Foreclosing on Iran: US Imperialism at Work

The drums of war have shifted to the sound of falling bombs. As of this weekend, the “Maximum Pressure” campaign against Iran has transitioned into a massive, coordinated air campaign. With over 2,000 targets struck across 24 of Iran’s 31 provinces, hitting a girls elementary school, killing over 165 children, killing Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and 40 other high ranking officials, the U.S. and Israel have moved beyond deterrence into an era of forced regime restructuring.

While the White House frames “Operation Epic Fury” as a preemptive strike to save the world from a nuclear threat, the reality on the ground suggests a much more calculated geopolitical “foreclosure.” For decades, Iran has been a thorn in the side of Western interests—a defiant obstacle to regional oil control and the “Petrodollar” system. Now, that thorn is being forcibly removed.

The drive to destabilise nations like Iran and Venezuela has nothing to do with liberating their people. It is about devaluing their nations to the point of collapse, then seizing the remains. And this is not a Trump invention.

When Iran’s democratically elected Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh nationalised the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company in 1953 — on the straightforward grounds that Iranian oil should benefit Iranians — the CIA overthrew him. American oil companies took 40 percent of Iranian production. The playbook is at least 70 years old.

1. The Strategy: Engineering a Dollar Shortage

The primary weapon in 2026 isn’t the bomb — it’s the Dollar Shortage. By imposing total sanctions, the U.S. effectively severed Iran’s access to the global banking system. When a country cannot receive U.S. dollars for its primary exports, its local currency—the Rial—inevitably becomes worthless. It has lost 90% of its value since 2018 alone. To keep the government functioning, the state prints money — making food and medicine unaffordable for ordinary citizens – leading to a death spiral of hyperinflation where basic survival becomes a luxury for the average Iranian. In Iran, sanctions have created chronic pharmaceutical shortages, cut patients off from cancer treatments and imported medical equipment, and reduced families to choosing between eating and heating their homes.

This economic misery is not an accidental byproduct; it is the goal. By collapsing the economy from within, the U.S. manufactures the domestic unrest it needs to justify a “humanitarian” intervention. We saw it in Venezuela, we are seeing it in Cuba and we saw it in Tehran last month: the U.S. strategy squeezes the population until they reach a breaking point, only for the White House to use that very desperation as the moral mandate for military action.

2. Venezuela Template and the China Connection

The blueprint was finalised on January 3, 2026. After years of sanctions that paralysed Venezuela’s economy, U.S. special forces seized Nicolás Maduro. Trump’s explanation was unusually candid: “We’re going to get the oil flowing the way it should be.”

Under Executive Order 14373, proceeds from Venezuelan oil sales now flow into U.S. Treasury-controlled accounts. The acting government must ask Washington for an allowance to buy food or repair power grids. Every barrel extracted serves U.S. interests rather than the Venezuelan people. This is not regime change. It is economic receivership.

The speed of what followed tells the full story. Within six weeks of the military operation, Chevron, BP, Shell, Eni and Repsol had all been licensed to operate. Contracts were signed. Oil was flowing to US refineries. By the State of the Union, Trump announced the US had already received 80 million barrels of Venezuelan oil — from its “new friend and partner.” All transactions with China, Russia and Iran were strictly prohibited. The contracts were clearly prepared well before the first shot was fired.

There is another strong motive: China. For years, Venezuela was a vital energy tap for Beijing, bypassing U.S. control. Since the U.S. takeover of Venezuela , those shipments have been halted. With Venezuela’s oil now under U.S. management, Iran became China’s last major “unauthorized” energy source. By attacking Iran now, the U.S. is attempting to cut Beijing’s final energy lifeline, gaining a massive lever over the Chinese economy.

3. The Iraq Template: The Proof That Cannot Be Denied

If Venezuela is the most recent proof of the imperial playbook, Iraq is the most documented — and the most damning, because the admission came from inside the system itself.

In March 2003, the United States and Britain invaded Iraq on the stated pretext of weapons of mass destruction. None were ever found. What was found, beneath the soil of a country the US had already bombed, sanctioned and starved for over a decade, was the second largest oil reserves in the world.

Before the invasion, Western oil companies were completely shut out of Iraq’s oil market. After it, ExxonMobil, BP and Shell — who had lobbied their governments most aggressively to ensure the invasion would open Iraq to foreign oil companies — were all awarded contracts. BP alone has extracted an estimated $15 billion in Iraqi oil since 2003. Western oil executives were reportedly running Iraq’s Oil Ministry in the months immediately after the invasion, before transitioning to serve as “advisers” to the new US-installed government.

At least 200,000 Iraqi civilians were killed. The country’s infrastructure was destroyed. A US-friendly government was installed. And the oil flowed — under contracts drafted with the help of the US State Department, governed by terms that gave foreign companies up to 75% ownership stakes.

The person who stated it most plainly was not a critic or an activist. It was Alan Greenspan, Chairman of the Federal Reserve for nearly two decades, in his 2007 memoir: “Everyone knows: the Iraq war is largely about oil.”

The pattern is identical to Iran and Venezuela: manufacture or exaggerate a threat, apply economic pressure, wait for desperation, then intervene militarily — with oil contracts ready to sign before the bombs have stopped falling.

4. The Double Standard: Iran vs Israel

The administration justifies this aggression by citing Iran’s nuclear potential. Yet, this rationale relies on a staggering double standard. Iran is an NPT signatory, submits to IAEA inspections, and does not possess nuclear weapons. Israel possesses an estimated 80 to 400 nuclear warheads, has never signed the NPT, has never submitted to a single inspection, and faces no sanctions, no ultimatums, no carrier groups. The U.S. provides billions in annual military aid to Israel while threatening to obliterate Iran for pursuing the same capability.The U.S. isn’t actually against nuclear weapons in the Middle East; it is only against nuclear weapons held by nations it cannot control

While Iran is labeled an aggressor, it is Israel that has conducted thousands of strikes across Lebanon, Syria, Yemen and Iraq. Israel continues its genocide in Gaza since October 2023, killing over 75,000 Palestinians, forcibly starving a civilian population, and systematically seizing and destroying territory — with American weapons, American funding, and American diplomatic cover at the UN. Israel in addition conducted a 12-day bombing campaign on Iranian soil in June 2025, killing scores of Iranian commanders and nuclear scientists The U.S. assassinated Iran’s most senior general on Iraqi soil in 2020 and struck Iranian nuclear facilities in 2025. It begs the question who is the aggressor and threat to security?

Iran launched ballistic missiles at Israel twice — in April and October 2024 — both explicitly in retaliation for Israeli strikes on Iranian targets. The aggressor and the aggressed look very different depending on where you start the timeline. Western media consistently starts it at the Iranian response ignoring or dismissing Israel and US aggression and complicity.

The nuclear concern is real — but Iran addressed it at the negotiating table, and the bombs fell anyway. There is only one explanation for attacking a country mid-negotiation, two days before a scheduled meeting: the goal was never a nuclear deal. It was what it has always been since 1953 — control of Iran’s resources, elimination of a rival power center, and now, the severing of China’s most important unauthorized energy supply.

5. The Liberation Rhetoric vs Historical Record

As the White House tells the Iranian people this is their “only chance for freedom,” we must look at the actual history of such promises. History shows that U.S. intervention is rarely about fostering democracy; it is about enforcing compliance.

The U.S. has a consistent track record of toppling democratically elected governments that were not compliant with American interests. We saw this in Iran (1953) when the CIA ousted Mohammad Mosaddegh for nationalizing oil. We saw it in Guatemala (1954) to protect fruit company profits, and in Chile (1973) to remove Salvador Allende. In these cases, and in the support for right-wing juntas in El Salvador and Nicaragua, “freedom” was the brand name, but access to resources and compliance was the goal.

The rhetoric of “freeing the people” serves as a moral cloak for what is fundamentally a strategic takeover. It is a profound irony that the U.S. positions itself as the champion of Iranian protesters while enforcing a domestic detention system where thousands are “rounded up” within U.S. borders by ICE, bypassing the same due process rights we demand for Tehran.

Saudi Arabia — America’s closest Gulf ally — executes dissidents, imprisons women’s rights activists, and murdered journalist Jamal Khashoggi on foreign soil. In Yemen, Saudi Arabia has prosecuted one of the most devastating humanitarian catastrophes of the past decade, using American weapons, American logistical support, and under American diplomatic cover. Not a carrier group in sight.

Human rights are not applied here as principle. They are invoked as narrative cover when resource and strategic interests are already driving the policy.

It would be disingenuous to ignore that for many Iranians, this chaos is the breaking point of decades of internal struggle. The protests that ignited in late 2025 were the explosion of long-simmering rage against systemic religious persecution and a theocratic system that prioritized regional proxy wars over the dignity of its citizens.

However, the tragedy lies in the 2 opposing sides that have trapped the Iranian population. On one side, they face a regime that responded to calls for reform with a brutal crackdown. On the other, they face a U.S. sanctions regime that intentionally set their economy on fire. The people aren’t just “fighting for freedom”; they are fighting for survival in a wreckage engineered by both their own leadership and foreign powers.

Conclusion: Not Liberation. Occupation.

What we are witnessing in March 2026 is a high-stakes Asset Foreclosure. By taking “custody” of the region’s energy taps, the U.S. is ensuring that the “New Middle East” is one where resources flow toward Washington and away from rivals like China.

The Iranian people deserve a system that respects their rights. But history suggests that when a superpower “frees” a nation by first starving its economy and then bombing its infrastructure, the result is rarely a democracy. It is a takeover.

Iran and Venezuela are not being liberated. They are being foreclosed upon. The threat narrative changes with the era — communism, terrorism, weapons of mass destruction, human rights, nuclear proliferation. The motive does not. The children killed in Minab on a Saturday morning did not die for democracy. They died because their country sits on the world’s fourth largest oil reserves and supplies energy to America’s principal rival. That is the truth the White House will never state and the media will rarely print.

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Sources:

National Security Archive, George Washington University — CIA declassified documents on the 1953 Iranian coup: nsarchive.gwu.edu

Reuters — Iran rial devaluation and pharmaceutical shortages, 2018–2026

International Monetary Fund — Iran economic data and currency reporting: imf.org

Al Jazeera — Venezuela sanctions mechanism and hyperinflation: aljazeera.com/news/2026/1/5/venezuela-after-maduro-oil-power-and-the-limits-of-intervention

Trump statement on Venezuelan oil infrastructure — CBS News: cbsnews.com/news/venezuela-oil-reserves-us-strike-trump-what-to-know

Columbia University Center on Global Energy Policy — Venezuela-China oil ties severely impacted by

U.S. action: energypolicy.columbia.edu/venezuela-china-oil-ties-severely-impacted-by-us-action

Reuters / Iran International — Chinese refiners turning to Iranian crude after Venezuela: iranintl.com/en/202601076231

Executive Order 14373, “Safeguarding Venezuelan Oil Revenue for the Good of the American and Venezuelan People,” January 9, 2026 — White House / Federal Register: federalregister.gov/documents/2026/01/15/2026-00831

US State Department — Actions to Implement President Trump’s Vision for Venezuelan Oil, February 2026: state.gov

UPI — Venezuela signs new contracts to supply oil to United States, March 4, 2026: upi.com

Al Jazeera — Western oil firms in Iraq after US exits: aljazeera.com

Alan Greenspan — The Age of Turbulence (2007)

Iraq Body Count — Documented civilian deaths 2003–2024: iraqbodycount.org

Brown University Costs of War Project — Human cost of post-9/11 wars: costsofwar.watson.brown.edu

Bloomberg — U.S.-Iran to hold talks at technical level, February 27 2026: bloomberg.com

Arms Control Association — Israel nuclear weapons estimates: armscontrol.org

Federation of American Scientists — Global nuclear weapons inventory: fas.org

Wikipedia — 2026 Israeli-United States strikes on Iran: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2026_Israeli–United_States_strikes_on_Iran

Al Jazeera — Gaza death toll exceeds 75,000, independent data verified: aljazeera.com/features/2026/2/18/gaza-death-toll-exceeds-75000

The Lancet Global Health — Gaza Mortality Survey peer-reviewed study, 2025

Al Jazeera — Minab school airstrike, death toll rises to 165: aljazeera.com/news/2026/2/28/israel-strikes-two-schools-in-iran

Amnesty International — Saudi Arabia human rights record: amnesty.org

UN Human Rights Council — Yemen civilian casualty reports: ohchr.org

U.S. Intelligence Assessment — CIA acknowledgment of Khashoggi killing, 2021

CNN — Why the U.S. and Israel attacked Iran: cnn.com/2026/02/28/middleeast/israel-attack-iran-intl-hnk

Democracy Now — U.S. and Israel launch unprovoked attack on Iran: democracynow.org/2026/2/28/special_report_us_israel_launch_unprovoked

Focus on the Global South — Framing Palestine: Israel, the Gulf states, and American power: focusweb.org/framing-palestine-israel-the-gulf-states-and-american-power-in-the-middle-east