Hey everyone, welcome back to My Weird Prompts. I am Corn, and I am sitting here in our home in Jerusalem with my brother. We have got a really heavy, but I think absolutely essential topic to dive into today. Usually, our housemate Daniel sends us an audio prompt to kick things off, but today we actually decided to pick the topic ourselves. It is something that has been weighing on us, especially given everything we have seen over the last few months here in March of two thousand twenty-six.
Herman Poppleberry here. And you are right, Corn. Living here in Jerusalem, you cannot help but feel the weight of this. We spent a lot of time in recent episodes, like episode nine hundred twenty-nine, talking about the technical side of the threats we face, the missiles, the targeting data, the diagnostic nature of the attacks from the north and the east. But lately, I have been hearing a lot of people, both here in Israel and friends back in the United States, asking a more fundamental question. Why? Why is the Iranian regime so obsessed with us? We are a small country, over a thousand miles away. We do not share a border. We do not have a territorial dispute in the traditional sense. Yet, for the leadership in Tehran, the destruction of Israel is not just a policy goal, it is a foundational reason for being.
That is exactly the disconnect I want to explore. If you look at it through a purely Westphalian, realist lens of international relations, it makes zero sense. Nations usually fight over resources, borders, or regional hegemony. But the intensity of the hostility coming from the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and the Supreme Leader goes way beyond geopolitical competition. It feels existential, almost pathological. I want to peel back the layers of the Khomeinist ideology and look at the actual architecture of this hatred. Is it genuine religious fervor, is it a calculated tool for domestic power, or is it some kind of fusion of both that has taken on a life of its own?
It is definitely a fusion, but to understand the why, you have to go back to the very beginning of the nineteen seventy-nine revolution. You have to look at how Ayatollah Khomeini framed the world. He did not just see a political struggle in Iran, he saw a cosmic struggle. He used these two specific terms that are still the bedrock of the regime’s worldview today: the Mustazafin and the Mustakbirin. The Mustazafin are the oppressed, the downtrodden of the earth, specifically the Muslim masses. The Mustakbirin are the arrogant, the oppressors. In this framework, the United States is the Great Satan, the ultimate source of arrogance. But Israel? Israel is the Little Satan. It is viewed as a colonial implant, a cancerous tumor, as they often say, that was placed in the heart of the Islamic world to keep the Mustazafin divided and weak.
So, in that worldview, Israel is not just a country. It is a symbol of everything they believe is wrong with the world order. But Herman, why has that persisted? Revolutions usually cool off over forty-five years. People get tired of the rhetoric. They want better economies, they want freedom. We see the Iranian people protesting in the streets, risking everything to move past this. Yet the leadership, especially the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, seems more committed to this anti-Israel mission now in two thousand twenty-six than they were in the nineteen eighties. Why has it intensified rather than faded?
That is a great question, and it goes to the heart of how the regime maintains its legitimacy. You have to understand that the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, or the I R G C, is not just a military. It is a massive economic conglomerate and a state within a state. They control huge swaths of the Iranian economy, from construction to telecommunications. For the I R G C to justify its massive budget, its extra-legal power, and its brutal suppression of domestic dissent, it needs a permanent state of war. It needs an enemy that is so threatening, so demonic, that any internal opposition can be framed as treason or Zionist collaboration.
I see. So if you are a young person in Tehran asking for basic human rights, the regime can just point to the resistance against the Zionist entity as the reason why they cannot afford to give you those rights. It is a classic diversion tactic, but it is baked into the very institutional DNA of the I R G C. If Israel suddenly ceased to be an enemy, the I R G C would lose its primary reason for existing as a revolutionary vanguard. They would just be another corrupt military. By keeping the conflict alive, they keep their power alive.
And this is where the theology and the strategy become inseparable. In Khomeinist thought, the liberation of Jerusalem is not just a territorial goal, it is the prerequisite for the return of the Mahdi, the hidden Imam. For the hardliners, this is not a metaphor. They believe they are participating in a divine timeline. So when they build these massive drone factories and ship precision-guided munitions to Hezbollah, they are not just playing a geopolitical chess match. They are, in their minds, fulfilling a religious obligation. This is why we see them willing to endure massive economic sanctions and international isolation. You cannot easily deter someone who thinks they are on a mission from God to cleanse the region of a perceived religious and colonial impurity.
It is terrifying when you think about it that way, because it removes the usual guardrails of rational state behavior. If your goal is the total eradication of another state, there is no room for compromise. There is no middle ground. And we have seen this reflected in the way they have built the Axis of Resistance. We talked about this back in episode seven hundred sixty-six, how it has evolved from a loose collection of allies into a vertically integrated military architecture. Herman, you have been looking at the recent data from early two thousand twenty-six. How is this ideological obsession manifesting in their current operational strategy?
It is manifesting as what I call operational fusion. We touched on this in episode seven hundred fifty-seven, but it has reached a new level this year. The I R G C is no longer just the benefactor of groups like Hezbollah or the Houthis. They are the central nervous system. In the last few months, we have seen a forty percent increase in the frequency of highly coordinated, multi-front exercises. They are practicing for a day when they can overwhelm our defenses from every direction simultaneously. And what is striking is the diagnostic nature of it. As we discussed in episode nine hundred twenty-nine, they are not just firing rockets to cause damage. They are firing them to collect data on our interceptors, our radar response times, and our decision-making loops. They are treating the destruction of Israel as a technical problem that can be solved through persistent, iterative testing.
That is a chilling way to put it. It is like they are debugging a program where the end goal is the collapse of a nation. But let's talk about the domestic side of this again. Does the average person in Iran actually buy this? We see the videos of students refusing to step on the Israeli and American flags painted on the ground at universities. We hear the chants of neither Gaza nor Lebanon, my life only for Iran. There seems to be a massive gap between the regime’s obsession and the priorities of the Iranian people.
There is a huge gap, Corn, but that gap actually makes the regime more dangerous, not less. When a regime loses its popular legitimacy, it leans even harder on its foundational ideology and its security apparatus. The more the Iranian people reject the regime, the more the I R G C feels it has to prove its worth through external aggression. They use the anti-Israel cause as a litmus test for loyalty. If you are not a hundred percent behind the resistance, you are an enemy of the state. This creates a feedback loop where the regime’s survival becomes tied to the continuation of the conflict. They cannot stop, because stopping would mean admitting the last forty-seven years of sacrifice were for nothing.
It is a sunk cost fallacy on a civilizational scale. They have invested so much blood and treasure into this proxy network and this narrative of resistance that they cannot pivot without the whole house of cards falling down. But I want to push on the strategic side for a second. Some analysts argue that Iran uses the Israel issue primarily to gain influence in the Arab world. By being the most vocal anti-Zionist power, they try to leapfrog the Sunni-Shia divide and position themselves as the true leaders of the Islamic world. How much of this is just a play for regional hegemony?
That was certainly a big part of the strategy in the nineteen nineties and early two thousand seconds. They wanted to shame the Arab regimes for their perceived weakness or their willingness to negotiate. And for a while, it worked. It gave Iran a lot of soft power on the so-called Arab street. But look at where we are now in two thousand twenty-six. The Arab world has changed. The Abraham Accords showed that many Arab nations are more afraid of Iran than they are interested in fighting Israel. They see Israel as a potential partner in technology, security, and trade. This has actually isolated Iran even further. Instead of being the leaders of a broad Islamic front, they are now the heads of a radical, revolutionary fringe. This has made them more desperate. They feel the walls closing in as the region moves toward normalization, so they have to escalate to prove that they can still break the system.
So the peace treaties between Israel and its neighbors are actually a threat to the Iranian regime’s ideological monopoly. If Israel is integrated into the region, the whole Khomeinist narrative that Israel is an alien, colonial tumor falls apart. It proves that coexistence is possible, which is the ultimate nightmare for a revolutionary regime that thrives on perpetual conflict.
Peace is an existential threat to the Islamic Republic. That sounds like a paradox, but it is the truth. If there is no enemy, there is no need for the I R G C. If there is no Little Satan, the religious justification for the regime’s hardships disappears. This is why they were so determined to sabotage any progress toward further normalization. Their strategy is to make the cost of peace so high, through terrorism and regional instability, that no one wants to pursue it. It is a veto through violence.
I think it is important for our listeners to understand that this is not just about Benjamin Netanyahu or any specific Israeli policy. I mean, we have our own opinions on domestic politics here, but the Iranian regime’s hostility predates the current government, it predated the previous ones, and it will likely continue regardless of who is in office in Jerusalem. It is a structural hostility. Sometimes I think people in the West make the mistake of thinking if we just changed one or two policies, the Iranians would calm down. But you are saying that is a total misunderstanding of their operating system.
It really is. You cannot negotiate with an ideology that views your very existence as a theological error. If you look at the writings of the current Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei, he is very consistent. He does not talk about borders or two-state solutions. He talks about the eventual and inevitable disappearance of the Zionist entity. He views it as a historical certainty. When you are dealing with that kind of teleological worldview, diplomacy is just a tool to buy time or gain a tactical advantage. It is never a path to a final settlement.
And that brings us back to the I R G C’s proxy network. We have talked about the Axis of Resistance as a military tool, but it is also an ideological export. When the I R G C trains a fighter in Yemen or a militiaman in Iraq, they are not just teaching them how to fire a missile. They are indoctrinating them into this Khomeinist framework. They are creating a transnational class of warriors who are loyal to the Supreme Leader and the mission of the revolution. This is how they project power without having to risk an Iranian soldier in every fight.
And it is a very cost-effective way to wage war. They are willing to fight to the last Lebanese, the last Syrian, or the last Yemeni to achieve their goals. This is the cold-blooded strategic side of the equation. They use these groups as human shields and forward-deployed bases. It gives them plausible deniability, or at least it used to. One of the big shifts we have seen recently is that the deniability is gone. Everyone knows who is pulling the strings. But the regime almost seems to welcome that now. They want the world to know that they can reach out and touch anyone, anywhere, through their proxies.
So let's look at the second-order effects of this. If the Iranian regime is successful in maintaining this permanent state of hostility, what does that mean for the rest of the world? It is not just an Israel-Iran problem. We see the Houthis attacking global shipping in the Red Sea. We see Iranian drones being used by Russia in Ukraine. This anti-Western, anti-Israel ideology is becoming a central pillar of a new axis of authoritarian states.
You are hitting on something crucial, Corn. The obsession with Israel is the tip of the spear for a much larger assault on the Western-led international order. Iran has positioned itself as the leader of the global resistance against American hegemony. By attacking Israel, they are attacking the most visible and successful ally of the United States in the Middle East. They are trying to prove that the U S cannot protect its friends and that the Western model of liberal democracy and international law is a failure. In their mind, if they can break Israel, they can break the entire Western position in the region.
It is a high-stakes gamble. But it also seems like they are playing a dangerous game with their own survival. They are betting that the West and Israel will never have the stomach for a direct confrontation that would threaten the regime itself. They operate in the gray zone, pushing just enough to cause chaos but trying to stay below the threshold of a full-scale war that would involve the United States. But as we have seen in early two thousand twenty-six, that threshold is getting harder and harder to define.
The calculation of the regime is that time is on their side. They believe the West is decadent, divided, and weary of Middle Eastern wars. They see the political polarization in the United States and the internal debates in Israel as signs of weakness. They think they can just outlast us. They are willing to wait decades. This is a generational struggle for them. That is something I think we often struggle to grasp in the West, where our political cycles are four years long. The Iranian leadership is thinking in terms of decades and centuries.
That brings me to a point I wanted to raise about the tactical shifts we are seeing. If they are thinking in the long term, then every attack, every drone, every cyber-assault is a data point. We mentioned episode nine hundred twenty-nine and the diagnostic targeting. It feels like they are conducting a massive, multi-year experiment to find the systemic vulnerabilities in our defense grid. They are looking for the point where the cost of defense becomes unsustainable, or where the technology finally fails.
That is exactly right. And it is not just military technology. They are looking for social and psychological vulnerabilities too. They use social media and influence operations to try and exacerbate the divisions within Israeli society. They want us to be at each other's throats. They want the world to see Israel as a source of constant trouble and instability, hoping that eventually, the international community will just give up on us. It is a comprehensive strategy that spans the physical, digital, and psychological domains.
It is a lot to take in. But I think it is vital to name it for what it is. This is not a misunderstanding. It is not a conflict that can be solved by a better map or a more clever diplomat. It is a fundamental clash of worldviews. On one side, you have a modern, democratic state trying to live in peace and innovate. On the other, you have a revolutionary regime that requires the destruction of that state to justify its own existence and its theological vision.
And that is why I think the term obsession is so accurate. It is not a rational policy choice. It is a core identity. For the men who lead the I R G C, being anti-Israel is as central to who they are as being Muslim or being Iranian. In fact, they have fused those things together. To be a true Iranian patriot and a true believer, in their eyes, you must be a soldier in the war against Zionism.
So, looking forward, where does this go? We are in two thousand twenty-six. The regime is facing a succession crisis as the older generation of revolutionaries passes away. There is a younger generation that seems much more interested in the internet, global culture, and economic opportunity than in fighting a war for Jerusalem. Can the I R G C maintain this ideological purity as the leadership changes?
That is the big question. The I R G C is trying to ensure that the next generation of leaders is even more hardline than the current one. They are promoting the young ideologues, the ones who grew up in the shadow of the I R G C’s schools and institutions. They are trying to institutionalize the revolution so it can survive without the original founders. But biology is a powerful force. You cannot keep a population of eighty-five million people in a state of revolutionary fervor forever. Eventually, the gap between the regime’s obsessions and the people’s needs becomes too wide to bridge with just propaganda and fear.
But until that breaking point happens, we are in for a very dangerous period. The more the regime feels its domestic grip slipping, the more likely it is to lash out externally to rally the base and justify its power. We are seeing that right now. The intensity of the proxy attacks, the direct drone strikes, the cyber warfare—it is all part of a regime trying to prove it is still relevant and still powerful.
It is. And for us here in Jerusalem, it means we have to stay vigilant. We have to understand the nature of the enemy we are facing. We cannot afford to be naive. We have to recognize that when they say they want to destroy us, they actually mean it. It is not just rhetoric for a rally. It is a mission statement.
I think that is a good place to start wrapping up the core discussion. We have covered a lot of ground, from the theological Mustazafin versus Mustakbirin dichotomy to the institutional requirements of the I R G C, to the strategic utility of the Axis of Resistance. Herman, if you had to give our listeners a few key takeaways to help them make sense of the news over the next few months, what would they be?
First, I would say, stop looking for a rational, geopolitical reason for everything the Iranian regime does. A lot of it is driven by an internal ideological logic that does not care about traditional state interests. Second, understand that the proxy network is not a side project. It is the primary mechanism through which Iran projects its power and its ideology. They are the same thing. And third, watch the coordination levels. As we have seen in early two thousand twenty-six, the goal of the I R G C is total operational fusion. They want to be able to pull one lever in Tehran and have ten different groups move in unison. The more they achieve that, the more dangerous the situation becomes.
Those are great points. I would add one more: do not underestimate the resilience of the Iranian people. The regime’s obsession with Israel is a burden on them too. They are the first victims of this ideology. Their wealth is being spent on missiles and militias while their own economy crumbles. The ultimate solution to this problem probably lies within Iran itself, with the people who are tired of living in a permanent revolution.
I agree. The regime is a hollow shell in many ways, held together by the I R G C’s guns and this singular, obsessive narrative. If that narrative fails, or if the guns are turned in a different direction, the whole thing could change very quickly. But until then, we have to deal with the reality on the ground.
And that reality involves a lot of technical and strategic challenges that we will continue to track here on the show. If you want to dive deeper into the specifics of how this conflict is playing out, I really recommend checking out those past episodes we mentioned. Episode seven hundred sixty-six on the Axis of Resistance strategy, episode seven hundred fifty-seven on the I R G C’s command of Hezbollah, and episode nine hundred twenty-nine on the targeting data. You can find all of those on our website, myweirdprompts dot com.
And you can also search our entire archive there. We have over nine hundred episodes now covering almost every aspect of this and many other topics. We are really grateful to all of you for sticking with us and engaging with these deep dives. It is not always easy subject matter, but we think it is incredibly important.
It really is. And hey, if you have been enjoying the show, we would really appreciate it if you could leave us a quick review on your podcast app or on Spotify. It genuinely helps other people find us and helps the show grow. We love seeing the community of listeners expand, especially people who are looking for more than just the surface-level headlines.
Definitely. A quick rating or review makes a huge difference. Well, this has been an intense one, Corn. I am glad we decided to tackle this today. It feels like we needed to put some of these pieces together.
I agree. It helps to step back and look at the whole architecture of the problem. Thanks for all the research, Herman. You really helped clarify the connection between the theology and the tactics.
My pleasure. It is what I do.
Alright, well, that is it for this episode of My Weird Prompts. We will be back soon with more explorations into the topics that matter, whether they come from Daniel’s audio prompts or from our own deep dives. You can find us on Spotify and at myweirdprompts dot com.
Thanks for listening, everyone. Stay safe, and stay curious.
Until next time. Goodbye.
