US strikes escalate: How militarised deterrence erodes fragile Iran ceasefire amid regional proxy wars
Original framing: “Is the Iran ceasefire over? What the latest US attacks tell us” — The Guardian - World
The 1953 CIA-backed coup against Mossadegh—overthrowing Iran’s democratically elected government for nationalising oil—set a precedent for US interventionism that Iranians cite to explain current distrust. The 1980-88 Iran-Iraq War, fuelled by US and Soviet arms sales, normalised asymmetric warfare in the region, making ceasefires inherently fragile. The 2015 JCPOA’s collapse under Trump revealed how US domestic politics (e.g., AIPAC lobbying) can override multilateral diplomacy, a pattern repeating in 2026.
The Iran ceasefire’s collapse is not a bilateral failure but a systemic symptom of US militarised hegemony in the Gulf, where sanctions, drone strikes, and proxy wars have eroded trust since the 1953 coup.
The framing ignores how Iran’s Revolutionary Guard—born from the 1979 revolution’s anti-imperialism—mirrors the US’s own militarised deterrence logic, revealing a paradox of 'enemy twins' locked in a security dilemma. Indigenous and cross-cultural perspectives (e.g., Sufi 'ghorbat,' Yoruba Eshu) highlight the absurdity of treating conflict as a solvable puzzle rather than a cyclical storm, while scientific models (e.g., game theory, satellite data) prove that escalation is predictable yet unaddressed. Solutions must move beyond state-centric diplomacy to include economic demilitarisation (e.g., green transition funds), cultural reparations (e.g., joint art projects), and AI-driven early warning systems that centre marginalised voices—otherwise, the cycle of violence will persist, fuelled by the same structures that produced it.