Trump's war on Iran is a Suez moment - but not in the way you might think

“Trump's war on Iran is a Suez moment - but not in the way you might think Submitted by Dan Glazebrook on Thu, 05/28/2026 - 12:11 The US is using its failed war on Iran to monopolise global energy and prop up the dollar - just as Britain used Suez to build the offshore financial system that replaced its empire Vessels anchored in the Strait of Hormuz off the port city of Khasab, Oman, on 17 May 2026 (AFP) Off With its failure to defeat Iran or force the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz, the US war on Iran has been labelled a " strategy of desperation ", a " historic blunder " and a " strategic defeat ". A recent Washington Post analysis of satellite imagery concluded that the damage to US military assets in the region has been "far larger than publicly acknowledged by the US government or previously reported". The war has revealed the limits of US firepower for all the world to see, with neoconservative thinker Robert Kagan even describing it as an Iranian checkmate of the US, and others calling it "America's Suez moment". Such talk, however, misreads what is happening – both Trump 's aims in the conflict and the significance of the original Suez crisis in the first place. In 1956, a British-French-Israeli conspiracy to occupy Egypt and overthrow its leader, Gamal Abdel Nasser, was thwarted by a combination of Egyptian arms, US financial pressure and Soviet nuclear brinkmanship. With its weakness exposed, Britain began the process of formal political decolonisation the following year. The game was up for the British Empire. But a new game was afoot. In his history of offshore finance, Treasure Islands , Nicholas Shaxson notes of this period that "there is a financial side to this story which almost nobody knows about, for out of the dust and fire of Suez something new emerged in London, which would eventually grow to replace the old empire, and raise the City of London to even greater financial glories". By the mid-1950s, the costs of direct colonial rule were starting to outweigh the revenues it was bringing in. Britain's military spending, due to its colonial commitments, "has broken our backs", as then-Prime Minister Harold Macmillan put it, with conscription in particular a huge drain on resources. The big danger of withdrawal, however, was that anti-colonial movements would reclaim their land and resources. What Britain sought was to hand over – or at least share – responsibility for the repression necessary to avoid this outcome; a role it largely succeeded in ultimately passing on to the US, the Gulf monarchies and other handpicked military rulers across the former empire. Just like Britain after Suez, the US is reconsolidating its imperial domination through a systemic transformation of the global financial order At the same time, this new, streamlined "burden-sharing" form of imperialism allowed Britain to cut its expenses while adding new revenue streams through a reboot of the City of London. With the UK government introducing tighter restrictions on international sterling trade, London's merchant banks simply shifted to lending in dollars. And with an incredible sleight of hand, these dollar transactions were deemed, for regulatory purposes, not to be taking place in the UK. But as they were obviously not taking place in any other jurisdiction, no other state was able to regulate the new market, either. The result was a bankster's paradise of speculation, loans and investments free from any regulatory oversight, which became known as the "euromarket". According to Shaxson, "it was at this point" – within months of Suez – "that the modern offshore system really began… Britain's formal empire gave way to something more subtle... At the moment of its apparent destruction, the British empire began to rise from the dead." It was, says economic historian Gary Burn, "the most monumental financial innovation since the banknote". Over the decade that followed, the euromarket spread out from London to a string of island territories that Britain had clung on to, creating a global network of tax havens – from the Channel Islands to the Caribbean to the Pacific atolls – that are still draining the Global South today , to the tune of trillions of dollars , much of which is then channelled back to London . London had found a way not only to maintain its financial dominance but to render the colonial world system far more profitable than it had been at the height of empire. A new empire Like Britain in 1956, the US may be facing military humiliation – but it too is creating a new form of financial domination in the process. The war on Iran, as commentator Richard Medhurst has pointed out, is part of a broader war to monopolise global energy supplies, and a transformation of the US into what he calls a "pirate state". An armed takeover of the world's oil and gas supplies is under way – most blatantly with the US takeover of Venezuelan oil in January of this year, but also involving a global war against the Russian oil industry. The US and its allies have, in recent months, seized tankers in the Caribbean, the North Atlantic, the Mediterranean, the Black Sea and the Baltic Sea, as well as refineries and export hubs, disabling 40 percent of Russia's export capacity. Suez was the death knell for the British empire. Hormuz may do the same for the US Read More » Meanwhile, Trump's naval blockade has crippled Iran's exports, while Iran's own blockade and attacks on Gulf energy installations have cut off Gulf energy exports. As a result, the world is increasingly being forced to turn to the US for oil and gas, paid for in dollars. The plan is to create a global dependence on US energy, thereby propping up the declining dollar and reversing the long-term trend towards de-dollarisation. And it requires neither the capitulation nor the downfall of the Iranian state to achieve it; the blockade is already achieving its desired results, with US fuel exports at a record high . Just like Britain after Suez, the US is reconsolidating its imperial domination through a systemic transformation of the global financial order. Yet the new dollar domination being crafted by Trump today is deeply unstable. The wars required to sustain it escalate tensions with everyone, including allies, and effectively amount to an energy blockade of China . Karl Marx warned that the methods used by the ruling class to overcome their crises ultimately pave the way "for more extensive and more destructive crises" and diminish "the means whereby crises are prevented". This is exactly what Trump is doing today, with the ultimate crisis – world war – the increasingly real risk of this desperate gamble. The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Eye. War on Iran Opinion Post Date Override 0 Update Date Mon, 05/04/2020 - 21:29 Update Date Override 0

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