The war with Iran will have consequences far beyond the battlefield and its immediate destruction, regardless of how it ends. It is both a turning point and a catalyst. What will come after, we can only guess; but what is breaking, we can already see.
Many of us are trying to make sense of the “Ramadan War.” There are multiple theories about the reasons, the timing, the objectives, and its progress. Some of those theories are contradictory; most are complementary—different dimensions of the same event.
Some frame this as being all about China, arguing the U.S. is trying to curb China’s rise by controlling the energy resources it needs; Venezuela and Iran would serve that purpose. Others claim it is all about Israel seizing the opportunity to continue its hegemonic project or avoid collapse. Some see it as a planned transition to a multipolar war, while others view it as a distraction from the Epstein files (it seems to have worked!). Others focus on keeping the dollar hegemony or the transition to a new economic paradigm based on stablecoins. Some just blame it on the everlasting bloodthirst of a decaying empire.
All of these angles hold some truth. The emphasis usually falls on the area of expertise of the person speaking, or the factor they are most convinced is the driver of events. It is difficult to discard any completely, though some have more of a basis than others. It is also difficult to conclusively select one. Only with time will tell.
However, what we can say with a degree of certainty—because we are seeing it happen in real time—is that this war is the catalyst of many processes that were already ongoing. Some of those processes strike directly at the very foundation upon which much of the modern world was built—an unspoken agreement that is now breaking.
Lying and deceit are part of war. Leaders minimize their losses and maximize their gains to keep up the morale of the troops and the population. They also try to confuse the enemy. But when those who are supposed to be in charge of the war actually believe their own lies, they are not propperl lying anymore. In the U.S., this seems to be the case.
Donald Trump was warned that Iran would close the Strait of Hormuz, and he dismissed the warnings, saying that they would either surrender beforehand or that the American navy would deal with it quickly and reopen it. So, no one made a plan. And when Iran closed it, he was first astonished that they did not surrender and then demanded that the U.S. Navy reopen it. He’s either a complete fool—which I doubt—or he really believed his own rhetoric, which is even worse.
When he comes out in public and says that Iran is decimated or that their nuclear program was “obliterated”, I don’t think he’s lying, as in saying something he knows is not true; he actually believes it. Someone might be lying to him, or he constructs his own interpretation of the facts, and that becomes his truth—and by extension, the truth that most of his administration acts upon.
What happened in 2002, when the U.S. conducted the military drill “Millennium Challenge,” was a convenient construction of truth. It was one of the largest and most ambitious military drills to date for the U.S. army. The objective was to demonstrate the effectiveness of the transition to a technologically centered war. Against the Blue Team (the U.S.) was the Red Team, representing an undefined country in West Asia, but modeled on Iran.
Leading the Red Team was Marine Corps Lieutenant General Paul K. Van Riper, a combat-hardened, old-school marine known for his shrewdness. Van Riper designed an asymmetrical defense strategy to counter the technological superiority of the Blue Team. For example, he used old communication methods to evade Blue’s sophisticated electronic surveillance network. The initial defeat of the Blue Team was catastrophic. As per by Wikipedia:
Red received an ultimatum from Blue, essentially a surrender document, demanding a response within 24 hours. Thus warned of Blue’s approach, Red used a fleet of small boats to determine the position of Blue’s fleet by the second day of the exercise. In a preemptive strike, Red launched a massive salvo of cruise missiles that overwhelmed the Blue forces’ electronic sensors and destroyed sixteen warships: one aircraft carrier, ten cruisers, and five of Blue’s six amphibious ships. An equivalent success in a real conflict would have resulted in the deaths of over 20,000 service personnel. Soon after the cruise missile offensive, another significant portion of Blue’s navy was “sunk” by an armada of small Red boats, which carried out both conventional and suicide attacks that capitalized on Blue’s inability to detect them.
After Blue’s defeat, the exercise was restarted, and Red was given precise orders and constraints to ensure Blue’s victory.
The similarities between this exercise and what is happening in the Iran War are uncanny. One would have hoped that, from that expensive exercise, the U.S. would have learnt. But it does not seem that way. Iran is using a very similar tactic to that deployed by Van Riper, and it is working. It seems the U.S. intelligentsia learned their lessons from the Blue Team’s fake victory—a lie that they believed.
These two examples seem to suggest that both the structure and the command has accepted a narrative of an all-powerful military capable of anything. To be clear, I think that the U.S. has a powerful army, and that they can, as they are doing, cause a lot of harm to Iran. However, its strength is not as great as they seem to believe. For example, they are not capable of forcibly reopening the Strait of Hormuz, much less launching a ground invasion of Iran.
That is an epistemic truth that the war on Iran is breaking. The U.S. can’t impose its will purely by force, which was the main reason for the feudal contract of protection that it had with many states, including the Gulf nations. They are suffering the fallout of a failed agreement. The military bases in their countries were supposed to be an insurance policy but have become the reason they are targeted, while the U.S. cannot ensure their defense. I find it hypocritical that they complain of being attacked while hosting U.S. bases. What did they expect?
This is an epistemic break because much of the now-defunct world order was predicated on that premise. If the U.S. can’t adequately enforce its will nor protect allies from the consequences, then the strategic calculus will change for many countries. Taiwan would do well to accept China’s offer of unlimited gas supplies for a diplomatic resolution. Or does anyone think that, when the Chinese decide that the time to take the island has come, the U.S. would be able to stop them?
The world order that the U.S. and its allies built was already declared dead—even by themselves—but the real consequences, the reality check, had not yet come. As I read on my feed: Who would have thought that it would be Iran, and not Russia or China, who would break the U.S. illusion of power?
The same applies to the power that the U.S. financial system projects. When that illusion confronts reality—either through the crash of the AI bubble, the collapse of private credit, or the structural crisis created by oil prices at $140–$150 per barrel (which is what is being paid in the real, non-manipulable world)—it will burst in the same way that the military illusion is bursting.
This will send shockwaves through the entire world. Not only because most countries are dependent on the financial system created by the U.S. and its Western allies, but because that system had apparently become a permanent “truth” upon which to build societies. Some leaders, like Argentina’s Milei, still believe it.
Perhaps part of that selective composition of truth is owed to the effect of social media echo chambers on our perception, as well as algorithms and, now, generative AI. It is difficult, if not impossible, to assess with certainty if Netanyahu is alive or dead. I don’t particularly think that he is dead; I think it’s more probable that he is hiding, but that’s beside the point. For how could I know?
We are at a point where no video will ever be conclusive proof of life—or death, for that matter. Even if he is alive, and even if all those videos that have come out were true, there would still be many people who would doubt them. It is actually possible that some of those videos were made with AI and that he is alive, which makes matters even more confusing. Similarly, it is confusing to discern which videos of attacks and explosions are real and which ones are AI-generated.
AI has much to do with the belief in the invincibility of the U.S. army and financial system because it’s propping up both. It guides the weapons and selects the targets. It can also decide that war is necessary. It has already happened. Between June 6 and 12, 2025, Mosaic—a Palantir-developed AI model—flagged an apparent surge of enriched uranium at Iranian facilities.
The AI’s conclusion: Iran was weeks away from producing not just one, but potentially five nuclear bombs. This dramatic assertion led to the war. Yet it was based on inference, not verifiable facts.
That is the world into which we are venturing: a world where what many held to be indisputable truths are breaking down and are being replaced by AI models.
