Iran's Controlled Demolition | Shahid Bolsen

Okay. So let's talk about what's actually happening in Iran. Because in my opinion, the standard narratives, both the the Western imperialist narrative, their version, and the anti imperialist version are are both missing the point in my opinion. You know, haven't really talked about this. I haven't talked about what's been going on in Iran, what's been happening.

Simply because I I I I really sort of feel that that I have outlined already the currents that are taking place in the region and the the direction of those currents. And I sort of think that that should be enough to provide enough geopolitical context to help anyone understand most of the events that occur, most of the events that are occurring without needing to delve into specific, you know, specific things that are going on. But maybe I I understand maybe that's a little presumptuous on my part. Not everyone has been able to see all of those previous videos. It's a lot of content, so I don't mean to be arrogant.

So there's been massive protests. A lot of those protests have become violent, and there have been massive crackdowns against those protests. There's been allegations, unsurprisingly, that Israel and The United States were actively involved in hijacking, stoking, and steering the protests, which is really more or less just given most of the time, which is one of the main reasons why so many countries don't tolerate protests. They don't tolerate protests at all because anyone with any sense in the global South knows that any legitimate protest just becomes a big gaping hole for US or Western intelligence to enter. And once they enter, they direct the protests and the opposition movements away from even legitimate grievances and towards Western policy goals, so they know this.

And yes, I believe that the protests were initially legitimate like most protests are initially. Because, yes, the economic situation in Iran is quite catastrophic. The real lost like 40% of its value since June 2025, plummeting to approximately a 145,000 to to the US dollar by December, this last December. According to Iran's own statistics, year on year inflation reached, I think, 42 something percent in December 2025, food prices rising 72%, health costs increasing by 50%. Okay.

These are catastrophic figures no matter how you spin it and no matter what the reasons are for the for the for those catastrophic figures. And it's completely understandable that people would protest under these conditions, under conditions like this. But yes, I do believe that that there's Israeli infiltration in his Israeli involvement, and yes, Trump threatened to bomb Iran. All of these things are going on. All of these things are true, But that doesn't necessarily mean that the same usual script is playing out.

You understand? You know, the the normal script of legitimate protests being hijacked by external western actors and so forth to become a color revolution and so on, then leading to military intervention to defend the protesters and whatnot. No. I don't think that's what's going on exactly because the context is different. The regional situation is not what it was twenty years ago.

It's not what it was ten years ago. It's not even what it was five years ago, if we're honest. Look, you can think about it this way. You can think about it like this. There are multiple controlled demolitions happening all around the world at the same time.

I think the most conspicuous controlled demolition that we see is happening in America itself, in the EU, to an extent in Israel, and in Iran. And this is all happening within the broader context of what you can say is the controlled demolition of the post World War two global order. And so now everyone who built their place and who built their policy and their ethos, any state according to the logic of that world order, they have to dismantle it or have it dismantled. You understand? What we're watching is a coordinated slow demolition in my opinion of the hardline elements within the Iranian regime.

Orchestrated by Iranian pragmatists within the regime potentially potentially in cooperation with their historical covert partners, specifically Israel. You know in my talk some time ago, and the Axis of Assistance I called it, I laid out how Iran and Israel maintained what I called at that time and still believe today a symbiotic relationship for decades. They publicly proclaim their hostility while covertly cooperating when it serves their interest. This isn't a conspiracy theory, this is documented history. I mean for the first ten years of the so called Islamic Republic, Iran was literally buying weapons from Israel at the same time while they were calling for Israel's destruction.

So you you come to understand that the louder the rhetoric, the deeper the cooperation most of the time. It's performance that's masking their real political pragmatism. I know that makes a lot of Iran supporters angry to hear that. You think I'm insulting Iran, but that's not what I'm doing at all. I simply recognize that Iran has been an incredibly savvy political player in the region.

And frankly, if you're someone who who who finds this insulting, then you're exactly that type of person who has made it so incredibly difficult for Iran to navigate transitioning according to the regional plan. You're making it very difficult for them. Because as as I said in that talk, Iran needs to transform or they will face a destruction. All of the Iranian sectarian fanboys are part of why the transformation, the necessary transformation is so perilous for the regime. I said back then that I had not taken any threat to Iran seriously for half a century because it became very obvious after some time and after some experience that it was always just rhetoric.

And usually it was rhetoric, it was actually just a distraction from actual cooperation that was taking place. But I said at that time that for the first time in fifty years it's actually possible that Iran could be in danger. I mean in danger of actual, you know, invasion or regime change operation and so forth, because three things have to be removed for the regional transformation to take place. One is Zionism in its current form, militancy in the region, and Iran's sectarian regime as it is currently configured. Now the hardest one to change, as as one would have expected, the hardest thing to change is the Zionist regime.

But I think the next hardest thing to change is the sectarian regime of Iran. As far as the militancy goes, well, we're already seeing that. We're already seeing that being dismantled. That's already happening. So for Iran, the question was always, how does this transformation happen?

What's it gonna look like? How is that actually gonna proceed? Because the Iranian pragmatists are facing a very major and dangerous challenge. The hardline revolutionary guard, those elements in the regime, they're the main obstacle to Iran joining the GCC and BRICS led plan for regional integration. You know, these are the the true believers in in the Iranian regime's ethos and their world view.

You know, the proxy militia networks that they've managed, that's their bread and butter. Maintaining that resistance posture for them takes precedence over even Iran's economic survival as a country. There's a danger that they would actually let the country go down in flames, they would rather see the country go down in flames rather than adapt. And obviously they control huge portions of the security apparatus, this makes them very dangerous. If Iranian pragmatists try to remove those hardliners directly, I mean, if they had the power to do so, which they don't, if they try to do that they would risk civil war within their own government.

That doesn't serve anyone's interest, that serves no one's interest, not Iran's interest, not the regional power's interest, not even Israel's or America's interest if we're honest. A failed state with 90,000,000 people and ballistic missiles, that's not in anyone's interest. So what's the solution? You outsource the problem potentially to your covert partner. You create conditions in the country where the hardliners delegitimize themselves so thoroughly that their removal becomes not just acceptable but necessary, called for.

Okay, if not their removal, then at least a significant marginalization or a limitation of their influence within their regime. Because look at what actually happened, the protest started in late December, December 28 I think, over real economic grievances. Like I said, the economic conditions have deteriorated rapidly over the past six months. People have a reason to protest. That's true.

People are genuinely angry, and they have every right to be angry. But then look at the protest chant that emerged. They said neither Gaza nor Lebanon, my life for Iran. This is what they said. That's devastating for the regime because it completely demolishes their whole the the the entire legitimacy narrative that they've relied upon for fifty years.

For fifty years, they justified everything through opposition to Israel and rhetorical support for the Palestinians. This has been a a mainstay for the the the legitimacy of the Iranian regime. Now their own people, their own people are explicitly rejecting that trade off. I'm sure you can suspect that this chant, this call was not organic and that this chant represents the hijacking of the protest. Or you could you could suspect that the western media has exaggerated the prevalence of that chant, but the raw footage is there.

We've seen the videos, we've seen the clips, and that and that chant started early on. The chant is also consistent with similar sentiments that were expressed in earlier protests. Earlier protests where the people were chanting against proxies and so on, and when they were protesting for having the government prioritize domestic economic suffering. So I don't think you can dismiss it altogether. You can't dismiss it altogether as just a hoax, especially not based on, well, I don't think Iranians feel that way.

That's not evidence. Especially when you're you're living outside the country and you're probably not Iranian in the first place, and you just have a need, you know, to believe that Iran is a big homogenous collective hero of resistance or what have you. You need for Iran to be a certain kind of way, and you need to be able to think of Iran in a certain kind of way, well that's not evidence. That's not evidence any more than Westerners need to think of Iran in a certain kind of way. That's not evidence either, do you see what I mean?

You have to look at the actual evidence that exists to see if if you can dismiss this chant or not. Not to mention the point here is the emergence of that phrase, the emergence of that chant, and the emergence of that sentiment, because even if it wasn't organic, even if you could prove that it was not organic, it was also not organically shut down either. It appeared over and over again across multiple protests around the country in almost 500 different videos from almost a 100 different locations around the country. Nobody shut it down. And we're talking about everything from, you know, relatively small crowds of protesters to literally mass mobilizations of tens of thousands of people, all making that same chant.

No, the sentiment is there, and it would be purely delusional if you deny that that sentiment exists and yet on. Even if we assume that the chant was instigated by Israel, or by America, by their infiltrators and intelligence and so on. Okay, maybe, but it resonated at the end of the day, and it got adopted by Iranians who do not work for the CIA and who do not work for the Mossad, do you understand? And you should take note of the fact that the chant itself and the sentiment itself and the message of the chant itself completely aligns with the trajectory that the regime needs to take in order to comply with the regional plans of the GCC and BRICS and the a national OCGFC. You understand me?

It's a call against the continued support for militias and sectarian armed factions. It's the need of regime pragmatists being voiced by the grassroots. You see my point? Again, personally, I don't doubt for a second, I don't doubt for a second that Israeli intelligence is there, but are they there antagonistically or unilaterally or are they there basically because they've been contracted to be there by the pragmatist elements within the regime? I don't know.

But in my opinion, the former is less plausible than the latter. Because look, the relationship between Iranian intelligence and the Israelis is completely intertwined and it has been intertwined for decades. This is an open secret. You get to call them infiltrators, get to call them spies, even when you are literally cooperating with them and coordinating with them, when it serves your interest. Again, this is just a matter of fact, this isn't an opinion or a conspiracy theory, and it's also not strange.

You have to understand that state enmity towards any other actor, almost any other actor, that barely exists at the upper levels of authority. Not just for Iran, but generally, this is generally true. States are not emotional at the lower levels, at the ground there is division and enmity and what have you because that's useful, but all of that dissipates the higher up you go. Yes, the Iranians and the Israelis have coordinated and they have cooperated for a very long time, this is simply a fact, and they are deeply embedded in each other's intelligence apparatuses. And if that disillusions you, I'm very sorry.

Like I said before, you could always choose instead of feeling insulted or feeling disillusioned about it, you could choose to understand that that means that the political intelligence and the savvy and the realism of Iran is demonstrated by that fact, rather than interpreting it as me insulting Iran. Look, when you have relationships like this between your intelligence apparatuses and so forth, it's very useful because you can have them do you can have those people do things that you can't do. You can outsource tasks to them, tasks that would be too risky for you to do yourself and vice versa. You can do for them and they can do for you. Symbiotic relationship, reciprocal, transactional, cooperative.

Understand, I'm not talking about friendship, I'm not talking about camaraderie, it's just realpolitik. This is what happened in my opinion with Ismail Hania, and this is what happened with Hassan Nasrallah, and the other, you know, Hezbollah leaders that got taken out after him. This is the dismantling of the militant groups, but outsourcing that task because doing it yourself would be risky politically, and I don't see why the protest would be any different from this, it makes sense to me. Like I said, you literally have the crowds calling for the same types of changes that the regime pragmatists know need to be made in Iran. But you need to frame it or you need to create pretext for those changes that will help you avoid any risks or or internal hard line or backlash within the regime itself.

This isn't a unique dynamic to you, no, this is the same kind of dynamic that happens at any high level politics. Now I'm not saying that it is necessarily the case, it's necessarily the case that it's actually coordinated between the regime pragmatists and the Israeli or the Western intelligence, it may or may not be. But I don't think that there's any serious question as to whether or not those elements, the western and Israeli and American intelligence and so forth, that those elements are present. And I also don't think there's any serious question as to whether or not the way this is all playing out serves the interests of the pragmatists in the long term, in terms of facilitating the transformation. So it's either coordinated or it's not coordinated, but the result of it is gonna be the same as if it was coordinated, so Allahu Alaam.

Because I mean, think about the pattern of the violence, the the violent the protest of violence, it's not random. The violent elements are specifically targeting symbols that are associated with the hardline faction. Statues of Khomeini, revolutionary guard facilities, the particularly conservative mosques and so forth, and the hardliners have responded exactly as you would predict with overwhelming brutality, overwhelming force. The death toll is allegedly somewhere between 2,618 people, depending on which source you trust, security forces firing live ammunition into the crowds, raids on hospitals, alleged torture of detainees, there's even reports of families being forced to pay for the bullets that killed their relatives. I mean sure, on one hand it demonstrates regime power, it does demonstrate the power of the regime and that would assure Bricks, that would assure China and the GCC and so forth, But on the other hand, it also demonstrates that you need to impose that much force to protect your regime, that's not a good look.

See, this is what the brutality accomplishes strategically for the pragmatists inside Iran, it delegitimizes the hardliners beyond any credible claim of stability, internationally, domestically, completely. Every video that you see of security forces shooting unarmed protesters, every report of torture cases, all of that creates a permanent record that shows that these specific individuals can never be part of any future arrangement. I think the US Treasury has already sanctioned the IRGC commanders who were considered to be the most responsible for those massacres. That makes them international pariahs forever, and I don't see that the regime of fragmentists would do anything but welcome that. I think they would welcome that.

Meanwhile, it creates overwhelming pressure from BRICS partners like Russia, China, Saudi Arabia, UAE and so forth, who want stability and who want calm. They need Iran to be stable, they need it to be governable for the regional integration plans to move forward with Iran. They don't have any problem with with suppressing protesters, obviously, we know this. None of them are comfortable with populations rising up to top of their governments, nobody likes to see that kind of a thing happen, they don't want to encourage that. But it has to be effective suppression, it can't create more instability and more volatility, it has to make your regime stronger not more insecure.

This gives the Iranian pragmatists the perfect argument. We have to delegitimize these hardline elements or else we face complete isolation from our new friend group. We also face potential military intervention, and we need to appease the population, you understand? While the population that that you need to appease is conveniently voicing the demands that are in line with the changes that are required for the regional transition. You see my point?

So, if we make the changes now, it's not from external pressure, it's because we're listening to our people. You create the pretext for the change. Because look, Jamini himself appears to be among the hardliners. You understand? This is very dangerous.

This is how daunting it is for the pragmatists within the government who are trying to enact changes within the government. I've said for a long time that I'm not even sure whether or not Iran is gonna successfully make those changes, it's a massive pivot for them. And there's deeply entrenched elements, the most powerful elements in fact in the government that seem to be completely averse to transitioning into a more rational role in the region, given the irrational role given the new context that are emerging. The way that they did things before made sense before but it doesn't make sense now. But we're not seeing any purge of the hardliners, no punishment of the security forces, in fact we're seeing the contrary.

So there's no guarantee that any of this is gonna work, there's no guarantee that they're gonna be able to do this. Old habits die hard, and that's exactly why in my opinion, Nasrallah and Hania and others were simply eliminated from the equation, because they were not able to adjust to the new realities of the region. But in Iran, you're not talking about one or two people, you're talking about the so called supreme leader himself, and you're talking about a huge and powerful armed faction, the IRGC. So what are your options? How do you how do you you can't coerce them.

So all you can do is try to delegitimize them in incremental bursts and hope that that's gonna pan out. So now let's talk about Trump, right, and and his threats. Because if you look at that, I think the dynamic becomes even clearer. Trump threatens military intervention, I think, on January 2. He said, if Iran violently kills peaceful protesters, America will come to their rescue.

Right? Mid January, January 13 or so, he tells the protesters help is on the way. The Pentagon presents him with options for a military strike on Iran. Few days later, we hear that a US attack is imminent. Personnel are evacuated from Qatar, from Bahrain.

Iran closes their airspace. The USS Abraham Lincoln heads to The Gulf. Everyone thinks it's about to happen. Everyone thinks it's about to happen. Well, almost everyone.

Then Trump backs down. Why? Why did he back down? He backs down after Netanyahu. Netanyahu calls him and urges restraint, and after Saudi Arabia and The UAE lobby Washington against any military strikes on Iran, and after the Iranian foreign minister reaches out to Washington through back channels.

Do you see? Trump didn't restrain his allies, his allies restrained him. This is America as a regional power. It's a regional hegemon not a global hegemon, as I've said. I've told you before, Trump doesn't dictate policy to The Gulf, he takes dictation from The Gulf because they have a strategy and he doesn't have a strategy.

Because they have the plan and they have the capital to back up the plan and they have lined up the a national o c g f c in support of that plan. So Trump threatens and then he gets restrained by the regional powers. This signals or it should signal to Iranian hardliners the external threat is real, and only adaptation can prevent it. And regional powers, regional powers not Iran will control whether America actually strikes or not. The friend group demonstrates their influence, and if you have any sense, then you would understand that you need to work with that friend group and start making the adjustments that they need you to make.

But like I said, old habits die hard, and the hardliners, they're very used to the way things have always worked and they're very used to the way that they have always worked, very similar to the Zionists in fact. And recalibration is not gonna be easy for them to wrap their heads around. I said previously that Iran is not making any decisions today without consulting the BRICS partners. They'll consult with the BRICS partners first. This is exactly what collective sovereignty looks like, collective management of regional affairs.

This is what it looks like in practice. It's very sophisticated statecraft, and it's operating across multiple levels coordinated between actors who even maybe are officially adversaries or rivals. But I think that now we're seeing, this was several months ago when I said that, but now I think that we're seeing a rift, split internally in Iran. The pragmatists, the realists, those who see the logic of the regional plan versus the entrenched sectarian hardline elements who want things to operate the way that they always have operated. The former, in my opinion, is still coordinating with and consulting with BRICS and with the GCC and China and so forth.

The latter, the hardliners seem to only be consulting with like the nineteen eighties. Like I've said before, no regime in the region is gonna be able to survive, no leader can survive unless they adhere to the regional plan because the regional plan is essentially an expression of the new global power structure. So it's not just a plan that we're talking about. It's not just a plan that you're complying with. You're complying with the ascendant power dynamics and the emerging geopolitical and economic logic of how the world is gonna be organized from now on.

So if you cannot or if you will not demonstrate your utility to that emerging global order then you will be dissolved. It's just a matter of how and when and how long it will take. I don't care what you think about it. I don't care what you think about Iran's leader or about their regime. If you like them or you dislike them or if you support the protest or you oppose the protest.

This has nothing to do with it. The fact of the matter is that the sectarian posture, the destabilizing role in the region that Iran has always had, all of that worked in the post World War two world order logic, but it doesn't work anymore. Now, one wants to see Iran fall into anarchy and chaos except maybe the the neocons in Washington who are completely delusional anyway, they always have been. But in my opinion, no one who's actually making decisions wants to see that happen. But at the same time, the people who make decisions also wanna see Iran continue being what it has been for fifty years, except for the regime hardliners.

But the point is, only one of these outcomes is possible. Chaos and anarchy is possible, war is possible. Continuing as is, is not possible. BRICS and the GCC want things to proceed smoothly. The a national OCGFC, they're open to proceeding violently.

I don't think they prefer it, but they're open to it. Because they can still turn a profit from that if it proceeds violently. They can still turn a profit, even if it also costs them potential profits that they would get from proceeding in a more smooth way forward. But at the end of the day, the hardline stance cannot succeed for Iran in the long term, period. It's really the same as as the demolition projects in the other places that I mentioned.

The neo cons in Washington, the Zionists in Israel, and the Iranian sectarian hardliners. These are all very complicated and very, say, and sometimes dangerous to try to dismantle. I think that the most successful has been in The US, at dismantling. But that's largely because the OCGFC already had secured complete control of the government, so it's much easier for them to dismantle as they like, but in Israel and in Iran it's much more challenging, and I think in those two places accomplishing change is not going be straightforward, it's not going be straightforward at all. It's going be a very bumpy road with a lot of starts and stops and a lot of twists and turns.

But at the end of the day, the fact of the matter is that the old way no longer works. And whoever does not adopt or adapt to the new realities will be eliminated one way or another. So how are we gonna know if the Iranian regime is actually going to adapt and actually going to survive? Well, I think that we should start to see selective prosecution of the IRGC commanders who are who have been most associated with the killing of protesters. We'll see an emergence of a reformed sort of leadership that maintains some level of continuity while signaling, greater flexibility.

We'll see rapid economic integration with their BRICS partners. We'll see the proxy networks completely cut loose. We'll see internal restructuring of the government system that functionally reduces the power of the IRGC, the hardliners, and maybe even Khamenei himself. It's impossible to say exactly, but I would think that some of these changes, some of these things, if they don't happen within the next two years, or if there are clear signals that they're not going to happen within that time frame. If that's the case, then I think we will be looking at more drastic measures being taken.

But in my opinion, we will see something like this. I think that they will do it. By 2027, 2028, I think we'll see that. Iran is gradually going to become a more pragmatic state, fully capable of participating, insha'Allah, in regional economic integration. Which is what like I say, which is what everyone who's actually making the decisions and who's managing this, this is what they actually want.

I still believe that Iran can avoid a major collapse. I think that the protests and the military threats and so forth, that's just facilitating the conditions necessary for Iran to make the requisite adjustments that need to be made in order for them to integrate into the region. And again, this is what I talked about earlier. Last year, I said that Iran was gonna have to sacrifice their proxy networks to demonstrate their willingness and their cooperation with regional transformation, and they have largely done that. And this is the same pattern, like getting rid of the militant groups.

It's the same pattern, but inward now, trying to get rid of the hard line elements that are preventing adaptation, possibly using your historical covert partner to try to create the crisis with the protests and so forth for the purpose of highlighting the necessity of changing. The Iranian regime spent the last fifty years performing resistance to American imperialism while functionally serving American imperialism through regional destabilization. Now, subhanAllah, at the moment that they could genuinely pivot to a post American world order, their own ideological commitments of the hardliners are getting in the way. It's like the performance became a reality for them, the mask got stuck on their face, and that's the challenge that the pragmatists are dealing with in Iran. So the mask has to be surgically removed by some way or somehow.

It has to be removed carefully, gradually, with coordination between multiple actors in the region who each have different motivations for what they wanna do and why they wanna do it, but they have a shared interest in the managed transformation of the region and to prevent chaotic collapse of Iran. I know that this isn't gonna be popular. My analysis is never popular about Iran. The pro protest people are gonna reject the suggestion that it has been coordinated by the West, western infiltration. Supporters of the regime will reject the idea that the protest had anything to stand on in the first place.

They think that the whole thing is a western regime change, color revolution operation. The so called anti imperialists are gonna hate the idea that the Bricks powers are actually trying to facilitate changes within the Iranian regime. Because everyone has their own preferred narrative, especially about a place like Iran. And if it doesn't fit with your narrative, then you would think that the the analysis is wrong. I don't care about any of this.

I I care about trying to understand what's actually happening without any emotion. And what's actually happening is much more complex than anyone's narrative or what anyone wants to believe or feels has a need to believe. What we're watching is a controlled demolition of an obsolete political structure. And that demolition in my opinion is not being carried out by Iran's enemies but by their own pragmatists working with potentially with their historical partners. It's sophisticated and it's brutal but it's also necessary.

This is how power structures transition in the twenty first century. This is how it looks. They have to they have to transition through coordinated restructuring, and Washington is not calling the shots, but the regional powers themselves are managing the process. There's not necessarily any clear good guys or bad guys, but there's multiple actors whose interests temporarily align, align around the managed transformation succeeding. The so called Islamic Republic that we have known all of our lives, that's coming to an end.

Even if there are some elements in the government that have not accepted this fact, or even if there are elements in the government who are in denial about this fact. In my opinion, Iran and say, twenty years or so is gonna resemble something more like France in the mid twentieth century, except it's gonna be more artistic, more creative, more cultured, more intellectual, it's gonna be richer, and it's gonna be more prosperous. That's what Iran is gonna look like in twenty years or so. Again, you can feel however you wanna feel about that. It truly doesn't matter.

I'm just telling you the trajectory as I see it without any emotion, without any bias. What's happening now is what I have talked about, what I have already talked about, and what I said would happen, including when I said that it was gonna be fraught with challenges and setbacks and bumps in the road. I said it's not going to be easy. The recalibration is daunting, not just for Aitam, but for everyone. It's daunting and it's traumatic and it can even be painful, but it's also unavoidable and it's also irreversible.