Geo-Strategy #1: Iran's Strategy Matrix

Okay, so as you know from your research, on April 1st the Israelis struck the Iranian Embassy in Damascus, Syria, killing seven people including two commanders. This is an act of war because the embassy is considered Iranian territory, and never before has this been done intentionally, okay? And this follows the killing, the assassination, of their General Qasem Soleimani in 2020, right? This is when the Americans launched a drone strike against him in Baghdad, and he was really one of the top Iranian generals. And what both of these incidents show us is that the Americans and the Israelis have dominance over Iran, okay? Military dominance. So the first thing is they have, right, technologically America and Israel are so much superior to Iran.

There was a jet that went from Israel and went to Damascus to carry out the strike. Now if you did the research you would know that the can Embassy is right next to the Iranian Embassy and the strike was so precise that it only hit the Iranian Embassy and didn't touch anything else, okay? That's a precision strike. That's how powerful the technology is that the Americans and Israelis have, okay? But the other thing that's important is the idea of intelligence. So how did the Israelis know That these commanders would be there at that time, right?

That's intelligence. And intelligence comes in two forms, right? There's the idea of human and then signals. Signals is basically, I can listen in on your cell phone, I can track where you go, I know where your car is, right? That's signals, electronic intelligence. The other is human. So there are spies in the embassy who tell the Israelis that this meeting will happen, okay? So this is clearly military dominance that Israel and the Americans possess over Iran.

And when this strike happened, as you know, the Iranians had to respond, and this was called Operation True Promise. And the idea of True Promise was that there's a strike package, okay, consisting of drones and missiles that hit Israel. Now what the Israelis say is that 99% of these drones and missiles were intercepted, they caused no damage, and the Israelis say this shows that our Iron Dome system is amazing, we're amazing, Iran cannot touch us. What the Iranians said is that no, we designed the attack to be harmless. We intentionally designed the attack so that it would not cause that much damage, okay? So who's right, the Israelis or the Iranians? I want to make an argument to you today That the Iranians are more believable, more credible, okay?

And the reason why is that the Iranians have to be very strategic in their response to the Americans and the Israelis. And the reason why is the Americans and the Israelis have military dominance over Iran, but just because you have military dominance does not mean you'll win the war, okay? So what I believe is that Iran and Israel are committed to a war and it's possible that in two years' time there will be a ground invasion of Iran, okay? But it's going to take time to build up to the ground invasion. And just because the Americans and the Israelis attack Iran does not mean they will win.

And the reason why is that, as you know from your research, in 2002 the Americans actually tried to invade Iran, okay? They ran a simulation called the 2002 Millennium Challenge, and the idea is, let's pretend that we will invade Iran and let's see what happens. So they divided the military into two teams, right? Team USA and Team Iran. Now if you know anything about the American military, you will know that it is the most dominant, powerful military ever to exist in human history, okay? It is crazy powerful. If the Entire world were to get together and say, let's go fight the United States, the world would lose.

The United States has the most powerful military in the entire world, okay? And Iran is a very poor country. So the United States invaded Iran and they wanted to see what would happen, and it turned out that who won? Iran won, okay? And the reason why Iran won is the idea of asymmetrical warfare, all right? And this is a very important idea that you must know if you are to understand this conflict.

So what is asymmetrical warfare? All right, let's pretend that Jack and I are enemies. We hate each other and we want to kill each other, okay? Jack has armor and he has a machine gun. I have nothing, okay? So in most battles Jack's going to kill me, right? But let's pretend that I live in a dark forest and it's really hard to see in this dark forest, but I've been living there for decades, okay? So I know the dark forest very, very well. So if Jack attacks me in this dark forest then it's possible for me to win, because I can set traps, right? I can play tricks on Jack. And that's the idea of asymmetrical Warfare, okay?

Even though Jack is superior, because I'm inferior I'm forced to be much more strategic in how I fight against Jack, okay? And so asymmetrical warfare means that as long as you can define the terms of engagement, as long as you can control how the war is fought, you will win, okay? So let's look at what this means for Iran and the United States. The United States has these aircraft carriers and they cost like a billion dollars, okay? They're very expensive but they're powerful. Now in asymmetrical warfare, what happened is Iran sends its entire navy against this one aircraft carrier of the United States and then what happens? The United States blows up the entire Iranian navy, okay? That's what would happen. So you don't do that, okay? You do not send your navy against an American aircraft carrier.

What you do instead is you send drones, okay? Or drone swarms. So what they did in the Millennium Challenge was they had these suicide boats, right, charging these aircraft carriers, and guess what, guys, if there's a lot of them, like a thousand of them, you can't stop all of them, and if one hits then your boat sinks, okay? Does that make sense? Okay, this is What we call asymmetrical warfare.

Now what's important to understand is that in asymmetrical warfare you have to control how much resources you use, okay? So for example this aircraft carrier costs a billion dollars. The drone swarms, okay, a drone maybe $1,000 for a real one, okay? But then you have fake ones that cost $100. $1,000 are these drones that blow up, right? $100 are drones that don't blow up, right? You have a th000 of these and then that's like $10 and then you have 10,000 of these and that's another $10 million, okay? So it will cost you maybe $20 million to blow up a $1 billion aircraft carrier. Does that make sense?

And this is why Iran would win a war, because Iran would employ asymmetrical warfare, drone swarms against the American aircraft carriers, okay? And True Promise actually showed us that the Iranians would probably use a strategy, and the reason why is that the total package, the strike package that they used, cost about 10 to $30 million, but how much money did they spend to bring down these drones? Did you guys know how much it cost the Israelis to defend themselves against the attack, okay? It was one At least one dollar, okay?

Do you understand? All So this shows us that in a war Iran would use asymmetrical warfare and even though Israel and the United States have military dominance, they may not be able to win this war, okay? So does this make sense so far? Any questions about this? Okay, that's a really good question. Okay, and the question really is, okay, listen, the Iranians will use this asymmetrical warfare strategy against the Americans and so shouldn't the Americans respond with more strategic thinking? And that's a great question, and the answer is, the Americans would not do that. Why not? Why is it that asymmetrical warfare is so effective against empires and dominant military powers? What's the problem of empires usually? What is their biggest problem? What is the fatal flaw, okay? They have too much bureaucracy. But Iran also has bureaucracy, but the empires have a much bigger problem, okay?

Now let's go back to the Millennium Challenge. Now in the first test, in the first battle, Iran won against the United States, right? So what did the United States do? They did it again. They did another, they did a second simulation. The second Simulation, what did they do exactly, okay?

What the Americans said is, nope, this is cheating, guys. Can you understand? Asymmetrical warfare is cheating. You cannot cheat. And then the Americans won. Does that make sense? Okay, so remember, in the first instance, where you are allowed to use asymmetrical warfare, they won. In the second instance the Americans said, no, asymmetrical warfare is cheating, so you're not allowed to use asymmetrical warfare, you must fight us directly. And the Americans won. What does this tell us about the American military? Exactly, thank you. Okay, they are inflexible. Empires are inflexible, and the reason why is the idea, right, if you're an empire you refuse to admit your failings and faults, you become very stubborn, okay?

So it's back to the example of Jack has his machine gun, his armor, right? He comes in the Star Force thinking, like, I'm invincible, right? And like everyone's like, Jack, don't go into that dark forest, it's stupid, but Jack's like, no, I have a machine gun, I don't care. All right, so that's the situation. That's why asymmetrical warfare is so effective, because it allows you flexibility and creativity, and the empire, the dominant power, refuses to be flexible and creative, okay? Does that make sense? All right, and So the classic example of this is Vietnam, where the Vietnamese were clearly dominated by the Americans, but the Vietnamese were using extremely creative and flexible tactics against the Americans, whereas the Americans insisted on their main military doctrine, okay?

Does that make sense? All right, great. Okay, any more questions? That was a great question, thank you. Any more questions before we move on?

Okay, so now I want to talk about, okay, if the Iranians are going to use asymmetrical warfare, what would it look like? And the answer is this. When the Americans invade, okay, the war started before the invasion, the Iranians must do four things if they are to prevail in the war, okay? And this is what we call the strategy matrix. The Iran strategy matrix means that from now on everything must fit into the strategy matrix, okay? It must accomplish the objectives of the strategic matrix. So the first thing it must do is unite the population, okay? The second thing it must do is build alliances. The third thing is win opinion. The fourth is weaken the enemy, okay? So in other words everything that Iran is going to do from now until the actual invasion will be to accomplish all four goals at once And it must, if it is to survive a full-scale American invasion, okay?

Does that make sense? All right, so you have the population. What does this mean, okay? It means that you win the war depending on how much your population is willing to resist the invasion, and it turns out that even though the Iranians right now are divided, okay, there's a lot of opposition towards the current government in Iran, as some of you know there have been some protests over the past few years, women protesting for more rights in Iran, okay? So there's a lot of division in that country, but I think that most Iranians would resist an invasion.

The reason why is that the Iranians have a very bad history with Westerners, okay? So the example is 1953, coup, okay? So what happened is that in 1909 the British discovered oil in Iran. It was called Persia back then. And so they created a company called the Anglo-Iranian Petroleum Company, which we now know as British Petroleum, BP. And the idea is that this company would be responsible for extracting and selling all the oil. But unfortunately the deal was that Iran, Persia, would only get 16% of profits, okay? They only got 16% of so The Iranians are very upset about this.

It's their oil, it's their resource, but they're not getting that much money out of it, okay? It's basically stealing. So for decades the Iranians have been trying to renegotiate the deal. In 1953 the democratically elected government of Iran said to the British, listen, let's do 50/50, okay, that's fair. 50/50. 50% for us, 50% for you. Right? That's a fair deal. And the British, instead of saying yes, went to the Americans, and the British and Americans together launched a coup against the democratically elected government of Iran and installed a police state called the Shah, okay? The Shah, which is like the monarchy, okay? And the Shah, the king of Iran, was so brutal that he created a police state. In 1979 the Iranian people overthrew the Shah, okay? And so the Iranian people do not like the idea of foreign invaders coming in and controlling their resources, okay? Does that make sense? So over time, as Israel and as America continue to be aggressive towards Iran, the population will start to coalesce and fight against the Americans, okay?

So that's unite the population. Second is build alliances. Now Iran has two layers of alliance. The first layer is called the Axis of Resistance Right, which I asked you to research.

And the Axis of Resistance includes the Shia militias in Iraq, Syria, Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas and the Houthis in Yemen. Okay, now what's important to understand is that this is an alliance, okay? They agree to fight together because they have a common interest, which is to remain independent of American influence, okay? But that does not mean that Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthis take orders from Iran, okay? They're not controlled by Iran. Iran supports them militarily and financially but Iran cannot completely control their behavior, okay? So the example is October 7th. Hamas launched an attack against Israel, right, which resulted in this war, and Iran says we were not involved, and Israel says that can't be true because you control Hamas, right? So that's the first layer of alliance.

But what Iran needs to do if it is to win the war is also bring in Russia and China, okay? Russia wants the United States to fight Iran. Why? To distract and weaken the United States and also to move their attention away from Ukraine, right? Does that make sense? Because Russia is about To win the war in Ukraine, and if there's a war in Iran then the United States will be forced to divert resources away from Ukraine into Iran, okay?

What would Russia bring to the table? Russia will probably not deploy soldiers, okay? Well, what Russia would do is say to the United States, when you invade Iran you are not allowed to use tactical nuclear weapons, okay? You understand? Russia would say, hey, United States, if you use nuclear weapons against Iran we will use nuclear weapons against you, okay? So basically Russia would limit the military options of America in a war, which would be of tremendous benefit and advantage to Iran. Does that make sense?

China needs to help Iran. Why? What does Iran have that China really needs? What does Iran have that China really, really needs? The Chinese economy needs what? Oil, right? So basically China cannot afford for the United States to take over both Iraq and Iran, because then it can control the energy supply to China. Does that make sense? So China would involve itself over time in order to make sure that it's able to obtain oil from the Middle East. China right now is getting most of its oil from the Middle East Okay, but it will take time for Russia and China to get themselves involved in this conflict.

Iran must prove two things. What are these two things? What must Iran show to China and Russia in order to get China and Russia involved in this conflict? If you're China and Russia, you're an investor, right? Why will I invest in you, Iran? Why exactly? Okay, so the first thing is we will fight. The second thing is we will okay. So this will take time for Iran to prove this to Russia and China, and the more that Iran can show it can win, the more that China and Russia will invest in Iran, both financially and militarily and politically, okay? Does that make sense?

Okay, so this will take time. And the third thing is win global opinion. So how will Iran win global opinion? What's happening right now that's helping Iran win global opinion? Basically what's happening in the world right now that is helping Iran win global opinion, or why is the world becoming more supportive of Iran? What thing is happening right now that is outraging or angering the world? What's happening right now? What's Israel doing right now that is outraging the world? Yeah, Gaza.

Okay, so this is really important for Iran. It must maintain the world spotlight on Gaza, okay? Because what's happening in Gaza is basically genocide, right, where the Israelis are committed to solving the Palestinian problem once and for all. That basically means removing the Palestinians from Gaza. They can go to Egypt, they can go to Jordan, it doesn't matter, okay? But the Israelis want them out of Gaza, okay? And so this will go on for many, many years and as long as the attention is on Gaza then people will become much more sympathetic towards Iran over time, okay? If you've been following the news about America, there have been major protests at Yale and at Columbia and other universities about what's happening in Gaza, okay?

All right, and the last is weaken the enemy, okay? So what does this mean? It means that when the United States invades Iran, two years from now, six years from now, who knows, but when it does so it wants to build a large coalition of forces, okay? Because then it gives itself legitimacy, right? So this coalition will consist of NATO, Middle East countries, right, and Israel, Saudi Arabia, many, many countries. And what Iran needs to do is create conflict And dissent in this coalition, okay?

And the way it does that is by building up internal okay? Does that make sense? There are many people, most people in America, do not support a war against Iran, and so Iran needs to encourage this internal dissent, okay? It can also create conflict between NATO and the United States, okay? Because obviously America will want NATO involved in its invasion of Iran, but why would France and Germany want to involve themselves, right? Okay, does that make sense?

So these are the four major goals of Iran and it must accomplish all four goals if it is to survive an invasion, okay? So from now on everything that Iran does will be to accomplish all four goals, okay? And this is part of asymmetrical warfare. Does that make sense? All right, now let's look at a concrete example. The concrete example is Operation True Promise. Why did Iran design Operation True Promise the way it did? And the answer is to accomplish all four goals, right? The first is unite the population. The idea here is Iran needed to show its population that Iran can strike back against Israel, okay? So that's the first thing. Build alliances: striking Israel is showing its allies and China and Russia that Iran Is willing to fight, okay?

Win global opinion. Now what Iran said is we designed the strike to not cause damage in Israel, and the reason why is it wants to win global opinion, right? If it throws all these missiles and rockets at Israel and it kills a lot of people, then there'll be a lot of people sympathetic towards Israel. So the attack was designed not to cause any casualties, okay? Does that make sense? All right, and if you are an observer you think that what Iran did was right because it's a sense of fairness and justice, right? What Israel did was wrong. It attacked an embassy of Iran in Damascus. That is against the law, and Iran, to save face, to pursue justice, threw some rockets at Israel, okay? So most people think that Iran's response showed restraint and it was a measured response, okay? Does that make sense?

Right, and the last thing is weaken the enemy. Why would this weaken the enemy? Well, because after Iran attacked Israel, Israel wanted to show a strong response, okay? The reason why is that Israel has a policy of disproportionality. So Israel is committed to disproportionality. So what does that mean? It means that if you kill one Israeli they'll come and kill about a hundred of you or a thousand of you, okay?

If you throw one rocket at them they'll throw a thousand rockets at you. And the idea here is deterrence, right? To make you afraid of Israel so you would not dare to attack Israel, okay? So when Iran attacked Israel for the first time, by the way, this is the first time that Iran has attacked Israel, then Israel was committed to a disproportionate response. Who stopped Israel from a disproportionate response? Yes. Why would the United States say, Israel, do not strike back disproportionately? Why would the United States do that? Yeah, okay.

So the United States cannot afford right now to fight another war, and also if the United States were to fight a war it would have to do so by itself, okay? NATO would not involve itself. The Middle Eastern countries like Saudi Arabia, UAE, Jordan would not involve themselves either, okay? So the United States had to restrain Israel, and so this is creating conflict between Israel and the United States, okay? So that's why. So in other words from a military dominance perspective, Operation True Promise accomplished nothing, okay? Because you blew nothing El but from an Asymmetrical warfare perspective you accomplished all your four major goals and that's why the Iranians claimed success, and you can make the argument that from a strategy perspective it was a very successful operation, okay?

Does that make sense? All right, any questions about this? Anything you want to clarify or you don't really understand? Does this make sense to you?

Okay, so Peter asked a great question: this war, how will it affect us? We're going to the United States for college, we're trying students. And the answer is this, okay. The answer is in war there's something called rules of engagement, and so before they have a war all the major parties agree on what the rules are, okay? So for example you look at the war in Ukraine. Now the United States and NATO are openly supplying weapons and financing and intelligence to Ukraine, right? But from the Russian perspective, we allow that, okay? We will not allow NATO to send troops to fight with the Ukrainians, but we will allow NATO and the United States to provide weapons and financing, okay? Does that make sense? This is what we call the rules of engagement, the rules of okay? So the same thing would happen if the United States were to invade Iran.

Before the actual invasion there would be an agreement among all major parties, which would include Iran, the United States, Russia, China, Israel, about the rules of war. And so one important rule of war is you're not allowed to use tactical nuclear weapons, okay? Iran, you may have nuclear weapons, you're not to use them. United States, you have nuclear weapons. Israel, you have nuclear weapons. But you are not allowed to use them in this war, okay? That would be the first agreement. The second agreement is that Russia and China are allowed to provide assistance on a very limited basis, okay? So China would probably provide weapons and materiel but this will not impact the relationship between China and the United States, okay?

And during this war China will maintain a position of what we call strategic ambiguity, and all this is saying is that China is not going to say that we support Iran, okay? Russia will not come out and say we support Iran. Never, before this war happens, Russia and China could, if they chose, sign a treaty with Iran saying that if anyone attacks you we'll come to your aid, right? They will not sign this treaty because they need to maintain strategic ambiguity, okay? China and Russia do not Want to be dragged into this war.

Does that make sense, okay? So my guess is that China will provide assistance to Iran but on a very limited basis and on a basis that the United States can accept, okay? That's the first thing. The second thing is, listen, I'm just making a prediction that this war will happen. I don't know it's going to happen, okay? You understand, I'm just a high school teacher, I'm not making the decisions, okay? I'm just teaching you how to think about geopolitics.

And third of all, when you're actually in the United States you'll find that there's so much anger at Israel that no one really cares about students. Do you understand? I mean, at that point most Americans will be extremely anti-war. It would be like the Vietnam War, where you have this massive protest and civil unrest because there were a lot of Americans who were against the war, and quite honestly it was a pointless war. America accomplished nothing by fighting the war, okay? So, great question, Peter. Does that make sense to you? Okay, any more? Okay, great question. So we talked about the idea of hubris, right?

Empire, hubris. And so Israel is a small nation, about 8 million people, right? It's not the American Empire. It's not the American Empire. The problem is this, the problem is that if you look at the Middle East, the strongest military power in the Middle East is Israel by far, okay? Israel does not actually need American protection. If the entire Middle East got together and attacked Israel, Israel would win, because this happened twice before, right, in the Yom Kippur War and the Six Day War. So militarily speaking Israel is powerful, and quite honestly if the United States were to retreat from the Middle East, Israel would dominate, okay? So even though it does not look like an empire, it's basically an empire, you understand? So therefore It from hubris, okay? It's not going to be strategic and flexible and creative. It doesn't have to be because it has military dominance over everyone. But that's a very good question. Just because Israel is small does not mean it is weak, it's very okay?

Any more questions? Okay, the question is, very good, so is America constraining Israel? And you can make the argument both ways, okay? You can make the argument that the American presence in Israel is preventing Israel from starting a regional war, okay?

But you can also make the argument that Israel right now is using America to pursue a lot of its interests. So it's a very complicated question. But I personally think that America is right now constraining Israel, because Israel needs American support and that constrains the actions of Israel. If America were not around, then it's possible that Israel unleashes the force of its military, and its military is very, very strong. If America were to leave the region, then I think Israel would become the dominant power in the region. But I think the same is true throughout the world. If America left Europe, who would become the dominant power? Germany, right? And if America left East Asia, who would become the power? Japan. Does that make sense? So I would say that the regional powers right now are Germany, Israel and Japan, and it's the American Empire that's constraining all three right now. If America were just to go back home and isolate itself, then these three nations would rise to the top.

Any more questions? That's a great question. So first of all, listen, this is all theory and conjecture. America has not expressed any intent of invading, and if America does invade Iran, then chances are it will win the war.

But an invasion of Iran, if it lost the war, would basically mean the end of the American Empire. The reason why is, if you look at why empires collapsed, it's because of three reasons. The first is the idea of overextension. It's doing too many things at once. It's fighting this war in Ukraine, it's fighting this war in Iran, it's fighting wars everywhere basically. The idea of overextension, that's the first reason. Second is the idea of debt. It basically just runs out of money because it's overextended, and this leads to the idea of civil unrest. So the American Empire is heading into a lot of trouble over the next 10 years, because all three things are happening at once: overextension, debt and civil unrest.

At the same time, the American Empire is extremely wealthy and extremely powerful, so even though America loses the war, there's still no peer competitor to the United States. But all that means is that the world will divide into different regional blocs, where maybe Germany controls Europe, Japan controls East Asia, Israel controls the Middle East.

So more of a parallel world, a multipolar world as opposed to a unipolar world where one nation controls everything. The decline of the American Empire is going to take decades, centuries. But we'll talk about this in a future class. What will happen to America if it loses the war? Any more questions? Yeah. Okay, so that's a good question. The ground invasion, what will provoke it? That's something that I want to spend a future class on. But listen, we've done a lot of wars, and we know that America doesn't really need a reason to fight a war, do you understand? It can just make up a reason.

So basically the argument that I want to make is that if Trump wins the presidency, then it's most likely that he will start a war against Iran. That's what I think. I think it will be Trump who initiates the war, and I think that it will happen maybe two years from now. So this is a very complicated question: what's the relationship between Israel and America? The reason why it's complicated is that there's something called the Israel Lobby, and again we need to spend an entire class on the idea of the Israel Lobby, because it makes no sense.

It's really hard to understand by itself, so I'll spend an entire class on the Israel Lobby and then you'll understand why there's an alliance between Israel and America. All right, but thank you. Any more questions? So just to summarize, we will do a class on Jack's question, what will the war look like and what will it mean for America if it loses the war. We'll also do a class on David's question, which is what's the relationship between Israel and America. Any more questions? Yes, we'll also be talking about the rise of Japan and Germany. All right, any more questions? Okay, great. I'll see you next week.