The War on Iran: Anatomy of a Conflict That Is Reshaping the World Order
Today I am providing my English translation of an article by Margherita Furlan, originally in Italian and published on AntiMafiaDuemila.com on Thursday 5th March 2026.
(All formatting original, footnotes mine).
Preface: wars do not just break out; they are built up
When, on 28th February 2026 at 7.30 AM Italian time, the first missiles of Operation “Roaring Lion” struck Tehran, Isfahan, Karaj and Qom, the world witnessed not the start of a crisis, but the detonation of a bomb that had been building up over years of mounting pressure. The joint attack by the United States and Israel came at the very moment when diplomacy was yielding concrete results: the day before, Oman’s foreign minister had declared that Iran was ready to give up its stockpiles of enriched uranium and that an agreement was “within our grasp”. Three rounds of talks in Geneva, with the IAEA1 involved as a technical observer, had opened up a real space for negotiation for the first time.
This war is not about Iran’s nuclear programme. It is about the future of the world order.
The real motives: five levels of interpretation
Control of energy routes as a pillar of hegemony
To understand the war against Iran, one must start with a fundamental fact: the United States is now the world’s leading producer of oil and natural gas, but its “energy dominance” rests on a more fragile foundation than official rhetoric would suggest.
The White House’s figures are impressive on the surface: crude oil production reached a record 13.6 million barrels a day in 2025, whilst natural gas production stands at 110 billion cubic feet a day — almost as much as Russia, Iran and China combined. In 2025, the US exceeded 100 million tonnes of LNG2 exported in a single year for the first time, a world record. LNG exports are forecast to rise to 16.4 billion cubic metres per day in 2026 and 18.1 billion in 2027. The US currently produces 24 million barrels per day of oil and liquid fuels — more than Russia and Saudi Arabia combined.
But deep cracks are emerging beneath the surface. American shale fields are maturing: it is becoming increasingly expensive to extract significant new quantities of crude oil. Oil production growth has fallen below 1% in 2026, according to the Energy Information Administration itself. Some analysts believe that US oil production is already reaching its plateau and could begin to decline by the early 2030s. Shale producers in Texas and New Mexico are frustrated: as a Chatham House analysis put it, “they do not see prices high enough to stimulate growth”. And as the head of energy at Raymond James stated, “Trump has been unequivocal: he wants lower prices — and that is bad for American producers”. The contradiction is structural: Trump wants low prices for consumers and high prices for producers at the same time. Two incompatible goals.
This is where war enters the equation. Against a backdrop of looming production decline, control of global energy routes is not a geopolitical luxury: it is an existential economic necessity. If you cannot increase production indefinitely, you must control who can do so and under what conditions. And if you cannot compete on cost with Iranian oil sold at a discount to China or with Russian gas flowing via pipeline, you must physically eliminate those competitors from the market.
The Strait of Hormuz, through which about a fifth of the world’s oil and a fifth of global liquefied natural gas passes, is the first bottleneck. The Suez Canal is the second. The Red Sea, controlled by the Yemeni Houthis allied with Iran, is the third.
Neutralising Iran means simultaneously neutralising the capacity to disrupt all three chokepoints — and creating the conditions to replace those flows with American LNG.
The architecture of energy dominance is broader than it appears. In July 2025, the US and the European Union signed a $750 billion Energy Pact committing the EU to purchase $250 billion a year in American LNG, oil and nuclear fuel until 2028 — with the stated aim of permanently removing Russian energy from the European grid. Major US companies Cheniere Energy, ExxonMobil and Chevron are expanding their infrastructure in Europe, transforming the continent into what one analyst has called “a bad market for American shale”. Meanwhile, in the defence sector, Trump’s “Peace Council” has secured a €150 billion European commitment to purchases of American military hardware — Lockheed Martin’s F-35s and RTX’s (formerly Raytheon) Patriot systems. Energy and arms: the same value chain.
Washington now has direct or indirect influence over oil production from Canada to Guyana to Venezuela — around 20% of global output. But that is not enough. Operations in recent months form a coherent arc: Venezuela (the capture of [Nicolas] Maduro and control over the world’s largest crude oil reserves), Nigeria (pressure on African reserves), Greenland (critical minerals and Arctic shipping routes), Iran (an energy hub between the Gulf and Asia). The aim is to plant the American flag in every area where there are substantial energy reserves. As Secretary of State Marco Rubio summarised at the Munich Conference, the administration views the global energy transition not as an opportunity but as a threat: if the world breaks free from fossil fuels, those who control them will also lose their importance. This is why Trump scrapped the clean energy tax credits in the Inflation Reduction Act and signed the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” to dismantle Biden’s legacy on renewables.
By this logic, the war on Iran is not a reaction to a threat: it is a positioning manoeuvre in a global energy market where American dominance, though seemingly at its peak, is structurally threatened by the decline of shale, the rise of alternative Eurasian corridors and the de-dollarisation of oil transactions. Energy has become the greenback’s last guarantee — and when that guarantee falters, arms are resorted to.
Dismantling Iran as the linchpin of the multipolar system
To understand why Iran is the target, one must understand what Iran represents within the new architecture of the multipolar world. It is not just any country: it is the point where at least four strategic systems intersect, and Washington wants to prevent them from coalescing.
The logistical hub: the North-South Corridor (INSTC3). This is perhaps the least discussed aspect and, at the same time, the most important. The INSTC is a 7,200 km multimodal corridor linking St Petersburg to Mumbai via Moscow, Astrakhan, the Caspian Sea, Iran and the Indian Ocean. By January 2026, traffic along this route had reached record levels, with the launch of the first regular container trains between the Moscow region and the Iranian port of Bandar Abbas. The INSTC halves transport times and costs compared to the traditional maritime route via Suez. For Russia, under western sanctions and with northern routes limited, this corridor is literally an economic lifeline. Destroying it — or rendering it unreliable — means stifling Russia’s ability to trade with South Asia, just when Moscow needs it most.
The energy nexus: the Iran-China axis. Between late 2025 and early 2026, Iran finalised a 20-year Comprehensive Strategic Partnership Treaty with Russia and accelerated the implementation of the 25-year Cooperation Programme with China, signed in 2021 but long left on paper. The latter provides for $400 billion in Chinese investment in Iranian infrastructure — ports, railways, telecommunications, special economic zones — in exchange for oil supplies at preferential prices for 25 years. China is the only remaining customer for sanctioned Iranian oil, and it purchases it at significant discounts, paying in Yuan rather than Dollars. This is the crux of the matter: every barrel of Iranian oil sold to China in yuan is a barrel taken out of the petrodollar’s system. Iran is not merely an energy supplier to Beijing: it is a living laboratory for the de-dollarisation of oil transactions.
The infrastructure hub: Chabahar and the projection towards the Indian Ocean.
The port of Chabahar, situated on Iran’s south-eastern coast overlooking the Gulf of Oman — crucially, outside the Strait of Hormuz — is the terminus of a strategic project involving India, China and Russia simultaneously. India has developed it as an alternative to the Pakistani port of Gwadar (controlled by China as part of the CPEC4 corridor) to gain access to Afghanistan and Central Asia. But Chabahar is also a transit point for crude oil destined for China, which wishes to bypass Hormuz. Striking Iran means calling into question the viability of Chabahar and, with it, the logistical diversification strategies of three nuclear powers.
The political-military nexus: the axis of resistance. Over four decades, Iran has built a network of asymmetric alliances — Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas in Gaza, the Shia militias in Iraq, the Houthis in Yemen, and proxies in Syria — which has granted it strategic depth far beyond its borders. This network, the so-called “Axis of Resistance”, has allowed Tehran to project power at low cost, without directly committing its own conventional forces. The “Twelve-Day War” of June 2025, the downsizing of Hezbollah, the collapse of [Bashar al] Assad in Syria and the weakening of Hamas had already eroded this network. The attack on 28th February [2026] aims to complete the task: not only to destroy Iran’s conventional military capability, but to eliminate the coordination centre of the entire system.
From this perspective, the aim is not simply to “strike Iran”, but to dismantle its overall geopolitical role: to undermine its ability to maintain networks of alliances, indirect projections of power and corridors of influence stretching from the Persian Gulf to the Levant. The issue of regime change, often raised in public debate, should be seen as a secondary option: even without a formal overthrow of the political system, a militarily weakened, economically isolated and structurally unstable Iran already represents a strategic outcome consistent with this logic.
This framework forms part of a longer historical cycle, that of the “New Middle East” project theorised as early as the 1990s: not the stabilisation of the region, but its controlled fragmentation along ethnic, sectarian and territorial fault lines, such as to prevent the formation of autonomous regional poles. After Iraq in 2003 (the elimination of the sovereign state as a geopolitical actor), Libya in 2011 (dissolution into permanent anarchy), and Syria from 2011 onwards (territorial fragmentation and proxy war), Iran is the final major piece of the puzzle. With one crucial difference: Iran is not Saddam [Hussein]’s Iraq or [Muammar] Gaddafi’s Libya. It is a country of 92 million people with a millennia-old imperial history, a developed industrial-military complex and structured alliances with the two major revisionist powers on the planet. The stakes are of a far greater magnitude.
Indirectly targeting China and Russia: the 21st-century proxy war
This is the factor that transforms the Iranian conflict from a regional crisis into a focal point of global competition. Iran is not the ultimate target: it is the means by which Washington intends to inflict strategic damage on its real rivals.
Against China: cutting off the energy lifeline. The closure of the Strait of Hormuz, a direct consequence of the conflict, hits China head-on. 45% of all crude oil passing through Hormuz is destined for Asian markets, with Beijing as the primary recipient. China imports around 72% of the oil it consumes, and a significant proportion passes through that strait. It is no coincidence that Beijing immediately asked its main refineries to halt exports of refined petroleum products — an unprecedented emergency signal, indicating fears of being unable to meet domestic demand.
But the damage extends far beyond the immediate oil flow. The Iranian attack on QatarEnergy’s Ras Laffan and Mesaieed sites — a retaliation against the Gulf states hosting US bases — has taken around a fifth of global LNG export capacity offline. Qatar is the world’s largest LNG exporter and China is among its top customers. At the same time, Maersk has suspended all shipping through the Strait of Hormuz and rerouted vessels around the Cape of Good Hope, adding weeks to delivery times and incurring huge costs for the supply chain.
The strategic message is twofold. In the immediate term: to demonstrate that China lacks the capacity to protect its own energy supply lines, despite massive naval investments in recent years. Structurally: to demonstrate that all the alternative energy corridors Beijing was building — from the 25-year cooperation programme with Iran to the Belt and Road Initiative — pass through areas that Washington can render inoperable at any time. The attack directly targets Chinese-funded Iranian coastal infrastructure — Asaluyeh, Bandar Abbas — designed to ensure Beijing access to international waters bypassing the main choke points under Western influence.
Then there is the link to the Taiwan issue. Demonstrating that the US can block Chinese energy routes in the Persian Gulf is a form of extended deterrence that goes far beyond the Middle East. Should China take action against Taiwan, Washington could replicate the Hormuz scenario in the Pacific — and Beijing knows this. In this sense, the war on Iran is also a test of the credibility of American deterrence in the Indo-Pacific.
China thus faces the most difficult dilemma of its rise as a superpower. Abandoning Iran would mean accepting a scaling back of its strategic ambitions and losing an irreplaceable supplier of cheap oil — with direct repercussions for the Taiwan issue as well. But openly supporting Tehran would expose Beijing to the risk of direct military escalation with the US and the certainty of additional tariffs and sanctions. Significantly, China has for now chosen to wait and see: verbal condemnation, calls for restraint, but no concrete action. While Russia benefits from the chaos, China benefits from time, observing and analysing American vulnerabilities whilst consolidating its economic ties with Tehran, waiting for the storm to pass.
Against Russia: undermining the North-South Corridor and the energy hub. For Moscow, Iran is the final continental terminus of the INSTC — the only functioning trade corridor connecting it to Indian Ocean markets whilst circumventing Western sanctions. Russia had also stored a significant quantity of its crude oil in Iran, using the country as a redistribution hub for Asian customers. Iranian instability simultaneously undermines infrastructure investment, logistical connectivity and Moscow’s ability to circumvent the commercial isolation imposed by the West.
Furthermore, Russia and Iran are competing with each other when it comes to selling their sanctioned oil, with a race to the bottom on prices that favours the buyer — namely China. Beijing imposes conditions from a position of strength on two suppliers who have no alternative outlet. In this triangle, eliminating Iran does not only harm Tehran: it alters China’s bargaining power (which loses an alternative supplier to Russia) and, paradoxically, could temporarily strengthen Moscow as the sole supplier of discounted crude oil — but at the cost of even greater dependence on Beijing.
The paradox for Russia is that, despite being militarily engaged in Ukraine, it benefits from the chaos in the short term: energy prices rise, Western military resources are diverted from Ukraine to the Middle East, and anti-American sentiment in the Global South strengthens. But in the medium term, if Iran were to fall and a pro-American regime were to be established there, neither Russia nor China could expect any benefit. The military-technological cooperation that had made Iran an irreplaceable partner — from Russian Su-35 fighter jets to the Khayyam spy satellite, from Chinese BeiDou-3 navigation systems to anti-stealth radars — would be wiped out.
The bigger picture: war as a stress test for multipolarism. Iran has, despite itself, become the test case for the strength of the Eurasian bloc. If BRICS, the SCO5, strategic partnerships and alternative corridors mean anything, they should signify the ability to protect a member under attack. The fact that neither Russia nor China is intervening in any concrete way reveals a reality that the West regards as a victory and that the Global South views with concern: the multipolar system is still too young, too fragmented and too dependent on the goodwill of its components to function as a collective security system. But it is also true that every war the West wages against a BRICS member accelerates the consolidation process — because it demonstrates, in practice, why that system is necessary.
Convergence with Netanyahu: two agendas coming together
To understand the convergence between the US and Israel on Iran, one must abandon the notion that this is merely an alliance between a protector and its protégé. What is currently taking place is the operational merging of two distinct yet complementary strategic projects, each with its own internal logic and long-term objectives.
The Israeli agenda: the ‘Begin Doctrine’ taken to its logical conclusion. Israel’s national security strategy has a cornerstone dating back to 1981, when Prime Minister Menachem Begin ordered the bombing of the Iraqi nuclear reactor at Osirak. The principle was clear: Israel will never tolerate a regional adversary acquiring nuclear capabilities or conventional military superiority such as to threaten its existence. This doctrine, applied in 2007 against the Syrian reactor at al-Kibar and in June 2025 against Iranian nuclear sites, has found its most radical expression in the current conflict: not striking a single target, but dismantling an entire State apparatus.
For Netanyahu, this is the operation of a lifetime. Having personally drafted the first national security strategy document since Israel’s founding — a text largely classified but whose principles have been made public — the Prime Minister has systematically created the conditions for this moment. The curtailment of Hamas through the war in Gaza, the weakening of Hezbollah in Lebanon, the fall of Assad in Syria which eliminated Iran’s corridor to the Mediterranean: each stage has removed a protective shield from Iran, until it was left exposed.
For Tel Aviv, the issue is not merely military but existential in the broadest sense. Israel aims to eliminate every possible regional geopolitical competitor — not just Iran, but, in the long term, any actor, including Turkey, that might challenge its qualitative superiority and freedom of action. The ultimate goal is not peace in the traditional sense: it is the permanent absence of challengers.
The Ben Gurion Canal project and the economic “Greater Israel”. There is a dimension to this conflict that is almost completely ignored, yet is crucial to understanding the convergence of interests. The Ben Gurion Canal project has been in existence since the 1960s: an infrastructure that would link the Red Sea (from the port of Eilat in the Gulf of Aqaba) to the Mediterranean, passing through the Negev desert. It would be a direct alternative to the Suez Canal — longer, but under complete Israeli control.
For decades, the project remained on paper, hampered by the Palestinian presence in Gaza (whose territory lies along the proposed route) and by the threat posed by the Iranian Axis of Resistance. But the war in Gaza, the systematic destruction of the Strip’s urban fabric and the elimination of Hamas’s operational capacity have removed the first obstacle. Neutralising Iran would remove the second: without Tehran to coordinate Hezbollah, the Houthis and Iraqi militias, the Bab el-Mandeb Strait (the southern entrance to the Red Sea) would become safer.
In December 2025, Netanyahu signed the recognition of Somaliland as an independent state — the first UN member state to do so. This is no symbolic gesture: Somaliland controls some 300 miles of coastline on the Gulf of Aden, right at the mouth of Bab el-Mandeb. This move guarantees Israel a cooperative partner on the African side of the strait, completing the security chain necessary to bring the Ben Gurion Canal to life.
The project forms part of the wider India-Middle East-Europe Economic Corridor (IMEC), launched at the 2023 G20 summit, which envisages an integrated network of railways and seaports stretching from India through the Gulf states and Israel to Europe. Netanyahu presented it as the heart of the “New Middle East” — a regional economic system centred on Israel as a logistics, financial and technological hub, in partnership with the Gulf petro-monarchies and under the US security umbrella. In this architecture, Iran is the only remaining obstacle.
The merging of agendas: the Board of Peace as a clearing house.
Trump’s Board of Peace — the body headed by Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff that manages Middle Eastern negotiations — is not a diplomatic body in the traditional sense. It is the forum where American financial interests, Israeli territorial ambitions and the security needs of the Gulf petro-monarchies converge. The fact that Witkoff held a secret meeting with Reza Pahlavi, the exiled Iranian crown prince, prior to the attack, suggests that the regime-change component was planned, not improvised. The target is not Iran as an enemy: it is Iran as the final missing piece (before Ankara) of a new regional order centred on the Washington-Tel Aviv-Riyadh axis, in which Israel acts as the linchpin of the dollarisation of the entire Middle East.
The war economy as an internal driver
The final motive is perhaps the most cynical and the most quantifiable: war as a tool for economic recovery. Not in the Keynesian sense of public spending stimulating demand, but in the more specific and contemporary sense of a self-perpetuating financial-military-energy system that requires conflict to remain profitable.
The figures for the military-industrial complex. On the first trading day after the attack began — Monday 2nd March [2026] — whilst stock markets around the world were plummeting, defence stocks soared. Lockheed Martin hit a new all-time high of $676.70, rising by 3.3%. The share has gained 40% since the start of 2026, when tensions with Iran began to rise. Northrop Grumman jumped 6% in a single session, up 46% since June 2025, when the first attacks on Iranian nuclear sites were carried out. RTX (formerly Raytheon) rose by 4.7%. L3Harris by 3.8%. Palantir Technologies, the data analytics firm that supports intelligence operations, rose by 6%.
The wealth generated for shareholders of the three largest defence companies in a single day of trading has been estimated at between $25 and $30 billion — a figure roughly equivalent to the Pentagon’s annual spending on housing and quality-of-life programmes for military families. As one Wall Street analyst summarised to his clients: “Defence spending was already set to rise in 2026. A prolonged war with Iran will make this spending more urgent and less controversial.” And as MarketWatch headlined: “War can be good for business.”
The iShares U.S. Aerospace and Defense ETF (a passive investment fund managed by BlackRock that aims to track the Dow Jones U.S. Select Aerospace & Defense Index, investing in US companies in the aerospace and defence sectors, covering manufacturers of military equipment, drones, civil aircraft and security systems) gained 35% from the first attacks on Iranian nuclear sites in June 2025 to early March 2026. The biggest threat to investors in these stocks? Peace. When talk of negotiations emerges, investors in the defence sector tend to sell — as happened at the end of 2025 during the Russia-Ukraine-US talks. But analysts are confident: there is no immediate risk of peace breaking out.
The rearmament machine. Behind the shares lies an industrial apparatus that needs conflict to justify its expansion. The defence budget for the 2025 financial year was $858.9 billion — $10.6 billion more than the administration had requested. Congress authorised an additional $8 billion for procurement programmes, including multi-year contracts for eight weapons systems.
Last year’s reconciliation budget allocated $25 billion for the procurement of ammunition and the expansion of production capacity. Prior to the attack on Iran, the US had already signed agreements with Lockheed Martin to quadruple the annual production of THAAD interceptors — from 96 to 400 units, at $12.77 million each. The FY26 budget (the US federal spending plan for the financial year beginning 1st October 2025 and ending 30th September 2026) allocates $20.4 billion solely to replenish ammunition stocks and improve the supply chain.
And now the Pentagon is preparing a request for a supplementary budget of around $50 billion to replenish the weapons used up in the ongoing conflict. Executives from Lockheed Martin and RTX are expected at the White House to discuss ramping up arms production.
The self-perpetuating cycle: weapons, wars, energy, finance. The sequence is circular and self-sustaining. War drives up the price of oil, which fuels the profits of American energy companies. High prices justify the export of LNG to Europe (turned into a captive market by the €750 billion Energy Pact). War consumes weapons, which must be replaced through multi-billion-Dollar contracts with the arms industry. Gulf states under Iranian attack purchase American defence systems — Patriot, THAAD6, Iron Dome — using petrodollars generated by the crisis itself. Defence and energy stocks rise, attracting capital to Wall Street. The Dollar strengthens as a safe-haven currency. US Treasuries find new buyers.
US gold — over 8,133 tonnes, the world’s largest reserve — appreciates, bolstering the Federal Reserve’s balance sheet. Even marine insurance becomes a business: Trump has announced that the Development Finance Corporation will provide insurance cover for political risk to all commercial traffic in the Gulf — transforming the danger created by the war into a paid service offered by Washington.
All this is not a side effect: it is the business model. War is the product. Chaos is the raw material. And the price is paid by the people of Iran, European consumers, Italian families at the petrol pump. Human lives converted into percentage points on Wall Street charts.
This is the motivation that no spokesperson will ever admit. But it is the one that the markets read with perfect clarity on the first day of every war.
Gold: the silent weapon of the multipolar transition
The disruption of the Dubai pipeline
The war has brought Dubai to a standstill, a city that handles 20% of the global trade in physical gold. The emirate serves both as a refining centre for gold mined in Africa and as a transit hub for shipments between Europe and Asia. The gold is physically transported in the holds of passenger aircraft — up to five tonnes per flight, worth around $830 million at current prices.
With over 21,000 flights cancelled in the Gulf, physical gold flows have ground to a halt. In London, shipments that have already arrived at Heathrow cannot proceed to their final destinations. In India, domestic gold prices have shifted from a $50-per-ounce discount to London to full parity in just 48 hours — a brutal cost pass-through to consumers and the jewellery industry.
Global air cargo capacity has fallen by 18% in a week. Maersk has suspended transits through the Strait of Hormuz. Qatar has halted LNG production at Ras Laffan and Mesaieed, taking a fifth of global export capacity offline.
Who will come out on top in the gold rush?
The price of gold, currently around $5,160 an ounce, serves as a barometer of mistrust in the system. A year ago, it stood at $2,624. It surpassed $4,000 in October 2025 and $5,000 in January 2026, reaching an all-time high of $5,595 on 29th January [2026]. In 2025, gold recorded a 65% rise in Dollar terms — the best annual performance since 1979, the year of the Iranian Revolution. This is no coincidence: every major crisis in the dollar-centric system has its counterpart in the price of gold.
But this time there is something structurally different. It is not just the classic safe haven in times of war. We are facing a paradigm shift in the very function of gold within the international monetary system.
Central banks: the great accumulation. The structural winners are the central banks of the BRICS nations. Since 2022, they have been accumulating over 1,000 tonnes a year, a rate more than double the average of 400–500 tonnes in the previous decade. 95% of central banks surveyed by the World Gold Council expect a further increase in reserves. 43% state that they will increase their gold holdings in the coming year — a historic record, up from 29% in 2024.
The reasons given by the central banks themselves are revealing: gold’s performance in times of crisis, portfolio diversification, and protection against inflation. But the unspoken reason is the decisive one: de-dollarisation. Following the freezing of Russian reserves in 2022 — when the West demonstrated that it could confiscate a sovereign nation’s Dollar and Euro reserves — many States concluded that the only truly secure reserve is one that no government can freeze at the click of a button: physical gold, held in their own vaults.
China leads the rankings in terms of purchases, but the official figures likely underestimate the reality. Formally, gold accounts for only 7% of Beijing’s foreign exchange reserves, compared to a global average of 20%. This figure suggests that the accumulation process is far from over — and that every phase of “low” prices (relative to peaks) is being exploited to buy. China is also the world’s leading gold producer: it controls the cycle from extraction to hoarding.
Poland saw a surge in purchases in 2024, driven by geopolitical uncertainties linked to the war in Ukraine on its borders. India has increased its reserves by 38% over five years. Turkey, despite being a NATO ally, is accumulating gold. Even the central banks of the Gulf states — which for decades had tied their fortunes to the Dollar — are diversifying into gold.
The most significant figure for the multipolar analysis: the BRICS are planning a new unit of account collateralised 40% by gold. Every additional dollar in the price of gold strengthens the credibility of this project and weakens the Dollar-centric system. Gold is no longer merely a safe-haven asset: it has become the monetary infrastructure of the multipolar transition.
Russia, the world’s second-largest producer with around 300 tonnes a year, is seeing both its gold reserves and energy exports rise simultaneously. It is the paradoxical winner of a war it is not fighting. But even the US, with its 8,133 tonnes — the world’s largest reserve — is benefiting from the rise. The point is that in a system where everyone is hoarding gold, the key question is no longer “how much do you have” but “where do you keep it” and “who has access to it”.
The Italian paradox: the world’s third-largest reserve and denied sovereignty
Italy holds 2,452 tonnes of gold — the third-largest reserve in the world after the US and Germany, with a per capita average of 41.6 grams, among the highest on the planet. At $5,160 an ounce, this asset is worth around $407 billion (approximately €375 billion). A colossal figure, exceeding the GDP7 of many European countries, and one that increases in value every day the conflict continues.
But here lies the paradox that should be at the heart of any debate on national sovereignty, yet is systematically ignored: 43% of these reserves — around 1,061 tonnes, worth approximately $176 billion at current prices — are held in the vaults of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and at Fort Knox in the United States. A further 6% is held at the Bank of England in London. Only around 51% is in Italy, at Palazzo Koch in Rome. Why is this relevant today? For at least three reasons.
First: the precedent of the freezing of Russian reserves in 2022 has shown that the physical location of a sovereign State’s reserves is not a technical detail but a matter of national security. If tomorrow Italy were to adopt a stance unwelcome to Washington — for example, by refusing to allow the use of bases for offensive operations — would it have any guarantee that its overseas gold reserves would remain untouchable? The question may seem rhetorical. It is not.
Secondly: in the 2026 budget, the government introduced preferential tax treatment for investments in gold, estimated to generate around €2 billion. This comes at a time when the value of national gold reserves is rising by billions each week. The tax treatment of gold is becoming a political issue — but the debate on the location of reserves remains taboo.
Thirdly: in a world where the BRICS are building an alternative gold-based monetary system, Italy — with its enormous reserves — could be a major player in any future negotiations on the reform of the international monetary system. But only if that gold is under its own control. A thousand tonnes held in New York are not an Italian strategic reserve: they are a deposit with a foreign central bank, governed by agreements dating back to the post-war period that no government has ever had the political will to renegotiate.
The blockage of physical gold flows through Dubai — which paralysed 20% of the global bullion trade, created “stuck exports” at Heathrow and sent premiums soaring in Asia — demonstrates just how fragile the gold logistics system is and how concentrated it is in unstable regions. Italy, with the world’s third-largest gold reserves but without full physical control of its own gold, is a potential monetary power that chooses to remain a vassal State. It is a situation which, viewed from the perspective of the shift towards a multipolar world, appears increasingly unsustainable — and increasingly costly.
The corridors: the invisible stakes
The war against Iran must also be seen as a war against the alternative corridors that the multipolar world was building to free itself from the Western logistics system.
The North-South Corridor (INSTC), linking Russia, Iran and India, is the first indirect target. In January 2026, it was operating at record capacity. Today, it is compromised.
China’s Belt and Road Initiative, which connects Beijing to Middle Eastern and African markets via Iran, is the second. Iran’s coastal infrastructure — Asaluyeh, Bandar Abbas, Chabahar — was financed or co-financed by China. Striking these targets means striking Beijing’s strategic projection towards the Indian Ocean.
Corridor VIII, which runs from the Adriatic to the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea, bypassing Turkey, paradoxically becomes even more significant if the Middle Eastern system becomes unusable. But Italy, which is its natural western terminus, does not seem to be strategically aware of this.
The risks for Italy: military bases, energy dependence and strategic marginalisation
US bases: creeping involvement
Italy is home to around 13,000 US military personnel stationed across a network of facilities that constitutes the most significant US military infrastructure in the Mediterranean. Understanding what is happening at these bases at this very moment is crucial to gauging the extent of the country’s actual involvement — beyond government rhetoric.
Sigonella, between Lentini and Catania, is the operational hub. Described as “the aircraft carrier of the Mediterranean”, it is the main base for NATO’s Alliance Ground Surveillance, which uses ground surveillance drones such as the Global Hawk and the Phoenix. In recent days, monitoring sites such as Flightradar and AirNav have recorded much heavier traffic than usual. On the very morning of the attack, Saturday 28th February [2026], a Boeing P-8A Poseidon — the US Navy’s main anti-submarine patrol and reconnaissance aircraft — took off from Sigonella bound for the eastern Mediterranean. An MQ-4C Triton spy drone landed at the base that same day. US cargo aircraft make stopovers there continuously, one of which came from the Souda base in Cyprus [sic - it is actually in Crete (Greece)] — the latter directly involved in offensive operations against Iran, as demonstrated by the stopover of the aircraft carrier Gerald Ford before proceeding to Israel.
The planes bombing Iran do not take off from Sigonella. But Sigonella is the nerve centre of the surveillance, intelligence and logistics that make those bombings possible. It is a distinction that holds true in legal and formal terms but not in terms of strategic complicity: without Sigonella’s “eyes”, Operation “Epic Fury” would not be as effective.
In Niscemi, a few kilometres away, the MUOS (Mobile User Objective System) station provides ultra-high-frequency military satellite communications for all US operations in the Mediterranean, Africa and the Middle East. It is one of the system’s four global nodes, and its operations — confirmed by the authorities — are uninterrupted.
In Aviano, in Friuli, the airbase hosts a squadron of F-16 fighter jets and, crucially, some B61 nuclear bombs as part of NATO’s nuclear sharing arrangement. Here too, there is an “unusual comings and goings” of aircraft. The site posted a message to staff on social media: “All personnel and their families are reminded to remain vigilant. Although there are no specific and credible threats at present, vigilance remains essential for your safety.”
In Naples and Gaeta, the naval bases support the Sixth Fleet. Camp Derby, between Pisa and Livorno, is a US Army ammunition and logistics depot. In Vicenza, there is a US Army garrison. The alert level has been raised at all these installations, with security levels set to 3 and 4 — the highest since the Cold War.
The legal framework: variable-geometry sovereignty
The legal issue is both clear and ambiguous — and this ambiguity serves the system. The use of US bases in Italy is governed by the 1951 NATO Status of Forces Agreement, the 1954 Bilateral Infrastructure Agreement (updated in 1973) and the 1995 Italy-US Memorandum of Understanding. [Italain Defence Minister Guido] Crosetto pointed out that “these legal frameworks have governed these activities for decades and no government has felt the need to amend them”.
The formal distinction is between “kinetic” operations (offensive operations, which require the consent of the Italian government) and “non-kinetic” operations (logistics, surveillance, communications and training, which Washington may conduct independently following consultation). As [Italian Prime Minister Giorgia] Meloni herself explained: “There are technical authorisations when it comes to logistics and so-called non-kinetic operations, that is to say operations that do not involve bombing. If requests were made to use the bases for other purposes, the decision would lie with the government, but I think that in that case we would have to decide together with Parliament.”
The problem is that the distinction between kinetic and non-kinetic is increasingly blurred in modern warfare. Is a spy drone that identifies a target less “kinetic” than the missile that strikes it? Is a communications station transmitting launch coordinates less involved than the aircraft dropping the bomb? In international law and in the perception of an adversary such as Iran, the answer is no.
The resolution approved today by the majority in the Chamber formalises the green light for the use of bases for “training and technical-logistical support activities” and for the deployment of anti-drone and anti-missile air defence systems in the Gulf region and in Cyprus. It is a significant step: Italy is formally assuming a defensive role in an offensive conflict launched by others.
The contrast with Spain is stark. Pedro Sánchez has refused any support for US operations, ordering the transfer of KC-135 tanker aircraft from the bases at Morón and Rota to other locations. The Spanish Defence Minister, Margarita Robles, stated that “the cooperation treaty with Washington must operate within the framework of international law” and that, in the absence of a UN, NATO or EU resolution, “it is not applicable”. Italy has not shown this courage. And even within the majority itself, Lega Nord’s [Gian Marco] Centinaio pointed out that “the Constitution clearly states that Italy repudiates war”.
The immediate risk: can Iranian missiles reach Italy?
It is the question nobody wanted to ask and which is now circulating obsessively. The technical answer: Iranian medium- and long-range missiles — the Sejil (range 2,000 km), Khorramshahr-4 and Soumar (theoretical range up to 3,000 km) families — are at the limit of their range to reach southern Italy. Sicily lies 3,000 km from Tehran. Accuracy at such distances decreases drastically, and Italy is protected by the NATO missile defence shield.
Crosetto put it bluntly in the Chamber of Deputies: “Faced with a reckless reaction, we can expect anything and everything is to be expected”. It is the first time since the end of the Cold War that an Italian defence minister has uttered such a statement in Parliament.
Energy dependence: the Achilles’ heel
Italy is one of the European countries most exposed to the energy consequences of the conflict, and this is no coincidence: it is the result of specific strategic choices and a failure to achieve genuine diversification.
Around 45% of the liquefied natural gas arriving in Italy by ship comes from Qatar, via the terminals at Rovigo and Piombino. Qatar has been directly hit by Iranian retaliation: Iranian drones have forced QatarEnergy to suspend production at Ras Laffan and Mesaieed, taking a fifth of global LNG export capacity offline. For Italy, Europe’s largest importer of Qatari LNG, this is a direct blow to energy security.
The Gulf region — Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, the UAE [United Arab Emirates] — supplies between 25% and 30% of Italy’s imported oil. With the Strait of Hormuz closed and maritime traffic paralysed, these flows are at risk. In the Red Sea, where around 40% of Italian maritime trade passes between Suez and the Gulf, the European naval missions Aspides and Atalanta have been reinforced — but the situation remains precarious.
Minister [of Enterprises and Made in Italy Adolfo] Urso has stated that Italian stockpiles are at 50% — a reassuring level for the coming weeks but not for a prolonged conflict. The real issue, as Urso himself admitted, is not the quantity but the price: “High volatility is having an impact on businesses and households”. With oil above $83 a barrel, gas above €51 per megawatt-hour and petrol already up to €1.67 per litre on average, the impact is immediate and regressive — hitting those on lower incomes hardest.
And here lies the bitterest paradox: Italy is paying the energy price for a war decided by others, on which it was not consulted, whose objectives it does not share, but to which it is contributing with its own bases and weapon systems. The price is being paid by Italian households at the petrol pump and on their bills. The profits are pocketed by American energy companies, which, thanks to the $750 billion Energy Pact, are turning Europe into a captive market for US LNG.
70,000 Italians in a war zone
Then there is the human dimension, which is often overlooked in strategic analyses. As [Italian Foreign Minister Antonio] Tajani stated in the Chamber of Deputies, there are around 100,000 Italians directly or indirectly affected in the crisis areas, of whom around 70,000 are in the Gulf states and around 2,000 are military personnel. The Foreign Ministry’s Gulf Task Force has handled 14,000 calls and thousands of emails. Around 10,000 Italians have already been helped to leave the risk areas via special charter flights — two of which landed at Ciampino on the morning of 5th March [2026] carrying 192 compatriots from Abu Dhabi and Dubai.
Defence Minister Crosetto — who found himself stranded in Dubai at the start of the conflict, forcing the dispatch of an Air Force flight to bring him home — announced the evacuation of 239 military personnel from Kuwait to Saudi Arabia, and the withdrawal from Qatar and Bahrain. Italy is withdrawing its troops from the most exposed areas — which speaks volumes about the military authorities’ own perception of the risk.
Strategic margins: the real problem
But the most serious political implication goes beyond this specific conflict. Italy was not warned of the attack. As Tajani himself admitted in Parliament: “Let me make this clear: the United States and Israel decided independently and in secret when to intervene. Germany and France have said they were not warned; we were only informed once the operation was already underway”.
Europe is outside the strategic “decision loop”. But Italy is in an even worse position than the other major European countries: it provides the bases, logistical support and weapons systems, whilst simultaneously evacuating its own military personnel from the theatre of operations, yet it has no say in the decisions determining its involvement. As Crosetto stated with a frankness unusual for a serving defence minister: the US and Israeli attacks “are clearly outside the rules of international law” and “this is a war that has begun without the world’s knowledge”.
A few hours after these words, the Chamber of Deputies approved the resolution authorising US logistical support from Italian bases. The contradiction is glaring and illustrates, better than any analysis, the state of a country that is unable to translate its awareness of the problem into independent political action.
Meanwhile, Western military attention and resources are shifting from the Ukrainian front to the Middle East — a risk that Zelensky has highlighted with alarm. For Italy, which has extended until 31st December 2026 the authorisation to supply military equipment to Ukraine worth €3 billion, and which may have to send its already scarce Samp-T systems to the Gulf rather than to Kyiv, the blanket is becoming increasingly short.
The Kurdish question: the invisible front
The latest element of the crisis is the playing of the “Kurdish card”. The CIA is working to arm Iranian Kurdish forces, with the aim of opening a land front in north-western Iran. Trump has spoken directly with the leaders of the Democratic Party of Iranian Kurdistan and with Iraqi Kurdish leaders.
The Kurdish variable is potentially the most destabilising of all, because it touches on the issue of the territorial integrity of four States — Iran, Iraq, Turkey and Syria — and because Ankara will never be able to accept a precedent of an armed Kurdish entity controlling territory. It is a trigger that could extend the conflict far beyond the Iranian theatre.
Conclusion: checkmate and its paradox
The war against Iran is presented as a containment operation. In reality, it is a preservation operation: an attempt to maintain a unipolar order that the world is already abandoning.
But the strategic paradox is devastating. The war that was supposed to halt de-dollarisation is accelerating the gold rush among BRICS central banks. The war that was supposed to isolate Iran is demonstrating to the entire Global South the need for an alternative system. The war that was supposed to control energy is causing prices to skyrocket against Washington’s own European allies. The war that was supposed to demonstrate American power is showing the world that this power can render any corridor, any route, any hub insecure — which is precisely the strongest argument for those who wish to build new ones, beyond Washington’s reach.
Great powers do not collapse when they are defeated on the battlefield. They collapse when they insist on fighting wars that belong to the past. The Iranian crisis risks being remembered not as a show of strength, but as the moment when the West once again confused military power with strategic vision.
Checkmate is underway. But who is delivering it to whom remains the fundamental question of our time.
International Atomic Energy Agency
Liquefied Natural Gas
International North–South Transport Corridor
China-Pakistan Economic Corridor
Shanghai Cooperation Organisation
Terminal High Altitude Area Defense, formerly Theater High Altitude Area Defense
Gross Domestic Product