My theory of what's really going on between Iran and the US these past few weeks

People always make the mistake of thinking of institutions as fully united, monolithic entities that work in harmony with each other.

This is almost never the case. In the real world, even institutions that seem opaque and monolithic from the outside (such as an authoritarian regime) have power struggles between multiple factions.

In my opinion, the Iranian government has at least two major factions, the religious faction and the military faction. The Ayatollahs control the religion and the Presidency, and the generals, and particularly Soleimani, were in control of the military.

Soleimani rose through the ranks during the Iran-Iraq war, gaining rank and respect via his tactical acumen. He gained his power completely independently from the Ayatollahs. This is somewhat unusual in Iran where most honors are bestowed by the state, under the authority of the Supreme Leader.

Once Commander of the Quds force, Soleimani was given near complete control of Iranian interests outside the country. This has allowed him to build a complex web of connections and allies all across the Middle East and even beyond. This garnered him great power and influence in the region and inside Iran.

The war in Syria has particularly elevated Soleimani's stature. His tactical use of proxy groups and militias to wage war against a never-ending invasion of foreign Sunni fighters has preserved the Shia territories that are so critical to Iran's influence in the region. His international stature similarly rose via backdoor diplomacy with the involved nations of Russia, Turkey, and the US.

Soleimani was essentially becoming the de facto leader of Iran, and the Ayatollahs knew it. They were becoming nervous. Soleimani had gained too much power for them to openly challenge internally. A revolt and coup would be on their hands in an instant.

Iran is a crippled country. They are disintegrating after years of heavy sanctions. Their demographics skew heavily to the younger side of the spectrum which is less religious and less supportive of their authoritarian regime. The Ayatollahs know that they must adapt to survive.

The Ayatollahs wish to open their country up, maybe just a little bit even, to be on better terms with the West and to grant more freedoms to their people. They want to rejoin the international community to rescue their failing economy. Again, mostly in order to survive and not so much out of benevolence. However, they have had one huge problem standing in their way: Soleimani.

Soleimani's power resides in perpetuating the Sunni-Shia conflict. He needs Iran to maintain itself in the shadows, to be shunned by the international community, so he can continue manipulating proxy groups across the Middle East engaged in endless conflicts. Without the ability to manipulate these conflicts, he loses his importance, his power, his influence.

So Soleimani has been using the same kind of chaos tactics, but this time internally in Iran. The protests against the Ayatollahs were being manipulated by him and his allies, in order to handicap their power and threaten them with a popular uprising if they step out of line. But of course being the great manipulator that he is, he also murders a bunch of the protesters in order to get the people even more riled up against the regime, perpetuating the cycle just as he has done in various proxy wars.

To handicap their international diplomacy he engages in things like.... a siege upon the US embassy in Baghdad. So much of what "Iran" has been doing these past few years has essentially been Soleimani manipulating the international community into punishing the Iranian regime further and further, which degenerates the situation in Iran more, which then gets their citizens angrier and less supportive of the Ayatollahs and their regime.


What we've seen unfold recently between Iran and the U.S. has been a secretive joint venture between the Ayatollahs the Trump administration. A complex and sophisticated operation to eliminate Soleimani in a way to allow the Ayatollahs complete plausible deniability so that they will not upset the Soleimani loyalists, but also to prevent the US war machine from taking control of the narrative and spiral things into a real war.

Much like the way that Al-Baghdadi was lured out of his rathole and to his killing by the theater of the Turkish-Kurdish safe zone conflict in Syria, Soleimani was lured out with the siege of the Baghdad embassy. The US was almost certainly aware that these were being set up and readied to go by Soleimani. He just needed some kind of "trigger" to unleash them, and the US obliged with the strikes on Kata’ib Hezbollah.

The embassy siege was almost surely part of a bigger plot by Soleimani. This is why he was coming to Baghdad, to direct the next steps to his proxies on the ground. Again, the US almost certainly knew all of this. Because they were working with the Iranian regime. The regime likely provided details of Soleimani's planned operations which is how the US was able to so precisely track him once in Baghdad.

Obviously, the Iranian regime has to put on a face of outrage and desire for revenge. They had to retaliate in some way. But, it had to be done in a way that would both seem strong and aggressive but also underwhelming. Thus, the Iranian regime can save face, but also give Trump a plausible reason to de-escalate the situation and not retaliate further. Thus, we have guided missiles launched at US bases that oddly all miss their targets and cause no casualties.


The next piece of the puzzle is the plane crash. It's pretty apparent at this point it was not a mechanical failure, it was some kind of attack. An attack that almost certainly originated from within Iran. That leaves three possibilities: Iran accidentally shot it down, Iran intentionally shot it down, a 3rd party actor inside Iran shot it down.

Personally, I don't believe the accidental angle. I just don't see how an object moving away from Tehran while gaining altitude could be mistaken for a missile moving towards Iran and losing altitude. Especially when you're right next to an airport where civilian planes would be expected. I also think it unlikely that a 3rd party actor was involved, although it's possible.

So that leaves the most likely explanation that it was shot down intentionally. But why on earth would the Iranian regime do that? Surely they would not expect to be able to dupe the rest of the world into believing the US shot it down, even if the US HAD retaliated and shot missiles at Tehran. Modern radars and missile tracking systems are just too good. There would be evidence clearly showing that the US missiles had not gone anywhere near the airplane.

So why do it? The answer goes back to my original point that "Iran" is not a perfectly monolithic institution. This appears to be another internal power play by the Soleimani faction. They have likely put the pieces together themselves and have realized the Ayatollahs are working with the US to destroy their faction.

In my opinion, whoever was operating this missile defense platform was likely a Soleimani loyalist. He was instructed to shoot down an airliner at the first opportunity because they knew this would blow back huge on the Iranian regime. So now Trump has been placed between a rock and a hard place, where he thought that with Soleimani out of the way it was the beginning of a new relationship dynamic with Iran, but how can he do that now? This is now a regime that has appeared to have just murdered 170 innocent people.

So now today, we hear about the Ayatollahs having Soleimani loyalists in the IRGC arrested. They are moving quickly to decimate the Soleimani faction before they can strike back further. I doubt they will be completely successful. So expect some further crazy things to happen in Iran and the Middle East over the next few weeks.


BTW, in case you were wondering, it's pretty clear the Obama administration supported the Soleimani faction. The JCPOA was essentially the go-ahead approval for Soleimani to launch the program to wrest control of Iran for himself. I think this is the real reason why Trump calls it the worst deal in history!! They need the Soleimani faction to win this struggle, in order to hide their involvement in supporting the faction that is responsible for so many US deaths in the Middle East. This is why John Kerry would risk prosecution by blatantly violating the Logan Act (multiple times) in order to advise Soleimani on how to counter Trump's policies in the Middle East.