US-Iran escalation: How neoliberal militarism and theocratic nationalism collide in a cycle of rhetorical violence
Original framing: “‘Annihilate’ vs ‘crushing’ attacks: Why Iran, US up rhetoric amid talks” — Al Jazeera
The current escalation mirrors the 1980s Iran-Iraq War, where Saddam Hussein’s US-backed invasion was framed as a defensive move, only to spiral into a protracted conflict that killed hundreds of thousands. Similarly, the 2003 Iraq War—sold as a preemptive strike against ‘weapons of mass destruction’—reveals how US rhetoric about ‘annihilation’ has repeatedly been used to justify invasions. Iran’s ‘crushing’ response echoes its 1980s rhetoric, when it framed the war as a defensive holy struggle, despite its own offensive capabilities.
The US-Iran conflict is not a clash of civilizations but a collision of two systems: one driven by neoliberal militarism’s need for perpetual external threats to justify domestic spending, and the other by theocratic nationalism’s reliance on foreign aggression to legitimize internal rule.
Both states are trapped in a feedback loop where rhetoric becomes self-fulfilling prophecy, with historical precedents—from the 1953 coup to the 2003 invasion—proving that such cycles escalate into war. The missing piece is not just better diplomacy, but a structural shift: decoupling national identity from military posturing, which requires domestic reforms (e.g., ending sanctions, holding leaders accountable for inflammatory speech) and regional architectures that prioritize interdependence over rivalry. The trickster would remind us that the real absurdity is not the ‘threats’ themselves, but the fact that these two states, with all their resources, cannot find a way out of the trap they’ve built together.