Iran Is Not Venezuela

by Costantino Ceoldo

Costantino Ceoldo contrasts Venezuela’s fragile sovereignty with Iran’s civilizational self-consciousness and asks whether the coming clash will decide the fate of the multipolar order.

It is undoubtedly true that the two nations are different, totally and irremediably so. Venezuela is a young nation that has experienced reduced sovereignty for most of its short existence, and this was clearly demonstrated recently not only by the kidnapping of its legitimate president Nicolás Maduro by Washington, carried out with the concrete help of corrupt local traitors, but also by its behaviour in the aftermath of the kidnapping, which clearly shows that the situation that has arisen also benefits many early Chavistas who have always declared themselves loyalists.

Iran, on the other hand, is an ancient nation whose history spans more than a thousand years and which, as the centre of kingdoms and empires, has given the whole of humanity science, philosophy, medicine, poetry, theology and sublime mysticism.

It can therefore be said that Venezuelans do not really know that they are a people. Iranians, on the other hand, do, and this knowledge of belonging to a millennial tradition has been well remembered by them to this day, precisely because of the Khomeini revolution.

The figure of Imam Khomeini is more complex than is thought in the West, where political propaganda and the mainstream media have successfully perfected the idea that Ruhollah Khomeini was just an old, bearded man with a grim look, bigoted, incapable of true love and absurdly eager to plunge his nation into a religious Middle Ages where women are domestic slaves but where even men must be careful if they deviate from established orthodoxy. But it was thanks to Khomeini’s Islamic revolution that Iran transitioned from being a nation on a leash under Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, acting as pro tempore CEO of the United States and England, to a developed nation that once again claimed the right to decide its own destiny.

The living conditions of the population have improved significantly compared to the times of the Pahlavis and their Anglo-American masters, and no one has prevented the local and inevitable comprador bourgeoisie from continuing to get rich by doing business and spitting on the plate from which they eat every day.

Of course, liberals and feminists cry out against (for example) the chador imposed on Iranian women and so on (sic). But they do so from countries where women can earn a lot of money by selling themselves on OnlyFans and other similar platforms, perhaps mocking those other women who insist on earning a living in factories or offices. They do so from countries where workers are now often reduced to disposable tools, paid little and soon to be replaced by artificial intelligence. They do so from countries where the elites (sic) publicly ask themselves, without fear of punishment, what to do with the poor, while at the same time calling them “useless eaters”, as happened in Davos a few years ago. Above all, they do so from countries where the release of the Epstein files has uncovered a hell of inhumanity but has not yet led to the necessary series of judicial investigations aimed at punishing the horrific crimes that Epstein and his masters have committed.

We should therefore be very cautious in judging the inevitable flaws of the Islamic Republic, condemned from the outset by Western propaganda because it is intrinsically hostile to the degeneration of the collective West, which, with its many weights and measures constantly being adjusted, pursues its own interests and those of its allies and masters, whether overt or covert.

Things are different, however, and the concentration of American forces in the Middle East tells us that the negotiations between Washington and Tehran in Geneva are most likely just the interlude necessary to complete the line-ups so that Trump can finish the job started last year by Israel and keep his promise to the Jews in order to be re-elected.

It is not easy to predict how an American attack on Iran would unfold. What we do know for certain is that the Pentagon used Anthropic’s AI Claude to prepare for the kidnapping of Nicolás Maduro and boasted about it publicly.

Claude will therefore have developed various scenarios for the Iranian case as well, presenting a range of optimal solutions that make the Venezuelan adventure look like a walk in the park: this is evident from the concentration of US forces in the area and also tells us something about Donald Trump’s panic-stricken fear of getting caught up in a bloodbath of American forces hit by the Iranian hypersonic missiles, just a few months before the mid-term elections in November 2026.

The Donald’s gamble is remarkable, but Israel wants the destruction of Iran and the taming of what remains, so that it can rule over the entire Middle East through organised chaos and prevent the emergence of new regional players that could challenge Tel Aviv.

The fall of Damascus and the subsequent, inevitable transformation of Syria into a Chaosthan were a severe blow to Russia, which lost both a traditional ally and room for manoeuvre in the Middle East. The fall of Tehran and the destruction of Iran would be an even more serious blow to the Kremlin, if only because of the proximity of a Western-controlled Iran to Russia’s borders. It would also be a severe blow to China, which relies on Iranian oil.

Above all, Tehran’s defeat would confirm once again that the collective West is invincible and can crush all its opponents, no matter how long it takes. The mental contagion caused by such a confirmed belief would have devastating effects on the whole of humanity. However, the Iran of the Ayatollahs is not the Iraq of Saddam Hussein, nor is it the Venezuela of Nicolás Maduro. Nor is it the Iran of Claude’s cyber scenarios.