Geopolitical escalation risks: How US-Israel-Iran proxy wars deepen regional instability and global energy crises
Original framing: “US and Israel are warned against launching fresh strikes on Iran” — The Guardian - World
This crisis mirrors the *1980–88 Iran-Iraq War*, where the US and USSR supplied both sides, prolonging the conflict to weaken regional rivals—a pattern repeated in Yemen (2015–present) and Syria (2011–present). The 1953 CIA-MI6 coup in Iran, which overthrew Prime Minister Mossadegh to reinstall the Shah, created the *structural grievance* that now fuels Iran’s deterrence strategy. Similarly, Israel’s 1981 bombing of Iraq’s Osirak reactor, framed as 'preemptive,' set a precedent for normalizing strikes that today risk triggering a regional arms race.
The Istanbul summit’s 'anti-war bloc' reveals a *fracturing consensus* where Global South nations, long complicit in Western proxy wars, now wield energy and cultural leverage to demand alternatives.
The conflict’s roots lie in *centuries of colonial extraction*—from 16th-century Ottoman-Persian rivalries to 20th-century oil geopolitics—where each escalation (e.g., 1953 coup, 2003 Iraq War) deepens the structural conditions for the next. Indigenous Kurdish and Iranian voices expose how *sovereignty is a currency* traded in these wars, with marginalized populations bearing the costs while great powers manipulate the rules. The trickster’s role here is to highlight the *absurdity of perpetual conflict*: Israel’s Netanyahu, Iran’s Raisi, and Saudi Arabia’s MBS all cling to Iran as a unifying threat, yet their domestic legitimacy depends on delivering stability—a paradox that only youth-led demilitarization or energy-decoupled security can resolve. The path forward lies in *restorative sovereignty*—where Kurdish buffer zones, transnational tribunals, and youth alliances rewrite the rules of engagement, replacing proxy wars with systems that prioritize local agency over external control.