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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.

New Pentagon report outlines China's military buildup

China is preparing for war over Taiwan. ( 28-Aug-2011 )Summary

The Pentagon has issued its annual report on China's military, and it shows that China is rapidly preparing for all-out war with America over Taiwan.

One of the saddest things that I've had to report on my web site is China's rush towards total war with the United States. I've been describing this for years, but it was always in the distance. A new report by the Pentagon makes it clear that this war is no longer distant, and an attack within the next 12-18 months is a reasonable expectation.

In addition, China is developing a number of capabilities that can directly attack the U.S.:

"China is modernizing its nuclear forces by adding more survivable delivery systems. In recent years, the road mobile, solid propellant CSS-10 Mod 1 and CSS-10 Mod 2 (DF-31 and DF-31A) intercontinental-range ballistic missiles (ICBMs) have entered service. The CSS- 10 Mod 2, with a range in excess of 11,200 km, can reach most locations within the continental United States."

This is the fulfillment of several threats made by China in years past. In 2005, top-level Chinese army officer General Zhu Chenghu threatened America with nuclear war if America interfered with Taiwan:

"If the Americans are determined to interfere [then] we will be determined to respond. We ... will prepare ourselves for the destruction of all of the cities east of Xian [a city in central China]. Of course the Americans will have to be prepared that hundreds ... of cities will be destroyed by the Chinese."

In 2005, Zhu's remarks were an empty threat. Today, they're a real threat.

And, as I reported in 2006, Sha Zukang, the Chinese ambassador to the U.N., furiously and harshly threatened the U.S. over Taiwan. I transcribed the words that he literally screamed in an interview with a BBC reporter:

"The moment that Taiwan declares independence, supported by whomever, China will have no choice but to [use] whatever means available to my government. Nobody should have any illusions on that. ...

It's not a matter of how big Taiwan is, but for China, one INCH of the territory is more valuable than the LIVES of our people."

[With regard to the U.S.'s constant criticism of China's rapid militarization:] It's better for the U.S. to shut up, keep quiet. That's much, much better. China's population is 6 times or 5 times the United States. Why blame China? No. forget it. It's high time to shut up. It's a nation's sovereign right to do what is good for them. But don't tell us what's good for China. Thank you very much."

Will America abandon Taiwan?

I want to address this problem head on, because dozens of people have suggested this to me over the years -- that America can simply abandon Taiwan, let the Chinese have it, rather than risk a major world war.

I want to make it as clear as I can that there is no possibility that America would abandon Taiwan, for several reasons:

Once China attacked, American response would be rapid and automatic, with no time for debate.
China would not target Taiwan alone. China would simultaneously attack America's "weak points," its communications satellites and its cyber capabilities, leaving no choice but to respond.

The U.S. has a defense treaties with Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Australia and New Zealand (ANZUS treaty), Israel, Europe, Iceland, and others. All of these countries have cut back on their own military in the last 60 years because they've counted on U.S. protection. If the U.S. abandoned Taiwan, then every one of these countries would go into total panic, and war would result anyway.

This last point is one of the great ironies of a type that we often see in generational theory -- something adopted early in a generational cycle in order to prevent war later becomes one of the causes of war decades later, during the generational Crisis era. In this case, when these treaties were signed after WW II, when America became policeman of the world, their purpose was to prevent another world war by making it too expensive for anyone to attack a country aligned with the United States. Now that America can no longer provide that level of defense, these treaties guarantee that a war cannot be prevented.

The way the world works

The Pentagon report was mostly ignored by the mainstream media this past week, but there was a little coverage, and one thing that I heard politicians say a couple of times was to the effect: "There's no danger of war with China, because it will be decades before they have the capability to defeat the United States." In fact, the Chinese themselves are saying the same thing (consistent, I would add, with their strategy of secrecy and deception).

The world doesn't work that way. Japan attacked Pearl Harbor when anyone could have told them that they would lose the war. General Beauregard and the Confederates attacked Fort Sumter when anyone could have told them that the South would lose. Logic and rationality are for non-crisis wars. Generational crisis wars are launched on raw emotion, with little logic.

Here's how historian Wolfgang Schivelbusch describes the beginning of war in his 2001 book, The Culture of Defeat: On National Trauma, Mourning, and Recovery:

"The passions excited in the national psyche by the onset of war show how deeply invested the masses now were in its potential outcome. Propaganda had reinforced their conviction that "everything was at stake," and the threat of death and defeat functioned like a tightly coiled spring, further heightening the tension. The almost festive jubilation that accompanied the declarations of war in Charleston in 1861, Paris in 1870, and the capitals of the major European powers in 1914 were anticipatory celebrations of victory-since nations are as incapable of imagining their own defeat as individuals are of conceiving their own death. The new desire to humiliate the enemy, noted by Burckhardt, was merely a reaction to the unprecedented posturing in which nations now engaged when declaring war.

The deployment of armies on the battlefield is the classic manifestation of collective self-confidence. If both sides are not convinced of their military superiority, there will be no confrontation; rather, those who lack confidence will simply flee the field. Accordingly, the battle is decided the moment the confidence of one side fails. The will to fight ("morale") evaporates, the military formation collapses, and the army seeks salvation in flight or, if it is lucky, in organized retreat. The Greek term for this point in space (on the battlefield) and time (the course of the battle) was trope. The victors demarcated the spot with the weapons of the vanquished and later with monuments, yielding the term tropaion, from which we get our word trophy." (p. 6-7)

The euphoria lasts until something goes wrong. Panic occurs when a military disaster occurs. In his 1832 book, On War, General Carl von Clausewitz describes what happens:

"The effect of defeat outside the army -- on the people and on the government -- is a sudden collapse of the wildest expectations, and total destruction of self-confidence. The destruction of these feelings creates a vacuum, and that vacuum gets filled by a fear that grows corrosively, leading to total paralysis. It's a blow to the whole nervous system of the losing side, as if caused by an electric charge. This effect may appear to a greater or lesser degree, but it's never completely missing. Then, instead of rushing to repair the misfortune with a spirit of determination, everyone fears that his efforts will be futile; or he does nothing, leaving everything to Fate."

This is what happens when reality sets in -- whether by the Bataan Death March or the Battle of Bull Run.

I've been following this issue closely for years, and there is absolutely no question in my mind that the Chinese WILL launch a preemptive attack to acquire Taiwan at some point. This is a highly nationalistic issue for the Chinese, and they will not be deterred. It could happen at any time, but based on the Pentagon report, the next 12-18 months seems pretty likely.

Some people suggest that the Taiwanese people will eventually decide that they WANT to be part of China again. But once again, that ignores the strength of nationalism, this time on the Taiwanese side. Taiwan's indigenous Hokkein people want no part of Beijing, and Han Chinese on Taiwan moved sharply towards separatism after the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre, and after the passing, in the 1990s, of the elderly leaders of the Kuomintang Party who were survivors of Mao's Communist Revolution. See my 2004 article Taiwan's Wild Election Battle)

The survivors of World War II understood how dangerous xenophobia and nationalism are, after they'd seen it in Germany's Naziism, Italy's Fascism, and elsewhere.

The Chinese learned the same lesson from their own civil war, and from Japanese nationalism and xenophobia. And Hu Jintao, China's president, is a survivor of Mao's Communist Revolution, and may well be only person left in China's government desirous of peace, as I discussed in 2006 in "Eerie similarity: Chinese President Hu Jintao and Donald Rumsfeld." In that article, I quoted the following analyst description of Hu:

"Yet in this sense, Hu reflects present-day China: As leader, he has not yet found a clear pathway, sources say. His country is at a major juncture of greater expectation, but with no clear direction or footing, socially or politically. Hu is not a zealous ideologue, a visionary economist, nor is he ready to force a war over Taiwan. He is cautious, lawyerly, a survivor, say numerous scholars, diplomats, and party sources. To the Chinese, he is as much a mystery as he is to the foreign community in Beijing. Whether he has yet consolidated power in China's secretive leadership enclave is still speculated about."

But Hu's time is almost gone. In 2012 there will be a planned generational change in China's leadership, and Hu will be replaced by younger people who ARE zealous ideologues and who ARE ready to force a war over Taiwan.

China's war with America over Taiwan will not be a rational decision. It will be pursued by a nihilistic younger Chinese generation in the same way that America's Generation-X pursued the destruction of the global financial system. It will be both immensely destructive and immensely self-destructive.

It's worth repeating what General Zhu said:

"If the Americans are determined to interfere [then] we will be determined to respond. We ... will prepare ourselves for the destruction of all of the cities east of Xian [a city in central China]. Of course the Americans will have to be prepared that hundreds ... of cities will be destroyed by the Chinese."

There's nothing rational about this, but it's the way the world is going.

Air Force Commander Prepares California Desert Community for Pearl Harbor-Like Strike by China

In May, the commander of Edwards Air Force Base, California, talked openly about the need for local leaders to prepare for a Pearl Harbor-like strike on his base and others inside the United States.

Brig. Gen. Doug Wickert delivered “a sobering assessment of China’s growing military capabilities” in a briefing to community leaders, according to an Air Force press release. Wickert, commander of the 412th Test Wing, spoke at Antelope Valley College on May 7.

Edwards Air Force Base is in the Mojave Desert, about 100 miles northeast of Los Angeles.

According to the press release, Wickert referenced the 1941 attack on Naval Station Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, in his briefing, drawing parallels to warnings about Pearl Harbor’s vulnerability before the attack.

Such frank talk about the possible impact on a community around a U.S. military base, in the event of a war with China over Taiwan, is rare.

Notably, Wickert’s comments appear to be fully endorsed and approved by the Department of Defense, signaling a changing attitude.

In January 2023, Gen. Mike Minihan, commander of Air Mobility Command, which controls much of the air transport and air refueling capacity of the Department of Defense, wrote in a letter to his command: “My gut tells me we will fight in 2025. [Chinese leader Xi Jinping] secured his third term and set his war council in October 2022.

“Taiwan’s presidential elections are in 2024 and will offer Xi a reason. United States’ presidential elections are in 2024 and will offer Xi a distracted America. Xi’s team, reason, and opportunity are all aligned for 2025.”

Minihan wrote the letter to prepare his command for conflict. The Department of Defense quickly replied at the time, “These comments are not representative of the department’s view on China.”

A Wake-Up Call for Community Leaders

Wickert’s audience consisted of local community leaders, the leadership of critical infrastructure providers to the base, and members of Congress.

Rep. Vince Fong (R-Calif.) opened the briefing by discussing the necessity for stateside military installations to stay operational in the face of complex catastrophes, including military actions by adversaries.
Wickert compared Edwards, a massive facility focused on testing, research, and development, to its counterpart in the Chinese air force.

He presented intelligence data on the rapid modernization and “staggering” growth of the Chinese army, the press release states. Using Google Earth imagery, he pointed to Dingxin Test and Training Base in the Gobi Desert, China’s equivalent to Edwards.

“The base sits next to a full-scale two-dimensional replica of Taiwan’s Taichung International Airport,” according to the release.

Wickert said, “It’s kind of clear what their intention is.”

Wickert cited Xi’s 2013 instructions to the Chinese military to be ready to invade Taiwan by 2027.He made the connection to the local California community, stressing “the Antelope Valley’s crucial role in national defense and deterrence,” particularly Northrop Grumman’s B-21 Raider production line at nearby Air Force Plant 42 and the aircraft’s test and development facilities at Edwards.
A third facility close by is the General Atomics-owned Grey Butte Field Airport, used for drone production, training, and research.

“If I was Chairman Xi and it’s time to go [to war], guess what I’m going to target first?” Wickert asked. “So like it or not, we’re all in this together.”

The implication was clear: He expects the Chinese regime to target Edwards Air Force Base, nearby facilities, and all of the U.S. homeland as part of its efforts to seize Taiwan.

US prepares for long war with China that might hit its bases, homeland: Peter Apps

LONDON, May 16 (Reuters) - Earlier this month, U.S. Air Force Brigadier General Doug Wickert summoned nearby civic leaders to Edwards Air Force Base in California to warn them that if China attacks Taiwan in the coming years, they should be prepared for their immediate region to suffer potentially massive disruption from the very start.

In a remarkable briefing shared by the base on social media and promoted in a press release, Wickert - one of America's most experienced test pilots now commanding the 412th Test Wing - outlined China's rapid military growth and preparations to fight a major war.

Cutting-edge U.S. aircraft manufactured in California’s nearby “Aerospace Valley”, particularly the B-21 “Raider” now replacing the 1990s B-2 stealth bomber, were key to keeping Beijing deterred, he said. However, if deterrence failed that meant China’s would likely strike the U.S. including nearby Northrop Grumman factories where those planes were built.

"If this war happens, it's going to happen here," Wickert told them, suggesting attacks could include a cyber offensive that included long-term disruption to power supplies and other national infrastructure. "It's going to come to us. That is why we are having this conversation... The more ready we are, the more likely to change Chairman Xi’s calculus."