Yesterday, the world woke to a grim spectacle: a blood-soaked theatre being staged in the name of freedom and security. Old wine in a new bottle. Washington is presenting the bombs falling on the Middle East as instruments of peace, as tools meant to liberate people and secure the world. That narrative demands to be challenged. What we are witnessing is not a triumph of democracy. It is a dangerous gamble by a hegemonic power convinced that overwhelming force can bend political
reality to its will.
President Trump has taken to the media to announce a massive and ongoing military campaign against Iran, promising to devastate its military, eliminate its nuclear program, and force political change. He has vowed to destroy missile capabilities and cripple naval power. Explosions are reportedly tearing through Tehran, and the operation is described not as a limited strike but as a coordinated campaign along with Israel, which is carrying out its own wave of attacks in western Iran. Label it whatever; alpha, bravo or charlie, it’s scale signals dangerous escalation.
The reaction was immediate. Iran fired missiles at Israel and targeted U.S. bases across the region, including Al Udeid in Qatar, Ali Al Salem in Kuwait, Al Dhafra in the United Arab Emirates, and the U.S. Fifth Fleet headquarters in Bahrain, followed by American residential compounds and blocks in the UAE. Air raid sirens are still sounding. U.S. embassies in Jordan and the UAE have instructed staff to shelter in place. Though the officials call it precautionary, the fact remains that once kinetic exchanges begin, control becomes uncertain.
Calls for Iranians to rise up once bombing ceases may resonate rhetorically, yet civilians under bombardment prioritise survival, and immediate concern turns to safety, not protest.
At the heart of this confrontation lies a familiar assumption: that overwhelming firepower can crush a nation’s will. Dozens of strikes launched from regional bases and aircraft carriers are meant to compel submission through destruction. Yet history offers little support for the idea that physical devastation automatically produces political surrender; outcomes of failed campaigns in Iraq, Libya and Afghanistan, which actually turned these countries into wastelands. In an anarchic international system, states act from existential fear. They rally when threatened. Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, with nearly two hundred thousand members, is not an abstract target but a deeply embedded institution. Bombs may damage infrastructure, but they also risk strengthening regime cohesion by casting the conflict as a struggle for survival.
Even within Washington, doubts had surfaced before this escalation. Senior military officials had already acknowledged uncertainty about how fully the political leadership grasps the depth of Iranian hostility or the forces this campaign could unleash. The chairman of the Joint Chiefs had cautioned that American troops could be killed or injured.
The path to this moment did not begin overnight. In 2018, President Trump withdrew the United States from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, the nuclear agreement negotiated with Iran. He called it the worst deal in history and imposed hardline conditions, demanding that Iran cease uranium enrichment and abandon regional proxy networks. What was not accounted for was that without diplomatic exits, states prefer to seek deterrents rather than capitulate. The security dilemma intensifies; pressure begets counter-pressure.
According to a preliminary classified assessment, recent strikes a few months back on Iranian nuclear facilities reportedly set the program back by only months. Military action, in other words, did not resolve the underlying problem. The Defence Intelligence Agency had concluded in 2025 that no decision had been made by Iran to pursue an intercontinental ballistic missile. As envoys met Iranian officials in Geneva, force was chosen over sustained negotiation, opting for coercion over diplomacy.
The material balance also matters. Iran does not require large surface fleets to offset U.S. operations. It possesses hundreds of fast boats suited for swarm attacks in the Persian Gulf and an estimated three to six thousand naval mines capable of sealing the Strait of Hormuz, a chokepoint of global energy supply. It is believed to hold more than two thousand short- and medium-range ballistic missiles, placing American installations across the Gulf within range. Each launch is a reminder that asymmetric defence can impose high costs.
A prolonged campaign risks turning into a war of attrition. American officials anticipate strikes lasting days or weeks. In such contests, endurance becomes decisive. A state fighting on its own territory may tolerate hardship differently from a distant power projecting force from offshore bases. The human, economic, and political toll accumulates.
Yet the strategic consequences extend beyond the Middle East. Great power politics rarely unfold in isolation. The United States is engaged in long-term competition with China, the only peer competitor with the industrial capacity and demographic scale to challenge American primacy. A substantial military buildup in the Middle East, including aircraft carriers, destroyers, and dozens of fighter aircraft, inevitably draws resources and attention away from the Indo-Pacific, which Beijing closely watches. Every diversion is liable to alter the broader balance.
The USA runs the risk of not merely tactical miscalculation but strategic overextension. It has not learnt from its failures of the past that removing regimes does not guarantee stability. Iraq descended into insurgency after the fall of Saddam Hussein. Libya fractured following the removal of Muammar Gaddafi. But being an ancient civilisation, Iran is a different nation, even martyrdom of the Supreme Leader will not make it capitulate, rather gel it more.
The moral dimension complicates matters further. Calls for Iranians to rise up once bombing ceases may resonate rhetorically, yet civilians under bombardment prioritise survival, and immediate concern turns to safety, not protest.
The immediate horizon for the world seems bleak. Armed proxies across the region may activate. Gulf allies face internal pressures and the spectre of huge economic blowback, especially for the UAE’s safe life bubble. Energy markets could react sharply if the Strait of Hormuz is threatened. What begins as a campaign to eliminate capabilities is likely to evolve into a protracted confrontation, draining the national resources of the aggressor. Remember, nemesis follows hubris.
The writer is a freelance columnist and can be reached at [email protected]