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The year 2026 marks the centenary of the death of Claude Monet, one of the founding figures of Impressionism. It was, after all, one of his paintings – Impression, Sunrise (Impression soleil levant) – that lent the movement its name. Impressionism emerged in France in the 1870s, carried by artists such as Claude Monet, Auguste Renoir, and Camille Pissarro. Breaking with the rigid rules of the Academy, the Impressionists moved away from the idea of rendering the “subject” with polished perfection. Instead, they sought to capture light, the fleeting moments, and the impression that a scene or model conveys. They embraced a spontaneous, unfiltered vision of the world, stripped of hierarchy – characterized by fragmented touches, swift, visible brushstrokes, and an intensive use of color, in which even shadows shimmered with hues of blue or violet rather than of black.

The week that has just passed in the Middle East has been a crescendo of rhetoric and military action, culminating this Monday, April 6, in the end of the ultimatum issued by Donald Trump to the mullahs' regime, with the White House chief threatening to “annihilate” Iran's energy facilities. A week during which the American president was anything but stingy with declarations, the apotheosis having been reached on Saturday, when he gave the leaders in Tehran 48 hours to endorse the agreement he presented to them, failing which “hell” would descend upon them. Donald Trump asks them to “conclude a deal or open the Strait of Hormuz,” referring to negotiations based on the 15 points put forward by the Americans, which mainly concern the abandonment of nuclear and ballistic programs, as well as the cessation of funding for regional allies such as Hezbollah.

Those who have studied war, such as Gaston Bouthoul or Marvin Harris, never confined their analysis to the immediate geopolitical dimension alone. They did not merely ask "why did it break out?" but also "what does it do?" and "whom does it serve?" For societies, when they prove unable to resolve their internal contradictions, tend to export them outward, and war is transformed into a means of reorganising the interior through violence directed toward the exterior. This approach allows for a reading of contemporary wars that escapes their reduction to the military or directly geopolitical sphere. The conflict blazing today across the Iranian-American-Israeli triangle cannot be understood simply as a struggle for influence or mutual deterrence; it must rather be grasped as a complex process serving multiple functions, aimed at consolidating embattled domestic legitimacies, redrawing regional balances, and producing mobilisation narratives that simultaneously redefine the enemy and the self.

It was, of course, to be expected… Wielding the threat of a deluge of fire that could soon fall upon Iranian strategic infrastructure, President Donald Trump reminded the leaders of the Islamic Republic that the last 10-day deadline he had given them to endorse the 15-point plan presented by Washington expires in 48 hours (i.e., Monday) or to ensure free maritime navigation in the Strait of Hormuz. “Iran has 48 hours before facing hell,” President Trump declared. Saturday evening, April 4, no indication yet allowed for forecasting a possible breakthrough capable of avoiding a large-scale escalation in military operations, but last-minute twists are obviously not to be excluded in this kind of situation.

In recent days, seeing the army withdraw from certain southern villages like Rmeich, Ain Ebel, Debel, or Qlayaa stirs something inside that is hard to name. It's not just sadness. It's older than that, deeper, as if this retreat confirms an intuition we've long suppressed: that of a country slowly slipping out of itself. In cafes, in the messages we send each other in the evening, we feel that something has cracked. But emotion, however accurate it may be, is not enough to understand what is happening. And as long as we remain immersed in it, we see nothing. An army is not meant to commit suicide. It is meant to last long enough to still be useful when it truly matters. Sending men without cover against an overwhelming power is not courage. It is ordering their death while calling it bravery.

Our decaying Republic has regained its luster. It only took one of our ministers to show firmness and 'dismiss', in accordance with established rules, the accredited representative of Iran. And it was all the more to Youssef Rajji's credit that he managed to weather the storm sparked by his impertinence. However, it should not be believed that this diplomatic show of force would go so far as to restore the credibility of this government or administration. It would take a hell of a lot more; and purges of Stalinist scale would barely be enough! The Khalij in fire and blood But let's go to the Persian Gulf, since that's what it should be called. Cornered in its last strongholds, Tehran has decided to set the said Khalij ablaze!