Generational Dynamics Forum - New Site

Navigator wrote: Fri Jun 13, 2025 2:14 pm Unfortunately, I see zero hope in the short term of Iran becoming an ally of the west, let alone reproachment with Israel.

First off, let me congratulate the Israeli's on what seems to be a very successful initial strike on Iran. Such action has been needed for DECADES.

The US has technically been in a state of war with Iran since the Embassy takeover in 1978. The fanatical nut jobs (first Khomeini and now his son) will NEVER give up the path that they are pursuing as per their interpretation of Shia Islam. They are doing this to the utter detriment of their population, and while the majority of Iranians have no love of their regime, they are powerless to affect any kind of change. As was seen years ago during small scale demonstrations, any dissent is brutally and bloodily crushed by the quasi-militia forces that hold substantial power over the broad population.

The Iranians were NEVER going to give up their quest for atomic weapons. This had to be done. It should have been done to the North Koreans in the late 1980s or early 1990s, but no US President had the guts to do it. And now look at the nightmare in northern Asia that resulted.

It seems to me that the Trump administration understood this, and we were playing along with the Iranians in "negotiations" while the Israelis finished their plans and preparations. Israel had already done quite a bit of damage to the Iranian infrastructure last year. They should finish that job along with taking out any kind of technological industry or wherewithal that the Iranians have.

However, when a foreign country (Israel) bombs your country (Iran), the response is generally increased support for the local regime. This means that Iranians, out of their own national pride, will, at least in the short term, most likely rally to the flag of the Ayatollahs.

The next potential nightmare is that the Ayatollahs, out of desperation, take military measures to close the Straights of Hormuz, blocking oil tanker traffic in/out of the Persian Gulf. Yes, the Iranians are very dependent on their own oil revenue, but if they feel that their "back is against the wall", they may do this. This would mean that the US would become involved militarily, and would most likely require occupation of coastal areas (to stop the launching of anti ship missiles and deployment of mines into the Gulf. This is because the Gulf is so critical to the world economy.

Such a scenario would drag the US into yet another middle east war, which obviously would be highly unpopular in the US, and even more so in Europe. And if you think the anti-ICE riots are bad, just wait for this.

In dozens of articles in the last few years, I've stated and restated the core principle of Generational Dynamics that, even in a dictatorship, major decisions are made by masses of people, by generations of people. The attitudes of politicians are irrelevant, except insofar as they represent the attitudes of the people.

What Iraqi Civil War?

Early in 2003, I predicted that there would be no popular uprising against the Americans, and that there would be no civil war. After the overthrow of Saddam, I said that an Iraqi civil war was impossible. Despite the constant near-hysteria of the politicians, journalists and high-priced analysts,

I've been right so far. Here's why. (09-Apr-04)Summary

Iraq is in a generational "awakening" period, like America in the 1960s. During the 60s, we had assassinations, riots, looting, radical rhetoric, and low-level violence, but no civil war. Similarly, a popular civil war in Iraq today is impossible, despite the warnings of politicians, journalists, and high-priced analysts

Why no civil war in Iraq?

The short answer is: Because only one generation has passed since the Iran/Iraq war of the 1980s, and a popular civil war is impossible so soon after a crisis war.

Let's take a moment to compare Iran today to America in the 1960s, because the equivalence is precise.

Iraq today is one generation past its last crisis war, the Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s.

America in the 1960s was one generation past its last crisis war, World War II. You have to understand 1960s America if you want to understand Iraq today.

If you're reading this and you're under 65-70 years old, then you probably have no idea how horrible WW II was for most Americans. Rumors of German bombers on the east coast and Japanese bombers on the west coast abounded, and terrorized Americans formed watch groups to watch for incoming bombers. Body bags with American soldiers were coming in by the boatloads from Europe and the Pacific. Everyone was affected by the war, had lost friends and family in the war, and feared for the American way of life and even the nation's survival. If you were traumatized by 9/11, then imagine the 9/11 attacks ten times a day for a couple of years and you'll begin to understand World War II.

When WW II ended, those who survived vowed that nothing like that must ever be allowed to happen again. Society reorganized itself to fight the new menace, the Communists, who would have to be stopped before they were allowed to start World War III.

By the 1960s, kids born after WW II came of age, and that's when the American awakening began. There was a well-known "generation gap," as college kids rebelled against the austere rules imposed by those who had survived WW II.

Look what happened in America in the 60s and early 70s: President Kennedy was assassinated; Martin Luther King was assassinated; Robert Kennedy was assassinated; there was a series of "hot summers," with racial rebellions in many cities, the most well known being the Watts riots in L.A. in 1965; there were huge riots and demonstrations in Washington D.C., and in other large cities; many of these riots degenerated into violence.

In all, three different presidencies ended in ruin in one way or another: President Kennedy's by assassination, President Johnson by being forced not to run again; and President Nixon by forced resignation.

But there was NO CIVIL WAR.

This is EXACTLY what's happening in Iraq today.

The Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s was a horrific crisis war, where even poison gas was used to kill people. Those who survived that war want no part of another one.

That's the context in which you have to understand the riots and demonstrations by Shi'ite Muslim cleric Moktada al-Sadr's private militia. Al-Sadr himself is 30 years old, and his followers are in their teens and 20s. These are kids with little or no personal memory of the 1980s war. They don't really care that much one way or the other about the American-led Coalition; they're just kids, and they're rebelling against their own parents more than anything else. In most cases, they have no strong convictions except to have fun.

That's why I've been saying for over a year that a popular civil war is impossible. There's no one who wants a war like that. The older generation will do anything to prevent such a war, and the younger generation really doesn't give a f--k. There's no fuel for a civil war.

I've looked at dozens, perhaps hundreds, of crisis wars throughout history, and there's never been a popular civil war just one generation past a crisis war. It's impossible.

Iran. Iran is also in a generational awakening period. Since 1999, there have been large pro-American college student demonstrations. Some analysts, apparently including some in the Bush administration, are advocating a policy of encouraging the students to overthrow the Iranian mullahs. Such a policy would almost certainly fail: There is no more chance of a civil war in Iran than there is in Iraq.

Phong Tran wrote: Fri Jun 13, 2025 7:54 am Thanks for finding and posting those Tim.

Does anyone remember if John mentioned anything about why he doesn't mention Europe in his Clash of Civilizations world war?

2-Jan-18 World View -- Escalating violence in Iran protests brings calls for Iran-Israel friendship

Trump and Netanyahu express solidarity with Iranian protesters

As long-time readers are aware, I predicted over ten years ago, based on a Generational Dynamics analysis, that Iran would be a United States ally in the approaching Clash of Civilizations world war.

Ten years ago, the idea that Iran and the US would become allies seemed fantastical and insane. But during the Barack Obama administration, whatever one thinks of the Iran nuclear deal, Iran and America overcame much of the vitriolic rancor that separated them.

The reason that Iran and the US are becoming allies is generational. The hardliners in Iran are in the dying generations that fought in the 1979 Great Islamic Revolution, and considered the Iranian Hostage Crisis a great victory for them. However, those people are dying off, and the generations growing up after the war are pro-Western and pro-American. At some point, there will be an "Awakening climax" in Iran, like the resignation of Richard Nixon in 1974, that signals the victory of the younger generations over the war survivors, and the end of the hardline regime. A likely outcome is that Iran will become the same kind of ally as it was under the Shah of Iran, prior to 1979.

So we're seeing Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu expressing friendship and support for Iran -- but not for the old geezers in the hardline regime, but for the young generation of protesters.

Donald Trump tweeted as follows:

"Big protests in Iran. The people are finally getting wise as to how their money and wealth is being stolen and squandered on terrorism. Looks like they will not take it any longer. The USA is watching very closely for human rights violations!
Many reports of peaceful protests by Iranian citizens fed up with regime’s corruption & its squandering of the nation’s wealth to fund terrorism abroad. Iranian govt should respect their people’s rights, including right to express themselves. The world is watching!

The entire world understands that the good people of Iran want change, and, other than the vast military power of the United States, that Iran’s people are what their leaders fear the most."

Israel's president Benjamin Netanyahu posted a video in which he said the following:

"Iran’s cruel regime wastes tens of billions of dollars spreading hate. This money could have built schools and hospitals. No wonder mothers and fathers are marching in the streets. The regime is terrified of them, of their own people.
This regime tries desperately to sow hate between us. But they won’t succeed. And when this regime finally falls, and one day it will, Iranians and Israelis will be great friends once again. I wish the Iranian people success in their noble quest for freedom."

The possible friendship between Netanyahu and the Iranian people exposes an important conflict in the geopolitics of the Mideast.

Recently, Israel has been closely allied with Egypt in fighting Islamist terrorists, especially in Egypt's northern Sinai. Egypt has also been an ally of Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates (UAE) in the Arab split that led to the blockade of Qatar over its close relations with Iran.

Israel has also recently been closely allied with Saudi Arabia because of their common enmity to Iran.

If you connect all those dots and now throw in a possible future détente between Israel and Iran, then you quickly arrive at a conflict. This is not a trivial situation, and will almost certainly lead to some kind of conflict not currently anticipated.

Generational Dynamics predictions that I've been posting for years haven't changed. Generational Dynamics predicts that the Mideast is headed for a major regional war, pitting Sunnis versus Shias, Jews versus Arabs, and various ethnic groups against each other. Generational Dynamics predicts that in the approaching Clash of Civilizations world war, the "axis" of China, Pakistan and the Sunni Muslim countries will be pitted against the "allies," the US, India, Russia and Iran. Reuters and Jerusalem Online

9-Nov-15 World View -- Political crisis in Iran grows over nuclear agreement

The coming regime change in Iran

Ten years ago I predicted, based on a Generational Dynamics analysis, that Iran would become America's ally. At the time, that prediction seemed insane, so it's been astonishing to see Iran move step by step in that direction during the last five years.

For this article, I wanted to go more deeply in the reasoning behind that prediction ten years ago. In order to do that, I went back through my archive of news articles that I've cut, pasted and saved (currently totally about 80,000 articles since the 1990s) to find some news articles about Iran that influenced me.

Here are some excerpts from a Washington Times article that appeared on July 11, 2002, about ten months after 9/11:

"Iranians Stage Pro-American Protest Against Ayatollahs
"Death to the Islamic Republic, the Taliban of Tehran." This is the challenge tens of thousands of Iranians chanted to their government yesterday, marking the third anniversary of peaceful demonstrations that left students lying dead outside of their dormitories. The United States should listen to what the people within Iran are demanding since it may affect the outcome of our war against terrorism.

The U.S. war against terrorism is about rolling back Islamic fundamentalism. The enemies of America are not ordinary Muslims living in Tehran, Istanbul, Baghdad or Dearborn. Those who wish to see us dead are the self-proclaimed radical Islamists who have been inspired, supported and funded by the Islamic Republic of Iran, among others, for more than 23 years. If the United States is interested in winning the war against terrorism, then it must pay attention to what happened in Iran yesterday because, for the first time in 23 years, the people of Iran are taking the lead in exposing the bankruptcy of Islam as a form of governance."

The article is referring to July 9, 1999, when tens of thousands of Iranian college students held anti-government protests for six days. Iran's security forces brutally massacred the students, killing many of them, and the protests spread to cities across the country. The above article is about new protests being held on the 3rd anniversary of those protests.

The next year, the government took some steps to contain the fourth anniversary of the 1999 massacre. This article is from the Iran Press Service, dated June 23, 2003:

"Iran Bans Off Campus Protests
TEHRAN — The Iranian government said on Tuesday that it would not allow any protests meeting to be held in the future outside universities.

Abdollah Ramezanzadeh, the official spokesman for the government said, in answer to questions concerning the anniversary of the student's anti-regime revolt of July 9, 1999, "no further demonstrations would be allowed outside universities' campuses."

"The Interior Ministry is opposed to any gathering outside university campuses and no permit has been issued by the government for holding special commemoration meetings, Ramezanzadeh stated, adding that however, the government "will not interfere in any gathering held inside universities." ...

Ramezanzadeh said the government and many students were still "dissatisfied" since the masterminds of the July 9, 1999 disaster have not been properly dealt with."

"We expect that those behind recent events and the culprits involved in the 9 July 1999 crimes, irrespective of their factional affiliation, are confronted," he added, quoted by the official news agency IRNA."

Here's another article from my archives, from the LA Times on July 2, 2003:

"Iran Shuts Out Porn, Dissent Web Sites
TEHRAN — Iran is blocking access to Web sites containing pornographic material and dissent against the country's Islamic establishment, an official said Tuesday.

More than 140 Web sites promoting dissent, dancing and sex have been blocked since the crackdown began last month, said Farhad Sepahram, a Telecommunications Ministry official.

Religious hard-liners are increasingly worried about Iranians' access to information from the outside world, apparently concerned that communications are playing a role in stirring reform sentiment such as the recent anti-government protests by young people.

Sepahram said most of the blocked Web sites belong to opposition groups. They include one run by Reza Pahlavi, son of the late Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, who was toppled by the 1979 Islamic Revolution, and one by Abolhassan Bani-Sadr, Iran's first elected president after 1979 who now opposes the cleric-dominated establishment.

Also blocked are the Voice of America's Persian-language service and radiofarda.com, a U.S.-financed Persian-language audio program."

So how did I know ten years ago that Iran was going to become America's ally? It was because reading all these articles, and others like them, made it clear that what was going on in Iran was the same as what went on in America in the 1960s.

In America's Awakening era in the 1960s, we had girls burning their bras, marches on Washington, violence in the streets of Los Angeles, Chicago and Detroit, and student anti-war protests. These are the kinds of things that are typical of any society 20-30 years after the end of a generational crisis war. Student protests are particularly common during these eras because they represent the rise of the first post-war generation.

It was just like that in Iran ten years ago. So I could see that many college students were protesting against the hardliners, and were pro-American and pro-Western. (They didn't like America's 2003 ground invasion of Iraq, and they didn't like President Bush's characterization of "Axis of Evil," but they were still pro-American because they really hated their own government more than anything else.)

And now, of course, those college students are 30-40 years old, and have moved into positions of power, as I knew ten years ago that they would. Today, they're the reporters who write the news stories and are being accused of supporting an "infiltration network" (a phrase that they undoubtedly think is hilarious), and they're the scientists working in the nuclear plants.

America's Awakening era finally climaxed in 1974 with the resignation of Richard Nixon, resulting in a victory of the younger generation over the older generation. Iran is headed in the same direction. The Watergate issue triggered the political coup that ousted Richard Nixon, and it's possible that the nuclear deal may be the trigger for the eventual coup that ousts Iran's Ayatollah Khamenei and the other older generation hardliners.

Navigator wrote: Thu Feb 20, 2025 9:29 pm

DaKardii wrote: Thu Feb 20, 2025 8:35 pm What's going on? Are they okay?

My wife has terminal breast cancer. It recently moved aggressively into her liver. She is on chemo, but only as a way to forestall the inevitable. I think that she has about a year.