By Rohana R. Wasala 

When you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change.

• Max Planck (1918 Nobel Laureate in Physics, German physicist and pioneer of the Quantum Theory)

(Caveat: Please consider that mine is not meant to be the last word on the subject of this essay. – RRW)

 Chinese-Canadian Jiang Xueqin (aka Professor Jiang/PredictiveHistory) is a globally popular YouTuber equipped with a Yale University BA in English Literature. He is an educator, education reformer and writer based in Beijing, China. Professor Jiang is widely known for his astute geopolitical predictions. One of the latest of his vodcasts that I have viewed was uploaded March 3, 2026. In its first 3 days alone, it had been watched or listened to by over 5.75 million viewers (that is, by March 6, the day that I checked out Jiang’s ‘PredictiveHistory’ YouTube channel). The host introduced him as having made three significant predictions in 2024: 1) that (Donald) Trump would win (the US presidential election), 2) that he (as president) would start a war with Iran, and 3) that the US would lose that war, which would change the global order. As we know, the first two forecasts have already come true. And the third, which is of real global transitional significance, is apparently moving towards fulfillment. Jiang has added to the plausibility of his third forecast in this context in a more recent (seemingly autodubbed) video by claiming that the killing of the 86 year old Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei of the Islamic Republic of Iran along with his close family relatives has immensely empowered him as an Islamic martyr (of the Shiite sect), which will powerfully militate against an American victory over Iran. 

To ordinary observers, it appears that Iran’s success against America may also look possible, particularly in view of its strategic adoption of low-cost drone warfare designed to overwhelm the expensive air defenses mounted by the US-Israeli combine, the growing risk of regional (even global) escalation of the conflict, the increasing economic strain on energy checkpoints like the Strait of Hormuz (through which roughly 20% of the world’s petroleum passes), and Trump’s own infamously eccentric, unconventional, ‘strongman’ approach as the leader of the world’s only Superpower to the long simmering US-Iran confrontation (since 1979)  backed by his ingrained, careless, impulsive, unpredictable, highly narcissistic personality. But, if Jiang’s third prophecy in 2024 comes to pass, there won’t be anything in it for Iranians to celebrate unless the predicted Iranian success against America leads to the Iranian people’s liberation from the tight clutches of the despotic ruling mullah minority. 

According to the latest ‘Iran International’ reports, the brutal crackdown on domestic Iranian protesters emboldened by a catastrophic economic collapse and the attendant sharp depreciation of the Iranian Rial and soaring inflation has already killed an estimated 36,500 of them, including fresh young men and women still in their teens demanding democracy and freedom. That’s not a scenario that will favour an Iranian victory over America, which will mean a continuation of the hellish status quo. The Saturday March 14 bombardment of the Kharg island by America marked a dangerous escalation of the war with disastrous economic implications for Iran. President Trump boasted on his ‘Truth Social’ website that America had executed one of the most powerful bombing raids in the history of the Middle East, and totally obliterated every MILITARY target in Iran’s crown jewel, Kharg Island”. But the attack spared the Iranian oil export facilities on the small island which is vital to Iran’s economy since it is the central oil terminal through which 90% of the country’s oil exports are shipped to foreign destinations. Trump has threatened to hit the oil facilities if Iran continues to obstruct shipping in the Strait of Hormuz. He might even consider taking over the Kharg island if necessary, he warned. Iran has vowed retaliation.

Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, for his part, expressed his determination to create conditions within Iran for Iranian people to topple the oppressive theocracy of the mullahs. Responding to media queries on Thursday March 12, 2026, an exhausted Netanyahu said: 

This is no longer the same Iran. This is no longer the same Middle East, or this is also not the same Israel. We are not waiting, we are initiating, attacking and we are doing so with a force the like of which has not been seen before. I have added another goal to create the conditions for the Iranian people to overthrow this terrible tyrannical regime. (However) to create conditions doesn’t guarantee that (this) will happen…..”. 

About two years ago, speaking at the opening ceremony for Holocaust Martyrs’ and Heroes’ Remembrance Day in Jerusalem on May 5, 2024 (seven months after the deadly coordinated attack by members of Hamas and affiliated Islamist groups on kibbutzim in southern Israel, which started the current conflict) stated: 

Today we again confront enemies bent on our destruction. I say to the leaders of the world, no amount of pressure, no decision by any international forum, will stop Israel from defending itself. As the prime minister of Israel, the one and only Jewish state, I pledge (to) you today from Jerusalem on this Holocaust Remembrance Day, if Israel is forced to stand alone, Israel will stand alone. But we know we are not alone, because countless decent people around the world support our just cause and I say to you, we will defeat our genocidal enemies”.  (‘Today we again confront enemies bent on….’ harks back to the 1941-1945 Nazi Holocaust of European Jews.)

IDF (Israel Defence Forces) army reservist and military journalist (presenter of the ‘Boots on the Ground’ program) Yair Pinto of TBNIsrael reported in a newsbreak headlined Israel Suffers Enormous Cost Exterminating Iran’s Terror Empire” on March 14, 2026:

Everyday since the beginning of the Lion’s Roar war or its American name Epic Fury, heavy explosions have been heard over Tehran in Iran. Every piece of the Revolutionary Guard’s infrastructure in Iran has been bombed. Two rounds of senior revolutionary guards have been eliminated and even the Supreme Leader of the Revolutionary Guard, the most important figure, was terminated in the first hours of the opening of this war, and the United States and Israel brought in all the heavy forces from the news (sic) and the most advanced fighter jets in the world including American B2 bombers and their companion in this arena the B1, and also the B52 and in addition a third aircraft carrier is on its way to the region and as we are speaking while two much larger aircraft carriers are already here in the    middle East and in the state of non-stop attacks day and night, not to mention American nuclear submarines, warships that look like they come out of a science fiction movie. This is including a firepower that is beyond the imagination ……. The United States and Israel are ……. dismantling layer after layer the systems that keep the (Islamic) Revolutionary Guard (Corps) standing. So if that is what is happening in the skies, at the sea, and on the ground, how much longer can the Revolutionary Guard (IRGC) in Iran hold on?”

Pete Hegseth is at present the head of the United States military. Sworn in as the Secretary of Defense under President Donald Trump on January 25, 2025, he is now called the Secretary of War. This is after the rebranding in September 2025 of the Department of Defense that he heads as the Department of War. The renaming of the defence department was meant to ‘emphasize military strength and resolve’. Secretary Of War Hegseth oversees all the United States Armed Forces. During a press briefing at the Pentagon on March 2, 2026, accompanied by the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Dan Caine, Hegseth,  after inaugural remarks, said:

For 47 long years, the expansionist and Islamist regime in Tehran has waged a savage one-sided war against America. They didn’t always declare it openly, except for their constant chants of Death to America”; they did it through the blood of our people, car bombs in Beirut……… roadside bombs in Iraq and Afghanistan. …………………… We didn’t start this war, but under President Trump, we are finishing it. Their war on Americans has become our retribution against their Ayatollah and his death cult……”

Towards the end of his introductory address, Secretary Hegseth stated:

To the media outlets and political left screaming “endless wars,” stop. This is not Iraq. This is not endless. I was there for both. Our generation knows better and so does this President. He called the last 20 years of nation building wars dumb, and he’s right. This is the opposite.

This operation is a clear, devastating, decisive mission: destroy the missile threat, destroy the navy, no nukes. Israel has clear missions as well for which we are grateful, capable partners, as we’ve said since the beginning, capable partners are good partners, unlike so many of our traditional allies who wring their hands and clutch their pearls, hemming and hawing about the use of force.

America, regardless of what so-called international institutions say, is unleashing the most lethal and precise air power campaign in history. B-2s, fighters, drones, missiles, and of course classified effects. All on our terms with maximum authorities. No stupid rules of engagement, no nation-building quagmire, no democracy building exercise, no politically correct wars. We fight to win, and we don’t waste time or lives.

As the President warned, an effort of this scope will include casualties. War is hell and always will be. A grateful nation honors the four Americans we have lost thus far and those injured, the absolute best of America.

May we prosecute the remainder of this operation in a manner that honors them. No apologies, no hesitation, epic fury for them and the thousands of Americans before them taken too soon by Iranian radicals”. (Quoted from an official website of the US Department of War accessed March 15, 2026)

.Announcing the launch of Operation Epic Fury against Iran on February 28, President Donald Trump said, anticipating Hegseth’s charges against Iran’s Islamist hostility towards America: 

Our objective is to defend the American people by eliminating imminent threats from the Iranian regime, a vicious group of very hard, terrible people … .Its menacing activities directly endangered the United States, our troops, our bases overseas, and our allies throughout the world. For 47 years the Iranian regime has chanted ‘Death to America!’ and waged an unending campaign of bloodshed and mass murder, targeting the United States, our troops, and the innocent people in many many countries…..”. 

President Trump mentioned at random a number of examples of such atrocities including the (1979) violent takeover of the American embassy in Tehran holding dozens of hostages for 444 days. (This happened in November 1979. Young Anti-American Iranian militants were demanding the return for trial in Iran of the ousted Shah of Iran from the US where he was living in exile.) Trump remembered how in 1983 Iranian proxies (supposedly, an early iteration of Hizbullah) carried out the Marine barracks bombings (in Beirut, Lebanon) that killed 241 American military personnel; he also mentioned the attack on the (guided missile destroyer) USS Cole (by Al-Qaeda terrorists in the Yemeni port of Aden on October 12, 2000) that killed many (Actually, that attack left 17 sailors dead and 39 others injured).

Here President Trump was touching on the bloody history of 47 years of Iranian violence (not universally unprovoked, though) against America (1979-2026). The conflict has a religious appearance on the face of it (which, nevertheless, is also a most potent factor). But it is fuelled more by secular political, military and economic interests rather than by religious ideological differences. In fact, the America-Iran conflict at the regime level had had a near 30 year incubation period by 1979. In 1953, the democratically elected prime minister of Iran (1951-53) Mohammad Mosaddegh was overthrown by an American CIA and British M16-backed coup, making way for the Shah to be back on the throne. This was done by America with British support for nothing more exalted than the hunger for cheap oil, which even today seems to provide the fundamental driving force of the ongoing America-Israel joint campaign against Iran. The religion-based genocidal hatred of Iran’s current rulers and its proxies (Hamas, Hizbullah, etc) towards Israel and America gives moral legitimacy to that campaign in the eyes of the decent people around the world.

 It is ironic that the ‘great Satan’ (America) that toppled Iranian democracy in 1953 and installed the authoritarian Shah back in power is now, in partnership with ‘the little Satan’ (Israel), engineering a regime change involving a return to democracy and modernity free from rigid religious dominance over governance. While missile strikes on Tehran were going on (as shown in videos released by the US), Prime Minister Netanyahu declared (March 10) that they are ‘breaking the bones of the Iranian terror regime’. Be that as it may, there is more to this irony: Iran itself was once in a triangular strategic partnership with America and Israel! 

To be continued