The feeling that the future direction of the world is up for grabs grows all the time. The most consequential development in this regard last month has been the American and Israeli assault on Iran.

The bombing began on 28 February. 165 schoolchildren aged between seven and twelve killed were among the first casualties of this war when their school was hit in an airstrike.

Since then, the bombing has not stopped. Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, who has ruled since 1987, and members of his family, as well as military commanders, were killed by the United States and Israel. In response, Iran launched ballistic missile and drone strikes against American bases in Qatar, Bahrain, the UAE and Kuwait, as well as civilian buildings.

The precise motivations and objectives of Donald Trump and the American military remain unclear. Statements have been inconsistent, shifting from day to day, and one official to the next.

Israel, on the other hand, is clearer: it wants regime change or a failed state in Iran.

Both Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu launched this war because they believe they won’t suffer politically. Trump feels confident following the kidnapping of Nicholas Maduro in Venezuela, and has his eyes on Havana next. He correctly believes that his supporters are committed to him, not any political position, or campaign promise. Thus it does not matter that he campaigned on being ‘the peace president’, and putting an end to ‘regime change wars’. That is how cults of personality work.

Netanyahu on the other hand has fundamentally reshaped the politics of the region since 7 October, methodically eliminating all challenges to Israel’s power by destroying Hamas in Gaza, perpetrating non-stop violence against Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank, rapidly expanding settlements, decimating Hezbollah in Lebanon and seizing territory in Syria. He has not encountered sufficient resistance to halt expansionist and maximalist goals. The world has largely watched on.

The assault on Iran came at a time of perceived weakness of the regime. A mass protest movement against price increases and regime corruption was violently suppressed only a few weeks before the bombing started, at a cost of tens of thousands of lives and many more injured. It seemed like a good time to strike from the point of view of Israel and America. Israel has always wanted to topple the regime because it is the only power in the region that opposes them via its proxies and now directly, and the American military remembers what happened to their people in 1979 and in Lebanon at the hands of the current regime in Tehran.

Trump is speaking of a campaign lasting four weeks, or more, or less. The truth is that there is no plan in place on the American side, and the objectives and strategy are being improvised in real time.

The war has exposed the gap between the words and the actions of western political leaders. In our review of world news last month, we commented on Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney’s widely praised speech, in which he described a fundamental rupture in the world order, contrasting the ‘pleasant fiction’ of the post-Cold War order with the new ‘harsh reality’, in which major powers act without constraints. He proposed that ‘middle powers’ should embrace strategic autonomy and coordination to counter coercion, stating that ‘if you are not at the table, you are on the menu’.

He was not the only leader to advocate strategic autonomy from America. European leaders made similar albeit diluted arguments at the Munich Security Conference in early February. Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission, said that ‘Europe must be more independent’. British Prime Minister Keir Starmer spoke about transitioning from over-dependence to interdependence. Meanwhile, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said that Europe must become a strong, self-sustaining pillar within NATO, based on investment in defence and industry.

When the bombing began, all of this vanished into the air.

Anger around Greenland and American reliability in the Ukrainian war was set aside and they all got on board with America and Israel with the exception of Spain. It is easy to understand though, for all the rhetoric about strategic autonomy and independence from America, these leaders rely on America in the war, and this reliance makes a fundamental challenge to Trump and/or Netanyahu impossible. When forced to choose they prefer a battered western alliance than none at all.

Trump faced another crisis in advance of the war in Iran, the staggered release of millions of files relating to Jeffrey Epstein. The picture that emerges is of a powerful transnational network centred on Epstein that trafficked girls and young women to be abused by wealthy and well connected men. Beyond this, the files show that Epstein acted as a fixer for financial and political problems within this sprawling network, and a conduit between the worlds of politics, business, and intelligence agencies.

The sheer scale of the network and the impunity with which it operated is very striking. The range of individuals implicated in the files show how money and material interest matter more than anything else. It is a network that includes everybody from Steve Bannon on the far right to Noam Chomsky on the far left of the American political spectrum.

In the United States, nobody has been arrested in connection with the crimes described in the files. In Britain, former Prince Andrew, now the lowly Andrew Mountbatten Windsor, the name the family adopted in 1917 to obscure their origins in the House of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, the same dynasty that ruled Bulgaria until 1946, the brother of King Charles, has been arrested for misconduct in public office. Once second in line to the throne, he is now eight in line. There is a proposal to remove him completely from the line of succession. The ruling class in Britain obviously feels that it can’t be seen to do nothing. Peter Mandelson, one of the most important operatives in British Labour Party politics over the last forty years, has also been arrested for misconduct in public office. He is long associated with corruption and the exercise of influence behind the scenes. The released files showed that he maintained a relationship with Epstein long after his conviction for soliciting prostitution from a minor, and sharing sensitive government information with him and Jamie Dimon of JP Morgan Chase during the 2008 financial crash when he was a minister in the British government. He advised Jamie Dimon to ‘mildly threaten’ the government he was working for over a proposal to limit bankers’ bonuses.

The damage to the Labour Party is compounding all the time, and starting to show up in election results. The Epstein files revelations surrounding Prince Andrew and Mandelson came on top of the government’s demonisation of immigrants, its complicity in Israel’s genocide in Gaza, and a cost of living crisis that shows no sign of getting better.

They have just lost a by-election in Manchester to the Green Party. A by-election is held when a member of parliament resigns (usually in disgrace) or dies. They finished in third place behind the right-populist party Reform, and had their vote total halved. It was the first time the Green Party won a by-election and their first ever MP elected in the north of England.

The result has a broader significance than just the result in one area. It is further evidence that the British first past the post electoral system, designed to produce clear winners and stable majorities, is fragmenting. The Greens and Reform took 70% percent of the vote, and Labour and the Tories who dominated British politics throughout the twentieth century got just 27% of the vote.

The Green Party in Britain under its new leader Zack Polanski has repositioned itself as a left populist party, and its appeal to Labour voters and supporters who feel abandoned seems to be growing all the time, judging by the growth in their membership, opinion polls ratings, and now election results.

Trump, Netanyahu, Prince Andrew and Peter Mandelson all have one thing in common. They have acted in the way they did, whether that be abusing young women and girls, using public office to enrich themselves and their friends, or committing genocide and war crimes because they feel they are above the rest of us and do not have to follow the same norms and rules. Their power comes from money and access to state power; ours comes from our numbers and the power of collective organisation based on our shared interests and values. This is the only way to combat a world that turns a blind eye to such injustices.