Comments and analysis from Russian and regional sources portray the confrontation between the US and Iran not as a demonstration of American dominance, but as a series of miscalculations and constraints revealing Washington’s vulnerability. Column after column highlights an “epic failure” in actions against Iran, questions the US ability to wage a prolonged conflict, and discusses how confident rhetorical moves and Tehran’s strategic flexibility are shifting the balance of power in the Middle East. Taken together, these pieces paint a picture in which the US no longer appears an unquestioned hegemon but is forced to reckon with limits to its military and political role in the region, while Iran uses both diplomatic and military tools to contain and reshape American initiatives. This material was prepared based on publications from aif.ru (Russia) and www.independent.co.uk (South Africa).
Iran’s Deadlock for the US and the Collapse of the Superpower Image
A publication in Argumenty i Fakty headlined about “15 points of US shame,” referenced in the piece on aif.ru, offers the Russian reader not merely another episode of the Middle East crisis but a story of Washington’s “epic failure.” The US–Iran conflict is presented as a symbolic moment of the collapse of the unipolar model and the demystification of the American war machine, which, the author implies, is no longer capable of a rapid, unpunished blitzkrieg.
The central figure in the text is political scientist Vladimir Shapovalov, deputy director of the Institute of History and Politics at Moscow State Pedagogical University. His stance is built on sharp distrust of Western sources and the interpretation of events as an information-propaganda game by the United States. He demonstratively questions the objectivity of The New York Times, saying it cannot be considered an “objective source” and allowing that publications about the supposed “15 points” of US proposals to Iran might be fake. At the same time, he argues that the very fact of such a “leak” is useful: a signal of US weakness and a sign that Washington is forced to seek a way out of an inconvenient war.
Shapovalov reinterprets any possible back-channel negotiations between the US and Iran not as normal diplomatic processes but as a desperate attempt to “save face” and present the campaign’s result as a victory. Washington, he claims, has a “vital” need to declare itself the victor and to “sell the legend” of having eliminated Iran’s nuclear threat. This emphasizes the propagandistic nature of American policy: what matters is not the real outcome but its media packaging for domestic and international audiences.
According to this logic, Trump’s initial plan for a swift blitzkrieg against Iran failed. Instead of a quick military operation, a protracted confrontation arose which, Shapovalov stresses, has already inflicted “economic, political and geopolitical costs” on the US. Washington has become embroiled in a conflict it cannot exit without losing face, and the intended deterrent effect and show of force have backfired — revealing the limitations of a superpower’s capabilities.
For a Russian audience, this perspective is especially advantageous and resonates with dominant narratives. Emphasizing the failure of a “lightning war” by the US echoes Russia’s image of its own resilience under sanctions and military pressure. The recurring motif is that Western coercion no longer works as it once did, and attempts to “punish,” “break” or “intimidate” fail to achieve the desired result. Thus, the conflict with Iran becomes part of a broader scheme in which the US is gradually losing the ability to impose its will.
A separate layer is energy. The Strait of Hormuz and control over oil and gas flows tie into an issue sensitive to Russia’s interests in commodity markets. Shapovalov directly links talk of US–Iran talks to an attempt to “bring down energy prices and calm the markets.” In his reading, Washington is trying both to avoid a full-scale crisis in the Strait of Hormuz that would hit the global economy and to maintain the appearance of control over the situation. For the Russian reader, this fits a familiar picture: American policy again appears as an instrument of control over the global energy market, often at the expense of other suppliers’ interests, including Russia’s.
The piece pays particular attention to how the US is supposedly squeezed between Iran’s hardline position and Israel’s expectations. Israel, in this logic, is not going to quickly wind down military actions and pushes Washington toward a tougher scenario, while Iran demonstrates a willingness to respond “symmetrically,” capable of striking the region’s energy infrastructure. Responsibility for escalation in the Strait of Hormuz is effectively shifted onto Washington. Iran, by contrast, is depicted as a rational player that, possessing escalation capabilities, uses them as a tool of deterrence and bargaining rather than mindless aggression. This indirectly legitimizes Iranian resistance and justifies Russia’s policy of rapprochement with Tehran and its critical stance toward sanctions.
The text constantly relies on images and historical echoes familiar to the Russian public. The key comparison is the “collapse of the US blitzkrieg.” This is a deliberate allusion both to the Soviet experience of repelling Hitler’s blitzkrieg and to the West’s modern “protracted wars” in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya. The American strategy is described as naive and adventurous: betting on a quick defeat and imposing a political solution turns into long-running conflicts that increase instability and undermine the prestige of the US.
Another persistent motif is the “legend” and manipulation around weapons of mass destruction. Shapovalov and the article’s voice draw a direct parallel with the 2003 Iraq campaign, when the myth of WMD in Baghdad served as a formal casus belli. Now, in their view, the US is again using the narrative of an Iranian “nuclear threat” to justify strikes, sanctions and diplomatic pressure. The public is offered a simple story: there was a terrible threat, Washington decisively intervened and “protected the world.” This is the “legend” that the American elite supposedly must “sell” to the world and to their own voters, hiding the real failure of the blitzkrieg.
Equally important is the pervasive skepticism toward Western media. The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and other major outlets are presented not as independent information sources but as participants in an information war, embedded in a general propaganda mechanism. The pronounced distrust of them, characteristic of the Russian media context, is foregrounded here. The aif.ru piece integrates this distrust into the broader story of the “debunking” of American hegemony: if the West’s flagship media are seen as tools of pressure, then Russian and Iranian resistance automatically looks more justified.
Behind all this is a direct connection to current Russian positioning in world politics. The US appears as a power that can no longer “simply” win and exit a conflict without reputational losses. Every new crisis — from Iraq and Afghanistan to the current confrontation with Iran — is described as a step toward “America’s fall from the pedestal.” Simultaneously, it is emphasized that the US is losing control not only over military dynamics (the war did not become a blitzkrieg) but also over the economy (Washington is unable to truly “calm the markets”) and over its allies (Israel, in this view, continues its own course without much regard for White House interests).
Against this backdrop, Russia appears to the domestic audience as more “composed” and consistent. Unlike the US, which gets stuck in conflicts, Moscow is portrayed as a player capable of dialoguing with Tehran and other regional forces, balancing interests and avoiding demonstrative blitzkriegs. This contrast reinforces Russia’s self-image as one of the pillars of an emerging multipolar world where American hegemony is eroding and space for “non-Western” powers is expanding.
It is important that the Argumenty i Fakty article consciously abandons journalistic neutrality. Factual elements — Trump’s ultimatums, discussion of mythical or real “15 points,” Iran’s reaction, the risk of escalation in the Strait of Hormuz — are used only as a backdrop for an emotionally charged interpretation. Lexical choices such as “epic failure,” “15 points of shame,” and “legend” are set from the start and guide the reader’s perception in the authors’ intended direction. Alternative interpretations of Washington’s motives, American or at least neutral assessments, are practically absent: the “frame of US defeat” is not disputed or problematized.
As a result, the piece serves an obvious domestic political and ideological function. It strengthens entrenched Russian skepticism toward the US and Western media, supports an anti-hegemonic discourse and legitimizes sympathy for Iran as a country “that does not make concessions” and demonstrates the ability to push back against the “superpower.” In this presentation, the US–Iran conflict becomes a clear example of how Washington is losing its monopoly on force and information dominance, and the world is gradually shifting to a system in which “non-Western” players have more room for resistance and independent action.
It is in this light that the aif.ru article appears not merely as commentary on another turn of the Middle East crisis but as part of a larger narrative about the erosion of American hegemony, an energy confrontation and the right of other centers of power to challenge Washington’s claims to sole superpower status.
Iran, the US and the Global South: How the Conflict in the Persian Gulf Is Read from South Africa
A British The Independent piece on the US–Iran confrontation, rising oil prices and Donald Trump’s rhetoric in the context of the Persian Gulf describes a storyline familiar to Western audiences: the risk of military escalation, oil market volatility, statements by American politicians, their impact on US domestic politics and the broader security architecture in the Middle East. However, when this material is viewed from a South African context, the perspective shifts: the question of “who wins the US–Iran showdown” gives way to “whose risks are these,” “how this affects the Global South” and “what this says about the limits of US power in a changing world order.”
From a South African point of view, the confrontation between Washington and Tehran in the waters of the Strait of Hormuz is not a local Middle Eastern skirmish but another episode demonstrating the limits of US military power as a tool of global governance and how vulnerable dependent economies of the Global South are to external energy and financial shocks. The Independent’s focus on rising oil prices and market jitters directly points out that any hint of a blockade in the Strait of Hormuz immediately affects commodity quotes on global exchanges. For London or Washington this is primarily a macroeconomic and geopolitical story; for Pretoria it is a hit to the pocket: South Africa is a net importer of oil and petroleum products, and any sustained rise in oil prices directly pushes up inflation, weakens the rand, and raises transport and electricity costs.
In this sense, news about Trump’s rhetoric — his promises of a “tough response” to Iran and statements that Tehran allegedly “fears admitting it is seeking negotiations” — which sway oil prices, in the South African interpretation look like an example of how domestic political games in the US convert into real costs for countries not involved in the conflict. If The Independent analyzes such rhetoric in the logic of the US election scene and debates over foreign policy, in South Africa it is perceived as confirmation of an imbalance: unilateral actions by a superpower can become a shock for the entire Global South, leaving those countries without mechanisms to influence the situation.
The political spectrum within South Africa traditionally shades reactions to such crises across several lines. The official and pro-government camp — primarily the African National Congress and parts of the executive — prefers the language of “balance”: acknowledging “legitimate security interests of all parties” while harshly criticizing unilateral US sanctions as instruments of coercion. In the spirit of how South Africa positions itself in the UN and BRICS, calls for multilateral diplomacy and political settlement instead of military threats and sanctioning suffocation typically sound. An escalation in the Persian Gulf like that described in The Independent is interpreted as an illustration of the limit of US military power: even with technical superiority, Washington is unable to build a stable order, and protracted crises become the norm.
Opposition and more liberal forces — the Democratic Alliance and parts of the expert community — are more cautious in direct criticism of Washington, but their emphasis also shifts from ideological assessment to pragmatism: any regional war around Hormuz or Iran is dangerous primarily as a blow to the global economy and trade routes. They stress that for an energy-importing economy like South Africa’s, stability of supplies and predictability of oil prices are questions of survival for the middle and poor classes. In this context, the details The Independent points to — price fluctuations in response to Trump’s statements and moves by Iranian leadership, possible risks to shipping in the Strait of Hormuz, nervousness among insurers and logistics firms — become for South Africa a direct projection onto future domestic inflation, tariffs and economic growth rates.
Leftists, trade unions and activist movements — from the EFF to Palestinian and anti-imperialist networks — view the Iran–US confrontation through the lens of “global resistance to American imperialism.” For them, Tehran’s rhetoric of standing up to external pressure resonates with their own historical memory of the struggle against apartheid, selective Western sanctions, and Western capitals’ support for “convenient” regimes in Africa during the Cold War. Theses that in the British piece are packaged in the language of international security and “containment” easily translate on the South African street into language about inequality, neocolonialism and “double standards” in the application of international law.
South Africa’s historical experience with sanctions plays a special role. When The Independent describes Western sanctions pressure on Iran as part of a Western strategy, Pretoria inevitably recalls two layers: the sanctions campaign against South Africa during apartheid and modern restrictive measures against Russia and a number of Global South states. From this past arises a persistent distrust of sanctions as a “neutral” legal tool: South African analysts tend to see them as a political weapon that rarely leads to peace and reform but often strengthens hardline and conservative forces inside targeted countries, pushing them toward more radical courses.
All this fits into a broader picture in which South Africa sees itself as part of an emerging multipolar world. Unlike the Western focus on how the crisis around Iran affects the US’s status as “leader of the free world,” the South African perspective emphasizes that the unipolar moment after the Cold War is passing and that US attempts to impose its will by force are colliding with growing capacities of regional powers and alternative centers of power. In this sense, any demonstration that the US cannot unilaterally resolve the Iranian issue — as indirectly evidenced by the prolonged rounds of pressure, Tehran’s countersteps, episodes of escalation and setbacks described in The Independent — is perceived in South Africa as confirmation of the trend of waning American hegemony.
This trend is directly linked to the growing role of BRICS and the BRICS+ format. For the South African establishment, participation alongside China, Russia, India and Brazil — and now an expanded circle of states — is not only an economic but also a political-symbolic resource: the ability to balance Western influence, secure better terms of trade and credit, and build diplomatic formats that do not depend on Washington’s or Brussels’ will. The US–Iran conflict, which in the British account appears as a threat of regional war and a challenge for US Middle East allies, from a South African perspective fits into the narrative that in the new world order space for maneuver for Global South countries may expand — but the cost of others’ mistakes and foreign wars for them also increases.
Finally, there is a difference in scale of attention. If The Independent, following the logic of British and American media, closely tracks the dynamics of strikes, statements, rises or falls in oil quotes and domestic political consequences for Trump and his opponents, the South African lens is less sensitive to the nuances of American party politics. The question of how escalation around Iran will affect Trump’s chances of returning to the White House or the positions of his rivals recedes to second place. Far more important is what it will mean for fuel prices in South Africa, the rand’s exchange rate, government budget space, and social tension in a society where unemployment remains one of the highest in the world.
As a result, The Independent’s piece on the US–Iran confrontation, oil markets and Donald Trump’s rhetoric in the Persian Gulf, read from South Africa, becomes another argument in favor of the thesis: the era of unconditional American hegemony is ending, and any forceful scenarios in strategic regions — from the Strait of Hormuz to the Eastern Mediterranean — pose direct threats to the economic and social stability of Global South countries like South Africa, even though these countries have almost no voice in decisions that trigger such crises. From the South African perspective, the response can only be strengthening multipolarity, developing alternative institutions and building diplomatic agency of one’s own — otherwise “other people’s” wars will continue to determine “our” daily lives.
