Now well into its second week, the US-Israeli war against Iran has gone beyond the “combat operation” the US president, Donald Trump, announced when it began on February 28. Civilians and infrastructure have been struck across the region from Lebanon, to the UAE, Saudi Arabia and Iraq. The conflict has spread rapidly across the Middle East. Now, with the strait of Hormuz effectively closed, oil prices have risen sharply threatening global economic chaos.

This is not an abstract strategic contest. It is unfolding in a region shaped by decades of conflict driven both by external intervention and by regional actors themselves. Israel’s overwhelming use of military force in recent years in Gaza, Lebanon and now against Iran has been a central factor in the current escalation, while Iran and allied armed movements such as Hezbollah, Hamas and the Houthis have pursued their own strategies of deterrence and retaliation.

The latest US-Israeli strikes and Tehran’s response therefore add another layer to an already volatile landscape in which multiple actors pursue security, influence or survival through force. The human cost is mounting. Meanwhile, the legal principles meant to constrain the use of force under the UN Charter have increasingly been overshadowed by power politics.

In this context, the meaning of the “America first” slogan on which Donald Trump campaigned in 2024 demands urgent reassessment. So does the manner in which American power operates.

US involvement in and response to the conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East show a pattern of Washington enlisting regional partners to help realise its foreign policy aims. It is letting Europe bear the main burden in economic terms in the Ukraine conflict while in the Middle East, it has partnered with Israel. Meanwhile, it is happy to directly manage affairs in the Americas – in the Venezuela raid in January, for example, or the Cuba blockade.

When Barack Obama called it “leading from behind”, there was a furore on the American right. But now, this approach is central to maintaining........

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