Michael Reid
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The China-Pakistan-GCC riddle
No one is betting that most GCC petro-monarchies in West Asia have seen which way the wind is blowin’.Contact us: info@strategic-culture.su
China and Pakistan released a joint 5-points statement on the war on Iran that at face value might be considered as lame as it gets.
Immediate ceasefire & humanitarian access to all affected areas.
Early peace talks; respect for sovereignty of Iran & Gulf states; diplomacy over force.
Protection of civilians & non-military infrastructure under international law.
Security of shipping lanes, especially the Strait of Hormuz.
Strengthening role of the United Nations and a UN Charter-based peace framework.
For all of Pakistan’s Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar’s unbounded enthusiasm, this sounds like a cliché collection with no bite. Dar heavily spun that both the US and Iran expressed their “confidence” in Pakistan’s mediation. That’s extremely debatable.A feasible scenario: China was not convinced at all by anything discussed by a Quad – the Foreign Ministers of Pakistan, Turkiye, Saudi Arabia and Egypt – meeting in Islamabad. So Dar had to rush to Beijing to answer some tough questions.
Most of all, China could not possibly risk becoming the guarantor of a non-plan which will certainly be bombed by the Baboon of Barbaria in no time.
Of course there’s way more to it. But that will have to be discussed strictly between China and Iran. Dar had to run to Beijing because Tehran simply does not entirely trust Pakistan, not to mention the Turks and the Arabs. For anything meaningful to happen, Iran needs serious guarantees from China.
Previously, the Iranian government – with all its ministers – had responded to the 15-point US letter sent via Pakistan (in fact another intimation to surrender). They rejected all the US points and asserted the right to enrich uranium; continue developing its missile systems; request compensation for the unlawful war; and a lasting end of the war guaranteed by the UN.
Then there’s another intriguing scenario. The vague final statement might be interpreted as an opening for China to step in and mould the post-American Persian Gulf.
Pakistan’s Army Chief, Field Marshal Asim Munir, the strongman of the current regime, has the Baboon of Barbaria on speed dial. This was Ishaq Dar’s second trip to China in 3 months. He was on the phone several times recently with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi.
So how did we get here?
What is this Muslim Quad really up to
To be blunt, Egypt geopolitically is a non-entity; and to make matters worse, did less than nothing about the horrendous Gaza genocide. Egypt and Pakistan can be seen in several aspects as vassals of Saudi Arabia and the UAE, which are vassals of the combo US-death cult in West Asia (but that, in the case of Saudi, may be about to change).
There was vast spin that the meeting in Islamabad was coordinated by a “Sunni Axis”. Stratospheric nonsense. What really matters is that all of them back the death cult in West Asia; for instance, as in Turkiye continuing backdoor trade despite an “official” ban.
The interlocked relations of these four Muslim nations is complex. Pakistan and Iran share a tricky border: Sistan-Balochistan in Iran, Balochistan in Pakistan, this one crammed with CIA/MI6 infiltrated/weaponized actors such as the Balochistan Liberation Movement, BLM.
Islamabad has a defense pact with Riyadh, signed in September last year; yet that does not mean Pakistan would help Saudi against Iran, which is being illegally bombed by foreign actors. Everybody even in the Baloch deserts knows that if Iran falls, Pakistan is next.
Turkiye’s Fidan – who harbors presidential ambitions – is essentially an Atlanticist. Both Pakistan and Egypt are de facto run by two Zionist-linked generals. And then, to complicate matters, the Baboon of Barbaria, in public, called MbS an ass-kisser: nothing in the Arab world can possibly be more humiliating than that.
The Islamabad Quad met just as Saudi Arabia, UAE and Kuwait were “privately urging” the Baboon of Barbaria to go all out against Iran. That instantly changed after the “kiss my ass” gambit.
Now the GCC is already broken. Oman and Qatar declared themselves neutral – and won’t antagonize Iran. Riyadh, after Islamabad, came up with something quite bombastic. MbS has already started to exact his revenge: “We will no longer purchase American weapons.” Translation: one side of the larger than life petrodollar scam is already collapsing. The other side is collapsing in the Strait of Hormuz.
It was obvious even before Islamabad that Iran will not consider any US demands relayed via the Quad. Only via China.
Chinese diplomacy is always mastering sophisticated understatement. And caution. It was China that brokered the diplomatic agreement between Iran and Saudi Arabia in Beijing: Wang Yi was there to give the imprimatur. But that, in fact, never really came together in practice.
Beijing simply cannot risk guaranteeing any peace initiative alone because they cannot trust the Trump administration nor the genocidal psycho killers in Tel Aviv.
The only reasonable path forward would be a sort of non-aggression pact fully guaranteed by the five permanent members of the Security Council; and even that could be bombed by the Baboon of Barbaria whenever his whims dictate.
Pitting Persians, Arabs, Turks, Kurds against each other
Islamabad’s ambition is boundless. They dream of facilitating a Hormuz framework – already being engineered by Tehran – with Beijing as de facto guarantor, thus at the same time solidifying Chinese influence across the Persian Gulf while Pakistan collects the strategic dividend of becoming a key geopolitical partner in West Asia.
But there’s a catch. Neither Iran nor China need Pakistan for an Hormuz framework. That’s already in effect: Iran’s parliament has already approved legislation to make the toll booth permanent – with a tiered system where Tehran collects fees in yuan and passage is allowed for everyone except US and Israeli-linked vessels.
Everyone in West Asia knows what the death cult wants: total Divide and Rule, pitting Persians, Turks, Arabs and Kurds against each other. Essentially, the blow up of West Asia – with the proverbial, incited Sunni-Shi’ite sectarian tensions widening to the point of involving Pakistan, all to the benefit of that ghastly concoction, Eretz Israel.
Assuming the war would end with a negotiated settlement – absolutely out of the question as it stands – Pakistan would profit immensely: the perpetually-stalled Iran-Pakistan (IP) gas pipeline, blocked by US sanctions, would finally come to light.
Then there’s the Gwadar angle – the Pakistani port in the Arabian Sea which is a counterpart of the Iranian port of Chabahar in the Sea of Oman, only 80 km away. Gwadar is 400 km away from the Strait of Hormuz. Gwadar is the southwest maritime terminal of the $62 billion China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), the flagship New Silk Roads/BRI project.
A Gwadar boom will allow Pakistan to develop refining, storage, and transit infrastructure connecting it with Iran’s energy flows. Translation; further integration between West Asia and South Asia. No wonder the Americans will do everything to prevent it – as much as they are bombing nodes of another key connectivity corridor, the Russia-Iran-India International North South Transportation Corridor (INSTC).
Cracks on the GCC’s glitzy walls
The GCC is fracturing in real time. The UAE – an artificial construct, carved out by the Brits of lands belonging to the Sultanate of Oman – for all practical purposes has entered the American War on Iran. No culture. No History. Only a bling bling money laundering machine – which may be destined to extinction, or a return to Oman.
MbS, for his part, has already started to exact his revenge: and what he wants is definitely not what MbZ in Abu Dhabi wants. Iran, for its part, has already established, via ballistic missiles, the ability to devastate GCC petro-monarchies which insist on hosting US bombing raids.
And still, endless rabid vociferation and tweaking of narratives aside, there does not seem to exist any realistic possibility for the unhinged criminal psychopath incarnating the Presidency of the United States to find an honorable way out from his war.
He needs to pay back his selected billion-dollar Zionist donors; he needs a distraction from the Epstein files; yet at the same time there are signs he is “bored”; ready to ditch the GCC petro-monarchies; ready to declare Mission Accomplished; and ready to change the narrative again – as in attacking Cuba.
China and the Global South, in contrast, are fully aware that Iran’s Sovereign Resistance is now configured as the ultimate game-changer.
Geography is destiny, as much as History is geography in motion: Iran is the key crossroads and logistics maritime/landbridge connecting Russia, all of Asia, West Asia, Europe and Africa. China, Russia and the momentarily-in-deep-coma BRICS-plus cannot afford not to back Iran. Because the entire future of a possible global multipolarity hinges on a surviving, thriving, Sovereign, Resistance-reinforced Iran.
Yet, as it stands, no one is betting that most GCC petro-monarchies in West Asia have seen which way the wind is blowin’.
The Betrayal Is Complete: How Trump’s Spiraling Descent Has Shattered MAGA and Hurt America
Author AdministratorApril 13, 2026Guest Post by Mike Adams
A Desperate, Unhinged Betrayal of His Truest Believers
The MAGA movement’s raw political power, which swept Donald Trump back into the White House in 2024, was never solely about the man himself. [1] I was part of that coalition — an advocate for peace, national sovereignty, and the dismantling of a corrupt establishment. But what we are witnessing now is not the leadership we backed. It is the lashing out of a man spiraling into madness, turning with kindergarten-level rage on the very voices who built his movement: Tucker Carlson, Candace Owens, Alex Jones, and Megyn Kelly.
In my view, this is not a political tactic. This is the profound personal rot of a leader who has lost his way. The language is demonstrably absurd, a sign of a deep disconnect from reality. As I’ve said before, the movement has devolved into an ‘obedience cult of mindless idiots,’ where principled support has been replaced by mindless adherence to a figure who now attacks his own base. [2] This isn’t strategy; it’s the unraveling of a man, and it betrays every patriot who believed in the cause.
A Debt of Honor Unpaid: What Trump Owes Alex Jones
Of all Trump’s recent insults, the most grotesque is his attack on Alex Jones. Here is a man who, more than almost anyone, paid the ultimate price for aligning with the MAGA cause and telling the truth about the deep state. Jones lost his wealth, his company, and his freedom to what I believe was a rigged, state-sponsored persecution. [3] To call such a man ‘low IQ’ is not just factually wrong; it is profoundly dishonorable.
I believe Trump would not be president without the groundswell of support that figures like Jones helped galvanize. While the corporate media worked to bury him, Jones was a megaphone for the forgotten Americans who felt betrayed by the system. His sacrifice embodies the ultimate cost of dissent in a captured republic. For Trump to now spit on that sacrifice reveals a staggering lack of character. It signals that no loyalty is sacred, and no sacrifice will be remembered if it becomes inconvenient to the ego of the leader.
The Real Divorce: Trump Has Abandoned America for a Foreign Mistress
The domestic betrayal is only half the story. In a far more catastrophic move, Trump has divorced America itself. His loyalty now lies unequivocally with the fanatical, genocidal agenda of Netanyahu’s Israel. He surrounds himself with hate-filled Zionist advisers — people who, as noted in one analysis, ‘cheer for bombing Iran into the Stone Age’ — and in doing so, he has embraced a foreign darkness. [4]
This isn’t conjecture. A former top counterterrorism official in the Trump administration, Joe Kent, resigned in protest, penning a letter that asserted the administration was ‘effectively run by Israel.’ [5] In my view, a president who serves a foreign nation’s expansionist goals over his own country’s sovereignty and security is no longer an American president at all. He has become a puppet, and the strings are pulled from Jerusalem. This is the ultimate betrayal of the ‘America First’ promise, trading our sons, our daughters and our national treasure for a foreign war that serves no American interest.
The Global Collapse: How Trump is Burning America’s Empire to the Ground
The consequences of this foreign subservience are global and dire. Trump’s catastrophic march to war with Iran, a trap laid by Netanyahu, has not brought victory but humiliation. [4] The U.S. military, once a feared force, has been exposed as a paper tiger. As one assessment starkly put it, ‘the absence of these outcomes underscores the American Empire’s loss of credibility in projecting violence against major powers like Iran, Russia, or China.’ [6] Our allies see this weakness and are acting accordingly.
Why would Taiwan or South Korea trust a guarantor who cannot win a war and who prioritizes a foreign nation’s agenda? They are recalculating their futures, likely moving closer to China or seeking their own defenses, cursing the day they tied their security to Washington. [7] Furthermore, by initiating a conflict that has galvanized Iran and its allies, Trump has single-handedly accelerated the collapse of the petrodollar system and the unipolar world order. He is not making America great; he is presiding over the rapid, irreversible collapse of its empire.
The Inevitable Wipeout and the Path Forward
This path of betrayal, war, and collapse leads to only one destination: a historic political wipeout for the GOP. Democrats are privately jubilant that Trump remains the figurehead of the Republican Party because he is a walking disaster for its electoral chances. As one commentary noted, MAGA operatives are now ‘reduced to begging for votes from those they’ve systematically abandoned,’ using only fear, not earned loyalty, as their argument. [8]
The only hope for the country, and for the remnants of the original MAGA ideal of peace and sovereignty, is for the GOP to find the courage it has thus far lacked. The 25th Amendment or impeachment are not mere suggestions; they are necessary surgeries to remove a malignant force that has hijacked the party and endangered the republic. We must now seek leaders of truth, light, and genuine American sovereignty. We must prepare for the turbulent world that Trump’s failures have ushered in, by decentralizing our lives, securing honest money like gold and silver, and building communities of resilience. The betrayal is complete, and our task is to build anew from the ashes… if there’s anything left.
References
The Implosion of MAGA: How Trump’s March to War Exposes a Movement’s Betrayal. – NaturalNews.com. Mike Adams. February 26, 2026.
How MAGA Became an Obedience Cult of Mindless Idiots. – NaturalNews.com. Mike Adams. March 6, 2026.
Epstein files scandal erupts as Trump administration accused of cover up; MAGA base revolts. – NaturalNews.com. July 9, 2025.
The Netanyahu Gambit: How Trump Walked America Into an Iranian War Trap. – NaturalNews.com. Mike Adams. March 2, 2026.
Health Ranger Report – Joe Kent courage hero. – BrightVideos.com. Mike Adams. March 18, 2026.
2026-03-27-BVN-IRAN WILL DEFEAT THE U.S. EMPIRE. – Bright Videos Network.
The Decay of Western Civilisation and Resurgence of Russia. – Glenn Diesen.
My Vote Is Not a Hostage: Why I Will Never Again Give Consent to MAGA’s Betrayal. – NaturalNews.com. March 27, 2026.The Collapse of the US/Israel’s Coup against Iran—And What It Means
Jonas E. Alexis, Senior EditorApril 12, 2026
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Please Donate – Click HereBy Jonas E. Alexis, VT Editor
If you do not think that Israel’s attacks on Iran ended up having the opposite effect of what the Israeli government expected, then you should look at a recent article from The New York Times, which was also reported by The Times of Israel. Listen to this:
“The report, which detailed how Trump arrived at his decision to go to war on February 28, said Netanyahu told Trump that Iran’s ballistic missile program could be destroyed in a few weeks; Tehran would be so weakened by US-Israeli attacks that it would be unable to block traffic through the Strait of Hormuz; it would likely be unable to strike US assets in neighboring countries; and the regime was ripe for collapse, thanks to help from Kurdish fighters capable of invading the country from Iraq. While Trump’s CIA chief and secretary of state would later characterize Netanyahu’s regime change prediction as “farcical” and “bullshit,” the president and many of his advisers were sold on the ideas that Iran’s leadership could be taken out and that its military arsenal could be destroyed.”
Israel was clearly wrong. Iran stood its ground. Not only that, Iran gave both Trump and Netanyahu the finger by asserting control over the Strait of Hormuz and by disrupting both Israeli and U.S. assets in the Middle East.
In other words, the Israeli government and its allies in America did not expect Iran to come out strong in this conflict. Netanyahu obviously believed he was still untouchable and that Iran was too small to seriously challenge the Zionist empire, or what Ruhollah Khomeini called “the great Satan.”
As Jeffrey Sachs pointed out, in a war like this, almost no one truly wins, because lives are lost and the economy suffers.
However, Sachs also said one thing is certain: the outcome of the war appears to favor Iran. This is a reasonable and defensible view. Trump, with his strong threats, apparently believed he could scare Iran into surrendering and reopening the Strait of Hormuz after only a few attacks. But once again, Iran did not back down. According to Press TV and other news reports, Iran actually has the advantage.
Could the Zionist regime have predicted this outcome? Of course not, because they are blind to higher realities. They thought they could concoct one fabrication after another and attack a country at will. As Jewish Neocon Michael Ledeen once declared: “Every ten years or so, the United States needs to pick up some small crappy little country and throw it against the wall, just to show the world we mean business.”
Ledeen made this statement in the 1990s, and he likely did not expect that Iran would be an exception to it. The Israeli regime has now been wounded, and Iran has shown the world that even a smaller country can have a strong impact.
In addition, both China and Russia have clearly said that they oppose the actions of Israel and the United States against Iran. If Trump had considered using nuclear weapons, it could have led to a much larger global conflict.
Trump may have recognized how serious the situation was and decided to step back. He then claimed that the United States had already achieved its goals in Iran and that the war was effectively over, suggesting it was time to pursue a peace deal.
The main question is this: why did Trump agree to meet with Netanyahu at the White House and consider going to war with Iran? I have argued that the Israeli government obviously has leverage over Trump, and the Epstein files cannot be dismissed easily. Tucker Carlson has recently suggested something similar.
Carlson also gave an example, claiming that Netanyahu had compromising information about Bill Clinton and used it to pressure him over the release of Jonathan Pollard from prison. So, is it farfetched to say that Netanyahu is using the same tactic? For example, consider this video clip carefully from U.S. Representative Dan Goldman of New York:
There may be things in Trump’s past that he would not want the public to know. The situation became more unusual when Melania appeared to contradict an earlier statement from the Trump administration by saying that the Epstein files are real and that victims deserve to be heard. This contradiction upset some people in the administration.
However, this does not necessarily mean that Melania is acting out of courage or principle. It is also possible that she is trying to protect herself. Some commentators, including Larry Johnson, have suggested that she probably was an Epstein girl, and that this could mean others have influence over her as well.
So, what is the conclusion from this situation with Iran? I recently listened to a Chinese professor who argued that the United States and Israel cannot return to the way things were before the war. In other words, their global position has been seriously weakened, and many countries may no longer view them in the same way.
This was already happening during the conflict, as even NATO chose not to get involved alongside Israel and the United States. This reportedly frustrated the Trump administration. In short, both Israel and the United States faced a significant loss of credibility.
So, the attack on Iran turned out to be a major mistake by the Israeli regime and the Zionist empire in the United States. In response, countries like China, Russia, India, and others in BRICS strongly criticized the actions of Israel and the United States. Friedrich Hegel might have described this kind of unexpected outcome as “the cunning of reason.”
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Contact us: info@strategic-culture.suThis was always about Civilization.
“A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again.” History will register it with a gaze as pitiless as the Sun. An astonishing barbarian imprimatur, courtesy of the President of the United States, via a social media post.
In a nutshell, this was a trashy “civilization” that gave the world the Big Mac threatening to wipe out an ancient civilization that gave the world algebra; influenced art, science, governance in unparalleled ways; produced stars from Cyrus the Great to Avicenna, from Omar Khayyam to poet supreme Jalaladdin Rumi; developed serial, sublime gardens, carpets, architectural wonders and philosophical and ethical frameworks.
Crucially, there was not a single peep about this Barbaria outburst from the political leadership of the entire “civilized” collective West, not even feigning outrage, once again proving their absolute, irreversible moral and political bankruptcy.
Iranians answered Barbaria in kind. Over 14 million people registered to form human walls around their power stations all across the nation, simultaneously protecting their livelihood and confronting head on the firepower of the Epstein Syndicate.
As a hair-raising cliffhanger approached, the Baboon of Barbaria pivoted into – what else – TACO: the LEGO guys immortalized it.
There’s absolutely no way that Pakistan could have offered “guarantees” to Iran that a ceasefire was the way for the war to eventually end. As confirmed by diplomatic sources, what really happened is that Beijing, at the 11th moment, placed itself as the guarantor, assuring Tehran that the US would accept at least some of Iran’s demands included in its 10-point plan.
That was further confirmed by Iranian ambassador to China, Abdolreza Rhamani Fazili. The negotiations start this Friday in Islamabad.
POTUS, the Drooling Baboon of Barbaria, confronted with the inevitable, dire consequences of his own strategic blunder, used Pakistan for his off-ramp. That was confirmed by another epic blunder by the Pakistani Prime Minister himself: he forgot to remove the header of the tweet/X post drafted by the White House for him to publish.
The current Pakistani regime – de facto led by Field Marshall Asim Munir, who has Trump on speed dial – may have profited, and will continue to geopolitically profit, from a unique status: a Muslim nuclear nation with a significant Shi’ite minority; good relations with the GCC; neighbor of Iran, enjoying good relations; signed a defense pact with Saudi Arabia; a strategic partner of China; no US bases on its soil.
But Islamabad was always a mere go-between, never the architect of any “mediation”. Whatever obfuscation coming from the White House, it was China that had to clinch the lineaments of a possible détente.
The Epstein Syndicate begs for a break
We had arrived to a point where the death cult in West Asia was being crushed simultaneously by Iran and Hezbollah in southern Lebanon; no matter the avalanche of spin, their cries begging for help played a significant part into Trump’s pivoting to a ceasefire.
The Epstein Syndicate as a whole begged for it. Nothing to do with geopolitics, but with operational hell: the Empire of Chaos has run out of military resources.
The ultimate give away was when the USS Tripoli retreated – under fire – to the depths of the southern Indian Ocean, complete with its 2,500 Marines on board. That meant the US Navy out of the war theater – except for subs with Tomahawks, roughly half of which go off-target with staggering (non)precision.
And the problems are far from over. Financial hell looms, whatever is decided in Islamabad and beyond, with $10 trillion in Treasuries to rollover in 2026. And the petrodollar is fast on the way to the dustbin of History.
Enter, once again, the demented death cult.
No one should ever forget. The Epstein Syndicate is non-agreement capable. And the death cult doesn’t do ceasefires: it does at best loopholes that allow it to keep killing everyone in sight.
The writing is already on the wall. If the death cult blows up the ceasefire – which is already the case – Iran and Hezbollah will counterpunch, massively, without attacking American assets.
Still, it’s way too early to affirm that the Baboon of Barbaria lost his war under every possible metric: moral; legal; political; economic; strategic.
After all, the Empire of Chaos will always be, intrinsically, non-agreement capable, especially when the track record tells of two attacks on Iran back to back during diplomatic negotiations, killing everyone from Leader Ayatollah Khamenei to scores of possible negotiators.
The Big Picture song remains the same (sing it!): this is a war till the end against the Top Three proponents of a multipolar world, Iran, China and Russia.
China’s power play, plus a few established facts
Before the ceasefire, China was getting 1.2 million barrels of Iranian oil a day, essentially via 26 ghost fleet tankers with their transponders in the dark, with payment settled in the Strait of Hormuz toll booth in yuan through CIPS. All that was bypassing SWIFT, sanctions, the petrollar, and Western insurance.
Talk about a new, alternative payment settlement system de facto implemented in the most crucial chokepoint on the planet.
This complex shadow energy architecture remains unaffected under the ceasefire – assuming it holds. But the key point is that China gets an extra breather: the ominous threat to finish off with every export of Iranian oil, post the Barbaria-declared Power Plant Day cliffhanger, seems to have disappeared. That explains the rationale behind China’s last minute guarantee to Iran.
Now compare it with the Empire of Chaos’s avowed “goals”: provoke regime change; get the enriched uranium; destroy the missile program; destroy Iran’s ability to project power. They all turned into an epic strategic blunder, culminating with the new status of the Strait of Hormuz.
Iran and Oman will coordinate the toll booth on every ship crossing the Strait during the ceasefire – and certainly beyond, in a detailed juridical framework. American ships crossing the Strait of Hormuz after paying their toll in yuan – there’s hardly anything more poetically intoxicating, in an Irony of History sense.
Still, it’s clear the Empire of Chaos is playing for time – even as Iran retains the initiative. This is the key take away from the Supreme National Security Council in Iran:
“It has been decided at the highest level that Iran will conduct two weeks of negotiations in Islamabad based solely on these principles [the Iranian 10-points]. This does not mean the war is over; Iran will only accept the end of the war once these principles are confirmed in detail.”
Let’s briefly review the 10 points – which, in theory, were “accepted” by Trump:
Commitment to non-aggression;
Preservation of Iran’s control over the Strait of Hormuz;
Agreement on uranium enrichment;
Cancellation of all primary sanctions;
Cancellation of all secondary sanctions;
Termination of all UN Security Council resolutions;
Termination of all IAEA Board of Governors resolutions;
Payment of compensation to Iran;
Withdrawal of American combat forces from the region;
Cessation of war on all fronts, including the war against Hezbollah in Lebanon.
There’s no way Iran will compromise on nearly all of these points. Payment of compensation might be metastasized into income from the Strait of Hormuz toll booth. But sanctions relief is not gonna happen; the US Congress will never allow it. Guarantee by the US they will not attack Iran again does not even qualify as a joke. Moreover, the Empire of Chaos simply cannot guarantee anything for Gaza or Lebanon.Still, that is an extremely risky play for Iran, and a huge test for China as the major guarantor. Iran has suffered horrendous damages – especially in its petrochemical industry. Even with a lot of Chinese investment, it will take years to recover.
The Three Stooges may go to Islamabad this Friday. Curly: Vance. Shifty: Witkoff. Mo: Kushner. But Iran – via FM Araghchi – will only seriously talk to one of them: Curly.
So Civilization survives – for now. A few facts too. Fact One: the US is not a superpower anymore. Fact Two: Iran is back as one of the world’s top powers. Fact Three: Most of the gutless Gulf petro-monarchies will end up kicking out US military bases for good. Fact Four: Qatar and Oman will work out a security arrangement with Iran.
The main imperative remains – and that concerns the whole planet: how to find a cure for that cancer in West Asia.
Barbaria strategically surrenders. Civilization wins. For now
U.S. strategic defeat to Russia
U.S. strategic defeat to Iran
U.S. collapse in corruption and deception
Claiming victory, whilst admitting defeat: There is no easy way to open Hormuz
Contact us: info@strategic-culture.suBloomberg: “It is arguably Iran that has secured the most significant strategic victory … There is every sign that Tehran’s ability to control the Strait is increasing”
The defeats which the West keeps on having “[are] above all … intellectual”. And “not being able to understand what they are seeing – means that it’s impossible to respond effectively to it”. So Aurelien has argued. But “the problem goes beyond the fighting on the battlefield, to seeing and understanding the nature of asymmetric wars and their economic and political dimensions”.
“This is particularly the case for Iran, where… Washington appears to be incapable of understanding that the ‘other side’ does have a strategy with economic and political components – and is implementing it”.
“[In line with the western obsession with trivia], all the media concentration recently has been on the movement of U.S. troops to the region and their possible uses, as though that, in itself, was going to decide something. Yet in fact, the real issue is the development and deployment by the Iranians of a new concept of warfare, based on missiles, drones and defensive preparations, and the inability of the West, with its platform-centric mentality, to understand and process these developments [i.e., fully assimilate the strategy behind asymmetrical warfare]”.
Iran’s security concept and model was planned more than 20 years ago. The trigger for the move to an asymmetric paradigm came from the U.S.’ utter destruction of Iraq’s centralised military command in 2003, as a result of a 3-week massive air assault on Baghdad.
The issue for Iran that arose in its wake was how the country might build a deterrent military structure when it did not have (and could not have) anything resembling peer air capability. And when too, the U.S. could look down upon the extent of Iran’s military infrastructure from its high-resolution satellite cameras.
Well, the first answer simply was to have as little of its military structure out in the open to be observed from above. Its components had to be buried – and buried deeply (beyond the reach of most bombs). The second answer was that deeply buried missiles could indeed, in effect, become Iran’s ‘air force’ – i.e. a substitute for a conventional air force. Iran thus has been constructing and stockpiling missiles for more than twenty years. The third response was to divide Iran’s military infrastructure into autonomous provincial commands – to decentralise command centres, with each having separate stockpiled munitions, separate missile silos, and where appropriate, their own naval forces and militia.
In short, Iran’s military machine – in the event of a decapitation strike – was designed to operate as an automated, decentralised retaliation machine that cannot be easily stopped or controlled.
When unable to understand what is before our very eyes, the easiest thing is to reach for that which one knows – a build-up of troops – and to continue doing what hasn’t worked in the past.
In an earlier incarnation, a younger Trump – desperate to be admired as a star in the world of Manhattan real estate – took New York Attorney Roy Cohen to be his personal mentor. “The latter notably was also the lawyer for the city’s five big crime families – who had, with connections such as these, earned for himself the reputation as someone not to be messed with”, Israeli military commentator, Alon Ben David relates:
“In most cases, all Trump needed to do was to introduce Cohen to the other side of the deal, so that the latter would agree to his terms. Sometimes Trump was also forced … to drag the other side to court, where Cohen would bare his teeth to the judges and win. But that was always Trump’s bottom line: win. Not to make the pie bigger, not a win-win for both sides, but a victory for him alone – and preferably with the other side’s surrender”.
Time moves on, and today, as Ben David writes, the U.S. military juggernaut serves as Trump’s ‘Roy Cohen’. He presents the American military might for display to the Iranians in the expectation that they readily will capitulate; else he, Trump, will let go of the leash. Trump complained to Witkoff after the armada of U.S. naval vessels had been assembled off the Persian coast that he was ‘puzzled and confused’ as to why the Iranians had not already capitulated on sighting the collective naval power assembled.
“[The cause for Trump’s puzzlement is that] this time he faces an opponent different from any he has ever known. These are not Manhattan real estate moguls or Atlantic City mobsters, they are Persians, members of a 3,000-year-old culture, and they have different concepts of time and what victory is”.
Trump doesn’t now know what to do: he is confused and at a loss as to how to extricate himself from this predicament. He has threatened Iran, but they don’t capitulate. And as might be expected, Netanyahu, fearing that Washington might enter into negotiations with Iran before Iran’s military capabilities have been completely dismantled, “is pressuring the Trump administration to carry out a short, high-intensity operation that could include ground forces”, Israeli commentator Ben Caspit writes in Ma’ariv.
Whilst Trump is sending mixed messages about the prospects for talks with the Islamic Republic, Israeli officials believe he is considering three options: First to escalate the war by attacking Iran’s energy infrastructure on Kharg Island and at its South Pars gas field, with a second option being a ground operation to eliminate Iran’s highly enriched uranium stockpile.
A third option being considered would be to negotiate an agreement with Iran – but such a prospect would be seen by Israeli leadership circles as a “clear Iranian victory, opening the path for the Iranian Republic to survive”, Caspit writes. “Israel is focused on weakening the regime to the point where it cannot recover – thus it hopes, maybe encouraging future mass protests. This argument is also being used to convince Washington to continue the war”, Caspit emphasises.
A fourth option could be that Trump just declares victory and walks away.
What, realistically, might Trump hope to accomplish if he expands the war?
First, both Israeli and U.S. military officials now consider that toppling the Iranian State is nigh impossible to achieve through airstrikes alone. It has never worked in the past.
Secondly, statements of faith by the U.S. Administration in say the ultimate military seizure of the Strait of Hormuz should be seen more as battle-cries and descriptions of fantasies which reveal a deeper problem–that of strategic lacunae —
“They are not deduced from the facts of the situation, nor do there have to be actual processes capable of making them happen. The truth is what we want it to be; the truth is what makes us comfortable, we prefer the myth to the reality”.
The fact is that there is no easy way to reopen the Strait. Any negotiated reopening would, at a minimum, require substantive concessions to Iran, including explicit recognition of Iranian sovereignty over the waterway.
An attempt to agree a ceasefire to open Hormuz would require it to be applicable across all fronts: it would require Israel to cease operations in Lebanon, for AnsarAllah to similarly halt attacks on Israel, for Iraq to halt its attacks – and for Israel to halt its attacks in Occupied Palestine.
Thirdly, Trump claims that that ‘regime change’ has already occurred because he had not heard the names of the new Iranian leaders before–“These are different people than anyone has ever heard of before, and frankly they’ve been more reasonable. So, we’ve had total regime change beyond what anyone thought possible”. Trump doesn’t know who the ‘new’ third layer of Iran’s leadership are, but nonetheless presumes that they will be more flexible in negotiating with the U.S.. (What is the basis for this ‘faith statement’? No facts needed?)
Fourth, any attempt to open Hormuz by direct military assault would be fraught with the risk of sustaining substantial U.S. casualties: Hormuz is home ground to the Iranians and constitutes a prospective battle for which they have been preparing over many years. The geography of Hormuz alone–narrow waterways, proximity to Iran’s coastline, and dense Iranian defence systems – pose obvious and severe risks. From where would the troops stage? How would they be supplied? How would they be exfiltrated?
Even were U.S. forces to seize Kharg, or one, or all of the three islands adjacent to the UAE coastline, Iran could still attack unauthorised tankers transiting the waterway using surface or submersible drones or missiles launched from mainland Iran.
And even if successful, U.S. military positions on the islands would not solve the core problem – Iran would still have the ability to impose costs (missile strikes and casualties) from afar, and would use this leverage to impose further escalatory steps.
Fifth, as with the suggestion of controlling Iran’s enriched uranium, there is no way to ensure that the reported 430 kg of 60% enriched uranium that Iran has is out of Iranian hands other than seizing it; an agreement on Iran relinquishing it is unlikely, as is seizing it in an impossibly complex military operation –
According to the Washington Post, when Trump requested a plan to seize the enriched uranium from Iran, the U.S. military briefed him on a complex operation involving airlifting excavation equipment, building a runway inside Iran for cargo planes to extract the material, all with the deployment of hundreds of troops.
A U.S. Special Forces military operation to seize this uranium would require meticulous detailing of the site (or sites) where it is held, as well as requiring well-founded staging and ex-filtration plans. Does the U.S. know if this uranium is still in one consignment, or has it been separated?
There is no indication that the U.S. has done the ‘thinking through’ for such an operation – suggesting that this aspect might be lined up as a deception exercise: Mount a small operation close to Isfahan, pretend to have seized the uranium, and skedaddle away quickly before Iranian forces kill American troops.
And finally, regarding the destruction of Iran’s missile capabilities, there is simply no way to achieve this. Iran’s magazines and production facilities are dispersed across the extent of the country and buried deeply. Maybe to lie would be Trump’s best option to produce a ‘win’ on this issue.
Iran has launched the extensive machinery of its ‘Mosaic’ system of long-term, pre-planned military actions. This is the point – Iran’s strategic counterattack was not conceived to lead to any negotiated compromise, but rather to create the circumstance by which it can escape the western-imposed ‘cage’ of endless sanctions, blockades, isolation and siege.
The uncomfortable reality for the U.S. and its allies is that every available counter-military or diplomatic response to Iran’s strategic counterattack carries significant downsides.
The war is Trump’s and the U.S.’ to lose. Trump now realises the war is lost – it may be lost, but it is not over. It may last for some time.
After a month of war, “it is arguably Iran that has secured the most significant strategic victory”, notes Bloomberg – with its ever “tightening grip over traffic through the Strait of Hormuz”:
“There is every sign that Tehran’s ability to control the Strait is increasing … The near-total closure of Hormuz since [early March] … has proved an exceptionally effective asymmetric weapon in Iran’s fight against two of the world’s most powerful military forces”.
Claiming victory, whilst admitting defeat: There is no easy way to open Hormuz
When escalation is a game played against you and you have no cards to play
Contact us: info@strategic-culture.suSuddenly, it would seem that there is hope for peace in the Middle East, or at least most of it, as Trump secured what he believed to be a deal with the Iranians. In reality, of course, it was the Iranians who had the advantage all along and gave him the “off ramp” which he desperately needed. The constant threats, with the most recent posting using foul language mocking Islam, all signalled that the U.S. president was losing his mind, tortured by a sense of no one listening to him, like a child in the corner who is forced to be naughty just to get the attention of adults. But there was a point in recent days – perhaps the social media post which used the ’F’ word – where it was clear he lost all control, his threats were empty, and it was Iran which held ALL the cards. And so a provisional deal was struck, which simply accepted a list of demands by the Iranians as a basis for negotiations. This was probably the greatest military defeat in modern times that any U.S. president has had to endure in office, and the humiliation for Trump is axiomatic. What a climbdown. From constantly playing a role in front of the cameras as the victor who is in control to actually being on the losing side which is prepared to do almost anything to get a ceasefire. The recent military operation to attempt to seize uranium involving special forces and Hercules planes, which went horribly wrong when the mission failed and then the subsequent rescue mission also failed, was one final slap in the face for Trump, who must have realised at this point that all of the military briefings that he was given were bad and that most of the people around him who are advising him have no military experience at all and are out of their depth.
But it’s actually worse than that.
In recent days, it has transpired that what we originally thought got Trump into the war in the first place – an out-of-control fixation to bomb Iran no matter what deal was offered, goaded by Israel – was in fact erroneous. There are credible reports now circulating that claim that Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff actually misunderstood what the Iranians had offered them when they were negotiating a deal – a deal which was much better than what was offered to Obama and would have made Trump come out of the negotiations a winner. Many analysts at the time were shocked that Trump’s decision to bomb Iran came about because, they thought at the time, that Iran had made a credible offer too soon and that the Trump team were not interested in peace and so were left in an awkward position, looking like fraudsters. In reality, it now seems, they simply didn’t grasp what was being offered to them, such is their lack of competence and their poor command of the English language. The Iranians are all highly educated and speak English remarkably well, and yet it would seem that the two sides were divided by the nuances of English. The two cronies that Trump sent were simply not bright enough to really see the wood from the trees, and as a consequence the U.S. has lost the Straits of Hormuz to Iran now, the petrodollar is on the way out, a new regime is indeed in place (but one which now favours a nuclear deterrent), relations with GCC countries are irreparably damaged, and a new powerful Iran has emerged from the ashes in the region.
Plain stupidity by Trump and his unique style of running the presidency using friends and sycophants as advisers has got him to a place where even Sky News calls a “massive strategic defeat” for the U.S., as now the ten-point plan not only calls for reparations but also includes the withdrawal of all U.S. troops from the region and all sanctions to be lifted against Iran.
For the U.S. to lift sanctions, it has to be backed by Congress, which is unlikely to do so, although there are some observers who say they might back it just to spite Trump. In reality, it will be UN sanctions which will have to go, but the real blow to the U.S. is that the petrodollar is finished and that America’s influence in the region has been taken over by Iran. Tehran is the new regional power, all thanks to the sensational stupidity of Trump and his airhead cronies.
But there’s more stupidity to come.
Barely a few hours after the plan was accepted by Trump, it transpired that the Americans believed that the ceasefire doesn’t cover Lebanon. J.D. Vance told journalists that this was probably down to a “genuine misunderstanding by the Iranians”, despite it being clearly written in one of the points: “end to all hostilities in the region”.
Ceasing hostilities against all resistance groups in region
And so Lebanon, and what Netanyahu is doing there – deliberately creating a forever war there with Hezbollah so he can continue to stay in power and evade corruption charges – is now the most important part, if not the Achilles heel, of the deal. What are we to make of the explanation of J.D. Vance? Is it a ruse to trick the Iranians, so that Israel can be rearmed? Is all that Trump needs a pause of a few weeks before he believes he can come back with an even more hare-brained plan to “invade” Iran? It’s unclear, although critical observers are beginning to realise the level of incompetence and rank ineptitude on the American side and are starting to use the “idiot” argument to explain most of these grey areas. As was brilliantly summed up by a former CIA director on live TV, Trump was called “a pathological liar, corrupt and incompetent” whose reliance on sycophants who only tell him what he wants to hear got him into the mess he is in today. Trump’s blundering in Iran has made Tehran richer and more powerful than it ever was before and will leave it still able to process uranium. Trump played the escalation game all along with Iranians who were much smarter and always one step ahead, who ultimately turned the same game against him. Tiny Lebanon now takes centre stage.
When escalation is a game played against you and you have no cards to play
The Mongols, Drones, and the Future of War
The $500 Weapon That Changes EverythingJay Martin
In under 70 years, an unknown confederation of nomadic tribes built the largest land empire in human history.At its peak, it covered everything from the Pacific coast of China to the borders of Poland, and from Siberia down to the Persian Gulf.
That was East Asia, Central Asia, the Middle East, and Eastern Europe.
It was five times larger than the Roman Empire at its peak. And it all happened in the span of one lifetime.
“God alone knows who they are and from where they came.”
Russian chronicler describing the Mongols’ arrival.
The Mongol armies arrived so swiftly and conquered so decisively that the civilized world had no framework for what was happening to it.
They swept out of the steppe like a weather system — by the time you understood that something was coming, it had already arrived.
What is so notable is that the Mongols did not conquer a collection of disorganized, defenceless people. They overthrew the wealthiest empires the world had ever known. And they did it quickly.
The scale of what they conquered is difficult to overstate.
The Khwarezmian Empire, stretching across modern-day Iran, Uzbekistan, and Turkmenistan, had taken over 150 years to build. There were over two million people, wealthy trading cities, and standing armies. The Mongols dismantled it all in two years.
The Abbasid Caliphate in Baghdad — seat of Islamic civilization for five hundred years, home to over a million people and the largest library in the world — fell in thirteen days.
The Song dynasty in China – three hundred and nineteen years old. A hundred and twenty million people and an economy that produced a third of the world’s GDP — three times the output of all of medieval Europe combined. A civilization that had invented gunpowder, movable type, and paper money.
In 1279, all of China fell to the Mongols.
A Minor Adjustment
How? How does a collection of nomadic tribes from the barren steppe dismantle the wealthiest civilizations on earth?
Most historians point to a minor adjustment in military technology.
The stirrup.
Stirrups existed before Genghis Khan. But the Mongols weaponized them in a way no army had done before.
With both feet planted firmly in iron stirrups and mounted on hardy steppe horses, Mongol warriors could fire arrows at full gallop with devastating accuracy. They could stand, pivot, and even ride backwards while loosing volleys into a pursuing enemy. They could cover distances that no infantry-based army could match, arriving at the walls of cities before scouts had time to deliver a warning.
The stirrup didn’t just improve cavalry. It created an entirely new kind of warfare — one that made the existing military paradigm obsolete overnight.
Erik Prince — the founder of Blackwater, the most elite private military force ever assembled — made an observation recently that stopped me in my tracks. He said, reflecting on the current conflict in Iran, that the introduction of drone warfare onto the modern battlefield represents “the greatest swing in the pendulum, since Genghis Khan put stirrups on horses.”
Now, when most people hear “drone warfare,” they think of a Predator or a Reaper — a $28 million aircraft operated by the U.S. military from a facility in Nevada. That is not what Prince is talking about.
He is talking about a $500 commercial quadcopter fitted with a 3D-printed munition that can be assembled in a garage and destroy a $3 million tank. He is talking about Iran’s Shahed drones — which cost somewhere between $20,000 and $40,000 to produce — being shot down by $5 million Patriot interceptor missiles.
He is talking about the U.S. Navy spending over a billion dollars in munitions to defend against Houthi drones that cost less than a used car.
This is what Prince means by stirrups.
The empires the Mongols conquered had operated for centuries under a simple assumption: more wealth meant larger armies, stronger weapons, and military dominance. Genghis Khan wiped that assumption out with a piece of bent iron that cost almost nothing and fit in the palm of your hand.
The stirrup didn’t give the Mongols a bigger army. It gave a smaller, poorer force the ability to defeat a richer, more established one.
Prince argues that is exactly what drones are doing today. The battlefield no longer belongs to the nation that spends the most. It belongs to the nation that adapts the fastest.
If he is right, we need to think very carefully about what comes next.
Winning by Not Losing
Here is a question most people never consider. What is the difference between winning a battle and winning a war?
The Americans have the most powerful military the world has ever seen. This is not a matter of opinion. In terms of technology, firepower, logistics, training, and the ability to project force anywhere on the planet, the United States military is without peer.
And yet.
The American military won every significant battle in Vietnam, Iraq and Afganistan… but lost all three wars.
The lesson is as old as warfare itself. When a smaller, weaker force is attacked by a superpower, it does not need to win. It needs to not lose.
Survival is victory.
If you are still standing when the great power loses its appetite for the fight — when the cost in blood and treasure exceeds the political will to continue — you have won. Not by defeating your enemy, but by refusing to be defeated.
Iran cannot defeat the American military. No honest assessment of the balance of forces suggests otherwise. But Iran does not need to defeat the American military. Iran needs to endure it. Every day the conflict continues without a decisive American victory, Iran’s strategic position improves. Every day the Strait of Hormuz remains contested, the cost to America — economic, political, and reputational — compounds.
And that brings us to a curious parallel in modern geopolitics…
America’s Suez Moment?
Most people assume that the transition from the British pound to the U.S. dollar as the world’s reserve currency happened at the end of World War II. It seems logical. Britain was shattered. America was ascendant. The Bretton Woods agreement in 1944 appeared to settle the question.
But if you look at the actual balance sheets of central banks in 1945, you will not find a sudden pivot. Despite being battered — infrastructure destroyed, resources depleted, debts staggering — Britain had won the war. And after a century and a half of trusting the pound sterling, the world’s central banks did not have sufficient incentive to go looking for an alternative.
Until 1956.
In 1956, Egypt’s President Gamal Abdel Nasser made a calculation. He assessed that the United Kingdom — once the most powerful empire in human history — was too weak to defend and maintain its occupation of the Suez Canal.
The Suez Canal was not an ordinary waterway. It was the artery through which two-thirds of Europe’s oil supply travelled. It connected Britain to what remained of its trade interests in the Middle East, the Indian Ocean, and Asia.
Whoever controlled the Suez Canal controlled the flow of energy to the Western world.
President Nasser nationalized it.
The United Kingdom, unwilling to accept this humiliation, mobilized what had once been the most powerful navy on the planet and moved toward the canal alongside France and Israel.
But this was 1956, not 1856. The Royal Navy was short of resources. Without American manufacturing support — the same support that had sustained Britain through two world wars — they lacked the firepower for a sustained campaign.
So Britain did what it had done throughout World War II. It appealed to the Americans for help.
President Eisenhower, however, saw the situation differently. He worried that Britain attacking Egypt would push the entire Arab world toward the Soviet Union in the middle of the Cold War. This was against the US interests.
Frustrated with the careless nature of Britain’s military pursuits, he responded strategically and sent a message to the rest of the world.
He blocked $561 million in IMF standby credit that Britain desperately needed. He froze $600 million in Export-Import Bank loans. And he ordered the US Treasury to prepare to dump America’s holdings of British sterling bonds — a move that would have collapsed the pound overnight.
Britain’s Chancellor warned the Prime Minister that without American financial support, the country would be unable to import sufficient food and fuel within weeks.
The message was simple. Withdraw from the Suez Canal, or we will destroy your currency.
The British Navy retreated home. Tail between their legs. With the rest of the world watching.
This — not Bretton Woods, not the end of the war — was the moment that central banks around the world truly pivoted from the pound sterling to the American dollar. They watched the previous world superpower, which had dominated the globe for all of recent memory, become neutered. Unable to act without the permission and support of the new greater power.
The Strait
That is why analysts are calling the Strait of Hormuz America’s potential Suez moment.
The Americans have indicated a willingness to withdraw from Iran before the Strait of Hormuz is reopened to international shipping. If that happens — if an unsuccessful military adventure in Iran results in the Americans going home having lost control of the situation, having forfeited control of the Strait to their adversary — it does not matter under what pretense the narrative is spun domestically.
The rest of the world will see what actually happened.
And central banks will do what central banks have always done when they witness that kind of moment. They will adjust.
The Promoter
But here is something else I am thinking about.
The American military is dependent on manufacturing inputs from China. This is well documented. From rare earth minerals to electronic components, the supply chain that sustains American military capability runs through Chinese factories.
Iran is also dependent on China.
Although the Strait of Hormuz is theoretically closed to Western-bound oil tankers, ships have been travelling through it — with Iranian permission. Not just Iranian crude heading out to China, but Chinese cargo ships heading into Iran. Since the war began on February 28th, Iran has shipped at least 12 million barrels of crude oil through the Strait, all of it to China. Meanwhile, China-linked cargo vessels have been transiting in the opposite direction.
There has been much speculation in the United States about whether Iran will run out of missiles.
My question is different. What is on those Chinese cargo ships arriving in Iran?
Reports have surfaced of Chinese-supplied air defence systems, kamikaze drones, anti-ship cruise missiles, and even precursor chemicals for solid rocket fuel being shipped to Iranian ports. Is any of this finding its way onto the battlefield? And if so — what exactly are we looking at here?
I’ll tell you what it looks like to me.
In the 1970s, a boxing promoter out of Cleveland perfected something that would make him the most famous man in the sport — and the most controversial.
He put on some of the biggest fights in boxing history – Muhammad Ali versus George Foreman and Ali versus Joe Frazier. He managed Mike Tyson’s rise to undisputed heavyweight champion, against foes like Buster Douglas and Larry Holmes. He dominated the sport through the 1970’s, 80’s and 90’s.
The promoter’s name was Don King. And he is the most famous boxing promoter who ever lived. King understood something very simple: if you hold the promotion contract on both fighters, you don’t need to pick a winner. You just need the fight to happen.
Why is that controversial?
A boxing promoter’s job is to protect his fighter — to negotiate the best purse, to select the right opponent at the right time, to make sure the terms of the fight favour his man.
It’s a negotiation, and by definition, that means negotiating against the interests of the opponent.
But when one promoter holds both contracts, the negotiation shifts from promoter-on-promoter to promoter-on-fighter. And that’s a fight the promoter wins every time. (This is probably why Don King has been sued over 12 times by fighters.)
If you are not a boxing fan, think of it this way – the parallel would be hiring the same lawyer to represent both sides of a lawsuit. The only person guaranteed to walk away richer is the one collecting fees from both.
But here was King’s real leverage – his contracts required any fighter to agree that if they won, King would promote their future fights too – so he always retained the winning fighter under contract.
It didn’t matter who won. He had already locked up whoever walked out of the ring with the belt.
Is China the Don King of the Persian Gulf?
If the Strait reopens on American terms and Western commerce resumes, China will remain America’s indispensable manufacturing partner. The supply chains don’t change. The rare earth dependencies don’t change. America still can’t build the next generation of weapons systems without Chinese inputs. China keeps the contract.
If Iran wins — if the Americans withdraw and Iran maintains sovereign control of the Strait — China stays Iran’s primary weapons supplier, its largest oil customer, and its most important trading partner. Iranian crude flows to Chinese refineries at a discount. Chinese cargo flows into Iranian ports unopposed. China keeps the contract.
Show me a conflict where one country supplies both sides, and I’ll show you the country that’s actually “winning”.
The question the world should be asking is not whether America can defeat Iran. The question is whether America can afford to fight a war in which its primary economic competitor is bankrolling both corners of the ring.
Honest question — let me know in the comments: what am I missing?
Thats it for today,
Jay Martin
https://jaymartin.substack.com/p/the-don-king-strategy
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A Pure SHOCK to the US: IRAN Harshly Refused to Release U.S. POWs amid a Breakdown in Negotiations
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