The United States in dramatic decline, no longer superpower: Scholar

Iranian professor of international relations Abu-Mohammad Asgarkhani

The United States is in a "dramatic decline" and cannot be considered as a superpower anymore but it desperately struggles to reclaim its previous position in the international scene, says a senior Iranian political commentator.

“The term superpower is not anymore relevant to our international system and, to be frank, the international system, its structure, its logic and principles and even more distribution of capability in the international system is going to change. So the term superpower should be replaced by big powers or great powers,” said Abu-Mohammad Asgarkhani, a university professor of international relations, in an interview with the website of the Basirat Center for Political Studies on Sunday.

As the US further falls into decline, he said, regional powers are emerging in the international arena, triggering and influencing world developments.

Asgarkhani also stated that changes in the structure of the international system would result in changes in principles, adding that the US, nonetheless, was obstinately trying to impose its previous status as a superpower on others.

He also noted that US Republican presidential nominee, Donald Trump, was "picking the point" and had correctly predicted the steady decline of the United States as a hegemonic power when he controversially showed his support for warmer relations with Russia.

West plots to integrate Russia

Elsewhere in the interview, the Iranian university professor said that what was currently happening in the Middle East was in fact part of a major plot orchestrated by the US and certain Western powers to diminish Moscow’s influence across the globe, an agenda which has been pushed since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.

"At the bottom of their analyses, the American analyses, Russian hegemony should go away. So what the US foreign policy is after is to decapitate the Russian hegemony, and gradually different factions in Russia will rise, and that there is going to be some kind of disintegration of Russia. So the expansion of the North Atlantic Treaty organization (NATO) toward the east and especially Russia is for the same cause, which is happening,” Asgarkhani stated.

Russia not after conflict with US

The Iranian scholar also downplayed analyses that claim Russia and the US are moving toward an ultimate confrontation, saying both powers, particularly Moscow, always seek a cooperation-conflict approach.

"The point is that the Russian strategy has been a kind of cooperation-conflict with the US. So cooperation and conflict theoretically generate and regenerate each other… I mean their cooperation leads to conflict and they try to resolve their problems and they cooperate with that. For example, while the Russian forces fight in the Middle East, you see that the American and the Japanese and the Russian astronauts cooperate on space regime… So on different issues in every nook and cranny of the planet, you can see they have cooperation,” Asgarkhani said.