We’re nearing the five-month anniversary of Trump’s Iran war and antiwar naysayers are in shambles. Every prediction they’ve made so far has been wrong. No American boots are on the ground. No one has been drafted to “die for Israel” (indeed, enlistment is so high that the military is hitting its recruitment targets months ahead of schedule). No waves of Iranian refugees have materialized in Europe or the U.S. (not that they’d be allowed in anyway, as one of Trump’s first executive orders shut down all refugee admittances save for white South Africans). And gas isn’t $6 a gallon, not even in West Coast blue states that have gutted their oil industries and slapped punishing taxes on the consumer to fund the climate change scam.
It’s time for the pacifists and the foreign-funded patsies to admit they were wrong. Not only has the Iran war been fantastic for America’s long-term goals, Iran lost. They lost months ago, when Israel turned the IRGC leadership into halal chutney. Everything since then has been cleanup, same as how the Allies defeated Germany at Stalingrad and the remaining two years were just grinding the Wehrmacht back to Berlin. Iran has lost so thoroughly that they are the new Gaza: a conquered territory whose citizens are dying at the hands of a corrupt leadership that would rather seek pointless revenge than admit defeat.
Everything You Were Told About Iran Was Wrong
America started the war. Israel dogwalked Trump into it. Iranians hate us because we overthrew their government in 1953. Iran are good boys who dindu nuffin. All lies.
The current hostility between America and Iran began with the hostage crisis of 1979, when Islamic Republic-backed “students” stormed America’s embassy (in violation of international law on diplomatic immunity) and held our diplomats captive for over a year. Prior to this, Western nations were neutral-to-supportive of the Iranian Revolution. At the time the revolution was ongoing, Ruhollah Khomeini had been given refuge in France, returning to Iran in 1979 in a chartered Air France jet. As cited in Abbas Milani’s book The Shah, President Jimmy Carter withdrew support for the Shah due to the supposed brutality of his crackdown in 1978 and was in extensive contact with Khomeini and his supporters under the belief that Khomeini wished to democratize Iran. Khomeini reciprocated, stating in a message to Carter that “[y]ou will see we are not in any particular animosity with the Americans.”
In January 1979, the Carter administration dispatched Robert Huyser, then-deputy commander of EUCOM, to Tehran to negotiate the formation of a transitional government. The Shah had already made the decision to appoint a prime minister from the opposition in order to quell disorder. The man he picked was Shapour Bakhtiar, a leftist who had served as a minister in Mohammed Mosaddegh’s government (the government the CIA allegedly “couped”). Huyser struck a deal where the Shah would appoint Bakhtiar as the head of the transitional government, depart Iran, and Bakhtiar would hold a referendum on whether to maintain the monarchy or make Iran a republic. The vision was that Iran would democratize in the same way Greece, Spain, and Portugal recently had.
Khomeini despised Bakhtiar and attacked him as soon as his appointment became public. Nonetheless, following the Shah’s departure and Bakhtiar’s appointment as prime minister, Bakhtiar attempted to bury the hatchet by allowing Khomeini to return to Iran. Like the Carter administration, Bakhtiar believed that Khomeini was a sincere democrat and that upon his return, he would assume a nonpartisan role in politics, akin to a king in a constitutional monarchy. Khomeini betrayed Bakhtiar almost immediately upon returning, denouncing him on the same day he arrived in Tehran and forming a rival Islamic government just four days after coming home. Khomeini’s forces quickly overran the country, and with the U.S. declining to intervene, Bakhtiar’s government collapsed within a week. Bakhtiar himself fled to France, where an Iranian assassin murdered him in 1991.
Given the Carter administration’s warm relationship with Khomeini, his attempt to maintain good relations with post-revolution Iran (most notably by maintaining our military alliance), as well as Khomeini’s opposition to Mosaddeghism (as shown by his immediate overthrow of the Mosaddeghist transitional government), the idea that modern Iran can claim a grievance against America based on the 1953 “coup” is absurd. Khomeini himself despised Mosaddegh, declaring that he would be “slapped by Islam” for his supporters’ blasphemous behavior, and during Mosaddegh’s prime ministership, Iran’s ayatollahs opposed him, seeing Mosaddegh as an atheistic leftist trying to destroy Islam.
Did you know that there were not one, but two Iran hostage crises? The first one occurred on February 14, 1979, three days after Khomeini overthrew Bakhtiar’s government, when the Marxist, Khomeini-aligned OIPFG stormed the American embassy and took Marine Kenneth Kraus hostage. Ambassador William Sullivan chose to surrender the embassy to prevent a massacre and was able to negotiate with Khomeini’s foreign minister to get the OIPFG to stand down. Kraus was kidnapped, tortured, and sentenced to death in a kangaroo trial, but was freed after only six days of captivity. Despite Carter continuing to pursue normal relations with the new Iran, Khomeini betrayed him as he betrayed Bakhtiar, denouncing the U.S. as the “Great Satan.” This pattern of treachery and backstabbing defines the Islamic Republic to this day, from their repeated and egregious violations of the memorandum of understanding, their attempts to hold the world economy hostage by attacking civilian shipping, and their blatant lies about their military capabilities.
The ostensible trigger for the second hostage crisis, the one everyone knows, was Carter allowing the gravely-ill Shah to travel to the U.S. for medical treatment. Khomeini argued that this was evidence of an American plot to overthrow his government, which was ridiculous given that Carter had effectively allowed Khomeini to take power and tried to maintain good relations with Iran afterwards. Khomeini’s supporters were also motivated by their desire to overthrow the interim government he had appointed upon his return, as it was comprised of moderate leftists who opposed an Islamic theocracy and were suspected of seeking improved relations with the U.S. The government would resign two days before the hostage crisis began, less than two weeks after Iranians approved the formation of the Islamic Republic in a referendum in which its opponents were threatened with violence.
There’s a clear parallel between the Iranian and Russian revolutions: an absolute monarchy is overthrown by a leftist popular front (Bakhtiar’s government/Kerensky’s government) only to be itself overthrown by the most radical faction (Khomeini/the Bolsheviks). It also eerily paralleled events in Rhodesia during that same time. In 1978, the white Rhodesian government of Ian Smith negotiated a power-sharing agreement with Abel Muzorewa’s UANC, paving the way for the reconstitution of the country as Zimbabwe Rhodesia, increased black participation in government, and Muzorewa’s election as prime minister. Rhodesia was slowly losing the Bush War, as whites emigrated due to violence, its limited international support (from Portugal and South Africa) was withdrawn, and its opponents, the Marxist ZAPU and ZANU, were both funded by China and the Soviet Union (respectively) and aided by Rhodesia’s newly-independent neighbors. Both ZAPU and ZANU rejected the Internal Settlement, as did Carter, the U.K., and the UN, and Muzorewa’s government would ultimately negotiate the Lancaster House ceasefire with the Marxists. Robert Mugabe (who led ZAPU) would go back on all of his promises not long after winning the 1980 election, unleashing a reign of terror that drove out Zimbabwe’s remaining whites and turned the nation into a cartoonishly poor dictatorship.
The Coup That Never Happened
But what about the 1953 coup? America went and overthrew Iran’s first democratically elected government. Nope. Didn’t happen.
First, the facts: Mohammed Mosaddegh was not “democratically elected” in the way that Americans think of democracy. He was appointed prime minister by the Shah in 1952 after being elected by members of the Iranian parliament, meaning his election was as “democratic” as John Thune being elected as Senate Majority Leader. While some members of Iran’s parliament were themselves democratically elected, the Shah exercised considerable control over who was allowed to run for office and the franchise was extremely limited at this time; for example, women in Iran could not vote until 1963. Mosaddegh’s coalition, the National Front, won at most 11 seats out of 136 in the 1950 election, and Mosaddegh himself would not become prime minister until 1951, being preceded by three other PMs. According to Elections in Asia: A Data Handbook, Mosaddegh committed fraud in the 1952 election by halting the counting of votes from rural areas, who were strongly opposed to his rule; as a result, only 79 out of 136 seats were filled, with the National Front taking 30 of them.
While Mosaddegh began his tenure as a popular figure, he had lost significant support by 1952 due to Iran’s poor economic situation. His nationalization of the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company’s (a forerunner to the modern BP) assets was initially popular, but led to a British embargo against Iran (Britain even contested Iran’s theft of its property to the Hague, who declined to act) and also saw the collapse of Iranian oil exports as Iranians were unable to keep the wells and refineries they’d stolen running. In 1952, Mosaddegh rammed through legislation inspired by Hitler’s Enabling Act that allowed him to rule by decree, using his powers to carry out violent crackdowns on political opposition.
In 1953, during the supposed “coup,” Mosaddegh held a phony referendum that would dissolve parliament permanently, give him the exclusive power to make law, and remove the right of the Shah to dismiss him; this is the definition of an “auto-coup,” in which a politician who obtains power legally attempts to stay in power illegally. Mosaddegh was also closely aligned with the communist Tudeh Party and it was believed by many Iranians that he would turn Iran into a communist state aligned with the Soviet Union. The Shah was alarmed by Mosaddegh’s actions, despite supporting some of his policies (such as his nationalization of the oil industry), and many of Mosaddegh’s supporters had abandoned him by this point due to his clear dictatorial ambitions. The Shah was going to remove Mosaddegh regardless of the CIA’s involvement; he was a threat to Iran’s constitutional order.
The CIA’s own declassified documents report that Operation Ajax, the CIA “plot” to oust Mosaddegh, was a failure. On August 15, 1953, the Shah formally dismissed Mosaddegh as prime minister and sent Colonel Nematollah Nassini, commander of his personal guard, to deliver the news. Mossadegh rejected the lawful dismissal and had Nassini arrested. This was the sum total of Operation Ajax, and in its wake, the Shah fled Iran and CIA agents in the country advised the Eisenhower administration to “make peace with Mosaddegh.” Four days later, however, a wave of anti-government demonstrations led by leftists, the ayatollahs, and virtually every other rival faction in the country forced Mosaddegh from power; he was arrested, sentenced to three years in prison, and was kept under house arrest until his death in 1967.
The claim that the demonstrations of August 19 were instigated by the CIA stems entirely from Kermit Roosevelt’s 1979 book Countercoup: The Struggle for the Control of Iran. Roosevelt, a grandson of President Theodore Roosevelt, did participate in Operation Ajax, claiming to have personally led demonstrations against Mosaddegh. However, almost nothing in his book has been corroborated by independent sources, and he outright fabricated large parts of it, including doctoring quotes from President Eisenhower. Roosevelt’s own colleagues accused him of lying to embellish his role in the “coup,” and Eisenhower himself dismissed Roosevelt’s Operation Ajax report as “seem[ing] more like a dime novel than historical fact.” The CIA ultimately deemed Countercoup “essentially a work of fiction” in declassified documents.
Iran Has Already Lost the War
The extensive evidence of Iran’s meddling in American domestic affairs, from their assassination attempts on Donald Trump to the recently declassified documents fingering them in part for electoral fraud in the 2020 presidential election to their close cooperation with Cuba (which is actively trying to overthrow the U.S. government according to this week’s State Department report), justify war on their own. The fact that Iranian oil forms a key plank of our rival China’s industrial base is another good reason; the war has led to America seizing control of the global energy market, with buyers who would normally head to the Middle East now going to Texas and Louisiana, whose refineries are swollen with crude from freshly-liberated Venezuela.
I’m sympathetic to those who oppose the war for noninterventionist reasons. We all grew up during Iraq, a war that should have never happened, and Afghanistan, a war that continued endlessly and culminated in Biden allowing the country to fall to the Taliban. I’m also sympathetic to those who are frustrated by rising gas prices. But the simple fact of the matter is that America has already won the war:
- Iran’s navy and air force have been completely destroyed. The U.S. Air Force has total air superiority and can bomb Iranian targets with impunity. America had established this air superiority in April, when the U.S. rescued two downed pilots by constructing an airstrip in Iran’s own territory, which the Iranians were either unable or unwilling to attack. The recent strikes, particularly around Iran’s main port of Bandar Abbas, have permanently crippled Iran’s infrastructure. The Navy blockade of the Strait has kept civilian ships carrying much-needed food and other goods from docking at Iranian ports.
- Iran is unable to control the Strait of Hormuz, as tankers continuously enter and exit despite Iran insisting that the Strait is “closed” (curiously, they have never once “reopened” it). Tankers are now transiting the Omani side of the Strait, protected by the Navy, and are turning off their AISes to avoid Iranian detection. Even pro-Iranian sources have conceded that traffic is flowing through the Strait, albeit at lower volumes compared to before the war, which is the opposite of “closed.”
- Even if Iran controlled the Strait, it wouldn’t matter, as trade has either routed around it or halted entirely due to demand destruction in the first phase of the war. Both the UAE and Iraq are constructing pipelines to circumvent the Strait, while China has curtailed oil imports so it can stretch out its strategic reserves. This is evidenced in how despite the war having escalated (Trump having made good on his “Bridge and Power Plant Day” promise), oil remains at less than $89/barrel as of this writing, significantly lower than its peak of $112/barrel in April. Piracy only works once; trade eventually re-routs to avoid the pirates. These actions are creating an oil glut that will likely define the rest of the 2020s, which could potentially lower the cost of energy to levels not seen since the COVID pandemic. This parallels the oil glut of the 80s, itself caused by the Arab oil embargo of the 70s and the Iranian Revolution; the 80s glut was so large it caused budget crises in oil-producing regions like Texas and Alberta and even contributed to the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991.
- Iran is depleted militarily. The number of missiles and drones they attack U.S. Gulf bases with is drastically lower than during the first part of the war, and they are so desperate for materiel that they are scavenging missile sites the U.S. has already destroyed. They notably have not attacked Israel once during this phase of the conflict, despite Israel’s invasion of Lebanon being their cited casus belli for tearing up the MOU. Iran’s attacks on our bases have had zero effect on American warfighting capabilities.
- Iran has been unable to score symbolic wins by killing or capturing American soldiers. The U.S. has only lost 20 men during the course of the conflict, which is fewer than the casualties sustained during the first week of the Iraq War. Beyond the aforementioned air superiority, Iran is unable to inflict casualties on American Gulf bases, denying them video of dead Americans that can be broadcasted across the Internet. Similarly, the April rescue operation denied Iran the ability to capture and torture the downed pilots for propaganda purposes.
- Iran has been unable to move the needle on American public opinion to replicate the forced political loss of Vietnam. While the war is unpopular according to polls, the Democratic Party has only a pitiful 5.4 lead in aggregate generic ballot polling for the upcoming midterm elections. This parallels not 2018, the last true wave election America had, but 2022, where the much-ballyhooed “red wave” of opposition to Joe Biden failed to materialize. If Americans are upset about the war, they don’t seem to care enough to do anything about it, including voting the Republicans out of power.
- Iran’s economy is in collapse and it has been so isolated in trade that it is facing famine. Even prior to the MOU’s collapse, it was unable to sell its oil. No one wants to trade with a pirate state. Iran’s inflation has surged to 89 percent, one of the highest in the world, while food inflation has risen so high that even bread is becoming unaffordable. Iran imports 50 percent of its food supply and both Iranian and international sources have begun warning of mass starvation in the coming months. Food scarcity is a reliable trigger of domestic unrest; the French Revolution, Arab Spring, and other major historical revolutions were triggered by famine and food inflation.
It’s arguable that America won the war with the mass bombing of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and his inner circle, depriving Iran of proven leadership and forcing inexperienced incompetents to the top. Everything that has happened afterwards is cleanup, like how Stalingrad broke the back of the Wehrmacht and forced them into a perpetual retreat from the Red Army. The myth that Iran is “winning” comes from paid propagandists and useful idiots praising Iran for basic emergency measures any country is capable of, like creating temporary river crossings that can be washed out by rain.
So why does Iran keep fighting when every day they do so, their position becomes worse? Prominent commentator Captive Dreamer has called this the “Gazafication” of warfare, where doomed nations who have clearly lost are encouraged to keep getting themselves killed for a “moral victory.” It’s been nearly three years since the Gaza war began and Israel has clearly won, with Hamas unable to eject them from the Strip and no outside actors willing to intervene in substantive ways. The same forces egging the Gazans on are egging on Iranians for their own self-serving reasons:
- Third worlders desire to see the oppressive white imperialist U.S. destroyed, regardless of the facts. (Iran’s “Great Satan” rhetoric is simply Marxist anti-imperialism in Islamic drag.)
- Leftists also want the above, but in addition to this, they derive a vicarious (sometimes sexual) thrill from other people dying to fight the “evil empire.”
- Low-IQ anti-Semitic “right-wingers” want Iranians to die needlessly in the struggle against “ZOG.”
I have predicted in the past month that the online discourse on Iran, poisoned by obvious bots, foreign agents, and useful idiots for the IRGC, will gradually shift from delusional gloating about how Iranian is “beating” the U.S. to petulant whining about how America is “genociding” Iranians. It has already begun to shift, with Iranian officials accusing the U.S. of “war crimes” and even pro-Palestinian figures conceding that Iran “almost succeeded” (aka it lost). Trump offered Iran an off-ramp in the form of the MOU and much as Khomeini betrayed Bakhtiar and Carter, the IRGC betrayed Trump. It is tragic, but the Iranians will pay the price for their leaders’ treachery.
