When the backyard is half the world

Not even two months into 2026, the United States has captured one head of state and killed another. Nicolás Maduro was transferred to an American prison, and Ali Khamenei has been killed, both in displays of military technology and intelligence infiltration within the highest levels of their respective presidential security details (in Khamenei's case, with essential collaboration).

The coup against Venezuela's Bolivarian regime is resulting in a subservient government and US control of oil that could starve Cuba out of power, almost literally. The outcome of the decapitation of the supreme leadership of the Iranian revolution (more of a regression than a revolution, after 47 years of ayatollahs) is much more uncertain and dangerous for the entire world, because it is not so easy to reduce the Middle East to a second backyard of the United States, and because it directly challenges Russia and China. What has begun is the closest thing to the "regional war" so often feared, and even the "piecemeal world war" denounced by Pope Francis.

At the end of last December, speaking of the midterm elections next November and with Trump putting his name on the Washington stage, I wrote here that "in the long campaign ahead we will witness something more violent and authoritarian than Napoleonic coronations." Trump and Netanyahu have personal incentives to remain in power, and a shared war may be their refuge. Faits accomplis and military technological superiority are always exposed to fatal errors. Including miscalculations. And this time it hits much closer to home.