In the Progressive International’s ninth Briefing of 2026, we examine how the war on Iran has accelerated the breakdown of the old imperial order in West Asia — and the backtrack of the US-Israeli axis that once profited from it.

This weekend, U.S. and Iranian negotiators are due to meet in Islamabad, where Pakistan has thrown a security cordon around the capital in an attempt to hold together a shaky ceasefire.

Iran’s strategic gains after six weeks of aerial bombardment can be read in the very centre of the agenda: the flow of oil through the Strait of Hormuz.

Prior to the US-Israeli attack on Iran — launched by assassinating top Iranian officials in the midst of negotiations — the Strait of Hormuz was treated in Washington as a permanent fact of empire: a narrow waterway through which the world’s oil would flow under U.S. protection, denominated in dollars, disciplined by sanctions, and backed by Gulf bases that projected American force across the region.

That fact has now faded — and will likely never return to force. Even after the ceasefire announced on 7 April, ship traffic through Hormuz remains far below normal, at roughly 5-10% of pre-war levels. The waterway through which around a fifth of the world’s oil passes now lies effectively under Iranian control, with the Revolutionary Guards directing ships through Iranian waters around Larak Island.

Tehran’s 10-point ceasefire plan includes a $2 million toll per tanker, payable in cryptocurrency rather than dollars — a sign not only of military leverage, but of Tehran’s effort to route commerce beyond the financial channels Washington has long used to discipline its enemies.

The old arrangement was simple: Iranian oil could be sanctioned, and Gulf oil would keep moving. No more. The United States has been forced to issue a temporary waiver on sanctions on Iranian oil exports in an effort to ease the supply shock.

The same power that spent years trying to close Iranian access to global markets now improvises exceptions to contain the consequences of its own escalation. The war to destroy the Islamic Republic has instead enhanced its strategic position.

Nor has the cost been borne by Iran alone. U.S. bases once presented as instruments of regional dominance have been exposed as liabilities — struck, evacuated, or placed on emergency footing across the Gulf and eastern Mediterranean. Shipping insurers have repriced risk across the region. Energy markets remain volatile. And now Washington is demanding its allies help clean up the mess: NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte has told European governments Trump wants concrete commitments from them within days to help secure the Strait of Hormuz, amid renewed threats that Washington could yet abandon the very alliance through which it has long organised its empire.

Europe, meanwhile, has watched events unfold largely from the sidelines. Reduced to refuelling stations for US bombing runs and spectators at negotiations they did not shape, European governments have had little influence over the course of the war or its aftermath.

The moral alibis of war dissolved with remarkable speed. What began with the familiar propaganda of “liberation” and “democratisation” quickly unfolded into a threat to permanently destroy Iranian civilisation. Across Iran, civilians responded with defiance, forming human chains around critical infrastructure in scenes that captured the war’s deeper political effect: bombardment did not fracture Iranian society so much as harden it against foreign coercion. As the Tehran Resolution, signed this week by more than forty movements worldwide, put it, “the war on Iran is, at its core, a war to preserve the crumbling architecture of Western supremacy.”

Far from being cowed into submission, Iran has emerged with greater leverage over the region’s energy lifeline, a stronger claim to deterrence, and a fresh demonstration that neither sanctions nor bombardment can erase it from the regional balance of power. The Gulf monarchies, energy markets, Washington and its rudderless allies must now reckon with a reality long denied in Western capitals: Iran cannot be isolated into irrelevance.

For Benjamin Netanyahu’s government, a situation in which Iran survives, retains strategic depth, and converts military resilience into diplomatic and economic leverage is a clear strategic defeat. Israel’s escalating assault on Lebanon — and its insistence that Beirut lies outside the ceasefire framework — is an effort to roll back by other means what could not be achieved through direct bombardment of Iran.

As the Progressive International’s Cabinet warned this week, “Israel’s lethal aggression in Lebanon cannot be understood in isolation” but forms part of “a broader scorched earth campaign to establish Greater Israel and suffocate the forces of resistance that stand in its way — be they in Gaza, Beirut or Tehran.”

No text agreed in Islamabad can secure the ceasefire while the powers that made this war still seek to dictate its outcome. Israel widens the assault on Lebanon; Washington reserves the right to resume bombardment at will; and diplomacy itself proceeds beneath the now-familiar shadow of assassination.

But the US and Israel do not have command over the escalation ladder; Iran does, because it holds the keys to Hormuz.

For now, tankers inch through the strait under Iranian watch while diplomats gather in Pakistan under armed guard. The old order in West Asia is dying. The question is what will emerge from its wreckage.

For progressive forces around the world, the task is not merely to observe imperial decline — but to organise the more egalitarian order that will replace it.