In mid‑March 2026 the role of the United States in the world is being discussed primarily through the prism of a new war: the joint American‑Israeli campaign against Iran, which began on February 28, has become the main filter through which Russia, Turkey and Australia view Washington. But this is not only a conversation about bombings and “Epic Fury” — as the Pentagon called its operation against Iran — but also about petrol prices in Ankara, airfares in Sydney, political alliances, shipping, the share of the US in the world economy and even the future of NATO. Three interconnected storylines come to the fore: the war itself and its legitimacy, the economic consequences of American decisions, and the question of how sensible it is to bet on Washington as the principal ally.
The main theme became the very nature and objectives of the US and Israeli war against Iran. In Russian‑language discourse the conflict is more often described as the culmination of a broader crisis between Washington and Tehran that began even before the official start of the operation and includes the failure of nuclear talks and Iranian strikes on US bases in the Middle East. Russian and pro‑Russian sources emphasize that on February 28, 2026 it was the US and Israel who first delivered massive strikes against Iran, after which there was a retaliatory salvo against American facilities in Qatar, Kuwait, the UAE and Bahrain, followed by a series of incidents in the Indian Ocean where a US submarine sank the Iranian frigate IRIS Dena. (ru.wikipedia.org) In this telling the US appears not as a reactor but as the initiator of forceful escalation, which allows Russian authors to fit the war into the familiar narrative of “illegal interventions” and regime change.
In the Turkish media space the tone is noticeably different, but the core of the discussion also remains the question of Washington’s calculations. Here the war is simply called “İran savaşı” — “the war with Iran” — and almost always mentions America’s role first, using the formula “ABD‑İsrail ile İran arasındaki savaş” — “the war between the US‑Israel and Iran.” Thus, in an analysis by the Nefes portal it is said that by the 17th day of the war, according to Tehran, more than 500 people had died in the capital alone from American‑Israeli strikes, and the campaign continues “with full intensity.” (nefes.com.tr) This creates for the Turkish audience an image of a protracted, bloody conflict in which the US is not merely forcefully “restoring order,” but is increasingly entangling itself.
A separate strand of Turkish commentary is doubt about the White House’s strategic calculation. In the piece “Washington'da savaş pişmanlığı” (“Military remorse in Washington”) the same Nefes cites anonymous American officials who allegedly already fear the war could drag on for months and turn into an “escalation trap” for the Trump administration. Analysts recall that last year’s successes of a “targeted operation” against Iran and the abduction of Nicolás Maduro in Venezuela produced in the president a “surge of overconfidence” — and it is precisely this that, in essence, dragged the US into a larger war. (nefes.com.tr) The key motive of Turkish authors is that the US again overestimates its military power and underestimates the political and economic costs.
Against this background the statements of Iranian leaders, widely quoted in Turkish and Russian media, sound especially striking. Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, commenting on the US campaign, said that “our powerful armed forces will continue to fire until the President of the United States understands that the illegal war he is imposing on both Iranians and Americans is wrong and must never be repeated.” (mk.ru) Iranian President Masud Pezeshkian emphasizes in an interview with Turkish TV channel TV5 that his country “did not start this war and does not seek to continue it,” while Secretary of the Supreme National Security Council Ali Larijani addresses Donald Trump directly on the social network X: “Hatanızı kabul edip bunun bedelini ödeyene kadar sizi rahat bırakmayacağız” — “We will not leave you alone until you admit your mistake and pay for it.” (tv5.com.tr) The Turkish public receives the American war through the eyes of Iranian leadership, which further blurs the propagandistic image of a “surgical operation” that Washington had hoped to project.
In Russia Iranian statements are often woven into a broader critique of American foreign policy as a system. The Belarusian publication Nasha Niva, whose materials are widely cited in Russian feeds, emphasizes that Trump, inspired by “the most successful operation in US history” — the capture of Maduro — perceives force as a universal tool, and the willingness to “come to the rescue of Iranian protesters” in case of violence merely masks a strategic aim of regime change in Tehran. (nashaniva.com) In this reading the current war is a continuation of a line of forceful intervention begun earlier, and many Russian commentators do not miss the chance to recall Yugoslavia, Iraq and Libya to show that in Iran the US allegedly repeats the same scenario again.
If in Russian and Turkish discourses the US primarily appears as a military actor, in Australia and neighboring New Zealand Washington’s role is discussed through the prism of alliance obligations and economic consequences. Formally Canberra supported the American‑Israeli operation against Iran and, as a number of English‑language reviews note, stresses commitment to the alliance with the US. Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, according to an analytical review of Australia’s participation in the war, assures that the country will not send ground troops to Iran and will limit itself to “exclusively defensive measures” — for example, strengthening allies’ air defenses and exchanging intelligence. (en.wikipedia.org) In this statement one hears the desire to strike a balance: confirm fidelity to Washington without repeating the unpopular domestic experience of land operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Australian and New Zealand media, especially business and travel sections, meanwhile increasingly recall the US not only as a warring power but also as an oil superpower whose actions instantly affect prices worldwide. Turkish Euronews explains in detail how strikes on refining capacity in the Persian Gulf and the blocking of tankers in the Strait of Hormuz related to the US‑Israel–Iran war have driven up oil prices, and along with them — the cost of jet fuel. The article gives a telling example: Air New Zealand announced fare increases — NZD 10 for domestic flights, NZD 20 for short internationals and NZD 90 for long‑haul services. (tr.euronews.com) Although the text is written in Turkish, the reader easily reads the global nature of the shock: Washington’s and its allies’ decision to bomb Iran immediately turns into pricier tickets in Auckland or Melbourne.
In Australian debates this intensifies an old dispute: how profitable is a “hard tethering” to the US if every spike of tension involving Washington instantly hits energy prices and tourist flows? Economic commentators point to how the war in Iran and sanctions on Tehran exacerbate a general trend toward fragmentation of the global economy, in which the US increasingly acts as an initiator of protectionist barriers and export controls. On Turkish‑language forums discussing the global economy it is said outright that high US trade barriers have triggered an unexpected “domino effect”: economies outside America are drawing closer to each other, forming new trade blocs, while risks for investors in US markets grow because of political unpredictability and overvaluation of tech stocks. (reddit.com) For countries like Australia, whose trade ties with China and Asian markets are as important as the alliance with the US, this raises the question: will Washington be a partner or a source of constant shocks?
Turkey, being both a NATO member and a country deeply tied to Middle Eastern energy and trade, reacts to this duality particularly acutely. On the one hand, its financial and analytical institutions — from forex bulletins to daily market notes — record daily the impact of the US war against Iran on global markets: they note how “Iran savaşı ve yükselen petrol fiyatları” — “the war with Iran and rising oil prices” — weigh on American indices and increase volatility worldwide, provoking sell‑offs on Wall Street and forcing the Turkish regulator to prepare measures to protect the lira. (cdn.gedik.com) For Ankara this is not an abstract story: rising oil prices hit inflation, budget spending and political stability, and many observers openly write that “if the US‑Iran war drags on, pressure on energy markets and the Turkish economy will only intensify.”
On the other hand, in the Turkish patriotic press the US increasingly appears not simply as an ally but as an “imperialist predator” whose presence in the region threatens Turkey’s sovereignty. Thus, in a hardline column in the newspaper Aydınlık the author, criticizing the war, calls support for Iran a form of resistance to “emperyalist yırtıcılara” — imperialist predators — and questions the very presence of American and NATO facilities on Turkish territory: “İncirlik, Kürecik, Kisecik gibi üslerin varlığı… ulusal egemenliğimiz için açık tehdittir” — “the existence of bases like İncirlik, Kürecik, Kisecik… is an obvious threat to our national sovereignty.” (aydinlik.com.tr) The rhetorical question posed by the author — why Turkish military bases are on Turkish soil rather than Turkish bases on American soil — well illustrates a growing demand in part of society for more equal relations with Washington.
Russian discourse is built not only on emotional criticism but also on drawing direct parallels between the US‑Israeli war against Iran and US actions around Ukraine. Articles and analytical notes emphasize that the current crisis with Tehran is a continuation of a line where the US already “directly intervenes” in conflicts along Russia’s borders and in neighboring regions, using sanctions, military aid and diplomatic pressure. Discussions of the Iranian war are accompanied by references to recent trilateral US‑Russia‑Ukraine meetings in Abu Dhabi and Geneva, where American negotiators, according to some authors, tried simultaneously to “save face” before Kyiv and Moscow and not lose control over energy and mineral flows. (en.wikipedia.org) Here a persistent motif arises: the US supposedly behaves as a global manager of resources, intervening where oil, gas or strategic deposits are at stake.
Against this background specific Russian storylines appear that are barely visible in the English‑language press. For example, in a recent issue of Izvestia there is an alarmed discussion of the Pentagon’s decision to revise its policy of cooperation with American AI companies: the Ministry of Defense, according to the newspaper, demanded lifting restrictions on the use of their technologies for mass surveillance and autonomous weapons, and the refusal of one developer led to its effective exclusion from state contracts — freeing a niche for more loyal suppliers. (cdn.iz.ru) In this story Russian readers are shown the US as a country where the military sector readily subsumes cutting‑edge civilian technologies — and this image easily fits into the broader perception of Washington as a force ready to transgress both external and internal law for the sake of dominance.
Another thread that converges in all three countries is doubt about Washington’s ability to fully calculate the consequences of its forceful actions. In Turkey this is discussed in terms of how quickly the US is burning through its ammunition reserves in the war with Iran. On a popular investment forum an estimate is quoted that America in a matter of weeks exhausted that part of the arsenal that was considered “meant to last years,” and now is forced to replenish its market with defense orders, to the point that Turkish companies are launching lines in the US to produce 155‑mm artillery shells. “Rusya ile aynı batağa düştü Amerika,” — writes one commenter — “America has fallen into the same quagmire as Russia; both superpowers thought ‘it will surrender in three days and we will win,’ and both were wrong.” (reddit.com)
In Russia a similar motif sounds through parallels between the current war and previous US conflicts in the Middle East: analysts and columnists repeat that Washington again underestimated the enemy’s resilience and overestimated its own ability to control the postwar order. A Belarusian piece “The US considers the next step on Iran” directly warns: even if American air forces manage for a time to suppress Iranian military capabilities, the exit for Washington will not be simple — neither a scenario of prolonged occupation nor a new wave of sanctions guarantees the desired regime change, and every day of war increases the risk of retaliatory strikes against American citizens and targets around the world. (nashaniva.com)
Australian and New Zealand observers, less emotional than their Russian and Turkish colleagues, nevertheless reach a similar conclusion but through the lens of economics. They are less interested in the battlefield layout than in the resilience of the US as the core of the global financial system amid growing geopolitical adventures. Market analysts in Istanbul and Sydney note in sync: every new turn of tension involving the US intensifies sell‑offs on Wall Street and pushes some global investors away from American assets, which in the long run may accelerate diversification of world reserves and the rise of alternative centers of capital attraction. (bigpara.hurriyet.com.tr)
As a result a multilayered international image of the US emerges, markedly different from that offered to the American audience itself. In Russia Washington is seen primarily as a military superpower, habitually violating norms of sovereignty and international law while projecting force on Russia’s periphery — from Ukraine to the Middle East. In Turkey, where the web of interests is more complex, the US is perceived simultaneously as a necessary but dangerous ally: a country whose bases sit on your soil and whose protection partly guarantees security, but whose wars raise your energy bills and push you to reconsider participation in Western security structures. In Australia and New Zealand the focus shifts to pragmatism: here Washington is the main military partner and at the same time a source of price and financial shocks that must be lived with and which force a more cautious approach to betting on the “American bloc” amid Asia’s rising economy.
Across all three countries a common, if differently worded, idea appears in recent commentary: the world is entering a period when any unilateral forceful decisions by the US — be it war with Iran, tightening sanctions or new trade barriers — become not merely local episodes but triggers of complex and often uncontrollable chains of consequences. And the more frequently this repeats, the less willingness there is to perceive Washington as an unconditional center of “order and stability” — and the stronger the drive to seek one’s own, sometimes painful but more independent trajectories in a changing world order.
