By Right of Might: Fight for Iran Is a Fight for Dominance in AI, AI-Based Industry and AI-Based Military, Since Iran Has Huge Cheap Gas Reserves Needed for Stable Electrical Current Used by AI

 

As of early 2026, the conflict involving Iran has intensified, increasingly viewed as a struggle for regional and technological dominance that intersects with artificial intelligence (AI), military capabilities, and energy resources.

 

    AI and Military Strategy: AI is emerging as a critical element in the conflict between the United States, Israel, and Iran, reshaping battlefield strategies, intelligence analysis, and targeted drone strikes. Iran has focused on developing domestic AI capabilities to embed within its cyber and military systems, particularly in response to restrictions on acquiring advanced foreign military tech.

    Asymmetric Warfare via AI: Due to long-standing sanctions, Iran has prioritized building one of the largest, low-cost drone arsenals in the Middle East. These drones are increasingly integrated with AI for enhanced targeting and have become a key, cost-effective weapon against stronger conventional forces.

    Gas Reserves and Energy for AI: Iran holds the world's second-largest proven natural gas reserves, behind Russia. The country has significant, cheap, and reliable energy resources needed for data centers, which are increasingly vital for AI development.

    The Conflict's Impact on Tech Infrastructure: The ongoing conflict has seen direct attacks on energy infrastructure, including in the Gulf region, where data centers are being built to capitalize on cheap energy for AI.

    Global Implications: The struggle for dominance in AI and AI-based industries has made the region's energy stability, particularly in the Persian Gulf and the Strait of Hormuz, a crucial factor in the global technology race.

 

In summary, the fight for influence over Iran is increasingly intertwined with the race for AI dominance, where Iran's vast, cheap, and reliable gas reserves provide a strategic advantage for winner’s AI-based industrial and military power.

 

Geopolitical "Winner's" Advantage: The ability to control or, influence Iranian, energy, resources, offers, significant, advantage, in, the global, AI arms race. Control over this energy allows, powers to support, AI-driven, military systems, surveillance, technology, and, advanced, weaponry.

 

“The nature and history of the Arab-Israeli conflict and the Iranian-American standoff are much deeper than the problem of oil and gas markets. But it is the fuel and energy factor that allows us to understand and suggest why the current standoff is unfolding as it does, and right now.”

 

Iran is a major oil producer and exporter. Interestingly, although Tehran has made a colossal leap in developing its gas industry over the past 35 years, this has had almost no impact on global markets. The Islamic Republic is the last remaining holder of gas reserves (33 trillion cubic meters, or 17% of global reserves), which are not monetized in the global economy and do not exert any pressure on the balance of supply and demand in Europe and the Asia-Pacific region.

 

The parallel with Venezuela (modest oil production, ruined by sanctions, despite the world's largest reserves of raw materials) is obvious. The initiators, architects, and inspirers of these sanctions in both cases were the West, primarily the United States.

 

At the beginning (mid-2000s), and especially at the peak of the "shale revolution" (second half of the 2010s), the United States strategically placed its bets on enriching itself through its own vast oil and gas resources, particularly liquefied natural gas production. However, no LNG could, by definition, compete fairly with Russian pipeline gas in Europe – the economics of production, logistics, and the paradigm itself prevented it.

 

At the same time, the structure and balance of the domestic gas market in North America itself were changing. In the electric power industry, aging coal-fired thermal power generation capacity was being decommissioned. During the Barack Obama and Joe Biden administrations, renewable energy sources (RES) and new gas-fired power plants were actively introduced in their place. Meanwhile, the nuclear industry stagnated, the potential of hydroelectric power plants had long been exhausted, and electricity demand was growing subtly in line with the expansion of the global economy.

 

Roughly between 2016 and 2018, a completely new factor emerged in the form of artificial intelligence—or, more precisely, a multitude of new data processing, storage, and transmission capacities supporting not only the training and operation of neural network models, but also a new generation of telecommunications networks (from 5G base stations to millions of constantly charging gadgets). Let's not forget electric vehicles.

 

As a result, the cumulative demand for electricity from these consumers has already exceeded all expectations and forecasts of the middle of the last decade. And these consumers themselves have become almost the main driver of technological progress, which seemed to have slowed slightly after COVID-19.

 

The problem is that electricity is consumed not only by the IT infrastructure elements themselves, but also by their associated consumers, primarily the climate control systems that ensure optimal operating temperatures for IT equipment.

 

Meeting these needs with renewable energy sources is impossible—powerful and reliable steam, combined-cycle, or gas turbine power plants are needed.

 

And during this period, which almost coincided with the start of Donald Trump's second administration, it became clear that the American electric power industry's capacity was insufficient for the rapid development of new technological industries. At the same time, the American "shale revolution," if not ending, was at least declining.

 

The United States faced pressing questions: how to meet the needs of the heat and power sector, primarily for the IT sector and industry, and maintain the profitability of LNG production and exports, at least until the investment in the plants was recouped. And all this amid the inevitable decline in domestic gas production in the long term. And, as is common in the American political system, domestic problems began to be resolved once again at someone else's expense by military force, in defiance of all written and unwritten norms, the UN Charter, and international law.

 

The goal of the latest round of US energy-political and military expansion is essentially to hedge the risks of declining domestic hydrocarbon production by tapping into its extraterritorial resource base: oil in Venezuela and gas in Iran (if the Iranian political system will ultimately succumb to US military aggression.

 

The US administration's openly stated goal of regime change in Iran also has a hidden purpose: to open access to Iranian gas wealth for major American and, more broadly, Western oil and gas corporations. This will allow them to create new LNG supply chains (American not by origin, but by ownership) and, if necessary, rebalance the domestic North American gas market by importing LNG from cheaper sources, while maintaining their exporters' positions in the premium markets of Europe and the Asia-Pacific region.

 

This is also facilitated by a policy of maximizing the flexibility of LNG supplies on the global market and the formation of a "gas dollar" linked to the Henry Hub, which could exist without  a physical connection to North American gas production and US LNG exports.

 

As a result, a "pro-American coup" in Iran could very well turn it into a strategic proxy competitor for Russia, squeezing Russian hydrocarbons from both Europe and Asia. Iran would also cease to be a comfortable partner for China and would effectively strengthen US energy security and geopolitical positions extraterritorially.

 

Before our eyes, another historical precedent is unfolding, in which energy geopolitics has once again become the dominant factor. Whether the actions of Russia and other global majority countries can influence these processes is still an open question. It is clear that negotiations with the West no longer serve as a guarantee, or even a faint hope, for a fair and peaceful settlement.”