Something Unthinkable Just Happened in Iran... Even the U.S. Didn't Expect This Much

For 47 years, the Islamic Republic told its people that no enemy could break them. They kept repeating that they have survived sanctions, they have survived assassinations, and they have even survived the 12-day war with Israel. That survival was the entire justification for the sacrifices the IRGC demanded and the money that it consumed and the brutality that it deployed against its own people. Then yesterday, 11 days into an American naval blockade, the Islamic Republic of Iran went on national television and asked its citizens to eat less food and use less electricity.

I'm not joking, we'll get into all this very soon. That was not a statement of defiance or anything like that. It was a plea from the regime to its people, to eat less, to conserve more, so they can survive for a longer time. 11 days. That's all it took for regime officials to realize the problem they are facing. The country is collapsing and Iran is now asking its citizens to help the regime

survive. Let's get into the problem that this regime is facing. Over the last couple of days, everyone, including myself, was focused on the exports that Iran couldn't get out because of the US blockade in the Gulf of Oman. And rightly so. Exports, especially oil exports, is how the IRGC got its money and how they survived.

How they basically operated. They used that money to fund all the activities that they carried out. But there's another side to the blockade that people aren't paying attention to, and that side is now coming back to destroy the Iranian economy. You see, the blockade isn't just about stopping ships from leaving Iranian ports. It's also about stopping ships in international waters from going into Iranian ports.

In fact, you guys remember Tuska, the ship we've been talking about for the last few days? That was a ship that the US seized just a few days ago after firing on its engine room. Well, guess what? That ship was trying to go into Iran with weapons and some other cargo that it was bringing from Southeast Asia, more specifically from China.

By taking over Tusca, the US Navy proved that this blockade wasn't just about making sure that Iran cannot export oil, it's also about stopping stuff from going in, more specifically stopping weapons and anything else. Now Tusca was a cargo ship, meaning it was carrying probably normal cargo that ships carry, but it also had weapons on it that the IRGC could use to rebuild their ballistic weapons program.

Now from IRGC's point of view, that risk was worth taking, because IRGC truly believes if they cannot fight, they will not survive. And that's why they need weapons and they need it desperately. But you see, Iran also depends on exports for a bunch of other goods, and those goods are very, very important for Iranian people. Last year, Iran imported roughly $60 billion in goods through the sea ports, basically

the ports it has. That's roughly $160 million every single day. The real issue, to understand the real issue, we have to look at exactly what Iran was importing, not just the amount it was importing. Take a look at this pie chart on your screen. The biggest slice here is of course electronics, equipment and stuff that the factories need, you know, other people need, and of course Iranian consumers need. But there's another

part that's kinda hidden, it's broken up into different categories. And that is food. Cereal here, that's the second biggest part, refers to basically staple grains, like wheat, maize, maybe even rice. Then we have fats and oil, that's also part of food. And then we have seeds and grains, that's also part of food.

In fact, roughly 40-60% of Iranian food was being imported from other countries. Iran is not really a self-dependent or self-sufficient nation when it comes to their food supply. And guess what, that food is now not flowing in. And because of that, the Iranian president had to go on national TV yesterday and beg the Iranian people to, you know, slow down on eating a lot of food and of course slow down on using up electricity.

Take a listen.

We have a simple request from our dear people who are ready and on the scene now to reduce their consumption of electricity and energy. Currently, we don't need the sacrifices of these loved ones, but we do need to control consumption. What's wrong with turning on two lights at home instead of ten? These are destroying our infrastructure.

They are placing us under siege so that people will become dissatisfied, and the satisfaction that exists now will turn into dissatisfaction. How can we stand against it? That we don't allow the areas that they think cause dissatisfaction among the people to

arise at all.

Iran is winning so hard that they're now asking their people to stop eating so they can survive and calm down on their electricity usage. This is just 11 days into the blockade. This statement was put out yesterday and the blockade started on April 13th. 11 days. That's all it took.

Now Iranian food situation was already pretty messed up even before this war. In fact, just at the start of the year when the protests were ongoing, we looked into the data as to how much food cost inside of Iran and they had a 10% inflation every single month. You heard that right, that wasn't a mispronunciation or something like that on my part. It's 10% every single month. If we do some quick math, we realize that 10% a month inflation means that food prices are doubling basically every seven months. That means Iranians who are already

struggling because of all the other stuff that's going on and those stuff we'll get into in just a second, they also not have to worry about food getting out of their budget because wages are not growing in Iran at 10% per month levels.

And everyone needs food, so they have to deal with food inflation. If it's something else, like luxury items going up in prices, maybe Iranians can just not buy luxury. But food everyone has to buy and Iran was already struggling with food inflation being

at a very high level and because of this war, that situation has only gotten worse. Now, the IRGC has no one to blame but itself because IRGC was using these cargo ships that were meant to bring in medicine and food and they were trying to smuggle in weapons and that's exactly why the blockade is targeting those ships. But you know what makes this situation even more shocking is the fact that Iran should have known that this was coming. You see, after the 12-day war that happened last year, Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei put this plan in effect and the plan was basically that hey hey, if there's another war, Iran is just

going to go on this economic terrorism spree. They're going to attack every Gulf country in the nation, including Oman, which doesn't have U.S. bases, which is not really a U.S. ally, because Iran wanted to carry out this strategy of economic coercion, basically terrorism, in my opinion. And part of that strategy was also blockading the Strait of Hormuz because Iran realized

how important that is to the oil market and that's why how important the Strait of Hormuz would be to the US audience and of course the US president. Now, if you just take that strategy and think a little deeper, if Iran is going to blockade the Strait of Hormuz, I feel like someone in that room who was planning the strategy should have said, Hey, if we blockade the strait, wouldn't the United States respond by maybe blockading Iranian ports? Because let's be honest, this is not that crazy of a plan.

We're just taking Iranian strategy and applying it against Iran. But not one person in the room thought of that. And they didn't think of maybe, Hey, maybe we should stock up on food supplies. After all, country is heavily heavily dependent on imported food and guess what? Everyone needs food even during a war. So maybe we should stock up. But no one thought of that for even one second. And now just 11 days into the blockade,

Iran is running out of the most basic need that every human has. Now I'll be honest, this shouldn't be as big of a surprise at at least to me, because I know this is the same government that mismanaged Tehran's water supplies so badly that just a few months ago, they were talking about evacuating the capital, evacuating Tehran and moving the capital south.

And again, this wasn't because of something that was natural. You know, it wasn't because of a drought or something that was natural. You know, it wasn't because of a drought or something that was unexpected. The main reason behind the mismanagement was the Islamic regime itself. Here are some more

details. Iran is grappling with its worst water crisis in decades, with officials warning that Tehran, a city of more than 10 million people, may soon be uninhabitable if the drought continues. President Massoud Pazeshkian cautioned that if rainfall does not arrive by December, the government must start rationing water in Tehran. And even then, citizens may still need to evacuate the city.

But Iran's water crisis is not solely the result of low rainfall. Decades of mismanagement, including overbuilding of dams, illegal well drilling, and inefficient agricultural practices have depleted reserves. That's according to dozens of critics and water experts who spoke to state media in recent days. The mismanagement sparked protests over water shortages in both 2018 and 2021.

The government has blamed the crisis on various factors such as the policies of past governments, climate change and overconsumption. The water shortage is straining citizens already struggling under the weight of a crippled economy.

If the government had the capability, it wouldn't have let things reach this point. You know, they shouldn't have allowed it to come to this. What is the government supposed to do? It's the same managers. What do they expect them to do? They don't even make use of experts.

Now this food and electricity crisis could be why, despite Iran saying that it will not negotiate until the US blockade ends. Yesterday, we saw an Iranian delegation fly to Islamabad, Pakistan, to reopen the negotiations. They say one thing, but the regime is too incompetent to actually prepare for what they actually want to do, and that's why they want to restart the negotiations. Now, according to a Pakistani official who was part of these negotiations, here's what Iran discussed.

Pakistani official tells Axios that the meeting with Arragachi, the Iranian foreign minister, will focus on relaunching negotiations with the United States. Arragachi also mentioned that Iran will not be listening to American red lines when it comes to negotiations. Iran is not looking to surrender to US pressure, but they are open for a rational

and fair negotiation meeting. Now, yesterday we talked about how we saw reports of special envoy Steve Vitkoff and Jared Kushner flying to Islamabad a day after this Aragaci meeting to basically set up for a summit, a second summit between the United States and Iran.

Now, unfortunately, it seems Iranian foreign ministers meeting probably did not go as well as Iran was hoping because right after the Iranian delegation left Pakistan, Trump made a statement and he basically said, the United States will not be flying back and forth

from Pakistan to negotiate with Iran.

If Iran is serious about negotiating, they can just pick up a phone and call. Take a listen. the president. I've told my people a little while ago they were getting ready to leave and I said nope, you're not going to make an 18-hour flight to go there. We have all the cards. They can call us any time they want, but you're not going to be making any more 18-hour flights to sit around and talk about nothing. Now, this is significant.

It came after the trip earlier in the week where we thought the vice president J.D. Vance would be going to hold talks was scuttled so that is breaking news from our own Aisha Hosni and Alex Hogan is live from the White House with the exclusive details Alex. Hi, I just a major shakeup to the negotiations that we did expect to see take place today and this once again shows how delicate these negotiations are despite the broad

international efforts to get everyone to the table at the last hour just like this morning, everything can simply fall through so what we did expect to see we're waiting to see Steve Whitcoff and Jared Kushner, the U.S. envoys we're going to be leading that delegation today in Pakistan. President Donald Trump as you

mentioned just telling Fox News is Isha Hosni today that he has canceled that trip becomes amid the news that Iran's foreign minister has already left Pakistan president Trump once Right after that, Trump put out this statement on his Twitter.

I just cancelled a trip of my representatives going to Islamabad to meet with the Iranians. Too much time being wasted on traveling and it's too much work. By the way, in case you guys don't know, going from the United States to Pakistan is a 16 hour flight, one way. So you go there, probably need some time to recover after a flight like that, then you do the meeting with the Iranians and then you fly back.

That's another 16 hours. So clearly a very long journey. But anyways, let's continue with Trump's statement. Besides which, there is a tremendous amount of infighting and confusion within Iranian leadership. Nobody knows who's in charge, including Iranians themselves.

Also, we have all the cards. They have none. If they want to talk, they can just call the United States. Now, in my opinion, this seems to be much more than just rhetoric. Like, I don't think this is just Trump saying that, hey, we don't want to negotiate. So Iran, you know, finally commits to negotiations openly.

Because again, that's the strategy that Trump could be using. He has done things like that in the past. But this time, it seems the negotiations are truly being called off. The reason I say that is because preparations were made in Pakistan for, you Pakistan for a big meeting of

the United States and Iran to take place in Islamabad, while those preparations are being rolled back. For the last two weeks, Islamabad was basically shut down because there were rumors that the next meeting was going to be a big one where there would be a deal that would be agreed upon or even signed, so there's a chance President Trump may himself would make an appearance. And because of that, Islamabad, Pakistani capital, was in a lockdown.

Shops were shut down, streets were closed off to normal people, and there were security officials everywhere. There were barricades everywhere. Basically, normal life stopped over the last two weeks. Well, it seems now those preparations are being rolled back. The city is opening back up again, security barriers are coming down. That definitely is not a

good sign about negotiations taking place. Now, on top of this, there's a New York Post journalist, and I'm guessing probably other American journalists, who are still in Islamabad from the last negotiation meeting that took place roughly three weeks ago. They were probably predicting that there's gonna be another meeting, so they just stayed in the city. And some of these journalists had direct contact

with the White House and maybe even President Trump himself. Well, it seems this morning, President Trump texted one of the journalists and said, hey, you can come back home, probably hinting at the possibility that there's not gonna be another meeting anytime soon. It is a bit confusing that the president of the United States is just texting

people major news, but nonetheless, it is big news. And it does hint at the possibility that negotiations are completely off. That means the war may be restarting any time now. Then again, I do want to provide one more option as to what could happen. It could mean that negotiations will shift to some other city, maybe Switzerland. That's where the negotiations were taking place before the war started in February.

So that's a possibility. But in my opinion, that's a very low probability that that's going to happen. So more likely than not, it seems next, we will be talking about war restarting. Now, for Iranians, this is definitely not good news because, as we talked about at the start of the video, the inflation is out of control, food is not getting into the ports,

and now, if the war restarts, the inflation is gonna get even worse. Here are some more details. I think to begin with we can factor the last couple of months ending in the second war. In January and February the inflation reached 8% a month. Starting there and assuming it will increase 1% every month or every couple of months. By the end of the year we're dealing with 12%, 11% inflation a month. This is more than 200% increasing prices basically. And so the price of average goods will be tripled. In an unfortunate but at the moment likely scenario that another conflict will start,

I think again we can start from January, February inflation but factoring 1%, 2% every month. By the end of the year, I think the inflation will be above 20% a month. And you see the trend, I'm talking about inflation in months, no longer in years. And that is the reality we're dealing with. In that case, we're talking about 500% inflation.

Now to understand why Iran is behaving the way it's behaving right now, we have to go back and look at how Iran got to where it is today. That doesn't just mean going back to 1979 when the Islamic revolution took place. In fact, we have to go further back to when the Karger dynasty was ruling Iran in the 19th century and look at how the decisions the ruling class made back then still affects Iran to this very day.

Well, guess what? That's exactly what we're doing in our multi-part podcast that just came out today. So if you're someone who's interested in the history of Iran and how we got to where we are today, definitely go check it out. You can watch it by clicking the links in the description, or you can just watch it by clicking the end screen on your screen. by clicking the end screen on your screen.

Basically clicking the video that's on your screen.