Geo-Strategy Update: US-Iran War Incoming

Hi, hi YouTube. This is Professor Jiang again. I am in Toronto. I'm still trying to recover from the jet lag and the time difference. As everyone knows, it seems this war in the Middle East is blowing up, and it seems like even though the United States has yet to declare war on Iran, it will probably happen in the next couple of days, with the United States bombing Iran.

So today I'm going to share with you my impressions, my analysis of what's happening in the Middle East, and I hope that this discussion will be clarifying and illuminating for many of you. It's very clear what the US intention is, because we've seen what the United States has done to Iraq, Libya and Syria. They call it regime change, but it's really the destruction of the society, the destruction of the capacity of a people to be a nation, to work collectively. And the most glaring example, of course, is Iraq.

In 2003, before the Americans invaded, it was a fairly well-functioning society. Yeah, I mean there were sanctions that impoverished the people, but overall it was a fairly stable society in the Middle East. The United States goes in to overthrow Saddam Hussein, and at that time you had a lot of people who welcomed this transition and this change, and they believed that the Americans would implement democracy, which was a stated mission, and it would lead to a more prosperous Iraq. But very soon the Americans implement a policy called, which is to remove anyone from the Baathist party from government, from the military, from the police.

The problem with this is these are the elite of society. You remove the elite from society, from the pillars of power, society ceases to function properly. And that's exactly what happened. It led to massive sectarian violence that continues even today in Iraq. So I can't believe that anyone's so stupid as to not know the consequences of this policy of de-Baathification.

And so when Americans say regime change in the Middle East, think of Iraq 2003 and what happened afterwards. So the question now is, how will the Americans move forward? Well, the American strategy in the Middle East has been in place for the past 20 years, and regime change requires three pillars. The first pillar is decapitation of the leadership. Just remove the entire leadership. The second is revolutionary intent, and you do that through economic sabotage, through sanctions, by destroying infrastructure that allows people to live normal lives, which includes water supply, electricity.

And the third pillar of the strategy is to foment sectarian violence, to divide and conquer the people, to take advantage of the fact that within the societies there are these minorities of people who have traditionally been suppressed. You give them a promise of a better life. So in Iraq 2003 you had the Kurds, but you also had the Shia, the Shiites.

In Iran, there are tons and tons of minorities who are discontent with the way things are right now. So that's the American strategy moving forward. And if we want to clarify or simplify the strategy, we can use a metaphor. To win wars in the Middle East, Americans use bombs, they use propaganda, and they use money. The bombs are basically you have these fighter jets going in to destroy any military opposition. Propaganda is CNN, BBC, New York Times, to create the impression that this is being done in the name of democracy and prosperity and peace.

And then money, in that you are financing a lot of the opposition groups. You're financing a lot of the internal dissent which will overthrow the regime. So this strategy, bombs, propaganda, money, is also being implemented right now in Iran, and in fact you can make the argument that this has been going on secretly underground for many years.

Personally, I think the strategy won't work. First of all, bombs don't really work with the geography of Iran. Remember, Iran is mountainous terrain. It's a huge, huge country. It's three times the size of Iraq.

So I'm not convinced that air strikes will do any real lasting damage to the infrastructure of. Propaganda: New York Times, CNN, BBC have absolutely no credibility today, not even among Western domestic audiences. They have even less in Iran. And then you have money, and I don't know how effective money will be, because at the end of the day, what differentiates Iran from, say, Libya, Syria and Iraq is that the people in Iran consider themselves Persians. In other words, they consider themselves heirs to a brilliant, creative civilization that's been around for 5,000 years.

And I can't overstate enough how that would energize and motivate the people to resist and to unite together. Also, what's really important is the Iranians saw exactly what happened to the Iraqis. This once vibrant, harmonious, brilliant nation was destroyed by American sanctions and American air strikes. So I don't think that the Americans have a compelling case to make before the Iranian people. Another way of saying this is that even though it seems the Americans have the military advantage, they are still the greatest military in human history.

The problem, though, is the Iranians have much more strategic flexibility. What I mean by that is that the Americans, to overthrow this regime, need to decapitate the leadership. They need to create internal dissent, a revolution, and they need to rally the religious minorities against the regime in Tehran. That's really the main strategy moving forward and really the only. Oh, there's my son Chris, by the way. And that's the only real path to victory for the Americans, whereas the Iranians have much more strategic flexibility. So in other words, America and its allies in the Middle East have major strategic vulnerabilities.

Let's, for example, take Saudi Arabia. Well, Saudi Arabia has two vulnerable resources that the Iranians, at any time, can strike at through their proxies, the Houthis. You have the desalination plants, which are the only source of fresh water for Saudi Arabia. If you knock out the desalination plants in Saudi Arabia, Saudi Arabia loses all its fresh water in two weeks' time and there's no way of replenishing that fresh water. Then of course you have the oil fields, which are extremely vulnerable to rocket attacks.

So Saudi Arabia, the main US ally of Arab nations in the Middle East, is extremely vulnerable to Iranian attacks. Then you have the Strait of Hormuz, which controls a great deal of the world's trade. If Iran closes that off, then that cuts off not just oil to East Asia, but it cuts off revenue for American allies like Oman, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Qatar. And the last strategic vulnerability is you have all sorts of American bases throughout the Middle East, especially in Kuwait, especially in Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and these are legitimate military targets if America declares war on Iran.

So another way of saying this is that Americans' ability to inflict pain on Iran, we know it's predictable and we know that the Iranians can sustain it, because this sanction regime has been going on for the past few decades. But the Iranians' ability to inflict pain on American allies as well as the American military as well as American consumers, well, that's not really predictable. And ultimately you can make the argument that because the American people are not in favor of this war, it's less likely that American consumers will be able to absorb the high oil prices and inflation that this war would inevitably cause.

So I would say, going into this war, just from a geopolitical analytical perspective, I would say it's very much in favor of the Iranians. This does not mean that the Americans and Israelis will not be able to inflict tremendous damage on the nation. I mean, if America and Israel continue their bombing campaign, which I suspect they will for the next few months, then we will see tremendous damage and economic loss within Iran. But ultimately war is not decided by resources, weapons or technology. It's really decided by a people's willingness to fight and die for what they believe in.

And I think when it comes to this question, I think the Iranians have a huge advantage over the Americans. Also, let's not forget that the Iranians have been studying, sorry, sorry, sorry, the Iranians have been studying the American strategy in the Middle East for the past 20 years, and I'm pretty sure they developed counter strategies against an American attack. And I think the main counter strategy is the idea of decentralization. You've got these different militias, different cells embedded in different parts of Iran. So even though America and Israel may be able to decapitate the leadership, may be able to knock out the central leadership in Tehran, they won't be able to occupy the country, and unless they're able to occupy the country and install a military regime that's to their liking, then this war is not won, then Iran is still a functioning threat to American Middle East interests.

Having gone through some broad analysis, let's look at questions that viewers have been asking on my Discord server. The first big question is, will nuclear weapons be used in this war at any point? My intuition tells me it won't be, for many, many reasons. The first major reason is there is a huge taboo against the use of nuclear weapons. If America were to detonate a nuke, America would lose all credibility, all authority among its allies and among the world, and we have to remember that this war is being fought to reestablish American credibility and authority in the world.

Putin's invasion of Ukraine did a great deal of damage to America's reputation, and fighting this war in Iran is to reestablish the idea that America is still the global hegemon, that it is still a unipolar world. And so by using a nuke, it shows the desperation, anxiety and, quite honestly, incompetence of the American military. So for that reason I don't think America will use nukes. Also, even though Putin has not publicly stated that he will retaliate if America uses a nuke against Iran, he hasn't done this publicly because it's not to his advantage to say it publicly.

But I'm sure that through back channels, through intermediaries, Putin has made this very clear to the Americans, and Putin will tolerate an American invasion of Iran but he will not tolerate nuclear weapons being used in this war. So I think we can discount the use of nukes in this war. We would have to reach a very high point in the escalation ladder for even nukes to be considered in this war. So I think, for the purpose of analysis, let's discount the possibility of nukes.

The second question is, what are the unknowns going into this war?

Well, I think there are three big unknowns. The first big unknown is what happens if the Americans kill the supreme leader of Iran. This would trigger a succession crisis. His son is supposed to take over in the case of the death of the Ayatollah, but he's extremely unpopular and he's not that competent. So I'm not sure what the death of the supreme leader, the assassination of the supreme leader, would do to the dynamic of this war. But I would assume that this would be a huge advantage for the Americans and the Israelis.

So I think that's a big question. Will they be able to assassinate the supreme leader? That's the first big question. The second big question is, what will Putin's response be? As we know, Putin has withdrawn a lot of his Soviet, a lot of his Russian advisers from Iran, and Putin has stayed pretty quiet in the matter, and so what he intends, what he will do, we just don't know right now, and I think that's the intention. I think Putin wants to be the power broker behind the scenes.

And I think in many ways he's setting up a trap for America, because there's really one scenario in which America loses this war, really badly. If America were to send in ground troops, it would lose this war. The reason why is the idea of the sunk cost fallacy. So if America were to send in the Marines and a ground invasion, we can expect the American military would just bulldoze all opposition. It would establish beachheads. It would establish forward operating bases throughout the interior of Iran. And at this point everyone's cheering on, like, look how great the American military is.

There's a surge of patriotism in America. The American media, CNN, New York Times, they are just praising the American military to the sky. And it would seem a repeat of Operation Desert Storm in 2003. The problem, though, is the American military does not have the depth, the strategic depth, the resources, the supply lines in order to sustain this attack. And what would happen very quickly is this massive blitzkrieg, shock and awe, whatever you call it, in Iran would get bogged down really quickly. And at this point it would be very easy for the underground militias, these cell groups, to strike at supply lines for the Americans.

And it'll become very quickly almost an impossible war to win for the Americans, but at the same time they've invested so much and they're so close to Tehran, they're so close to taking over the capital, that they can't give up. It's the sunk cost fallacy, and the sunk cost fallacy is such a powerful force in geopolitics. And so the Americans are kind of stuck there and then they're just forced to, it's a black hole for them. They're just forced to throw in what they don't have, and this might trigger, well, this will definitely trigger protest across America, which may lead to a civil war.

So remember, it's impossible for any nation in this world to defeat America, just impossible. Even if the entire world were to get together and attack America, the world would still lose. The only way to defeat America is by causing a civil war, a revolution in America, that would damage the regime so much that America would be forced to retreat from its obligations in the world. So my question then is, does Putin understand this? And has he set up conditions in a way to create this outcome?

And my thinking is yes. This is Putin's plan moving forward, and Putin will be working behind the scenes in order to create a situation where America is forced to invade Iran with ground forces. These ground forces will seem to quickly establish supremacy in Iran, but they get bogged down, and then Trump, the Americans may be forced to have a draft, and this will lead to Vietnam War protests and conflicts across America, which may in the end trigger an American civil war. So that's Putin and Russia. Again, we don't know exactly what they will do, but if I'm right about Putin then I think he will very much be the master manipulator behind the scenes.

The third great unknown is China. China and Iran have very strong economic ties. China gets a third to half its oil from Iran. If Iran were to fall and America were to control the oil supply, then the Chinese economy would be in a lot of trouble. Geopolitically, this would be very, very bad for China. So China is a great unknown. What will China's response be? My prediction is we will not hear from China in this conflict that much. In fact, we can sort of discount China from this war.

There are reasons why. The first major reason is China doesn't really have a grand geopolitical strategy. It doesn't really understand its place in the world. It doesn't have a theory to explain its place in the world. Remember, previously I discussed the heartland thesis, the Mackinder thesis, where both America and Britain need to stop a hegemon emerging to unite the Eurasian continent. Because if a land power would emerge, maybe Germany, maybe Russia, were able to unite Europe and Asia together, then that would destroy America and Britain's capacity to control global trade.

You can have railways connect Eurasia and you really don't have to trade by the seas anymore. That's how America and Britain see the world. Russia understands that it is extremely vulnerable to invasions. It's been invaded by multiple nations in its history, which has caused tremendous death and destruction within Russia. So Russia needs to be on the offensive if it is to maintain its territorial integrity. But when we go to China, China doesn't really care about the rest of the world.

For China, what's important is to maintain its territorial integrity by not participating in the world. China built the Great Wall, and the purpose of the Great Wall was to prevent outsiders from coming into China but also to prevent insiders from leaving China. So for China its main priority is to maintain its territorial integrity, and what it understands is that the only way for the Communist Party to fall in China is if it were to engage itself in an external geopolitical conflict that it has no way of extricating itself from. That's why China is not going to get involved in this war in the Middle East.

And at the end of the day, if the United States conquers Iran and forces China to pay twice, three, four times as much for oil, then China will just absorb the cost, because for China what's really important is to maintain the stability of the regime. Geopolitics doesn't really matter.

So I would say these are the three big questions moving forward that we can watch out for. Will the Americans be able to kill the Supreme Leader? Because that is definitely on the agenda, and they're investing a lot of resources to ensure this possibility, and I'm not sure if it will happen.

But if it does happen, then the consequences for Iran will be quite dire. Another unknown is Russia, what Putin will do. I think it will be almost impossible to truly gauge his intentions and strategy moving forward. Now, another unknown is China. Will China participate in this conflict on the side of Iran? My guess, my prediction, is if there is participation it'll be very limited. So China will supply armaments, but it will not intervene on behalf of Iran to the degree that Iran would really want.

One last thing I want to talk about is that some of you have been curious as to how I've been able to so accurately predict the contours of this war. The quick answer to this is I use a new analytical model called game theory. Game theory is something that I will discuss in greater detail over the next few months as I analyze this war even more. And game theory is not a secret. I mean, it is not something that's impossible to learn. My hope as we move along is to teach everyone the ability to use game theory to analyze geopolitics, in order to anticipate events and to prepare for events.

So that's it for my first analysis of this war. I'm hoping to make more updates as this war progresses. There are lots of things I can't really talk about on YouTube because I'll be banned or I'll be censored. As some of you know, I made a video on the history of Germany, and that's been banned in Germany by YouTube because it was flagged by certain users who found some material within the video extremely controversial. So I need to be really careful about what I say in order to avoid YouTube censorship.

I'll probably, at some point, move to Rumble, where I'll be more free to discuss what I really think about the world, so please watch out for that. I'll make an announcement if I move on to Rumble. But the big announcement is I've set up a Discord server. As some of you know, this Discord server will allow us to engage as a community. What I'm hoping to do at some point is set up a time where we can have question and answer, where you can ask me anything and I'll tell you how my thought process works and guide you through the process of developing a game theory mindset, so you can analyze global events for yourself using game theory.

The link to my Discord server, called Predictive History, is in the description, so please click on that and please join the Discord server, and very quickly we'll set up an hour-long live stream where I'll answer some questions that you have posted on the Discord server. I apologize if I'm not responding to your messages. I have two young boys who are running around the park right now and I have to watch them and they're very active.

And they're suffering from jet lag. So I'm taking them out on strolls to the parks every single day. So I'm usually not at home. I don't have internet access outside my parents' house. So I apologize if I'm responding to you in real time to your queries and to your messages. I am extremely thankful and grateful for the community that we're developing right now, and I hope to build on this community, because as some of you have pointed out, the world is moving to a very dark place, and the only way to survive and to anticipate and to prepare for the chaos that this new world will bring about is to come together as a community and to help each other out and to have solidarity.

So please join the Discord server and I will see everyone on Discord. Goodbye.