Again, What's Going On In Iran?

Channel 14 says it obtained an exchange among Iranian leaders:

President Pezeshkian: “I want to be involved in the negotiations with the U.S. Without a quick deal, our entire economy will collapse in 3 weeks.”

IRGC chief Vahidi: “That’s exactly why you can’t be involved. You’ll… pic.twitter.com/EV76ZmFa2w

— Open Source Intel (@Osint613) March 30, 2026

As we wait for President Trump's address on Iran this evening, I continue to reflect on the X post above from several days ago. A big theme in the comment thread is that it's no surprise that the Revolutionary Guard is in control. On the other hand, no date is given for the reported exchange between President Pezeshkian and Revolutionary Guard Chief Vahidi, but at least one report claims that Vahidi has been eliminated:

🚨🇮🇷BREAKING: General Ahmad Vahidi who was appointed as commander-in-chief of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) on March 1, 2026, reporadaly has been ELIMINATED in U. S. & Israel strikes. pic.twitter.com/7wuxWVRV6X

— Eli Afriat 🇮🇱 (@EliAfriatISR) March 27, 2026

But other reports suggest he's still in charge, and conflicts with President Pezeshkian are continuing:

Rising tensions between the Pezeshkian administration and Iran’s military leadership have pushed the president into a “complete political deadlock,” with the Revolutionary Guard effectively assuming control over key state functions, informed sources told Iran International.

. . . Pezeshkian has repeatedly sought an urgent meeting with Mojtaba Khamenei in recent days, but all requests have gone unanswered, with no contact established.

Informed sources say a “military council” composed of senior IRGC officers now exercises full control over the core decision-making structure, enforcing a security cordon around Mojtaba Khamenei and preventing government reports on the country’s situation from reaching him.

But reports from a week ago said the Trump administration was talking, at least indirectly, with Parliament Speaker Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf and Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, but neither has been mentioned in the past several days. I asked the AI oracle, "Where do Parliament Speaker Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf and Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi stand in Iran's current political structure?" It answered,

In Iran's political structure as of early 2026, Parliament Speaker Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf and Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi have both seen their roles expand significantly, emerging as central power centers during a period of severe regional conflict and leadership instability.

. . . Qalibaf is the Speaker of the Islamic Consultative Assembly (Iran's Parliament). A former commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) Air Force and former Mayor of Tehran, he has long been a heavyweight in the conservative/hardline camp.

. . . Following severe degradation to Iran's senior leadership from military strikes, Qalibaf has moved far beyond his traditional legislative role. According to intelligence and media reporting, he is operating as one of the de facto leaders of the country's strategic decision-making and war effort.

. . . Araghchi serves as the public and international face of the Iranian regime. While the actual decisions regarding military posture and red lines are heavily dictated by the IRGC and top security councils, Araghchi manages the critical backchannels and diplomatic messaging.

I asked a follow-up: "What is Iran's President Pezeshkian's standing vis-a-vis Parliament Speaker Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf?" It answered,

The political standing between Iran's President Masoud Pezeshkian and Parliament Speaker Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf (Ghalibaf) is defined by a shift from early cooperation to an escalating institutional and political rivalry. While they initially pursued a "honeymoon" period governed by the rhetoric of consensus to manage the country's governance, their relationship has grown increasingly adversarial.

. . . Amid the severe regional conflicts and military strikes impacting Iran, Qalibaf has emerged as a vocal and influential figure handling strategic posturing. He has taken an uncompromising, hardline stance against negotiations with the U.S. and Israel. Conversely, Pezeshkian's standing has been described as somewhat diminished or restricted to managing day-to-day state functions, particularly after facing pushback from hardline institutions when he attempted to extend diplomatic olive branches or apologies to neighboring Gulf states.

But this is worth exactly what I paid for it, nothing. Still, the comment thread after the first post I embedded above misses the big point: Israel clearly has penetrated and decrypted all of Iran's intra-government deliberations, to the point that their intelligence can leak specific exchanges between Iran's top figures and their subsequent remarks to staff. This report confirms that surmise:

Sources quoted by The New York Times overnight described a situation of deep dysfunction in Tehran, where decision-making has been severely disrupted following joint US and Israeli strikes. Officials said damage to communications infrastructure has fueled paranoia among senior figures, who now fear their conversations are being intercepted, leading many to avoid direct contact altogether. This has hindered coordination of military responses and stalled efforts to formulate positions in potential negotiations.

. . . Israeli officials speaking to The New York Times compared the situation in Iran to the breakdown experienced by Hamas in Gaza after its leadership was eliminated. They said communication challenges are forcing reliance on intermediaries and slow exchanges, complicating both military coordination and diplomatic efforts, and leaving uncertainty over who is authorized to make decisions on behalf of the Iranian government.

We should note that if Israeli intelligence can eavesdrop on their conversations, it likely can pinpoint their specific locations as well, and they know it. And based on recent remarks from Trump, the situation may have changed:

President Donald Trump told the New York Post on Monday that the U.S. is talking to new leaders in Iran, without providing more details.

"There has been total regime change because the regimes of the past are gone and we're dealing with a whole new set of people," Trump said. "And thus far, they've been much more reasonable."

Trump added that the U.S. is waiting to see if Iran's Parliamentary Leader Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf will work with the U.S., and he claimed that Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei was "seriously injured."

"We're gonna find out," Trump told The Post when asked about Ghalibaf. "I'll let you know that in about a week."

Trump's implication seems to be either that Qalibaf, Vahidi, and Pezeshkian are no longer factors, or that their alignment and posture have significantly changed. As of last Thursday, nearly a week ago, Trump was saying,

“We estimated it would take approximately four to six weeks to achieve our mission; 26 days in, we’re extremely, really, a lot ahead of schedule. The Iranian regime is now admitting to itself that they have been decisively defeated,” he said.

“They’re saying to people, ‘This is a disaster.’ They know it. That’s why they’re talking to us, and they wouldn’t talk otherwise, but they’re talking to us because they’ve got a disaster on their hands. They’re defeated. They can’t make a comeback,” he said.

. . . “They now have a chance to make a deal, but that’s up to them, and they’ll tell you, ‘We’re not negotiating. We will not negotiate.’ Of course, they’re negotiating. They’ve been obliterated,” he said. “Who wouldn’t negotiate?”

Let's hope his address tonight adds some clarity.

Pope Leo, The Scriptural Conundrum, And Alan Dershowitz

Pope Leo Explains God Does Not Listen To People Who Wage War So Long As You Don’t Count Moses, David, Joshua, Elijah, Saul, Gideon, Samson, Or Anyone Else In Bible https://t.co/8Hu7kJv7hc pic.twitter.com/q2jBwHjSST

— The Babylon Bee (@TheBabylonBee) March 29, 2026

I double checked this with AI, which replied,

Yes, Pope Leo XIV stated that God "does not listen to the prayers of those who wage war" during his Palm Sunday homily on March 29, 2026.

Speaking to tens of thousands in St. Peter's Square, the Pope condemned the ongoing conflict between the U.S., Israel, and Iran as "atrocious" and warned against using faith to justify violence.

. . . He cited Isaiah 1:15 to emphasize his point: "Even though you make many prayers, I will not listen: your hands are full of blood".

But then I asked AI about Moses and the battle with the Amalekites:

According to Exodus 17:8-16, the Battle of Rephidim saw Joshua lead the Israelites against the Amalekites while Moses, Aaron, and Hur watched from a hill. The Israelites prevailed whenever Moses held up the "staff of God," but faltered when he lowered it due to fatigue. Aaron and Hur Supported his arms with a stone for sitting, allowing Joshua to secure victory until sunset.

A quick web search brings up the point that in Isaiah 1:15, God is specifically rebuking the later-stage Southern Kingdom of Judah, which had fallen into hypocrisy. This wasn't the case with Moses, Aaron, Hur, and Joshua, who were doing God's will. It's hard to avoid a conclusion that if your cause is in accordance with God's will, even when you go to war, God listens to your prayers.

But let's go to the specific wording of The Catechism of the Catholic Church, paragraph 2309:

The strict conditions for legitimate defense by military force require rigorous consideration. the gravity of such a decision makes it subject to rigorous conditions of moral legitimacy. . . . the use of arms must not produce evils and disorders graver than the evil to be eliminated. the power of modem means of destruction weighs very heavily in evaluating this condition.

The evaluation of these conditions for moral legitimacy belongs to the prudential judgment of those who have responsibility for the common good.

Let's consider very recent remarks by Alan Dershowitz, who by his account speaks frequently with Prime Minister Netanyahu, and whose viewpoint must certainly have influenced the prudential judgment of both Netanyahu and President Trump, whose mutual reponsibility it is to evaluate the moral legitimacy of the Iran war.

The military action undertaken against Iran, designed to prevent it from developing a nuclear arsenal, is the most significant since World War II.

This is a remarkable assessment, and it relies on what the meaning of "significant" is. The Korean and Viet Nam wars were longer and invoived far more forces on both sides, but they were fought to a stalemate, a result of a policy context of "containing" the Soviet Union, not defeating it. This likely won't happen with Iran, and it certainly isn't the US or Israeli intent. I think Dershowitz is correct in equating the moral significance of the Iran war with World War II in the area of averting potential widespread destruction of innnocent life.

Indeed, had similar preventive military action been taken against the Nazi regime in the 1930s, it might have saved as many as 50 million lives. If the military attack against Iran succeeds in preventing it from developing a nuclear arsenal, it too may prevent millions of deaths — we will never know how many.

We will only learn the deadly numbers if this attack fails and Iran develops and deploys nuclear weapons.

Preventive military actions are always controversial and often unpopular, because history is blind to the probabilistic future. If prevention succeeds, we never know its benefits. If it fails, we learn its costs the hard way.

What Dershowitz is saying here is that, weighing the circumstances, those who have responsibility for the public good have chosen to venture into war. He doesn't mention Clausewitz, but Clausewitz has a great deal to say about being blind to the probabilistic future -- it's simply part of war:

War is the province of uncertainty: three-fourths of those things upon which action in war must be calculated, are hidden more or less in the clouds of great uncertainty. Here, then, above all a fine and penetrating mind is called for, to grope out the truth by the tact of its judgment.

. . . Resolution is an act of courage in single instances, and if it becomes a characteristic trait, it is a habit of the mind. But here we do not mean courage in face of bodily danger, but in face of responsibility, therefore to a certain extent against moral danger.

Dershowitz brings up a question that strikes me as very close to Clausewitz's invocation of resolution as courage against moral danger:

Trump has said if the U.S. had not bombed Iran’s nuclear facilities back in June, Iran would already have a nuclear bomb and would have used it. That may or may not be accurate. We can never know for certain. But do we have to take that risk, and does Israel? Or are these two nations entitled — or perhaps obligated — to eliminate or at least reduce that risk by preventive military action? Should they have to wait until it is imminent, which may mean too late or almost too late to prevent it?

What Dershowitz is arguing is that we're never going to be completely certain about either the conditions that may have led to the war -- was Iran actually just weeks from building and deploying a nuclear weapon? -- or what the outcome may be -- will we be able finally to prevent Iran from ever doing this? -- but we have entrusted the elected leadership in both Israel and the US with the prudential judgment and the resolution to go to war.

But Dershowitz leaves aside the scriptural conundrum (and so does the pope): irrespective of the New Covenant, the Abrahamic Covenant is eternal and remains in effect. God still has a special relationship with Israel. It's a major mistake to ignore this.

Another Bad Idea From The UK: Mass Migration As Social Engineering

Another area of the UK's decline that I've begun to look at is immigration. This so-called "bitesize" piece from the BBC probably puts the best possible take on it:

After World War Two, a mass immigration of people coming to work in Britain began. Many of the early arrivals were from the West Indies, South Asia and Cyprus. The most famous arrival was of people from the Caribbean, mainly Jamaica and Trinidad, on the ship Empire Windrush in 1948. This is sometimes mistakenly referred to as the first arrival of black people in Britain.

- UK had a severe labour shortage after World War Two, especially in the transport network and the newly created National Health Service

- large areas of the main cities had been destroyed by aerial bombing and a programme of rebuilding began, needing workers

- for the above reasons, British governments actively invited people from the Commonwealth to come and work

- the economy of the Caribbean islands, seriously underdeveloped by Britain, was in crisis with high levels of unemployment[.]

Let's see if we can parse this out. From Econ 101, I dimly recall that a shortage of anything raises its price. A labor shortage ought to mean workers can ask for higher wages, except if you can increase the supply of workers, well then, they can't ask for higher wages. So it sounds to me as though as a matter of government policy, the UK elected to import cheap labor to keep wages down during a labor shortage. According to AI:

The British Nationality Act 1948 granted all Commonwealth citizens the right to live and work in the UK. This led to the arrival of the "Windrush generation" from the Caribbean to address severe labor shortages in reconstruction, transport, and the newly formed National Health Service (NHS).

Wait a moment. Isn't it incongruous that the UK had a Labour government from 1945 to 1951, that would notionally have been looking out for the benefit of the working class? Instead, it passed legislation to import cheap labor to keep wages down. In fact, this policy continued into the early 1960s:

During the 1950s and early 1960s, the UK actively recruited workers from overseas, for example, the NHS led mass recruitment drives for nurses from the Caribbean in the 1950s and doctors from the Indian subcontinent in the 1960s. These policies were driven by a recognition that migrant [which is to say cheap] labour was needed for post-war growth and public services.

. . . From 1962 onward, immigration controls were tightened on Commonwealth migration, via the Commonwealth Immigrants Act 1962, further restrictions in 1968 and the Immigration Act 1971. These acts ended the open-door policy by requiring work vouchers or permits for Commonwealth citizens. However, it is notable that even as laws became stricter, legal immigration continued, in the late 1960s Commonwealth citizens were still admitted at tens of thousands per year.

. . . A major shift in UK immigration policy came with integration into Europe. The UK joined the European Economic Community in 1973, but the full effects on migration only emerged after the then Prime Minister, John Major, signed the Maastricht Treaty in 1992, joining the United Kingdom, without the consent of the people, to the newly formed European Union.

The principle of free movement of people was enshrined in EU law, allowing UK and other EU citizens to live and work in each other’s countries without visas. For Britain, EU free movement became particularly significant after the EU’s expansion eastward. In 2004, ten new countries, eight of them in Eastern Europe, (known as the “A8” countries) joined the EU.

The UK government under Prime Minister Tony Blair chose to allow immediate free movement access to workers from the new member states in 2004, rather than imposing transitional limits. This policy decision encouraged a large wave of legal migration from Eastern Europe to the UK.

Let's note that the overall national policy of keeping wages down via mass migration was facilitated by both Conservative (John Major) and Labour (Tony Blair) governments. In fact, this ought to represent a major betrayal of the working class by the Labour Party, which was founded by the Fabians as a way to temporize with working-class demands, but as we've seen, keeping the working class down was the actual Fabian agenda. Recent Labour immigration policy has in fact taken this even farther:

The huge increases in migrants over the last decade were partly due to a politically motivated attempt by ministers to radically change the country and "rub the Right's nose in diversity", according to Andrew Neather, a former adviser to Tony Blair, Jack Straw and David Blunkett.

He said Labour's relaxation of controls was a deliberate plan to "open up the UK to mass migration" but that ministers were nervous and reluctant to discuss such a move publicly for fear it would alienate its "core working class vote".

As a result, the public argument for immigration concentrated instead on the economic benefits and need for more migrants.

. . . Mr Neather was a speech writer who worked in Downing Street for Tony Blair and in the Home Office for Jack Straw and David Blunkett, in the early 2000s.

. . . He said the final published version of the report promoted the labour market case for immigration but unpublished versions contained additional reasons, he said.

He wrote: "Earlier drafts I saw also included a driving political purpose: that mass immigration was the way that the Government was going to make the UK truly multicultural.

Keeping wages down? That's so 1999!

The "deliberate policy", from late 2000 until "at least February last year [2008]", when the new points based system was introduced, was to open up the UK to mass migration, he said.

Some 2.3 million migrants have been added to the population since then, according to Whitehall estimates quietly slipped out last month.

A Home Office spokesman said [in 2009]: “Our new flexible points based system gives us greater control on those coming to work or study from outside Europe, ensuring that only those that Britain need can come.

“Britain's borders are stronger than ever before and we are rolling out ID cards to foreign nationals, we have introduced civil penalties for those employing illegal workers and from the end of next year our electronic border system will monitor 95 per cent of journeys in and out of the UK.

“The British people can be confident that immigration is under control.”

But even as the UK struggled to limit legal immigration, illegal immigration has soared:

In the year ending June 2025, there were 49,341 detected irregular arrivals, 27% more than in the previous year, and 88% of these arrived on small boats. Small boats have been the predominant recorded entry method for irregular arrivals since 2020, when detections on this method increased rapidly and detections on other methods declined (likely in part due to the COVID-19 pandemic making other methods of entry, such as air or ferry, less viable).

The illegal migrants are, of course, precisely those the UK doesn't need and presumably doesn't want, if the "points bsased system" is any indication -- but why does the UK nevertheless encourage them with incentives like migrant hotels?

What we're actually seeing is an official effort, only partly concealed, to destroy the traditional UK working class by keeping native-born wages down and importing third-world replacements, who at the same time will harass the native-born working class via techniques like rape gangs.

This is the country that brought us Fabian socialism. There's something deeply wrong here, and it's hard to avoid thinking it has to do with the UK class structure -- but under the current scheme of social engineering, it isn't the middle or upper classes that will be hurt. Instead of the working class sending the aristocrats and the bourgeoisie to the gulag, the aristocrats and the bourgeoisie are going to wipe out the traditional working class.

A Detour Into Archbishops Of Canterbury

Yesterday I resumed my occasional ruminations on bad ideas that originated in the UK, in this case, Fabian socialism. This morning I ran into a piece on another bad idea from the UK that's had far less traction, the Archbishop of Canterbury: The posh plot to stick Mullally in Canterbury. As best I can tell, it breaks down the controversy in class terms, which is an almost exclusively intra-UK issue, when the occupant of the Canterbury see is at least politely said still to be the leader of world Anglicanism.

But here's the issue as outlined in the piece:

The BBC presented Sarah Mullally as a ground-breaker in its coverage of her installation as Archbishop of Canterbury. But the real ground-breaker in the Church of England was George Carey, the archbishop that Margaret Thatcher chose in 1990.

This is because Carey was non-U.

Carey was the first Archbishop of Canterbury since the Reformation not to have been educated at Oxbridge. Born as the son of a porter in London’s East End in 1935, he left school at 15 to work as an office boy at the London Electricity Board. He went to a secondary-modern school having failed his 11-plus.

. . . He did National Service in the RAF as a radio operator with a deployment in Iraq. After the RAF, he started pursuing a vocation to be ordained in the Church of England. Within 15 months he passed three A-levels and six O-levels, and won a place at King’s College, London, to study Theology. He came up against snobbery in the established Church of the 1950s, being told by a snooty cleric that he would never make it to ordination. But he was ordained in 1962, serving as a parish minister and theological educator. He became Bishop of Bath and Wells in 1987.

The idea of Carey as a potential regenerative force in both the Church of England and world Anglicanism was something I experienced as a then-Episcopalian. Our parish at the time brought in a morbidly obese lesbian rector as part of this grand transformation, as a result of which my wife and I stopped going to church for several years. One point the search committee found in her favor was that she was a personal friend of George Carey. Carey was in favor of ordaining women but a moderate on the issue of same-sex.

But even though the Church of England ordained women during his tenure, it was overall less a breakthrough than a distraction. The controversy over ordaining women on one hand drove about 700 Anglican priests out of the Church of England and into the Catholic Church, and currently, a majority of Church of England priests in formation are women. But after his retirement, a much bigger scandal arose over successive investigations of his coverup of abuse by priests and bishops:

During Carey's term as Archbishop of Canterbury, there were many complaints of serial sex abuse made against Peter Ball, the Bishop of Lewes and later of Gloucester until his resignation in 1993 after admitting to an act of gross indecency. Archbishop Carey wrote to the Director of Public Prosecutions and the Chief Constable of Gloucester police, supporting Ball and saying that he was suffering "excruciating pain and spiritual torment". In October 2015 Ball was sentenced to 32 months imprisonment for misconduct in public office and indecent assault; he admitted the abuse of 18 young men aged 17–25.

. . . [Carey's priestly faculties were revoked on 17 June 2020 after new evidence came to light about failures to consider child protection in regard to leading schools' children's activity and Bible camps run by John Smyth in the 1970s. [They were] then reinstated in January 2021.

On 4 December 2024 Carey submitted his resignation as a priest from the Church of England, writing "I wish to surrender my Permission to Officiate".

The piece at the first link, though, seems to want to make Carey into some sort of hero for promoting the ordination of women -- but his tenure did nothing to stop the trend of Anglican decline in the UK, the US, and Canada:

In 1970, the combined membership of [The Episcopal Church] and the Anglican Church of Canada came to 4,373,000. In 2015, the combined membership of TEC and the Anglican Church of Canada came to 2,537,000 and it has dropped considerably since then. In half a century North American Anglicanism has halved in size.

North American Anglicanism has been declining by some metrics for a long time, but much of the decline is recent. As late as the 1990s, membership in the American South grew and it was holding steady in the West. The Anglican Church of Canada’s decline only really picked up from the turn of the century. But it picked up with a vengeance. The Anglican Church of Canada’s membership nearly halved between 2001 and 2017.

Historical perspective matters, even when looking at recent history. The last Lambeth Conference at which the bulk of Anglicanism was represented was in 1998. TEC and the Anglican Church of Canada are profoundly different (and much smaller) now than they were then.

For the rest of the West the picture is mixed. The numbers for England, Scotland, and Wales are as bad or nearly as bad as for North America.

The odd thing is that the piece blames Mullaly's installation on a "posh plot" -- except that Carey's own project to ordain women, which came to fruition in 1992, made Mullaly's installation possible. There simply wouldn't have been a woman Archbishop without the non-U Carey. Where's the posh?

[I]n 1990 the Prime Minister made the appointment from two candidates submitted by the Crown Nominations Commission. The unsuccessful candidate was not disclosed but it is reasonable to believe that Mrs Thatcher chose Carey, an evangelical from a working-class background, in preference to the then Archbishop of York, John Habgood, an Oxbridge-educated theological liberal from an upper-middle-class background.

. . . Since Carey stepped down as Archbishop of Canterbury in 2002, the Church of England has been led by an Oxbridge academic in Rowan Williams, an Old Etonian oil executive in Justin Welby and now a female NHS executive in Sarah Mullally. Could any sensible person believe that an institution that has been so captured by middle-class neo-Marxists will ever again be led by a man from a working-class background?

George Carey was the true ground-breaker and, under God, Mrs Thatcher made it happen.

It seems to me that Whig vs Tory or U vs non-U have nothing to do with whether any Archbishop of Canterbury has been effective in recent decades -- that's a minor distraction intramural to the UK. If anything, though, it seems to me that Carey was complicit in implementing the same British bourgeois temporizing agenda as all his predecessors and successors. I wouldn't call them "middle-class neo-Marxists", though -- I think it would be more precise to call them respectable temporizers.

But hasn't this been baked into Anglicanism from the start? When I went through Episcopalian confirmation class about 1980, the big point that the priests made was about how Anglicans were able to resolve their differences through compromise. That's where it's always gotten them.

Fabian Socialism 2.0

I remember a discussion question from somewhere at least 50 years ago that went something like this: "Which of the two British dystopian novels, Aldous Huxley's Brave New World or George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four, seems most prescient of current conditions to you? Explain." I thought this was a good question at the time, but I never could come up with a definite answer, and as I revisit the question today, I'm actually more convinced that the answer is "neither".

Let's look at Brave New World. According to Wikipedia,

Largely set in a futuristic World State, whose citizens are environmentally engineered into an intelligence-based social hierarchy, the novel anticipates huge scientific advancements in reproductive technology, sleep-learning, psychological manipulation and classical conditioning that are combined to make a dystopian society which is challenged by the story's protagonist.

Nineteen Eighty-Four, on the other hand, also per Wikipedia, paints a different picture:

Much of the world is in perpetual war. Great Britain, now known as Airstrip One, has become a province of the totalitarian superstate Oceania, which is led by Big Brother, a dictatorial leader supported by an intense cult of personality manufactured by the Party's Thought Police. The Party engages in omnipresent government surveillance and, through the Ministry of Truth, historical negationism and constant propaganda to persecute individuality and independent thinking.

We might say that Brave New World represents an apotheosis of consumer capitalism, while Nineteen Eighty-Four is a practical outcome of the Marxist-Leninist vision. On one hand, the Marxist-Leninist paradigm collapsed within half a century of Orwell's prediction. On the other, nobody seems especially eager to embrace the ultimate expression of consumerism, despite the widespread availability of plastic surgery and group therapy -- and intelligence-based social hierarchy these days is a joke: the punchline is Kamala Harris.

But both dystopias are aimed in particular at the UK. As best we can observe from an ocean away, the UK has turned into somnething utterly unlike either of the 20th century visions, and at least by some analyses, this was utterly unforeseen:

To analyze the nature and extent of Islamist ideological penetration in Britain, it is important to understand the demographic features of British Islam. Britain did not measure religion until the 2001 Census, and even then one’s religious affiliation was only a voluntary question. Britain did however measure migrants’ countries of origin and from these figures it is thought that the 1991 Muslim population was around 1.25 million. The 2001 Census indicated that 1.6 million people in England and Wales and just over 42,000 in Scotland identified themselves as Muslim. The voluntary nature of the question is likely to have led to a low figure and it is now thought that there are around 2 million.

This whole discussion, however, is sanguline; a quick web search brings up a number of Muslims in the UK closer to 4 million. In general, UK legacy media downplays the idea of conflicts in values between Islam and the UK, but in the current environment, Keir Starmer is actively appeasing Muslim voters on issues like anti-Semitism:

He can't stand up the the Muslims because of the 'rent boys'

Pathetic

Oh, there's the door bell. I assume that's the police

They're a major part of the cover-up, sadly https://t.co/Ca63MBFTcu

— John Cleese (@JohnCleese) March 27, 2026

This has brought me to the question of what's become of Fabian socialism, a peculiarly British idea that caught on elsewhere in the late 19th and erly 20th century in response to the idea of world proletarian revolution. A UK study guide gives a succinct explanation of the term:

Fabianism is a socialist movement that advocates for gradual reform and the peaceful transition to socialism rather than revolution. It emphasizes education, moral persuasion, and the use of democratic means to achieve social change, reflecting a belief in the power of reasoned argument and collaboration over violent upheaval.

. . . Fabianism differs from traditional forms of socialism primarily in its commitment to gradual reform rather than revolutionary change. While many socialist movements advocate for immediate and often radical changes to overthrow capitalism, Fabianism promotes a more measured approach, believing that social change can be achieved through education, moral persuasion, and democratic processes. This ideology emphasizes collaboration within existing political structures to create a more equitable society.

The standard definition goes on to give a roll call of relentlessly bourgeois figures connected with the movement: George Bernard Shaw, H. G. Wells, Annie Besant, Graham Wallas, Charles Marson, Sydney Olivier, Oliver Lodge, Ramsay MacDonald, Emmeline Pankhurst, and Bertrand Russell, to the point that either consciously or subconsciously, these people recognized what would happen to the bourgeoisie in the event of world proleterian revolution, viz, the gulag, and they were above all intent on saving their own skins.

Thus they concocted a strategy of tempporizing indefinitely with the proletariat, offering cures of one sort or another to social ailments that seldom solved much except to keep the bourgeoisie in place. By the 21st century, as a practical matter, the US solved tbe problem of proletarian revolution, first by containing the Soviet Union, and then by allowing the Marxist-Leninist project to collapse of its own weight. It's worth pointing out that NATO and similar alliances were constructed as part of this containment strategy, but once the Marxist-Leninist model collapsed, they became irrelevant.

The next problem is that once the US strategy co-opted the threat of world proletarian revolition, the whole Fabian idea also collapsed. I think this was at the root of both Reagan Republicanism and Trump populism; the bottom line is that temporizing with radical demands in order to maintain a comfortable bourgeoisie should no longer be necessary. In other words, the whole Labour project has become as irrelevant as the Marxism-Leninism it was intended to supplant.

The response of Labour, it appears, has been to cast about for another group to temporize with, in this case, the Muslims. This isn't going to work; there's a different dynamic, and each temporization will only come off as weakness until the bourgeoisie is dhimmi, relegated to second-class status in return for a tac, otherwise characterizable as reparations. As I think about it, both Brave New World and Nineteen Eighty-Four are intensely UK bourgeois views of the social structure, both date from the mid-20th century, and the implicit prescriptions of both for the social compromise are no longer relevant.

I think this is why I could never quite work through the question of which was more prescient; neither was. Neither remotely saw Islam as a potential problem for the UK or the West in general.

Britain?

Via the UK Guardian:

Donald Trump has dismissed British warships as “toys” in his latest jibe at Nato countries for their lack of involvement in the joint US-Israeli strikes on Iran. Speaking at the White House on Thursday, he claimed he had told the UK: “Don’t bother, we don’t need it.”

Trump has previously alleged that he requested two aircraft carriers from the UK that Keir Starmer had initially rejected and then offered to send. No 10 has denied that a request was made or denied.

However,

The United Kingdom will lead a multinational coalition to re-open and then maintain the Strait of Hormuz “as soon as the conditions are right” — likely meaning not while a war is still going on — it is claimed. The Times cites unnamed British defence officials who say meetings between partner nations have already taken place, and more are planned. . .

Why is it that responses to Trump's criticisms from both the UK and NATO always involve meetings?

This discussion needs to be put in perspective: two once-respected UK institutions, the Royal Navy and the Church of England, have just recently ended their decades-long collapse into irrelevance. The Church began ordaining women in 1992, with the result that its previous decline in Sunday attendance continued, but at a faster rate. The installation on Wednesday of the first female Archbishop of Canterbury will likely finalize the slide into irrelevance.

Mark Felton, an academic historian who has transitioned primarily onto the YouTube platform, has spoken frequently on the decline of the Royal Navy.

Currently, the Royal Navy has 63 commissioned ships, but of this number, only 25 are really fighting ships, that is, submarines, aircraft carriers, destroyeres, and frigates. The balance are support, patrol, and survey vessels, which, though armed, are not true fighting warships. Such a small fleet might be sufficient for a small nation engaged only inj self-defense, but Britain still has some 15 overseas territories, many of which, like the Falkland Islands, require naval protection.

. . . A decade earlier, in 20l6, the situation wasn't much better. Eleven submaries, no aircraft carriers, six destroyers, and 13 frigates. Twenty years ago, in 2006, the fleet had nine submarines, three aircraft carriers, one helicopter carrier, ten destroyers, and 13 frigates. And 30 years ago, in 1996, the Royal Navy had 17 submarines, three aircraft carriers, 16 destroyers, and 22 frigates, and it is generally agreed that the Royal Navy should still be this large, as its defense commitments are still basically the same as they were in 1996.

So, roughly, the Royal Navy's fighting fleet has been reduced by half in 30 years, but is just as busy.

The Uk's lack of preparedness for the US-Israeli attacks on Iran has been an embarrassment to Keir Starmer, the prime minister:

arship, has finally arrived in the eastern Mediterranean to defend Cyprus from Iranian attacks.

. . . Sir Keir Starmer has been criticised for Britain’s sluggish response to the Iran war. Politicians accused him of failing to prepare for the joint US-Israel strikes on Iran, after a two-month build-up of the US naval armada in the Middle East.

All six of Britain’s Type 45 destroyers were stuck in port when a drone struck Akrotiri. Only two were classed as operational, which meant they should have been ready to sail at 72 hours’ notice.

HMS Dragon was in dry dock without weapons and had scaffolding on when Sir Keir ordered her to sail. It took a week to bring the ship out of maintenance in Portsmouth and a further two weeks for the ship to finally arrive in Cyprus.

Sir Keir’s decision not to join the war caused a row with Donald Trump, with the US president accusing him of seeking to “join wars after we’ve already won” and saying he “will remember” the lack of British support during the conflict.

But any short-term decision by the UK actually to deploy a single warship to the Mediterranean doesn't affect the long-term trend. According to the Center for Strategic & International Studies,

The transatlantic relationship is being recast. . . . While the scope of the transformation of U.S. involvement in Europe remains to be seen, the trajectory of the transatlantic alliance will also dramatically impact the vaunted special relationship between the United States and the United Kingdom. . . . As London takes a sober look at its long-term approach through its recent Strategic Defense Review, a refreshed understanding of the special relationship is critical to developing a strategy to maximize U.S.-UK defense cooperation and equip both partners to face the challenges ahead.

. . . Yet the special relationship is not as meaningful as it once was. An honest audit of bilateral ties over the past decade reflects a partnership that has faded in relevance to policymakers, especially in Washington. . . . In recent years, the United Kingdom has been consumed with Brexit, become estranged from Europe, suffered sluggish economic growth, and implemented cuts to its military forces. This has made it a less relevant actor in Europe, a less relevant global economic player, and less of a global military presence.

. . . The task ahead will not be easy. The Trump administration is increasingly at odds with Europe, creating a widening diplomatic gulf.

But according to Trump, defense isn't the only issue:

Donald Trump has warned Britain “you won’t have a country left” unless illegal migrants are deported now.

. . . The businessman-turned-politician said his former administration was “very tough at the border” and “would take people immediately back” as the US was flooded with “millions” of illegal arrivals.

He suggested that Britain “could do the same thing”, before going on to say: “If you don’t get them out, you’re not going to have a country left.”

It comes as small boat migrants continue to prove a major headache for PM Sir Keir Starmer – with his “one-in, one-out” deal with France dealt an embarrassing blow last month when a booted out asylum seeker sneaked back into the UK.

For now, it looks like Trump's assessment of the UK's ability to turn things around is correct, and the decline of its national will is reflected in the decline of its key historic institutions, inclulding the monarchy, with the Windsor family appearing to list in the direction of Edward VIII, not his faher or his niece. Recovery will be a lengthy process, if it takes place at all.

The Only Journalist Who's Been Working Over Spring Break Is Mark Halperin

The reason he's working is because he has a lot of incentive. He crashed and burned his career in 2017, when multiple women filed sexual harassmnet and misconduct complaints against him from his time as political director of ABC News, at which point his then-employers NBC News ahd Showtime fired him. He began a serious attempt at rehabilitation in 2019 but faced major headwinds, and he made little progress until last year, when he began work for Megyn Kelly and MK Media, hosting the 2WAY news platform.

I've followed him on 2WAY, and I get the impression that what he's trying to offer is someone who has good inside sources, who asks those sources good questons, and does good analysis of what he learns. What he's betting is that since this is something nobody else is providing, he can rebuild his career with it.

Lately, he's been unique in covering the putative upcoming "negotiations" over the Iran war. One question that's come up for me over the past few days is why, over the past week, "Tehran", or whoever claims to be speaking for the mullahs, has consistently demanded the same unrealisic proposals.

These include reparations from the US, full control over the Strait of Hormuz and the right to charge tolls, withdrawal of all US bases in the region, a permanent end of the war, and the end of sanctions. It made these demnds last week before Trump announced a pause for negotiations, but it reiterated them yesterday. So what are the prospects for negotiations? At about 2:05 in the video embedded above, Halperin says:

I think the president and Bibi have had a plan all along to do regime change. . . . The whole point of this extrordinary, unauthorized attack, the whole point of all this firepower, the whole point of assassinating foreign leaders, is because this regime has been run by crazy, theocratic murderers. And if you replace a bunch of crazy, theocratic murderers with a bunch of crazy, theocratic murderers, you haven't really solved the problem. So I believe, although it's been played down, and although I believe the president could end the conflict without this, I believe there's been a secret plan to do regime change. . . . How did World War II end with the Japanese and the Germans? Surrender.

He fleshed out these ideas in more detail in another post:

We don't know if there'll be peace talks, but there might be tomorrow in Islamabad, they might feature the vice president, they might feature the president's two special negotiators, Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff. The Iranians might not come, because they don't think the deal that's on the table is any good. They also might not come, according to Axios, something I thought of, although not based on reporting, it'd be a good time to kill them, if you wanted. . . . We also know that the Iranians, quite rightly, have observed the past is prologue with Donald Trump, and the last two times there were negotiations going on, they were basically just a pretext to attack.

In other words, Halperin, whose read on Trump makes him more savvy than most believe, thinks he's playing a deeper game. After all,

The United States military is deploying thousands of Marines and several more battleships to the Middle East, even as President Donald Trump’s top officials are reportedly engaged in talks to potential end to the war with Iran.

Some 2,200 Marines from the 31st Expeditionary Unit, traveling aboard the USS Tripoli, are due to arrive in the region on Friday, according to the Wall Street Journal, along with an amphibious landing dock, the USS New Orleans.

The troop movements are taking place against the backdrop of the first tentative signs of ceasefire talks since the conflict began on Feb. 28. After giving Iran an ultimatum to open the Strait of Hormuz or face the destruction of its power grid, Trump wrote on Truth Social on Monday that he had “constructive conversations” with the Iranian leadership, “regarding a complete and total resolution of our hostilities in the Middle East.”

Iran has denied that talks had taken place. A statement from Iran’s foreign ministry, reported by the semiofficial Mehr News Agency, said Trump’s statements were designed to “reduce energy prices and gain time to implement his military plans.”

Military experts interviewed by TIME suggest that the suspicion may not be far-fetched.

I've linked here to analysis that said Trump announced a pause for negotiations to calm the markets, and this lasted at least until yesterday. Today,

The S&P 500 fell on Thursday, weighed by higher oil prices, as traders followed the latest developments out of the Middle East.

The broad market index declined 0.7%, while the Nasdaq Composite shed 1%. The Dow Jones Industrial Average dipped 108 points, or 0.2%.

Crude prices rose on Thursday, putting pressure on equities. Brent futures jumped 4% to above $107 per barrel. West Texas Intermediate futures climbed 3% to above $93.

So, what is Trump's deep game? I suspect it's that the Crusades left a lot of business unfinished. He's going to take crazy, theocratic murderers out of Islam, which is to say he's going to take Islam out of Islam. This will leave Islam in a state comparable to liberal Protestantism, at least aa far asa the US is concerned. The Europeans will have a different job on their hands.