Empire of Chaos, Plunder and Strikes in Panic of Being
Evicted from Eurasia
Pepe Escobar • January 19, 2026
https://www.unz.com/pescobar/empire-of-chaos-plunder-and-strikes-in-panic-of-being-evicted-from-eurasia/
Tehran will never bow down to the diktats. The
neo-Caligula regime change obsession – in fact mirrored as a NATOstan obsession
– will keep ruling. Tehran is not intimidated.
The whole planet is somehow convulsed by
neo-Caligula’s latest scam: because he did not get his “peace” Nobel from
Norway, part of his megalomanic narcissist revenge is to bag Greenland from
Denmark (in Empire-speak, who cares? These Scandinavians are al the same
anyway).
In neo-Caligula’s own words: “The World is not secure
unless we have Complete and Total Control of Greenland.”
That seals the Empire of Chaos completely morphed into
the Empire of Plunder and now the Empire of Permanent Strikes.
Assorted Euro-chihuahuas dared to dispatch a tiny
bunch of dog-sled conductors to defend Greenland from neo-Caligula. To no
avail. They were instantly hit with tariffs. The strike remains in effect until
the “complete and total purchase” of Greenland.
Euro-chihuahuas – following the Global South – may
have finally woken up to the new paradigm: Strike Geopolitics.
Neo-Caligula did not get regime change in Caracas –
and his oil mirage was refuted even by US energy majors. He did not get regime
change in Tehran – even if CIA, Mossad and assorted NGOs worked full time to
deliver.
So Plan C is Greenland, essential for imperial
lebensraum purposes, as collateral for the unpayable $38 trillion – and rising
– debt.
By all means that does not imply ditching the Iran
obsession. The USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier is moving into a position
in the Sea of Oman/Persian Gulf where it would be able to strike Iran before
the end of the week. All attack scenarios remain in place.
Assuming all hell breaks loose, this may become an
even more humiliating replay of the 12-day war in June last year, which the
death cult in West Asia spent as much as 14 months planning.
The 12-day war not only failed as a regime change op;
it engendered a sample of Iranian retaliation so hardcore that Tel Aviv still
has not recovered. Tehran has been explicit, over and over again, that the same
fate awaits neo-Caligula’s forces in Iran and across the Gulf in case of
renewed strikes.
Why the regime change obsession endures
As for the equally, miserably failed regime change op
on Iran these past few weeks, it featured on the forefront the pathetic Clown
Prince Reza Pahlavi, safely ensconced in Maryland, massively plugged by US
media as a “unifying political figure” capable of reassessing the “lived
catastrophe of clerical rule”.
Neo-Caligula was too busy to care about these
ideological niceties. What he wanted was to accelerate the proceedings by –
what else – applying Empire of Permanent Strikes logic: bombing Iran.
Diversionist spin, predictably, went ballistic. The
death cult in West Asia may have asked Moscow to tell Tehran that they would
not strike if Iran did not strike first. As if Tehran – and Moscow – could
trust anything coming from Tel Aviv.
The Gulfie crowd – Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Oman – may
have asked neo-Caligula not to strike, because that would have set the whole
Gulf on fire and generate “grave blowback”.
The real deal – once again – was TACO. There was
simply no gamed US strike scenario that would have allowed lightning quick
regime change, the only acceptable outcome. Thus back to bagging Greenland.
It took only a few days to unmask the massive
propaganda campaign across NATOstan about “mass casualties” among Iran
protesters.
The – fake – figures came from the Center for Human
Rights in Iran, located in, where else, New York, and financed by the
CIA-infested National Endowment for Democracy (NED) in Washington and other
assorted disinformation entities.
The list of reasons for urgent regime change in Iran
though remains off the charts, featuring, among others, these four key
elements:
1. Tehran must ditch the Axis of Resistance across West
Asia supporting Palestine.
2. Because Iran is at the privileged crossroads of
trade/energy connectivity corridors in Eurasia, both its connections with the
International North–South Transportation Corridor (INSTC) and China’s New Silk
Roads (BRI) must be severed. That means blowing up from the inside organic
intra-BRICS cooperation between Russia, Iran, India and China.
3. As over 90% of Iranian oil exports go to China – and
are settled in yuan – that’s a serious threat to the petrodollar: the ultimate
anathema. That’s where in Empire of Permanent Strikes terms, Iran aligns with
Venezuela. It’s our – petrodollar – way or the highway.
4. The staying power of the never-ending dream of an Iran
under the Shah remix – complete with a Shah-style SAVAK secret police; cozy
Mossad ties to rein in those Arab barbarians; and a sprawling CIA-run net of
surveillance hubs targeting both Russia and China.
How to counter a “regime-change war”
Tehran is not spooked by sanctions – as it has endured
over 6,000 of them over four decades, designed to totally strangle its economy
and even bring oil exports, in imperial terminology, down “to zero”.
Even under maximum pressure, Iran was capable of
building the most extensive industrial base across West Asia; relentlessly
invested in self-sufficiency and state of the art military hardware; joined the
SCO in 2023 and BRICS in 2024; and for all practical purposes developed a top
Global South knowledge economy.
Tsunamis of – digital – ink have been spent on why
China has not properly helped Iran so far against imperial maximum pressure,
for instance supporting Tehran against the speculative attacks on the rial.
That would have cost Beijing almost nothing – compared to its level of foreign
reserves.
The speculative attack on the rial was arguably the
essential trigger of the protests across Iran. It’s essential to remember that
hunger salaries were a key contributor to the collapse of Syria.
It’s up to Beijing to – diplomatically – answer this
uncomfortable question. The spirit of BRICS Plus – call it Bandung 1955 Plus –
may not survive when we all know this current world war is essentially about
resources and finance, which need to be mobilized and properly deployed.
And that brings us to China’s leadership seriously
evaluating whether it’s worth to remain a sort of larger version of Germany:
embryonically self-centered; harboring fear; and fundamentally selfish in
economic and financial terms. The – auspicious – alternative is for China to
create sufficiently sized credit facilities within BRICS to an array of
friendly nations.
Whatever happens next, it’s clear that the Empire of
Permanent Strikes not only will remain “actively hostile” to a multipolar,
multi-nodal world; the hostility will be marinated in a toxic sludge of anger
and revenge, and subordinated to the ultimate, panic fear: the Empire’s slowly
but surely, inexorable expulsion from Eurasia.
Cue to White House Special Representative Witkoff –
the real estate Bismarck – enouncing the imperial diktats to Iran:
1. Stop enriching uranium. Out of the question,
2. Reduce missile stockpiles. Out of the question.
3. Reduce approximately 2000 kg of enriched nuclear
material (3.67–60 %). That might be negotiated.
4. Stop supporting “regional proxies” – as in the Axis of
Resistance. Out of the question.
Tehran will never bow down to the diktats. But even if
it did, the – promised – imperial reward would be the lifting of sanctions (the
US Congress will never do it) and a “return to the international community”.
Iran is already part of the international community at the UN and inside BRICS,
SCO and the Eurasia Economic Union (EAEU), among other institutions.
So, the neo-Caligula regime change obsession – in fact
mirrored as a NATOstan obsession – will keep ruling. Tehran is not intimidated.
Cue to the strategic advisor to Iran’s Parliament Speaker, Mahdi Mohammadi:
“We know that we are facing a regime-change war in
which the only way to achieve victory is to make credible the threat that,
during the 12-day war, although it was ready, did not get the opportunity to be
carried out: a geographically expansive war of attrition, focused on the
Persian Gulf energy markets, on the basis of steadily increasing missile
firepower, lasting at least several months.”
