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https://twitter.com/1maria_ml/status/1108675700373012487

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America-China Watcher

@PandemicTruther

Jul 2

China's Art of War - Civilized Warfare with Chinese Characteristics thanks to the superstar China's reconnaissance ship 815A

China has already won the war at China's doorsteps.

It's not me saying it. It's the US defense secretary.

The statement was made by U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth in a November 2024 interview on The Shawn Ryan Show. He said, “So if our whole power projection platform is aircraft carriers and the ability to project power that way strategically around the globe... And if 15 hypersonic missiles [of China] can take out our 10 aircraft carriers in the first 20 minutes of a conflict, what does that look like?”

In reality, China doesn’t need to fire a single shot. One Type 815A reconnaissance ship is enough to get the job done.

Have you ever found it strange? For over a decade, the United States has been bent on containing and crushing China. Thousands of missiles surround China’s coastline. Military bases encircle it like a noose. And yet—China's coastline and the South China Sea has remained eerily quiet. Not a single shot fired. No major skirmish. Just drills, flybys, and declarations.

So what’s really going on?
The answer is uncomfortable for many: an intense, invisible ghost war has been raging beneath the surface—and China has already won it.

I’ll spell out the details for you.

🧵

China’s Eye in the Sky: A New Era of War Without Warning

1. High-Resolution Satellite Reconnaissance and Real-Time Data Transmission

In 2024, a rocket rose from the plains of Changchun, roaring into the stratosphere. Its cargo? Twelve satellites from the “Jilin-1” constellation—small, civilian on paper, but lethal in capability. Each one carries the world's most advanced commercially available optical payload, boasting a jaw-dropping resolution of 0.2 meters. From 500 kilometers away, they can capture the outline of a U.S. B-2 stealth bomber. Not just the shape—but the tail number painted on its body. Not just the plane—but the exact tilt of a C-130’s spinning propellers parked on the tarmac.

And they don’t just see. They also transmit. A full-length, high-definition film the size of Avatar 2—delivered to Earth in a single second. That’s the power of China’s indigenous satellite-to-ground laser communication system, transmitting at 10Gbps. It bypasses electromagnetic interference, penetrates even 50 meters of seawater, and delivers real-time commands to submarines lurking below the ocean's surface.

Now imagine this: A Dongfeng missile takes flight. The satellite captures the exhaust plume and trajectory in real time. In that very moment, it transmits the data down to a ground control unit. The command center adjusts its flight path mid-course. Target locked. Kill order confirmed. From discovery to destruction, it all happens in one fluid loop—faster than the enemy can even react.

This isn’t theory. It’s already happening.

In 2023, the Jilin-1 satellites tracked and filmed the loading of B-52 strategic bombers on the U.S. airbase in Guam. Not once—but fourteen times. Every payload. Every switch. Each type of munition. Captured frame by frame. The footage didn’t just circulate inside Chinese command centers—it was streamed to the world during a live U.S.-Japan military exercise in the South China Sea. The Pentagon panicked and issued a late-night press release insisting they had not entered Chinese territorial waters. But China had already entered theirs—visually, digitally, tactically.

And still, this was just Level One: watching.

2. Kinetic Anti-Satellite Strikes: Silent but Lethal
Level Two? Hitting.

Back in 2007, China stunned the world by obliterating one of its own weather satellites—Fengyun-1C—using a direct kinetic anti-satellite strike. It wasn’t a blast. It was a high-speed body collision, turning a multi-million dollar satellite into a cloud of orbital debris. That was a warning. Today, it’s a guarantee.

By 2027, China’s third-generation kinetic anti-satellite system—capable of reaching geostationary orbit at 36,000 kilometers—was fully operational. This range includes America’s most precious military satellites: the GPS constellation. A single hit would shatter decades of infrastructure and leave no trace. No explosion. No shrapnel. Just silence. The satellite fails, seemingly on its own. The U.S. military now refers to this system as a "space assassin”—a kill system that leaves no fingerprint.

And it gets worse. Unlike early designs, China’s latest models use zero-debris “covert kill” technology. It doesn’t blow you up—it just turns off your light. A malfunction, they’ll say. But there’s no coming back. It’s warfare by silent unobtrusive deletion, typically civilized warfare with Chinese characteristics.

Still, satellites alone don’t win wars.

You need eyes on the sea.

That’s where the 815A comes in.

Read 14 tweets

America-China Watcher

@PandemicTruther

Jun 28

Understand Israel's madness - Worse than Jihad

Israel is not a secular democracy. It's a theocracy. Its wars are holy wars—more fanatic than Jihad.

The Three Faces of Likud: A History of Power, Blood, and Religious Fanaticism

It didn’t begin on October 7, 2023. For Palestinians, it was October 7 every day. Every day before that date, before the headlines and outrage against Hamas terrorism, there were Palestinian villages burned, Palestinian children shot at checkpoints, Palestinian homes demolished at dawn, and Palestinian olive groves turned to ash. The violence was constant, routine—just not televised. And if we're speaking of religious fanaticism, there's no ideology today more systematically violent than that of Likud and its settler wing. This is not some half-baked slogans—it's a sophisticated creed of 2000 years. A doctrine that sanctifies the land grab and sacralizes blood. It doesn't just permit killing; it demands it, cloaked in divine entitlement and historical grievance.

Netanyahu is not a dictator—he is a mirror of the Israeli public will. A mirror held up to a large and growing section of Israeli society, particularly the settlers, who are not civilians in any meaningful sense. They are armed, trained, and often more militant than the state itself. The state restrains; they accelerate. Israeli settlers will kill anyone preventing them from land grabs and murdering Palestinians, pointing their guns at the IDF if need be. That's how violent the Israeli civilians are. They are the grassroots enforcers of a fanatic religious ideology against which Islamic fanaticism pales in comparison.

Likud isn't just a party. It's an ideology. It's a mirror—splintered, flashing three different faces:

1. The Likud of Power: Gripped tightly by Benjamin Netanyahu, the man who has come to define Israeli politics.
2. The Folk Likud: Embodied by settler leaders like Daniela Weiss, born of zeal and steel, carving out Israel's destiny on Palestinian land.
3. The Ideological Religious Likud: A fever dream of a Greater Israel, more myth than map, yet still shaping the nation's spine—adhered to by the majority of the Israeli population.

I/ The Likud of Power - A Party of the Bible and the Bullet

The story begins in 1948—the same year Israel declared its independence and fought its first war against Arab armies. That year, Menachem Begin, a former Irgun commander once labeled a terrorist by the British Mandate, founded the Freedom Movement. Begin and his followers had a different vision from Israel's socialist founders. They were driven by a belief in a biblical Israel—one that stretched beyond the 1949 armistice lines, all the way into the West Bank, Gaza, and parts of Jordan, Lebanon and Egypt.

This vision was biblical and ruthless. In their eyes, God had already drawn the borders. All that remained was to fulfill the prophecy.

In 1973, Begin's party merged with several other right-wing factions, forming the Likud alliance. Four years later, in 1977, the unthinkable happened. After nearly three decades of uninterrupted rule by the left-wing Labor Party, Likud won the national election. Israelis called it "the upheaval." It marked the rise of a new class, a new language, a new ideology, a new idea of what Israel should be. Begin became Prime Minister, and with him came a new tone: nationalist, religious, unapologetically hawkish and fanatic.

Begin's Strange Peace

Despite his fiery origins, Begin did something no one expected. In 1978, he sat down with Egyptian President Anwar Sadat and U.S. President Jimmy Carter to negotiate what would become the Camp David Accords. This was a landmark peace deal—the first between Israel and an Arab country. It ended three decades of war with Egypt, returned the Sinai Peninsula to Egyptian hands, and laid the groundwork for further Arab-Israeli peace efforts.

But peace came with a paradox. While Begin handed back the Sinai, he ramped up settlement activity in the West Bank, doubling down on the idea that those lands were non-negotiable. The contradiction was glaring: Israel could give land back to Egypt, but never to the Palestinians living under occupation.

The Lebanon War and the Shattered Image

In 1982, as Israel invaded Lebanon under the pretext of driving out the PLO, Ariel Sharon—then Defense Minister—oversaw the siege of Beirut. Israel allied itself with the Christian Phalangist militia, a Lebanese Maronite group bitterly opposed to the Palestinians. After the assassination of Lebanon's president-elect Bachir Gemayel, Sharon allowed the Phalangist fighters to enter the Palestinian refugee camps of Sabra and Shatila in West Beirut. What followed was a bloodbath. Over the course of three days, the militias slaughtered between 800 and 3,500 Palestinian civilians, including women, children, and the elderly. Israeli forces surrounded the camps, fired flares to illuminate the night, and sealed the exits to prevent Palestinians from escape — they aided the massacre and did nothing to stop the killings.

An Israeli commission later found Sharon personally responsible for failing to prevent the massacre, forcing him to resign as Defense Minister. But he never expressed remorse, and his political career not only survived—it thrived. Sharon was hailed by Israelis as a national hero. His brutality won the hearts of the Israeli population. For many, Sabra and Shatila became the moment when Israeli policy crossed from occupation into open and active ethnic cleansing.

The Hardening: Shamir to Sharon

In 1986, Yitzhak Shamir took over. A former underground fighter like Begin, Shamir had no illusions about peace. Under his rule, Likud rejected any negotiation with the Palestinians. Talks were considered naïve, even dangerous.

In the mid-1980s, a new political star emerged: Benjamin Netanyahu. Young, media-savvy, and fluent in American political style, he quickly became the face of a modernized Likud—one that appealed to television audiences and foreign donors. Sharon represented the old Likud—rooted in land and steel—while Netanyahu built the new Likud, rooted in media control, ideological clarity, and permanent campaigning. Their rivalry would later fracture the party, as Sharon eventually split off to form Kadima, leaving Netanyahu to lead a more hardline Likud into the future.

Netanyahu's Cunning

Beneath the polished image broadcast across Western media, Netanyahu is no less ruthless. In Israel, to win hearts, a politician must outdo rivals with bloodthirst—proving, time and again, that he is willing to go further than the rest.

A persistent theory alleges that a string of emblematic terrorist attacks—9/11, the Bataclan massacre, the London metro bombings, Charlie Hebdo—were orchestrated with Mossad logistics. The objective? To shape Western public opinion, to fuse the idea of "Muslim" with "terrorist," so that Palestinians—and by extension, the broader Muslim world—could be lumped together as Islamic extremists. Once that association was made, their systematic elimination would no longer spark outrage but approval.

Where his predecessors like Sharon relied on brute force and paid the price for their visible massacres, Netanyahu's specialty lies in cunning—in the orchestration of narratives, the manipulation of perception, and the staging of a series of iconic false flags conveniently blamed on Islamic extremists. Unlike Sharon, who got caught in the act, Netanyahu knows better than to let the blood splatter on camera. He is media-savvy, fluent in the language of Western fear, and deft at turning public opinion in his favor. That makes him even more dangerous.

Charactetistically, Netanyahu has been quietly allowing—even sponsoring—Hamas activities, knowing full well they would provide the perfect pretext for war. By letting Hamas operate, he manufactures the excuse for endless retaliation. Every Israeli strike becomes "self-defense," every atrocity in Gaza repackaged as a justified response. After October 7th, the narrative wrote itself: Israel has the right to defend itself. Under Netanyahu, Likud has entered a new phase—no longer just brutal, but cunning. It is a Likud cloaked in righteous propaganda, fluent in the language of Western media, and armed with the moral alibi of victimhood. Israel's ethnic cleansing becomes anti-terrorism.

Read 6 tweets

America-China Watcher

@PandemicTruther

Jun 26

Israel: A Nation on Edge, A Strategy Without Exit

Israel in a Nutshell Leading up to June 12

It’s hard to believe that a country as small as Israel has been able to stir the Middle East upside down for over seventy years—fighting from Lebanon all the way to Iran, then swinging back to bomb any surrounding country right and left at will without any resistance. You might think Israel is crazy, yet its strikes are always sharp and calculated, its operations cold and clean—like those of a virtuoso killer. Israel is the most formidable killer of the Middle East.

---

The Begin Doctrine: always no-warning, always first-strike

Someone once said: Israel is like that neighbour who drops down through your ceiling at midnight, blows up your rice cooker, and the next morning says, “Sorry, I thought you were hiding a bomb.” The joke is crude, but the metaphor lands.

Because its neighbours—Syria, Lebanon, Iran, even Egypt and Jordan—haven't always been pushovers. These are nations with standing armies and weapons to spare. And yet, time and again, in this powder keg of a region, they end up flat on their backs, blinking at the sky. Why? Simple. Israel doesn’t rely on landmass or manpower. It survives by striking hard and speaking little. That’s its edge.

To understand Israel’s strength, you need to understand where it comes from. This country wasn’t so much founded as it was fought into existence. In 1948, the moment it declared independence, five neighbouring countries rushed in to crush it. The result? A newborn nation in its crib punched five grown men in the face—and carved out even more land than the UN had given it.

That first war shaped its worldview: only fists can guard a homeland. Since then, Israel has lived by one rule—if you look at me the wrong way, I’ll hit first. It doesn’t wait. It doesn’t warn. When Israel hits, first your airstrike goes, then your nuclear site, then your commanders. If you complain, next comes your capital, reduced to rubbles.

But this ruthlessness isn’t arbitrary —it’s doctrine. Israel’s entire military strategy is built on two pillars: pre-emption and absolute regional military dominance. That means it never waits for you to be ready. While you’re brushing your teeth in the morning, still fumbling with the toothpaste cap, its missiles are already on the way.

This isn’t hyperbole—it’s history. In the Six-Day War of 1967, Israel’s opening airstrike wiped out 90% of Egypt’s air force before they even got off the ground. Arab capitals were left speechless.
🧵

Unapologetic Terrorism as Founding Principle of the Country

And it doesn’t stop at regular warfare. Israel favours terrorist decapitation strikes. In 1988, Mossad agents crossed the sea into Tunisia and assassinated Abu Jihad, the number two in the PLO (Palestine Liberation Organization), in front of his family. Inflatable boats slipped ashore under moonlight. A few precise shots, and they were gone.

Is this how a country fights wars? Apparently, yes. Because while Israel operates as a state, it has mastered the tactics of a non-state terrorist group.

In fact, its roots run deep in that tradition. Before independence, the Jewish underground—Haganah, Irgun, Lehi—were experts in bombings and assassinations. After 1948, these same men, ruthless terrorists, became the generals, ministers, and architects of the new nation. Israel may be the only modern state founded on terrorist insurgent tactics—and rather than abandon them, it refined them into official state doctrine.

This instinct to strike first is in the country’s DNA. Before 1948, Jewish paramilitary groups operated as true terrorist organizations:

Haganah, founded in 1920, began as a defense union but soon adopted violent tactics alongside extremist offshoots.

In 1931, Irgun (Etzel) split, led by Revisionist Zionist Ze’ev Jabotinsky and later Menachem Begin. They claimed bombings and assassinations were legitimate tools—targeting Arabs, British, even Jewish moderates.

In 1940, Lehi (the Stern Gang) broke away from Irgun. Under leader Avraham Stern, they even flirted with forming alliances with Nazi Germany—seeing terror as divine mandate.

These groups staged some of the most notorious acts of Zionist terror:

The King David Hotel bombing (1946), killing 91 people

The Deir Yassin massacre (1948), where Irgun and Lehi killed over 100 villagers

The assassination of British officials like Lord Moyne

The murder of UN mediator Bernadotte

Numerous bombings in Haifa, Jerusalem, and across Palestine

These weren’t fringe radicals disgraced and condemned worldwide like Osama Bin Laden—they were future prime ministers and state-builders: Menachem Begin (Irgun → Herut → Likud → PM), Yitzhak Shamir (Lehi → PM). Even David Ben-Gurion, from Haganah, oversaw coordinated terror campaigns that would lead to Palestinian displacement. Terror—not principles or ideals—built this nation.

Warrior State: Civilian Soldiers, Unit 8200 (the New Digital/AI Mossad), and the Military-Industrial Complex

But don’t be fooled into thinking it only knows how to sneak attack. Israel’s real strength isn’t in weapons—it’s in systemized efficiency.

In war, speed is everything. Other countries need months to mobilize. Israel needs three hours. Take the recent flare-up with Iran: Tehran launched hundreds of drones and missiles. Israel intercepted most mid-air, then mobilized 300,000 reservists within days.

That’s not rhetoric—that’s execution.

In the U.S., such a response would need Congress, debate, headlines, protests. In Israel, a single text: “Report for duty.” And people show up. Because in Israel, “citizen-soldier” isn’t a slogan—it’s a societal structure. Men serve three years, women two. After that, you still return to base for annual training until your forties. Behind 170,000 active troops lies a reserve force over 600,000 strong. This is a state permanently at the ready.

And then there’s Unit 8200—the elite cyber force. Teen prodigies are recruited young, trained in data, surveillance, and cyberwarfare. After service, they go on to launch startups, build chips, write algorithms. Some become tech billionaires. Half the world’s leading cybersecurity firms trace their roots to Israeli veterans.

They don’t just fight—they profit.

The Iron Dome system is a case in point. Each Hamas rocket intercepted becomes a marketing video. Washington watches, impressed: “I’ll take one.” Europe queues up. India arrives with open wallets. Is this war—or advertising? Hard to say. But what’s clear is that war fuels Israel’s arms exports.

In 2024, its defense sales hit $14.8 billion, nearly cracking the global top four. For a country this small, it’s becoming the Shein/Temu of military hardware.

That’s why Israel is addicted to war: it’s all benefits and no loss. Each war expands its territory, swells its coffers, and doubles as a global advertisement for its arms industry. One war after another gave rise to a thriving military-industrial complex in Israel. The country has thus embarked upon a self-perpetuating cycle—war feeding war—in a vicious loop of profit and power.

Read 10 tweets

America-China Watcher

@PandemicTruther

Jun 25

The Knife Within: How Iran’s Secular Elite Enabled the June 12 Strike

Below is a rewrite of a video by 阿冉 on Bilibili/YouTube. I strongly advise Chinese to follow him for indepth knowledge of Iran.

In a single night, Israel executed a brutal decapitation strike on Iran’s nuclear elite. Through billowing smoke, the military suffered one blow after another: Commander-in-Chief of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), Hossein Salami; Chief of General Staff, Mohammad Bagheri; Deputy Chief, Ali Rashid — all obliterated. Even top nuclear scientists like Dr. Abbas and Dr. Tranchi were taken out in pinpoint assassinations. Iran’s nuclear command was wiped clean. The Mossad's precision was astonishing. Has Iran been so thoroughly infiltrated that it’s become a sieve? Otherwise, how could Israel have obtained such top-secret intelligence?

Has Iran really been riddled with American and Israeli spies? The answer is "Yes". Without a doubt. In fact, "infiltrated like a sieve" doesn't even begin to describe it. Half of Iran might as well be American or Israeli agents.

The Supreme Leader Khamenei’s granddaughter studies in the U.S. Iran’s top officials use iPhones. Their government emails run on Gmail. If Qassem Soleimani wasn’t assassinated, or Hussein wasn't targeted — that would’ve been the real surprise.

But here’s the twist: it wasn’t the Mossad or the CIA that turned Iran into a sieve. It was Iran itself. To be specific — Iran’s secular elite.

What outsiders see as foreign infiltration is, in fact, internal warfare. And the one who planted the seeds of this civil war? None other than the father of the Islamic Republic himself: Ruhollah Khomeini.

Video is Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. His family controls a business empire of USD 95 billion.

Khomeini. 1979: The Fracture of Revolution

When the 1979 Islamic Revolution broke out, Khomeini, exiled in France, returned to Tehran in triumph.

But with Khomeini’s rise, Iran was torn in two:
On one side, the clerical theocracy, led by Khomeini.
On the other, the secular elite, represented by the leftist Tudeh Party.

During the revolution, the clergy and the leftists were allies. But once victory was secured, Khomeini launched a brutal purge.
The Tudeh Party was decimated, and Khomeini stood alone at the top.

But in doing so, he made a fatal mistake:
By destroying the left, he left behind only right-wing secularists, many of them pro-American.
Worse still, the ferocity of his purge planted a seed of distrust:
“You can’t trust these clerics. Side with them, and you’re next to be eliminated”.

Thus, the secular camp swung hard to the right.

Even with his iron grip, Khomeini lacked one thing — guns.

Revolutions are not built on divine slogans. Power grows from the barrel of a gun (Mao Zedong).

And Iran’s military at the time? Loyal only to the Shah.

Khomeini could command God, but not the army.

Then, in September 1980, Saddam Hussein gave him the perfect excuse:
The Iran-Iraq War.

Under Iraqi fire, Iran’s military rallied behind the clerics.

Khomeini purged the Shah’s officers and built a new force: the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).

The Shah army's upper leadership was decimated. It was stripped of political power.

The old army was wiped out, and the new one answered only to him.

But the war was catastrophic — over a million dead.
In 1982, Khomeini launched a suicidal “Islamic kamikaze” offensive.

13-year-old boys were handed plastic “keys to paradise” and sent to blow themselves up against Iraqi lines.

Twenty-one thousand children became human bombs.
This was holy war in its most fanatical form.

The video is of Khomeini.

The Rise of the IRGC Business Empire

After the war ended in 1988, Iran launched a new campaign:
the “Shia Crescent” — Hezbollah in 1982, Shia rule in Iraq by 2003, Syria in 2011, the Houthis in 2015.
For over two decades, Soleimani’s Quds Force blazed a path of blood across the region.

While the clergy sacrificed lives in jihad, the secular elite suffered the economic consequences.
But what truly enraged them wasn’t U.S. sanctions. It was this:
The IRGC grew rich and powerful — stealing the secular elite’s wealth.

Iran’s power structure is a battlefield in real time.
I (阿冉）once met a Chinese businessman in Mashhad who traded minerals with the IRGC.
Pointing to a giant poster of Soleimani, he spat:
“These so-called anti-American heroes? They’re a joke. Their houses are piled high with U.S. dollars.
The IRGC isn’t a military. It’s a corporation. And a very greedy one at that.”

He wasn’t exaggerating.
The IRGC runs Iran’s minerals, energy, and foreign trade.
Its oil smuggling network disguises Iranian oil as Iraqi oil, selling it globally through a front company:
Al-Muhandis Group — a conglomerate that also dominates Iraq’s infrastructure.

Even my (阿冉) war correspondent was shocked:
“Baghdad looks like Las Vegas.”
Every skyscraper? IRGC-built.

As that Chinese trader put it:
“Holy warriors my foot. Try religious capitalists. The ‘Axis of Resistance’? It's a business network.”
The IRGC’s empire squeezed Iran’s private sector dry.
Companies linked to it — like Khatam al-Anbiya Construction HQ and the Martyrs' Academy — crushed the competition.
Thirteen of Iran’s top construction firms went bankrupt.

From the secular elite’s perspective:
The IRGC stole our business, destroyed our careers.
Who cares about national unity?
If taking down the IRGC means cooperating with the enemy — so be it.

Today’s assassinations don’t shock Iranians.
They see it as karmic retribution.

The elite in Iran and Iraq live in luxury and opulence. Right video is Baghdad and the left is Tehran.

Read 6 tweets

America-China Watcher

@PandemicTruther

Jun 24

Understanding Iran uphill June 12th

The Coup That Failed but Awaits: Mossad’s Strike, the Secular Elite, and Iran’s Stubborn Persian Pride

Iran has long been a paradox — a revolutionary theocracy armored in ideology, yet hollowed out from within by a secular elite. Beneath the surface, pro-Western factions have quietly prepared for a post-Khamenei future, betting that the Supreme Leader’s death would be their moment to seize power.

But Iran is not a country that bends easily. Its identity — forged in Aryan pride, Shia defiance, and imperial memory — has made it difficult for even its closest partners, like China or Russia, to interfere. The pride that once protected it from colonization now risks blinding it at its most fragile moment.

The Persian way of asking for help is peculiar. It goes something like this, “We are the frontline. We're holding the line for you. If we fall, the threat will come straight to your doorstep.”

Sounds like a threat. China doesn't know what to make of it.

Let's sort out the Gordon knot of the Iran society and you will see why it's a place where angel fear to tread.

The first chapter of this Iranian regime was written in November 1979. Fifty-two American diplomats and citizens were taken hostage at the U.S. embassy in Tehran and were held for 444 days before released. As the crowd of students prepared to storm the gates, someone asked Khomeini, “Can we go in? Will America retaliate?” His answer came without hesitation: “America? They won’t dare.”

At that time, Iran had no strong army, no nuclear arsenal, no powerful allies. Just revolutionary momentum. The U.S. tried to respond with Operation Eagle Claw (Not a pun 😃) in 1980. It failed: helicopters crashed, soldiers died, no hostages were rescued. Iran, against all odds, became the David that had humiliated Goliath.

They have done it again this time. 🧵

But forty-five years later, for years leading up to June 12, that revolutionary legacy is unraveling. The revolution’s fervor is fading. A secular, bureaucratic elite — Western-educated, anti-clerical — waits in the wings. The Mossad strike in June 2025 was designed to shatter the balance and cause a coup from within. It failed. But the plan is only dormant, not dead. It bides its time — waiting for Khamenei’s funeral.

Under President Pezeshkian, internet censorship was lifted. Nuclear talks resumed. During the Syria crisis, Iran didn’t intervene for Syria — it backed out. The tiger turned into a cat.

It thought it was a chess master, but Syria changed the board.

Do you know why Israel dared to strike on June 12? Because it thought the response from Iran would be the habitual theatrical symbolic retaliation of no consequence like in the past. But Israel miscalculated. Iran's aggressive response was totally unexpected.

But before June 12, Iran was becoming weaker and weaker.
What caused this shift? Not the people — the problem lies with the elite.

The old aristocracy carries a sickness, rooted in three pathologies: the legacy of Aryan racial superiority, the trauma of colonization, and a spiritual loyalty to Western capitalism. These forces have undermined Iran’s revolutionary spine.

For centuries, Iran was ruled by outsiders—
Arabs, Azerbaijanis, Turkmen.
Each new ruler, a reminder of loss of the glory of the Persian empire.

Iran's Aryan myth runs deep. In 1926, Reza Shah declared, “A pure-blooded Aryan is now king.” Nazi Germany officially classified Iranians as “pure Aryans” in 1936. Even today, traces of this thinking remain in the elite class — disdain for Arabs, suspicion of Turks, contempt for East Asians, even as China defies sanctions to be the sole buyer of Iranian oil. Mocking Chinese or Koreans? They call it humor. But inside that joke lies racial arrogance.

That's why Iran has repeatedly declined to buy Chinese arms and integrated package of aerial defense, saying "We want to be independent. We don't need your help. We can produce on our own”. The Chinese and their products are perceived not to be on par with the Persian Aryans.

This Persian pride comes from their empire memories embodied in their ancient scripture Shahnameh.

The ideological backbone of Iran’s modern theocracy doesn’t rest solely on Islam. It also draws from a much older, deeply ingrained civilizational myth: the Shahnameh — the thousand-year-old Persian epic by Ferdowsi. Though not a religious text, the Shahnameh functions as Iran’s cultural scripture — a Persian Talmud of sorts — recounting the rise and fall of noble kings, heroic resistance against foreign invaders, and a constant struggle to uphold justice. When leaders like Khamenei say “Neither East nor West,” they aren’t speaking only as Shia clerics; they are channeling a Persian worldview that predates Islam — one that sees Iran as an eternal civilization, too proud to submit to Rome, too dignified to follow Moscow, (or God forbid the Upstart China) and too ancient to be colonized by Washington.

So in 1979, Khomeini shouted:
"Neither East nor West—only Islam!"
No to America. No to the Soviets.
Only internal strength.
So when China and Russia proposed closer military cooperation, Iran politely declined.

And then there’s the Shia wound — a thousand-year trauma of marginalization by Sunni power, from Karbala to modern exclusion. Like Israel invokes the Holocaust, Iran invokes Shia martyrdom. It feels orphaned, shunned by Sunni Arabs, its defiance born of loneliness.

Inside Iran, three powers vie for control: the clerics, the IRGC (Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, the private army of Khamenei), and the secular elite. The IRGC is nothing revolutionary — it's a bunch of oligarchs now controlling a third of the Iranian economy. The seculars are locked out of that privilege and wealth. So they look abroad. They whisper and wave to Tel Aviv, “Come and liberate us”. They hint at peace, trade, suspending the nuclear program, and expelling the Chinese — if only someone would remove the generals.
Soleimani’s death wasn’t random. It sent a message: the IRGC isn’t invincible. The secular elite can't take them out but Israel can. Since then, one upon another decapitation strike have thinned the IRGC ranks. But Khamenei remains. Because even the seculars fear what happens if they go too far.

Millions still see him as sacred. They would rise if he calls.
So the seculars wait. The coup didn’t fail. It’s on hold.
Netanyahu talks about a decapitation strike of the supreme leader — not just metaphorically. The real coup awaits the funeral.

The secular elite — and their backers in Tel Aviv and Washington — believed the Israeli strike would fracture Iran from within. They envisioned angry crowds pouring into the streets, disillusioned youth storming ministries, and the clerical regime crumbling under its own contradictions. The plan was clear: provoke a national trauma, ignite an uprising, and let the urbane elite seize power. But that coup never happened. Instead, the nation was stunned into silence. The humiliation was too great. No one moved. For now, the state holds.

Despite this, the Islamic Republic is far from monolithic. Iran remains split between its urban elite and rural masses. The cities are filled with Westernized youth fluent in English, frequenting cafés, bars, and galleries, their identities increasingly divorced from the Islamic state. But in the countryside and working-class towns, the regime still draws overwhelming support. This silent majority, often unseen by foreign analysts, still reveres the Supreme Leader. The theocracy has deep roots. Even the president, seen as a reformist and secular figure, must operate under Khamenei’s shadow. Every diplomatic outreach, every Western-facing maneuver, is vetted and authorized by the Supreme Leader himself. It's not an exaggeration to say that Khamenei authorized this rapprochement with the West.

The Revolutionary Guards, once born out of ideological purity, are now plagued by corruption. These are no longer the barefoot revolutionaries of 1979. Their children drive Ferraris through northern Tehran. Their wives vacation in Europe, shop in Dubai, and invest in Canadian real estate. The IRGC’s economic empire spans construction, telecoms, energy, and black-market imports. What was once a people's army has become a cartel. Meanwhile, the clerical establishment is controlled by a few powerful families — Rafsanjani, Khomeini, Khatami, Larijani, and Yazdi. These clerics behave more like feudal lords than spiritual leaders. Their control over religious endowments, seminaries, and judicial posts ensures their dynasty's survival, often at the cost of public trust. They are the new oligarchs — veiled in turbans but driven by greed.

There is a persistent rumor that haunts the regime. That the Mossad's surgical strikes — the assassinations of nuclear scientists and IRGC commanders — were made possible not by foreign penetration, but by betrayal from within.

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America-China Watcher

@PandemicTruther

Jun 23

China is backing Iran in a big way

Without China, Iran would have collapsed.

China Is Iran’s War Chest: A Strategic Lifeline, Not Just Cheap Oil

China has emerged as the primary lifeline for Iran’s government and citizens, shouldering the lion’s share of its crude oil exports—and effectively neutralizing Western sanctions. While some argue China is exploiting a discount, this perspective overlooks the immense strategic and financial risks Beijing is bravely absorbing.

📊 Due to US sanctions, there's no buyer of Iranian oil. So China buys all. China buys ~90 % of Iran’s Oil

• EIA data reveals that, by 2023, nearly 90 % of Iran’s crude oil and condensate exports flowed into China—up sharply from just 25 % in 2017.

• Iran’s total exports rebounded from a low of 0.4 million bpd (barrel per day) in 2020 to ~1.4 million bpd by 2023, with China absorbing most of the growth.

• In March 2025, seaborne exports to China reached a record 1.8 million bpd—up nearly 50 % from 2024 levels.

• In February 2025, shipments surged ~86 %, hitting 1.74 million bpd, according to Kpler.

📅 June 2025: Iranian Oil Exports +23 %—All to China

• Iran’s oil exports have surged 23 % during the current war, all shipped to China, underscoring China’s central role.
• As of early June, Iran was exporting ~1.4–1.5 million bpd to China—even amid tighter U.S. sanctions.

📈 Sanctions Neutralized — Iran’s Oil Revenues Surge

• With most global buyers shut out by sanctions, Iran relies almost entirely on China to export oil—the mainstay of its government revenue.
• In 2022–23, Tehran generated roughly $53–54 billion annually from oil via covert channels.
• China’s “ghost fleet” of tankers, ship-to-ship transfers on the high seas, and relabeling campaigns (e.g. as Malaysian or Emirati origin) have effectively bypassed sanctions.

🛑 The Crushing Cost of Defying Sanctions

Chinese companies violating U.S. sanctions against Iran have faced extremely severe punishment. One of the most high-profile cases was the arrest of Huawei’s CFO, Meng Wanzhou—also the daughter of the company’s founder—who was detained in Canada at the request of the United States and subjected to nearly three years of house arrest before a diplomatic resolution was reached. This incident underlines the intense scrutiny and pressure exerted on entities linked to Iran. In fact, U.S. sanctions against Iran are enforced far more aggressively than those against countries like Russia. The legal, financial, and geopolitical risks that China has absorbed in maintaining oil trade with Iran—and the billions in fines already paid—far outweigh the modest 10–15 % discount it receives. China's continued engagement under such high stakes reflects strategic calculation, not opportunistic profit-seeking.

The risks of doing business with Iran under U.S. sanctions are not theoretical—they are devastatingly real. When China telecommunications company ZTE was caught violating U.S. sanctions by supplying telecommunications equipment to Iran, the company was nearly destroyed. It was fined nearly $1 billion, temporarily banned from accessing U.S. technology, and even forced to accept a U.S.-appointed compliance monitor embedded in its senior management.

Huawei fared no better: for its links to Iran, it was placed on the U.S. entity list, losing access to vital suppliers and billions of dollars in global contracts.

Even European giants paid the price—BNP Paribas, for instance, was fined a staggering €8.9 billion in 2014 for breaching U.S. sanctions against Iran and Sudan.

Given this precedent, no company or country dares touch Iranian oil—except China. And it’s not because of the 10–15 % discount: China could easily buy discounted oil from Russia with fewer consequences. China is taking the risk because it wants to prop up the Iranian state as a geopolitical counterweight and safeguard regional balance—not merely save a few dollars per barrel.

Although Iran sells its oil to China at a discount of 10 to 15 percent below Brent prices, this apparent savings is deceptive. Once you factor in the extensive overhead involved—such as operating a dedicated banking mechanism insulated from U.S. financial networks, conducting non-dollar transactions, and managing complex logistics to evade detection (mingling on the high seas)—the discount is not just offset, it is often exceeded.

China must rely on indirect shipping routes, ‘ghost fleets’ with disabled transponders, ship-to-ship transfers, and constant rebranding of crude origin. All these steps involve legal, financial, and diplomatic costs.

Far from being a bargain, importing Iranian oil under sanctions is a high-cost, high-risk operation that only China is willing to carry out at this scale. The discount, in effect, is an illusion—China is paying a premium in risk to uphold this strategic lifeline.

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