The war with Iran was sold as a quick decapitation—a replay of Venezuela, where a brittle regime would crumble under the first real shock. Instead, it became a strategic catastrophe. The US and Israel believed they were targeting a government. They discovered, too late, that they were confronting a civilization.
Iran is one of the oldest, most resilient civilizations in human history. The Persians have fought wars for three thousand years, survived invading hordes, and revived every time. This insight—obvious to any student of history—was entirely absent from US and Israeli war planning.
The False Analogy: Iran as Venezuela
Weeks before the conflict, Netanyahu briefed Trump on a promise: a quick, easy war. Decapitate the leadership, the regime collapses, victory declared. Trump bought it. The premise was that Iran was a hollow shell like Venezuela. But Venezuela is a 19th-century nation-state. Iran is heir to Cyrus the Great and millennia of resistance. No invader has ever erased Persia.
When decapitation strikes failed, Washington was surprised. Instead of weakening, Iran gained a powerful burst of energy. A civilization under existential threat does not send armies into hopeless battles. It strikes the global economy’s jugular: the Hormuz Strait.
The Strait That Broke the War
Iran had warned for years it could close the strait. The US and Israel bombed nuclear facilities while leaving this obvious lever unaddressed. Within days, Iran imposed de facto control. Oil prices spiked. Suddenly, Trump’s overriding concern—November’s midterm elections—became Iran’s primary bargaining chip. Iran is not waiting for a military knockout. It is waiting for an electoral clock.
The Unraveling Alliance
The US and Israel are no longer in unison. Trump, facing domestic pressure, desperately wants an off-ramp before November. Israel insists on finishing the job but cannot. This war is fundamentally between Iran and Israel. The US was dragged in by undue Israeli influence and, Washington embraced the Venezuela fallacy. You cannot decapitate a civilization. You can only bleed against it.
Businessmen Negotiators
The final insult: Trump appointed businessmen Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff as negotiators. Their expertise is real estate, not Persian history or Shiite theology. They expected to out-haggle Iran. Instead, Iran holds the upper hand—because when a civilization feels existentially threatened, it does not negotiate from weakness. It waits. It plays the long game.
As one seasoned observer put it: “Any other country would have surrendered from day one. Iranians didn’t surrender. In fact, they retaliated very strongly.” That is not bravado. That is three thousand years of muscle memory.
Conclusion: The Cost of Forgetting History, Felt Even Here
The US and Israel launched this war believing Iran would fold like a house of cards. Instead, Iran closed the Hormuz Strait, kept its economy afloat, and forced Washington to beg for a way out. The magnitude is undeniable: a civilization was underestimated, and the global order is paying the price.
But this price is not paid only in Washington or Tel Aviv. Even here in Fiji—thousands of miles from the Persian Gulf—we are already feeling the direct effects, and we will continue to feel them long after the fighting ends. The closure of the Hormuz Strait has sent energy costs soaring. Imported goods, from food to fuel to manufactured basics, have become dramatically more expensive. Inflation presses down on every Fijian household. Our small island economy, already vulnerable to global shocks, has no shield against a war we did not choose and cannot influence.
This should be a wake-up call. The era of stable fossil energy flowing through chokepoints controlled by distant powers is over—at least for now. It is time for Fiji to look seriously at alternative energy sources, as China has shown. Beijing understood years ago that strategic vulnerability follows the oil tanker. Today, China leads the world in renewable energy—not out of environmental idealism, but out of hard-nosed strategic, visionary calculation. Fiji can learn from that. What we lack is the political will to accelerate the transition.
The Iran war has reminded every nation without its own oil fields of a simple truth: when great powers clash over civilization and empire, small countries get crushed by the wake. The only defense is resilience. And for Fiji, resilience means less reliance on fossil fuel. The Americans and Israelis miscalculated Persia. Let us not miscalculate our own future. The war will end. The lesson should not.
Pasifika Talanoa by a traveled ITaukei Fijian 