The US “Burden Sharing Network” Takes Shape

September 15, 2026 (NEO - Brian Berletic) - In 2025, the US National Security Strategy paper would be broadly misinterpreted as a US plan to break with its historical pursuit of global primacy and instead, retreat to the Western Hemisphere while somehow reconciling or coexisting with traditional targets of US aggression. 

Many analysts even claimed there was an absence of any direct mention of Russia or China as part of long-standing “great power competition.”  

Yet, even throughout the document itself, terms like “hostile and subversive influences” simply stood in for “Russia” and “China,” reaffirming continuity of US foreign policy objectives rather than upsetting or breaking from them. 

Included within the 33 page document was a detailed explanation of exactly how the United States would continue pursuing “great power competition” against not only Russia and China, but all other nations obstructing US primacy.

Under a section titled, “priorities,” was a policy of “burden-sharing and burden-shifting” which explicitly stated: 

“…the United States will organize a burden-sharing network, with our government as convener and supporter. This approach ensures that burdens are shared and that all such efforts benefit from broader legitimacy. The model will be targeted partnerships that use economic tools to align incentives, share burdens with like-minded allies, and insist on reforms that anchor long-term stability. This strategic clarity will allow the United States to counter hostile and subversive influences efficiently while avoiding the overextension and diffuse focus that undermined past efforts.” 

It should be noted that the introduction of a US “burden sharing network” describing the coercion of other nations into serving as extensions of US power and influence, followed a section titled “primacy of nations” claiming, “it is natural and just that all nations put their interests first and guard their sovereignty” - thus, a complete contradiction. 

But that is only if one assumes the US discussed the “primacy of nations” as a general principle applied to all nations and not just a means of absolving the US - and the US alone - of its obligations under international law. 

The threat of “economic tools” to “align incentives” and to “insist on reforms” for what the US paper claims is “long-term stability” are clearly euphemisms for the coercion of nations to serve US foreign policy objectives, and specifically to uphold US primacy even at the expense of these nations’ own objective best interests. 

The Burden Sharing Network in Practice 

One of the most blatant implementations of this “burden sharing network” was actually publicly announced months before the National Security Strategy paper was published. In February 2025, US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth would publicly demand Europe “double down and re-commit” to what he referred to as “Ukraine’s immediate security needs” and “Europe’s long-term defense and deterrence goals.” 

At a time when many in the public and analytical circles still believed the US under the new Trump administration was trying to either end or distance itself from the ongoing war in Ukraine - Secretary Hegseth made it clear that any shift in US policy toward Ukraine was merely - what he would call - a “division of labor” between US interests in Europe and the Pacific and realistic limitations preventing the US from pursuing both without extracting more resources from its client states.

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. 

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. 

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.  

Trump’s Threats Against Iran Exposes US Continuity of Agenda

April 3, 2025 (NEO - Brian Berletic) - US President Donald Trump has recently sent a “letter” to Iran’s leadership providing it with a two-month deadline regarding a new “nuclear deal” - this after President Trump during his first term in office in 2018 unilaterally and baselessly withdrew from the previous Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) and as the US builds up military forces as a direct threat to Iran’s government.

While President Trump has suggested drastic measures may be applied if Iran doesn’t meet the deadline, neither he nor anyone in his administration has explained under what authority the US has created this deadline, with what authority it intends to enforce it with, or how the threat of this war of aggression differs from the long line of US wars of aggression President Trump campaigned for office vowing to end.  

The Trump administration is posing as if its primary motivation is to prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons as part of a wider narrative regarding US leadership in maintaining peace and stability worldwide. In reality, this most recent escalation is part of a wider US policy spanning multiple presidential administrations aimed at dismantling Iran’s network of allies across the region, isolating Iran, before pursuing regime change operations against Iran itself. 

With the removal of a sovereign Iran in the Middle East, the US can advance a decades-spanning agenda of establishing and maintaining primacy both over the Middle East and well beyond it - an agenda that has served in actuality as the single greatest threat to peace and stability worldwide.  

If Real - Iranian Nuclear Weapons Would Be Rational, Not Radical 

It should be noted that the US is the only nation on Earth in human history to use nuclear weapons against another nation - twice. Throughout post-WW2 history, the US has considered using nuclear weapons again - including against North Korea, China, Vietnam, and even Afghanistan. This, combined with a long history of conventional wars of aggression, makes the US the most dangerous nuclear-armed nation on Earth - its belligerence a key factor in driving nations like China and North Korea to develop and expand their nuclear programs in the first place.

Regarding Iran specifically, the US has created a decades-spanning national security threat to Tehran including regime change in 1953 as part of Operation Ajax, decades of economic sanctions meant to strangle Iran’s economy, the sponsoring of armed opposition groups inside Iran including listed terrorist organizations, as well as backing proxy wars against Iran - most notably the deadly 8 year Iran-Iraq War in the 1980s, as well as proxy wars against Iranian allies arraying Israel, Al Qaeda, and the self-proclaimed “Islamic State” (ISIS) against Lebanon-based Hezbollah, Syria, Iranian-friendly militias in Iraq, as well as Ansar Allah in Yemen. 

The US has also invaded and destroyed nations bordering Iran to the east and to the west - beginning with Afghanistan in 2001 and then Iraq beginning in 2003. US forces remain in Iraq to this day. 

In the last several years, the US and its proxies have successfully destroyed Hezbollah’s senior leadership in Lebanon, toppled the Syrian government, and is conducting a bombing campaign against Ansar Allah in Yemen. 

Were Iran pursuing nuclear weapons, it would be more rational than “radical” - a response to US military aggression that has ravaged the Middle East and has openly and constantly threatened Iran itself. Despite Iran’s status as a signatory of the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), the United States - through serial acts of military aggression against non-nuclear armed states - has created a geopolitical environment voiding the core objectives of the treaty. The world cannot eliminate nuclear weapons if the US is committed to creating threats requiring nuclear deterrence. 

What’s even more telling are the conclusions reached by US policymakers themselves amid the pages of papers and reports published over the years used to guide US decision making regarding Iran itself and the wider Middle East, including the possibility of Iran obtaining nuclear weapons and the certainty they would be used defensively, not offensively - threatening only the continuation of US interference and that of its proxies in the region. 

Israeli Strikes Demonstrates Limits of Western Military Might

November 5, 2024 (NEO - Brian Berletic) - Israel’s most recent missile strikes on Iran reveal the limits to conventional Western military power in the Middle East, reflecting wider limits globally.
While Israel’s air force conducted a sophisticated, large-scale operation requiring well-trained, well-coordinated personnel as well as capable air-launched long-range precision guided missiles, a combination of Iranian defensive capabilities and constraints on Western (including Israeli) military industrial production limited results.

While Israel and its US sponsors are capable of larger-scale military operations, this would be within the context of open warfare – warfare US-Israeli forces and their combined industrial power would struggle to sustain.

Doubts may exist regarding Iranian resolve and resilience and whether it and its allies could outlast and outfight US-Israeli forces short of either or both the US and Israel resorting to nuclear weapons. Even if the US and its proxies, including Israel, were to prevail over Iran in the Middle East, it may come at the cost of forfeiting Washington’s pursuit of primacy elsewhere around the globe, including in Ukraine versus Russia and the Asia-Pacific region versus China.

Escalation Toward War

Long-standing US policy seeks to use Israel to provoke war with Iran, absolving Washington of responsibility while creating a pretext for Washington itself to wade into the conflict once it begins. Despite Israel lacking the conventional military power required to fight and win a war against Iran, Israel has conducted a long list of provocations to draw Iran into conflict, nonetheless, specifically to fulfill this US foreign policy objective.

Exchanges of missile strikes between Israel and Iran began in April 2024 when Israel attacked the Iranian consulate in Damascus, killing military personnel and civilians. It triggered a chain-reaction of strikes, assassinations, and retaliations, documented in a timeline laid out by the New York Times.

Iran’s first retaliatory strike in April 2024 consisted of a barrage of drones, cruise missiles, and ballistic missiles two weeks after its consulate was attacked and after notifying the United States days prior, giving the US and its regional partners ample time to coordinate efforts to intercept most of the incoming weapons.

US-Israel Inch Toward Wider, More Dangerous War

October 14, 2024 (NEO - Brian Berletic) - Beginning in October 2023 a renewed cycle of violence began destabilizing the Middle East. Hamas’ October 7, 2023 military operation into Israeli-held territory served as a pretext for Israel, not to dismantle Hamas itself, but to conduct an indiscriminate punitive military operation against all of Gaza.

 
Israel all but admitted as much, with Israeli Defense Forces spokesman Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari admitting “thousands of tonnes of munitions had already been dropped on the tiny strip” by October 10, 2023 and that, “right now we’re focused on what causes maximum damage.”

While the Western media repeatedly refers to Hamas’ October 7, 2023 attack as “Iranian-backed,” the West itself has admitted that Iran had no knowledge of the impending operation, let alone any role in it. This resembles deliberate attempts by the US to infer Iraqi culpability regarding the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the US, despite officially admitting Iraq played no role, all to serve as a partial pretext for the eventual US invasion and occupation of Iraq from 2003 onward.

Omitted from deliberately deceptive narratives trying to link Iran to Hamas is the fact that Hamas has a long-standing history of serving as an extension of US aggression in the region, rather than serving as a bulwark against it. In 2012, Hamas publicly announced it would mobilize against the Syrian government on the side of US-backed and armed militants. For years, Hamas fighters would play a role in fighting the Syrian government and its Iranian, Russian, and Hezbollah allies.

For years, Hamas has worked in tandem with Israel itself to frustrate efforts to establish a two-state solution, perpetuating hostilities, and serving as a continuous pretext for continued Israeli aggression.

Creating an Impossible Dilemma for Iran

The ultimate goal of Israel’s punitive operation against Gaza is to create an impossible dilemma for Iran and its allies and, eventually, a permissive environment for wider conflict across the region.

While Iran does not support Hamas, it supports the Palestinian people and their right to resist what the UN recognizes under international law as illegal Israeli occupation. Iran and its allies, including Lebanon-based Hezbollah and Yemen-based Ansar Allah (referred to across the Western media as “Houthis”) were compelled to assist the Palestinians.

Hezbollah has since exchanged fire with Israeli military targets along the Israeli-Lebanese border, while Ansar Allah has conducted interdiction operations against Israeli-bound shipping through the Red Sea.

Israel has used this as a pretext to escalate further, striking Iran’s consulate in Syria on April 1, 2024, and a series of terrorist attacks and targeted assassinations against Hezbollah culminating in the death of Hezbollah’s Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah.

Both escalations were met by Iranian retaliation. Iran conducted a large-scale attack on Israel using stand-off weapons including drones, cruise missiles, and long-range ballistic missiles in mid-April and a larger ballistic missile strike in early October.

Both strikes were conducted with considerable restraint.

The mid-April strike was preceded by Iranian warnings, providing the US and Israel days to prepare. The second strike, although conducted on short notice and involving a larger number of ballistic missiles, was designed to demonstrate Iran’s ability to penetrate Israeli air defenses rather than to maximize damage.

Washington Sets Trap for Iran, Will Iran Take the Bait?

September 24, 2024 (NEO - Brian Berletic) - Amid the ongoing conflict in Ukraine and growing tensions in the Asia-Pacific, Washington is moving toward an equally dangerous, regional war in the Middle East between its Israeli proxies and a growing list of neighboring states and organizations.
This includes Lebanon and the Lebanese-based military and political organization Hezbollah, the Syrian Arab Republic, Iran, as well as Shi’a militias across Iraq and Yemeni-based Ansar Allah referred to across the Western media as the “Houthis.”

This large group of nations and organizations stretching across the region share a common denominator – they all serve as obstacles to US primacy over the region, with the US itself having waged war directly and/or indirectly against each since the end of World War2.

Just as the US has recruited Ukraine to wage war on Russia by proxy in Eastern Europe and has politically captured and used the island province of Taiwan against the rest of China in the Asia-Pacific region, the US has carefully cultivated Israel politically and militarily for decades to serve as a proxy used to carry out assassinations, terrorist attacks, military strikes, and even provoke wars the US itself seeks plausible deniability in regard to.

Toward this end, the US provides Israel with billions in aid annually, including a steady flow of arms and ammunition Israel’s various wars of aggression would be impossible to conduct without. While Washington publicly poses as seeking peace and stability in the Middle East, its continuous support for Israel enables the perpetual conflict and instability undermining the region.

Most recently, the US has repeatedly claimed to have urged Israeli restraint regarding its military operations against Gaza. In practice, however, the US has enabled the large-scale destruction of Gaza through the continual shipment of munitions including thousands of bombs used in Israeli airstrikes, Reuters reported in June of this year.

Despite both the US and its Israeli proxies claiming Israeli actions are done in self-defense, the level of violence has been one-sided, with Gaza all but flattened and tens of thousands left dead, injured, or displaced. In parallel with its operations in Gaza, Israel has carried out strikes against Lebanon, Syria, and Iran – none of whom were involved in Hamas attacks in October last year, according to the Israeli military itself.

All three nations have repeatedly resisted retaliating to these Israeli provocations.

Israel: The Original Ukraine-Style Battering Ram

The nature of Israeli belligerence is transparent, part of a well-documented US policy to provoke wider war across the Middle East the US can then justify intervening in – and war both the US and its Israeli proxies can cite when using weapons and tactics otherwise difficult or impossible to justify – up to and including nuclear weapons.

In 2009, the Brookings Institution in its 170-page paper titled, “Which Path to Persia? Options for a New American Strategy toward Iran,” would detail various means to coerce, contain, and ultimately overthrow the government of Iran, including waging war against Iran.

The paper admits how difficult it would be for the United States itself to launch military strikes against Iran, stating:

…any military operation against Iran will likely be very unpopular around the world and require the proper international context—both to ensure the logistical support the operation would require and to minimize the blowback from it.

It also says:

…it would be far more preferable if the United States could cite an Iranian provocation as justification for the airstrikes before launching them. Clearly, the more outrageous, the more deadly, and the more unprovoked the Iranian action, the better off the United States would be. Of course, it would be very difficult for the United States to goad Iran into such a provocation without the rest of the world recognizing this game, which would then undermine it.

An entire chapter was dedicated to the use of Israel to carry out an initial strike on Iran, allowing the US to distance itself from culpability. Titled, “Leave it to Bibi: Allowing or Encouraging an Israeli Military Strike,” it explicitly states:

…the goal of this policy option would be to destroy key Iranian nuclear facilities in the hope that doing so would significantly delay Iran’s acquisition of an indigenous nuclear weapons capability. However, in this case, an added element could be that the United States would encourage—and perhaps even assist—the Israelis in conducting the strikes themselves, in the expectation that both international criticism and Iranian retaliation would be deflected away from the United States and onto Israel.

The paper notes that an Israeli strike could, “trigger a wider conflict between Israel and Iran that could draw in the United States and other countries,” giving Washington the pretext it seeks ahead of any war of aggression it itself wages against Iran.

With this policy in mind, Israel’s steady cadence of increasingly provocative attacks against Iran and its allies is easier to understand. The US, through Israeli provocations, seeks to provoke a wider war the US itself can wade into, appearing to be aiding an ally rather than initiating yet another war of aggression in the Middle East.

Ultimately, for this trap to work successfully, Iran must retaliate to one of these many provocations, and do so in a way the US and its allies can portray as disproportionate or even “unprovoked.”

So far, Iran’s responses have been exceedingly measured.