So here we are again. The United States, that self-appointed sheriff of a global village it no longer understands, has launched 'precision strikes' on Iran. The pretext? A downed helicopter, a flare-up in the endless theatre of Middle Eastern crisis. But let us not be fooled by the language of surgical strikes and measured responses. This is not about retaliation. This is about the desperate spasms of a declining empire, a Rome that has lost its moral compass and now fires missiles to remind itself it still has a pulse.
Consider the irony. The West once lectured the world on the virtues of diplomacy, on the rule of law, on the necessity of restraint. Now we have a US administration that, having failed to negotiate a nuclear deal, having alienated its European allies, and having watched its influence wane from Kabul to Kyiv, turns to the oldest tool in the imperial toolbox: the pinpoint bombing of a nation it cannot conquer. The precision of the strikes is meant to convey control, but it instead betrays a deep intellectual and strategic decadence. This is the politics of the gesture, not the substance.
Let us examine the historical parallel. The Victorian era, for all its imperial bluster, at least had the decency to pretend it was spreading civilisation. The British bombarded Alexandria in 1882 to restore order, or so they said. Today's strikes have no such veneer. They are the actions of a superpower that has run out of ideas, that substitutes drones for diplomacy and cruise missiles for courage. The downing of an American helicopter is tragic, no doubt. But to respond with war is to admit that you have no better answer. It is the sign of a nation that has forgotten how to think.
Meanwhile, the region burns. Iran, that perennial bogeyman, will not be cowed. If anything, these strikes will strengthen the hardliners in Tehran, who will point to American aggression as proof of their own paranoid narratives. The proxies in Yemen, Syria, and Lebanon will be emboldened. And the American public, exhausted by two decades of fruitless conflict, will be asked to support yet another open-ended engagement. The cycle repeats because we refuse to learn from history.
What is missing, as always, is a grand strategy. The US has no idea what it wants in the Middle East beyond the absence of a single dominant power. It cannot defeat Iran, it cannot pacify Iraq, and it cannot leave Afghanistan. So it strikes. And strikes again. Each time it digs itself deeper into a quagmire of its own making. This is the fate of empires that mistake military prowess for wisdom. They act, but they do not think.
The real crisis is not in the Middle East. It is in Washington, where a generation of leaders has been raised on the idea that power is the ability to destroy. They have forgotten that true power is the ability to build, to persuade, to endure. Until America relearns this lesson, it will keep striking. And the world will keep burning.
