In a striking turn of events, Donald Trump recently announced that the US would delay its planned attacks on Iranian energy infrastructure, claiming that “very good and productive” talks were underway with Tehran. Yet Iran swiftly denied any such negotiations had taken place, exposing Trump’s claim as fiction and revealing what it truly was: the political defeat of Donald Trump and the entire system of US imperialism and Zionism that he represents.
On February 28, Trump set out to break Iran, to force concessions, secure access to its vast oil resources, and reassert unquestioned US dominance in West Asia. His approach was akin to how he forced Venezuela to its knees by abducting President Maduro and his wife, and how he continues to impose an energy blockade on Cuba. What he encountered instead with Iran was the indefatigable resilience of its people. Despite being faced with external aggression, the Iranian people persisted and resisted. And in doing so, they exposed the limits of Trump’s strongarm imperialist tactics in a world no longer willing to submit quietly to his madman antics.
This is the central contradiction of Trump’s war on Iran: the more aggressively he pushed, the more he strengthened the very forces he sought to weaken.
At the same time, Trump has fractured the Western imperialist alliance that historically sustained American power for decades. Since the end of World War II, US dominance relied on the integration of European allies into US war plans. Trump managed to disrupt this balance primarily due to his insatiable pursuit of oil and dominance.
Spain, for instance, has taken one of the clearest positions going as far as withdrawing its ambassador from “Israel” and openly criticizing unilateral military escalation. France renewed its calls for “strategic autonomy,” signaling discomfort with the directions of the US. Italy reiterated the call for an immediate ceasefire. Germany, while still materially aligned through NATO, has expressed hesitation over full-scale escalation. The European Union itself in a statement, called for “maximum restraint, protection of civilians and full respect of international law, including the principles of the United Nations Charter, and international humanitarian law.”
Yet these signals of political distancing also coexist with a deeper contradiction: that despite public dissent, much of European states remain structurally embedded in the very war it questions. Even in the same breath, they find it so easy to condemn Iran’s retaliatory actions while ignoring how the US has brazenly disregarded all sorts of international laws when it attacked Iran.
Germany, Italy, Netherlands, and the United Kingdom continue to host US military infrastructure that enables surveillance, refueling, and logistical coordination for US operations in West Asia. Their contributions to US war efforts make up the material backbone that sustains Trump’s warmongering capacity far beyond its borders.
This contradiction is even more pronounced in the peripheries of the European Union. Cyprus stands as one of the clearest examples. Our island, still under ongoing Turkish occupation and colonisation, remains a semi-colony, subjected to British occupation through military base areas, including RAF Akrotiri and the Dhekelia base area. This reality shows that the decolonisation of our homeland was never completed, even though, as Cypriots, we won only nominal independence through an anti-colonial guerrilla struggle against British rule.
Crucially, the presence of these bases on Cypriot soil was never a matter of choice for our people. Imposed through colonial arrangements and maintained by the colonial powers that be, these bases exist outside the sovereignty of the Republic of Cyprus itself. The Turkish occupation also helped preserve this British military presence, after Cypriots’ struggle to remove the colonial remnants was interrupted by the occupation of the island. These bases have long functioned as forward operating hubs for major Western military interventions across West Asia and North Africa, including Iraq, Libya, Syria, and Palestine, and now risk being drawn once again into a wider regional war centred on Iran.
For Cyprus and other countries that share a similar fate, including many island peoples around the world who remain under different forms of colonial control and continue to fight for genuine sovereignty, this creates a profound and dangerous reality: our country can be drawn into a war not by its own will, but by the decisions of foreign powers operating from its soil. As tensions escalate, these bases risk becoming magnets for conflict, or worse, they can be used to directly attack any nation that goes against US imperialist interests, thereby placing Cyprus on the frontlines of a conflict it neither chose nor controls.
From Cyprus to West Asia and North Africa, the consequences are real and immediate.
Trump may have been forced to confront the limits of his approach. He may have failed to break Iran or secure the submission he sought. But the system that enabled his actions remains intact and it continues to place entire peoples at risk.
The political defeat of Donald Trump is therefore not an endpoint. It is a moment of exposure; of the limits of coercion, the resilience of resistance, and the fractures within an imperialist order that can no longer operate as it once did.
What comes next will depend not on the calculations of leaders alone, but on the capacity of peoples, those who have borne the brunt of these wars, to transform resistance into lasting change.
Oz Karahan Oz Karahan is a Cypriot political activist and columnist. He is active in the Union of Cypriots, an anti-imperialist and progressive political organisation that fights for an independent and unitary Cyprus free from foreign military presence. He contributes to various media outlets and writes for the Cyprus-based newspapers Avrupa (formerly known as Afrika) and Cumhuriyetçi. He currently serves as Vice-Chairperson for Europe of the International League of Peoples’ Struggle.
