The military strike launched jointly by the United States and Israel against Iran on February 28, 2026 was the inevitable outcome of a long-term strategic miscalculation, hegemonic inertia, and extreme domestic political dynamics converging together. This war represents the culmination of a spiraling escalation of regional tensions that began with the ‘Al-Aqsa Flood’ operation in October 2023. In the cruelest possible way, it lays bare an inescapable reality: the final struggles of a hegemonic power—whose hard power and soft power are both showing signs of decline—pose a far greater threat to the global order than it did in its heyday. Far from reshaping the Middle East into a configuration aligned with US–Israeli interests, this military adventure by the US and Israel has instead accelerated, in unprecedented fashion, the unraveling of US global influence, leaving the entire international community squarely confronted with a highly uncertain ‘post-American era’.
Li Fuquan (2026) studied this question.