Post-Iran War: The End of an Era, Not to Decline, but as a Trigger to Abrupt Change

Alastair Crooke, 12 June 2026

Professor Michael Hudson, in a recent discussion, takes issue with those who speak today of the ‘decline of the US hegemon’. A decline implies something goes up and down, Hudson says, but it always recovers.“But there’s never been any such thing statistically as a cycle … There’s no decline, it’s a crash” —

“We’re seeing the ending of an era, not a decline, but an abrupt change. And this change is not stemming from without: The ending of the American power did not result from any foreign civil war or other war against American dominance. The end came from the United States itself in trying to juxtapose its interest as hegemon against that of every other country”.

Paradoxically, Professor Hudson says:

“Every move taken to escape US ‘decline’ has become the mechanism that delivers it. The US went to war to reassert dominance - and proved it could no longer dominate ... It waged forty years of maximum pressure to break Iran, and instead forged the very adversary that is now [facing down US domination]”.

In order to preserve America’s power, President Trump turned to trying to impose a series of choke points on the entire world economy “through controlling oil — because everybody needs it”, Hudson says.

That Trump went to war on Iran, on Russia and instituted the attempted chokehold on China, however, does not, in itself, constitute the full matrix of American power-preservation. That matrix is broader. But oil is one of its principal dimensions — as is the connected dollar hegemony. Trump clearly wants to consolidate global energy control in order for the US to determine who may have access to energy (i.e. not Iran, nor Russia, nor Cuba), and those whose energy supply will be squeezed to constrain competition potential (i.e. China).