The power brokers of the Yankee end of empire are the real leash holders at the end of the day. The question, as far as I can tell, is: what strategic calculus are they going to make if israel doesn’t want to bend the knee enough to match step with them?

They can threaten removal of support, or even carry it out in which case israel’s situation becomes even more precarious. If israel bends, they have to reign in their more rabid tendencies, which may require a forced change in the power status quo of israel. If israel refuses to bend, Trump of all people, world’s biggest narcissist, is not going to bow to their will. Especially not after the consequences of this war, which are forcing the empire to make concessions when it would normally go full speed ahead and not acquiesce a thing. I mean, if you look at the way the empire has acted in post-WWII, this seems unprecedented to me, the level of successful military resistance and the deal being pushed on it.

I don’t want to be overly optimistic, but to me it looks like Iran is essentially putting the US in a position where it has to choose: either force israel to be less rabid, or cut it loose. Either way is a loss for US dominance in the region and gives Iran, and the axis of resistance as a whole, more breathing room to build back its strength as a force of anti-imperialist in the world. Meanwhile, the US doesn’t seem to have the military power in this case to force a different outcome. Every time they push, Iran wrecks their military forces in the region all the more, sending a clear message that comprador states are taking on risk to be hosting the empire and sending a message to the empire that its weapons (some of which are hard to replace) can be destroyed when they hang out there.

So while I’m not exactly confident in israel’s ability to stop violating ceasefires, I am more confident in the idea that the narcissist in chief is not going to be pleased if the empire tries to make a strategic retreat and their rabid dog makes a fool of them and their negotiation efforts.

That said, it’s possible that the US is only negotiating for show while it plans more attacks, but Iran is of course going to be well aware of that possibility and make them hurt again if they do. And the capitalists looking at oil and markets and so on are going to be none too happy if this keeps going on and keeps stressing oil supplies to their limits.

I don’t have much faith in the MOU in achieving peace however I do think it’s the proper course for Iran. Mainly because the process of failed negotiations further alienates the reformists among the Iranian people, and makes it more likely their faction dwindles in influence. Although I guess my perspective is a bit more focused on the consequences of internal Iranian politics.

Was the western elite acting against its interest by supporting Rhodesia? People aren’t looking into the empire’s finances if they attribute this entirely to corruption of key figures in the US political system, as if it’s the governing body of the entire empire & not just a privatized facade. A lot of them just repeat Mearsheimer-inspirired international relations/poli sci which feigns ignorance of why the US acts against its national interest. We already know that the US govt acts in ruling class interest. Nations are not all mindless amoebas trying to swallow the others up. Somebody needs to actually put their body between the fiber optic drone & the settlement. The region needs to be kept cowed & deindustrialized, it’s a subimperialist dynamic. Rhodesia was so subimperialist at one point Samir Amin says itreachede his definition of a first world country.

They serve the westoid cult of liberalism well (taken to mean zero restrictions on capital if your country has a Whiteness Rating above 4, outside the institutions they create to redistribute the violence & inflatiom to the periphery). Imperialism needs colonialism to slice up the world before it can be stitched back together into something easier to manage, but it’s unwieldy enough to backfire this hard. The need to bring irrationally self-absorbed elites into a messianic death cult in order to even have a narrative to run with makes it pretty hard to 180⁰ this thing