The Iran War
The Final Chapter of the Unipolar Moment
All things pass, but the Iran War is hastening the process.
(Jakub Porzycki/NurPhoto via Getty Images)
The attar of Nishapur, when asked by the king to say something that might make a happy man sad and a sad man happy, noted īn nīz bogzarad (this too shall pass). As a matter of history or political analysis, the phrase doesn’t offer much specific. But as a summation of all things temporal, it is unparalleled. At the time of writing, there is no clarity “why” we are in another war against one of the most objectively beautiful and historic countries in the world, renowned for its poetry, architecture, food, and, most importantly, tehzeeb (refinement). We just know that we are determined to turn it to rubble like barbarians, a realization increasingly difficult to internalize—being on the side of utter barbarity while speaking of high civilization. This will indeed pass. But for what it is worth, the mismanaged Iran War, initiated by an empire in relative decline, almost exclusively due to being chain-ganged by a reckless protectorate, that killed roughly 160 schoolgirls on the first day of the conflict, is likely to be remembered by history less for its immediate military results than for marking the definitive end of unchallenged global dominance of the United States of America.
Yours truly isn’t the attar of Nishapur, or of anywhere else for that matter, and historians should avoid the prediction business, but it would be prudent to look at the trends. The Iran War, for all practical purposes, will be the final war of a century of American unilateralism. That doesn’t imply that America will be powerless in future. In fact, this might finally force this country to realize that prudence and retrenchment are key to survival. But the structural trends that lasted from the Great White Fleet all the way to the Global War on Terror’s final battle marks the end of the American century, all tactical military brilliance aside. It is already evident from the conduct of this war that the U.S. is incapable of high-intensity war on multiple fronts, even against middle powers, without strip-mining assets from other theaters. The logical conclusion is that the defense-industrial base remains optimized for short, high-technology engagements and imperial policing, rather than the prolonged, munitions-intensive industrial warfare characteristic of great-power conflicts.
But war isn’t all about tactics or materiel. Perceptions of American political incoherence and strategic unpredictability amplified by partisanship and policy reversals have already eroded trust among allies. Large and ill-conceived wars rarely remain confined to the region where they begin. At the very least, they trigger strategic recalculations across the system. Consider that countries such as China and Turkey observe the conflict with careful attention to how American resources and attention spans are distributed. Likewise, for years European leaders have debated the idea of strategic autonomy, the notion that the continent should possess the military and industrial capacity to defend its interests independently of the United States when necessary. Within Europe, however, longstanding rivalries are returning to fore, especially between France, which traditionally advocates for a strong and independent European defense posture under French regional hegemony, and the real economic hegemon of Europe, Germany, which plans to dwarf every other country in military spending by 2030. At the same time, proposals for deeper coordination among the core Anglosphere (CANZUK) should accelerate.
America will remain a primus inter pares, as the structural advantages enjoyed by the United States are unchallenged. Its economy is still foremost in the world, supported by technological innovation, global financial networks, and the wealthiest consumer market in history. While American military appetite will be low, no one can mistake it for a collapsing military power. Potential global challengers will also continue to face significant constraints. Russia maintains formidable military capabilities but operates with a relatively limited economic base and under demographic pressures. China lacks any alliance loyalty or appetite for even deploying military power beyond its immediate region to protect its interests in Afghanistan, Panama, and Africa. There is no other political entity that challenges American hegemony; if America prefers to retrench and recuperate, the world will be more anarchic and contested, but there will not be any single great power taking over rapidly as a successor hegemon.
Within America, the debate about any future alliance entrapment will only grow. This is Israel’s war, just as Ukraine is Europe’s war, and the president, the secretary of state, the recently resigned director of counterterrorism at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, and numerous others all point to that on and off the record. There is nothing that Israel provides that the U.S. cannot manage on its own, from research to intelligence to “over the horizon” military capabilities. But the Iran war is demonstrating, more than anything, that no matter how many times America packs up and leaves the region, for as long as Washington is underwriting Israeli security, there is no incentive for Israeli leadership to not maximize its own security or power. Absent America’s explicit assurance, Israel’s ability to project power regionally would face far greater limitations and risks. This unique “special relationship” effectively shields Israel from many of the natural repercussions of its actions, and is a significant cause of America’s current political isolation and lack of strategic prioritization. It grants a level of impunity across political, diplomatic, economic, and military domains, allowing Israeli maximalists to operate with reduced fear of consequences. By offering near-unconditional backing, Washington also reduces any real incentive for Israel to pursue meaningful compromises or a balanced, stable coexistence with the Palestinians and neighboring states.
Yet it is foolish and downright morbid to just blame it all on a foreign power while overlooking the biggest internal causal chain. The current war is the culmination of two distinct social and cultural forces within the U.S. One is the power of low-church, lower-middle-class conservatism over high-church and mainline Protestantism. The second, is the deep Huntingtonian instinct hidden within the former.
Populist movements have been built on at least one oft-repeated noble lie, that most people are anti-interventionist by nature. That is of course garbage history. In fact, if there is one book that both exemplifies and explains the worldview of current American civilizationalists and populists it is a now-obscure one titled In Defense of Internment: The Case for ‘Racial Profiling’ in World War II and the War on Terror, by Michelle Malkin, incidentally also from the starting phases of another long Middle Eastern war. The arguments therein will sound similar to most cheerleading this war; they may be crudely summarized as “fight them there, and put them in a camp here, to defend civilization”. Many people who supported the Iraq War did so on evangelical and crusading grounds, only to claim 20 years later that it was a mistake. While most serious academics and foreign policy realists indeed were opposed to the Iraq and now the Iran War, the masses even then, as now, were easy marks; whatever happens, in a system of two-party democracy, most people will tribally support their own side. The long-term legacy of recent anti-interventionist efforts likely will depend heavily on how the Iran conflict unfolds. If the war becomes prolonged or expands geographically, it may overshadow earlier attempts to redefine American strategy. But if there is one core lesson from this war, it is that Kissingerian realpolitik is difficult in an age of social media–fueled mass democracy and demagoguery.
The Iran War could accelerate the push to control social media. It is already happening in Europe, and the efforts will reach these shores soon. Social media platforms have transformed the speed and scale at which information circulates and political leaders may feel trapped into responding quickly to viral stories or emotional appeals, even when the underlying information is incomplete or misleading. Algorithms often prioritize content that provokes strong reactions, and both foreign actors and foreign lobbies can rapidly exploit these systems to spread propaganda or manipulate debate. In the 15th century, the printing press resulted in a similar debate about foreign influence, corruption, and religious fanaticism, with criticisms of new technology ranging from humanists such as Nicollo Perotti, to monks such as Filippo de Strata, to Ottoman Sultan Bayezid, who outlawed printing, making it punishable by death. Balancing freedom of expression with the need to protect public discourse from manipulation will likewise become one of the defining dilemmas of functionally post-democratic societies, as any attempt to regulate digital platforms risks accusations of censorship, while leaving them entirely unregulated will allow foreign interference, appeals to emotions, and coordinated disinformation campaigns to flourish.
Underlying many debates about the Iran War, however, is the deeper question about how international politics should be understood. Realism emphasizes the importance of geography, material and relative power, and strategic interests. An alternative framework interprets global politics through the lens of civilization and identity. According to this view, conflicts reflect deeper cultural divisions between religious or historical communities. Political leaders sometimes adopt this language because it resonates emotionally with domestic audiences and simplifies complex geopolitical struggles. The difficulty with civilizational narratives is that they can transform limited disputes into existential confrontations. When wars are framed as clashes between entire cultures, compromise becomes politically difficult and escalation appears morally justified. Such rhetoric may mobilize support in the short term but can also entrench hostility for generations. Realist analysis does not eliminate the possibility of war, but it reduces the temptation to interpret every confrontation as a cosmic struggle. The Iran War demonstrates the continuing tension between these two frameworks. The civilizational framing appeals to simpletons, because it is so binary. It is also ahistoric, and will always result in crusading impulses.
It is an easy social science correlation to tally the voices who supported the Iraq War, their worldview, and the voices currently cheerleading the Iran War, and their support for “civilizational” politics in the U.S. One might notice that something is changing. This is also the dusk of Christian Zionist and low-church evangelical power in the U.S. For much of the early 21st century, American Middle Eastern policy was shaped by this powerful ideological coalition—itself a theological aberration—which somehow defeated both the high-church establishment WASPs (as represented in the cabinet of George H.W. Bush, and a constituency that is now significantly liberal), as well as left-wing non-interventionist atheists, nationalists, and secular liberals. Neoconservative strategists argued that American power should be used actively to shape global order, remove hostile regimes, and promote liberal political systems abroad. These ideas found political alliances with evangelical movements that emphasized fanatical support for the modern state of Israel (which they ahistorically portray as equivalent to the biblical Israelites) and the ushering of Judgement Day, married with moral arguments about the transformation of authoritarian societies.
Even during the Iraq War of 2003, many policymakers believed that American military superiority and political influence made ambitious regional transformation possible. The subsequent two decades of difficulties in Iraq and Afghanistan did not entirely discredit this worldview, but they introduced doubts among generations who grew up during the Global War on Terror about the feasibility and cost of such projects. The Iran War now arrives at a moment when the political coalitions that supported interventionist strategies are undergoing an unalterable change. The Iran war may therefore mark one of the final hurrahs of the older interventionist consensus. Win or lose in Iran, America is unlikely to nation-build again.
It is always interesting for a historian to contemplate how historic memory remembers an empire, and how the views shift over time. The British Empire, arguably the most liberal empire in history, is remembered by the post-colonials not for eradicating slavery, sati, or jizya, or for all the technological achievements from the steamship to telegraph, naval charts, modern medicines, but for events such as the Jalianwalabag massacre and the Bengal famine, both of which were caused by individual or structural incompetence, and neither of which was planned and orchestrated by the empire as a matter of policy. That selective memory results partly Marxist and decolonial historiography of a hundred years, entrenched in and promoted by both Soviet and American academia. It bears little resemblance to history, of course, given that such events do not define the empire in totality, nor do they explain why contemporaries viewed the empire as a positive force, as established historically in writing of the times.
The American empire will inevitably suffer a similar fate someday. It is not an iron law of history, but even partial decline of a great power is rarely kind towards the historical memory of the residents and subjects of that great power. Historical memories are not of course permanent, but that’s rare solace to those living in the present. The Germans who hated Roman power in the 5th century would be shocked to see the resurgence of Roman popularity in the 21st. And the admirers of liberal Ottoman rule in parts of Eastern Europe in the 16th century would not believe the current memory of the Turks.
It is inevitable that there will be an immediate attempt at crafting a narrative surrounding the United States’ intervention in Iran that will attempt to show that America needs even more allies and international commitments. If the principal lesson drawn from another discretionary conflict is the necessity of bolstering alliances or forming new ones, such a conclusion risks overlooking the structural causes that have entangled the United States in simultaneous commitments in Eastern Europe and the Middle East. Extensive alliance networks and security guarantees have historically functioned not only as instruments of influence but also as mechanisms that bind the United States to regional disputes that may not align with its core strategic interests. Any such call for further expansion of alliances or security commitments risks deepening the very patterns of overextension that have contributed to the present strategic dilemma. A more sustainable approach would involve a deliberate reduction of peripheral commitments and a reallocation of limited political, economic, and military resources toward priorities determined by geographic realities and material capabilities.
For good or for bad, the populist movements were unable to form a counter-elite, a difficult endeavour for a movement which is philosophically opposed to any elite. As the Iran War generates widespread frustration with ideological crusades or strategic miscalculations, as well as social media manipulation and epistemic anarchy, voters and policymakers may rediscover the appeal of more restrained and un-democratic elite approaches to foreign policy. The current “civilizational” wars of religion that started in 2003 and are still continuing will also lead to urgent social and international recalibration, especially toward further regulation of social media and further consolidation of elite diplomacy as opposed to a more volatile public opinion–fuelled foreign policy.
The U.S. will survive, given the blessings of geography and technological and economic might. But hegemonic transitions are rarely kind to protectorates, especially one that will be considered by history to be the final causal actor that led to the decline of the relative power of the said hegemon.
Finally, this is perhaps curtains for evangelical and Zionist power in the U.S., as well as the bipartisan support Israel has enjoyed in the American political system since at least the Truman years. A fanatical worldview, without any social or cultural pedigree but in the vicinity of power for 30 years under various names and forms, has proven to be as crusading and myopic as any other dogma; it will be forever remembered as what dragged down the empire in its final unipolar war and hurried the shift to multipolarity. The two final players of the game who will be remembered: Benjamin Netanyahu, talking of a great Israeli regional empire, and Donald Trump, visibly exhausted, his apparent purpose to ensure Israel’s maximalist impulses are fulfilled, his domestic and foreign policy legacy cheered on and then ruined. He has created and then lost a once-in-a-generation multiracial coalition and squandered the opportunity to transform the great power for the next 250 years; instead of economic resurgence or cultural and social unity, the administration chose shock-and-awe crusades against real and perceived civilizational enemies, from Minneapolis–St. Paul to the mountains of Persia.
The post The Final Chapter of the Unipolar Moment appeared first on The American Conservative.
(@mtgreenee) April 18, 2026
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