Iran Kills US Gulf Hegemony. Irreversible Power Shift | Dr. Arta Moeini & Lasha Kasradze

## Peace chatter and US setbacks What emerges from this exchange is a portrait of a war whose early tactical successes have become strategic liabilities for the United States and its partners. The conversation contends that initial airstrikes and targeted killings—while devastating on a human level—failed to produce the political outcomes their planners anticipated. Rather than decapitating a fragile personalist regime and triggering a quick collapse, the strikes appear to have reinforced the very system they intended to undo. The discussion places particular emphasis on the misreading of Iran as a fragile, leader-centric state that could be toppled with decapitation. That assumption, it argues, ignored the country’s institutional depth and prompted a cascade of consequences the U.S.–Israeli axis is still struggling to manage. The video also points to signs of political embarrassment and operational strain in the U.S. approach. Reports of high-level resignations and public warnings from military figures are read as indicators of internal disagreement and miscalculation. The conversation highlights the logistical pinch experienced by U.S. forces—limitations in available munitions, the return of supplied weapons by regional partners, and a dawning recognition that the kind of campaign many advocated would require far greater commitment, perhaps including boots on the ground. Against this backdrop, any offered “peace terms” to Tehran look less like triumph and more like damage-control. The overarching message is that the United States, despite battlefield firepower, has found itself boxed in by a strategic environment it underestimated. ## Iranian state and social resilience A central theme in the discussion is the resilience of Iran’s political order—rooted not in personality but in layered institutions. The conversation insists that the Islamic Republic is better understood as a modern, totalizing state with multiple redundancies: security organs, religious institutions, economic foundations and social networks that interlock to sustain the system. This institutional thickness, the discussion suggests, made the regime far less susceptible to the “Venezuela option” thinking or simple decapitation narratives. Killing or removing a single leader did not equate to unmaking the state. The exchange further explores how social heterogeneity has shaped resilience. Iran’s society is portrayed as a mosaic—cosmopolitan, secularized urban classes living alongside deeply religious communities—so domestic fractures do exist. But those fractures do not translate easily into state collapse. Instead, the conversation argues, the regime’s long project of politicizing large swaths of society and establishing bureaucratic reach has produced a kind of social-institutional immunity. Even if public anger surfaces, the apparatus of the state—security services, economic networks, and religious legitimation—can absorb shocks, reframe events as martyrdom, and mobilize nationalist and religious sentiment in ways that consolidate, rather than undermine, authority. ## Symmetrical war and strategic strain One of the more consequential ideas put forward is that the conflict has moved toward a form of symmetrical attrition that erodes traditional asymmetries between a high-tech military power and a geographically embedded adversary. Iran’s use of ballistic missiles, drones, and maritime disruption has incrementally exposed limits in U.S. and allied air defenses and logistics. Over time, persistent saturation attacks and targeted strikes on critical nodes—radars, ports, tanker traffic—create dilemmas not easily solved by superior platforms alone. The conversation frames this as a deliberate Iranian strategy: to overwhelm interceptors, strain the supply chain of missile defense, and deploy leverage by threatening global energy routes. That dynamic produces strategic effects that outweigh specific battlefield outcomes. Control—or at least credible disruption—of the Strait of Hormuz and asymmetric pressure on shipping lanes translate into bargaining power. The conversation notes that even with material damage, Iran has managed to keep its economy functioning enough to export hydrocarbons and petrochemicals in ways previously constrained by secondary sanctions. In short, the hostilities have not simply inflicted damage; they have shifted the leverage calculus in the Gulf, elevating Iran’s ability to punish and negotiate. For the United States and its partners, the problem is not merely tactical attrition but the cumulative political cost of a prolonged, grinding war whose endgame is unclear. ## End of unipolar order A broader geopolitical claim threaded through the exchange is that this crisis accelerates a structural shift away from U.S. dominance in critical regions. The conversation frames American inability to translate military superiority into durable political outcomes as symptomatic of a declining unipolar moment. When a major regional power can impose costs on global energy markets, sustain institutional continuity under attack, and reopen commercial relationships despite sanctions, the old assumptions about deterrence and dominance look increasingly brittle. This is not only about military limits; it is also about political will and international legitimacy. The discussants emphasize that external actors—states in Asia and elsewhere—are now willing to engage economically with Tehran in ways that erode the effectiveness of U.S. coercion. At the same time, the costs borne by allied states—naval escorts, insurance rate spikes, disrupted supply chains—create pressure for recalibration. The conversation suggests the cumulative effect is an irreversible rebalancing: a multipolar or at least a contested regional order where Washington’s unchallenged primacy in the Gulf is no longer a given. If sustained, this reordering will compel strategic adaptations from all actors that have hitherto relied on American control of the maritime commons and energy security. ## Lessons for allies and Georgia From the vantage point of smaller states and regional allies, the exchange offers practical and political lessons. One lesson is the limits of dependence on external security guarantees when those guarantors are themselves distracted or constrained. Allies must reckon with the possibility that the United States may be unable or unwilling to provide the level of intervention previously assumed. The conversation recommends that medium and small powers diversify their options: invest in resilience, decentralize critical infrastructure, and cultivate flexible diplomatic relationships to hedge against sudden strategic shocks. Turning to the South Caucasus, the discussion reads the reverberations of the Gulf conflict through a local lens. For countries like Georgia, the takeaways are acute. The conversation argues that states on the periphery should not over-invest in zero-sum alignments; instead, they should cultivate pragmatic neutrality, deepen local security capacities, and build economic linkages that do not tie them irrevocably to a single patron. Political elites in such countries, the discussants warn, must prepare for spillover dynamics—sanctions, refugee flows, energy market volatility—and avoid being swept into conflicts not of their making. The advice is pragmatic: bolster civil defense, maintain flexible diplomacy, and engage regional institutions to mitigate risk while preserving strategic autonomy. ## Final forecasts and Trump options Toward the close of the exchange, the conversation turns to plausible endgames and the political calculus shaping them. One forecast is that the United States will find itself pressured into either escalating dramatically—which risks open-ended occupation and massive costs—or seeking some negotiated pause that preserves face while ceding some leverage to Tehran. The interlocutors underscore that presidential politics matters: domestic politi

Iran Kills US Gulf Hegemony. Irreversible Shift | Moeini & Kasradze The scale of the strategic mistake the US made in attacking Iran is slowly becoming apparent, and it is leading to ever more desperate moves by the US-Israeli axis. Dr. Arta Moeini, who is intimately familiar with both the Iranian and US political systems, explains the extent of these miscalculations and their impact on the regional balance of power, while Lasha Kasradze examines the facts on the ground as they relate to the South Caucasus. Links: Institute for Peace and Diplomacy: https://peacediplomacy.org 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: 33 Khamenei killing and war outlook 00:06:19 Peace chatter and US setbacks 00:16:24 Iranian state and social resilience 00:24:19 Symmetrical war and strategic strain 00:30:03 End of unipolar order 00:40:00 Lessons for allies and Georgia 00:52:08 Final forecasts and Trump options #Pascal Welcome back, everybody, to Neutrality Studies. I’m joined today by my two wonderful colleagues, Dr. Arta Moeni from the Institute for Peace and Diplomacy, and Lascha Casarace, who’s been here with me on the channel many times—I’m pretty sure you know him. He’s from Georgia, and Arta, you’re working from North America. Welcome to both of you. #Lasha Kasradze Thank you very much. Good to see you again. #Pascal Twice, twice today—yes, in succession. And Arta, I’d like to start with you. You wrote a piece recently published on *UnHerd* entitled *The Dangerous Martyrdom of Khamenei: His Death Will Strengthen Tehran.* Could you give us a bit of your analysis of that piece, and more generally, where we stand today, on this March 25th, in the U.S.–Israel–Iran war? #Arta Moeini Yeah, thank you. So the piece was written basically the day after Khamenei was hit and died, so it was very fresh at the time. My interpretation was that this was going to strengthen the regime—that it would turn him into a martyr, a kind of new saint—and that this would recharge and refuel the Iranian ideological capital for the regime. In fact, it would actually strengthen the Islamic Republic -- 1 of 17 -- rather than make it topple. I think the Americans especially had this idea of the “Venezuela option,” that they were going to decapitate the leadership, and after that, they’d get someone friendly who would accept the U.S. red lines, meaning Iran would join the U.S. bloc and everything would be great. And that’s how it was sold to President Trump—that basically, you’re going to have a great win and you’re going to end this pariah status that we’ve had over the past 47 years. And so it’s all going to be great. Obviously, that’s not how it turned out, mainly because the Islamic Republic is, or has been, a modern total state. It’s been a systematic entity. It’s had parallelisms, multiple redundancies, a kind of horizontal layering—which means there are various institutions that, you know, work through the system and the government. There’s the IRGC, which is a very powerful entity, and then there are other organizations like the bonyads, the foundations connected with the economy and the political system. So you have a multilayered system, and it's not a personalistic one. The United States and the leadership thought they were going to have either a Venezuela situation or something like a Saddam situation—basically, that they’d remove what they called the Ayatollah, right? One person, and then the regime would collapse. They expected a regime collapse or at least a regime change. But they weren’t prepared for a long, attritional war—and instead, that’s what they got. Iran had already threatened beforehand to trigger a regional escalation. And it was able to immediately hit all the U.S. bases in the region. It didn’t really spare any place, and its strategy was clear from the very beginning. It did what it had promised to do. It started hitting the radars, trying to blind the U.S. and Israeli defenses and overwhelm them—not overnight, but over time—by basically throwing a lot of stuff at them, knowing full well that their interceptors would hit their limits and eventually run out. So now, after two or three weeks—now in the fourth week—they had calculated, based on the 12-day war, that the United States and Israel would have serious problems dealing with Iranian ballistic missiles and drones. And the last thing I would say—and then we can have a discussion about it—is that this is not a new war. This is the continuation of the 12-day war. It was paused and then reignited. The Iranians were always expecting this to come back. They expected the war to resume and had no illusions about that. But once the war happened, even though it looked great for America tactically—they were able to do whatever they wanted, hit whatever sites they wanted, and maintain corridors of air superiority—in practice, strategically speaking, the actual gains from the war have been a Pyrrhic victory, if anything, for the United States. It’s actually given strategic leverage to Iran, to Tehran, granting it things it didn’t have before. Control over the Strait of Hormuz, disruption to the global economy, as well as to global energy networks—that’s what it’s going to use as leverage. And for the first time ever, it’s actually able to sell things—sell petrochemical products as well as its oil and gas—to many countries without having to worry about secondary sanctions, with the United States sort of pausing or terminating them. So it’ -- 2 of 17 -- s been a very costly but strategically beneficial war for Iran. So it’s a very questionable, very reckless decision to wage this war of choice. It’s not in America’s interest. We went into it because of Israel, because of Benjamin Netanyahu’s personal agenda. And it may very well tank the Trump presidency. #Pascal Yeah, I mean, if success is measured by how many little schoolgirls you’re able to kill, then yes, the United States definitely got the upper hand there. But I think the point is very important. Strategically, what has the United States gained so far? And as we speak on this March 25th—I read, sorry, it’s your March 24th in the evening, actually—I read that apparently there’s chatter in the New York Times that the Trump administration has sent peace terms, or something like that, to Iran. Lashad, have you read anything about that? What’s your take on how the war is currently developing for the United States? Hey, very brief intermission because I was recently banned from YouTube. And although I’m back, this can happen anytime again. So please consider subscribing not only here, but to my mailing list on Substack—that’s pascallottaz.substack.com. The link’s going to be in the description below. And now, back to the video. #Lasha Kasradze Well, I’ve been listening and reading as much as I can on this. But I think every serious researcher, or even anyone just superficially observing, is denying that Trump ever had this conversation with the current Iranian leadership. I think Arthur would agree on his Truth Social. I think he completely made this up—that he told them he was giving them some leeway. Basically, Tehran denied that this conversation ever took place. But to your broader question, it’s really about where the United States stands. We can go back to what the Chief of Staff, General Kane, said and warned. Not to mention, only a few days ago, some high-level intelligence officials resigned—Cox, I think, or Fox, I can’t recall the gentleman’s name now—who said that this war was a disaster for the United States, or was going to be a disaster. And that the nuclear program, I think, was already eliminated, and that Iran, this time around, would not just let this bombardment go. There were warnings coming out of the intelligence community to the administration that this was going to be a quagmire for America. Hence, they resigned—or he resigned. And again, General Kane’s advice was ignored. And now Trump finds himself in this situation. If you recall, about a week or so ago, South Korea and Japan were asked to give back some weapons. Just imagine—this is tremendous, and very embarrassing—because there was a scarcity of the military arsenal that the United States needs. And so now the question is, this time around, are they going to finish the job, whatever that means? Every expert, anybody, any article you read says that if you’re going to dismember Iran, if you’re going to blow up the entire state, you have to have boots on the ground. And is America politically in the mood to do this? I highly doubt it. -- 3 of 17 -- And Trump, I think, knows this. Trump understands this. Again, I want to give the benefit of the doubt to the president of the United States, because had it not been for certain powers, he probably would have avoided this war, right? Let's recall his disposition toward Putin and the whole Ukraine saga. Instinctively, this is not a president who wants these wars—although that argument is becoming weaker and weaker as each day and week passes. So I think this is another headache. And what is America getting out of it exactly? Are there strategies out there? You know, I was just thinking, just to follow up on Arta’s point briefly, this is what strategy is. I mean, Edward Luttwak was talking about this in his famous books—how you have to go to great lengths even though you’re experiencing enormous damage in terms of your sovereignty, your domestic infrastructure, your economy. There’s some upper hand that Iran has, that strategic upper hand—the Strait of Hormuz, et cetera—that it can use even though it’s facing this much superior military power coming after it. So I think, strategically, Iran, ironically, has an upper hand. The United States, even though the Ayatollah is gone and they’ve wiped out the theocratic elite in Iran, has not been able to change the regime, let alone conquer the country. #Pascal Actually, I'm not sure about that. I mean, Arta—the Ayatollah is there, right? I mean, the Ayatollah is dead, long live the Ayatollah. So, institutionally, this kind of works. And on the other hand... no, it's... yeah, yeah. #Arta Moeini No, you're absolutely right. I mean, if you want to finish your point—but, you know, ultimately, the theocratic elites, yes, they decapitated one person, Khamenei Senior, but everybody else is still there. And the irony of all this is that they got a person to become the supreme leader who, in my view, would never have become the supreme leader without the strikes. And, you know, the son of Khamenei, who is now the supreme leader, was somehow the only surviving member—at least according to Iranian media reports—the only surviving member of the strike on the compound. I mean, that in itself, for the Iranians, is quite a miracle. You know, it's like God has told us who the next in line is. Now, that might be a kind of propaganda, but it's also important because, even strategically, militarily, he was basically the chief of staff for Khamenei, in a way. He knew everything. And he was never a public figure—quite shy, actually. I'm talking about Mojtaba Khamenei, the son of Ali Khamenei, who was killed, assassinated. And he’s always been behind the scenes. It appears that he’s running the country again from behind the scenes, but he was always the IRGC’s choice. He was very close to the IRGC. He’s quite hardened— known as a hardliner. He might be pragmatic in certain regards, but in terms of Iranian defense, ballistic missiles, even the nuclear file, he’s known as quite the hardliner, and he was the choice of the IRGC. So there was an -- 4 of 17 -- internal struggle, in fact, between the more military-security–affiliated people in Iran and the more theocratic—let’s say, the more clerical—establishment in Iran. They