Will Iran Become a Second Vietnam for the US? Or Worse?

Ulrike Reisner

What is unfolding before our eyes is of historic significance. The United States will lose its claim to hegemony over the world just a few decades after the fall of the USSR. There is a considerable discrepancy between what the official Western media report about the war in Iran and what is happening on the ground. As we at the Brennus Institute Paris-Vienna seek to illustrate, the United States and the West face far more than a military defeat. It is the destruction of the instrument most valuable to American power: control over the Middle East. 

The abandonment of the Gulf states, treated as collateral damage in the war with Iran, jeopardises the West’s financial supremacy – or what remains of it. The assassination of the Ayatollah Khamenei has severed the last ties that might still have existed between Western countries and the rest of the international community. To help us make sense of a series of events as significant as the fall of the Berlin Wall once was, Edouard Husson devotes a two-part analysis (Brennus Letters) to the question that strikes us as fundamental: Is the outbreak of the Second Iran War a desperate attempt to bring about a ‘Great Reset’ in order to save Western hegemony over the world? Why has the publication of the Epstein files made this war inevitable for the US? We present here extracts from the two comprehensive analyses in Brennus Letters #6 and #7, both published in March 2026.

The Tragedy of Donald Trump

In the current situation, there is neither sympathy for Donald Trump nor any excuse for the catastrophe he has triggered. His breach of the promise he made to his voters to bring about peace is unforgivable.

On the other hand, we must acknowledge that Trump is a magnificent subject for a modern tragedian. For Donald Trump’s second term is indeed a tragedy! All the necessary ingredients for a modern Shakespearean drama are present.

Let us imagine the plot of the play to be written. One must begin with the heinous murder of General Soleimani in January 2020. For it is indeed the spectre of General Soleimani that haunts Trump’s second term. A few days before he had Khamenei killed, Trump had boastfully remarked in his 2026 State of the Union address: “And we took out Soleimani”. What befalls Trump is truly Soleimani’s revenge.