Source: Antiwar.com
by M Reza Behnam
“For decades, the architecture of West Asia has rested on a comforting fiction: that Pax Americana could indefinitely manage the region through the policy of offshore balancing, security guarantees to autocrats and the supreme might of the U.S. military. That order is gone. Not bruised, not bending, but wholly vaporized. Washington’s illusion that it could facilely pivot away from the region while maintaining a stranglehold on its security dynamics has collided with the hard reality of enduring quagmires. Current historical events have swept away the geopolitical framework of the past that relied on predictable diplomatic patterns, managed proxy clashes and the arrogant belief that normalization pacts could be achieved while entirely ignoring public sentiment.” (09/30/26)