America and the Policy of Oppression
From here, I find that the United States of America, in its arrogance, carries the mark of destruction and devastation; it is absent from its successive governments' long-term political methodology. It acts like a wild giant that does not see ahead, scattering papers and trampling over those around it, without considering the consequences of any matter or the ramifications of any step it takes, showing no concern for the impact of a decision on those around it.
I attribute this to the rise of those who know nothing of politics or geography; an example is the interview conducted by the journalist Tucker Carlson when he hosted Senator Ted Cruz on June 18, 2025, where he asked him about Iran's population, and he found him unaware. A man who does not even know how many he wants to topple, slipped during the same interview and said, “We are preparing for military strikes today.” This is how the world is managed from a comfortable chair, without a map or a population counter.
Imagine that this is exactly what happened in Iraq when Bush claimed he was coming to save the Iraqi people from the tyranny of Saddam Hussein and the Ba'ath Party, to spread democracy, freedom, and justice; then we found that the American occupation of Iraq resulted in complete devastation of the infrastructure, a civil war that flared up between Sunni and Shia, corruption in the successive governments, the looting of state coffers, and a transformation of Iraq from a self-sufficient country to one sitting on the fifth largest oil reserves in the world, yet unable to light its homes except with gas imported from its neighbor Iran, about 50 million cubic meters daily to meet nearly a third of its electricity needs.
Add to this the transformation of the country into a playground for cross-border militias, the spread of arms and drug trafficking, and then the emergence of "ISIS" amid that ruin, with its effects extending to every corner of the world; all because Bush wanted to remove Saddam!
Afghanistan is not far from this same lesson; Washington spent nearly 20 years and trillions of dollars trying to uproot the "Taliban," only to leave on August 15, 2021, handing over Kabul to the "Taliban" itself, in a humiliating scene of hovering planes and people clinging to them. If Bush had at least opted to organize a military coup led by some Ba'athist figures, as Britain usually does, he could have preserved his influence, been kinder to the region, and reduced costs in terms of blood and money.
British Policy in the Great Britain
Look at how Britain acted when it saw the popularity of Iranian Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh, after he passed the nationalization of oil with the mandate of parliament, nationalizing the Anglo-Iranian oil company "which has become part of British Petroleum today"; it did not deploy its armies nor declare war, but instead, in collaboration with the Americans, orchestrated a quiet coup dubbed by British intelligence "Operation Boot," and by Americans "Operation Ajax," which ousted Mossadegh in 1953 and installed General Fazlollah Zahedi in his place, restoring Mohammed Reza Pahlavi to take control himself. The same could be said a decade before that when they dismantled the Rashid Ali al-Kaylani movement in Iraq in 1941, restoring the regent and Nuri al-Said to power.
Even when wanting to gain an ally, they approached him with the most flattering of accolades, as the High Commissioner in Egypt, Henry McMahon, did when he wrote to Sharif Hussein bin Ali urging him against the Ottomans; he concluded his letter on August 30, 1915, stating that “His Majesty the King of Great Britain welcomes the restoration of the caliphate to the hands of a true Arab from the branches of that blessed prophetic lineage.”
And you would see the vast difference between soft deception and a crush, for it was only a few years until the other face was revealed; in a private message to Lord Hardinge on December 4, 1915, McMahon admitted he did not take the idea of an independent Arab state seriously, and then came the Sykes-Picot Agreement in 1916 to partition the lands even before freeing them. Their skill in containment was not a moral virtue, but rather a more tightly knitted predation; killing with a silk thread rather than a sword's edge.
This state of regional balances was brilliantly mastered by the English, and became a method in their system; they contained France after the fall of Napoleon at the Vienna Conference (1815), establishing a balance on the continent rather than crushing the defeated, which would create a new vendetta, and they supported the Ottoman Empire during the Crimean War (1853–1856) to curb the expansion of the Tsarist Russia, then they concluded the Anglo-Japanese alliance in 1902 and supplied Japan with arms and ships in its war with Russia (1904–1905) to stabilize the balance in the far east.
Moreover, consider how they handled the Ottoman Empire itself; they could have hastened its fall a long time ago, but they chose—over decades—to keep it weak and called it "the sick man," serving as a barrier between them and the Tsar’s expansion towards warm waters and straits; once their necessity from it was exhausted, they signaled its division as well. I assert that if another state, addicted to the weapon of power over negotiation, had been entrusted with what was entrusted to London, we would have seen a world war every two years.
The Defeated is Always Fond of the Victorious
We have learned that the French and Americans do not settle for occupying a country and plundering its resources; they yearn to impose their agenda and ideology on those they occupy by the force of domination, relying on the principle of the defeated being influenced by the victors, as Ibn Khaldun titled it in his Introduction: "the defeated is always fond of the victorious in his banner, attire, beliefs, and all his customs."
Furthermore, the dominance of populist politicians in the ruling arena in both states is characterized by their feeling of innate superiority, believing they have achieved a civilizational perfection, thus they perceive themselves as sent by God -even if the side of atheism and secularism prevails in them- to lead people out of the darkness of ignorance into the light of their civilization. France's colonialism is a good witness to this; it did not content itself with occupying Algeria for 130 years, but made it "a piece of France," which is far from the British, who seem busy in fragmenting peoples, establishing grudges and borders quietly and meekly, gentler than the sound of a feather hitting the ground.
Trump and Embracing What He Criticizes
We apply all this to the Iranian case and the American approach to it; you can see how Trump campaigned for the necessity of peace and negotiation, leaving wars behind, and criticized Bush and Obama for that; yet, after all this, he contradicts National Intelligence Director Tulsi Gabbard, who testified before Congress in March 2025 that the assessments of American agencies still indicate that Tehran is not working on developing a nuclear warhead, claiming, “She is wrong,” while Reuters reported from an informed source that the assessment has not changed, and that Iran needs up to three years to produce a launchable warhead. Imagine that the President of the largest country in the world does not even rely on his intelligence assessment; who then does he take advice from?
Then after all this, he requests a Nobel Peace Prize, complaining in a lengthy statement that he will not receive it no matter what he does, listing wars he claims to have extinguished: “I will not receive a Nobel Peace Prize for stopping the war between India and Pakistan, nor for stopping the war between Serbia and Kosovo, nor for preserving peace between Egypt and Ethiopia. No, I will not receive it whatever I do, but people know, and that is all that matters to me.”
This populism in discourse, which coursed through the veins of the new American state, especially in the Republican Party, which embraces the high-handed rhetoric calling for America to isolate itself while simultaneously protecting Israel, and facilitating its hegemony over the region, challenging world nations in imposing their visions even if they lead to evils; a policy like this would make it unsurprising if Trump's term were to end with a catastrophic world war.
Which is more sustainable for the king: a hand that pulls the strings of its foe from behind a curtain, or a fist that strikes his head, awakening a revenge in his breast that does not sleep? And which of these ancient emperors squandered their strength in a war whose beginning they knew but did not know where it would end?
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