Ian Welsh

The horizon is not so far as we can see, but as far as we can imagine

Category: Iran Page 3 of 4

Iran For Dummies

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On April 23, 2026

17 Comments

~by Sean Paul Kelley

On the road to Meshed, 2006.

Between 1,000-2,000 non-Iranian born Americans visit Iran every year. In 2006 I was one of those Americans that makes up a tiny, tiny minority of Americans that have actually visited our bête noire, boogeyman, and our archest of arch foes. I was there when Iran was a founding member of the Axis of Evil. For 21 days I experienced it all first hand. Iran is more than the sum of the good, the bad, the ugly and the sublime: it is a civilization masquerading as a nation-state in a Westphalian world and deeply aware of the precarious nature of that fact.

Now that I’ve established my bona fides—you know, that I’ve actually visited Iran and also wrote my masters thesis on the ancient Persian city and one time capital of Khorasan and the Abbasid Caliphate, Merv—this endows me with certain privileges when it comes to discussing Iran. One of those privileges is the legit use of what scholars and philosopher’s call ‘argumentum ab auctoritate,’ in ‘Murican that means “argument from authority.” (And yes, I was showing off my knowledge of Latin, sue me.)

So, take it as gospel, I’m not claiming infallibility here, only that I am an OG authority.

A confession is in order: before I visited Iran in 2006 I had extremely wide and deep preconceived notions about what I would see and experience in Iran. Said notions were damn near hard-wired.

For example, I wrote in a travel essay for the San Antonio Express-News that I was completely wigged out by the picture of the Ayatollah Khomeini above the immigration line upon arrival. I shuddered, as if looking upon Old Scratch himself and thought to myself, “have I just bet my life on two-pairs with a 10 high? Fuck, I’d have been safer in Papua New Guinea.”

But I persevered through my very palpable discomfort.

By 2006 I had about 55 previously visited countries under my belt, including almost all of the ‘Stans, excepting Pakistan and Afghanistan. I had also covered most of Turkey and much of Anatolia. Also had been to Oman, the UAE and Bahrain. Oh yeah, and Azerbaijan, Iran’s confessional Shi’a confreres.

So, I had ideas and notions galore.

Piling Pelion upon Ossa (IYKYK) was a lifetime of American propaganda about Iran. And a lifetime’s worth a propaganda is hard to escape, no matter how open-minded a person you are, or how supererogatory you aspire to be. Yet again, I persevered and walked through my fear.

I add these far too verbose prefatory remarks because they produced a multitude of preconceived notions about Iran. Frankly, I’m too embarrassed to describe what my expectations were. I’ll simply be charitable and go with juvenile.

Esfahan

Stucco Mihrab in the Friday Mosque, 2006

No country has ever so completely and comprehensively demolished my preconceived notions of place, people and government like the Islamic Republic of Iran did. Iran detonated an ignorance obliterating nuke in my brain that to this day is difficult to describe.

With that said, I am now going to address, in often harsh and sarcastic ways, the seven most common arguments made about why Iran is such a terrible, shitty, murderous country and why we should destroy them.

Argument the First: Iran is a poor backwards country, populated by uneducated religious fanatics.

A simple four word Google search ( e.g. iran higher education statistics ) demolishes such ignorant balderdash.

Let’s do a little compare and contrast, shall we?

In Iran 61% of college age adults are enrolled in a university. The country ranks in the top 10 of STEM graduates, with a very strong emphasis on engineering. Women outnumber men in higher education enrollment standing at 60%.

College age adults enrolled in university vary between 41 and 43% of the population in the Home of the Brave. The United States also, like Iran, ranks in the top 10 of STEM graduates. But there is a caveat: the large, but presently shrinking, presence of foreign students majoring in STEM attending American universities. Moreover, in the United States, women outnumber men on college campuses by a 10% margin (44% vs. 34% for men).

Iranians uneducated?

Not so much.

I found, without exception, the Iranians I engaged in conversation to be not only well-versed with contemporary history and issues—great at geography too, one happily recited the state capital of Missouri (how many of you know it? And be honest)—and equally well-versed in their own 3500 years of history.

But it wasn’t just the depth of knowledge they had of their own history, but the sophisticated knowledge of the philosophy undergirding the European Enlightenment right up to Post-Modernity and the deleterious nature of Neo-liberalism.

Ornament at Persepolis, 2006

I had a conversation with a Hojatoleslam (a clergyman one level below an Ayatollah) that meandered from John Locke, Adam Smith to Sarte, ibn Sina, al-Ghazali, back to Habermas, Schopenhauer and Godamer. We rounded off the conversation with a discussion of international relations, and he cited Hans Morganthau and Henry Kissinger’s PhD doctoral dissertation.

Here was no religious fanatic, clergy or not; no AK-47 waving, screaming zealot; this human was erudite, witty and, dare I say, quite urbane. Not an adjective many Americans would associate with a member of the Shi’a clergy, no?

The clergy of Iran are very well educated in all matters secular. They are so for a very good reason, too. And no, they don’t all attend meddressehs so as to memorize the Quran, although they are capable of delivering a masterclass of Quranic exegesis when called upon. And if you don’t know what the word exegesis means go stick your head in a Cuisinart. You simply don’t have the intellectual firepower to have this conversation.

Reason being for aforesaid education: these men are being groomed to lead a modern nation state. And let me stress the word modern. Iran as a nation is fully reconciled with all the varied and sundry accoutrements of modernity. Is it a reconciliation that would make Western Civilization happy? Most certainly not. But it ain’t our country. We profess, ad nauseum, to honor and protect self-rule and self-determination in theory. In fact: fuck no we don’t. But I digress . . .

Importantly, the revolution in 1979 is used as a constant cudgel and brickbat in Western media accounts as that which led Iran down the shit hole to backwardsdom, like Afghanistan, or Saudi Arabia. This is a seriously tragic misconception that I’ll address another time. Suffice it to say that the Iranian revolution was about reconciling Iran’s deep and rich past with modernity and all its complications, which is exactly what happened.

Argument the Second: but Iran is repressive country that imprisons so many . . .

. . . the next person who makes this wildly inaccurate assertion will have a nuke dropped in their crotch.

You want to talk repression, okay, let’s compare and contrast one more time.

Here, in the land of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness between 542-698 per 100,000 people are imprisoned, I won’t even bother addressing how racist our prison policies are. The number for Iran is half that. Yes, go google it before your pajamas rot. I repeat: half as many, 287-294 per 100,000 in prison.

Are some of them political prisoners? You bet they are, I carry no man’s water. But the reality of home is that there are American political prisoners also, although most that are persecuted escape to exile, eg. Ed Snowden.

And before you open your mouth and say some more stupid shit, let me offer you five words: Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib.

As Grandpa Bruce, a cowboy’s cowboy and brother of World Champion Toots Mansfield, used to yell at someone doing or saying something stupid, “stop milking the bull!”

Argument the Third: Iran treats women like crap; remember they killed that girl who was protesting!

This is such a childish argument it beggars belief. It also deprives the young woman we’re discussing of her second most precious resource: her agency. First being time, obviously.

I will now admonish the children in the room, children who should be seen and not heard.

The adults are talking so Daddy will now spank.

Mahsa Amini was protesting and her protesting tragically ended in her death.

How many of us will see such noble ends emerge phoenix-like from such sacrifice?

That she died for her beliefs is honorable and worthy of my respect and veneration. What is unworthy of the woman is using her to score propaganda points. And yes, I’m aware of the hypocrisy of what I just wrote. It’s my essay. Write your own in opposition if you must. But be damned sure you’ve been to Iran before you do.

I digress . . . again. Guan Yin!

But it was the effects of her death that were most profound—and I’d hazard that while unhappy she had to die, she might find some measure of solace in the climate of change her death created. Fact is, her death had and has had profound effects on Iran. Her death galvanized hundreds of thousands of Iranian women in a way the regime could no longer ignore. And her death led to significant change in Iran’s enforcement and public perception of hijab.

For example: since 2022 many women in larger cities go without a head scarf. There is no need for me to provide you with a link. All you have to do is Google it. Or Tik-Tok it. It’s there to be found. I guaran-damn-tee-it!

I value intellectual honesty so it’s important to note that it is still illegal for women to go without.

But ask yourself, what unjust American law have you, or are you, willing to break, risking fines, perhaps prison, because it’s an unjust law? That’s a tough ask, ain’t it?

If you’re unwilling to walk and chew gum at the same time, we’ll never agree on a damn thing. So, as I am nothing if not considerate, and have no interest in wasting your time, I advise you to stop reading this. It’s only going to get worse for you.

The second most beautiful mosque in the world.

Argument the Fourth: they mowed down so many protestors who wanted a new . . .

. . . I’m going to throw the next person who shouts this slogan in an industrial-sized microwave oven, set it on defrost, and thaw out their brain.

Protestors risk their lives in any and every country the protest in. Seriously, you read a history book lately? How many African-Americans were slaughtered during our Civil Rights Movement? How long did it take? Still ongoing in reality.

And what about those middle-class white kids gunned down at Kent State over Vietnam?

Protestors die. It happens. Any protestor unaware of the potential for death is a fool. Even successful revolutions eat their own children. So, please, check yourself and that moral high horse you’re on at the door—so sorry to mix metaphors—because a.) that fucker’s dead and b.) it smells very bad.

Argument the Fifth: but they are divided. So many Iranians hate the regime.

Hell’s half-acre, that’s about as dumb as asserting Jessica Simpson has a PhD in Astrophysics.

A query if I may: as a percentage of the population, what percent of Americans hate their ruling regime?

I’d wager it’s closing in on 45%. What say you?

Now, close your eyes and imagine the president is a female Democrat? What’s the percentage now?

Gotcha, didn’t I?

Second, let me guess: you think bombing the Iranians will divide them, shatter the state apparatus like we did in Iraq and let loose chaos, perhaps? Aside from your utter lack of any semblance of morality and/or ethics—the strategic stupidity on display is galactic in size.

The idea that our efforts will degrade support for the regime to such a degree that the people stab it with their steely knives and really kill the beast this time (apologies to Don Henley) is barely worthy of a first grader.

But I still gotta ask: we’re six weeks into the war. How’s that idea working out?

I’ll give you a hint. Actually, I’d rather slap you upside the head like Gibbs would Tony on NCIS but I can’t reach you through wi-fi. I’m just not able to spontaneously disembody myself and reembody at will.

Sublime.

So, the hint comes as a question.

What happens when you bomb elementary schools, killing hundreds of little kids?

Peeps in any nation be getting unified.

Why?

Well, anger towards an outsider—the other—is a universal, time-tested human unifier.

And Iranians are pissed and more unified than ever.

Argument the Sixth: but, but, Iran is an Islamic religious tyranny!

Attend: the constitution of the Islamic Republic mandates two seats in parliament be held by Christians.

Feeling dumb now, aren’t you?

This will make you feel superhumanly dumber: one seat is mandated for Persian Jews.

You read that right: JEWS.

If you don’t believe me, google it.

Final Argument: but you can’t drink alcohol!

Who gives a shit about alcohol when opium is everywhere. Trust me on this.

Did Gen. Caine Defy A Presidential Order Saturday Night and Deny Trump the Nuclear Codes?

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On April 20, 2026

14 Comments

~by Sean Paul Kelley

Kerry Burgess on X is reporting this: “General Caine cited Article 92 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice on Saturday night, as he refused Trumps order to execute a nuclear strike on Iran.”

Gen. Caine is the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and therefore not in the direct chain of command. Would Trump even know that? Probably not.

But this story is gaining traction, from Sky News, the Mirror, and the Daily Express.

I’m speechless.

The Twin Pillars of the Interregnum of Unreality Are Under Stress

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On April 8, 2026

29 Comments

Guest Post by Nat Wilson Turner

Last Fall, I posited that the US and greater West are in the grips of an Interregnum of Unreality that began when Barack Obama successfully papered over the Great Financial Crisis while addressing none of the causes and leaving the very same banksters whose antics caused the crisis in place.

The Interregnum of Unreality is the legacy of Barack Obama who achieved near-total information dominance via traditional and social media and used that power to promulgate a message that everything was fine, nothing ever happens, the neo-liberal order will never end because it rests on two indestructible pillars:

  1. The perception of American prosperity
  2. The perception of global American military dominance

Thanks to Trump’s impericidal decision to attack Iran in February, kicking off a war he can’t TACO out of, the reputation of American invincibility has taken a beating.

The estimable Aurelian writes in his latest missive of the global political implications of the ass-whipping the American military has taken in the Ramadan War:

That hit is going to be all the larger because of the massive, orchestrated PR campaign that has been going on for more than a generation, presenting the US as the Empire and the Hegemon, its military the unstoppable colossus trampling small countries underfoot. But the test of a hegemon is not how loudly you shout, but whether you can in fact do what you claim. In spite of defeats in Iraq and in Afghanistan, and the ignominious scuttle from the Red Sea, both boosters and critics of the US have been prepared to believe the US had that much power until the last month or so. But now we have price discovery, and it turns out that the US has large and quite capable forces, but it’s not the unstoppable giant ogre that it claimed to be, and never was. The whole “hegemon” thesis, people are beginning to realise, was smoke and mirrors all along: it’s just that now it’s obvious. It’s not just how it is now, it’s how it always was: a traditional result of wars, after all, is to reveal the truth about militaries. No doubt even as I write, pundits are busy composing apologias along the lines of “well, of course by hegemony we just meant Quite a Powerful Nation with a Large Military, actually.” But overselling and underperforming will have their usual political consequences.

He also brings in the second pillar of our interregnum of unreality, the markets:

There’s an interesting comparison to be made with the “Artificial Intelligence” racket, which was similarly hyped, and also expected to somehow guarantee world-dominating status for the US. But in quiet corners away from the hysteria, people who know what they are talking about have been pointing out for several years now that “AI” is a scam, that as an industry it will never be profitable, and that the money, and even more the power and the infrastructure needed, will never be available. And just in the last few weeks, the media are discovering that that’s how it is, and indeed that’s how it always was, if you had bothered to do a few sums. We can add the interesting rider, however, that in a world where generating power is going to have to be rationed, and silicon chips may be scarce, the “AI” scam may come to a swifter and more brutal end than even its worst critics supposed. Exactly what that will do to the US economy I’m not qualified to say, but I imagine it won’t be pretty.

And the damage will not just be financial. Most of the big names of international business, the Musks, the Zuckerbergs, the Altmans and the rest of that lot, treated with fawning reverence by the media and governments of the world, and who have persuaded us that what they think is actually important, will turn out to have empires built on not very much. How badly the poisonous mixture of world depression, financial crisis, and shortage of power and chips will hit them I don’t think anybody knows, but if they survive, their image, and that of the US as a technological leader, will have suffered as badly as the image of its military.

Earlier this week I posted at Naked Capitalism about the deep ties between OpenAI, Oracle and the UAE and that there are indications they are deepening those ties even as the foundations of their partnership are being lit on fire.

The weak links in the AI boom and the Middle East — OpenAI, Oracle, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) — are strengthening their ties even as the Ramadan War exposes their increasing vulnerabilities.

Spoiler alert: Despite OpenAI’s jarring strategic shifts last week, the UAE is still pouring money down that hole.

Is reality finally intruding on our generation-long delirium?

When Trump failed to calm the markets last week with his ridiculous address to the nation, it seemed that a little reality was peeking through the veils.

But when Iran joined Trump yesterday in claiming that the basic terms of a ceasefire and ensuing negotiations had been reached, the markets roared their approval, with American equities markets posting huge gains.

This despite the ceasefire never taking place and the Strait of Hormuz only being open for a few hours.

As I attempted to document in a post earlier today at Naked Capitalism, “cognitive dissonance and conflicting agendas among key players” has allowed the western media to engage in an orgy of chatter about this ceasefire that never was even as Israel, Iran, and reportedly the UAE all launched strikes at civilians and industrial infrastructure.

One hopes that Trump realizes he went too far in his genocidal threats to destroy Iranian civilization and will at least refrain from implicitly threatening to nuke Iran going forward.

However it’s almost certain he will attempt more attacks on Iran involving US ground forces and equally certain that those attempts will end as disastrously as his first.

We’re seeing a full-on anti-Trump mutiny from leading MAGA media figures and even 70 of the senescent US House Democrats are calling for Trump to be removed from office because Trump’s rhetoric freaked the American mainstream the fuck out.

Democratic 2028 aspirants Rep. Ro Khanna and Sen. Chris Murphy both capitalized on the Trump-triggered panic and ensuing TACO to raise their profiles. Most of rest of the Dem 2028 aspirants have been caught flat footed, trapped by their zionist obligations and inability to recognize the political moment.

The freakouts and cognitive dissonance will continue until they can’t.

And as Aurelian pointed out, the consequences of the Interregnum Ending will be serioius:

For the US, as I’ve indicated, the shock is likely to be existential: Americans have been so misled for so long by their governments and media about their economic and military strength that the sudden discovery of its limits will be brutal and de-stabilising. Above all, a political culture of entitlement, which is used to issuing demands and threats to try to get what it wants, will suddenly have to cope with the US becoming the demandeur, as it is over the current “ceasefire,” obliged to make compromises and sacrifices to get what it needs to keep the country going, and seeing others expand into the strategic space it has vacated. Whether the current political system will survive the shock, and whether it will be capable of actually making the concessions necessary for survival, are very open questions.

Meanwhile the majority of Americans are getting their faces vigorously rubbed in the litter box of reality every time they pump gas and soon the inflationary impact of Trump’s war will resonate throughout the economy.

The longer it takes for the official narrative to adjust to new circumstances, the longer the Interregnum of Unreality continues, the worse the impact will be and the bigger the looming revolutionary moment will seem to be and the more forceful the ensuing crackdown will need to be to snuff it.

Getting Real About The Second Iranian War

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On March 27, 2026

34 Comments

I saw an article today by the American Conservatives, who tend to be more sensible than most conservatives. It posits that peace can’t be made with Iran till Trump gets tough with Israel, because it’s Israel who keeps escalating.

This is true, but it avoids the pedo-elephant in the room.

It is almost certain that Israel has blackmail on Trump. Videos and pictures of him raping kids or young teenagers. (I print this because I know there is zero chance Trump can risk discovery at a trial.)

Trump is completely compromised. He’s on a leash.

Is this 100%? Of course not. But well over 90%. Trump was Epstein’s best friend for years, and Epstein’s properties were all saturated with video cameras. Epstein clearly worked for Israel.

Trump needs to be impeached or removed with the 25th Amendment, but the problem is that a proportion of Congress are certainly compromised as well, another proportion are bought and paid for, and another proportion are scared of Zionist money being used against them.

So the war seems likely to go on until Israel wants it to stop, and what Trump wants is irrelevant. As for ordinary Americans, their interests are not represented: no one in power gives a damn what they think. The correct action is revolution, but Americans talk big about the 2nd amendment, they don’t use it to resist tyranny.

Iran has some simple needs to be willing to declare peace, the most important of which is “this is the last war”, the second of which is “no more assassinations and no more attacks” and the third of which is “since we can’t trust you to keep any agreement we have to make you incapable of attacking us again or too terrified to do it.”

Manjier has a lot of contacts in the Resistance, here’s the list he published:

Notice that it includes stopping the war/genocide on Libya/Hezbollah and Gaza. There’s no way the Israelis will agree to that unless they have no choice.

I don’t see any way this war ends before Israel is a smoking ruin, and the Gulf States are so terrified of Iran they declare they’ll never allow US bases in their countries again.

Can Iran enforce this? I think so. The US and Israel seem to be running out of interceptors a lot faster than Iran’s running out of missiles and drones. China’s in their corner, quietly supplying them with all the “non military” equipment they need. And Iran’s pain tolerance is extremely high: the decision makers know that if they don’t win decisively again Israel will just assassinate them later and probably kill their families at the same. The new Ayatollah lost his father, wife and kids.

Here’s one analysis of the munitions numbers:

 

The problem, as has been stated many times, is that no “deal” is possible. America will not keep them. Israel will not keep them. So they must be defeated for Iran and its leaders to be safe. The victory must be crushing. If I were in Iran, I would be making the exact same calculation.

We’ll end this with another Iranian propaganda video, sort of a palate cleanser.

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Pro Iran War Propaganda Videos

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On March 25, 2026

24 Comments

Of all the wars I’ve covered in my writing career, this one has been the hardest in the sense that figuring out what’s true and what isn’t is difficult. The baseline assumption is that nothing the US says about the war can be trusted. Most of what Iran says in concrete terms about what they fired and hit can be trusted. AI images and video have proliferated, so the old “show me picture” routine doesn’t work unless y0u’re a good image analyst and willing to spend hours. Trump, of course, lies about everything. Iranian official media exists, but it’s often censored by the West so reading their official statements is often difficult.

All that said, I think it’s time for something different: a collection of propaganda videos that are Pro-Iranian. Because of all the above, it’s unclear to me if these are official, but they’re interesting nonetheless.

The first appears to be official, was published by Russian “news” outfit RT, and makes the ethical case:


Iranian underwater drones:


This one made me laugh:

And the Korroamshahr-4 missile:

More serious posts next, though the third video is actually a pretty accurate summary of Iranian war efforts so far.

Everyone reads these article for free, but the site and Ian take money to run. If you value the writing here and can, please subscribe or donate.

Shockwaves From The Second Iranian American War

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On March 24, 2026

30 Comments

Some of the issues from the Iranian war are obvious: everyone’s talking about oil and natural gas, for example. Many have mentioned fertilizer. But I think it’s worth going into in a bit more depth.

First is that in addition to gasoline, oil is used to make bunker fuel (98% of freighters and tankers), jet fuel, and diesel (heavy machinery, large trucks.) The prices for all three are rising faster than gasoline prices and there will be a worldwide shortage. Production of semiconductors, phones and so on will shut down some time after that, depending on how the small reserves available are shared out. Taiwan is particularly vulnerable and production can be expected shut down in a couple weeks.

The chart below is from six days ago:

Don’t take the above chart too seriously, I’ve heard different numbers from different sources, and the type of oil in reserve matters a LOT.

This will, of course, hit the AI Bros hard. They have significant stockpiles of some of what they need, but not everything. Worried about that data center coming to where you live? If you’re lucky, Iran has just saved you from an AI driven spike in your energy prices, but not an oil shortage spike!

Airlines are already reducing flights. Expect prices for travel to spike significantly. If you don’t already have tickets for a trip get them now. Even so, it wouldn’t surprise me if many already booked flights are cancelled without recourse, citing forece majeur. Diesel and bunker oil shortages will mean supply line disruptions, and primary processing disruptions. Fertilizer shortages are already changing planting decisions, farmers in Australia are planning on planting much less wheat, for example.

Oil goes into a lot of things. Here are a couple of graphics showing some of them:

And,

To oversimplify, pretty much everything has some oil in it. For example I’m stocking up on NSAIDs and Tylenol 2s (legal in Canada.) I saw one person saying they went out and bought about a year’s supply of pretty much everything which can be stored. One side benefit may be that insane levels of plastic packaging might, at least, be reduced.

China’s bunkering up. No refined oil products are being allowed for export. Fortunately for China, they, unlike apparently almost every other nation in the world, are not run by retards, so they have massive petroleum reserves and they bought about 50% of the world’s grain production for the last four years and stored much of it. But this goes far beyond petrochem: they produce, for example, almost all of the world’s tungsten, and no more exports of that.

Stockpiles in the the West are essentially at zero, right now, and yes, most advanced weapons cannot be made without Tungsten.

There’s been a crash in silver prices recently. You may have read about it. But here’s the thing, there’s an actual physical shortage of it because it’s used in essentially all electronics, including semiconductors and even more importantly, solar panels. Everyone’s going to want solar panels now.

China, not being fools, are no longer allowing export of silver because they know it’s the physical shortage that matters, not the paper price on paper exchanges where delivery isn’t expected to happen.

I spent years railing that just-in-time logistics was sheer fucking insanity and should be outlawed. In addition every country who isn’t a net producer should have at least year’s stockpile of fuel and even net producers should have three years of food stored (because things like droughts and fertilizer shortages happen.) Medication and key medical goods should also be stockpiled. A lot of people are going to suffer and die when key drugs hit shortage and many cancer drugs, for example, are produced in India and on top of the factories not being able to operate without energy, many drugs use petrochemical derivatives directly.

This war should never have happened. Even if it ended now there would be serious shortages for about four to five months, and it would be three to four years before full production could be resumed, if it can be. (Shutting down oil and gas well production often damages the underlying fields.)

Oh, and which major nations will suffer the least? Russia and China. It is to laugh.

I know this is the second article on this subject in a few days, but the impacts of the war are important for you to understand.

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America’s Economic Future: Imminent Pain and Dislocation Not Seen Since the ’30s

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On March 23, 2026

20 Comments

~by Sean Paul Kelley

The end of this credit cycle is going to include the following macro events: a credit crisis, a housing crisis, an energy shock, with the potential for massive failed deliveries necessary to third world nations creating famine on a biblical scale, at least one Too Big To Fail failing, as Lehman Bros and AIG did in 2008, and the AI bubble bust. All of these will happen. Locked in. Fixed. No way out.

In a previous post I outlined the order in which the financial catastrophe barreling down on us like oncoming freight will occur. I’ve simply included one new variable: the energy shock.

Here’s how it’ll go down.

First, there is an expansion. Stocks rise. At some point the rise becomes divorced from realistic earnings expectations. This is when intense speculation drives equities into bubble territory. After all, Nvidia’s market cap is just shy of ($4.2trillion) the annual GDP of India ($4.4trillion) as of Monday March 23, 2026. Simultaneously, US Treasury buyers, ‘prudent’ investors, qualified investors (people with more than $5 million in net worth), pension funds, insurance and re-insurance companies and good old orphans and widows, as they always do, got a bit jealous and so reached for yield. They wanted safety with high returns. But in this world you can have safe or you can have high returns. You’re a fool to think you can get both at the same time; alas we have a superabundance of fools these days.

So just like in 2007-08, the shadow banking system, ie. the issuers of supposedly safe and high yielding assets, called subprime loans, experienced serious losses, that lead to the unwinding phase of the financial crisis. The 2008 fin crisis started on a lovely summer day in NYC, June 22 2007—I think the Yankees won that day—when two Bear Stearns subprime hedge funs went belly up. This was 2008’s canary in the coal mine.

This time around it isn’t subprime that has precipitated the unwind but the dominance of private equity/private credit shadow banks, such as Blue Owl, Blackstone, Blackrock, and others.

As previously noted, the current crisis’ canary in the coal mine was Blue Owl. Their very rude wake up call arrived in the form of $1.4 bn in redemption demands, which forced Blue Owl to sell assets to meet redemption needs. It was a catastrophe for Blue Owl, in every way a fire sale in which every Wall Street trader exacted his pound of flesh. It also led to a very ugly unravelling of contracts with Oracle. Oracle’ stock plummeted.

Many others have followed in the weeks since Blue Owl burped up a massive fur ball. The specifics can be found in this post and are beyond the scope of this discussion. They are pertinent, but listing them would make this a Tolstoyian endeavor. The upshot is this: normally, an enormous amount of credit destruction (read, debt) has to happen until we get to phase three of the credit cycle. One counterintuitive effect: a stronger dollar. We’re already seeing this versus the other major fiat currencies.

Moving on to one of the other developments I outlined in the first paragraph: a housing crisis. Home building has long been the foundation of the American economy. It’s in serious stress right now. As I mentioned before, last month saw a full -17.6% collapse in the purchase of new homes. In the Northeast it was an epic cow patty catastrophe: -44%. In my hometown, sellers outstrip buyers buy a full 114%. This in the heart of the ‘Texas miracle.’ I honestly don’t know how a collapse in homebuilding will effect this economy coupled with the headwinds it’s facing. I know it won’t be salutary and will exacerbate already dangerous liquidity and solvency issues caused by the private credit/private debt unwind. What else? “Cannot say. Saying, I would know. Do not know, so cannot say.” Five bucks to whoever gets that reference.

Will the Fed be able to contain both? FuckifIknow?

Adding to fierce headwinds, Trump’s war against Iran has had a similar effect on the global economy as Odysseus ill-timed opening of Aeolus’s wind bag: it’s blown us on a completely fucktarded vector, beyond any rational goal, that will take five years-at a minimum-to recover from if we stop now. Plenty of us predicted this but we’re just dipshits sitting in the basement wearing our jammies. If the Israeli’s continue their wanton destruction of everything, there is no telling how Iran will respond. And I’m not even pondering nukes here.

The effects the closure of the Straits of Hormuz are and will continue to have on the global economy, rather the effects faced by the Rules Based Order the West imposed on much of the globe will be make the European energy crisis look like a night out with Sidney Sweeney.

One effect: potential famine in those third world countries-on a biblical scale-unable to import desperately needed fertilizer from the Persian Gulf at reasonable prices.

Second, no helium. Helium is a gas essential to modern industrial life, everywhere.

Third, my best friend in Denmark joked, “hell, we might soon be back on bikes eating only porridge for dinner.” He also rued the demise of Nordstream and said, unequivocally that Danish renewables won’t be enough. This from the one European nation with the largest sector of renewables. Imagine the second order effects cascading out across the globe?

And what about the cost of transport? Not just everywhere, but especially here in the US? Anyone given any thought to just how super human stupid just in time delivery looks now? I’ve always warned about this. You know: chickens, roosting; shit like that.

Fuck it. I’ve got more than ten years of Wall Street experience so what the hell do I know?

Well, I know this as I know the sun rises in the East and sets in the West: the exogenous shock waves rippling towards the US economy are bad. Vewwy, vewwy bad. And there is no double-slilt experiement available to cancel out the oncoming waves.

What next?

Oh yeah: Too Big To Fail. Nope. Stress test? Are you Dave Chapelle?

Just ask Lehman Bros or AIG. This time around one of the Too Big To Fail institutions will fail. Maybe more than one. If I had my choice it would be Goldman, but if I am being realistic I’d put odds on Wells Fargo and/or Citigroup. Why? Well, Wells Fargo has a history of laundering tons of cartel cash, so no real culture of compliance/risk management. Citigroup has brazenly challenged the SEC to regulate them on multiple occasions. Those would be my two choices.

Finally, I’ll recap phase three of the credit cycle: the Ponzi unwind. As I wrote here,

“Crypto will be the first big Ponzi unwind. And it will take a lot of suckers with it. Plus, a damn lot of fools who worked for investment, commercial banks and private credit/equity shops. Crypto is bullshit, wrapped in dead fish skin that’s been perfumed by Chanel. No matter how good it smells, it’s rotten to the core. Crypto is to this financial crisis as CDOs and synthetic CDOs were to 2008.”

Moroever,

“The AI-hyperscalers will suffer as well, during the Ponzi unwind. Why? They are in essence engaging in a similar sort of vendor financing like CISCO and Juniper Networks did in the dot-com bubble. Nvidia is giving chips to AI-hyperscalers as collateral for loans. Never mind the chips will depreciate long before the earnings are solid enough for the AI-hyperscalers to payback the “loans.”

It’s accounting legerdemain in extremis.

So, to be clear: multiple endogenous-domestic-headwinds coupled with very ugly exogenous-international-shocks, real and potential, increase the odds, hourly, that we’re nearing financial armageddon.

To recount what to expect: a housing crisis, a credit crisis, an energy-shock, fertilizer shortages leading to potential famine, one or two Too Big To Fail, failing and the AI bubble bursting. All at the same time. Same time. Boom. Boom. Boom.

This ain’t gonna resemble your daddy’s financial crisis. In the words of Grunge’s greatest lyricist, Chris Cornell, “I’m feeling California, but looking Minnesota.”

Personal Consequences Of The Iran War

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On March 18, 2026

19 Comments

I’ll keep this one short. Israel just hit a major Iranian oilfield. Iran has said it will now hit Gulf oilfields in retaliation. Ali Larijani, probably the last person in the Iranian administration who could have negotiated an off-ramp, has been assassinated.

This war is about to enter the economic devastation phase.

Unless you live in China (bought half the world’s grain production for the last 4 years and massively increased its fuel stockpiles) you’d better start preparing. Stock up on food. Check your local power grid to see how reliant it is on natural gas and oil turbines (Europeans, this is you.) Buy medicine. Acetaminophen, for example, is basically 100% a petroleum product. Figure out how to stay warm or cool and how to cook — can you still get some solar power and batteries. India mostly relies on gas for cooking, and it’s going to run out soon.

Australia’s got maybe 3 weeks of petroleum left. The Gulf States aren’t going to be able to run air conditioning soon. Everyone’s going to start putting export bans on key supply chain items soon. The Chinese have already banned export of natural gas and oil, but this will spread to food, key medicines, etc, etc… if the war goes on much longer.

Don’t assume this is all going to work out, even in most countries which can keep the power on and enough food, there will be price increases. A lot of the world economy is based around oil, gas and… fertilizers. About a third of the world’s fertilizers come from the Gulf, thru the Strait. Even if the war ends in a couple weeks, there will be aftershocks, and, of course, companies like supermarkets will jack up prices then keep them up even after the shock, just like they did during Covid.

But over the next few months expect shortages and increased prices and in some parts of the world straight up energy brown outs.

Unless you’re Chinese or Russian, don’t expect your government to do anything competent to protect you. Even if it can, it won’t, unless you’re part of the 1% at least.

Prepare. Perhaps we’ll be lucky, but don’t be count on it.

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