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.)

Quick & early comments on the ceasefire that may become outdated by this evening: Huge sigh of relief that an off ramp has been found, even if unstable.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

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.

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.

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.

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.

Israel is historically unique in that it struts like a hegemon but survives like a colony. It dominates its region militarily and psychologically, yet is so critically dependent on foreign support that if the lifeline is cut, the entire structure starts to collapse. No state in modern history combines such regional dominance with such strategic dependence. Israel wields power like an empire, but lives like a protectorate - it can't sustain its supremacy without continuous Western military, economic, and diplomatic support.

Israel will never accept a sovereign, strong Syria. No amount of "goodwill signals" will change that, they’ll only be read as weakness and invite more aggression. Israel looks only at your capacity, never your intent. Its doctrine is security through mass devastation. This government wasted months on appeasement while Israel bombed Syria 1000+ times, occupied ~200 sq km of land, inflamed sectarian tensions, this on top of its longstanding occupation of the Golan. Appeasement didn’t buy time or security. It sent a signal of weakness.

Here's a thread about Netanyahu's calculus for regional recalibration in the aftermath of the 12-day war with Iran.

Netanyahu is due to meet Trump tomorrow, and a lot might change - this is a thread about what won't When Israel launched its war on Iran mid-June, I had said it's Netanyahu's war. Yes, it was also Israel's war, another war of consensus. But Netanyahu doesn't do anything unless it helps him politically.

This is a map of the parameters.

So, the 12-day war between Israel (& the US) vs Iran seems to be over, and the ceasefire seems to be holding. Here's a thread assessing what has changed, what didn't change, and what may be next: Since it's Israel who started this war, let's start with its war aims (declared & assumed):
- End Iran's nuclear program
- Regime change
- Kill Iran-US negotiations for a new deal
- Drag the US in
- Distract from Gaza
- Stop Europe’s 2SS push

A quick situational update after the US strikes Iran's nuclear facilities. Events might to accelerate, so I'm hoping to give you a snapshot of how things stand as of the time of writing this thread. The US warned Iran ahead of its attacks - we have confirmation of this from US, Iranian, and Arab sources. The same reporting says the strike was one-off and now over, with the US seeking negotiations and explicitly denying intent to pursue regime change.

https://x.com/i24NEWS_EN/status/1936672747679092774

Excellent question by @vali_nasr. Here's a thread about Iran's nuclear program, why it's so hard to "destroy", and why "Fordow" is really about dragging the US into war:

https://twitter.com/vali_nasr/status/1935596742008783338

Let's start with the basics. To have a nuclear program, a country needs:
- Uranium reserves
- The ability to mine ore & process it
- Centrifuges to enrich it
- Technical know-how to run the cycle

Iran has all of these *domestically*. Natively.

Here's a big-picture geopolitical thread on Israel's war on Iran - its possibilities, impossibilities, dynamics, and delusions. My goal is to give you a full big-picture view in one place, which is why this is a long thread. If you prefer drip-fed updates, skip this thread. Caveat: Most geopolitical analysis is cold and state-centric. This thread is rooted in collective liberation. Remember as you read: Israel's regime is genocidal. Iran's is a theocratic tyranny. If clear moral language makes you uncomfortable, scroll back to WSJ or CNN.

Hello everyone, emerging to drop some comments about Trump's recent statements about Gaza. I have limited time so I'd rather dump a quick analysis into a single meandering thread, sorry in advance So: Trump, with a smirking Netanyahu sitting next to him, said he thinks Gaza should be ethnically cleansed, bulldozed, and then turned into a US-controlled "riviera." The comments have horrified and alarmed many people.

Netanyahu said they were "the first good idea he's heard"

Here's a personal thread about the very strong, complex emotions that I struggled with all of last week, since we watched Assad fall and Syria rise: (I've been working with my team on building systems that would enable me to post new content consistently & sustainably, and on multiple platforms. But I couldn't focus. I had to stop & check-in with myself. So let me acknowledge these emotions)

Israel's immediate reaction to the fall of the Assad regime is mass bombardment of Syrian army bases and expansion into Syrian territory. This tells you two things: First: Israel saw no security threat from Assad's regime - they had a tacit understanding and Assad always stayed within the lines. So long Assad was in power, Israel had no need to take out his weapons depots or aircraft fleets, or to create a further buffer zone.

The rupture in international solidarity communities (that tried to integrate Western + Global South activists) is deep. The rupture in the small Israeli-Palestinian solidarity communities is catastrophic. It'll take a decade to fix what happened in the last two months, if at all. I'm starting to become convinced that many movements will not survive this and will have to be mourned and laid to rest, and new movements built out of what remains. Built on better principles, with more moral courage and clearer-eyed vision.

Here's a thread about the concept of indigeneity in historical Palestine and its implications in light of Zionist settler-colonialism and the persecution of the Palestinians. You may want to bookmark this for whenever someone screams "but Jews are indigenous to the land!" 🧵 Note: This thread is not an attack on Jewish life in the Middle East. It's an analytical critique of the narratives used. My argument is that indigeneity is not an appropriate framing to use in the Israel-Palestine context, but especially when used (aggressively) by Zionists

A long thread about colonialism, decolonization, what models can & can't work, and why the Israel-Palestine context is unique. I wish people would slow-read this because many are walking around with outdated models, and may be causing damage 🧵 Caveat: I wrote this as a stream of consciousness with minimum editing so please forgive me if this ends up being meandering or repetitive or choppy. I just find that I write more powerfully and authentically when I'm not trying to edit anything or make it sound good

A lot has been said recently about what Islam allows or prohibits in war so I thought I'd clarify this: In Islam the distinction is not "civilian vs military"; it's "combatant vs non-combatant". Here's a quick explanation In the classical Islamic era, the distinction of civilian vs non-civilian didn't exist. Neither the Prophet nor his tribal adversaries had standing armies made up of full-time soldiers. Armies at the time were made of men of fighting age who otherwise were traders, farmers, etc.

So many people seem to lack basic reading comprehension. You say Palestinian children should live, they think you say you want Israeli children to die. You say Palestinians are oppressed, they think you say you want to kill Jews. So tragic that this has become a real zero-sum. These people aren't exactly imbeciles, mind you. Some are highly educated. I'm talking PhDs, scholars, journalists, business leaders. They don't really lack basic reading comprehension. No, they can read. They just will only understand what they want to understand.