American Made

May 28 marked the passing of the Iran war from its third into its fourth, and possibly final, month. From early April to June a fragile ceasefire had remained, somewhat improbably, intact, before a flurry of missiles exchanged between Israel and Iran, Tehran’s downing of a US Apache helicopter, and a swift series of US retaliatory strikes against Iran marked an end to this period of relative quiet. Yet days later, on June 14, US President Trump announced that Washington and Tehran had agreed a deal to bring the war to a close, with the agreement’s formal signing to take place in Switzerland on June 19. 

Markets have rallied and oil prices tumbled at the news that the Strait of Hormuz will soon be released from the grip of Iranian strangulation and US blockade, yet it is important to note that the memorandum of understanding reached between the US and Iran establishes a 60-day negotiating period, and not a formal, or necessarily lasting, peace. Iran’s resolve has proven more resolute than many would have expected in February, and the circumstances which would satisfy Washington’s withdrawal from the Gulf appear even cloudier now than they were in March. In pursuit of what conditions might satisfy this latter puzzle, it seems prescient to revisit the events which prompted the US to engage Iran in the first instance.

Unfortunately, the laziest explanation for the conflict has so far proven the most seductive. A plethora of media outlets, journalists and talking heads have reliably informed the masses that the root cause of the war is simple; America has, yet again, been drawn into a protracted regional campaign at the behest of Israel. This summation is not wholly absurd, for decades Iran has represented Israel’s chief strategic threat, and the present conflict is plainly inseparable from current Israeli security concerns. To assume this view in totality however is to mistake an instrument for the architect. In truth, America fights, as it always has done, for America.

The Iran war should be understood less as an aberration of Washington’s Middle East policy and more as the latest frontier on which an evolving global order is being shaped. Iran’s threat to Washington lies not in its belligerent rhetoric, nor its militant regional proxies or (as of yet unsubstantiated) claim to possess enriched uranium, but in geography and alignment. Iran straddles the Strait of Hormuz, through which roughly one fifth of the World’s oil consumption transits. A significant portion of this traffic, constituting around 90% of Iran’s crude exports, sails for Beijing, far beyond the enforceable scope of US sanctions.

For China, Iran has become a useful partner; a fellow traveller against the Western current, whose oil comes cheap and in plentiful supply, and whose existence as a prominent node in the growing number of states seeking space outside the asphyxiating omnipresence of US global power presents the opportunity for friendship. Departing from its decades-old approach of non-alignment in favour of a lucrative relationship with the East (revenue from crude exports to Beijing fill Tehran’s coffers with half of its annual expenditure) Iran has become the logistical boiler room of China’s burgeoning industrial development. To defang Iran then, is to sever a crucial energy artery which allows Beijing to operate outwith the remit of US permissibility.

While the most barbed action of a recalibrated US foreign policy, the Iran war by no means represents an isolated instance of aggression. A hostile approach to China’s expanding global influence is evident in most facets of the second Trump administration’s foreign policy. The January kidnapping of Venezuelan Premier Nicolás Maduro from his Caracas residence was framed as the seizure of a narco-corrupt dictator to face justice, yet it so happened to occur in a state in possession of the world’s largest proven oil reserves, one which has cultivated strong diplomatic ties with China and supplied Beijing with close to 800,000 barrels per day of crude exports in 2024 alone.

Cuba, the subject of a comprehensive US trade embargo since 1962, has also received Washington’s renewed chagrin. While not a major oil exporter to China in the ilk of Iran and Venezuela, 2026 witnessed a wave of fresh sanctions imposed on the state’s political leaders and top brass, while further sanctions on entities supplying the state with oil were entrenched. These measures, which sparked widespread humanitarian concerns stemming from their projected impact on Cuba’s agricultural and healthcare sectors, were intended to cripple the state’s industrial capacity and are inseparable from Cuba’s membership of China’s Belt and Road Energy Partnership. Beijing’s investment has reportedly encompassed the construction of a new radar site situated near Guantánamo Bay, which would allegedly grant China a greater ability to surveil US air and maritime activity, developments which threaten to draw Cuba into a US confrontation, one, which according to US Secretary of Defence, Pete Hegseth, the state ‘could not withstand’.

Elsewhere in the region, the US’s militant rhetoric is comparatively lower, yet its actions remain dripping with hostility directed towards Beijing. Brazil, a member of BRICS, has been the recipient of pressure more economic and diplomatic in nature. Boasting a healthy trade surplus with Beijing, Brazil was threatened by President Trump with a potentially crippling 50% tariff, reportedly linked to the state’s trial against US-aligned former President Bolsonaro. For the US, the prospect of a major-Western hemisphere democracy being pulled into China’s commodity and BRICS orbit is evidently unpalatable.

US pressure has not been restricted to enemies or outwardly China-aligned states; Panama, host of the aptly named Panama Canal, through which 5% of global trade, 40% of US container traffic, and 21% of Chinese container traffic flows, has been the recipient of measures centring on Washington’s desire to control a channel of strategic infrastructure. The US recently amped up pressure on Hong-Kong based company, CK Hutchison, to sell its operating stake of two of the Canal’s five port terminals; an endeavour which reaped dividends when CK Hutchison sold its share of port assets to a US-backed Blackrock investment firm in 2025.

European allies have not been shielded by established diplomatic relations from the US’s revived foreign policy doctrine. While Washington has taken overt military and economic action to prevent South America from becoming a cradle of Chinese investment, European allies have become the recipient of threats centring on trade, defence spending, and, in the case of Denmark, sovereign territory. While the US has justified withdrawing troops from Europe by citing a lack of logistical support for its war effort in Iran, the broader logic is to subordinate allies rather than abandon them outright. By rendering US trade, investment and military support conditional on increased defence spending and a more hostile diplomatic posture towards the East, it is not outwith the realm of possibility that allyship with Washington, and indeed membership of NATO, becomes less membership of a respected alliance, and more a seat at the table of a glorified protection racket.

During President Trump’s state visit to China in May, Chinese President Xi Jinping delivered an axiomatic warning of the Thucydides trap; the notion that existing and emerging powers will inevitably come into conflict when the latter’s rise threatens the former’s established hegemony. Xi, in a tacit acknowledgement of China’s growing power and global ambition, pondered whether the US and China could succeed where history’s major powers have typically failed by transcending the trap and its associated perils. Trump did not address Xi’s musings in his own speech. He need not anyway; the reinvigorated aggression of which the US’s foreign policy has been imbued speaks for itself. There may yet be a new global order, but it will be American made.

Image: Flickr/The White House (Daniel Torok)

Licence: US governmental work (public domain)

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