There are reports of another coup attempt inside of Iran. It seems we’re getting a new one every single week. Leadership is in chaos. Negotiations seem useless until Iran figures out who’s actually running the country. And of course, the economic crisis keeps getting worse every single day. Let’s start with this new report.
This report comes from Iran International. Iran’s president Pezeshkian and parliament speaker Ghalibaf are seeking to remove the foreign minister Araghchi, accusing him of following IRGC’s commander’s instruction in nuclear talks without informing the government. Now, some of you may remember initially when negotiations took place in Pakistan, the parliament speaker was the leader. He was the leader of the negotiating team that went to Pakistan on Iran’s behalf. But when they got back to Tehran, it seems the parliament speaker was removed from his negotiating powers by the IRGC and then the foreign minister became like the sole leader of the negotiating team. And this is something we saw when the foreign minister went back to Pakistan to give a new deal to the United States at the end of the last week. The speaker did not go and now we’re getting this report. This has led to speculation that maybe Ghalibaf was removed from the negotiating team because he was unwilling to listen to the IRGC or maybe because he was willing to give up too much during the negotiations.
Now, it’s important to remember that Ghalibaf, the speaker of the parliament in Iran, well, he’s someone who’s been craving power for a very long time. He ran to become the president of Iran three different times and I think he lost every single time. But now, it seems everyone who was keeping him in check is either dead or in hiding. So, this may be his chance to, you know, become more of a central figure in Iran’s future. And that’s why he has been the guy that the United States has been negotiating with ever since Ali Larijani was assassinated during a strike. But it seems now he’s been getting pushed out of power and he’s fighting back with the Iranian president. In fact, President Pezeshkian has told people close to him that if foreign minister Araghchi doesn’t change his ways, he will be dismissed by the president himself.
Now, the most interesting part of this report is the timing. It came on the same day when Iran submitted a new peace plan to the United States through Pakistan which is the mediator in this whole talks. Now let’s talk about this new peace plan that came out yesterday. I think it’s safe to assume that this plan is coming from people close to the IRGC or maybe the IRGC itself. According to Pakistani officials, the Iranian side handed them this plan late last night. So late night Thursday and now the United States is discussing what to do next. This is the second peace plan that Iran has submitted to the United States in the last 2 weeks. The first one we talked about came roughly at the start of the week and in that plan Iran said that they would open the Strait of Hormuz and end the war if the US lifts the blockade, but they wanted to delay negotiations on the nuclear stuff to a later point.
The United States obviously rejected that plan. But after that plan was submitted, the US did submit a counter-proposal. This counter-proposal came from special envoy Steve Witkoff, who sent a list of amendments to Iran that put the nuclear issue back into the drafts. Now, of course, we don’t know all the details of all the proposals and counterproposals, but we do know a couple of conditions that the US side submitted back to Iran. One of them was of course Iran must commit to not move any enriched uranium that’s currently buried underground in one of their nuclear facilities. The second one is of course Iran committing to not rebuilding any of the nuclear sites while the negotiations are ongoing. This is pretty obvious. No one wants Iran to take a little bit of that enriched uranium and hide it somewhere so they can make a nuclear bomb later, all the while agreeing to giving up their nuclear ambitions in the negotiations.
Luckily for everyone, Iranian society has been so deeply infiltrated by Israeli spies that if Iran does try to do any funny business around the enriched uranium site, the United States would know it very quickly and that would mean the war would restart right away. And of course, on top of that, the US also has satellite access and satellite imagery of Iranian nuclear sites. So if they see any heavy equipment moving into place to, you know, dig out something, you can easily assume what Iran is trying to do. And of course that would mean negotiations would be called off.
Now talking about negotiations, President Trump did bring it up yesterday and I’m guessing this statement that he made came before Iran submitted the counter-proposal. But nonetheless, take a listen to what he said:
“Really great. Yeah. And that’s going to carry forward. And look, the country is doing really well. And that’s despite a military operation. I don’t call it a war, but you’d rather have military operation. Uh we’re really uh I mean Iran is dying to make a deal. I can only tell you that. I don’t want to get into the… but they got to, they cannot be nuclear, other than that. But they are, their navy’s gone. Their air force is gone. Every ounce of any form of equipment practically is gone. You know, their drone factories are about 82% down and their missile factories are almost 90% down. And many of their missiles have been knocked out between… they used some but we knocked out more than they used and it’s pretty, it’s pretty amazing what’s happened. They want to make a deal, but despite the fact that we are in what some people would call a war, we just hit a new high today on the stock market. We have uh S&P is through the roof. They’re all, I mean they’re through the roof.”
And this new draft comes just a day after President Trump held a meeting with CENTCOM commanders and other military commanders to discuss the options that the US military has. They discussed plans for a short, powerful wave of strikes on Iran in hopes of breaking the deadlock, the negotiating deadlock. Admiral Brad Cooper, US commander for US Central Command, has also asked the Pentagon to send the army’s Dark Eagle hypersonic missiles to the Middle East for possible use against Iran if the war restarts. The reason for requesting this specific missile is because Iran has moved a lot of their launchers, missile launchers, out of the range of precision strike missiles that the US had used previously. They have a range of around 300 miles. And Iran has now positioned their launchers outside of that 300-mile range.
But this new missile, the Dark Eagle hypersonic missile, has a range of around 1,700 miles. But this is a very secretive missile. This is something the United States has never used in combat before. So a lot of exact details are still classified. According to Bloomberg reporting on this, there are rumors that the United States only has eight of these missiles so far. They were built to fight against Chinese and Russian advanced air defense systems and they were built by Lockheed Martin. Each missile costs around $15 million and the battery used to launch these missiles costs around $2.7 billion each. So if the war does restart, I’m guessing these missiles would be used to take out any air defenses or any launchers that the United States does know about. And then of course, the US will quickly establish air superiority inside of Iran very quickly.
Now just recently there was also a closed-door classified briefing for many senators where the Department of Defense shared plans for what could happen in case the war restarts. This of course doesn’t necessarily mean what’s going to happen, but what options the United States has on the table if negotiations don’t move forward. Well, Senator Blumenthal was part of this meeting and he shared a few details after it concluded. Take a listen:
“We just watched you in that heated exchange earlier, Senator. So, among the military options the president was just reportedly briefed on, as we understand, and you heard Christian reporting, the defense secretary, Marco Rubio, are still there. Uh, but we understand it was a series of short and powerful strikes against Iran, uh, among other things as well as uh taking perhaps part of the Strait of Hormuz and something that could involve US ground troops. Do you believe that there’s a coherent strategy here at this point when you hear about options like that being presented to the president tonight?”
“Erin, there really is no coherent strategy which came across very vividly and graphically in the hearing today with Secretary Hegseth and it comes across in the president’s comments which oscillate between seeming open to negotiation and then foreclosing it entirely and threatening destruction of civilizations. I do have the impression from some of the briefings that I have received as well as other sources that an imminent military strike is very much on the table which is deeply disturbing because it could well involve American sons and daughters in harm’s way and potential massive casualties.”
On the other side of this war, the economic costs have continued to destroy the Iranian economy. Here is what the Treasury Secretary just posted yesterday:
“Amid the impact of operation economic fury, Iranian currency has hit an all-time low. Iranian people deserve a new era which the corrupt and shambolic Iranian regime cannot provide. With their old industry closing and their currency plummeting, it is past time for the Iranian regime to concede that the people of Iran deserve much better than what the regime can provide.”
As we talked about yesterday, inflation has truly gotten out of control as the economy reopens. It has now hit more than 50% since the economy has kind of reopened because of the ceasefire. But people have no hope of actually improving their lives. The situation is getting so bad that the companies are saying that they will start laying off people just to survive. All the while, prices for basic necessities like food, oil, gas keep on rising and people’s wages are either disappearing or shrinking because even though the economy is reopening, it’s not thriving. The inflation is of course killing the buying power of savings that people do have. Take a listen. Here’s more details:
“Just look at the cost for Iran so far for this war. Uh, through the Strait of Hormuz during peacetime, more than 80% of all their commerce, including their oil and their food and their water went through the Strait of Hormuz. Seaborn trade, 90% of it has now been halted. All right, daily economic losses almost 450 million a day. In addition, you got inflation up 67% year-over-year and the US dollar is just crushing the Iranian currency at the moment.”
This economic collapse has sort of created a time bomb for Iran where they need to make sure the economy recovers and the sanctions are lifted before protests restart like we saw back in January. It is very difficult for rats in a sewer pipe to know what’s going on in the outside world. Some color for Iranian leadership as they literally sit in the dark: The United States has complete control over the Strait of Hormuz. There is a hard currency US dollar shortage. Food and gasoline rationing are in place. The entire international community has turned against you. The blockade will continue until there is a pre-February 27th freedom of navigation.
Now, this is a bit confusing because just a few days ago or I guess roughly two weeks ago, the Iranian foreign minister did very publicly announce that, “Hey, we’ll be opening up the Strait of Hormuz.” Now, of course, that announcement didn’t necessarily mean that they opened up the Strait of Hormuz. But just minutes after that announcement, President Trump also publicly announced that, “Hey, despite Iran opening up the Strait of Hormuz, the US blockade will continue.” And now we are seeing statements coming out of the administration saying that the US will lift the blockade if Iran opens up the Strait of Hormuz. To me, this seems like there’s going to be some kind of deal that should be announced very soon.
Of course, Iran wants to open up the Strait of Hormuz if the blockade is gone, but they don’t want to negotiate the nuclear part. I’m guessing the United States likely wants some concessions on the nuclear part and the blockade will go away and the Strait of Hormuz will open up. From the Iranian point of view, they really want the blockade to go away because of course you can argue exactly how long it will take until we start seeing the bad side effects of the blockade on the Iranian oil industry, but you cannot argue that it’s not having a bad side effect. There’s clearly a problem that Iran has to deal with. Maybe it’s going to be 2 months from now or 2 weeks from now. No one exactly knows the timeline except the Iranian leadership. And of course, they don’t want to be transparent about that because then the other side knows exactly how long they have to continue the blockade before Iran gets desperate.
So, let’s see what happens. Now, yesterday, President Trump was also asked about executions that are still ongoing inside of Iran. Take a listen to his comments:
“You have called this the new regime uh before any Iran. But I speak to Iranians on a daily basis and they tell me that these are the same people that have murdered them, executed them, repressed them. I talked to them through the blackout and they wanted me to ask you this question. And second of all, uh, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, how come he’s not involved, uh, in these?”
“Well, he’s very much involved. Marco is very totally negotiated with them all the time. No, look, Iran killed 42,000 people over the last two months, protesters. Uh, they were going to kill eight women whose lives I saved, and I appreciate that they didn’t do it. I asked them not to do it. They didn’t do it. They were getting ready to hang the women. They were going to hang eight beautiful women that were… I mean it just caught the imagination of a lot of people. People were talking about it. You know, it was inconceivable. You saw those eight beautiful people and they were going to be executed that evening. This was a week ago. And I got on the phone very quickly and I said, ‘Don’t do it. Don’t do it. The whole world is watching. Don’t do it.’ And they didn’t do it. I appreciate it. I guess four were released and the other four are going to be released in a month. They were ready to be executed that night. So they take a tough, you know, they knocked out the wrestler. They killed, they killed the wrestler’s teammates. Uh, he was a, he was a world champion wrestler. He was a great wrestler, great talented wrestler. They killed him because he protested. He spoke. He didn’t, he wasn’t wrestling. What he did is he spoke negatively about the regime and they killed him. They executed him along with his friends. They killed 42,000 people. So when you say about they say that I do the same. I don’t do the same. I’m trying to, I’m trying to save that country in a certain way. And uh nobody’s ever seen anything. Think of it. They killed 42,000 innocent, not weapon-carrying people for protesting. 42,000. And the number they say is a lot higher than that. There’s a rough group, but we have decimated them. And their economy is a disaster. So, we’ll see how long they hold out. We’ll see.”
