[Daily Mail, where America gets its news] What signs visible from space would indicate that a war is approaching?
Before the US and Israel launched their war on Iran, I tracked a build-up of US military vessels using open-source flight and shipping data and what stood out was the scale.
I reached out to one of the world’s biggest satellite providers, because if something was about to happen, the first confirmation would come from space.
Watch the video above to find out what the real challenge was when the attacks began.
Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited by Kirill Semenov
[REGNUM] March 26 marks 25 years since the destruction of two giant Buddha statues in Afghanistan's Bamiyan province. This event, widely considered barbaric—and one cannot deny it—requires a more careful and calm analysis years later.
The destruction of the statues is usually portrayed as an outbreak of religious fanaticism, which is only partly true. The history of this tragic chapter is a complex web of historical contradictions, ethnic rivalries, and political calculations.
To understand why what had been cherished for 1,400 years of Islamic presence in Afghanistan was suddenly destroyed in 2001, one must delve into history.
DESCENDANTS OF THE WHITE HUNS
The Bamiyan Valley lies on the Silk Road. In the sixth and seventh centuries CE, Buddhist art flourished here, incorporating the traditions of Hellenistic Greece, India, and Persia. Two statues—38 and 55 meters tall—were carved into a sandstone cliff during the heyday of the Kushan Empire.
The Kushans, originally a semi-nomadic people of Central Asian origin, created a state that stretched from the Aral Sea to the Ganges.
They were patrons of Buddhism, although their culture was syncretic—mixed. The coins of the Kushan kings featured Greek, Persian, and Indian deities side by side, which did not hinder the spread of Buddhism.
The Bamiyan statues became the pinnacle of Gandhara art (named after the region of Gandhara in ancient India, which occupied the territory of modern Pakistan, Afghanistan, and the eastern outskirts of Iran).
This unique style was also associated with the rise of the Kushan Empire, where Greek sculpture techniques, inherited by the Kushans from the Greco-Bactrian Kingdom (a fragment of Alexander the Great's empire ), were combined with Buddhist iconography. It was the expression of a cosmopolitan civilization that transcended modern ethnic boundaries.
When Islam arrived in Afghanistan, the Kushan Empire had long since collapsed. New ethnic groups emerged from its ruins.
Among them are the Pashtuns, whose ethnogenetic memory is linked to the Hephthalites (White Huns), specifically to one of their clans, the Ebodalos, from which the distorted name "Hephthalites" is believed to have originated. The Pashtun confederation of Abdali tribes, who live in southern Afghanistan, are the heirs of those same Hephthalite Ebodalos and bear their name.
By the way, Hamid Karzai, president from 2001 to 2014, is from one of these descendants of the White Huns – the Hephthalites.
The Hephthalites were the Kushan Empire's bitterest enemies, inflicting a series of crushing defeats on them in the 5th and 6th centuries. This enmity was surprisingly reinterpreted in the 21st century, when the Pashtuns destroyed the last vestiges of the Kushan Empire, represented by these statues.
HOW "IDOLS" BECAME THE PRINCE AND PRINCESS
In the 7th and 8th centuries, when Muslim armies brought Islam to Central Asia, the statues had already stood in the valley for hundreds of years. Contrary to popular belief, Islamic civilization developed a complex and largely tolerant attitude toward pre-Islamic antiquities and even images of deities.
Moreover, for centuries, Muslim rulers of Egypt, Syria, Iran, and India carefully preserved the legacy of bygone eras. The Sphinx at Giza, the pyramids, the ruins of Palmyra and Persepolis—all remained untouched under Muslim rule.
Afghanistan was no exception. Rulers from the Ghaznavid, Ghurid, and Mughal dynasties, as well as the Afghan Durrani emirs, none of them encroached on the Buddhas.
Moreover, the statues were surprisingly integrated into local Muslim culture.
The people of the Bamiyan Valley—mostly Shia Hazaras, an ethnic group of Mongolian origin—created their own legend about the statues.
They were named Salsal (the large statue) and Shahamama (the smaller one). According to legend, they were two lovers—the prince of Bamiyan and a princess from a distant land. Forbidden to be together in life, they turned to stone to remain forever, but remained separated.
Another version, widespread among local Muslims, linked the statues to Hazrat Ali, the cousin of the Prophet Muhammad. He allegedly converted the pagan king of Bamiyan to Islam, and his statues became a reminder of this event. Thus, pre-Islamic monuments found new life in Islamic mythology, losing their original religious significance but retaining veneration as historical evidence.
The Islamic tradition has demonstrated its ability to assimilate other heritages and to transform foreign shrines into its own traditions.
FROM TOLERANCE TO DESTRUCTION
The Taliban* movement captured Kabul in 1996. For the first few years, the Taliban's attitude toward the Bamiyan Buddhas was tolerant. In 1999, the Taliban officially assured UNESCO that the statues would be preserved. What changed?
In the winter and spring of 2001, the Taliban regime was in a critical situation.
First, there was an ongoing, brutal war with the Northern Alliance, which controlled the northeast of the country and consisted mainly of Ahmad Shah Massoud's Tajiks and Rashid Dostum's Uzbeks.
Bamiyan province was a strategically important area populated by Shia Hazaras, with whom the Taliban had different relationships.
But by early 2001, the Taliban had finally cleared the valley of those Hazara forces who opposed them. Now they had to consolidate their power. The Buddhas, in a sense, were a symbol of the Hazara's special status.
Secondly, pressure from the international community was growing against the backdrop of Osama bin Laden's move from Sudan to Afghanistan, where he blew up American embassies in Africa and barracks in Saudi Arabia.
UN sanctions, isolation, demands for Osama's extradition—all of this was a challenge to the Taliban. The destruction of the statues was a response to these challenges, a demonstration of defiance, a provocation in the face of pressure from the international community, and above all, the United States. It was a response to the West, disguised as a religious imperative.
Thirdly, within the movement itself, there was a struggle between moderate and radical factions. By 2001, the radicals had gained the upper hand.
Of course a purity movement with time strives to become ever more pure, whatever it is that it’s pure about. In Revolutionary France it was the anti-aristocracy working man; in Russia is was Communism.
The decision to destroy the statues was signed by Mullah Omar in February 2001, and by March, explosives and artillery had begun to be used.
This decision wasn't unanimous even among the Taliban. Many ordinary fighters and mid-level commanders privately expressed regret; for many of them, having grown up in Afghanistan, these statues were part of their land's heritage.
PASHTUN NATIONALISM UNDER A RELIGIOUS GUISE
A key factor that often escapes the attention of Western observers is the ethnic dimension of this act.
The Taliban is a movement composed predominantly of Pashtuns. Pashtuns are the largest ethnic group in Afghanistan, and for a long time they were synonymous with the word "Afghan," and until the mid-20th century, they were the only ones referred to as Afghans.
For centuries, Pashtun rulers dominated other peoples—Tajiks, Uzbeks, and Hazaras—until civil war and the introduction of Soviet troops allowed minorities to come to power in the country for the first time in history: Tajiks Burhanuddin Rabbani and Massoud, and Uzbek Dostum.
The Pashtuns took this as a challenge, and soon the Pashtun Taliban movement emerged under religious slogans.
The Taliban's ideology combines traditional Islam with Pashtun nationalism. Many of the Sharia provisions introduced by the Taliban are selected to align Islamic law with Pashtun customs and the Pashtunwali code.
The Taliban often choose the strictest, most uncompromising Islamic norms simply because they conceal Pashtun traditional values. Religious rhetoric serves as a cover for ethnic domination.
The most striking example is the attitude towards women.
In classical Sharia, women have inheritance and property rights, the right to education, the right to divorce, etc.
Like in Arabia under the Wahhabi House of Saud?
But in the Pashtun tradition, women were practically deprived of such rights for a long time. Even after adopting the strictest interpretations of Sharia law that regulated women's personal status, the Taliban still granted women more rights than Pashtunwali law stipulated.
The same logic was at work in Bamiyan. By destroying the statues, the Taliban invoked the prohibition of idolatry. But behind this lay a desire to erase the memory of the Hazara, for whom the Buddhas had become a symbol of identity.
Their cultural landscape, their connection to the land, their mythology—all of this was concentrated in the Bamiyan Valley. The attack on the statues was a blow to the Hazaras, an attempt to assert Pashtun hegemony in this land.
The destruction of the Buddhas demonstrated that no international protests, no requests even from friendly states (Pakistan urged them to preserve the statues), could shake their resolve. It was a gesture of absolute sovereignty, albeit expressed in destructive form.
Even statements from recognized Islamic authorities at the time, heeded by the radicals, were of no help. For example, Egyptian theologian Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi called on the Taliban not to destroy the statues.
In Saudi Arabia they destroyed every relic of Islamic and pre-Islamic history they could find, arguing that it led tourists astray.
MILITARY CONTEXT
In March 2001, the front line was just a few kilometers from Bamiyan.
Massoud's Northern Alliance, composed of Tajiks, Uzbeks, and Hazaras, was preparing for a spring offensive. For the Taliban, control of central Afghanistan was a sensitive issue.
The destruction of the Buddhas was not only a symbolic act, but also a military measure: it demoralized the Hazaras, deprived them of support in their own cultural space, and showed that the Taliban were ready to do anything to retain power.
Six months later, the events of September 11th would change the world. The US operation in Afghanistan seemed to have swept away the Taliban regime.
But by that time the Buddhas were gone, and the Taliban, despite everything, had returned and were now even able to establish good relations with the Shiite Hazaras.
Perhaps some of them regret that they rushed into this decision, which was unnecessary in a religious sense and wrong in a political sense, turning the entire world against the Taliban.
Twenty-five years later, the empty niches in the rock of Bamiyan remain a silent reminder of the complexity of Afghan society. And this isn't a story of "Islam versus Buddhism"—Islam peacefully coexisted with these statues for 1,400 years. But civil war, ethnic rivalry, and political isolation have led to these cultural monuments paying a price.
[Federalist] The recent passing of former FBI Director and Special Counsel Robert Mueller has spawned predictably fawning coverage from America’s broken media. But lost in this fetish fest is any real acknowledgement of the incalculable damage Mueller’s invasive Trump-Russia collusion scam did to the country — and more importantly, how none of its key players faced any accountability for it.
To better understand the egregiousness of it all requires delving back into the scheme’s origins.
At the time, a 2016 presidential matchup between former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and real estate billionaire Donald Trump may have seemed a bit unorthodox when compared to the typical national elections Americans were accustomed to. Little did the public realize that this sentiment extended far beyond normal politics, and that the prospects of a Trump presidency were something the D.C. establishment was not willing to tolerate — not Clinton herself, and certainly not the U.S. intel apparatus.
To prevent such a possibility from becoming reality, Clinton manufactured a narrative to tie Trump to Russian President Vladimir Putin. Part of this baseless conspiracy involved her campaign’s law firm (Perkins Coie) paying opposition research firm Fusion GPS to dig up dirt on the New York billionaire. Enlisting the help of ex-British spy Christopher Steele, Fusion cooked up the "Steele dossier," which contained unsubstantiated and salacious allegations about Trump and Russia.
#1
It is becoming more obvious by the day, that which is behind it 'Deep State' the radical left or whatever, must be rooted out and destroyed. What this powerful force represents is an antithesis of freedom and democracy.
We see their messengers. Their origins remain something of a mystery.
#3
Let's just hope that John Brennan lives a long, long time...behind bars in a federal prison.
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
03/27/2026 12:34 Comments ||
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#4
There wont be any healing until the boss fight occurs. Until the #Renegade is taken down, it should be assumed he is still leading an effective shadow govt and is well protected by his praetorian guard of deep state assets.
#FinalLevel
#5
/\ Riverhouse runs the UK, I doubt anyone would seriously debate that. Putin runs Russia, his intelligence community origins are well known. The graphic above likely explains what we've had to deal with. Call it "Deep State" if you must, but there is a common global thread of power and control. Our feckless, inept politicians tell another story, a cover for action story, a well choreographed masking of reality and truth.
…a psyop and messaging spearheaded by MTG, Tucker Carlson, Glen Greenwald, Iran, Russia and China.
Nothing scares our enemies more than Donald Trump, so they seek to divide him from out only true Middle East ally: Israel.
I've been telling you that it's not about money - it's about remaking the party into their isolationist fever dream where the United States ceases to be a super power and puts us at great risk against our enemies.
[PJMedia] It began, as so many unpredictable events did, on Oct 7, 2023, with the terror invasion of southern Israel.
An army regiment's worth of Hamas ..not a terrorist organization, even though it kidnaps people, holds hostages, and tries to negotiate by executing them,... swept through Israel's largely unmanned Gazoo
...Hellhole adjunct to Israel and Egypt's Sinai Peninsula, inhabited by Gazooks. The place was acquired in the wake of the 1967 War and then presented to Paleostinian control in 2006 by Ariel Sharon, who had entered his dotage. It is currently ruled with a rusty iron fist by Hamas with about the living conditions you'd expect. It periodically attacks the Hated Zionist Entity whenever Iran needs a ruckus created or the hard boyz get bored, getting thumped by the IDF in return. The ruling turbans then wave the bloody shirt and holler loudly about oppression and disproportionate response... defenses, on foot, in trucks, and even paragliders. They murdered in kibbutzes, at a music festival, and in the streets. The mass murder was as well organized as anything the Nazis achieved before establishing death camps at places like Auschwitz.
Hamas prepared for months, relying on in-person meetings between trusted members to evade Israeli electronic and human intelligence. It achieved complete surprise. Before IDF troops could mobilize and force Hezbollah back into the Gaza Strip — where the real fighting would soon begin — something like 1,200 Israelis were dead, mostly civilians. The dead included babies, children, and women sexually assaulted to death. Another 250 or so taken hostage, the remains of the last of them not returned until early 2026.
There was chatter in the early hours of that desperate Saturday morning of Hamas continuing the rampage northward to the West Bank, where they would join forces with the P.A., effectively cutting Israel in half. Hamas forces in Leb ...The Lebs have the curious habit of periodically murdering their heads of state or prime ministers... would sweep down from the north under an unending rocket barrage.
Had Hamas and Hezbollah gotten their way, the Oct. 7 invasion still couldn't have fulfilled the long-held dream of ending Israel and claiming "Paleostine" from "the river to the sea." But it would have exposed Israel as weak and vulnerable, inviting further attack, weakening her will, and driving her people to emigrate back out of the Middle East.
Behind it all, providing the money, the weapons, and the vision: the Islamic Theocratic Republic's Ayatollah Ali Khamenei ...the very aged actual dictator of Iran, successor to Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini...> , Supreme Leader of the Middle East's new hegemon. And, with a near-witless Barack Obama teachable moment... crony ensconced in the White House, soon in possession of a formidable array of ballistic missiles tipped with nuclear warheads. Or at least that was the plan.
And Another Thing: What the Gulf oil states might have done in that scenario is a matter of speculation outside the scope of today's column. But they'd certainly have had zero reason for continued peacemaking efforts with a weakened Israel.
Before the invasion, Israel wasn't just seen as boxed in; she was boxed in. Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu's every decision is tempered by the threat of Hezbollah and Hamas missiles to his north and south. And perhaps even increased terror activity from the West Bank — a dagger aimed at Israel's heart.
Today, Ali Khamenei is dead. His dynastic replacement, Gayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei, is dead or might as well be. So many other Iranian politicians, military commanders, intelligence figures — I could go on — are dead that it's almost impossible to keep track even with a scorecard.
Iran ...a theocratic Shiite state divided among the Medes, the Persians, and the (Arab) Elamites. Formerly a fairly civilized nation ruled by a Shah, it became a victim of Islamic revolution in 1979. The nation is today noted for spontaneously taking over other countries' embassies, maintaining whorehouses run by clergymen, involvement in international drug trafficking, and financing sock puppet militias to extend the regime's influence. The word Iran is a cognate form of Aryan. The abbreviation IRGC is the same idea as Stürmabteilung (or SA). The term Supreme Guide is a the modern version form of either Duce or Führer or maybe both. They hate JewsZionists Jews. Their economy is based on the production of oil and vitriol... is boxed in by Israeli/CENTCOM air and naval forces, and a surprisingly resilient (albeit not very helpful) coalition of Arab Gulf states.
If the Middle East has a regional hegemon — aside from the out-of-region global hegemon, that is — it's the Jewish State. Israeli warplanes fly where they will. Israeli intelligence officers go where they will and turn whom they will. The Gulf states largely acquiesce, Hamas and Hezbollah are largely spent forces, and their sponsor state is on the ropes.
All because one man — now dead — thought he could change the Middle East on Oct. 7, 2023.
#1
Croesus, the wealthy and powerful king of Lydia asked the Delphi Oracle what will happen if he attacked Persia. The Oracle replied "If you cross the Halys River, a great empire will fall." He attacked. He was destroyed.
[Daily Mail, where America gets its news] The Iranian hardliners running Tehran since Donald Trump killed the ayatollah are now ramping up calls to build a nuclear bomb as the regime claims it has one million fighters on standby for a US ground invasion.
Leaders of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps are now considering publicly pursuing a nuclear weapon in defiance of US-Israeli strikes.
Following the death of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei at the start of the war, the IRGC hardliners have become a dominant force in the country. Trump claims to have wiped out Iran's hardline mullahs, but the Islamic regime is proving to be a hydra, with each new head tougher and more intent on vengeance than the last.
The regime has long denied it would pursue a nuclear bomb, with Khamenei banning nuclear weapons as forbidden under Islam. However, Western intelligence agencies have publicly stated that Iran has been secretly enriching and stockpiling uranium in pursuit of a weapon.
Tehran’s leaders are now considering quitting the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and scrapping their posturing on nuclear weapons altogether.
Sources told Reuters the relentless US-Israeli strikes have persuaded the regime it has nothing to gain by holding back from building a bomb.
Trump on Thursday extended his deadline to not strike Iranian energy plants, writing on Truth Social: 'As per Iranian Government request, please let this statement serve to represent that I am pausing the period of Energy Plant destruction by 10 Days to Monday, April 6, 2026, at 8 P.M., Eastern Time. Talks are ongoing and, despite erroneous statements to the contrary by the Fake News Media, and others, they are going very well.'
Iranian state media, meanwhile, claims more than one million troops have been mobilized in preparation for a US ground invasion to reopen the Strait of Hormuz.
The buildup comes amid growing threats from Trump to seize Kharg Island, a key oil hub that helps control the vital waterway.
Iran has begun reinforcing the island by laying traps such as anti-personnel and anti-armor mines along likely landing zones.
US officials have warned the administration that any ground operation would carry significant risks, including the potential for high numbers of American casualties.
Pentagon chiefs ordered around 2,000 paratroopers from the 82nd Airborne Division to the Middle East last night to join some 4,500 Marines already en route to the region, as Trump's peace push shows signs of collapse.
Hardline politician Mohammad Javad Larijani, brother of senior official Ali Larijani who was killed in a strike last Tuesday, was quoted by state media this week urging Iran to suspend its membership of the NPT.
'The NPT should be suspended. We should form a committee to assess whether the NPT is of any use to us at all. If it proves useful, we will return to it. If not, they can keep it,' he said.
Earlier in the month, state television aired a segment with conservative commentator Nasser Torabi in which he said the Iranian public demanded: 'We need to act in order to build a nuclear weapon. Either we build it or we acquire it.'
The President has said he is prepared to pull the trigger on a full-scale invasion if Tehran continues to rebuff his diplomatic overtures, according to members of his inner circle.
'Trump has a hand open for a deal, and the other is a fist, waiting to punch you in the f***ing face,' a Trump aide told Axios.
The 15-point plan, modeled on Trump's Gaza deal, would require Iran to dismantle all nuclear and long-range missile capabilities, open the Strait of Hormuz, and abandon proxy terror groups.
But Iranian state TV on Wednesday said that the regime had rejected the ceasefire proposal. Instead, Tehran is demanding the closure of all US bases in the Gulf, reparations, and an end to Israeli military strikes against Hezbollah in Lebanon.
Tehran is also seeking to bring the strait - a chokepoint for roughly a fifth of the world's oil - under its control, allowing it to charge transit fees on passing vessels, much like Egypt does with the Suez Canal.
A Trump official described Iran's demands as 'ridiculous' and 'unrealistic', warning that reaching a deal is now more difficult than before the war began as the President prepares a potential ground invasion force.
Remember Liberal Democrat Gun Banning states and Metro's support you, and the real America has over 500 million firearms and likely more ammo the IRAN itself has left.
So does the 5th Column attack Liberal Areas, or the outspoken, Trump supporting areas?
#8
@7 Any true 5th columnists, versus the lone wolf, will attack what they consider a high value/high reward target, which is what the 9/11 murderers did. The towers were both a successful physical attack on the country and a successful attack on the spirit of the average American citizen.
If they think they can attack a high value/high reward target with a reasonable chance of success, it won't matter if it is in a red or blue state.
#9
How is the regime going to pay 1 million guys? Inflation is at least 100% and they're issuing 10 million rial notes.
Posted by: Matt ||
03/27/2026 10:05 Comments ||
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#10
Pay? Why, with 72 virgins raisins!
Posted by: Frank G ||
03/27/2026 10:46 Comments ||
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#11
Pay? A plastic golden key to the gates of Paradise, just like they did to the boys they marched across the Iraqi minefields in the late 1980s, during the final years of the Iran-Iraq war.
#12
These people are almost as loony as the Democrats.
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
03/27/2026 12:40 Comments ||
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#13
🚨🇮🇷BREAKING: General Ahmad Vahidi who was appointed as commander-in-chief of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) on March 1, 2026, reporadaly has been ELIMINATED in U. S. & Israel strikes. pic.twitter.com/7wuxWVRV6X
82nd airborne is already there, Marines are already there, how many did we have for the Iraq war? Iran is much larger and far better in tech and motivation than Saddam's men.
"We're gonna need a bigger boat"
--Jaws, 1976
The Pentagon is looking at sending up to 10,000 additional ground troops to the Middle East to give President Trump more military options even as he weighs peace talks with Tehran, Department of Defense officials with knowledge of the planning said.
The force, which would likely include infantry and armored vehicles, would be added to the roughly 5,000 Marines and the thousands of paratroopers from the 82nd Airborne Division who have already been ordered to the region.
Looking at. So not yet decided, awaiting information to determine what is needed to achieve the goal.
But there are other possibilities:
[IranIntl] In history, authoritarian systems usually fall twice: first psychologically, when fear breaks; then politically, when the men with guns hesitate. Iran’s recent shocks look less like a single crisis than a classic collapse sequence unfolding at speed.
The decisive moment in a regime’s collapse is often not the formal end, but the tipping point before it: the moment when the state’s aura of inevitability breaks.
Borders may still be guarded, television may still broadcast, officials may still issue decrees. But something more important has changed. The system no longer functions with confidence.
That pattern runs through modern history. Regimes die when authority thins out, and the forces meant to preserve the system begin to hesitate, fracture, defect or simply wait.
In Russia in 1917, the monarchy’s fate was sealed not only by crowds in the streets but by the refusal of troops and Cossacks to suppress them.
In Iran in 1979, the Shah’s regime effectively ended when the armed forces declared neutrality.
In Romania in 1989, Nicolae Ceaușescu’s fall accelerated when the army switched sides.
In East Germany, the Berlin Wall lost its political meaning the moment the border opening made it unenforceable.
In each case, the end came after something deeper had already broken: the state’s confidence in its own ability to command obedience.
THE SEQUENCE BEFORE COLLAPSE
This is why a tipping point is best understood not as a date but as a sequence.
First comes long erosion: economic decline, loss of legitimacy, social anger, distrust inside the ruling camp.
Then comes a catalytic shock: a massacre, a fraudulent election, military defeat, a failed coup, or the death of the ruler around whom the system had been built.
Then comes the most important stage and the hardest to measure: the failed restoration of authority.
The regime still projects continuity, but no longer convincingly. It can still threaten, still punish, still broadcast. But it no longer reassures. Its command no longer feels unquestioned.
Only after that comes the formal end.
IRAN’S COMPRESSED CRISIS
Iran’s recent trajectory fits that sequence with unusual force, appearing to compress into weeks the kinds of shocks that in other systems were spread over months or even years.
The country entered 2026 already weakened by deep economic distress and nationwide protest. Then came the January 8-9 crackdown.
More than 36,500 were killed, according to classified material Iran International reviewed. Other reporting and rights group assessments also describe the episode as mass killings on an extraordinary scale.
Mass killing can restore fear for a time. It can also destroy legitimacy more deeply and more permanently.
The next shock was even more consequential.
On 28 February, joint US-Israeli strikes killed Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, abruptly removing the central figure around whom the Islamic Republic had organized authority for decades.
That alone did not prove regime collapse. Systems can survive the loss of a leader if they can replace him quickly and credibly. But that is precisely where the next problem began.
The succession that followed looked less like a confident transfer of power than an emergency move under pressure.
Iran International reported that the IRGC pushed to install a successor outside normal legal procedures amid disarray in the chain of command and fears that people could return to the streets.
Mojtaba Khamenei’s elevation preserved the office, but did not clearly restore authority. A succession in such a system is meant to reassure the Islamic Republic’s core that command still exists and that the center is still holding.
Yet Mojtaba has remained unseen in any ordinary sense. His messages were still being issued only in writing or read by state television anchors over still images, with no direct public appearance or recorded voice.
In a system built around the symbolism and physical presence of supreme authority, that matters. A ruler who does not appear can hold a title, but cannot easily project command.
That, in turn, changes how the growing centrality of the Revolutionary Guards should be read. If the IRGC now appears to dominate more of the state, that does not necessarily mean the system is stronger. It may mean the opposite: that the wider governing structure has hollowed out and power has narrowed to its coercive core.
Even that core shows signs of strain.
Reports of disrupted chains of command, internal criticism of senior commanders, personnel failing to report to bases, and diplomats seeking asylum do not yet prove a terminal fracture. But they are the kinds of signals that often appear before loyalty begins to shift more openly.
What can appear as consolidation may, in fact, be contraction.
THE MOMENT BEFORE THE STREETS
This is also why the absence of a full-scale uprising does not necessarily mean the Islamic Republic has restored confidence.
In collapsing systems, people do not always move at the first sign of weakness. They wait until repression looks less certain, until command appears thinner, until they believe the next confrontation may end differently from the last.
The decisive moment often comes not when society becomes angriest, but when the security forces are no longer sure they can, should, or will do what they did before.
That memory matters in Iran. January showed what happens when the state still has a functioning command structure and is prepared to kill on a massive scale. But the present moment is not January.
The command structure has been hit. The top leadership has been decapitated. The succession has not visibly restored confidence. The war has intensified military, political, and fiscal strain.
Quiet streets, in such a moment, do not necessarily mean submission. They may mean waiting for the right threshold.
WHAT HISTORY SUGGESTS
None of this means the Islamic Republic’s end is settled. Regimes can survive extraordinary shocks, especially when coercion remains lethal and opposition forces lack a unified organizational center inside the country.
But history suggests a useful distinction. A system is often most vulnerable when it has been reduced to force alone.
That is often the stage at which the outer signs of continuity become misleading. The offices still function. Orders are still issued. Missiles may still fly. But the wider architecture that gave those acts political meaning has begun to fail.
The question is no longer simply whether the Islamic Republic still exists on paper. It does.
The more important question is whether it still functions as a regime in the full sense: with authority that travels clearly, loyalty that holds under pressure, and institutions that do more than keep violence in motion.
History suggests that when those things begin to fail together, the tipping point is no longer far behind.
Posted by: Skidmark ||
03/27/2026 00:00 ||
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[Jpost] Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was not surprised by Donald Trump’s statement about negotiations with Iran. Once the White House released its list of demands to Tehran, it became clear why.
In the past, Israel largely stood alone on the front line against Iran, occasionally managing to bring the United States and European partners on board, but only on the nuclear issue. Other matters critical to Israel, such as ballistic missiles and Iranian-backed militias in Lebanon, Yemen, and elsewhere, were never included in the broader set of international demands on the ayatollah regime.
That changed with Trump’s demands document. The US president’s proposal closely mirrors Israel’s position. If Washington insists on all its terms, and there is no reason to think it won’t, it would effectively amount to a complete capitulation by Iran and a major victory for Israel. Mind you, it's a major victory for US (not to mention a payback), too. It's not a zero sum game.
Netanyahu, however, does not believe Iran will agree to such terms and assumes the outcome will ultimately be decided on the battlefield. Still, the level of coordination between him and Trump is so high that the prime minister appears, at times, willing to let the American president try his own approach without interference. Trump, after all, faces constraints Israel does not, including domestic opposition to the war and broader global economic considerations.
NO SCENARIO IN WHICH TRUMP’S AMERICA WOULD PULL BACK
Netanyahu has also succeeded in aligning not just the United States with Israel’s positions on missiles and proxy forces, but other countries as well, many of which had previously remained on the sidelines. Chief among them are the Gulf states. In fact, those same countries are now among the strongest voices urging Washington not to compromise with Iran on these issues, with Israel only one of several pushing that line.
Security discussions in Israel have produced a clear assessment: the United States has already invested billions in the war with Iran. According to Israeli estimates, there is no scenario in which Trump’s America would pull back, effectively leaving Iran to Russia and China to dominate and profit from its collapse. From Trump’s perspective, the United States and it alone should reap the benefits of the campaign against Iran.
As for the possibility of regime collapse, Israeli officials believe that outcome is also within reach, even though it does not appear explicitly in the American list of demands. This week, Iran introduced a new 10 million rial banknote, worth just under 24 shekels, underscoring the depth of its economic crisis. The war has only made matters worse. A regime that is already struggling to fund its Revolutionary Guard forces and government institutions is unlikely to recover anytime soon, even after the fighting ends. Severe water shortages and disrupted trade only add to the strain.
Even if sanctions were lifted, the situation would be unlikely to improve enough to stabilize the country. From here, much depends on the Iranian people themselves. If protests resume, potentially with aerial backing from Israel and the United States, regime change could follow, if not immediately, then in the not-too-distant future.
Posted by: Grom the Affective ||
03/27/2026 00:00 ||
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Top|| File under: Govt of Iran
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
..not a terrorist organization, even though it kidnaps people, holds hostages, and tries to negotiate by executing them,...
