Washington’s fixation on Iran is in the service of American hegemony. In The Grand Chessboard (1997), Zbigniew Brzezinski named Iran one of five “geopolitical pivots,” states that matter less for their own power than for where they sit. Iran commands the Gulf and the Strait of Hormuz. Brzezinski wrote that an “antihegemonic” coalition of China, Russia and Iran could emerge “only if the United States is shortsighted enough to antagonize China and.