In early March 2026, for a large part of the world "America" in the news was no longer about elections or tech sanctions, but a blazing Middle East. The joint US–Israeli war against Iran, which began in late February, struck nerves in Beijing, Tokyo and Kyiv alike — but in each place in its own way. It is overlaid by Donald Trump's "swings" on Ukraine and a new wave of trade protectionism that directly affects both Asia and Europe. As a result, the United States is simultaneously perceived as an indispensable security guarantor and as a source of strategic instability.
The central theme uniting Chinese, Japanese and Ukrainian discussions is Washington's unpredictability: from the sudden collapse of talks with Tehran and a massive strike on Iran to attempts to impose a quick peace for Ukraine and experiments with global tariffs. But the commonality ends there. China views the US–Israeli war with Iran through the prism of its own vulnerabilities and rivalry with Washington; Japan — through the fear of the region being drawn into a nuclear spiral; Ukraine — through the prospect that the Iranian front will permanently push the Ukrainian question off the White House agenda.
The loudest storyline is precisely the US–Israel war with Iran. On the night of the strike, the United States and Israel used Tomahawk cruise missiles, precision weapons and drones, inflicting massive damage on the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and eliminating Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and a significant portion of the country's military and political leadership, which in Russian‑language descriptions gave rise to the conflict's very name — "the 2026 US and Israel war with Iran" (ru.wikipedia.org). Within days Iran responded with missile strikes on American bases in the region — according to reports, attacks hit US facilities in several Middle Eastern countries and struck residential areas as well (ru.wikipedia.org). Chinese media note that at least 17 American bases and facilities were damaged in the Iranian attacks during the first weeks of the conflict (huacheng.gz-cmc.com). For many commentators in China and Japan this looks like a scenario that until recently belonged to the realm of "World War III in analytical fantasies," and in Kyiv — like a treacherous diversion of American attention from Eastern Europe to the Persian Gulf.
The Chinese media field perhaps provides the most multi‑layered reaction. Official Beijing voiced a tightly legalistic position: the foreign ministry and embassies warned citizens to leave Iran as soon as possible, and the MFA described the elimination of Iran's leadership as "a serious violation of Iran's sovereignty and security, a trampling of the purposes and principles of the UN Charter and the basic norms of international relations," demanding an immediate cessation of hostilities and a return to negotiations, while separately emphasizing its rejection of "unilateral actions" (zh.wikipedia.org). This formula is not only a defense of international law but a veiled reminder to Washington: if this can be done to Tehran today, tomorrow someone may try to rewrite the rules around China the same way.
In Chinese expert discourse, which is freer than official communiqués, the war with Iran is used to illustrate Xi Jinping's key mantra: "hard power decides everything." In a popular column on a Chinese‑language portal aimed at the diaspora, the escalation is described as an example that the US "used Israel as a springboard to strike Iran," and therefore Beijing must prevent Japan and the Philippines — formal US allies — from becoming the "East Asian Israel" and the "Southeast Asian Israel," respectively (wenxuecity.com). In this logic the current war both confirms Beijing's long‑standing fears — that Washington tends to solve problems by force when diplomacy does not yield the desired result — and serves as an argument for accelerating its own military and technological buildup.
Chinese official and semi‑official publications try to give the events a broader geopolitical dimension. Analytical pieces on the "Middle East crisis" emphasize that the United States deployed its largest regional force since the Iraq war of 2003: a strike carrier group led by the Abraham Lincoln, increased air presence, missile defense systems — and that this buildup was a direct continuation of the collapse of Geneva talks with Iran in January 2026, which Washington characterized as the "last diplomatic attempt" before possible war (zh.wikipedia.org). Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi, speaking at the Munich Security Conference, warned that any war involving Iran would carry severe consequences for the entire Middle East — the quote that armed conflict could destabilize the region for years ahead was widely reproduced by Chinese and regional media (zh.wikipedia.org).
The Japanese discussion is more fragmented, but two motifs clearly resonate: fear of erosion of the "nuclear taboo" and awareness of its own dependence on the American security umbrella. Back in 2025 analysts at the National Institute for Defense Studies under Japan's Ministry of Defense, assessing the Israel–Iran conflict, wrote that Israel's sudden strike dealt such damage to Iran's military machine and nuclear program that Tehran faced a long period of rebuilding key capabilities and lived under a constant threat of a "decapitation" operation against its leadership (nids.mod.go.jp). Now the same logic is projected onto US actions: Japanese media voice alarm that Washington has effectively demonstrated a willingness to carry out targeted elimination of a supreme leader, which is perceived as a qualitative shift in acceptable uses of force.
In a TV Asahi report an international political scientist bluntly said there is a sense of being "on the eve of World War III": the US systematically uses military force against sovereign states, up to the physical elimination of leaders and trying them under American laws, and behind rhetoric of "justice" often hides disregard for international law and human casualties (news.tv-asahi.co.jp). At the same time left‑wing media and activist outlets, such as a Japanese labor movement platform, publish pieces arguing that the idea of a US "economic state strategy" is a form of violence: in their view Washington relies less on multilateral diplomacy and more on a combination of sanctions and limited uses of force, which destroys whole societies and is essentially a continuation of war by other means (labornetjp2.org).
However, in more mainstream analytical journals, such as Foreign Affairs Japan, the tone is less emotional. They emphasize that there are no convincing historical precedents for the American bet on "precision strikes from above and popular uprisings from below" against the Iranian regime: having destroyed infrastructure and decapitated the ruling elite, the US and its allies are not able to offer a viable political alternative; moreover, there was no immediate and inevitable threat indicating that Iran was on the verge of acquiring nuclear weapons or about to strike the US and its allies (foreignaffairsj.co.jp). At the same time Japanese authors acknowledge that the very prospect of a nuclear Iran scares Tokyo as much as Washington does, and therefore the US remains a key guarantor of non‑proliferation and the security of regional partners.
The Ukrainian perspective is almost entirely focused on one question: what does the US war with Iran mean for Kyiv and for the prospects of peace with Russia. In expert and media circles there is an ambivalent feeling. On one hand, the United States is still seen as an indispensable supplier of weapons and intelligence; on the other — Washington's weariness from a protracted war, which intensified with Trump's second term in 2025, now intersects with a new Middle Eastern front.
Ukrainian analysts as early as late 2025 described Trump's foreign policy as "one big swing": from pauses in aid to its resumption, from statements about a "quick peace" to signals of firm support for Kyiv's defense capability (eurointegration.com.ua). According to polls cited by European Pravda, nearly half of Americans do not approve of Trump's actions on the Ukrainian war, and a significant share have difficulty determining which side has the advantage on the front — in Kyiv this is perceived as an alarming indicator of American public fatigue (eurointegration.com.ua). Against this background Ukrainian commentators closely analyze who personally influences the US president and how changes in the internal balance of power in Washington ahead of the 2026 midterm elections will affect defense support for Ukraine (eurointegration.com.ua).
Recently leading Ukrainian outlets have begun to speak of a "transatlantic crisis." In a long column in Ukrainska Pravda it is stressed that after Trump's return to the White House Ukrainian and European diplomacy found themselves in a "stormy sea": the US administration, on one hand, continues to declare commitment to the Western coalition supporting Ukraine, but on the other, demonstrates leniency toward Russia's aggressive policy and sets conditions that in Kyiv are perceived as an attempt to impose a "partial capitulation" — and the author directly links the intensification of this pressure to the calendar of the midterm Congressional elections in autumn 2026 (pravda.com.ua). At the everyday level, in this logic the US war with Iran is dangerous because it creates another major crisis for the White House that will require resources and political capital — and therefore another argument for Washington to "close the Ukrainian file" as quickly and cheaply as possible.
Western studies are often cited in Ukrainian media suggesting 2026 could be decisive for a settlement: either because the Trump administration and its supporters in Congress will need to show results of their mediation, or because the prospect of a tougher, more "hostile" Congress will push Russia toward an agreement on terms it considers most advantageous before possible tightening of the American line (rbc.ru). In this context Iran is seen as a dangerous distraction: if, by the time serious talks on Ukraine begin, the American administration is tied down by a large Middle Eastern campaign, Kyiv's room for maneuver will be substantially reduced.
Another major storyline, noticeable in China, Japan and Ukraine alike, is the US trade‑economic turn. Against the backdrop of the Middle East war the White House initiated a large increase in global tariffs, attempting thereby to circumvent a Supreme Court ruling that had found the electoral "mirror" tariffs against specific countries illegal. Chinese chronologies of January–February 2026 describe in detail how the US Supreme Court first overturned Trump's imposed "symmetrical" duties, after which the president himself announced a temporary — for 150 days — 15% increase in tariffs on all imports, accompanying this with sharp criticism of Taiwan and accusations that the island had "stolen the American chip industry" (zh.wikipedia.org). For Beijing this episode was further proof that Washington is willing to use trade as an instrument of political pressure on multiple fronts — from China and Taiwan to allies in Europe and Asia.
In Japan the same decisions are perceived differently. For Tokyo the United States remains a key market and the main guarantor of security, so even tough tariff moves are viewed through the prism of the need to preserve the alliance. A noteworthy split appears in Japanese expert circles: military analysts focus on how sanctions and tariffs fit into an overall US "state economic strategy" — as an element of containing China and Russia, as a way to weaken the resource base of potential adversaries; economists, however, openly worry that trade wars in the long run could push toward further fragmentation of the world economy and force Tokyo to make painful choices between American and Chinese markets.
Ukrainian experts, for their part, fear less the tariffs themselves than the political cycle in Washington that could accompany them. Authors analyzing the US domestic agenda note that a sharp protectionist escalation ahead of midterms will likely be accompanied by populist pressure to "focus on America, not other people's wars." That is why, according to Ukrainian analysts, Kyiv needs not only to persuade the US of the importance of continuing military and financial support, but also to offer American elites a "positive agenda" — from joint energy and digital infrastructure projects to participation in developing Ukraine's mineral resources, which is already being discussed in bilateral formats as a way to "compensate" for some of the US costs of assisting Ukraine (ru.wikipedia.org).
Finally, a particular place in international perception of the US is occupied by the linkage "war in Ukraine — war with Iran" through the common theme of the legitimacy of forceful actions. Chinese and Singaporean editorials stress that overthrowing other countries' governments, even if they are perceived as authoritarian and dangerous, contradicts the spirit of the UN Charter; they also acknowledge that within the Middle East there are many actors who secretly desire Iran's weakening, but insist that the US must balance "moral right" and international norms and consider the risk of further destabilization and threats to its own troops (zaobao.com.sg). In Japan and Ukraine, by contrast, the emphasis is more on consequences: in Tokyo there is fear that undermining the non‑proliferation regime and the de facto normalization of targeted "decapitation" operations will lead to a new arms race in which Japan will be squeezed between American expectations and regional threats; in Kyiv the question is often asked: if international law allows such radical precedents, why was it so powerless to restrain Russian aggression against Ukraine?
Taken together a multi‑layered image of America emerges. For China the US is both the main competitor and a source of systemic risk, whose actions confirm the need to build up "hard power" and create alternative centers of influence. For Japan it is an indispensable ally whose strategic impulsiveness forces Japanese society to repeatedly revisit its own taboos on armament and military activity. For Ukraine it is a necessary but increasingly capricious partner, whose foreign policy "swings" and involvement in other conflicts could cost Kyiv not only weapons, but also the space for sovereign decisions about peace and war.
The US–Israel war with Iran became the topic on which these different optics manifested most clearly. In Beijing it reinforces the conviction that the international order is finally entering an era of "the law of the strong"; in Tokyo it makes officials nervously count steps to a possible nuclear fork in Northeast Asia; in Kyiv it adds another timer to the already ticking hours of war. And the way the United States emerges from this Middle East crisis — whether it can combine military power with real diplomacy, and actions in Iran with responsibility for Ukraine — will largely determine how much the world in 2026 will still see America as a leader, rather than simply the most powerful and unpredictable player.
