Pepe Escobar, Zulfiqar Ali: BREAKS- North Korea Just Delivered Carrier-Killer Drones To Iran

by Transition Protocol(opens in new tab) [9-8-2026] Pepe Escobar(bio)(opens in new tab).

Iran's leadership has concluded that this war cannot be settled at a negotiating table. In this episode, recorded 8 September 2026, Pepe Escobar — reporting from Seoul — and Zulfiqar Ali lay out how every diplomatic off-ramp brokered by Pakistan collapsed, why Tehran has shifted from a defensive to an offensive posture, and what that means for the US naval blockade, the Strait of Hormuz and the wider Iran war.

Zulfiqar Ali reports, from sources inside Iran's power structures, that North Korea has delivered a cache of stealth underwater attack drones to Iran through a corridor involving China and Pakistan — and that the decision to go on the offensive was cleared by Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei, President Pezeshkian, Speaker Ghalibaf and Foreign Minister Araghchi. This is source-based reporting and is not independently verified; it is presented and labelled as such throughout. Escobar assesses what the American counter-response could look like, why Russia and China are now backing Iran with more than diplomacy, and what a strategic defeat in West Asia and Ukraine at the same time would mean for American power.

Pepe Escobar is a veteran geopolitical correspondent and a founder of this channel, reporting this week from Seoul and travelling to Moscow. Zulfiqar Ali is a commentator with long-standing sources across Iran and Pakistan. Transition Protocol is an independent, source-driven geopolitics and economics channel — we tell you what is confirmed, what is developing, and what is a single source, every time.