The Collapse of American Hegemony and Global Nuclear Risks

Founded more than a century ago in the immediate aftermath of the First World War, the New York City based Council for Foreign Relations (CFR) ranks as our oldest and most mainstream foreign policy organization, generally reflecting the consensus views of our DC establishment.

In my article last week, I noted that its equally venerable flagship publication Foreign Affairs had just published a major 5,000 word article by a prominent Middle East academic named Marc Lynch, apparently deemed so important that it was placed beyond the usual paywall. The highly descriptive title was “The End of the American Middle East” and it opened with the following remarkable paragraph: The Tragedy of Great P... Mearsheimer, John J. Buy New $17.38 (as of 10:21 UTC - Details)

The American Middle East is finished. The regional order that has prevailed since 1991 has been one of the many casualties of the U.S.-Israeli war with Iran. The American and Israeli failure to dislodge the regime in Tehran has proved the bankruptcy of decades of sanctions and violence. The inability of the United States to protect its Gulf allies from Iranian attacks or to keep the Strait of Hormuz open has fatally undermined the core security bargain that justified its network of military bases in the region. And Israel’s increasingly threatening posture and abandonment of any pretense of interest in reaching an accommodation with the Palestinians have ended Washington’s decades-long mission of bringing its Arab allies and Israel together into an enduring security partnership.

Lynch went on to argue that the failure of our war against Iran suggested that we should renounce our half-century of hostility to the Islamic Republic. Completely forgoing any future military intervention in the region, America must instead “bring Iran into the regional security system as an invested partner.” The Iranians had damaged or destroyed all our regional military bases, but rather than attempting to restore them, we should abandon our longstanding military footprint in the region.

A week later, that same publication carried another article along similar lines by Nate Swanson, the director of the Iran Strategy Project at the equally mainstream Atlantic Council, once again placing the text beyond the usual paywall.

After its military failures, the Trump administration had reverted to a fallback position of all-out economic warfare against Iran. But Swanson’s title declared that “Maximum Pressure on Iran Will Fail,” and he argued that this new approach would be equally unsuccessful, opening his piece with the following paragraphs:

For 47 years, the Islamic Republic has bedeviled U.S. presidents. The 1979 Iran hostage crisis helped doom Jimmy Carter’s reelection bid. The Iran-contra scandal in the mid-1980s badly tarnished Ronald Reagan’s foreign policy record. And Barack Obama’s 2015 nuclear deal with Iran, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), led to an unprecedented situation in which the U.S. Congress invited a foreign leader, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, to Washington to argue against it.

In February, when he launched his war against Iran, President Donald Trump declared that he intended to break this embarrassing pattern once and for all. By crushing Iran militarily and effecting regime change, he boasted that whereas other presidents had only talked about the Iranian threat, he was taking decisive action to end it. But six months later, Trump has become yet another U.S. president facing a dangerous humiliation related to Iran; the fallout from his excursion threatens his party’s prospects in the midterm elections. Now, perhaps in desperation, Trump is attempting to squeeze an economic noose around Tehran. But as it is constructed, this economic-pressure operation poses a greater threat to U.S. credibility than it does to Iran’s economy…

Iran acknowledges that it needs sanctions relief, but it is also learning that time is on its side and that, by controlling the Strait of Hormuz, it can impose reciprocal consequences for pressure… The Great Delusion: Li... Mearsheimer, John J. Best Price: $14.77 Buy New $16.42 (as of 05:07 UTC - Details)

The irony of Trump’s failed war on Iran—and his stop-start negotiations to try to end it—is that it has so severely weakened Washington’s ability to exert pressure on Tehran that no future administration will ever be able to revert to the traditional U.S. playbook.

Swanson’s conclusions were particularly notable since he mentioned that he himself had “served on the Trump administration’s Iran negotiating team in the first half of 2025.”

Raised in a family of Iranian exiles, Trita Parsi came from a background that was less than friendly towards the Islamic Republic. A few years ago, he became co-founder and vice president of the very respectable Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft. That organization advocates realism and restraint in foreign policy, with its major donors being leading American foundations, including Open Society, Koch, Ford, Carnegie, and Rockefeller.

And as Parsi explained in a recent interview, “The United States and Israel threw everything they had at Iran and they failed. As a result, the Iranians are far more confident in their capabilities than they were before.” Meanwhile, regional trust in America had completely collapsed, with the GCC countries recognizing that America could not protect them against Iranian retaliation.

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In June, Trump had signed a Memorandum of Understanding that amounted to an American surrender. But even prior to that, I had already anticipated some of the conclusions of Lynch and Swanson, arguing that our emerging defeat by Iran might produce the sort of outcome they have now described. The Israel Lobby and U... Mearsheimer, John J. Buy New $11.29 (as of 01:03 UTC - Details)

• Will America Be Expelled from the Middle East?
  Ron Unz • The Unz Review • May 11, 2026 • 6,100 Words

These views seemed to reflect the emerging consensus of our foreign policy establishment, representing a dramatic reversal from the casual assumption of global American hegemony that had always been taken for granted during the decades since the end of the Cold War.

Perhaps more surprisingly, the conclusions of these mainstream experts have even been echoed by those of a far more ideologically-skewed perspective.

Consider Brooklyn-born journalist Jeffrey Goldberg. His personal loyalties are suggested by the fact that although he carefully avoided any American military service, he became an Israeli dual-citizen and then eagerly volunteered as a prison guard for that country.

Along with Judith Miller, Goldberg was one of the leading promoters of the lies regarding Saddam’s WMDs that enabled our disastrous Iraq War, costing our country many thousands of lives and many trillions of dollars. And in accordance with our longstanding tradition of punishing honesty while rewarding failure, he was then heavily recruited by the prestigious Atlantic magazine, eventually becoming its top editor a decade ago.

Goldberg’s Atlantic has regularly featured the work of PNAC co-founder Robert Kagan who for decades has ranked as one of America’s most prominent foreign policy Neocons, with his wife Victoria Nuland also holding senior positions in both Democratic and Republican administrations. But back in May, Kagan had turned heads when he repeatedly declared that our Iran War was irretrievably lost and that our only option was “surrender.”

A few days ago, Kagan doubled-down on that verdict, arguing that our defeat had now elevated Iran into becoming the dominant power in the Middle East, with our economic sanctions likely to prove equally useless. Kagan’s striking remarks were excerpted and highlighted by the MoA blogger.

For years, Iran confronted a balance of power in the Middle East that tilted against it. The region was dominated by a hostile American superpower, a nuclear-armed and militarily superior Israel, and significant local actors—Egypt, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates—that were strategically and economically aligned with the United States.

Today finds Iran in entirely new circumstances. It has gone head-to-head with the superpower and Israel, withstood a pounding from their most advanced weapons, and more than survived. As a result, Iran has, with American help, completely reconfigured the power structure of the Middle East and the Persian Gulf. The dominant power in the region going forward will be Iran, not the U.S. or Israel. Neighboring countries are already making their adjustments to this new reality. More distant powers will too. For years, the world has been dealing with an Iran constrained. It will now discover what Iran unleashed looks like… Going to Tehran Leverett, Flynt Buy New $13.76 (as of 08:42 UTC - Details)

Iran’s control of the Strait of Hormuz is a more useful instrument of power than a nuclear weapon would be. A nuclear weapon might deter an attack, but control of the strait gives Iran leverage every day, over dozens of countries. With it, Iran can reward friends, punish enemies, extract revenue, force the loosening of sanctions, and make governments think twice before opposing Iranian policies. It can do all of this without firing a shot, and while preserving the ability to threaten violence when necessary.

The sanctions strategy that for decades served to isolate Iran rested on international cooperation. Nations that depend on access to the strait—Japan and South Korea, for example—will have to choose between access to a reliable energy supply and participation in American-backed sanctions. Will they choose solidarity with Washington—this Washington—over their economic interests? In the new order that Iran is creating, a global sanctions regime is likely to be unsustainable.

When someone like Kagan is willing to write such things and someone like Goldberg is willing to publish them, the reality has become totally undeniable even to the most ideologically besotted.

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