While chess originated in India, the game as we know it came from Persia (now known as Iran). It was from Persia that the term for the final, winning move came: “Checkmate.” The original Farsi phrase is “shāh māt,” which literally means “the king is dead.” No matter how fast or slow a chess game, whether it takes minutes or weeks, it ends when the king is dead. Israel has taken note of that fact and has decided to fight a new type of warfare, ignoring the pawns and killing the king in the first instance.
Of the world’s 1.6 billion Muslims, about 7-10% of them are “in it to win it.” While 10% is a small percentage, 160,000,000 fanatics are still a good-sized global army, and many of them are troops in the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps. They will fight to the death, buoyed up by promises of martyrdom’s rich rewards (mostly creepy sex but, perhaps, a glut of fine raisins).
But no matter how fanatic your troops are, they still need leaders. Think of them as savage sheep. If led to battle, they’ll fight fiercely, but if there is no shepherd, they lose the plot, often becoming frightened or disheartened, and almost all will scatter.
Image created using ChatGPT (which got the savage sheep, sort of, but couldn't figure out how to do alternating colored squares)
It’s this savage sheep concept that gets me to my chess metaphor. Throughout history, wars have been fought by the little people, the pawns, whether conscripts, professional soldiers, or the savage sheep. This means that all wars have, ultimately, been wars of attrition, aimed at reducing an enemy’s numerical advantage. Famously, Stalin beat back the Nazi invasion of Russia, not just with help from the Russian winter, but by throwing so many (often unarmed) men in front of Nazi guns that the Germans finally ran out of bullets.
The attrition approach is much more costly if the troops on the ground are truly fanatic. The fanatics will keep fighting until their leaders finally surrender and command them to lay down their arms. Think of Hiroo Onodo, who, refusing to believe “propaganda” about WWII’s end, surrendered in 1974 only because Japan found his former commander, who ordered him to do so.
Israel understands that Iran’s IRGC troops have been inculcated into this level of fanaticism. Israel hasn’t forgotten the lessons of the Iran-Iraq War in the 1980s, nor has it missed the fanaticism displayed by Iran’s proxies, whether Hezbollah, Hamas, or the Houthis. Sadly, it’s been almost impossible to decapitate Hamas, because of the hostages, because Hamas leadership is deliberately embedded among civilians, and because so many antisemitic leftist nations (and, in America, leftist individuals and groups, including the Democrat party) have thrown their weight behind Hamas.
However, Israel succeeded in a checkmate against Hezbollah with its brilliant pager war. This move, ten years in the making, bypassed an infantry battle to wipe out everyone important enough to be in the leadership pipeline. Checkmate. The result was that, when Israel instructed Hezbollah to stay out of the Iran war, Hezbollah obeyed.
What we’ve seen since June 13 is that Israel is using an expanded version of the quick “checkmate” against Iran. Israel knew that it could not win by pitting its nation of 9.8 million against Iran’s 88 million. The only way to end the war is with a “checkmate”—that is, by instantly decapitating Iran’s leadership class:
Here it is!!
— Hillel Fuld (@HilzFuld) June 17, 2025
I think I got them all, but then again, by the time I hit publish, Israel will probably have eliminated 20 more terrorists!
For now, as far as I can tell, here are all the senior terrorists across all the organizations that Israel has assassinated!!
What a… pic.twitter.com/QI7NwyAtqO
Meanwhile, while Khamenei is still alive, he’s in hiding, and even Reuters, in a weirdly sympathetic article (“Iran’s 86-year-old Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei cuts an increasingly lonely figure...”), cannot make it appear as if the “Supreme Leader” is leading anybody anywhere.
Checkmate.
Israel also wiped out the leadership class’s weapons, first by destroying its anti-aircraft abilities, followed by wiping out all of its nuclear infrastructure but for the Fordow installation, its missile production and launchers, its airbases and military installations, and much of the military’s energy and support infrastructure.
Checkmate.
Significantly, the pawns mostly remain unharmed. Israel is doing its best not to hurt the Persian people, their homes and businesses, or the basic infrastructure of their lives. Israel doesn’t want to fall into the “you break it, you own” school of having to be responsible for Iran after the war. Instead, it’s getting rid of Iran’s destructive abilities while leaving a viable country behind for a people who have come to loathe their vicious leadership class and desperately want something new:
BREAKING: Iranians are chanting:
— Eyal Yakoby (@EYakoby) June 17, 2025
“This is the final battle, Pahlavi will return.”
pic.twitter.com/xKBjUbdjeo
Iranian girls remove their hijabs, take over their school, and chant “Death to the dictator and the Islamic regime”.
— Dr. Maalouf (@realMaalouf) June 18, 2025
❤️ pic.twitter.com/K72zlBMSOv
Persia may have brought the board game of chess to its apex, but Israel is bringing the reality of chess to the real world of modern warfare, and it’s doing so brilliantly.
Checkmate!