Pepe Escobar : Zero Hour Approaching

So this is how the whole drama is coming to: either neo-Caligula and his “massive armada” pauses, opening some room for talks, and he ends up saving the global economy; or we have the Gates of Hell opened in West Asia.

Strategic Culture

The hour is getting late. Virtually all pieces of the puzzle are falling into place.

Even as his “massive armada” is being deployed, neo-Caligula social posts/vociferates to Iran: “MAKE A DEAL” (originally in caps). That’s maximum pressure in effect. Not even the possibility of negotiation. It’s Capitulation or War.

Neo-Caligula’s Top Three demands:

1. Iran should ditch its – civilian – nuclear program, as in total cessation of uranium enrichment.
2. Iran must reduce its missile program to a minimum.
3. Iran must stop supporting “proxy forces” – as in Hezbollah, Yemen’s Ansarallah and Iraqi militias.

There’s absolutely no way that Ayatollah Khamenei, the IRGC and the Majlis – the Iranian Parliament – will agree to any item on this ultimatum, dictated, of course, by the Zionist axis. Hence no capitulation.

Cue to Tehran dramatically raising the stakes.

The Majlis has already approved the closure of the Strait of Hormuz. The final decision is in the hands of the Iranian government/security apparatus. This is in fact binding for the government and the military, de facto authorizing the IRGC, under  full constitutional cover, to seal the Strait of Hormuz.

Iran said it was open to talks with the US but would never give up its missiles after Washington’s strike threats (Credit: Atta Kenare/AFP/Getty)

I’ve extensively written about that on Asia Times during the past decade. At the time, Goldman Sachs derivative experts were adamant: if Hormuz is blocked, before or during a full-scale naval war in the Gulf, oil may reach $700.00 a barrel.

And this will only be temporary – because the entire global economy will collapse.

Most of all, the blocking of Hormuz would trigger the detonation of the TWO QUADRILLION (caps mine) dollars derivative market – updating the initial, misleading calculation by the BIS (Bank for International Settlements), placed at $700 trillion. Over the years, several Gulf traders, off the record, have agreed with the “quadrillion” numbers.

Also during the past decade, the US Joint Chiefs of Staff admitted that they do not have the military ability to keep Hormuz open. That remains the case.

Now cut to clueless little gusano Marco Rubio – bought and paid for by Zionist vulture billionaire Paul Singer, who already profited from the Venezuela operation – talking about  US “force posture” near Iran.

As 30-40k US troops are “in reach of thousands of Iranian UAVs and ballistic missiles”, it’s “prudent” to have forces to “defend against what could be (Rubio’s own definition) an Iranian threat”.

Of course, this “threat” would never come from the  Empire of Chaos, Plunder and Permanent Strikes – following a neo-con dream already sketched in the late 1990s.

So, according to Rubio's logic, the US Army now reserves the right to launch a preemptive strike against Iran.

Assuming this preemptive strike happens, Tehran has already signalled, via a Supreme Leader’s advisor and the Foreign Ministry, among others, that it won’t be a limited war.

Translation: even the ghost of a Tomahawk hitting Iranian territory will be answered by an “immediate and comprehensive response” targeting Tel Aviv and US bases across the Gulf.

Quick recap: neo-Caligula – at least at face value – frames his threats as a prelude to a “deal” which would in effect amputate Iran’s nuclear program and its whole defense/disuassion mechanisms.

Tehran’s response: you attack us, and we destroy Israel as a functioning entity – plenty of hypersonic missiles are up to the task – and you, neo-Caligula, becomes responsible for the collapse of the global economy.

“Unconventional” weapons and “strategic surprises”

Venezuela was just a rehearsal. Iran is the Holy Grail.

Neo-Caligula is not attempting to impose a mere military blockade of Iran. He is launching hardcore economic siege warfare – aimed not only at Iran but also China and Russia, disrupting at the same time Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) integration projects (China-Iran) and the International North South Transportation Corridor (INSTC, uniting Russia-Iran-India).

This is the next level – way beyond Hybrid, approaching Hot – of the comprehensive imperial war on BRICS, directed against no less than four top BRICS: Iran, Russia, China and India.

We are way beyond mere “containment” of Iran. This is a systemic threat, all-round, across the geopolitical and geoeconomic spectrum, directly disturbing energy flows, connectivity corridors and strategic partnerships. And all that disguised as a mere “security” operation.

Iran’s asymmetric naval strategy, painstankingly built since the start of the millenium, has myriad ways to counter-act an imperial attack: over 6,000 naval mines; deployment of swarm tactics via small, missile-armed boats; countless anti-ship cruise and ballistic missiles positioned along the Persian Gulf shoreline; scores of kamikaze drones, submarines and anti-ship missiles scattered on Gulf islands.

Iran is massing all its firepower on what it describes as the “first line of confrontation”, as in the Persian Gulf. Unlike during the 12-day war, everything will be used in the theatre: “unconventional” weapons; an array of “strategic surprises”; new hypersonic missiles; massive cyber-attacks.

Those with an IQ over room temperature at the Department of Forever Wars might do their homework, for instance, on the Khalij Fars supersonic anti-ship ballistic missile, part of Iran’s AAAD strategy: Mach 3 speed; over 300 km range; over 650 kg warhead with EO/infrared seeker. The Khalij Fars would have a ball against American sitting ducks.

Iran has already switched off its radars and is going dark, including the civilian radars at Imam Khomeini International Airport, to protect itself from US missiles and at the same time to allow the installation of Russian jamming systems Murmansk-BN (they need radar silence to be properly callibrated).

Then, on the imperial side, there’s the imminent entry in the theatre of the E-11A BACN: not a mere surveillance aircraft, but a sort of massive “flying router”: a sky-high Wi-Fi linking F-35s and F-22s using different communication systems with ground forces and ships, everything  in real-time and evading Iran’s notorious, mountanious terrain.

Are you ready to destroy the global economy?

NATO is, predictably, all over the place now, complete with strident regime change rhetoric. A sound scenario determines that neo-Caligula may have struck a bargain with the EUro-chihuahuas: I refrain from annexing Greenland (for now) but you support my war on Iran.

Enter yet another “coalition of the willing” (actually “the coerced”). It’s no wonder the IRGC is now being designated as a “terrorist organization” by Brussels – on a par with al-Qaeda and ISIS (these two, by the way, fully normalized by Washington, Brussels and even Moscow).

In parallel, several NATO bases are being set up to help the American “massive armada” with a massive air bridge.

Tehran now has fully understood that what neo-Caligula and his Zionist backers really want is regime change. This has absolutely nothing to do with Iran’s nuclear program.

Still, Iranian Parliament Speaker Mohammad-Baqer Qalibaf continues to stress that Tehran does not oppose the principle of dialogue and diplomacy, as long as it involves mutual respect. Turkiye’s Sultan Erdogan, for his part, is proposing a high-level trilateral between Iran, the US and Turkiye, possibly via video conference.

It’s now up to diplomacy-averse neo-Caligula and his megalomaniacal narcissist mood swings. So this is how the whole drama is coming to: either neo-Caligula and his “massive armada” pauses, opening some room for talks, and he ends up saving the global economy; or we have the Gates of Hell opened in West Asia.

It’s Zero Hour time.