When the air defense missile depots are emptied, when American bases across the Arabian Gulf are turned into shooting ranges, when evacuation flights from bases multiply and aircraft carriers take the long way back via the Cape of Good Hope to avoid the barefoot Houthis, when every US fighter has been withdrawn from the Gulf bases they were supposed to defend, then the leadership of the armed forces begins to realize something that the writers of Trump’s speeches prefer to ignore.
What is happening is not a war of necessity for the US. It is not a war over Iran’s nukes. It is a war of choice for the existential line of an imagined wealthy people.
The US provides the warheads, the ammunition, the logistics, and the piles of bodies. Israel provides the red lines and the urgency. The imbalance is no longer able to be masked by rhetoric about “shared values” as interceptors run out and the next Iranian missile is already in the air. Iran does not need to sink an aircraft carrier. It only needs to keep its missiles flying, while Washington’s primacy turns to exhaustion and the emirates recalculate the status of their protector.
Empires rarely admit when an ally has become the superior partner in the relationship. They just keep paying the bill until the soldiers, the economy, and the voters decide the bill is in deficit.
The US is tired. Fatigue is not enemy sabotage, it is simply arithmetic, and the numbers are starting to make sense.
For this reason, the question we pose as a title is no longer theoretical.
