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The strikes on Iran today – February 28, 2026 – mark a grim milestone in the unravelling of American imperial legitimacy. In a joint operation codenamed ‘Roaring Lion’ by Israel and ‘Epic Fury’ by the United States, the forces of both countries bombarded targets across Tehran, Isfahan, Qom, Karaj and other sites, aiming to cripple Iran’s nuclear and missile capabilities while openly calling for regime change.

US President Donald Trump, speaking from the White House, declared the launch of ‘major combat operations’ to ‘eliminate imminent threats’ and deliver ‘a safe nation’ – rhetoric eerily reminiscent of the pretexts used for Iraq in 2003, yet delivered with even less pretence of multilateral restraint or diplomatic exhaustion. Trump explicitly urged Iranians to ‘take over your government’, framing the strikes as an opportunity for internal upheaval that could end the regime ‘for generations’.

These attacks came amid ongoing diplomatic channels, however strained, and despite repeated Iranian signals of willingness to negotiate limits on its programme in exchange for sanctions relief. The timing is no accident. It exposes the bipartisan continuity of US primacy politics, now turbocharged under Trumpism. What was sold to the American worker as ‘America First’ restraint – a rejection of liberal elite-driven forever wars in the wake of Iraq and Afghanistan’s catastrophes – has revealed itself as merely a tactical pivot. The ruling class, through its foreign policy establishment, liberal and conservative alike, has long pursued global hegemony.

MAGA was never a genuine break but a populist rebranding designed to rally a disillusioned base behind a slightly more brazen, less veiled version of the same strategy.

This pattern echoes a darker chapter in US history: the repeated negotiation and subsequent violation of treaties with Native American nations. Time and again, the United States entered into solemn agreements recognising tribal sovereignty and land rights – often when Native resistance was strong or settler expansion required temporary pacification – only to break them as military superiority grew or economic imperatives such as land acquisition, resources and railroads demanded.

Treaties such as Fort Laramie (1851 and 1868) promised vast territories to the Sioux and Plains tribes, yet were undermined by gold rushes and military campaigns leading to reservations and massacres such as Wounded Knee. Forced pacts in the Southeast, including the Treaty of New Echota (1835) with the Cherokee, paved the way for the Trail of Tears. These were not aberrations but structural features of settler-colonial logic: negotiate from expediency when weak, renege when strong and justify betrayal as progress towards ‘civilisation’.

Today’s diplomacy with Iran – signals of negotiation........

© The Wire