I was invited by the editor of the Punjab Tribune to submit an essay on any topic I wished. I chose this one– which explains in part why I love Punjabis.

   I’m not a Punjabi, though I’ve been accused of having been one in my past life. In fact I had never been outside the United States before my first visit to the region as a research fellow at Punjab University many decades ago. But I quickly fell in love with the place. But why?

            Maybe it was the awesome geography, the antiquity of the culture, the liveliness of its towns and cities, or just…the people. Yes, the people. There’s something special about the people, Punjabis, and I’m trying to put my finger on what it is.

            I’ve had some time to reflect on this. After all I’ve spent several years in the Punjab and have visited there every year or so. I’ve stayed in Chandigarh, Jalandhar, Amritsar, Batala, and myriad villages from Hoshiarpur district to Bhatinda. I’ve written several books about aspects of Punjab society and culture, and I have ridden in more packed buses than you can count. 

            So yes, for someone who is not a Punjabi, I have a fairly good feeling for the Punjabi character. If you put me in a room full of people of South Asian descent, I can usually pick out the Punjabis, even without hearing a word from them. They’re just that distinctive.

            So what’s so special about Punjabis?

Embodied Earthiness

Punjabis are earthy. When I use that term I mean it in two senses—people of the earth and people down to earth. I come from a farming community in America’s mid-west, a son of German farmer immigrants, and I know farm people to be direct, straight-shooting no-nonsense people. That also dovetails with the “down to earth” description, and I think that applies to a lot of Punjabis even if they are city folks.

The cultural tradition of the Punjab is rooted in the soil, and there is a great deal of pride in the geography of the region. Punjabis have the self-confidence of a people anchored in a sense of belonging, a sense of place. The very name, of course, relates to the five rivers that come from the great mountains to fertilize the plains below. Punjabis know who they are.

Punjabi earthiness is also embedded in the panjabi language. Though I studied Hindi before coming to India I wanted to be able to speak some panjabi since I would be going to many villages where that would be the main language. So the Panjabi department at Panjab University provided a couple of graduate students, Mohinder and Devinder, who were my tutors and buddies for much of my first year in the region. Dev Inder is now a famous photographer, but at the time, he was just a goofy graduate student like myself.

They were determined that I learn the real panjabi, and not just the textbook version. One of the first things they wanted me to know were the dirty words or the words with dirty double meanings. They didn’t want me to embarrass myself inadvertently by saying something that had a racy connotation. It turned out that there were a lot of words like this in the language, and I was impressed.

With my new-found knowledge of panjabi smut I was able to follow the epithets thrown at each other in street fights. On one occasion I could understand two ladies shouting at each other in a bus once when I was in rural Sangrur district. They were loudly discussing certain bodily functions and the men grimaced and looked at me, hoping the foreigner would not understand. I just laughed and we all joined in the levity of the situation. My wife, who comes from a Chinese Cantonese family, claims that there is a certain kinship among earthy cultures, citing Cantonese, Italians, Mid-West Americans and Punjabis, and I think she’s right. I feel at home in each of these places, especially the Punjab.

The good side of earthiness is the zest for life and the honest sincerity of abiding friendship. When you have Punjabi friends you can count on them for life.

Melting Pot of Cultures

The second distinctive feature of Punjab also relates to its geographical location. It has been for millennia the entry point to the subcontinent, and as such the melting pot of cultures and ethnicities. Pre-partition Punjab contained an equal mix of three religions—Hindu, Sikh and Muslim–or four if you count the religiosity of Scheduled Caste folk as a separate cultural group. My dissertation project focused on a Punjabi attempt in the 1920s and 30s to create a new religion (well it actually claimed to be the “original religion,” the Ad Dharm) based on reverence for Sant Ravidas that appealed to the one-fourth of the Punjab population that felt marginalized in the other three main religious communities. That special religious identity persists today and the Ravidas fellowship has an imposing dera at Ballan near Jalandhar.  

There are few other places in India that have such a diversity of religious communities living side by side with each other. This means that Punjabis are used to cultural differences, and they are not threatened by them. For that reason they adapt easily to new cultural surroundings.

When the British recruited their army, they looked to Punjabis to fill their ranks. When they needed truck drivers, Punjabis were ready to roll. They would drive throughout the country, and the ubiquitous dhabas that sprang up to cater to their eating habits spread Punjabi cuisine everywhere. Even today when you go to an Indian restaurant in the UK, Europe, or America, it is likely Punjabi food that is featured as normative Indian fare. Saag paneer, baingan bharta, gobi alu—that’s soul food for me!

Bold Risk-Takers

            The first two characteristics, anchored in a place and being cosmopolitan may seem contradictory, but in fact they’re complementary. Even though Punjabis mix with a variety of different people and travel and live in different places, they always have a sense of home. They know who they are. This gives them a self-confidence and daring to do things, to go to places, and try to achieve. They are risk-takers, since they have solid ground behind them.

            There are a large number of South Asians in America today, and the first Indian settlers in the US in the early 20^th century were Punjabis. Former soldiers for the British found their way to Canada’s British Columbia and then down to Washington State and California. Many settled in California’s lush Central Valley where their knowledge of irrigation that many Punjabis learned in the canal areas of Punjab was useful information in the newly irrigated California region. Sikhs instructed the California farmers how to weave their irrigation channels efficiently in a pattern that was called “Hinduising the crops,” though the American farmers who employed them didn’t know the difference between Sikhs and Hindus.

            In fact there was a great deal of collegiality among the Punjabis in early 20^th century California. When Prof Har Dayal, a visiting professor at Stanford, began to foster among the Punjabi immigrants in California the idea that they could foment revolution against the British in India, the response was electric. Hindu and Sikh students at Berkeley and Muslim and Sikh farmers in the Central Valley came together to create the Ghadr (“Revolution”) Party. Almost all of them were Punjabis. When I was a graduate student at Berkeley one of my projects was to collect the extant publications and historical documents relating to the movement. These are now archived in the Berkeley research library. It was a bold and quixotic venture, as it turned out, since the British had laced the movement with spies.

But some of these erstwhile revolutionaries managed to return to India, and one of them, Mangu Ram, created a movement of social liberation for the people of his Scheduled Caste. This was the Ad Dharm movement that became the subject of my first book, published in India as Religious Rebels in the Punjab. I met with old Mangu Ram at his farm near Gahrshankar in Hoshiarpur district, and marvelled at the daring creativity of his task. To think that he could invent a whole new religion to challenge the caste hierarchy of Hinduism was a dazzling project—the kind of thing that a Punjabi would attempt.   

            The tragic uprising in the 1980s and 90s in the Punjab was another example of Punjabi daring. For a recent book on how movements like this come to an end I talked with old militants and was amazed at the audacity of their project, the confidence with which they attempted the impossible. Tragic though it was, it was a Punjabi thing.

            If you’re in India and someone starts talking to you as if you were an old friend, the chances are fairly good that person is a Punjabi. Once when I was living in Chandigarh I was riding my motorcycle through the nearby Sivalik Hills when I came across the charming hill station of Kasauli. In the marketplace a Sardari spotted me and immediately engaged me in conversation, then invited me to his bungalow to meet his wife and have a shot of whiskey. He turned out to be Khushwant Singh, and he was full of stories. I stayed half the night, impressed with someone who embodied the Punjabi spirit par excellence.   

            Today much of the Punjabi adventurousness travels abroad. In the United States, for instance, they have become one of the most visible minority groups in the country. There are many immigrants in the U.S. from all over India, of course, but Punjabis stand out. When I see someone of South Asian descent interviewed on television news, I often try to identify their backgrounds by their name. I’m surprised at how many are Singh, or Khanna, or Puri, or Mann, or Dhillon. Punjabis, all of them.

            When we created the department of global studies at the University of California at Santa Barbara it was the first in that field in a research university anywhere in the world. It was dedicated to intercultural understanding. One of the first new faculty positions was in Sikh and Global Studies, focusing on the diaspora of communities such as Punjabi Sikhs around the globe. It was endowed by a physicist in silicon valley who is regarded as the “father of fiber optics,” Narinder Singh Kapany—a Punjabi, of course—and we named the chair after his mother, Kundan Kaur Kapany.

There are now over a hundred global studies departments around the world, including in Ambedkar University in Delhi. Our Santa Barbara department now has almost twenty faculty members. Five of them are of South Asian descent, and judging from their names one is Bengali and four just happen to be Punjabis. Hey, don’t blame me, I didn’t choose them because they were Punjabi, we chose them because they were self-confident, articulate, and good at what they do. You know, like Punjabis.

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Mark Juergensmeyer is Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Sociology and Global Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Among his many books are Religious Rebels in the Punjab, Radhasoami Reality: The Logic of a Modern Faith, and a section on the 1980s uprising in Punjab in When God Stops Fighting: How Religious Violence Ends.

Here’s the full page version of the essay:

This is an excerpt from my review of Richard Beck’s Homeland: The War on Terror in American Life, published in Religious Studies Review. The full review is in a previous post on this webblog.

Every American over the age of thirty knows where he or she was on 9/11. In my case, I was on my way from my home in California to Philadelphia, where I was to give a talk on religious violence. I had stopped over at my parents’ house in Southern Illinois, near St. Louis, and was sleeping in the basement guest room when my older brother came in and woke me with the news. I gave a quick but unprintable response. Just then, my phone started ringing. It would not stop for several weeks. I had just published a book on the comparative study of religious violence that had a picture of Osama bin Laden on the cover. In the publicity tour for the book, I must have gotten into the rolodexes of radio and TV producers as someone who could talk about religion-related terrorism. Now they were desperate to find anyone who could help to make sense of what was going on.

            What 9/11 did to disrupt my life, however, was nothing in comparison to what it did to the whole country. In this intriguing and well-written book, Richard Beck has chronicled the ripple effect of that momentous day. The experience grew from stunned shock to a mobilization for warfare that lasted over ten years and still has implications for the country’s economic, political, and cultural life.

 On the day of the attack, however, the startled nation did not immediately think of war. As Beck makes clear, the initial reaction was shock, mixed with a deep sense of humiliation, compounded with fear. Dark forces seemed to encroach at the edge of what Americans regarded as the apex of civilized life. Beck invokes the historical memory of early American settlers warring with the shadowy forces of Native Americans as a precursor to this dread of being assaulted and humiliated by the uncivilized unknown.

But how should the American public make sense of this new assault? Beck explains that in the Pentagon, war was already in the air. In my own survey of the newspaper headlines that appeared later that day, in the afternoon editions on September 11, 2001, I found that none of them described the attack on the World Trade Center towers and the Pentagon in terms of war. It was not until the next day when President George W. Bush appeared on television that he said that the attacks were “more than acts of terrorism,” they were “acts of war.” On the Fox News Channel and other television outlets, Bush’s phrase “the war on terror” became incorporated into the standard logo for news reports related to the attack and the US government’s response. The logo would remain for months and years that followed.

            In this large and richly reflective book, Richard Beck gives an expansive discussion about how the war on terror has changed American social and political life and laid the groundwork for the contentious politics of the Trump era. The years of mounting paranoia about others, strident xenophobia, and the tightening of political and economic power have led to the moment when a proud and thriving democracy is on the brink of becoming a fearful and frightened autocracy.

This is an excerpt from an essay requested from me for a special issue of Oxford University’s St. Anthony’s International Review.           

The recent political shifts on a global scale have led many observers to conclude that we are on the verge of a new Cold War. But it is not clear what the opposing sides are, nor how they are constituted. Some observers point to the rising tension between the United States and China as a new point of contestation. It is a conflict, to be sure, but it is essentially a bipolar one. To be a new Cold War one would expect each side to have a global reach, and present opposing ideological bases for organizing public life.

            What is emerging at this point in the third decade of the 21^st century as an opposition on a global scale is the conflict between democracy and autocracy. Like the old Cold War, the states on either side do not always agree with one another. The Soviet Union and China were uneasy partners in the Communist bloc. But they leaned on each other for support in times when they had to face their ideological opponents—democratic capitalism in the case of the Communist partners. In an eerie way, global politics seems to be lining up in a similar kind of mass dichotomy between two uneasy though warring camps.

            The rise of authoritarian nationalism in recent years has been remarkable. The increasing control of Xi in China, the ascension of Putin as a Russian dictator, the emergence of Erdogan and al-Sisi as the strong men of Turkey and Egypt; the rigid regimes of North Korea, Iran and Saudi Arabia; the dominance of Modi in India; and the authoritarian tendencies of the Trump administration in the United States provide a counterweight to what was once a near-global acceptance of democracy. Though hounded by autocratic right wing parties, the democratic spirit still thrives in Japan and Europe, elsewhere in the Americas, and in much of Africa, Southeast Asia and the Pacific. The two sides are by no means united except in their persistence in the differing tracks on which they have traveled. And the confrontation is nearly global.

            The stance of Trump in disdaining traditional European democracies in favor of the autocracies of Russia, Hungary, Turkey and even North Korea is an example of these new alliances. When Russia reached out to Iran and North Korea for assistance in its invasion of Ukraine, it demonstrated the new alliances. Perhaps nothing illustrated the emerging autocratic coalition more than the extraordinary lineup at the September 2025 meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. On the final day, China’s Xi stood side by side with Russia’s Putin and North Korea’s Kim. Also in attendance were India’s Modi, Egypt’s al-Sisi, and Turkey’s Erdogan.

            What is particularly interesting to me, as someone who has observed the global connections between religion and politics over my now long career, is the role of religion in this new Cold War. The stance of religious leaders have been varied, and many have been critical of the rise of autocratic dictatorships. Yet many of the new autocracies are openly built on religious nationalism.

           The drift towards autocratic religious nationalism is a development that has been several decades in the making. But it is striking to see it emerge as a dominant force in many of the present confrontations. In Russia, for instance, Putin leans on the Russian Orthodox church and its Patriarch Kirill for support. The regime of Saudi Arabia has built its power on the religious network of Wahhabi Islam, just as Iran’s theocracy is based on Shi’a institutions. In India, Modi wears his Hindu identity strongly, and his political party is based on an old Hindu nationalist movement that dates to the beginning of India’s Independence movement. The support of Evangelical Protestant Christians in the United States has given Trump his strongest base. Religion is part of the emerging autocracies of the new Cold War.

            At one time I thought that it might be one side of a cold war, the conflict between religious and secular nationalism. Thirty years ago I published a book with the title, The New Cold War? Religious Nationalism Confronts the Secular State.

            At the time it seemed a startling proposition that religion could play a role in a new kind of anti-secular authoritarian politics. Religion was, however, a significant part of the power politics of the Middle East, and religious nationalism was emerging as the rival to secular democracy in other parts of the world as well.

            Fifteen years later the book was completely rewritten and reissued with the title Global Rebellion: Religious Challenges to the Secular State. The reason for the change in title was that the revised book covered a wide range of non-state movements, some of them transnational such as al Qaeda. The role of religion in these oppositional politics was a potent force, but it was scattered among a broad range of movements. At the time, it seemed less like a global confrontation in the way that a Cold War would suggest, and more like a global rebellion.

            Today’s situation provides yet another context for thinking about the role of religion in global conflict. My original title, “the new Cold War,” again appears to be prescient. It is not, however, the way that I originally thought, or as I later revised my thinking. It is not that religious nationalism itself is one side of the confrontation or that it foments rebellions, but that it plays a significant role in buttressing the power and providing the mobilizing force of dictatorial regimes in the emerging global conflict of the present: the new Cold War between autocracy and democracy. 

            Hence, thirty years after I first published The New Cold War? the theme has returned. Religion provides the potency to shore up right-wing power, anti-immigrant hate and economic isolationism, and for that reason it is part of the equation in the current dichotomy between democracy and authoritarianism. For strongman regimes in Iran, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Turkey, Hungary, Russia, India, and now the United States, religion is often a way to connect the masses to a powerful state.

When we first moved to Maui about ten years ago to set up our retirement residency for half of each year, I looked for places to get good food. I wanted locally sourced, if possible, fresh stuff for a pesco-vegetarian like myself.

I thought I found the ideal place. It was a grocery store, part of a Hawaiian chain, known as Down to Earth, and it had yummy stuff. But I soon found out that it was owned by a secretive religious group known by the enigmatic name, the Science of Identity Foundation. The stores were one if its major sources of income. And the US Representative from the district that Maui was in was a member of the movement. Her name was Tulsi Gabbard.

The leader of SIF, Chris Butler, was a tall blond surfer who attended the University of Hawaii in the 1960s. It was then that he became deeply involved in the Hare Krishna movement (ISKCon, the International Society of Krishna Consciousness), only to leave it in 1977 after the death of the movement’s leader, when Butler started his own movement. He proclaimed himself the Guru, and adopted a Hindu name, shortened to an affectionate phrase, Jagad Guru (“spiritual master”). He claimed to be in direct mystical contact with Lord Krishna, and was a vessel for the God’s wishes. His disciples treated him as semi-divine.

Tulsi’s parents, Mike and Carol Gabbard, joined the movement early on, and Mike quickly became one of the leaders in the inner circle. He adopted two of the movement’s pet oppositions, anti-Islam and anti-Gay, with particular passion over the opposition to homosexuality. During the 1990s Mike had a talk show, “Speaking Straight,” and formed an organization to oppose the increasing liberalization over gay rights in the Hawai’i legislature.

Mike and Carol gave their children Hindu names, hence Tulsi was assigned the name for an aromatic Indian basil plant, much revered in Hindu culture. Though she was born into the movement, and attended its schools, she never rebelled from it. Quite the opposite, she became as ardent a member as her parents, regarding her Jagad Guru as a beloved mentor and spiritual guide.

Though he became increasingly secretive, the directives of Chris Butler – Jagad Guru – were obeyed without question, delivered in a stream of messages through his aides. He told his most devoted followers whom to marry, what employment to seek, and even what to say in important moments.

He wanted his movement to have political impact. Mike Gabbard was elected to the Honolulu City Council, then the Hawai’i Senate, first as a Republican and then switching to the state’s dominant Democratic Party. Since his mother was Samoan, he could tout his Polynesian heritage as an asset in his campaigns.

His daughter Tulsi was even more politically successful, and again the SIF movement and Jagad Guru’s instructions were behind her success. At age 21 she was the youngest person elected to the House of Representatives in Hawai’i, and she also served on the Honolulu City Council before running successfully for one of the two districts for the US House of Representatives. As luck would have it, her district included the island where we lived half of the year, Maui.

Tulsi served four terms in the US House of Representatives. When she was sworn in, she put her hand on the Bhagavad Gita, asserting that her religion was Hindu.

During those eight years her office received thousands of emails with directives about what to say, what issues to support, what bills to propose, and whom to meet and greet. Though the name of her Jagad Guru, Chris Butler, never appeared on any of these emails, it was clear who sent them, and she always obeyed. As a recent Washington Post exposé revealed, some of her public pronouncements and legislative proposals were taken verbatim from the emails she received from the movement in Hawai’i.

When she ran for President in 2020, it was revealed that most of her advisors in her inner political circle were also members of SIF and followers of Jagad Guru. Those of us in Hawai’i just assumed she was getting her directives from the movement. The same assumption stayed with us when she switched from Democrat supporter of Bernie Sanders to a Republican MAGA supporter of Donald Trump, and was rewarded by being dubbed the Director of National Intelligence, a position for which she was profoundly unqualified. But then, the same could be said of almost all of Trump’s other cabinet choices.

Shortly before the Washington Post published its exposé based on the purloined emails, one of the reporters who wrote the story contacted her to give her a head’s up and get a comment from her if she wished to give it. She didn’t. But two days later she resigned from her position, stating that she was concerned about her husband’s health.

I suppose Tulsi is now back in Hawai’i. I might even see her in the Down to Earth grocery store, if I ever go back to it again. I stopped going ten years ago, and have never looked back.

When I read about Trump’s surrender terms to Iran — billions in reparations, end of sanctions, unfreezing assets, and allowing it to control the Hormuz Strait in the future — I laughed. Here we go again, I thought.

It immediately reminded me of Gaza, where Trump helped to negotiate a deal that would provide for the restoration of Gaza and provide it limited sovereignty. None of that has happened, of course, but it gaveTrump and Netanyahu an excuse to stop the fighting that they were not winning.

Then there was Afghanistan. Trump’s surrender to the Taliban at the Doha agreement in 2020 essentially gave the country to the rebels without any involvement or protection for the secular government or the secular society in Kabul. It did allow a year for the US troops to withdraw. When Biden succeeded Trump’s first presidency he was stuck with only a few hundred US troops remaining in Afghanistan. There was no option other than to complete Trump’s surrender withdrawal. Trump, of course, proclaimed his role as a victory, and blamed Biden for pulling out of the country.

Now he’s ending the war he started in Iran, where the terms are truly staggering. It is Iran’s best wish list. They receive billions in unfrozen assets, reparations, revenue from Hormuz, and trade with the dropping of sanctions. The US gets nothing, other than an excuse to get out of a losing war. Trump, of course, will portray it as a victory, and many of his MAGA followers will believe it.

But before you bury your head in shame over the US capitulation, you can be reassured that very little of this will actually happen. Trump has built his dubious reputation over making promises that he never fulfills, agreeing to things that he has no intention of actually carrying out. Look at Gaza, which has been completely neglected after the alleged peace deal. My guess is that none of the Iranian reparations, sanction-lifting, and unfreezing of assets will actually materialize. Trump will blame Iran for this or that, and use it as an excuse to renege on his promises.

It will remain for the next President, most likely a Democrat, to deal with the mess. He or she will have an angry Iran to deal with, bitter over both the war and the unfulfilled promises. It will, of course, be ramping up its efforts to have the capacity for nuclear strikes on the US, now that Trump has proven that it is the only way that they can remain safe in the future. North Korea has shown the utility of that approach.

Meanwhile we long for the days when the Obama administration worked out a real deal with Iran to limit its nuclear capacity and begin to open itself to the West. It could have led to an unravelling of the theocracy and real change for peace in the region.

Trump put an end to that, and his war has made Iranian autocrats the victor. It is the third war he’s ended that has made the US worse off than when they began. That’s quite a record.

Now that a tentative cease fire has been announced bringing the US bombs into Iran to a halt, it is time to ask the logical question. Who won?

Certainly not the US. Trump basically capitulated to Iran in order to release its stranglehold over the Strait of Hormuz. It had effectively countered US bombs by choking off 20% of the world’s oil supply along with a third of the world’s nitrogen ingredients for fertilizer. Even Trump’s MAGA base was up in arms over the high cost of gasoline and fertilizer. So Trump was willing to essentially surrender.

The sheer cost of the 100-day military fiasco was staggering. The Pentagon admits exhausting almost 30 billion dollars in the war effort, and leaving thousands dead, including 13 US service men and women. The wider economic impact of the war has been estimated at almost a trillion dollars.

What did the US achieve with that? Go through the list of objectives that Trump had enunciated at one time or another in his shifting attempt to justify the war: the elimination of Iran’s nuclear capability; control of Iran’s oil production; regime change to a Venezuela-like transfer of power; the creation of a more moderate leadership willing to work with the US; the stimulus for a popular uprising against the regime.

None of these have happened. The situation is now worse than before the US attack, with a hardened regime and Iran’s continued manipulation of control of the Strait of Hormuz. And it is much worse off than after the five-nation nuclear restriction that was negotiated during the Obama administration. That not only had a pledge from Iran never to develop or acquire nuclear weapons, but also included an extensive monitoring system to make sure that the agreement was fulfilled. As you may recall, Trump tore that up during his first administration.

 If Iran forced Trump to capitulate, then it won, right? Well no, since it is now far worse off than before the war. Not only has much of its nuclear and military infrastructure been devastated, its leadership cadre has been decimated. The new leaders lack experience and tend to be more ideologically driven than their predecessors. The Iranian people bear the brunt of these disasters, suffering from a collapsed economy and violently controlled by paranoid leaders.

Well then, Israel should be happy, since it was Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu who urged Trump to attack Iran in the first place. For a while, the Israeli public was wildly happy, thinking that their long enemy, Iran, and its ally, Hizbollah in Lebanon, would be vanquished. That didn’t happen, and when Trump wanted to capitulate, the mood in Israel soured against both Trump and Netanyahu. The telephone conversation between the two on the day that the deal with Iran was announced—on Trump’s birthday—was described as “difficult.” So Israel didn’t win either.

Neither did all of those ex-patriate Iranians who hoped that finally the evil regime was finished. It now is worse. Their hopes have been crushed.

Other Arab countries in the area have also been wounded from the Iranian shelling from missiles and drones. Moreover, their faith in the US as a reliable partner to maintain stability in the region has been shattered. US-Middle East relations may take some time, if ever, to restore to its previous cozy state.      

Even Russia, the one country that has profited most from the war since it elevated the prices of its own oil in sales to China, India, and elsewhere, has not won from the fighting’s end. Even partial opening of the Strait of Hormuz means a lowering of the global price of oil, greatly affecting Russia’s income.

So after the Iran war it seems no one really won. Then who lost? It is like the old Agatha Christie mystery about who committed the murder on the Orient Express: everyone.

Now that there is a shaky ceasefire in the US-Israel war on Iran, it is time to tally up the scorecard and assess who won and who lost. As I see it, now that the dust is beginning to settle it’s becoming clear what the outcome has been.

BIG WINNER

Russia. Curiously the biggest single winner of the war is a party that was not directly involved in it. It is alleged that Russia’s President Vladimir Putin has been supplying Iran with missiles, however, though Putin has denied it. He would have good reason to do so, since Russia’s economy is almost solely dependent on the international sales of its oil reserves, and with the blocking of the Strait of Hormuz that limits access to Iranian and Gulf States’ oil the price of Russian petroleum has risen significantly and their economy is thriving. Moreover, the Iran War has been a huge boon for the Russia efforts in Ukraine. In the forty days of the Iran siege, the world’s attention has turned away from what Russia is trying to do in Ukraine. Even more problematic is the devastation of the US armament supply. With the constant rain of missiles on Iran, the US will have trouble replenishing Ukraine’s defense efforts. Moreover the US no longer has the moral high grown to criticize Russia for invading another country needlessly. If we can do it, so can they.

SEMI-WINNERS

            Iran. At first glance it appears that Iran was a big winner. The cease-fire deal essentially amounted to a surrender by the US. It agreed to stop bombing if Iran opened the Strait of Hormuz, which is exactly where we were before the US and Israel started attacking the country. At the same time, though Iran has emerged victorious it is badly battered. The missile strikes have been devastating to its military infrastructure, including its bases and leadership. Even so much of the essentials are intact. The Revolutionary Guard remains strong, including the dreaded Basij militia, which savagely counters any attempts at resistance to the regime. More important for the leadership, the political infrastructure is solid, despite the assassination of many of the top political and military leaders. They were quickly replaced. A new Ayatollah has been declared, the son of the previous one, who is reported to be even more of a hard-liner than his father. The popularity and support for the regime has sky-rocketed, for nothing unites a country like a foreign attack. Even many of those who despised the Ayatollah and the Islamic regime supported the efforts to stave off American assaults and Trump’s demands for political control of the country. The regime has never been stronger. There is no hope of a deal to limit nuclear arms in Iran, and in fact the country has even more reason to increase the speed of developing fissionable grade Uranium and nuclear devices, now that it no longer trusts the US and is determined to develop the strongest defenses it can produce.

            Israel. Although there is grumbling in Israel over the ceasefire among those who say that the war efforts did not amount to anything and that Israel should have stayed in it and finish the job, it is likely that Prime Minister Bebe Netanyahu came out ahead. He is said to have goaded Trump into these Iran attacks, and for good reason. He desperately wanted to have something to deflect the Israeli public’s attention from his continuing legal troubles, and to demonstrate his strength, especially following the catastrophic Hamas attacks and his unsuccessful attempts to rid Gaza of every trace of Hamas by obliterating much of the territory. Hamas is still a potent force in the territory. After assassinating leaders of Hamas and Hezbollah, the head of the Ayatollah remained his main prize. Trump helped him accomplish that. And despite the Iranian missile and drone attacks that have landed on Israel’s soil, Netanyahu’s popularity has soared. It’s said that over ninety percent of Jewish Israelis were behind his war efforts.           

            Trump personally. The mainstream news media has characterized Trump’s leadership in the war as bizarre and pointless. He is increasingly accused of showing signs of early dementia, and his stature as President is even lower after the war than before. Yet the Iran war has masterfully taken all the oxygen out of news media. For the forty days of the war, no one was talking about the Epstein files, even though the bombshell information about a 13-year old girl alleging to the FBI that she had been raped by him was revealed just at the time that Trump launched the attacks on the Ayatollah. Though the American public in general was opposed to this Iranian adventure, the Republican base was solidly behind it. For Trump, this was what counts. Moreover, his family profited from the war. His sons Donald and Eric have invested heavily in companies that make military drones and drone components, and are reaping the benefits.

LOSERS

Ukraine. To Russia’s delight, the attention of the American public has shifted away from Russia’s assault on Ukraine. More important, with the constant bombardment on Iran, the US stockpile of missiles has gotten perilously low, and Ukrainian leaders are worried that Trump has depleted the supply that is necessary for Ukraine to continue its defense.

Lebanon and the Gulf States. In retaliating against the attacks on their country, Iran has targeted not only Israel but also sites where the US military has bases. Iran has attacked locations in UAE, Qatar, Kuwait and Bahrein. Inevitably there has been collateral damage to civilian areas near those military sites, as the countries scramble to defend themselves. In Lebanon, Iran’s ally Hezbollah has sent missiles into Israel, with huge counter strikes against Hezbollah in Beirut and Southern Lebanon. The Lebanese government has attempted to distance itself from the Hezbollah- Israel conflict, though many areas of the capital and elsewhere in the country have been destroyed.

            Europe. Leaders of European nations have been conflicted about how to respond to the US attempts to get their support for the war. The Iranian attack is hugely unpopular among the European public, and France’s President Emmanuel Macron has denounced the US attacks. British Prime Minister Keir Starmer initially withheld the US of British military bases for the Iranian war efforts, but then relented. European countries were trying to find a way to avoid Trump’s wrath but appease their own anti-war public. Increasingly Europe appeared marginal to this regional conflict.

United States. Perhaps the biggest loser has been the United States. An economy already battered by the erstwhile tariffs has gotten worse. Gas prices have soared since the blocking of the Strait of Hormuz that prohibits access to Iranian and Gulf States oil reserves. There is such a backload of oil produced that many of the storage tanks in the region are full. As a result production facilities had to close down. That means that even after the fighting stopped it will take considerable time to get the production facilities working again. The price of oil worldwide, including the United States, will continue to be at all-time high levels. The Iran war is the most expensive in history, costing taxpayers almost 2 billion dollars a day. Inflation is soaring. The US has also suffered in international stature from what appears to much of the rest of the world to be a capricious military act with no clear purpose. The countries that used to consider themselves as allies with the US feel increasingly insecure. Their trend towards self-sufficiency has increased. The US is no longer seen as the stable and reasonable ally as it has been in the past.

            The war in Iran – America and Israel’s assault on the country and its barrage of missile and drone responses – have produced a variety of impacts. They might not be exactly what Donald Trump and his buddies had planned on, but clear winners and losers have emerged.

Winners

            Iran. Though the missile impact on the country has been devastating to its military infrastructure, it is a large country and much of the essentials are intact. The Revolutionary Guard remains strong, including the dreaded Basij militia, which savagely counters any attempts at resistance to the regime. More important for the leadership, the political infrastructure is solid, despite the assassination of many of the top political and military leaders. They were quickly replaced. A new Ayatollah has been declared, the son of the previous one, who is reported to be even more of a hard-liner than his father. The popularity and support for the regime has sky-rocketed, for nothing unites a country like a foreign attack. Even many of those who despised the Ayatollah and the Islamic regime support the efforts to stave off American assaults and Trump’s demands for political control of the country. The regime has never been stronger. There is no hope of a deal to limit nuclear arms in Iran, and in fact the country has even more reason to increase the speed of developing fissionable grade Uranium and nuclear devices, now that it no longer trusts the US and is determined to develop the strongest defenses it can produce.

            Israel. It is likely that Prime Minister Bebe Netanyahu goaded Trump into these Iran attacks, and for good reason. He desperately wanted to have something to deflect the Israeli public’s attention from his continuing legal troubles, and to demonstrate his strength, especially following the catastrophic Hamas attacks and his unsuccessful attempts to rid Gaza of every trance of Hamas by obliterating much of the territory. Hamas is still a potent force in the territory. After assassinating leaders of Hamas and Hizbollah, the head of the Ayatollah remained his main prize. Trump helped him accomplish that. And despite the Iranian missile and drone attacks that have landed on Israel’s soil, Netanyahu’s popularity has soared. It’s said that over ninety percent of Jewish Israelis are behind his war efforts.

            Russia. It is alleged that Russia’s President Vladimir Putin has been supplying Iran with missiles, though Putin has denied it. He would have good reason to do so, however. The longer the US pounds away at Iran, the more that the world’s attention has turned away from what Russia is trying to do in Ukraine. Russia’s economy is almost solely dependent on the international sales of its oil reserves, and with the blocking of the Strait of Hormuz that limits access to Iranian and Gulf States’ oil. As a result, the price of Russian petroleum has risen significantly and their economy is thriving.

            Trump personally. The Iran war has masterfully taken all the oxygen out of news media. No one is talking about the Epstein files these days, even though the bombshell information about a 13-year old girl alleging to the FBI that she had been raped by him was revealed just at the time that Trump launched the attacks on the Ayatollah. Though the American public in general is opposed to this Iranian adventure, the Republican base is solidly behind it. For Trump, this is what counts. Moreover, his family is profiting from the war. His sons Donald and Eric have invested heavily in companies that make military drones and drone components, and are reaping the benefits.

Losers

            Lebanon and the Gulf States. In retaliating against the attacks on their country, Iran has targeted not only Israel but also sites where the US military has bases. Iran has attacked locations in UAE, Qatar, Kuwait and Bahrein. Inevitably there has been collateral damage to civilian areas near those military sites, as the countries scramble to defend themselves. In Lebanon, Iran’s ally Hizbollah has sent missiles into Israel, with huge counter strikes against Hizbollah in Beirut and Southern Lebanon. The Lebanese government has attempted to distance itself from the Hizbollah- Israel conflict, though many areas of the capital and elsewhere in the country have been destroyed.

            Europe. Leaders of European nations have been conflicted about how to respond to the US attempts to get their support for the war. The Iranian attack is hugely unpopular among the European public, and France’s President Emmanuel Macron has denounced the US attacks. British Prime Minister Keir Starmer initially withheld the US of British military bases for the Iranian war efforts, but then relented. European countries are trying to find a way to avoid Trump’s wrath but appease their own anti-war public. 

Ukraine. To Russia’s delight, the attention of the American public has shifted away from Russia’s assault on Ukraine. More important, with the constant bombardment on Iran, the US stockpile of missiles has gotten perilously low, and Ukrainian leaders are worried that Trump has depleted the supply that is necessary for Ukraine to continue its defense.

United States. An economy already battered by the erstwhile tariffs has gotten worse. Gas prices have soared since the blocking of the Strait of Hormuz that prohibits access to Iranian and Gulf States oil reserves. There is such a backload of oil produced that many of the storage tanks in the region are full. As a result production facilities will have to close down. That means that even when the fighting stops it will take considerable time to get the production facilities working again. The price of oil worldwide, including the United States, will continue to be at all-time high levels. The Iran war is the most expensive in history, costing taxpayers almost 2 billion dollars a day. The US has also suffered in international stature from what appears to much of the rest of the world to be a capricious military act with no clear purpose. The countries that used to consider themselves as allies with the US feel increasingly insecure. Their trend towards self-sufficiency has increased. The US is no longer the stable and reasonable ally of the past.

The massive Israel-US attacks on Iran are aimed, according to President Trump, at regime change. The death of the Ayatollah of Iran will be unlikely to cause that to happen. Most likely a new Ayatollah will be proclaimed and life will go on as it was before.

Yet there is massive unrest in the country, as we have seen in the recent nation-wide protests. The Israel-US attack could be the occasion for a new and larger uprising. As in Libya, Egypt and the Philippines, the uprising could topple the current regime.

If the Islamic rule has been brought to a sudden end, what could happen next?

            Chaos, most likely. Iran consists of large ethnic minorities, from the Kurds in the Northwest to the Baluchis in the Southeast. This will be their opportunity for succession and independence.

            In the Persian heartland of Iran, internal struggles will ensue. Gangs and warlords will rise up. There is no clear opposition force in the wings that is politically and militarily capable of swiftly moving in and asserting control.  

Let’s look at the experience of neighboring countries that have recently gone through political disruptions and regime change. What are the options?

The Iraq scenario

            After the ouster of Saddam Hussein the George W. Bush administration expected that the country would immediately come together around a new democratically elected leader. After all Iraq appeared to be well-educated and hungry for an end of dictatorship. The neo-con leaders did not even do much planning for the reconstruction of the country. After toppling the dictator, it was “mission accomplished.”

            That’s not what happened, of course. The country was plunged into chaos. What contained the chaos was the occupying force of the US military presence, though it was resented as much or more than the dictatorial oppression of Saddam. Years of confusion and anti-American violence ensued.

Eventually the political forces organized around ethnicity and religion, the two enduring forms of identity and mobilization. Shi’a political parties dominated 60% of the country. Kurds in the north created their own independent region. Sunnis in the northwest mounted resistance movements against both the US and Shi’a rulers that eventually devolved into ISIS.

The Afghan scenario

            On the other side of Iran, Afghanistan was going through similar turmoil. The US military easily toppled the Taliban authority largely because its power rested on a coalition of regional ethnic forces. They abandoned the Taliban when it was apparent that they didn’t stand a chance against the American military might.

            This put the US in the uneasy position of being the occupying power. It was effective control mainly in the city of Kabul with skirmishes against growing regrouped Taliban militia around the country. Eventually when the US left in a deal worked out by the Trump administration, the Taliban marched back in.

The Syrian scenario

            Iran’s main ally in the region, Syria, was controlled by the Asad family and their supporters from the Alawite sect, which is related to Shi’a Islam. The Shi’a connection to Iran was a tight bond that helped to sustain Iran’s influence over the region, along with Lebanon’s Hizbollah party and Yemen’s Houthis.

            But Hizbollah and the Houthis have been militarily degraded in recent attacks from Israel and the US. The Asad regime also fell, toppled by an organized Sunni militia that quickly maintained control over the country and became the ruling party.

            This was the smoothest transition of any of the recent regime changes in the neighboring countries. It was successful largely because there was already an organized militia and a ruling party in a northern province of Syria that was able to provide security and administration for the country as a whole.

The Yemen scenario

            Civil war broke out after the fall of the Saleh regime in Yemen. A militia based in the Houthi ethnic community of northern Yemen rose up against the government and took control of the major city, Saana. The Houthis were followers of a kind of Shi’a sect, which made them natural allies of Iran. The government forces in the south were supported by Saudi Arabia, and the continuing conflict was largely seen as a proxy war between the Saudis and Iran. 

The Somalia scenario

            After the overthrow of the regime of President Siad Barre in 1991, Somalia plunged into political chaos. Unlike Yemen there were no strong internal powers to define the situation as civil war between two contesting parties. Instead a variety of subgroups and warlords rose up exerting strength in various parts of the country. They operated more like competing gangs than like credible alternative governments.

            What Somalia did not have was the occupying power of a foreign country – the US in the case of Iraq and Afghanistan – to provide stability until it found an alternative form of control and political leadership. In the case of Iraq it was a fractured control and leadership, but at least it was not sheer chaos. In Afghanistan it was a return to the old Taliban. As wretched as its rule was for many modern educated people in urban areas it was a stable rule for which much of the rural parts of the country was familiar.

            But Somalia did not have an occupying power to provide civil order. It also did not have a well defined militia and political party sufficiently powerful to replace the national leadership and provide stability. What emerged in Somalia was chaos and a failed state.      

The Venezuelan scenario

This is not the first dictator that Trump has toppled. Earlier this year a US military raid captured Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro. The Vice President, Delcy Rodriguez, was sworn in as his successor. Despite previously being a loyal servant to Maduro, and echoing his castigation of American attempts to control the country, she soon appeared to capitulate and meekly work with the US authorities.

It is not inconceivable that the same thing could happen in Iran. The most loyal and ideologically aligned of the Ayatollahs inner circle may either be killed or marginalized in the attacks. The lower echelon leaders of the government may not have the same sense of ideological loyalty to the Islamic Revolutionary State as Khomeini and other leaders have had. To keep their positions of power, the might very well be willing to bow to US demands and work in concert with American advisors in rebuilding Iran’s nuclear and foreign policy. The regime could stay more or less intact, though more open to change.

As in Venezuela, this might frustrate the many Iranians who had hoped for a wholesale political revolution immediately and a return to an unfettered democracy and an open society. And in time the government, now shorn of the need for Islamic ideological justification, might turn increasingly in that direction. In the interim, the post-Ayatollah transition might be surprisingly smooth.

Iran after the Ayatollah

            Will Iran after the Ayatollah follow one of these scenarios? Or will it follow a different course? The government is well established and the likelihood is that after the current Ayatollah has been dispatched, another will soon be chosen to take his place. The constitution of the Islamic Republic of Iran requires the office of a Supreme Leader in addition to the usual three branches of a democratic state—judicial, executive, and parliamentary. So a new leader would have to be chosen, and perhaps life will go on without a hitch.

            On the other hand, the political turmoil of international conflict linked with major physical assaults on the country leading up to the killing of the Supreme Leader could spark an uprising throughout the country. Iran has experience widescale rebellion before, though this time it could be catastrophic for the regime. It could fall.

            If that happens, one of the options that has befallen the other countries in its neighborhood could be Iran’s fate as well. One would hope for the Venezuelan option, though if there is an uprising that ousts the old regime entirely, the outcome might look more like a combination of the Yemen and Somalia scenarios.

            There are well-defined ethnic communities within Iran that could break away and form their own semi-independent states. Only 60% of the country is ethnically Persian. There is a large Baluchi community in the southeast that could break away and form ties with the Baluchis across the border in Pakistan.

            On the western side of Iran there is a huge Kurdish population adjacent to Iraq’s Kurdistan. When I was in Sulaymaniyah, an Iraqi Kurdish city on the border with Iran, I was impressed on how easily people went back and forth across the border as if it was one region. South of Iran’s Kurdish region is a Kurdish related community, the Lurs. Another community in the far northeast are the Azeris, a Turkish-speaking group related to Azerbaijan.

            Each of these could spin off into its own semi-autonomous region. The Persian heartland might be thrown into a Somalia-like confusion with different gangs and warlords competing for power. Years of turmoil would follow.

            What might keep this from happening would be the intervention of a foreign power to provide stability. After all, Iran is one of the world’s great oil producers, and the world economy depends on the continued access of this precious resource.

            Russia might want to intercede, or China. To keep that from happening, Israel or more likely, the United States would bring in its own troops. Is the United States ready for another unending war of occupation in the Middle East?