Ted Cruz

So, after two weeks of the largest nationwide demonstrations in Iran since the Islamic Revolution, what has changed and why?

It has nothing to do with negotiating tables and lots to do with battle space.

First, let's note that this month's huge anti-regime demonstrations in more than 100 Iranian cities were not ignited by a single big domestic event like a blatantly stolen election or the murder of an innocent young woman.

The Iranian Rial has been crashing past a million to the dollar.

Let me say that again.

Past one million to a dollar.

That's their exchange rate for weeks.

And inflation reached the point where the Tehran Bazaar was losing money on every transaction.

So it closed.

Because hyperinflation, if the value of the real falls day after day after day, you sell something for five million real.

And then the next day, that five million real is worth a fraction of what it was worth the day before.

That's why they closed.

Something else drove the following events, such as the South Pars energy strike and reported military defections.

The battle space started shaping up six years ago this month under Trump, with the U.S.

killing of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Quds Force Commander Qasem Soleimani, the second most powerful man in Iran, by U.S.

drones at Baghdad Airport.

He had just arrived from Damascus, where he was briefing former Syrian President Bashar al-Assad on a plan to attack the U.S.

embassy in Baghdad.

as it had been done in Tehran in 1979.

Iran's Iraqi cat's paw, Abu Madi al-Mahandis, and 10 senior Iranian briefers and bodyguards were also killed in the strike.