In this expanded analysis, we trace the long arc of American intervention in the Middle East—from the calculated ambitions of the Project for a New American Century to the erratic, improvisational warfare of the Trump era. The assassination of Ayatollah Khamenei marks not a triumph of strategy, but the culmination of a decades-long decline in … Continue reading From Neoconservative Dream to Spontaneous War: The Trajectory of American Empire in Iran