Episode Details

Ahnaf Ibn Qais discusses “Escalation & Prelude to Total War.” It begins:

“The World is on the Brink of Total War.

“While it is uncertain what particular sequence will play out to get us all there, it is clear that we are on the cusp of a Nuclear Exchange & are waiting to see how it will manifest soon. If anything, even the ‘Normies’ understand that the DOOM cometh:

“The United States of America, that Evil Empire of Lies & Great Satan, has all but ensured that it will be entering the coming War at a grave disadvantage.

“Not only will it fight the Sinic, Russian & Islamic worlds simultaneously, but it will also try to do all this ( & more ) while its Industry, Manufacturing & overall Military Prowess are at an all-time low…”

Excerpt from the interview:

So let's talk about this article from Ahnaf entitled Escalation and Prelude to Total War. Hey, welcome, Ahnaf Ibn Qais. How are you, good sir?

Doing well. Assalamu alaikum wa rahmatullahi wa barakatuh. Thank you for having me on, good sir.

Good to have you back. So, you wrote this a couple of weeks ago, that the world is on the brink of total war. And it isn't any less on the brink now than it was then, is it?

Yes, yes. What has happened is that after the assassination of Brother Haniyeh, a lot of rumors were circulating with regard to how exactly it happened. Some were saying it was like a bomb in a guest house. Other people were saying that it was poison. So for the first 72 to about 96 hours or so, I had no clue what was happening.

Later on, multiple telegram channels of the geopolitics people that I follow were saying that they got confirmation that actually it was

an ATGM type weapon with a seven kilogram TNT load. So they basically disassembled it, took it inside the country, put it together and shot it right through his window. And that's basically how they took him out.

But the reason I bring this up and the reason why it's relevant to our conversation is that this is basically a hostile act on Iranian soil. And the Iranian envoy at the UN Assembly invoked Article 51, which is the article saying that if you're attacked on your home soil, you have the right to self-defense.

And that's basically what the Iranian mindset on this thing: look, you've crossed all red lines. You've crossed all boundaries. You've slapped us in the face. You leave us with no choice.

And that's basically what's happening in terms of the essay I wrote about two weeks ago. I was writing that right before the assassination, right? So there's a lot of stuff, unfortunately, that happened after it. That being said, I think it's still relevant in the sense that there are a lot of trends I cover in that essay. But in terms of what's pertinent right now on August 9th is that you've got this situation where the Russians have all this military cargo—they've got the IL-76 and all these jets. Basically if you want to carry electronic warfare equipment, the heavy stuff like that, or the S-400 or other related systems, that's the plane you use.

And multiple sorties are already happening from Moscow to Tehran and nearby areas. According to one of the OSINT people—these are people who basically spend hours a day looking at air traffic and looking at the skies—there have already been more than 20 sorties back and forth.

So just to give our dear listeners an idea of what that actually means, in November to December of 2021, the Russians were doing a similar number of sorties towards the border areas with Ukraine. Now, back then, when people pointed this out—the technology people, the OSINT people—the normies were saying, “oh, well, nothing's going to happen. Russia is just bluffing. Nothing's going to happen.” I think that's wrongheaded and very, very naive. My view always is that you l