What's being revealed in the Middle East is not that Washington, America, has asserted its dominance once again, but that a superpower improvises in time of crisis, while smaller and medium-sized countries watch and wait. Iran's latest has come with an announcement of a cash bounty by Tehran's army chief, Major General Amir Hatami, for any citizen who kills or captures an “invading” American soldier, and double the reward for a female. The statement was made at a ceremony to celebrate Iran's National Journalist Day, during which Hatami called for the end of the “American military presence in the Persian Gulf” and stated that the money would be raised “through public fundraising campaigns” by ordinary Iranians donating to the armed forces. Well, it's theatre, is it not, that's been put on since no American ground troops have ever been sent into Iran in this war, apart from one rescue mission in April to locate a downed pilot. However, theatre in Tehran sets the agenda for the discussion all over the region, and that is exactly what is happening.

The war itself started Feb. 28, when the United States, with Israel in its side, bombed Iranian military and government facilities and killed the country's Supreme Leader and a series of top officials, throwing the region into a war that has already lasted longer than most analysts anticipated. A cease-fire was in effect for a couple of weeks in April which never took hold and a peace framework agreement in June never materialised. It has been replaced by a more damaging form of conflict: a naval blockade on Iranian ports, occasional missile duels around the Strait of Hormuz and a constant trickle of events that keep global energy markets in suspense but have yet to deliver the decisive result either side is seeking. Meanwhile, Washington has piled more new sanctions on its blockade and has been pushing the price of Brent crude this month to nearly $90 per barrel, a quarter more than before the war began, trying to create pressure for Tehran to return to the negotiations table despite the expiration of the temporary ceasefire agreement without any new talks. Gulf production is already expected to stay below pre-war levels until as early as early 2027, and the Strategic Petroleum Reserve is at the lowest levels since 1983.

The strain on American credibility is most apparent in the bizarre story that made the rounds last month following an intelligence warning that a credible Iranian assassination attempt was linked to Trump's presence in Ankara for the NATO summit, which was confirmed via multiple accounts to include the transportation of Trump in a ‘catering truck' and decoy Air Force One from Turkey. The journalists and staff were reportedly kept in the dark, with their window shades shut, with the president being quietly transferred to a smaller military jet, likely a Boeing 737. Remarkably, Turkish officials have now told reporters that perhaps the warning itself was fabricated by the Israelis to "complicate Ankara's efforts" about its earlier order for the Russian S-400 system, and to "take a step back" from the U.S. president's efforts to sound out Tehran. That suspicion may or may not be justified, but the episode alone, in which a sitting American president cannot trust his own plane on the ground of a NATO ally, has become a topic of watchful attention in regional capitals.

Those capitals are ready to go. The Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and Turkey signed the Mecca Joint Defense Agreement on August 7, which states that an attack on one is an attack on all three. Analysts have been cautious about calling it a Middle Eastern NATO, but the significance of the act has not been lost on anyone: three nations with a combined active military force of 1.4 million, several thousand planes and nuclear arms in the case of Pakistan have decided to take matters into their own hands and to stop relying on Washington's protective fence. The strategic cost is highest in Pakistan, however, which now has commitments in the Gulf that sit awkwardly with its unresolved insurgency in Balochistan, which continues to simmer while Islamabad expands its military presence elsewhere. Analysts have called this a strategic trap in the making: Pakistan enjoys prestige and financial backing from the Saudis, but gets stuck in commitments that can lead to involvement in conflicts that it is unlikely to be able to win.

Meanwhile, the Houthis, who have gone silent since the Gaza ceasefire last October, are again in the news, this time with the deadliest attack on Red Sea shipping in more than a year, a double-tap missile attack that killed six members of the Pakistani and Indonesian crews, as well as two Yemeni rescuers. The group has announced a new blockade of Saudi Arabia, claiming it was in response to the kingdom's yearlong blockade of Yemen, and separately claimed the attack was on a ship carrying Saudi military equipment. This restart of the fighting is particularly troubling for Egypt, which had just recovered financial losses of about $10 billion during the two years of disrupted traffic in the Suez Canal, and was hoping for a fragile recovery by bringing in fiscal-year revenues back up to $4.67 billion. Cairo's discreet overtures to Tehran, believing perhaps that Iran could rein in its Yemeni puppets, now seem to be an early acknowledgement that the Middle East is a region where American power can still be a force but is no longer the sole one that counts, and that Riyadh, Ankara and Islamabad are not far behind in preparing for one where they take care of their own security first and Washington second.