Episode 93: How to win Iran's forever war

Ask Haviv Anything

Haviv Rettig Gur

History

4.9 • 1K Ratings

🗓️ 25 February 2026

⏱️ 127 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

The conflict with Iran isn’t just about nukes. It's about a revolutionary martyrdom ideology hiding in plain sight. In this explosive deep dive, we uncover the ideological engine behind the “Muqawama,” the Iran-led "resistance axis" — a fusion of Marx, Mao, martyrdom, and Shiite theology that teaches its followers that suffering is strength and devastation is victory. From Hamas to Hezbollah to Tehran itself, this doctrine explains why bombs don’t deter the regime — and why its greatest threat may not be Israel or America, but its own young people. If you want to understand what’s really driving the Middle East’s endless wars — and how it might finally unravel — this is the episode you can’t afford to miss.

This episode was sponsored by Betsy and Andy Cadel of New York City, who asked to dedicate it to our global Jewish family, but also specifically the Selbst family of Tel Aviv who made sure their son Simon was safe and protected during the 12-day war with Iran last summer while he interned in Israel. It gave him, and his very terrified parents who were thousands of miles away, immeasurable comfort knowing he was not alone.

And most of all they want to wish both Guy and Dotan Selbst congratulations on their recent engagements and upcoming weddings. A wonderful reminder of how important it is to celebrate the future.

If you like what we do here, please join our Patreon community at https://www.patreon.com/c/AskHavivAnything. It helps us keep the lights on. It's also a wonderful community and forum where you can ask the questions that guide the topics we cover on the podcast, join in our great discussions with listeners sharing news and valuable resources, and take part in our monthly livestreams in which Haviv answers your questions live.

If you would like to sponsor an episode, please email us at haviv@askhavivanything.com⁠.

Musical intro by Adam Ben Amitai.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hi, everybody. Welcome to a special episode of Ask Habiv Anything. It's long, it's deep,
0:10.3	it's a little bit complicated. If you stick with me, you're going to see enormous and
0:14.1	important things that I think are generally invisible to Western eyes when they look at this
0:19.6	region. As we record, a debate is raging
0:22.9	in the media, in the West, in the Middle East, over whether President Trump is actually going to
0:27.4	order a military strike on Iran and whether it will accomplish its goal, which is to bring them
0:31.3	back to the negotiating table, much more willing to compromise on their nuclear program, on the
0:35.6	missile arsenal, on their production capabilities of those missiles, and maybe even if such a strike would have the capacity to topple the Ayatollah's regime.
0:44.0	We explored this question in previous episodes, especially episode 79, where we tried to argue that this regime has a unique and extraordinary superpower. And that superpower is an
0:58.4	ideological framework called the Mukawama. Resistance is the translation, but it's bigger than just
1:04.1	the word resistance in English. The Islamic Republic has this vision of holy war, this theory
1:10.2	of its own existence and meaning and purpose,
1:12.6	and how it will accomplish that purpose, that calls for a sustained, never-ending campaign of
1:21.2	violence that is accompanied by a willingness to absorb violence, catastrophic levels of damage.
1:29.2	And the more damage you absorb, the more sacred and religiously perfect is the sacrifice.
1:33.7	And so you can absorb limitless catastrophic damage, while the enemy facing the constant
1:40.0	never-ending pressure of the Mukawama, of the terroristic violence, of the harm to its capacity to
1:46.8	just exist, inevitably will fall. This is an asymmetric form of warfare that learned a great deal from
1:54.3	Mount Zitton and Algeria and all these other anti-colonial and anti-imperial theorists and
2:00.7	conflicts in the 20th century.
2:03.2	But it's cast in a uniquely Islamic and specifically Shia way.
2:08.0	If you understand the mukawama, you understand the extent to which the Islamic Republic is in this sense, this strategy sense,
	...

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