Published: 2026-07-17
Updated 2026-07-18: Added a reference to and quotes from an antiwar article which documented as reality this article’s scenario for a course in the complex conflict.
The Emperor and the Sycophants
A child who is read “The Emperor’s New Clothes” grasps the lesson that children can see things which adults cannot. A child’s perception is still clear, unmanaged.
The reader is left a question. Is it the sycophants or the Emperor that is more deceitful?
In today’s empire, any child can identify the lies being issued by the emperor, uncorrected by his sycophants or the imperial press. Not all of the empire’s subjects understand that the lies are issued for them. Adults in foreign lands wonder how those subjects feel being treated as children by their imperial court of mendacious grifters.
Grift Juice
The US economy consumes millions of barrels of oil every day. Without the economy there can be no grift.
The US emperor thought that he could steal another nation and its oil, and merge them into the empire. He believed he could do this in days, like the assimilation of Venezuela. Nobody warned him that the target nation might violently resist and that multiple, irreplaceable sources of grift juice might be lost.
Since the empire and its Zionist vassal began losing their illegal war of choice against Iran, the empire began substituting its own stores of grift juice to keep its economy afloat. The empire is about to run out of its substitute. Ongoing extraction is damaging the salt caverns.
Striking Iran
The latest barrage of lies from grifter court includes suggestions that attacking Iran — “striking” in the imperial tongue — will cause it to change policy. This nonsense was issued after the world saw millions of Iranians flood their streets in support of their government, their independence, and in defiance of the empire of chaos, lies, plunder and piracy. All of that was after the emperor signed a Memorandum of Understanding [2026-06-17] which was an admission of imperial defeat.
The imperial grifter lies are based on a magical belief in the supremacy of the imperial military. That this magical belief persists after the empire was run out of Iran’s neighbor Afghanistan, but a few years ago, demonstrates the power of the imperial press. It casts an amnesia against imperial defeat. By contrast, people in Iran have not forgotten what happened next door under the last emperor.
Iran’s military also know how effective their weaponry are. Prof. Theodore Postol’s analysis that the effective shoot-down rate for the US Patriot missile defense system is 3% will come as no surprise in Iran. The failure rate of 97% is suppressed in the empire. [The last time Postol did this analysis was in 1993, after Gulf War 1. His conclusion then was 0% for the old version of the system’s missile. He received death threats. His analysis was vindicated by the American Physics Society in 1996.]
US military bases in the Gulf region are entirely vulnerable to attack by Iranian ballistic missiles. Once their radars are destroyed, they are also totally vulnerable to drones. Iran destroyed the radars in the first days of the war. The US has almost nothing operational left on the ground in the region. Anything it uses is rapidly destroyed after it exposes itself. This is modern “ISR” [intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance] warfare. The US has, in effect, been run out of the region by Iran.
The current emperor just restarted his already lost war, against an adversary he cannot defeat. This is the considered opinion of military experts, everywhere, who are not imperial grifters (paid to lie through the imperial press to maintain the aforementioned amnesia).
It is not only that the empire is impotent against Iran, but that Iran has total control over supply of the empire’s missing grift juice (from which it would manufacture diesel and kerosene).
Iran’s Axis of Resistance ally in Yemen, Ansar Allah, can block the Bab al Mandeb strait at the southern end of the Red Sea. This would prevent supertankers filling at Saudi Arabia’s western port of Yanbu leaving the Red Sea as the supertankers are too big for the Suez canal exit at the north end of the sea. If Saudi Arabia chose smaller tankers, insurance premiums could be elevated with Ansar Allah’s drones.
Ansar Allah or Iran could attack the Yanbu port or the Saudi east-west pipeline to it. Nobody can stop them. The US tried to neutralize Ansar Allah a year ago. The imperial press have conveniently forgotten about that too. The US navy retreated. Planes falling overboard were the least of its embarrassments.
Resetting Sykes-Picot
Iran’s doomsday button is the destruction of all of the oil extraction, storage and transport infrastructure of the Gulf monarchies. This would crash the global economy, potentially creating starvation in the West. COVID would look like a holiday in comparison. Iran has demonstrated its capability. There is no doubt of its resolve. This is the Global Roulette which the emperor has recently threatened to play when he threatened to destroy Iran’s power stations.
Should the emperor begin attacking Iranian power generation utilities, Iran might press the button gradually, destroying the monarchies one by one, starting with the brain-dead who are still supporting the empire.
A scenario may be that Iraq’s Popular Mobilization Units might need to pay a visit to Kuwait to provide security in the aftermath of the destruction of the royal palace and guards. Kuwait and Iraq could be re-united, removing one of the idiotic borders which the British and French drew all over the region when they carved up the Ottoman Empire after World War one, a century ago (plus a few years).
The West’s political class has no idea as to how enticing the idea of removing the Sykes-Picot borders from the region are to many of its inhabitants.
Iran has no desire push this doomsday button. However, the enmity of the Gulf monarchy families is not only preferable to being absorbed by the empire, but has been overwhelmingly demanded by the defiant people of Iran.
The Gulf monarchies are being used as sacrificial pawns by the empire and its Zionist vassal. The monarchs know it.
[The Emperor Has No Soul; Mr. Fish]
Fuel and Munitions
Shocked, imperial generals are staring at two shrinking stockpiles: fuel and weapons.
The lack of fuel for the imperial military is a direct consequence of its illegal war. The imperial air force flies on Gulf oil. The empire’s failure to anticipate this and prepare accordingly defines its arrogance and strategic incompetence.
Imperial weapons have been converted into imperial coins via warfare and the empire’s stock market. They cannot be resupplied because of a lack of “rare earth” components, unavailable from China for two reasons. The emperor attempted to impose a tariff on Chinese trade. The imposition failed and angered China. The second reason is the war itself. China does not wish to aid the empire in removing one of its energy suppliers. Accordingly, the empire cannot effectively resupply its weapons because it has doubly angered its main trade partner.
These two analyses reveal a degree of ineptitude which helps to explain the decline of the empire. The imperial grifters are so myopic that they started a war which the empire could not win, the prosecution of which would drain imperial weapons stocks and limit its ability to wage war, on top of crashing the imperial economy.
The emperor is threatening Iran when the empire needs the oil Iran controls. There will be little oil, and no talks either, until the empire returns the assets it stole from Iran 47 years ago and begins issuing apologies.
The empire can keep firing the missiles it can’t replace and issuing suicidal threats as its economy heads off a cliff. Iran could just wait and watch.
Instead, it will continue to respond to imperial warring by attacking and damaging imperial military assets to clear the imperial military presence from its region. The largest collection of those is now in its Zionist vassal military colony. The colonial Transport minister recently admonished the empire for putting the colony at risk by parking its military equipment there.
Across the Strait
Across the Strait of Hormuz, Iran’s generals are supported by a munitions production rate which has increased since the start of the latest imperial war. The weapons have been improved since the little “12 Day” test war, which Iran won against the empire and its Zionist military car-park in June, 2025.
The Iranian generals have a near inexhaustible supply of fuel. Their supply lines are non-existent. They are defending. Their distribution lines are through ancient trade routes, millennia old.
Behind Iran’s generals are China and Russia, representing a non-imperial world. Their production can supply Iran of its needs. China and Russia have also survived years of imperial economic warfare — sanctions in the imperial tongue. Iran’s strategic partners are impervious to imperial edicts.
The emperor and sycophants at grifter court refuse to hear or know the war is lost. They refuse to know that the reserves of imperial grift juice are at unprecedented levels of almost nothing. But, they are crashing the imperial economy before the upcoming mid-term elections.
Imperial subjects, to what degree do you believe those elections will be held fairly?
Be a child. Look clearly at what is in front of you.
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Sources
War On Iran: Oil Supplies Will Again Be In Trouble - This Time For Real; b.; Moon of Alabama; 2026-07-14
Iran War 3.0; Alastair Crooke; Strategic Culture; 2026-07-13
The Imperial Court; Patrick Lawrence; Consortium News; 2026-07-14
Iran Says ‘Barbaric’ US Attack Forced the Evacuation of Children’s Cancer Hospital in City of Ahvaz; Dave DeCamp; Antiwar; 2026-07-16
US Launches Attacks on Iran for Sixth Consecutive Night; Dave DeCamp; Antiwar; 2026-07-16
US Strikes Civilian Infrastructure in Iran; Kyle Anzalone; Antiwar; 2026-07-17
“Overnight Thursday, the US bombed multiple bridges, a railway, a maritime watchtower, and energy sites.”
“ran responded to the attacks by bombing US bases in Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait, and Jordan. Tehran also targeted energy sites in Bahrain and a desalination plant in Kuwait.”
DHS says 400,000 deceased people remain on US voter rolls; Al Mayadeen English; Al Mayadeen English; 2026-07-17
Fallout From the 12 Day War; YesXorNo; 2025-07-02
Videos
Yemen Joins the War, and the Entire Middle East Could Go Up in Flames; Glenn Diesen interviews Pepe Escobar; Glenn Diesen; 2026-07-14
All-Out War in the Middle East & Trump’s War on Russia; Glenn Diesen interviews John Mearsheimer; Glenn Diesen; 2026-07-16
Iran DESTROYS US F-18s as Trump Hints NUCLEAR STRIKE; Haiphong interviews Larry Johnson & Col. Lawrence Wilkerson; Danny Haiphong; 2026-07-15
Iran OBLITERATES US Air Base & HIMARS, Trump’s War IMPLODING; Danny Haiphong interviews Alastair Crooke; Danny Haiphong; 2026-07-13
Evidence of Patriot PAC-3’s Near-Zero Interception Rate; Glenn Diesen interviews Theodore Postol; Glenn Diesen; 2026-07-12
Copyleft: CC0
According to Sir Albert Howard, the inventor of compost (or the bringer of compost to the West), the Roman Empire fell because its slave-based agricultural latifundias could not provide healthy wheat to the Empire, ie, Romans became weak because their food was filling but lacked nourishment. Of course it is hard to point to one cause of such a complex Fall as that of the Roman Empire, but Sir Albert is surely onto something. Mainly, our current fossil-fuel based, industrial agriculture also produces weak food. "It's the water…" And it is obvious that American leadership is incompetent and corrupt.