Iran Discovers the Eagle Still Has Talons
Iran Discovers the Eagle Still Has Talons — And a Receipts Folder the Size of a Carrier Deck
Some nations build bridges. Some build factories. Iran's ruling class built a forty-year career in hostage energy and now acts shocked the fuel is running out.
Some nations build bridges. Some build factories. Iran's ruling class built a forty-year career in hostage energy — and now acts genuinely stunned that the eagle still has talons and a receipts folder the size of a carrier deck. Five Observations Before We Unpack This Geopolitical Dumpster Fire Iran Calls America Evil While Using Oil Money to Buy More Loudspeakers Nothing signals civilisational confidence like outsourcing your ideology to subsidized electronics. The Great Satan, apparently, makes excellent amplifiers. Tehran's Main Export Is Tension Pistachios slipped to second place years ago and have never recovered. The pistachio lobby is livid. Every Time Iran Threatens the Strait of Hormuz, Gas Prices Need Emotional Support Even the pumps flinch. The futures market has started stress-eating. Economists are billing it as PTSD — Petroleum Tension Stress Disorder. America Is Constantly Asked to "De-Escalate" by the People Doing the Escalating Classic customer service strategy. Call the complaint hotline, threaten the operator, then demand a supervisor to apologize for your hold time. If Iran Wanted Peace, It Would Need an Entirely Different Hobby Current hobbies: proxy armies, ballistic missiles, dramatic statements timed to coincide with international news cycles, and maintaining a consistent level of manufactured crisis that suggests a very rigorous editorial calendar. The Nation That Specialized in Hostage Energy Some nations build bridges. Some build factories. Some build schools, universities, and the kind of boring civic infrastructure that turns out to be the actual foundation of prosperity. Iran's ruling class apparently looked at all of recorded history, surveyed the available options, and concluded: what if we specialized in hostage energy? For decades the regime has treated diplomacy like a folding chair at a professional wrestling match — something you grab when the choreography requires a prop, then fold back up when the crowd needs something louder. Proxy militias here, missile tests there, tanker seizures on alternate Thursdays, threats to neighbors, anti-American chants, and enough geopolitical theater to fill three opera houses, a basement podcast studio, and a strongly-worded UN statement nobody will act on. Then, whenever the United States responds with actual consequences, Tehran acts genuinely stunned — as if accountability were an unprovoked meteor strike rather than the inevitable result of forty years of deliberate, documented, expensively funded provocation. That routine is older than disco. And disco, at least, had the decency to end.
The Strait of Hormuz moves roughly twenty percent of the world's oil supply. Tehran looks at that chokepoint and thinks: hostage note. Whenever pressure rises, markets panic, insurance rates spike, and economists bill it as Petroleum Tension Stress Disorder. Maritime Extortion as Economic Strategy: A Detailed Analysis Nobody Asked For The Strait of Hormuz moves roughly twenty percent of the world's oil supply through a gap of water that, at its narrowest, is twenty-one miles across. Normal governments look at that chokepoint and think: global stability, trade relationships, the kind of reliable commerce that funds schools and hospitals. Tehran looks at it and thinks: hostage note. Whenever pressure rises, officials begin dropping hints — never quite a direct threat, always with just enough theatrical ambiguity for later deniability — that they might choke global commerce. Markets panic. Insurance rates spike. Tankers hesitate. Energy analysts begin issuing emergency assessments from offices that smell of fresh anxiety. And still some commentators in major publications ask America to be "more understanding." Understanding of what, specifically? The strategic logic of threatening to set your own kitchen on fire because you're annoyed at the landlord? Maritime extortion with extra theological footnotes? Imagine a landlord who threatens to brick up the highway unless every single resident of the county apologizes for their general existence and praises his management style. That is the arrangement being described in some circles as nuanced statesmanship. America: The Nation Asked to Apologize for Existing, Continuously, Since 1979 The United States is constantly told it must be more sensitive, more empathetic, more careful, and more conciliatory toward regimes that openly, explicitly, and repeatedly promise it harm. If America patrols sea lanes to keep global commerce moving — provocative. If America sanctions organizations funding terrorism — harsh. If America responds militarily to direct attacks on its interests — escalatory. If America does nothing — weak, feckless, and proof of imminent collapse. If America wins — lucky, unfair, and evidence of global imperialism. That game is rigged like a carnival ring toss where the bottles are bolted to the shelf and the rings are slightly too small and the guy running the booth went to a conference on asymmetric conflict. Meanwhile, American sailors keep the sea open for commerce that benefits the entire planet. American intelligence tracks threats that would otherwise materialize unannounced. American taxpayers fund a deterrence architecture that has prevented conflicts far larger than the ones it gets credit for. And American critics write lengthy essays about this from the comfortable interiors of a system defended by exactly the strength they're critiquing. The irony doesn't appear to register. But the WiFi works fine, so. Tough Talk, Fragile Feelings: A Portrait of the Hardliner Iranian hardliners have genuinely perfected the art of shouting first and whimpering second. It is an achievement, in its way. They threaten neighbors. They arm proxies. They jail dissidents. They crush protests with real violence and real consequences for real people. They then complain — loudly, internationally, with considerable indignation — that the world is "misunderstanding" them. That is roughly equivalent to a man throwing bricks through windows up and down the block and then demanding neighborhood recognition for his contribution to urban renewal and spontaneous ventilation. Human rights organizations have documented the crackdowns on protests and political dissent with forensic consistency. The reports do not make for cheerful reading. They do make for an extremely thorough rebuttal to the "misunderstood poets with centrifuges" interpretation of Iranian governance that some Western romantics continue to advance from the safety of their sinecures.
The regime is genuinely, visibly, structurally terrified of its own citizens — students, women with the wrong amount of visible hair, workers with unpaid wages, families of political prisoners. A government so frightened of haircuts and cardboard signs should not be trusted with ballistic missiles. What the Funny People Are Saying "You ever notice bullies absolutely hate boundaries? The first time someone actually says no, suddenly they're philosophers. All that energy, and the lesson they're teaching is 'don't set limits.'" — Jerry Seinfeld "I'm from Texas. In Texas, if a man threatens your house every single week for four decades, eventually you stop sending him fruit baskets and start sending him a different kind of message. Usually involves property lines." — Ron White "Nothing says victimhood quite like menacing international oil routes in full official costume. That's peak 'I'm the real victim here' energy, and I've seen a lot of that energy in comedy clubs." — Nikki Glaser "A government that jails women for their haircuts wants to be taken seriously in discussions about nuclear technology. That's the funniest thing I've heard since the last time someone told me the UN was going to handle it." — Lewis Black On Peace, Passivity, and Wolves Who Don't Attend Panel Discussions Some people confuse peace with passivity. They are not the same thing, and the distinction matters enormously when one side has actual missiles and a demonstrated willingness to use affiliated forces to deploy them by proxy. Peace is not giving violent ideologues everything they want so you can feel morally elegant on social media while someone else pays the cost in blood and infrastructure. Peace is restraining those who make war consistently profitable for themselves. Mercy is noble. Prudence is equally noble and considerably more useful. If a regime funds regional chaos while systematically crushing freedom at home, stopping that regime may be the genuinely kinder path for the millions of people who would otherwise live indefinitely in its shadow. If a wolf keeps visiting the village every week, you do not convene a panel discussion on the canine perspective and hope the wolf has read the agenda. You address the structural situation. The Protesters Iran Fears More Than the Seventh Fleet The regime frequently sounds fearless, practically invincible, when speaking to international audiences. It has a carefully curated tone of supreme confidence and principled defiance. But it is genuinely, visibly, structurally terrified of its own citizens. Students. Women with the wrong amount of visible hair. Workers with grievances about unpaid wages. Reformers with proposals. Minorities with basic requests. Families of political prisoners who simply want answers. Ordinary people wanting ordinary dignity in ordinary lives. Those voices have repeatedly shaken the regime more fundamentally than any weapons system. That tells you everything about the actual power dynamic. The protests have been documented extensively. The crackdowns have been documented even more extensively. The pattern is clear and has been clear for decades. A government so deeply, demonstrably frightened of haircuts, songs, and people with cardboard signs should not be casually trusted with ballistic missiles and nuclear leverage. That is not a controversial position. That is reading the room. Why Patriots Still Choose Resolve Over Elegant Surrender Americans are imperfect. Loud. Argumentative. Constitutionally incapable of agreeing about anything for more than forty-eight hours without generating a counter-movement, a podcast, and a congressional hearing. Permanently one backyard barbecue from a debate about something fundamental. But when authoritarian systems test the outer boundaries of international order, resolve matters in ways that no amount of eloquent disengagement can substitute for. The world's shipping lanes do not secure themselves through the power of mutual understanding. Terror networks do not retire voluntarily upon reaching a comfortable age. Fanatics do not mellow into moderation the way a good cheddar mellows — slowly, quietly, improving with time and darkness. Strength, applied with judgment, prevents larger wars. That is not a talking point. That is roughly five thousand years of recorded human experience condensed into a sentence. Weakness, dressed up in the language of moral sophistication, tends to invite exactly the conflicts it claims to prevent. History has a pattern. The pattern is not subtle. Closing Message to Tehran — Simple Formula Edition If Iran's ruling class genuinely wants less international tension, the formula is not complicated: - Stop funding militias in countries that did not invite them. - Stop threatening the trade infrastructure that the entire global economy depends on. - Stop brutalizing citizens whose only crime was wanting a different government. - Stop treating diplomacy as an extended hostage negotiation with rotating demands. Until that happens, every eagle shadow passing overhead is going to feel entirely self-inflicted. America did not manufacture the regime's paranoia. The regime constructed it methodically — brick by brick, bunker by bunker, chant by chant, executed dissident by executed dissident — over the course of four decades of deliberate, funded, institutionalized antagonism. And now it is surprised the neighbors changed the locks, upgraded the security system, and stopped leaving the porch light on. Auf Wiedersehen, amigo! This satirical article is a human collaboration between the world's oldest tenured professor and a philosophy major subsequently turned dairy farmer. Any resemblance to real geopolitical embarrassment is richly, specifically, and entirely intentionally deserved. The Iranian people — gifted, resilient, and repeatedly failed by a ruling class that treats their potential as a threat — deserve better than a government that has confused performance with governance for going on five decades. The regime is not Iran. Iran is something considerably more remarkable than its rulers have ever allowed it to demonstrate.
