this post was submitted on 22 Jan 2026
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Geopolitics

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The mainstream media in the West is committed to portraying the protests in Iran as strictly an internal affair. The people of Iran, so the argument goes, spontaneously rose up against their government because they were in desperate straits due to their leaders’ corruption and mismanagement of the economy, as well as their oppressive policies. Virtually all the protestors in this story were peaceful, but their protests were met with government violence. Outside forces had little to do with causing the protests.

This interpretation of what happened in Iran is wrong and contradicted by an abundance of evidence. None of this is to deny that there were many peaceful protestors who had legitimate grievances against the government, but that is only part of the story.

If fact, what happened in Iran is an attempt by the Israeli & American tag team to overthrow the government in Tehran and break apart Iran, much the way the US, Turkey, and Israel fractured Syria.

But the strategy failed, mainly because the Iranian government was able to shut down the protests quickly and decisively. A key element in the government’s success was shutting down Starlink, which made it extremely difficult for the protestors to communicate with each other and the outside world. Once that happened, the protests were doomed and both Prime Minister Netanyahu and Trump understood that the tag team could not use military force to deliver the coup de gras. The Iranian regime had survived.

The bottom line is two-fold: 1) the tag team failed to overthrow the regime in Iran, although it surely has not given up on that goal; and 2) there is good reason to think that Israel and the US did not win the 12-Day war.

Interesting analysis by John Mearsheimer. Obviously he's not a Marxist, but I think this piece is pretty good.

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