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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   647 thread views

Transnational Thursday for January 1, 2026

Transnational Thursday is a thread for people to discuss international news, foreign policy or international relations history. Feel free as well to drop in with coverage of countries you’re interested in, talk about ongoing dynamics like the wars in Israel or Ukraine, or even just whatever you’re reading.

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HAPPENING NOW: Fort Tiuna near Caracas Venezuela has just been bombed. Multiple other sites in the capital have been bombed as well.

Well at least we won't be hearing about the rules-based international order for some time now...

A US invasion of Venezuela would be a smart move to put the squeeze on Cuba, secure the hemisphere and a good amount of oil - if the US was good at imperialism that is. I expect a complete mess, lots of munitions expended for very little practical gains. Whatever military gains there are will be outweighed by failing to install a stable puppet government.

Trump claims to have kidnapped captured Maduro -- maybe just a quick bit of the old in and out?

I think what's happened here is a successful air raid, based on Trump's desire to seize Venezuelan oil. He has always been interested in other countries oil reserves and has been trying to steal their oil tankers too.

https://x.com/WatcherGuru/status/2007520406199251070

President Trump says the US will use Venezuela's oil reserves and sell "large amounts" to other countries after capturing Nicolás Maduro.

Step 1, a decapitation strike on Maduro, was a complete success for the US. Unsurprisingly a non-white, non-East Asian country that can't manage its own oil industry or run agriculture properly is not going to be great at fighting. But Step 2 is the key part, getting someone in charge of the country who'll let you take and sell the oil, installing a puppet and keeping them in power. That's the part where the US has historically floundered.

The invasion of Afghanistan also started with a highly successful airborne special forces operation: the Taliban were ousted in weeks and Rumsfeld laughed at the reporters who'd been anxiously worrying about 'quagmires'. Only later did things start to go south.

Associated Press, Reuters: In the ongoing civil war in Yemen, the UAE-backed Southern Transitional Council has declared independence as "South Arabia" and announced plans to hold a secession referendum two years from now. See the former country of South Yemen, which existed from 1967 to 1990.

Houthis more or less control what used to be North Yemen. Looks like these parts were joined together by mistake.

Credit where credit is due - UAE is trying to become a kingmaker in all of those regional conflicts.

There are some very large protests/rioting in Tehran. Potentially veering towards an attempted revolution. As I said in my post in the last TT thread, I’m pretty sure these are organized and coordinated by Burgerland/Israeli intelligence. Probably not much will come out of it, but something to keep an eye on.

Edit: Starting to see some armed anti-government paramilitaries popping up on the street in videos. Not necessarily a huge deal, these groups have been conducting attacks for years. But perhaps a sign of an escalation.

An Iranian expat has told me recently (with regards to the Women's rights and other major protests), that suggesting these (albeit sometimes large) protests will lead to regime change is the same as if Chinese or Cuban state media portrayed the BLM or Occupy Wall Street protests as possibly toppling the US government. The state there is powerful and entrenched, aside he has no love for the regime and is an anti-Islamist.

I also think Westerners tend to overestimate the seriousness of these things because they apply a western metric towards the number of deaths. The military opening fire on a crowd of demonstrators and killing a couple hundred people would be a big fucking deal if it happened in Paris or Portland. In Iran that’s fairly standard.

Are they dying of thirst due to the draught or what's going on over there?

The water situation is difficult, their currency value is falling, the regime is losing support for not being able to ensure basic economic and infrastructural function. And the liberals in Tehran continue to not like their theocratic government. The question is whether the people out in the streets fall into group A or group B. If it’s just group B it’s probably a nothingburger. If it’s group A it could be a happening.

One article says:

Small-scale protests demanding that the Iranian government address the devaluation of the Iranian rial and high inflation rates have continued for the second consecutive day in Tehran and Hamadan City, western Iran, on December 29, amid a rapid collapse of the Iranian currency since November 2025. The value of the Iranian rial has deteriorated rapidly after November 2025, though its value has fallen for years due to sanctions and Iran’s general international isolation. Protests initially began in Tehran on December 28. Groups of less than roughly 100 civilians, who were reportedly Iranian ”businessmen”, marched from Lalezar Street toward the Imam Khomeini Square on December 29, demanding that the Iranian government intervene in the economy and address the high inflation rate and devaluation of the currency.

A hundred businessmen does not sound like much of a riot.

I assume it means multiple groups each comprising fewer than 100 people. The government response was quite large:

Iranian security forces halted and clashed with the protesters at the Istanbul intersection on December 29, according to Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC)-affiliated media and geolocated footage. Iranian security forces also launched tear gas and clashed with protesters on Boali Street in southern Hamedan City on December 29. A BBC Persian journalist reported that economic protests also occurred in Malard City, Tehran Province, and on Gheshm Island in the Persian Gulf, but did not provide footage of the protests at the time of this writing. Tehran merchants announced that they will continue to protest on December 30.

Also, that article is from Sunday, and the protests have escalated since then.

Protests continued to expand geographically across Iran on December 31. Small protests broke out in Tehran on December 28 and have since spread to 17 out of Iran’s 31 provinces.

Article

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