Transcription
In May of 2024, a relatively unknown history professor from Beijing stood in front of a classroom of students. He wasn't talking about dynasties or ancient battles. He was looking into the future, sketching out a scenario that at the time seemed like the plot of a Hollywood thriller. He predicted Donald Trump would return to the White House. He predicted that return would trigger a catastrophic war with Iran. And most provocatively, he predicted that the United States and its closest ally, Israel, would lose that war. He called it the Iran trap.
The academic world largely ignored him. Social media algorithms paid him no mind. But then, the unthinkable began to happen. Prediction by prediction, his analysis started to crystallize into reality. By February 2026, the first two prophecies had come true with shocking accuracy. The classroom lecturer wasn't just a YouTuber with a following. He was suddenly being called China's Nostradamus. And now, as the dust settles on a conflict that has fundamentally redrawn the map of the Middle East, we are left staring at the stunning realization that his most dangerous prediction has also come to pass.
We are witnessing the end of an era. The narrative of American military invincibility, the assumption that Israeli intelligence is unassailable, the belief that the Islamic Republic of Iran could be surgically removed from the world stage, all of these pillars have crumbled. What happened was not a simple battlefield defeat. It was a strategic catastrophe that left Israel more vulnerable than it has been in its brief history, and left the United States scrambling for an exit that looks less like peace and more like surrender. This is the story of how America quietly accepted Iran's end game, and how Israel never saw it coming.
Part one. The genesis of a trap.
To understand how we arrived at this point, we have to go back to the motivations that pushed Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu into this conflict. According to Zheng Su Qin's analysis, the war wasn't just about nuclear centrifuges or missile ranges. It was about the convergence of three unstoppable forces.
First, there is the Israel lobby, specifically powerful forces like AIPAC, who have long viewed the Iranian regime as an existential threat that must be dismantled, not contained. For Prime Minister Netanyahu, the war wasn't a strategic option. It was a theological necessity. He framed the strikes as creating the optimal conditions to collapse the Iranian government, to give the Iranian people the chance to remove it. He genuinely believed that if you decapitated the head of the snake, the body would wither. The decapitation strike, the assassination of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and his top commanders, was supposed to trigger a chaotic collapse.
Second, there are the geopolitical ambitions of Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states. For decades, they have viewed Iran's influence in Yemen, Iraq, and Syria as a direct threat. They were willing to support a war that would permanently their rival and eliminate the Houthi threat on their border. They saw this as a chance to end the era of Iranian proxy warfare.
Third, and perhaps most critically, is the American addiction to empire. As Jiang noted in his lectures, America is currently addicted to empire because empire symbolizes easy money. All the money must flow through America. The petrodollar system, the global oil trade conducted in US dollars, is the lifeblood of American economic hegemony. A rival power challenging that system or threatening the oil routes through the Strait of Hormuz is an economic death sentence. Trump, a dealmaker, saw the war as a way to not only obliterate the nuclear program, which he claimed he had done in June 2025, but also to reestablish dominance over global energy markets. He faced immense pressure from Israel, Saudi Arabia, and his own administration to strike.
But, here is the fatal flaw that Jiang highlighted and that history is now proving correct. These three actors, Israel, Saudi Arabia, and the US, all had different end games. Israel wanted to destroy the regime and engage in a campaign of regime change. Saudi Arabia wanted to neutralize a rival. The United States wanted a deal. And as we now know, those incompatible objectives turned into a strategic suicide pact.
Part two, the terrain of defeat.
In his 2024 lecture, Jiang Xuechin warned his students about the boots on the ground. He argued that the Iranian military was not designed to fight a 21st century war of showmanship. It was designed to survive. Iran's greatest weapon is its geography. The country is a fortress of rugged mountainous terrain. It is a landscape that chews up conventional armies and spits them out. Jiang compared a potential US invasion of Iran to the Athenian invasion of Sicily in 415 BCE, where an overconfident superpower sailed into a trap and was annihilated. He also pointed to the lessons of Vietnam and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. If American forces entered Iran, they would become hostages, not soldiers, unable to mass forces, protect supply lines, or retreat. Conquering and holding a country the size of Iran with a population of 88 million people would require the impossible, an occupying force of 3 to 4 million soldiers, a number the US military, with its declining recruitment and outsourced manufacturing, simply does not possess.
This was the trap. The initial air strikes would be devastating. They would destroy command centers, air defense systems, and nuclear facilities. They would be a spectacular display of American power, but it would be the easy win that breeds fatal arrogance. The same arrogance Hitler displayed when he invaded the Soviet Union or the same overconfidence the US had when it entered Vietnam. Once the territory was violated, Iran would shift to a strategy of asymmetric attrition. However, the trap was not just physical, it was economic and psychological. Iran had been preparing for this war for 20 years. Through its proxies, Hezbollah, Hamas, the Houthis, and through exercises like the simulated 12-day war in June 2025, the Iranian military had meticulously analyzed American and Israeli tactics. They knew the enemy's strike capabilities, their flight times, their radar gaps, and they knew that America's Achilles' heel isn't the military, it's the economy.
Part three, the Strait of Hormuz.
The economic sword Jang is adamant about one point. Iran can the Western world in a single move by closing the Strait of Hormuz. This is not a military move, it is an economic nuclear option. Imagine a world where 20% of the global oil supply is cut off overnight. India gets 60% of its oil through that Strait, China 40%, and Japan a staggering 75%. The global economy would run out of oil within 8 to 9 months. The cost of goods would skyrocket. Food supplies would diminish. The US imports 80% of its food leading to inflation, riots, and complete economic collapse.
This is precisely what happened. Iran didn't just fire missiles into the desert, they targeted critical infrastructure. During the 2026 war, more than 80% of all projectiles fired by Iran in the first 10 days were directed at the Gulf states hitting water desalination plants in the UAE, energy facilities in Kuwait, and disrupting maritime traffic in the Strait. They didn't care if they hit a US base or a Saudi palace. They aimed to the economic confidence of the entire region. The Gulf states, which had built their economic models on stability and tourism, were suddenly looking at paralyzed infrastructure and terrified investors.
This is where the true power of Iran's strategy becomes apparent. The US military had aircraft carriers and advanced fighters, but what they didn't have was a way to stop a $50,000 drone from hitting a multi-million dollar water treatment plant. The cost of defending against cheap, low-tech attacks was bankrupting the American arsenal. The US quickly depleted its interceptors, revealing a military designed for show of force, not prolonged attrition. The initial demands for unconditional surrender transformed into a scramble for a ceasefire.
Part four, the decapitation that didn't work.
Let's pivot to Israel. For decades, Israel has boasted of its unparalleled intelligence capabilities. It has penetrated the IRGC, the nuclear program, and the inner circle of the supreme leader. The Israeli security establishment reads Iran through the lens of regime survival. They understand that the Islamic Republic's primary objective is to stay in power. Their belief was that if you remove the central pillar, the supreme leader, the entire house will collapse. This theory was put to the ultimate test.
On February 28th, 2026, the Israeli Air Force executed a spectacular decapitation strike, killing supreme leader Ali Khamenei and seven senior defense and intelligence officials. Weeks later, they assassinated Ali Larijani, the secretary of Iran's Supreme National Security Council, the man widely believed to be running the country. The world expected chaos. They expected a succession crisis. Instead, the Islamic Republic simply reconstituted itself. Within 10 days of Khamenei's death, under the pressure of direct IRGC threats, the Assembly of Experts convened and selected his son, Mojtaba Khamenei, as the new supreme leader.
In his first public statement, Mojtaba didn't surrender. He vowed to continue the war, to keep the strait closed, and to maintain the values of the revolution. He was more radical, and many believe more willing to break for a nuclear weapon than his father was. This is the genius of the Iranian state. As political scientist Hussein Banai explains, "The Iran that the US and Israel fight is not a dictatorship dependent on one man. It is an architecture of overlapping power centers. The IRGC, the Basij, the judiciary, the Guardian Council, designed with deliberate redundancy. The goal is to ensure the destruction of any single node cannot bring the whole system down. The supreme leader was not a king, he was a security manager. By killing the father, they simply installed a more hardline son, supported by a military that was now even more desperate to protect the regime. Israel's decapitation strategy had failed."
Part five, The Strategic Adrift.
"The tragedy of this war, as outlined by analysts at Foreign Affairs and the IISS, is that the US and Israel were fighting the same war for fundamentally different reasons. This created a strategic drift that Tehran was able to exploit. Trump's theory of the case was a deal. He wanted to use military force as a credible demonstration of power to bring the Iranians back to the negotiating table. He compared it to ousting Nicolas Maduro in Venezuela. He believed that if he destroyed the nuclear program and killed the leader, they would eventually produce a leader more willing to negotiate. He literally wanted to be involved in selecting Iran's next leader. This is a classic misreading of a religious revolution. Unlike Venezuela, where leaders are secular power brokers, the IRGC's devotion to the regime is religious. You cannot replace Ayatollah Khomeini with a US-friendly technocrat. Netanyahu's theory of the case was destruction. He didn't want to deal with the Islamic Republic. He wanted the Islamic Republic to cease to exist. Israel's relentless targeting of any credible Iranian interlocutor threatened to foreclose the diplomatic space that Trump's deal-making needed. In effect, the two allies were pulling in opposite directions. Israel's assassinations made it impossible for Trump to find a partner to negotiate with. Trump's periodic signals of openness to a deal undermined Israel's strategy of maximum pressure, giving Tehran a reason to wait out the storm rather than surrender. Iran, watching this split from the sidelines, realized that the partnership between its enemies would not hold. The result was a war that was operationally coordinated but strategically adrift."
Part six, the catastrophic capitulation.
And that brings us to the present day. The war has ended, but it has ended on Iran's terms. The deal that Trump was forced to accept is, in the words of the editor of the Times of Israel, a catastrophic capitulation. What did the US and Israel accomplish? They did not achieve regime change. The government in Tehran is more hardline and emboldened than before. They did not eliminate the missile threat. The agreement does nothing to address Iran's missile arsenal or its support for Hezbollah and the Houthis. And the existential nuclear threat, the primary reason for the war, was left for a later stage of negotiations, meaning it is effectively on the table. Worse, the US is forced to retreat from the proximity of Iran within 30 days, allowing Iran to claim victory and boast that it chased the US military out of the region. Meanwhile, Israel is being handcuffed, forced to withdraw from Lebanon, and restricted from using military pressure against Hezbollah. This is a complete reversal of Israel's war aims. As one former Israeli national security advisor put it, Iran came out stronger. They stood up to the US, the global superpower. This is an Iranian victory. And what about the economic pressure? The sanctions relief and unfrozen assets going to Tehran could total hundreds of billions of dollars, funding the very proxies and missile programs Israel was trying to destroy. The US, desperate to lower oil prices and open the Strait of Hormuz, has essentially paid Iran to stop shooting.
Part seven, the isolation of Israel.
Israel has now moved from being perceived as the new regional hegemon to being looked at as a liability. Prime Minister Netanyahu is facing a political crisis at home. He is stuck between a rock and a hard place, criticized by his far-right allies for signing a deal that is a disaster, and criticized by the left for starting the war in the first place. The relationship with the United States has fractured. Trump, frustrated with Netanyahu's intransigence and his continued strikes in Lebanon, has belittled him publicly, saying he should use a softer touch, and calling him a very small partner. For a country that relies entirely on US military support and diplomatic cover, to have the American president openly mock you is a disaster. Analysts like Robert Kagan have warned that this is the most devastating blow to Israel's security in its history. Iran will emerge from the conflict many times stronger and more influential. It will exercise leverage with dozens of nations, all of whom have an acute interest in keeping Iran happy to keep the oil flowing. Israel will emerge more isolated than at any time in its history, and not least from its only reliable protector, the United States.
Conclusion, the hubris of empires.
The West got a reality check in this conflict. There was a fundamental assumption that the United States could topple any government it desired through sheer military might, that it could walk into a country, install a new leader, and establish a new world order. Professor Jiang Xueqin, whether he is a Nostradamus or merely a brilliant student of history, understood that such beliefs are the beginning of the end for empires. The Athenian arrogance in Sicily, the Nazi overconfidence in the Soviet Union, the American hubris in Vietnam, Jiang saw the pattern and pointed out that Iran was specifically designed to force that pattern to repeat. The Islamic Republic's survival imperative was so deeply embedded in its institutional architecture, and so intertwined with its economic leverage over the Strait of Hormuz, that any strategy short of total dissolution would leave the threat intact, and actually make it worse.
America has quietly accepted Iran's end game. They are no longer fighting for regime change. They are fighting for a decent exit. And as they retreat, they leave behind a region where Iran is the dominant power broker, a region where Israel is looking over its shoulder, and a world where the American empire looks less like a global leader and more like a fragile giant forced to pay tribute to the past. In the coming months, the war won't be fought with fighter jets or aircraft. It will be fought in the halls of power, in the diplomatic backrooms, and in the economic struggles of the global oil trade. The nature of this war has changed forever, and Israel, blindsided by the shift, is only just beginning to realize the magnitude of its loss. What we must ask ourselves is, is history truly cyclical, or can we learn from these mistakes? As Professor Jiang reminded his students in 2024, "If you think you are God, you get into a lot of trouble." In this new multipolar world, that is a lesson both Washington and Jerusalem will need to learn the hard way.