It cannot be overstated how much Trump essentially having to beg Putin for diesel illustrates just how dramatically he has accelerated the decline of US global hegemony. Through his own—and, really, Washington’s broader—strategic hubris and the outsized influence of Israel on U.S. foreign policy, Trump has found himself forced to ease pressure on Russia, an ostensible great-power competitor that Washington had spent years trying to isolate and weaken, to offset the immense costs of his strategically disastrous war against Iran. It’s honestly incredible no matter how you look at it. Iran, what was an ostensible middle power battered by years of US siege and economic warfare, has managed to impose strategically game-changing costs on the United States. The situation has become such that US overreach is simultaneously managing to empower Russia—at a critical moment in the Ukraine War and for the Trans-Atlantic alliance—AND propelling Iran toward a level of geopolitical power and influence it could scarcely have achieved otherwise. What’s unfolding before our eyes in real-time is a truly astonishing case of imperial overstretch and decline, one destined for the history books.