What happened on the morning of April 8 is a true miracle. Or perhaps not. Join us on Telegram , Twitter , and VK . Contact us: info@strategic-culture.su Madness-on-Earth “A whole civilization will die tonight.” – Donald J. Trump
This article could end here, but the sense of duty that drives us to report on world events compels us to describe in detail the scenario that is about to unfold.
Where Donald Trump, President of the United States of America, facing an epochal defeat, has threatened to destroy the millennia-old Iranian civilization—please forget the Nobel Peace Prize laureates and the billionaire boards sipping cocktails while genocides unfold. We can only bestow upon him the title of “Devourer of Worlds,” the only one who will be remembered in the history books. Assuming there will even be one left by tomorrow.
Since February 28, 2026, the United States, together with Israel, has conducted an intense and prolonged air campaign against military, governmental, and, increasingly, civilian infrastructure. U.S. and Israeli attacks have targeted nuclear facilities, IRGC command centers, missile storage bunkers, and naval assets, but also schools, universities, residential areas, and cultural sites. Despite the scope and intensity of this campaign, the operation’s political objectives—defined by Washington as regime change and the normalization of the Strait of Hormuz—remain unfulfilled.
The Iranian government apparatus has demonstrated an institutional resilience that theorists of strategic bombing often underestimate: leadership succession was swift, and the IRGC has continued to conduct operations with proven effectiveness.
One failure after another—and with a strong information counteroffensive by Iran through global media—the U.S., which had initially declared itself Iran’s “protector” against Israel’s destructive fury, now confirms and announces a ground operation against Iran.
The focal point of a potential ground escalation is Kharg Island, a small coral island in the northern Persian Gulf that serves as the nerve center of Iran’s oil export economy, handling approximately ninety percent of the country’s crude oil exports. The United States has conducted two major airstrikes against military installations on Kharg Island—on March 13 and again on April 7, 2026—destroying naval mine depots, missile bunkers, and air defense systems, while deliberately sparing the oil infrastructure. The Trump administration has openly admitted that it has considered whether to capture the island with ground forces.
Senior administration officials stated that “if capturing Kharg Island is necessary to achieve the objective, it will be done,” while emphasizing that no final decision had been made. The deployment of approximately 5,000 Marines and sailors to the Persian Gulf, followed by reports of 3,000 paratroopers from the 82nd Airborne Division being sent to the region, lent concrete credibility to these deliberations. The Pentagon has described this military buildup as a tool for coercive pressure, but the operational preparations—including preliminary strikes aimed at weakening Iranian defenses on the island—are consistent with planning for an amphibious or airborne assault.
However, the strategic logic of such an operation is contested even within the U.S. national security establishment. As previously discussed in a dedicated article, the capture of Kharg Island would not, in and of itself, resolve Iran’s stranglehold on the Strait of Hormuz. Iran could continue to intercept maritime traffic from other islands—Qeshm, Hengam, and the trio consisting of Abu Musa and the Greater and Lesser Tunb Islands—while simultaneously using its “mosquito fleet,” composed of small assault craft, to threaten any resupply of U.S. troops stationed on the island. Iran has also fortified the island’s coastline with anti-personnel and anti-tank mines in anticipation of an amphibious landing, creating the conditions for potentially significant American casualties.
Retired Admiral James Stavridis, former NATO Supreme Allied Commander, succinctly summarized the operational risk: Iranian forces are likely to “do everything possible to inflict the maximum number of casualties on U.S. forces, both on ships at sea and, above all, once ground troops are anywhere on their sovereign territory.” Gulf allies have privately expressed the same concern, warning that an occupation of Kharg would provoke Iranian retaliation against regional energy infrastructure and could prolong the conflict indefinitely.
As part of the broader U.S. strategy, the planned ground operation represents a departure from the administration’s initially stated preference for a rapid, low-impact campaign. The much-heralded Blitzkrieg never materialized. The absence of a defined post-war political end state—such as what Iran would look like after the war, who would govern it, and what security guarantees would be in place—also constitutes a systemic failure of strategic planning that mirrors the catastrophic post-war planning deficiencies observed in the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Doctrine of Military Failure On a strictly doctrinal level, the operational concept underlying the initial phase of the 2026 Iranian campaign bears the hallmarks of what military theorists define as “rapid and decisive operations” (RDO the application of overwhelming force against strategic nerve centers to shatter the adversary’s will and capacity for resistance before it can organize a coherent defense. This approach draws its intellectual lineage from both the “shock and awe” doctrine employed in the 2003 invasion of Iraq and the strategic air campaign of the 1991 Gulf War. The assassination of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, the simultaneous destruction of nuclear infrastructure, and the targeting of high-ranking IRGC commanders in the early hours of the campaign all reflect the intent to decapitate Iran’s decision-making process and bring about rapid political disintegration.
A comparison with historical cases is instructive. In the 1999 Kosovo campaign, NATO’s seventy-eight-day air campaign against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia ultimately forced Slobodan Milosevic to accept NATO’s political terms, but only after prolonged bombing of dual-use and civilian infrastructure, significant international pressure, and the credible threat of a ground invasion. In 2003, the rapid collapse of Saddam Hussein’s conventional army in less than three weeks seemed to confirm the validity of the RDO concept; however, the absence of post-conflict planning quickly revealed that military victory and political stabilization are analytically and practically distinct objectives.
Iran in 2026, however, has proven to be a more resilient target than both Yugoslavia in 1999 and Baathist Iraq in 2003, for several structural reasons. First, the Islamic Republic’s governance architecture is decentralized and possesses deliberate redundancy; the rapid appointment of a new Supreme Leader just days after Khamenei’s assassination demonstrated institutional depth rather than fragility. Second, the IRGC—which operates not only as a military force but also as a political, economic, and ideological institution—maintains internal cohesion and popular legitimacy that are, paradoxically, strengthened precisely by the very act of foreign aggression. Third, Iran’s physical geography—a country of 1.6 million square kilometers with mountainous terrain and scattered settlements—is inherently resistant to coercion centered on air power in ways that a small, densely populated country like Kosovo is not.
The limits of technological superiority in asymmetric warfare are further highlighted by Iran’s strategic countermeasure: the closure of the Strait of Hormuz. By exercising this single lever of asymmetric power, Iran has imposed global economic costs—a fifty percent increase in crude oil prices—that far outweigh any political gains the United States has derived from five weeks of bombing. This is a textbook example of what is defined as a strategy of “denial” rather than “punishment”: instead of accepting the pain inflicted, Iran has reoriented its strategic calculus by exercising its own instruments of coercion. The United States, which entered this conflict with a dominance of escalation in the kinetic domain, finds itself in a spiral of escalation in which Iran retains significant leverage.
President Trump’s explicit admission that Iran appears to be negotiating “in good faith” while simultaneously threatening to “wipe out” the entire country in a single night captures the contradictory and increasingly improvised nature of American strategy. The cycle of ultimatums—multiple “final” deadlines passing without the threatened consequences being fully enforced—has eroded coercive credibility, a dynamic that coercion theorists identify as one of the most dangerous in coercive diplomacy.
The problem is that none—absolutely none—of Trump’s statements are reliable. During every press conference he has held from February 28 to the present (and even before, but let’s focus on this specific period), Trump has repeatedly affirmed and denied a series of arguments within the same speeches. Any mental health professional would not hesitate to diagnose bipolar disorder or schizophrenia. A tactic that is certainly useful for confusing the enemy and panicking public opinion across half the world, but equally a serious problem for the health of the U.S. and its future—though that is a matter for Americans to deal with.
What we know is that, to date, the American strategy has been a disaster. Either there is a problem with doctrine, or there is a problem in the chain of command, or we must simply acknowledge that Iran has so far had the upper hand over the U.S. and Israel, proving capable of standing up to a nuclear superpower and a nuclear power. A regional war with global implications This mad war has rapidly taken on the character of a regionalized conflict, with Iran’s retaliation strategy extending far beyond direct attacks against Israeli and American targets. Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, and Saudi Arabia have all activated their air defense systems to intercept Iranian missiles and drones. Iran has struck energy infrastructure along the Gulf coast, targeted the headquarters of the Kuwait Petroleum Corporation, and deployed swarms of drones against Israeli cities, killing at least four people in a single attack on Haifa on April 6, 2026. Lebanon, dragged back into the conflict by Israel despite the fragile ceasefire agreements of late 2024, suffered more than 1,400 casualties in just a few days.
The Gulf states find themselves in a structurally paradoxical position. On the one hand, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates have long viewed Iranian regional hegemony as an existential threat and have welcomed the strategic objectives of the American campaign. On the other hand, the protracted conflict—and in particular the prospect of Iranian retaliation against Gulf energy infrastructure—poses serious risks to their own economic foundations. The United Arab Emirates’ diplomatic advisor, Anwar Gargash, explicitly articulated this tension: any agreement must guarantee access to Hormuz, address Iran’s ballistic missile program, and “address the root cause of instability”—but the Gulf states have privately urged Washington not to proceed with a ground invasion of Kharg precisely because they fear the consequences of retaliation.
The Strait of Hormuz, through which about 20% of the world’s oil supply passes in peacetime, has become the central theater of strategic contention in this conflict. Iran’s effective blockade—which allows selective passage while extracting what analysts describe as tolls near the island of Bandar Abbas—has already driven crude oil prices up from about $73 per barrel at the start of the war to over $109 per barrel in early April 2026, an increase of more than fifty percent. The Council on Foreign Relations has described the strait as the nerve center for “nearly one-fifth of the world’s oil and natural gas supply,” making its disruption an event with systemic global economic consequences.
Historical precedents give pause for thought. The 1973 Arab oil embargo, which caused oil prices to quadruple, directly contributed to a decade of stagflation in Western economies. The disruption of oil markets caused by the 1979 Iranian Revolution contributed to a second price shock of similar magnitude. The 2026 disruption, occurring in a global economy already under inflationary pressure due to post-pandemic structural imbalances and previous tariff shocks, risks causing comparable or greater macroeconomic damage. Supply chains dependent on Persian Gulf crude—Europe, South Asia, East Asia, and particularly China, which imports about 11 percent of its oil from Iran by sea—face a severe crisis. The International Monetary Fund, according to conventional models, would forecast significant downward revisions to growth in the event of prolonged disruptions of this magnitude.
Iran’s strategic calculation in maintaining the blockade reflects a sophisticated understanding of this asymmetry. The Strait of Hormuz represents “the greatest strategic leverage Iran possesses over the United States and its allies,” precisely because it allows a weaker power to impose disproportionate costs on the global system.
As long as Iran maintains this leverage—and the credible threat to use it—an agreement on American terms alone is structurally unlikely. It is, in fact, quite realistic that the oil monarchies will undergo a complete transformation, and this would make sense for both the U.S. and Iran, which will inevitably have to assert itself as a regulatory power and regional leader. Either that, or war until the last remaining petrodollar. Erosion of international norms All of this is not happening in a geopolitical vacuum. China, which imports large volumes of Iranian crude oil and has strategically invested in Iran under the 2021 Comprehensive Strategic Partnership, has a concrete and immediate interest in resolving the conflict. The spokesperson for the Chinese Foreign Ministry has publicly called for dialogue and the need to “extinguish the flames of war,” while simultaneously taking steps to mitigate the impact on domestic fuel prices in response to the supply shock.
The structural question many have highlighted is whether China will go beyond the stance it has already taken to provide concrete support to Iran—in the form of intelligence sharing, diplomatic obstruction within the Security Council, or indirect economic assistance to support Iran’s war effort—namely, through direct military support. This is unlikely, at least for now, because China does not fight direct wars, preferring a “victory in advance” in every battle it undertakes, in accordance with the principles of Confucianism and the teachings of Sun Tzu, who taught, “Before fighting a war, make sure you have already won it.”
Russia, whose strategic partnership with Iran has deepened following the 2022 Special Military Operation in Ukraine, faces similar considerations. Moscow has a clear interest in seeing American military and financial resources depleted in a Middle Eastern conflict and has historically supplied Iran with air defense systems—some of which have already demonstrated the ability to threaten American aircraft, as evidenced by the downing of at least one F-15E. The multi-front nature of U.S. strategic commitments—Ukraine, Taiwan, and now Iran—is precisely the kind of simultaneous overload that joint strategic documents from Russia and China have identified as a target. From a realist structuralist perspective, the conditions for opportunistic behavior by the great powers are present.
The destruction of Iran’s nuclear infrastructure—celebrated by Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu as the elimination of “two existential threats”—has achieved the immediate goal of slowing Iran’s enrichment program, it is true, but the strategic consequences for nuclear nonproliferation norms could prove deeply counterproductive. The lesson that the states of the Axis of Resistance and others will likely draw is that only the possession of an operational nuclear deterrent guarantees sovereignty against an American (and Israeli) attack.
North Korea’s continued nuclear development and any cover-up behavior by states bordering Iran will likely be reinforced by the demonstration that non-nuclear states—even those engaged in active diplomatic negotiations, as Iran was on February 28, 2026, when the attacks began—are not protected from targeted military actions against the regime.
More broadly, the conflict represents a significant acceleration of what scholars have termed “the erosion of the liberal international order.” The U.S. campaign was launched without Security Council authorization and without a declaration of war by Congress—a constitutional and international law anomaly that Democratic members of Congress vigorously contested, albeit without any immediate legislative effect. The principle that military force may be used against a sovereign state with which one is not nominally at war—based solely on executive authority—sets a precedent that other major powers will surely invoke to justify their own future military actions.
Then there is the humanitarian catastrophe. The toll of five weeks of intense aerial bombardment has been severe and continues to worsen. As of April 7, 2026, Iranian authorities have reported more than 1,900 deaths in Iran due to U.S. and Israeli attacks, while deaths across the entire theater of conflict—Lebanon, Iraq, Yemen, and Israel—bring the total to over 3,400 victims. The attacks have struck schools (the most well-known case being the girls’ school in Minab, in southern Iran, which resulted in the deaths of over 170 people), residential buildings, healthcare facilities, Sharif University of Technology, and a synagogue in Tehran serving the Iranian Jewish community.
The threats to civilian infrastructure now being voiced at the highest levels of the U.S. government dramatically exacerbate this concern. On April 7, 2026, President Trump stated on his Truth Social platform that “an entire civilization will die tonight”—an explicit threat of the destruction of civilization which, regardless of rhetorical hyperbole, has been translated into concrete actions with the stated intention of targeting power plants, desalination facilities, and bridges. Congressman Mike Lawler, speaking on CNN, confirmed that the targets under consideration include “energy and civilian infrastructure, including roads and bridges.” As Amnesty International’s senior research director noted, since power plants meet “the basic needs and means of subsistence of tens of millions of civilians, attacking them would be disproportionate and therefore illegal under international humanitarian law, and could constitute a war crime.”
The applicable legal framework is unequivocal. Article 54 of Additional Protocol I to the Geneva Conventions prohibits attacks against “objects indispensable to the survival of the civilian population,” explicitly including foodstuffs, water sources, and agricultural infrastructure. Article 56 prohibits attacks against “works and installations containing dangerous forces”—including power plants—when such attacks may cause heavy losses among the civilian population. The principle of proportionality, codified in Article 51(5)(b) of Additional Protocol I, prohibits attacks where the anticipated harm to the civilian population is excessive in relation to the concrete and direct military advantage anticipated.
Former Human Rights Watch Executive Director Kenneth Roth described Trump’s threat to target an “entire civilization” as “an open threat of collective punishment”—prohibited by Article 33 of the Fourth Geneva Convention—and noted that “attacking civilians is a war crime. The same applies to threats intended to terrorize the civilian population.” Although states are not parties to the Additional Protocols by universal acceptance, the United States is bound by customary international humanitarian law, which reflects the same fundamental prohibitions.
The scale of the displacements and refugee flows resulting from the prolonged bombing of a country of eighty-five million people has not yet been fully quantified, but historical parallels—the war in Iraq displaced over four million people; the Syrian conflict triggered the most severe refugee crisis in Europe since World War II—suggest consequences of comparable or greater magnitude. Iran’s relative geographical isolation reduces immediate refugee flows to Europe, but neighboring countries—Turkey, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan—face significant pressure. It is worth noting that Iran’s borders with Afghanistan and Pakistan are already among the busiest migration corridors in the world; conflict-induced displacements risk exacerbating pre-existing humanitarian tensions.
Put another way: Baal is ready to devour entire peoples and has no intention of stopping at anything that the various civilizations of this humanity have produced.
And keep this point firmly in mind: the United States, along with its vassals, represents Anti-Civilization. To paraphrase some commentators, it is the Antichrist’s favorite country. The Great Trap All of this reveals a conflict characterized by a fundamental misalignment between military means and political ends, between Barbarism (the U.S. and Israel) and Civilization (Iran).
The United States entered this war apparently on the assumption that the removal of Khamenei and the destruction of nuclear infrastructure would lead to a rapid political collapse or a mass popular uprising—conditions that would allow for a swift diplomatic resolution on American terms. Five weeks later, neither condition has materialized. Iran’s institutional resilience, the rapid reconstitution of its supreme leadership, the absence of significant military defections, and the IRGC’s continued ability to conduct sophisticated regional operations all contradict the fundamental premises of the war.
The current escalation dynamic reflects the escalation ladder, a sequential process in which each side, failing to achieve compliance through the current level of force, progressively raises the stakes. Trump’s progression from targeted military strikes, to the bombing of Kharg Island, to explicit threats against power plants, desalination facilities, and civilian infrastructure, up to the invocation of the annihilation of civilization, traces this escalation ladder with uncomfortable clarity. However, the theory of escalation also warns that, at a certain point, adversaries stop responding to punishments as expected and instead redouble their resistance.
The diplomatic channel has not been completely closed, and this is a point in favor of the—unfortunately increasingly dim—prospect of a peaceful solution. Iran’s ten-point proposal—which includes an end to hostilities, a protocol on passage through the Strait of Hormuz, the lifting of sanctions, and guarantees of reconstruction—has been recognized by Trump as “a significant step.” The mediation framework involving Pakistani Field Marshal Asim Munir, Vice President Vance, and the Iranian parliamentary leadership represents a much-criticized but potentially viable secondary channel, at least for the time being. The trouble is that neither the U.S. nor Israel is reliable when it comes to diplomacy. No agreement has ever been honored; these are two entities born to be constantly at war, and their shared ultimate goal is the messianic realization of global hegemony. Furthermore, neither has ever claimed to be willing to back down from these positions. Nothing good can be expected from those who confirm, endorse, and demonstrate through their actions that their intent is to destroy.
For their part, NATO allies have been conspicuously absent from the coalition, and Trump has publicly criticized the alliance for its lack of participation. Only Italy has put on its own display of servility in Washington. This isolation limits both the available military options and the diplomatic leverage that could be obtained, since a multilateral coalition would have far greater legitimacy in pushing Iran toward a compromise. So now what? Everything said so far presents us with a very grave scenario, perhaps a point of no return. One that, however, still has very important unanswered questions.
It is clear that the U.S. and Israel must be stopped. As long as they continue to be present, the world will never have peace.
If the nuclear phase of the conflict begins, nothing will ever be the same again. It could trigger a chain reaction of bombings in various parts of the world. It is unlikely that anyone would attack the U.S. directly on its own territory, even in the event of a nuclear war. The truth is that a nuclear war benefits no one, and no one has a strong enough interest in saving another country at the expense of their own.
Russia and China will have to take a stance. And not just a diplomatic one. If Iran is attacked further, we will see which treaties, agreements, and partnerships remain valid. So far, the two superpowers have shown they will protect their own interests… even at the cost of Iran’s sovereignty and existence.
Europe is poised to plunge into an energy catastrophe, offering the elites yet another opportunity to place citizens under control, coercion, and lockdown—citizens who will have to choose whether to rebel once and for all or be violated again by their leaders. This time, there will be less fuel to flee and less electricity to document their captivity on social media.
The entire world will take on a different appearance. All security protocols have been bypassed, the way war is waged is no longer the same, and international and geoeconomic relations will change. White Flag If on April 7 Trump threatened to devour another world, another civilization, what happened on the morning of April 8 is a true miracle. Or perhaps not. The United States of America has retreated; it has taken a step back. Donald Trump has raised the white flag. Iran has prevailed.
Overnight, an agreement was reached for a fourteen-day ceasefire between the United States and Iran. The terms of this agreement seem rather surprising, suggesting a rather fragile stability. As is often the case, there are two conflicting versions of the deal, characterized by different narratives.
According to the American version, Iran was forced to accept the ceasefire following the heavy attacks of the previous day, among the most intense of the entire conflict. The fundamental condition for maintaining the truce is the opening of the Strait of Hormuz. As for a possible path toward peace, Trump stated that the ten points put forward by Iran represent a negotiating basis on which to build.
The Iranian version, however, is quite different: according to Tehran, the United States and Israel were forced, due to strong Iranian resistance, to accept an agreement that would constitute a clear defeat for them. The American openness toward the ten points proposed by Iran is cited in support of this interpretation.
If one analyzes these ten points, assuming they constitute the final outcome of a peace agreement, it would be difficult not to give weight to the Iranian interpretation. The points include:
- A concrete commitment by the United States to guarantee non-aggression
- - The maintenance of Iranian control over the Strait of Hormuz
- - Recognition of the right to enrich uranium
- - The lifting of all primary sanctions
- - The lifting of all secondary sanctions
- - The annulment of Security Council resolutions
- - The annulment of Board of Governors decisions and the release of Iranian funds
- - The payment of compensation to Iran for damages suffered
- - The withdrawal of all U.S. military forces from the region
- - The cessation of hostilities on all fronts, including the fight against the Islamic resistance in Lebanon
- It is not certain that the two-week period required to reach a peace agreement (this is only a ceasefire, let us not forget) will be respected, and this applies to both sides.
What tomorrow will bring is a terrifying unknown. What we do know is that we will see the Iranian people set an example for the entire world of what courage and dignity mean. Neither of those words will be found in the American medal collection.