One might ask if killing a head of state in the middle of negotiations defines a new normal for the American Empire. But if one includes the history of assassinations of heads of state across Africa and Asia since the Second World War, this seems a natural progression. However, doing so publicly and boasting about it without even a veneer of international law or manipulation of international bodies (United Nations) is a change, quite similar to Israel’s public genocide in Gaza under the influence of messianic Zionism. The real change, though, is for the United States Secretary of War to quote the Bible during his hyperbolic war briefing, or for Christian pastors to gather in the White House to pray for the success of this war with the president.

Against this backdrop, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) stated that they were actually surprised by America’s lack of strategy. Practically all independent military and intelligence analysts think that they have not come across such incompetence and lack of planning, with one describing it as: “Iran is playing chess, Trump does not know where the board is.” Most think that the United States has already lost the war, given the initially stated objective of regime change; later, limiting Iran’s regional projection of power or the underlying Israeli objective of the destruction of the state cannot be met. Lastly, at great cost, Iran also seems to be matching the ultimate arsenal in the US-Israeli war plan, the escalation ladder, even though it could lead to regional destruction and a worldwide economic catastrophe.

It seems that Fukuyama’s End of History hubris, that liberal democracy will pervade the world and every nation will follow the American political and economic system, has come full circle, as democracy even has a questionable presence at home,e given the influence of money in politics, cs allowing a few lobbies to dictate policy. The declining US empire has been taken over by a simpleton bully con artist with the support of greater Israeli and Christian fundamentalist forces. The Zionist-billionaire-financial lobby (the Epstein class) and the military-industrial complex (MIC) have not just been playing havoc with the world, but their policy prescriptions have also hollowed out America. Neoliberal order, countless wars, and financialisation of the economy have led to deindustrialisation, draining blue-collar Middle America of its vitality and self-confidence over the last three decades.

Still, the current American regime seems to have no recourse to this decline as it equates tariffs with reindustrialisation and the extraction of resources from other nations to plug its ballooning debt. The war on Iran should thus be seen as the last attempt of a declining empire to make Zionists happy through the greater Israel project; the MIC through greater spending on war; and the private equity funds and Wall Street by bringing the Iranian economy under the sway of American finance, thus giving a lifeline to the dollar as the predominant reserve currency. Additionally, in great power geopolitics, control of oil and gas resources would increase American leverage over a rising but energy-dependent China.

In other words, the US elite is failing in a peaceful transition from a unipolar to a multipolar world not necessarily because it subscribes to what Mearsheimer terms ‘offensive realism’—the American goal of worldwide hegemony by maximised projection of its power to ensure continuation of a unipolar world—but because realism (a rational protection of American interests) has given way to ideological, messianic and personalised statecraft. This has led the United States to compromise its other sources of power, such as the rule-based international order—the United Nations, the Western military (NATO) and political alliance, and lastly its soft power through organisations such as USAID.

The rule-based international order has been a key pillar in Western power preservation as it camouflaged Western dominance in the cloak of civilisational and cultural superiority, successfully hiding pre-existing systems of international domination.

The rule-based international order has been a key pillar in Western power preservation as it camouflaged Western dominance in the cloak of civilisational and cultural superiority, successfully hiding pre-existing systems of international domination.

Western civilisation has now been dominant for centuries. Centuries of intra-European warfare prepared it to project power outside its borders, where it exploited the rest of the world for development at home, initially through direct colonisation and later in the post-colonial era, through better terms of trade (buying raw materials and selling machinery), debt payments by developing countries, investments owing to the dollar or euro being reserve currencies, and lastly capital parking by corrupt Southern elites. Thus, the rule-based international order has been a key pillar in Western power preservation as it camouflaged Western dominance in the cloak of civilisational and cultural superiority, successfully hiding pre-existing systems of international domination.

Few civilisations had withstood Western colonisation, but even these became subordinate in the international system dominated by the West. Russia was an exception, but the fall of the Soviet Union also led it into the Western orbit, followed by a wholesale plunder of its national assets termed as privatisation in the neoliberal era. However, it gradually regained its strength after a decade-long turmoil, eventually to lash out against the encroachment of its sovereignty as NATO attempted to reach its Ukrainian border. Similarly, the other major countries that were able to withstand US imperialism during unipolar decades were the civilisational states of China and Iran, where revolutions had scraped off the Eurocentric elite while raising the wretched of the earth, and which had enough self-confidence to chart their own path rather than blindly following the West.

Still, these civilisational states were considered pariahs because the global mind had long been captured by the West owing to its media dominance, equating the West with a higher civilisation, in constituting individual freedom and human rights. Thus, the American adoption of messianic statecraft from Israel, and its acquiescence by the larger West, which refused to accept the Gaza genocide, condemn the killing of the Iranian head of state, and thus normalised assassinations of political and scientific leaders along with their families and neighbours, has completely eroded the West’s moral standing in the eyes of the wider world, calling into question Western civilisational superiority.

Add to this the increased erosion of beneficial terms of trade with Chinese high-value-added products outcompeting Western ones, and only military and finance are left as the basis of Western dominance. This makes the Iran war critical because for a regional power to sustain against the American-Israeli war machine suggests that the United States has not just lost its military dominance, leaving Western Asia in need of a new security architecture, but also potentially its financial lifeline.

While this may delay domestic political reforms and individual freedoms for Iranians for another generation, owing to the empowerment of the IRGC, Iran has nonetheless secured its place as a pillar in the evolving new global order emerging in the wake of a civilisational reset

While this may delay domestic political reforms and individual freedoms for Iranians for another generation, owing to the empowerment of the IRGC, Iran has nonetheless secured its place as a pillar in the evolving new global order emerging in the wake of a civilisational reset

The Gulf’s petrodollar has been instrumental in keeping the United States afloat in times of massive trade deficits through dollar-denominated energy trading, and investing these funds in US Treasury securities, the stock market and military hardware, while the United States provided security to family regimes in the Arab Gulf states through American military bases across the region. But in the current war, the security in Gulf countries has vanished not despite US military presence but because of it, as Iran argues that these bases form a critical node in the execution of war against Iran. It is no surprise, then, that Iran’s goal to remove American military presence from the Gulf would automatically mean the payment of reparations to Iran as the new regional hegemon. Otherwise, this would call into question the very survival of small Gulf states such as the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Bahrain and Kuwait, which are all colonial constructs.

Especially when Abu Dhabi has been playing geopolitics far above its weight by destabilising Sudan, Yemen and Libya, or when Bahrain’s Sunni ruling family reigns over a majority Shia population. When the dust settles, the future architecture in the region will greatly depend on Saudi Arabia and Iran, as Iran has stated its preference for a comprehensive regional security system by welcoming the Saudi–Pakistan Strategic Mutual Defence Agreement.

Still, at the international level, a civilisational reset would require the displacement of the dollar as the predominant transactional and reserve currency, which explains Iran’s requirement that all ships passing through the Strait of Hormuz settle their transactions in Chinese yuan rather than the dollar. Although non-dollar-denominated transactions have gained some traction because of dollar weaponisation through sanction regimes on Russia and Iran, forcing them into alternative trading arrangements, the transition remains slow. Some BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa) members have started trading in their respective currencies, but the transition has been extremely slow, as it depends on providing an alternative architecture for global financial transactions.

For this, the Chinese yuan needs to gain greater weight as a global reserve currency, which is dependent on China loosening its currency controls, allowing for easier international transactions in yuan, while at the same time increasing domestic consumption so that Chinese citizens can spend some of the yuan accumulated from the country’s massive trade surplus. More importantly, a critical reason for slow BRICS progress has been the role of India, which currently holds the BRICS presidency but has positioned itself squarely in the Western camp under the current Bharatiya Janata Party government.

India did not condemn the war of aggression against Iran, while in their first leadership conversation, the President of Iran asked India to activate BRICS both to condemn the aggression and to address the conflict, which India has not done yet. While India may consider itself a civilisational state that has experienced the humiliation of colonisation, unfortunately,y its civilisational basis continues to be fractured. It threw off the yoke of colonisation not as an outcome of revolution but of Partition. These civilisational cracks have only amplified with time as Pakistan and India remain stuck in zero-sum geopolitics.

The rise of Hindutva has further exacerbated these cracks as Indian Muslims are being forcefully excluded from the Indian civilisation, while the state ideology in Pakistan continues to negate the Indian constituent of its Indo-Islamic civilisational identity. Understandably, the subcontinent continues with its irrelevance in this civilisational contest, acting as a subordinate of great powers. The Indian Prime Minister’s trip to Israel under the drums of war to meet fellow fascists only matched the Pakistani Prime Minister’s flattery of the narcissistic head of the American Empire, both indicating that a collective subcontinental decolonisation programme is a pipe dream until Hindutva in India and Pakistan’s security state are domestically defeated.

Until then, subcontinental infighting leaves little room for India to chart its own path independent of the Western global order. However, the question remains whether the ‘I’ in BRICS would be replaced with Iran for a narrower though quicker consolidation of a non-Western security and financial framework, or whether BRICS will continue at a snail’s pace courtesy of India’s ambivalence.

While a measured, stability-oriented leadership in China, accustomed to planning for the long game, cannot be expected to break the current BRICS mould, a peaceful power transition from the West to the East requires a quicker defanging of dollar weaponisation and a way for Iran to bypass sanctions and rebuild after the war. In conclusion, Iran’s survival amid the latest onslaught suggests that, alongside China, Persia is re-emerging as a civilisational power after centuries of Western domination in Western Asia.

While this may delay domestic political reforms and individual freedoms for Iranians for another generation, owing to the empowerment of the IRGC, Iran has nonetheless secured its place as a pillar in the evolving new global order emerging in the wake of a civilisational reset.

© The Friday Times