🧵 Thread of my Iran posts. Together, they form what I would call a microfoundations view of the Iran–US crisis, based on incentives and constraints. In my opinion, the May 9th post is the most important of the thread. Summaries generated by ChatGPT.

September 27th, 2026: “The only way Iran can ensure that no ship goes through is to make sure no crew is willing to man the vessels, and that only happens if they believe the ships will be sunk. Threats, orders, hits, and every other measure can be ignored. The credible prospect of being sunk cannot” x.com/m4h007/status/21043582…

NEW Footage of Iran’s F-5 Jet Attack on the U.S. Base in Kuwait U.S.: “We had to abandon the base.” This is that famous attack EVERYONE DENIED. Now we have PROOF The F-5s flew so LOW witnesses could see the pilots’ helmets. U.S. defenders ran critically low on ammunition and some troops were forced into the desert.

Extending this thought to Harvard, I can’t think of one person, let alone two, from Harvard, in its entire 400 years of history, at the same historical level of von Neumann and von Karman.

Bronx School of Science is probably the most decorated school in America: 9 Nobel prizes, 3 Turing Awards, etc. That’s probably one of the best planned centers for cultivation of talent in history. Nonetheless, it has never produced anyone at the same level of von Neumann or von Karman. That’s what it means that you can’t plan 15 standard deviation events.

JCPOA was really the equilibrium state between Iran and the US, but too fragile because it never had the backing of the US foreign policy establishment. Even that fragile equilibrium is no longer possible, because the physical frontier has moved but the mindset and the US demands have not and will not. The next stable equilibrium will be the US leaving the Middle East altogether.

Of course it was random. Do you think you can plan a 15 standard deviations event? You can have a society of tall people, but freaks appearing is just chance. So many have tried to imitate Silicon Valley, so many Tech hubs across the world, including even in Cambridge, Massachusetts, but have failed to replicate that level of success.

This is why so much of western historiography is just ignorant hagiography. Archimedes was born 190 years (2 centuries!) after the battles of Marathon, Salamis, etc. He wasn’t even from mainland Greece. These idiots have compressed centuries with a few names to some mythological golden period meme, worthy of a middle school education. 20th century Hungary, which nobody would argue wasn’t a geopolitically backwater place, had far more genius density with people like von Neumann, von Karman, Edward Teller, Eugene Wigner: all contemporaneous, and many friends of each other. A cluster of very smart people can appear randomly at some point in somewhere, just like any extreme event, and many times without an explanation. That’s the nature of randomness.

And yet 100% factual.

Hot heads are not the type of people you want in charge during a crisis situation. It usually does not work out very well, and we are already seeing the consequences in the US Treasury market. Soon he will lose his grip on the crude oil market too,

You don’t seem to get it. Those battles are like a small expeditionary force from China losing a battle to Nepal. For China, it barely registers. Just skirmishes at the border. For Nepal, it’s a founding myth and civilizational achievement. That’s the true Greek history.

Here’s a historical fact for the Greeks. The entire myth is just that: a myth. In the early fifth century BC, Greece was a poor, mountainous backwater on the periphery of the great civilizations of the age. Athens and Sparta were two tiny annoying peripheral outposts on the edge of an incomparably richer empire. They are mythologized modern creations with zero connection to their actual contemporary geopolitical weight. They were backwater nothings. Tom Holland put it well: to the Persian imperial court, Greece was simply what Afghanistan is to the modern West: "a remote and mountainous backwater."

Who do I call for the Saudi and Emarati offers? I’d be glad to relieve them of their money but nobody will believe me whatever praises I sing for them. Here’s sample work for consideration: Ansar have been defeated and there are no ballistic missiles raining on Jeddah! All the livestream videos are fake! MBS is the second coming of Napoleon! His military genius is only matched by his choice of allies like Trump! That’s why America is helping him recapture all the lost Saudi territory!

I don’t know how they think they can keep doing this collective punishment of all people criticizing Israel and expect Jews in America eventually not becoming the subject of every blame that will be directed at Israel. Don’t say nobody told you.

Every American man fantasizes about being a Ron Swanson, more than Batman or the cowboy.

For example, there would have been no Copernican Revolution. Copernicus' mathematical astronomy was directly based on the work of the Maragheh School founded by Nasir al-Din Tusi and culminating in the model of Ibn Shatir.

Not to mention how much they added in hard sciences. There would be no algebra. Medicine would be centuries behind. These apes think they invented everything.

"The Maidan Killings and the False-Flag Case:" New favorable review of my open access book "The Maidan Massacre in Ukraine: The Mass Killing that Changed the World." 21stcenturywire.com/2026/10/…

Yes. I agree. It’s something I’ve actually thought about, but didn’t include here. One way I’ve been thinking about the value of money is 1/P, except instead of defining P as a basket of consumer goods and services, define it as a basket of basic inputs into economic activity, particularly energy and labor. Then 1/P tells you how much of those inputs $1 can buy. If the price of those inputs goes up, the value of money in this sense goes down. You need more dollars to finance the same amount of real economic activity. That increases the demand for financing, which I think can put upward pressure on interest rates. There is also a separate effect for countries that import energy. Their dollar import bill goes up, which can worsen their external balance, increase inflation and put pressure on their currency. Their central banks may then have to keep rates higher to control inflation, support the currency, or prevent capital outflows. That may be part of why we’re seeing pressure on rates in a number of countries at the same time. None of these are one variable causal relationships. Fiscal problems, capital flows, US Treasury yields, FX intervention, etc. can enter the chain at any point. But for the US the end result is particularly important because of the amount of debt. As that debt rolls over, higher rates become higher debt service costs. So yes, I agree with your original point. The economic cost of keeping energy prices high can be much larger than what you see directly at the gas pump or even for diesel.

Yes, all other things being equal Iran would prefer zero outflow. But the question is the marginal cost and benefit from stopping every extra barrel. If they can shoot 10 missiles in a week and keep the overall pressure on the US to be 80% of what it would be with zero outflow, then that might be a better option for them. I don’t know what is the optimum point. My point was that his objective function is wrong. He’s optimizing the wrong function.

But what a disgrace to then hear the PM claim to be unable to state a NZ position on the legal status of the US and Israeli attack on Iran and Israel’s assault on Gaza until the ICJ or ICC have reached a determination. Clearly unable to understand what Kiwis expect from their leader.