Introduction: Wars have uncertain outcomes
As week four of Iran's Martyrs' War against America, Israel, and Europe's colonial aggression draws to a close, the Revolutionary Guard Corps continues to press its advantage.
On Thursday, IRGC missiles and drones struck targets at U.S. military bases in Kuwait, Bahrain, and Jordan, and peppered Israel with cluster munitions in no fewer than ten waves of missile strikes. Hezbollah rockets felled one IDF soldier in Nahariya, Lebanon. IDF Sgt. Aviaad Elchanan was killed south of the Litani River in an anti-tank assault. On Friday, an Iranian attack on Saudi Arabia's Prince Sultan Air Base wounded 12 American soldiers and destroyed an E-3G Sentry command-and-control aircraft. As of Saturday afternoon, Kuwait's international airport and an aluminum plant in the UAE were ablaze after Iranian drone attacks. The Houthis in Yemen have entered the war, firing their first salvos on Israel.
The March 25 Economist, Europe's gold-standard weekly news and current-affairs magazine, summed up the current state of play in two words in an article titled \"Advantage Iran.\"
Iran is winning militarily because it has shuttered America's 27 regional bases, destroyed critical energy sites in GCC countries, pummeled Israeli cities and military and energy sites, and achieved air superiority over Israel's skies, while maintaining its missile and drone stockpiles. Iran is winning the economic war by disrupting global supply chains, spiking global gas and oil prices, driving inflation, draining America's economy, and replacing Petrodollar energy purchases with the Petroyuan. Iran is winning the global information war by articulating clear and coherent messages, backing up its threats with demonstrable corresponding actions, and allowing the press far more freedom to cover the war inside Iran, compared to Israel's heavy-handed censorship and the confusing rants of Nero Germanicus.
If the Martyrs' War continues on its current trajectory, the logic of escalation dynamics dictates that a foundering Israel must consider introducing tactical nuclear weapons into the conflict to avoid an existential collapse. Stated differently, if you look out your window in Tehran in April or May and see a second sun on the wrong horizon, that is an Israeli tactical nuclear weapon lighting up your neighborhood.
Unless American forces are able to mitigate the growing global economic crisis by retaking the Strait of Hormuz or launching an invasion to achieve a strategic objective that reverses Iran's escalation dominance, an IDF nuclear strike on Tehran is not only conceivable but probable.
Unlike the United States, Israel has conducted an unapologetic two-year live-streamed ethnic cleansing campaign of Palestinians in Gaza. Orthodox Haredi Jews and Likudnik factions in Israel's ruling government coalition have demonstrated they are sufficiently ruthless and animated by messianic convictions to fulfill the Greater Israel prophecies by using nuclear weapons if confronted with an existential moment.
Fanon Global's (FG) view of Israel's willingness to use a tactical or strategic nuclear weapon against Iran is rooted in our analysis of Iran's victory in the Twelve-Day War. The mismatch between Israel's flawed air defense shield and the IRGC's ability to launch a preponderance of ballistic missiles and drones to overwhelm the Iron Dome, THAAD, and David's Sling systems from concealed locations in Iran was the margin of victory.
In the nine-month interregnum between the Twelve-Day War and the Martyrs' War, that imbalance was never rectified. Nevertheless, Netanyahu convinced Nero Germanicus that they could win a quick Shock-and-Awe victory. Following the Twelve-Day War in June 2025, Fanon Global asserted that Israel faced more of an existential threat than Iran in an inevitable future conflict. FG concurs with the analysis of Lt. Col. Karen Kwiatkowski, Brandon J. Weichert, Theodore Postal, and others who are raising the issue of an Israeli nuclear strike as a logical progression up the escalation ladder that will plunge the planet into uncharted waters.
Unlike Nero Germanicus, Benjamin Netanyahu understands the risk, Iran's capabilities, and the strategic calculations more than anyone. Nevertheless, he nudged Nero into the conflict because the Republican Party may lose the November mid-term elections. That said, even the worst-case scenario in which the U.S. suffers more military setbacks, cannot retake the Strait of Hormuz, and reduces its military footprint in the Persian Gulf, Israel still wins because Netanyahu wants the GCC oil monarchies to be weakened to the point that they can be reduced to Tel Aviv's vassal states.
Netanyahu is betting that the UAE and Saudi Arabia, in particular, will maintain an alliance with Israel. Instead of shipping their oil through Hormuz, the monarch's oil will flow through the Saudis' East-West Pipeline to Israel's Red Sea port of Eliat and on to the Mediterranean Sea via Israel's Port at Haifa. In return, the despotic oil monarchies will finance Israel's annexation of Gaza, the West Bank, and Southern Lebanon. The oil monarchies will gradually be absorbed by Israel's dominance in data centers, scientific research, financial networks, intelligence operations, advanced education learning and technical centers, and military/nuclear weapons systems.
The short-term trick for Netanyahu is to navigate the unfolding battlespace in the Middle East, which is rife with peril, incessant incoming fusillades of Iranian missiles, and an unstable partnership with Nero's Fourth Rome government. Netanyahu's ace in the hole to alter adverse military dynamics is invoking the nuclear Samson Option.
Advantage Iran
Netanyahu is also worried that Nero Germanicus might also begin serious negotiations with Iran before Israel carries out additional strikes on Iran’s ballistic-missile sites. Israel is still attempting to track Iran's 440 kg of missing uranium, enriched to 60 percent, and position assets to foment a future uprising inside Iran. On Wednesday, Netanyahu directed the IDF to strike as many targets in Iran as possible in the \"next 48 hours.\" Boaz Bismuth, the Likud Party chairman of the foreign affairs and defense committee in Parliament, said, “If you do not obtain the three objectives, you will not be able to end the war.” He's right, then what?
On Thursday morning, Axios, the unofficial Oval Office national security leaks portal, posted an article, \"Pentagon prepares for a massive 'final blow' of Iran war.\" Twelve hours later, Axios's former IDF intelligence office cum reporter, Barack Ravid, posted another article: \"Trump extends deadline for negotiations with Iran and paused his threat to bomb Iranian energy facilities by another 10 days.\"
Unstable, impulsive, and ignorant of the wiles of high diplomacy, Nero Germanicus is wandering about lost in the fog of war. His pro-counsels are two Zionist Greater Israel Project real estate agents. His Secretary of War is a pathetic novice and dry, drunk. Out of their depth amid a crisis that is reconfiguring international trade, strategic alliances, and reshaping the global chessboard for decades to come, Team Taco is reverting to its base predatory instincts: gaudy displays of power and intimidation with no strategy.
The ten-day postponement is to call up more troops, more jets, more missiles, and more vessels. Sometime soon, a 96-hour continuous bombardment extravaganza and simultaneous invasion of an Iranian island is likely to occur. In the aftermath of what Axios described as the \"Final Blow\" of the war offensive, Nero presumably will look to open negotiations with Iran.
Trita Parsi's Window
The first serious attempt at negotiations--which will occur on Iran's timetable, not America's-- opens the Trita Parsi Window.
Parsi correctly assumes that, at the moment, Iran has real cards to play and political leverage that Team Taco can't dismiss if they want a deal. Thus, Parsi is rightly concerned that Iran might be tempted to overplay its hand and potentially scuttle a deal that is doable. Iran needs to secure as many of its demands as possible, make prudential compromises, and avoid publicly humiliating the vainglorious Nero Germanicus.
From FG's perspective, unless Nero delivers a stunning battlefield victory in the next three weeks, it may not be possible for him to spin a clear-cut defeat as a victory to mollify his base. One of the first signals that serious talks may be underway is if the KushKoff Zionist tag team is sidelined from the direct talks. Their ignorance of the subject matter is informed by their lack of fluency in the language and nuances of high-level diplomacy. Hillbilly Elegy, J.D. Vance, isn't much better, but the gesture might serve as a good-faith concession to jump-start a new round of discussions.
Trita Parsi doesn't mince words when he states, \"Israel will do all it can to sabotage any such off-ramp, including by killing Iranian's negotiatiors.\" On that point, the Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday that Team Taco asked the Israelis to remove Iran's Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi and Speaker of Parliament, Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf's name from the hit list to be assassinated. The cancelation of the contact--so to speak--appears to be a sign that Nero Germanicus is indeed looking for a negotiated off-ramp to the war.
With Ali Larijani's assassination and the IRGC running a war-footing government, Parsi's concern is all the more relevant. Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi is a smooth, erudite, practical, patient, and skilled diplomat. Speaker Ghalibaf is a tough Iran-Iraq War veteran, who was designated by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, before his assassination, to be his facto deputy. Ghalibaf was name-checked by the Jerusalem Post as the so-called \"high-level\" leader Nero said he secretly communicated with about a deal recently. Ghalibaf denied the story. Both men, if they are involved in the negotiations, will take their political instructions from Supreme Leader Mojtada Khamenei and the IRGC leadership.
One significant roadblock to successful talks is that the U.S. cannot negotiate on Israel's behalf where there are overlapping issues. Israel's interests are not the same as Washington's; they want more destruction of Iran's infrastructure, state apparatus, and assassinations of its leaders to render Iran virtually ungovernable.
Parsi's Window comes with a soft timeline of 7-10 days for Iran and Washington to get something done, if not a comprehensive agreement. His concern that talks cannot drag on for weeks with no success is on point. To avoid stalled negotiations, one approach may be to begin the talks with issues that don't directly involve overlapping Israeli interests.
These issues might include lifting sanctions on Iranian oil shipments — which the U.S. has already temporarily done — and recognizing Iran's and Oman's sovereign rights in the Strait of Hormuz. These types of agreements can be made early to establish momentum and a level of credibility that suggests the U.S. is not merely using the talks as a ruse to manipulate the stock market or as diplomatic cover to relaunch a full-scale shooting war.
Securing the lowest-hanging fruit quickly could leave Parci's Window open longer to work through the more difficult issues and decrease the incentive for Iran to overplay its hand. If the talks are unfocused, long, acrimonious, and nothing gets done, hostilities are likely to quickly resume, and Israel will be more incentivized to pursue the Samson Option.
That said, Iran's latest demands submitted to Pakistani interlocutors contained the following items, among others previously floated:
- A complete halt to aggression and assassination by the enemy.
- The establishment of concrete mechanisms to ensure that the war is not reimposed on the Islamic Republic of Iran.
- Guaranteed and clearly defined payment of war damages and reparations.
- The conclusion of the war across all fronts and for all resistance groups involved throughout the region.
- International recognition and guarantees regarding Iran’s sovereign right to exercise authority over the Strait of Hormuz.
In and of themselves, Iran's demands are not wholly unreasonable. Contextually speaking, however, acceptance of any one of the five demands can easily be interpreted as another big Taco. Notwithstanding FG's reservations that talks are a futile exercise and that these issues will be decided on the battlefield, how can the best face be put on these demands?
Point 1. The U.S. can pledge to halt acts of aggression and assassination against Iran, fully cognizant that Israel will not. It won't be a good look for Netanyahu, but he is impervious to criticism. Executing foreign leaders, scientists, and their critics is a strategic and standard practice of Israel's national security policy.
Point 2. Non-aggression treaties or agreements between the U.S. and Iran could, in theory, be adopted and \"monitored\" by the U.N. However, the most concrete manifestation of war not being reimposed on Iran is the status of U.S. military bases in the Gulf States and the Middle East.
As a practical matter, the U.S. military is out of Iraq with the exception of Iraq's autonomous region of Kurdistan. If, as Iran has demonstrated, the U.S. cannot protect the Gulf States from attack, there is no need for U.S. military bases. If some Gulf States agree to pay Iran a Strait of Hormuz user fee in Chinese yuan, there is also no need for U.S. bases to \"protect the shipping lanes.\" FG can foresee a scenario in which some Gulf States, like Oman, Iraq, and Qatar, ask America to close its bases, in exchange for unfettered access to the Strait of Hormuz and guarantees that they will not be attacked by Iran.
Iran's demand for the removal of U.S. bases from the Persian Gulf region was not included in the five points given to the Pakistani mediators last week, but the issue can be addressed. If Team Taco agreed, that might provide both sides with talking points and victories. The closure of all GCC bases would give the impression that Nero was chased out of the Persian Gulf. On the other hand, if the Strait of Hormuz crisis is resolved with minimum U.S. casualties, the American public might not care as long as gas prices at the pump come down and inflation stabilizes.
Point 3. As the country that was attacked, Iran should receive some form of payment for damages and/or reparations. Iran should provide an inventory of the aggregate estimate of the damages. Sanctions relief, transit fees through the Strait of Hormuz, direct payments, and other measures of repayment can be combined into a general formula to quantify a compensation amount. Whatever names are assigned to compensation or reparations for Iran, and how they are structured, are the province of bureaucratic scribes and accountants. Conjuring creative math and language to mask political reality and obscure defeats is what they are paid to do. What Steve Bannon calls Nero's loyal \"low propensity voters\" is a malleable lot to mollify.
Point 4. The cessation of hostilities between Israel and \"resistance\" groups like Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthis that are allies of Iran is a non-starter. This issue can only be addressed by the international community structurally, if at all. Israel is moving forward with yet another plan to \"disarm\" Hamas and annex Gaza and Southern Lebanon before Tel Aviv sets its sights on Ankara. Only a decisive defeat inflicted on Nero's Fourth Rome legions and Israel can slow the river of blood to a trickle from the Golan Heights and the Litani River to Dimona.
Point 5. Iran has established and is implementing protocols to verify shippers and receivers, identify cargo shipment inventories, and process transactions. Cargo shipment payment processing in Chinese yuan and cryptocurrency is being completed in less than a minute. Currently, Iran charges a flat rate of $2 million per vessel for services. Iran's demand for payment to transit the Strait is not something new. The Suez Canal Authority of Egypt also charges vessels to transit its waterway. For the largest shipping vessels, the average fee to transit the Suez Canal is in the $700,000 range. The SAU's expected revenue from fee collections in 2026 is $8 billion. Nero needs to keep oil flowing out of the Strait to keep gas prices down in the U.S. Iran can build on that point.
Parts of the Hormuz Strait are in the territorial waters of Iran and Oman. Formal recognition of the sovereign rights of Iran and Oman in the Strait of Hormuz should be codified in a treaty by the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS). A separate revenue-sharing agreement between Iran and Oman should be concluded.
Nuclear War and the \"Handmaidens of the Apocalypse\"
In October 1986, former Dimona nuclear technician Mordechai Vanunu unveiled the first irrefutable public revelations about Israel's secret nuclear weapons development program. Vanunu, who worked at Dimona for nine years, said the labs were capable of producing 1.2 kg of plutonium a week--enough for around 12 nuclear warheads a year. He took 60 pictures inside Dimona's nuclear research labs. Several photos were published on October 5 by the London Sunday Times.
Pursuaded by a female Mossad agent named \"Cindy,\" Vanunu went to Rome, where he was drugged, taken to Israel, found guilty of espionage, and served 18 years in prison. Half his sentence was spent in solitary confinement before being released in 2004.
Israel's strategic doctrine revolves around fear of an existential threat rather than strategic competition and deterrence with other nuclear powers. Israel's national security narrative is rooted in the belief that the country could face destruction if a war turns decisively against it, as could have happened in the 1967 Six-Day War.
Unlike America's \"sole presidential authority\" system that allows Nero Germanicus to authorize the launch of a nuclear weapon without any consultation whatsoever, Israel's \"opaque\" system requires the approval of a quartet of senior officials: Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Minister of Defense Israel Katz, Army Chief of Staff Lt. General Eyal Zamir, and the Chief of the Air Force Major General Tomer Bar.
Sixty years after the first deliverable nuclear weapon was fabricated at Dimona, Israel now has a muscular triad arsenal of an estimated 100-150 nuclear weapons. Its air-based components include the F-15, F-16, and F-35 fighter jets, capable of delivering nuclear weapons to targets. Israel's land-based Jericho system has 24 silos that house medium-range to intercontinental ballistic missiles.
The third leg of the triad is Israel's sea-based system, comprising a fleet of five Dolphin-class submarines with individual tubes housing long-range surface-to-air Popeye cruise missiles. These subs likely have advanced stealth capabilities that dramatically reduce the window of time for adversaries to retaliate.
Nuclear weapons researcher and author Anne Jacobson noted in an interview with Lex Fridman that, \"We now know they’re [subs] sneaking up to the east and west coast of the United States within a couple hundred miles...And that’s when you’re talking about under 10 minutes from launch to strike. Nuclear-powered submarines are the nightmare weapon system...the handmaidens of the apocalypse.\"
From Fanon Global's perspective, if Netanyahu decides to use a nuclear weapon, he may or may not inform America prior to launch. It should not be assumed that if Netanyahu exercises the nuclear option, he will restrict his attacks to one tactical nuclear weapon. Tactical nuclear weapons are typically designed for active battlefield use to combat conventional military forces such as large formations of infantry and armor. Thus, tactical nuclear weapons would be most effectively used against mass formations of Iran's Artesh army and Basij forces confronting a ground invasion. That seems like an unlikely possibility.
If Israel were catapulting to the top of the escalation ladder, a lower-yield, less destructive tactical nuclear weapon could be used, with the implicit threat that a far more lethal strategic nuclear weapon could be put into play. At the same time, Israel could go big with a more robust strategic nuclear first strike in several locations for a knockout punch. As Iran has no nuclear counterstrike capability, their likely response would immediately be a concentrated attack with their most advanced maneuverable hypersonic missiles on Israel's Dimona nuclear site. Tehran demonstrated on March 21 that it can easily reach Dimona, as it flattened apartment buildings in the town six kilometers from the installation. At that point, the great powers would almost certainly intervene.
Iran has vowed to fight to the end and inflict as much punishment on the U.S. and Israel as is necessary to ensure that they will never be attacked again. From Fanon Global's perspective, history has proven that the best guarantee to achieve that strategic goal is for Iran to become a nuclear state.
If Iran were to go nuclear, there are three options available to achieve credible nuclear deterrence and prevent future U.S. and Israeli conventional wars of aggression:
- Opt for a quick breakout now to develop a few nuclear weapons, which would need to be publicly tested in a demonstration project to inform the world
- Purchase nuclear weapons off the shelf from North Korea
- Have Russia announce that Iran is now under its nuclear umbrella. Putin picks up the phone and tells Netanyahu that if he launches a nuclear attack on Iran, Moscow will turn out the lights in Israel.
Iran poses no threat of invading Israel with a ground invasion. Nor has Iran ever possessed or attempted to fabricate a nuclear weapon. To date, the religious fatwa of assassinated Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei has not been changed by his successor, Mojtada Khamenei, to wit: \"The Iranian nation and officials have repeatedly declared that we do not want nuclear weapons, which do not exist at all in our chain of needs and weapons system. We have declared that the use of nuclear weapons is forbidden and prohibited by Islam.\" In Shia jurisprudence, fatwas can be changed by a new Supreme Leader.
Conclusion: Iran is rewriting the rules of a new world order.
Wars have uncertain outcomes. The certainty of the Martyrs War' that began with the U.S. and Israel's assassination of Iran's Supreme Leader, was that it would be a quick and dirty Shock and Awe victory. This 20th-century war doctrine would reinforce America's position as the global unipolar power. Instead, Iran's 21st-century global asymmetric warfare is rewriting the rules of global trade, the architecture of global alliances, integrated economic and military warfare doctrine, and reconfiguring the mathematics of global reserve currency relations.
To the planet's great peril, the Martyrs' War may also rewrite 21st-century nuclear warfare doctrine if the Parsi Window closes.