Why the US is at War with Iran and Why the War Might Pause but Won’t End

April 28, 2026 (NEO - Brian Berletic) - While much discussion of the US war of aggression against Iran has focused on regional-specific factors including the myth the US is fighting Iran on “behalf of Israel,” there are far more realistic and important global factors that have led to the war and will unfold because of it.

The war on Iran is part of a decades-spanning US project to assume complete control over the Middle East and the oil and gas that is produced and exported from the region. This is not as a means of taking the energy for the United States’ own use, but to establish and enhance a US monopoly over energy production and exports from the US itself and from the nations and regions the US is assuming control over.

This includes most recently Venezuela in Latin America. The early 2026 US war of aggression against the Venezuelan state, kidnapping of the Venezuelan president, and the taking hostage of the remaining Venezuelan government led to the almost immediate cutting of Venezuelan oil exports to China and the distribution of Venezuelan oil wealth to US corporations. 

A similar war of aggression by the US against Russia through Ukraine is also quickly expanding into a war directly against Russian energy production, storage, and export infrastructure through the use of drones that - while attributed to Ukraine - the New York Times has revealed is actually overseen by the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the US military.

Likewise the US is encouraging its European proxies under a “division of labor” to expand maritime tracking, interdiction, and seizure of tankers carrying Russian energy exports, as well as a US campaign using maritime drones to attack the tankers. Again, the NYT has identified the US CIA and US military as having "supercharged" what are nominally claimed to be “Ukrainian” operations. 

Together with the war on Iran, a clear, global pattern emerges of what is the deliberate US disruption, destruction, and even shutting down of energy exports to Asia in general, but to China specifically. 

While the US was likely also attempting to quickly topple the Iranian government to enhance its control over the region and further isolate both Russia and China, a much wider and more global-focused objective was to cut off energy not just from Iran to Asia and specifically China, but from the entire Middle East to Asia and China.

The most recent phase of US aggression against Iran - beginning in late February and as a continuation of violence launched against Iran in both 2025 under the Trump administration and even 2024 at the end of the Biden administration - involved targeting Iranian energy production as well as strikes on Kharg Island - Iran’s key energy export facility.

US strikes on Iranian energy production led to retaliatory strikes by Iran on America's Pesian Gulf Arab state proxies including Kuwait, Qatar, the UAE, and Saudi Arabia. 

Collectively, this violence led to reduced production across the entire region subsequently leading to lower energy exports of gas and oil from the entire Middle East to China when compared with pre-war levels.

From the late-February start of hostilities to the recent ceasefire agreement, energy exports from the entire region to China dropped from approximately 52% of China's total imported needs to around 30%, according to Reuters. 

A March 2026 Politico article makes it clear that beyond just China’s dependence on the region for energy, Asia as a whole depends on energy imports from the Middle East for between 70% to 90%+ of their total energy import needs - especially US proxies like Japan, South Korea, the Philippines, and the island province of Taiwan. 

Isolating China, Controlling Asia 

Just as the US had previously done to Europe through its instigation of war with Russia in Ukraine, the destruction of the Nord Stream pipelines, and the implementation of sanctions on all other energy imports from Russia - and now including the striking of Russian energy production, storage, export facilities and actual tankers carrying Russian energy exports - all of this forcing Europe into energy dependence on US exports - the US is now pursuing a similar policy targeting China and the rest of Asia by deliberately disrupting access to Middle East energy exports. 

Western Media Hails More Ukraine “Wonder Weapons” That Russia Also Has

April 7, 2026 (NEO - Brian Berletic) - The Western media has shifted much of its attention toward the most recently launched US war of aggression in the Middle East against Iran - but corners of the Western media remain dedicated to shaping public perception regarding many other fronts along the US’ global war on multipolarism, including the ongoing US proxy war on Russia in Ukraine. 

Familiar propaganda formulas continue to be utilized to keep these other, older wars raging as the US escalates around the globe elsewhere, including claims of new “wonder weapons” given to or developed by Ukraine. 

Ranging from M777 artillery pieces, to HIMARS, Patriot missile systems, F-16s, and ATACMS - each weapon platform was introduced as a “gamechanger” that would shift Ukraine’s fortunes on the battlefield despite the same media also insisting Ukraine was already “winning.” 

What many of these articles leave out, however, is even more important than what they present to audiences. 

Ukraine’s Robotic Wonder Weapons 

A recent surge in stories about Ukrainian “ground robots” is now following this familiar pattern. 

The Guardian in its article, “‘The frontline is like Terminator’: fighting robots give Ukraine hope in war with Russia,”  is just one of many articles claiming Ukraine is transforming into a “centre for the development of unmanned weapons,” implying unparalleled expertise possessed by Ukraine regarding aerial drones and now “ground” or “land robots.” 

The Guardian insists Ukraine’s expertise is so immense that it is “highly sought after” even amid Washington’s latest war against Iran - claiming Saudi Arabia and Qatar are among several Persian Gulf states that have signed a 10-year defense agreement with Ukraine “to provide them with low-cost Ukrainian interceptors.”  

What the Guardian fails to mention is the fact that the deal involves technology sharing, factory construction, and localized production in the Middle East that will take years to manifest into actual military capabilities for these Persian Gulf states, implying that Ukraine itself lacks a surplus in drone production as it struggles on the battlefield against Russia.  

The article is - however - primarily about UGVs (unmanned ground vehicles) and how they have filled every combat role along the frontline from infantry and engineering, to logistics and medical evacuations. 

Buried deep in the article, almost at the very end, it makes an admission that, “Russia also makes extensive use of ground systems.”

What the article does not say is that Russia is producing many times more unmanned weapons of all kinds, from drones to ground vehicles, in quantities the collective West’s collective military industrial production cannot match.

The US War on Iran is a US War on Multipolarism

April 3, 2026 (NEO - Brian Berletic) - The US war of aggression launched against Iran on February 28, 2026 is only the most recent US aggression launched to undermine and dismantle the multipolar world. The US has not only threatened the existence of Iran as a nation state as well as the security of the entire Middle East, but the death and destruction it has caused has already begun to radiate out across the world in terms of disrupted or destroyed energy exports and rapidly unraveling economic stability.

 

The US - being energy independent itself - has forced much of the world into an American energy monopoly - having placed sanctions on Russian energy exports and now either seizing, disrupting, or destroying all other potential competitors. 

This includes a US invasion of Venezuela just earlier this year, kidnapping the Venezuelan president and holding the remaining government hostage while openly seizing the nation’s natural resources - including oil - for the US itself. 

The current US war of aggression against Iran is not only targeting Iranian energy production but has resulted in regional conflict damaging or destroying energy production across the Persian Gulf altogether. . 

Because the US produces nowhere near the amount of oil and LNG required to make up for disrupted or destroyed energy production and exports from the Middle East, this will result in global energy shortages and subsequent collapses in both industry and consumer demand. 

The world which had been collectively rising above and beyond the reach of US primacy now faces the prospect of being deliberately destabilized and dragged down by the US. 

The US itself, incapable of competing within the very world order it created following the World Wars, has decided to use its remaining military, economic, financial, and political strength to demolish it in the hope of emerging from the settling debris once again “strongest.” 

Far from an obscure theory, this is an observation made even by Russia’s top diplomat, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, who in a recent interview would say that, “the events in Latin America and the Middle East directly stem from the West’s attempts to preserve the remnants of its dominance,” and that, “the elites of Western countries, continue to invest whatever political and economic resources they have left in their confrontation with our country.” 

Far from a last minute plan, the US spent much of the 21st century preparing not only for the now ongoing war with Iran but also its ongoing proxy war with Russia in Ukraine, and its growing encirclement of China in the Asia-Pacific region - targeting all of multipolarism’s major pillars and many in between. 

On the Path to Persia 

To encircle and weaken Iran, the US invaded Afghanistan to its east and Iraq to its west in 2001 and 2003 respectively under the Bush Jr. administration. During that same administration, the US began preparing armies of extremists to wage proxy war against Iran and its regional allies including Hezbollah in southern Lebanon, the nation of Syria, and Ansar Allah in Yemen. 

American/Ukrainians Caught Arming Militants in Myanmar and the US Dirty War on China

March 20, 2026 (NEO - Brian Berletic) - India’s national media reported the arrest by Indian security services of US mercenary Matthew VanDyke and six Ukrainians for illegally crossing the border into neighboring Myanmar to provide military training to armed groups fighting Myanmar’s central government. 

Indian security services have also linked the suspects to “importing huge consignments of drones from Europe to Myanmar via India” for “ethnic armed groups,” matching the established pattern of US proxy war waged around the globe throughout the 21st century. 

The military support provided by groups like VanDyke’s “Sons of Liberty” and other US-linked organizations like former US Special Forces operator David Eubank’s “Free Burma Rangers,” together with overt US government funding and support for political opposition groups the US seeks to install into power, have fueled decades of conflict inside Southeast Asia’s nation of Myanmar. 

US-Backed Militants in Myanmar

VanDyke has gravitated toward US wars and proxy wars of aggression around the globe including the US war on Libya in 2011, against Syria also in 2011, and in Ukraine from 2022 onward according to Western sources like Newsweek.  

VanDyke’s recent operation in Myanmar involved not only training militants, but also equipping them with “huge consignments” of drones, indicating a significant source of funding. Because the funding is not disclosed by VanDyke’s “non-profit security contracting firm” it is very likely - as with all other aspects of Myanmar’s opposition - it is funded by the US government and simply laundered through fronts like VanDyke’s. 

Other similarly US-backed operations training and equipping militants in Myanmar include David Eubank’s “Free Burma Rangers” (FBR). US diplomatic cables made available by Wikileaks revealed Eubank regularly reports to US government representatives at the US consulate in neighboring Thailand (here, here, here, here, and here). 

While FBR poses as some sort of nongovernmental organization (NGO) which “assists ethnic resistance groups” with “humanitarian operations,” videos produced by Free Burma Rangers themselves and those by the militant groups they help train and equip, depict the organization providing military training (including weapons training), as well as FBR members themselves carrying weapons on patrol with local militants.

The political opposition these armed groups seek to install into power, the so-called “National Unity Government” (NUG) is itself a documented wholecloth creation of the US government.  

At the AI Race’s Finishing Line: A World of Abundance or Automated Dominance?

February 12, 2026 (NEO - Brian Berletic) - As artificial intelligence (AI) continues to advance, an important but unnoticed debate is taking place within the halls of Western power and among a handful of billionaire business leaders and investors regarding the shape of the world to come as this technology permeates every aspect of modern civilization. 

Western-based optimists insist that AI will bring about a utopian world of abundance, eliminating poverty, illness, and violence and insist that the US must win an intensifying AI race with China to do so. 

Paradoxically, it is the US who has, in the past several decades - including throughout the entirety of the 21st century, perpetuated and even compounded existing poverty, illness, and violence stretching from Latin America to Central Asia and everywhere in between. The US has - in the past 26 years alone - invaded and destroyed entire nations, killing millions and displacing 10s of millions fleeing from the poverty, illness, and violence stemming from US-led war. 

Even within US borders, these same interests have ravaged the American population through predatory economic practices prioritizing profit and power over any semblance of societal or civilizational purpose. This has manifested itself as rotting infrastructure, inaccessible healthcare, unaffordable education, and the growing dearth of opportunities emerging from a society systematically exploited and neglected rather than built-up and invested in. 

For a Western-based billionaire - this reality may not be apparent because of the cocoon of luxury, comfort, and security immense wealth affords anyone, anywhere - but it is reality nonetheless. 

China, on the other hand, has already spent the last several decades lifting hundreds of millions of its own people out of poverty, improving healthcare, and eradicating violent crime within its borders long before AI became a practical reality. 

China Pursues Abundance, Cooperation, and Coexistence 

Throughout the 21st century China has not invaded a single nation nor participated in the sort of unilateral economic sanctions the US and its partners have used to target scores of nations around the globe with the explicit purpose of crushing economies and dividing and destroying populations to in turn induce “regime change.” 

Instead, China has continued to rapidly build out its own infrastructure while partnering with nations around the globe, long neglected under decades of Western domination, to build desperately needed modern infrastructure creating what China refers to as the “Belt and Road Initiative” (BRI). 

Nations like Laos in Southeast Asia - upon which the US dropped more bombs during the Vietnam War than the nation's total population - received its first and only modern rail route thanks to China’s BRI - a high-speed rail line that has transformed the landlocked impoverished nation into a logistics and tourism corridor between China and the rest of Southeast Asia. 

Neighboring Thailand has also greatly benefited from the rise of China in profound ways decades of “major non-NATO ally” status with the US failed to provide including expanding trade, tourism, manufacturing, infrastructure expansion, and technology transfers rapidly modernizing Thailand at a pace US-proxies in the region like the Philippines will likely never experience in the near or intermediate future. 

Consumer costs for cars, computers, smartphones, and all other types of consumer and industrial electronics and equipment have plummeted across nations in Asia trading with China - empowering individuals, small businesses and large enterprises alike to do more, more quickly, and with less resources. 

A visit to anywhere across Asia where Chinese-driven development has escaped US efforts to sabotage, stagnate, or reverse, reveals stunning progress at all levels of society, not just for a handful of billionaires.