Love lost, fire at will, dum dum bullets and shoot to kill, I hear dive bombers and…empire down…empire down…

How the mighty have fallen. What will historians record of the American empire? The shattered visage of an octogenarian TV star and paedophile as lone and level the sands stretch far away? Faded pictures of evangelical faux religious nutcases rubbing shoulders with game theory fantasists, white supremacists and deranged tech bros at White House prayer sessions? Will they record the Iran war as the moment hubristic overreach signalled terminal imperial decline?

The American revolution flowed from British imperial overreach as they tried to enforce monopoly trade in their American colonies. The Japanese empire stretched its military resources too thin before collapsing under the weight of its own violence. The Romanov dynasty in Russia started the revolution that brought them down by engaging in World War I. The Qing Dynasty in China was brought down by internal corruption and mismanagement and the Mongol Empire fell thanks to a crisis of succession that destroyed the empire from within.

Imperial power depends on the perception of that power and this morning American power is a global laughing stock. Trump says that Operation Epic Fury is to be downgraded to a ‘short excursion’ because Iran is totally defeated with all American war aims achieved – but it sure doesn’t look that way.

What were the war aims then? To replace Ayatollah Ali Khamenei with Mojtaba Ali Khamenei to front exactly the same regime? To horrify the world by bombing a girls primary school, killing 150 children? To kill 2,000+ civilians? To close the Strait of Hormuz and precipitate a global energy, food and financial crisis? To expose Israel, US military bases and Gulf allies to relentless missile attack? Trump says that the parents of dead US soldiers all told him to ‘finish the job’ but nobody in The White House seems to know what the job even is, much less how to finish it.

Bemused hacks in Western imperial news outlets are choosing not to join up the dots of Donald Trump’s public utterances because they cannot be joined up.

Trump says that the war will be over ‘very soon’, but Iran says that missile attacks will continue “for as long as necessary” and that talks with the US are “no longer on the agenda”.

Trump says that if Iran blocks the oil flow in the Strait Of Hormuz that the US would hit Iran “20 times harder”, but they have been blocking it for 9 days already and Iran said yesterday that not “one litre of oil” will move through it until they say otherwise. At time of writing the Strait remains closed.

Trump says that US warships will escort tankers through the strait, but why aren’t they there already? Perhaps because it would line them up to be sunk like paper boats in a barrel? Trump says that the US will provide insurance for oil tankers moving through the strait, but sceptical owners might wonder why they need an as yet unconfirmed escort and emergency insurance to guard against an enemy that Trump says is already utterly vanquished. Would you bet billions of dollars of ships on the assurances of the current POTUS?

But what of the vassal states? Well, Macron says that France will escort the ships through the strait once the war has “calmed” which is a hilariously filled nothing burger, Starmer has been spanked over daddy Trump’s knee for not jumping to attention quickly enough and will send a gunboat to Cyprus when they can start the engine. So that’s a big help.

Like a naughty child with a box of matches, Trump has set the Middle East on fire but the flames won’t be extinguished by another temper tantrum. Oil prices have currently fallen because the markets seem to retain faith in the idea of US coherence and control – but that won’t last long if the missiles keep firing and the tankers remain at anchor.

Truth is, we are all playing with fire here. Trump and his entourage are an intellectually limited and mentally unhinged rabble, united only by narcissism, megalomania and a visceral fear of being humiliated. As it becomes clear that Operation Epic Fury has turned into Operation Epic Fail, what will this psychotic administration do next? Trump has already casually muttered about sending a nuke Iran’s way…

Evangelical Christian Zionists in the US believe that by facilitating Israel to take over the Middle East that they will trigger the rapture - hellfire might be more apt.

The question as to whether any of us will survive the onrushing fall of the US empire remains not just extant but luminously urgent.