The Vance revelation that a US-Iran deal is ‘very close but not finalised’ has sent a shudder through Whitehall and the chancelleries of Europe. But let us not pretend this is news. It is the predictable conclusion of a decadent superpower’s retreat, a chapter ripped from Gibbon’s Decline and Fall.
America, like Rome before it, is suing for peace with its Persian nemesis, and Britain—that faithful, deluded client—must once again rearrange the deckchairs on the Titanic. The Victorians would be appalled. They understood that empire requires spine, not spin.
A deal with Tehran is not diplomacy; it is surrender. It tells every jihadist from the Levant to the Khyber Pass that the West has lost its nerve. And what of our own national identity?
We are reduced to a pitiful spectator, praying that the American emperor spares us the worst of the fallout. The parallels to 1938 are too obvious to spell out. But then, we live in an age that prefers therapy to truth.
So brace yourselves, Britain. The eclipse is coming, and our allies are just as helpless as we are.
