This will offend some people because supposedly outsiders aren’t supposed to do anything but cheer Resistance actors or something.
- Russia offered them a formal military alliance and they refused;
- They have and had sufficient missiles and drones to overwhelm Israeli defenses;
- During the Gaza war they did not attack Israel which allowed Israel to defeat Hamas (note that if they had, Hezbollah would have gone all in if they encouraged it, so it would have been absolutely massive, 80% of Hezbollah’s missile stockpile had not been destroyed at that point.)
- They did not send troops to save Assad and keep Syria in their sphere,
- During the brief Israeli/Iran war, they were winning and Israel was a week or so from running out of interceptors. Israel asked for a ceasefire and they agreed;, and,
- They keep refusing to get nukes despite having the capability.
These are deeply foolish people and if they keep refusing to actually fight or make alliance, and keep letting Israel and the US take swings at Iran at times and places of their choosing they are eventually going to lose.
They should also get that formal alliance with Russia and make whatever agreements are necessary to get full economic support from China, which could end their inflation problems in half a year
The counter-argument is that winning the missile war might lead to nuking. I don’t think Israel would do that unless it was existential, nuking Iran would cost them extremely. But Israel having nukes is precisely why Iran either needs to get their own or to get under a nuclear powers umbrella. (Ideally you first make an alliance with Russia, then you get the nukes.)
I don’t know what the dysfunction is, exactly, but if they don’t fix it, it’s likely to be terminal. I suspect a lot comes from Khameini, certainly the nuclear ban does.
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Nat Wilson Turner
I’m very frightened right now that Trump is going to try another Maduro-style kidnapping in Iran. The riots last night were a dramatic escalation and seem clearly to be driven by the US and/or Israel.
This tweet which Kit Klarenberg retweeted spooked me, (I’m not otherwise familiar with the Flor Cadena account but trust Kit’s reporting) (translated by Xai):
Nat Wilson Turner
Trita Parsi also is worth following:
Nat Wilson Turner
As for what Khamani and company should be doing, not for me to say. I think there’s a great deal of cognitive bias to overcome on their part because they presumably keep assuming the US and Israel are rational actors.
NR
I think it’s entirely possible that Iran is afraid of Israel nuking them if they cause too much damage to Israel. I don’t doubt that Israel would do it. I think that should be part of your analysis, I can guarantee you that it’s part of Iran’s.
Ian Welsh
Edited the post to deal with NR’s suggestion.
both sides do it
Another dynamic to layer on top of Ian’s analysis: how much of Iran’s c2 systems have been penetrated and made cripple-able by intelligence.
If the regime thinks there’s some likelihood that something perceived as “going on offense” would trigger a reduction of the state’s ability to coordinate and act, that almost tautologically means they think there’s some likelihood they’ll be deposed, e.g. domestic dynamics spin out beyond their control.
One way to test the above: how has Iran’s tolerance for risk over time correlated with Israel’s / US’s ability to penetrate and harm c2 infrastructure?
Already thought about this too much but seems like that correlation’s been positive since the Obama nuke deal.
DanFmTo
Not my place to make excuses for Iran, but another factor is their view of how involved America might get in the event they put Israel into real trouble. America was of course helping to shoot down Iranian missiles and probably contributing to airborne intelligence, refueling and such, but when would the US go beyond the single B-2 strike to something much larger?
That said, I don’t think they can avoid this fight, as Ian notes, Israel will just keep trying to bring them down at moments of its choosing so it probably is a choice of fight and win decisively against Israel and risk the US getting much more involved or just sit back and wait to die anyway. Like Hezbollah they think there’s some middle ground but it doesn’t exist.
Failed Scholar
The refusal to at least get some kind of nuclear umbrella coverage from Russia (if not a full on military alliance) is just unfathomable to me. Some Persian cultural thing we just don’t understand? There are a few of those that are perplexing, like their love of “raising the black flag of revenge!” or whatever that they are entirely too fond of but that I can assure them gets zero f***s given by their enemies.
The only other plausible thing is that they just don’t trust Russia, and there are good reasons for that. Recall that Russia (and China) joined in the sanctions against Iran previously, and Russia specifically (prior to 2014) was very much trying to team up with the Western Team GoySlaves and Co.. Iran even filed a lawsuit against Russia when Russia broke a contract to supply S300 SAM systems back in 2011: https://www.globaltimes.cn/content/673484.shtml
The Iranian’s even paid for the bloody things and Russia still strung them along for years. Not something the Iranians will forget, I’m sure.
Then we have something like 1/4(?) of Israel’s population are actually from Russia and other Soviet countries, enough that some of the missile strike videos coming out of Israel were complete with ‘Suka Blyats!’ type commentary from the filmers. How credible are Russian threats to act against a state like that? How many Jewish oligarchs wield influence in Moscow? There are a pile of Jewish-Russian billionaire oligarchs, what kind of influence do they have on Russian foreign policy? We see how it works in the United States of Israel after all…
Then we get into the tangle that was Syria, and who knows what Iranian government views on that are vis-a-vis Russia and who exactly is mostly to blame for that clusterfu**.
Stormcrow
They use arrays of centrifuges to separate fissionable uranium isotopes from uranium metal. About 2/3 of these, if not more, were deadlined with maintenance issues when news about the Iranian nuclear program was still filtering out. Maybe 15 years ago IIRC. To make a bad situation worse, Stuxnet reportedly targeted those systems.
The problem behind those problems is that they’re clearly aiming for a uranium bomb rather than a plutonium bomb. This does not strike me as an easy alternative, let alone a sustainable one because every method of fissionable uranium isotope enrichment that I’ve ever heard of has miserable yields and is plagued with the problems that horribly corrosive uranium hexaflouride creates. And it’s also unreasonably expensive. And the environmental pollution is AFAIK permanent. The Hanford cleanup effort has been going on for most of my life and will probably continue going on until the US collapses from other causes. There is no real end in sight.
The cost/weapon ratio and the relative scarcity of U-235 are the factors that drove both the US and the USSR to create plutonium industries, despite the predictable and dreadful environmental consequences of that alternative. A decent reference about this issue is Plutopia: Nuclear Families, Atomic Cities, and the Great Soviet and American Plutonium Disasters. Plutonium industries are equal opportunity polluters and TTBOMK nobody knows how to avoid the environmental and human consequences. You also need reactors capable of transmuting U-238, by far the most abundant uranium isotope, into plutonium, which aren’t cheap and which are unreasonably public, given even halfway decent surveillance.
Meanwhile, Iran is running out of water. That story broke several weeks ago, when Tehran was only a few days from watching their establshed sources run dry. I have no idea how they’re coping, but I don’t envy the people in charge of that effort.
I think Iran is between the devil and the deep blue sea with their nuclear weapons program. I don’t envy the people managing that effort either.
Carborundum
The Iranian nuclear program makes a lot more sense if one thinks of it not so much as a weapons program, as a means of manufacturing diplomatic chips. “Hey, look at me, over here, making progress towards in the nuclear realm. Better negotiate with me.” The key problem is they keep over-thinking things, believing that the world is a lot more motivated to negotiate with them than it actually is – and particularly that the world actually understands what they are doing, which all signs point to “no”. Bad, bad case of main character syndrome.
They went the uranium route because they what they really wanted for most of the period was a breakout capacity, submerged in a civil program, and were also working without a practical means of making plutonium – even now when its online, Bushehr is safeguarded up the wazoo. It has been asserted that they provided some of the cash for the Deir el-Zor facility, but I don’t know how good the evidence is.
The Iranian strategic mindset is an interesting one. They are absolutely maniacal about the notion that no one else can be trusted (particularly including Russia and the UK for historical reasons) and they need to go it alone. They never and I mean *never* go all-in on something; it’s always hedging and it’s always balancing between multiple internal power structures with their own agendas. Track one for what they’re trying to achieve, track two for the internal competition – and track two seems to get a lot more attention.
I don’t think they Iran was anywhere near as winning the missile conflict as some do. I think there’s a lot being spun without a lot of concrete data (same as with the degree to which their nuclear program as been damaged). They can hold areas at threat, but in the absence of special weapons or good terminal guidance, what they can achieve at range is limited. Expensive and politically / psychologically damaging, but it doesn’t do a lot concrete against IDF military capability. The central nagging fear in the back of their minds is what do they do if they empty the tubes – what about the next battle? If they can’t maintain spoiler status in the local neighbourhood, from their perspective that’s a real problem. Regime survival is job 1.
mago
Whatever the motives, policies and ideologies fueling them, will they still hold sway when the leaders pass away?
Trump’s near death, but to hear the talking heads he’s going to last forever.
Khamani has one foot on a banana peel.
Who knows?
The water situation in Iran and Iraq and the ME in general is a long standing issue growing worse by the day. Stupid government decisions exacerbate it.
I’m not privy to any of it. But human stupidity is a constant.
The protests are likely provoked by Zionist forces exploiting popular discontent. Events gain momentum with exploitative forces manipulating desperation.
Iran is pussy footing on the world stage while repressing dissent internally.
Yeah, get a pair, but what will be unleashed?
Rhetorical questions abound.
Ian Welsh
Carborundum,
disagree on missiles, but could be wrong, for sure. Otherwise, completely tracks. I wonder how much comes from Khameini and will change when dies. I have heard the younger RevGuards types are much more hardcore and willing/wanting to fight.
Mago: the question is what Vance will be like once he’s President. It doesn’t look reassuring, so far, though it’s hard to tell how much of what he says is because he’s kissing Trump’s ass to keep influence. He’s certainly changed his public views considerably since getting into office.
Carborundum
I have come across a quote attributed to an IRGC MGen saying that they had expended between 25% – 30% of their missile force. The article also assesses that they were being significantly more successful at defeating Israeli defences towards the end of the conflict, I would say probably because the Israelis needed to ration interceptors, and that they hit a number of targets in Israel that have not been publicly acknowledged (though a number of these, we saw imagery of during the conflict). Article is here: https://archive.ph/zOaeV
From the Iranian perspective, I think what they did was try to reset deterrence. (Recall the really odd to Western ears diplomatic statements they made at various points.) They were having some pretty significant personages whacked with impunity – Iranians, not proxies – which was causing real issues internally. I think they demonstrated to everyone that punching them in the face is not a cost-free exercise, even if they have significantly reduced proxies. The wild card, at this point unknown, is how much damage was inflicted on their nuclear program and how they react. I suspect that the west (at least publicly / politically) is over-stating how much damage they did – witness the dismissal of LGEN Kruse, Director of DIA for putting turds into the narrative punchbowl.
If that expenditure rate is accurate and they had relatively limited direct, military damage as I believe *and* what the IRGC are saying about being able to significantly ramp up missile production is true (which I suspect it is), it makes more sense to me why they would decide to keep their powder dry. These guys have lived in a rough neighbourhood for a long, long time and they are good at enduring – not a lot of cultures can say their literature from a thousand years ago remains readable and relevant to the modern population.
Carborundum
Forgot to add, yes, what the next generation do is going to be “interesting” by which I mean scary. This is exactly the type of situation where one can end up with significant dislocation – there’s a whole group of folks who did the dying out there in Syria who may well not have a lot of patience with waiting in line.
mago
Vance’s toxicity will only increase and solidify with his grip on the reigns of power.
Feral Finster
“The only other plausible thing is that they just don’t trust Russia, and there are good reasons not to.”
Russia seeks, not to end the West, but to be allowed to join it, albeit not as a supplicant.
Iran doesn’t quite want to join the West, but they are far more open to western thinking than, say the Turks or the gulfie Arabs, and again keep pulling their punches.
Of course in both cases the West sees such reticence as contemptible weakness.
Feral Finster
“I don’t think they Iran was anywhere near as winning the missile conflict as some do.”
Of course. Missiles were getting through but nothing that was actually degrading the Israeli capacity to make war, much less that of Israel’s American thug.
Eric Anderson
I concur on Carborundum too.
But, what I’ve not heard mentioned is that Iran is Shia.
That being said, they are literally an island to themselves surrounded by non-sympathetics for their entire modern history. Suspicion of outside help IS their history because literally *everyone* has been trying to destroy them for centuries.
KT Chong
At this point, if Trump sends special forces into Iran to capture Khamenei and brings him back to the US, that is actually the least bad of outcomes for Iran. Khamenei has been incredibly incompetent and a liability to Iran, China and Russia. If Trump takes out Khamenei but leaves the government intact, (like in Venezuela,) at least there is hope that someone competent will replace the idiot.
KT Chong
So allegedly Khamenei has an escape plan: flee to Russia. Russia will be stupid to take him: he is going to preach Islamic revolution in Russia, and be a magnet for Islamists.
elkern
I figure that Khamenei’s core perspective is that of a Mullah, primarily responsible for the souls of his followers. Using Nukes would sully those souls (and even more so, his own), risking eternal damnation.
OTOH, as Supreme Leader, he is responsible for the people of Iran in *this* life, in the current world, where nukes could be a useful deterrent against Israel (and maybe USA?).
Also, as a Persian, he views himself and his people as ‘Civilized’, perpetually beset by barbarians (Mongols, Sunnis, Baathists, etc). He’s playing Chess, which doesn’t work so well against people playing Poker (see: Corbomite Maneuver).
I don’t believe that ‘world opinion’ would restrain Israel from nuking Iran. The modern history of Israel is filled with examples of leaders who push the boundaries (social and territorial), always willing to let the next generation clean up the messes they make.
different clue
@Stormcrow,
According to this article, the reason Iran is running out of water is because the Iranian authorities for decades have been building dams ( which spread water out to dry) and neglecting their ancient legacy system of qanats. Dams was the way to show oneself and others how modern one was, after all. And the current Ayatollocracy remains committed to dams and etc. And that fuckup will of course continue.
” After Ruining a Treasured Water Resource, Iran Is Drying Up ”
https://e360.yale.edu/features/iran-water-drought-dams-qanats
Another fuckup is the religionist restrictive nastiness by which the Ayatollocracy rules and dominates its subjects. It doesn’t beat them into submission and surrender. It only beats them into episodic outbursts of rage. ( I know it is fashionable on the Left to think that no population would ever rebel or even demonstrate on its own without US and/or Israeli instigation). If the Ayatollocracy doesn’t figure out how to loosen its religionist restrictiveness and nastiness ( for example, things like trying to heavily discourage the celebration of Nouruz because it is a pre-Islamic Persian cultural holiday) and etc. Why be so nasty and petty?
Failed Scholar
@KT Chong
The idea the Khamenei would “flee to Russia” is such utterly ridiculous propaganda, or the even more ridiculous “preach Islamic revolution in Russia”. Grandpa gonna preach revolution? LMAO. I didn’t realize the hasbraists do stand-up routines.
The man is an 86 year old geriatric. Literally older than the state of “Israel”. His next step is returning to God, either from natural causes or man-made.
different clue
@ Failed Scholar,
I had no idea that KT Chong is a hasbraist. How could you tell? Can you teach the rest of us how to tell?
And also . . . what is a GoySlave?
Jorge
One important factoid about Iran: twenty years ago a Persian told me that 1/4 of the population lives in the greater Teheran metropolitan area. Of course they’ll run out of water!
Planter of Trees
Russia and China are publicly and loudly committed to nuclear nonproliferation. Quite apart from preserving their own exceptional status, a nuclear standoff between, say, Iran, Turkey, and the Gulfies is a tenuous proposition. Not that it would get to that point, because the American-Israeli Axis would go berserk.
So it’s probable that Iran has been told in no uncertain terms: operational nuclear weapons mean you will be entirely on your own. This also means that, whatever the merits of fission-propelled sovereignty, it is not a viable path for smaller states either.
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His next step is returning to God, either from natural causes or man-made.
Correction — his next step is returning to the dust from whence he and all of us came. All we are is dust in the wind. Everything is dust in the wind.
Failed Scholar
@different clue
I’m not saying KT Chong is, but whatever his source was for that info absolutely is. Using this amazing ability called “thinking” and “reasoning” ought to make that point obvious. Do you seriously think Iran’s version of a Pope, who is one foot in the grave, would run off to Russia so he can do….what exactly???? Live an extra six months???? This is borderline even for a Westoid ShitLib Crapitalist True Believer Uber-Materialist to do, much less the leader of a faith that deeply believes in martyrdom. So why would any editor (assuming this was published someplace “legitimate”) ever run with such a dubious clearly propaganda headline? If you got a theory of your own, we’re all ears here, because in case you haven’t noticed, anything from the Heckin’ Rules-Based Order Western Media Complex™ (fact checked from Tel Aviv) can very rarely be trusted at face value.
As to your other question, goyslave refers to any “citizen” of a Western country that’s currently aiding/committing genocide on behalf of the judeo-supremecist state. You can use your imagination to figure out the mystery of which country that might be.
@Like & Subscribe
I’m not actually sure what the Shia believe in concerning death and the afterlife, but this site: https://allaboutshias.com/death-and-the-life-after-death/ claims the following:
Failed Scholar
As a reminder to everyone here, the centrality of propaganda and psyops is something that the US gov admit to openly, in documents like the 2023 “Army Global Missile Defense Operations” manual: https://x.com/incel_freak/status/2010180618815189148 “You are not defeated until you believe that you are”. The fourth image in the tweet:
The whole thread is interesting excerpts from that DoD manual: https://x.com/incel_freak/status/2010090304595210417 For those without a twatter account, viewable via https://xcancel.com/incel_freak/status/2010090304595210417
Olivier
Re. Israel’s willingness to nuke Iran, I think the calculus has changed after Gaza: before Gaza they might have been restrained by the prospect of becoming a pariah state but now that they are well on their way to becoming one, if not already there, what do they have to lose? Plus, every atrocity moves the Overton window and lowers the psychological threshold for another, worse one.
Failed Scholar
A recent topical example of weaponized bullshit, from Reuters: https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/venezuela-vice-president-rodriguez-russia-four-sources-say-2026-01-03/
Four whole sources, too.
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Israel’s willingness to nuke Iran, I think the calculus has changed after Gaza: before Gaza they might have been restrained by the prospect of becoming a pariah state but now that they are well on their way to becoming one, if not already there, what do they have to lose?
Better yet, it’s cool to be a pariah state these days. Pariah state status is en vogue. America sure thinks so, that’s why Trump is in office. To transform America into a pariah state like Israel and steal Israel’s pariah thunder or Russia’s pariah thunder or North Korea’s pariah thunder. If you’re not a pariah state or aspire to be one, you are not hip and further, you simply are not relevant — at least to the daily news cycle and its obsessive penchant for the spectacular..
Purple Library Guy
So there’s all these protests in Iran, which apparently were triggered by a collapse in the value of the currency making everything too damn expensive. Sanctions appear to have had something to do with the currency collapse, but that’s very broad. Anyone have any idea why the currency collapsed like now in particular?
Incidentally this would appear to be another data point against Ian Welsh’s thesis that sanctions are now good for economies.
Carborundum
Reporting is that it collapsed because they stopped using a subsidized exchange rate for import of essential goods.
elkern
b at MoA claims that the current round of anti-Gov’t unrest in Iran was “…started on December 28 by a massive short-selling attack on Iran’s currency”, but provided no link.
Carborundum
The problem with b’s construction is that the slide in the value of the rial started well before December 28th. Looks like a rise since end of July 2025 with an inflection point in mid-November.
Add to that the combination of a catalyzing announcement of the end of the public-facing subsidized rial (while apparently still allowing the IRGC access to their preferential rate) and a bazaari strike, well, here we are.
different clue
I heard on BBC news last night about how the demonstrations are spreading and how the death toll is rising. And that Trump said: ” keep demonstrating. Help is on the way.”
There is no possible beneficial help that the US could possibly give to the demonstrators in Iran. And there is no possible way that Trump could come up with a way to help. Trump did leave himself an out, however. Apparently his exact statement was that he would intervene if the IranGov started “hanging” ( his exact word) any arrested demonstrators. So as long as the IranGov doesn’t use the “hanging” method to execute demonstrators, but only uses all the other methods, then it is all good because Trump said specifically no “hanging”, so as long as they don’t use the “hanging” method, then Trump doesn’t need to intervene.
I notice that the IranGov is moving fast and hard to contain and suppress the demonstrations faster than it has in the past. I think the IranGov hopes to beat the Iranian people into submission and compliance for good, this time. The problem for the IranGov is that the majority-Shia population of Iran all share the Shia tradition of martyrdom, self-sacrifice and revenge that the exiled Khomeini and his assistants used to such good effect when the ShahGov kept killing more people at every funeral for the slain martyrs, creating another batch of martyrs to be mourned and promised-vengeance-on-behalf-of at every subsequent funeral, thereby creating even another even fresher batch of martyrs to be mourned and promised vengeance-on-behalf-of at every further more subsequent funeral, etc. and so on.
By continuing the attacks on the funeral goers at each funeral, the ShaGov spun the hamster wheel faster and faster, until the bearings burned out and melted, and the whole society rose up to such a point that only the whole army would have been able to drown it in blood, which the army decided not to do . . . preferring to see the Shah depart.
The current Ayatollahcratic Regime is made of sterner stuff. They will not back down. They will beat , torture, mass-kill, etc. the protesters into either self-abasing submission and compliance; or they will beat the protesters into a total-population-involved state of total rage and hate, such as consumed the population of Haiti just before and after the departure of Baby Doc. The Haitians were hunting runaway and hiding TonTon Macoutes all over the island, to hack, slash, burn, stone, etc. them to death for decades of TonTon Macoutery.
In this scenario, the Iranian Army ( I assume they have one) may prefer not to drown the demonstrators in blood, but Iran’s own TonTon Macoutes ( the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, the Baseej, the Morality Police, etc.) will not go quiet into that good night. If they realize that their own defeat is inevitable, they will try to kill as many Iranians as they can before they are all hunted down and killed in their turn. They will fight to the last man. They will never surrender.
When all that is done ( if this scenario plays out this way), the Iranians who have survived the final victory over the Ayatollahcrats’ own TonTon Macoutes will turn on the Ayatollahcrats themselves and keep hunting them down and killing them with knives, axes, machetes, hatchets, etc. till their rage has been sated and their arms are too tired to swing those knives, axes, machetes, hatchets. The surviving relatives of the thousands of Iranian Communist Movement ( Tudeh) members who were mass slaughtered by the newly-in-power Khomeini revolutionary government will seek their own private vengeance on any relevant target still living.
Wouldn’t the Ayatollahcrats rather find a better way forward?
(Once Iran has all settled back down if it plays out that way, the Americans may well try helicoptering in the Pahlavi Princeling. If they try that, the Iranians may well give the Princeling and the Americans an up-close-and-personal reminder that they have not forgotten about the Mossadegh overthrow.)
spud
Feral Finster:
agreed, putin and his inner circle so so want to be equal players in the WEF world. they think they will be granted equal status, just because communism is gone.
of course they are wrong. they are viewed as sub humans by not only the western capitalists, but also the japanese.
to ignore the history of the constant invasions in siberia, as well as europeon russia, is foolish.
kinda slezzy rice once said, its not fair that russia has all of those resources. that really meant whats mine is mine, whats yours is mine, and there will be no discussions about it, period.
every time russia is hesitant to smack back, means the western oligarchs see as weakness.
russia might be viewed as unreliable as time goes on here. all bark, no bite.
yet russia cannot allow iran to fall. to do so means nato on the caspian sea, and every country on the caspian, because nato toys to break apart russia. and some border china, who would be next.
so Xi should not worry to much about that trillion dollar trade surplus, and really begin to worry about getting together with partners, and making sure they all do not get carved up.
iran better understand by itself, it cannot fight off determined capitalist parasites and leeches.