Prof. Schlevogt’s Compass No. 51: Persian Armageddon, rewired – Seven repercussions of the Iran war

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The US and Israel are waging a war of choice with global consequences: eroding norms, imperial decline, and a world tilting toward disorder.

Dark rumor has long held that the Roman emperor Nero set Rome ablaze in search of inspiration for a song on the destruction of Troy. Judicious historians and classicists dismiss this account as apocryphal.

A prosaic arsonist in the White House

Today, a powerful ruler, US President Donald Trump, stands accused not by rumor, but by unfolding reality. The American leader himself has struck the match, setting not only Iran and the wider Gulf region, but the entire world, alight, all at Israel’s behest. Trump revels in the spectacle of fire on a grand scale, even as he shows no inclination to transmute destruction into epic.

Seven systemic consequences, distinct yet interwoven, will reverberate globally far beyond the contingencies of the present conflict. This holds true even were the US–Israeli war of choice against Iran to cease forthwith. For the visible toll in human suffering and material destruction, grave as it is, constitutes only the most immediate and tangible register of harm. Beneath it lies a deeper and less visible yet more insidious and enduring transformation: the erosion of norms, the enfeeblement of restraint, and the gradual dislocation of an order once presumed resilient.

Forces long gathering beneath the surface have been violently quickened; trajectories once gradual now race toward their culmination. What is currently set in motion most likely will come to be remembered not as an episode among many, but as a threshold: the point at which the long arc of American ascendancy bent irreversibly toward its twilight.

Trump announces two-week ceasefire with Iran

1. Diminution of America’s global status

In the current age of viral geopolitics, the apt hashtag for the US-Israeli war on Iran might be: “Make America diminished again” (MADA). The US, afflicted by imperial overstretch, persists in behaving as an empire it can no longer sustain, thereby risking a long-term reversion, at best, to a position reminiscent of the pre–First World War era.

First, Trump is dismantling America’s global alliances. His conduct signals to allies that alignment with the US entails exposure without protection.

Gulf partners, not consulted by the US before the war, face potential devastation from Iranian retaliatory strikes – a cost that Trump, with remarkable selfishness and callousness, appears all too willing to impose on his loyal allies. European and Asian partners, already strained by punitive American tariffs, are again harmed despite opposing the war.

Given Trump’s hostile action towards friends, it comes to no surprise that core partners have hesitated to support the war by providing bases; the response to Trump’s calls for “teamwork” in securing the Strait of Hormuz after the US and Israel had caused its closure has been muted. Subsequently, Trump even exhorted allies to secure the desperately needed oil themselves, calling the massive dislocations a small price to be paid for his “excursion” to Iran.

The pattern of America’s betrayal, evident in its treatment of the Kurds and Afghan allies alike, now extends system-wide. Trust, the foundation of alliance politics – above all the expectation that the US will come to the aid of its allies – is broken; and once broken, it is exceedingly difficult to restore. As in a breach of marital fidelity, the damage endures. Among other consequences, NATO itself may collapse under the corrosive strain.

Remarkably, Trump even betrays his domestic allies, worsening their prospects in the upcoming midterm elections by the day; global partners will take note of how readily he abandons his friends.

Second, America’s claim to act as a liberating force is profoundly discredited. Iranian opposition figures who imprudently had placed their hopes in the US, betraying their own country by inviting foreign intervention, now confront a stark reality: At Israel’s behest, Washington is devastating Iran in the dissidents’ name, killing thousands of innocent compatriots, including countless children, through strikes on densely populated areas, while dismantling the country’s intellectual, cultural, and material foundations – including heritage sites and water plants without any military value – thereby precipitating a humanitarian catastrophe.

Trump asserts, implausibly, that Iranians welcome further bombardment and acquiesce in their own suffering. In reality, the war will induce a classic “rally-around-the-flag” effect, prompting Iranians to set aside internal divisions and unite in the face of external threat, thereby strengthening the very state the enemies sought to weaken.

Third, the war exposes and accelerates America’s overextension, precipitating its self-disarmament and undermining its global deterrence.

The large-scale destruction of US bases in the Gulf has turned strategic assets into liabilities, which may prompt host states to expel American forces rather than remain exposed without credible protection. Similar foreign pressures for the US to close its bases may emerge elsewhere, including in Europe and Asia, while the worsening of America’s fiscal situation, accelerated by the very expensive war, increasingly renders the global military architecture unsustainable even if political will should persist.

The sustained operations deplete American weapons and munitions, with replenishment constrained by industrial limits and external dependencies. At the same time, the war highlights the effectiveness of Iran’s asymmetric capabilities against America’s high-cost platforms. The cumulative effect is a visible erosion of American deterrence: the gap between assumed and actual power narrows and credibility diminishes, while Iran increased its deterrent potential.

Fourth, the moral basis of US leadership is further weakened by perceptions of double standards and opportunistic expediency. A state is attacked over alleged nuclear ambitions while a close regional ally, Israel, retains undeclared capabilities, commits acts of genocide, and continues to destabilize the world as a whole; sovereignty is disregarded abroad even as foreign interference is condemned at home. Reports of market-sensitive signaling on prediction markets, opportunistic rhetoric, and shifting justifications deepen cynicism. The result is not merely reputational damage but strategic loss: In an order where legitimacy underwrites influence, the erosion of moral authority constrains power itself.

Trump walks back threat to destroy Iranian ‘civilization’

2. Strengthening of alternative power centers in a multicentric world

The US–Israeli war accelerates the transition toward a multicentric world order, in which power diffuses away from a single hegemon toward several sovereign centers. In this shifting landscape, the principal beneficiaries are Russia and China, both positioned at the core of this emerging configuration.

Through a contrast effect, the US appears increasingly as a destabilizing force, its missteps amplifying the appeal of alternative models and strengthening the strategic position of adversaries. In operational terms, rivals need only observe a familiar maxim: Never interrupt an adversary in the midst of error.

For Russia, the conflict yields both short-term and long-term gains. Supply chain disruptions reopen its markets across the world due to the relaxation of sanctions – undermining the long-term credibility of the punitive regime – and generate windfall revenues from the export of a larger amount of higher-priced natural resources, even as Moscow continues to support Tehran.

The diversion of Western attention and resources weakens Ukraine’s position, as financial and military commitments become harder to sustain, while Russia’s leverage increases correspondingly.

At the same time, Moscow consolidates an alternative international power bloc. Its diplomatic competence, in stark contrast to American ineptitude, is evident in its maintenance of ties across opposing camps and its positioning as a mediator, thereby enhancing its global standing. Europe’s severance from Russian energy appears increasingly costly and may prompt renewed large-scale sourcing from Russia.

Finally, Russia will also grow increasingly attractive as an immigration destination for mentally healthy Western talent with sound moral values who seek stability and a traditional, culturally rich lifestyle.

China’s gains are more structural still. As strategic overreach hastens America’s imperial decline, Beijing advances toward primacy by default as much as by design. Its strategy is one of calculated restraint: allowing rivals to exhaust themselves while it consolidates economic, technological, and geopolitical advantage.

More consequential than material gain is China’s self-presentation as a force of stability, a proponent of sovereignty, and a reliable partner in economic development rather than an erratic agent of military intervention. In contrast to Western neocolonial violence, China’s benign model acquires growing appeal across the Global South and beyond.

The broader lessons are stark: Pressure begets counter-pressure; attempts at domination hasten the rise of alternatives. In a multicentric world, influence accrues not to those pursuing coercive, antithetical strategies of hegemony and suppression, but to those who cultivate durable, wide-ranging relations across divides. By undermining its alliances while confronting its rivals, the US destroys the very order it purports to defend.

3. Undermining of ochlocracy and personalistic authoritarianism

Another consequence of the US–Israeli war on Iran is the simultaneous discrediting of two opposed systems of rule: democratic governance in its degenerate, mob-driven form, and authoritarianism in its personalistic, leader-centric variant. Far from vindicating either model, the crisis exposes the vulnerabilities inherent in both.

Classical political theory, from Polybius to Cicero, describes the recurrent degeneration of regimes in a cycle of political systems, termed anacyclosis. Democracy slides into ochlocracy, the rule of the mob, when demagoguery displaces deliberation and institutional safeguards falter. What presents itself as popular sovereignty thus reveals its terminal form: not self-government, but the volatility of the crowd.

The elevation and sustained support of figures such as Trump, despite manifest unfitness – as evidenced by his felony conviction and mental disorders (such as excessive narcissism) – illustrates the absence of effective mechanisms for selection and correction. According to the ancient theory, this invites the eventual reassertion of one-man rule.

Yet authoritarianism fares no better where it rests on the cult of personality. Systems overly dependent on a single leader, reminiscent of Thomas Carlyle’s dictum that the history of the world is but the biography of great men, prove inherently fragile: Where figures are elevated beyond their measure, distortion follows and collapse becomes a systemic risk. Remove the individual, and the structure falters.

A simple diagnostic applies: Where a regime can be reduced to the name of its leader, it stands exposed to failure. By contrast to personalistic regimes, Iran’s model displays a degree of institutional resilience grounded in continuity rather than singular indispensability.

This pattern disconfirms the prevailing assumptions of many multicentric theorists. The emerging multicentric order does not herald the unqualified ascent of illiberal or authoritarian forms, but rather underscores the necessity of balance: domestic constitutional systems capable of restraining both mass impulse and personal ambition, and an international framework that embeds states within cooperative structures without extinguishing sovereignty. For those inclined toward democracy, it calls for stronger checks and balances; for those inclined toward authoritarianism, for less personality-centric rule.

How close is the Middle East to a nuclear catastrophe?

4. Rehabilitation of belligerent ideologies

Another crucial intangible repercussion of the US–Israeli war on Iran is the normalization and spread of radically belligerent ideologies, embraced either as defensive shields or postures for expansions, following the precedent set by Washington and Jerusalem. Right-wing forces are thereby strengthened globally, including new anti-Israel nationalist parties.

First, even leaders who recognize the dangers of the triad of nationalism, militarism, and imperialism may conclude that such postures are once again necessary for survival in a world reverting to great-power rivalry reminiscent of the pre-1914 and pre-1939 eras.

A key means of motivating a people – soldiers in particular – is to frame actions as the continuation of a “proud” military tradition. Yet where history has been written by the victors, as in Germany, it serves their interests and undermines the defeated. In such cases, strong incentives arise to revise the past into a more empowering nationalist narrative. Trump’s casual, euphemistic rhetoric, reducing large-scale violence to the register of schoolyard conflict, recalls the pre-First World War trivialization of war that prepared entire societies for catastrophe.

Moreover, leaders of states that feel threatened by aggressive actors are induced to emulate them: adopting militarist postures and expansionist doctrines, pursuing territorial revisionism in the name of security. Perceived existential pressures, whether demographic or resource-driven, further intensify expansional ethnonationalism, including renewed quests for Lebensraum (living space).

Second, anti-Zionism moves from the margins into the mainstream. As Israel is increasingly perceived as the central driver of mass destruction and global destabilization, criticism once suppressed by discursive constraints becomes socially acceptable.

Mainstream commentators, including senior former officials, now openly discuss the influence of the pro-Israel lobby on US policy, claims previously neutralized as taboo. Scandalous revelations surrounding the extensive degenerated power network built by Jewish financier Jeffrey Epstein further erode trust and amplify suspicion toward a global political-economic elite perceived as aligned with Israeli interests.

Such criticism can slide from policy critique into broader ideological hostility. The distinction between criticism of the State of Israel and attitudes toward the Jewish people in general can become blurred in public discourse, especially given Israel’s self-definition as a Jewish state and the broad domestic support among its Jewish citizens for the unrestrained violence it unleashes on its neighbor, heightening the risk of conflation and further polarization.

An increasing number of commentators question Israel’s narrative of victimhood, express understanding and sympathy for the historical opposition to Zionism, and challenge the scope and application of antisemitism laws as constraints on criticism and mechanisms for entrenching Zionist supremacy. What began as political critique thus threatens to spill into civilizational hostility, as normative barriers weaken and long-suppressed narratives re-emerge.

5. Discreditation of Christianity and re-normalization of barbarism

The war also highlights the politicization of religion. In particular, the US-Israeli war on Iran risks discrediting Christianity through its instrumentalization by powerful actors. Christian Zionist currents, predominantly Protestant, have provided unwavering support for the war, cast the conflict in sacred terms and blessed destruction as destiny. This continues a long pattern of Protestants accommodating faith to the zeitgeist, exemplified by their churches lending strong support to National Socialism.

Political leaders in turn invoke divine sanction for large-scale destruction, fusing religious belief with state violence and reinforcing the perception of religion being deployed to justify the indiscriminate use of force.

The instrumentalization of religion in the pursuit of war crimes reached a new height when Trump wrote on social media with respect to Iran: “48 hours before all Hell will reign [sic!] down on them. Glory be to GOD!” The rhetoric crossed into blasphemy when the rescue of a US airman was cast in terms evocative of Christ’s resurrection.

Such rhetoric erodes the perceived political neutrality of a pivotal faith tradition and exposes it to global backlash. Audiences unfamiliar with authentic Christian theology may fail to see that Christian Zionist positions run counter to Jesus’ injunction to love one’s enemies; what is preached as morality appears, in practice, as license. They may thus, erroneously, perceive Christianity as an aggressive, censorious creed and mobilize opposition against it.

The consequences are profound, encompassing not only the erosion of legal norms but also the discrediting of the very values invoked to justify them. Absent Christianity’s civilizing influence, barbarism gets normalized once more.

The US, long proclaiming itself the leader of the free world, has a record steeped in large-scale brutality, from the annihilation of indigenous peoples and the slave trade (officially classified as gravest crimes against humanity) to the atomic destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki (which rendered it the first and so far only state to have unleashed nuclear weapons upon civilian populations). The US has also furnished Israel with extensive financial, military, diplomatic, and discursive support, enabling operations widely criticized as grave violations of international law, including genocide in Gaza.

Yet Washington has traditionally at least maintained the fiction of restraint, denying the breach of legal norms. The war on Iran marks a decisive departure, not merely the breach of norms, but the erosion of any semblance that such norms still bind. What emerges instead is a doctrine of unbounded force: The US, under Trump’s leadership, now appears increasingly willing to dispense with even the pretense of legal justification and prudent restraint and acts unashamedly as state terrorist and state plunderer.

The shift is evident in both atavistic rhetoric and conduct. The line between the military and civilian spheres collapses under a single elastic claim: everything sustains the enemy, therefore everything may be destroyed.

Among other things, US–Israeli attacks on Iran have indiscriminately killed thousands of civilians and destroyed residential quarters, mosques, sports complexes, hospitals, schools, universities, research centers, industrial plants, pharmaceutical facilities, nuclear and other energy sites, water and desalination plants, transport infrastructure, and heritage sites (which, if destroyed at large scale, makes it extremely difficult to rebuild a nation). The toxic pollution from strikes on Iranian oil refineries has been likened to the effects of chemical weapons. Elsewhere, Israel has continued its campaign of assassinating journalists. All of this has occurred not as a last resort, but as an opening move.

Trump openly avows his intent to effect not only the complete destruction of Iran’s civilian infrastructure, but the eradication of the entire civilization – acts that constitute grave war crimes.

In one social media post, the US president wrote: “Tuesday will be Power Plant Day, and Bridge Day, all wrapped up in one, in Iran…Open the F***in’ Strait, you crazy bastards, or you’ll be living in Hell - JUST WATCH!”

Trump has also openly boasted that he will “blast Iran into oblivion…back to the Stone Ages” and threatened to “take out Iran” in a single night if his extortionary demands are not met within the allotted time. Such an outcome would exceed even the devastation of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and could well be brought about by a renewed resort to nuclear weapons, the chilling logic being that they must be used to preserve their usability.

The US and Israeli leadership appear driven by a satanic relish for cruelty and bloodshed, evident in their use of dysphemisms (the deliberate use of coarse or degrading language to describe violent acts).

Such bloodlust is evident in Trump’s own words: “We will conclude our lovely ‘stay’ in Iran by blowing up and completely obliterating all of their electric generating plants, oil wells, and Kharg Island (and possibly all desalination plants!), which we have purposefully not yet ‘touched’.” He also spoke of bombing Kharg Island again “just for fun” and continuing to bomb “our little hearts out,” even suggesting: “You never know with Iran because we negotiate with them and then we always have to blow them up.”

Trump’s war crime rhetoric culminated into the following delirious and outright maniacal proclamation with reference to Iran: “A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again… God Bless the Great People of Iran!” After failing to subdue Iran, Trump now resembles a burglar who, thwarted in a break-in, proceeds to indiscriminate vandalism in frustration.

Even peremptory demands and binding deadlines no longer command observance: Israel, in a brazen display of contempt for norms, destroyed Iranian civilian infrastructure even before the expiry of Trump’s ultimatum and restricted civilian movement in Iran, prohibiting rail travel. Prior to the normalization of totalitarian control during the Covid-19 pandemic, such conduct would have been unthinkable; today, it is met with numbed acquiescence by outside observers.

Equally striking is the normalization of extrajudicial assassination of Iran’s leaders and their extended family, which are acts of collective punishment. The method recalls crude Stalinist logic, eliminating individuals pre-emptively, before any act is committed. Trump has even boasted of killing Iranian leaders merely for the purpose of revenge, not a legitimate justification, describing such killings a “great honor.” One need only imagine the outcry were Iran to adopt similar methods and target the US president.

Trump has also openly boasted of intended plunder, expressing his preference for seizing the oil from the Iranians, retaining it, and making “plenty of money” from it. His logic is disarmingly blunt and atavistic: that the resource is “there for the taking” and that “there’s not a thing they can do about it.”

At issue are the core principles of the Geneva Conventions: distinction, proportionality, and military necessity. These prohibit attacks on civilian objects and forbid strikes causing excessive civilian harm relative to military advantage.

By contrast, the cumulative effect of overwhelming destruction inflicted by the US and Israel with collectively punitive and retaliatory intent – causing widespread, severe, and long-term harm – and targeted killings outside active battlefields is the perception of two states not constrained by the moral and legal frameworks established after the Second World War.

Justifications, where offered, follow an expansive logic in which legality yields to expediency: Virtually any human and material target is framed as contributing, however indirectly, to the adversary’s war effort. In the extreme, a bridge becomes a legitimate target because officials might traverse it, and even the air becomes culpable because they breathe it, thus, by such logic, sustaining the “regime.” Under such reasoning, the distinction between civilian and military objects collapses, and with it the central restraint of modern warfare and core principles of international humanitarian law.

Domestic checks have thus far failed to impose meaningful limits on Trump, raising the question of whether institutional safeguards are effective. It remains to be seen whether the US military will continue to execute unlawful orders or refuse complicity in Trump’s war crimes. The citizens in uniform should understand that if leaders are unchecked, law, once the boundary of action, becomes an instrument of justification: elastic, adaptable, and ultimately expendable.

Mission accomplished? The costly reality behind the US rescue operation in Iran

6. Worsening global security situation

A central justification of the US–Israeli war of choice on Iran is that it allegedly will make the world safer. The opposite is more likely.

By hollowing out the authority of the United Nations and openly disregarding international law, Washington and Israel establish a precedent of unrestrained force, effectively licensing others to invade, strike, and plunder at will, with no credible multilateral constraint.

The so-called “rules-based order,” long denounced by Russia and other countries as unilaterally created and selectively enforced in a self-serving manner, is further hollowed out. Yet rules governing war remain indispensable. Even those who publicly contest the rule-based order display indignation when international law is violated to their detriment and invoke the rules to further their interests.

As legal norms erode, violence will become more widespread, more brazen, and increasingly difficult to contain. Western states are not exempt from this pernicious trend: With domestic systems under strain, incentives arise to resort to external conflict and other crises, such as a new global pandemic, as diversions from underlying structural problems.

The strategic consequences of the war on Iran are severe. The Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons risks sliding into irrelevance as states – including Iran under its new resolute leadership – draw the obvious lesson: Only nuclear weapons guarantee survival. Proliferation will accelerate; more states will seek their own arsenals or host those of others. The threshold for nuclear escalation, once unthinkable, is lowered.

At the same time, a logic of perpetual war takes hold. Israel’s repeated strikes across multiple theaters, often continuing despite so-called ceasefires, have normalized a pattern of ongoing, intermittent destruction, denying societies any chance of sustained recovery. Trump appears to think in such intervals, contrasting current damage in Iran that he deems remediable within a decade with possible additional destruction that would take a century to repair.

Violence becomes cyclical, self-perpetuating, and increasingly indiscriminate. Grievances deepen; demands for revenge intensify; escalation becomes the default trajectory. The result is systemically entrenched instability.

European responses compound the damage. Severe punishment for Russia over Ukraine contrasts with tolerance of US and Israeli actions, entrenching the perception of systemic double standards. Such asymmetry does not preserve order, it accelerates its collapse by signaling that power, not principle, governs outcomes, thereby emboldening unilateral use of force.

The cumulative result is a world less restrained, more heavily armed, and more volatile: legal norms eroded, conflicts perpetuated, nuclear risks multiplied, and the likelihood of retaliatory violence, including global terrorism, significantly increased.

7. Structural economic shock and forced energy shift

The US–Israeli war on Iran is poised to trigger a global economic crisis of exceptional severity. Unlike previous oil shocks, this is not merely a disruption of supply but the destruction of production itself. Key energy infrastructure is being eliminated, with reconstruction measured in years, not months. The result: Structurally broken supply chains, surging energy prices, entrenched inflation, and a slide into recession.

One particular pattern becomes difficult to ignore: Successive crises – from the COVID-19 pandemic, which most likely was man-made, to the Ukraine war and now Iran – are locking the global economy into a state of permanent crisis.

Whether by design or consequence, these shocks function as cover, obscuring deep structural failures in Western economies, above all unsustainable debt and chronic stagnation. These strains stem from policy failures, as leaders sacrifice public welfare on the altar of ideological commitments. As a form of self-inflicted harm, politicized priorities and misaligned appointments in the name of diversity and have weakened institutional competence and contributed to costly strategic missteps, whose economic consequences are now evident.

Adverse economic indicators again can be conveniently subsumed under the broader narrative of a global crisis. A sharp increase in the price level may even appear fiscally attractive, quietly eroding sovereign liabilities at the expense of creditors’ wealth. Yet the subsequent rise in interest rates required to rein in inflation will further depress growth and increase the debt burden, necessitating tax increases, spending cuts, or both.

At the same time, the war on Iran will also speed up de-globalization. Energy insecurity will drive massive investment shifts toward domestically produced renewable energy, alongside an expanded deployment of nuclear power.

Repeated supply chain breakdowns, already occurring during the COVID-19 pandemic and the onset of the Ukraine war, will further spur a shift toward economic sovereignty and autarky, fueling protectionism and import-substitution. Thus, the gains from international specialization realized through trade and investment are sacrificed in favor of resilience.

Conspiracy theorists may discern a pattern: COVID-19 entrenched remote interaction, the conflict in Ukraine underscored the imperative of energy independence, and the Iran conflict accelerates energy investments required to sustain artificial intelligence, which facilitates more intrusive forms of societal control.

Financial markets, long buoyed by speculative narratives, particularly centering around artificial intelligence, are exposed to a harsher reality. Fossil fuels, for the time being, remain a foundational input to economic activity; sustained shocks to their supply can unravel entire systems. Overvalued markets face sharp corrections, with the attendant risk of cascading failures, including bank failures.

Even after the immediate global damage of the Iran war has been eventually repaired, with inflation subdued and growth renewed, the deeper and more consequential loss remains: the erosion of trust in Western political and economic systems. What follows the conflict thus is not recovery, but a more brittle equilibrium: an economy profoundly fragile and prone to recurrent crisis.

This region fears both Iran’s fall and its victory. Why is that?

Empire unbound: When power goes mad

The US and Israel have branded Iran’s leaders “lunatics.” In truth, it is they who have normalized madness. Acting as unhinged state terrorists, with Israel as the driving force and Washington in tow, they push the world toward the edge of nuclear catastrophe. By contrast, Iran’s leadership again presents itself as comparatively prudent, measured, and restrained to the extent permitted by circumstance.

America’s action is no aberration, but continues a long record of industrial-scale state violence, including the firebombing of German cities, the atomic annihilation of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and later savage campaigns of mass destruction in Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere.

Trump’s apparent irrationality may partly reflect a calculated “madman” posture, intended to terrify adversaries with the promise of limitless escalation. But such theatrics are not a shield; they are an accelerant.

Madness, once performed, has an insidious way of becoming real. Incendiary behavior provokes escalatory retaliation; cruelty leaves scars that endure across generations. Russia to this day remembers the devastation wrought by the Mongol invasion of Kievan Rus.

What we are witnessing is the logic of unbounded power: unjustified, unrestrained, and indiscriminate violence, the defining characteristic of unhinged and barbaric tyranny.

When the pretext for the Iraq War, weapons of mass destruction, was exposed as fabricated, a global outrage ensued. Today, even the perceived need for pretense has vanished. No reasonable, coherent justification is offered for the war of choice on Iran – only force, naked and unapologetic.

Israel’s and America’s sustained, overt disregard for ethical norms have fostered widespread cynicism and moral apathy. Repetition has numbed the public, much of it bereft of a moral compass and critical faculties, blunting outrage and resistance, for now.

The ultimate questions are stark: Why should societies tolerate unhinged leaders who imperil both their own citizens and populations abroad? Why should the world at large continue to countenance – and bear the cost of – the brutal crimes perpetrated by a small circle of Israeli leaders and their US accomplices?

No political order endures without a noble and credible moral foundation. A system that abandons moral constraint cannot command lasting loyalty; it corrodes from within.

Over time, a growing number of Western citizens will question the wisdom of supporting governments that impoverish them in pursuit of external, chiefly Israeli, objectives. The unrestrained conduct of Western elites will ultimately destroy confidence in and loyalty to liberal-democratic regimes.

In apocalyptic language, one might speak of a Persian Armageddon, a final contest between good and evil. Yet the roles differ from those commonly assigned in familiar narratives.

While no actor in this human drama is without fault, the final verdict is clear: Israel, and its backer, the US, are emerging as the truly destabilizing agents and vectors of egregious perversion, whereas Iran presents itself as a staunch defender of civilization, wisdom, tradition, order, legality, sovereignty, and restraint, thus functioning as an indispensable counterweight to the unhinged duo.

The US-Israeli war of choice on Iran is not merely a conflict but a turning point, eroding norms, accelerating America’s imperial decline, and propelling rival powers to prominence in a rapidly fragmenting and increasingly dystopian multicentric world.

As their global influence dissipates, Western leaders would be well advised to heed the following lesson: As a rule, empires do not fall because they are defeated; they fall because, in abandoning all restraint, they first defeat themselves.

[Part 7 of a series on viral geopolitics. To be continued. Previous columns in the series: