Iran's protests reflect deep social and generational strain, but absent unified leadership, elite fracture and a credible alternative order, they challenge the system without becoming a revolution.
I wish I could find enough credible information about Iran, but can't. I read a few books though. In any case I would like to know where you get your information on Iran from.
Horrified and frightened by the decline of the West I tend to project an image on the BRICS nations that consists of the traits that are painfully missing where I live. It's very hard to fight this tendency to comfort myself with illusions like that, while on the other hand it is obvious that the West serves as the ultimate bad example that instructs his victims to bring about the alternative. And there is hope in that.
With respect I have to push back against your core argument. You oversimplify the difference between revolution and collapse. The term revolution itself to some extent is a misnomer. The metaphor suggests that what is down is coming up and vice versa, whereas the example of the French revolution demonstrates exactly the opposite of what you suppose: historians know that the local uprisings in the decades leading to the French Revolution were not aimed overthrowing the nobility but on better government (no matter how violent they were); instead revolution is the decay, the erosion of the institution of the old regime in combination with a fermentation of opposing ideas amongst the populace. It has nothing to do with an alternative already manifest waiting to replace the old system. In hindsight the cliché of the French Revolution as somehow a product of Enlightenment philosophy has made us forget that the philosophers were all monarchists. Voltaire ridiculed the notion that his hairdresser might take part in government. They despised democracy. They wanted was enlightened monarchy which meant a leading role therin for themselves. What produced the revolutionary situation was a feudal regime in desperate need of reform, which the nobility blocked completely longing idiotically to reestablish their medieval privileges. It is the privileged elite pushing their luck, misunderstanding the basis of their own power and how it works.
Same thing in the US and the West in general: Dysfunctionality as a result of decadent ignorance of how the system works that guarantees one's own exorbitant privileges. This is why Trump serves as a wrecking ball to the Western system including the system in the US that produces it's extreme inequality and it's military hegemony. In that sense he is revolutionary. He is the ultimate manifestation of decay.
Coming back to the Iranian situation it doesn't make sense to me that the West, dysfunctional, perverted and ignorant as it is, especially in Israel, was able to produce a correct assessment of the situation in Iran and consequently decide on a strategy that is actually able to achieve regime change. They can destroy, but not construct. They can wreak havoc. (Pager attacks, kidnapping Maduro, Syria) But that produces a reaction because the underdog doesn't survive not learning from mistakes, whereas power and money lead to ignorance because you don't have to understand what you can force or buy. And this lack of understanding makes the West incapable of understanding or even reflecting on the reaction to his spectacular actions. (Which is how the Us's spectacular defeat in its own trade wars came about. Militarily and geostrategically it is the same dysfunctionality) That reaction is the patriotic pull consolidating the societies of Russia, China, but also in Africa - and obviously in Iran after the 12 day war in June.
I can see that the Iranian revolution seems to be losing the younger generation being westernized and not as religious anymore (beside the fact that the overturn of the regime of the Shah was in itself not only the work of religious fervor but a collected effort with a lot of Marxist input as well). But it absolutely makes no sense to me, that economical grievances notwithstanding the Iranian people in general would be obnoxious enough as to try to align themselves with the West just when it is visibly dying and in his death throes attempts to regime change Iran. Ending the Iranian revolution for them should be a project for another day. To attempt to that now would be like rearranging the furniture while the house is on fire. And I sincerely hope that Iranians are too reasonable to go for it.
Thank you for the thoughtful and serious engagement. I appreciate both the spirit and depth of your critique.
Regarding sources, may analysis draws on a mix of Iranian economic data, polling and survey research (groups like GAMAAN), reporting from regional and Western media, historical scholarship on revolutions and comparative political theory. I try to triangulate rather than rely on any single narrative, precisely because information on Iran is fragmented and often politicized.
On the substance of your pushback, I agree with you on several important points. Revolutions are rarely born from fully articulated blueprints, and decay, elite miscalculation and institutional erosion are central to revolutionary situations. The French case illustrates this well. I also agree that Western powers are far better at destruction than construction and that external pressure often produces patriotic consolidation rather than compliance. In fact, that dynamic is a core part of my argument about why external regime-change strategies misread Iran.
Where we differ is narrower than it may appear. My distinction is not that revolutions require a pre-packaged alternative waiting in the wings, but that successful revolutions eventually generate a coordinating center and governing logic capable of seizing and exercising authority. In France this emerged unevenly and chaotically. In Russia, China, Vietnam and Iran it emerged through parties, movements or institutional networks forged under pressure. Decay alone does not determine outcomes. It creates a revolutionary situation, not necessarily a revolutionary transfer of power.
On Iran specifically, I fully agree that most Iranians are not seeking alignment with a declining West, nor are they blind to the dangers of foreign intervention. The post-June war patriotic consolidation you mention is real, and it reinforces my skepticism toward claims of imminent regime collapse. The generational legitimacy gap, economic grievances and social alienation are serious, but attempting to dismantle the entire revolutionary order under conditions of external threat would indeed resemble “rearranging the furniture while the house is on fire.”
So in that sense, our conclusions are closer than our framing suggests. My core claim is not that Iran is immune to decay, but that decay, protest, and even deep dysfunction do not automatically translate into revolution, especially in a system still capable of coercion, adaptation and nationalist mobilization under pressure.
I’m grateful for the engagement. This is exactly the kind of disagreement that sharpens analysis rather than dilutes it.
I hope so too, because the spectre of Syria and Libya is all that awaits, if they choose that road. 🫣 Obviously it’s hard to know what is going on behind the (western) headlines, but I sincerely hope that China is massively stepping up economic assistance to Iran, inc providing stability for the currency. If Iran is lost, the blow to BRICS, BRI and the multi-polar project will be grave indeed.
Recent commentaries that I found(Middle East Eye for instance) view the situation much less stable than I would hope. We will have to wait and see. Not to speak of the Iranians. The point is, that even in an unstable situation an attack by the US and Israel would not lead to a revolt against the Iranian Revolution but a patriotic reunification. That at least is what we have seen so far.
But I try to prepare myself for more losses. Being german I have to think of the Nazi grip on most of Europe. It was horrible but it was also unsustainable. And if I learned anything from the last years it is this: never underestimate the incompetence of western leaders and generals. They can kill a lot of people but they cannot win a war. They can make the biggest splash but will never understand how to really build up sustainable power.
No matter how much more money Trump will spend for the military he still hasn't figured out how the military industry fs with him and how incompetent they are. These people will never ask themselves why Russia or China are much more efficient in the military industry with much less money spent. Hypersonic weapons!
They can destroy economies, but in the end they destroy their own economy. What is so nerve-racking is the gulf between the time in which the penny drops in our own heads about the state of things and the torturous months and years it takes to play out. The economic crash in the US is already overdue. This and the Epstein files is what the US government tries to distract from. They go for maximum effects and replace geo-strategic thinking with world wrestling antics. This will kill a lot of people but it will lead to their fall.
What makes me especially anxious is how far down they will drag us all until they're finally finished.
The Americans know this full well and will act accordingly. China simply hopes that the crocodile will eat them last. This makes sense, in a way, because the Chinese government claim for legitimacy stems from its delivery of rising prosperity.
Not only that. The commies in China, for a hundred years now have done wonders. Read Edgar Snow, Red Star Rising over China. The book is impressive, especially being written by an American journo that spoke Chinese and went to interview Mao and other party and army leadership. And the crocodile is not that big and strong. China in its current state is going to break the crocodile's jaws and teeth.
One can think of the English Revolution as another example, which was a war between up and coming urban merchant class and elements of nobility (oligarchic elements) against monarchy and its supporters (tyranny), caused by taxation. There wasn't any "rot" to speak of and ended up with a rebalancing in power.
The point is to give the Americans a pretext to intervene.
See, e.g., Libya and Syria. You'd think that Iranians would get wise, but American soft power convinces the minions that this time, it'll be different!
WHEW. Nah, not products of Western and CIA and Mossad and MI6 interference, these so called uprisings. Nah, no way, and you do not even posit that?
Try it out wherever you live. Sanctions, amigo. SANCTIONS do kill. Constant economic warfare. COnstant infusion of the virus of Israeli-Jewish interference, and the coup maker economic hitmen.
Wouldn't it be a different story IF, the dirty west JUST stayed out of societies' lives , no?
Venezuela?
It usually takes archival digging, the golden gaffe, an ill-considered remark, and occasional spells of candour by those in power, to admit that the United States has, in common with other imperial powers, brutal ambitions. An example of the latter was General Smedley Butler, who, at his death in 1940, had become the most decorated Marine in US history. After retiring from active service, he was frank about his role. Professing to be a “racketeer” and “gangster for capitalism”, he went on to explain how: “I helped make Mexico, especially Tampico, safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Boys to collect revenues in. I helped the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefits of Wall Street.” That was just a selection.
With President Donald Trump in power, we do not need a Butler to give the game away or expose any frightful cabal. The empire is out of the closet, bolshie, bright, and more thieving than ever. While the Donroe Doctrine is intended to reprise the Monroe Doctrine, it offers nothing more than imperial rapacity, seizure under pretext. The January 9 meeting with two dozen oil executives at the White House to discuss the fate of the Venezuelan oil market showed Trump to be in full flight as cocky pip and proud procurer of corporate thieving under the cover of government protection.
Representatives from such veteran behemoths as ExxonMobil and Chevron were present to listen to calls from the president that they invest handsomely in modernising and tidying up Venezuela’s tattered oil infrastructure. Problems with the oil itself – heavy, hard to refine, and packed with sulphur, not to mention the questionable number of proven reserves – did not blight the conversation. “American companies will have the opportunity to rebuild Venezuela’s rotting energy infrastructure and eventually increase oil production to levels never seen before,” he crowed at the start of the meeting. Our giant oil companies will be spending at least $100 billion of their money.” In the course of this merry investment, Venezuela would “be very successful, and the people of the United States are going to be big beneficiaries.”
The choice of companies involved in the venture would, however, not be determined by free market wiles or any invisible hand. “We are going to be making the decision as to which oil companies can go in, which we will allow to go in.” They would mostly be American, naturally. Forget the Venezuelans, he insisted. “You’re dealing with us directly. You’re not dealing with Venezuela at all. We don’t want you to deal with Venezuela.”
Jeffery Hilderbrand of the oil and gas producer Hilcorp Energy, and noted Trump donor, was all salivation and gratitude. He was also pleased with the implausible alibi Trump had offered for controlling and pilfering Venezuelan oil for American interests: finding imagined enemies who might do the same thing. “Thank you for your great, tremendous leadership in protecting the interests in the Western Hemisphere,” he sighed with oleaginous gratitude. “The message that you have sent to China and our enemies to stay out of our backyard is absolutely fantastic… Hilcorp is fully committed and ready to rebuild the infrastructure in Venezuela.”
CEO Bill Armstrong, of the Armstrong Oil and Gas company, also smacked his lips at the plunderous prospects. “We are ready to go to Venezuela,” he declared. “In real estate terms, it is prime real estate. And it’s like West Palm about 50 years ago. Very ripe.” Fracking executive and Trump supporter Harold Hamm was tickled by the prospect of adventure, seeing Venezuela as little more than a playground to roam in and profit from. “It excites me as an explorationist.” The country was “exciting” with its abundant reserves, posing “challenges and the industry knows how to handle that.”
Chevron, which already has a presence in the country in partnership with the state-run oil company Petróleos de Venezuela SA, accounting for 240,000 barrels per day, expects to bolster its production by 50% over the next 18 to 24 months. Those at Repsol are dreaming of tripling the current daily production of 45,000 barrels over the next few years, provided the conditions are appropriate.
Not all the oil companies expressed the same level of glowing confidence. Naked plunder comes with its challenges and logistical tangles, not least the touchy issue of Venezuelan sovereignty. Exxon CEO Darren Woods was, for instance, concerned that much would have to be done to make Venezuela an appropriate recipient of capital. One way was to ensure that whoever was in control in Caracas would be eternally reliable and amenable to US oil interests. “We have had our assets seized there twice and so you can imagine to re-enter a third time would require some pretty significant changes from what we’ve historically seen and what is currently the state.” As things stood, given “legal and commercial constructs and frameworks in place”, Venezuela was “ininvestable”.
That same day, Trump further confirmed the choking of Venezuela by signing an Executive Order to prevent “the seizure of Venezuelan oil revenue that could undermine critical US efforts to ensure economic stability in Venezuela.” The Order prohibits US courts from seizing revenue collected from Venezuelan oil and any relevant holds in US Treasury accounts. The customary, absurd justifications follow: to lose control of such funds would “empower malign actors like Iran and Hezbollah while weakening efforts to bring peace, prosperity, and stability to the Venezuelan people and to the Western Hemisphere as a whole.” Were these funds to be tampered with, US objectives to stem “the influx of illegal aliens and disrupting the flood of illicit narcotics” would be compromised.
The Iranian government should accept that to survive this, absolute sovereignty and self dependence needs to be put aside and accept more aid from its BRICS friends.
Also, any “legitimate“ internal alternative will be most likely a puppet of Israel and the US. Pushing Pahlavi is deliberate so the internal alternative seems more credible.
They also don’t care about regime change. Regime collapse is good enough.
Sanctions are weapons of war. Without the sanctions, without the decades of US/UK meddling (Mosadegh), the situation would be very likely different. All you write may be correct, but they are the effect, not the cause. And if we don’t fix the cause, this situation will continue. We didn’t fix the cause of both world wars either and look in what state we are today. History tells us that we made some very bad turns.
It’s just plain criminal. So from a moral point of view it is abhorrent. Besides they are targeting the population so they will stand up and oust the government. It’s foreign interference.
What matters is results. Pointing out the abhorrent nature of American actions does nothing to change them. This is why those resisting American power keep on losing.
N. Koreans didn't loose, nor the Vietnamese, nor the Chinese. Russians lost their empire but they are having a comeback, all the while the US is deflating and becoming less in terms of relative power (soft and especially hard). Yes, the little guys that have brittle societies are loosing, and are used as example, killing the chicken to skare the monkeys, but presenting the US as ever victorious is a falacy, not based on facts.
Thank you. I've added a reference section to address this concern. Information on protests and economic conditions in Iran necessarily comes from a triangulation of sources rather than a single dataset. Currency and inflation reporting, international financial institutions and comparative political-science literature on protest and revolution.
Given Iran's media environment, no source provides complete or perfectly transparent coverage of protests. The argument in the essay rests mainly on structural conditions, historical comparison and well-established mechanisms of revolutionary change. Those analytical foundations are now fully referenced so readers can assess the evidence and reasoning directly.
"The governing apparatus endures because its coercive core remains intact." That is a very general statement that captures any government, any polity on the face of the planet. They all have a coercive apparatus at hand, well formed and well oiled...
Yet another wise and perceptive analysis of current events, seen through the lens of historical revolutions.
I share the author's opinion. Protests are common throughout the world, regardless of the political system the protesters are living under. In the west we see protests so frequently that we tend to ignore that they're even taking place. Even when protests in the west become violent, and they do from time-to-time, we do not expect the government to collapse.
It's in the nature of protests to turn violent, depending on the grievance and its intensity. But it's exceedingly rare that violent protest has a revolutionary goal - to sweep aside the structure of the state entirely and begin anew. Nine times out of ten, or perhaps even more often, protesters seek only to change the existing government's behavior. They do not seek to destroy the political structure of their country, but to improve it.
There are practical reasons for this. Almost everyone has some grievance against the government they live under, and expressing it publicly is both a human right and a useful release valve. However, there are very few people who can conceive of a new political system in its entirety - one that's culturally, economically, militarily and organizationally consistent with what the majority of the country will accept.
Protest is easy, because it merely opposes something that exists. Revolution is very hard indeed, because it requires both tearing something down and then rebuilding it from the ground up.
I do not know where the Iranian protests will lead, but the likelihood that they will become revolutionary seems quite small.
I wish I could find enough credible information about Iran, but can't. I read a few books though. In any case I would like to know where you get your information on Iran from.
Horrified and frightened by the decline of the West I tend to project an image on the BRICS nations that consists of the traits that are painfully missing where I live. It's very hard to fight this tendency to comfort myself with illusions like that, while on the other hand it is obvious that the West serves as the ultimate bad example that instructs his victims to bring about the alternative. And there is hope in that.
With respect I have to push back against your core argument. You oversimplify the difference between revolution and collapse. The term revolution itself to some extent is a misnomer. The metaphor suggests that what is down is coming up and vice versa, whereas the example of the French revolution demonstrates exactly the opposite of what you suppose: historians know that the local uprisings in the decades leading to the French Revolution were not aimed overthrowing the nobility but on better government (no matter how violent they were); instead revolution is the decay, the erosion of the institution of the old regime in combination with a fermentation of opposing ideas amongst the populace. It has nothing to do with an alternative already manifest waiting to replace the old system. In hindsight the cliché of the French Revolution as somehow a product of Enlightenment philosophy has made us forget that the philosophers were all monarchists. Voltaire ridiculed the notion that his hairdresser might take part in government. They despised democracy. They wanted was enlightened monarchy which meant a leading role therin for themselves. What produced the revolutionary situation was a feudal regime in desperate need of reform, which the nobility blocked completely longing idiotically to reestablish their medieval privileges. It is the privileged elite pushing their luck, misunderstanding the basis of their own power and how it works.
Same thing in the US and the West in general: Dysfunctionality as a result of decadent ignorance of how the system works that guarantees one's own exorbitant privileges. This is why Trump serves as a wrecking ball to the Western system including the system in the US that produces it's extreme inequality and it's military hegemony. In that sense he is revolutionary. He is the ultimate manifestation of decay.
Coming back to the Iranian situation it doesn't make sense to me that the West, dysfunctional, perverted and ignorant as it is, especially in Israel, was able to produce a correct assessment of the situation in Iran and consequently decide on a strategy that is actually able to achieve regime change. They can destroy, but not construct. They can wreak havoc. (Pager attacks, kidnapping Maduro, Syria) But that produces a reaction because the underdog doesn't survive not learning from mistakes, whereas power and money lead to ignorance because you don't have to understand what you can force or buy. And this lack of understanding makes the West incapable of understanding or even reflecting on the reaction to his spectacular actions. (Which is how the Us's spectacular defeat in its own trade wars came about. Militarily and geostrategically it is the same dysfunctionality) That reaction is the patriotic pull consolidating the societies of Russia, China, but also in Africa - and obviously in Iran after the 12 day war in June.
I can see that the Iranian revolution seems to be losing the younger generation being westernized and not as religious anymore (beside the fact that the overturn of the regime of the Shah was in itself not only the work of religious fervor but a collected effort with a lot of Marxist input as well). But it absolutely makes no sense to me, that economical grievances notwithstanding the Iranian people in general would be obnoxious enough as to try to align themselves with the West just when it is visibly dying and in his death throes attempts to regime change Iran. Ending the Iranian revolution for them should be a project for another day. To attempt to that now would be like rearranging the furniture while the house is on fire. And I sincerely hope that Iranians are too reasonable to go for it.
Thank you for the thoughtful and serious engagement. I appreciate both the spirit and depth of your critique.
Regarding sources, may analysis draws on a mix of Iranian economic data, polling and survey research (groups like GAMAAN), reporting from regional and Western media, historical scholarship on revolutions and comparative political theory. I try to triangulate rather than rely on any single narrative, precisely because information on Iran is fragmented and often politicized.
On the substance of your pushback, I agree with you on several important points. Revolutions are rarely born from fully articulated blueprints, and decay, elite miscalculation and institutional erosion are central to revolutionary situations. The French case illustrates this well. I also agree that Western powers are far better at destruction than construction and that external pressure often produces patriotic consolidation rather than compliance. In fact, that dynamic is a core part of my argument about why external regime-change strategies misread Iran.
Where we differ is narrower than it may appear. My distinction is not that revolutions require a pre-packaged alternative waiting in the wings, but that successful revolutions eventually generate a coordinating center and governing logic capable of seizing and exercising authority. In France this emerged unevenly and chaotically. In Russia, China, Vietnam and Iran it emerged through parties, movements or institutional networks forged under pressure. Decay alone does not determine outcomes. It creates a revolutionary situation, not necessarily a revolutionary transfer of power.
On Iran specifically, I fully agree that most Iranians are not seeking alignment with a declining West, nor are they blind to the dangers of foreign intervention. The post-June war patriotic consolidation you mention is real, and it reinforces my skepticism toward claims of imminent regime collapse. The generational legitimacy gap, economic grievances and social alienation are serious, but attempting to dismantle the entire revolutionary order under conditions of external threat would indeed resemble “rearranging the furniture while the house is on fire.”
So in that sense, our conclusions are closer than our framing suggests. My core claim is not that Iran is immune to decay, but that decay, protest, and even deep dysfunction do not automatically translate into revolution, especially in a system still capable of coercion, adaptation and nationalist mobilization under pressure.
I’m grateful for the engagement. This is exactly the kind of disagreement that sharpens analysis rather than dilutes it.
I appreciate that.
I hope so too, because the spectre of Syria and Libya is all that awaits, if they choose that road. 🫣 Obviously it’s hard to know what is going on behind the (western) headlines, but I sincerely hope that China is massively stepping up economic assistance to Iran, inc providing stability for the currency. If Iran is lost, the blow to BRICS, BRI and the multi-polar project will be grave indeed.
Recent commentaries that I found(Middle East Eye for instance) view the situation much less stable than I would hope. We will have to wait and see. Not to speak of the Iranians. The point is, that even in an unstable situation an attack by the US and Israel would not lead to a revolt against the Iranian Revolution but a patriotic reunification. That at least is what we have seen so far.
But I try to prepare myself for more losses. Being german I have to think of the Nazi grip on most of Europe. It was horrible but it was also unsustainable. And if I learned anything from the last years it is this: never underestimate the incompetence of western leaders and generals. They can kill a lot of people but they cannot win a war. They can make the biggest splash but will never understand how to really build up sustainable power.
No matter how much more money Trump will spend for the military he still hasn't figured out how the military industry fs with him and how incompetent they are. These people will never ask themselves why Russia or China are much more efficient in the military industry with much less money spent. Hypersonic weapons!
They can destroy economies, but in the end they destroy their own economy. What is so nerve-racking is the gulf between the time in which the penny drops in our own heads about the state of things and the torturous months and years it takes to play out. The economic crash in the US is already overdue. This and the Epstein files is what the US government tries to distract from. They go for maximum effects and replace geo-strategic thinking with world wrestling antics. This will kill a lot of people but it will lead to their fall.
What makes me especially anxious is how far down they will drag us all until they're finally finished.
The Americans know this full well and will act accordingly. China simply hopes that the crocodile will eat them last. This makes sense, in a way, because the Chinese government claim for legitimacy stems from its delivery of rising prosperity.
Not only that. The commies in China, for a hundred years now have done wonders. Read Edgar Snow, Red Star Rising over China. The book is impressive, especially being written by an American journo that spoke Chinese and went to interview Mao and other party and army leadership. And the crocodile is not that big and strong. China in its current state is going to break the crocodile's jaws and teeth.
One can think of the English Revolution as another example, which was a war between up and coming urban merchant class and elements of nobility (oligarchic elements) against monarchy and its supporters (tyranny), caused by taxation. There wasn't any "rot" to speak of and ended up with a rebalancing in power.
The point is to give the Americans a pretext to intervene.
See, e.g., Libya and Syria. You'd think that Iranians would get wise, but American soft power convinces the minions that this time, it'll be different!
"You'd think that Iranians would get wise, but American soft power convinces the minions that this time, it'll be different!"
Agreed, but that American soft power also convinces the American minions that this time, it'll be different.
I suspect that most humans simply want to be on whatever side is seen as stronger.
The stealth operation in Venezuela is not necessarily an example of strength. US and Israel lost the June 12 day war against Iran...
You misspelled US color revolution.
You're so thoughtful and humorous; you must be an interesting person in life.
WHEW. Nah, not products of Western and CIA and Mossad and MI6 interference, these so called uprisings. Nah, no way, and you do not even posit that?
Try it out wherever you live. Sanctions, amigo. SANCTIONS do kill. Constant economic warfare. COnstant infusion of the virus of Israeli-Jewish interference, and the coup maker economic hitmen.
Wouldn't it be a different story IF, the dirty west JUST stayed out of societies' lives , no?
Venezuela?
It usually takes archival digging, the golden gaffe, an ill-considered remark, and occasional spells of candour by those in power, to admit that the United States has, in common with other imperial powers, brutal ambitions. An example of the latter was General Smedley Butler, who, at his death in 1940, had become the most decorated Marine in US history. After retiring from active service, he was frank about his role. Professing to be a “racketeer” and “gangster for capitalism”, he went on to explain how: “I helped make Mexico, especially Tampico, safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Boys to collect revenues in. I helped the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefits of Wall Street.” That was just a selection.
With President Donald Trump in power, we do not need a Butler to give the game away or expose any frightful cabal. The empire is out of the closet, bolshie, bright, and more thieving than ever. While the Donroe Doctrine is intended to reprise the Monroe Doctrine, it offers nothing more than imperial rapacity, seizure under pretext. The January 9 meeting with two dozen oil executives at the White House to discuss the fate of the Venezuelan oil market showed Trump to be in full flight as cocky pip and proud procurer of corporate thieving under the cover of government protection.
Representatives from such veteran behemoths as ExxonMobil and Chevron were present to listen to calls from the president that they invest handsomely in modernising and tidying up Venezuela’s tattered oil infrastructure. Problems with the oil itself – heavy, hard to refine, and packed with sulphur, not to mention the questionable number of proven reserves – did not blight the conversation. “American companies will have the opportunity to rebuild Venezuela’s rotting energy infrastructure and eventually increase oil production to levels never seen before,” he crowed at the start of the meeting. Our giant oil companies will be spending at least $100 billion of their money.” In the course of this merry investment, Venezuela would “be very successful, and the people of the United States are going to be big beneficiaries.”
The choice of companies involved in the venture would, however, not be determined by free market wiles or any invisible hand. “We are going to be making the decision as to which oil companies can go in, which we will allow to go in.” They would mostly be American, naturally. Forget the Venezuelans, he insisted. “You’re dealing with us directly. You’re not dealing with Venezuela at all. We don’t want you to deal with Venezuela.”
Jeffery Hilderbrand of the oil and gas producer Hilcorp Energy, and noted Trump donor, was all salivation and gratitude. He was also pleased with the implausible alibi Trump had offered for controlling and pilfering Venezuelan oil for American interests: finding imagined enemies who might do the same thing. “Thank you for your great, tremendous leadership in protecting the interests in the Western Hemisphere,” he sighed with oleaginous gratitude. “The message that you have sent to China and our enemies to stay out of our backyard is absolutely fantastic… Hilcorp is fully committed and ready to rebuild the infrastructure in Venezuela.”
CEO Bill Armstrong, of the Armstrong Oil and Gas company, also smacked his lips at the plunderous prospects. “We are ready to go to Venezuela,” he declared. “In real estate terms, it is prime real estate. And it’s like West Palm about 50 years ago. Very ripe.” Fracking executive and Trump supporter Harold Hamm was tickled by the prospect of adventure, seeing Venezuela as little more than a playground to roam in and profit from. “It excites me as an explorationist.” The country was “exciting” with its abundant reserves, posing “challenges and the industry knows how to handle that.”
Chevron, which already has a presence in the country in partnership with the state-run oil company Petróleos de Venezuela SA, accounting for 240,000 barrels per day, expects to bolster its production by 50% over the next 18 to 24 months. Those at Repsol are dreaming of tripling the current daily production of 45,000 barrels over the next few years, provided the conditions are appropriate.
Not all the oil companies expressed the same level of glowing confidence. Naked plunder comes with its challenges and logistical tangles, not least the touchy issue of Venezuelan sovereignty. Exxon CEO Darren Woods was, for instance, concerned that much would have to be done to make Venezuela an appropriate recipient of capital. One way was to ensure that whoever was in control in Caracas would be eternally reliable and amenable to US oil interests. “We have had our assets seized there twice and so you can imagine to re-enter a third time would require some pretty significant changes from what we’ve historically seen and what is currently the state.” As things stood, given “legal and commercial constructs and frameworks in place”, Venezuela was “ininvestable”.
That same day, Trump further confirmed the choking of Venezuela by signing an Executive Order to prevent “the seizure of Venezuelan oil revenue that could undermine critical US efforts to ensure economic stability in Venezuela.” The Order prohibits US courts from seizing revenue collected from Venezuelan oil and any relevant holds in US Treasury accounts. The customary, absurd justifications follow: to lose control of such funds would “empower malign actors like Iran and Hezbollah while weakening efforts to bring peace, prosperity, and stability to the Venezuelan people and to the Western Hemisphere as a whole.” Were these funds to be tampered with, US objectives to stem “the influx of illegal aliens and disrupting the flood of illicit narcotics” would be compromised.
thank you for your analysis. Now ´that´ was really interesting
Good.
The Iranian government should accept that to survive this, absolute sovereignty and self dependence needs to be put aside and accept more aid from its BRICS friends.
Also, any “legitimate“ internal alternative will be most likely a puppet of Israel and the US. Pushing Pahlavi is deliberate so the internal alternative seems more credible.
They also don’t care about regime change. Regime collapse is good enough.
Sanctions are weapons of war. Without the sanctions, without the decades of US/UK meddling (Mosadegh), the situation would be very likely different. All you write may be correct, but they are the effect, not the cause. And if we don’t fix the cause, this situation will continue. We didn’t fix the cause of both world wars either and look in what state we are today. History tells us that we made some very bad turns.
"Sanctions are weapons of war. Without the sanctions, without the decades of US/UK meddling (Mosadegh), the situation would be very likely different."
So what? They work.
It’s just plain criminal. So from a moral point of view it is abhorrent. Besides they are targeting the population so they will stand up and oust the government. It’s foreign interference.
What matters is results. Pointing out the abhorrent nature of American actions does nothing to change them. This is why those resisting American power keep on losing.
might makes right. But only if we do it:-(
N. Koreans didn't loose, nor the Vietnamese, nor the Chinese. Russians lost their empire but they are having a comeback, all the while the US is deflating and becoming less in terms of relative power (soft and especially hard). Yes, the little guys that have brittle societies are loosing, and are used as example, killing the chicken to skare the monkeys, but presenting the US as ever victorious is a falacy, not based on facts.
Depends on the victim, eh?! Don't work on China, or Russia, or India...
Odd - there is no reference to where you get information on such protests. This seriously undermines your credibility.
Thank you. I've added a reference section to address this concern. Information on protests and economic conditions in Iran necessarily comes from a triangulation of sources rather than a single dataset. Currency and inflation reporting, international financial institutions and comparative political-science literature on protest and revolution.
Given Iran's media environment, no source provides complete or perfectly transparent coverage of protests. The argument in the essay rests mainly on structural conditions, historical comparison and well-established mechanisms of revolutionary change. Those analytical foundations are now fully referenced so readers can assess the evidence and reasoning directly.
Excellent overview.
"The governing apparatus endures because its coercive core remains intact." That is a very general statement that captures any government, any polity on the face of the planet. They all have a coercive apparatus at hand, well formed and well oiled...
Yet another wise and perceptive analysis of current events, seen through the lens of historical revolutions.
I share the author's opinion. Protests are common throughout the world, regardless of the political system the protesters are living under. In the west we see protests so frequently that we tend to ignore that they're even taking place. Even when protests in the west become violent, and they do from time-to-time, we do not expect the government to collapse.
It's in the nature of protests to turn violent, depending on the grievance and its intensity. But it's exceedingly rare that violent protest has a revolutionary goal - to sweep aside the structure of the state entirely and begin anew. Nine times out of ten, or perhaps even more often, protesters seek only to change the existing government's behavior. They do not seek to destroy the political structure of their country, but to improve it.
There are practical reasons for this. Almost everyone has some grievance against the government they live under, and expressing it publicly is both a human right and a useful release valve. However, there are very few people who can conceive of a new political system in its entirety - one that's culturally, economically, militarily and organizationally consistent with what the majority of the country will accept.
Protest is easy, because it merely opposes something that exists. Revolution is very hard indeed, because it requires both tearing something down and then rebuilding it from the ground up.
I do not know where the Iranian protests will lead, but the likelihood that they will become revolutionary seems quite small.
Former CIA Director Mike Pompeo confirms on Twitter/X what many suspect:
The Iranian regime is in trouble. Bringing in mercenaries is its last best hope.
Riots in dozens of cities and the Basij under siege — Mashed, Tehran, Zahedan. Next stop: Baluchistan.
47 years of this regime; POTUS 47. Coincidence?
Happy New Year to every Iranian in the streets. Also to every Mossad agent walking beside them...
https://x.com/mikepompeo/status/2007180411638620659
Imagine the mentality of someone on this thread, providing a link to the ‘wisdom’ of Pompeo. 😂 I couldn’t have made that up! 😵💫
Oh no not the status quo! I call bullshit kemeni fled the country and tehran belongs to the people. This is state propaganda