The pretext for Trump’s aggression against Iran, in partnership with Israel, is flimsy. As the saying goes, even a gentle rabbit may bite when cornered. The current war is, in some respects, an extreme manifestation of hegemony. And the whole world is paying the price.

The U.S.-Israel war with Iran is exposing widening reluctance among American allies to support the conflict, signaling potential erosion in U.S. global influence. At the same time, moves to bypass the U.S. dollar in oil trade, amid growing Chinese involvement, could challenge the petrodollar and reshape the global energy order.

The U.S.-Israel strikes on Iran have heightened regional instability while exposing China’s complex strategic dilemma, as Beijing seeks to safeguard critical energy imports and investments without becoming directly involved. Balancing ties with Iran, Gulf states, and the West, China is pursuing a cautious, deliberately ambiguous approach to protect its broader geopolitical and economic interests.

An era has reached its end. Washington now faces a stark choice: It must either pay the true diplomatic and political price of leadership or prepare to hand over the keys to a region it can neither afford nor effectively manage.

U.S. strikes on Iran that killed Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei redirected American military resources and attention from the Indo-Pacific to the Middle East. This shift allows China to strengthen its strategic position in Asia while the United States becomes absorbed in a secondary conflict.

Donald Trump is deconstructing U.S. foreign policy through his erratic decision-making and appetite for political theater. The correction likely depends less on any single president but on whether America can build more stable strategic assessment mechanisms, more open decision-making processes and more resilient policy-correction capacity.

Two weeks into the U.S.-Israeli military campaign against Iran - launched on 28 February 2026 with the explicit aim of decapitating leadership, and ostensible objectives of degrading nuclear and missile capabilities, so as to trigger regime collapse - the conflict has instead evolved into a grinding quagmire. What Washington anticipated as a swift application of air superiority leading to internal disintegration has produced the opposite: a politically consolidated Iranian state, depleted U.S. and allied air-defence stocks, Iranian control over the Strait of Hormuz, and a cascading energy shock rippling across global markets.

The messy crisis in the Strait of Hormuz has clarified how power works in the 21st century. It reminds us that the greatest long-term threat to the United States is not China’s military buildup or Russian aggression, but the gradual fragmentation of the alliance system that has underwritten its global leadership since World War II.

Each has three core national objectives that are internally contradictory. Any two can be pursued simultaneously, but never all three. Until these triangles are broken, there will be no lasting peace in the Middle East—only the same fire burning in different forms.

The U.S.-Israel strike on Iran lacks a clear legal basis or credible justification and represents a high-risk gamble by the Trump administration. Despite early military success, the operation faces uncertain prospects, including limited chances of regime change and the risk of prolonged conflict.