The US-Israel war on Iran is doomed to fail. Will it take down America's crumbling empire?
Submitted by Ammiel Alcalay on Tue, 03/17/2026 - 13:23
After decades of waging wars against weaker enemies, the US and Israel may have finally confronted an immovable object, exposing the limits of American power
Iranians stand on a large US flag during an al-Quds Day, an annual event in support of Palestinians, weeks after Israel and the US launched strikes on Iran that triggered a regional war, in Tehran on 13 March 2026 (AFP) On Somewhere along the way, we have seen the rationale for the existence of the state of Israel transition from reliance on western guilt and being a safe haven for Jews after the attempted destruction of Jewish communities in Europe, to the violent biblical rhetoric now deployed across the spectrum.
From marauding settlers, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and even the leader of the purported "opposition", Yair Lapid, to US Ambassador Mike Huckabee and Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth, replete with his "kafir" and "deus vult" tattoos, we hear about Amalek, the Third Temple, and God's promises to the "chosen people".
The recently televised split-screen on al-Quds Day in Iran showed Hegseth on the left, fulminating about Iranian leadership: "Desperate and hiding, they have gone underground, cowering. That is what rats do."
On the right, we could observe President Masoud Pezeshkian and Secretary of the Supreme National Security Council Ali Larijani, along with other leading officials, mingling with crowds in Tehran, greeting people and having selfies taken along the way, with smoke from explosions ascending in the background.
Most worrisome is that Hegseth, like most Israelis who have been brainwashed to take their edifice of lies as gospel truth, is all too ready to mock the "stupid rules of engagement", declaring that Iranians under joint US-Israeli attack would receive "no quarter, no mercy".
Were we not witnessing a continuing genocide further in the making, the recent events initiated by the US and Israel would truly count as high-grade farce
Pentagon whistleblower Wes J Bryant has characterised such statements as "blood lust" coming from the very top, making Hegseth unfit for office.
Brought up on bad cartoons and even worse movies, the secretary's mock outrage and staged delivery hark back to the lie someone of his generation would have had drummed into him ad infinitum - that the US fought in Vietnam with "one hand tied behind our backs", while still managing to defoliate the whole country with napalm and Agent Orange, and routinely massacre villages while raping and pillaging along the way.
Were we not witnessing a continuing genocide further in the making, the recent events initiated by the US and Israel would truly count as high-grade farce.
But the killing machine moves ahead, like some robotic Frankenstein mowing everything down in its way, inventing new forms of cruelty as the old ones just become part of the landscape.
The killing machine
Once upon a time, in another part of the "neighbourhood", as US pundits like to put it, King Hammurabi's code enshrined the concept of "one punishment for one crime", as expressed by "an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth" - something the American exceptionalists and the Israeli chosen do not seem to abide by, as they routinely exercise collective punishment.
The first act presented a message: the US Tomahawk "double tap" on a girls' school in Minab, killing at least 168 girls between the ages of seven and 12, and then some of the parents and teachers who came to their aid.
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And the corresponding assassination of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei - why kill only one when family members are present, and kin from three generations can all be killed in the same attack?
While the US might make some pretence towards acting more circumspect, the Israelis are going full bore as they set up the conditions, along with US "diplomacy", for civil war in Lebanon: "Beirut will look like Khan Younis," they declare, dropping leaflets along the way, while massacring displaced families, medics, and rescue workers as they target homes, clinics, and medical facilities, all the while trying to ban self-defence.
As the bigger picture of Iran, the Strait of Hormuz, skyrocketing energy costs, the rising price of fertiliser, regional security, and the role of the Gulf states in recycling petrodollars send shock waves around the world, attempts to redraw the West Asian map continue apace.
While Israel threatens to occupy southern Lebanon and flatten Beirut, Gaza and the West Bank are hardly reported on, and the roughly 10,000 abducted, abused, and tortured detainees in Israeli prisons have been largely left to their own devices.
Homes continue to be demolished and land seized. Settlers maraud and set fire to Palestinian property, vehicles, and livestock, while occupation soldiers protect settlers and arrest the assaulted Palestinians or the few foreigners standing in solidarity with them.
An immovable object
Just a few scant months ago, Hamas was presented by pundits, propagandists, and politicians as the greatest threat known to "western civilisation". Now one hardly even hears that "dreaded" name mispronounced, as the fabricated "nuclear threat" from Iran has displaced it.
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And even more telling: concepts like "ceasefire", "aid trucks", and "reopening crossings" have largely gone by the wayside, and are rarely even mentioned any more or, if so, almost as an afterthought.
On Sunday 15 March, at least 13 Palestinians were killed in Gaza, including nine police officers on Salah al-Din Street, and a family in Nuseirat: Kamel Ayyash, his pregnant wife Halima, and their son Ahmad. Another child, Ibrahim al-Hasanat, a neighbour, was also killed.
Hours before, Israeli forces ambushed a family coming home from a shopping trip to Nablus, where they had bought new clothes for the Eid ending Ramadan.
Ali and Waad Bani Odeh and their two youngest children, Mohammed and Othman, five and seven, were all shot in the face and head. The two surviving children, Mustafa and Khaled, eight and 11, were beaten, kicked, cursed and mocked by the soldiers who had just orphaned them.
And yet, Israelis and Americans now seem to have bumped into an immovable object, an actual state of 90 million people whose strategic and political depth - not to mention their largely indigenous arsenal - is truly formidable.
Neither the US nor Israel has been in such a position for a very long time.
Iran's resolve serves notice as it provides an example to so many peoples deemed expendable by this very empire
The vastly under-equipped Taliban outlasted the US in Afghanistan, while both Hamas and Hezbollah - with largely light arms and rockets - remain as fighting forces.
They continue despite facing the onslaught of the world's most formidable combined military might, fighting through a mode of malicious cowardice that relies on vastly disproportionate air power, mass targeting of civilians, and the wholesale destruction of infrastructure.
While it is hard to predict whether this particular confrontation will see the "Empire of Chaos" - economist Samir Amin's apt title for the forces led by the US - finally crumble, there can be little doubt that Iran's resolve serves notice as it provides an example to so many peoples deemed expendable by this very empire.
For those of us within the empire - as we watch our own infrastructure fall apart and see our key institutions rot from the inside out, with Israel first and America last - one can only hope that the present confrontation will push people towards becoming more active in helping to bring this monstrous system of cyclical and perpetual warfare to an end.
The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Eye.
War on Iran Opinion Post Date Override 0 Update Date Mon, 05/04/2020 - 21:29
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