Ted Grimsrud—July 2, 2026
[I have been overwhelmed for several months (my last post was March 2) by the cacophony of voices claiming to explain what is actually going on in the Iran War (and in American foreign policy in general). I have continued to read a fair bit every day from numerous sources. I don’t think I have a huge amount of clarity now, but it does seem objectively to be the case that the US Empire is in trouble. What follows probably won’t provide much clarity for anyone else, but I did finally find enough in my own mind to offer some current thoughts. I hope to write something weekly on these topics for a while, and I invite conversation.]
It seems impossible for a non-connected person to know what’s going on in the current wars of America. And the evidence seems to indicate that US leaders don’t know, either—including people at the very top.
Trump’s dishonesty
I find it embarrassing as an American how dishonest Trump has been ever since the beginning of the US war of aggression on Iran in late February 2026. Even before that, with the unprovoked June 2025 bombing of Iran by first Israel and then the US, Trump without batting an eye claimed that the US had destroyed Iran’s nuclear facilities. This straight-out lie was recognized as such at the time by most observers.
We have been treated to the baffling spectacle of Trump claiming day after day that the US was crushing Iran. To the contrary, Iran took some blows but almost immediately retaliated with devasting effect, established control over the Strait of Hormuz, and essentially drove the US military out of the various American military bases in the area. As well, Iran visited as still undisclosed devastation on the Israeli military machine.
Blatantly contradicting Trump’s unhinged claims for American success, Iran drove the Americans to sign a Memo of Understanding (MOU) that acknowledged Iranian success. And yet, the American Empire (including its Israeli proxies) is congenitally unable to admit defeat and back down from its aggressive war. Instead, US/Israel has regularly violated the MOU. As a consequence, we near a precipice that if we fall over it will lead to horrendous worldwide economic consequences.
All this due to a war of aggression, a patently illegal war of aggression, following from US/Israel desire simply to destroy Iran—not as claimed as a response to Iran’s misdeeds but rather as part of an effort to re-establish US global hegemony. The war on Iran, thus, is in a broad sense part of the war on Russia and a prelude to the ultimate war, against China.
The American Empire’s “own goal”
Ironically, for people who wish for a diminishment of the American Empire, this quest for reestablished hegemony is doing precisely that. The American military has proved to be strikingly ineffective. The failures of American military technology in Ukraine have been masked by Russia’s patient strategy to exert its will in that conflict. So, the effects of the failures have been slow to be apparent. As well, the willingness of American NATO partners to pour their resources into the Ukrainian military effort has also prolonged the unwinnable war even as the Ukrainian nation disintegrates in face of the Russian onslaught.
The more obvious American failure has unfolded as the US military essentially collapsed in face of Iranian retaliation. The Iranians were ready for the aggression and with remarkable precision and forcefulness within days made it clear that the US was going to fail. Since early March, the Americans have been trying to figure out how to get of the war but because they could not surrender due to their pride and arrogance, things have kept getting worse.
Remarkably, many Americans still believe in Trump—even after his continual visible and unsupportable lies about American “success.”
The American Empire’s doom
Russia, Iran, and (it seems clear) China have all focused their energies on national defense and have readied themselves for the American aggression. All three have remained patient and tried over and over to take a negotiated path toward resolution. However, the Americans and their NATO and Israeli proxies have backstabbed their adversaries—perhaps most egregiously in faking negotiations with Iran in order to improve the likelihood of successful surprise attacks. The attacks failed and now we see the American Empire in more peril than ever before in the 80+ years of its hegemonic era.
Russia, Iran, and China can obviously take care of themselves. Though the people of the world are in a terrible situation with quite uncertain prospects for averting total disaster, we are headed for interesting times. It is difficult to see a happy outcome for the US, NATO, and Israel. All three aggressors face profound military breakdowns and social turmoil with little evidence of having the resilience and creative resources available to avert disaster.
What can be done from within the Empire? A growing number of Americans are rising up in opposition to the war on Iran—though precious few have yet to speak out against the proxy war in Ukraine even in face of growing evidence of just how devious and self-defeating Biden’s policies (largely continued by Trump) in the early 2020s were. The current system in the US is not set up to be responsive to popular opinion, and so far, we see little evidence that much will change in the American approach.
However, there is one urgent step that people in the American Empire may take right away. That is simply to quit believing in the goodness of the Empire and then to encourage others to quit believing in it as well. It is crucial to recognize that we have a “bipartisan” empire. Trump has had the misfortune of being in power at the moment of crises coming to a head. He certainly has in many ways made things worse, but I am convinced that Harris would have done little better (except probably being less obvious in her dishonesty). After all, under Biden the Empire took crucial steps toward our current disasters—both in Ukraine and western Asia.
We all need to say No! When folksinger Phil Ochs wrote his 1960s song, “I Ain’t Marching Anymore,” he called it a “turning away song.” He wasn’t sure what else to do. We need to stop marching for Empire and turn away from it right now. We can only know what to do next and what the impact might be when we simply say no and mean it. I will reflect on this “turning away” more in the weeks to come.
Thinking Pacifism 