why the US, Israel and Iran are at war now?

02 Mar, 2026

It is the machine, not the man

Everyone watching the US-Israel-Iran conflict is pinning it on Trump. Half the population says he's a patriot; the other half says he's a total lunatic. Both sides are missing the same thing: the machine driving this war.

Energy, Petrodollar, Nuclear Deterrence

To understand the machine, let's first understand the three fundamental variables that govern the machine: energy, petrodollar, and nuclear deterrence.

Energy. The world runs on energy. The countries that produce and consume the most energy have the most economic growth. They have access to better healthcare, agriculture, financial stability, and overall better economic throughput. And, Oil was the default energy source for many decades.

Petrodollar. America's global dominance doesn't come solely from its military might — it comes from the financial infrastructure it has laid upon the world. In 1974, President Nixon brokered a deal with the Middle East: oil would be sold and purchased in the US dollar. The US can now print as much money as it wants, while the rest of the world consumes oil by buying and storing dollars. The inflation the US generates through printing is absorbed by the rest of the world.

Nuclear Deterrence. A traditional military force scales linearly. Nuclear completely resets this equation. A single nuclear weapon makes destruction so catastrophic that going to war with a nuclear-capable country becomes irrational, regardless of the size of your conventional force.

When nuclear technology emerged, most countries tried to develop it but very few could. Take the Middle East: countries producing a large chunk of global oil still have no nuclear capabilities. America made a deal — trade oil in dollars, receive US military protection, but do not develop nuclear weapons. The handful of countries that did acquire nuclear capability now sit in a position of deterrence. Nobody starts a war with them. That asymmetry is everything.

The Background: History That Created The Machine

Iran's geography. The Persian Gulf has one exit: the Strait of Hormuz, a narrow passage barely 33 kilometres wide at its narrowest point. Every barrel of oil from Saudi Arabia, UAE, Kuwait, and Iraq must pass through it to reach the world. Iran sits on its northern shore. This gives Iran unchosen veto power over 20% of the world's oil supply, not by producing it, but simply by being able to threaten it.

1953. At the peak of the Cold War, Iran — a democratic country — refused to sell its oil to Britain. Britain went to the US and framed it as a communist takeover. The US overthrew Iran's democratically elected Prime Minister, Mohammad Mosaddegh. A brutal regime replaced the democratic one, and Iran's entire perception of America was permanently altered. The hatred was not manufactured. It was earned.

1974. The petrodollar deal reshaped the region's power map. Iran was producing nearly 20% of global oil and had no interest in routing it through the dollar system. They planned to sell directly to China, Russia, and the rest of the world, bypassing the petrodollar equation entirely. This made Iran an existential threat to the American financial order — not just a political rival.

1980s. The US enabled Saddam Hussein to wage war against Iran, hoping to destabilize the regime. Iran felt betrayed for the second time. And while all of this was happening, the Gulf states kept pumping oil through the petrodollar system, quietly siding with America.

Iran's response. Without nuclear capability, Iran built the next best deterrent: a proxy network across the entire region. Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Houthis in Yemen, militias across Iraq and Syria. Attack Iran, and fires start in six places at once. This network protected Iran from direct invasion for decades.

Israel. Israel is a non-Muslim country in the entire region, deeply aligned with American values. It was directed not to develop nuclear weapons. But it did, maintaining deliberate ambiguity: neither confirming nor denying. Israel became the testing ground for America's most advanced military technology. The US provided money and weapons so Israel could survive in a region hostile to its existence. Look at the map — Israel is no bigger than New Jersey.

In return, Israel became one of America's most critical partners, providing ground-level intelligence across the entire Arab world.

2003. When the US invaded Iraq and removed Saddam Hussein, it inadvertently shot itself in the foot. Saddam was Iran's biggest regional threat. By eliminating him, America removed its own check on Iran. Tehran, freed from its most dangerous neighbor, could now focus entirely on building its own power.

2015–2018: The JCPOA. In 2015, Obama's administration struck a deal with Iran — the JCPOA ¹ — that capped Iran's nuclear program in exchange for lifting sanctions. Inspectors confirmed full compliance. Then in 2018, Trump tore it up anyway. Iran felt betrayed for the third time. When Biden returned to the table in 2021, Iran refused to trust it. Any agreement the next American president can simply cancel is not a deal. It is surrender on an installment plan.

But What Changed?

The Shale Revolution. Around 2005, American engineers cracked horizontal drilling combined with hydraulic fracturing, unlocking vast oil reserves trapped in underground rock that had previously been completely inaccessible. By 2018, the US had gone from importing 60% of its oil to becoming the world's largest producer, surpassing Saudi Arabia and Russia. America no longer needed Iran.

The Abraham Accords (2020). Donald Trump brokered normalization agreements between Israel and major Arab states. For the first time in forty years, a stable relationship existed between Israel and the rest of the Middle East. For Iran, this was a strategic catastrophe. For decades, Iran had relied on Muslim solidarity across the region as a buffer. The Accords shattered that. It had been cornered.

Iran's nuclear clock. By 2023, Iran had enriched uranium to 60% purity. Weapons grade is 90%, but the gap is not as large as it sounds. The hard work in enrichment is getting from 0% to 20%. From 60% to 90% is fast once the centrifuges are running. Speculation put Iran weeks to months away from enough fissile material for a weapon. A nuclear Iran makes the entire architecture of this conflict obsolete, and both Israel and America know it.

Iran breaks the petrodollar. Iran, controlling access to 20% of global oil supply through the Strait of Hormuz, began selling its oil directly to China and Russia in yuan, bypassing the petrodollar equation entirely. ²

The New World Order

The old order ran on oil, dollars, and military might. That order is ending — not because America lost, but because the underlying technology is changing.

Electric vehicles are displacing millions of barrels of daily oil demand. Global oil consumption is projected to peak by 2030. ³ The dollar's grip on global reserves has been quietly eroding for two decades. ⁴ The new critical resource is not a barrel of oil. It is a kilowatt. AI is the new energy race, and China is building energy infrastructure at a pace that dwarfs America's. ⁵

What looks like a war between three countries is a transition moment. America is not acting from unlimited strength. It is acting from urgency — using its old leverage in the last window it still works, trying to close the Iran problem before the competition that actually defines the next century demands its full attention.

The oil era is not over yet. But everyone who built their power on it can feel it ending. And that is precisely why this war is happening now.

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