Empires almost never collapse in a sudden crash. They begin by waging wars they present as necessary.
The war launched on February 28, 2026 against Iran by the United States and Israel may belong to that category of events which, at the moment they occur, appear to be merely another regional crisis — but which, in retrospect, reveal themselves as turning points in the architecture of the international system.
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Behind the airstrikes and diplomatic communiqués lies a far larger question: the capacity of the contemporary world order to maintain its coherence in the face of accelerating rivalry between major powers.
The targeted elimination of IranianSupreme Leader Ali Khameneifollowed a now-classical military doctrine: strategic decapitation. The logic is simple — neutralize the decision-making center of a regime in order to trigger the rapid disintegration of its entire political and military apparatus.
But this assumption presupposes pre-existing institutional fragility.Iran is neither a young state nor a politically isolated regime. It is embedded in a deep historical and institutional continuum that endows its political system with a capacity to absorb shocks rarely observed in contemporary states.
Iran’s response — swift and multidirectional — immediately transformed a bilateral confrontation into a major regional crisis. This trajectory illuminates a deeper reality: the international system remains structured by a hierarchy of power dominated by the Washington–Tel Aviv axis, yet that structure today appears more brittle than it did in the immediate aftermath of the Cold War.
For several decades, the security of the Gulf monarchies has rested on a simple equation: energy resources in exchange for American military protection. This model was consolidated through the installation of U.S. military bases across the region and the progressive integration of Gulf economies into global financial circuits.
The Abraham Accords added a further dimension to this architecture by normalizing relations between several Arab states and Israel — implicitly aiming to build a strategic bloc capable of containing Iranian influence.
Source: Global Research
