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By Ephraim Agbo
The question hangs in the air like the smoke over the Strait of Hormuz: is this war—the missiles, the closed shipping lanes, the deaths of more than 1,100 children—actually a desperate act by a power that senses its moment is slipping away? Three weeks into the US-Israeli conflict with Iran, the answer emerging from strategic capitals, academic institutions, and military analysis is unsettling in its clarity.
Yes. And that is precisely what makes it so dangerous.
"What we are witnessing is a Suez Crisis moment for the United States," Fawaz Gerges, professor of international relations at the London School of Economics, told Middle East Eye . The reference is deliberate and devastating. In 1956, when Britain and France invaded Egypt after the nationalization of the Suez Canal, they imagined themselves still as imperial powers capable of imposing their will. The United States forced them to withdraw, and the world understood that the era of European dominance had conclusively ended. Today, the question being asked from the Gulf to East Asia to Europe is whether the United States is playing the role of Britain in its own Suez drama—an overextended power whose military action reveals weakness rather than conceals it .
The Anxiety at the Heart of American Power
To understand why this war may be driven by fear rather than strength, one must first understand the psychological transformation that has overtaken Washington's strategic class. The United States that emerged from the Cold War was a power that believed in its own permanence. That confidence is gone.
"The anxiety of the United States does not stem from an overall decline in its absolute strength," writes Zhang Jiadong, professor at Fudan University's Center for American Studies. "Rather, it stems from the panic generated by the compression of its relative advantages" . This distinction matters enormously. The American economy remains the world's largest. Its military is unrivalled in technological sophistication. Its alliances, though strained, still span the globe. But the gap between the United States and everyone else has narrowed, and for a nation accustomed to unipolar dominance, the experience of becoming merely "first among equals" feels indistinguishable from decline.
This cognitive dissonance has produced what the Fudan analysis calls a "predatory hegemony"—a power that, rather than investing in its own competitiveness, devotes increasing energy to sabotaging the potential of its rivals . The logic is simple: if you cannot outrun the person chasing you, trip them instead. The war on Iran, viewed through this lens, is not primarily about nuclear proliferation or regional stability. It is about demonstrating to China, to Russia, to the entire watching world that the United States remains capable of projecting decisive force and disrupting the energy flows on which challengers depend.
The Signs of Overreach Are Everywhere
The evidence that this war is born of anxiety rather than assured dominance is not subtle. It is written in the redeployment of military assets from regions that Washington has spent decades declaring "vital interests."
The United States has reportedly begun moving a Terminal High-Altitude Area Defence system from South Korea to the Middle East. Patriot missile batteries are being shifted. The USS Tripoli, carrying 2,500 Marines, has been diverted from Japan . For South Korea, a treaty ally that endured a Chinese economic boycott to host that THAAD system, the message is alarming. "If US forces are just going to go in and out, then what does that mean for the US commitment to South Korea's defence?" asked Andrew Yeo of the Brookings Institution. "Those questions are being raised" .
They are being raised in Europe as well. Air defence systems have been moved from Germany to Turkey. Romania is hosting refuelling operations. Greece has deployed Patriot missiles to the Aegean . All of this occurs while the war in Ukraine continues, and while the Trump administration simultaneously walks back sanctions on Russian oil to contain rising energy prices . The picture is not one of confident power management. It is one of scrambling to cover gaps.
"The problem the US will need to recover from is the loss of credibility as it opened a Pandora's box without thinking through what would happen next," Oxford historian Peter Frankopan told Middle East Eye. "Lack of competence is a terrible thing to display in public" .
The Narrative of Victimhood as Cover for Aggression
There is a deeper pathology at work here, one that scholars increasingly identify as central to understanding American foreign policy in this moment. The United States has constructed for itself a narrative of victimhood that bears almost no relationship to historical reality.
"For decades, the American domestic sphere has been filled with a 'victim narrative'—the belief that the economic globalization of the past decades has caused the United States to 'suffer losses' and that the existing international system has damaged American national interests," the Fudan analysis notes. "If we pull our perspective back to the macro-historical dimension, we find this perception is absurd" .
The numbers bear this out. At the end of the Cold War, Germany and Japan together had an economy roughly the size of the United States. Today, after decades of globalisation that Washington now claims harmed its interests, the American GDP is more than twice the combined total of those two former challengers . The United States extracted more wealth from the existing international order than any other nation. To now claim victimhood is, as the analysis puts it, "not only a distortion of history, but a fig leaf for predatory policy" .
This psychological posture matters because it enables actions that would otherwise be indefensible. If you are the victim, then any response is self-defence. If the system is rigged against you, then violating its norms is justified. The war on Iran becomes, in this framing, not an act of aggression but a necessary correction.
The Allies Are Already Leaving
The most concrete evidence that this war reflects American weakness rather than strength may be the behaviour of those who have spent decades depending on American power.
France and Italy have opened direct communication channels with Tehran to secure passage for their tankers through the Strait of Hormuz—a clear bypass of American leadership . India has done the same . The Gulf states, traditional anchors of the American security architecture in the Middle East, are visibly hedging. Saudi Arabia has signed a mutual defence agreement with Pakistan and is exploring joint weapons production with Turkey. The UAE has hosted Chinese military personnel . When traditional allies begin making side deals with potential adversaries, the message is unmistakable: confidence in American protection is eroding.
"Across the Gulf, I am hearing lots of threats to turn to China and elsewhere for weapons systems, security and defence and even for investment more broadly," Frankopan said. "I think that reflects the heat and difficulties of the moment" .
The crisis extends beyond the immediate region. At the Munich Security Conference in February 2026, world leaders abandoned diplomatic niceties. Germany's chancellor said the global order "no longer exists." France's president warned Europe must prepare for war. The conference's own report was titled "Under Destruction," stating bluntly that "more than 80 years after construction began, the US-led post-1945 international order is now under destruction" .
The Iran Strategy: Endurance Over Victory
Iran, for its part, understands exactly what is happening. Its strategy is not to defeat the United States militarily—an impossibility—but to outlast it politically. Tehran is betting that the American public, confronted with rising energy prices, sustained casualties, and no clear definition of victory, will eventually force Washington to blink .
"They're like a bleeding animal—wounded, but therefore more dangerous than ever," said Alex Vatanka of the Middle East Institute . The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, now firmly in control after the killing of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and the installation of his son Mojtaba, is executing a pre-planned strategy of asymmetric warfare. Close the Strait of Hormuz. Attack energy infrastructure. Drive up global prices. Make the war hurt where it will be felt: in Western economies and at American polling places .
Thus far, the strategy is working. Oil prices have surged above $100 per barrel. The United States has been forced to release 400 million barrels from strategic reserves—an unprecedented intervention that cannot be sustained indefinitely . The IRGC has declared that Iran, not Washington, will decide when the war ends .
The Minab Catastrophe
If there is a single image that encapsulates the strategic incoherence of this war, it is the school in Minab. On a day in early March, a US Tomahawk cruise missile—operating on targeting data that predated the construction of a wall separating a military base from a school by more than a decade—killed more than 170 schoolgirls .
Tphe Pentagon had cut the office responsible for civilian harm prevention by 90 percent . The intelligence failure was catastrophic. And the administration's response—President Trump initially claimed Iran had fired the missile—only compounded the damage. The images of pink flowers on school walls have circled the globe. The United States, which began this war with claims of precision and moral purpose, now confronts a credibility crisis that no number of additional air strikes can repair.
"This is the most serious operational threat Iraq has faced in more than 20 years," a senior Iraqi oil ministry official said of the wider conflict . But the phrase could apply equally to the United States itself. The threat is not to American territory or even American lives, though those are being lost. The threat is to the idea of American competence, American reliability, American exceptionalism. Once those intangibles are gone, the concrete foundations of power begin to crumble as well.
The Contradiction at the Heart of American Strategy
The deepest irony of this war is that it seeks to preserve American dominance through actions that accelerate its erosion. Every missile fired at Iran is a missile that cannot be used elsewhere. Every air defence system pulled from South Korea is a signal to Pyongyang and Beijing that American commitments are conditional. Every ally forced to fend for itself in the Strait of Hormuz becomes an ally more open to Chinese or Russian overtures.
"By some thinking, anything that keeps US forces outside the Indo-Pacific region is good for China," Yeo observed . The same logic applies globally. The United States is pouring resources into a Middle East conflict at precisely the moment when its strategic rivals are consolidating gains in Asia, Africa, and Eastern Europe.
The Fudan analysis frames this as a recurring pattern in the life cycle of hegemonic powers. "When the backlash from predatory policies outweighs the short-term gains they can extract, when the costs of maintaining power exceed the limits of what can be borne, this policy model will inevitably reach a dead end" . The question is whether the United States will recognise that dead end before it is too late—or whether, like Britain at Suez, it will need to be forced to confront its own diminished circumstances by events beyond its control.
The Fear That Drives the War
So, is this war born of fear of losing global dominance? The evidence suggests yes, but with an important qualification. The fear is not that the United States will collapse or be conquered. It is that the comfortable assumptions of the post-Cold War era—automatic deference, unchallenged sea lanes, allies who follow without question—are eroding faster than Washington can adapt.
"The very fact that there is a debate over whether ties with the US are an asset or liability is disturbing," said Ian Lesser of the German Marshall Fund . That debate is now underway from Seoul to Riyadh to Berlin. And it is happening because the United States, in its anxiety to demonstrate continued relevance, has chosen a course of action that raises questions about its judgment, its reliability, and its understanding of its own interests.
The war on Iran may achieve its tactical objectives. Nuclear facilities can be destroyed. Missile launchers can be eliminated. Leaders can be killed. But the strategic objective—the preservation of American primacy in a rapidly changing world—cannot be achieved through military means alone. It requires the consent of allies, the confidence of markets, the belief of other nations that American leadership serves their interests as well as Washington's. Those intangibles are draining away with every day this conflict continues.
In the end, the fear that drove the United States to war may become the fear that defines its aftermath. Not fear of Iran, or China, or any external adversary. But fear of a world in which American power is no longer decisive—a world the United States itself, through this very war, is helping to create.
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