Pepe Escobar
This is a Structured War of Attrition. And the screenplay has been written in Tehran.
Iran's Decentralized Mosaic Defense - the official denomination - keeps being tweaked 24/7: that's the IRGC's long-term strategy of a death by a thousand cuts designed to bleed the Empire of Chaos dry.
Let's wade through the interconnected canals permeating the unconstitutional, unwinnable, strategically catastrophic Empire of Chaos-built swamp.
Iran's mosaic resilience and long-term strategy; the temptation for that ghastly death cult in West Asia to go nuclear; the approaching, inexorable Interceptor Hell; China's relentless drive to ditch the old order (hoarding gold, dumping dollars); the BRICS's progress in creating a parallel financial system; the collapse of American vassals, in several latitudes: all that is accelerating a radical system reset.
And then, there's Vladimir Putin, just casually, almost like an afterthought, annoncing there may not be any Russian gas to be sold to the EU after all:
"Maybe it would make more sense for us to stop supplying gas to the EU ourselves and move to those new markets, and establish ourselves there (...) Again, I want to stress: there's no political motive here. But if they're going to close the market to us in a month or two anyway, maybe it's better to leave now and focus on countries that are reliable partners. That said, this isn't a decision. I'm just thinking out loud. I'll ask the government to look into it together with our companies."
The pitiful Bratwurst Chancellor asked permission from neo-Caligula for Germany to buy Russian oil. He got it. But there may be nothing to buy. This is an energy war, and the EU once again does not even qualify as a homeless beggar. No Qatar gas, no Russian oil and gas. Now go back to your NATO-obsessed Forever War.
The bombing of the GCC-petrodollar pipeline
Immediately after the decapitation strike last Saturday on Supreme Leader Ayatollah Kahamenei, Iran switched to decentralised command and control and cells with a 4-level deep succession plan, launching relentless volleys of older, slower missiles and sacrificial drones to consume Patriot batteries and THAAD systems in industrial scale. With that move, Iran changed the rules of the game alread on Day One of the war.
Anyone with and IQ over room temperature knows that to use 3 Patriots - $9.6 million combined cost - to defend against a single Iranian sacrificial ballistic missile is completely unsustainable.
So it's no wonder that it took only 4 days of the war of the Epstein Syndicate on Iran for the global financial system to go completely bonkers. $3.2 trillion evaporated in a matter of 4 days - and counting.
The Strait of Hormuz for all practical purposes is closed - except for Russian and Chinese vessels. At least 20% of global oil needs are not moving anywhere. Qatar's entire LNG production is off line - with no resumption in sight. Iraq's 2nd larget oil field has been shut down.
And still, volatile neo-Caligula vociferates that his war that was supposed to last only a weekend may drag for five weeks, and other industrial-military Pentagon clowns are talking about all the way to September.
By lasering on US interests across the GCC as legitimate targets - and not only military bases - Iran set a time bomb. This is a direct attack on the petrodollar (to the silent delight of Beijing). Tehran certainly gamed that the chain reaction would be instantaneous - all the way to panic as preamble to a new, generalized Great Depression.
No oil, plus no meaningful GCC defense against Iran's missiles/drones means no more torrents of Wall Street fake money. The AI bubble, after all, is being financed by GCC "investments". The new Pipeineistan bombing is not of the Nord Stream kind: it's the bombing of the GCC-petrodollar pipeline.
All that is happening in record time as Iran's decentralized mosaic is fine-tuned. For instance, an array of deadly anti-ship missiles - which have not been used yet - are coordinated by the IRGC, the navy, the army, and aerospace forces. Same for drones.
Even if ballistic missile attacks are not keeping up with the initial, breakneck pace, they are more than enough to keep steadily hammering US military bases (whose air defenses are already largely depleted); plunge the death cult in West Asia and the GCC in total economic hell; and scare to death every nook and cranny of "global markets".
And for all the chest-thumping in Washington by the oily, clownish Secretary of Forever Wars, dozens of Iranian underground military fortresses loaded with tens of thousands of missiles and equipment remain invisible - and untouchable.
Bankrupting the Empire of Chaos business model
This is a desperate war to save the petrodollar. An energy powerhouse like Iran trading outside the petrodollar is the ultimate anathema, especially because the process is coupled with the BRICS drive towards setting up independent payment systems.
The immense structural fragility of the GCC - Iran's neighbors - makes them an ideal prey. After all, their entire business model is built on the petrodollar in exchange for a Mafioso US "protection", which has vanished in the sand in the first four days of the war.
Cue to Iran's Asymmetric Warfare Machine bankrupting the Empire of Chaos business model in real time.
The definitive exhibit is the implosion of the Dubai bling bling dream - much more than the devastation imposed on US 5th Fleet-related interests in Bahrain and even a ballistic missile destroying the $1.1 billion AN/FPS-132 phased array radar at Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar.
A coordinated, in progress GCC crack up, already inevitable, eventually means the end of petrodollar recycling, opening the game to the petroyuan or energy trade in a basket of BRICS currencies.
"Checkmate" comes from the Persian "Shah Mat", meaning "the king is helpless". Well, Emperor neo-Caligula may not know he's naked, because he's incapable of playing chess. But he's scared enough to start desperately looking for a way out.
The Astrakhan-Tehran air corridor
Now for the role of Russia. The focus should be on the Astrakhan-Tehran air corridor, crammed with secret cargo flights. The Chkalovsk military airfield near Astrakhan is the key logistical hub of the corridor: cargoes such as the Il-76MD, the An-124 and the Tu-0204-300C are shuttling back and forth covered with special material that reduces radar visibility and hides them from civilian tracking sytems.
Their cargo arrives in Mehrabad airport in Tehran (no wonder it was bombed by Israel), Pyam and Shahid Behesthi in Isfahan. Multimodal logistics also apply, as some cargo is delivered via the Caspian.
Everything is coordinated by the 988th Military Logistics Brigade from Astrakhan. Cargo contents include components for air defense systems; radar guidance modules; hydraulic systems for missile launchers; long-range detection radar modules.
On top of it, under a secret protocol, Russia is supplying Iran with state of the art electronic warfare, including an export version of the Krasukha-4IR, capable of jamming the radar systems of US drones.
Add to it that Iran will soon deploy full-fledged S-400 batteries - which will allow it to control as much as 70% of Iranian airspace.
How the economic-political stress will become unbearable
And now for the role of Turkiye.
Only two months ago the MIT - Turkish intel - directly warned the IRGC that Kurdish fighters were trying to cross from Iraq into Iran. Let that sink in: a full NATO member passing time-sensitive operational intelligence to the IRGC just as the Epstein Syndicate was getting ready for war.
There are at least 15 million Kurds living inside Iran. The last thing Ankara wants is empowered Kurds in Iran. For all of Sultan Erdogan's insatiable hedging, he knows he can't frontally antagonize Tehran. He needs to balance a cornucopia of interests mixing NATO; the energy corridor with Russia - but also the energy corridor to the West via the BTC pipeleine; and the role of western anchor to the Middle Corridor to China.
That's why that alleged Iranian ballistic missile allegedly pointing to Turkiye and shot by NATO was not a big deal: Foreign Ministers Fidan (Turkiye) and Aragchi (Iran) discussed it like adults. There's impenetrable fog of war about it: the missile might have been sent to cripple the BTC oil terminal and subsequent drones launched on Georgia designed to cripple the weakest spot of the BTC.
None of that is confirmed - and will be impossible to confirm. That might as well have been a false flag - even though Tehran may be quite interested to cut off 30% of Israel's oil supply.
The BTC will continue to be in play, as it weaves across Georgia carrying Azeri crude across the Caucasus to the Turkish Mediterranean coast. Bombing the BTC would fit the Iranian strategy of severing every energy corridor feeding the Epstein Syndicate and its acollites across the Gulf, the Caucasus and all the way to the Mediterranean.
Along the BTC, other logical Iranian moves would be to attack the Saudi East-West pipeline (it bypasses Hormuz); Iraq's offshore loading platforms in Iranian territorial waters that handle 3.5 million barrels a day; and the Abqaiq processing hub that handles the majority of Saudi crude before it reaches export terminals.
If Iran under extreme stress is forced to hit all of the above, there's no strategic petroleum reserve on the planet capable of covering the gap.
In this hellish interconnection of energy corridors, shipping lanes, global supply chains, maritime security and the oil price going out of control, only Pentagon clowns can possibly want to prolong the war until September. Asia, Europe, and every energy importer across the chessboard will be applying maximum pressure for any measure of de-escalation.
Iran's asymmetric strategy though remains immovable: expand the war horizontally, and stretch the timeline to the max to make the economic-political stress unbearable.
Translation: this is not a quick regime change stunt by a bunch of psychos. This is a Structured War of Attrition. And the screenplay has been written in Tehran.