Part 1- Thoughts on Aftermath of Syrian Coup

In the previous post, I wrote about ‘big picture’ reasons why the Syrian government collapsed so quickly. The very short version of this story is that there were serious and unresolved foundational problems with the modern state of Syria, as created by UK and France from peripheral parts of defeated Ottoman Empire, after WW1. Creating a nation state containing multiple ethno-religious groups who have not liked each other for centuries is not conducive to running a stable government. Only a repressive and secular dictatorship could have ever ruled over modern Syria and this label describes the Assad family. While the West might want you to believe that it was their economic sanctions and support for various fundamentalist rebels who finally bought down that regime, the reality is different. It was the many bad economic and diplomatic policies of Assad regime and inadequate support by its backers (Russia and Iran) which led to this outcome- as described in previous post.

With that out of the way, let us talk about the medium and long term effects of that regime collapse- the real ones, not the fake BS being promoted by western “experts”.

1] Iran acquiring and testing nuclear weapons is going to be most important (at least in medium-term) result of the Syrian regime collapse. While no prediction can be made with 100% certainty, this event will be seen in future as the final straw which finally forced Iran to abandon its long-term policy of nuclear ambiguity. To understand my reasoning, we have to compare the situation of Iran in late-2024 to North Korea (DPRK) in the late-2000s, because the overall trajectories are quite similar. While DPRK had toyed with the idea of acquiring its own nuclear arsenal since late-1960s, it did not find that necessary until the collapse of USSR in 1991, and even then they would have preferred normalizing relations with USA that acquiring nukes. Some readers might remember that USA and DPRK came very close to normalizing relations in 1994-1995, but this never happened because USA thought it could destroy DPRK and did fulfill its side of even the smallest agreements made between thosee two countries. This highly unstable equilibrium lasted until the early-2000s when USA invaded Iraq to start its failed occupation of that country.

DPRK did however take a very important lesson from that invasion- namely, that any arrangement, agreement or treaty made with USA was not worth the paper on which it was written. Consequently, they decided (sometime in 2002-2003) that acquiring nuclear weapons and missiles to reliably deliver them was only solution for dealing with USA. Within three years, DPRK tested its first nuclear device and while the first was probably an underperformer, subsequent nuclear tests demonstrated its ability to build better and better nuclear weapons culminating in the famous Hydrogen Bomb test of 2017. All this was done by a pretty poor country under intense economic sanctions by USA. The same is true for their long-range missile programs and they now possess a range of MRBMs and even ICBMs capable of delivering a Hydrogen Bomb to anywhere in the USA. My point is that even a fairly poor country run by determined people can develop and deploy nuclear weapons and delivery systems within a few years. Iran in 2024, as you will soon see, is far ahead of where DPRK was in 2003 and already has the largest SRBM and IRBM arsenal in the world. It was this proven ability, along with its support of Syria, Hezbollah etc which made Iran reticent to officially cross the nuclear state threshold- in the past. But things have changed a lot in the past year.

Before we get into the many reasons why Iran chose to not cross the nuclear weapon state threshold for many years, we have to talk about the two main worldviews present within the Iranian political leadership. On one side, you have the nationalists who are usually also extra-religious and want an Iran which is a major power in its part of the world. On the other side, there are the “reformers” who are very willing to prostitute themselves to the West for the right price. Note that the “reformers” (Pezeshkian, Zarif etc) have no interest in embracing liberalism, but are (for the lack of a better word) borderline traitors/ mercenaries willing to sell out their country for a quick buck. While Iran also toyed with the idea of developing its own nuclear weapons in early-2000s, after USA invaded Iraq, it quickly realized that bleeding American occupation in Iraq by supporting and arming various Sunni militias in that country was a far better use of resources. This does not mean that Iran stopped developing the infrastructure to make nuclear weapons during that period. It simply put that project on the backburner and focused on driving USA out of Iraq while expanding its own influence- a task largely accomplished by 2010.

At this point, Iran could have simply gone ahead with developing nuclear weapons but chose to delay crossing that threshold for a number of reasons. Firstly, there was the issue of regional power balance as the official acquisition of nuclear weapon by Iran would almost certainly result in Saudi Arabia following them. As things stood at that time, and even today, Iran has more than enough conventional missiles and military capability to deter countries such as Saudi Arabia, Israel etc. Furthermore, Iran had also started supporting Hezbollah and Syria far more intensively at that time and it’s leadership felt that supporting such proxies in addition to Sunni militias in Iraq gave it enough strategic depth and deterrence against Israel and USA. But more importantly, the rise of these borderline traitors.. I mean “reformers”.. such as Zarif led them to try a diplomatic reset with USA. This agreement, known as JCPOA, was supposed to reward Iran for shelving its nuclear weapon program. While there were some initial gestures of goodwill such as the return of some frozen assets by USA, it quickly became obvious that USA had no real interest in upholding its end of the deal. After Trump was elected in 2016, his Zionist handlers pushed him to cancel that deal. The killing of IRGC General Qasem Soleimani by USA while visiting Iraq in 2020 was the final straw as far as the Iranian ‘deep state’ was concerned. While these actions were supposed to further destabilize Iran, it has the opposite effect and made it obvious to most people in Iran who were not retarded that any treaty or agreement with USA was worthless and that their “reformists” were either simpletons or traitors. However the IRGC did use the 2015-2020 time span to further modernize and expand its missile and drone force- by a very considerable amount.

Almost all of missile, nuclear and other weapon development, support of external armed movements etc is done via the IRGC. The thing you should know is that the nationalists (and IRGC) did give reformers such as Zarif one real chance to deliver a lasting peace agreement with USA and he could not deliver on it. This is why Iranian missile programs of all types went into overdrive after 2018. As things stand, Iran has the missiles and numbers to bypass every Israeli and Western missile defense system- and they have demonstrated this in a pretty spectacular fashion on October 1, 2024. They have also demonstrated the ability to develop solid-fueled satellite launchers which could be modified to an ICBM capable of delivering a 400-500 kg warhead to any city in USA, but especially that east of the Mississippi. There is now a very real possibility that Iran will test that system or a derivative as a proper road-mobile ICBM (original intention) in the near future. To summarize Iranian missiles can now reach Israel, every American military base in the Middle-East and now (very likely) the USA mainland. So.. How is their latent nuclear weapon program doing?

Let us start with addressing and dispelling a common myth. Neither Israel nor USA ever had the ability to seriously affect Iran’s nuclear weapon program. All those much hyped assassinations and dumb stunts such as Stuxnet sped up and increased the size of their program. FYI, this is exactly what happened when USA tried to stymie DPRK’s nuclear and missile program- it backfired. As things stand right now, Iran has the ability to enrich enough weapon grade uranium (U-235) for one new bomb core every few days and their centrifuge technology has improved by leaps and bounds since the early 2010s. Their declared centrifuge cascades are now in far more secure locations and they have also eliminated most traitors. Then there are the other important unknowns. Has Iran built small graphite reactors to make Pu-239 in secret? Pu-239 is an alternate material for weapon cores. The underlying technology for such reactors is old and rather simple. Also DPRK, a frequent military partner of Iran, almost certainly has built more than one such ‘secret’ reactor. Neighboring Pakistan has built a handful of heavy-water reactors (less efficient than graphite) to make Pu-239.

What I am trying to convey is that there is a high likelihood of Iran having more nuclear weapon program components that are secret- some of which might not even be located in Iran. We also cannot rule out the possibility that DPRK might have worked with Iran for designing and even testing nuclear devices. We still do not know if all of their known nuclear tests were of devices which were exclusively designed and manufactured by DPRK- especially the two tests in 2016. Hence, we should assume that Iran has all the components and materials for assembling nuclear weapons, including a properly tested design small enough to fit inside the MARV of their latest missiles. It is also within the realms of possibility for Iran to already possess a few assembled nuclear weapons. We should, therefore, not be surprised if Iran conducts one or more nuclear tests at very short notice in the next few weeks or months. Such a chain of events will likely occur even if the traitors.. I mean ‘reformists’.. try to cut a deal with USA, because after the recent collapse of Syrian government, even those in Iranian ‘deep state’ who might have been sympathetic to the argument to reengaging with USA do not see any other way. Only an idiot without any desire for self-preservation would now trust the USA. And there is one further reason that things will go that way.

As late as mid-2010s, even countries such as Russia and China were willing to cooperate with USA regarding any economic or weapon sanctions etc against Iran. They were dumb for doing so, but they did it anyway. Since then, the ground situation has changed a lot and neither country has any interest in helping the USA. Most people in any position of power in Iran also understand that the future of economic growth lies in the East and that the West (especially Europe) is a spent force. The almost pathetic lack of independence demonstrated by European countries in their foreign relations and trade policies has not helped the situation. All of this is a nice way of saying that Iran does not care about any further economic sanctions and is now in a position to cut off the flow of oil from the Gulf States to Europe if necessary. This was not the case a decade ago and makes it far more likely that Iran will cross the nuclear weapon state threshold sooner than later. In fact that outcome is now as likely as the current ‘reformist’ government in Tehran being forced to resign because of events beyond their control.

In the next part, I will go over the other downstream effects of the Syrian coup such as Turkey being faced with some new problems on its eastern borders, the possibility of the Syrian civil war restarting and how Russia will ‘reward’ Turkey for what amounts to a short-sighted betrayal by the later.

What do you think? Comments?