"Transition Protocol" and compare the two analyses.
Trita Parsi has just:
Shown himself to be just another flatheaded 20th century OccidentalistAnglo-American intellect, and
MOONED all of humanity and any hope which might be for the appearance of any new Security Architecture for West Asia & the wider world.
Doctor Parsi's fencing-in of the conversation over the yet-to-be-seen document in a Cold War framing returns us to the old, dark, sad Great Game period which he is too young to remember and those of us who lived it hope never to revisit. Most shocking is the siting of the U.S. as the point of origin and prime reference for the cosmos at large.
Ptolemy was wrong, Trita; the stars do not revolve around America.
Yes just what I was thinking. America is a diminishing power what is so hard to understand about that. Also why would Iran not be hard line with Hormuz after the USRael behaviour? On again off again. The strait exists between Iran and Oman geographically.
All I can say is I’m very glad I subscribed to Transition Protocol. I feel as though I’m listening to people who actually understand the nuances between the different players in this game instigated by USRael.
Yes, Larry, Pepé and Doctor Zulfikar are doing a great service to all of us.
With Dr. Parsi, the last straw was really where he wholesale revises reality with : “…but the fact of these other countries are involved in these negotiations……there’s not going to be an agreement unless the U.S. agrees.” Really? His mind just can’t exist in a universe where the U.S. is not the Sun around which the stars and planets revolve. No BRICS, no SCO…..
That 10 YEARS from today the Strait will not be the same chokepoint it is now does not mean that ZioTrumpianism can’t presently put us in the worst global Depression since The Black Death.
I commented in Transition Protocol and that neither Trita nor Glenn, among others, seem to be willing to mention the elephant in the room, Israel's nuclear weapons. And in this commentary, Trita takes this beyond absurd when he says that the nuclear deal with Saudi Arabia could make it very difficult for Iran to agree to its own non-nuclear deal - without a word about Israel’s nukes.
So, Saudi Arabia having the potential for nuclear weapons is a bigger issue for Iran than Israel possessing scores of them??
‘His mind just can’t exist in a universe where the U.S. is not the Sun around which the stars and planets revolve. No BRICS, no SCO…..’ That’s what I thought too unbelievable, and I wish they’d start using West Asia it’s not colonialist Middle East anymore.
The ideas advanced by Trita Parsi can be reinterpreted from a more abstract perspective if one moves beyond the conventional language of geopolitics—states, national interests, alliances, and rivalries—and instead views events as manifestations of a deeper dynamic governing the organization of complex flows. From the perspective of Potential Informational Flow (PIF), reality is not primarily constituted by stable entities, but by continuous processes of generation, circulation, stabilization, and transformation of information. Information should not be understood here in the ordinary sense of data or messages, but as generative capacity: the production of novelty, difference, unprecedented configurations, and emergent possibilities.
Within this framework, a distinction can be drawn between the informative and the informational. The informative refers to the creative potential that introduces new possibilities into a system. The informational refers to the relatively stable forms that store, organize, and transmit those possibilities. No society can exist without both dimensions. Every form of stability requires structures, yet every structure originally emerges from a prior creative dynamic.
The image of the toroid is particularly useful for understanding this relationship. A toroid may be conceived as a recirculating flow structure in which movement never entirely disappears but continually returns upon itself in recurring cycles. Applied to geopolitics, the toroid represents the constant circulation of goods, energy, knowledge, legitimacy, influence, military power, capital, and trust. The international system therefore appears not as a collection of isolated states but as a vast network of interdependent flows.
Within this circulation, relatively stable zones of concentration inevitably emerge. These are what the PIF model refers to as clusters. A cluster is neither an anomaly nor the product of a conspiracy. It is simply a temporarily stabilized accumulation of convergent flows. A great power, a military alliance, an international organization, a reserve currency, a strategic maritime route, or a major energy infrastructure can all be understood as clusters. Wherever flows converge, concentrations emerge; wherever concentrations emerge, mechanisms arise to preserve them.
From this perspective, American hegemony may be interpreted as one of the major organizing clusters of the contemporary global system. For decades, its primary function was not merely the exercise of power over other actors, but the provision of a relatively stable architecture for the circulation of global flows. Maritime security, military alliances, financial institutions, and the capacity for international intervention constituted mechanisms that reduced uncertainty and facilitated the overall circulation of the system.
As long as this architecture retained sufficient adaptive capacity, it fulfilled an effective organizing function. Yet every successful structure contains an inherent tendency toward rigidification. The more effective a configuration becomes at stabilizing a flow, the greater the pressure to preserve it. Rules that initially enable adaptation gradually become oriented toward their own conservation. The structure progressively ceases to serve the flow, and the flow begins to serve the structure.
The conflict surrounding the Strait of Hormuz thus acquires a different significance. The fundamental issue is no longer who legally controls the maritime passage. What matters is recognizing that the Strait constitutes a geopolitically crucial cluster within the global toroid. Multiple energy, commercial, financial, and strategic flows converge there. Its importance derives less from the actors surrounding it than from the intensity of the circulations that pass through it.
Iran’s position therefore appears less as a simple national claim and more as the expression of a deeper informative transformation that existing structures find increasingly difficult to absorb. When Parsi argues that recent crises did not grant Iran new capabilities but merely revealed capabilities it already possessed, he is describing—albeit in different terms—a phenomenon that the PIF model considers fundamental: crises do not generally create novelty; rather, they make visible a novelty that has been accumulating beneath the surface.
For long periods, informational structures may continue to operate on inherited assumptions even when deeper conditions have already changed. Eventually, however, the distance between these two layers becomes too great. At that point, a crisis emerges. The crisis does not destroy order in itself; it simply reveals that the map employed by institutions no longer adequately corresponds to the territory they seek to organize.
The emergence of new regional alliances can likewise be understood through this lens. When an organizing center loses part of its capacity to coordinate flows, the system does not remain static. New connections appear, new forms of coordination emerge, and alternative stabilizing structures begin to develop. Actors often interpret these processes as the result of deliberate strategic decisions, yet from a broader perspective they constitute phenomena of self-organization. The system spontaneously seeks new ways of redistributing organizational capacity.
What matters is not so much that particular states desire greater autonomy, but that existing geopolitical structures are encountering growing difficulties in processing the novelty arising from Potential Informational Flow. Multipolarity therefore appears less as an ideological project than as an emergent response to the increasing informational complexity produced as the system attempts to organize an ever richer, more diverse, and more distributed informativity.
The central issue thus becomes the relationship between rigidity and novelty. Every stabilizing structure generates benefits as long as it retains sufficient plasticity to process transformations. Yet when stabilization is prolonged beyond a certain point, the structure becomes increasingly self-referential. Institutions cease to respond primarily to changes in their environment and instead respond to the requirements of their own preservation.
The result is a growing divergence between the deep informativity of the system and the adaptive capacity of its surface structures. New technologies, new trade corridors, new military capabilities, new alliances, and new distributions of power emerge, while inherited institutions attempt to operate as though the broader context remained unchanged.
From this perspective, wars, diplomatic crises, and regional reconfigurations may be interpreted as episodes of informational decompression. They are not necessarily the product of particular leaders' intentions, nor expressions of a moral struggle between good and evil actors. Rather, they are emergent phenomena that arise when the accumulation of novelty exceeds the absorptive capacity of existing structures.
The tensions observable in the Middle East, the relative weakening of traditional security mechanisms, the search for alternative frameworks of regional cooperation, and the growing difficulty of maintaining unipolar modes of organization all reflect the same underlying dynamic. The system continues to generate new configurations, yet inherited forms are finding it increasingly difficult to integrate them.
In this context, neither established powers nor emerging actors necessarily constitute the ultimate cause of transformation. Both fulfill complementary functions within the broader process. Some introduce variation and generate new possibilities; others provide stability and continuity. The problem arises only when stabilization reaches a degree at which it can no longer incorporate the novelty generated by the system itself.
The PIF framework therefore allows the events described by Parsi to be viewed with greater depth. Disputes over maritime corridors, military alliances, or security architectures cease to appear as isolated phenomena and instead emerge as particular manifestations of a much more general dynamic. The fundamental question is not who will dominate the international system, but which structures will retain sufficient adaptive capacity to process the increasing complexity confronting them.
Ultimately, history would not be determined exclusively by the decisions of states, the strategies of elites, or the intentions of individual actors. Rather, it would be shaped by the continuous interaction between Potential Informational Flow, which generates new possibilities, and the informational structures that attempt to organize them. Every successful accumulation produces stability; every prolonged stability generates rigidity; every rigidity limits the absorption of novelty; and when the gap between these two dimensions reaches a critical threshold, the system initiates processes of profound reorganization in order to recover its capacity for learning. From this perspective, the current geopolitical transformation of the Middle East appears less as a struggle for power than as a manifestation of this more general evolutionary principle.
Imagine if Iran takes the initiative to join the new defence pact of Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Pakistan.
I realize it sounds outlandish but think about it how such surprising move could effect IRAN'S relationship with these countries and nations of GCC and also how it effect the need of the GCC to need US presence in the region for their protection
Trita, you are right ME will be less and less strategic.. But, Israel is in the ME and it gives orders to Trump and he obeys.. no rational .. obedience
It would be interesting to hear Trita Parsi discuss with George Beebe Israel's role in the Iran war. In your recent interview with Beebe I noticed that he carefully avoided that aspect while Vice President Parsi is more openly critical.
If Iran becomes a member of the Mecca Joint Defence Agreement (MJDA), would this provide MJDA members the ability to, jointly, issue ultimatums to Israel and requiring the formal, UN-recognized establishment of a “Palestinian State"??
Have any news outlets, political commentators, diplomats, or countries' representatives commented on potential positive outcomes for the middle east region if Iran becomes a member of the Mecca Joint Defence Agreement
Another refreshing guest on an otherwise narrowly ideological program. Trita Parsi is a credible analyst of foreign policy. As much as Glenn tried to tie the idiosyncratic trump war in Iran into his narrative of US/western hegemonic dominance, Parsi countered with a more straightforward, pragmatic view of situation. No talk of Iran as the south Eurasian chess piece of the Brzezinski plan. Parsi suggests that the US would like to have influence over who controls the Hormuz strait but that the primary goal is to simply get it open.
Glenn further dilutes the relevance of his US hegemonic ambitions hypothesis when he wonders aloud at the mistake of the US using so much of it missile resources as his presumed hypothesis of a larger northern Eurasian and East Asian dominance is in the works. This exposes at least two flaws in Glenn’s hypothesis. First, trump has no understanding or interest in this US/western defining ambition of hegemonic power over the world, and second, that without trump none of this would have played out as it has.
As we’ve come to lean, whatever pressure US presidents have come under since the time of Reagan, none ever thought it a useful idea to carry out full scale bombardment of Iran.
So, Saudi Arabia getting the potential to develop nuclear weapons is a big issue vis à vis Iran's nuclear decisions. But Israel already possessing scores of nuclear weapons doesn't even merit a mention??
The first twenty minutes was Parsi doing his Responsible Statecraft thing and going through the options as though the USA and Iran were rational actors, in a kind of jewvacuum devoid of Israel. In other words, a pointless twenty minutes, because Israel exists and controls the USA's actions.
The continual repetition of the word 'deal' began to piss me off. If I want to hear the word 'deal' every five seconds I'll listen to the war criminal sex offender. Nothing 'agreed' with the USA is a 'deal'. It is an 'extortion' under extreme duress. None of these extortions would stand in any court worthy of the name as all the party under duress has to say is "I signed under duress".
The kidnapping of the President of Venezuela and his wife wasn't a deal, it was a kidnapping.
The mass murder of Iranian schoolgirls wasn't a deal, it was a mass murder of schoolgirls.
Nothing can be called a deal if you've been threatened with being bombed into the Stone Age.
ALL are encouraged to visit Pepé & Cie's
"Transition Protocol" and compare the two analyses.
Trita Parsi has just:
Shown himself to be just another flatheaded 20th century OccidentalistAnglo-American intellect, and
MOONED all of humanity and any hope which might be for the appearance of any new Security Architecture for West Asia & the wider world.
Doctor Parsi's fencing-in of the conversation over the yet-to-be-seen document in a Cold War framing returns us to the old, dark, sad Great Game period which he is too young to remember and those of us who lived it hope never to revisit. Most shocking is the siting of the U.S. as the point of origin and prime reference for the cosmos at large.
Ptolemy was wrong, Trita; the stars do not revolve around America.
Yes just what I was thinking. America is a diminishing power what is so hard to understand about that. Also why would Iran not be hard line with Hormuz after the USRael behaviour? On again off again. The strait exists between Iran and Oman geographically.
All I can say is I’m very glad I subscribed to Transition Protocol. I feel as though I’m listening to people who actually understand the nuances between the different players in this game instigated by USRael.
Thanks Ann,
Yes, Larry, Pepé and Doctor Zulfikar are doing a great service to all of us.
With Dr. Parsi, the last straw was really where he wholesale revises reality with : “…but the fact of these other countries are involved in these negotiations……there’s not going to be an agreement unless the U.S. agrees.” Really? His mind just can’t exist in a universe where the U.S. is not the Sun around which the stars and planets revolve. No BRICS, no SCO…..
That 10 YEARS from today the Strait will not be the same chokepoint it is now does not mean that ZioTrumpianism can’t presently put us in the worst global Depression since The Black Death.
This Is Not A Drill.
I commented in Transition Protocol and that neither Trita nor Glenn, among others, seem to be willing to mention the elephant in the room, Israel's nuclear weapons. And in this commentary, Trita takes this beyond absurd when he says that the nuclear deal with Saudi Arabia could make it very difficult for Iran to agree to its own non-nuclear deal - without a word about Israel’s nukes.
So, Saudi Arabia having the potential for nuclear weapons is a bigger issue for Iran than Israel possessing scores of them??
OK, smh, whatever…
Exactly what you wrote;
‘His mind just can’t exist in a universe where the U.S. is not the Sun around which the stars and planets revolve. No BRICS, no SCO…..’ That’s what I thought too unbelievable, and I wish they’d start using West Asia it’s not colonialist Middle East anymore.
Thumbs UP on West Asia, ma'am; once again, where's the center? One has to assume it's their navel......
The ideas advanced by Trita Parsi can be reinterpreted from a more abstract perspective if one moves beyond the conventional language of geopolitics—states, national interests, alliances, and rivalries—and instead views events as manifestations of a deeper dynamic governing the organization of complex flows. From the perspective of Potential Informational Flow (PIF), reality is not primarily constituted by stable entities, but by continuous processes of generation, circulation, stabilization, and transformation of information. Information should not be understood here in the ordinary sense of data or messages, but as generative capacity: the production of novelty, difference, unprecedented configurations, and emergent possibilities.
Within this framework, a distinction can be drawn between the informative and the informational. The informative refers to the creative potential that introduces new possibilities into a system. The informational refers to the relatively stable forms that store, organize, and transmit those possibilities. No society can exist without both dimensions. Every form of stability requires structures, yet every structure originally emerges from a prior creative dynamic.
The image of the toroid is particularly useful for understanding this relationship. A toroid may be conceived as a recirculating flow structure in which movement never entirely disappears but continually returns upon itself in recurring cycles. Applied to geopolitics, the toroid represents the constant circulation of goods, energy, knowledge, legitimacy, influence, military power, capital, and trust. The international system therefore appears not as a collection of isolated states but as a vast network of interdependent flows.
Within this circulation, relatively stable zones of concentration inevitably emerge. These are what the PIF model refers to as clusters. A cluster is neither an anomaly nor the product of a conspiracy. It is simply a temporarily stabilized accumulation of convergent flows. A great power, a military alliance, an international organization, a reserve currency, a strategic maritime route, or a major energy infrastructure can all be understood as clusters. Wherever flows converge, concentrations emerge; wherever concentrations emerge, mechanisms arise to preserve them.
From this perspective, American hegemony may be interpreted as one of the major organizing clusters of the contemporary global system. For decades, its primary function was not merely the exercise of power over other actors, but the provision of a relatively stable architecture for the circulation of global flows. Maritime security, military alliances, financial institutions, and the capacity for international intervention constituted mechanisms that reduced uncertainty and facilitated the overall circulation of the system.
As long as this architecture retained sufficient adaptive capacity, it fulfilled an effective organizing function. Yet every successful structure contains an inherent tendency toward rigidification. The more effective a configuration becomes at stabilizing a flow, the greater the pressure to preserve it. Rules that initially enable adaptation gradually become oriented toward their own conservation. The structure progressively ceases to serve the flow, and the flow begins to serve the structure.
The conflict surrounding the Strait of Hormuz thus acquires a different significance. The fundamental issue is no longer who legally controls the maritime passage. What matters is recognizing that the Strait constitutes a geopolitically crucial cluster within the global toroid. Multiple energy, commercial, financial, and strategic flows converge there. Its importance derives less from the actors surrounding it than from the intensity of the circulations that pass through it.
Iran’s position therefore appears less as a simple national claim and more as the expression of a deeper informative transformation that existing structures find increasingly difficult to absorb. When Parsi argues that recent crises did not grant Iran new capabilities but merely revealed capabilities it already possessed, he is describing—albeit in different terms—a phenomenon that the PIF model considers fundamental: crises do not generally create novelty; rather, they make visible a novelty that has been accumulating beneath the surface.
For long periods, informational structures may continue to operate on inherited assumptions even when deeper conditions have already changed. Eventually, however, the distance between these two layers becomes too great. At that point, a crisis emerges. The crisis does not destroy order in itself; it simply reveals that the map employed by institutions no longer adequately corresponds to the territory they seek to organize.
The emergence of new regional alliances can likewise be understood through this lens. When an organizing center loses part of its capacity to coordinate flows, the system does not remain static. New connections appear, new forms of coordination emerge, and alternative stabilizing structures begin to develop. Actors often interpret these processes as the result of deliberate strategic decisions, yet from a broader perspective they constitute phenomena of self-organization. The system spontaneously seeks new ways of redistributing organizational capacity.
What matters is not so much that particular states desire greater autonomy, but that existing geopolitical structures are encountering growing difficulties in processing the novelty arising from Potential Informational Flow. Multipolarity therefore appears less as an ideological project than as an emergent response to the increasing informational complexity produced as the system attempts to organize an ever richer, more diverse, and more distributed informativity.
The central issue thus becomes the relationship between rigidity and novelty. Every stabilizing structure generates benefits as long as it retains sufficient plasticity to process transformations. Yet when stabilization is prolonged beyond a certain point, the structure becomes increasingly self-referential. Institutions cease to respond primarily to changes in their environment and instead respond to the requirements of their own preservation.
The result is a growing divergence between the deep informativity of the system and the adaptive capacity of its surface structures. New technologies, new trade corridors, new military capabilities, new alliances, and new distributions of power emerge, while inherited institutions attempt to operate as though the broader context remained unchanged.
From this perspective, wars, diplomatic crises, and regional reconfigurations may be interpreted as episodes of informational decompression. They are not necessarily the product of particular leaders' intentions, nor expressions of a moral struggle between good and evil actors. Rather, they are emergent phenomena that arise when the accumulation of novelty exceeds the absorptive capacity of existing structures.
The tensions observable in the Middle East, the relative weakening of traditional security mechanisms, the search for alternative frameworks of regional cooperation, and the growing difficulty of maintaining unipolar modes of organization all reflect the same underlying dynamic. The system continues to generate new configurations, yet inherited forms are finding it increasingly difficult to integrate them.
In this context, neither established powers nor emerging actors necessarily constitute the ultimate cause of transformation. Both fulfill complementary functions within the broader process. Some introduce variation and generate new possibilities; others provide stability and continuity. The problem arises only when stabilization reaches a degree at which it can no longer incorporate the novelty generated by the system itself.
The PIF framework therefore allows the events described by Parsi to be viewed with greater depth. Disputes over maritime corridors, military alliances, or security architectures cease to appear as isolated phenomena and instead emerge as particular manifestations of a much more general dynamic. The fundamental question is not who will dominate the international system, but which structures will retain sufficient adaptive capacity to process the increasing complexity confronting them.
Ultimately, history would not be determined exclusively by the decisions of states, the strategies of elites, or the intentions of individual actors. Rather, it would be shaped by the continuous interaction between Potential Informational Flow, which generates new possibilities, and the informational structures that attempt to organize them. Every successful accumulation produces stability; every prolonged stability generates rigidity; every rigidity limits the absorption of novelty; and when the gap between these two dimensions reaches a critical threshold, the system initiates processes of profound reorganization in order to recover its capacity for learning. From this perspective, the current geopolitical transformation of the Middle East appears less as a struggle for power than as a manifestation of this more general evolutionary principle.
I can see trump calling the deal between Oman and Iran final for walking away and then he will work with Sadia Arabia crushing rebels in Yemen??
Imagine if Iran takes the initiative to join the new defence pact of Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Pakistan.
I realize it sounds outlandish but think about it how such surprising move could effect IRAN'S relationship with these countries and nations of GCC and also how it effect the need of the GCC to need US presence in the region for their protection
https://substack.com/@ramnprezmontero/note/c-310841130?r=6t84i5
Oh, Come ON, Patrick!
You know all this mean, anti-Semitic talk about
Peace Loving Israel having
nukes is just another blood libel from the goyim.
Trita, you are right ME will be less and less strategic.. But, Israel is in the ME and it gives orders to Trump and he obeys.. no rational .. obedience
It would be interesting to hear Trita Parsi discuss with George Beebe Israel's role in the Iran war. In your recent interview with Beebe I noticed that he carefully avoided that aspect while Vice President Parsi is more openly critical.
If Iran becomes a member of the Mecca Joint Defence Agreement (MJDA), would this provide MJDA members the ability to, jointly, issue ultimatums to Israel and requiring the formal, UN-recognized establishment of a “Palestinian State"??
Have any news outlets, political commentators, diplomats, or countries' representatives commented on potential positive outcomes for the middle east region if Iran becomes a member of the Mecca Joint Defence Agreement
Another refreshing guest.
Another refreshing guest on an otherwise narrowly ideological program. Trita Parsi is a credible analyst of foreign policy. As much as Glenn tried to tie the idiosyncratic trump war in Iran into his narrative of US/western hegemonic dominance, Parsi countered with a more straightforward, pragmatic view of situation. No talk of Iran as the south Eurasian chess piece of the Brzezinski plan. Parsi suggests that the US would like to have influence over who controls the Hormuz strait but that the primary goal is to simply get it open.
Glenn further dilutes the relevance of his US hegemonic ambitions hypothesis when he wonders aloud at the mistake of the US using so much of it missile resources as his presumed hypothesis of a larger northern Eurasian and East Asian dominance is in the works. This exposes at least two flaws in Glenn’s hypothesis. First, trump has no understanding or interest in this US/western defining ambition of hegemonic power over the world, and second, that without trump none of this would have played out as it has.
As we’ve come to lean, whatever pressure US presidents have come under since the time of Reagan, none ever thought it a useful idea to carry out full scale bombardment of Iran.
So, Saudi Arabia getting the potential to develop nuclear weapons is a big issue vis à vis Iran's nuclear decisions. But Israel already possessing scores of nuclear weapons doesn't even merit a mention??
Ok, smh, whatever...
The latest internet oracle🥹
The first twenty minutes was Parsi doing his Responsible Statecraft thing and going through the options as though the USA and Iran were rational actors, in a kind of jewvacuum devoid of Israel. In other words, a pointless twenty minutes, because Israel exists and controls the USA's actions.
The continual repetition of the word 'deal' began to piss me off. If I want to hear the word 'deal' every five seconds I'll listen to the war criminal sex offender. Nothing 'agreed' with the USA is a 'deal'. It is an 'extortion' under extreme duress. None of these extortions would stand in any court worthy of the name as all the party under duress has to say is "I signed under duress".
The kidnapping of the President of Venezuela and his wife wasn't a deal, it was a kidnapping.
The mass murder of Iranian schoolgirls wasn't a deal, it was a mass murder of schoolgirls.
Nothing can be called a deal if you've been threatened with being bombed into the Stone Age.
GREATER ISREAL
The Greater Isreal project is ongoing and shall continue
the Jared Kushner " Gaza Riveriera " is also in wait
The US has not lost any interest in controlling Iran
Nor have they lost interest in choke points on China
Trita does not appear to consider these underlying issues in US
providing approval to Iran Oman plan
- At the same time - There is no treaty, there is no agreement
there is no national or internation law - there is no moral law
That the US and Isreal will not break and will not plan to break
when agreeing with Iran
That is the Iranian Issue - That is also the Russian issue
Pretty much absolutely everyone, including Trump, knows Trump plans
on breaking any agreements he is forced to make
.