This article is read by Eunice Wong. You can find her work at www.eunicewong.actor.

Text originally published May 14, 2026.

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America’s newest quagmire in the Middle East is like its old quagmires in the Middle East. It is based, as were the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, on a gross misreading of our adversaries, a catastrophic failure to understand the limits of imperial power and no discernable strategy. It swells the profits of the war industry, wasting billions of public funds, alienates our allies and erodes the global power and prestige of the United States.

Dying empires, governed by the corrupt and the incompetent, are blinded by militarism and hubris. They are unable to read the world around them. They stumble into self-defeating cul-de-sacs — as we did in Iraq, Afghanistan and earlier in Vietnam — where military adventurism accelerates self-inflicted wounds.

The war on Iran is one more chapter in our precipitous and ultimately fatal decline.

Tehran’s 10-point temporary ceasefire proposal — brokered by Pakistani mediators and presented to the U.S. 40 days after war against Iran had begun — is tantamount to surrender terms. It demands the end of U.S. and Israeli attacks, including in Lebanon. It calls for the removal of U.S. military bases and installations from the region. It solidifies Iran’s control over the Strait of Hormuz. It refuses to abandon uranium enrichment. It calls for the end to sanctions and termination of anti-Iranian resolutions by the United Nations Security Council and International Atomic Energy Agency. It also requires release of frozen assets — estimated at $100 billion — and reparations for the U.S. and Israeli attacks.

This is too bitter a humiliation for the U.S. and Israel to accept.

Within hours of the Iranian proposal, Israel — determined to sabotage any agreement — launched a devastating air attack against Lebanon. The attack, which was carried out over 10 minutes, included the bombing of central Beirut. It involved 50 fighter jets and 108 airstrikes that dropped around 160 bombs, killing 350 people and wounding 1,000 others. The lightning and unprovoked massacre, known as “Black Wednesday,” is a potent reminder that Israel has no intention of allowing this war to end. With the U.S. not ready to admit defeat, and Israel’s bloodlust, we are in for a very rough ride.

Iran submitted an updated proposal last week, which Trump said is “totally unacceptable.”

But Iran, with its stranglehold over the Strait of Hormuz, can afford to wait. The longer it maintains its blockade over shipping — roughly 20 percent of the world’s oil and liquified natural gas flows through the Strait of Hormuz — the more global economic pain it inflicts.

There is no good outcome for the U.S.

The Trump administration’s obstinacy and Israel’s determination to resume attacks on Iran ensures that the global economy will barrel towards a global depression.

The World Bank projects a 31 percent increase in the cost of nitrogen fertilizers which are produced in the Gulf and transit through the Strait of Hormuz this year if the war continues. This ensures a huge rise in food costs.

Shortages are already shutting down global manufacturing and production. The fragile, interdependent global supply chains are seizing up.

This economic ecosystem, as Iran has shown, is easy to destroy. It will be very hard to piece back together.

Iran suffered devastating blows to its civilian infrastructure and economy — including residential areas, schools, health centers, police stations, churches and synagogues and energy, desalinization plants, steel and pharmaceutical facilities — as well as its military assets, including parts of its navy, air force and missile launch capabilities. It endured “decapitation strikes” against its senior political and military leaders at the start of the war, which included the assassinations of the Supreme Leader of the Islamic Revolution, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the secretary of Iran’s Defence Council, Ali Shamkhani, and the chief of staff of Iran’s armed forces, Abdolrahim Mousavi, among others.

None of the U.S. and Israeli objectives, however, have been met.

The new Iranian leadership — centered around the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) — is more defiant and intransigent than the previous leadership.

Iran maintains control over the Strait of Hormuz. It charges as much as $2 million for every oil tanker passing through it. These tariffs — which Iran introduced as part of its demand for war reparations — must be paid in Chinese currency, part of an attempt by Iran, China and Russia to break the hegemony of the U.S. dollar. Iran also retains significant missile and drone stockpiles and enriched uranium, which it has