US-Israeli War Against Iran and the Multipolar World: The American Question
Source : eurocontinent.eu – 16 mars 2026 – Pierre-Emmanuel Thomann
The United States and Israel launched a military air offensive against Iran on February 28, 2026. The initial announced objective, a regime change supposed to occur immediately following the assassination of Supreme Leader Khamenei, has visibly failed. Washington then insisted on military objectives such as the destruction of the nuclear program, the annihilation of ballistic capabilities, the neutralization of the Iranian navy, and the structural weakening of the regime. Behind these tactical objectives, the strategic stake is to forcibly modify the regional and global geopolitical configuration. This operation follows the American-supported Israeli operation in June 2025, the « 12-day war » involving bombings of Iran’s supposed nuclear capabilities, which was therefore a failure since a new operation was deemed necessary. The sanctions regime against Iran since the proclamation of the Islamic Republic of Iran has lasted since 1979.
America’s scorched-earth geopolitics
The United States is a declining empire that is very dangerous for international stability because it does not accept the new multi-centered geopolitical configuration and seeks to prevent its adversaries from taking advantage of it according to a « scorched earth » geopolitics. Let us set aside for a moment the ideological, identity-based, religious, and civilizational angles that are also very present, particularly in this new war, notably the rivalries between extremist Jews, Zionist and evangelical Christians, and Shia Muslims. Let us posit some hypotheses on the systemic stakes, notably the evolution of the geopolitical configuration.
The United States, in geopolitical retreat since the 2008 war between Russia and Georgia, followed by the war in Ukraine since 2022, practices a scorched earth policy in geopolitical spaces they will be less and less able to control. The goal is to not let their adversaries take advantage of these spaces opening up to multipolarity, namely the BRICS member states and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO).
The geopolitical objective, announced in its 2025 national security strategy, is to maintain the United States at the top of the global geopolitical hierarchy and to practice balancing in Europe, the Near East, and Asia to allow no adversary to control these spaces. This translates in operational terms into the provocation of geopolitical conflicts, such as the proxy war against Russia by supporting Kyiv, resulting in the destruction of Ukraine, and the US-Israeli attack against Iran, causing the destruction of this country which had moved closer to the Chinese Silk Roads and the new North-South corridor initiated by Russia on the Russia-Azerbaijan-Iran-India axis. Future destabilizing action in Asia against China cannot be ruled out.
The violence of this operation against Iran is even stronger because the United States lost to Russia in Ukraine and is seeking geopolitical compensation. For its part, Israel, which considers Iran a threat to its vital interests—unlike the United States—has managed to draw Washington into this intervention based on its own geopolitical objectives. Israel has a disproportionate influence on global geopolitics relative to its size, notably through its entryism in Washington, and primarily aims at the regional configuration in the Near East. Israel seeks to destroy Iranian potential, or even fragment Iran, to torpedo any idea of a regional geopolitical balance. Israel is also taking advantage of this to accelerate its « Greater Israel » project, notably with a new invasion of Lebanon to fight Hezbollah, an Iranian proxy. The Netanyahu regime is betting on military crushing, without regard for long-term regional stability.
Slowing the Rise of a Multipolar World for the United States
United States objectives are interpreted on Eurasian and global scales. The United States is attacking Iran, considered the weakest link in Eurasia among its adversaries, since they cannot engage in a frontal confrontation with Russia and China. Behind purely military objectives like the destruction of the Iranian nuclear program—despite many expert doubts on the subject—and ballistic missiles, it is primarily an attempt to slow the emergence of the multipolar world that threatens US geopolitical supremacy. The objective is also to seize control of Iran’s oil and gas resources to prevent China from benefiting from them.
We are therefore not seeing a change in the global geopolitical configuration with the aggression of Iran by the United States and Israel. We are in a new sequence of the transition from a unipolar world to a multipolar world, a US response to the process of emergence of a multi-centered world inaugurated by Russia with the interventions in Georgia in 2008 and Ukraine in 2022 to stop the encirclement of Russia by Washington via NATO enlargements.
Ukraine and Israel are two « Front-States » located in the « Rimland » according to Anglo-American geopolitical doctrines. This space can be decomposed into a European Rimland to torpedo a European-scale agreement on the Paris-Berlin-Moscow axis, and a Middle Eastern Rimland to torpedo an agreement on the Iran-Russia and Iran-China axes. Iran has a strategic position in Western Asia, serving as a hinge between the Near East, Central Asia, and South Asia. Iran has access to the Caspian Sea to the north and the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman to the south, extensions of the Indian Ocean. According to US geopolitical strategy, control of Iran would allow for the expansion of the Middle Eastern Rimland toward Asia and weaken the Shia world. Due to the proximity between the United States and Israel, in addition to the presence of energy resources, the Middle Eastern theater seems to be a priority today.
Washington’s aim would be to halt the rise of the alternative globalization led by the BRICS and the SCO, and—as a high hypothesis—to bring it to a standstill, but this is an illusion. This poorly initiated military operation, having failed to cause the immediately announced regime change, will trigger numerous domino effects on a global scale. Washington risks a new entanglement, both geoeconomic and geostrategic, in a conflict that risks lasting.
The United States, geographically located far from the Middle Eastern theater, faces logistics problems in delivering ammunition, as well as in missile production. Military operations remain limited to the air, in a race for speed with Iran, whose stocks of missiles and drones are very large. Uncertainty remains total regarding the capacity and will of the belligerents to pursue this confrontation in the long term. A ground intervention in this mountainous and immense country would be hardly conceivable for the United States. Iran’s best defense is its geography, with an area three times that of France and a population of 90 million people with a very high level of education focused on science and mathematics. Iran has prepared for this type of conflict, and the many mountain tunnels dug to store military equipment cannot be entirely eradicated without a ground operation.
Iran’s Unrestrained defensive War
Iran’s defense resembles the Chinese doctrine of « unrestricted warfare ». Tehran is expanding theaters of operations not only on a regional scale by targeting American bases in Gulf countries, Saudi Arabia, and Iraq, and by relying on Shia militias in Lebanon, Iraq, and Yemen—in addition to missile strikes on military targets in Israel—but also on a global scale by blocking the Strait of Hormuz to trigger an energy and economic crisis that will weigh on public opinion, notably on Donald Trump’s electorate, which is already cracking. Targets are also expanded to data centers in Gulf countries, accelerating digital warfare.
In this asymmetric conflict, the longer Iran resists militarily and geostrategically despite increasing destruction, the greater the unfavorable geoeconomic consequences will be for the United States and the West in general, Israel, Gulf countries, and the EU, especially if the closure of the Strait of Hormuz is lasting.
A possible scenario is that Washington, after declaring all Iranian military infrastructure destroyed—notably those of the supposed nuclear program and the ballistic arsenal—will declare victory and suspend the military operation, even if it will be difficult to truly assess the damage. It will be difficult to eliminate the drones, which play an increasingly decisive role and are mass-produced by Iran.
In this asymmetric war, the suspension of the military operation after a strictly military gain, but a disaster from the perspective of longer geopolitical timeframes, could be considered a defeat for Washington and Israel and a victory—not military, but geopolitical—for Iran. This is especially true if the regime change, the initial announced objective, does not occur and if the forced geopolitical reorientation of Iran within American-dominated Western globalization and its distancing from the BRICS and SCO have failed. The regime change scenario is made difficult by the lack of political unity in the diaspora opposition and the still very significant support for the current regime. The internal geopolitical fragmentation of Iran, likely desired by certain Israeli networks, is a scenario that many states will seek to avoid, notably its neighbors, due to the risks of regional geopolitical conflagration, particularly with the Kurdish question and the Azeris of Iran.
The double standard regarding criticisms of the actions of the United States and Israel, compared to other countries, has never been so blatant. In terms of reputation, the United States will increasingly be perceived as a dangerous and unpredictable power, even deceitful and untrustworthy. Israel finds itself isolated in the middle of a field of ruins from which its enemies will irremediably re-emerge. Israel has only won a respite. The relationship between the two states risks worsening; Americans in Trump’s electoral base feel they have fallen into a trap set by the Israelis, as Iran represents no threat to the United States. The Israelis visibly pushed for an intervention in a decisive way through their entryism among neoconservative networks in American politics and administration. Disagreements between Americans and Israelis on targets are beginning to appear, notably strikes by the Israeli army on Iranian oil infrastructure.
Russia and China are the winners in the new geopolitical landscape
Only major power poles like Russia, China, and India, which seek to avoid being drawn into a new front against the multipolar world opened by Washington, will be able to benefit from this new destabilization. Russia, which holds the central geopolitical position in Eurasia thanks to its energy resources, will be able to supply China—the most affected by this war—but also India. This will de facto strengthen the Russian-Chinese Eurasian partnership. A potential decoupling between Russia and China dreamed of by Washington is an illusion. China has an interest in a Russian victory in Ukraine to avoid encirclement in Eurasia, and Russia has no interest in distancing itself from China to pursue the Russian « Greater Eurasia » project and strengthen its energy and geoeconomic partnership, which rebalances the relationship. China and Russia have a common interest in containing American destabilization operations on the periphery of the Eurasian continent that target them indirectly. A devastated Iran is more likely to deepen its partnerships with Russia and China in the post-conflict period, regardless of the new political regime, than to enter a process of vassalization to the United States, which will not be able to physically occupy the country. It should be remembered that they failed in this type of operation in Iraq and Afghanistan.
When comparing geopolitical objectives of a systemic nature, Russia and China, unlike the United States, do not seek global geopolitical supremacy but a multi-centered world. Moscow and Beijing therefore do not engage in rigid alliances and thus avoid being drawn into conflicts that would divert them from their regional geopolitical and geographical priorities and from progressively building an alternative world to American globalization. Russia and China, though opposed to this operation, will thus not fall into the trap of becoming massively involved in a new front in Iran; however, in a more discreet and indirect way, they can help Tehran hold out longer and drastically increase the cost of this operation for the United States.
The United States, on the other hand, has more to lose after its inability to ensure the security of Gulf countries by engaging in an operation against the advice of these countries. They also cause negative repercussions for their European NATO allies by worsening uncertainties about the conflict in Ukraine. Gulf countries are learning at their own expense that hosting American bases means becoming Front-States in this US-Israeli war of aggression. This is comparable to the case of Georgia and Ukraine, which had positioned themselves to join NATO as part of the US strategy of rollback and encirclement of Russia in its Eurasian lands, and whose territories were fragmented during the Russia-Georgia war in 2008 and the war in Ukraine since 2014.
The United States’ Geopolitical Overreach
Indeed, a power with hegemonic ambitions, if it wants to be legitimate, must demonstrate that its control of the international system, anchored in a geopolitical order of which it occupies the center, is profitable to other countries and brings stability and prosperity. The opposite is happening here, and the United States—refusing multipolarity, i.e., a more balanced sharing of global power with Russia, China, India, and European states still committed to this idea—by voluntarily destroying the very idea of a multilateral system to contain conflicts, becomes, along with Israel, the main global geopolitical threat. Powers in Eurasia, but also countries of the Global South, will strengthen their cooperation to reduce dependence on the United States, which is more prone to provoking chaos than to building a stable international order.
In this configuration of geopolitical fragmentation on the margins of the Eurasian continent, the United States is finding it increasingly difficult to encircle Eurasia because they are overextended with the European, Middle Eastern, Indo-Pacific, and Arctic Rimlands. Hence their doctrine of « geopolitical outsourcing, » where they seek to delegate their priorities to Front-States: Ukraine on the front line against Russia backed by European NATO states, and Israel and Gulf countries against Iran. With this military operation, the United States risks again being drawn into the front line in an operation that may prove counterproductive from the perspective of their geopolitical stretch.
The shift of Washington’s geopolitical priority from the Ukrainian theater to the Middle Eastern theater favors Russia, with the inability to provide military equipment in sufficient quantity to Kyiv, the priority being deliveries to Israel and Gulf states, as well as the replenishment of stocks.
France’s Geopolitical Interests as a Balancing Power: Shifting Focus Toward Russia, India, and China to Address the American Question
What interest is there for France and Europeans if they are drawn into this uncontrollable headlong rush for the benefit of US-Israeli geopolitical interests, while they are already facing inevitable defeat on the Ukrainian front? They will again be the big losers of the emerging multipolar world.
Allowing oneself to be dragged into this US-Israeli aggression against Iran, serving Gulf countries—some of which, like Qatar, export Islamism—or following in the wake of US-Israeli geopolitical supremacism, is not in the interest of France as a balancing power that would gain from staying outside of blocs. These alliances, poorly conceived in a previous configuration, risk vassalizing France to the interests of Anglo-Saxon maritime powers and Sunni countries against Iran. It is from the « arc of crisis » south of Europe that real threats to France originate, and not from the « arc of crisis » to the east where Russia does not threaten France. Iran is not a geopolitical threat to France. Conversely, the war against Iran risks strengthening Sunni Islamists (Iran, along with Syria and Russia, had fought against the Islamic State) and migration crises. France would also have a role to play in protecting Lebanon to contain Israeli operations. The looming energy crisis following Iran’s closure of the Strait of Hormuz—a predictable decision directly linked to the US-Israeli attack—will be worsened by the EU’s disastrous decision to cut itself off from Russian energy imports, which are nonetheless unavoidable. It is not up to France to perform the outsourcing aimed at repairing US-Israeli destabilizations. It would be wiser to re-import gas and oil from Russia and repair Nord Stream. The time has come for France, and with as many states as possible on a global scale and according to the principle of geopolitical balance, to contain the geopolitical nuisance capacity of the United States, which remains convinced it is invested with a « Manifest Destiny ».
In the geopolitical dialectic, one must consider the counter-shocks caused by this new crisis. This may not be immediately visible, but Russia, China, and India will emerge as poles of geopolitical stability patiently building an alternative geopolitical order that it would be wise for France to move closer to, in order to overcome what must now be called « the American Question ».
