Joel Waldman

"You close it and you won't have a country." President Trump said he told Iranian officials about the Strait of Hormuz. "You won't even make it back to your fu*king country." "We may take over the Strait, if we have to," Trump said. "If they don't make a deal, we'll collect tolls." Trump added the U.S. could become the "Guardian Angel" of the Strait, and take 20% of the oil.

Trump is literally cooking the Islamic regime from the inside, and today we witnessed yet another public crack in the system. Most people are completely fixated on this MoU, treating it as the main story. In reality, it is largely just a pretext, a tool being used to advance much deeper games. The real game playing out is something else entirely, and people should be looking elsewhere to understand what’s truly happening. Few days ago, one faction of the regime’s gangsters has been faking letters supposedly from Mojtaba Khamenei to claim that negotiations with the US were personally approved by him. Others quickly learned the trick and started playing the same game. Today, one of the rivals claimed they have access to Mojtaba’s confidential letters with the current negotiating team. It turned into a full-blown public shitshow. Honestly, it was both ridiculous and entertaining. The pigs are turning on each other. Let me lay out the full picture for you. Khamenei, to coup-proof his rule, massively empowered the IRGC and turned it into a powerful state-within-a-state. But then he became afraid of his own creation, so he deliberately prevented power from concentrating in any single hand and allowed different competing cartels to form inside the IRGC. Most of the top figures in these cartels are deeply corrupt, ideology is just a facade for them. At the same time, he personally cultivated a loyal base from the poorest and most broken layers of society: fanatical, powerless people who were extremely loyal to him personally and would attack anyone on his command like rabid dogs. After his death, the IRGC clearly took full control of the country, but they are far from united. They’re now openly fighting each other for the real seat of power. Trump, with his deal-making style and the huge carrot of money, especially after the naval blockade pushed them into real poverty and begging, has brilliantly pushed these corrupt elements forward. This has created open clashes with the more ideological factions. One of these hardliner cartels belongs to Saeed Jalili and includes figures like the cleric Mahmoud Nabavian, a sitting MP. Today, Nabavian went on state TV and announced he wanted to reveal Mojtaba Khamenei’s confidential letters criticizing the negotiating team and the current deal. He started reading them live, but they cut him off mid-sentence. The network later called it a serious violation, announced legal action, and even one of the directors resigned and was rebuked. This was their last desperate attempt to stop the negotiating team from reaching Geneva. But it failed. Just hours later, the other side, Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf and his crew, still made it to Geneva. A few days ago, they even put the approval of this Memorandum of Understanding to a vote in the Supreme National Security Council. Everyone approved it except one person, and many believe that lone dissenter was Saeed Jalili, from the same cartel as Nabavian. Meanwhile, another IRGC cartel, Khatam al-Anbiya Headquarters, tried to sabotage the surrenderist negotiators’ trip to Geneva by claiming they had closed the Strait of Hormuz. CENTCOM immediately clapped back and said the Strait is wide open (and ships are moving freely). Perfect own-goal. Trump knows exactly what he’s doing. He understands these animals better than anyone. He’s weakening the regime from within, without firing a single shot. Just as he predicted, as soon as the corrupt ones smelled real money, they sold out the entire regime and its ideology without hesitation. Let the man cook, trust the process.

Hijab is a symbol of pride, not oppression.