Although this war is a continuation of the previous imperialist policy, it also presents dangerous new developments. As usual, we are inundated with propaganda, disinformation and fake news while strict censorship of information prevails. The official narrative is nothing new: the United States and Israel are all-powerful, super-competent, and invincible; the targeted adversary embodies absolute Evil, while being weak, incapable, and always on the verge of collapsing under the unstoppable blows of the forces of Goodness. These are typical recycled wartime psyops. The perpetrators of these aggressions care little that the available facts and the overall course of the conflict contradict them.
2026 is a rerun of 2025
The first strategic error: the illusion of “decapitation.” Raised on video games, aggressors seek instant success formulas for quick, cheap victories, without fighting or unbearable losses. Imbued with supremacism, fundamentally racist reflexes, they believe their adversaries to be backward, primitive tribes who would be stunned and scatter after the loss of a leader. They cannot conceive of them as having interests, ideas, and structures that transcend the current leaders. Steeped in a colonialist mentality, Israel assassinates regularly. None of those who order these assassinations seem to have noticed that they never produce the desired results. Organizations and states replace them by means of pre-established procedures and continue on their path. No sooner are Palestinian officials, Hezbollah leaders or Iranian military personnel assassinated than their adversaries anticipate the collapse of their adversaries. And yet, nothing of the sort happens. The weakening of Hezbollah had become a dogma repeated by all the politically correct. Yet, the fighting against Israel in March 2026 demonstrates an organization that is effective and living up to its reputation. After the failed “regime-change decapitations” during the June 2025 aggression against Iran, an iteration of the same fantasy occurred in March 2026. Unsurprisingly, it met an identical failure. There was no fall of the regime. The demonstrations hoped for, even loudly called for, by the aggressors were not against the regime, but in support of it. But let no one imagine for a moment that these brilliant assassination enthusiasts will learn from their mistakes.
Similarly, displays of force are designed to impress a backward populace. On several occasions, Trump engaged in a childish spectacle of intimidation, obviously to no avail. A corollary of this wishful thinking was his naive belief that Iran would yield to the American armada and his disappointment at the opposite outcome.
Second mistake: the notion of a short war. In March 2026, as in June 2025, the failure of the assassination strategy shattered the dream of a brief, easy and uncostly war. The June 2025 war was lost by Israel and the United States in the opening hours; the March 2026 war follows the same pattern. The longer a war lasts, the more evident the Israeli-American failure becomes, and the more visible the limits of their supposed omnipotence. This time, the consequences are greater because Iran had made it clear that any war waged against it would be regional, with an oil export coming to a halt, and it kept its word. Its overall strategy has not changed since June 2025: rely on its greater resilience and its ability to outlast its enemies, transform the American-Israeli blitzkrieg into a war of attrition, absorb offensives, and retaliate with missiles and drones until the aggressors give up. The number and accuracy of these projectiles surprised Israel and the United States in June 2025, but they have clearly not learned from their mistakes.
Another replication of the June 2025 scenario: the use of negotiations as a smokescreen to prepare for aggression. Treachery now has the status of standard practice. If they just opened their eyes, those negotiating with the United States would better understand the traps they are falling into. It can be assumed that this is being duly noted in Moscow, where talks with the United States are already bogged down, and in Beijing, where Trump is feigning a willingness to enter into negotiations.
Shifts
The June 2025 war taught the American-Israeli camp one thing: Israel alone cannot defeat Iran, which has more than ten times its population and 74 times its land area, while being too far away to be invaded. This was obvious, yet it took empirical testing for the truth to sink in, both in Washington and Tel Aviv. The United States was involved in the June 2025 aggression from the outset, while professing non-involvement. Called to the rescue by Israel, it intervened militarily on the final day. In March 2026, all the masks fell away, and the aggression became a joint operation. As in the tripartite aggression (the “Suez Crisis”) of 1956 against Egypt, an imperialist power was directly at war alongside Israel. The symbiotic relationship between this settler colony and the imperialism for which it serves as a bridgehead in the Middle East became all the clearer.
The failure of the June 2025 military aggression to change the Iranian regime and install an American-Israeli puppet had prompted the use of internal chaos as an alternative. On December 28, 2025, a typical “color revolution” was triggered, like those Iran and other countries have experienced in the past, in other words riots behind which a coup could be launched. The presence of the CIA and Mossad was openly displayed, and the latter distributed weapons so demonstrations could turn violent. The resulting disorder would facilitate a military aggression. Proving that they lack a credible candidate to lead Iran under their tutelage, Israel and the United States put forward the son of the deposed Shah, a monarch who headed a police state supported by the CIA until his overthrow by the 1979 revolution.
Unfortunately for the instigators, the December 2025 operation failed. As in previous attempts in 2009, 2019, and 2022, the state structure resisted, and massive demonstrations in its favor sealed the outcome around mid-January 2026. The United States and Israel then had to change tactics. They stopped relying on riots to pave the way for an attack and, in March 2026, resorted to outright military action. Trump was reduced to calling on Iranians to rise up in support of those who were bombing them and killing schoolgirls – an absurdity that revealed a disconnect from reality. Without fear of ridicule, he demanded that the selection of Iran’s new leader be subject to his approval.
The objective of the United States, Israel, and the West in general is to overthrow the Iranian regime and seize control of the country through compliant puppets. This has been on the table since the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Camouflaged behind the pretext of nuclear weapons, which are acknowledged as nonexistent, regime change became increasingly prominent and is now unequivocally the primary motive for war against Iran. Unable to succeed alone, Israel has been clamoring for the United States to attack Iran for a quarter of a century. Wary after a series of fiascos, the United States had been reluctant until the arrival of Trump, the president most influenced by Israel and the Zionist faction of American billionaires who finance him (and perhaps the Epstein factor?). The extent of this influence is measured by the fact that Trump is abandoning everything he promised since 2016 to get elected and is committing the United States not only to a war in the Middle East, but to direct participation in a war. Neoconservative policies are being replaced by even more neoconservative ones. Clearly, Israel and Zionist billionaires carry more weight than his electorate, which is discovering that “America First” means ” Israel First.” With Trump, Israel’s decisive role and initiative are no longer concealed, with Netanyahu’s regular visits ensuring coordination. The Trump presidency became the “window of opportunity” for joint aggression.
Iran has been in the crosshairs of the United States since the 2009 publication of Which Path to Persia?: Options for a New American Strategy Toward Iran, by Kenneth M. Pollack, Daniel L. Byman, Martin S. Indyk, Suzanne Maloney, Michael E. O’Hanlon, and Bruce Riedel, for the Brookings Institution. At the time, the fear was that Iran would acquire nuclear weapons. Today, from the neoconservative perspective, American interests are more closely aligned with the expansion of its Israeli protectorate. To sell their agenda to the American president, they simply had to dangle the prospect of a good deal represented by the presence of Greater Israel in the Middle East. Trump was persuaded that war is the continuation of the struggle for economic dominance by other means.
Preparation for World War
The new element in the 2026 war is… frankness. This is due in part to Trump’s bluntness, but primarily to the erosion of the United States’ hegemonic position. The anti-Chinese aims of the war against Iran are widely recognized in high places and in the mainstream media. Depriving China of Iranian oil is at the top of the list of war goals. The intention to restore unipolarity and US primacy by sowing discord in the world has become commonplace. Observers and analysts no longer have much to throw light on or explain, because everything is said officially. The geopolitical motivations are clearly stated. The hegemonic intentions are proclaimed. The raw language accurately reflects the message. Wars with direct US participation are back. References to force dominate. International law is mocked. Treachery, falsehoods and assassinations are common currency, cynicism a celebrated virtue.
Realpolitik is in control, stripped of any moralizing veneer. This “realism” is reminiscent of the period from 1870 to 1914, and its well-known outcome. To complete the dystopian picture, Trump’s boasting, bluster, buffoonery and humbug are likely to be elevated to the status of behavioral norms. In this sense, the war launched against Iran falls within the context of a widespread panic, highly typical of a declining hegemon seeking by any means to convince itself of its superiority through a show of force as disastrous as it is fanatical.
So farewell to the fallacious rhetoric of liberal and benevolent imperialism, to the mystification of “values,” which had been harped on in the unipolar era since 1990. The United States’ refusal to acknowledge responsibility for the deaths of some 150 schoolgirls in Minab, killed by Tomahawk cruise missiles on February 28, 2026, provides a means to appreciate the true extent of the concern displayed for weeks on end for the Iranian people. According to Trump, Iran bombed itself with Tomahawks (which only the United States possesses). Rejection of the globalist imperialism of Bush, Clinton, Obama, and Biden is, in reality, leading to a more uninhibited use of force and armed globalism. An end to subterfuge, subtlety or hypocrisy. The masks are off. There is no pretense of a political program, beyond the law of the strongest, kidnappings and assassinations. Forget verbal hocus-pocus meant to deceive, throw out the white gloves; the Department of Defense is now known for what it truly is: the Department of War. Chests are puffed out. Instruments of violence are brandished. “Natives” are intimidated, threatened, and killed with pride, just like in the good old colonial days (which Secretary of State Rubio recalls with nostalgia). Imperialists of yesteryear, such as Cecil Rhodes and Joseph Chamberlain, are enjoying a second life. In addition to its contribution to the genocide in Gaza, US policy is undergoing a process of Israelization / Zionization.
The return of the law of the jungle raises fears of a descent into barbarism. It foreshadows the multiplication and intensification of wars. From the proxy wars they waged for two decades, the United States is returning to direct warfare. The global conflict is evolving into world war. [1] The current aggression against Iran serves as a dress rehearsal for armed confrontations with Russia and China. The proxy war against Russia has failed, and a proxy war against China offers no better prospects for the United States. The “color revolutions” have failed. What remains is direct assault, with the participation of vassal “allies,” in accordance with the doctrine outlined by Secretary of War Pete Hegseth in 2025, advocating the division of labor in time of war.
Against Russia, ailing European countries are straining at the leash, eager to embark on a military adventure, even though they lack the resources and disaster looms. Against China, the United States may still hope to be able to mobilize the Japanese, South Koreans, Filipinos, and Australians. In the aggression against Iran, the “middle powers” (European countries, Canada), themselves threatened and extorted by the United States, have rallied behind their master and Israel, denouncing the victim and exonerating the aggressors. They despise Trump but love his war and want one against Russia.
Trump’s neoconservative shift and a takeover by dyed-in-the-wool neoconservatives as early as the 2026 midterms could give warmongers hope that the United States will take the fateful step against Russia. This newfound NATO unity, achieved at Iran’s expense, risks bearing bitter fruit in the form of confrontations against Russia and China – in other words, the much-feared world war.
The peril inherent in the situation is compounded by the weakness of opposition forces worldwide. They are in the majority but unorganized. Threatened countries are rarely in a position to form an effective front to ensure their security, allowing aggressors to attack them one by one. Although peaceful, the populations of Western countries lack the political means to make their voices heard and they are bludgeoned day and night with propaganda. If leaders do not feel resistance, the march toward world war could turn into an unstoppable rush.
[1] Samir Saul, Michel Seymour, Le conflit mondial du XXIe siècle, Paris, L’Harmattan, 2025.
Samir Saul holds a doctorat d’État in history (Paris) and is a professor of international history at the Université de Montréal. His latest book is entitled Imperialism, As Rampant Today as in the Past (2025). He is also the author of L’Impérialisme, passé et présent. Un essai (2023); Intérêts économiques français et décolonisation de l’Afrique du Nord (1945-1962) (2016); La France et l’Égypte de 1882 à 1914. Intérêts économiques et implications politiques (1997). He is also co-editor of Méditerranée, Moyen-Orient : deux siècles de relations internationales (2003). He recently published with Michel Seymour Le conflit mondial au XXIe siècle (2025). Email: samir.saul@umontreal.ca
Michel Seymour is honorary professor in the Department of Philosophy at the Université de Montréal, where he taught from 1990 to 2019. He is the author of a dozen monographs, including A Liberal Theory of Collective Rights, 2017; La nation pluraliste, co-authored with Jérôme Gosselin-Tapp, for which the authors won the Canadian Philosophical Association Prize; De la tolérance à la reconnaissance, 2008, for which he won the Jean-Charles Falardeau Prize of the Canadian Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences. He also won the Richard Arès prize from Action nationale magazine for Le pari de la démesure, published in 2001. He recently published with Samir Saul Le conflit mondial au XXIe siècle (2025). Email : seymour@videotron.ca web site: michelseymour.org
The American-Israeli aggression against Iran, Realpolitik and world war
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