Pepe Escobar
May 9, 2026
Virtually the whole planet will pay an extremely hefty price for the latest American Dementia.
Let’s start with a false flag.
Iran attacked the UAE port of Fujairah – its oil export Holy Grail – with more than a dozen ballistic and cruise missiles.
No, it didn’t. The IRGC vehemently denied it. UAE media – a ultra-censored bunch – started spinning that the attack came from Saudi Arabia.
Fog of war. Nobody can reveal where the false flag really came from. Quite easy to do the math on who would profit from it.
Then Saudi Arabia and Kuwait cut American access to their airbases (now restored) – quite angry because the Pentagon totally downplayed the attack on Fujairah (echoes of false flag, all over again).
So for the clownish U.S. Secretary of Forever Wars, missiles over Fujairah did not qualify as breaking the – fragile – ceasefire.
Barbaria was furious with Riyadh’s counterpunch. The result was that much-lauded “humanitarian” Operation Freedom, Liberty or whatever – to “unblock” the Strait of Hormuz – duly vanished in less than 48 hours.
The official reason was “great progress in negotiations.” There’s less than zero progress. And the real reason was not exactly operational impasse caused by Riyadh blocking its airspace. It was a stunning firepower demo by Iran which left the Pentagon literally speechless. Nothing officially confirmed, of course. Fog of war.
Immediately afterwards the Americans attacked Iranian tanker Hasna close to the Strait of Hormuz, disabling its rudder with a Super Hornet’s cannon.
The Iranian response was harsh: a combo of anti-ship ballistic and cruise missiles, kamikaze drones with high-explosive warheads, and fast attack boats. The victims were three U.S. destroyers – Truxtun, Mason, Rafael Peralta – attempting to transit the Strait of Hormuz from the Gulf of Oman.
The destroyers literally ran away begging for their lives. The IRGC Navy’s op was so hardcore they had to deploy their last-resort defense systems, such as CIWS guns.
Ebrahim Zolfaghari, the inimitable spokesperson of the Khatam al-Anbiya Central HQ, came up with the details:
“An American warship attempting to pass through the Strait of Hormuz was destroyed by the IRGC Navy. Two other warships that came to its aid were met with heavy fire and forced to flee.”
NASA FIRMS satellite data then showed a large fire previously detected in the Strait of Hormuz Musandam province drifting from its original position, suggesting a ship burning and drifting with the current. Also a second large fire was detected 30km west of the small island of Larak.
These fires happen to be in the exact same area where the destroyers were forced to fire their CIWS terminal defense systems, five-inch naval guns, and .50-caliber machine guns against a volley of IRGC missiles launched from the Bandar Abbas coastline.
The American counter-response, in impotent anger, was strikes on several points in Qeshm island. That won’t change anything.
In a nutshell, in less than 48 hours Iran and Barbaria switched from “great progress” towards coming up with a dodgy, one-page Memorandum of Understanding (MoU), actually redacted by Zionist mutts, to no holds barred war.
So welcome to a “ceasefire” in effect for a full month, since April 8, now metastasized into the odd firefight (there will be more), while both Barbaria and Iran say “move on, nothing to see here.”
You are allowed to escort nothing
The undisputable key conclusion of all this frantic action is that the U.S. Navy cannot escort even a seagull, not to mention tankers across the Strait of Hormuz.
And that will be the case, non-stop, from now on.
The IRGC Navy has proved that it may deploy everything from low-intensity harassment fire to hardcore escalation tactics unforeseen by incapable Pentagon mutts.
That will prove effective even if they are just employing low-tier anti-ship assets. They don’t even need to sink a U.S. military vessel. Just to instill panic.
It’s obvious that no tanker or cargo owners and insurance companies will be willing to be “escorted” by the mightiest Navy in the History of the Galaxy in conditions of being under fire.
Ergo, the Strait of Hormuz remains fully controlled by Iran – and passage has to be negotiated with a brand new body, the Persian Gulf Strait Authority. There is less than zero military way to “open it” – apart from a suicidal ground invasion and subsequent permanent occupation.
Meanwhile, the UAE – with their elaborate plans of escaping Opec and Opec+ to export oil like there’s no tomorrow from Fujairah – better get their act together.
Ali Khedryan, a member of the National Security Committee in the Iranian Parliament, laid down the law: “The Islamic Republic no longer views the UAE as a neighbor, but as an enemy base.”
Tehran has spent a lot of time studying evidence that UAE fighter jets removed their flags and launched direct attacks on Iranian soil. This means that Tehran may conduct devastating attacks on the UAE at any moment it sees fit. No false flag: the real deal.
The whole planet pays the price for American Dementia
All of the above might suggest a certified Highway to Hell ahead. And to consider that the Baboon of Barbaria, if he had the will, could really try to work seriously on the off-ramp he needs so bad.
First step would be to demote Twedledee and Twedledum, Dumb and Dumber Witkoff-Kushner as negotiators: the Iranians have already refused to talk to these clowns.
On the nuclear dossier, the Americans could settle for a perfectly viable 5-year moratorium on uranium enrichment; then enrichment up to 3.6%; dilution of the existing stockpile, which would remain in Iran; the return of IAEA inspectors (the Iranians had already agreed, before the war); and no dodgy sunset clauses.
Every grain of sand in the Ancient Silk Roads across Persia is aware that the U.S. “intel community” – OK, that may be a contradiction in terms – knew that Iran was not developing a nuclear weapon.
They – and especially analysts and traders across the Gulf – also knew that Iran would inevitably target the U.S. Empire of Bases and shut down the Strait of Hormuz in case of war.
Sanctions will remain a major sticking point. Both Baboon of Barbaria and Capitol Hill will never agree to fully lifting sanctions, especially as a precondition towards a final deal, and on top of it with guarantees from the UN Security Council.
The Americans stick to “phased” removal of sanctions. Tehran doesn’t buy it; they saw what happened after the JCPOA.
On payment of reparations, the same thing: the U.S. will never agree. Enter the tollbooth in the Strait of Hormuz, which may work as a replacement for reparations.
The Pentagon would have to be confronted by reality and admit that the Empire of Bases in the Gulf is useless, and much worse: a strategic liability. Most bases are destroyed anyway.
Then there’s the Strait of Hormuz – and how to get it back to what it was before the start of the war.
From Tehran’s point of view, this nostalgic ride will never happen. A stratospheric miracle would be a global deal with the backing of Russia-China – with carefully negotiated security guarantees for both Iran and the Persian Gulf petromonarchies.
Don’t count on it.
Once again: Iran – even under new Khamenei management – does not want to possess a nuclear weapon, and remains a full member of the NPT. They don’t need a nuclear weapon. They have plenty of state of the art strategic dissuasion mechanisms.
It’s impossible for the Empire of Chaos, Lies, Plunder and Piracy to negotiate in good faith. Exceptionalism by definition implies ultimatum + capitulation, in every case. So realistically the road ahead will be long, winding, tortuous, extremely dangerous, yet to a near certainty leading to an American strategic defeat – with unforeseen global consequences.
Facts: the war is not about to end. Iran’s control of the Strait of Hormuz is a done deal. Iran – backed by Russia and China – will not allow the Empire of Bases to be reconstituted in the Persian Gulf. Iran’s new status is already that of a regional superpower – and a Eurasia big power. A new West Asia order is in the horizon.
The tragedy is that virtually the whole planet will pay an extremely hefty price for this latest American Dementia. As the physical infrastructure of the global economy is being destroyed in real time, little consolation is offered by three inexorable facts: the petrodollar is doomed; that artificial bling bling concoction, the UAE is doomed; and U.S. hegemony is doomed.
https://strategic-culture.su/news/2026/05/09/a-new-west-asia-order-is-in-the-horizon/
