Why USA Seem Helpless?
When USA alongside Israel declared Operation Epic Fury on Iran, on 28 February 2026, it avowed to change the regime and liberate the people of Iran. So far nothing has happened.
Iran is bombing allies of USA in Gulf. USA claims that it is attacking the infrastructure of Iran that produces the equipment for such attacks. For 13 days, same narrative has continued.
Iran has, however declared that strait of Hormuz is off bound to all countries. It has hit over a dozen oil tankers which has sent insurance premiums to uneconomical levels. The result is that the strait of Hormuz is now deserted. It accounted for 40% of world trade of energy. Oil prices are about to cross $100/- sending fears of economies going into tailspin.
Thatcher in 1980
This is the extract of speech of Margret Thatcher given on 28 January 1980:
The Soviet Union has driven a wedge into the heart of the Muslim world. If its hold on Afghanistan is consolidated, the Soviet Union will, in effect, have vastly extended its borders with Iran, will have acquired a border more than 1,000 miles long with Pakistan, and will have advanced to within 300 miles of the Straits of Hormuz, which control the Persian Gulf. These are the facts. They are a cause for alarm both to the countries of the region and to ourselves.
West of Afghanistan, Iran is now, more than ever, in the front line. The Soviet Union says that its intentions towards that country are benevolent, but who can believe them. After all, the Russians claim that the treaty that they signed with Persia in 1921 is still valid. That treaty says, among other things, that if a Third Party should attempt…to use Persian territory as a base for operations against Russia…Russia shall have the right to advance her troops into the Persian interior I need hardly comment on the implications of such a text.
Note the words in bold. She was aware of the importance of Strait of Hormuz. She knew that it was a choke-point of oil supply on which the World economy is dependent.
It is also public knowledge that in April, 1980 there were indeed 30 Iranian military officers still undergoing training in Britain. This was also shown to be part of policy to contain Russia from invasion of Persia/Iran. Britain’s “help” to Iran in the early 1980s was claimed to have been driven by a mix of anti-communism, commercial interests, and strategic pragmatism.
In 1982, a KGB major named Vladimir Kuzichkin defected to the UK with a list of Soviet agents and sympathizers within Iran. The Thatcher government secretly passed this list (containing hundreds of names) to the Iranian regime. Needless to say, hundreds of people were annihilated by Iranian Regime in a brutal crackdown on the Tudeh Party (the Iranian Communist Party).
Now it is also revealed that the UK’s containment policy which supplied Chieftain Tanks and its spares besides other equipment, went way beyond it. For four decades Britain quietly profited from a regime it publicly condemned.
Money Laundering in Europe
Tehran relied on shadow banking networks of Iran-based exchange houses and foreign companies transacting billions with each other and with witting or unwitting counterparties across UAE, Hong Kong and Singapore. They used oil companies, shell companies, shipping companies, investment companies and technology procurement companies for laundering of money.
Hossein Shamkhani, son of a former top advisor to Iran’s Supreme Leader, established a money laundering network using London-based finance firms as a key node, with Ocean Leonid Investments, a hedge fund operating from 180 Brompton Road in Knightsbridge close to Harrods, described by Bloomberg as a central cog handling Iranian and Russian crude flows and related trades. London was functioning as part of this network’s command and control infrastructure.
Over £200 million worth of UK property was bought through proxy Ali Ansari. Khamenei’s name does not appear on any of the relevant documents. Figures close to the regime used British Virgin Islands companies to invest in UK property. The Ansari properties made use of an Isle of Man company.
Iranian oil sold in Asia, proceeds washed through UAE, Hong Kong and Singapore exchange houses, routed through London hedge funds like Ocean Leonid in Knightsbridge as command and control, then through Isle of Man and BVI shells into clean London property. Every layer was registered, incorporated and operating in plain sight inside British jurisdiction. Transparency International identified it. FinCEN quantified it. Bloomberg named the individuals. The British state watched it operate for decades and called it business.
Operation Epic Fury
Thatcher in 1980 understood Hormuz as the object to be protected. Every instrument she deployed, however compromised it later became, was oriented toward keeping Hormuz open and outside hostile control. Thatcher made this case publicly, in Parliament, on the record, in plain English, citing specific distances and a specific treaty text. It was not classified intelligence. It was not sophisticated geopolitical modelling. It was common sense geography.
Trump in 2026 launched an operation that made Hormuz the first casualty. Not a Soviet threat to Hormuz. Not a Chinese threat to Hormuz. American action itself triggered the closure. The operation designed to project American dominance is now condemned to accept dominance of Iran, albeit tacitly.
The Silent Beneficiary
Every Patriot and THAAD interceptor consumed over Bahrain, Qatar and Kuwait is one fewer available for Taiwan. China needs no involvement in this war. It only needs to count. Each day Operation Epic Fury continues, the Indo-Pacific deterrence posture weakens in precise, quantifiable increments. Beijing is not watching this war. It is auditing it.
The Payback Time
In 1956 America betrayed its ally Britain by actively destroying the operation Suez, collapsing the pound, and humiliating London publicly. Britain was the wronged party.
In 2026 Britain betrayed its ally America by quietly hosting, financing, enabling and protecting Iranian regime wealth in London for four decades. All the while sanctions of USA operated, through the Iran-Iraq war, through every public condemnation. thus the America was trying to strangle the same regime, that Britain protected.
America knifed Britain in the back in 1956. Britain knifed America in the back continuously from 1979 to 2025 by running a parallel private accommodation with the regime through London’s financial system.
Alternate Possibility
All this could be just a coincidence coupled with incompetence of present administration in White House.
Ukraine aid began serious escalation in 2022. Russia bled treasure, ammunition, manpower and international credibility into a land war it cannot cleanly exit. By February 2026 when Operation Epic Fury launched, Russia condemned the strikes at the UN Security Council and then stopped. A Russia genuinely free of Ukraine could have materially intervened in Iran’s defence. If that was the calculation, it worked perfectly.
The same planners who apparently neutralised Russia through Ukraine expenditure somehow failed to account for the most elementary geographical fact Thatcher articulated in 1980. How is that possible?
The people who designed Ukraine policy and the people who designed Operation Epic Fury were likely different institutions, different departments, different presidential cycles, with no single strategic mind holding both threads.
And that brings back to the conclusion of incompetence, something I am not able to assume so readily.
Therefore, I hope that before the time runs out, an escalation of war is expected in Strait of Hormuz within next 48 hours to resolve the crises. It not, we have to revert to the default conclusion of incompetance.
References:
- UK Parliament (Hansard): East-West Relations – 28 January 1980
- Bloomberg (Original Investigation):Khamenei’s Son Built Secret Overseas Property Empire (Republished summary via Iran International).
- Mojtaba Khamenei, the newly elected Ayatollah owns €400m European property empire.
- Gulf News:Luxury Hotels, London Mansions: €400m Property Network Linked to Mojtaba Khamenei (Detailed breakdown of the Frankfurt Hilton and Mallorca assets).
- India Today: Hotels in Europe, Villas in Dubai: Inside the Luxurious Empire of Khamenei’s Son
- Transparency International UK: London’s Role in Iran’s Financial Networks (Analysis of the £200m+ in properties and the crypto-laundering via Zedcex).
- GOV.UK (Official Announcement): UK Sanctions Individual Who Funds the Work of the IRGC (Ali Ansari)
- UK Sanctions List Search: Designation IRN0254 – Ali Aliakbar Ansari (Details the asset freeze, travel ban, and director disqualification).
- Republican Policy Committee (US House): Background on Iran and Operation Epic Fury
- Arab Center Washington DC: Epic Fury: Washington’s Contradictory War Aims in Iran
- Times of Israel: Mojtaba Khamenei Reportedly Owns Two London Properties Overlooking the Israeli Embassy
- Jewish News:New Iranian Supreme Leader Linked to Flats near Israeli Embassy and Mansions in Hampstead
- Iran threatens to hit US bases in Gulf