by a terrorist we do not know how to escape. Please please do not kill us. #Soleimani."

Now I feel like you're up to date. A lot of people haven't caught up with the drunk tweets yet, but now you have.

So I'm looking at some of the complaints, and the funniest complaints are the ones that go like this: if somebody is a terrorist and he's killing your people, you really don't want to piss him off. That's actually the argument against what Trump did. The argument against it is like, whoa, I know he's an international terrorist and I know he's killing Americans by the hundreds and he's trying to kill more, but if you attack you're really gonna piss him off. That's the counterargument. You're gonna piss off a terrorist. 'Cause I'm almost positive that guy had a reason to kill people anyway.

All right, let me put my spin on it. Are you ready? I always talk about filters. I will now give you the Dilbert filter on this Iranian situation.

Now the Dilbert filter goes like this: everyone has a boss. That's pretty much a summary of it. Everyone has a boss, and there's not that much difference from one situation to another where you have a boss and a subordinate. There are a number of universal truths that just simply happen out of a boss-subordinate situation.

And let me ask you this. Do you think Soleimani was a very loyal general and he supported his supreme leader in all things and all he wanted to do was serve his leader? Do you think that accurately describes General Soleimani? Do you think he was totally just a loyal subordinate? Well, maybe. Can't rule it out.

But let me put the Dilbert filter on this. Everybody hates their boss. Everybody thinks they could do a better job. Imagine you're Khamenei, you're the supreme leader, and one of your subordinates, who happens to be this general, is becoming more popular every year while you are becoming less popular every year. You see where I'm going? Do you see it yet?

So Khamenei, the supreme leader, is getting blamed for the economy and getting blamed for whatever bad stuff is happening in Iran. His own population is protesting. The general is just getting more popular every day because he's doing things that seem to be popular in Iran. And it seems to me like he was winning.

What would you think if you were the supreme leader and you were getting less popular every day and there was one of your subordinates who was getting more popular every day? What would that make you feel like?

Now do you think Soleimani, based on what you know about him so far — somebody says big-time mind reading, this is speculation, right? If I said it's true that would be mind reading, but we're in purely speculative territory here — do you think this Soleimani was the kind of guy who was going to be happy being the number two guy forever? Did he seem like he was sort of an alpha personality? But not totally, oh yeah I'm like the baddest-ass general there's ever been but I'm gonna do whatever the bearded guy with the holy book tells me to do.

Maybe. Maybe he was a dedicated servant of the Republic and he may have actually wanted to be number two forever. But is it likely? Is it likely he wanted to be the number two guy?

So let me ask you this. What would you do if you were the supreme leader or part of his inner circle and you had a threat from within at the same time you had a threat from without? Let's say hypothetically, just speculating here — all right, there's just speculation folks, thought experiment — let's say hypothetically that the Supreme Leader of Iran actually kind of wanted peace. What if he wanted peace? Do you think that the supreme leader could have made peace as long as this general was still alive? Maybe. Probably not.

So here's the thing you have to ask yourself. All right, let me put this in the form of a thought experiment. All right, I'm gonna simplify this for you. There are two people in a room, doors closed, so they're just sealed in a room. All right, just two people. One of them has a Koran, that's all he has. He has his clothes and he has a Koran. The other one has his clothes and a gun. All right, one has a Koran, one has a gun. They're the only ones in the room. Who's in charge? Who's the supreme leader of the room? The one with the Bible or the Koran or the one with the gun?

There's nobody else in there. The answer is whoever the guy with the gun wants to be in charge. So if the guy with the gun wants the guy with the Koran to be in charge, well then the guy with the Koran is in charge. If the guy with the gun wants to be in charge himself, he's in charge. He's got the gun.

So let me ask you this. Who was in charge of Iran? Do you think that the supreme leader could have overruled Soleimani on, let's say there was an internal coup, which way would the troops go?

Here's my guess. My guess is this: Soleimani was smart. Everybody says he was smart and capable. So we'll start with the assumption he was very capable and smart, a badass smart. Do you think that for years Soleimani has been making sure that the troops that are closest to the capital, the ones that are physically around you in Tehran, do you think that he's made sure that they got better treatment than other people even when the economy was going down? I don't know, but I'll bet he did. I'll bet he did a good job for his troops. Do you think they're loyal to him or were? I'll bet they were.

So here's my conspiracy theory. Are you ready? There is a nonzero chance — I'm not saying this is true, I'm just saying there's a nonzero chance that I haven't seen anybody bring it up — that Khamenei, the supreme leader, or somebody in his closest circle dropped the dime on him. It could be. Remember there's a part of the story that we don't understand, which is how did we know which of the three convoys was the real one? Now it could be we just have good intel. You know, it might be nothing more than that. Maybe we got intel from somebody on the ground. Could be that. It could be just that. Most likely it's just that.

But there's at least one possibility that the Iranian government itself wanted this guy dead for their own purposes. So I'm just putting that in the mix.

President Trump tweeted a two-parter tweet, and the second part he said, while Iran will never be able to properly admit it, Soleimani was both hated and feared within the country. Do you hear that? That's what President Trump decided to tweet in one of his first — you know, it was among the first things he said on the topic. And he said Soleimani was both hated and feared within the country.

You feel the little bit of a hint, a suggestion that maybe feared within the country might not be just the public. He might have been feared by the government itself. And if they weren't afraid of him, what was wrong with him? If you were the supreme leader, wouldn't you be afraid of this guy? I'd be very afraid of this guy. Didn't look like he had any limitations on what he was willing to do.

Then look at what President Rouhani of Iran said. And let me ask you, does this seem like Iran is phoning in the response? So what you should look for is if Iran is genuinely offended to the point of war or, you know, they're having a genuine reaction to it, you would expect to see something unusual, you know, really, really hyper. What's the best word? You expect to see a big reaction.

Here's President Rouhani's reaction to the United States killing the top general in their country: "The great nation of Iran will take revenge." That's it. I could have written this tweet a week before the event. Yeah, you know, Iran, we don't like it, we're gonna take some revenge. Is this the most generic and emotion-free response you've ever seen? We just killed their top general and the president of Iran says the great nation of Iran will take revenge. It's completely empty. He phoned it in.

So you've got two hints here that are hinting in the same direction. Trump is hinting when he says Soleimani was both hated and feared within the country that this isn't as obvious a situation as you thought it was. Soleimani might not have a lot of love, and we don't know who it is who doesn't love him, but we have to ask, is it the public or is it the leadership?

If it's like every other big corporation in the world, there were factions. We should assume that there was somebody. Yeah, don't you think there's a hundred percent chance that within the Iranian inner circle at the top, don't you think there's a hundred percent chance that somebody in that circle was saying maybe we got to get rid of this guy?

Let me ask you this. If we tried to make a peace agreement with Iran, could we do it while Soleimani was still alive? I'll bet no. Because what would Soleimani — you know, his interest seems to be war and expansion and taking over the whole region or controlling it or dominating it or something. But I can't imagine the supreme leader even being able to have a serious conversation about peace while that general was still alive.

So think about it. It might be that Iran, Israel, and the United States are all on the same page. But what President Trump said, and I quote, "While Iran will never be able to properly admit it" — that's the actual language from the president — "while Iran will never be able to properly admit it, Soleimani was both hated and feared within the country." He's signaling that the Iranian reaction to it might not be exactly on the surface what it looks like. It's just a thing.

Now I've told you before that there's an interesting thing about being close to war. So all the smart people are saying that we're closer to war with Iran or that we're actually at war because it's an act of war. But remember, being close to war and being close to peace look exactly the same. When things are the darkest, that's when you can get something done because nobody wants to go into the darkness. If you're both right on the edge of darkness, that's when you get serious about, okay, we don't really want to get into this darkness. Iran doesn't really want a shooting war. We definitely don't want to shoot anymore. So if nobody wants a war and you're on the precipice of war, well, it's a very focusing situation.

So I'm gonna say something that I don't think anybody said yet. We're closer to peace with Iran than we've ever been. We're also closer to war than we've ever been, which is a weird situation. So there's no doubt that this makes things more dangerous, certainly in the short run, maybe even the long run. But it also shakes the box because remember the last condition, the situation that existed a week ago, was impossible to get peace. Would you agree with the following proposition? A week ago, the way the variables were holding up, there was no way to get a peace deal with those variables. True or false? Would you not agree there really wasn't any path to just talking it out? There wasn't.

Now this guy's gone. Is there still zero chance of being able to talk it out? I don't know. I don't know. This might have shaken the box enough. So it depends what people are thinking in Iran, what they're thinking in Iraq, and we don't know that. We know it's going to be all over the board. There's gonna be people on every side of everything. But it's possible that we're closer to peace.

And here's what I say in all these situations. If the variables that you used to have can't get you there, what do you do? Trump always does the same thing. It's the same move in every situation. When the variables are not conducive to victory, he shakes the box and he makes sure that the variables change. And then when he's done shaking, he looks at them again. He says, all right, how about now? And if that still isn't good enough, he's gonna shake the box again. So you might see some more shaking.

One of the questions that people are asking — all the smart people — is what's his strategy? What is Trump's strategy? Now I am somewhat famous for writing the strategy is what you say when you don't know anything. Or let me put it a different way. The people who are crying there's no strategy to this, what's our strategy, they're the weakest thinkers in the game. Strategy isn't really a thing.

People like to think that there's a strategy, but it has more to do with their mental comfort of why things are the way they are. The truth is that every day we make a decision today that is independent of anything you've done before. In other words, everything that you've thought about or decided yesterday is always a sunk cost. Every day you wake up and you say, based on the variables today, what should we do today for our greater good? And because the variables every day are changing, it wouldn't make a lot of sense to have some overall strategy that was immune to the situation changing in the real world.

People do what they can do as the situation presents itself. And then after the fact, smart people say, well, it looked like a strategy. You know, strategy is often a hindsight where you go into the future and you look back and you go, well, I guess the strategy was to do this or that. The truth is we make decisions as we go, and that's the only way to do it. It wouldn't make sense to have some kind of strategy that isn't going to change if the variables are changing. And the variables are changing. I mean this change is a big variable.

But let me tell you a few of the things this accomplishes. So this is different than saying it's a strategy. I'm going to say there are several things this accomplishes and that they're good. So if you do something that accomplishes several good things, is that a strategy? Well, you don't need to put a word on it. It's just we saw an opportunity to do several good things. Here's some of them.

One of them is it reinforces Trump's unpredictability. You've heard Trump talk about it all the time. I'm going to be unpredictable. I am intentionally unpredictable. I'm using unpredictability as a tool. Watch me be unpredictable and watch how well this works. I mean Trump has told this as directly as you can say anything. And now we're watching the situation and we saw that he didn't attack, at least in a kinetic way, after Saudi Arabia's oil refineries were taken out. He did not attack and kill a lot of people when Iran took out a drone. So then Iran is thinking, oh, he's not going to get tough. Then he kills their top general. What does Iran think about their ability to predict Trump now? I guarantee that Iran is saying we have no frickin' idea what this guy's gonna do next. That's exactly what Trump wants them to feel like, right?

So the first thing he accomplished was he reinforced unpredictability as an asset that we have. In other words, Iran, you cannot depend on us reacting in a way that you think we'll react. Our range of reactions is infinite. So you have to take your chances, and that's scarier for them. So that's good.

Here's the other thing. It reinforces however far Iran is willing to go, we will go further. How important is that? So Trump is beginning to establish the principle that no matter what they do, we're gonna take it a little further. Yeah, and I would imagine that if they respond — so most people are thinking that Iran just sort of has to respond. So listen, and by the way I disagree with that. I think it's more likely they'll respond than not respond, especially since all of the surrogates are sort of semi-autonomous. But they don't have to respond. They really don't. I mean they do have a choice, but most of the experts are saying they will.

What will happen when they respond? Well, Lindsey Graham has made a pretty clear indication of what will happen. So Lindsey Graham has said their oil refineries are basically next. Other people have said if they were to mine the waters around Iran, if they were to interfere with international shipping. Other people have said, yeah, in the comments here, sink the navy. We could sink the entire Iranian Navy and what would it take? An afternoon.

So I think that Lindsey Graham and others have created the expectation that we will always go further and that the next thing you do to us is at the expense of your entire economy and all of your oil refineries and or maybe both, the loss of your entire navy. So that's productive, isn't it? Productive to set the pattern that whatever you do, we're gonna do more. Of course this another thing it does is that it pecks away at Iran. We're in a war. We're sort of in this long-term war of attrition with Iran. So Iran is trying to make it harder and harder for us and more painful for us to stay in the region. Meanwhile President Trump has been pecking away at Iran's economy and ability to do things. So this is one more peck in a strategy of infinite pecking, and it's a really big peck.

So this perfectly fits our strategy of putting more pressure on them over time. It puts — certainly tells that story. It also might slow down the slow picking away that Iran is doing on us, and that's good, right? So we've just said yeah, you can cause some pain and death to our people or contractors or military in the area, but if you do it's gonna hurt you more than it hurts us. So that's productive to put that line in the sand.

Now the administration is saying that the purpose of this was to deter future attacks. Does Soleimani was planning future attacks? Well I'm pretty sure the number two guy could plan a future attack. You know, I doubt — I kind of doubt that they don't have the ability and will to do future attacks. But maybe. You know, I certainly wouldn't bank on deterring anything, but it's not impossible.

All right, the other thing that this did is it puts Iranian influence in Iraq on trial. Remember I told you that what Trump is really good at is focusing attention where it helps him the most, in this case where it helps the country the most. Don't you think that Iraq should be having a much bigger — let's say that they should be a lot more concerned about Iranian influence in their country?

What do the typical Iraqi citizens think of Iran dominating their country? Let me put you in the head of an Iraqi. You're an Iraqi citizen. You're not in the government. You're just a citizen of Iraq. And you heard that Iran landed their top general in your country to cause some trouble. Imagine that you're an Iraqi citizen and you found out that the top general of Iran — a country that you have no love for, you know, remember it wasn't that long ago that Iraq and Iran had that war and it was a bad war. You have no love for them. And they could land their top general at your main airport. Your own government.

Now let me get this straight. I'm an Iraqi citizen and I'm watching the news. Or like, wait a minute, let me get this straight. Are you saying that my own government, the Iraqi government, is letting the general from an enemy country — you know, trying to be friends but sort of enemies — and they can just land in our country so he can organize criminal activity in our country and somebody in another country killed him when he came here? Do I mind? Do I mind?

So I think the other thing that this does is it focuses the question for the Iraqi citizens: what the hell is Iran doing in your country? Because a lot of this has been like a slow progress of Iran gaining influence over time. But I think this calls it into question. Iraq, you know, what do you want to be on? Do you want to be dominated by the Iranians? If not, maybe you're happy about this.

I've said before that this might have removed the primary obstacle to peace. I don't have a way of knowing this, but this is just an understanding of big organizations. In a big organization it is not uncommon that the top people disagree. In fact I would say it's pretty common, right? It's very common for the top inner circle to have some factions and disagreement. Could it be that Soleimani was one of the main obstacles to Iran getting serious about some kind of a lasting peace deal? Totally possible.

Would it be possible that the United States is aware of the internal thoughts in Iran and within the leadership? Totally possible.

You know who you don't have the smartest comment about this? Every time Sleepy Joe does something good I'm gonna mention it. I don't think he should be president, but I don't think you can ignore when somebody on the team you don't want to win, you can't ignore when they do good stuff. They make a good play. They play things right.

So Biden actually did a pretty good job in responding to this. And here's what he said. So Biden said — you're basically complaining that the president didn't get enough buy-in or it made things more dangerous. So there's a generic complaint that something bad might happen. And remember the Democrats mostly focus on imaginary problems and imaginary future problems. So Biden takes the Democrat view: oh, this will create unspecified future imaginary problems. That's sort of their entire attack, is future imaginary problems. So he does that.

But here's the small thing he did. He says directly, I'm not privy to the intelligence, but you know here's what I think. Now the statement "I'm not privy to the intelligence" tells you what? It tells you that Joe Biden has been on the other side of the curtain and Joe Biden knows what a lot of people don't know, which is that the story, the theme that the public hears and even the other candidates hear is not necessarily the full story.

Biden is signaling by saying I'm not privy to the intelligence that he believes there's enough of a chance that it was worth mentioning that there's something going on that we don't fully understand. One of those things that could be going on that we don't fully understand is Soleimani was as big a problem to the Iranian leadership as he was to us. I'm not saying that's true. I'm just saying that the possibility fits the evidence as we've seen it.

All right, the other thing that this does is it's a momentum changer. It seemed to me that the momentum in Iraq was that Iran was pecking at us and there hadn't been much response. So the way the human mind works is that we're far more influenced by the direction of things than where things are. Where things are just wasn't as important as the fact that things were getting worse and it looked like Iran was winning, if you can call it that. This changed the momentum. This completely eliminates whatever they think they've accomplished and reverses it. They are now clearly behind. And reversing direction is the important thing, not even where you are. All right, so that's good.

Now I'm still talking about all the things that we benefited by this without calling it a strategy. It's just a bunch of benefits you get. There are risks as well, of course. Risk of greater violence, but there are benefits.

All right, here's another. Tinker Bell just tweeted this and I thought it was a great point. You can lose sight of context when you're looking at the details. How awesome is it that we just entered a war — and that's not the awesome part. Entering war's not awesome. How awesome is it that the first casualty of the war was a senior citizen? Now I don't know how old Soleimani was, but it was at least over 50. So you've got a senior citizen. Trump killing another senior citizen and we call that a war.

Somebody's saying this lament. It was 61. Senior citizen. Traditionally you're used to war being something where the senior citizens send the 20-somethings off to die. That's what we've always called war before. In the age of Trump, war is economic war and I'm gonna kill your senior citizens who caused this problem. I'm not going to send my 20-year-olds unless I have to. If I have to I'm going to send them, but let's handle this with senior citizens. The senior citizen.

Now I don't know that this is a trend or anything, but isn't it kind of refreshing that the senior citizens who are in charge are just killing each other? You know, in this case it's good that we did the killing. So that's some context.

All right, let's talk about how effective we think this will be. Now one of the things people are saying is that this character Soleimani was unique. So was Soleimani unique? Was he unique in the sense that he can't be replaced? Do you think that — have you ever had experience in a big company in which there was somebody you thought couldn't be replaced and then they quit? What happened when the person who couldn't be replaced quit? Nothing. Nothing. You've had that experience, right? The irreplaceable person leaves and it didn't make as much difference as you thought. Didn't make much difference.

So will the quality of work go down in the terrorist, Iran troublemaking world? Maybe, but probably not. I don't think you could depend on it. But it is true that there are people who are singularly capable. He might have been one of those. You know, it's not like working for IBM where the irreplaceable person is a second-line manager. You know, it's a lot easier to find a second-line manager. But this guy might have been special. He might have been special in a few different ways. One of them might be his connections. So he might have good relationships with a lot of people. If you replace him with somebody who doesn't have those same relationships — and I would think relationships are 80% of the game over there — if he doesn't have those relationships, maybe that person is less effective.

I've always thought that killing terrorist leaders, starting from the top and working your way down as they replace the leader, it has to lower the average IQ of the leadership, doesn't it? It doesn't seem likely that if the top guys are geniuses — well, maybe the first one who replaces them is pretty bright too, but what about the fourth, the fifth one? Do all these terrorist organizations have a fifth guy who's as good as the top guy? Because the first one or two, maybe the first three are gonna be really good, but you very quickly leave the talent zone and get into the average. So it's possible this guy was special and taking him out makes a difference.

I like also that this sends a message that you can't make us leave anywhere by picking at us. This sends a very clear message that the decision to be in Iraq or not be in Iraq, it's gonna be made by Trump. There's nobody else who gets a say in the decision. This reinforces that, right? Because before you could have said to yourself, well, they're gonna cause so much pain that I guess Trump will be sort of forced to leave because we don't want to lose a service person every few weeks. It's going to be unbearable. But I think you just changed that and you just said all right, let's at least establish whose decision it is. It's mine. I'm gonna kill your general, so it's my decision if I leave.

One of the things you're going to see is Tulsi Gabbard getting a lot of attention. You've already seen her probably on the news. So Tulsi Gabbard's message fits perfectly with what's happening in the world. So she's famous for the don't get involved, don't escalate, and she's pointing out that this escalation could be dangerous. She is right. It could be dangerous.

Dilbert, great analysis. Yeah, you know 99.9 percent of all the people who are going to be talking about this Iranian situation are unqualified to do so, and I'm certainly no exception. But there are some universal things that I think are worth considering. And one is that this guy was as much a problem to Iran as he was to us. So I think you have to at least put that in the mix as a good possibility.

Tucker Carlson doesn't like it. Somebody says well I don't think we've heard from him yet. He's probably still on vacation, but I think you're probably right.

Does it feel like you don't want to talk about any other topic? Have you noticed that this topic just wipes the board clear of other topics? I mean I don't care about the presidential race. I don't care about the impeachment. Kind of suddenly I don't care about any of it. It just focuses because this is such a big deal. But I'm gonna talk about a few other things anyway.

Did you see the photo I had tweeted around of Mike Bloomberg standing on a subway and he's reading a paper? He's just standing there. And he tweets that he stands on the subway like it's gonna be some I'm-a-man-of-the-people thing, similar to his tweet about the cubicles. And there were so many persuasion mistakes in that. I tweeted it and asked people to spot them all, and people spotted even more than I saw.

But here's the thing. You don't want pictures of your leaders looking not like leaders if you're running for president. I just think he's completely misreading the mood of the public. You know, we don't mind if our mayor is casual. You might even be okay with your governor being a little casual. But I think it's a complete misreading of the American mind and also a misreading of what's important. I think we want a president who looks like a president. I think we wanted Trump because he wore a suit every day and he arrived even as a candidate on a jet that looked like Air Force One. Trump played the part of a president from day one.

Mike Bloomberg is trying to do this man-of-the-people stuff and I'm thinking well that's great, you know, we love that you're a man of the people. In fact, by the way, I have positive feelings about Mike Bloomberg. He's brilliant. I think he means well. I think he wants what's best for the country. Very positive thoughts about him. But he's so completely wrong about what I think — my opinion about what the citizens want from a president. The president is not just an employee. He's also a style preference. He's our mascot. He's the face. He's the brand. And I don't think people want that casual.

So there's a cult expert named Steven Hassan who has been writing books and doing interviews and stuff talking about how Trump supporters are a cult. Now he used to be in a cult and he escaped the cult and now he writes about people who have been brainwashed by cults. And so he says based on his expertise and research that Trump supporters are like a cult. And he tweeted this in support of that theory. He says when you look at every characteristic on