"Every country that moved toward normalization with Israel has found itself targeted by Tehran, which has been willing to threaten oil infrastructure, destabilize neighbors, and deploy missiles against capitals that chose a different future."
Excellent analysis, as usual. I think it may also be fair to say that not only countries that moved toward normalization have been targeted and “taught a lesson.” Iran has gone after Qatar, Oman, and Saudi Arabia as well, yet none is formally part of the Abraham Accords. Do they feel particularly rewarded for holding back?
Same in Germany, where you have schools with 90% Muslim kids, where Christian kids convert to Islam, to avoid bullying by the majority. And if you talk about that you are a Nazi, of course.
Zineb Riboua’s essay “The Resistance Moves West” (2026) provides a geopolitically confident assessment of Iran’s setbacks after Operation Epic Fury, yet her reading of the westward migration of “resistance” ideology risks mischaracterising legitimate dissent as ideological defeat. What she presents as retreat in the Middle East may instead reflect sustained global scepticism toward interventions that privilege alignment over legal consistency. Selective application of rules, evident in tolerance of Israel’s nuclear capability versus sanctions and strikes on Iran, undermines claims of a neutral “rules-based order.” Riboua’s emphasis on protests in London, Paris, and Berlin, while largely omitting comparable opposition within the United States, further frames dissent as externalised rather than systemic to hegemonic power structures.
From a Westphalian perspective, Operation Epic Fury breached sovereign equality and non-intervention (UN Charter, Article 2(4)), with Article 51 self-defence offering limited justification for pre-emptive action. Sustainable order in West Asia requires reconciling stability with sovereignty through genuinely multilateral processes, not selectively applied coercion.
Gadfly read her Jan6 essay “ why America is always on trial”. She will fill you in on decolonialization theory and the inversion of right and wrong that grips our western society. You fall into that trap. Please don’t be insulted.
Riboua’s argument is sharp, but it concedes more than it intends. American intervention tracks value, not virtue. Venezuela and Iran command urgency; the Sahel and Myanmar drift. That is not morality at work. It is prioritisation dressed as principle.
Democracy, in this register, travels well when accompanied by oil, chokepoints, or strategic rivalry. Stephen Krasner (1999) called it organised hypocrisy. The vocabulary has improved; the pattern has not.
Washington still does the opening act better than anyone. Shock, awe, precision, speed. But the harder question always arrives after the strike. Who governs, on what terms, and for how long?
Afghanistan was not a failure of entry. It was a failure of duration.
Riboua is right about action. The United States can act, decisively and at scale. But action is the easy part. Traction is the test, and that is where the script keeps fraying.
Krasner, S. D. (1999) Sovereignty: Organized Hypocrisy. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
This is an interesting article and particularly new in the sense that the ideological aspects of Iranian revolution might end up in Europe. In fact the founding fathers of the Islamic revolution brought it from Europe and the US to Iran. They were mostly Europe and US educated. Does that mean that they owe something to The West.
“….The resistance doctrine is losing its audience in the Middle East and finding a different kind of host in the West, among populations with their own grievances against the Western order, their own suspicions of American power, and institutions sufficiently open to make the resistance proposition feel like dissent…..”
Ironic that it’s the useful idiots in the West who are supporting this oppressive Theocracy while enjoying the privilege of actually being able to voice their opinion without censure.
These pieces pushing the boundaries of geopolitical analysis are bracing. When other media either ignores events, or spends a week repeating the same thing. Thank you!
That doesn't make any sense to say it's a middle eastern ideology. Hamas specifically operated under a western anti colonial ideology based in fanon. The un operated under that as well and westerners, to no one's surprise, is interpreting their politics in terms of whatever Iran is thinking up. You see that in the odd coalitions that show up *exclusively in the west*.
Excellent analysis. The West’s Fanonists have missed this: “Operation Epic Fury has been proof of concept for the strategic and economic calculations behind the Abraham Accords, and the Gulf is drawing the appropriate conclusions.”
Excellent article, but I come away from it with a sense that we may have won the battle but lost the war. vis a vis the open borders in the west allowing the dissention to pervade the culture. What I would like to see is some exploration and explanation on who is behind this seemingly orchestrated open border policy and what were they really trying to achieve?
Carl, the west is self-loathing and insane with luxury beliefs.
Here’s a couple good quotes :
“While in the 19th century the West’s intellectual leaders had often expressed their moral and intellectual superiority over the lesser races, by the 1920s the intelligentsia were more concerned with superiority over their own people, the less educated and sophisticated lumpen middle Americans they often despised.
These co-ethnics were the out-group, while the foreigners, with their ‘cosmopolitan note’, were the far-group; the out-groups it is permitted to dislike, to make the source of hostility or butt of one’s humour, but the far-group is to be protected and feted.
Ed West
“The ideal of the open society doesn’t simply ignore such realities, it gains force precisely as a principled negation of experience. It serves to coordinate elites in the epistemic equivalent of a potlatch: an Olympian disregard for social realities expresses a certain magnificence in those who are able to maintain it.”
Mathew Crawford
“If we want to know what a darwinian system will evolve we have to look at the selective pressures on its organisms.
What is our cathedral selecting for?
The selective advantage of an idea may not be driven solely by the quality of that idea . When an idea goes arwy, becomes perverse, it must be because of the pattern of selective advantage in this marketplace of ideas.
A dominant idea is an idea that validates the use of power . There is no market for recessive ideas, recessive ideas, invalidate power or the use of power. A dominant idea is an idea that tends to benefit you and your friends.
The cathedral cannot tell us whether an idea is good or bad because it will always select for the dominant idea. Our institutions cannot hear think know learn understand or teach ANY recessive ideas : that is any ideas that would damage or delegitimate the powers that be.”
Curtis Yarvin
If you wanna know the mechanisms life you need to read your Curtis Yarvin.
I'm somejwhat comfused, ZR, for in your concluding graf, you appear to say that "doxtrime taking hold" in Ole Yurrrp is sign that the "ideology is being soundly defeated"?
…”Tehran’s regional strategy drew on grievances too local, too accumulated, and too genuine to be manufactured from outside. What it contributed was not the grievance but the apparatus around it. “
Can you outline these grievances? Have you done that elsewhere (where?)?
The grievance is “we were on top five hundred years ago but now we’re losers who can’t win wars against a tiny country and produce nothing except oil and lunatics and it’s all your fault, evil West”.
"Every country that moved toward normalization with Israel has found itself targeted by Tehran, which has been willing to threaten oil infrastructure, destabilize neighbors, and deploy missiles against capitals that chose a different future."
Excellent analysis, as usual. I think it may also be fair to say that not only countries that moved toward normalization have been targeted and “taught a lesson.” Iran has gone after Qatar, Oman, and Saudi Arabia as well, yet none is formally part of the Abraham Accords. Do they feel particularly rewarded for holding back?
Here in Londinistan we can confirm it is well underway.
Same in Germany, where you have schools with 90% Muslim kids, where Christian kids convert to Islam, to avoid bullying by the majority. And if you talk about that you are a Nazi, of course.
Well they’ll find subsidies too so there’s that!
Don’t feel bad, the Western Academy is the last redoubt of Marxism on earth too.
Zineb Riboua’s essay “The Resistance Moves West” (2026) provides a geopolitically confident assessment of Iran’s setbacks after Operation Epic Fury, yet her reading of the westward migration of “resistance” ideology risks mischaracterising legitimate dissent as ideological defeat. What she presents as retreat in the Middle East may instead reflect sustained global scepticism toward interventions that privilege alignment over legal consistency. Selective application of rules, evident in tolerance of Israel’s nuclear capability versus sanctions and strikes on Iran, undermines claims of a neutral “rules-based order.” Riboua’s emphasis on protests in London, Paris, and Berlin, while largely omitting comparable opposition within the United States, further frames dissent as externalised rather than systemic to hegemonic power structures.
From a Westphalian perspective, Operation Epic Fury breached sovereign equality and non-intervention (UN Charter, Article 2(4)), with Article 51 self-defence offering limited justification for pre-emptive action. Sustainable order in West Asia requires reconciling stability with sovereignty through genuinely multilateral processes, not selectively applied coercion.
Gadfly read her Jan6 essay “ why America is always on trial”. She will fill you in on decolonialization theory and the inversion of right and wrong that grips our western society. You fall into that trap. Please don’t be insulted.
Riboua’s argument is sharp, but it concedes more than it intends. American intervention tracks value, not virtue. Venezuela and Iran command urgency; the Sahel and Myanmar drift. That is not morality at work. It is prioritisation dressed as principle.
Democracy, in this register, travels well when accompanied by oil, chokepoints, or strategic rivalry. Stephen Krasner (1999) called it organised hypocrisy. The vocabulary has improved; the pattern has not.
Washington still does the opening act better than anyone. Shock, awe, precision, speed. But the harder question always arrives after the strike. Who governs, on what terms, and for how long?
Afghanistan was not a failure of entry. It was a failure of duration.
Riboua is right about action. The United States can act, decisively and at scale. But action is the easy part. Traction is the test, and that is where the script keeps fraying.
Krasner, S. D. (1999) Sovereignty: Organized Hypocrisy. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
And yet the UN has been largely silent, maybe because it is sensing its irrelevance?
More like The Dumbass Doctrine…no one cares about “international law” except people like you with their heads stuck in their backsides.
It seems less like finding new adherents and more like shipping its adherents to the West.
Or us stupidly importing those adherents.
This is an interesting article and particularly new in the sense that the ideological aspects of Iranian revolution might end up in Europe. In fact the founding fathers of the Islamic revolution brought it from Europe and the US to Iran. They were mostly Europe and US educated. Does that mean that they owe something to The West.
“….The resistance doctrine is losing its audience in the Middle East and finding a different kind of host in the West, among populations with their own grievances against the Western order, their own suspicions of American power, and institutions sufficiently open to make the resistance proposition feel like dissent…..”
Ironic that it’s the useful idiots in the West who are supporting this oppressive Theocracy while enjoying the privilege of actually being able to voice their opinion without censure.
Henry🎯 they are afforded the comfort and freedom to be stupid.
These pieces pushing the boundaries of geopolitical analysis are bracing. When other media either ignores events, or spends a week repeating the same thing. Thank you!
That doesn't make any sense to say it's a middle eastern ideology. Hamas specifically operated under a western anti colonial ideology based in fanon. The un operated under that as well and westerners, to no one's surprise, is interpreting their politics in terms of whatever Iran is thinking up. You see that in the odd coalitions that show up *exclusively in the west*.
Excellent analysis. The West’s Fanonists have missed this: “Operation Epic Fury has been proof of concept for the strategic and economic calculations behind the Abraham Accords, and the Gulf is drawing the appropriate conclusions.”
Excellent article, but I come away from it with a sense that we may have won the battle but lost the war. vis a vis the open borders in the west allowing the dissention to pervade the culture. What I would like to see is some exploration and explanation on who is behind this seemingly orchestrated open border policy and what were they really trying to achieve?
Carl, the west is self-loathing and insane with luxury beliefs.
Here’s a couple good quotes :
“While in the 19th century the West’s intellectual leaders had often expressed their moral and intellectual superiority over the lesser races, by the 1920s the intelligentsia were more concerned with superiority over their own people, the less educated and sophisticated lumpen middle Americans they often despised.
These co-ethnics were the out-group, while the foreigners, with their ‘cosmopolitan note’, were the far-group; the out-groups it is permitted to dislike, to make the source of hostility or butt of one’s humour, but the far-group is to be protected and feted.
Ed West
“The ideal of the open society doesn’t simply ignore such realities, it gains force precisely as a principled negation of experience. It serves to coordinate elites in the epistemic equivalent of a potlatch: an Olympian disregard for social realities expresses a certain magnificence in those who are able to maintain it.”
Mathew Crawford
“If we want to know what a darwinian system will evolve we have to look at the selective pressures on its organisms.
What is our cathedral selecting for?
The selective advantage of an idea may not be driven solely by the quality of that idea . When an idea goes arwy, becomes perverse, it must be because of the pattern of selective advantage in this marketplace of ideas.
A dominant idea is an idea that validates the use of power . There is no market for recessive ideas, recessive ideas, invalidate power or the use of power. A dominant idea is an idea that tends to benefit you and your friends.
The cathedral cannot tell us whether an idea is good or bad because it will always select for the dominant idea. Our institutions cannot hear think know learn understand or teach ANY recessive ideas : that is any ideas that would damage or delegitimate the powers that be.”
Curtis Yarvin
If you wanna know the mechanisms life you need to read your Curtis Yarvin.
You mention Iran's role in Syria, which damaged its regional popular support. Could you explain this in more detail?
Iran sent in Hizbullah mercenaries to fight for Assad’s regime and they brutally massacred tens of thousands of Syrians and flattened cities.
I'm somejwhat comfused, ZR, for in your concluding graf, you appear to say that "doxtrime taking hold" in Ole Yurrrp is sign that the "ideology is being soundly defeated"?
…”Tehran’s regional strategy drew on grievances too local, too accumulated, and too genuine to be manufactured from outside. What it contributed was not the grievance but the apparatus around it. “
Can you outline these grievances? Have you done that elsewhere (where?)?
The grievance is “we were on top five hundred years ago but now we’re losers who can’t win wars against a tiny country and produce nothing except oil and lunatics and it’s all your fault, evil West”.
That’s funny as hell, Gordon, put a smile on my face.
They can't. If they did then they'd have to change their name to "in an ideology that purports to be neutral by a failed epistemic framework".