Analysis: The War on Iran
(Persian Pride and Strategic Folly: How Iran Misplayed Its Hand in the Geopolitical Casino.)


I begin this piece by saying a big BRAVO to the people of Iran. Whichever way we dice it, the Islamic Republic proved its mettle. By defeating the crazed lunatic Zionist Occupiers, they showed the world the stuff they are made of and that they are the true heirs of Cyrus the Great.
I am not an expert on Iran or West Asia, but I think that a mistake made by the Iranians cost them dearly. I very much hope that they will learn from their mistake and be better prepared next time the rabid dogs of war in Occupied Palestine decide to launch another attack.
A famous Yoruba proverb says: “Iku to npa ojulumo eni npowe fun ni / The death that takes one’s mate sends a message.
After the imperialists captured and hanged Saddam Hussein, the then Libyan strongman, the mercurial Muammar Gaddafi made a fiery speech to denounce his Arab colleagues and warned that their cowardice would come to haunt them.
Unfortunately, the old fox did not take his advice. Western leaders wowed and feted him. With their wretched, phony smiles pasted on their duplicious faces, they embraced Gaddafi and assured him of eternal friendship. Failing to learn from history, Gaddafi believed them and dismantled his nuclear weapons programme.
They paid him back by sponsoring “freedom fighters,” who captured, sodomised, and butchered. Today, once Africa’s most prosperous nation has been turned into a Slave Market.
Ghadaffi’s fate should have served as a profound lesson for all non-Western leaders not to put any currency into promises by Western leaders.
Which makes Iran's predicament somewhat puzzling.
What do you say when a nation steeped in five millennia of civilizational wisdom chooses to do just that - continue to seek favor and affection from the West? What should one make of a state that, despite being surrounded by enemies, still insists on playing solo on a geopolitical chessboard already rigged against the lonely?
This is the baffling case of the Islamic Republic of Iran, a proud civilization that has tragically confused stubborn independence with strategic solitude. In a world dominated by packs of unethical and uncultured hungry human hyenas (I talk here of the Collective West), alliances, and pragmatic geopolitical realignments, Iran’s rulers, cloaked in their ancient Persian prestige, have continued to engage in the most suicidal form of foreign policy: ambiguous diplomacy.
For reasons that are difficult to comprehend, many top officials of the Iranian government continue to flirt with the West that seeks their ruin, reject treaties with those who could secure their existence, and sabotage relationships with those who have stood by them when others only offered bombs and sanctions.
To be blunt, Iran has walked itself into a war with the West - not directly, of course, but through the blood-soaked proxy of Israel - and this was not inevitable. No, this war was a product of years of miscalculation, ego, elite liberal delusion, and sheer diplomatic buffoonery. It is beyond belief that the heirs of Cyrus will display such naivety as the current crop of leaders in Iran.
Let us begin with the stunning revelation by none other than Vladimir Putin himself, a few days ago, when he publicly stated that Iran rejected Russia’s proposal for a military treaty.
Yes, Putin is not known for telling lies. Iran, a nation encircled by hostile powers in a shark-infested region of the world, targeted by decades of sanctions, cyber-attacks, constant assassinations of top officials, and now open warfare, refused a security guarantee from the world’s most battle-hardened state.
What did Tehran think the current geopolitical setup was - a gentleman’s parlor debate?
Did Iranias believe NATO was still in the business of fair play? Or perhaps the mullahs believed the same West that butchered Iraq, carved up Libya, and currently uses Gaza as a shooting range would somehow spare them out of respect for Cyrus the Great? It does not add up.
Despite all their fiery rhetoric, Iran’s leaders appear to be trapped in the mental amber of 1979. Yes, their Islamic revolution gave them pride. Yes, they kicked out the Shah and his CIA tutors. But what have they done since? Alienated their neighbors, provoked bigger powers without forming alliances to solidify their base, and bragged without backup. Why did they enrich their uranium to almost weapon grade and not go all the hog and surreptitiously build the Bomb like the North Koreans?
For reasons best known to the Mullahs, Iran convinced itself it can win by playing solo in a chess match where the ruthless Anglo-American-Israeli axis always plays five moves ahead.
Let’s not be naïve. If today, a Tehran skyline is turning to rubble under bunker-buster bombs or cyber strikes, it is not because of divine fate or imperial destiny.
The Islamic Republic refused to play the game that Russia, South Korea, and China have mastered—the game of smart alliances.
Iran’s treatment of China is a Case Study in Ungratefulness. China did more for Iran diplomatically and economically than any other country. When the West slammed Tehran with the most draconian sanctions known to man, when oil exports were reduced to a trickle, it was China that kept buying Iranian crude. China provided lifelines through backchannel trade, currency swaps, and infrastructure investment.
And yet, how did Iran repay this? For reasons that baffle many analysts, Iran repaid China’s kind generosity with unbelievable ingratitude.
Iran did this by awarding major oil and port contracts to India. Yes, India is America’s junior partner in the so-called Indo-Pacific containment strategy aimed at China. We kid you not.
Although New Delhi repeatedly stalled under American pressure, Tehran granted India significant stakes in the Chabahar Port project.
China, which had offered more reliable funding and faster timelines, was passed over in favor of India, a shameless parasitic country whose loyalties swing with the Wall Street Journal’s editorial page. India is an unreliable Western satrap with delusions of leading the Global South.
To the Chinese, the message from Tehran was loud and clear: We don’t know who our real friends are. How do the Iranians want the Chinese by such acts of ingratitude?
On paper, Iran, Russia, and China belong to the following multilateral groupings that ought to share - or at least ought to be using as strategic infrastructure:
Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO)
BRICS+
Eurasian Economic Union (Observer status)
Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB)
Non-Aligned Movement (NAM)
These are not mere acronyms to decorate diplomatic communiqués. They are serious strategic counterweights to NATO, the EU, and the IMF. In any sane world, these institutions would serve as the basis of a tri-polar axis of resistance to the fading Western hegemony.
Russia and China understand this. Their relationship has grown from wary neighbors to strategic soulmates. Military exercises. Energy pipelines. Common positions at the UN. Joint tech development. Even currency de-dollarization.
And where is Iran in this grand scheme?
Nowhere. The Mullahs and Technocrats in Tehran chose to float like ideological ghosts, uncertain whether to join the wedding or sabotage the honeymoon.
Iran remains the unreliable third wheel, never fully present, always hedging, perennially hoping that one more round of nuclear negotiations in Vienna or Geneva will get the Americans and the chihuahuas in Europe to “respect” them.
It is the diplomatic equivalent of battered-wife syndrome: the delusional belief that if you love your abuser hard enough, they will change.
Let’s now pull back the veil on Iran’s fundamental problem: its Western-educated elites. Like in many countries, Western-trained Liberals remain Iran’s Trojan Horse.
These foreign-sponsored saboteurs wreaked havoc in Russia before Putin routed them. Iran did not learn from Russia’s mistake, and it discovered to its chagrin how these collaborators wiped out the top echelon of its military and its nuclear scientists.
Yes, the same smooth-talking diplomats with PhDs from Harvard, Georgetown, and the London School of Economics. These men (and they are mostly men) walk the corridors of Iranian power in tailored suits, still dreaming of being accepted at Davos, still addicted to the CNN-Foreign Affairs cocktail circuit, still believing that if Iran behaves “responsibly,” the West will pat them on the back and let them keep their sovereignty. They were not the triggermen, but they created the atmosphere in Iran that allowed Mossad and Western intelligence to recruit foot soldiers.
These are the same fools who were “shocked” when Trump tore up the JCPOA, and even more “shocked” when Biden, who ran on restoring the deal, did absolutely nothing. Like mindless imbeciles, the pathetic compradors continue to grovel. To Plead. Begging to be allowed back into the favor of the same people who wrecked their country in 1953 and inflicted the notorious fake Shah dynasty on their country.
You would think that after Iraq, after Libya, after Syria, after Sudan, someone in Tehran would realize that there is no appeasing a predator. You either form a pack, or you become lunch.
As pointed out supra, we do not claim to be experts on Iran or West Asia. But let us use available resources to be brutally honest and map three potential outcomes of the current and future hostilities:
Scenario one: Regime Decapitation: This is the West’s wet dream since the revolution in 1979.. A successful assassination campaign (as we have seen before), combined with mass protests, sanctions, and perhaps a regional ground invasion, topples the Islamic Republic. The Ayatollahs are dragged out like Saddam, paraded like Gaddafi. Iran is Balkanized. A compliant, IMF-loving technocrat is installed in Tehran. Oil flows freely to ExxonMobil. Israel, the oildoms, including Saudi Arabia, pop champagne in celebration.
Scenario Two: Pyrrhic Stalemate: Iran lives up to its rhetoric and holds the line militarily, but is devastated economically and infrastructurally. The country survives, the mullahs remain in power, and the Liberals continue to be influential in tilting foreign policy to the Western orbit. No lesson is learned.
Scenario Three: Realignment with the East: After taking enough punches, the Iranian leadership discovers sense and finally wakes up. They signed a formal security pact with Russia, integrated fully with BRICS, and gave China the first refusal on all major infrastructure and energy projects. The East becomes Tehran’s lifeline and anchor. Iran joins the multipolar world not as a stubborn guest but as a strategic partner. This is the only sensible option if the Islamic Republic were to survive and thrive.
When the dust finally settles, the Islamic Republic must go into immediate strategic rehabilitation. Enough with the theological exceptionalism and the Persian pride. Enough with trying to be “neutral” in a world that punishes neutrality. Enough with pining for Western approval while snubbing Eastern solidarity.
Sign that military pact with Russia - not tomorrow, not next year. Now. North Korea guaranteed solid security when it wisely signed a defense treaty with Moscow.
Elevate relations with China to an irreversible strategic partnership - give Beijing what it wants in exchange for what Iran needs: tech, investment, markets, and muscle.
Follow the example of Russia and purge the Western-trained liberal infiltrators from strategic posts. These are not public servants - they are the fifth column, the Trojan horses of imperialism.
Iran must finally understand: this is not the era for lone wolves. This is the age of packs, networks, and fortified alliances. Western hegemony may be declining, but it is far from dead. And when a beast is dying, it bites harder. The Yorubas say Ageku ejo ti nsoro bi agbon, Injured snake that bites like a wasp.
As the Mullahs in Tehran must have now realized, Iran’s flirtation with strategic solitude in the face of such a beast is not just foolish - it is suicidal.
The Persian Empire once ruled from the Indus to the Aegean. Today, its modern incarnation can barely hold onto its narrative. That must change. Pride may be historical, but power is contemporary.
To the Ayatollahs in Tehran, if you are listening: The world is shifting. You either change with it, or be crushed by its movement. You can go and ask Saddam Hussein or Muammar Gaddafi.
©️ Fẹ̀mi Akọ̀mọ̀làfẹ̀
(Farmer, Writer, Published Author, Essayist, Polemicist, Satirist, Social Commentator, Chronicler of collapsing empires.)
My Mission: Stultitia Delenda Est - Stupidity Must be Destroyed!
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Iran is very complicated and simple:Israel(as an European bridgehead)its influence to dominate the middle east(1)dawning of a multi-polar world,in this respect trying to”destroy”a cheaper/shorter new transportation network outside the influence of the”West”and(of course)Iran as such having withstood all agression raised against it since 1979
But I am not writing to You coz of tht,I have many connections in Kenya…..hope You what is currently happening there,the amount of violence against mainly young people……..ongoing corruption no horizons
This just in: US sanctions preventing Iran from shipping oil to China have been lifted. (Although what gives the US any right to sanction is ridiculous!)
Trump got his "win" (& a Nobel nomination). Iran is out of the crosshairs for the moment. Israel is further down the crapper.
https://x.com/simpatico771/status/1938107594440081655
SIMPLICIUS Ѱ
@simpatico771
⚡️🇮🇷Looks like Iran's secret quid-pro-quo is out of the bag. Lifting of sanctions for allowing US to carry out a fake strike to give Trump a much-needed "victory" for domestic audiences.
"In a CNBC interview, Trump’s personal envoy Steve Witkoff confirmed that the Trump administration lifted some of the sanctions on Iran on June 24, 2025, enabling the Iranian regime to ship oil to China.