Before I begin this analysis of the situation in the Middle East and its consequences, I want to warn people that this examination is going to be largely secular and nuanced, which means people on both sides of the divide are going to complain, and frankly, I don’t care. To be clear, I am not interested in the plight of the Palestinians, the Islamic regime in Iran, or the conspiracy theories on the internet. I find appeals of empathy and compassion to be naïve. I do not waste my time worrying about them. Hence, being cancelled on so many subs.

In fairness, I also do not care about the Israeli government, and I have no vested interest in whether they survive. In the past, Israeli-supported organisations have helped form militant leftist groups and anti-conservative sentiments in the US, and the fact that leftist activists have turned on Israel in recent years is rather poetic. I recognise that many Zionist Christians would disagree with this position, believing that Israel is the only Western ally keeping watch over the Holy Land. I am also aware that numerous disinformation agents online are paid by both sides, as Israel and Islamic governments run these digital operations constantly, expending vast amounts of money to employ armies of social media shills whose singular job is to disrupt sincere discussion and sway American opinion to support one side or the other. This tells me a great deal about how important the US population is to the world’s geopolitical future, as everyone wants us to pick their team or hate their opponent.

What I care about first and foremost is how geopolitical events and our involvement will affect America and American interests (where I live), and what I have learned in recent years is that it is easy enough to predict events but not necessarily outcomes. There are people who believe every international conflict or crisis will end in global doom, yet none of them has been correct so far. Of course, all it takes is the right crisis to trigger a Black Swan, and this is where many of us build lighthouses, warding ships away from the rocky shores of any incident that might become a world-ending singularity.

It is important to understand that dramatic geopolitical shifts can act as linchpins, impacting our lives through a chain of dominoes that is not immediately apparent until years later, and potential does not mean certainty. As I have been pointing out for many years, collapse is a process, not an event. I have predicted the development of an unavoidable war footing between Iran and the US, with Israel as instigator or convenient rationale, and I argued that this would escalate. I predicted the initial air strikes of the primary targets. I predicted Iran’s closure of the Strait of Hormuz, which has now occurred. I predicted a ground invasion into Lebanon by Israel, which has not yet happened, followed by the eventual ground invasion by US and Israeli forces into Iran.

Immediate consequences could include a spike in oil and gas prices, as over 20% of the world’s oil supply passes through the Strait of Hormuz, as well as the elevated possibility of planned and autonomous terror attacks—the recent mass shooting in Austin, Texas appears to be the first—and there is the danger of a potential military draft should the war carry on for more than a couple of years or if it turns into an occupation dealing with a large insurgency. Finally, there is a growing risk of increased hostility toward Russia and China, potentially catalysing a world war; this is a worst-case scenario view of the conflict and not necessarily the most likely outcome.

For example, in Venezuela, naysayers wailed and raged over Donald Trump’s black-bag operation that resulted in the capture of illegitimate dictator Nicolas Maduro. They claimed with certainty that this action would initiate Vietnam Part II, yet they were entirely wrong. Millions of Venezuelans around the world rejoiced, and the Venezuelan population has done nothing in the name of bringing Maduro back. Trump’s critics ignored the applause from Venezuelan nationals and argued that their opinions do not matter because their support of Trump’s invasion is inconvenient to the narrative that he is a mindless warmonger and that he is betraying his voter base, which is a childish response to complex geopolitical dynamics. Many dictatorships deserve to die, and the libertarian methodology of sitting around and doing nothing while criticising those who act is growing stale. The American public is not inspired by passivity. This does not mean we should go to war with Iran per se, but I think US patriots are done with ego-stroking debates on constitutional and ideological theory and want to see results.

Decapitation

If moral justification is the issue, then there is a fair case to be made for the decapitation of the Islamic regime in Iran, as the Mullahs have engaged in a similar brutal theocratic oppression we have seen with the Taliban in Afghanistan, but on an industrial scale. If you are a woman, a political dissident, or a religious minority in Iran, you have limited rights and can be arrested or murdered for any reason at any given moment. Just because Muslims happen to agree with conservatives that transgender activists are predatory lunatics does not mean we have anything else in common. Most critics will argue that regime change in Iran is only meant to benefit Israel and not the Iranian people, yet it benefits many countries, not just Israel. I would also argue that Trump’s real goal is probably to further isolate China from its international oil sources, while Israel is a secondary concern or a useful excuse. Trump’s decapitation strategy against Venezuela, his policies on the Panama Canal, and his Iran strikes conveniently cut China off from around 20% of its oil resources, which is significant and could change China’s military development efforts dramatically. That said, just because Trump was right on Venezuela does not mean he will be right on Iran.

The US is very good at taking out enemy leadership and blowing things up, but we are completely inept when it comes to occupation, and this is where we always lose. An occupation requires the majority support from the foreign population; without it, there is no point. In Iran, Trump might have it. We must wait and see what the Iranian population does in reaction to the decapitation strikes. If too large a percentage of the populace throws support behind the Islamists, then the limited strikes will have to evolve into a ground war, and a ground war without domestic alliances would turn into a quagmire. Then there is the question of the Strait of Hormuz. Clearing the strait and keeping it operational will be difficult, as Iran can run interference on oil shipping for months merely by targeting tankers with thousands of drones. I do not have to explain what one Shahed drone can do to a ship loaded with combustible oil. If it were my operation, I would target the strait with long-range artillery or ballistic missiles supported by drone spotters. All it takes is one large sunken ship to close the Hormuz for weeks. This is a problem if Trump’s strikes on top officials do not inspire a popular revolution.

The Hormuz closure will mean higher gas prices, though I suspect part of Trump’s strategy is to use Venezuelan oil exports to offset the Hormuz bottleneck. If Trump cannot keep prices relatively low, then the American public will be very unhappy. We have already spent four years suffering under Biden’s inflation. We cannot absorb any more. Russian and Chinese involvement in the region appears to be limited to weapon sales and logistics. Russia has a Strategic Partnership Treaty with Iran, but it does not contain a mutual defence clause. I worry far more that elitists in Europe are doing everything in their power to start a world war with Russia by interfering in Ukraine. Speaking of the other conflict in the east, it is interesting to me that under the Biden Administration, Democrats avidly and rabidly demanded direct confrontation with Russia over Ukraine. Like Iran, it is just another country that has little to do with us, yet they were happy to risk nuclear conflagration over that foreign entanglement. This is why I do not take leftists seriously at all when it comes to their anti-war rhetoric.

Quagmire

As far as Israel is concerned, they make off like bandits in this situation. They know it, and I am sure they are secretly proud of that fact. They would never be able to fight this war alone, but I am not going to cry over the destruction of a Muslim theocracy just because Israel gains something from it. The issue is America, and whether this war will escalate out of control and turn into a global crisis that harms us. I will admit that Trump has displayed a knack for executing limited military operations with far-reaching effects at limited cost. He has proven naysayers wrong on several occasions. Secretary of Defence Pete Hegseth asserts that there will be no quagmire. If this is possible to pull off, then it will be the Trump Administration’s greatest magic trick yet. But what started as a limited weekend operation turned into a 4-week minimum program and is now being slated as a 6-month campaign, possibly involving troops on the ground. All the elements for a protracted war and a quagmire are in place.

Balkanization

If we don’t put boots on the ground, then the outcome will be chaos and civil breakdown in Iran, followed by balkanization and widespread insurgency far outside the boundaries of the country. We already know the CIA is preparing the Kurds (and others) for a ground-based invasion. This will not be pretty. The goal, obviously, then, will be to balkanize Iran… but it could also result in a very chaotic outcome (much like Libya, with factions vying for control of major regions – for example, a war between the Kurds and Azeris for major parts of northwestern Iran). Trying to manage and clean up the mess would likely result in the same kind of failed occupation the US experienced in Iraq and Afghanistan. It is a gamble that risks a sharp division within the conservative base. It also risks the left (groups like the MEK) coming into power.

Any major disaster on Trump’s watch could serve the interests of globalists seeking to exploit a crisis to further demonise the concepts of nationalism and conservatism. At that point, the only solution would have to be a total and unrelenting crusade, with or without the Trump Administration. If Iranians want to protect their children and the future in general, the MEK can never be allowed to take power in Iran.

World War III

There is a fourth possibility of the war expanding and seeding a future world war, i.e., China taking advantage of the quagmire and chaos to invade Taiwan, or a Russian invasion of the Balkans… As they say, you strike while the Iron is hot. The war could, for example, ‘push’ China to take kinetic action if its core interests and future are put at risk (which is precisely what might happen if the Straits of Hormuz are shut down).

For now, there is also a fifth outcome. I am erring on the side of the Iranian government staying in power, and a nominal win for Trump after a couple of months of limited strikes and covert operations. There are compelling reasons to maintain the status quo. Let’s never forget that it took 20 years, 4 administrations, trillions of dollars to replace the Taliban with the Taliban. There are compelling arguments for that. First, you can imagine Arabs spending literally trillions of dollars buying arms to protect themselves from Iran. Then, of course, Iran will remain sanctioned and contained, which will eliminate Iran as a global competitor in many key markets like energy and transportation (to name a few). There’s no compelling reason to open Iran up now. It can serve a useful purpose as a regional bogeyman, which can be engaged as needed if anyone in the region steps out of line. And it will probably be the fastest way to end this war without prolonging it, which could collapse the global economy. Yes, I am not putting any bets on the current Iranian opposition outside Iran to save the day.  

In the meantime, until an outcome ensues, I do expect a wave of attempted terror attacks in the West, even more NGO-financed riots by leftist activists, and probably an emergency effort by DHS’s ICE militia to deport more Muslim immigrants from the country to other Minneapolis-type cities like LA, or even New York. The cynics say nothing ever happens, except when something happens, so keep your head on a swivel.

The modern world has been built on a bet: that efficiency is strength.

Over the last four decades, globalization has not merely expanded trade. It rationalized the physical architecture of civilization. Supply chains became lean, inventories became minimal, shipping became synchronized, and production systems became distributed across borders in the name of cost optimization. In place of redundancy, this system embraced precision. In place of buffers, it embraced velocity. The result is an economic order that looks sophisticated in peacetime—yet reveals itself as brittle when exposed to chokepoints.

The Strait of Hormuz is the most concentrated expression of this fragility. It is not just a strategic waterway; it is a geographic monopoly embedded inside the machinery of world industry. A narrow maritime corridor—measured in miles—contains within it the fate of energy prices, fertilizer production, industrial chemicals, shipping insurance, sovereign budgets, grid stability, and political order in dozens of import-dependent states.

If the Strait were to experience a true “zero-flow” closure—whether by mines, missile threats, insurance withdrawal, or any credible war-risk regime that deters commercial shipping—the disruption would not remain an “energy shock.” It would function as a systemic shock: a cascade in which the failure of one corridor propagates outward through real material dependencies until the crisis becomes economic, then fiscal, then political, and finally geopolitical in a much harder sense—meaning states begin to treat resources, shipping routes, and industrial inputs as security assets rather than tradable commodities.

This is what makes the scenario dangerous. The risk is not simply that oil becomes expensive. The risk is that the world’s logistical constitution—its hidden infrastructure of social peace—begins to fracture.

Efficiency as a Form of Concentrated Vulnerability

The ideology of modern supply chains is often narrated as progress: fewer frictions, cheaper goods, tighter integration, and global specialization. Yet integration has a darker counterpart: interdependence without slack. When a system is optimized to minimize cost, it also minimizes resilience. It removes spare capacity because spare capacity is “waste.” It consolidates suppliers because consolidation is “efficiency.” It moves production to the cheapest jurisdiction because labor arbitrage is “rational.”

All of this works—until it doesn’t.

The structural error is that efficiency is being treated as strength when it is often only the appearance of strength during stable periods. Under stress, what matters is not optimization but redundancy. What matters is not cost minimization but survivability. And survivability depends on physical constraints: pipes, ports, vessels, chemical inventories, grid stability, and time.

Hormuz concentrates those constraints into one point.

When the Strait is open, the system treats it like a normal route—one artery among many. When it closes, the system discovers it was never one artery among many. It was a main artery, and the alternatives were partial bypasses that cannot carry the load.

The Closure Is Not a “Blockade.” It’s a Reveal

The initial public framing of a Hormuz crisis would likely be conventional: a maritime standoff, a naval escalation, an oil market panic. But the deeper meaning is more consequential. A closure would expose that global civilization is not an abstract “services economy” floating above material reality. It is a heavy industrial economy with digital layers built on top.

Energy is not just what powers cars; it powers everything that makes modern life stable: electricity grids, fertilizer, mining, manufacturing, shipping, refrigeration, hospitals, telecom, and defense supply chains. LNG is not simply a fuel; it’s baseload reliability for power-hungry industrial systems. Oil is not merely gasoline; it is petrochemical feedstock, freight mobility, and—through state revenues—political stability in producer regions and importers.

The closure would therefore operate like a stress-test applied to the entire global system at once. It would not produce one shortage, but a sequence of shortages, each one feeding the next.

The First Material Reality: Stranded Energy and the Limits of Bypass

In a zero-flow scenario, the immediate economic fact is simple: a massive volume of oil and LNG becomes physically trapped behind a war-risk barrier. Markets will try to compensate. Governments will try to reassure. Analysts will point to bypass pipelines.

But pipelines are not magic. They are fixed-capacity physical infrastructure. Even at maximum diversion, bypass routes cannot absorb anything close to the full volume of Gulf exports. That mismatch creates a structural deficit that cannot be “priced away” in the short term, because the underlying issue is not demand preference—it is physical delivery.

Once markets understand that the deficit is real, the crisis enters its second reality: logistics becomes finance.

War-risk insurance premiums surge or coverage is canceled. Shipowners refuse to send hulls into risk zones. Freight rates explode. The global shipping system—already strained by concentrated vessel supply—begins to distort. Even when oil exists somewhere, it becomes harder to move, harder to insure, and slower to deliver. This is where the panic gains momentum. The crisis is not just that barrels are missing; it’s that the physical ability to transport energy safely becomes impaired.

At that point, price becomes less a mechanism of equilibrium and more a signal of desperation.

The Economic Shock Becomes a Chemical Shock

In popular imagination, energy shocks are about fuel prices. In reality, they are also about chemistry.

A large share of crude moving through Hormuz is “sour,” meaning it contains significant sulfur. When that crude is refined, sulfur is removed to meet environmental standards—and the industrial system thereby produces elemental sulfur as a byproduct. That sulfur is not a trivial side stream. It is a feedstock for sulfuric acid, one of the most important industrial chemicals on the planet.

This is where the cascade begins to feel counterintuitive to most observers. You close a maritime strait, and suddenly copper extraction is threatened. You interrupt crude supply, and suddenly water treatment chemicals tighten. You reduce sour crude flows, and suddenly fertilizer production, mining leach operations, and industrial processing begin to experience a chemical famine.

Sulfuric acid is not easily substituted. It is toxic, corrosive, and constrained by transport rules. Inventories are thin. Production cannot be scaled instantly. The result is not merely higher prices but real bottlenecks: operations that require constant acid input simply slow or stop.

This is the point where “energy shock” becomes “industrial shock.”

From Sulfuric Acid to Copper: The Electrification Trap

Once the sulfuric acid constraint emerges, it strikes at the heart of the global electrification agenda: copper and cobalt.

Much of modern copper extraction—particularly solvent extraction and electrowinning for oxide ores—and cobalt/nickel processing through acid-intensive methods depend on sulfuric acid. If acid availability tightens, output tightens. If output tightens, the supply of copper tightens. If copper tightens, everything that depends on copper tightens: power grids, transformers, motors, EVs, data center buildouts, and industrial electrification projects.

This creates a grim paradox. The world has been accelerating electrification as a response to geopolitical energy risk. Yet the electrification system itself is materially dependent on mining, chemicals, and heavy manufacturing that are vulnerable to the same supply shocks.

A closure at Hormuz therefore produces not only an oil panic, but a second-order assault on the infrastructure meant to reduce oil dependence. That is the systemic irony: the transition infrastructure is itself fragile.

Grid Hardware: Where Time Becomes the Enemy

Even without a Hormuz crisis, heavy electrical equipment is already constrained. Large power transformers and high-voltage switchgear have long lead times, concentrated manufacturing, and limited surge capacity. These are not products that can be quickly “scaled” by software-like agility. They are physical monoliths made of specialized steel, copper windings, and slow curing processes.

When copper tightens, transformer manufacturing tightens. When transformer manufacturing tightens, grid expansion tightens. When grid expansion tightens, everything that is trying to add load—AI data centers, electrified transport, industrial reshoring—collides with time.

This is where the crisis stops being a “shock” and starts becoming a structural arrest. The economy can tolerate price spikes for a while. What it struggles to tolerate is the inability to build, repair, and expand critical infrastructure at the speed demanded by energy insecurity and digital growth.

And this is precisely where a maritime closure reaches into the most modern layer of civilization: compute.

Semiconductors and Compute: The Myth of Weightless Modernity

The digital economy is widely described as “immaterial.” But semiconductors are among the most material products humans make. They require ultra-stable power, ultra-pure chemical inputs, high-purity gases, precision machinery, and enormous energy reliability. Even momentary voltage disruptions can ruin batches. Even small supply interruptions in photoresists, substrates, or specialty chemicals can ripple through yields and lead times.

In a severe energy and LNG disruption scenario, power reliability becomes less certain in key manufacturing regions. The semiconductor supply chain then becomes a casualty not because chips are “optional,” but because the production environment is intolerant of instability.

When chips tighten, the consequence is not merely consumer electronics inflation. It impacts automobiles, telecom networks, medical devices, industrial controls, and defense hardware. Modern states cannot treat this as a market inconvenience. They treat it as strategic vulnerability.

At that moment, the political economy begins to change. States intervene more aggressively. Export controls multiply. Stockpiling accelerates. Governments begin to treat components the way they treat ammunition: something you secure, ration, and allocate, not something you simply buy.

Inflation as a Political Weapon: The Food–Fuel Fuse

Yet the most politically explosive chain is not semiconductors. It is food.

Natural gas is the feedstock for ammonia, and ammonia is the basis of nitrogen fertilizers. Fertilizer costs translate into crop yields and food prices within a single planting cycle. If energy and fertilizer inputs rise sharply, food inflation rises with lagged certainty.

When food prices rise rapidly, subsidy systems crack. Import-dependent states burn through reserves. Governments face a choice between fiscal ruin and social unrest. For many, the choice is not real: they lack the fiscal space to subsidize indefinitely, and they cannot endure the unrest that follows subsidy withdrawal.

This is where the Hormuz shock becomes a global political contagion. Blackouts, food inflation, and currency collapse converge into a destabilization engine.

Populations do not riot because they’ve read shipping analytics. They riot because bread is unaffordable, diesel is rationed, and the lights go out. Modern legitimacy is sustained through uninterrupted provision: stable prices, stable power, stable availability. When these fail, legitimacy fails.

What emerges is not merely hardship but regime stress—especially in states already burdened by debt, import dependency, and political polarization. In that sense, a Hormuz closure is not just a global inflation event; it is an uprising risk multiplier.

A “globalized Arab Spring” is not a metaphor here. It is a structural possibility.

Credit, FX, and Sovereign Stress: Where Economics Becomes Geopolitics

As the shock widens, capital markets respond. Industrial firms face margin compression. High-yield spreads widen. Emerging market currencies weaken under dollarized energy costs. FX reserves drain as governments attempt to import survival inputs.

At this stage, crises that once looked separate begin to merge. An energy shock becomes a balance-of-payments crisis. A balance-of-payments crisis becomes sovereign distress. Sovereign distress becomes political instability. Political instability triggers export bans, hoarding, and defensive trade policy—feeding back into the shortages.

This is the moment when the system stops behaving like a “market” and starts behaving like a contest for survival.

And survival contests are geopolitical.

The New Order: From Markets to Administrative Triage

If the closure persists long enough, states will abandon the assumption that neutral market price is the primary allocator of resources. They will move toward command allocation—formal or informal. Export controls will expand. Emergency powers will become routine. Militarized shipping corridors will become normalized. Strategic stockpiles will be treated as instruments of coercion rather than insurance.

The global economy will not simply “recover” back into its prior shape. It will mutate.

This is the deepest consequence: the political economy of efficiency gives way to the political economy of security.

Under that doctrine, redundancy becomes rational. Reshoring becomes justified. Subsidizing domestic capacity becomes necessary. The inflationary costs of duplicating supply chains become accepted as the price of sovereignty.

But the world cannot reshoring everything at once. Global shipbuilding capacity is finite. Heavy electrical equipment capacity is finite. Mining projects take years. Chemical production expansions take time. So the transition period becomes one of scarcity management.

Scarcity management is not the same as prosperity. It is triage.

The Civilizational Claim

The terminal risk, in this framework, is not one shortage, nor one recession, nor even one war-risk premium. It is the structural transition into a world where scarcity is permanent enough that coercion becomes routine.

In such a world, hunger, hyperinflation, sovereign failure, technological bottlenecks, and militarized trade corridors are no longer “crises.” They become normal features of the operating environment.

The closure of Hormuz is therefore significant not simply because it raises oil prices, but because it exposes the hidden constitution of the global order: the supply chain architecture that quietly underwrites social peace.

That is why, if such a closure were credible, the entire world would be pressured—immediately—to support efforts to restore flow. Not out of moral clarity, but out of systemic necessity. Even rivals would face incentives to cooperate, because the alternative is a fragmentation spiral no one can fully control.

A multipolar world is not automatically a stable world. It is a complex world, and complexity under scarcity is dangerous. When the global system is forced to choose between ideology and survival, it will choose survival. And survival politics is rarely gentle.

This is the risk: not simply that a strait closes, but that the world discovers its efficiency was concentrated fragility— and that the era of effortless integration is over.

In the long and tragic history of the Middle East, few peoples have been summoned to revolt as often—and abandoned as quickly—as the Kurds. Today, amid escalating tensions between the United States, Israel, and Iran, a familiar pattern appears to be re-emerging. Reports that Donald Trump recently held sensitive calls with Kurdish leaders—including Masoud Barzani of the Kurdistan Democratic Party and Bafel Talabani of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan—raise a troubling question: are the Kurds once again being encouraged to rise against a powerful state only to face the consequences alone?

According to reporting about the discussions, the outreach came after months of quiet lobbying by Benjamin Netanyahu. Israel has long cultivated ties with Kurdish factions across Iraq, Syria, and Iran, seeing them as potential allies against regional adversaries. The idea, reportedly entertained in strategic conversations, is that Kurdish groups might “come out of the woodwork” and rise up against the Iranian state during a broader confrontation.

On paper, such thinking fits neatly within the geopolitical chessboard. Kurdish militias possess local knowledge, hardened fighters, and an existing history of insurgency against Tehran. In strategists’ minds, they represent a potential internal pressure point against Ali Khamenei’s government.

But for the Kurds themselves, the calculation is not theoretical—it is existential.

A History of Encouraged Revolts

For decades, Kurdish movements have been courted by external powers whenever regional conflict intensifies. During the Cold War, Kurdish uprisings were intermittently supported, only to be abandoned when larger diplomatic deals were struck. One of the most infamous examples occurred in 1975, when Kurdish forces in Iraq—encouraged by the United States and Iran to rebel against Baghdad—were abruptly cut off after the signing of the Algiers Agreement (1975). Within days, the revolt collapsed, and tens of thousands of Kurds fled.

A similar dynamic has repeated itself many times since. Kurdish fighters were critical partners of the United States in the war against the Islamic State. Yet when geopolitical priorities shifted, support proved conditional and fragile. The lesson learned in Kurdish political circles is stark: alliances with major powers are often tactical, temporary, and ultimately expendable.

The Strategic Temptation

From a strategic perspective, the logic behind courting Kurdish insurgency against Iran is clear. Iran contains several Kurdish regions, particularly in its northwest along the Iraqi border. Kurdish militant groups already exist there, including factions opposed to Tehran’s central authority.

If a regional war intensified, encouraging Kurdish uprisings inside Iran could theoretically stretch Iranian security forces, forcing them to fight on multiple fronts. This concept—destabilizing an adversary through internal ethnic or regional pressure has been a familiar tactic in modern geopolitical competition.

But the gap between strategic imagination and political reality is enormous.

Iran has historically responded to Kurdish insurgencies with overwhelming force. Any uprising lacking sustained external backing would likely face swift suppression by Iranian security services, including the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. Unlike in Iraq or Syria, where fragmented state authority created space for Kurdish autonomy, Iran’s central government has proven far more resilient in maintaining territorial control.

In other words, the Kurds could be invited to open a front in a war whose outcome they cannot control.

The Pattern of Abandonment

The fear expressed by many observers—and by Kurds themselves—is that the scenario could follow a familiar script:

First, Kurdish factions are encouraged to believe that geopolitical winds are shifting in their favor.
Second, they mobilize fighters and political networks to challenge the central government.
Third, the larger powers that encouraged the uprising recalibrate their priorities once the costs escalate.

When the dust settles, the Kurdish fighters remain on the battlefield alone.

This is why many Kurdish leaders have historically approached external encouragement with caution. The Kurdish political landscape is fragmented, but the collective memory of betrayal runs deep—from Iraq in the 1970s to Syria in more recent conflicts.

A Dangerous Illusion

There is also another uncomfortable truth behind the strategy. Outside powers often assume that Kurdish groups will automatically align with any initiative directed against a common adversary. But Kurdish movements are not monolithic. They are divided by ideology, geography, and competing political visions.

Some factions seek autonomy within existing states; others pursue independence. Some maintain relations with Western governments; others are wary of foreign manipulation. Assuming that Kurdish groups can be easily mobilized as a unified insurgent force risks misunderstanding the complexity of Kurdish politics.

More importantly, it risks misjudging the cost Kurds themselves would bear if the gamble fails.

The Human Cost

For Kurdish communities living in Iran, any insurgency would not be an abstract geopolitical maneuver—it would be a matter of survival. Iranian Kurdish regions have already experienced cycles of repression, insurgency, and retaliation over the decades.

An externally encouraged revolt could expose civilian populations to severe reprisals, economic isolation, and prolonged instability. Kurdish fighters might once again find themselves portrayed as proxies in a wider conflict between major regional powers.

And when that conflict shifts—as geopolitical conflicts inevitably do—the Kurds may once again discover that their supposed allies have moved on.

The Hard Lesson of Kurdish History

The central tragedy of Kurdish politics is that the Kurdish cause has often intersected with great-power rivalries without ever becoming the central priority of those powers. The Kurds have frequently been valued not as partners but as leverage.

This is why talk of Kurds “coming out of the woodwork” should provoke unease rather than enthusiasm. It echoes the language of past moments when Kurdish aspirations were briefly elevated as useful tools in larger struggles.

The Kurdish people have paid dearly for those moments.

Encouraging them to open another front against Iran—without the guarantee of sustained political, military, and diplomatic backing—risks repeating a familiar and painful cycle. One in which Kurdish fighters are celebrated as courageous allies when useful and quietly forgotten when the strategic map changes.

In that sense, the question posed today is not simply about geopolitics.

It is about whether the world has learned anything from the long history of Kurdish abandonment—or whether the Kurds are once again being shepherded toward another slaughterhouse.

Geopolitical analysis often reduces conflict to systems: deterrence models, force structures, proxy networks, escalation ladders. We speak in abstractions — capabilities, red lines, strategic depth.

But wars are not fought by abstractions. They are fought by human beings.

As a critical side note, in much of the early press coverage surrounding Ayatollah Khamenei’s reported death, it was stated that he was killed alongside his wife, daughter, in-laws, and granddaughter.

His second son, Mojtaba, was not present. Yet Mojtaba is widely understood to exert significant influence over Iran’s Basij militia — a force with branches extending across the region and numbering in the millions when including active members and affiliated networks. He is frequently cited as a likely successor following the temporary appointment of Ayatollah Arafi. Beyond succession speculation, Mojtaba Khamenei already holds meaningful influence within Iran’s security architecture and maintains deep institutional ties to the Basij mobilization structure.

The Basij itself is not a conventional militia. Established in 1979 by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini to defend the Islamic Revolution, it now operates under the command of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). It functions as a hybrid force: paramilitary, ideological, and social-control network. Unlike a traditional armed group confined to barracks, the Basij is embedded throughout Iranian society. It maintains neighborhood units, university branches, workplace organizations, and women’s divisions, granting it localized presence and rapid mobilization capacity.

It has played a central role in suppressing protests, enforcing social codes, mobilizing electoral participation for hardline factions, and providing grassroots intelligence to the regime. Its strength lies not merely in its size — often cited in the millions — but in its distributed structure and ideological cohesion.

Strategically, the Basij remains one of the Islamic Republic’s primary instruments of internal durability. It serves as both deterrent and shock absorber. It can be scaled up during domestic unrest or external confrontation. Rooted in Shi’a revolutionary ideology and the doctrine of defending the Supreme Leader, it frames loyalty as moral duty rather than political preference. Although generational shifts and public dissatisfaction have eroded enthusiasm in parts of society, the Basij remains structurally embedded and operationally significant. Any serious assessment of Iran’s resilience must account for its ability to mobilize, monitor, and consolidate control during moments of instability.

Its influence does not stop at Iran’s borders. Through integration within the IRGC’s broader strategic architecture — particularly via the Quds Force — the Basij model has informed the development of allied militias across the region. Hezbollah in Lebanon, various Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF) factions in Iraq, and pro-Iranian militias in Syria reflect similar organizational principles: localized recruitment, ideological indoctrination rooted in resistance narratives, and alignment within Tehran’s broader regional deterrence strategy. The Basij is less an expeditionary army than a prototype — a blueprint for decentralized yet aligned ideological militias across the Middle East.

Now consider the psychological dimension.

When violence becomes personal at the apex of power, the consequences can be far more destabilizing than analysts anticipate.

Before policy, there is grief.
Before doctrine, there is shock.
Before calculation, there is rage.

The violent death of close family members does not remain private when it occurs at the center of a revolutionary state. It becomes narrative. It becomes signal. It becomes fuel.

Iran’s own history provides a powerful example.

In 1977, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini’s eldest son, Mostafa Khomeini, died suddenly in Najaf while in exile. Many of Khomeini’s supporters believed SAVAK — the Shah’s secret police — was responsible. Whether definitively proven or not, perception carried weight. Khomeini framed his son’s death as martyrdom. It became a moral indictment of the Shah’s regime and helped intensify revolutionary momentum.

Personal loss was transformed into political mobilization.

This transformation was not incidental. Shi’a political theology places martyrdom at its core. The memory of Karbala — the killing of Imam Hussein — is not merely commemorative; it shapes political consciousness. Injustice met with sacrifice deepens resolve rather than diminishes it.

Now apply that historical lens to a contemporary leadership crisis.

If senior members of Iran’s ruling family were killed in an external strike, the regime would not portray it as a tactical setback. It would frame it as an existential assault. The long-standing narrative of encirclement — foundational to the Islamic Republic’s identity — would harden.

Here lies the uncomfortable strategic reality: such an event might consolidate the regime rather than fracture it.

External attacks frequently unify internal factions. Even critics of a government can rally around a perceived foreign threat. National identity can temporarily eclipse political dissatisfaction. In Iran, where memories of foreign intervention remain vivid, that reflex is particularly strong.

The Basij amplifies this dynamic.

It is not simply a militia; it is a mass ideological network embedded across society and linked to regional allies. Its power lies not only in scale, but in cohesion. It is built around the defense of the revolution and the sanctification of sacrifice.

A strike that personalizes conflict at the leadership level would not remain confined to elite mourning. It could cascade into mobilization. Commemoration could evolve into calls for retaliation. Emotional energy could be channeled into disciplined yet intensified asymmetric response.

Importantly, this does not necessarily imply reckless escalation.

Iran’s strategic doctrine has historically favored calibrated retaliation — deniable operations, proxy activation, strategic patience. Leadership understands that full conventional war would threaten state survival.

Yet something fundamental would shift.

When conflict merges with bloodline, compartmentalization becomes harder. Political calculation narrows. Flexibility diminishes. The boundary between defending the nation and avenging family erodes.

Leadership shaped by fresh trauma often hardens. Moderating voices can be sidelined. Security institutions gain leverage. Political space contracts.

History demonstrates that decapitation strategies do not reliably produce collapse. At times, they produce entrenchment.

There is also the question of legitimacy.

Even many Iranians critical of the current system might recoil at the killing of family members. A government perceived as under foreign assault can regain nationalist credibility, even if briefly. External force can validate internal narratives of resistance.

The Islamic Republic itself emerged in part from personal loss reframed as injustice. Khomeini did not retreat after his son’s death; he intensified his moral campaign against the Shah. What may have been intended as intimidation became accelerant.

That precedent should not be ignored.

In moments of escalation, policymakers often assume that pressure fractures adversaries. Yet when pressure becomes personal at the summit of an ideologically structured regime, it can instead unify and radicalize.

The key question is not whether retaliation would follow. It almost certainly would.

The real question is whether such escalation would precipitate regime collapse — or regime consolidation.

Conflicts are often modeled through hardware: missiles, drones, enrichment levels, troop counts. But at decisive moments, they pivot on psychology.

When grief fuses with ideology and power, decisions cease to be purely strategic. They become existential.

And existential conflicts are the most difficult to contain.

It was not widely reported, but in the days preceding the recent escalation—before the bombing campaign began—there were claims circulating that approximately one hundred operatives affiliated with the MEK attempted to seize control of a compound associated with Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei in Tehran. Reports described an armed confrontation and alleged that the operation was crushed with total casualties among the attackers. Whether fully accurate or not, the story itself is revealing—not because of tactical details, but because of what it suggests about the broader strategic landscape now unfolding around Iran.

For those unfamiliar, the MEK (Mujahedin-e-Khalq) occupies a uniquely controversial place in modern Iranian political history. Founded in the 1960s as a hybrid Islamic-Marxist revolutionary movement, the group violently opposed the Shah’s regime prior to 1979. After initially aligning with the revolutionary wave that toppled the monarchy, it quickly fell into direct conflict with Ayatollah Khomeini’s emerging theocracy. Brutally suppressed, the organization fled Iran and later aligned itself with Saddam Hussein during the Iran-Iraq War—an association that permanently damaged its legitimacy among many Iranians. Today the MEK is headquartered in Albania and presents itself as a democratic alternative to the Islamic Republic.

Over the decades, Tehran has consistently accused the MEK of cooperating with Western and Israeli intelligence services. Whether every accusation is true is beside the point. What matters is that the perception of operational overlap exists. The group’s alleged involvement in intelligence gathering and targeted sabotage—such as operations against Iranian nuclear scientists—has long been cited as evidence of deep coordination with Mossad. Regardless of the precise details, the strategic logic is clear: Israel sees Iran’s nuclear program as an existential threat, and any actor capable of operating on the ground inside Iran becomes strategically valuable.

At the same time, Israel has not confined its engagement to the MEK. In recent years, it has been visibly supportive of Reza Pahlavi, the son of Iran’s last Shah. Pahlavi has positioned himself as a secular nationalist figure advocating democratic transition. His 2023 visit to Israel was particularly symbolic. During that trip, he promoted the idea of a “Cyrus Accords,” invoking Cyrus the Great—an ancient Persian ruler celebrated in Jewish history for allowing the Jewish people to return to Jerusalem after Babylonian exile. The symbolism was unmistakable: ancient Persia and Israel as historical partners, contrasted with the ideological hostility of the Islamic Republic.

For Israel, such imagery is powerful. It offers a narrative in which regime change in Tehran could unlock normalization, cooperation, and strategic alignment. For Pahlavi, the calculation is equally strategic. International legitimacy is currency. By engaging Israel openly, he signals to Western policymakers and diaspora communities that a future Iran under his leadership would abandon confrontation and integrate into a pro-Western regional order.

Yet this alignment raises profound contradictions. The monarchist tradition represented by Pahlavi once suppressed and imprisoned MEK members. The MEK, in turn, violently opposed the Shah. Kurdish and Baluchi separatist groups do not necessarily envision a centralized Iran at all; some seek autonomy, others independence. Azeri groups hold their own distinct nationalist aspirations. Ideologically, these actors are not merely different—they are historically antagonistic.

And yet they converge around a single axis: opposition to the Islamic Republic.

Israel, for its part, views the Iranian theocratic regime as its most formidable long-term adversary. Since 1979, Tehran has transformed from a quiet regional partner into a declared ideological enemy. Iran’s support for Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas in Gaza, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and various militias across Syria and Iraq has positioned it as the central architect of Israel’s northern and southern security dilemmas. Add to this the development of ballistic missiles and nuclear enrichment capabilities, and Israel’s security doctrine inevitably treats Iran as an existential threat.

Against this backdrop, Israel seeks not only deterrence but leverage. One dimension of that leverage involves cultivating ties—covertly or overtly—with forces capable of pressuring Tehran from within its own borders.

Historically, Israel’s “periphery doctrine” encouraged alliances with non-Arab actors on the margins of hostile Arab states. In the 1960s and 1970s, Israel supported Kurdish leader Mustafa Barzani in Iraq as part of a broader strategy to counterbalance regional adversaries. That logic did not disappear with time; it evolved.

In the Iranian context, engagement with Kurdish, Baluchi, Azeri, and other minority groups creates strategic friction inside Iran’s internal geography. Ethnic minority provinces require constant security investment from Tehran. Pressure along those fault lines can serve as indirect deterrence.

But here is where the contradiction becomes acute.

On an ideological basis, none of these alliances cohere. A monarchist restoration movement, an Islamic-Marxist exile organization, and ethnonationalist separatist factions do not share a unified blueprint for Iran’s future. They share only a negative objective: the removal of the current regime.

On a practical governance level, the contradictions are even sharper. If the Islamic Republic were to collapse under combined external and internal pressure, who governs the day after?

Would Reza Pahlavi preside over a unified constitutional monarchy or republic? Would MEK operatives assume command positions within security structures? Would Kurdish or Baluchi regions demand immediate autonomy? Would Azeri groups push for federal restructuring? Would Iran fragment into a Balkanized landscape of competing militias and provisional authorities?

These are not abstract questions. They are structural fault lines.

Israel’s engagement with these actors may be strategically rational in the short term. Weakening Tehran reduces the operational capacity of Hezbollah. Disrupting Iran’s nuclear infrastructure buys time. Encouraging internal dissent strains the regime’s resources.

But the long-term scenario is far less predictable.

If disparate opposition groups—each with distinct visions—are empowered simultaneously without a coherent transitional architecture, the result could be profound instability. Power vacuums rarely produce orderly democratic transitions. More often, they produce factional competition, parallel security structures, and fragmented authority.

It is here that your core concern emerges: the “day after” problem.

In the event of theocratic collapse, Iran would not be an empty canvas. It is a vast, multi-ethnic, historically centralized civilization-state with deeply embedded institutions. Sudden regime implosion, especially under external pressure, could produce cascading power struggles.

In such a scenario, Israel’s role would not necessarily end with regime change. Quite the opposite. If multiple opposition groups rely on Israeli intelligence, funding, diplomatic backing, or operational support during the struggle, those relationships do not simply disappear. Influence persists.

This does not automatically translate into colonial control. The Middle East is not governed by 19th-century imperial frameworks. However, sustained dependency relationships can produce asymmetric influence. If post-regime actors owe their survival to external coordination, the external actor inevitably retains leverage.

The perception of such leverage could be as destabilizing as the reality.

Iranian nationalism remains potent. The memory of foreign interference—most notably the 1953 coup—still shapes political consciousness. Any post-theocratic government perceived as externally engineered or externally beholden would face legitimacy challenges from day one.

This is where the fragility of the current alignment becomes apparent.

Israel’s relationship with Iranian opposition movements is best understood not as a simple alliance, but as a layered convergence of interests. Israel seeks to counter a hostile regime. Opposition groups seek international backing. Tehran seeks to portray all of them as foreign proxies.

Each actor operates within this narrative battlefield.

The idea of the “Cyrus Accords” attempts to elevate the discussion beyond tactical maneuvering. It imagines a civilizational reset. It suggests that hostility between Israel and Iran is not inevitable, but contingent on the current political order.

Yet even if normalization were achievable, the path to it would likely be turbulent.

Regime resilience in Iran has proven durable over decades of sanctions, covert sabotage, and internal unrest. Opposition movements remain fragmented. There is no unified command structure among them. No agreed constitutional roadmap. No consolidated transitional council recognized across ideological lines.

If collapse comes abruptly—especially amid escalating war—the vacuum could be explosive.

My central warning is therefore not about ideology but about structural coherence. What shape will Iran take if the Islamic Republic falls? A centralized secular republic? A restored monarchy? A federal system? A fractured state? Who commands the armed forces? Who controls the nuclear infrastructure? Who secures the borders?

In the absence of answers to these questions, the removal of one regime does not guarantee stability—it may simply inaugurate a new struggle.

The uncomfortable possibility is that multiple externally supported factions could compete for authority simultaneously. That scenario would not serve Iranian sovereignty, Israeli security, or regional stability.

Whether one views Israel’s current strategy as prudent containment or dangerous overreach depends largely on how one answers the “day after” question.

If there is a coordinated transitional framework, broad-based internal legitimacy, and a clear national consensus, the outcome could be transformative.

If there is not, then the outcome could be chaos.

And chaos in a nation of Iran’s size, complexity, and strategic importance would reverberate far beyond its borders.

That is the real issue. Not simply whether Israel engages opposition groups. Not whether the MEK operates covertly. Not whether Reza Pahlavi courts international support.

The real issue is governance. Surely, they have been promised ‘something’ by Israel’s Mossad. What role will the MEK take after the theocratic regime falls? Will MEK become Reza Pahlavi’s new secret police? How will the separatists be satisfied?

Because wars do not end when regimes fall. They end when a stable political order replaces them.

And without a coherent, unified vision among these disparate forces, the collapse of the theocracy could mark not the beginning of renewal, but the beginning of fragmentation. Israel would remain involved behind the scenes, coordinating governance with the groups it has long supported. Iran would become a de facto colony, much like the region was controlled by European powers in earlier centuries. Israel would claim, as the British did (in India), that without their ‘hand’ the country would fall apart. And then India splintered after the British left, largely by British design. Kicking out Israeli colonization would likely be very difficult. And in the end, lead to the Balkanization of Iran.

That possibility—more than any individual alliance—is what deserves serious consideration.

U.S. President Donald Trump has managed to maneuver himself into a position that makes a long war on Iran all but inevitable.

About two days ago I was still betting on Trump to chicken out of a war with Iran. The military buildup in the Middle East was insufficient but for a short in-out air campaign on Iran with no discernible value.

But over the last days the U.S. military has sent many more air refueling tankers, dozens of more fighter planes and – most importantly – command and control elements to the Middle East. The force is sufficient for a large air campaign that could be sustained for at least two weeks. An additional carrier strike force has entered the Mediterranean and will be positioned west of Israel by the end of the week. A second carrier strike group is deployed in the Arabian Sea.

Deploying such a large force is extremely costly. Pressure will increase quickly to use it or to stand down.

The last negotiations between The U.S. and Iran went well but ended without any results. Iran promised to come back in maybe two week with a detailed plan on how to proceed:

“We were able to reach a general agreement on a set of guiding principles, based on which we will proceed from now on, and move toward drafting a potential agreement,” Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi told state TV after talks with US Special Envoy Steve Witkoff in Geneva.

The two sides will each draft and exchange texts for a deal before setting a date for a third round of talks, he said, cautioning that the next stage would be “more difficult and detailed.”

Two weeks is a long time and the military clock is now ticking faster than the diplomatic one.

The U.S. military is reported to have told Trump that it will be ready to strike by this weekend:

Top national security officials have told President Trump the military is ready for potential strikes on Iran as soon as Saturday, but the timeline for any action is likely to extend beyond this weekend, sources familiar with the discussions told CBS News.

Mr. Trump has not yet made a final decision about whether to strike, said the officials, who spoke under condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive national matters.

With the forces deployed and ready to strike Trump is no longer in a position to avoid a war if Israel wants one. If Netanyahoo were to strike Iran the U.S. would immediately have to intervene to lower the consequences of Iran’s inevitable retaliation.

The deployment of refueling tankers in the Middle East points to the necessity for the U.S. to avoid stationing planes within the reach of Iran’s short range missile forces. Fighters and bombers will have launch from further away, tank up, run their turn on Iran, tank up again and land to reload. The number of sorties that can generated by this will be only half of what a ‘normal’ air campaign would look like.

Any attack will likely start with the firing of one or two hundred cruise missiles. They will be followed by stealth bombers which will try to destroy Iranian air defenses. After that is more or less achieved, waves of strike planes will launch missiles from safe distances to strike at Iranian military and civilian command elements as well as infrastructure in Iran.

Iran will retaliate with waves of drones and older missiles. The aim will be to exhaust U.S. missile defenses. During last years 12-day war it took Iran about eight days to achieve that. Thereafter it used newer missiles which were able to hit their targets in Israel will unexpected precision.

Iran will also use its shorter range missiles to destroy any U.S. element, be it on ground, air or sea, that is within its reach. Irregular forces aligned with Iran in Lebanon, Iraq and Yemen may join the campaign.

Iran is expected to be be helped by Chinese and Russian intelligence. During the war in Ukraine the U.S. established the norm that the supply of intelligence to one party of a war is insufficient to make oneself a combatant. Chinese satellite intelligence will allow Iran to have at all times a clear picture of its enemies disposals.

Iran however is undoubtedly the underdog in this fight. It can not win a war against a country that is several thousand miles away from its shores. The damage a sustained U.S. air campaign will cause will be real and very painful. The real threat is not a one off campaign but a constant deterioration of the Iranian state should the U.S. decide to wage a long campaign of attrition against it as it did against Iraq between the two Gulf wars.

The only way to prevent that is for Iran to use the economic power that comes with its control of the Strait of Hormuz. A blockade of the Strait would raise global oil prices to the north of $100 per barrel. With energy prices going through the roof, and the collateral economic damage cause by it, the chance of the Republicans winning the midterms will go down to nil.

It is doubtful though that Trump still cares about that.