There's been lots of debates over the years about who controls whom - does the US control Israel, or does Israel control the US?

Here's some thoughts on the US imperial system, its rise and its decline. To do this best I'll have to expand the frame to include the Gulf & its oil 🧵

https://x.com/iyad_elbaghdadi/status/2042155229714772162

(I went to sleep late and woke up with a headache. I should get up and pour myself a cup of coffee and start my day, but instead I'm writing this thread about the US imperial system from bed. Sorry team @Kawaakibi.)

@Kawaakibi Okay. Empires are best understood in terms of hierarchy.
- In pre-modernity empires, this was core vs periphery
- In modern colonial empires, it's metropole vs colony

These aren't hard binaries and there are some gradations in between (e.g. semi-core, dominions, etc.)

Quick & early comments on the ceasefire that may become outdated by this evening:

Huge sigh of relief that an off ramp has been found, even if unstable. At the very least it creates momentum in the direction of deescalation and increases the political cost of restarting. Pakistani mediation shone, huge diplomatic win for Pakistan

Before the agreement, I was fully expecting escalation to continue and had plotted a risk assessment based upon that scenario, find it here. That risk is now suspended, but not eliminated, because the ceasefire remains unstable

https://x.com/iyad_elbaghdadi/status/2041228700482429124

On Friday, I presented a risk assessment briefing re the Iran war to my team on an internal call. We thought it was worth sharing the notes (which were AI-transcribed & summarized), so here goes. Posting without much editing to save time.

Note for context: I was born & raised in the Gulf, and lived the first 37 years of my life in the UAE. I still have friends & family in the UAE & the rest of the Gulf who I love dearly and worry about daily.

Anyway, on to it.

Overall assessment of the war
- Conflict is on an escalation/attrition path with no realistic short‑term off‑ramp.
- Iran sees the situation as existential and therefore cannot de‑escalate without serious guarantees; it still has not used the full spectrum of its capabilities (e.g. regular army/shadow navy, maximum Houthi disruption, sustained strikes on Gulf civilian targets).
- Israel will not stop on its own; the US political/military leadership is structurally and personally incapable of absorbing the “L” and stepping back.
- Likely timeline: this war phase runs at least to end of the year, potentially longer, with conditions changing non‑linearly (step‑changes/phase shifts) rather than gradually.

Some disorganized notes:

Re: How this war ends, it's clear that Iran is going for attrition, something the IRGC is good at, and the math works in their favor.

Meanwhile, it's not clear what the US is going for in terms of a threshold that would count as "victory".

It's also clear that short of bringing about regime change - which even the US and Israel have quietly acknowledged isn't gonna happen - Iran will retain its ability to block the Straits of Hormuz. Given the geography, it doesn't take much to disrupt shipping there.

Re Trump pressuring NATO allies to join his war - the fact is that even if every country stupidly sends its navy to the Straits, this will just pull in more countries without changing the dynamic. The French + British + Australians won't manage to do something the US can't.

In almost every way this war is becoming an absolutely catastrophic disaster and a humiliating strategic defeat for the United States. This could, relative to its scale & cost, go down as the worst planned, worst managed, worst executed war in modern US history.

Trump keeps issuing threats even as his admin are desperately trying to get the Iranians to answer the phone to agree on a way to deescalate. He doesn't get it - the Iranian government is no longer in any mood to take his bluster. They control the escalatory ladder now.

Just today we know:
- Iranian boats are starting to mine the Straits of Hormuz
- US is giving away its strategic position in Asia just to keep this war afloat
- In both the Gulf countries and Israel, more missiles/drones are getting through without interception or warning

Here's a megathread on the war on Iran that focuses on the deeper dynamics, potential trajectories, and likely outcomes.

A lot will change over the next few weeks - this thread is about what won't.

Stay until the end for an announcement & an invitation.

Most geopolitical analysis is cold and state-centric. Here, we look at the longer arcs and what they mean for the prospects for collective liberation and systems change.

This is geopolitics for liberation.

Let me start by saying that all the main actors here are awful:
- Israel is a genocidal apartheid state
- Trump is an incompetent, corrupt warmonger
- Iran's regime is a brutal, repressive theocracy

God bless and save the people of the region, they're the hope for change.