US Plays With Total War Insanity | Patrick Henningsen

The footage and remarks captured in the recent conversation with Patrick Henningsen sketch a troubling continuum: a pattern of manufactured unrest, mediated narrative control, and incremental escalation that can be read as the apparatus of modern geopolitical warfare. What emerges is not merely episodic crisis but a playbook — economic pressure, covert provocations, information operations, and opportunistic political maneuvering — that repeatedly produces conditions conducive to larger military interventions. The stakes are global: if the method is consistent, the outcome may be systemic instability rather than isolated conflict. ## Protests and street evidence The conversation foregrounds a stark disjuncture between Western depictions of popular uprisings and the on-the-ground realities recorded by independent observers. Rather than an organic, overwhelmingly peaceful mass movement toppled by a repressive regime, what was witnessed was a far more complex tableau: genuine economic grievances that were rapidly co-opted, scenes of extreme violence, and targeted attacks on unarmed police and emergency services. Burned buses, charred ambulances, and evidence of officers immolated in situ complicate the simple narrative of nonviolent dissent. Equally instructive are the visible demonstrations of public solidarity for the state during national events, suggesting that Western media portrayals of a fracturing society are flat-footed at best and deliberately misleading at worst. The contrast between localized pockets of unrest and nationwide loyalty reveals how quickly isolated episodes can be amplified into universal claims of regime collapse when they serve strategic narratives. This distortion is not merely rhetorical; it forms the moral scaffolding for external actors seeking to justify escalation. ## Riot playbook and covert tactics The conversation reconstructs a familiar operational anatomy of color revolutions and regime-change campaigns: the tactical insertion of trained provocateurs, snipers, and agitators to catalyze violence and provoke disproportionate responses from state security forces. These techniques — snipers firing into crowds, agents using protesters as shields, and the deliberate creation of fatal incidents — are not accidental. They are modular components of an escalation toolkit that has been deployed in multiple theatres with predictable effects. What makes these tactics especially effective is their ability to convert legitimate civic discontent into spectacles of chaos. Once violence is visible, sympathy can be redirected from grievances to punitive action; images of blood and burned vehicles become the currency of intervention. The sequence matters: engineer disorder, capture dramatic evidence, circulate it through sympathetic channels, and then claim moral imperative. That sequence has a track record, and the conversation suggests that it was replicated with adaptations rather than invented anew. ## Media alignment and propaganda A throughline in the exchange is the role of mainstream media as an accelerant of conflict narratives. Journalistic coverage often smooths over complexity, privileging dramatic frames that fit preexisting policy preferences. This is compounded by a professional class of reporters and producers whose institutional incentives — access, scoops, advertiser and ownership pressures — can align with strategic messaging. At times, even outlet-by-outlet inconsistencies produce a net effect: an apparent consensus that convinces domestic audiences a particular course is necessary. Yet the conversation also detects cracks in that consensus. Some experienced correspondents and outlets have shown greater skepticism in recent reporting, and episodic leaks or divergent coverage hint at fissures within the information ecosystem. Those fissures can be double-edged: they may limit monolithic propaganda, but they can also be weaponized strategically to pre-empt covert operations or to manipulate public perception of dissent within elite circles. The media, in short, is not merely an instrument of statecraft — it is a contested terrain in which both overt and clandestine actors vie to define reality. ## Plans chaos and US interests One of the most consequential themes is the interpretation of chaos as strategy rather than failure. The conversation outlines two plausible logics: either the current trajectory is an escalation of a long-held, coherent objective (the perennial aim of some neocon circles to reshape regional order), or it is the emergent outcome of repeated, opportunistic attempts (plans A, B, C) that cumulatively destabilize the region. Both readings converge on the same point: disorder produces strategic benefits for powerful external actors. Viewed through a geopolitical lens, regional chaos serves multiple U.S. interests. It restricts the consolidation of rival powers, disrupts energy corridors, and preserves a dependency landscape favorable to external influence. Whether deliberate or tolerantly permissive, the creation of uncertainty functions as leverage. The conversation suggests that Washington’s handiwork — whether through economic pressure, proxy arming, or informational operations — has contributed to a combustible environment that can be tapped for geopolitical gain. ## Lobby power and cabinet picks The exchange also draws attention to the domestic levers that channel foreign policy outcomes: lobbyists, vested interests, and personnel decisions. Cabinet selections and intelligence appointments are not neutral bureaucratic choices; they reflect and reinforce strategic predilections. Powerful lobbies and think tanks shape narratives and policy options long before a vote is taken or a missile launched, cultivating access and normalizing particular courses of action. This interplay of domestic politics and foreign policy becomes especially salient when administration changes or intra-elite splits occur. Resignations, public backpedaling by lawmakers, and fractures within intelligence circles can either slow down or accelerate interventionist impulses. The conversation implies that the visible drama overseas is mirrored by backstage political jockeying at home, where the alignment between lobby power and executive decision-making can be decisive. ## Covert influence and sovereignty Beneath public spectacle lies an architecture of covert influence aimed at undermining sovereign decision-making. The transcript sketches how intelligence services, private contractors, and allied partners can coordinate operations — from signal exploitation to proxy support — that erode a nation’s agency over its internal affairs. The evidence of external facilitation in protests, the use of satellite communications to coordinate unrest, and the pre-positioning of local proxies all point to a deliberate attenuation of sovereignty. The consequences extend beyond the immediate target state. When outside actors normalize the use of clandestine means to influence political outcomes, they create precedents that can be reciprocated or exported. The degradation of international norms around nonintervention and the erosion of legal prohibitions against covert action contribute to a more permissive environment for destabilization. For smaller states, the calculus of survival increasingly includes anticipating and defending against multifaceted, deniable interference. ## Trump posts and market shocks Finally, the conversation underscores the symbolic and material effects of high-profile signals — public statements, social media posts, and leaks — that can move markets and shape policy trajectories. Cryptic presidential messages or revealing journalistic disclosures can affect commodity prices, investor behavior, and the tempo of diplomatic responses. In an interconnected world, rhetorical escalations are often priced and traded in real time, producing immediate economic consequences that feed back into political cal

US Plays With Total War Insanity | Patrick Henningsen The Iran War is a multi-decade history of step-by-step escalation to get to total war and the peak of the strategy is around the corner. Today I'm speak with Patrick Henningsen, American journalist, geopolitical analyst, and founder of 21st Century Wire. Links: Patrick Henningsen on 21st Century Wire: https://21stcenturywire.com Patrick Henningsen on Substack: https://patrickhenningsen. substack.com Watch the SUNDAY WIRE show on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com /@21stCenturyWireTV Follow Patirck's daily short reports on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com /21wire_media/ Neutrality Studies substack: https://pascallottaz.substack.com (Opt in for Academic Section from your profile settings: https://pascallottaz.substack.com/s/academic) Merch & Donations: https://neutralitystudies-shop.fourthwall.com Timestamps: 00:00:00 Introduction 00:00: 17 Iran trip before the war 00:04:20 Protests and street evidence 00:08:23 Riot playbook and covert tactics 00:14:27 Media alignment and propaganda 00:20:17 Plans chaos and US interests 00:25:22 Lobby power and cabinet picks 00:40:31 Covert influence and sovereignty 00:52:17 Trump posts and market shocks #Pascal Welcome back, everybody, to Neutrality Studies. Today we’re joined by Patrick Henningsen, an American journalist, geopolitical analyst, and founder of the independent news and analysis website 21st Century Wire. Patrick, welcome. #Patrick Henningsen My pleasure. Great to be with you, Pascal. #Pascal Thank you so much for taking the time, because you were actually in Iran very recently, right? About a week before the war broke out, you came back to the US and Europe. Can you tell us a little bit about why you went there and what you saw? You also said that having a war with Iran would be a huge mistake. Could you tell us how you came to that assessment? #Patrick Henningsen Yeah, well, thanks, Pascal. Let's start with that. I was there a couple of weeks before the bombs dropped. I left Iran just over a week before the latest round of hostilities resumed. My main reason for going was that I knew there was a small window of opportunity. It could have been attacked at -- 1 of 18 -- any moment, and the U.S. was positioning its naval assets in the Arabian Sea and the Gulf of Oman, while threats were being made by the Trump administration. At the same time, they were engaged in these nuclear negotiations which, if history is any guide, could possibly be used as cover for a sneak attack again. The Iranians understood that, but they were obliged to go through the process. But we all knew—and I knew—that if I went later, it might be too late. The airports might be closed, or the airport might not even be there, full stop. There was also the risk of being stranded and not being able to leave if a major war started. And not only that, Pascal, but I realized back in December and January that the narrative of these protests—supposedly this massacre of 30,000 democratic, peaceful protesters—was so important because I knew from previous wars that this would be used as the moral cause, the moral justification for the war, whether half the population in America was against it or not. That background moral argument is really important. They did the same thing with Saddam Hussein. They did the same thing with Muammar Gaddafi. They've done the same thing in Yugoslavia and Syria—especially under Trump. You have to remember, Pascal, that when Trump got elected, the swing vote, the independent vote, included a lot of anti-war populists, conservatives. That was part of the MAGA coalition. And, you know, whether those people were against the war or for the war—and I’ll include centrist Democrats in there as well—there were anti-war populists, Democrats, liberals who were against interventions, not just against Trump but against war in general. But still, in America, you have to understand the psychology here: people will say, “I’m against the war, but this is an evil regime, and it’s probably better if there’s regime change. The world’s a better place if Ayatollah Khamenei is dead.” And they did the same with Saddam Hussein. This was the British argument: “Well, we regret the war, but,” as Tony Blair said, “you can’t argue the world’s not a better place without Saddam in it.” So that narrative is really important. I needed to know whether that actually happened or not. I was fortunate enough to get access to some of the evidence from the police there and to look at the damage done by these rioters and agent provocateurs. They burned Iranian unarmed police. The riot police don’t carry weapons—like many riot police in Europe, they’re not armed. They carry shields, billy clubs, and helmets. Many of them were burned alive. I counted eight from the evidence I saw. It was really violent, these riots. Right. #Pascal Sorry, I just—I kind of didn’t... Of course, there were the riots. But when I asked you about what you saw there, I forgot that you went right after the riots and before the war, in that window, that period of time. So, you were trying to investigate the riots—was that the primary motivation to go? #Patrick Henningsen That, and also just to see what society was like, because there were two things. We were told the country was on the verge of collapse, that people were rising up against the government, that the -- 2 of 18 -- country was fractured, and that this massive massacre had taken place. So those were the two things. The first thing—I arrived on the national day, which is like the equivalent of their Independence Day—and I went straight to the center of Tehran. There were about two million people out on the streets supporting the government, all knowing they could be bombed at any minute because the threats were already being issued by the United States. And so I saw that massive support, that massive solidarity for the government, for the supreme leader. And you knew at that point that at least that part of the story in the Western narrative was totally fabricated. Later, we had time to look at burned buses, burned EMS vehicles, firemen and nurses who were killed. Hundreds of police were murdered. A lot of innocent bystanders were killed as well. Some police were burned alive—petrol poured on them and then set on fire by these so‑called peaceful protesters who came on the back of legitimate economic protests in December. These were the merchant class, the traders, and so forth, protesting because of sanctions and the collapse in the currency that was engineered from the outside, by the way. #Pascal Scott Besant actually boasted about it. He openly said, “We collapsed the Iranian economy. Ha, ha, ha.” It’s not even a secret. #Patrick Henningsen Yeah, and we can get back to that discussion later if you want, which is this economic warfare formula that I've studied over the years. That same formula was carried out against Syria, against Venezuela, against Russia—not successfully—but also against, obviously, Cuba and some of these other countries, permanently sanctioned. North Korea, permanently sanctioned countries. Same thing happened here. You know, for, I think, 10 euros, it would be the equivalent of 1.5 million Iranian rials. So just to go have lunch, you’d need one and a half million rials. I mean, walking around with a stack of bills like this. And I saw the same thing happen in Syria. I saw the attempt at this in Lebanon as well, because they did try to engineer a currency crash right before COVID, or right after COVID, or right around the COVID period in Lebanon. So the same thing happened here. Anyway, that was a legitimate protest, and it was quickly co‑opted and hijacked—very much by outside forces. The evidence suggests that. I also saw in Syria, during the Arab Spring, how they had a way of ginning up mobs, partly by distributing drugs. So this was something I’d seen before in Syria and knew about there, and I saw the same thing here. We spoke to the police about it; there were accusations along those lines. So, I mean, this is a formula. If you look at the Maidan in February 2014, what happened there is very similar. The same type of operation was attempted in Tehran—but with no success, because the society, as I learned, is totally different in Iran. It’s very resilient, and it’s not what people in the West think it is. #Pascal -- 3 of 18 -- How does that formula work? Because, okay, I see how you can, from the outside, create some form of social crisis. I mean, with the Maidan, it was ratcheted up—allegations of corruption and mismanagement. And of course, things aren’t going well, right? If a country is under a lot of stress, especially if the United States and Europe put their minds to it, to put it under stress, then yes, things won’t go well. But then, to get from just people going into the streets to actually organizing a protest is a difficult thing, right? Because you need to get the word out, you need to organize things, you need banners, you need timing, you need people to carry the banners and all that. This all costs money and so on, and it’s an organizational effort. But then, on top of that, getting violence to happen—how do you do that? I mean, with the Maidan, we know that these forces were talking to the ultra-right-wing nationalist extremists. Some call them Nazis; I like to call them ultra- right-wing, but whatever. And then they start shooting. But with Iran, how did they manage to get the violence in? Because I think societies in Europe and the U.S. are just not used to this type of organized destruction through protests. #Patrick Henningsen Well, normally you have outside provocateurs—key people coming in. They’re very skilled, very well trained. We saw this in Homs in the early days of the Syrian destabilization, where you’d have snipers firing into the crowd, hitting both protesters and police, or using the crowd as human shields to fire at police and get the police to fire back. This was also done in Maidan and elsewhere. Evidence suggests—and there’s peer‑reviewed work on this; I might have even interviewed the author of that recent book about these provocateurs and snipers—that gunmen were brought in to create the exchange of fire. And then it’s the image from the media of the police firing back that the West values most in shaping the narrative. This has been done many, many times. It’s not something new—it’s like the next level of a color revolution. So if you really want to escalate a color revolution—the Revolution of the Roses, the Orange Revolution, or whatever—and make it turn violent, there are specific tactics that get deployed. And these were definitely deployed. It was like chapter and verse from other similar revolutions, case studies we’ve looked at in other countries. #Pascal But actually, you need to fool a lot of people, right? Uh, you give money to them and tell them, “Let’ s go have a peaceful protest.” And in the end, you start shooting them in the back to get the bloodbath you need, right? That’s part and parcel of it, I suppose. #Patrick Henningsen It's very sinister. Yeah. That's it—it's chaos you want. You want confusion. And then the U.S. and Israel tried to capitalize on this by making public calls at that time for the people to rise up and take -- 4 of 18 -- over their institutions. I mean, imagine Donald Trump telling you to rise up and take over the institutions—Netanyahu was doing the same. And then we had admissions on the Israeli and American side that their intelligence services were active on the ground. And I probably think the British were as well, because there’s nothing going on there that the British wouldn’t also be involved in alongside the Americans. So they have pedigree in that sense. So it’s not surprising. But the real surprise was that Iran was able to recover, maintain order, and control the situation—and also intercept the Starlink terminals that were sent in. They shut down the internet, and tha