Secret Plan to Destroy BRICS and Crash China w/ Ryan Perkins
Executive Summary
A first-time guest interview broadcast September 9, 2026: Ryan Perkins, a Beijing-based geopolitics analyst (Ryan Perkins Geopolitics on Substack, ChinaIndicator on X), meeting the hosts after their recent Russia trip and fresh from the Vladivostok economic forum. Christoforou's framing sets the stakes: many assume the United States is blundering through the Middle East crisis; Perkins thinks there is a more considered strategy. The thesis, published speculatively in April as the pro-yuan hypothesis: he started writing shortly after the war began in March because the official picture didn't look right. Across ten to twenty years of policy papers, two constants held everywhere - a regime-change operation in Iran was consistently considered unlikely to succeed, and in any military operation Iran would close the strait. If both outcomes were known in advance, the closure may have been the intention: a fertilizer crisis starting at the northern hemisphere planting season, and an energy shortage created and hidden at once - long-term infrastructure destruction across the region, Venezuela, EU sanctions on Russian energy exports - with prices suppressed through financial means. The optimum synchronization of the two weapons is the September-October harvest, six months after the fertilizer shock began. Last Friday's Duran video opening with Bessent on an energy shock read to him as vindication; the incompetence narrative, he argues, is the standard bridge between a policy imperative and public acceptance in a democracy. And at the center sits Scott Bessent - a man who made billions manipulating markets for leverage over currencies. The walkthrough maps the weapon. Prices: $100 within the week, 120-125 by month's end, around $150 a barrel by year's end if supply carries on unchanged. Three targets: China primary - economic containment extending the military and political regime; fracturing BRICS solidarity; and an object warning to the global south weighing BRICS against the dollar zone's short-term safety. India is the most exposed major economy - fertilizer and feedstock through the strait, 80% of oil imports through it, a climbing import bill pressuring the rupee toward depreciation spiral. Brazil is squeezed on fertilizer (the Reuters report of Brazilian soybean farmers losing their edge - on air 'three or four weeks ago'; verified June 8, thirteen weeks prior). China's two vulnerabilities, the kind Bessent would have identified: industrial value added - the SME sector absorbed the pandemic's inflation wave and was bridged by a government package because that shock was short-term, while an eighteen-month-to-two-year squeeze leaves nowhere to bridge to; and the offshore RMB pool - half of China's oil bought in RMB (45% Saudi, 20% UAE, 99% Russian), the overflow changing hands openly in Hong Kong, Singapore and London: one currency, two exchange rates, a peg to defend with buy-backs or rate rises that preclude the SME support. The aim: an industrial recession the government cannot cushion. What can China do? It has prepared for at least ten years - fifteen, possibly twenty: renewables and EVs to energy-proof the economy; this year, swap agreements and an end to dollar bond issuance. Mercouris sharpens the danger: a currency crisis forcing a very sharp, dramatic rate increase - a societal shock given SME employment - and asks why protect the floating RMB at all. Because cutting it off is the unthinkable option: the moment the entire BRICS financial architecture starts to crumble. One tool exists (borrowing RMB against RMB bonds from the central bank); the trap's deviousness is that defending the currency excludes the pandemic-style bridge. A real dilemma. The reassessments follow. The tariff war, in this light, was less ramshackle than portrayed - a way to test vulnerabilities and map retaliation pathways, with Trump's senile-old-man persona as cover. Mercouris supplies the lineage: the offshore Eurodollar pool broke Bretton Woods; Soros broke the ERM in 1992; Bessent was active in the ERM crisis, did something similar in Japan in 2012 and in Iran this January - he has a record. Hence the hosts' probe: energy and food shocks hitting the West too, games with western stability hoping to crash China - a very big place to crash; is this a fund manager's job or a Treasury Secretary's? The objective, answered: not to break China but to create enough leverage to force a Plaza-Accord-type agreement - the 1985 sequence of revaluation, crushed exports, cheap money, bubbles, US rate rises and the deflationary decade - to slow and contain China while America reindustrializes. Which, Perkins argues, cannot happen: no blueprint exists, and the dollar's reserve status is why America de-industrialized in the first place; Germany plays the same role in the Eurozone, as Britain did in the late nineteenth century. Then the pivot-back evidence. India pressed openly for a Ukraine ceasefire (Modi at Bishkek, the Tashkent intervention), Lula likewise; the BRICS financial architecture that had momentum under Russia's presidency stalled under Brazil's (everything shifted to green issues) and went nowhere under India's - strongly suspected US pressure, since that infrastructure is exactly what would have given China options. The visible sign: India bought fertilizer aggressively on the open market - urea at roughly twice pre-crisis prices - and subsidized it to farmers, moving the Hormuz shock straight onto the government balance sheet; budget strain and rupee pressure followed: the first visible sign the trap is working. India won't announce leaving BRICS; it will behave in ways that make participation meaningless. Mercouris's Moscow account, from officials in the room: enormous 2024 payments work culminating at Kazan; Brazilian stalling, acrimony, South Africa and India siding with Brazil; the real brake being officials' personal fear of US sanctions. Radhika Desai told Perkins the same at Vladivostok. From the forum itself: Putin's speech light on geopolitics, the Q&A light on Ukraine - but the point made that Russia is happy to negotiate an ending strictly between the two belligerents: a neat get-out after Bishkek, since Kyiv won't agree. Indonesia's president was there, keen on trade and the free-trade area; Southeast Asia was the forum's focus, with Mercouris's fold on Indonesia's Soviet-era links and the new president's interest in reviving them. The close: Power of Siberia 2 is going ahead and fast-tracked - the problem is the route. The original alignment through Mongolia was 'pretty certain'; at the conference Perkins was told the delay comes primarily from the Chinese side - not distrust of Mongolia but of what might happen to Mongolia - with a new route around it into northeastern China being worked out. The name change itself (verified: renamed 'Power of Baikal' on September 2) points to the new route and to priority. The Mongolians, who had negotiated transit fees, energy-infrastructure investment and a share of the gas, take the blow. And the closing awareness point: ask any taxi driver in Beijing about the Iran war and they will tell you it is about China. That awareness, Perkins says, is not recent - it underpinned the last decade's political changes, from the constitutional continuity amendment to the socialist reorientation of education, the preparations of a leadership that understood this was coming. 'We live in very interesting times - as the Chinese themselves I believe actually do say.'
Chapters & Key Takeaways
12 takeawaysThe thesis's foundation: 10-20 years of policy papers held two constants - regime change in Iran unlikely to succeed, strait closure certain in any war - so the closure may have been the intention, not a side effect.
The synchronization timetable: fertilizer shock at planting season plus hidden energy shortage peaks at the September-October harvest - published speculatively in April as the pro-yuan hypothesis.
The weapon's targeting: China primary (economic containment extended), BRICS solidarity fractured, and an object warning to the global south weighing BRICS against the dollar zone.
The core mechanism: half of China's oil bought in RMB creates an offshore pool traded in Hong Kong, Singapore and London - one currency, two rates, and a peg that rising oil spending makes ever costlier to defend.
The trap's design: defending the offshore peg with higher rates precludes the SME fiscal bridge that worked in the pandemic - engineering an industrial recession the government cannot cushion.
The sharpest line of the episode: cutting off the floating RMB would be the moment the entire BRICS financial architecture starts to crumble - the option China cannot take.
The objective reframed: not breaking China but creating enough leverage to force a Plaza-Accord-type agreement - contain and slow China to buy reindustrialization time.
The counter-argument: reindustrialization has no blueprint, and the dollar's reserve status is why the US de-industrialized in the first place - Germany in the Eurozone tells the same story.
The first visible sign: India bought urea at twice pre-crisis prices and subsidized it to farmers, moving the Hormuz shock onto the government balance sheet - budget strain and rupee pressure already showing.
The BRICS stall account from officials in the room: Russia's 2024 Kazan-capped payments work, Brazil's presidency stalling into green issues amid acrimony, and officials' personal fear of US sanctions as the real brake.
The pipeline news: PoS2 is going ahead and fast-tracked, but the Chinese side - fearing what might happen to Mongolia - is working out a new route around it, into northeastern China like PoS1.
The awareness argument: the constitutional continuity change and the socialist-education reorientation were preparation for exactly this confrontation, understood at both elite and taxi-driver level.
Deep Read
Reading the Iran War as a Designed Trap: Fertilizer, Energy, and the Squeeze on China
Ryan Perkins, joining The Duran for the first time, opened with the origin of his hypothesis: he began writing shortly after the war started in March because the initial picture did not look right to…
Read the full articleInterview Highlights
8 exchanges- Q
What does Ryan Perkins think the Americans are actually up to with the Iran war?
Alexander Mercouris asked02:19ARyan Perkins answeredPerkins started writing about this in March because the official picture didn't look right. Across ten to twenty years of policy papers, two constants held everywhere: a regime-change operation in Iran — short and sharp or a protracted air campaign — was considered unlikely to succeed, and in any military operation Iran would close the strait. So he worked the implications: a fertilizer crisis starting at the northern hemisphere planting season; an energy shortage being created and hidden at the same time — long-term energy infrastructure destruction across the region, Venezuela, EU sanctions increasingly targeting Russia's energy exports — with prices suppressed through financial means. If both are weapons, the optimum moment for them to synchronize is the September-October harvest window, roughly six months after the fertilizer shock began — a timetable he published in April. When Bessent opened Alex's video last Friday saying the world is about to enter an energy shock, Perkins took that as vindication. His conclusion: the primary purpose of the Iran war is to shape the economic landscape to facilitate the trap — and the incompetence narrative is the standard bridge between a policy imperative and public acceptance in a democracy.
- Q
Where do prices go, who are the three targets, and what are China's two vulnerabilities?
Alexander Mercouris asked09:52ARyan Perkins answeredPrices: breaking $100 this week, possibly $120-125 by month's end, around $150 a barrel by year's end if supply carries on unchanged. The weapon has three targets: China primary — economic containment behind the military and political containment; fracturing the solidarity of BRICS; and an object warning to the global south — BRICS solidarity or the relative short-term safety of the dollar zone. India is the most exposed major economy: most of its fertilizer and feedstock comes via Hormuz, 80% of its oil imports do too, and a climbing import bill pressures the rupee toward an import-price depreciation spiral. Brazil is heavily exposed on fertilizer — Reuters reported Brazilian soybean farmers losing their edge over US growers. China's two vulnerabilities: industrial value added — the huge small and medium manufacturing sector absorbed the pandemic's global inflation wave, was bridged by a government package then because the shock was inherently short-term, and cannot be bridged the same way across an eighteen-month-to-two-year squeeze; and the offshore RMB pool — one currency, two exchange rates, and the more oil China buys in RMB, the more changes hands in the open market, pressuring the offshore rate and forcing a choice between defending the peg with higher rates and supporting SMEs. The aim: an industrial recession the government cannot cushion.
- Q
How has China been preparing — and can anything blunt the offshore-RMB trap?
Alexander Mercouris asked26:23ARyan Perkins answeredChina has been preparing for at least ten years — more like fifteen, possibly twenty: the senior leadership understood some kind of economic war was coming. The preparation shows in the enormous renewable-energy and electric-vehicle investment (energy-proofing the economy), and this year in the financial sector: currency swap agreements, an end to bond issuance in dollars, balance sheets being put in order. Mercouris folds in two points: the danger is not a gradual rise but a currency crisis forcing a very sharp, dramatic interest-rate increase — a societal shock, given how many people the SME sector employs; and his probe — why protect the floating RMB at all, what happens if China cuts it off? Perkins: that is exactly the unthinkable option — it would be the moment the entire BRICS financial architecture starts to crumble. One counter-tool so far: institutions are allowed to borrow RMB against RMB bonds straight from the central bank, to discourage selling when prices drop. And that is what makes the trap so devious — raising rates to make the RMB more attractive to hold precludes precisely the fiscal package that bridged the pandemic shock. A real dilemma.
- Q
Is the goal really to crash China — or to force a new Plaza Accord?
Alexander Mercouris asked31:41ARyan Perkins answeredNot to break China — on Perkins's reading the objective is to create enough economic leverage to force a Plaza-Accord-type agreement: not a carbon copy, but functionally similar. The 1985 precedent: Japan agreed to let its currency revalue; the revaluation crushed the export sector; the government answered with an enormous flood of cheap money; that inflated asset bubbles across the economy; US rate rises then deflated them, producing the long deflationary decade. The aim here: slow the Chinese economy and contain it for a period, buying time to reindustrialize. That, he argues, cannot happen — there is no blueprint for reindustrializing a country, and the primary reason the United States de-industrialized is the dollar's reserve status: an empire of capital runs time horizons and capital structures incompatible with industry; reindustrialization comes, if and when the dollar ceases to be the reserve currency. Germany tells the same story — de-industrializing since reunification, accelerated by the Eurozone, playing within it a role analogous to America's in the dollar zone, as Britain did in the late nineteenth century. The playbook is on the desk: the Eurodollar pool broke Bretton Woods; Soros broke the ERM in 1992; Bessent ran a similar play in Japan in 2012 and in Iran this January.
- Q
Are India and Brazil pivoting back toward the US — and why did the BRICS payment system stall?
Alexander Mercouris asked41:23ARyan Perkins answeredThe alternative financial architecture had a lot of momentum under Russia's BRICS presidency — and stalled as soon as Brazil took it over, shifting everything to green issues, then went nowhere again under India. Perkins strongly suspects US pressure: that supporting infrastructure outside the dollar zone is exactly what would have given China options now. The visible sign is India. Instead of the harvest-time food shortfall he expected, India went out and aggressively bought fertilizer and feedstock on the open market at much higher prices — urea at roughly twice the pre-crisis price — then handed it to farmers at hugely subsidized prices: the Hormuz shock moved straight onto the government balance sheet. That is creating budget problems and already pressuring the rupee — in his words, the first visible sign that the trap is working. India will not announce leaving BRICS; it will just behave in ways that make participation meaningless — the Modi ceasefire interventions fit that. Mercouris's Moscow account, from officials in the room: enormous Russian work through the 2024 Kazan summit on payment systems, Brazilian stalling and acrimony (South Africa and India siding with Brazil), and the real brake — officials in Brazil and especially India personally afraid of US sanctions against themselves. Radhika Desai told Perkins the same at Vladivostok.
- Q
What did Putin's Vladivostok speech signal — and what stood out at the forum?
Alexander Mercouris asked48:15ARyan Perkins answeredThe speech itself had little on geopolitics — and even the question-and-answer session had very little on Ukraine. What caught Perkins: Putin made a point of saying Russia is more than happy to negotiate toward an ending of the Ukraine crisis, but it has to be between Russia and Ukraine, the two belligerent parties. That surprised him — until he decided it is quite a neat get-out after Bishkek: the Ukrainians will not agree to direct negotiations, so the formula sounds accommodating while kicking the ball down the road. Beyond that: the president of Indonesia was there, very keen to improve relations and trade with Russia — the new free-trade area a potential area of cooperation; people do not realize how close that part of Russia is to Southeast Asia; and relations with Southeast Asia were a big focus of the Eastern Economic Forum. Mercouris's fold: Indonesia had very strong economic links with the USSR until the mid-1960s, when it all went away; the new president — historically associated with the pro-American regime that took over — seems interested in going back to the strong relationship the Russians used to have.
- Q
What is happening with Power of Siberia 2 and the Mongolia route?
Alexander Mercouris asked51:37ARyan Perkins answeredIt is going ahead, and being fast-tracked as much as it can be. The problem now is the choice of route. The original alignment was fixed to go through Mongolia — that had been pretty certain — but at Vladivostok Perkins was told the delay comes primarily from the Chinese side: not that they distrust Mongolia, but that they distrust what might happen to Mongolia in the near future. China is concerned about the security of routing through a third country, and they are working out a new route that would go around Mongolia and presumably come in through northeastern China, the same way Power of Siberia 1 does. The name change is itself a sign that the project is a priority. The losers are the Mongolians, who had negotiated not just transit fees but a great deal of investment into Mongolian energy infrastructure and a share of the gas — this is a big blow to them.
- Q
Does the Chinese public already know the Iran war is about China — and what has that awareness produced?
Alexander Mercouris asked54:30ARyan Perkins answeredYes — and it is not recent. That awareness underpinned much of the political change in China over the last decade. One reason the constitution was altered to allow Xi Jinping to stay past his second term: the senior leadership understood this was coming, and judged that navigating it needed continuity of leadership and a reinforced ideological backbone — there is still a large liberal-leaning, pro-US community, particularly in the big coastal cities, and the reorientation back toward a more socialist education system was preparation precisely for this, because those were the weaknesses likely to be exploited. And the awareness is ordinary, not elite: get in a taxi in Beijing and, if the driver starts talking about the Iran war, he will tell you it is actually all about China; on Ukraine they will say it is ultimately about regime change in Russia and, by extension, policy toward China. We live in very interesting times — as the Chinese themselves, he believes, actually do say.