First published at Arguing for Socialism.
Notwithstanding all the death and destruction meted out by the US-Israeli aggressors, they have failed to achieve any sort of victory over Iran. On the contrary, Iran seems to be in a stronger overall position.
Despite the unpopularity of the regime, public support for defending their country against the US has grown stronger within Iran. This is shown by the large and repeated public demonstrations within the country and the willingness of large numbers of people to turn out to protect vital infrastructure with their bodies.
Iran prepared in advance for the expected US-Israeli onslaught. There was a big decentralisation of the military command and military assets across the vast country. Missiles, drones and attack boats are kept in deep underground facilities under granite mountains, impervious to Washington’s vaunted bunker-buster bombs.
Before the war Iran placed a large order with China for decoys — high quality inflatable replicas of missiles, tanks etc., some even with their own heat sources to register on US-Israeli surveillance. We can assume that a lot of the devastation fell on these fakes. In the cities, government buildings were emptied of personnel.
Early in the conflict Iran wiped out all the critical US radars in the Gulf region and Jordan. Iran has also destroyed several US AWACS (Airborne Warning and Control System) aircraft which play the same role. These radars were also a key part Israel’s early warning system. They will probably never be replaced. (Apart from their cost and complexity they use large amounts of rare earth elements for which China will be highly unlikely to grant export licences.)
Iran has also wiped out US bases in the Gulf states, rendering them literally uninhabitable. (The barracks were not even hardened; they had no bunkers for the troops to flee to.)
Iran has also attacked data centres established by the big US tech companies in the Gulf states.
The Gulf state rulers must surely be wondering just what their “alliance” with the US is worth. It couldn’t defend them and has actually made them a target of Iran.
Iranian missiles and drones have also pounded Israel, targeting military and security centres, industrial facilities and infrastructure. For instance, Ben Gurion airport, the country’s main link with the world, is effectively closed due to repeated attacks. There has been widespread damage across the country but there is complete censorship in Israel and the pro-Israel western corporate media has imposed its own blackout on the topic.
Hezbollah resurgent
In late 2024 the militant Lebanese Shia organisation Hezbollah was dealt some very heavy blows by Israel. The attack by exploding pagers killed and maimed a large layer of its military and political leadership. Then its charismatic leader Hassan Nasrallah was killed in a targeted assassination. A very pro-US government was installed with the avowed aim of disarming Hezbollah.
But the organisation has clearly successfully reorganised and rebuilt itself. It has re-established tight internal security. It has stopped using electronic communications and has gone back to couriered messages. Going dark in this way means Israel’s vaunted surveillance technology is largely neutralised.
Hezbollah has clearly preserved and/or rebuilt its drone and missile arsenal and is dealing lethal blows to Israeli forces, both in Lebanon and in Israel itself. Despite deploying five divisions and up to 100,000 troops, the IDF has made only very modest progress in Lebanon and suffered high casualties. Over 100 of its vaunted Merkava main battle tanks have been damaged or destroyed by Hezbollah IEDs, anti-tank missiles and drones. (I was astonished to see images of columns of IDF tanks wending their way along narrow roads in the hills of southern Lebanon — no anti-drone cages, sitting ducks for ATGMs and drones which duly took them out in large numbers.)
Revolution in military technique
The wars in Iran and Lebanon are a very clear demonstration of the revolution in military technique that has taken place over the last few years, driven by the war in Ukraine. Drones and hypersonic missiles now dominate the battlefield. Moreover, the development of cheap precision guidance coupled with satellite intelligence gives missile strikes stunning accuracy.
Both Iran and Hezbollah have obviously intensely studied the lessons of Ukraine. There drones have revolutionised the battlefield. They dominate a zone 10-30 kilometres on either side of the line of contact. Within this zone any vehicle (truck, tank, artillery piece) or individual soldier is at risk of being hit by a drone. Attacks are now made by small groups of soldiers infiltrating or moving rapidly on motorcycles. Drones are also deployed in swarms to overwhelm defences.
What this means is that big expensive hardware items like tanks, artillery units, aircraft carriers and other naval ships which once dominated the battlefield are now extremely vulnerable. Iranian missile attacks have forced US carriers to retreat well out of range. That means their aircraft can’t attack Iran without refueling support, which is itself very vulnerable.
Not only does Iran have an arsenal of thousands (possibly tens of thousands) of drones but it has a vast and varied stockpile of missiles, especially hypersonic manoeuverable ones. Against Israel it has also deployed missiles with cluster warheads, that is, high up in its trajectory the missile releases dozens of smaller bombs which cannot be intercepted and cause damage over a wide area.
Rise of US imperialism
US imperialism erupted onto the world stage with the 1898 Spanish-American war; its easy victory over Spain gave the United States a number of first-class strategic assets.
In the Caribbean, it annexed Puerto Rico; and, pushing aside the indigenous liberation forces, it established a harsh protectorate over Cuba. In the Pacific, Washington grabbed the Philippines — again pushing aside and then brutally crushing the native independence movement — and annexed Guam giving it a vital staging post on the way to the Far East.
Some years before this, US adventurers had overthrown the Hawaiian monarchy; in 1898 the US formally annexed the islands, thus completing its strategic corridor to China and the Far East.
In 1903, Washington engineered a revolt in Panama, separating the country from Colombia, and embarked on the construction of the strategically and economically vital Panama Canal (completed in 1914).
Long US decline
The high point for US imperialism was 1946. Washington was the big victor in World War II. Its territory and economy had not been devastated and it had a monopoly of nuclear weapons. However, since then, despite the appearance of omnipotence, there has actually been a long slow decline in its relative position.
The Soviet Union broke the US atomic monopoly in 1949 with its first atomic test; in 1955 it tested its first hydrogen bomb.
For some time the US not only had nuclear weapons but also had a monopoly on the means of delivering them. But possession of nuclear weapons doesn’t automatically solve anything: They can only be used in certain political conditions.
Even in 1950-53, the Korean War showed the limits of US power. The US was fought to a stalemate by China and North Korea. Macarthur, the US commander, wanted to drive north into China, which would probably have touched off World War III. Truman sacked him in 1951. Washington also considered but rejected using nuclear weapons. Several million died in the war and the North was utterly devastated but US imperialism had been fought to a standstill.
The Vietnam War (1955-75) again showed the limits of US power. Despite killing millions of Vietnamese and devastating large parts of the country and its ecology, Washington was defeated. The indomitable Vietnamese resistance combined with the growth of a powerful antiwar movement in the United States itself saw off the aggressors. (Estimates of all military and non-military deaths range from 1.35 million to over 3.8 million. 58,000 US soldiers died plus many thousands more died by suicide afterwards.)
The 2003 Iraq War is yet another case in point. The US had a nominal victory but overall the conflict was a political disaster. Today, Iran has great influence in the country and the government has long been calling for US forces to leave.
The 2001-21 Afghanistan War was also a political disaster. The US invasion overthrew the Taliban regime and installed a puppet government; 20 years later the US fled the scene and the Taliban were back in power.
Trump’s plan
Despite the madness of Trump, he actually does have a plan to deal with the US decline. His tariffs are supposed to induce businesses to transfer operations to the US and reverse decades of offshoring of production. But it’s not that simple. The US doesn’t have the workers and labour costs are too high. And so many of the production inputs are themselves imported.
Furthermore, key elements of his broader program cut across re-shoring US production. Trump’s attacks on the universities, science and migrants are driving away much-needed talent. US industry has been restructured for so long: offshoring, just-in-time inventory, etc. can’t be reversed.
Then there is the obvious weakness of the vaunted US military machine, for all its undoubted lethality. As we have mentioned, the mighty but extremely expensive US aircraft carriers are also hugely vulnerable to missile and drone attacks. The Ukraine war has shown that US military equipment is hugely costly and often too complicated to maintain in battlefield conditions. (A prime example is the M1 Abrams tank. Costing in excess of $10 million USD, with its gas turbine engine it is prone to mechanical breakdown plus it is vulnerable to cheap drones. It has not fared well on the rough and often muddy Ukrainian battlefield.)
Competition with China
Right from the start, Trumpism has been dominated by the drive to reassert US primacy against China. Trump hit China with extremely punitive tariffs but he has been forced to back off.
China has one tremendously powerful counter to Trump’s attempt to attack its economy, namely its current near monopoly of the production of rare earth elements (REE). These 17 elements are actually not rare at all but, as Wikipedia explains, are in fact “relatively plentiful in the entire Earth's crust ... but in practice they are spread thinly as trace impurities, so to obtain rare earths at usable purity requires processing enormous amounts of raw ore which is costly and energy intensive.” REE are also often associated with thorium, so refining them can involve radioactive contamination, further complicating the whole process.
Rare earth elements are vital in electronics, lasers, advanced magnets and various industrial processes. They are thus vital to US production of radars, missiles and other essential military equipment.
China controls some 90% of global demand for rare earth minerals. And it has placed severe restrictions on what is exported and to which countries. The US and its allies are furiously trying to develop alternative sources of REE but, at the very least, this will take some time. Meanwhile, the US military may well take a big hit, being simply unable to produce some key items.
Battle over ports
Washington is trying to push China out of Latin America and the Caribbean. The Panama Canal has emerged as the latest site of this intense economic war. According to one report:
In January 2026 the Panama Supreme Court effectively ended Chinese-linked control over critical ports at both ends of the Panama Canal. While the canal itself is operated by the Panama Canal Authority (an agency of the Panamanian government), the court ruling annulled 25-year contracts held by CK Hutchison Holdings, a Hong Kong-based company that had operated the key container terminals of Balboa and Cristóbal since the 1990s.
China’s response was not long in coming. CK Hutchison has taken Panama to international arbitration. And China has sharply increased its detention of Panama-flagged ships in Chinese ports. Chinese state-owned shipping giant Cosco announced in early March that it was suspending all services at the Port of Balboa, at the Pacific end of the Panama Canal.
Now Peru is emerging as another key site of the struggle over maritime trade. As CNBC reports:
China has ramped up investment in strategic infrastructure across Latin America, including a major deep-water port in Peru. The Port of Chancay, operated and majority owned by state-owned Cosco, is expected to cut shipping times by about half …
China dominates the world’s shipbuilding orderbooks with nearly two-thirds of global orders flowing to Chinese yards in 2025 …
Meanwhile, around 40% of U.S. container traffic travels through the Panama Canal every year, which in all, moves roughly $270 billion in cargo annually.
Any expansion of Beijing’s maritime dominance, therefore, could put the U.S. and its allies at risk of the same dependency they face with critical minerals and rare earths …
Chancay is designed to link by rail with a Brazilian port on the Atlantic coast, dramatically shortening transit times for goods shipping to China.
Is the US heading toward a shooting war with China? On a purely military level this would be a very bad idea. For many years the US has been wargaming an all-out non-nuclear conflict with China and invariably loses or takes crippling losses.
China is undoubtedly a very keen observer of the US military’s difficulties in the Iran war. If the US has failed in a war against Iran it would seem to have absolutely no hope in a non-nuclear contest with vastly more powerful China.
Where is it all heading?
US imperialism and its power-mad ruling class will never be reconciled to its decline. It will continue to attempt to use its military muscle and standover tactics to compensate for its declining economic power.
Many commentators are hailing the development of a “multipolar” world. Factually, the US is no longer the sole superpower; its writ is no longer unchallenged. So there are already multiple centres (poles) of power. But the idea of a stable multipolar capitalist world, let alone as an objective to be striven for, is ridiculous. Ferocious competition is inherent in capitalism — both between the giant monopolies and between the states which protect them. Is a multipolar capitalist world better than a unipolar one? It will be different, that is all.
Whatever the geopolitical system, capitalism everywhere is based on the exploitation of wage labour and the siphoning of wealth from the Third World (the Global South).
All the things that have maintained a relative social and political stability in the world in the post-World War II period are fast eroding or being destroyed. Capitalism can offer nothing to the mass of the world’s people. Climate change is rushing toward us at breakneck speed and very little is being done to either avert or prepare for it. The only hope for humanity is a socialist world. Can we get there? This is the challenge of our time.
