Geopolitics for Liberation: The War on Iran

Let's first acknowledge that all the main actors here are awful: Israel is a genocidal apartheid state, Trump is an incompetent, corrupt warmonger, and Iran's regime is a brutal, repressive theocracy. God bless and save the people of the region - they're the hope for change.

This piece is divided into eight sections, covering the deeper dynamics of the war, its potential trajectories, and its likely outcomes. A lot will change over the coming weeks. This is about what won't.

The Trauma Loop: How Israel's Psyche Drives Its Strategy

The single deepest driver of this war is a profound shift that happened in Israel after Oct 7. This shift is both psychological and strategic, but the psychological is driving everything far more than you'd realize.

Israel always had a deep, longstanding identity structure that fused post-Holocaust exceptional victimhood with settler-colonial dominator logic. "Never again be weak, never again be at someone's mercy. The world is a field of danger. We can only be safe if we dominate." Israel's founders were clear-eyed about what their existence in the region entailed. In the decades after 1973, Israel gained strong Western support and became co-constitutive of the US empire - and this psyche lay dormant for many years.

The era since the Gaza genocide decisively returned Israel to its original existential psyche: do not trust, dominate; destroy threats before they arise; judge capacity and not intent. Hope that dropping enough bombs will make you safe, and live in a mix of jubilation and terror.

This is self-fulfilling. Any future isolation Israel faces is interpreted as evidence that "they all hate us," and as justification for more war. The more isolated it gets, the more violent it becomes. The more violent it becomes, the more isolated it gets. There's no off-ramp.

Netanyahu may have started this, but he isn't the deeper cause - he's both a symptom and an accelerator. Nor does this end with him: a successor, be it Bennett, Lapid, or anyone else, would follow the same logic. This is now structural.

This is why this war feels different. It may appear to be "another round," but deep down it's the logical end result of a state whose psyche sees perpetual military supremacy as the only viable path to safety. Everything else now flows downstream from this reality.

The war that began on Oct 7, 2023 is Israel's last war - not because Israel's victory or defeat is imminent, not because after this war Israel will find peace, but because Israel will be in a constant state of war from here on, as a very condition of its existence.

This dynamic also makes a negotiated end highly unlikely. Before the war, negotiations between the US and Iran were publicly framed as a chance to limit Iran's nuclear program. The Iranian regime offered concessions, as the Omani mediator noted: "zero enriched uranium stockpiling." But the Iranian regime likely knew that these talks were never genuine. Israeli officials kept signaling the real aim: leadership decapitation and regime change. Meanwhile, Mike Huckabee sparked a diplomatic crisis by saying Israel could "take it all" in the Middle East.

This is Israel's war, and it is existential for Iran's regime. There simply isn't any intersection between what Israel wants and what Iran can accept. There may be a ceasefire at some point - but the underlying dynamics make a final negotiated end impossible.

No Goals, No Victory: America's Aimless War

Winning means achieving your goal. Israel's goal is to maximally degrade the Iranian regime's capabilities - and if possible, to collapse the Iranian state. But what about the US? What does it want? It doesn't seem like anyone in the administration knows.

Is it a war for Iranian freedom, as Trump initially said? Or is it not a regime change war and "no democracy building exercise," as Hegseth said? Or is it to get rid of the missiles and navy, as Rubio said? You can't win a war if you don't know what you want out of it.

If it's to get rid of Iran's missiles and drones, Iran can rebuild - its production of these is entirely domestic. If it's for regime change, you need ground troops. The US doesn't have nearly enough troops in the region for this, and no separatist group in Iran is up to the task. And even if the regime falls, you don't automatically get a democracy.

It seems Trump had envisioned a short war with a highly visible win, something that echoes Venezuela: take out the top guy, get a ceasefire, declare victory. That clearly didn't work.

When you add the mounting risks, the picture gets far worse. Starting with the serious systemic shock if the Straits of Hormuz are closed: the Houthis, who are much less equipped, shut Red Sea shipping by targeting ships with drones and missiles. Imagine what the IRGC can do. A quarter of the world's energy, and a large proportion of the world's fertilizers, are shipped through Hormuz. Long-term closure would trigger a systemic shock and spike global inflation in energy and food - pain that would reverberate across the entire world.

Then there's the risk to the Gulf states. If these oil-rich states face collapse, it would trigger a global chain reaction that is impossible to quantify. It's one thing to achieve your goals at a high cost. It's another to pay a very high cost and still not achieve your goals. And if the regime "falls" somehow - who inherits the aftermath? Who deals with the chaos? Who receives the refugee waves? For the US, this is a war with no clear objectives, zero upside, and enormous systemic risks, regardless of how much they destroy or how many they kill in Iran.

What about European countries? A few are stupid enough to feel they must humiliate themselves and grovel to Trump to keep him on side when it comes to NATO - Mark Rutte, who once called Trump "daddy," lies out of both sides of his mouth in his attempts to steelman this war. Yet other European countries realize that this isn't their war, that the degradation of international law is a far more serious and enduring threat to European security than the Iranian regime ever was, and that getting dragged in can make them a target of Iranian retaliation, including terrorism.

The truth is, this war is a godsend for Europe's primary enemy - Putin. Russia is a major exporter of fossil fuels. The boost to energy prices alone can fully fund his war in Ukraine, at a time when systemic stresses were starting to appear in his war machine. Disaster for Europe.

So if this is the picture, why did the US enter this war? Because its leadership is low-quality, compromised, and beholden to Israel. This war makes no sense to the US or Europe. This is Israel's war. Netanyahu dog-walked Trump into war twice and he'll do it again if he can.

Israel's geopolitical strategy is not aligned with the US's or the West's - in fact, it is undermining their interests. It'll keep starting wars and dragging them in. No Western leader dares to say this out loud, but Israel is well on its way to becoming a geopolitical liability.

Israel doesn't seem to care about US domestic confusion, Europe's security, or global risk. It is singularly focused on maximum disruption, degradation, and devastation in Iran. This is Israel's war, and Israel can still declare victory at the end of it. Everyone else will lose.

The IRGC: A Machine Built to Never Surrender

Iran's regime isn't built around one man's inner circle, like Saddam's Iraq or Assad's Syria. It is both a regime and a revolutionary religious project - ideological, institutional, multilayered, and coup-proofed.

The religious dimension alone gives it transnational reach. Not all Shias support this regime's ideology - many oppose it on religious grounds - but since its rise it has grown deep roots across many Shia communities around the world.

On paper, the regime looks like a "managed democracy," with multiple elected bodies constrained by multiple unelected ones, with the Supreme Leader on top. In reality, however, actual coercive power is in the hands of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, the IRGC. The IRGC isn't just an army - it's a parallel military-economic empire tasked with protecting the system. By some estimates, it controls half of Iran's economy. The IRGC will fight to the bitter end, even if it means turning Iran into a nightmare for any successor regime.

In the unlikely event of the regime collapsing - or degrading enough that it starts to lose coherence - the IRGC would be effectively in charge. They won't hand over power. And hand it over to who, anyway? There's no alternative power center in Iran to hand the reins to.

In such a scenario, the IRGC would switch to insurgency mode and decentralized command centers, each cell effectively fighting the war on its own and taking its own decisions. The civilian administration won't be able to rein them in. There will be no one person to negotiate with.

Israel already set the objectives of this war in existential terms. And so long as the IRGC sees the war in existential terms, it has every incentive to escalate and no incentive to de-escalate. This is not just a function of ideology, but of survival impulse.

In this war we've seen the regime escalate immediately - it's easy to see why, once you understand that the threat was existential from the start. But this is also a taste of the IRGC: if the regime falters, the chaos won't stay within Iran. This isn't a regime built to go out quietly.

The escalation is aimed to raise the cost to everyone in the region and to make any future round politically and economically unthinkable for those who host US forces or back the strikes. By hitting GCC states - airports, bases, oil facilities - Iran crossed a deliberate line.

The Stability Mirage: How the Gulf's Model Breaks Under Pressure

Nobody in the region wanted this war - least of all the Gulf monarchies that hosted US bases and quietly partnered against Iran for decades. There have been leaks about MBS pushing for the war, but that's likely Israeli disinformation.

The IRGC attacked both military and soft targets - airports, oil. Further escalation could see shipping, desalination plants, and even population centers targeted. This is "mutually assured destruction" by another name: ensure the pain is shared by all.

The Gulf states have cried foul, saying their territory wasn't used to attack Iran. But the point is moot - they still have US bases. They're not neutral; they're US allies. The deeper logic is that in an existential fight, the IRGC will ensure it's existential for everybody.

What makes the Gulf states uniquely fragile? They are classical rentier states. A huge proportion of their populations are foreign residents with no path to citizenship. The UAE, a close ally of Israel and the most targeted country by Iran, is an extreme example. The private sector - fintech, real estate, tourism - runs on foreign labor. These aren't only manual laborers; they're professionals, investors, and families who settled there thanks to the promise of safety and prosperity in a volatile region. This is how Dubai became a global brand.

Missiles hitting Dubai's airports, hotels, and ports shatters that illusion. The entire model depends on an unbreakable promise: stability. When that promise is broken, capital can flee, talent can leave, real estate can devalue, and financial hubs start to look elsewhere.

Many non-citizens living in the Gulf are second or third generation - they feel a sense of belonging and will not rush to leave. But there are others who came to make money, raise families, and live in luxury, not to live under the constant threat of drones and missiles.

The Gulf's armed forces, supported by allies, can shoot down a lot of drones and missiles. But what was forever a core promise - something taken for granted - now becomes something questioned and contested. This may not cause an immediate mass exodus, but its damage can compound.

Gulf societies seem to have absorbed the initial shock and panic well, but the real danger is what happens if this draws out into an open-ended attrition war. Past the first few weeks, fatigue can start to set in and can really stress the social makeup of these countries.

The IRGC's strategy is deliberate: make the pain so high and so shared that another round becomes politically and economically impossible for the Gulf. And the Gulf's pain tolerance is already low. The alliance with the US was meant to guarantee security; it has made them a target.

The foundation of the petrodollar system was that the Gulf states price their oil in dollars in return for security. Even in the midst of these events, the US focuses more on protecting Israel. When the petrodollar system starts to crack, the entire global system stands to change.

Four Ways This Ends (None of Them Well)

The incentives - Israel's perpetual war logic, the IRGC's existential war footing, US mission creep - make it highly unlikely this ends with either a clear victory or a negotiated settlement. Instead, four overlapping long-term paths present themselves.

Path 1: Degradation cycles. The regime absorbs the blows. The US and Israel cause a lot of devastation but cannot eliminate the system. A ceasefire is declared. The regime survives but is degraded, anxious, less stable, and more beholden to the IRGC. Israel looks for the next round. Meanwhile the regime uses the lull to resecure its borders, deal with any separatist or partisan activity within the country, and restock its drone and missile supply. In case of another round of protests, they won't hesitate to massacre.

Path 2: Attrition. The IRGC shifts to low-cost, high-pain harassment - routine attacks on Gulf shipping, proxy activation, cyber ops, terrorism. The US opts for a drawdown, despite Israel pushing to continue. The regime survives degraded but makes the region chronically unstable. Attrition is the IRGC's preferred mode of fighting, and the math works well in their favor. US weapons systems are expensive and built to fight conventional enemies. IRGC methods and weapons are made for insurgencies and attrition: cheap, lower-tech, and sufficient against soft targets.

Path 3: Collapse. This is unlikely, but repeated degradation cycles could compound pressure on the regime to the point that it starts to lose coherence. Separatist movements within Iran start to gain ground, drawing in bigger countries - Iraq, Turkey, Azerbaijan, Pakistan. Some of these countries don't want separatism on their border, while others see an opportunity. The IRGC switches into insurgency mode. No successor emerges - instead you get warlordism and fragmentation. The result is massive civilian suffering, refugee waves, and a long civil war.

These three paths are overlapping. You could get cycles of degradation with the IRGC switching to attrition between them, with successive degradation cycles pushing closer towards collapse. Or this round could transition into a long attrition with no "official" end.

Path 4: Iran gets nukes. This could stop the cycle in its tracks. Khamenei had issued a fatwa against nukes, but he is dead, and it has become obvious that if Iran actually had a nuclear weapon it would not be attacked. Getting a nuke is now the most rational self-preservation move for the regime. And if Iran gets nukes, other countries in the region will absolutely seek them. Those that can't afford nukes will seek shelter under someone else's nuclear umbrella, or develop cheaper WMDs. If threatened with sanctions, they'll call for disarming Israel and Iran first.

Divide and Dominate: Israel's Real Endgame

In a regime collapse scenario, the power vacuum will not produce a stable democratic Iran. It will produce competing factions, with the strongest being the IRGC combined with ethnic separatist groups. The Pahlavi movement has no armed base inside Iran.

Israel knows this, and it aligns perfectly with its strategic worldview. Publicly, it frames the strikes as "liberation" and calls on Iranians to "rise up," but the truth is Israel doesn't care about them. Its real aim is to accelerate chaos and block any strong, unified successor.

This preference is not hidden. Israeli officials and think tanks have long echoed Oded Yinon's ideas of weak neighbors and regional balkanization. In 2023, 32 Knesset members signed a declaration calling for Iran's partitioning. We're already seeing this play out: the US and Israel are arming Kurdish groups in Iraq for cross-border operations into Iran, aiming to seize territory and create buffers. This risks pulling Iraq and Turkey in, and puts millions of Kurdish civilians in Iran at risk of IRGC retaliation.

Israel is a survivalist nation caught in a trauma loop it can't break. It cares singularly about its own safety and is not thinking long-term - it takes this round by round, using whatever opening is available. But its long-term vision is clear: a region of small, divided ethnic states where hierarchies dominate, not large multi-ethnic democracies built on citizenship beyond blood. In a divided region, Israel can thrive. Unity anywhere is a threat.

The People Caught Between: Iran's Fractured Opposition and the Cost of Shortcuts

The Iranian people will suffer most - be it civilians or the diaspora communities who love them. Millions are feeling a mix of fear, hope, anger, and deep uncertainty.

If you know Iranians, you'll see many celebrating the targeting of the regime and the IRGC. You'll also see many protesting the attack on Iran and the killing of its leadership. Both exist, and both should be held in the frame. The truth is, almost everyone is scared and anxious.

As the US and Israel prepare to escalate the war inside Iran, it's worth keeping in mind that Hegseth has relaxed civilian casualty thresholds - meaning more suffering and death in Iran's cities. This is also dangerous for everyone else, as the IRGC could retaliate in kind across the world.

The Iranian regime has had a serious legitimacy crisis almost since its founding, made worse by repression, brutality, corruption, fanaticism, isolation, economic collapse, and stolen elections. Yet it retains a loyal support base, especially in rural and conservative areas. Reliable data on levels of support is hard to come by, but the majority of Iranians are likely in the exhausted middle - people who just want to live, work, and feed their families. Deep polarization among Iranians doesn't bode well for any post-regime future.

The Pahlavi wing is sold as the natural successor: pro-Western, pro-Israel, ready for democratic transition. But it has zero chance of seizing or holding actual power inside Iran. The Pahlavi movement is traumatized, dysfunctional, and increasingly toxic - a movement born of profound national trauma, of a proud country with deep civilizational roots reduced to isolation, repression, and fanaticism since 1979. This has bred anger, dysfunction, and patterns of behavior that alienate many people who want to stand in solidarity.

Trump is already signaling that he's discarding Pahlavi, preferring "someone from within" who is "currently popular" - and he wouldn't have said this without discussing it with the Israelis. It looks like Pahlavi didn't learn the lesson from Machado. After being abandoned by Trump and Israel, the opposition movement risks being left broken, betrayed, demoralized, and even more traumatized - spiraling into further dysfunction. Instead of advancing, the cause of Iranian freedom could regress for years.

A viable post-regime Iran needs internal legitimacy, minority inclusion, regional buy-in, and a clean break from theocracy and ethno-nationalism. Its movement needs to be trauma-aware and rooted in solidarity, collective liberation, and systems change. The Pahlavi movement lacks the vision or patience to bridge divides or heal wounds. Real progress demands slow, strategic, trauma-informed organizing - not shortcuts through collaboration with genociders and predators.

We will never stop believing in a free Iran.

Building Something Bigger: An Invitation

The struggle for collective liberation continues - across borders, beyond regimes, toward systems that serve ordinary people instead of sacrificing them.

On April 15th, @Kawaakibi launches @Kulna: an independent media platform dedicated to collective liberation and systems change. From Kulna you can expect honesty about power, moral clarity without cynicism, and a focus on the longer arcs of history, where real change happens - delivered by a full team across multiple media formats.

Come build with us.

Free Iran. Free Palestine. Decolonize Israel.

We're not free until we're all free. We're not safe until we're all safe.