The US War on Iran Continues

July 3, 2026 (NEO - Brian Berletic) - The US continues to playact diplomacy with Iran regarding the latest “memorandum of  understanding” (MOU) signed, then immediately violated by the US, re-negotiated, and supposedly agreed upon again - using the pause in all-out war to carefully shape the battlefield ahead of what will inevitably be another round of large-scale aggression. 

In the interim, the US continues striking at Iran and its allies across the region at will. 

This process takes place within the context of US policy papers for years admitting diplomacy in and of itself would be used against Iran to create a pretext for war rather than be used as a means of preventing it. 

The US has implemented precisely this policy through multiple instances of the US deliberately betraying diplomatic processes including the violation of the so-called “Nuclear Deal” (Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action or JCPOA) and two back-to-back US decapitation strikes carried out in the middle of US-Iranian “negotiations” between 2025 and 2026. 

These most recent chapters of US duplicity follow decades of war aimed at West Asia, imposing US domination over the region and slowly encircling and isolating Iran - both through interference, terrorism, and military aggression aimed at Iran itself, as well as at Iran’s network of allies.

US policy papers have long noted Iran’s regional network of allies as key to its national security policy, even specifically describing it in terms of defensive and retaliatory capabilities. 

One such paper, the RAND Corporation’s 2009 “Dangerous But Not Omnipotent: Exploring the Reach and Limitations of Iranian Power in the Middle East ,” under a section titled, “Iran Pursues a Multifaceted Regional Strategy Marked by Strengths and Limitations,” explains: 

“Iran fields a weak conventional force. Iranian leaders have long trumpeted their shift to an asymmetric strategy of homeland defense that would exact intolerable costs from an invader. Much of this rests on notions of “mosaic defense,” partisan warfare, and popular mobilization of Basiji auxiliaries.”

And that:

“Iran has limited leverage over so-called proxy groups. To compen-sate for its conventional inferiority, Iran has long provided financial and military support to a variety of non-state Islamist groups. According to Revolutionary Guard doctrine, this “peripheral strategy” is intended to give strategic depth to Iran’s homeland defense, taking the fight deep into the enemy’s camp. In the cases of Hamas and Hezbollah, this strategy also buys Iran legitimacy among Arab publics who are frus-trated with their regimes’ seemingly status quo approach. In effect, Tehran is being “more Arab than the Arabs” on issues such as Palestine. 

In supporting major Shi’ite militant groups in Iraq and Lebanon, Tehran may expect a degree of reciprocity. This is particularly the case in the event of a U.S. strike, in which Iran might expect these groups to act unflinchingly as retaliatory agents.”

Thus, US policymakers are fully aware Iranian support for organizations like Hezbollah in Lebanon, Ansar Allah in Yemen, or the Popular Mobilization Forces in Iraq are defensive in nature rather than an irrational, aggressive, expansionist policy of coercion or even “terrorism” as US political theater depicts it as amid the process of selling US wars of aggression against Iran to the American and wider global public. 

This also means that US policymakers are keenly aware that in order to isolate and undermine Iran itself, it needs to undermine or completely eliminate this strategic depth Iran has created across the region first. 

And this is precisely what has driven US policy in the region regarding Iran for at least the past 26 years including US war, occupation, and proxy war in Lebanon, Yemen, and Iraq as well as Syria. 

The US War for Energy Dominance Leads to Dominance Over Europe and Asia

May 3, 2026 (NEO - Brian Berletic) - The US war on Iran - at face value - appears to be a catastrophic tactical and strategic US failure demonstrating the limits of its military power and further exposing the limits of its military industrial capacity. 

However, just as with its still-ongoing proxy war on Russia in Ukraine, its inability to overwhelm targeted nations with outright military power distracts away from the many ways the US is still advancing its geopolitical objectives by other means. 

In Ukraine, the US has categorically failed in defeating Russian forces through its support of its Ukrainian proxies. However, it has used the war to lock Russia into an expensive, prolonged, high-intensity conflict that has demonstrably compromised Russian interests beyond Europe - especially regarding the 2024 collapse of Syria.

The war has also succeeded in cutting Europe off from cheap, reliable, and plentiful Russian energy and is placing Europe under increasing, and likely irreversible energy dependence on the United States. 

This energy dependence on the US obviously benefits US-based energy corporations financially but also enhances Washington’s strategic leverage or even outright control over Europe. This control is being used to successfully create a united front across Europe against Russia. 

In a similar manner - the US is using its war on Iran to strangle energy exports from the entire Middle East to Asia to decouple Asia from cheap, reliable, plentiful gas and oil and place it under US energy dependence, thus providing the US strategic leverage over Asia to create a similar united front against China. 

Decoupling Europe from Russian Energy Through War Was Planned 

In the 2019 RAND Corporation paper titled, “Extending Russia: Competing from Advantageous Ground,” a number of “economic” and “geopolitical” measures were laid out, designed to “extend” Russia and possibly precipitate a Soviet Union-style collapse like that which ended the Cold War.

Under “economic measures,” the paper lists “hinder petroleum exports,” “reduce natural gas exports and hinder pipeline expansions,” “impose sanctions,” and “enhance Russian brain drain.”   

The paper first argues that one of the main methods of implementing these measures is to expand US oil and gas production and its export to Europe. 

However, under a section titled, “likelihood of success," the paper explicitly admits:

“Reducing European peacetime consumption of Russian gas has a medium to low likelihood of success. Diversifying away from Russia is expensive, and projects might be difficult to accomplish.”  

It should be remembered that at the time, the US was already investing in LNG export facilities and even exporting LNG targeting markets in Europe - at a time US policymakers admitted it made no financial or economic sense to do so. 

However, the paper was far from finished. Under “geopolitical measures,” the paper lists first and foremost, “provide lethal aid to Ukraine.” 

The paper admits that: 

“Expanding U.S. assistance to Ukraine, including lethal military assistance, would likely increase the costs to Russia, in both blood and treasure, of holding the Donbass region. More Russian aid to the separatists and an additional Russian troop presence would likely be required, leading to larger expenditures, equipment losses, and Russian casualties. The latter could become quite controversial at home, as it did when the Soviets invaded Afghanistan.”

In other words, by providing lethal aid to Ukraine - which the US began doing under the first Trump administration - the US would be knowingly attempting to provoke a war with Russia in Ukraine. 

Not only would the resulting war generate high costs for Russia militarily, it would also obviously transform the chief obstacle to reducing/hindering Russian oil/gas exports and expanding US LNG exports - that chief obstacle being “peacetime” - into unending wartime.

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. 

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. 

Washington’s War on Iran: The Importance of Defending Information Space

January 15, 2026 (NEO - Brian Berletic) - The US has demonstrably continued its war on Iran through the execution of long-laid plans aimed at destabilizing the nation through US-backed protests and armed terrorists targeting major cities over the course of several days.  

This follows a nearly 2 week-long war the US and its Israeli proxies launched against Iran in mid-2025 - only having been placed on pause ahead of the next round of destabilization and military aggression which appears to be unfolding now. 

Amid the US-organized unrest in January 2026, the US has openly backed the opposition calling for armed militants to continue their operations and to even seize government institutions. 

Associated Press would quote the US president as saying, “keep protesting and take over your institutions if you can,” and that, “help is on the way,” in reference to previous threats of US military strikes on Iran in support of the opposition. 

Beyond rhetorical support, evidence of direct US involvement began to surface amid Western media reports. 

The BBC in a recent article admitted - buried deep in the report - that “security forces have also been killed,” implying heavily armed elements amid the so-called “protests.”  The same article admitted that informants contacting the BBC from within Iran were using “Starlink” satellite connections - referring to US-based SpaceX’s satellite communication network. 

This comes as no surprise. As early as 2022, CNN reported that, “the White House has engaged in talks with Elon Musk about the possibility of setting up SpaceX’s satellite internet service Starlink inside Iran,” as one of several ways to “support the Iranian protest movement." 

More recently, Forbes has admitted, “tens of thousands of Starlink units are operating inside Iran,” a metric of how aggressively the Biden administration-era initiative was executed and then continued under the subsequent Trump administration. 

Beyond continuity of agenda between the supposedly “opposing” presidential administrations, plans to back violent unrest inside Iran have been laid out by US policymakers as early as 2009 in the Brookings Institution paper, “Which Path to Persia?” and seamlessly carried out by each successive administration regardless of political affiliation or campaign rhetoric.  

Al Qaeda in the White House and its Implications Far Beyond it

November 18, 2025 (NEO - Brian Berletic) - In perhaps 20 years’ time, the Western media will reflect back on the radical shifts in narratives surrounding the head of Al Qaeda in Syria, Abu Mohammed al-Jolani now rebranded and presented as “Ahmed al-Sharaa,” who recently visited the White House and posed for pictures side-by-side an eagerly grinning US President Donald Trump.

Al-Jonali’s rebranding follows that of the terrorist organization he nominally heads, most recently referred to as “Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham” (HTS) but previously known as Jabhat al-Nusra, a notorious terrorist organization heading the US-engineered proxy war against the government, military, and people of the now decimated and divided Syrian Arab Republic.

Side-by-side with the likewise US-sponsored “Islamic State” (ISIS), HTS openly documented its war crimes spanning the 2011-2024 period the US proxy war unfolded. 

By 2025, however, like al-Jolani himself, the terrorist organization he headed previously featured on the US State Department’s list of Foreign Terrorist Organizations, was inexplicably removed.  

 

The Washington Post in its recent article, “Syrian president meets with Trump in White House after unlikely ascent,” depicts the rise of al-Jolani as “improbable,” noting his journey from “al-Qaeda to the West Wing.”  

In reality, this was an entirely probable, even inevitable outcome - considering the history of US state sponsorship of terrorism, al-Qaeda in particular, and the circular pattern depicting the terrorist front as both freedom fighters and villains spanning decades of US proxy wars and outright wars of aggression from Afghanistan in the 1980s to Syria today. 

As in the Past, So Too in the Present… 

Short memories are shocked by recent developments, but considering the trajectory of another infamous al-Qaeda leader, Osama Bin Laden, recent developments seem as natural as the sun rising and setting daily. 

In 2013, Business Insider published an article reflecting this trajectory. Titled, “This Mind-Boggling Profile Of Osama Bin Laden Came Out Exactly 20 Years Ago Today,” would exclaim:

This article from Dec. 6, 1993, by Robert Fisk of The Independent with the title "Anti-Soviet warrior puts his army on the road to peace" is stunning to consider 20 years later. 

Osama bin Laden, fresh off the US-backed mujahedin's victory over Russia in 1989, flew his men, materials, and money down to Sudan, ostensibly to start public works projects.

It then notes: 

The piece is fascinating because it is a positive profile of a man who would become a global terrorist mastermind.

Al-Jolani’s career mirrors that of Osama Bin Laden. Just as a mirrored reflection shows a similar but reverse reflection - al-Jonali has gone from a “terrorist mastermind” with a 10 million USD bounty on his head the US only recently withdrew, to an open ally in America’s continued war for primacy over the Middle East and beyond. 

Just as Osama Bin Laden and al-Qaeda were originally created and sponsored by the United States government to wage proxy war against its designated adversaries including the Soviet Union (later, against the Russian Federation), China (particularly in Xinjiang), and their partners, al-Jolani and al-Qaeda today (along with ISIS and other extremist organizations) have been and will continue to be used to wage proxy war or serve as a pretext for actual war against Russia, China, and other nations investing in a multipolar future. 

Bigger Picture: Syria as an Epicenter for Exporting US-Sponsored Terrorism  

It is abundantly clear the US will continue backing al-Jolani and the terrorist network now posing as Syria’s new “armed forces” - not to defend Syria - but to continue the fight against US-targeted nations and organizations across the region including Hezbollah in Lebanon, Iranian-backed militias in Iraq, and even Iran itself.

US Still Dangerous Despite Limits of Military Production

July 9, 2025 (NEO - Brian Berletic) - The US has recently paused the shipment of some weapons and munitions to Ukraine “due to worries that U.S. weapons stockpiles have fallen too low,” Politico reported. 

This is only the most recent development amid a growing military industrial crisis unfolding across the collective West as Washington and its network of client states wage increasingly intense and protracted wars and proxy wars including in Ukraine against Russia, across the Middle East against Iran and its allies, and as the US prepares for similar conflicts in the Asia-Pacific region against China. 

Politico would note air defense systems, other precision guided weapons, and even artillery shells were among the shipments being paused due to concerns regarding depleted US stockpiles.

Since the beginning of Russia’s Special Military Operation (SMO) in February 2022, initial surges of US-European weapons and munitions have steadily decreased despite promises to expand military industrial production across the collective West. In some cases, US weapons already faced critical shortages even before the conflict in Ukraine expanded in 2022. 

In January of 2022, Saudi Arabia announced critical shortages of Patriot air defense interceptors, exhausting them amid its US-backed war with neighboring Yemen. The US, even at that point, was unable to replace Saudi Arabia’s depleted stockpiles forcing Riyadh to borrow missiles from other Persian Gulf states operating the systems. 

Lockheed Martin, which produces Patriot missiles, does so at a rate of about 500-600 interceptors a year, with plans to expand production to only 650 by the year 2027. Ukraine’s requirements alone far exceed this quantity with Russia producing between 720-840 Iskander ballistic missiles, according to Ukraine’s military intelligence agency, that only the Patriot missile system is capable of intercepting.