8 Jan 2020 - Iran Analysis
What do we know so far? Reporting is that Iran's "retaliation" last night failed to spill any American blood. We'll have to guess how that may have occurred, and will. More important, is this a sea change in American power relations? Yes it is.
What do we know so far? Reporting is that Iran's "retaliation" last night failed to spill any American blood. We'll have to guess how that may have occurred, and will. More important, is this a sea change in American power relations? Yes it is.
2) First let's look at our options - again, assuming that the zero casualties reports are correct. To my eye, the best guess is self-sabotage. All for show, as a failing regime grows terrified of its own collapse, all bluster, no punch.
3) There are of course other possibilities. Our air defense capabilities might have scrambled their guidance systems, defeating every single missile. Good chance on that one. Or, we may have assets inside Iran, well placed, and capable of sabotaging such an attack for us.
4) It is even possible that the Iranian military, feeling the change in the tides of history, is split in loyalty, and as opposed to the top brass created a fake attack, thwarted the attack from within, presaging a growing split between the clerics and the military.
5) Fun as it is to speculate causes, in the end, we'll never know to a certitude, and that brings us to the real politics in play, world perception. Before we look at that, let's look at decapitation as a strategy. Qassem Suleimani, who knew, was the #2 man in Iran. Wow.
6) I imagine it shows my ignorance to confess I never heard of him before reading stories with pictures of his detached hand and his famous ring identifying his death as real. Now, we all know he was atop the most wanted list as the most powerful terrorist in the world. Wow.
7) Why didn't we all know who he was, before? For the same reason I - for one - had never heard of Osama Bin Laden before September 11, 2001. We have treated our enemies kindly, softly, timorously. Do you remember that Al Baghdadi - founder of ISIS - was release by us from jail?
8) I have to say it again, Bush 41 amasses 500,000 soldiers to sweep into Iraq, storms through to Baghdad, topples Saddam Hussein's statue, and then leaves Hussein in power. Why? Why didn't we all know QS? The answer couldn't be simpler, and it is not stupidity. It is cupidity.
9) Our leaders are corrupt. They gain their billions of dollars by all their various methods. But, it is not the money trail that interests me. It is rather the trail of power and friendship, and most of all, friendship with our enemies, enmity against us. That too is corruption.
10) So, I say let us STOP believe that Obama was fooled by ISIS or Iran. Rather, just picture him as the CEO of the wealthiest corporation in history, and must decide where to invest his capital as any CEO must. Who's Obama's guy? Suleimani is, QS. How so?
11) Say it with me: One Hundred Fifty Billion Dollars so. QS, we now discover, is the guy who got the $150b budget from Obama. He's the guy vaunting about in plain sight, leading such things as attacks against the American Embassy in Iraq, and flying out of the local airport.
12) It's not that he's snubbing his nose at us, it's that he feels completely safe and well protected by us. Afterall, wouldn't you feel safe after your boss gave you the largest budget in all of terrorism's history? Of course Obama would never kill his best corporate captain.
13) This is the great failure of our day, the great failure of American understanding of America, and of the world we pay for, the world we empower. We must stop thinking Obama made a mistake. We must see with eyes wide open, that he accomplished his desired objective.
14) And that brings us back to decapitation. Did you watch the video segments of the Ayatollah and the President of Iran, weeping at QS' funeral? If you haven't, you should. Here's what I observed. Absolutely honest grief. I saw real tears, not crocodile tears.
15) I believed that they felt true gratitude and friendship, a deep and abiding love in their hearts that were devastated, overwhelmed, really, over this shocking loss. Stunned horror is what I saw. I believe I also saw something far deeper. Petrified fear for themselves.
16) Tyrants don't do well once their power cracks. You don't have to think only of modern times. For all his obvious greatness, Julius Caesar was a dictator, and he walked - yes, on the ides of March - into the Senate thinking he was safe, not realizing how vulnerable he was.
17) All of which leads us to the fact that American will, when facing an enemy - if we are not secretly the corrupt friends of the tyrants - is the most frightening force in the world. I have to add, how did Hitler end up feeling about American might, willed against himself?
18) Decapitation reverses the fundamental dynamic of American leadership's corruption and alliance with America's enemies against America Herself. Here, we have to look at the apparatus of corruption's prosecution. It's called the swamp.
19) For decades as American leadership was selling out America, there was an ever-growing bureaucracy that did more than just obey orders. The swamp believes in its own manifest destiny. Thus, when Obama leaves and HRC is defeated, the swamp was put on notice and notice it did.
20) So first they take out Flynn and then they go after Trump. Their failure to take out Trump is catastrophic for them. It is an existential threat such as they have never faced before. It is not just Iran's leadership that quivers in fear over QS death, it is the swamp also.
21) With this decapitation strike, Trump alerts the entire world he's just not playing the game by the same rules as everyone did, before. Oh, they all knew that already, but had not felt the heat of his breath on the back of their necks, till now.
22) What Trump has always told us is this. He knew that these enemies could not do anything to America unless we let them, unless we paid for it, unless we supported them. From day one, he has simply stopped supporting our enemies.
23) Decapitation means that we do not have to fight a great war that lasts for years or even decades. It means that an enemy would be wise to be afraid. That is what I saw in the public weeping of Iran's top leadership. They are now, for the first time in 40 years, afraid.
24) Who knew how fast you could burn through $150b? You'd think it would last forever. But no, not if America votes in a new kind of leader, one who knows how to erase $150b of blood money with crippling, strangling sanctions. Let's look at the full strategy, now.
25) The way you capture a castle in a siege, most effectively, at least risk, is to cut off their water supply. Starvation is horrible, but slow. A castle runs on its water. A terrorist nation runs on its money. Stop giving it money or access to money and victory will come.
26) Let's say it again. For 40 years, it was us who empowered Iran to become the greatest terrorist nation on earth. It's taken Trump 3 years to bring it to its knees. He simply cut off the flow of money. Now, Iran weakened, he killed its evil mastermind.
27) What will happen now? Sooner, rather than later, the evil government will be toppled by its own people, no American boots on the ground at all. That's the strategic significance of perpetually - and honestly - disavowing regime change as our mission. No!
28) The only question in the strategy is whether or not Trump will be reelected. Iran's weakened leaders can hold on, I fear, through the election. If Trump is not reelected, another lifeline will have been granted to them. They can then tighten belts until help arrives.
29) So, it is my analysis that this economic strangulation and leadership decapitation strategy will absolutely succeed, as long as we reelect Trump. But if we allow his defeat, then that will be the gift of new life to the leadership of the worst terrorist nation on earth.
30) It's tempting to extend the analysis to North Korea, China, Putin and beyond, but those are topics for another day. Today, assuming there were zero casualties, we can decipher the greatest strategist's great strategy within that single fact.
