I’ve been saying this for over a year. This is a holy war to the IRGC and is all about retaining control so they can continue the war against the West and Israel.

Marc Liebman

From: Mike Brattland <mgbrattland@gerlecreek.com>
Date: Monday, May 25, 2026 at 7:35 PM
To: HeloBubbas <helobubbas@helobubbas.com>
Subject: [Helobubbas] FW: The theology of resistance: how Iran sees this war

From: andy.cain <andy.cain@comcast.net>
Sent: Monday, May 25, 2026 3:42 PM
To: Mike Brattland <mgbrattland@gerlecreek.com>
Subject: Fwd: The theology of resistance: how Iran sees this war

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---------- Forwarded message ---------
From: Andrew Fox from Fox On War <mrandrewfox@substack.com>
Date: Sun, 24 May 2026 at 17:33
Subject: The theology of resistance: how Iran sees this war
To: <albiemfox@gmail.com>

Why the Islamic Republic interprets conflict, negotiation, and survival through the lens of Karbala, martyrdom, and sacred history rather than Western strategic logic

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The theology of resistance: how Iran sees this war

Why the Islamic Republic interprets conflict, negotiation, and survival through the lens of Karbala, martyrdom, and sacred history rather than Western strategic logic

Andrew Fox

May 24

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Greetings from my post-Somaliland sickbed. Thank you for all the kind messages here and on X. I am happy to report that I am recovering. However, what better way to recuperate from illness than by writing an explanation of Twelver Shi’a psychology? I studied for an MSc in Psychology because wars are fought by people. If you can better understand the people fighting, you can better understand a war.

We are seeing many hot takes on the impending (or not) deal between Washington and Tehran. The reported terms look dreadful, but nothing is final or confirmed yet, so I am withholding judgment until we know for sure. I have set out here what I think the best outcome would look like within the art of the possible.

The greatest mistake Western analysts make when trying to understand the Islamic Republic is to assume that it thinks like a conventional nation state, with a thin layer of religious rhetoric painted on top. It does not. Nor is it an irrational apocalyptic cult marching enthusiastically towards Armageddon. Both caricatures fail because they flatten a system that is far more intellectually coherent, historically rooted, and strategically adaptive than most outsiders care to admit.

To understand how Tehran views the current war and negotiations, one must grasp the philosophical and psychological lens through which the regime interprets history itself. The Islamic Republic is a revolutionary project embedded in Twelver Shi’a political theology, shaped by martyrdom, resistance, humiliation, survival, and the belief that history is ultimately a moral struggle between justice and oppression.

At its core is the belief that legitimate divine authority did not end with the Prophet Muhammad, but continued through a line of twelve divinely appointed Imams (hence “Twelver”), descendants of Ali ibn Abi Talib (the first Shi’a Imam) and Fatima, the Prophet’s daughter. The final Imam, Muhammad al-Mahdi, known as the “Hidden Imam,” is believed not to have died but to have entered occultation in the ninth century. In their belief, he remains alive, concealed by God, and will return at the end of history as the Mahdi (“the Guided One”) to establish justice, defeat tyranny, redeem Islam and inaugurate a divinely ordered world.

In conflict, states interpret events through their own worldviews. The Islamic Republic interprets conflict very differently from the West. In Western strategic culture, war is generally assessed through material metrics. These include territory gained or lost, infrastructure destroyed, economic damage, casualty ratios, tactical victories, and negotiated outcomes. We instinctively assess success by measurable outcomes because modern Western states are fundamentally products of Enlightenment rationalism and industrial bureaucracy. This is why one school of thought declares the current war an overwhelming American victory. You may notice that fewer Israelis, who have a better understanding of the Middle East, have adopted this narrative.

The Iranian revolutionary system certainly understands these calculations, but it filters them through something far older and far more emotionally powerful: the Shi’a historical memory of persecution and sacrifice, above all the martyrdom of Husayn ibn Ali at the Battle of Karbala in 680 AD.

Karbala is far more than a historical reference point in Shi’a consciousness. It is a permanent moral archetype. Husayn’s defeat was a military annihilation, yet spiritually and morally it became a victory. In Shi’a belief, the righteous minority stood against corruption and tyranny despite impossible odds. Suffering itself acquired transcendent meaning. Resistance became sacred.

This philosophy permeates the Iranian revolutionary worldview. It explains why coercion often hardens the regime rather than moderating it. Western policymakers frequently assume that pressure produces capitulation because that logic works reasonably well for conventional governments that prioritise economic stability and political normality above all else. This is the logic underpinning Trump’s blockade. However, the Islamic Republic was born from Shi’a ideology, revolution, war, sanctions, isolation, and survival against overwhelming odds. Pressure does not necessarily discredit the regime internally. Often, it validates its entire narrative about the world.

From Tehran’s perspective, the current war is yet another chapter in a long historical struggle that spans Karbala, colonial subjugation, Western intervention, the overthrow of Mossadegh, the Iranian Revolution, the Iran–Iraq War, sanctions, covert action, and confrontation with Israel and the United States. The leadership sees itself as resisting a hostile international order designed to subordinate it.

This is why negotiations are not seen in Tehran as incompatible with resistance or something that sets boundaries on what the regime can, in principle, agree to. Western commentary often frames diplomacy and ideological confrontation as opposites. Iranian strategic culture does not. The regime is perfectly capable of negotiating intensely while sustaining proxy warfare, revolutionary rhetoric, and regional competition. It sees diplomacy as another arena of struggle rather than a pathway towards liberal reconciliation.

This is partly rooted in Shi’a political history. For centuries, Shi’a communities survived as vulnerable minorities under hostile Sunni empires. Their experience produced traditions emphasising patience, prudence, strategic ambiguity, and survival under pressure. The Islamic Republic has this Shi’a mentality at its core. Therefore, it sees negotiation as a tactical manoeuvre in pursuit of long-term strategic endurance.

Nor does the regime necessarily define victory as Western governments do. A Western military planner might look at destroyed missile stocks, damaged infrastructure, assassinated commanders, an economic crisis, or domestic unrest and conclude that Iran is suffering catastrophic losses. Tehran may well acknowledge those losses privately, but its deeper strategic calculus is different: did the regime survive? Did the enemy fail to force surrender? Did resistance continue? Did the adversary also incur costs? Could the Islamic Republic emerge battered but intact? If the answer is yes, the regime can plausibly frame the outcome internally as endurance and, therefore, as a spiritual form of victory.

The memory of the Iran-Iraq War is central here. That conflict profoundly shaped the current Iranian elite. Iran endured hundreds of thousands of casualties, international isolation, missile bombardment, chemical attacks, and economic devastation, yet the regime survived. In revolutionary mythology, survival itself became proof of divine legitimacy and ideological superiority. Many of the men still governing Iran today were psychologically shaped by that war. They learned that suffering could be endured, that international outrage was selective, and that ideological resilience could compensate for material weakness.

This does not mean the regime is suicidal or eager for unlimited escalation. Quite the opposite. The Islamic Republic has historically shown considerable strategic caution when regime survival is genuinely at stake, making some kind of deal more likely than not at this moment. The popular Western caricature of Iranian leaders as apocalyptic fanatics impatiently awaiting the end times is analytically lazy. The Mahdist element of Twelver Shi’a thought functions less as a blueprint for reckless war than as a philosophy of history that gives meaning to suffering and legitimacy to resistance.

This distinction explains why Iran can appear simultaneously pragmatic and ideological, cautious yet confrontational, and flexible in negotiations while uncompromising in rhetoric. These are all features of the system.

The Islamic Republic sacralises endurance; it is a holy mission. Until Western policymakers fully grasp that psychological and philosophical reality, they will continue to misunderstand both the regime’s resilience and the limits of coercion against it. My fear in any forthcoming deal is that Trump’s team does not understand this at all.

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