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Rebuilding Iran's Economy While Going Rogue
By Jason Reza Jorjani | June 17, 2025
The next ideological battle in Iran will not be religious, because Islam has already been sociologically defeated; economics is the next battleground. "Economics," which in his infinite wisdom, Ayatollah Khomeini said, "is for donkeys." No wonder the Islamic Republic made a shambles of Iran's economy, despite the country's tremendous potential – in terms of both human talent and natural resources – to retake its place among the most prosperous countries on Earth. Iran was, several times in world history, and for centuries at a time, the richest nation on the planet. The main socio-political rivalry of tomorrow's post-Islamic, secular Iran will be between Socialism and Capitalism as systems that promise a resurgence (Rastâkhiz) of the country after nearly half a century of medievalism.
The Specter of Socialism in Iran
The prospect of a Socialist Iran taking shape cannot be overstated. The Pahlavi regime that reigned until 1979 itself favored Socialism. Despite being perceived by many in the West as capitalistic, on account of his alliance with the United States and Western Europe, the late Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi had as the aim of the policies of his "White Revolution" (Enghelâbé Sepid) the establishment of a socialistic society in Iran explicitly modeled on Scandinavian social democracies – especially that of monarchical Sweden. His father, Reza Shah Pahlavi (1925–1941), had also been inclined toward socialistic policies of a protectionist nature, albeit in his case more right-wing ones, taking Mussolini's Italian Fascist state and National Socialist Germany as models for Iran's development. (He was, after all, removed from power and exiled by the Allies for leaning toward the Axis during the Second World War.) Consequently, an increasingly likely contemporary restoration of the Pahlavi regime, albeit under Reza Shah Pahlavi II in a very democratic and constitutionalist form, could easily also mean the resumption of the socialistic policies of the first two Pahlavi monarchs.
This is all the more likely insofar as the main political rival of Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi (soon to be Reza Shah II) is the Mojâheddin-e-Khalq Organization (MKO, aka. MEK), whose brand of anti-clerical so-called Islamic Liberation Theology is socialistic bordering on Communist. Whereas the Islamic discourse of the MKO is not likely to appeal to many Iranians today, especially among the youth, the group has been able to recruit fresh blood of late by emphasizing the socialistic aspects of its ideology and rebranding its publicly stated aim as the establishment of a Social Democracy in Iran. While they are likely to lose the battle over the shape of Iran’s next regime, under a restored Pahlavi constitutional monarchy the MKO will probably be another significant force for socialistic legislation in the context of party politics. In fact, Socialism may be its only basis for constructive compromise with more mainstream political parties – including, potentially, with a reestablished Rastâkhiz party (the party of the crown in 1970s Pahlavi Iran).
On the other hand, the majority of Iranians – especially two generations of youth who had to grow up under an Islamic theocracy – have never forgiven the leftwing parties and militia groups of the Pahlavi era for bringing the Ayatollahs to power. As everyone with even the most basic knowledge about the 1979 Revolution knows, it was actually the Communist Tudeh Party, the Che Guevara style Fadayân-e-Khalq, and the quasi-Maoist Mojâheddin-e-Khalq who were the muscle that toppled the Shah's regime, including by defying Martial Law with an armed uprising, so that Ayatollah Khomeini and his Islamic Republicans could establish a theocracy that immediately purged these very same radical leftist groups – executing thousands of their members in the 1980s. Pro-capitalist forces in Iran can certainly capitalize on this historical resentment against the Left.
Chinese-Led Global Socialism
However, the confrontation that looms on the horizon is far more complex and convoluted than a simple conflict between Socialism and Capitalism in their conventional forms. In recent years, there has been a perverse transformation of global Capitalism into a new form of Socialism. This has been concurrent with, and conditioned by, the rising power of China, a new superpower governed by a nominally Communist Party that has left classic Communism – or, in its case, Maoism – behind in order to develop a new hybrid system capable not just of participating in the global capitalist market but of dominating it. The so-called 'Chinese Communist Party' (CCP) is now actually far more akin to a National Socialist (or Nazi) Party, with a centrally planned and extremely protectionist domestic economy, and with a de-facto Corporatist (i.e., Fascist) policy of ensuring that Chinese corporations act internationally in such a way as to benefit China domestically. In other words, that they act in league with the Chinese state as Italian corporations did under Mussolini and German corporations did under Hitler. What is far more alarming is that this new Chinese model includes ubiquitous surveillance and a social credit system that punishes deviation from accepted norms of approved collectivist and paternalistic behavior. Such social credit scoring of citizens will be optimized and fully implemented as part of a Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) system that has the backing of the global banking establishment and the world’s principal financial institutions.
The International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank, the Bank of International Settlements (BIS) and the central banks of all of the leading Western countries, including the Federal Reserve of the United States, are all following China's lead and facilitating a Chinese consolidation of power over a new Global Socialist system that fully incorporates the surveillance of citizens with a view to rendering them financially destitute if they violate increasingly global norms of Political Correctness. These PC norms abrogate what were once considered the fundamental rights of citizens to free expression in liberal societies. The rise of the BRICS economies led by China and the Belt-and-Road Initiative (BRI) are only nominally framed as a resistance to the extant global financial system. In actuality, for decades, the bankers and policy makers involved in that system have been facilitating the transformation of global Capitalism into a Chinese-led International Socialism governed by a monopolistic oligarchy who actually see any restoration and revitalization of true free market activity as a mortal threat to their agenda. The current Islamic Republic of Iran is an integral part of that agenda, and together with Putin’s Russia, forms an Axis of the three major powers – China, Russia, Iran – that are poised to lead the global socialist surveillance state. Also aligned with them and facilitating, if not directing, their agenda is an international oligarchy that is treasonous and has sold out Western populations from within. In line with this, the Chinese regime has consistently backed the brutal repression of freedom-loving Iranians – especially the youth and women – who have repeatedly risen up against the Islamic Republic in mass demonstrations that rocked Iran in 1999, 2009, 2017–2018, and 2022–2023.
Following the now inevitable collapse of the Islamic Republic, any manner of socialistic economic system will only allow Iran to be recaptured by this Chinese-led global cabal. Consequently, pursuing a socio-politics of freedom and independence for the future Iran is entirely dependent upon devising a new vision of radically capitalistic finance and trade that defies this agenda. Such a system needs to be developed and deployed in alliance with rebels in the West, especially in the United States of America, who also intend to break free from the global cabal and defend against the prospect of paternalistic and collectivist Chinese hegemony.
Bitcoin and Energy in Tomorrow's Iran
The key to breaking the emerging Chinese-led global socialist system is for Iran to reemerge as a world leader in Bitcoin mining and then demand payment for all of its energy resources, both oil and natural gas, exclusively in Bitcoin. Integrating Bitcoin into China's centralized economic system, where the government meticulously plans and controls financial activities, would be ruinous. The inherent volatility and decentralized nature of Bitcoin contrast sharply with the stability and control central to China's economic planning. According to statistics from Bitooda that were reported in Cointelegraph on January 15, 2021, Iran accounted for 8% of the global Bitcoin hash power, putting it in third place at the time, behind only the United States and China, as one of the world's leading countries for Bitcoin mining.
Unfortunately, China not only cracked down on unauthorized Bitcoin mining within its own country, but it also leaned on the Iranian government to do the same within Iran, resulting in a precipitous drop to Iran now only accounting for 0.12% of global Bitcoin mining activity. China did this because the volatility and dynamism of Bitcoin poses an existential threat to the centrally-planned Chinese economy, with the CCP relying on the relative stability of fiat currencies and the international regulation of trade in those currencies by established global financial institutions. Now the United States (35.4%), Kazakhstan (18.1%), and Russia (11.23%) are leading, with Nordic countries also making significant contributions.
It is not coincidental that all of the aforementioned countries have significant energy resources. Bitcoin mining is a very energy intensive enterprise on account of the substantial computational power that it requires. Specialized hardware such as Application-Specific Integrated Circuits (ASICs) are used to solve complex mathematical puzzles in a process known as Proof of Work (PoW) in order to verify blocks of transactions in a decentralized worldwide public ledger known as the blockchain. Arriving at the solution to these mathematical problems is called hashing, and it is rewarded through the production of bitcoins as new verified blocks are added to the chain. One reason that this process is metaphorically referred to as bitcoin "mining" is that the block reward halves approximately every four years in an event known as the Bitcoin halving, which gradually reduces the rate at which new bitcoins are created, thereby mimicking the rate of mining precious metals. The PoW and the computational effort required to solve it make it extremely difficult for any malicious actor to alter the blockchain (which would require said actor to somehow seize control of at least 51% of the blockchain network's computing power).
One of the reasons why Iran was able to emerge as such a powerhouse in bitcoin mining is because of its vast oil and natural gas resources. This is needed not only for the computer processing power itself but also to power refrigeration or air conditioning that keeps the mining devices cool enough to continue functioning. Vented or flared natural gas from oil fields, which is in abundance in Iran, is an excellent source for powering bitcoin mining from energy that would otherwise be wasted. Unfortunately, Chinese pressure and resulting regulatory chaos caused Iranian power outages as a consequence of improperly managed and ad-hoc bitcoin mining operations. This would not be the case if the Iranian government fully embraced bitcoin mining and allocated a larger percentage of Iran's civilian power consumption to nuclear energy on the model of France (62%), which is a plan that the Shah of Iran had in the 1970s. Currently Iran only generates 1% of its power from nuclear energy. Aggressively expanding Iran's nuclear energy infrastructure for the sake of supporting bitcoin mining operations also provides a much broader base for higher grade fissile material enrichment (both uranium and plutonium) to strengthen Iran’s nuclear weapons program.
This raises another issue relevant to both bitcoin mining and the nuclear energy background for the flourishing of blockchain technology in Iran. The next Iranian regime must oppose the false discourse of man-made climate change, which is propaganda being pushed by global interests that want de-industrialization and a slowing of technological development and economic growth so that they can reestablish a quasi-feudal control over the world population. Climate change activists have proposed replacing Proof of Work (PoW) with an alternative process known as Proof of Stake (PoS), which is far less energy intensive. In PoS, the integrity of the blockchain network is supposedly maintained by participants (known as "validators") who "stake" their own cryptocurrency as collateral. The more one stakes, the higher the chances of being chosen to validate transactions and create new blocks. Since PoS does not rely on "mining," there is no need for energy intensive hardware. Validators typically use personal computers or servers, which are far less demanding in terms of energy. It has been argued that this is more "environmentally friendly."
However, it is precisely the energy intensive computational power of the PoW process that maintains the security of the blockchain network and protects against the ledger being tampered with. The more work (i.e., energy expended), the more secure the network is considered to be, because the computational power that would be required to tamper with it becomes increasingly non-feasible for anyone within the decentralized network to martial. By contrast, in PoS, the probability of validating transactions and creating new blocks is proportional to the amount of currency a validator stakes. This could potentially lead to a system where the wealthy have more control, causing a centralization of power that is contrary to the decentralized ethos of cryptocurrencies and of blockchain technology. This could defeat the purpose of deploying blockchain and bitcoin-exclusive international trade of Iran's energy resources, because it would open a window for the globalist oligarchs to recapture Iran's economy through PoS methods. Furthermore, PoS systems might be more susceptible to long-range attacks, where an attacker acquires old private keys from validators who no longer have stakes and uses them to create a new chain from a point far back in time. Validators might be incentivized to support multiple blockchain histories or forks, potentially leading to security issues. Finally, PoW is currently dominant on the blockchain and transitioning to PoS could be much more complex and challenging than straightforwardly and securely proceeding with the ongoing mining process in PoW. This would amplify the already significant challenge of incorporating this technology into Iran’s economy. Bitcoin, the most prominent PoW blockchain, benefits from a strong network effect and greater adoption.
PoW has a proven track record of securing the Bitcoin network effectively. The security of PoW is directly tied to real-world energy resources, which are abundant in Iran and both the Persian Gulf and Caspian Sea regions that were always part of Greater Iran or the four Persian Empires. The effort (work) required to mine new blocks ensures a fair and competitive environment. It also keeps the blockchain more decentralized than a transition to PoS, where wealth directly influences control over the network and thereby renders it vulnerable to capture by the same vested interests that this revolution in finance and trade is directed against. The high cost of redoing work in PoW provides a strong guarantee against rewriting the blockchain's history, making it highly immutable and resistant to censorship, which is a core principle for many in the cryptocurrency community and ought to be a core pillar of the adoption of this technology by the next Iranian regime. The energy consumed by Bitcoin mining is therefore justified by the network's value in providing a decentralized, secure, and global form of money that cannot be manipulated or controlled by the current cabal of oligarchs and their Chinese client state.
Please go to substack to continue reading.
While on the subject of China major Trump financial backers are creating a Chinese-style social credit system for the US:
Unfortunately, China not only cracked down on unauthorized Bitcoin mining within its own country, but it also leaned on the Iranian government to do the same within Iran, resulting in a precipitous drop to Iran now only accounting for 0.12% of global Bitcoin mining activity. China did this because the volatility and dynamism of Bitcoin poses an existential threat to the centrally-planned Chinese economy, with the CCP relying on the relative stability of fiat currencies and the international regulation of trade in those currencies by established global financial institutions. Now the United States (35.4%), Kazakhstan (18.1%), and Russia (11.23%) are leading, with Nordic countries also making significant contributions.
It is not coincidental that all of the aforementioned countries have significant energy resources. Bitcoin mining is a very energy intensive enterprise on account of the substantial computational power that it requires. Specialized hardware such as Application-Specific Integrated Circuits (ASICs) are used to solve complex mathematical puzzles in a process known as Proof of Work (PoW) in order to verify blocks of transactions in a decentralized worldwide public ledger known as the blockchain. Arriving at the solution to these mathematical problems is called hashing, and it is rewarded through the production of bitcoins as new verified blocks are added to the chain. One reason that this process is metaphorically referred to as bitcoin "mining" is that the block reward halves approximately every four years in an event known as the Bitcoin halving, which gradually reduces the rate at which new bitcoins are created, thereby mimicking the rate of mining precious metals. The PoW and the computational effort required to solve it make it extremely difficult for any malicious actor to alter the blockchain (which would require said actor to somehow seize control of at least 51% of the blockchain network's computing power).
One of the reasons why Iran was able to emerge as such a powerhouse in bitcoin mining is because of its vast oil and natural gas resources. This is needed not only for the computer processing power itself but also to power refrigeration or air conditioning that keeps the mining devices cool enough to continue functioning. Vented or flared natural gas from oil fields, which is in abundance in Iran, is an excellent source for powering bitcoin mining from energy that would otherwise be wasted. Unfortunately, Chinese pressure and resulting regulatory chaos caused Iranian power outages as a consequence of improperly managed and ad-hoc bitcoin mining operations. This would not be the case if the Iranian government fully embraced bitcoin mining and allocated a larger percentage of Iran's civilian power consumption to nuclear energy on the model of France (62%), which is a plan that the Shah of Iran had in the 1970s. Currently Iran only generates 1% of its power from nuclear energy. Aggressively expanding Iran's nuclear energy infrastructure for the sake of supporting bitcoin mining operations also provides a much broader base for higher grade fissile material enrichment (both uranium and plutonium) to strengthen Iran’s nuclear weapons program.
This raises another issue relevant to both bitcoin mining and the nuclear energy background for the flourishing of blockchain technology in Iran. The next Iranian regime must oppose the false discourse of man-made climate change, which is propaganda being pushed by global interests that want de-industrialization and a slowing of technological development and economic growth so that they can reestablish a quasi-feudal control over the world population. Climate change activists have proposed replacing Proof of Work (PoW) with an alternative process known as Proof of Stake (PoS), which is far less energy intensive. In PoS, the integrity of the blockchain network is supposedly maintained by participants (known as "validators") who "stake" their own cryptocurrency as collateral. The more one stakes, the higher the chances of being chosen to validate transactions and create new blocks. Since PoS does not rely on "mining," there is no need for energy intensive hardware. Validators typically use personal computers or servers, which are far less demanding in terms of energy. It has been argued that this is more "environmentally friendly."
However, it is precisely the energy intensive computational power of the PoW process that maintains the security of the blockchain network and protects against the ledger being tampered with. The more work (i.e., energy expended), the more secure the network is considered to be, because the computational power that would be required to tamper with it becomes increasingly non-feasible for anyone within the decentralized network to martial. By contrast, in PoS, the probability of validating transactions and creating new blocks is proportional to the amount of currency a validator stakes. This could potentially lead to a system where the wealthy have more control, causing a centralization of power that is contrary to the decentralized ethos of cryptocurrencies and of blockchain technology. This could defeat the purpose of deploying blockchain and bitcoin-exclusive international trade of Iran's energy resources, because it would open a window for the globalist oligarchs to recapture Iran's economy through PoS methods. Furthermore, PoS systems might be more susceptible to long-range attacks, where an attacker acquires old private keys from validators who no longer have stakes and uses them to create a new chain from a point far back in time. Validators might be incentivized to support multiple blockchain histories or forks, potentially leading to security issues. Finally, PoW is currently dominant on the blockchain and transitioning to PoS could be much more complex and challenging than straightforwardly and securely proceeding with the ongoing mining process in PoW. This would amplify the already significant challenge of incorporating this technology into Iran’s economy. Bitcoin, the most prominent PoW blockchain, benefits from a strong network effect and greater adoption.
PoW has a proven track record of securing the Bitcoin network effectively. The security of PoW is directly tied to real-world energy resources, which are abundant in Iran and both the Persian Gulf and Caspian Sea regions that were always part of Greater Iran or the four Persian Empires. The effort (work) required to mine new blocks ensures a fair and competitive environment. It also keeps the blockchain more decentralized than a transition to PoS, where wealth directly influences control over the network and thereby renders it vulnerable to capture by the same vested interests that this revolution in finance and trade is directed against. The high cost of redoing work in PoW provides a strong guarantee against rewriting the blockchain's history, making it highly immutable and resistant to censorship, which is a core principle for many in the cryptocurrency community and ought to be a core pillar of the adoption of this technology by the next Iranian regime. The energy consumed by Bitcoin mining is therefore justified by the network's value in providing a decentralized, secure, and global form of money that cannot be manipulated or controlled by the current cabal of oligarchs and their Chinese client state.
Please go to substack to continue reading.
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BREAKING: Israel Wipes Out IRGC Leaders As Iranians Celebrate:
Trump is only along for the ride. The attack on Iran has been in the planning stages for years. It's all being choreographed and scripted at the highest levels by private intelligence networks:
A tale of socialism from the Catholic Church:
The British have a huge influence over Israel:
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