Why the US is at War with Iran and Why the War Might Pause but Won’t End

While much discussion of the US war of aggression against Iran has focused on region-specific factors, including the myth that the US is fighting Iran on “behalf of Israel,” there are far more realistic and important global factors that have led to the war and will unfold because of it. 

This includes most recently Venezuela in Latin America. The early 2026 US war of aggression against the Venezuelan state, kidnapping of the Venezuelan president, and taking hostage of the remaining Venezuelan government led to the almost immediate cutting of Venezuelan oil exports to China and the distribution of Venezuelan oil wealth to US corporations.

A similar war of aggression by the US against Russia through Ukraine is also quickly expanding into a war directly against Russian energy production, storage, and export infrastructure through the use of drones that — while attributed to Ukraine — the New York Times has revealed are actually overseen by the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the US military.

Likewise, the US is encouraging its European proxies under a “division of labor” to expand maritime tracking, interdiction, and seizure of tankers carrying Russian energy exports, as well as a US campaign using maritime drones to attack the tankers. Again, the NYT has identified the US CIA and US military as having “supercharged” what are nominally claimed to be “Ukrainian” operations.

Together with the war on Iran, a clear, global pattern emerges of what is the deliberate US disruption, destruction, and even shutting down of energy exports to Asia in general, but to China specifically.

While the US was likely also attempting to quickly topple the Iranian government to enhance its control over the region and further isolate both Russia and China, a much wider and more global-focused objective was to cut off energy not just from Iran to Asia and specifically China, but from the entire Middle East to Asia and China.

The most recent phase of US aggression against Iran — beginning in late February and as a continuation of violence launched against Iran in both 2025 under the Trump administration and even 2024 at the end of the Biden administration — involved targeting Iranian energy production as well as strikes on Kharg Island, Iran’s key energy export facility.

US strikes on Iranian energy production led to retaliatory strikes by Iran on America’s Persian Gulf Arab state proxies, including Kuwait, Qatar, the UAE, and Saudi Arabia.

Collectively, this violence led to reduced production across the entire region, subsequently leading to lower energy exports of gas and oil from the entire Middle East to China when compared with pre-war........

© New Eastern Outlook