🧵 One of the most misleading narratives is the claim that the US or Israel threaten “war” with Iran…not only is it the other way around, but it’s all a scam because Iran can’t afford a real “war”…you really think a regime like that would risk the results of such conflict
Consider for a second a member of the Iranian theocratic abusive regime, would be risk losing all that power in a conflict, he knows the average people despise him, he knows he crushed protests before
The Iran regime CANNOT afford war and does everything possible to avoid it, either through threats and boasting and bluffing or working with China, Turkey and Russia or by moving proxy pawns around Syria, Lebanon, Iraq and Yemen to put the “conflict” somewhere else
Iran is a chess player, the regime is the king, it is feeble and weak but it has arrayed ♟ pawns all over to put the frontline far from home and create three thousand miles of potential underbelly it can strike at far from home, from the Gulf of Oman to Quneitra
That is why it is always nonsense when someone says that recent US statements mean their could be “war” this is just fear mongering talking point nonsense.
Ask these people who speak of “war”…HOW would a war take place. How would the Iran regime many of them adore and want to protect by creating a war narrative, how would it risk war? Are they kidding?
Iran’s regime doesn’t fight wars at home. It was traumatized by the war with Iraq in the 1980s that almost strangled the “revolution” in its cradle. Since then it decided to do a forward policy of proxy wars in the near abroad, strategic depth
So when anyone says that if there isn’t a deal there may be “war” they are being either naive, deceptive or purposely lying. The regime can never risk war with the US or Israel. It can accept certain amounts of low level conflict and sabotage and proxy conflict but not war
That is why Iran boasts a lot about war but what it invests in is PLAUSIBLE DENIABILITY attacks using drones and rockets and piracy at sea and harassing ships with speedboats and empowering militias and recruiting Afghan kids for the IRGC in Albukamal
Iran will indeed fight conflicts to the last Iraqi PMU, the last poor Syrian, the last poor Shi’ite Hezbollah member, the last Houthi, but how many IRGC members lay down their lives? Not many.
Iran had its “great patriotic war” in the 1980s and saw enough martyrs, those old greying men who run the regime know the horror of war and don’t want more
The regime elites have their aesthetic, the ostensibly austere regime, those types like Ahmadinejad or Soleimani who supposedly had monk-like existence with no possessions like they are Franciscan friars…but massive war is not for them
Iran is a calculating regime. Zarif and friends spreads the “deal or war” lie to western publics they try studied snd focus-grouped this concept via opeds to see if fear of more “Middle East conflict” would scare people in the West.
Westerners want peace…Iran fears war…so HOW can there ever be war????? Israel also doesn’t want war and Israel is so far from Iran it can’t ever have a real “war” with Iran. THINK about it. It can’t happen. Just proxies and some strikes or incidents but not total war
So since we all know this, let’s stop the misleading story. Absence of a deal might mean some tensions and nuclear blackmail and if Iran crosses a nuclear red line and tries to detonate a device at home there will be attempts to prevent that.
That’s like if someone tried to stop the guys at Los Alamos from the test in 1945…..but that’s not war, that’s trying to stop a stupid act by a regime that is far too smart to ever really detonate a nuclear weapon anyway…think about it
Everyone knows that when Iran is at the threshold it will get a call from it’s new friends in China and it’s old friend in Moscow and also it’s partner in Ankara who will say “ok you scared the West but don’t do the next step”….
And they is why there can never be war. Iran can risk it. It’s friends will advise it. And that’s how things work. Learn and study the Iranian regime method. Read the Iranian media. Stop listening to western commentators who invented the “war” bogeyman.
• • •
Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to
force a refresh
There is a lot of talk today about sheikhs in Hebron who want to for an "emirate" of Hebron. This is being greeted by some as a positive initiative. Let's take a look at the claims and also what the results could be.
First, the context. Israel is engaged in a 637 day war in Gaza against Hamas. Hamas still controls around 40 percent of Gaza. In Gaza, Israel has backed an initiative to have armed militias involved in some activities in the rest of Gaza. There is one named commander, Abu Shabab (not his real name obviously) and there are rumored to be others.
Some see this as a wise decision to have multiple armed gangs and militias run a post-war Gaza. Israel's current government opposes having the PA run Gaza, so the theory is that armed militias fighting eachother and Hamas is a good future.
In the West Bank the PA has been relatively successful at ruling Palestinian cities and towns for thirty years. However, Israel's current government includes parties that oppose the PA. The PA leader Mahmoud Abbas is aging and there is talk of what comes next.
Israel's Ynet says IDF possibly "preparing for a new phase in its campaign against Hamas on Sunday, as heavy airstrikes pounded northern Gaza and military officials weighed a deeper ground maneuver, potentially including a renewed incursion into Gaza City."
Is this the third "new phase" since March 2025? There was one that began on March 1 after the ceasefire fell apart; it truly began on March 18...then another one began after May 5 with Gideon's Chariots. Now, it's June 29...and yet another.
What the report says is a "deeper" maneuver...the IDF has spent the last months basically re-taking buffer areas around Gaza, leaving Hamas in charge of the central camps and Gaza city. 632 days of war and the IDF basically never went into parts of Gaza city or the central camps.
I remember having a conversation with someone a year ago and I'd said that the IDF still needs to defeat Hamas and remove it. They said "but hasn't Israel taken all of Gaza and defeated Hamas"...I had to remind them that, no...the Israeli offensive always leaves Hamas in charge of around half of Gaza. And it's the same a year later.
Iran's targeting of Qatar appears counter intuitive because Doha has generally been the most friendly country toward Tehran in the Gulf. Unlike the tensions that have existed between Saudi Arabia and Bahrain in the past with Iran; and to a lesser extent the UAE; Doha is close to Iran. Al-Udeid US base in Qatar is also just one of MANY US bases in the Gulf; there is also the naval facility in Bahrain, and al-Dhafra in the UAE and sites in Kuwait.
However, on the other hand Iran may assume it has enough political capital built up with Doha, and also cooperation with them in the energy sector; that Iran can do this and climb down after. If Iran focused on Saudi Arabia it could harm the fragile Beijing brokered new relations with Riyadh; it if targeted the UAE this could cause a crisis; also Bahrain could lead to a crisis.
Doha is therefore the least obvious choice. Iran could have targeted Al-Asad base in Iraq, or US bases in Syria, or in the KRG or US naval ships, or many other locations. However, Tehran may have assumed Doha is a kind of safe bet. It could tell Doha before hand what it would do, then there will be a formal complaint but maybe this leads to a deal brokered by Doha and Ankara?
What happened to the Iranian hardliners? Remember back in the era before the JCPOA and also after we were always told that it was important to "empower" the "moderates" in Iran's regime and that if we didn't do everything the regime wanted then the "hardliners" would be empowered? What happened to this fiction?
The narrative of hardliners and moderates was obviously a transparent nonsense designed to cater to the West's need to feel that it can "do X and then Iran will be happy and do Y"...it was sold to the West in a nice package and hundreds of opeds in Western media and commentators employed this paradigm to explain Iran
Notice how Iran's regime never felt it needed to "empower moderates in the US"...or that its behavior, such as attacking Saudi Arabia or Israel or other countries would "empower hardliners." Iran never had to sell itself this fiction because this was a talking point cooked up in the West, probably at a focus-group decades ago, as a way to sell the West, and especially the US, a mythical Iran policy.
In February 2019 Brig. Gen. Hossein Salami, who was then the second-in-command of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, claimed that if a war with Israel took place, then it "will result in Israel’s defeat within three days."