In the first days of April 2026, attitudes toward the United States abroad are once again determined less by Washington’s domestic politics than by the fire in the Middle East. Joint US and Israeli strikes on Iran, which began on February 28 and have already led to attacks on territories including the area around the Bushehr nuclear power plant, have become the main lens through which Russia, Israel and Japan are now discussing America as a power shaping the world order. In each of these countries the US is seen differently: as an irresponsible hegemon, as a vital but dangerous ally, as a distant yet still defining superpower of the security architecture. At the same time, the themes are surprisingly consistent — fear of uncontrolled escalation, fatigue with American “endless military campaigns,” and doubts as to whether Washington is seeking a genuine peace at all.
In the Russian information space, the US‑Israel war with Iran almost instantly provided a frame for talk of the “end of illusions” about American leadership. The strikes on the Bushehr NPP area provoked an especially sharp reaction: Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova called them “an indelible stain on the reputations of the US and Israel” and accused Washington of completely negating its former role in nuclear safety and nonproliferation. As emphasized in a Sputnik piece, Russian diplomacy uses the term “military adventure” and calls on the US and Israel to immediately abandon the operation, portraying it as a threat not only to the region but to the entire system of international security. In this narrative the United States appears not as a guarantor of rules but as the main violator: a country that claims special responsibility under the IAEA yet is bombing infrastructure connected to civilian nuclear energy and thereby, Russian commentators argue, “zeros out” the West’s moral arguments in discussions about nuclear risks. (sputnik.by)
Russian analytical articles go beyond official criticism and place the current campaign against Iran in a broader turning of the world system. Thus, the Uzbek site UzDaily, popular in the Russian segment as a source of post‑Soviet analysis, publishes a piece on the “military aggression of the US and the Zionist regime” as a symptom of the world entering a “dangerous phase of instability.” The authors argue that Washington’s bet on force instead of complex diplomatic deals destroys the remaining trust in the postwar security architecture. They draw a parallel between the slogan “America First” and its metamorphosis into “Israel — first and last,” meaning a policy in which US interests are subordinated to ensuring Israel’s regional dominance, even at the cost of long‑term burdens for American society itself. This view is nearly absent in mainstream Western debates but becomes a dominant explanation in Russian and broader Eurasian commentary: not Trump’s “mistakes,” but a systemic tilt toward a Middle Eastern ally. (uzdaily.uz)
At the same time, another line is noticeable in the Russian media — a cautious borrowing of European criticism of the US. Translations and retellings of French and other European columns, such as a piece in Le Figaro that says if Donald Trump fails in the coming days to secure a ceasefire with Iran “the US faces a catastrophe in the Middle East — and so do we,” are actively circulating on Russian‑language portals. The author compares February’s decision to begin the operation against Iran to Vladimir Putin’s mistake in February 2022 — underestimating the enemy — and warns that Washington, like Moscow once did, could become bogged down in a protracted conflict. Russian commentary readily picks up this European alarm but reinterprets it: the catastrophe, local commentators say, threatens not only the US and EU but the entire “Western model” of crisis management, which is turning from a tool of stabilization into a generator of wars. (eadaily.com)
In Israel, America is discussed in a very different key: not as an external threat but as a source of hope and simultaneously a potential catalyst for the most dangerous escalation. Israeli news and analytical resources are closely tracking the deployment of US forces — increased US presence at the Muwaffaq Salti airbase in Jordan, the arrival of the aircraft carrier Gerald R. Ford in the Mediterranean, and additional missile defense assets. These steps are presented as a clear signal to both Tehran and regional actors that Washington is prepared to move from a show of force to a full military scenario if Iran does not restrain itself. One Israeli outlet, Segodnya, emphasizes that the US and Iran are “closer to a military scenario” and that the buildup of American military presence effectively accompanies the failure of Geneva talks on Iran’s nuclear program. (segodnya.co.il)
Local experts, especially those from national‑conservative and right‑wing circles, view such US involvement as inevitable. American bases and aircraft carriers are described as an “umbrella” without which Israel would be too vulnerable to Iranian missiles and drones. Columns in several Israeli publications quote American allies claiming that “US presence is the only thing deterring Tehran from a full‑scale strike.” But even in these texts a worry creeps in: how truly ready is Washington to go all the way if the confrontation exceeds the bounds of a “managed war”? The experiences in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria make some Israeli commentators fear that America, once drawn in, could just as suddenly pull out, leaving its partners to face the consequences alone. This is especially evident in discussions of Trump’s domestic constraints: his critics in the US, such as Republican Congressman Thomas Massie, are already accusing the White House of overstepping military authority and betraying the isolationist spirit of “America First.” Israeli observers watch these debates closely, understanding that they directly affect the reliability of the American “umbrella.” (ru.wikipedia.org)
Concurrently, Israel itself becomes a prism through which the region evaluates the US. The Turkish newspaper Yeni Şafak, in its Russian‑language article about human casualties and economic consequences of the fighting, writes of “the US and their ally Israel” striking Iran and its proxies, while retaliatory attacks have already affected infrastructure in the UAE, Bahrain and Israel. In essence, America in the eyes of Middle Eastern authors appears not as a remote power but as a participant in the conflict bearing the same responsibility for destruction as regional players. For the Israeli discussion this is ambivalent: on one hand, US support cements Israel’s status as a key Washington partner; on the other, it makes Israel complicit in all American miscalculations in the region. (yenisafak.com)
Japanese voices sound different, but the key intonation is also skepticism about America’s ability to bring things to peace. In the Japanese discourse on US foreign policy during the current crisis, English‑language critical pieces are actively cited and reinterpreted. On the independent platform ISF, a translated article appears under the telling headline: “America Wants to ‘Talk’ to Iran, But Does Not Desire a ‘Real Peace.’” Japanese translators and commentators stress that Washington uses negotiations more as a tactical pause — time to pull in additional military resources, coordinate with allies and prepare for a “larger military phase” — than as a path to compromise. The text underscores that the US request for a pause is needed “to intensify pressure and demonstrate restraint before the international community,” not to develop a sustainable agreement. This resonates with long‑running Japanese debates about whether the US after Iraq and Libya can play the role of an honest mediator at all, rather than merely an armed arbiter. (isfweb.org)
For a Japanese audience accustomed to seeing the US as a guarantor of its security in Asia, the war in Iran is a prompt to consider how American strategy might look in a potential crisis over Taiwan or in the East China Sea. If even allies and critics in Europe speak of a “catastrophe that threatens everyone” regarding Iran, might a similar scenario — a protracted, poorly calculated conflict — become a model for Asian theaters? Expert publications draw parallels between the current US deployment in the Persian Gulf and the buildup of its navy and air power in the western Pacific: in both cases Washington demonstrates readiness for forceful deterrence, but it’s unclear whether it is prepared for the long‑term political and economic costs. This uncertainty prompts Japanese analysts to call for greater strategic autonomy for Tokyo — without abandoning the alliance with the US, but reducing the degree of one‑sided dependence on American decisions.
Against this background, another line of interpretation arises in Russia: a hybrid critique of the US through the prism of its domestic political discourse. Pieces about statements by American politicians, such as former governor Mike Huckabee musing about a “biblical right of Israel” to almost the entire Middle East, are presented in the Russian press as examples of how religious‑ideological motives permeate part of the Washington establishment. In a Moscow Komsomolets publication, such remarks are placed alongside growing US criticism of unconditional support for Israel from figures like journalist Tucker Carlson, who calls it an “intellectual infection.” For the Russian reader this builds an image of America as internally split: on one pole are religious and ideological “hawks” who view Middle Eastern policy through the prism of biblical geography, on the other are populist critics of the military establishment who accuse the elites of dragging the US into yet another fruitless conflict. (mk.ru)
What is common to Russia, Israel and Japan is the sense that the current American course toward Iran is not merely another local operation but a symptom of a deeper transformation of the US role. Russia sees in it proof of the final collapse of the myth of the US as the “guardian of global rules” and uses this to bolster its own narrative of a multipolar world where Washington is only one of the power centers, prone to norm violations. Israel, by contrast, is forced to bind its security even more tightly to the will of the White House, while simultaneously fearing that American domestic war‑fatigue will lead to a new cycle of “promises and retreats.” Japan reads the war with Iran as a warning: if the US continues to combine tough military pressure with inconsistent diplomacy, allies should prepare in advance for the possibility that in a critical moment America may be either overly aggressive or, conversely, sharply constrained by internal disputes.
It is at this crossroads of fears and expectations that the international image of America is being formed today. Not as an unconditional leader, but as a mighty yet increasingly unpredictable power whose decisions regarding one region immediately reverberate elsewhere. Russia, Israel and Japan, each in very different relationships with Washington, surprisingly converge on one point: whether the US can exit the Iranian conflict without another protracted war will determine not only the balance of power in the Middle East but also the answer to a more fundamental question — whether the United States can once again convince the world that its power serves more than itself.
