The Syrian rebel group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham has succeeded in toppling the Assad regime.
But beating Assad hardly means they’ve succeeded in conquering Syria. In fact, they’ve merely inherited the previous regimes headaches: managing a deeply divided ethno-sectarian landscape, with little hope of a quick or easy consolidation of power.
Adding to the headache is the lack of a reliable, capable foreign partner like Assad had (until, of course, he didn’t).
HTS and whatever group or constellation of entities replaces them will also have to contend with myriad external forces—the US, Israel, and Turkey among them—acting to advance their own interests with impunity.
Here at Zeihan on Geopolitics, our chosen charity partner is MedShare. They provide emergency medical services to communities in need, with a very heavy emphasis on locations facing acute crises. Medshare operates right in the thick of it, so we can be sure that every cent of our donation is not simply going directly to where help is needed most, but our donations serve as a force multiplier for a system already in existence.
For those who would like to donate directly to MedShare or to learn more about their efforts, you can click this link.
Nigerians will head to the polls Saturday, February 25 in what could prove to be one of the largest upset victories in Africa’s largest democracy and, historically, its largest oil producer. The elections are coming at a critical time for Nigeria: 2022 saw oil production drop to 32-year lows, national debt levels rise, and a resurgence in jihadist and communal violence.
Nigeria is an ethnically, linguistically, and religiously diverse nation. Africa’s most populous country can roughly be divided into north and south. Northern Nigeria is predominantly Muslim and home to the Hausa-Fulani ethnic groups—Nigeria’s largest ethnic group. SW Nigeria is home to the Yoruba, mixed Muslim and Christian community. SE Nigeria is home to the predominantly Christian Igbo, and then the rest of the Delta, especially the coast, is home to the Ijaw people (and most of the nation’s oil and gas reserves). For much of Nigeria’s post-junta history, there has been an unofficial power-sharing pact between the country’s northern and southern—primarily Yoruba—leaders.
Nigeria’s military junta formally stepped down in 1999. Between 1999 and 2015, the center-left (economically) but socially conservative People’s Democratic Party held the presidency. The PDP is the primary architect between the unofficial rule of having Northern and Southern states alternate in naming a presidential candidate, who would serve two 4-year terms. The first challenge to this power-sharing agreement came in 2010, when former president Umaru Yar’Adua died in office during his first term. Rather than having another northern candidate succeed him, southerner Goodluck Jonathan (Yar’Adua’s VP) ran successfully for office in 2011.
Goodluck Jonathan lost his presidential bid in 2015, the first Nigerian incumbent since 1999 ever to do so. He was defeated by former military dictator and member of the newly formed All Progressives Congress, Muhammadu Buhari. Buhari is barred from seeking a third consecutive term.
Whatever the results of Saturday’s election, this has already proven to be a historic, and disruptive, election season for Nigeria. The frontrunner in most polls for months has been the (relatively) young, charismatic Igbo former governor of southern Anambra State, running as part of the social democratic Labour Party. Obi, who at 61 is the youngest among the four major party candidates, was formerly a member of the long-ruling People’s Democratic Party. He is also the only current front-runner to have been born after Nigeria’s independence from the United Kingdom. This is also the first election in which no major candidate is a former general—a key distinction for a country with a former long-ruling military junta. Obi’s third-party candidacy has been propelled by a surge in enthusiasm among young and disenfranchised voters and a sleek, savvy social media campaign.
There’s still a question of how accurate polling will be, given the generational divide in supporters for the various candidates, as well as Obi and the Labour Party’s lack of the entrenched political patronage systems used by the PDP and incumbent All Progressives Congress. But one thing is certain: Nigeria’s voters, especially its youth, are increasingly frustrated with an established political class that is floundering in the face of a crumbling economy, deteriorating security environment, and lackluster government services. Much of this came to a head in 2022, as historic flooding displaced nearly 1.4 million Nigerians and the economy experienced several cash shortages amidst a botched rollout of monetary reforms.
No matter who wins the first round of elections tomorrow, they face a staggering to-do list. Nigeria is a country whose economy and national security have been held together for decades with a particularly addictive, if not entirely effective, type of bandage: petrodollars. Buoyed by many years of strong oil production and revenues, the PDP used state oil revenues to build large patronage networks and pad the pockets of many a politician—something even government officials are now quick to mention in the face of Obi’s popularity.
But unofficially, leaders have claimed that the endemic corruption that has hounded Nigerian governance and beleaguered its economy is a necessary part of distributing oil revenues to various community groups and leaders to keep a fragile peace. The bulk of Nigeria’s oil resources is in the country’s southern coastal regions, far from the Sahelian landscapes of the Hausa-Fulani or even Lagos and the primarily Yoruba regions of the southwest. If only. With endemic corruption and poor infrastructure development and strong inter-communal competition, unfortunately comes violence and organized crime.
Oil bunkering under the Buhari administration reached such a fever pitch that foreign majors finally more-or-less called it quits in regard to on-shore oil production. A system addicted to using cash to plug gaps and pad pockets cannot pivot easily, and so Nigeria has increasingly turned toward borrowing to finance various government schemes and initiatives. And so, despite being one of the most resource-rich countries in Africa, Nigeria is facing both increasing costs to finance its debt and declining revenues. Nigeria’s rising debt stock is becoming increasingly problematic in the face of dwindling revenue and the unsustainable burden of subsidy payments. A handful of international organizations have condemned the country’s appetite for borrowing, with the IMF saying, “the Nigerian government may spend nearly 100 percent of its revenue on debt servicing by 2026”. Between 1999 and 2021, local and external federal government borrowings jumped from N3.55 trillion to N26.91 trillion, an increase of 658 percent. The Buhari administration has overseen a 290% rise in foreign debt alone).
Similarly, the entrenched Islamist threat in Northern Nigeria shows little sign of stopping, especially given the arc of instability and mutable borders in the countries lining Nigeria’s Sahelian northern border: Niger, Chad and arguably Burkina Faso and Mali. And still, no real plan or capability to manage the organized criminal elements in its southern delta states stymying the very real (and very expensive) investment needs its ailing onshore fields, pipelines and refineries need to maintain, let alone boost, production.
And then there’s perhaps the largest challenge facing a potential President Obi or any of his rivals: at roughly 215 million people, Nigeria is Africa’s largest country—and growing. With a birth rate (5.3 per woman) that has barely ticked down since the 1960s, Nigeria is a very large and very young country, with entrenched ethnic, religious and geographic divisions and an ever-weakening central government.
Whoever wins Saturday’s election faces a critical and difficult to-do list ahead of them.
Here at Zeihan On Geopolitics we select a single charity to sponsor. We have two criteria:
First, we look across the world and use our skill sets to identify where the needs are most acute. Second, we look for an institution with preexisting networks for both materials gathering and aid distribution. That way we know every cent of our donation is not simply going directly to where help is needed most, but our donations serve as a force multiplier for a system already in existence. Then we give what we can.
Today, our chosen charity is a group called Medshare, which provides emergency medical services to communities in need, with a very heavy emphasis on locations facing acute crises. Medshare operates right in the thick of it. Until future notice, every cent we earn from every book we sell in every format through every retailer is going to Medshare’s Ukraine fund.
And then there’s you.
Our newsletters and videologues are not only free, they will always be free. We also will never share your contact information with anyone. All we ask is that if you find one of our releases in any way useful, that you make a donation to Medshare. Over one third of Ukraine’s pre-war population has either been forced from their homes, kidnapped and shipped to Russia, or is trying to survive in occupied lands. This is our way to help who we can. Please, join us.
I think an update will be helpful as Iran’s current spate of protests continue into their third month. I would like to state at the beginning of this update that as a personal matter, I stand with all people—especially the world’s youth—who yearn to live free, safe and productive lives. The people of Iran are no exception.
It’s also important to note that Iran has no semblance of a free or impartial media; there is a dearth of objective information about crowd sizes, and the number of deaths and arrests. This is by the regime’s own design. I have no doubt that the regime is arresting as many people as they can, and that state violence has proven to be fatal—likely hundreds of times. But every video and anecdote and photograph and story shared by protestors with the outside world is done with a stated goal and purpose. As I tell members of my own family, everything you’re seeing come from Iran is designed to break hearts, enrage, drive up engagement and support—not too difficult a thing when the opponent is the Islamo-fascist Iranian regime. But take certain characterizations with a grain of salt.
As I mentioned in our last update when protests began to escalate, Iran has been in the midst of several—often overlapping—periods of significant unrest, correlating with the sharp decline of the economy beginning in 2017. The current phase of protests lead by Iranian youth is not one that lists economic grievances at its core. The pithy, emotive slogan of “woman, life, freedom” presents a (n exceedingly Western friendly) set of demands around human rights and basic dignity. But make no mistake: Iran is a very poor country, and only getting poorer.
It’s also worth noting that despite many peoples’ assumptions, Iran is not a very young country. The 18–30-year-old cohort is the smallest segment of Iranian society.
Since the early 1980s, Iran has seen one of the most precipitous drops in birthrates in the world:
Data and image courtesy of World Bank
But let us not gloss over the truly sorry state of the Iranian economy. Iran’s current GDP per capita is less than Egypt’s. This is not a comparison most countries would welcome, and certainly not on the losing end. (Both are poorer, on a per capita GDP basis, than Iraq.) Iran’s youth face entrenched unemployment (near 30%). Iranian inflation is high (over 50%). The average Iranian household’s annual income is less than $10,000 USD. This is important context—for Iranian expats and descendants of Iranian expats living abroad, especially those who left Iran during the 1950s and the 1979 Revolution, the idea of deeply entrenched poverty in Iran is a surprise. Or a reality they have chosen to ignore.
But in the various and constant pensioner protests (pensions haven’t kept up with inflation), in the protests to fuel price hikes that lead to 2019’s Bloody Aban, in Khuzestan’s violent water protests of 2018, 2021, and 2022, in the various localized labor disputes of petroleum workers, the Haft Tappeh sugar factory, et al the common unifying thread is a deteriorating economic condition. And most of all: individuals’ dependance on the regime, its subsidies, and cash payments.
Tehran will blame sanctions and yes, sanctions have played a large role in eroding the Iranian economy, but blame is most fairly set squarely at the feet of the regime’s bad actions and economic mismanagement. This doesn’t change the fact, though, that most Iranians would struggle to pay for groceries if the regime disappeared tomorrow. Economic realities are not determinative, and I am not claiming that the limited ability of the Islamic Republic to soften the harshness of day-to-day life means that they will stay in power forever. But the quandary between freedom and food is not unique to Iranians, especially in their neighborhood: Libya, Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, and Yemen are all salient examples of the difficult transitions facing post-Revolutionary societies.
Which should not suggest I’m advocating for one outcome or another. I’m sure my “dream scenario” would align with many Iranians’, but I am in the business of delivering objective, data-driven analysis. This is why my overall assessment from August still holds: I don’t think the protests in Iran have risen—yet—to global geopolitical significance, despite the very emotional and human toll being paid by protestors. Why not? We haven’t seen any dissolutions or cracks within the ruling elite. Iran’s regional ambitions have not been curtailed. Tehran has not been cowed into accepting limits on its nuclear ambitions. Its regional adversaries are not ascendant. And we have not yet seen the kind of sustained, massive, cross-societal uprisings or protests needed to push a government out of power.
It’s also worth noting that due to geography and demographic makeup, Iran’s vast military, security and intelligence services are designed with domestic occupation in mind. This was as much true under the Shah as it has been after 1979—that the very same apparatus used to subjugate Iran’s population can be used to achieve regional ambitions beyond Iran’s borders is a bonus. Iran’s largest security challenge has always been from within; every region, sometimes every set of neighboring mountain valleys hosts a stunningly diverse array of cultures, ethnicities, languages and sectarian differences. I find it exceedingly unlikely that popular unrest will bring down the current clerical regime in Iran unless elements within the regime themselves choose to use public unrest to shift the structures of power.
The situation remains fluid, however, and there are several things I’m watching for to see any potential changes to our assessment:
What is the size and make up of protests? Rather than seeing current protests as a new phenomenon, I instead see them as the entry of Iran’s youth into a growing, years-long movement of unrest against the Iranian regime. As I laid out earlier, the regime’s ability to contain dissent has all but disappeared. This is one of the most difficult questions to answer, as both the government and protest channels are not objective sources. Outside of restive areas like Kurdistan and Baluchistan, however, videos and photos of protests rarely show crowds larger than a few dozen to low hundreds. The crowds, especially when hooliganism takes over at night, are very young and disproportionally male. This will have to change if we’re going to see security forces shift tactics.
Are security forces shifting tactics? The regime has been able to continue relying on local police and Basij forces, using a mix of live fire and less-lethal methods to push back crowds of protestors. This tells us several things, including protestor tactics are not becoming more sophisticated, and the numbers of protests (and numbers of protestors) are not overwhelming this first-line defenses of the regime. There have been no serious defections loss of support among the regime’s enforcers.
Are protest tactics shifting? Despite social media hashtags claiming an #IranRevolution, or some journalists’ descriptions of scenes in certain cities being a “war zone” protestors are largely disorganized and diffused, contained to neighborhoods. Protestors are still largely using tire fires, burning the contents of dumpsters, and using petrol bombs (Molotov cocktails) and hurling stones in their engagements with regime security forces. We’re not seeing the formation of neighborhood militias. There are no significant signs of people being armed. Protestors aren’t building IEDs. The smoke, especially from trash and tire fires, equally obfuscates and adds dramatic flair to clashes—but hasn’t caused a substantive weakening to the regime. It is likely inhibiting larger/older crowds from gathering on the streets. Similarly, I tend not to focus on statues, banners, and posters of regime figures being attacked. If the parliament building gets sacked, however, that’s a different story…
Is there unified, nation-wide participation? Many activists and the journalists they speak to will point to crowds of people in cars, shuttered shops, calls for labor strikes, etc as signs of passive but unwavering resistance to the regime. Maybe? The reality goes both ways. I would suggest many people look to the George Floyd protests that rocked cities across the United States (and eventually lead to the largest domestic mobilization of National Guard forces since WWII). Whether or not a business is closed in solidarity or in anticipation of violence isn’t always immediately discernable—leading both sides to be able to claim what they want. During the 1979 Revolution, the bazaaris, local business owners and traders, added considerable economic and social pressure on the Shah when they joined protestors in the streets. After decades of sanctions and the rise of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards’ (IRGC) role in the domestic economy, the number/size/scope of bazaar participation in modern protests is limited but still excites the expat community.
Has the regime lost civil society? As of now, despite all the heartache, teachers and professors are still working. People are still sending their kids to school. Debris from protests is still being cleaned out of the streets. Mail is still being delivered. Fuel is still being refined. Food is still showing up on shelves. The quotidian minutia of the system comes together day after day, even after weeks of protests.
And most important:
Is the regime still able to meet its basic economic commitments to the Iranian people? This might not make a sexy TikTok or dramatic share on Twitter, but if fuel prices rise—or petrol stations run out, the regime is in serious trouble. If the Islamic Republic can no longer provide subsidized bread, it likely has no future. Think of the ignoble end of the Rajapaksa dynasty in Sri Lanka—once the government could no longer guarantee access to basic staples like food and fuel, their fate was already sealed.
In addition to the things we’re looking for, I have some additional observations:
There is a different kind of intensity when it comes to protests within Iran’s Kurdish regions, and in the long restive province of Sistan and Baluchistan. These are Sunni majority areas with distinct cultural and linguistic identities and histories of agitating for independence even before the 1979 Revolution. Iran’s Kurds are also the most politically organized pocket of resistance, with ties to militant Kurdish groups in Turkey and Iraq and a large, international diaspora. While protestors might chant “woman, life, freedom” the tone and timber of resistance among Iran’s Kurds and Baluchi populations (and to a lesser extent, Azeri) leads me to think that we are looking at the early stages of a renewed and bloody phase of conflict in both areas.
Kurdish and Baluchi independence is anathema to most Iranians, however, which is likely why protestors are still organizing around the death of Mahsa Amini, a young Kurdish woman who died in police custody, and under the current banner of “woman, life, freedom.” But expect challenges to Iran’s territorial integrity, militancy, and a different magnitude of violence from state forces in response. The Islamic Republic will be keen to follow in the footsteps of Saddam’s Iraq and Syria’s al Assad regime in pitting restive minorities against its majority populations.
While many are comparing Iran’s Supreme Leader to the Assad and Saddam regimes, there is a major difference: Iran’s ruling elite does not represent an ethnic or sectarian minority.
I don’t see any outside power—US, EU, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Israel, etc—stepping in and forcing regime change. Also, I would not hold my breath regarding the return of the Shah’s family to power…
We’re not there yet, but I am often asked what I think “comes next” in terms of Iran, or what a post-ayatollah world looks like. I think the rule-by-ayatollah model is the most unpopular and weakest link of the current system. On paper, Iran’s clerical elite lend legitimacy to the IRGC, its subsidiaries like the Basij, and so on. And minus an initial short period after the revolution, Iran has only had one non-clerical president: Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. In reality, however, the ayatollahs and mullahs and so on are enabled and defended by the IRGC and the various state apparatuses they control. While I do not think this was always the case, the dependency of the part of the mullahs has increased significantly in recent years, especially since the 2009 Green Movement and with the rise of the sanctions economy. (If you want to get especially conspiratorial and discuss how the only winners in an Iran with an entrenched social protest culture and never-ending sanctions are the IRGC, you’ll find plenty of people who’d agree with you.) All this is to say, I think a charismatic, nationalist-populist leader could do very well for himself. Especially if he came from an IRGC background and could present a non-clerical face that would maintain much of the various state elements in place—namely the plum position of IRGC alumni.
Here at Zeihan On Geopolitics we select a single charity to sponsor. We have two criteria:
First, we look across the world and use our skill sets to identify where the needs are most acute. Second, we look for an institution with preexisting networks for both materials gathering and aid distribution. That way we know every cent of our donation is not simply going directly to where help is needed most, but our donations serve as a force multiplier for a system already in existence. Then we give what we can.
Today, our chosen charity is a group called Medshare, which provides emergency medical services to communities in need, with a very heavy emphasis on locations facing acute crises. Medshare operates right in the thick of it. Until future notice, every cent we earn from every book we sell in every format through every retailer is going to Medshare’s Ukraine fund.
And then there’s you.
Our newsletters and videologues are not only free, they will always be free. We also will never share your contact information with anyone. All we ask is that if you find one of our releases in any way useful, that you make a donation to Medshare. Over one third of Ukraine’s pre-war population has either been forced from their homes, kidnapped and shipped to Russia, or is trying to survive in occupied lands. This is our way to help who we can. Please, join us.
