These are the three social evils Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. warned would destroy America from within: Militarism, materialism, and racism. Decades later, they help explain the divisions in our country that led to the January 6 attack by protesters on the U.S. Capitol. Of the three, however, the role our recent wars have played in exacerbating these conditions is often the most overlooked.
Video produced by Khody Akhavi.
South Africa is struggling to unfurl its wings as a leading middle power and advance its relations with its fellow BRICS members while keeping out of the cross hairs of the U.S. president. This has been particularly hard considering that one member of the Global South grouping — Iran — is on Donald Trump’s current list of potential military targets.
South Africa joined BRICS in 2006. The organization is supposed to serve as an intergovernmental forum for member countries to connect on issues related to diplomacy, security, and economics. But the bloc has angered President Trump, who sees it as a threat to American leadership, particularly given China’s membership in the group.
Already frosty relations between Pretoria and Washington only got worse in the new year as South Africa found itself hosting Iran in long-planned naval exercises off its coast at the same time Trump was considering bombing Iran over its crackdown on protesters in January. From January 9 through 16, South Africa opened its waters to a number of BRICS countries to participate in these drills — christened Will for Peace 2026 — led by the Chinese. South Africa, Russia, the United Arab Emirates, Iran, and China were full participants, while Brazil, Egypt, Indonesia, and Ethiopia joined as observers.
What further complicates the discord is that South African President Cyril Ramaphosa reportedly never intended for Iran to join as a full participant. According to the New York Times, Ramaphosa ordered the country’s defense officials to limit Iran’s status in the drills to only being an observer. Despite these orders, Iran ended up fully engaging throughout the exercises, including the live fire portions. Ramaphosa responded by creating a Board of Inquiry to investigate the matter.
With BRICS’s membership recently growing — Iran and five others joined the group at the start of 2024 — these kinds of geopolitical miscues are more likely to happen, and when they do they’re guaranteed to agitate Washington.
In fact, this is the second incident within the past several months involving a purported miscommunication related to South Africa’s military relationship with Iran. In August 2025, South African General Rudzani Maphwanya reportedly visited Iran and pledged military and political support to the Iranians, which President Ramaphosa apparently didn’t approve either, calling the trip “ill-advised.” In response, the Democratic Alliance party — which is a part of the coalition government — called on General Maphwanya to be “court-martialled.”
Following the incident last month, the American embassy released a statement on X, saying that “Iran is a destabilizing actor and state sponsor of terror, and its inclusion in joint exercises — in any capacity — undermines maritime security and regional stability.”
The American embassy’s statement went on to say, “it is particularly unconscionable that South Africa welcomed Iranian security forces as they were shooting, jailing, and torturing Iranian citizens engaging in peaceful political activity South Africans fought so hard to gain for themselves. South Africa can’t lecture the world on ‘justice’ while cozying up to Iran.”
The State Department declined to provide Responsible Statecraft with a comment for this story.
The recent challenge in relations between the U.S. and South Africa follows a longer trend over the decades in which the governments of both countries have disagreed about a number of policy issues.
In an email to Responsible Statecraft, Ziyanda Stuurman, an advisor at the Africa Practice, said that “many of South Africa's politicians remember Ronald Reagan's policy of ‘constructive engagement’ with the Apartheid regime in the late 1980s as clearly as they remember grassroots pressure against and condemnation of the regime,” she said, adding that this is not the first time leaders from both countries have not seen eye to eye.
“In democratic post-Apartheid South Africa, several ANC-affiliated presidents have clashed with U.S. presidents from both sides of the aisle: Nelson Mandela heavily criticised the U.S.' involvement in Iraq in 2003; Thabo Mbeki and George W. Bush clashed several times between 2001 and 2008 over South Africa's response to the HIV/AIDS epidemic and Robert Mugabe's governance of Zimbabwe; and during his two terms in office, (South African President) Jacob Zuma was decidedly more interested in deepening ties with Russia and China between 2009 and 2018 and less so with Barack Obama and the White House.”
But Trump’s moves toward punishing South Africa seems to signal a particularly dark time for relations. In late November, the United States boycotted the South African-hosted G20 leaders’ summit following an explosion of tensions last year in which Trump accused the South African government — without any evidence — of failing to stop a genocide against the country’s white population.
As part of that scuffle, Ramaphosa and Trump faced off in a dramatic incident at the Oval Office, where the two argued in front of the press about the South African government's role in violence against white South Africans. Trump has also disinvited South Africa from next year’s G20 summit, which will be hosted by the United States in south Florida, and has placed tariffs of 30% on the country.
South Africa’s role as a leading member of BRICS has particularly angered Trump, who sees the institution as an attempt by member countries to challenge American power and influence — particularly Russia, China, and, of course, Iran.
Stuurman says that “military and security cooperation between South Africa and its BRICS partners — all of them — is not unexpected or new. What is new is the optics, timing and geopolitical stakes of these exercises, which the South African National Defense Force (SANDF) chiefs have shown little to no appreciation of in recent years.”
Despite Trump’s best efforts, Washington’s ability to punish Pretoria has dissipated in recent years as South Africa has expanded global partnerships, both in terms of security and economics. In 2023, South Africa exported 7.5% of its goods to the United States, while exporting 11.3% to China. And that same year, a stunning 20.5% of its imports came from China, compared to 8.6% from the United States. Compare that to the year 2000, when South Africa exported 9.2% of its goods to the U.S. and only 1.3% to China, while importing 11.9% from the U.S. and just 3.7% from China.
With an increasingly diversified partnership base, South Africa will be unlikely to fold to Trump’s demands. If anything, it will likely make the country more prone to seeking alternatives in the face of an unreliable American partner. For South Africa, the key is to mend relations with Washington without sacrificing its role as a leading, and vocal, Global South middle power, forming connections with a number of countries that happen to be in Washington’s crosshairs.
Shifting justifications for a war are never a good sign, and they strongly suggest that the war in question was not warranted.
In the Vietnam War, the principal public rationale of saving South Vietnam from communism got replaced in the minds of the warmakers — especially after losing hope of winning the contest in Vietnam — by the belief that the United States had to keep fighting to preserve its credibility. In the Iraq War, when President George W. Bush’s prewar argument about weapons of mass destruction fell apart, he shifted to a rationale centered on bringing freedom and democracy to Iraq.
Now, with President Donald Trump threatening a new armed attack on Iran amid a buildup of U.S. forces in the region, the Washington Post’s headline writers aptly describe the rationale for any such attack as being “in flux” and, for the online version of the same article, ask, “what’s the mission?”
A related question about the latest threat to attack Iran is: “why now?” The initial peg for Trump talking up the subject during the past month was the mass protest in Iran that began in Tehran’s Grand Bazaar in late December and rapidly spread through Iranian cities during the next couple of weeks. Trump urged Iranians to “keep protesting” and promised that “help is on the way.” This rhetoric led to widespread expectations, not least of all inside Iran, that U.S. military action was imminent.
No such action materialized, and perhaps a valid reason it did not is the difficulty in identifying targets for military attack that would be more likely to help the protesters than to hurt them. If a regime is gunning down innocent citizens in the street, there is no target deck an outside military power can devise that would distinguish the gunners from the innocents on that street.
A brutal crackdown by the Iranian regime that has quelled the protests leaves a couple of implications. One is a sense of betrayal among Iranians whom Trump encouraged to risk their lives by protesting without delivering any help that supposedly was “on the way.”
The other implication is that, without an ongoing protest, the link between any U.S. military action and favorable political change inside Iran is even more tenuous than it would have been a month ago. Iranians — like Americans or any other nationalities — can distinguish between their domestic grievances and external aggression. Another Israeli or U.S. attack out of the blue risks helping the Iranian regime politically by enabling it to appeal to patriotic and nationalist sentiment. Statements from such prominent reformist leaders as former Prime Minister Mir-Hossein Mousavi and former parliament speaker Mehdi Karroubi are simultaneously calling for sweeping constitutional change and explicitly rejecting foreign intervention, including military intervention.
An alternative view is that with the Iranian regime at least as weak as it has been for years, an armed attack from outside might constitute just enough extra pressure to precipitate the regime’s collapse. But the idea that the Islamic Republic is just one nudge away from falling has been voiced many times before, including during previous rounds of protests.
Moreover, the operative word is “collapse,” with all that implies regarding uncertainty about what comes next. Secretary of State Marco Rubio appeared to recognize that uncertainty when asked in a Senate hearing last week about what would happen if the Iranian regime were to fall and he replied, “That’s an open question.” The Iranian opposition lacks a unified leadership and structure ready to take power comparable to the movement led by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini that toppled the shah in 1979.
Regime decapitation to oust current Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei would be even less likely to yield a regime responsive to U.S. wishes than the ouster of President Nicolás Maduro in Venezuela. A more probable successor regime in Iran would be some kind of military dictatorship dominated by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). Regime change in Iran is a classic case of needing to be careful what one wishes for.
Trump has been vague about what Iran would need to accept to avoid being attacked, but there appear to be three issues at play. One is a demand for Iran to end all enrichment of uranium. But Iran is not enriching uranium now and does not appear to have done any enrichment since the Israeli and U.S. attacks last June. If this issue is to make a difference in determining whether the U.S. attacks Iran, it means war or peace would hinge on a demand that makes no practical difference, at least in the short term.
A formal commitment by Iran to forgo enrichment forever conceivably could have value over the long term, but history shows that expecting such a commitment is not realistic. Moreover, to place importance on such a commitment is a tacit admission that Iran is better at adhering to its obligations on such things than the United States is, given Trump’s reneging on an earlier nuclear agreement despite Iran observing its terms.
A second issue involves limiting the range and number of Iran’s ballistic missiles. There is a strong case to be made for a region-wide agreement limiting missiles in the Middle East, but neither the Trump administration nor anyone else has explained why Iran should be singled out for such restrictions while no one else in the region is, or why one should expect Iranian policymakers to accept such disparate treatment. Iran considers its missile capability to be a critical deterrent against the missile and other aerial attack capabilities of adversaries. A deterrent — to be used in response to being attacked — is how Tehran has used its missiles, as in responding to the U.S. killing of prominent IRGC leader Qasem Soleimani in 2020 and to Israel’s unprovoked aerial attack on Iran last June.
The Israeli government would, of course, like to see Iran’s retaliatory capability crippled. This would leave Israel — the Middle Eastern state that has started more wars and attacked more states than any other country in the region — freer to indulge in more offensive operations without having to worry about even the amount of retaliation that Iran mustered last year. Those operations may include attacks that, like the one in June, drag in the United States. This sort of Israeli freedom of action is not in U.S. interests.
The third reported U.S. demand is that Iran cease all support to groups in the region it considers allies, including the Houthis in Yemen, Hezbollah in Lebanon, and Hamas in Palestine. Despite the habitual application of the label “proxy” to such groups, they are separate actors with their own agendas, as illustrated by how the Houthis acted against Iranian advice in capturing the Yemeni capital of Sanaa.
As with uranium enrichment, Iranian support to these groups is a “problem” that is being solved without new Iranian commitments. Iran’s severe economic difficulties, coupled with popular demands within Iran to devote scarce resources to domestic programs rather than foreign endeavors, are already making it difficult for Iran to sustain its support to regional allies.
As with the missile issue, a demand to end such support as part of an agreement disregards how much that support is a response to aggression or predations of other governments. Aid to the Houthis, for example, became of significant interest to Iran only after Saudi Arabia launched a large-scale offensive against Yemen that was the most important factor in turning that country into a humanitarian disaster. The Iranian-supported establishment of Hezbollah and the group’s early rapid growth were a direct response to Israel’s invasion of Lebanon in 1982. The nature and methods of Hamas, like those of many other Palestinian resistance groups, have been responses to Israeli subjugation of Palestinians.
Also like the missile issue, any such demand disregards the outside support that other governments give to parties to some of the same conflicts in the Middle East. This includes, of course, the voluminous U.S. aid to Israel. Iran is being told it cannot have a full regional policy while others do. It is unrealistic to expect any Iranian leader to agree to that.
None of these issues, individually or collectively, constitutes a casus belli. The answer to the question “why now?” is to be found less in those issues than in domestic politics, including the motivations of diverting attention from political troubles and being able to claim some accomplishment regarding Iran that is bigger or better than what a predecessor achieved.
Claimable accomplishments that serve not just such domestic political needs but also the U.S. national interest are possible through diplomacy with Iran. President Trump is correct when he says that Iran wants a deal, given that Iran’s bad economic situation is an incentive to negotiate agreements that would provide at least partial relief from sanctions. Feasible diplomacy would not entail Iranian capitulation to a laundry list of U.S. demands but instead a step-by-step approach that might start with an updated nuclear agreement, which could build confidence on both sides for coming to terms on other issues.
The Trump administration’s saber-rattling is not building such confidence but instead is having the opposite effect. The Iranian regime’s lethal response to the recent popular protests shows that it believes the regime’s survival depends on not showing any weakness in the face of pressures either domestic or foreign. Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said last week that Iran would negotiate directly with the United States only if Trump stops threatening a military attack against Iran. Araghchi also ruled out any unilateral limitations on Iranian missiles, which he described as essential for Iran’s security.
A new U.S. attack on Iran, besides being an act of aggression contrary to the United Nations Charter and international law, would only exacerbate rather than resolve any of the issues that have been raised as possible rationales for war.
A U.S. attack would disadvantage Iranian oppositionists by associating them with an assault against the Iranian nation. It would strengthen the position of those within the regime who argue that Iran should seek a nuclear weapon. It would raise, not lower, the importance Tehran places on its alliances with nonstate groups in the region. And Iran would use its missiles to retaliate in ways that probably would hurt U.S. interests more than its response last June did.
Since arriving in Amman around three months ago to serve as the U.S. Ambassador to Jordan, James Holtsnider quickly became one of the highest-profile envoys in the Hashemite Kingdom. In addition to presenting his credentials to King Abdullah II, Holtsnider has met with Jordanian soccer players, attended weddings, and joined tribal gatherings.
However, a January 14 request by a U.S. Embassy delegation for the ambassador to offer condolences at the family home of former Karak mayor Abdullah Al-Dmour showed that many Jordanians have little interest in participating in Holtsnider’s public relations initiative. Dmour’s relatives rejected the U.S. ambassador’s wish to visit. Dmour’s tribe issued a statement noting Holtsnider’s request “violates Jordanian tribal customs, which separates the sanctity of mourning from any political presence with public implications.”
Veteran Jordanian journalist Lamis Andoni explained in an interview that the Dmour family’s refusal to welcome the senior U.S. diplomat was motivated by Jordanians’ outrage over U.S. support for Israel during the Gaza war.
“Honorable Dmour family, you have done what pleases your Lord,” said Jordanian lawmaker Basem al-Rawabdeh of the Islamic Action Front party. “Anyone who welcomes and honors murderers and criminals is complicit in their actions.” (In 2024, a shawarma restaurant opened in Karak named “October 7.”) The U.S. Embassy in Amman declined interview requests with Holtsnider.
In July 1997, Holtsnider enlisted in the U.S. Marine Corps because, he said, he sought a break from school. He served for six years, including as a Marine security guard at U.S. Embassies in Zimbabwe and Turkey. After leaving the military, Holtsnider earned an undergraduate degree in physics at the University of Colorado before joining the State Department as a career foreign service officer in 2007.
Many in Amman were surprised by the U.S. ambassador’s request to visit Dmour since the former mayor was a Ba’athist and a harsh critic of Washington.
“Ignoring this political and human dimension reflects a serious misreading of local context,” explained former Jordanian parliamentarian Tarek Khoury in an interview. “Such actions elevate tension and reinforce the perception that U.S. diplomacy often lacks the necessary sensitivity to memory, dignity, and political identity within Jordanian society.”
The Dmours were not the only Jordanian family to spurn Holtsnider. One week later, relatives of deceased Major General Ibrahim Al-Sarayeh also spurned a January 21 request from U.S. officials for the ambassador to visit their house of mourning. Such actions are consistent with Jordanian public sentiment, as a 2025 poll revealed that 57 percent of Jordanian students view the United States as an enemy.
It is worth noting that during President Donald Trump’s first administration, then-U.S. Ambassador to Amman, Alice Wells, also faced troubles. Foreign Policy reported in August 2017 that Trump cut Wells’ tenure short after the Hashemite monarch expressed misgivings. A former U.S. official said that Abdullah was unhappy with the Obama administration’s response to ISIS’s brutal killing of Jordanian pilot Muath al-Kassasbeh shortly after Wells, a career foreign service officer, began her tenure in 2014.
Under the dome of parliament, Jordanian lawmaker Hussein al-Amoush asked Foreign Minister Ayman al-Safadi whether Holtsnider’s frequent field visits were in coordination with the Jordanian government and complied with diplomatic norms. Safadi responded that the U.S. envoy’s tours were routine, and Jordanian ambassadors overseas hold similar meetings. Under both Democratic and Republican presidents, the United States has provided the Jordanian government with over $10 billion in aid during the past decade.
Then, there is Holtsnider’s distinctive, lengthy brown beard. Local journalists have devoted entire articles to Holtsnider’s facial grooming, which is unusual for a Western ambassador posted to Amman. One commentator on X wrote, “I swear if he were an Arab, they’d call him an ISIS member.” Khoury, the former Jordanian lawmaker, added, “The beard has been perceived by many as evoking an orientalist or performative image rather than a modern diplomatic one.”
For some Jordanians, Holtsnider’s outreach specifically with Jordanian tribes was controversial. Dr. Hasan Al-Dajah, a professor of strategic studies at Al-Hussein Bin Talal University, noted, in an interview “Critics argued that the ambassador, intentionally or unintentionally, was granting international legitimacy to traditional structures rather than the modern state, thus weakening the concept of citizenship and reinforcing the logic of the tribe at the expense of the rule of law.”
However, Rana Sabbagh, a former Jordan Times editor-in-chief, contended in an interview that foreign officials interacting with Jordanian tribes is standard diplomatic practice, as the tribes are an integral part of Jordanian society.
Finally, some in the Hashemite Kingdom have focused on Holtsnider’s Marine service, especially after U.S. troops stationed in Jordan recently shot down Iranian drones fired at Israel. Jordanian activist Kameel al-Zoubi posted on social media, “Sending a military man to Jordan is a clear message: that Washington considers us a base, not a state, and a subordinate government, not an independent one.” At the same time, Dr. Dajah noted that several ambassadors have security backgrounds, and such military service does not imply hostile intentions.
Holtsnider also faced controversy in his previous Middle East posting. In June 2022, the Kuwaiti Foreign Ministry summoned Holtsnider, who was serving as Charge d’Affaires, for a reprimand over a U.S. Embassy in Kuwait social media post that contained a rainbow flag. Kuwait’s Foreign Ministry demanded the “need for the embassy to respect the laws and regulations in force in the State of Kuwait and the obligation not to publish such tweets.” The U.S. Embassy in Kuwait’s account said President Joe Biden was a “champion for the human rights of LGBTI persons.” Holtsnider did not publicly respond at the time to Kuwait’s censure.
With roughly half of Jordan’s population of Palestinian origin, many citizens have a deep connection to the Gaza conflict. Despite their large street protests, Andoni asserted that Jordanians feel “helpless” as Washington continues to provide advanced weapons to Israel. Given their limited options, Andoni said Jordanians are forced to show their resentment by rejecting Holtsnider’s “publicity campaign.”
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