Burning It All

The United States has now fully entered the Iran-Israel conflict, not as a stabilizer, not as a credible intermediary, but as a direct military actor, through a sweeping and devastating bombing campaign on Iranian soil. This intervention, sold to the public as a calculated show of strength and deterrence, is in truth an act of catastrophic strategic blindness. It abandons decades of hard-learned lessons in diplomacy, betrays every principle of restraint espoused by the likes of George Marshall, Jimmy Carter, and Anwar Sadat, and will leave the Middle East, and the United States, less secure for generations.

The consequences of this escalation are already unfolding. They will not be contained to battlefields.

With its bombs, America has turned a smoldering conflict into a blaze. Iran’s leadership, divided, cautious, and often pragmatic when faced with overwhelming risk, will now face immense internal pressure to retaliate. Its allies and proxies throughout the region, from Hezbollah in Lebanon to militias in Iraq and Syria, will mobilize. This is not speculation. This is baked into the architecture of Iran’s deterrence strategy. Retaliation is no longer a matter of if, but how devastating.

The U.S. has effectively set off a chain reaction that could draw the entire Middle East into a war of unpredictable scale. Israel, already locked in a brutal confrontation with Iran-aligned forces, will find itself more isolated and endangered. Gulf States, caught between U.S. dependency and Iranian reach, will face destabilizing backlash. And civilians, millions of them, will pay the price.

This is perhaps the most tragic and lasting consequence: diplomacy, as a credible tool in U.S. foreign policy, is dead in the region. Iran’s moderates, those who argued for engagement with the West, who advocated for de-escalation and reform, have now been politically obliterated. By choosing bombs over backchannels, Washington has handed the Iranian hardliners the very justification they crave: proof that America cannot be reasoned with, that it will always choose force.

Any pretense of the U.S. as an honest broker in the region is gone. The idea of future negotiations on nuclear programs, regional security frameworks, or economic normalization is now as implausible as peace itself. The bombing has not just destroyed infrastructure, it has destroyed the last embers of trust.

In capitals across Europe, Asia, and the Global South, U.S. credibility is in freefall. Allies who once quietly tolerated America's military footprint in the Middle East are now voicing open concern, even condemnation. Nations that hoped for a return to diplomacy and multilateralism after years of American unilateralism are watching, once again, as Washington bypasses the United Nations, shreds international norms, and turns to war as a first resort.

China and Russia, eager to challenge U.S. dominance, will seize this moment to expand their influence, offering themselves as alternatives to American hegemony. Washington’s actions are driving a wedge between itself and the international system it once claimed to lead.

There is no greater gift to extremists than American bombs falling on Muslim soil. This has been proven time and again, in Afghanistan, in Iraq, in Syria. Every strike recruits. Every civilian casualty radicalizes. Already, jihadist movements are invoking the latest U.S. action to justify new waves of violence, portraying it as part of a broader war against Islam.

But the repercussions will not remain “over there.” At home, the attack increases the risk of retaliatory terrorism. Intelligence agencies are bracing for threats not just against embassies, but against civilians. And it fuels the very paranoia and militarization that erode democratic institutions, surveillance, repression, fear-mongering.

America’s leaders will promise this is “limited,” “targeted,” “contained.” But those words are hollow echoes from Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria. The history is clear: once the U.S. begins an open-ended military entanglement in the Middle East, there is no clean exit. Every new threat becomes an argument for deeper involvement. Every retaliation becomes justification for more bombing. And the cycle spins on.

This is not strategy. It is inertia soaked in blood.

When George Marshall championed rebuilding over revenge, when Jimmy Carter prioritized human rights over oil interests, and when Anwar Sadat risked his life for a vision of peace, they pointed to a different path, one where power was measured not by destruction, but by the ability to lead with restraint. That vision is now in ruins.

The bombing of Iran marks not just a military action, but a moral collapse. It signals to the world that the United States no longer believes in diplomacy, that it has abandoned the role of peacemaker, that it now governs its foreign policy through the cold arithmetic of shock and awe.

This will not end in victory. It will end in exhaustion, in moral bankruptcy, and in a world less safe for us all. And when history judges this moment, it will not ask whether we were strong enough to fight, but whether we were wise enough not to.