The Peter Zeihan Podcast Series - The U.S. Inches Towards Iran Conflict || Peter Zeihan

Episode Date: February 28, 2026

U.S. strikes against Iran appear imminent, with two aircraft carriers being positioned in the Persian Gulf. Trump has presented Iran with negotiation terms that would effectively end Iran's status as a regional power, so it's no surprise that negotiations have stalled. Join the Patreon here: https://www.patreon.com/PeterZeihan Full Newsletter: https://bit.ly/4qX5dIu

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Match with a licensed therapist today at Talkspace.com. Save $80 with code space 80 at talkspace.com. Hey, Al, Peter Zine here coming to you from Colorado. It looks like we're about to be in a fresh war, so we got that going for us. The United States is in the process of relocating a lot of military hardware to the Persian Gulf. There's already one aircraft carrier on station, and another one will arrive in the next few days. The Persian Gulf is of a size that you can really only have two aircraft carriers there if they want to not get in each other's way. So we're pretty close days away from the Trump administration deciding whether or not it's going to

strike Iran. Negotiations have been ongoing for the last couple of months to try to find some way forward, but it is pretty clear that they are not going well. The issue is that the Trump administration is demanding three things out of the Iranian government. Number one, no nuclear enrichment whatsoever for any purposes. If that is done, that means that Iran can never fuel its own nuclear power plant at Boucher, and it can never develop a nuclear weapon. That is the theory. Step two, Iran has to give up all the missiles it has and the capacity to manufacture missiles or import missiles that have a range of a certain zone which would allow them to hit Israel. So they've got to be within that category. And then third, Iran has to forever forswear

manipulating the region around it by supporting paramilitary groups. If these three conditions were agreed to by Iran, that would be the end of Iran as a strategic power. These are the three pillars by which which it interacts with its region in the wider world. Remember that Iran is a mountainous country. It can never have a sort of broad-based economy than a more normal country could. And when it comes to forming an army, because of all these mountains, it's got a thousand different little minorities, and its army is designed to occupy itself. So that's going out. Sending the army out is actually a security threat at home. If these three things happen, that's it. It's over.

is done as a meaningful power. It's a backwater satrabee. In the defense of the Trump administration, this has been the position of the United States going back to the Ayatollah Revolution in 1989. It's been a long time. And no one has been able to force the Iranians to do it. It's unclear whether the United States, under Trump, can force the Iranians to do it. But unlike previous administrations, who have been concerned about second order of effects with a broader conflict with Iran, this administration really isn't. It's coming off a little bit of a high after the Gaza War, a little bit of a high after securing Nicholas Madero, the former president of Venezuela.

And the only way that some of the more sane people can get face-time with the president is if they encourage him to do things that are really crazy that he likes. And a war with Iran is one of those kind of crazy things. And this is coming from the less crazy part of this administration. So if we do have a conflict, it's probably going to proceed like this. No ground forces. It's all going to be air war. Jets that take off from Kuwait primarily. And then of course the stuff that's coming off the carriers. Then the Iranians will shoot back with missiles against bases that the United States has in the region, but there are not nearly as many of those. They're not nearly as large or much better defended than they were during the war on terror because the United States doesn't

have 100,000 troops in theater looking to occupy Iraq anymore. There's just tiny footprints. That's much easier to defend. And for every missile that the Iranian sends in, they're probably going to suck up 40, 50, 60, 70 as the United States strikes back. And if it becomes clear that we're not going to get an armistice very, very quickly, you will probably see the United States take out a location called Karg Island, which is an island in the Persian Gulf where pretty much all Iranian oil exports flow. The Iranians don't have the ability to defend it meaningfully. There's not even a bridge. They certainly can't rebuild it. It was built by foreigners.

And if it goes away, then you're looking at 80 to 90% of runs. Export income goes away. And then their ability to enrich or to make missiles or to fund paramilitaries functionally drops to near zero. What this would do is introduce a degree of chaos into the region. Now, for those of you who don't remember your middle of the history, if you go back to before 2000, Pretty much every American president, every once in a while, drop some bombs in the Middle East, because we saw it as an area where nothing really mattered from a strategic point of view. I mean, you had the Israeli-Palestine issues, and there's always the Cold War in the background. But we didn't see any of these countries as real threats to us.

Until the chaos reached to a point that it generated a political evolution in the region, that generated a paramilitary that worked outside of the region, that became known as al-Qaeda and carried out the 9-11 attacks. What it feels like to me is we are going back to where we were. in the 50s and the 60s where we really didn't care. And starting this whole process again. And eventually, maybe we'll have another group like Al-Qaeda that will form and throw a hell marry the United States and we go through the war and terror again.

But that's very unlikely to happen the next two or three years, not in this administration. In the meantime, really the only other thing to consider is what the other major powers of the world who have traditionally supported Iran might do. In the case of the Europeans, they've soured. They're not a factor. In the case of the Russians, they need every bullet and rubble they have to fight the war in Ukraine. And in the case of the Chinese, they may think this is an awful idea, but two things. Number one, the Chinese don't have the naval fires to get here, much less getting engaged in a dick measuring contest with the U.S. Navy, which would go very, very badly.

And number two, they've already moved on from Iran in every way that really matters. They get a lot more oil from everyone else in the Persian Gulf. In fact, Iranian total exports are only about a million barrels a day. So we're in this weird situation where, on its own, all else being equal, never true, but bear with me, that if Iranian crew just vanished from the world, we'd be more less okay because the world at the moment is oversupplied. The real issue in the oil markets is Russia and the Shelf. That's a separate topic that might be any interesting too.

But I don't think that is shaping this administration's decision-making process at all. Of course, all of this could stop tomorrow if Donald Trump gets distracted by something shiny, and that happens. But it does look like this administration has already all but formally made the decision to go ahead and knock Iran back,

and they more than have the capacity to take out things like universities and technical zones and labs that would set the Iranian economy back 50 years technologically. Just keep in mind that the Iranian nuclear program is dispersed, it's hardened, and it's 1940s technology. So if you really want to remove that from the table, 50 years, it's not enough. You're jamming your favorite song, and while you aren't missing a beat, you could be missing a signal from your body.

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