Editor’s Notes: In this insightful interview on Breaking Points, Professor Jiang Xueqin joins the show to discuss his striking geopolitical predictions regarding the ongoing conflict between the U.S. and Iran. Utilizing game theory and “predictive history,” Professor Jiang explains why he believes the U.S. is facing a catastrophic war of attrition that could ultimately signal the end of American global hegemony and the petrodollar system. From the vulnerabilities of energy infrastructure in the Gulf to the internal political motivations driving the Trump administration’s decisions, this conversation explores the complex factors shaping a potential reordering of the world. (Mar 3, 2026)
TRANSCRIPT:
Introduction
KRYSTAL BALL: All right, guys, we’ve got yet another heavy hitter guest and first time guest on the show, Professor Jiang. He is the star of the popular YouTube channel Predictive History. He uses game theory to analyze past, current, and to predict future geopolitical events. And he joins us now. Professor, great to have you.
SAAGAR ENJETI: Good to see you, sir.
PROFESSOR JIANG XUEQIN: Thanks for inviting me.
The Three Big Predictions
KRYSTAL BALL: Yeah, of course. So, for people who aren’t familiar with your work, I wanted to show folks that back in 2024, you made three big predictions. One, that Trump would win, two, that he would start a war with Iran, and three, that the US would lose that war. Let’s take a listen to that.
VIDEO CLIP BEGINS:
PROFESSOR JIANG XUEQIN: In this class this semester, I’m making three big predictions, right? First is that Trump will win in November. Second is that United States will go to war against Iran. The third big prediction is that the United States will lose this war, which will forever change the global order.
VIDEO CLIP ENDS:
KRYSTAL BALL: So obviously that last one is the only one that has not yet come to fruition — is quite a stunning prediction. Do you stand by it? And what have you seen so far that leads you to sort of stand firm in that conclusion?
Iran’s Strategic Advantages
PROFESSOR JIANG XUEQIN: So given my analysis of how the war is progressing, I think that Iran has many more advantages over the United States. The reality is that right now it’s a war of attrition between the United States and Iran. And Iranians have been preparing 20 years for this conflict. In their eschatology, in their religion, this is a war against the Great Satan. They’ve had many practice runs.
Last June was a 12-day war when the Iranians were able to examine and analyze the strike capacities of both the Israelis and the Americans. And they’ve had a lot of time — eight months — to prepare fully for this new attack. They, through their proxies, the Houthis, Hezbollah, Hamas and the Shia militias, have been able to really grasp the American mentality. And now they have a pretty good strategy of how to weaken and ultimately destroy the American empire.
So what the Iranians are doing is they’re waging war against the entire global economy. They are striking the GCC countries, and not only are they striking GCC countries and American bases, but they’re going after the critical energy infrastructure of these bases, the blocked Strait of Hormuz. And eventually they will go after the water desalination plants, which is the lifeblood of these nations because they don’t have fresh water supply. In fact, the water desalination plant provides 60% of the GCC water supply. So if a drone — and these drones cost $50,000 — if they wiped out a desalination plant in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, and it’s a city of 10 million people, they’d be out of water in two weeks. In two weeks.
And right now the Iranians have de facto closed off the Strait of Hormuz. And the GCC gets 90% of its food from the Strait of Hormuz. So I know a lot of people are talking about the disruptions to the global economy, but right now the Iranians are actually threatening the very existence of Saudi Arabia, UAE, Bahrain, Qatar.
And why this is important is that the Gulf states are really the linchpin of the American economy. What they do is they sell petrodollars and then they recycle the petrodollars back into the American economy for investments in the stock market. And right now we know that the entire American economy is propped up by investments in data centers, and a lot of that comes from the Gulf states. So if the Gulf states are no longer able to sell oil and they’re no longer able to finance AI, this AI bubble in the United States will burst, and with it will burst the entire American economy, which is really a financial Ponzi scheme. So that’s a dire situation that the markets are facing right now.
The Munitions Problem and Interceptor Math
SAAGAR ENJETI: Yeah, I mean, to your point, sir, an Amazon data center was literally hit in the UAE. And now of course big tech companies, which were looking at the UAE as a major potential data center investment hub with cheap and abundant energy, are probably going to be rethinking that.
We also wanted to talk to you about munitions. We could put this next one up here on the screen. “The United States is racing to accomplish Iran mission before munitions run out.” This is specifically around interceptor math. There’s a famous video just from yesterday in Israel which shows a single Iranian ballistic missile which is being targeted by some 11 different interceptors, all of which miss. Most of those come from the United States, not to mention all of the different bases and the GCC countries that you just talked about, and the asymmetry of the cost — it’s a million dollars for a missile, tens of millions per interceptor in some of these cases.
With these munitions running out, how does that change the global picture?
You’re in China, obviously much of the stocks in Asia of the United States are likely to have to be cannibalized if this were to go on. How is that going to affect the global picture here?
PROFESSOR JIANG XUEQIN: Right, so my first point is that the United States military is not designed to fight a 21st century war. Remember, the military-industrial complex came into being after World War II and it’s designed to fight the Cold War. And the Cold War was really about muscle flexing — about who was able to send people up into space, who was the first to get a person on the moon, who had the more complex missile systems. So the entire American military strategy revolves around very sophisticated technology that costs a lot of money to build. And that’s what the American air defense system basically is.
And that’s why we’re seeing this asymmetry, as you point out, in this war — where you have these million-dollar missiles trying to take out these $50,000 drones. And it’s not sustainable in the long term.
So what we’re seeing is really the puncturing of the aura of invisibility and inevitability that sustained American hegemony for the past 20 years, especially after the collapse of the Soviet Union. And this is really a reordering of not just the global economy — because this signals the collapse of the petrodollar and with it the entire US dollar-based reserve currency system — but also the global hegemony of the United States. We’re moving towards a multipolar world.
The Question of Ground Troops
KRYSTAL BALL: Professor, this morning, Secretary of War Pete Hegseth was asked a question about potential ground troops in Iran. He refused to rule out that possibility. And he said, “Oh well, we’re not going to project to you what we will or will not do, we don’t want to rule anything out, we will do what it takes.” Do you think that America will end up invading Iran from the ground, since it’s already becoming relatively clear they won’t be able to accomplish the goal of regime change or even regime collapse using just air power alone?
PROFESSOR JIANG XUEQIN: So everyone says that the worst calamity that could happen to the United States is if it were to send ground troops into Iran. At the same time, the United States is committed to regime change in Iran. We never had a precedent in history where you were able to regime change from the air alone. You need ground troops.
And so unfortunately what’s going to happen over the next few months is that pressure will build on America to send ground troops, especially from the GCC countries and from Israel, which are being pounded right now by the Iranians. Remember that if the GCC countries — Saudi Arabia, Qatar, UAE, Bahrain — if they go, then the petrodollar goes with them. So the Americans need to protect these countries. And these countries are going to demand that either the Americans bribe the Iranians to cease — and this is like $5 to $20 billion in indemnity — or send ground troops to wipe out the Iranian threat once and for all.
And I know that there’s no political will for ground troops to be used against Iran among the American people. But remember that 78% of the American people were against the initial strikes against Iran in the first place.
Saudi Arabia and Israel’s Role
SAAGAR ENJETI: Right. And one of the things that really comes into question, I think, with all of this, sir, when we’re looking at the geopolitical picture and the sacrificing in much of this from the United States on behalf of Israel, is kind of a question as to who and what wanted this. We were actually curious for your view on a disputed report here from the Washington Post. We can put it up here on the screen. “A push from the Saudis: Israel helped move Trump to attack Iran.” Now, this has been internally disputed by Saudi Arabia, saying that they did not push the Trump administration to attack Iran. However, this is clearly an authorized leak from our own government trying to at least lay some of the blame on behalf of the GCC. What do you make of this analysis and of this narrative that Saudi Arabia was also trying to be behind this push to bomb Iran?
PROFESSOR JIANG XUEQIN: So I’ve always argued that both Saudi Arabia and Israel are heavily invested in regime change in Iran. In fact, Saudi Arabia sees Iran as much more of an existential crisis than Israel. Israel still has nuclear weapons and Israel is a very diverse, very sophisticated economy, whereas Saudi Arabia is completely reliant on oil.
And it’s always had problems with Iran because Iran is a theocracy opposed to the Saudi monarchy. Iran funds and equips the Houthis, which have been antagonistic towards Saudi Arabia for the longest time. And right now the Saudi economy is suffering. It’s been trying to pivot towards more of a tourist economy. That’s why they brought in Ronaldo. That’s why they’re switching to E-Gaming. That’s why they’re building something called The Line, Neom — and all these things are not working out. So they need to be able to control the oil resources of the entire Middle East in order to survive and thrive as a nation.
So I do believe that this reporting is credible, even though it does make Saudi Arabia look bad. But remember, Saudi Arabia says that they wanted peace, but they are helping the Israelis and the Americans attack Iran right now because they’re allowing the Israelis and Americans to use Saudi airspace.
Why Did Trump Go Ahead?
KRYSTAL BALL: So help us understand, because it still feels to me like there are some pieces that don’t totally add up. You had, in advance of this war on Iran, top military brass up to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff saying, “This is a really bad idea. We are not ready for this.” All the math on the interceptors has been talked about for months at this point, and yet Trump still decided to go ahead. What is the calculus that he was making here that led him to take what already appears to be catastrophic actions?
PROFESSOR JIANG XUEQIN: Right. Okay, so this is the key question. Why did they do this? I think there are three possibilities, and I think all three possibilities are valid.
The first is the idea of hubris. You look at history — this is how empires behave. The Maduro kidnapping was quick, successful, and it was an adrenaline rush for Trump, and that made him overconfident in the capacity of the American military. So hubris is a factor. And we see this throughout history. Why did Hitler invade Stalin? Because he conquered Europe really easily and he thought he was invincible. And that led to the destruction of the German army in the Soviet Union. So hubris is a factor.
Then you have to look at internal political calculus, where even though America does not benefit from this war against Iran, Trump himself personally benefits. Why? Because the Saudis and Israelis are bribing him to attack Iran. Remember that the Saudis invested $2 billion in the private equity fund of Jared Kushner, who is the son-in-law of Donald Trump. And Miriam Adelson has been financing Trump’s political career. A few months back she said that she will put up $250 million if Trump were to run a third term. So Trump is getting a lot of financial and political support from the Saudis and Israelis.
Also remember that if this war goes sideways and Trump is forced to use ground troops, he will probably get approval from Congress, and this will give him emergency war powers, which will allow him to influence the midterms. So Trump is thinking about a third term, and I think at the ballot box he probably won’t get it. But if there’s a war going on and you can delay elections and you have emergency war powers and people rally around the flag, then he probably will get a third term.
And the last factor that is very important is the eschatological factor, where if you look at the Epstein files, it’s clear that we are run by secret societies. It’s clear that the world is run by these individuals who have a lot of power. We don’t know who they are, but they control the military, they control the national security operatives. And these people — there are different names for these people. You can call them Illuminati. And the Illuminati are composed of three major groups. You have the Jesuits, who control the Vatican. You have the Sabbatean Frankists, which control the modern state of Israel today. And you have the Freemasons, which control the national security apparatus of the United States. And they believe that Israel, this war in the Middle East, is key to the end times, including heaven on earth. So it’s almost like a script that they’re following, even though it doesn’t make any typical sense.
So I would say that these three are the best reasons why this is happening.
Closing Remarks
SAAGAR ENJETI: Wow. Well, sir, I hope you come back. This was very informative, I think, for both of us. We deeply appreciate your time. Thank you.
PROFESSOR JIANG XUEQIN: Thank you.
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