https://www.theoccidentalobserver.net/2026/01/19/understanding-iran/
Watching the 2026 Tehran protestors is much like watching the 2020 George Floyd riots in Minneapolis or Portland. It would be easy to assume that the riots of 2020 were an indication that the United States wanted Trump deposed. Obviously, that was not the case. The real divide was between radical leftwing rioters – likely led by an internal color revolution – and your average American citizen who simply wants the country he once enjoyed in the 1980s or 90s. The difference between downtown Seattle and the suburbs of Salt Lake City, Knoxville, or Cincinnati may have been lost on outsider observers, but ordinary Americans know the difference. The same can be said for Iran. The protests of radicals in Tehran are not the generally shared views of the rest of Iran. The rest of “God & Country” Iran have ideals formed by the theological and ethnic constructs I described earlier. The world may see protests against a repressive theocracy. Your average Iranian sees protests led by external forces who seek to attack protectors of their very existence. They have never lost to such forces, even when the odds were against them.
In November 2004, I had the privilege of leading a small team in a wargame as the “leader of Iran,” against approximately 300 of the US Departments of Defense (DOD) and State’s (DOS) best thinkers on regional security. Our little eight person team defeated the United States so badly that by the end of the scenario, the US balkanized along politically sectarian lines, gas prices were nearly $20 a gallon, the US dollar was no longer the reserve currency, the US was demilitarized, and all of the American territories were taken to satisfy global war debt, as well as Hawaii and Alaska. What did I do to make this happen? My team sat back and waited for the Americans to take the bait and invade me. American strategic leadership does not understand the Iranian mindset or its unique construct. Israel does, but it does not care what happens to the United States. When the Americans lose in another regime-change war, like a parasite that killed its first host, it will just attach itself to a new host.