Strategic Review – April 10, 2026

If diplomacy is to succeed, whether in ending the conflict in Ukraine or in the Persian Gulf, then Washington needs to face up to the root cause of war.

Ultimately, that means the United States recognizing that its imperialist conduct is the cause of conflict. It also means the U.S. rulers coming to terms with the fact that they no longer have any authority or military dominance to assert their illegitimate will over other nations.

Talks are scheduled to begin this weekend in Islamabad between American and Iranian delegates to bring about an end to the 40-day war in the Middle East. A partial ceasefire that took effect this week is already jeopardized because of ongoing violations by Israel, which is carrying out massacres in Lebanon. Iran accuses the U.S. of sharing responsibility for the violations and, as a consequence, Tehran has again closed the Strait of Hormuz to global oil shipping.

The negotiations in Pakistan are supposed to build on a two-week ceasefire towards finding a peace deal. But with grave violations by the U.S.-Israeli side, it is doubtful if the tenuous diplomacy will go much further. Iran has warned that it is ready to resume military strikes against U.S. and Israeli assets, including oil and gas installations across the Persian Gulf. American President Donald Trump is also threatening to continue the war if Iran does not open the strategically vital shipping route.

Trump is in no position to demand anything. He is haunted by a political crisis at home from crashing poll ratings, uproar among his own voter base, and fallout from the Epstein pedophile scandal. Added to this is the mounting economic backlash from his reckless warmongering. Militarily, the U.S. has burned through a huge arsenal of weapons at a $30 billion cost that has left it out of ammo to wage more war on Iran. And all this for no strategic gain whatsoever. The global image of the United States has never been so tarnished, not since its defeat in the Vietnam War half a century ago.

The incontrovertible fact is that Iran retains control over the Hormuz Strait – the route for 20-30 per cent of globally shipped oil and other petrochemical commodities. This is Iran’s ace card, and the fact that Iran holds it assuredly shows which party actually won the military confrontation. Trump’s bragging about winning the war is empty rhetoric that makes him look even more absurd.

When Trump launched the war on February 28, he was issuing all sorts of imperious demands, from regime change to unconditional surrender. His subsequent claims that Iran was begging for a ceasefire are laughable. The devastating impact that the war was having on the global economy and the U.S. petrodollar system was forcing Trump into desperately seeking an exit from the conflict.

Iran magnanimously agreed to a ceasefire but with certain conditions, including a permanent end to U.S. aggression and military presence in the region, as well as Iran retaining control over the Strait of Hormuz, thereby creating a mechanism for financial reparations for the destruction wrought by Washington and its Israeli and Gulf Arab proxies.

Trump’s criminal misadventure – involving multiple war crimes and threats of genocide against Iran – has led to a historic watershed. Iran has destroyed the U.S. imperialist position in the Middle East, and there is no going back. For nearly five decades, since the Iranian revolution in 1979, the U.S. and its regional proxies have tried to defeat Iran through war, assassinations, economic terrorism, and subversion. That policy has now been demolished by Iran’s spectacular self-defense and defiance over the past 40 days.

The Iranian people have given their terms. The U.S. and its proxies must end the aggression permanently. Henceforth, the United States will not be permitted to continue encircling Iran with menacing threats. If Washington does not comply, Iran will ensure that its ace card over American imperial interests will be played again, this time with total determination. Trump once rebuked Ukraine’s puppet president, Zelensky, saying that he had “no cards to play”. How those words have rebounded on the arrogant big mouth in the White House.

However, and this is the essential conundrum, it is doubtful that the U.S. Empire can self-correct. Therefore, it is unlikely that the present ceasefire will hold and that diplomacy will succeed. For peace and diplomacy to succeed, it means the definitive end of U.S. aggression, which in turn means the end of U.S. imperialist conduct itself. Empires do not retire of their own accord or on request.

This brings us to the same situation in Ukraine. Trump’s much-vaunted talk over the past 12 months of seeking a peaceful resolution to that four-and-a-half-year conflict has not produced any viable result. It has dragged on because the chief protagonist, the United States, has not faced up to its responsibility for instigating the proxy war. Washington has instead tried to offload the problem to European vassals and the corrupt Kiev regime.

Russia has repeatedly warned that to end the war in Ukraine, there must be a genuine agreement on ending the root causes of that conflict. The root cause entails the policy of aggression that the U.S. and its NATO proxies have been pushing for decades to inflict a strategic defeat on Russia and to elicit regime change. If peace is to prevail, then the U.S. and its NATO vassals must respect Russia’s sovereign independence and negotiate a collective security arrangement for all.

This is what Iran is also saying with regard to the Persian Gulf. End the aggression, withdraw military forces from the region, and treat us with respect as a sovereign nation deserving of its full rights under international law and basic human morality.

What Russia and Iran are demanding is entirely reasonable and logical for the achievement of a peaceful international order. The problem is that the United States and its proxies are not reasonable, nor are they interested in genuine peace. Genuine peace is incompatible with imperialist ideology and conduct.

Iran has managed to contain the aggressor with formidable courage and power. Negotiations may also contain the Empire for a while. But ultimately, the only language a genocidal empire understands is defeat.

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