Ten hours that shook West Asia

 

Pepe Escobar
Strategic Culture Foundation
Sun, 01 Mar 2026 

Ten hours. That's what it took for Iran to:

• put the Empire of Chaos, Plunder and Permanent Strikes under siege all across the Gulf.
• bomb 27 major US military bases, relentlessly - inflicting extensive damage.
• determine that all US and Israeli assets and interests in West Asia are legitimate targets for retaliation.
• block the Strait of Hormuz (then unblocked; but free passage only for Russian and Chinese vessels).

Up next: if US warships do not retreat, they will be sunk.

The whole drama, predictably, developed as Deceit in the Making. The war was ordered by the leader of a death cult in West Asia, a genocidal psycho who then took refuge in his "Wing of Zion" and fled to... Berlin. His American sidekick, neo-Caligula, a megalomaniacal Narcissus, co-ordered the war from Mar-a-Lago.

Their spectacular success on Day One: to kill Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei in a decapitation strike. And to kill scores of girls - 100+ and counting - in an elementary school in southern Iran.

Predictably, this was also a remix of the assassination of Hezbollah's Sayyed Nasrallah in Beirut.

During indirect "negotiations" in Oman the Trump 2.0 team required Tehran to clarify an offer that required some final fine-tuning.

Oman's Foreign Minister Badr bin Hamad al Busaidi confirmed that Iran, for the first time, agreed to "never" accumulate nuclear material for a bomb; maintain zero stockpiles of enriched material; agree that existing stockpiles would be down-blended; and allow full IAEA verification.

The meeting took place in Tehran on Saturday morning, uniting top members of the Iranian leadeship.

The Epstein Syndicate duly bombed the meeting, killing top officials plus Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei. The Empire of Chaos does not do negotiations: it uses them as a weapon.

Yet there was no instant collapse leading to regime change. Less than half an hour after being struck, the Tehran leadership launched a stunning, lightning-fast, coordinated counterpunch on a massive scale, in 24-hour continuous launch mode, thus establishing the parameters of escalation as well as resilience supremacy on the battlefield.

For instance, Iranian tactics are now very different compared to the 12-day war. In the second wave against Bahrain, they used Shahed-136 kamikaze drones only after a massive ballistic missile barrage which completely bewildered US defense systems. The result: scores of expensive interceptors expended too early. The drones only came later.

Only on Day 1 Iran fired over 1,200 missiles and drones. Tehran has tens of thousands of missiles and drones in stock. US interceptors are about to run dry in a matter of days. Each THAAD costs $15 million. The math is definitely not leaning the imperial way.

From martyrdom to revenge

Iran going after US assets in Dubai is a masterful strategic play - linked to destroying sheltering US military personnel and/or clandestine CIA digs. All those tacky Dubai symbols of bling bling opulence are on fire; Burj Khalifa, Burj Al Arab, Palm Jumeirah.

As correctly argued here, 88% of the population of Dubai is foreign. Apart from being the world capital of money laundering, this is most of all a special economic zone with a flag, now running the risk of a bank run.

After all, the UAE does not produce anything - as in productive capitalism; it's a tax-free service economy built around bling bling opulence and safety (now gone).

Dubai also happens to have enormous leverage over neo-Caligula - as in "Trump coins", personal investments, donations to the Board of Peace, a.k.a. Board of War. Aviation is 27% of Dubai's GDP - and 18% of the UAE's. Dubai airport in the dark is an absolute disaster. Mega-airlines like Emirates, Etihad and Qatar Airways - complete with their mega-airports - are key vehicles/nodes of the global transportation matrix.

Dubai in the dark is a very bad business proposition for Trump. There's no question MbZ is already on the phone begging for a ceasefire. Moreover, Tehran also made clear that energy giants Chevron and ExxonMobil are legitimate targets. So it's no wonder neo-Caligula already wanted a ceasefire on Day 1, communicated via Italian diplomatic channels to Iran.

Whatever the torrents of speculation on whether the genocidal psycho in Tel Aviv did force neo-Caligula to go to war when his Invincible Armada was still not ready, the fact is the Pentagon lost the strategic initiative.

The script is being written in Tehran; that's going to be a war of attrition, where Tehran has gamed every possible scenario.

So here's how it all developed, in a flash. Decapitation strike. Council of Experts convened in minutes. IRGC: "maximum force" response within the hour, unleashed over the death cult + petro-chihuahuas. Succession mechanism: in place. Command structure: in place. No regime change. Zero imperial strategic dominance. From martyrdom to revenge.

The whole Global South is watching.

Total strategic rupture

According to several IRGC sources, Ayatollah Khamenei had everything prepared in excruciating detail via a series of directives. He had instructed Ali Larijani, the secretary of the Security Council, and selected leadership members not only on how Iran could resist to the Epstein Syndicate firepower but also any assassination attempts, including on himself. Khamenei was killed alongside Ali Shamkhani, the former National Security Council secretary, and IRGC Commander Mohammed Pakpour.

Khamenei named no less than four layers of succession for each key military command and government role. No wonder all crucial decisions after the decapitation were taken in record time.

The genocidal/murderous American-Israeli duo has no idea what's coming. They managed to affront the whole of the Shi'ite world - not to mention hundreds of millions of Sunni Muslims as well.

Total strategic rupture does not even begin to describe it: we have reached the absolute point of no return between Washington and Tehran. Instead of this childish notion of regime change, which only braindead fanatical Zionists can entertain, the killing of Khamenei is consolidating a national consensus; legitimizing a no holds barred retaliation; and unleashing a multi-front confrontation stretching from the Gulf to the Levant.

Iran's immediate tactics are crystal clear: to saturate Israeli air defences and trigger a massive Interceptor Crisis. That is bound to compel Israeli generals to beg neo-Caligula for a ceasefire - even as Iran will not cease to pick Israel's infrastructure and economy apart, possibly causing the death cult to crack in a matter of days.

Russia and China meanwhile will be working in the shade to ensure Iran's defense network remains intact.

If West Asia gas and oil stops flowing only for a few days, all ominous bets are off when it comes to the global economy. Iran has gamed all scenarios and can apply and release pressure at will.

The Global South will be learning all the lessons of how the Iranian leadership displays solidarity and clear objectives while forced on an unprecedented fight on several fronts against the imperial colossus - and that after 47 years of relentless sanctions. This kind of resistance, in itself, is already a miracle.

Now the path may be opened towards the end of American military footprint across West Asia - something envisioned by a lineage of martyrs, from Soleimani and Nasrallah to Khamenei.

We may just be reaching the portal of the post-U.S. West Asia order, where that ghastly death cult with its pathetic intolerant God will be strategically wallowing in the mire, its deterrence in tatters, consumed with paranoia while fighting multiple instance of asymmetrical pressure. 

 

Source: https://www.sott.net/article/504920-Ten-hours-that-shook-West-Asia