that Washington redraws it — quietly walking its own assets back from the strait it claims to control.
For years, Iran confronted a balance of power in the Middle East that tilted against it.
The region was dominated by a hostile American superpower, a nuclear-armed and militarily superior Israel, and significant local actors — Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates — that were strategically and economically aligned with the United States.
Today, Iran finds itself in entirely new circumstances.
It has gone head-to-head with the superpower and Israel, withstood a pounding from their most advanced weapons, and more than survived.
As a result, Iran has, with American help, completely reconfigured the power structure of the Middle East and the Persian Gulf.
The dominant power in the region going forward will be Iran, not the US or Israel.
Neighboring countries are already making their adjustments to this new reality.
More distant powers will too.
For years, the world has been dealing with a constrained Iran.
It will now discover what an unleashed Iran looks like.
Yet through all of this, the regime has survived and made no concessions.
Iran exposed America’s Achilles’ heel: the vulnerability of Iran’s neighbors.
A major turning point came in mid-March, when Israel attacked Iran’s South Pars gas field, and Iran retaliated against Qatar’s Ras Laffan complex, the world’s largest liquefied-natural-gas facility.
The attack showed that although Iran obviously could not defeat the United States in an air war, Iranian missiles and drones could inflict enough damage on the oil-and-gas infrastructure of the Gulf to plunge the world into a prolonged economic crisis.
The Gulf states understood this immediately, and so did Trump.
He halted attacks on Iranian energy targets, ordered a reluctant Israel to do the same, and soon brought the larger campaign to a stop without extracting a single Iranian concession.
Ever since, and despite many threats, Trump has not once ordered another strike against Iranian energy infrastructure.
In short, Iran proved to hold the most powerful leverage of all.
Iran did not even really need the MOU and knew that the US had no cards to play and would cut tail with or without it.
Iran’s control of the Strait of Hormuz is a more useful instrument of power than a nuclear weapon would be.
A nuclear weapon might deter an attack, but control of the strait gives Iran leverage every day over dozens of countries.
With it, Iran can reward friends, punish enemies, extract revenue, force the loosening of sanctions and make governments think twice before opposing Iranian policies.
It can do all of this without firing a shot while preserving the ability to threaten violence when necessary.
Another important repercussion of the US’s historic failure in Iran is the fact that it exposed America as a paper tiger.
This will have compounding effects in other regions throughout the world.
The effects will extend far beyond the Middle East.
American allies in Asia and Europe can see that a relatively brief war against a second-rank power has consumed much of America’s supply of the weapons needed for missile defense.
They can see that the United States began a war it could not finish, exposed its partners to retaliation and then stopped when the costs became too great.
Beijing’s conclusions about Taiwan, and Moscow’s conclusions about Europe, may be impossible to know.
But America’s allies will inevitably be asking whether Washington has the weapons, stamina and political will to sustain another major conflict.
In fact, they already are.
9. The Collapse of American Hegemony and Global Nuclear Risks
The American Middle East is finished.
The regional order that has prevailed since 1991 is one of the many casualties of the U.S.-Israeli war with Iran.
The American and Israeli failure to dislodge the regime in Tehran has proved, according to this analysis, the bankruptcy of decades of sanctions and violence.
The inability of the United States to protect its Gulf allies from Iranian attacks or to keep the Strait of Hormuz open has fatally undermined the core security bargain that justified its network of military bases in the region.
And Israel’s increasingly threatening posture and abandonment of any pretense of interest in reaching an accommodation with the Palestinians have ended Washington’s decades-long mission of bringing its Arab allies and Israel together into an enduring security arrangement.
For years, Iran confronted a balance of power in the Middle East that tilted against it.
The region was dominated by a hostile American superpower, a nuclear-armed and militarily superior Israel, and significant local actors — Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates — that were strategically and economically aligned with the United States.
Today, Iran finds itself in entirely new circumstances.
It has gone head-to-head with the superpower and Israel, withstood a pounding from their most advanced weapons, and more than survived.
As a result, Iran has, with American help, completely reconfigured the power structure of the Middle East and the Persian Gulf.
The dominant power in the region going forward will be Iran, not the US or Israel.
Neighboring countries are already making their adjustments to this new reality.
More distant powers will too.
For years, the world has been dealing with a constrained Iran.
It will now discover what an unleashed Iran looks like.
Iran’s control of the Strait of Hormuz is a more useful instrument of power than a nuclear weapon would be.
A nuclear weapon might deter an attack, but control of the strait gives Iran leverage every day over dozens of countries.
With it, Iran can reward friends, punish enemies, extract revenue, force the loosening of sanctions and make governments think twice before opposing Iranian policies.
It can do all of this without firing a shot while preserving the ability to threaten violence when necessary.
The sanctions strategy that for decades served to isolate Iran rested on international cooperation.
Nations that depend on access to the strait — Japan and South Korea, for example — will have to choose between access to a reliable energy supply and participation in American-backed sanctions.
Will they choose solidarity with Washington over their economic interests?
In the new order that Iran is creating, a global sanctions regime is likely to be unsustainable.
Washington said that it had targeted missile and mine-laying capabilities in a new round of US strikes along Iran’s southern coast and around the Strait of Hormuz.
Iran replied with missiles and drones against US facilities in Jordan, Bahrain, Kuwait, Iraq and the UAE.
For six months, the conflict has followed a recognizable cycle:
The US attacks. Iran retaliates. There is a pause and some indirect diplomacy. Both sides prepare again. Then Washington attacks once more.
A pause between blows is not peace.
The Trump administration continues to claim that Iran’s navy, missile forces and military infrastructure have been destroyed.
Yet the evidence of Iran’s repeated retaliation refutes this boast.
Iran’s systems have certainly been damaged by ferocious bombardment.
But damaged is not disarmed.
On 4 September, the first Iranian missiles and drones were launched within 15 minutes of the US attack.
The Iranian army struck four US bases in three countries:
- Two bases in the UAE
- Sheikh Isa Air Base in Bahrain
- A base in Kuwait
Iran said it hit satellite communications, equipment stores and aircraft hangars at Ahmad al-Jaber Air Base in Kuwait, as well as troops and radar systems at Al Minhad in the UAE.
Iran retains both the capacity and the will to reach the US base structure.
This is the war’s most important development.
The US built its power in West Asia on an asymmetry.
It could bomb a country from protected airfields and command centers scattered across the region, while the attacked country was unable or unwilling to touch those bases.
Iraq fired Scud missiles towards Israel in 1991 but did not systematically attack the vast US military architecture in the Gulf.
Baghdad feared that striking US bases would bring down even greater destruction.
Greater destruction came anyway.
Iran studied that lesson.
Iran has now begun to reverse the asymmetry.
The expensive network of bases designed to project US power has become a collection of targets.
Al Udeid in Qatar, the headquarters of US air operations across the region; the Fifth Fleet facilities in Bahrain; air bases and logistical hubs in Kuwait and the UAE; Camp Titin in Jordan; and installations in Iraq and Syria can no longer be treated as a secure rear.
Bases in Kuwait and the UAE have become front-line positions, while combined waves of decoy drones, ballistic missiles and cruise missiles seek to saturate Patriot and THAAD defenses and then strike command, radar, communications and logistical systems.
The technique matters because an interceptor costing millions of dollars can be drawn towards a drone costing a tiny fraction of that sum.
The vulnerability is political as well as military.
Every US facility sits on another country’s territory.
Governments in the Gulf must ask whether Washington’s military presence is a shield or a lightning rod.
Iran need not destroy every base.
It only needs to demonstrate that the bases impose danger on the states that host them.
Gulf governments might then restrict the use of their territory for US attacks, pushing US operations towards distant facilities such as Diego Garcia, the UK’s base in Cyprus, and US aircraft carriers — increasingly vulnerable themselves to long-term deployment fatigue.
Iran, moreover, has not climbed far up its escalation ladder.
It could increase the volume of its launches, widen its targets to logistical hubs, ports, surveillance systems and fuel depots, or encourage allied forces in Iraq, Lebanon and Yemen to enter the conflict fully.
It could further obstruct the Red Sea or close the Strait of Hormuz.
Any such step would deepen the economic crisis produced by the war.
Iran has converted the US’s geographical reach from an advantage into an exposure.
This does not mean that Iran has won, nor that escalation is safe.
A wounded empire is exceptionally dangerous.
The White House has force without a sequenced political strategy.
It can strike harder, but each blow opens additional Iranian options.
Iran, by contrast, can move step by step while presenting each action as retaliation.
But Iran has shown that US bases are not sanctuaries, that US weapons are not inexhaustible, and that US escalation does not command the final move.
The old asymmetry has been reversed.
Washington can still destroy.
It can no longer dictate.
Iran has emerged from months of the on-again, off-again war with a far better understanding of its military strengths and is surer of its capabilities.
Iran is now less likely than ever to make a deal, given that Iranian confidence has been boosted by a string of victories to the point where the US now looks weaker than ever.
Iranians are feeling pretty bullish about their position.
They have taken substantial damage, but that has always been built into their system.
They understand they can take damage, and they are playing a much longer game here.
Financially and economically, Iran can withstand hardship for years.
The West cannot.
Iran transferred $7.5 billion in oil revenues from sales during the first four months of the current Iranian year to the central bank.
The funds would be sufficient to cover the government’s foreign-currency expenditures from July through December, the report said, citing information obtained from Iran’s Oil Ministry.
Iran has enough oil available for sale outside the US naval blockade to meet the revenue requirements set under its state budget for 21 March 2026 to 20 March 2027.
Conclusion
The US has lost the war against Iran.
The reality has not yet set in across the West.
Iran has ended the petrodollar system.
Which leaves the Rockefeller Empire with two choices if it wants to save its global empire:
Start a global nuclear war, and/or impose ICE NINE on the financial system.
While it has lost the war against Russia in Ukraine and Iran in the Middle East, it has not stopped its plan to control the Western Hemisphere through pushing ahead with Rockefeller’s FORTRESS AMERICA plan.
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