Predictive History - The Story of "Civilization", "Secret History", "Game Theory" and more - Game Theory #11: The Law of Escalation

Episode Date: March 10, 2026

Game Theory #11: The Law of Escalation

We continue our analysis of the U.S.-Iran War. And in this war, there are three major questions that will determine the outcome of this war, as well as the world afterwards. Okay, these three questions are, number one, will the U.S. launch a ground invasion? So right now, the United States and Israel are primarily focused on a...

a air war striking Iran from a distance. In the past we would call this siege warfare. And as long as it remains an air war, the United States can choose to de-escalate and withdraw from the Middle East. They would lose this war, but the loss would not be catastrophic. Whereas if they choose to launch a ground invasion, it would escalate very quickly. quickly and they would be trapped in Iran for next five to ten years. It would be a catastrophe whether or not they win or lose. Because in order to fight a ground war, the United States would have to institute a national draft where a young man, as young as 18, would be forced to join the army and be sent

to fight in Iran. So that's the first big question for us. Will the United States send in ground troops? Remember, there's the idea of mission creep, where maybe in the beginning you're like, I'll send out a thousand troops to do a small mission. But then it doesn't go well, so you send in 2000, okay? It slowly creeps up.

It's what we call mission creep. And that's how the United States enrolled itself in Vienna. All right, so that's the first big question. Second big question is, will nuke nukes be used? There's a lot of concern online that Israel is repairing a nuclear strike on Iran because the Israeli don't like how the war is going and they want to reclaim the initiative. Nukes are a taboo in geopolitics. The Americans used them at the end of World War II and no one's

used them ever since. If Israel were to use tactical nuclear weapons, they would break this universal taboo and we might find ourselves in a nuclear pop-clips, okay? So it's a great concern that everyone has right now. And the third question is the Al-Axac Mosque. This is the third holiest site in the Islamic world. There's Mecca, there's Medina, and there's an Al-XA mosque. The Muslims believe that it is from the Aleksic Mosques in Jerusalem where Muhammad ascended to heaven. And the Jews believe that the Alexic Mos sits on the site of their temple, which is the house of God. So religious Jews, extremists want to destroy the Alexic Mos to rebuild the third temple. And if the religious dues, the extremists, destroy the Isaac Mos,

then the 2 billion Muslims in this world would be religiously obligated to go to war against Ishpiel. Okay? So these are the three big questions that will determine how this war will determine the future of the world. Okay. So in this class, I teach you game theory to make predictions about the future. So right now I'm going to make three predictions, and then I will show you my analysis as to how I make these predictions, okay? Now, what's important to understand is that these are only my guesses based on my analysis.

And whether or not they try not be correct will determine the validity of my analysis. I don't have inside information. I don't know more than you do. Okay? I'm just working out of public knowledge and doing game theory analysis. So according to game theory, this is yes. The United States will sit in ground troops.

According to game theory, this is no. And number three is yes. Okay? So what I'm going to do is my next two classes explaining to you my game theory analysis as to how I come to these conclusions. and we can watch how world events unfold. Now, I want you to understand something,

which is that for my theory to be valid, for my analysis to be valid, I have to be correct on all three, okay? If I miss one, then all my theory is wrong. I know there's not a concern from around the world that nukes will be used, and I'm 100% confident that nukes will not be. use at this time in this war and if I'm wrong I apologize to the world okay but

at the same time we'll all be dead anyway so it doesn't really matter all right okay all right so let me explain my analysis okay so remember today what I'm gonna do is do number one and number two explaining you why Israel will not use new war pens and why they will be a ground invasion and then next class I'll explain number three to you, okay? That's a plan for this week. All right. So to understand what's going on,

I need to do some basic geopolitical theory, okay? So in military affairs, in geopolitics, there's a concept called escalation ladder. Escalation ladder. Okay? The dominant theory is that whoever has excegen dominance has the most advantage. Okay, so what this means is, let's just say you and I get in a fight, okay? I have a knife.

You have a gun. Well, gun is more dominant than a knife. Therefore, you have a greater advantage over me, and therefore you should win. In theory, okay? And applied to this war in the Middle East, Israel, in the United States, has, you know, have exclusion dominance because they have nuclear weapons and Iran doesn't. Therefore, the United States and Israel

have a huge advantage over Iran. But what I will show you today is that this theory is incorrect. It actually doesn't work that way. So let's start off with a very simple example. Let's just say that two people get into a fight, okay? A and B. And how the escalation ladder will work is that maybe A and B run into each other.

And then A says, hey man, say sorry. And then B is like, it's not my fault. You say sorry, okay? So there's a conflict. It's usually a very small conflict. No one knows why and no one knows who's at the fault. So they start cursing each other. So the first step is a conflict.

Second step is they start cursing me. each other, right? Screw you, screw you. And then they might start pushing each other, right? Push, push. And then they hit each other, okay? Punch, punch, punch. And then they start the fight, and then one pulls on a knife,

and the other pulls on a gun. and then B shoots dead, A, fight over, right? So there are certain things that we need to keep in mind about this example. First of all, the fight is not contained in itself, okay? You cannot perceive this game as just one between A and B, who's physically stronger. There are other players involved as well.

Okay, so for example, there are spectators or friends. There's a crowd watching you, okay? This is important because there's also the police. Eventually the police will come, the government, and they'll ask people, hey, what happened, man? Whose fault was it? Right? And also, for people who are religious, there's also God, right?

If you die, you have to go up to heaven, and God's going to ask you, hey, man, how did you die? So you have to explain how you died. All right? So in other words, in this escalation ladder, there's three factors that you have to consider that drive people up this escalation ladder. These three factors are, of course, emotions. Second is power. And the third is reason or logic.

Okay? And what drives people up is adrenaline. In other words, it is impossible to skip the escalation ladder, right? You don't go from like, hey, screw you to like the guy pulling out a gun and shooting you, okay? You have to go step by step by step because adrenaline is rushing in your system. And this adrenaline, it's making you more angry, but it's also making you stronger and more resolved. And it's also telling you how to fight this battle. Okay?

And the thing to remember about this is this is really important is that it's not about how fast you climb up the escalation ladder, okay? If you get too angry and you overreact, then you are at fault, right? What you want to do is climb it up strategically, and that means you have to remain calm and controlled. Because if you remain calm and controlled, you have three advantages over your opponent.

The first is focus, second is clarity, and the third is, focus, you're clear and resolve, okay, sorry, resolve. Okay, what this means is that you know what you're doing, you have a strategy, you're clear about how to achieve your strategy and your goal, and you're determined to achieve it, okay? But in order to have all three, you have to remain calm, and therefore you need to control yourself

as you climb up this escalation ladder. Because remember, it's just not about, being your opponent. It's about justifying yourself to your friends, to the police, and to God as well. Because you might hit that person, he might go to hospital, and you've won the fight, but then you go to prison for 10 years, in which case, you've lost the fight. Okay? All right. So the main idea I want you to remember is this, and this is a law of escalation. This is a very important idea in my game theory model. Control is more important than dominance.

Control is more important than dominance. Why? Because control is the idea of calibration. Calibration means that you time or you structure or you strategize your response in a way that helps you achieve your strategic objective. You're not just going to plan. you're throwing a punch in a certain way

that allows you to defend yourself that strikes fair an opponent and also allows you to seem as the good guy among spectators. Okay, and then when the police come you can justify why you threw a punch in a certain way to the police so that you don't go to jail.

Okay? Alright, so another way of saying this is that calibration is ultimately about strategic flexibility And the idea of strategic flexibility is, in a fight, the person who has the most options, the person who has the most flexible strategy will usually win the fight. There's a lot of escalation. And I'll explain to you how this applies to the US-Iran war. Okay? All right. So before I actually talk about the war, what I want to do is do is, what I want to do is do a thought experiment to examine how we're going to understand what's going on between the United States and Iran. Okay? So let's do a thought experiment. And the thought experiment is this. Let's just say that there's a bully, okay? And he's the biggest guy in the school. And he has a gang, okay? These are his friends. And there's like maybe four of them.

And so what they do is they basically prey on everyone at the school, okay? And there's maybe 100 people at the school. Right. And so what they do is they make everyone in the cafeteria. Okay, if you want to go in the cafeteria and eat, you have to pay a tax. Maybe a dollar, who knows, okay? And the friends of the bully go collect the tax and then give him all the money, okay? And that is the structure of the school, where if you want to eat lunch in the cafeteria,

you have to pay a tax, and the bully's friends collect the money, and the bully shares the money amongst his gang, okay? Now, at first, people are okay with this system because they think that it's actually beneficial, because the bully is keeping the peace and order in the cafeteria, right? He's keeping everyone safe. So yeah, I pay a dollar, but it's not that much money. And we're all safe so that we can all enjoy our lunch in peace in the cafeteria, okay? But then what happens over time is that the bully gets more, more arrogant,

because he feels invincible. Everyone just obeys him. So he develops the idea of hubris. And the idea of hubris is that no one's, no one has a courage to challenge me. Everyone's afraid of me and therefore I can do what I want. So what does he do? Well, the first thing he does is that he charges more money from everyone, okay? So the tax goes up and so people are disgruntled about this.

Okay, they don't understand why they're paying more to the bully, okay? But knowing that, but what he will also do is pay less money to his friends so that he can have more money because he wants to buy a car or he wants to go to Paris for the summer. Okay? Does that make sense? Okay, so everyone's not happy about this, but this is the reality that they live in, and there's something they can do about it. And so people just put up with it.

One day, a new kid comes into the school, okay? new kid. And he doesn't really understand the rules of the game. He goes to cafeteria and he doesn't know he's supposed to pay a tax. Right? So the bully's friend comes over and says, hey man, where's a dollar? And he's like, what dollar? I just got in here. And he refuses to pay. And so what they decide to do is teach him a lesson by ostracizing him, by making him still alone by himself in the cafeteria. Okay, you have no friends because you don't know the rules. and you refuse to play along.

And the new kid is like, I don't care. I'm happy not having any friends. Okay? And so then the bully and his friends start to discuss, how can we get this new kid to play along? And so they decide what they're going to do is they're going to curse him. They're going to bully him, okay?

So the new kid goes to lunch and he's eating his lunch and the friends come down and start to curse him. He says, you're a wimp. Do you want to fight us? And what the new kid does is he just ignores these guys. And these guys are like, what's going on, man? Why is he afraid of us? And slowly what happens is that the other people, the other kids recognize that, wow, maybe it is possible to rebel against the bully.

Maybe it is possible not to pay these stupid taxes. And so they start talking to him secretly. They give him presents, they start to smile at him and say hi to him, okay? But the new kid just ignores everything, right? And then the friends are like, you know what? We don't actually benefit this much from this relationship anyway. Maybe if we appoint this new kid as the new bully, the new boss, he'll treat us better. And then you have other friends who are like, you know what, this bully, he's

He's fat, he's ugly. Maybe I should be the boss, okay? So just because a new kid comes in, doesn't know the rules, and he's willing to challenge the reality, challenge the assumptions, the values of this cafeteria, now there's dissent, now there's rebellion going on. Okay? And different people are talking to him and trying to form alliances with him.

But what he does, and it's really interesting, is that he just ignores everyone and keeps focused. And then one day, the bully's friend comes over and says, you know what, you're a whip. And the new kid finally says, I'm not afraid of you. Okay? And this friend goes back and tells his boss, hey, this new kid said, he's not afraid of you, man. What do you do about it? And the bully gets really angry and says, I'm going to go punch his face. Okay?

So the bully goes in front of New Kid and says, if you don't apologize, I'm going to punch you the face. New Kid's like, what did I do wrong? What should I apologize for? And the bully's kind of confused, so he goes away. Because he goes out next day and says, you're apologize now, man. New Kid's like, okay, for what? Tell me to apologize for what?

And this goes on for a long time, okay? And then eventually the bully gets so pissed off that he punches the new kid in the face, okay? So he started it. The new kid, he's hurt, but he decided to punch the bully back in the face, okay? And the bully's stronger, so he beats the bully up. So he beats up the new kid. But what's happened now is that everyone in the school has seen

that the bully is not that strong. Everyone's seen that the bully is actually pretty weak. And so they recognize that, hey, we stand alongside the new kid, we can beat the bully. All right? And eventually what happens is the bully is defeated. Doesn't make sense to you guys. All right. So certain things to understand is that, yes, the bully has escalation dominance because he's stronger and he's the biggest kid in the school.

He can beat up everyone. But what wins the fight is control. What wins the fight is collaboration, sorry, calibration, strategic flexibility. The fact that the new kid has many different options and he's picking the option that is most strategically advanced to him. Okay?

Now what you will notice from this example is the bully doesn't have that many options actually because he needs to maintain the idea of face or credibility, right? This is the essence of his power. The, his power lies on the fact that if you not listen to him, if you not obey him, he will come and beat the crap out of you, right? That's credibility.

And he doesn't, but the moment that you show that, it's actually not that big of a deal to be punched by him. He's not that strong. Then he loses all credibility, okay? Which means that he either retreats or he's forced to strike harder, to kill you, okay, to maintain its credibility. So another way of saying this is that by calibrating your movements strategically, you can manipulate the bully into self-destruction.

Doesn't make sense to you guys. All right? Any questions? Okay, so that's a theory. All right? So now what we're going to do is we're going to apply this theory, the law of escalation, to what's happening in the Middle East. We're going to do that by looking at the escalation ladders of both Iran and the United States.

All right. This is the US. This is Iran. So let's look at the escalation ladder. So the first United States does, of course, is something called decapitation. What is the capitation? reputation is like I just kill your leaders, you don't have any more leaders, and therefore

you don't know what to do and therefore you surrender, okay? That's the first thing the US did. It didn't work. So now what the United States is doing is attacking military targets, air defense, and military bases, okay? That's the second step. And the idea is that you beat the crap of the military so they surrender. But that didn't work either, okay? So then what you do, Next, of course, is economic embargo, where you basically prevent and from trading with the world, right? Prevent Iran from selling oil to China, basically, by blockading the seas. And the idea here is that if the government doesn't have any money paid soldiers, its soldiers

will just not fight, okay? But that's not working either. So then what you do, of course, is you attack civil. civilian infrastructure, okay? Which is probably water and oil. So you may have seen the news that this really attacked an oilty pot in Tehran. And now if you look at a picture of Tehran,

it's all black, okay? And this is a war crime or this goes against international law because you're attacking civilians. But that's what you do when you feel as though you need to apply more pressure to win this one. war okay and so you can keep on escalating and then what you do is that now the now that you've attacked the civilians and they still refuse to surrender what you do now is you use secret weapons single weapons might be advanced missiles that no one's ever

seen before okay and the and the point of these secret weapons is to scare the crowd out of people and say you see how dominant we are okay if that's doesn't work, then what you do next is use biological and chemical weapons. Okay? Biochemical weapons. Doesn't work either, then guys, nuclear weapons. All right? So what's really important for us to understand is that you must follow this escalation ladder if you are to use nuclear weapons.

And the reality is that, first of all, we have not seen secret weapons. We have not seen biochemical weapons, and therefore, nuclear weapons nuclear weapons comes later, okay? Unless I see biochemical weapons being used, I refuse to believe that nuclear weapons is on the table, okay? Alright, so I think we are here, which is the beginning of attacks on civilian infrastructure. But already we're seeing arguments

in the American political system against the use of weapons against civilians, okay? The reason why is that if you do this, Okay? If you destroy civil infrastructure, you unite the people behind the government. Because the idea is that you use air strikes to split apart the government and the people. And you want the people to overflow the government for you, okay? That's the idea here.

So we are at this stage, meaning that we have a long way to go before we hit nuclear weapons, okay? All right, so now let's look at the Iranian escalation ladder. So what's happening is that in the beginning, Iran does two major things, okay? The first is attack military targets, okay? And what they're basically targeting are U.S. radar systems and air defenses. Because once these two things go, then Iran can attack whatever it wants, okay? It's also closed the Strait of Hormuz. And by closing the Strait of Hormuz, you put pressure on the economies of the GCC,

as well as East Asia. The hope is that by blockading the economies, the GCC, UAE, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Qatar, Kuwait, will put pressure on Donald Trump to end this war as quickly as possible. Also, East Asia receives most of its oil from the GCC from the Shelf of Hamos, right? So China gets about 40% of its oil, Japan gets 75%. That's a lot of oil. So the hope is that these countries will put pressure on the United States to end this war soon as possible, okay?

So that is the Iranian strategy. But if they're forced to go up the escalation ladder, what will happen is this. If you attack their economy, they will attack your economy. as well, okay, with missiles, basically targeting oil fields. If you attack their civilian infrastructure, they will attack your civilian infrastructure as well. And what is the main weakness in these GCC countries? The salination plants, okay? Decalination plants.

And that's it, okay? That's the extent of the Iranian escalation ladder. Because it doesn't have nuclear weapons. It doesn't have biochemical weapons. It doesn't have intercontinental missiles that they can target the United States with. So as you can see, oh, the US and Israel have escalation dominance because it can go way up higher in the escalation ladder than Iran. But that's the wrong way to understand this.

Because if you look at their strategies, Iran has much more flexibility, much more calibrated than the United States, okay? When the United States attacks you, it's pretty blunt. But look, if I close all the Shredoomu's, I can be strategic in how I close the Shriver-Humuz. For example, if you're a Chinese ship, I let you pass. For example, if you are a GCC nation and you want to bribe me, if you want to pay me attacks, I let you pass as well.

If you're a DCC nation and you're like, you know what, forget the United States, I won't be your friend of Iran, I let you pass as well. You understand? By closing on the struggle moves, it creates a calibration strategy. It allows Iran to selectively and strategically apply pressure to the friends of the United States so that they become the friends of Iran. Same thing with these drone strikes against oil fields and military targets, right?

If you attack me, I attack you with drones. If you don't attack me, then I don't attack you. Okay? So in other words, okay, this is really important idea. The US and Iran have different military decision trees. Okay, all right? So let me explain how. Because the United States and Israel,

they're just attacking Iran, okay? And they attack with air power, so that's very blunt, right? Okay, so you go from one step to the next, to the next, to the next, okay? This is this, the classic escalation ladder. Iran is not like this. Their decision tree is different, okay? Because their strategy is to force the United States to admit defeat and retreat from the GCC.

Okay, to close the military base in the Middle East so that Iran has control over the strategic moves, and therefore it can control all-world trade. All right, so that's a strategy. So this strategy means that you have different options, all right? Your options are attack Israel, military targets, civilian targets, Tel Aviv, okay? All right, so I don't spend too much time on this, but as you can see, if you think about it, Iran can be much more selective in its targeting. than the United States and Israel.

And therefore, the options that it has, it is much more diverse, which gives Iran escalation control over the situation. Do you guys understand this? All right. So let's look at why Iran has advantages over the escalation ladder, okay?

US, Iran. The first major difference is that Iran is active, whereas the US is passive. Another thing that is, go back to the bully example where the bully has to maintain credibility. He has to show that he's more powerful than the other kids, right? So if you provoke him, he has no choice in the matter but to hit you, okay? But you, the new kid, can choose whether or not to provoke him or not. You can choose the timing of when to provoke him. Therefore, you're active.

The second big difference is that Iran has a clear strategy. It knows what it wants to accomplish and it knows how to accomplish what it wants. Remember what Iran wants is control the survival moves. and the United States out of the Middle East. That's what it wants to do, and it's calibrating its attacks in a certain way to achieve this end goal. And it's working out very well for Iran, okay? The United States, on the other hand,

doesn't know what it wants. It wants to destroy Iran. What does that mean, okay? Destroy. It could mean regime change. It could mean economy collapses. It could mean the civilian population starves, okay? It can mean anything.

But because there's so much, ambiguity, so much confusion about what it means, it confused this military strategy. And the last thing is, of course, is that Iran is flexible and the United States is inflexible. Okay? So by studying the escalation ladder, we discover that Iran has four more advantages

than the United States. Okay? All right, so what, So what does this mean? All right. It means that Iran will probably win this war ultimately. But it has to be major changes to a society in order to win this war. All right.

So remember, to win a fight, you have to have three things. Focus, clarity, and resolve. You have to know what your purpose is. You have to know how to achieve it. and you have to be determined to achieve it, okay? So what does this mean for the Middle East? What does it mean for Iran? First thing is focus means unity,

meaning that you have to unite your population, which means basically crushing all the scent. We can't argue anymore. We have to unify for a purpose, okay? The second thing, clarity, is to censor people. censorship. And we're already seeing that in Israel where

you're not allowed to film military strikes. If a drone comes and attacks Tel Aviv in Israel, you cannot film that and put it on social media. The government will come and arrest you. Same thing in Dubai. You cannot show Dubai being attacked.

So massive censorship going on. And resolve just means militarization, where the Middle East moves towards total war. Total war just means that every citizen now is recruited into the war effort. It just means that the entire economy

is geared towards war. Okay? And one last point I'll make is this. What we need to understand about the escalation ladder is that as it moves up, we have to remember that this war is being fought multidimensionally.

Okay? What does that mean? It means that the military is just one dimension. But there are four major dimensions. There are others, but let's focus on four major dimensions, okay? The first major dimension is narrative. Narrative is basically world opinion. Second, it's political.

Political just means the relationship of nations to each other, the relationship of the government to the people, political. The third dimension is economical, economic, and the fourth is military. And what's really important to understand is that the military dimension is probably the least important. There are other dimensions that are much more important. Therefore, these four factors determine how the United States

and Iran move up the escalation ladder, okay? Because your purpose is to control the narrative and justify why you're doing what you're doing. Political means you have to maintain good relations with other states, right? So as the United States is fighting this war against Iran, the United States is still talking to China, United States is still talking to Russia, okay? So that discussion, the political discussion,

determines the contours of this fight. Economic means that as this fight is still happening, nations are still trading with each other, and that factors into how the means to how the military is fought. Okay? Does that make sense? So I know this is very complicated,

but you need understand how complicated war is. It's not as simple as saying, you know what, let's nuke that guy. It doesn't work that way. There are a lot of constraints. There's a lot of factors, a lot of stakeholders involved

to constrain the use of nukes. Okay? All right. All right. So let's now discuss ground troops. All right? The first question we look at is, will ground troops be used?

And the answer, unfortunately, is yes, they have to be used. And it has to do with how the military works, okay? Of how wars are thought. Basically, when you fight a war, you have to have a correct cost pyramid. And the most simple cause pyramid, okay, is this. Infantry, soldiers, okay? bottom why because it's the cheapest what's above them armor okay artillery tanks they're more expensive to produce you need more resources then you need more time then you have naval

right then you have ear it doesn't make sense this is the cost pyramid and cost pyramid just is this question of like how much energy how much time how much resources do you need to produce a certain product It costs you very little to produce a soldier, but it costs you a lot to produce an airplane. This is important because wars are usually wars of attrition, meaning that you have to put all your resources into win the war, okay? So this is just production capacity. And this is the most standard model that you have

of a cost pyramid for a military war. Does it make sense, guys? The problem is that the United States have an inverse pyramid, okay? Meaning that ear is what's dominant. Then naval, then armor, then soldiers. You can't fight a war like this. I mean, the moment you choose to fight a war like this,

you've lost a war. Because you either take out the country in like two days or you scoot over. because you cannot replenish your forces. Now, I know this is hard to understand, but 1991, the Persian Gulf War, 2003, the Iraq War, these are not real wars, okay?

Because the Americans were so dominant and Iraq was so weak that was basically a video game. All right? It was these pilots flying around, this bombing everything, okay? It's like gas and tanks just running over the Iraqi army.

Those were just video games. But this Iran thing is a real war. And therefore, you cannot fight a war like this. If you want to win this war, the only thing you can do is return to a realistic cost pyramid. You don't have a choice in the matter. Right? Because again, your cheapest product are soldiers. Right?

And the most expensive are airplanes. You cannot afford to use an airplane in order to save a life of a soldier. Eventually, this cost-benefit analysis will blow up on you. Okay? Doesn't make sense, guys. All right. So if the United States wants to win this war, then it has no choice but to use ground troops, to use soldiers as the main force of its military.

Any questions so far? All right. Okay. Now the question then is, will the United States use ground troops? I already said that if United States is to win this war, it has no choice but to use ground troops. But will the United States use ground troops? And a lot is determined by the game theory strategies of the different players, okay? So let's look at the four major players in this war.

You have U.S., you have Israel. You have Saudi Arabia and you have Iran. So the United States and Iran, they're pretty easy to understand. What the United States wants to do is destroy Iran. Why? Because if you're going to destroy Iran, the United States would have complete control over Middle East oil and it would control global trade for the Strait of Hamos. And therefore the United States can maintain its empire, okay?

So a really simple objective, let's destroy Iran. We don't care how, we don't care why, let's just go do it. Iran has another strategy which is control, straight-of-oom-moose, destroy Sancom. Sancom is basically the American military in the Middle East, called Central Command, okay? So those are two major military objectives of Iran. And we get understand why.

Because if Sancom is destroyed, Iran has complete control over the Middle East. Now, Dubai, now, Oman, Bahrain, Kuwait have to pay taxes to Iran. Now Iran, the new kid is on the bully of the Middle East, right? Now it's a hegemon. That is the political objective of this war. Okay?

Israel is a bit more complicated. All right? For Israel, oh sorry, sorry, sorry, what other thing is humble Israel? That's the other thing because even if you defeat the United States, you start to deal with Israel, okay? And Israel is the great military power of the Middle East. So you want to humble them, you want to weaken them.

You can't destroy Israel because Israel has nuclear weapons, right? You piss off Israel, those nooks start flying. You don't want that. All right, so those are the three major political objectives for Iran. Control the server moves, destroy Sancom, and humble Israel. If you are Israel, actually for you, the strategy is different. What you want to do is this. You want to destroy Sencom and destroy Iran.

Those are your objectives. Why? Because if you destroy both the United States and you destroy Iran, then you are the sole hegemon in the Middle East, okay? Also destroy the GCC, destroy Saudi Arabia as well. Why? Because once Saudi Arabia is destroyed,

all its resources belong to you, okay? And this creates something called the Greater Israel Project, which is what we will discuss next class. But as you can see, that's really important, is that even the United States and Israel are allies, their auto strategy is different. Their objectives are different. In fact, they're in conflict, okay?

Then you have Saudi Arabia. What does Saudi Arabia want to do? Well, destroy Iran, because if you destroy Iran, you have complete control of the shoulder who moves. Then you can be a bully, okay? But you also want to destroy the U.S., and you want to humble Israel.

Does that make sense? Right? So by understanding how each player perceives the game, we can now understand how they will go about their strategy, right? So the United States just wants to destroy Iran. But as you can see, Israel, Saudi Arabia, and Iran all want to destroy the United States. And how do you do that?

You do that by force the United States into a long ground war. Right? Therefore, if you're Israel, you don't want to use nukes. Why? Because nukes would end the war too quickly. You want to drag this war out as long as possible to force the United States to setting ground troops. And then you're like, well, why doesn't the United States use nuclear weapons? And the answer is already told you.

The escalation ladder. It needs to justify itself to the people, okay? When you do anything, all right, when you do anything, sorry, when you do anything, you have to worry about certain factors, okay? You have to worry about troop morale. Your soldiers have to believe that they are fighting for a good cause, okay? You have to worry about public opinion. You have to make sure that the world is on your side.

You have to worry about politics, political will. You have to make sure the people are unified and you have to worry about everything. enemy morale. You don't want to piss out the person's, your enemy so much that they go into an extreme, they jump the escalation ladder to extreme beyond your control. It doesn't make sense. Okay, so as you can see, war is extremely complicated. It's not just about weaponry. It's not just about resources. It's ultimately about controlling the narrative, controlling the political landscape, Okay, marshalling the resources in a proper way that is strategically beneficial. Does that make sense to you guys?

Okay, so, yeah, so we just answered two questions. Will the United States use ground troops? Yes, it will, because Iran-Saharia and Israel will work together to force a ground invasion, even though the United States doesn't want to do so. But unfortunately, the United States doesn't have a clear Korean strategy. passive, therefore it can be manipulated into sending a ground invasion, okay? And the second question is, will Israel and the United States use nuclear weapons? And the answer is no, because it's not in their best interest to use nuclear weapons.

Okay, Israel wants the United States to lose this war. And that means a long war that destroys the American political will to fight any more foreign wars. If America loses, Israel becomes the dominant power in the Middle East. Okay? And so the last question is the Al-Axic Mosque. And we'll answer that next class on Thursday. Any questions?

Will Americans take over Iran like what they did to Venezuela? Like they captured their president? Okay, look, the strategy in the beginning was to do a Venezuela in Iran. Meaning you go in, you kill a leader, a new leader emerges, and go to you, and surrender to you because you're too powerful. Okay? But Venezuela and Iran are two very different countries. The Venezuela elite is very pro-American, meaning that their wealth, their children,

their family is stored in America. Therefore, the Venezuelan elite have a vested interest in negotiating a deal with America to protect their own interests. But for 40 plus years, America has sanctioned the Iranian elite. And Iran has become poor and angry and disgruntled because of that. Therefore, they lose nothing by fighting you. So even though you've killed the supreme leader, you've killed many of their leaders, in fact, elite themselves are unified in opposing you okay does that make sense okay any more

questions yeah um Alan so I in fact have a question about the motivation of US to involve in this war like as you said that US want to control the oil or the oil so like they must destroy Iran but I think this is like a little bit confusing because I think US know that this war is really highly risk and it can potentially even like destroy the whole systems. So why US risk the risk of like whole system collapsing to like control the oil that Iran had? Okay, all right. So this is the key question that everyone's arguing about. Quite honestly, we're going to argue this for the rest of eternity, okay?

We're going to argue this for eternity because no one knows and there's never going to be a clear answer. In fact, there are multiple possibilities, okay? What I'm going to do today is offer you the most simple explanation. And the next class, I will offer you a much more complicated explanation, okay? But a simple explanation is this. Again, this goes back to military doctrine, how the United States military works, okay? And the military doctrine is prevent the heartland from arising, right? So the United States is here. This is Europe, this is Russia, this is Iran, India, China, China, Japan, this is Middle East, and this Africa.

All right, so the American military doctrine is this. The greatest threat to American power is the Heartland unifying, okay? Why? Because if the Heartland unifies, it can trade by itself through railways. But America is primarily a naval power. Therefore, it requires people to trade by sea.

And so its strategy is to make sure there's never any cohesion in the Heartland, Either by making sure that no great power arises in the heartland, and that's why America went to war in World War I and World War II, because this is a great fear that Germany would conquer the world or Europe and Asia and create the heartland, okay?

Therefore America had to stop Germany from rising. So you either make sure no great power arises or you create so much conflict that they're always fighting each other. And that used to work before, okay? Now there's a problem, the problem is the, Bricks nations, Russia, Iran, and China are coming together. And if they come together, guys, that's a major piece of the heartland.

And everyone else, Europe, Middle East, Africa, India would probably follow, okay? Because it's easier to trade in the heartland than this trade with America, especially with the US dollar declining, right? So in other words, the United States has no choice but to fight this war because that's their entire strategy to maintain hegemony in the world, to prevent the heartland from unifying. All right? Doesn't make sense.

Because once you destroy Iran, the heartland fractures. There's no way that they can now trade together anymore. They're still reliant on American maritime routes, okay? America maintains a head. It's still a hegemon because it controls world trade. Whoever controls world trade controls the world. If we're going to control the heartland, controls world trade. Okay.

Doesn't make sense? Okay? But this is just one explanation. There's actually other explanations. And I'll go into a more complicated explanation next class. All right? Any more questions? Yep.

So you mentioned Saudi Arabia and how it wants to see the downfall of both the U.S. and Iran? You want to see the downfall of Israel, U.S. and Iran. Yeah. And to me that sounds like a pretty big goal, and how would you say, how would they possibly use their strategy to achieve that goal? Or how would it possibly be for Saudi Arabia? Okay. All right.

So it's very confusing to people why Saudi Arabia is actually against Iran, okay? But actually, if you go back and look at their history, they have major conflicts with each other. All right. So let's go over some of their conflicts. All right, so, Saudi Arabia, Iran. The first major conflict is that Iran is a theocracy, and Saudi Arabia is a monarchy. A theocracy just means that you're ruled by clerics who represent God. The monarchy is a king who represents God.

And for the Iranians, that is blasphemy, that's heresy, that's against the religion, Okay, so Saudi Arabia and Iran hate each other. Saudi Arabia sees Iran as a threat and trying to induce a revolution within Saudi Arabia. Iran sees Saudi Arabia as blasphemous. Okay? And it's a huge issue because Saudi Arabia is the home of Mecca Medina, the two holiest sites in the Islamic world. Okay? Second issue is that Saudi Arabia is Sunni and Iran is Shia.

So these are two different sects of the same religion, but it's like Protestants and Catholics. They just hate each other, okay? And the last thing is that Iran is anti-US and the Saudi Arabia is pro-US. What this means is that Saudi Arabia has military bases. American military bases inside of the Holy Land. And for the Iranians, that is the worst crime, right? Because it's infidels who are protecting the Holy Land. Infidels are not allowed in the Holy Land.

If you're not a Muslim, you're not allowed to go to Mecca. All right? So Saudi Arabia and Iran hate each other. Saudi Arabia has a huge problem in that it is an order economy. It's most of its GDP comes from oil exports and for the longest time it was trying to build a knowledge economy. It was trying to build tourism. It was trying to promote games, okay? Does that work? So if you're Saudi Arabia and you see the future, it's a pretty decimal future because eventually your oil is going to run out.

Eventually people are going to switch to electrical vehicles, digitalization, which means that oil is longer so important. Okay? So what you need to do is if you're able to control the Middle East, right? So where you get your money now is from trade access, the sort of moves. That's viable future. If you just sit back and wait, eventually your nation is going to run out oil and therefore it's going to cease to exist. So Sotomaynobint needs to act now.

And the way that it wants to act is it wants to create a... conflict between the United States, Israel, and Iran, where they destroy each other. Once they destroy each other, Saudi Arabia can come up on top. Now, Israel cannot be destroyed because Israel has nuclear weapons, but the goal is to negotiate a peace

with Israel after the war is over. Right? Does that make sense? To split the Middle East between Israel and Saudi Arabia. But will Israel agree to this deal? Probably not. But according to the game theory, Saudi Arabia has no choice in this matter, because it is so far behind everyone else.

Okay? It can only hope that this chaos leads to new possibilities. Because given the search of the game so far, it does not have a very good future. Okay, does that make sense? All right. Any more questions, guys? All right.

Okay, great questions. So please continue to follow war, okay? So you have a follow war and understand what's going on, and this class, what I'm doing is I'm providing you the game theory analysis for you to understand what's happening and why it's happening and where this war is going okay again the three big predictions I make and we'll know in the next year or two if these things things happen or not is the United States will send in ground troops it has no

choice in the matter if it wants to win this war or continue this war there will be no nuclear weapons being used again I will apologize the world if nuclear weapons are are used okay the third is that the Alexin Mos will be destroyed at some important. And it's something that I will talk about next class.