At the end of 2025, Patrick Wintour wrote a compelling essay for Guardian Weekly in which he described an interregnum in global history, where the rules-based order had been eroded and great powers once again jostled for control and influence.
This week’s edition sees Patrick return to a key aspect of that theme, the deteriorating global standing of the United States after a period of high-stakes brinkmanship with Iran. Donald Trump’s aborted threat that Iranian civilisation would “die … never to be brought back” unless it ceded to his demands exposed the limits of his apocalyptic foreign policy. It also pointed to the wider decline of American influence in a world where the US appears untrustworthy and strategically isolated.
