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The Pentagon summoned the Pope's ambassador, told him the United States has the military power to do "whatever it wants," and warned that the Church better take its side. They even invoked the Avignon Papacy, a dark chapter in history when a government used military force to bend the Church to its will. So where exactly does this end? If the Pope refuses to fall in line, what's the next move, bomb the Vatican? thedailybeast.com/trump-official…

The war with Iran will doubtlessly be studied for decades but what's already pretty clear at this stage is how much of a strategic defeat it is for the U.S. and Israel, perhaps the worst ever in their history (which is actually what former Israeli PM Yair Lapid already called it: x.com/yairlapid/stat…). I mean, how crazy is this: JP Morgan calculated (jpost.com/middle-east/ir…) that, as per the new Hormuz toll arrangement, Iran may get as much as $70-90 billion in additional annual revenue, representing a stunning 20% of its GDP, in extra revenue. Hilariously, Trump commented on Truth Social that the arrangement means “big money will be made” and “Iran can start the reconstruction process” (@realDonaldTrump/116367088879643074" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener">truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTru…). Damn right: they gained the single most valuable geographic rent on earth, by a huge margin. For comparison, the Suez Canal earns Egypt “only” $9-10B/year, and the Panama Canal about $5B. Stunning. Make no mistake, this establishes Iran as the new dominant power in the Middle-East. When you're a country that others need to effectively pay to do business in a region - which is what having a toll booth on Hormuz means in practice - you're no longer shut out of the global economy: you're the one charging admission. It's a phoenix rising from the ashes story if there ever was one (an apt metaphor since it comes from Persian mythology): after 47 years of sanctions, being the target of every trick in the book, and ultimately a war aimed at finishing them off, Iran is coming out the other end stronger than at any point in modern history. Above all, though, the most dramatic consequence of this war is what it means about U.S. power. As I argued in my previous article (open.substack.com/pub/arnaudbert…), this war is qualitatively different from other U.S. wars in the past few decades, such as Vietnam, Afghanistan, Libya, Iraq, Serbia, etc. (the list is unfortunately very long). In those wars the pattern was roughly always the same, with an immense power differential between aggressor and victim. These were imperial wars, the empire attempting to crush a much weaker people whose only realistic recourse was guerrilla resistance. As I wrote, as spectators of these wars, if you had any moral sense, the dominant emotion was a kind of helpless disgust: you were watching a giant stomp through someone else’s house. This war wasn’t at all like that: stunningly, Iran managed to hold its own symmetrically and tactically against the United States and Israel. This is an absolutely crucial difference because it changes what losing means. When the U.S. lost in Vietnam or Afghanistan, it was embarrassing but ultimately manageable - the giant walked away with a bruised ego, and the world shrugged. Empires lose to guerrillas sometimes, it doesn’t say much about the empire's ability to fight a real war. But losing symmetrically - losing when your most advanced stealth fighters get shot down from the sky, your military bases are neutered across an entire theater (x.com/RnaudBertrand/…), your most advanced missile defense systems get destroyed, your enemy seizes control of the world’s most strategic waterway, your navy can’t reopen it, and your “allies” get bombed unforgivingly despite your “protection” - that's a different kind of losing entirely. That tells the world the giant isn't such a giant anymore. This is the topic of my latest article: what the war revealed, what it destroyed, and what may come next. I titled the article "Don't bluff someone who can't fold." You'll understand why when you read the article here: open.substack.com/pub/arnaudbert…