Ep. 87: We Hate to Say It, But....
Hey FRs
ICYMI, this week we did our first "I told you so" episode. Normally, we would feel some satisfaction in saying that, but in this case, you know, with like the destruction of the world order and death as consequences, we felt none. We may be the number one geopolitical podcast in the manosphere but we're not total monsters.
Did Iran's proxy network perform exactly as strategists warned it would?
Of course they did. 🙄 The Center for Strategic and International Studies documented the blueprint back in 2016: Iran's forward defense strategy, built over four decades, doesn't just sit around and wait for its enemies to act. In this case it relied on standing orders and plausible deniability to activate its proxy networks across Lebanon, Yemen, Iraq, and Syria the moment U.S. forces moved near Iranian territory. The result was immediate strikes on Gulf infrastructure and American bases throughout the region, while Iran itself maintained distance from direct conventional engagement. Somehow, Washington was shocked by this.
What did the "closing" of the Strait of Hormuz actually cost ordinary people?
Iran has such a stranglehold on the Strait, it didn't even need to formally close it. When maritime insurance companies refused to cover vessels transiting a strait Iran had simply signaled was unsafe, Brent crude climbed to $112 per barrel and gas prices passed $5 nationally. Even better, the economic damage extends beyond the pump: fertilizer supply chains dependent on regional energy exports have created food insecurity conditions for developing countries that will take months to fully register. And the best news?! The worst is yet to come...
Why did the airstrikes produce the opposite of regime change?
Duh, because they always do. No air campaign in modern history has produced regime change. Let's say that again– no air campaign in modern history has produced regime change. And Iran with 92 million people across territory twice the size of Texas was a shitty candidate to be the exception. What the strikes did produce was consolidation. That must be good, right?
Now, the moderate factions that existed within the Islamic Republic's internal politics are gone, ie dead, and Mojtaba Khamenei, whose family was killed in the campaign, is now Supreme Leader and has the ultimate villain revenge arc opportunity ever. The political complexity that once existed inside the system was bombed out of existence and the IRGC has assumed effective control of the country. Yay....
Who is actually paying the price for all of this?
Sadly, and to no one's surprise (except those in charge), the Iranians. Since the war began, Amnesty International has documented over 6,000 arrests of protesters, journalists, lawyers, human rights defenders, and ethnic and religious minorities. At least 39 political executions have been recorded. The country just emerged from an 88-day internet shutdown, the longest ever documented anywhere. Iranian judges are expediting lifetime sentences, torture, and forced confessions in sham trials, and the crackdown is only accelerating. The people the operation claimed to be liberating are the ones bearing the cost of its failure.
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