Eurasia Press & News
What is unfolding before our eyes is of historic significance. The United States will lose its claim to hegemony over the world just a few decades after the fall of the USSR. There is a considerable discrepancy between what the official Western media report about the war in Iran and what is happening on the ground. As we at the Brennus Institute Paris-Vienna seek to illustrate, the United States and the West face far more than a military defeat. It is the destruction of the instrument most valuable to American power: control over the Middle East.
The abandonment of the Gulf states, treated as collateral damage in the war with Iran, jeopardises the West’s financial supremacy – or what remains of it. The assassination of the Ayatollah Khamenei has severed the last ties that might still have existed between Western countries and the rest of the international community. To help us make sense of a series of events as significant as the fall of the Berlin Wall once was, Edouard Husson devotes a two-part analysis (Brennus Letters) to the question that strikes us as fundamental: Is the outbreak of the Second Iran War a desperate attempt to bring about a ‘Great Reset’ in order to save Western hegemony over the world? Why has the publication of the Epstein files made this war inevitable for the US? We present here extracts from the two comprehensive analyses in Brennus Letters #6 and #7, both published in March 2026.
The Tragedy of Donald Trump
In the current situation, there is neither sympathy for Donald Trump nor any excuse for the catastrophe he has triggered. His breach of the promise he made to his voters to bring about peace is unforgivable.
On the other hand, we must acknowledge that Trump is a magnificent subject for a modern tragedian. For Donald Trump’s second term is indeed a tragedy! All the necessary ingredients for a modern Shakespearean drama are present.
Let us imagine the plot of the play to be written. One must begin with the heinous murder of General Soleimani in January 2020. For it is indeed the spectre of General Soleimani that haunts Trump’s second term. A few days before he had Khamenei killed, Trump had boastfully remarked in his 2026 State of the Union address: “And we took out Soleimani”. What befalls Trump is truly Soleimani’s revenge.
Political Economy of Connectivity
As American military assets continue flooding US bases throughout the Middle East, Alexander Maryasov, Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of Russia to Iran (2001-2005), explores the nature of a potential confrontation between Washington and Tehran, the domestic resilience of the Islamic Republic and its political system, and the retaliatory actions America and its allies may face should they choose war.
Opinions
Hubris and excess – the Greek tragedians could have thought of no other terms. The core of ancient tragedy is the transition from hubris to nemesis: divine justice strikes down those who have defied the gods. Since his re-election, Trump has displayed a lack of restraint. This was evident in many signs, most clearly in his statement to the New York Times a few days after the abduction of Nicolas Maduro: “Yes, there is one thing. My own morality. My own judgement. That is the only thing that can stop me,” he said when asked whether there were limits to his power on the international stage. “I don’t need international law,” he added.
A president who possesses the power to start wars, including nuclear strikes, and who regards himself as his only limit! Is there a more glaring example of excess? We suspect that many more events will further fuel the tragedy: Will Donald Trump be subjected to the invocation of the 25th Amendment by his own party?
Even more than Israel – Christian Zionism
Israel’s influence on American politics has been evident since the presidency of Lyndon B. Johnson, who overturned his predecessor John F. Kennedy’s veto against the Jewish State’s development of a nuclear weapon. There has been pronounced differences in the influence of Tel Aviv and the Israeli lobby AIPAC between presidential administrations.
It can be observed that Israel’s interference in American politics crossed a threshold in the second half of the 1990s: it was at this point that Jeffrey Epstein began to build his network, seeking to exploit Bill Clinton’s sexual obsessions to Israel’s advantage. The initial aim was to compromise the Democratic Party – which, unlike the Republican Party, was considered too receptive to the Palestinians’ arguments. During these years, Benjamin Netanyahu began to play a significant role in Israeli and American politics.
And Donald Trump, one might ask? Born in 1946, Trump can conceive of nothing other than unconditional support for Israel. For he owes his career, among other things, to a series of contacts with American Jews, starting with Roy Cohn, the New York lawyer who mentored him in his early years in the property business. Trump feels at ease with staff such as Jared Kushner, his son-in-law, or Steve Witkoff: since his return to the White House, he has entrusted them with an excessive role in diplomatic negotiations. Among the donors to his two election campaigns are some of the major Jewish fortunes in the United States.
Paradoxically, in the case of Donald Trump, there is a lobby that seems to us even more important than AIPAC: the Christian Zionists. These are the American evangelicals who, on the one hand, espouse the thesis—contrary to Christian scripture—that Jews need not believe in Christ to be saved; and who, on the other hand, are obsessed with the Apocalypse, the notion that the State of Israel is a sign heralding the imminent return of Christ for the Last Judgement. These Christians are fanatical supporters of the State of Israel.
Trump had always managed to mediate between most of his electorate and the two pro-Israel lobbies – the Jews and the Christian Zionists. Yet there is one constant, one weakness in his character: since the 1979 hostage crisis, Trump has harboured an undisguised aversion to Iran.
What role did the Epstein case play in triggering the war with Iran?
It is often claimed that Trump has been severely compromised by the Epstein affair. We are more cautious on this point. We find it strange that revelations about Donald Trump’s possible connections to the paedophile only came to light after the Iran war had begun. If that were the case, it would have made sense to do so beforehand to prevent the conflict. As we do not have sufficient information, we shall refrain from making a definitive judgement one way or the other.
However, it seems obvious that part of Trump’s entourage is compromised. And this is less for moral reasons than for financial ones. Trump hesitated to release the Epstein files – not because he was particularly afraid of being attacked for his moral failings, but because of what the files reveal about American and Western financial networks in general. An election promise had to be kept. For a year, Scott Bessent from the Treasury Department engaged in damage control. However, when the pressure became too great, Trump allowed the release. From that point on, the Second Iran War became inevitable. One could even have longed for it: it made it possible to consign to oblivion the important role played by Jared Kushner, the President’s son-in-law, in the Epstein financial networks. The attempt to secure Kushner a new role alongside Steve Witcoff in the negotiations with Iran in Geneva in February ended in an embarrassing disaster: several nuclear experts expressed astonishment at the duo’s amateurism, as they refrained from consulting technical experts and thus fell prey to a series of misjudgements. The same amateurism can also be observed in the preparations for war against Iran. Trump’s entourage lives in a bubble, both cognitively and financially. That is the price of the deindustrialisation of the United States.
Political Economy of Connectivity
Ivan Timofeev
The first round of the military campaign against Iran once again demonstrates the old patterns of international relations: major players are less sensitive to crises; asymmetry of potential is hardly an obstacle to resistance; a lack of allies is a problem; but being a junior partner can lead to being held hostage to a major player’s game, writes Valdai Club Programme Director Ivan Timofeev.
Opinions
The assassination of Khamenei: an act confirming that the supremacist West has finally broken with international law
On February 28, 2026, the United States and Israel assassinated Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei, thereby marking a new stage in the erosion of the international norm against assassinations. As the authors of the “Verfassungsblog” write, the erosion of this norm was already evident in the assassination of Qassem Soleimani in January 2020: “The Trump administration initially invoked self-defence and imminence, before shifting to claims that Soleimani had “American blood on his hands”. International reactions were limited: a joint statement by France, Germany, and the United Kingdom focused on regional stability without directly condemning (or indeed mentioning) the killing. Subsequent cases reinforced this pattern.” The authors of this article conclude by asking to what extent “targeted killings” of heads of state might become widespread.
In fact, we are inclined to believe that a polarisation has emerged which is leading to a split: between the West, which, legally speaking, has definitively crossed the threshold of the untenable; and the rest of the world, whose sole concern now is to restore international law.
It is important to understand that in the current war, on one side stands a state, Iran, a progressive form of political organisation that enables and regulates the coexistence of religions and ethnic groups; and on the other side, a cartel of private financial interests that is increasingly taking on mafia-like traits and now survives solely on the exploitation of other countries’ resources – we mean the United States, which is allied with a colonial operation, the State of Israel, which ranks among the most violent in history and whose ethno-cultural identity is becoming ever more extreme and intolerant. We note that both the pirate cartel and the colonisers possess nuclear weapons, which makes them even more dangerous.
We are far removed here from friendly musings on democratic regimes as opposed to autocracies. And it would be good if Western experts would stop making a fuss with references to Christianity, Judaism or Islam to justify the forty-year-long attempt at the systematic destruction of a state that is almost 3,000 years old. No, the issue is which form of human organisation will prevail. Either the state – a model shared by China, Russia, Iran and all the heirs of Rome; that is, the ability to allow cultures, religions and nationalities to coexist peacefully within stable borders under a universally oriented legal code. Or archaic forms of human organisation such as mafia-like oligarchies or warring tribes that live by raiding.
Globalization and Sovereignty
