The New Dark Age

In their unjust, illegal, and criminal war against Iran, the United States and Israel have suffered an undeniable, historic, and crushing defeat. They now find themselves forced to comply with Iran’s demands, despite all the victory posturing and triumphalist rhetoric from the very first days of the war.

This article aims to demonstrate how America’s false power is exposed by the patience and determination of the Iranian nation. Its continuation will examine Israel through the lens of American military expansion in the Middle East.

The initial uproar

This is no longer a hypothesis. Nor a slogan. It is a cold, methodical, almost clinical diagnosis.

The notion of a “paper tiger,” coined by Mao Zedong and openly and crudely attributed to Russia in the context of its special military operation in Ukraine by MAGA supporters and their European vassals, has shifted its focus. It has moved from the margins to the center. It no longer designates the peripheral enemy but the very architecture of American power. And this shift is not a rhetorical flourish. It is the product of a chain of events, a gradual unveiling, a stripping bare of reality.

Because it all started with a commotion.

In the early hours of the war, Washington spoke the language of certainty. The tempo was that of immediate victory: a brief, surgical, decisive war. A show of force intended to restore a supposedly intact hegemony. Donald Trump, true to his political theatrics, was already projecting himself into the post-war period. His martial and triumphant pronouncements suggested a war already won. The sequence was predetermined: shock, disbelief, capitulation.

But real war does not follow scenarios. Very quickly, a disconnect emerged. A gap, initially imperceptible, then increasingly glaring, between the initial pronouncements and the fabric of reality. What was meant to be swift became drawn out. What was meant to be controlled became uncertain. What was meant to be demonstrative became revealing.

It is in this gap that the reversal takes place.

The reversal

For decades, the United States imposed its worldview. It classified, named, and ranked “rogue states,” “revisionist powers,” and “systemic threats.” This language was not neutral; it structured reality as much as it described it. Yet, in this war, this language has turned against its source. It is no longer the adversary that appears fragile, but the Empire itself, overexposed, overextended, and riddled with contradictions.

Neither Vladimir Putin’s Russia nor any peripheral actor now embodies this image. It is the heart of the system that is faltering. And, in an almost caricatured form, Donald Trump’s presidency has become its visible manifestation.

Because between the initial proclamations and the present reality, the gap has become abysmal.

Hypertrophy

This weakening is not due to a sudden collapse. It stems from hypertrophy.

American power has expanded to the point of saturation. Too many bases, too many fronts, too many sanctions, too many contradictory narratives. This accumulation, far from strengthening dominance, dilutes its effectiveness. The Pentagon projects its force without managing to stabilize the theaters of operation. The Treasury multiplies sanctions without producing a decisive suffocation. Diplomacy threatens without convincing.

Excess becomes counterproductive. Power is dissipated.

In this context, the initial proclamations of victory appear in retrospect as discursive constructions. That is to say, instruments of internal political management rather than strategic interpretations of reality. They are less a matter of analysis than of staging.

MAGA: doctrine or pathology?

The MAGA movement accentuates this dynamic. It is not a rupture, but a revelation. Donald Trump did not create the contradictions of American power; he made them visible, exacerbated them, sometimes to the point of caricature. His approach is based on uncontrolled unilateralism, a transactional approach lacking credibility, and an escalation without any prospect of resolution.

Above all, it is riddled with permanent contradictions.

The war is alternately described as “almost over” and then as needing to be intensified. The adversary is declared “on its knees” before being redefined as a “major threat.” These shifts are not simply a matter of political spin. They signal a deeper breakdown: the inability to establish a coherent strategic line.

Under these conditions, deterrence itself loses its substance. Yet, it was the heart of the American strategy. Credible deterrence presupposes a correlation between the threat and the action. This correlation is eroding. Adversaries now factor in the political cost of an American escalation and exploit asymmetries. Iran, without necessarily limiting itself to achieving a conventional military victory, imposes a different tempo: that of attrition, of prolonging the conflict, of increasing complexity.

The war is becoming a war of thresholds, and Washington is gradually losing control of it.

The Economics of coercion

The same phenomenon can be observed in the economic sphere. Sanctions, once seen as an ultimate weapon, are entering a phase of diminishing returns. Their proliferation trivializes their use and reduces their impact. Parallel circuits are emerging, monetary alternatives are taking shape, and forms of financial cooperation are gradually circumventing the dominant order. The dollar must remain central, in Trump’s mind, but it is no longer unchallenged, and the Strait of Hormuz is putting the Chinese yuan on the spot.

In addition to this material erosion, there is a cognitive transformation.

Cognitive warfare

The Western narrative monopoly is crumbling. Where Washington once defined reality, it must now contest it. Public opinion in the Global South no longer passively accepts the Western narrative; it questions it, compares it, and sometimes rejects it. The war against Iran acts as a catalyst here. It exposes double standards, makes inconsistencies visible, and undermines the claim to universality.

In this context, the triumphalist declarations of the first days appear for what they are: instruments of propaganda, out of step with the dynamics on the ground.

Eurasian convergence

Simultaneously, a realignment is taking place across Eurasia. Russia, China, and Iran – three distinct trajectories, but a functional convergence. This is not a formal alliance in the strict sense, but rather a gradual de facto coordination: sustained dedollarization, alternative energy corridors, and direct cooperation. The American project of containment is thus encountering a new reality: Eurasia is no longer fragmented; it is learning to connect.

And every contradiction in America accelerates this process.

The obsession with control

Since the end of the Cold War, Washington has pursued a consistent objective: to prevent the emergence of an autonomous Eurasian bloc. This involves controlling trade flows, securing border crossings, and fragmenting continental powers. The war against Iran is part of this strategy. But it also reveals its limitations. Because controlling is not the same as mastering, and containing is not the same as neutralizing.

Bourdieu and depth

To fully grasp this transformation, one must, as Pierre Bourdieu suggested, “stand on the shoulders of others.” To see far ahead is to look beyond the event and understand its underlying structure. And that structure is clear: unipolarity is eroding, multipolarity is still hesitant to stabilize, and the international system is entering a phase of turbulence.

In this turbulent period, American excesses act as accelerators of decline.

The Strategic South

The Global South, for its part, observes and adjusts. Africa, Asia, and Latin America – these regions no longer seek automatic alignment. They are seeking room for maneuver, diversifying their partnerships, and exploiting rivalries. The war against Iran is becoming a textbook case: it indicates that it is possible to resist and therefore to negotiate differently.

The deconstruction of hegemony

This shift does not translate into a sudden collapse of American hegemony. Rather, it resembles a gradual deconstruction. Hegemony does not collapse under blows; it disintegrates from within, through loss of credibility, overextension, and accumulated contradictions.

The United States now ticks all these different boxes.

And Donald Trump, far from being an anomaly, is the catalyst. His contradictory statements, his prematurely proclaimed victories, his strategic about-faces are not accidents. They are the visible symptoms of a deeper disorder.

The Nakedness of power

At the end of this sequence, one thing becomes clear.

The paper tiger is no longer what we were led to believe it to be in Western rhetoric. It is now visible: the United States of America.

Not because American power has disappeared, but because it is no longer sufficient to structure the world. It remains immense, but it is no longer absolute. It is now contested, negotiated, eroded.

She doubts. She tests. She exposes herself.

And the world now knows it.

The war against Iran is not a victory. It is a revelation.

And in the history of international relations, revelations are often the first signs of irreversible shifts.

Mohamed Lamine KABA, Expert in the geopolitics of governance and regional integration, Institute of Governance, Human and Social Sciences, Pan-African University

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