On the geopolitical chessboard, the opening move has been made.

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After the farce over Greenland, the theatrical abduction of a Venezuelan president presented as a prelude to regime change, and the long, suffocating economic siege imposed on the people of Cuba, the turn has now come for Iran. It was hardly unexpected. The destruction of an independent Iranian state has been an enduring obsession of the political constellation often described as international Zionism, for which American imperial power has long served as the most reliable instrument.

Let us, for a moment, forget the torrent of denunciations once directed at Donald Trump by Western governments and European institutions. We were told he was a madman, a proto-fascist, an enemy of Europe, perhaps even a threat to NATO itself. At various points, he was portrayed as an accomplice of Vladimir Putin and a destabilising force in the Western alliance system.

Let us also forget the arrest warrant issued by the International Criminal Court against Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu. Forget the solemn declarations by European governments recognising a Palestinian state, including those made in Lisbon. Forget the carefully worded condemnations of Israel’s conduct in Gaza and elsewhere.

These things, it turns out, belonged to another age — a distant past measured in diplomatic press releases rather than in years. Today we inhabit a political climate in which Western leaders, from the most reluctant Atlanticists to the most enthusiastic, rush to embrace both Trump and Netanyahu with remarkable enthusiasm. The attack on Iran has been greeted not with hesitation but with gratitude. If Western governments had already become the obedient lapdogs of empire, they now appear content merely to follow the scent trail and collect whatever crumbs fall from the imperial table.

Such are the rituals of the moment: the ceremonial kissing of feet and hands — even when those hands are stained with the blood of war. It is also a moment when the limits of political hypocrisy seem to have vanished altogether. The same leaders who habitually invoke “our civilisation”, “our values” and the humanitarian superiority of the Western order now applaud actions that, until recently, would have been recognised without hesitation as naked aggression.

The official explanation, endlessly repeated from Jerusalem to Brussels and faithfully echoed by smaller European governments, is that the assault on Iran aims to liberate the Iranian people from the tyranny of the ayatollahs. It is a line delivered with solemn conviction and little apparent embarrassment. Only the wilfully naïve could fail to notice, however, that the supposed humanitarian objective conveniently coincides with control over one of the world’s largest reserves of oil.

Behind the moralising rhetoric lies a far more familiar ambition: to return Iran to a political arrangement reminiscent of the era of the Shah — complete with the repressive apparatus once trained and coordinated by Western intelligence services and Israel’s Mossad. That, stripped of the humanitarian varnish, is the strategic aim. Trump, Netanyahu and their European admirers have shown little consistent concern for the wellbeing of the Iranian people. Their record suggests a broader indifference to the welfare of peoples everywhere.

A particularly curious feature of the current moment is the response of the European Union. With minor variations in tone, the unelected leadership in Brussels and the majority of the twenty-seven member governments have not merely endorsed the American and Israeli action — widely regarded by legal scholars as a violation of international law and the United Nations Charter — but have also condemned Iran for daring to respond militarily.

The implication is difficult to miss: governments confronted with imperial force are expected to accept their punishment with quiet dignity. Self-defence, it seems, is permissible only when exercised by the powerful.

This logic invites a further question. Why is the European Union simultaneously urging its member states to embark upon an unprecedented programme of militarisation? National budgets are being reshaped, social programmes quietly dismantled, and future generations invited to shoulder the financial burden — all in anticipation of a hypothetical Russian attack. If the standard applied to Iran were applied consistently across Europe, governments fearful of Moscow might simply surrender in advance and save themselves the expense.

The Last Frontier

While television studios across Europe buzz with commentators marvelling at the supposed brilliance of Western military technology and speculating — sometimes with a disturbing enthusiasm — about the possible assassination of Iran’s eighty-six-year-old spiritual leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, it may be worth stepping back to consider the broader strategic picture.

At the beginning of this century, the American general Wesley Clark, a former NATO commander in Europe, described a plan circulating among neoconservative circles in Washington. According to Clark, the United States intended to pursue regime change in seven countries considered obstacles to its influence in the Middle East.

The list was instructive: Iraq, Libya, Syria, Somalia, Lebanon, Yemen and Iran.

Egypt and Jordan were absent from the list. Both had already been drawn securely into the Western strategic orbit through a succession of American-brokered “peace processes” with Israel.

Two decades later, the fate of those targeted states is well known. Iraq was invaded, fragmented and reduced to a landscape of competing sectarian and ethnic authorities, while its oil industry passed largely into the hands of multinational corporations. Libya was dismantled after NATO intervention and the brutal killing of Muammar Gaddafi — an event greeted with memorable enthusiasm by then US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who famously summarised the episode with the words: “We came, we saw, he died.”

Syria descended into a devastating war that attracted a complex array of external sponsors, leaving the country divided into zones of influence while foreign powers continue to manage its oil resources. Somalia remains a fragile political landscape, while Yemen has endured years of catastrophic conflict largely supported by Western allies in the Gulf.

Lebanon, repeatedly battered by regional confrontations and internal instability, survives precariously amid economic collapse and political paralysis.

The pattern is difficult to overlook. One by one, the states once identified as obstacles have been weakened, divided or placed under external influence. The strategic environment has grown increasingly favourable to the regional ambitions of Israel and its Western allies.

In that context, Iran appears as the final and most formidable barrier. Since the 1979 revolution that overthrew the Shah, the Iranian state has supported a network of political and military actors across the region — among them Hezbollah in Lebanon and movements resisting foreign influence in Iraq and Yemen. It has also provided one of the few remaining sources of political and material support for the Palestinian cause.

For critics of Iranian policy, this network represents destabilising interference. For others, it constitutes the last counterweight to a regional order dominated entirely by Washington and Tel Aviv.

What is clear is that the geopolitical stakes are immense. The fall of an independent Iran would transform the strategic map of the Middle East and Central Asia. Gulf monarchies, already closely aligned with Western interests, would face little regional opposition. Israel’s long-standing strategic concerns would largely disappear.

The argument that Iran’s nuclear ambitions represent the sole or even primary motivation for confrontation therefore appears increasingly unconvincing. The nuclear issue functions as a convenient and readily understandable justification for a far more ambitious geopolitical project.

Donald Trump’s role in this drama has sometimes been misunderstood. He was often portrayed as an erratic anomaly within the American political system — an accidental disruption of an otherwise stable order. In reality, he represents a particular phase in the evolution of that system.

Neoliberal globalisation, confronted with growing economic tensions and political discontent, has increasingly embraced more authoritarian forms of governance. The combination of aggressive nationalism abroad and populist rhetoric at home offers a way to manage both.

The parallel development of Trumpism in the United States and the increasingly uncompromising politics of the Israeli government suggests a deeper ideological convergence. It evokes earlier moments in twentieth-century history when economic and political crises encouraged democratic systems to adopt harsher and more authoritarian forms.

The result is a world balanced uneasily on the edge of escalation. The confrontation with Iran is not merely another episode in the long catalogue of Middle Eastern conflicts. It has the potential to reshape global alliances and to provoke reactions from other major powers.

So far, however, the international response has been cautious, even timid. Words of concern circulate freely in diplomatic corridors, but decisive action remains elusive.

On the geopolitical chessboard, the opening move has been made. The architects of imperial power believe they have delivered check. Whether anyone possesses the will — or the pieces — to prevent checkmate remains an open question.