Read Michael Hudson here: https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2025/06/michael-hudson-why-america-is-at-war-with-iran.html

The whole point is destabilization. America is using Israel to destabilize the Middle East just like how it has been using Ukraine to keep Russia busy. It is to prevent the Global Majority from seeking an alternative framework to the US dominated neoliberal order - or whatever brand of fascism it is trying to transition into right now.

Iran has its own industrial base but it is not like Russia with its remnant socialist industrial base, and certainly has suffered a lot under sanctions. It will need a lot of foreign aid, and even then, the whole country is going to suffer with a war going on. If it’s a long war, then we’re looking at years of lost economic development.

For the US, it doesn’t care. It wants chaos, trade flow disruption, killing the economy of the exporting countries so that they come to beg for a deal, which will open up their domestic economy to influx of foreign finance capital. If the US have its way, expect to see record IMF or foreign capital bailouts over the next few years.

This is why an alternative economic and financial framework is needed. We’ve had the chance 3 years ago when the Ukraine war started, but because the so-called BRICS did not have the political will to come together and do it, the whole window of opportunity for de-dollarization has been utterly wasted.

The only card left to play that I can see is for China to give up its net exporter status to absorb the surplus exports from the rest of the world, but the Chinese leaders are very unwilling to do it. They want to convince the US to go back to the status quo which they both enjoyed for the past couple decades.

Sorry China is already one step ahead.

In fact, just a few weeks before Israeli attack, China already ramped up crude import from Iran as though they already anticipated this outcome.

Now China’s oil inventory is at a record high level:

China typically imports 1.6m barrels from Iran daily, so China can last for at least a few months even without Iranian oil import, and if oil price goes too high and threatens their exports, they can release their crude stockpiles using Iran’s own oil they have accumulated, just like how Biden released the strategic petroleum reserves when the Ukraine war hiked oil prices.

Iran does not have what it takes to threaten China.

Does the latest action make him more likely to win or less?

It does if it wants to guarantee a win. Nobody’s going to gamble away the entire nation by starting a war if they don’t have the confidence to do so. This is not a video game where you can reload a saved game you know? If you lose, tens of millions of people die, the entire country collapses.

Iran cannot do that without Russia and China on its side, and so far there is nothing that indicates that except the presence of a few Chinese assets nearby that some have observed. There has been no extensive military or air force build up on Iran’s borders by both the Russians and the Chinese. Maybe things will change now after the latest US action.

Honestly I would not trust claims coming from either side until at least half a day later, if not longer than that.

Proper damage assessment takes way longer than that, with all the inspection that needs to be performed, and with all the sensitive equipments and infrastructure involved. At best they can tell you about the structural damage.

Same with the battle damage assessment following the strike from the US side. Maybe they have some advanced recon capability that I don’t know about, but still you’d expect this to take longer than what Trump was immediately tweeting after the strike.

You also have to take into considerations the Iranian response, which is still being decided. If they don’t want to escalate any further, or only want to commit to limited retaliation, they will probably save face by saying that damage is minimal and not seriously affecting their operations. Another reason is to prevent mass panic. Again, with minimum intel, all we can do is guess here

You mean non-western leftists?

Because honestly most average people are apolitical and just don’t care that much about the world. If you only get your information from the internet and social media, it can seem like people are having certain sets of opinions, but once you actually go out and talk to people about the stuff we care about here, you’d find that most of them don’t even know what you’re talking about.

Nazi Germany felt VERY confident they could take on the USSR, and they had the experience to do so… but it didn’t work out at all.

The entire Operation Barbarossa was predicated on the Wehrmacht being able to smash the Red Army within 4 months. The German High Command was very well aware of the fact that they would run into significant logistical and manpower shortages if the USSR did not surrender in four months. That’s why they had to go with the blitzkrieg, it wasn’t some genius warfare, but a necessary tactics given the limitations of their logistics and manpower. Still, it took another 4 years and millions and millions of lives to defeat Nazi Germany.

I guess if this does turn into a prolonged conflict, it will be dependent on the logistical supply on both sides, and their capacity to ramp up military production as well as their allies’.

Do note that there is also a global trade war, or more precisely, a financial war going on where its economic impact can sway these countries toward one trajectory or the other. The effects of a global financial warfare are very complex and this could end with many surprising outcomes that nobody could have predicted.

I think if your position is only anti-American/Western imperialism, then Mahathir’s words do often seem to fit that bill.

For example, in the strategy to promote national industries (e.g. Proton the national car), he looked to the East (Japan) instead of the West. He promoted regional independence instead of being fully open up to Western capital, though much of his view seems informed by a belief that “the US works for Jewish capital, that’s why I don’t trust them”.

He was also unfortunately right about not taking the IMF bailout (for the same twisted reason above), as Malaysia would have suffered even worse fate in the wake of the Asian Financial Crisis like its neighbors that took the IMF deals.

Having said that, his decades of rule was also characterized by deep corruption, cronyism, mass privatization, assault on labor movements on top of stoking religious and ethnic tensions against minority Chinese and Indians that very much placed him on the right, if not borderline far right.

Agreed and with your last point as well. I was just pointing out that Anwar was literally charged because of sodomy and many in the public fully bought into it and saw it as sufficient cause for imprisonment. Of course, this is not aimed at any specific culture and I’m sure many religious conservatives in the West would cheer for this kind of persecutions of people they see as heretics as well.

I do note that Mahathir leaned heavily into playing up religious conservatism and Malay ethnic supremacy to consolidate his power within the country.

This is already being countered by Trump’s global tariffs, and if China does not come to a deal with the US soon, the Southeast Asian exporters will have to compete with China dumping cheap goods into their countries.

(Not so) fun fact: Scott Bessent current leads the Trump trade war.

Who is Scott Bessent and what does he have to do with Anwar (Malaysia’s current Prime Minister) and ASEAN (+3)?

In 1990, Mahathir (the former Prime Minister of Malaysia) proposed the formation of East Asian Economic Caucus (EAEC), a regional bloc that will comprise the 10 Southeast Asian countries and the East Asian economies (Japan, South Korea and China). This will eventually turn into the neutered form of ASEAN +3 but we’ll get there.

The EAEC immediately set off the US nerve, being a direct counterpart to Clinton’s APEC, the US Asia-Pacific economic strategy that started a year prior in 1989. EAEC would be entirely regional, independent and without American involvement.

At the time, Thailand’s economy was flourishing being a huge manufacturing country that had benefited greatly from its “basket of currency” strategy, tying its currency to the US dollar among others. This will turn out to be its ultimate weakness. Remember, this was in the 1980-90s before China joined the WTO and ultimately became the world’s factory.

To neutralize the EAEC proposal, George Soros was activated to destroy the Southeast Asian economy.

For those who don’t know, Scott Bessent, who currently leads Trump’s trade war, was the chief architect and protege of Soros that engineered the Black Wednesday attack against the HM Treasury in Britain, and caused the 1992 sterling crisis. He was only 29 at the time.

By 1997, he was part of the core Soros team that engineered the Asian Financial Crisis that begun with a speculative attack against Thai baht. Due to the Thai baht being pegged to US dollars, the exchange rate immediately suffered. This would eventually crash the Southeast Asian and South Korea’s economies, leading to large scale IMF bailouts. The EAEC proposal was as good as dead.

Anwar (the current Malaysian PM) was the deputy PM at the time, under Mahathir. A fervent neoliberal, Anwar advocated for receiving IMF bailout, and led to the infamous “sodomy charge” by Mahathir and being prosecuted as a political prisoner. (Malaysia was and is a socially conservative country so a sodomy charge of a high ranking official is a big deal).

Malaysia eventually escaped the IMF trap but understand that Mahathir is no angel. He is a far right Malay supremacist with anti-Semitic views (believing that the US is an agent of the Jewish cabal) and his suspicion of IMF arose because of that view. He was also responsible for purging many of the left wing trade unions in the 1980s in Malaysia and killed off the vestiges of left wing movement in the country, while instituting neoliberal mass privatizations to benefit his own cronies.

Anwar would turn opposition during his “reform” phase as a political prisoner, and decades later, led the opposition coalition to electoral victory. But make no mistake, Anwar has always been a neoliberal and will always be loyal to the IMF export led growth strategy. Don’t expect Malaysia to turn socialist any time soon.

What came out of this was a battered Southeast Asian economy that already posed no threat to the US empire, and eventually the ASEAN +3 (China, Japan, South Korea) was formed, but in a much neutered form. The Asian Financial Crisis would eventually spread abroad, and directly precipitated in Russia’s default in 1998, when Russian ruble hit 6000 RUB / USD and a reset button had to be pushed. A year later, Vladimir Putin would become leader and began a decade of slowly clawing back what Russia had lost.

Back to Scott Bessent, having killed off Thailand and South Korea, the Soros team set their eyes on China and engaged in a fierce skirmish at the Battle of Hong Kong. It was here that China made a firm stand and eventually repelled the American financial attacks, though not without huge sacrifices with a heavy cost. For the Americans, their goals of harvesting the Southeast Asian economy and killing off the APEC competitor were already accomplished, so the loss at Hong Long was a set back but not a total failure.

In Chinese media, Bessent is rightfully feared and has been painted as someone who wanted to seek vengeance after the defeat in Hong Kong decades earlier.

It is very interesting that Bessent is now back on the forefront leading Trump’s trade war. I have no doubt that the Americans know perfectly well what their global tariffs are doing, and my guess is that they want to use China’s industrial capacity to kill off the surrounding exporting countries such that American finance capital can come and in harvest the region once again.

One key factor is who is on your side, or rather, whose expertise can you buy with your money.

I’ll give you an example. Liang Mong Song was one of the six most critical personnel in Taiwan’s TSMC. Due to internal feud, he was forced out of the company in 2013.

He initially joined South Korea’s Samsung and managed to convince Samsung to give up their 20nm chip and jump straight into 14nm fabrication. This allowed Samsung to claw back some of its global market share through supplying the A9 chip in 2015’s Apple iPhone 6S. Previously almost all of Apple’s chip fabrication has been monopolized by TSMC, so this was a blow to the TSMC dominance.

In 2017, Liang joined China’s SMIC and in less than 300 days, SMIC achieved the capability for mass production of 14nm chips.

There is a funny aside to this story though. One of the higher ups at TSMC that initially forced Liang Mong Song out, Chiang Shang-yi, also ended up in SMIC a few years later and became the Vice Chairman of SMIC in 2020. This caused a drama in SMIC where Liang made a huge drama and crying about wanting to resign. Eventually, Chiang “chose to leave the company” possibly because they decided that Liang is more critical to the company’s future.

Money is only one factor. You cannot cheat years of experience and expertise, even though you can certainly entice the world leading experts with an attractive enough offer. And this isn’t always easy because these people are highly sought after and already work for the richest companies out there. there has to be some personal motives for them to come and work for you.

You don’t go against the neocons.

If you pay attention, all the MAGA clowns that came into the Trump admin have been either forced out or forced into staying quiet. Elon is already out. Hegseth reduced to a token unimportant character. On the other hand, Rubio, the neocon pick that seemed strange at first, is running the show. The neocons are in charge now.

I think there has been a lot of projection that if the US wants to decouple from China, then China would wish the same too.

If you look carefully at all of China’s readouts, there has been no indication whatsoever that China is going to establish an alternative economic and financial framework. If anything, China has accused the US and Trump of protectionism and violating the sanctity of free market.

It is very clear that China is the one trying to save the marriage here, by convincing the US that it is still not too late to turn back to where things were. This is why China played the rare earth export card, to tell the US that it cannot simply walk out the door without consequences. In the end, they need each other to thrive. That’s the message sent.

Of course, just because one side is trying to save the marriage, doesn’t mean it won’t protect itself against further domestic (international) violence. And unfortunately many abusive relationships can go on for years and years despite the constant toxicity and hostility.

I bet Maverick could spin it up and shoot down two Su-57s on his way out.

Employees can own “virtual shares” if they demonstrate certain competency (due to historical reasons when Huawei nearly went bankrupt rather than as a business model) but do not have voting rights as shareholders.

To own virtual shares, an employee has to sign a “Strivers Agreement” that automatically forgoes annual leave and other benefits like maternity leave in exchange for higher pay, bonus, dividend payout and promotion opportunities. There are actually papers written about it.

You need to re-read this from the perspective of Putin/Russia trying to convince Trump/America by showing how good they have been.

Putin is saying, “look, we just made a press release with the Chinese that we just want peace (Beijing has abandoned Tehran), and Iran didn’t want our security assistance, so even they have abandoned trying to get foreign military assistance in the event of a war (Tehran has abandoned Iran), so we obviously won’t be helping them. Will you please remove the sanctions, we promise to only focus on Ukraine.”

It has nothing to do with the actual reality, but what Russia wishes to convey its position to the Americans. That’s what the whole article is about.

It’s not a co-op. It’s a company where employees owned “virtual shares” (due to historical reasons when Huawei nearly went bankrupt rather than as a business model) but do not have voting rights as shareholders.

To own virtual shares, employee has to sign a “Strivers Agreement” that automatically forgoes annual leave and benefits in exchange for higher pay, dividend payout and promotion opportunities. There are actually papers written about it.

It’ll make more sense if re-read the paragraph from the perspective of Putin/Russia begging Trump/the Americans to show how good they have been.

It is not meant to be materialist, it’s what Russia wishes to convey its position to the Americans.

Honestly no idea. Also you might notice that I almost never talk about Chinese military stuff haha. Not that I am privy to any sensitive information, but better safe than sorry.