On February 28, after nearly two months of revolution, financial collapse, and buildup to war, the United States and Israel launched an orchestrated attack on Iran. While they quickly saw success, all but destroying the Iranian Navy and killing the corrupt tyrant who had ruled Iran for 37 years, Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, they quickly entered a quagmire, as their goal of toppling the Iranian regime with the help of the Iranian Resistance failed, as the Iranians quickly suppressed any potential uprising by the Resistance. The Iranian Regime quickly appointed a new Supreme Leader (which is, go figure, the Supreme Leader’s son. Nepotism’s great, right?). Most importantly, the Iranians launched a massive, desperate, full-frontal counterattack all across the Middle East, and just within 8 days, the war had dragged in the UAE, Qatar, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, France, Britain, Azerbaijan, Jordan, Oman, autonomous Kurdistan, and Iraq on the side of the US and Israel.

While Hezbollah-controlled Lebanon, Houthi-controlled Yemen, and multiple jihadist militia groups throughout the Middle East were on the side of Iran. And while they have not joined the conflict yet, countries like Russia, China, North Korea, Armenia, Brazil, Vietnam, Malaysia, Sri Lanka, Norway, Taliban-controlled Afghanistan, and Pakistan all announced their support for Iran in one way or another (which is the only thing Afghanistan and Pakistan seem to agree on right now). Meanwhile, countries like Germany, Canada, Argentina, Finland, Japan, Latvia, Belgium, Lithuania, Egypt, Australia, Turkey, Croatia, Morocco, Bulgaria, Syria, the Netherlands, Portugal, Ukraine, Albania, New Zealand, Romania, Czechia, Trinidad and Tobago, and Papua New Guinea have all expressed their support for America and Israel.

This massive escalation made it impossible for the Americans and Israelis to overthrow the Iranian regime, as America and its allies now have to take into account the defense of basically the entire region. Baghdad, Jerusalem, Riyadh, Abu Dhabi, Muscat, Doha, Manama, Kuwait City, Erbil, Tel Aviv, Beersheba, Nakhchivan, Dubai, Haifa, Basra, and more are all under attack. This is not to mention that Hezbollah’s entry into the conflict triggered an Israeli invasion of southern Lebanon, including strikes near Beirut and Tyre, in attempts to secure territory south of the Litani River. Of course, they continue pressure on Iran through the skies by bombing cities like Tehran, Isfahan, Qom, Bandar Abbas, Kermanshah, and Tabriz, and in the seas, it’s estimated that during the first 8 days of the war, the US sank 60 Iranian naval vessels, all but eliminating their navy as a concept. But as impressive as it is to sink basically an entire country’s navy in roughly a week (especially since it opens the road for a possible ground invasion), it really doesn’t matter because Iran still controls Hormuz and has blockaded it.

What’s Hormuz, you might ask? Just the small strait of water where only 1/5 of the world’s oil and LNGs travel through. No biggie, this just means that prices will skyrocket across the world, and some countries like Thailand’s energy infrastructure might as well be non-existent again, no biggie.

So, to summarize: The US and Israel, while initially successful, failed to overthrow the enemy in a short amount of time, leading to a huge international crisis, rising oil prices, the destruction of countless properties, and a death toll of over 2,290 people and a wounded toll of some 7,000. Why on Earth are they even doing this? I mean, they should have at least seen some of these things coming from a mile away, right? I believe the reason is stupid, but not the stupid reason you’re probably thinking of.

NATION HOPPING AND THE IMPACT OF THE WAR

I think the reason for this war, beyond the morality of taking down the tyrannical Islamic Republic, is not AIPAC, or Epstein, or even oil. It’s China. I believe China is the primary reason why we’re going after Iran right now, but first, some background.

In World War II, the American forces fighting against Japan in the Pacific employed a strategy they called Island Hopping. This was the idea that America and the other allies would strategically jump from one island chain to another until they had moved from Australia to Japan. This strategy was tremendously successful.

And I propose Trump is using a somewhat modern-day version of this strategy (except with fewer banzai charges, more 2nd Cold War geopolitics, and instead of just being fought in the Pacific Ocean, it’s being fought on multiple continents).

I propose that the Trump administration has realized that tariffs aren’t necessarily beating China (to put it lightly), so they have decided that if America can’t beat China with money, they can beat them with their military. Obviously, they can’t just go to war with China, but they can go to war with all of Beijing’s friends, one by one. They will topple so many regimes that it will make the rest of the world scared of Washington, D.C., but at least they will beat China.

It started with Venezuela on January 3rd, with the capture of Nicolás Maduro and the rise of a pro-American government in that country. Now they’ve frog-hopped their way to Iran, intending to topple the Islamic Republic and install a new free pro-American Iran, probably headed by Reza Pahlavi (at least temporarily) if this ends anytime soon with a US-Israeli victory, or at least a partial US-Israeli victory.

I imagine they would then turn their attention to countries like Cuba, Ethiopia, Brazil, Myanmar, Tanzania, Tajikistan, Algeria, Malaysia, Burkina Faso, Nicaragua, Cambodia, and others, but the US doesn’t have that much of a basis to go after many of these countries. Many Americans have never even heard of many of these places, and many of them aren’t as openly hostile to America, the same way Maduro and Iran were. One would expect their next target would be someone like North Korea — you know, a country very openly hostile to the US that most Americans see as an enemy.

And while I’m sure the Pentagon would love to take out Big Daddy Kim next, the issue is that they have nuclear weapons — not to mention that China is treaty-bound to protect North Korea, further deterring any American moves toward North Korea anytime soon.

What the Pentagon really wants is that sweet spot — that one country that is no doubt strong and poses a real threat to American interests, but just weak enough for Washington to bully it. There are only two countries left in Beijing’s sphere of influence like that: Ethiopia and Brazil.

While American attitudes toward those two countries are not the best, they’re not bad enough to justify starting a war or kidnapping their president in a raid. I think if and once the Trump administration is done in Iran, they will start to turn their eyes to at least some of these countries; however, instead of starting another war, they will most likely put pressure on these Beijing allies diplomatically and/or covertly instead of militarily.

For example, the CIA might increase its covert support for the Myanmar rebels against the Chinese-allied military junta in the Myanmar civil war or prop up Cuban dissidents in the hope of toppling that Beijing ally from the inside. However, if Trump wants to continue warlord-maxxing, he could directly send troops to topple Cuba, as he has openly desired to do (and he can talk to RFK about how successful his uncle was at doing that), or he could directly intervene on the side of the rebels in the Myanmar civil war.

All of that is in the future, though, so what are we going to do about the ongoing conflict in the present!!??

REGIME CHANGE VIA JAZZ IMPROV

I have to ask one thing: What is our goal in this war? If the objective is regime change, we are doing a terrible job thus far. The idea of launching a campaign with the justification of helping the Iranian resistance would not be that hard; in the lead-up to war, the Iranians literally had a revolution (shameless plug). But I’m not going to sugarcoat it — the situation in the Allied high command is not very good. One could say it’s a shitshow.

They’ve been futilely trying to find another way to topple the regime, even though they can’t even agree on how to find another way to topple the regime. Everyone from Trump to Netanyahu, to Hegseth, to Katz, to Rubio all want different things, and debatably different objectives. Karim Sadjadpour described it as a regime change by jazz improvisation.

And of course, the war gets larger and larger every day, meaning more fronts, more planning, and more war. Historically speaking, it’s definitely not unprecedented to not know how to carry out regime change after your initial plans go awry. Sometimes it takes a little while for everyone to come back into agreement on how they will conduct the war, but, you know, maybe it should only take a few days instead of a few weeks.

What makes me angrier than anything is our continued bombing of Tehran and oil-rich Iranian islands in the Gulf. If we ever do think of a new plan to topple the regime, we’re gonna have a way worse time trying to convince the Iranian resistance to rise, as this brutal bombing campaign on the major urban cities and oil islands has, if anything, strengthened the regime.

I will ask this once: What is the goal of the Tehran bombing? If there was any strategic importance in shelling the Iranian capital, it is now long gone. At this point, we’re just bombing Iran indiscriminately, which unsurprisingly doesn’t endear us to the local population. It might come to a point where people who were previously in pro-revolutionary groups change their minds and decide, “Well, I’d rather have fellow Iranians kill me and my family than Americans or Israelis kill my family and me!!!”

We have already seen rallies in support of the new Supreme Leader Khamenei II. What happens when even more Iranians who were previously against the regime turn up in support of it? I’ll tell you what happens: we make a regime loathed by pretty much everyone in Iran look like heroes, and if we don’t think of a new strategy soon, other than just bombing the shit out of major cities, this war will most certainly last longer than any timestamp the White House says it will — no matter how many times Trump says we’ve “won.”

We can win, and I believe we will win, but we as American citizens need to tell our government to get its act together and preferably stop bombing civilians, for a free Iran may be in sight.