Last of a series

THE previous three installments of this series dissected how Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu precipitated the Iran war. On the surface, Netanyahu’s influence over Trump offered a masterful study of the puppeteer’s craft. Yet, at a deeper level, the conflict served as a seminar on how both the marionette and the puppeteer were, in bizarre ways, being managed by a far more adept actor: Saudi Arabia’s Mohammed bin Salman (MBS). It was, quite simply, a masterclass in “calculated silence.”

As we conclude this series on the Iran war, it is becoming increasingly clear that we are not just witnessing a military confrontation; we are watching the final resolution of a 45-year struggle for regional supremacy. And the victor isn’t the one who dropped the most bombs — it’s the one who had the most patience.

To fully appreciate the current situation, the antecedent of the Iran war needs to be reviewed in the light of Saudi’s role in it. The relationship between Saudi and Iran is best described as a longstanding rivalry with occasional attempts at détente.

For decades, the two have competed for power and influence in the Middle East, driven by religious differences (Sunni vs Shia); and Saudi asserting its authority as Islam’s center of gravity, being the host of Islam’s two holiest sites, Mecca and Medina. The two countries’ political dynamics and oil politics are often in the opposing regional proxy conflicts in Yemen and Syria, with Iran funding Saudi’s adversaries, the Houthis and Hezbollah.

Iran has, therefore, been the ultimate barrier to Saudi’s regional hegemony in the Middle East. Saudi is the richest country in the region, has the best military money can buy. But more importantly, it has America for a friend with a leader that is corrupt and can be bought. And MBS has the genius, the talent and foresight to mold Trump’s role in his ambitions, as we shall soon see.

The art of the ‘outsourced war’

Today, MBS has executed the most daring geopolitical maneuver of the 21st century: he bought a war without ever having to declare one. He has managed to dismantle his greatest existential threat, Iran, while maintaining the posture of a neutral bystander, a diplomatic broker and a victim of aggression — all at the same time.

This conflict isn’t a new feud; it’s the fallout of a 2019 humiliation. When Iran crippled Saudi’s Abqaiq and Khurais processing facilities and the world stood still, MBS realized a direct war would incinerate his “Vision 2030” dreams and scare off every cent of global capital. So, he changed the game.

He stopped trying to be a traditional ally and started acting like an owner. By bypassing military experts and personally pumping billions into Washington — most notably the $2 billion “risk” handed to Jared Kushner’s fund — MBS didn’t just invest money; he bought influence. He bought a family dynasty!

This wasn’t lobbying; it was a pay-to-play masterstroke. By tethering the US military to Saudi interests through financial leverage, MBS turned a superpower into his personal guarantor. He didn’t need to fight Iran himself — he built a geopolitical trap that forced Washington to do it for him.

Geopolitical gaslighting

MBS executed a masterclass in geopolitical gaslighting, wearing a “neutral mask” while American jets dismantled Iran. Behind closed doors, he was the hawk lobbying for war; publicly, he was the “restrained” leader signaling peace to Tehran. In the Philippines, we call this “doble cara.”

This wasn’t indecision — it was strategic mastery. By remaining officially non-belligerent, he occupied three roles: the architect who pushed for the conflict, the victim absorbing collateral damage, and the peacemaker ready to broker the end of conflict.

By refusing to get his hands dirty, he avoided being cast as a combatant. Instead, he emerged as the indispensable power everyone must rely on to rebuild the Gulf. He didn’t just survive the war; he positioned himself to own the aftermath.

The war for the ‘jugular’

Iran then weaponized the Strait of Hormuz. By choking this 33 kilometer-wide lifeline, Tehran aimed to break Western resolve with $120-$150 per-barrel oil triggering a worldwide political crisis. Yet, the cold math favors Riyadh. (Read my TMT columns parts 1 to 3, March 18, 25 and April 1, 2026.)

The bypass routes built for such a contingency — the Abu Dhabi pipeline to Fujairah, can only handle a fraction of the Hormuz volume. While insufficient, Saudi’s $475 billion reserves and “swing” capacity make them the only stabilizer left. MBS is playing a high-stakes game: absorbing finite infrastructure hits while Iran’s military and economy are systematically dismantled.

Once the dust settles, Iran vanishes. Saudi Arabia won’t merely dominate oil; they will be the sole guarantor of regional security by enduring the short-term chaos. When global powers beg for order, MBS remains the gatekeeper.

Cold-blooded intramural rivalry

MBS didn’t just target enemies; he neutralized his neighbors. By allowing the conflict to boil over, he watched the UAE’s reputation for invulnerability go up in smoke. Iranian missile strikes proved Dubai’s “safe haven” was an illusion. When the dust settles, investors won’t seek flashy skyscrapers — they’ll seek the strongest power left. With the Emirates tarnished and Iran ruined, MBS has cleared the field to become the Gulf’s undisputed hegemon. It is a hostile takeover.

Soft power and the battle for the Islamic soul

In this final, most calculated layer of the conflict, the battlefield shifted from the economic to the sacred. The “battle for the Islamic soul” reached fever pitch when Iranian missile shrapnel rained down on Jerusalem, dangerously close to the Al-Aqsa Mosque. For MBS, this was a geopolitical windfall.

For decades, Tehran has marketed itself as the revolutionary defender of Islam’s holy sites. However, the optics of Iranian fire threatening the third holiest site shattered that narrative instantly. While Iran appeared reckless, Saudi Arabia — the guardian of Mecca and Medina — maintained its mask as the “restrained adult.”

MBS didn’t need a propaganda campaign; the images of Iranian missiles over Al-Aqsa did the work for him. By staying silent while its rival endangered the faith’s heritage, Riyadh secured a decisive symbolic victory. This was the ultimate theological checkmate, positioning Saudi Arabia as the only legitimate leader of the Islamic world while Tehran’s credibility crumbled in the soot of its own missiles.

The inevitable conclusion

As the ceasefire nears, the Middle East is fundamentally re-engineered. Iran is broken, its proxies are toothless, and a massive power vacuum has opened that only the Saudi capital can fill.

MBS has achieved total rehabilitation. The former pariah — in the wake of the Khashoggi incident — is now the indispensable statesman, wielding a $930 billion checkbook to rebuild the region. He is betting that the world’s hunger for stability will forget how this fire started — positioning himself as the architect of the fire department rather than the arsonist.

This wasn’t just a war; it was a coronation. By letting others pull the trigger while maintaining “restraint,” MBS proved that patience is deadlier than missiles. The gap between him and his rivals is now an unbridgeable chasm.

Last of a series

BILLED as a clean decapitation strike, Operation “Epic Fury” fractured the post‑Cold War economic order triggering a cascading breakdown in global supply chains as longstanding guardrails erode. Donald Trump, pretending control over a conflict with no strategic clarity, doubled down.

On March 21, he issued Iran a 48‑hour ultimatum to reopen the Strait of Hormuz or face the “obliteration” of its power grid, an attack on civilian infrastructure supporting 90 million people — a war crime.

Just as the deadline lapsed, Trump backed off, extending it to five days, then another 10-day extension to April 6 — true to his TACO reputation — claiming “productive conversations” upon “Iranian government requests” — barefaced lies that Iran has denied.

Surreptitiously, Washington floated a 15‑point proposal through Pakistani go‑betweens. Tehran dismissed it outright, punctuating its contempt with new drone strikes in Kuwait. What began as an ultimatum decayed into a performative bargaining script pretending to be a threat.

The economic chokehold

Parts one and two of this series covered the Strait of Hormuz. When Iran closed it, the global economy didn’t just adjust; it convulsed. Oil prices, which sat comfortably under $75 before the war, exploded toward $120.

Iran’s wasn’t an act of desperation; it was premeditated. Before Feb. 28, Iran quietly tripled its oil exports and drew down storage reserves. They positioned the Strait closure as a weapon they could sustain. They had a plan.

Trump fires off midnight “twits-threats,” then wakes to post-tantrum exhaustion, leaving the world frozen at the “Strait.” Markets jumped on chaos — undoubtedly enriching Trump’s cronies — but the damage to the global order won’t heal.

‘Boots on the ground’: Rhetoric of escalation

Diplomacy staggers forward, but the military clock keeps its steady, unforgiving pace. On March 25, Israel — now openly and defiantly signaling a divergence from Washington’s objectives — launched an unprecedented wave of strikes on Tehran’s eastern perimeter. Simultaneously, US Central Command confirmed the arrival of another 5,000 paratroopers, and the Pentagon is reportedly preparing a $200‑billion supplemental request. The buildup marks the point where a standoff begins tilting toward the possibility of US forces entering Iranian territory. If targeting infrastructure fails to shift Tehran’s calculus, Washington is left with only higher‑risk escalations: a ground push into Iran or an amphibious move along the Strait’s coastline. This is a negotiating war — combat and diplomacy fused — each side trying to harden leverage. But coercion has limits. Once those limits are reached, escalation logic takes over, and the path toward a ground conflict becomes increasingly difficult to reverse.

Three scenarios for a world in freefall

As the ultimatums expired without an Iranian capitulation, the administration’s “commitment trap” snapped shut. We are now looking at three distinct trajectories for a world in freefall after the “shock and awe” — similar to the 2003 Iraqi adventurism. The opening strike failed to break Iran’s command structure. Hitting infrastructure didn’t neutralize Tehran’s mobile asymmetric assets, instead it dispersed IRGC units in the Zagros and kept firing cheap drone swarms and anti‑ship missiles. The US controls the air, but the “sieve effect” renders the Strait effectively uninsurable, freezing commercial traffic.

With 20 percent of global oil offline and halting major urea and ammonia exports, fertilizer prices have tripled and global food costs have been driven up an estimated 30 percent by the next harvest. Into this vacuum, China offers “security escorts,” edging out the US Navy in a corridor Washington once dominated.

Scenario one: The Middle Eastern quagmire. The conflict undergoes a horizontal explosion. Hezbollah saturates northern Israel, the Houthis strike Red Sea naval assets, and Suez closes. Iran escalates vertically by striking Gulf desalination plants and enabling cyberattacks on the US power grid. $8/gallon gasoline precipitates civil unrest. Washington is pulled into a multi-front entanglement with no clear exit.

Scenario two: The face-saving retreat. In a cynical pivot, the TACO backpedals, branding the war a “globalist trap,” to salvage his poll numbers, while Tehran — bleeding but defiant — accepts a hollow ceasefire. Both regimes declare a farcical victory: Washington claims “maximum pressure” triumphed, while Iran celebrates the “humiliation of the Great Satan.” This fragile “Cold Peace” restores oil flow, but exposes American resolve as a paper tiger. Regional allies, realizing Washington’s word is worthless, stampede toward Beijing to beg for long-term security guarantees.

Scenario three: Nuclear breakout and unipolar collapse. Tehran races to 90 percent enrichment and conducts its first underground test. Beijing and Moscow formalize a “triple entente” with Iran, providing a nuclear umbrella and a parallel trading system. The world splits into a stable Sino-energy sphere and a Western bloc crushed by $200 oil. The unipolar order gives way to a permanently fractured global system.

The deeper game –why it won’t end

Washington and Jerusalem missed history’s oldest lesson: You can destroy a nation’s arsenal, but not its will. Decapitation is not victory. By eliminating figures like Ali Larijani — men who could translate compromise into policy — they have hollowed out Iran’s negotiating core while leaving its fighting spine intact. The result is not peace but paralysis: a state that cannot bargain yet will not yield. You cannot end a war by dismantling the very machinery required to conclude it.

The exit ramp

We are trapped in a geopolitical “Nash equilibrium” where no actor can shift course without risking total collapse. Global stability is now held hostage by the survival instincts of two men — Trump and Netanyahu. Both launched this war to shield themselves from domestic vulnerabilities — Netanyahu to evade corruption trials and Trump to chase a legacy-defining “victory,” not to mention the Epstein files.

In doing so, they have accelerated a wider civilizational decline.

Before scenario three, the only viable off‑ramp left is institutional removal. Their military and security hierarchies — the supposed adults in the room — must accept that the commanders‑in‑chief are no longer serving national interests, only their own legal survival.

Israel needs a political reset. The opposition can force a no‑confidence vote to remove Netanyahu from direct control of wartime decisions, separating national defense from his unresolved legal battles. A transition government is the only plausible route to a ceasefire that regional actors might respect. Or he can go out the Yitzhak Rabin way in 1995.

In America, Congress must reassert its authority by invoking the War Powers Resolution, curbing offensive operations, and investigating the scope of Epic Fury. Voters also confront a choice about whether to sustain what critics describe as a “forever war.” Analysts argue that the GOP’s posture has amplified global risk while feeding energy volatility.

In the next midnight tweeting cycles, we need to watch the rantings and timing of the Truth Social posts and the developments in Pakistan. Then comes the harder question: In a conflict where both sides escalate to strengthen their bargaining position, who actually holds the leverage to force the first concession?

The answer will redefine the landscape. Meanwhile, these two madmen have pushed the world to a dangerous brink. To ensure humanity’s survival, the pathological narcissism of Trump and the scorched-earth desperation of Netanyahu must be ended before these reckless arsonists incinerate our future. They must be removed with extreme prejudice.