Geo-Strategy #1: Iran's Strategy Matrix

On April 1st, the Israelis struck the Iranian Embassy in Damascus, Syria, killing seven people, including two commanders. This is an active war because an embassy is considered Iranian territory, and never before has this been done intentionally. This follows the assassination of their general, Qasem Soleimani, in 2020, when the Americans launched a drone strike against him in Baghdad. He was one of the top Iranian generals.

What both of these incidents show us is that the Americans and the Israelis have dominance over Iran—specifically, military dominance.

The first element is technology. Technologically, America and Israel are so much superior to Iran. A jet went from Israel to Damascus to carry out the strike. The Canadian Embassy is right next to the Iranian Embassy, and the strike was so precise that it only hit the Iranian Embassy and didn't touch anything else. That's a precision strike; that's how powerful the technology is.

The other important thing is the idea of intelligence. How did the Israelis know that these commanders would be there at that time? That's intelligence, and it comes in two forms: human and signals.

• Signals intelligence is basically listening in on your cell phone, tracking where you go, and knowing where your car is. It's electronic intelligence.
• Human intelligence means there are spies in the embassy who tell the Israelis that this meeting will happen.

This clearly demonstrates the military dominance that Israel and the Americans possess over Iran.

When this strike happened, the Iranians had to respond. This was called Operation True Promise. The idea of True Promise was a strike package consisting of 300 drones and missiles that hit Israel. Now, what the Israelis say is that 99% of these drones and missiles were intercepted, they caused no damage, and this shows that their Iron Dome system is amazing. They believe Iran cannot touch them.

What the Iranians said is that they intentionally designed the attack to be harmless so that it would not cause that much damage.

So, who's right? The Israelis or the Iranians? The Iranians are more believable, more credible. The reason why is that the Iranians have to be very strategic in their response to the Americans and the Israelis, precisely because the Americans and Israelis have military dominance over them. But just because you have military dominance does not mean you'll win the war.

Iran and Israel are committed to a war, and it's possible that in two years, there will be a ground invasion of Iran. But it's going to take time to build up to that ground invasion. And just because the Americans and the Israelis attack Iran does not mean they will win.

The Power of Asymmetrical Warfare: The 2002 Millennium Challenge

In 2002, the Americans actually tried to invade Iran. They ran a simulation called the 2002 Millennium Challenge. The idea was, "Let's pretend that we will invade Iran and let's see what happens." They divided the military into two teams: Team USA and Team Iran.

If you know anything about the American military, you will know that it is the most dominant, powerful military ever to exist in human history. It is crazy powerful. If the entire world were to get together and say, "Let's go fight the United States," the world would lose. The United States has the most powerful military in the entire world. Iran is a very poor country.

The United States "invaded" Iran to see what would happen, and it turned out that Iran won. The reason why Iran won is the idea of asymmetrical warfare. This is a very important idea that you must know if you are to understand this conflict.

So, what is asymmetrical warfare?

Let's pretend that Jack and I are enemies. We hate each other and we want to kill each other. Jack has armor and a machine gun. I have nothing. In most battles, Jack's going to kill me. But let's pretend that I live in a dark forest, and it's really hard to see in this dark forest, but I've been living there for decades. I know this dark forest very, very well. If Jack attacks me in this dark forest, then it's possible for me to win because I can set traps and play tricks on him. That's the idea of asymmetrical warfare. Even though Jack is superior, because I'm inferior, I'm forced to be much more strategic in how I fight against him.

Asymmetrical warfare means that as long as you can define the terms of engagement—as long as you can control how the war is fought—you will win.

Let's look at what this means for Iran and the United States. The United States has these aircraft carriers that cost a billion dollars. They're very expensive, but they're very powerful. In symmetrical warfare, Iran would send its entire navy against one aircraft carrier of the United States. And what would happen? The United States would blow up the entire Iranian navy. You don't do that. You do not send your navy against an American aircraft carrier.

What you do instead is you send drones or drone swarms. In the Millennium Challenge, they had these suicide boats charging these aircraft carriers. If there's a lot of them, like a thousand of them, you can't stop all of them. If one hits, then your boat sinks. This is what we call asymmetrical warfare.

What's important to understand is that in asymmetrical warfare, you have to control how many resources you use. For example, an aircraft carrier costs a billion dollars. The drone swarms might consist of drones that cost $1,000 for a real one, but then you have fake ones that cost $100. The $1,000 drones blow up; the $100 drones don't. You have a thousand of the real ones, and that's like $1 million, not $10 million. And then you have 10,000 of the fake ones, and that's another $1 million. It might cost you maybe $2 million to blow up a $1 billion aircraft carrier. This is why Iran would win a war: it would employ asymmetrical warfare against American aircraft carriers.

Operation True Promise actually showed us that the Iranians would probably use this strategy. The total strike package that Iran used cost about $10 to $30 million. But how much money did it cost the Israelis to defend themselves against this attack? At least $1.1 billion.

This shows us that in a war, Iran would use asymmetrical warfare, and even though Israel and the United States have military dominance, they may not be able to win.

Why Don't Dominant Powers Adapt?

Shouldn't the Americans respond with more strategic thinking? That's a great question, and the answer is the Americans would not do that. Why is it that asymmetrical warfare is so effective against empires and dominant military powers? The biggest problem of empires, their fatal flaw, is hubris.

Let's go back to the Millennium Challenge. In the first battle, Iran won against the United States. So, what did the United States do? They did a second simulation. In the second simulation, the Americans said, "Nope, this is cheating." They argued that asymmetrical warfare is cheating, so you cannot cheat. Then the Americans won.

In the first instance, where you are allowed to use asymmetrical warfare, Iran won. In the second instance, the Americans said, "No, asymmetrical warfare is cheating. You must fight us directly," and the Americans won. This tells us that the American military is inflexible. If you're an empire, you refuse to admit your failings and faults; you become very stubborn.

It's back to the example of Jack with his machine gun and armor. He comes into the dark forest thinking, "I'm invincible." Everyone's like, "Jack, don't go into that dark forest, it's stupid." But Jack's like, "No, I have a machine gun. I don't care." That's why asymmetrical warfare is so effective: it allows you flexibility and creativity, and the empire, the dominant power, refuses to be flexible and creative.

The classic example of this is Vietnam, where the Vietnamese were clearly dominated by the Americans, but they were using extremely creative and flexible tactics. The Americans, meanwhile, insisted on their main military doctrine.

The Iran Strategy Matrix

If the Iranians are going to use asymmetrical warfare, what would it look like? When the Americans invade, the war has already started before the invasion. The Iranians must do four things if they are to prevail in the war. This is what we call the Iran Strategy Matrix. From now on, everything Iran does must fit into this strategy matrix; it must accomplish the objectives of the matrix.

The four objectives are:

• Unite the Population
• Build Alliances
• Win Global Opinion
• Weaken the Enemy

In other words, everything that Iran is going to do from now until an actual invasion will be to accomplish all four goals at once. It must do this if it is to survive a full-scale American invasion.

1. Unite the Population

You win the war depending on how much your population is willing to resist the invasion. Even though the Iranians right now are divided—there's a lot of opposition towards the current government, and there have been protests over the past few years with women protesting for more rights—most Iranians would resist an invasion. The reason is that Iranians have a very bad history with Westerners.

The example is the 1953 coup. In 1909, the British discovered oil in Iran (it was called Persia back then). They created a company called the Anglo-Iranian Petroleum Company, which we now know as British Petroleum (BP). The deal was that Persia would only get 16% of the profits. The Iranians were very upset about this; it's their oil, their resource, but they're not getting much money out of it. It's basically stealing.

For decades, the Iranians tried to renegotiate the deal. In 1953, the democratically elected government of Iran said to the British, "Let's do 50/50. That's fair." The British, instead of saying yes, went to the Americans. The British and Americans together launched a coup against the democratically elected government of Iran and installed a police state under the Shah, a monarchy. The Shah was so brutal that he created a police state. In 1979, the Iranian people overthrew the Shah. The Iranian people do not like the idea of foreign invaders coming in and controlling their resources. So, over time, as Israel and America continue to be aggressive towards Iran, the population will start to coalesce and fight against the Americans.

2. Build Alliances

Iran has two layers of alliances. The first layer is called the Axis of Resistance, which includes Shia militias in Iraq and Syria, Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas, and the Houthis in Yemen. What's important to understand is that this is an alliance. They agree to fight together because they have a common interest, which is to remain independent of American influence. But that does not mean that Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthis take orders from Iran. They're not controlled by Iran. Iran supports them militarily and financially, but Iran cannot completely control their behavior. For example, on October 7th, Hamas launched an attack against Israel, which resulted in this war. Iran says they were not involved, while Israel says that can't be true because Iran controls Hamas.

The second layer of alliance is what Iran needs to win the war: bringing in Russia and China. Russia wants the United States to fight Iran to distract and weaken the United States and also to move their attention away from Ukraine. Russia is about to win the war in Ukraine, and if there's a war in Iran, the United States will be forced to divert resources.

Russia will probably not deploy soldiers. What Russia would do is tell the United States, "When you invade Iran, you are not allowed to use tactical nuclear weapons." Russia would say, "Hey, United States, if you use nuclear weapons against Iran, we will use nuclear weapons against you." Basically, Russia would limit the military options of America in a war, which would be of tremendous benefit and advantage to Iran.

China needs to help Iran because Iran has something China really needs: oil. China cannot afford for the United States to take over both Iraq and Iran because then it can control the energy supply to China. China would involve itself over time to make sure that it's able to obtain oil from the Middle East, where it is currently getting most of its oil.

It will take time for Russia and China to get themselves involved in this conflict. To get them involved, Iran must prove two things:

1. We will fight.
2. We will win.

This will take time for Iran to prove. The more that Iran can show it can win, the more that China and Russia will invest in Iran—financially, militarily, and politically.

3. Win Global Opinion

How will Iran win global opinion? By keeping the world's spotlight on Gaza. What's happening in Gaza is basically genocide, where the Israelis are committed to solving the Palestinian problem once and for all. That basically means removing the Palestinians from Gaza. This will go on for many years, and as long as the attention is on Gaza, people will become much more sympathetic towards Iran over time. If you've been following the news about America, there have been major protests at Yale, Columbia, and other universities about what's happening in Gaza.

4. Weaken the Enemy

When the United States invades Iran—two years from now, six years from now, who knows—it will want to build a large coalition of forces to give itself legitimacy. This coalition will consist of NATO, Middle East countries like Saudi Arabia, and Israel. What Iran needs to do is create conflict and dissent in this coalition. The way it does that is by building up internal dissent.

Most people in America do not support a war against Iran, so Iran needs to encourage this internal dissent. It can also create conflict between NATO and the United States. America will want NATO involved in its invasion of Iran, but why would France and Germany want to involve themselves?

The Matrix in Action: Operation True Promise

Why did Iran design Operation True Promise the way it did? The answer is to accomplish all four goals.

1. Unite the Population: Iran needed to show its population that it can strike back against Israel.
2. Build Alliances: Striking Israel shows its allies, and China and Russia, that Iran is willing to fight.
3. Win Global Opinion: Iran said it designed the strike not to cause damage in Israel because it wants to win global opinion. If it throws all these missiles and rockets at Israel and kills a lot of people, there will be a lot of sympathy for Israel. The attack was designed not to cause any casualties. If you are an observer, you might think that what Iran did was right because it's a sense of fairness and justice. What Israel did was wrong; it attacked an embassy, which is against international law. To save face and pursue justice, Iran threw some rockets at Israel. Most people think that Iran's response showed restraint and was measured.
4. Weaken the Enemy: After Iran attacked Israel, Israel wanted to show a strong response. The reason is that Israel has a policy of disproportionality. This means that if you kill one Israeli, they'll come and kill a hundred or a thousand of you. If you throw one rocket at them, they'll throw a thousand rockets at you. The idea here is deterrence—to make you afraid of Israel so you would not dare to think of attacking it. When Iran attacked Israel for the first time, Israel was committed to a disproportionate response. Who stopped them? The United States. The United States cannot afford right now to fight another war. Also, if the United States were to fight a war, it would have to do so by itself. NATO would not involve itself; Middle Eastern countries like Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Jordan would not involve themselves either. So, the United States had to restrain Israel, and this is creating conflict between Israel and the United States.

From a military dominance perspective, Operation True Promise accomplished nothing because nothing was blown up. But from an asymmetrical warfare perspective, Iran accomplished all four of its major goals. That's why the Iranians claimed success, and you can make the argument that from a strategy perspective, it was a very successful operation.

Broader Implications and Rules of Engagement

How will a potential war affect the wider world? In war, there's something called Rules of Engagement. Before a war, all the major parties agree on what the rules are. For example, look at the war in Ukraine. The United States and NATO are openly supplying weapons, financing, and intelligence to Ukraine. From the Russian perspective, they allow that. They will not allow NATO to send troops to fight with the Ukrainians, but they will allow NATO and the United States to provide weapons and financing. These are the Rules of Engagement.

The same thing would happen if the United States were to invade Iran. Before the actual invasion, there would be an agreement among all major parties—which would include Iran, the United States, Russia, China, and Israel—about the rules of war.

• One important rule would be that you're not allowed to use tactical nuclear weapons.
• A second agreement would be that Russia and China are allowed to provide assistance on a very limited basis. China would probably provide weapons and material, but this will not impact the relationship between China and the United States.

During this war, China will maintain a position of what we call strategic ambiguity. This is just saying that China is not going to say, "We support Iran." Russia will not come out and say, "We support Iran." Before this war happens, Russia and China could, if they choose, sign a treaty with Iran saying that if anyone attacks, they'll come to their aid. They will not sign this treaty because they need to maintain strategic ambiguity. China and Russia do not want to be dragged into this war. China will likely provide assistance to Iran, but on a very limited basis that the United States can accept.

What Happens if America Loses a War with Iran?

An invasion of Iran, if lost, would basically mean the end of the American Empire. The reason is that empires collapse for three reasons:

1. Overextension: Doing too many things at once—fighting a war in Ukraine, a war in Iran, fighting wars everywhere.
2. Debt: It basically just runs out of money because it's overextended.
3. Civil Unrest: This is a consequence of the first two.

The American Empire is heading for a lot of trouble over the next 10 years because all three things are happening at once. At the same time, the American Empire is extremely wealthy and extremely powerful. So even if America loses the war, there's still no peer competitor to the United States. But all that means is that the world will divide into different regional blocks, where maybe Germany controls Europe, Japan controls East Asia, and Israel controls the Middle East. It would be more of a multipolar world as opposed to a unipolar world where one nation controls everything. The decline of the American Empire is going to take decades, possibly centuries.