Trump's Iran Strikes Expose Deepening Crisis of US Imperial Power

US President Donald Trump’s carefully choreographed attacks on Iran’s nuclear sites at Fordow, Natanz and Isfahan on June 22, 2025, represent a calculated effort to reinforce US hegemony within what is by now a more or less completely fractured ‘liberal’ international order. 

Trump’s strikes – claimed as a “spectacular military success” that obliterated Iran’s nuclear capacity – highlight their supremacist-hegemonic intent and imperial character. The project to violently and completely reshape and reconfigure the distribution of power in the Middle East – through a powerful transnational alliance of Israel, the Gulf States and a craven Europe – is well underway. 

America’s war on Iran – a sovereign state, member of the UN, signatory of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, and a vast country of 90 million people – is the most brazen and illegal such act yet, allegedly against Iran’s (non-existent) nuclear weapons. This is a war of choice to reorder the Middle East and establish US and Israeli power as its unchallenged centrepiece, with the feudal, obscurantist, and anti-democratic Gulf States providing cover. The destruction of the Palestinian people’s progressive, anti-colonial and nationalist aspirations, is essential to the project. As is the destruction of Iran. No independent voice or forces are tolerable when US imperial interests are at stake.

Not for the first time in colonial and imperial history, the US empire – in crisis at home and globally –  is attempting to divert attention under cover of a fabricated ‘imminent threat’ from a sovereign state with the full-force backing of the outriders of imperial power: its media, think tanks and armies of commentators, analysts and scholars.

Also read: US-Israeli War on Iran: Tactical Success May Not Add Up to Strategic Victory

Hegemony, and in this case supremacy, involves securing dominance through ideological leadership and consent, not just coercion. 

US power operates via a transnational bloc comprising state, corporate and civil society elites who sustain a system of increasingly naked power. This coalition integrates global capitalism into a hierarchical international system. In this system, US attacks serve to discipline a state challenging this order, reinforcing the bloc’s cohesion. The attack is framed as a defence of global security, with US elites leveraging media, think tanks and international organisations to construct a narrative of Iran as a rogue actor threatening the “rules-based” order. 

The Trump administration’s seemingly chaotic actions align with long-standing US goals of containing Iran’s regional ambitions. Tehran was challenging the US-led order in the region by refusing to scrap its civil nuclear programme. Back in 2020, the Soleimani assassination signalled that Trump’s actions, though theatrical, align with the long-term US goals of containing and destabilising the Islamic Republic of Iran which came into being following the 1979 Iranian revolution. The  latests strikes are framed as preventing Iran from becoming a nuclear threat, but it took less than 24 hours for Trump to speak explicitly about the goal of ‘regime change’.

The transnational bloc supporting the attack includes Israel, which coordinated its actions with the US, and Gulf allies like Saudi Arabia, reliant on US security. US-Gulf ties underscore their role in bolstering Washington’s regional dominance. Some of Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu’s allies in Europe have welcomed the strikes, hoping US involvement would end the war swiftly, while the Gulf states see them as curbing Iran’s regional ambitions. But this bloc is fragile and unstable. France, which was ostensibly pursuing diplomacy with Iran in Geneva alongside the UK and Germany, expressed reservations about the US action, reflecting tensions within the bloc. China, integrated into global capitalism, might seek to mediate in order to stabilise the system. Trump’s strikes are aimed at reasserting US primacy while navigating these fissures.

Coercion, consent and narrative control

Hegemony blends coercion with consent. The US attack was a coercive act to dismantle Iran’s nuclear infrastructure. Trump’s rhetoric, urging Iran to “make peace” or face further strikes, echoes his first term’s “maximum pressure” policy. This is Trump’s use of spectacle to mask strategic continuity. The strikes were packaged as a decisive blow, with Trump’s televised address claiming “spectacular” success, amplified by media and elite networks shaping a global discourse. Social media, despite potential for dissent, is a key arena for discourse wars: it is powerfully shaped by US-aligned algorithms to marginalise anti-war voices.

Consent-building extends domestically, where Trump’s nationalist rhetoric has rallied support. His claim of “complete and total control of the skies over Iran” aims to project strength amid domestic polarisation. However, coercion risks escalation. The possibility of miscalculations, and Iran’s retaliatory missile barrages on Israel, wounding dozens in Haifa and Tel Aviv, signal the potential for deepening and even wider conflict. Iran’s Revolutionary Guards vowed to respond powerfully, and any disruptions in the Strait of Hormuz could spike oil prices, straining global markets. In turning to war to solve the imperial crisis, American and Israeli war plans expose the West’s fragility, undermining the consent needed for hegemony.

Also read: Defending Iran is Asia’s Existential Imperative

Elite power and class dynamics

American foreign policy links domestic and international power. The attack serves US elites, particularly the military-industrial complex and energy corporations. Defence contractors like Lockheed Martin, producing B-2 bombers, and Raytheon, supplying cruise missiles, profit from arms sales to Gulf allies. 

Oil firms could benefit from market volatility while working-class Americans, facing economic strain or military service, are targeted for pacification by Trump’s populist rhetoric – a cynical tactic to secure subordinate groups’ consent. Trump’s claim that “Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon” resonates with his base, although clear schisms have appeared between so-called ‘restrainers’ and the increasingly violent regime change bent of the Trump administration. 

The promise to end the ‘forever wars’, fuelled by mass discontent, was always hollow in the hands of presidents of both parties – Obama, Biden and Trump alike.

Organic crisis and counter-hegemony

America’s latest illegal act of aggression both masks and exacerbates the structural contradictions inherent in the current ‘poly crisis’.  The strikes are both a power assertion and a symptom of systemic decay, reflecting the tensions of sustaining hegemony in a contested order.

The ‘liberal international order’ faces challenges from rising powers, domestic populism and anti-imperialist movements. Iran, allied with Russia and China, could galvanise a counter-hegemonic bloc, exploiting US overextension, as occurred in Iraq. Iran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, signalled resistance by declaring that diplomacy is no longer an option. Social media could amplify anti-war sentiment, complicating elite narratives. An organic crisis might emerge if Iran’s retaliation escalates or allies withdraw support, eroding US legitimacy. In an era of volatility, global power shifts suggest that such imperial missteps could accelerate moves towards a multipolar order, one that US supremacists would loathe.

Inderjeet Parmar is a professor of international politics and associate dean of research in the School of Policy and Global Affairs at City St George’s, University of London, a fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences, and a columnist at The Wire. He is an International Fellow at the ROADS Initiative think tank, Islamabad, and author of several books including Foundations of the American Century. He is currently writing a book on the history, politics, and powers of the US foreign policy establishment.

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