THE ARCHITECTURE OF EMPIRE

US Foreign Interventionism, the Iran War,

and the Consequences of Empire

A Geopolitical Analysis

March 2026

Compiled from analysis and open-source intelligence

Ilahi anta maqsudi wa ridhaka matlubi, a’tini mahabbataka wa ma’rifataka

1. The 2026 Iran War: Operation Epic Fury

On 28 February 2026, the United States and Israel launched coordinated airstrikes on Iran under Operation Epic Fury, targeting military facilities, nuclear sites, and leadership. The strikes killed Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and multiple senior officials. As of late March 2026, the conflict has entered its fourth week with no clear endgame.

1.1 Scale of Operations

The US claims to have struck more than 7,800 targets, flown more than 6,500 combat flights, and damaged or sunk more than 100 ships, including the first sinking of a ship by US torpedo since World War II. The American arsenal deployed includes B-1, B-2, and B-52 bombers, F-15, F-16, F-18, F-22, and F-35 fighter jets, two carrier strike groups, and 5,000-pound bunker-buster munitions.

1.2 The Strait of Hormuz Crisis

Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps closed the Strait of Hormuz to shipping, through which approximately 20% of global oil supplies pass. Tanker traffic initially dropped by approximately 70%, with over 150 ships anchoring outside the strait. The International Energy Agency has described this as the largest oil supply disruption in history, with global oil supplies expected to plunge by 8 million barrels per day.

Oil prices surged approximately 40% since the start of the war, with Brent crude hovering around $102 per barrel. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent’s framing of “50 days of temporary elevated prices for 50 years of security” has been widely criticised as politically convenient rather than economically realistic.

1.3 Iran’s Response

Despite the destruction of most of its conventional military capability, Iran has demonstrated significant asymmetric capacity. Iranian forces launched retaliatory missile and drone strikes targeting US embassies, military installations, and oil infrastructure across the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait, Bahrain, Iraq, Oman, and Jordan. Dubai International Airport was damaged by drone strikes. The US embassy in Kuwait was struck and closed indefinitely.

Iran fired over 500 ballistic and naval missiles and almost 2,000 drones in the first week alone. While the rate of ballistic missile launches declined, indicating possible depletion of stores, the IRGC’s ability to attack merchant shipping and regional infrastructure remains operational.

1.4 Coalition Isolation

The military coalition consists effectively of the United States and Israel alone. The diplomatic picture is fractured:

• China is ignoring Trump’s requests regarding Hormuz
• Britain will not be “drawn into the wider war” despite allowing base use for defensive purposes
• France will only consider a naval mission after the war ends
• Germany, Italy, Spain, Romania, and Luxembourg ruled out military involvement
• Trump called NATO allies “cowards” for not helping
• A top US intelligence official resigned in protest over the war

1.5 Economic Consequences Will Not Be Temporary

The claim that economic pain will be limited to weeks is contradicted by structural reality. The reverberations will be measured in years at minimum. Factors include:

• Oil futures contracts repriced globally
• Shipping insurance premiums restructured for the entire Gulf (12–18 months to normalise after hostilities end)
• Damaged port infrastructure in Dubai and elsewhere requiring rebuilding
• Diplomatic relationships across Gulf states requiring repair
• Iranian retaliatory capacity (Houthis, Hezbollah, Iraqi militias) enraged rather than degraded
• Global inflationary pressure from a 40% oil spike working through every economy
• The 2022 Russia–Ukraine energy shock still affecting European energy prices four years later — and that did not involve closing a strait carrying 20% of global oil

2. The Russia–Ukraine War: Beneath the Surface

The surface narrative of “unprovoked Russian aggression against a sovereign democracy” is the version optimised for Western media consumption. The deeper picture involves multiple intersecting structural forces that predate February 2022 by decades.

2.1 NATO Expansion — The Security Dilemma

When the Soviet Union dissolved, there was a verbal understanding — debated but supported by declassified documents from the National Security Archive — that NATO would not expand eastward. Between 1999 and 2020, NATO absorbed 14 former Warsaw Pact or Soviet states, moving its border to Russia’s doorstep. George Kennan, the architect of containment, called NATO expansion in 1998 “the beginning of a new cold war.”

The 2008 Bucharest Summit declaration that Ukraine and Georgia “will become members of NATO” was the inflection point. The question is not whether Russia had a right to invade, but why Western planners thought pushing NATO to Russia’s most sensitive border would not produce exactly this reaction. The US itself enforced this same principle with the Monroe Doctrine for two centuries and nearly started nuclear war over Soviet missiles in Cuba.

2.2 Energy Geopolitics — Who Controls Europe’s Supply

Before the war, Europe was deeply dependent on Russian natural gas, especially Germany through Nord Stream 1 and 2. This created an economic interdependence that gave Russia leverage over European policy. Nord Stream 2 was nearly complete.

The Nord Stream pipelines were sabotaged in September 2022. Seymour Hersh reported it was a US covert operation; official investigations were inconclusive and quietly shelved. The outcome was clear: Europe’s energy relationship with Russia was severed permanently. Europe scrambled to buy American LNG at 3–4x the price of Russian pipeline gas. US LNG exports to Europe surged. German manufacturing entered recession. The war accomplished what decades of American diplomacy could not: it broke the Russia–Europe energy axis.

2.3 Dollar Hegemony

Russia’s move toward de-dollarisation predated the war. Russia and China had been building alternative payment systems (SPFS, CIPS), trading in local currencies, and accumulating gold. The war gave the US justification to weaponise the dollar system — freezing $300 billion in Russian central bank reserves and cutting Russian banks from SWIFT.

The irony: the sanctions accelerated exactly the de-dollarisation they were meant to punish. China, India, Saudi Arabia, and Brazil all moved faster toward bilateral currency arrangements. Every non-Western nation now understands that dollar reserves can be confiscated by political decision.

2.4 The Defence Industry Ecosystem

Four years of war has been extraordinarily profitable for Western defence manufacturers. Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, Rheinmetall, and BAE Systems have seen dramatic stock increases since 2022. European defence spending commitments have exploded, with Germany announcing a €100 billion special defence fund. NATO members are pushing toward 3% of GDP on defence. Ukraine has become both the testing ground and showroom for next-generation weapons systems.

2.5 The 2014 Maidan and Minsk Betrayal

The current conflict actually begins with the 2014 Maidan revolution. A democratically elected Ukrainian president was overthrown after choosing a Russian economic package over an EU association agreement. The leaked Victoria Nuland phone call showed US officials selecting Ukraine’s post-revolution leadership. The Minsk Accords were negotiated to resolve the subsequent Donbas conflict. In 2022, both Merkel and Hollande admitted publicly that Minsk was designed to buy time for Ukraine to arm itself, not to achieve peace — confirming, from Russia’s perspective, that the West was never negotiating in good faith.

2.6 Resources and Reconstruction

Ukraine has some of the world’s richest agricultural land, significant natural gas reserves in the Black Sea shelf, lithium deposits, titanium, uranium, and rare earth elements. BlackRock, JP Morgan, and other Western financial institutions signed reconstruction agreements with Ukraine during the war. The question of who controls Ukrainian resources post-war is central to the conflict.

2.7 Current Status (March 2026)

Russia controls approximately 45,783 square miles — about 20% of Ukraine’s territory. Estimated casualties: 1.2 million Russian killed, wounded, and missing; 500,000–600,000 Ukrainian. Ukraine’s available generating capacity has fallen from 33.7 GW to about 14 GW. In Russia, public support for continuing the war fell to 25%, with 66% supporting peace negotiations. Yet the fighting continues, with neither side having achieved its strategic objectives.

3. The Pattern of US Interventionism

Since 1945, the United States has intervened — militarily, covertly, or through economic coercion — in more sovereign nations than any other country on earth. This is not opinion; it is declassified history.

3.1 The Empirical Record

Country	Year	Summary
Iran	1953	Overthrew Mosaddegh for nationalising oil. Installed the Shah. Created conditions for the 1979 revolution.
Guatemala	1954	Overthrew Arbenz for threatening United Fruit Company. Decades of civil war followed. 200,000 dead.
Congo	1961	Lumumba assassinated with CIA involvement. Mobutu installed. Three decades of kleptocracy.
Indonesia	1965	Supported Suharto’s coup. 500,000 to 1 million killed in purges. CIA provided kill lists.
Chile	1973	Overthrew Allende. Installed Pinochet. Thousands tortured and disappeared.
Iraq	2003	Invaded on fabricated WMD evidence. A million dead. ISIS emerged from the wreckage.
Libya	2011	Destroyed the most developed state in Africa. Open slave markets followed. No functioning government 15 years later.
Afghanistan	2001–2021	20 years, $2 trillion, then abandoned overnight. Taliban walked back in wearing US equipment.

3.2 The Structural Logic

Resource Extraction

Every major US intervention correlates with energy resources, mineral wealth, or strategic geography. When Gaddafi proposed a gold-backed African dinar for oil trade, Libya was destroyed within a year. When Saddam traded oil in euros, Iraq was invaded within 18 months.

Dollar Protection

The petrodollar system — established with Saudi Arabia in 1974 — requires global oil to be traded in US dollars. This creates artificial demand for the dollar and allows the US to run permanent deficits. Any leader who threatens this arrangement faces consequences.

Market Access via Debt

The IMF and World Bank structural adjustment programmes force developing nations to privatise state assets, open markets to Western corporations, and cut social spending. First come the loans, then the conditions, then the debt trap, then the privatisation of national assets.

Buffer State Strategy

Ukraine, Taiwan, Georgia, and the Baltic states are maintained as pressure points against strategic competitors. Their welfare is secondary to their utility. The moment these states lose strategic utility, they are abandoned — as Afghanistan demonstrated in August 2021.

Selective Rules-Based Order

When Russia annexes Crimea, it violates sovereignty. When the US invades Iraq without UN authorisation, it is “liberation.” When the ICC investigated US war crimes in Afghanistan, the Trump administration sanctioned ICC prosecutors. The rules apply to others, never to the rule-maker.

4. Afghanistan: The Aftermath

The US withdrawal from Afghanistan in August 2021, after 20 years and $2 trillion spent, represents the most complete illustration of the interventionist cycle: grand rhetoric, massive expenditure, local devastation, and abandonment.

4.1 Humanitarian Catastrophe

• 21.9 million people (nearly half the population) require humanitarian assistance
• 17.4 million Afghans experiencing crisis or emergency levels of acute food insecurity
• More than 4.5 million Afghan citizens forcibly returned from neighbouring states since October 2023
• Pakistan expelled nearly 900,000 Afghans in 2025; Iran intensified deportations
• The US has terminated all foreign assistance awards with activities in Afghanistan as of mid-2025
• “Afghanistan” does not appear in either the 2025 National Security Strategy or the 2026 National Defense Strategy

4.2 Women and Girls Under Taliban Rule

Women’s rights are arguably worse than they were under the first Taliban government in 2001. Girls have been banned from secondary education for five consecutive years. Women face bans from most work, public speech, and travel without male guardians. A new criminal procedural code introduced in early 2026 contains provisions that normalise violence against women and raise concerns about practices amounting to slavery.

The ICC issued arrest warrants for Taliban leader Hibatullah Akhundzada and Chief Justice Abdul Hakim Haqqani, charging them with crimes against humanity for persecution of women and girls. Afghanistan’s healthcare system is collapsing due to gender restrictions — the Taliban systematically restricts women’s access to healthcare, medical education, and freedom of movement.

4.3 Terrorism Unchanged

The UN Monitoring Team reports that the Taliban’s assertions that terrorist groups have no footprint in Afghanistan are not credible. The regime continues hosting Al Qaeda despite Doha Agreement promises. ISIS-K remains active. The very thing the US invaded to stop — Afghanistan as a base for terrorist organisations — remains the reality 25 years later.

4.4 Now at War with Pakistan

In February 2026, Pakistan launched airstrikes on Afghan territory, with Pakistan’s defence minister declaring “open war.” Pakistan struck targets including in Kabul and Kandahar, destroying brigade bases and ammunition depots. The Taliban launched retaliatory attacks on Pakistani military bases along the border. A former Afghan ambassador noted that the timing coincided with the Iran war, minimising international attention.

4.5 The Accounting

Twenty years of American “nation-building” produced: a country where half the population needs humanitarian aid; women’s rights worse than 2001; the same terrorist organisations operating from the same territory; a fractured Taliban government under ICC indictment; a new war with Pakistan; $2 trillion spent (mostly flowing to American defence contractors, not Afghan infrastructure); and then silence. The US moved on.

5. Implications for the Global South

5.1 Southeast Asia and the Energy Equation

The Strait of Hormuz closure directly affects energy flows to Southeast Asia. Malaysia’s oil and gas sector, and downstream fuel pricing, faces ripple effects. However, the oil will flow through alternative channels: China and India have their own arrangements with Iran, and Southeast Asian nations will find workarounds through intermediaries, albeit at higher cost.

The US eased sanctions on Russian oil specifically to compensate for lost Iranian supply — a geopolitically absurd outcome of punishing one adversary while rewarding another.

5.2 Chip Manufacturing and Supply Chain Reshoring

The CHIPS Act push, TSMC Arizona, Samsung Texas, and Intel Ohio represent efforts to reduce dependency on Asia-based semiconductor manufacturing. But the timeline is years, not months. TSMC’s Arizona fab produces at lower yields than Taiwan. Advanced packaging remains almost entirely in Asia. The US can manufacture chips, but the ecosystem — materials, chemicals, equipment maintenance, workforce expertise — remains heavily Asia-dependent. This is a decade-long transition at minimum.

5.3 The Multipolar Transition

What the world is witnessing — the Iran war, the Ukraine war, the chip war with China, the AUKUS military buildup in the Pacific — is the US attempting to maintain unipolar dominance as the world shifts toward multipolarity. The BRICS expansion, the Belt and Road Initiative, de-dollarisation, and the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation represent the Global South’s attempts to build alternatives to a system that has exploited it for 80 years.

For nations like Malaysia, the calculus is straightforward: diversify energy sources, strengthen China and India trade relationships, and prepare for sustained price volatility rather than a quick resolution. The sovereignty of smaller nations is respected only when it aligns with the interests of the powerful — and the transition from unipolarity to multipolarity will be turbulent.

6. Conclusion

When all layers are stacked, a consistent pattern emerges. The Russia–Ukraine war, the Iran war, and the long trail of interventions from Iran 1953 to Afghanistan 2021 are not isolated events. They are expressions of a structural logic: resource extraction, dollar protection, market access through debt, buffer state manipulation, and a selectively applied “rules-based order.”

The US is not uniquely evil among great powers — Russia and China pursue their interests ruthlessly too. But the US is uniquely powerful, uniquely hypocritical about it, and uniquely destructive in scale. It wraps imperial behaviour in the language of freedom, democracy, and human rights, which makes the gap between rhetoric and reality more insulting than honest imperialism.

The tragedy is that ordinary people — Ukrainians, Russian conscripts, Afghans, Iraqis, Iranians — pay the price for decisions made in Washington, Moscow, Brussels, and London. The sovereignty of smaller nations is a convenience, invoked when useful, discarded when not.

The Global South has understood this for generations. The question now is not whether the pattern exists — it does, and it is documented in declassified archives — but how nations navigate the transition from unipolar to multipolar order without becoming the next testing ground.

Ilahi anta maqsudi wa ridhaka matlubi, a’tini mahabbataka wa ma’rifataka

“My God, You are my purpose and Your pleasure is what I seek; grant me Your love and Your knowledge.”

Sources

Bloomberg, CNBC, CNN, Al Jazeera, Wikipedia (2026 Iran War, 2026 Strait of Hormuz Crisis, 2026 Afghanistan–Pakistan Conflict), Britannica, Fortune, Russia Matters (Harvard Belfer Center), Atlantic Council, ORF Online, UN Security Council Reports, Human Rights Watch World Report 2026, EUAA Country Focus 2026, US Congressional Research Service, OHCHR.