Fouad Shabani: Living on the Border Between Work, Thought, and Responsibility

Fouad Shabani: Living on the Border Between Work, Thought, and Responsibility

A narrative biography based on the available understanding of the author’s life, concerns, works, and intellectual path

I am Fouad Shabani, an independent writer and researcher in the field of strategic studies. If I were to introduce myself neither through titles nor through the list of my books, but through the question that underlies many of my efforts, I would say: I am seeking to understand the mechanisms that shape human lives, create crises, and sometimes push the world to the brink of war, collapse, or irreversible decisions.

For me, writing is not merely a literary activity or a means of expressing personal opinion. Writing is a way of understanding, testing hypotheses, recording what may be forgotten in the noise of daily life, and trying to turn knowledge into something that can be useful in the real world.

My life unfolds in two different realms: on the one hand, the tangible world of work, family responsibility, wages, and economic constraints; on the other hand, the world of books, research, political analysis, and efforts to find ways that might reduce the severity of human crises. The gap between these two worlds is one of the most important features of my life—a gap that has not always been easy, nor have I been able to ignore it.

1. Life in the Real World

I have lived in Iran, and an important part of my everyday experience has been shaped by working in an industrial environment. I work as a CNC machine operator in a wood-products factory—work that requires focus, precision, and the endurance of physical and mental pressure.

This experience is highly important for my understanding. I do not speak about economics, livelihoods, power, and social structures merely from the distance of a study desk. My daily life is intertwined with the question of wages, family expenses, the value of money, and the constraints on economic choices. I know that for many people, having a big idea alone does not change anything; an idea must be joined by time, energy, capital, and real opportunities in order to have a chance of being realized.

My work has not always been easy or suited to my abilities and expectations. However, the responsibility of providing for my family has meant that I cannot make decisions solely on the basis of job dissatisfaction. I have a wife and two children, and family is, for me, part of the meaning of responsibility. I cannot measure the future only by the standard of my personal aspirations; my decisions have consequences for those whose lives are intertwined with mine.

This situation creates a permanent contradiction: part of me wants more time for reading, research, translation, and writing; another part knows that real life does not wait for a book to be completed or an article to be published.

As a result, many of my intellectual efforts must proceed alongside professional and family responsibilities, not under ideal conditions free from livelihood concerns.

Perhaps this very experience has reminded me that economic and political analysis, if it cannot clarify its relationship to people’s real lives, risks becoming an ineffective mental exercise.

2. The Book: The Starting Point of an Intellectual Path

One of the important experiences of my life is the translation into Persian of The Death of Money by James Rickards, a work known in Persian as “The Death of Money: The Collapse of the International Monetary and Financial Systems.”

For me, this project was not merely the transfer of text from one language to another. I was dealing with a world of concepts related to money, the international financial system, crisis, and the fragility of economic structures—concepts whose understanding requires attention to the relationships among economics, politics, and power.

In the narrative and documents related to this project, the stated aim has been to confront usury-based economics and to raise economic awareness. I have also pursued the idea of publishing the book file for free as a public gift and a kind of scholarly and cultural endowment.

For me, the value of a book is not limited to the sale of its copies. A book can be intellectual capital that remains available to others even after the author’s lifetime. Of course, this view does not mean disregarding the costs of production, printing, and publication. An author also needs financial resources and the means to live in order to continue working. The question is how to find a balance between public access to knowledge and the sustainable possibility of continuing intellectual activity.

Translation and publication of the book shaped part of my identity: the identity of someone who wants to cross linguistic boundaries, bring ideas to new audiences, and contribute to the formation of public conversations.

In later years, this path gradually expanded from translation to authorship, from authorship to strategic analysis, and from analysis to designing frameworks for understanding and preventing crisis.

3. From Monetary Economics to the Study of Power

Gradually, my questions went beyond economics. I wanted to know why some systems, despite having extensive resources, become vulnerable to crisis; why some political decisions create costs far greater than the initial estimate; why false narratives can continue to affect a society even after the truth is revealed; and why sometimes actors who speak of war are in practice unable to control its consequences.

These questions brought me closer to the field of strategic studies—a field in which politics, economics, security, technology, history, and human behavior cannot be fully separated from one another.

Along this path, I gradually became interested in an approach that, instead of explaining everything by a single cause, examines several levels of reality at the same time. Demographic and livelihood pressures, elite competition, state capacity, political legitimacy, and external shocks can each play a role in the emergence of a crisis. But their importance is not the same in all countries and all periods.

For this reason, I try to distinguish among data, interpretation, and hypothesis. For me, the attractiveness of a theory is not by itself proof of its correctness. A strategic explanation must be able to withstand difficult questions, contrary evidence, and the probability of its own error.

This approach does not mean claiming absolute neutrality or immunity from error. No researcher stands outside their own human experiences and limitations. What matters is the effort to reveal assumptions, correct conclusions, and avoid turning personal preference into established fact.

I want my writings, even when they examine a sensitive or controversial subject, to be based on this principle.

4. America: The Study of a Complex Power

One of the main lines of my research is the study of the structure of power in the United States. In the book project America’s Two Faces: God, Oil, and Lust: How Religion, Petroleum, and Desire Shaped U.S. Politics, I have sought to examine the relationship among religion, oil, human desire, the market, and politics in the formation of America’s power structure.

The Persian title of this project can be translated as “America’s Two Faces: God, Oil, and Lust”—a title that is deliberately provocative, but the aim of the research should not be limited to sensationalism.

My main question is how forces with different logics can become intertwined in a single political system. Religion can be a source of legitimacy and identity; oil can contribute to material power, mobility, and geopolitical influence; and desire, consumption, and the market can create economic and cultural drivers. Alongside these, debt and deferred consumption are also important for understanding contemporary political economy.

My intention is not to present a one-dimensional image of America; I neither want to see it merely as the embodiment of freedom and progress, nor to reduce all its developments to conspiracy or a single hidden motive. To understand a great power, one must see at the same time its institutions, interests, contradictions, limitations, and capacity for reform.

This perspective has continued in my other projects, including research on the genealogy of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, a forged work whose publication history and political exploitation show how a fabricated claim can continue its social and political life even after the forgery is exposed.

In this project, it is important to me to distinguish among established fact, probable historical reconstruction, and controversial hypothesis. Subjects such as forgery, political propaganda, and hate-mongering require historical accuracy and discipline in citation more than they require hasty conclusions.

What links these projects together is an interest in the hidden and visible mechanisms of power—not in the sense that behind every event there is necessarily a hidden designer, but in the sense that political outcomes are usually the product of interaction among a set of interests, institutions, beliefs, and historical conditions.

5. “Hot Summer”: Searching for a Model for Understanding Iran

In the project “Hot Summer: The Architecture of Crisis Equilibrium in Iran,” I have tried to examine Iran’s situation in an analytical language and from a strategic perspective.

The central idea of this work is attention to a situation that can neither be considered complete stability nor necessarily a definitive prelude to collapse. A system may continue to survive while enduring multiple pressures; but this survival does not necessarily mean effectiveness, public satisfaction, or the resolution of fundamental problems.

In the conceptual framework of this project, I have used terms such as “crisis equilibrium,” “cold peace,” and “inefficient stability” to distinguish among different conditions.

For me, the importance of this distinction lies in the fact that an analyst must not confuse the durability of a structure with its health. Also, the existence of a crisis alone does not prove that collapse is imminent. Political and social systems can endure for long periods under costly and undesirable conditions—just as sometimes rapid and unexpected changes can disrupt previous calculations.

Therefore, instead of definitive prediction, I am interested in identifying mechanisms, constraints, and probable paths.

In research on Iran, the question of livelihoods and household purchasing power also has an important place for me. Macroeconomic figures become meaningful when we can understand their relationship to people’s lives: income lagging behind essential expenses, a young person unable to enter independent life, a family losing the ability to plan long-term, and a workforce spending a large part of its energy on continuing to live.

I pay particular attention to this gap: the distance between what an economic structure shows in statistics and official reports and what people feel in their everyday experience.

This interest does not mean that I regard any personal narrative as a substitute for statistical data. On the contrary, I want to bring data as close as possible to human experience and use them to explain reality better.

6. War: An Issue Beyond Victory and Defeat

One of my most important intellectual concerns is preventing the escalation of crises and preventing miscalculations from turning into war.

In my view, war is not only the product of a conscious decision to attack. Sometimes a combination of incomplete information, mistaken perceptions, political pressure, domestic rivalries, cyber operations, or erroneous outputs of artificial intelligence systems can create a path on which decision-makers gradually lose their peaceful options.

In such a situation, the question is not only which side has greater military power. The more important question is whether there are mechanisms to stop the escalation cycle, verify information, and reverse high-risk decisions.

Within the research framework Global Framework for the Prevention of Escalation and the idea associated with the Golden Window Covenant, I have tried to address this very question: how can a safe interval be created between the occurrence of an incident, the formation of a political perception of it, and the adoption of an irreversible decision?

In this framework, emergency communication, standardized reporting, independent verification, more time for decision-making, and the creation of an exit path from crisis are important.

I do not regard this idea as merely a theoretical discussion. If a mechanism can be designed that prevents even one case of misunderstanding from turning into war, its value should be measured by the lives saved and the damages that did not occur—not only by the amount of attention it receives.

My aim in this work is not to gain fame or to take a political position. I want an idea that could potentially help reduce risk to be made available to others in a clear, assessable, and usable form.

Of course, there is a distance between drafting a proposed framework and its acceptance or implementation by governments and international institutions. I do not ignore this distance. A proposal goes beyond the writing stage when it can pass the test of expert criticism, be understandable to different actors, and find a way to become a practical procedure.

But the difficulty of implementation is not a sufficient reason to abandon intellectual effort.

If a large part of international politics is spent managing the risks of war, why should part of this energy not be devoted to designing mechanisms that reduce the probability of war?

This is one of the questions I want to pursue in the coming years as well.

7. From “Operation Red Shadow” to Understanding the Psychology of Power

Alongside non-fiction research, I have also worked on fiction. The novel “Operation Red Shadow” is one of the projects in which I have pursued the possibility of examining power, surveillance, fear, obedience, and resistance in the form of literary narrative.

In designing this work, I have paid attention to limited first-person narration and the characters’ subjective experience. The influence of dystopian literature, especially the tradition known through works such as We by Yevgeny Zamyatin, has a place in my narrative interests.

For me, story provides another possibility for understanding human beings. Strategic research asks how a structure of power operates; literature can show what it means to live inside that structure.

Theories speak of institutions, decisions, and processes, but a story can turn the anxiety of an individual living under their pressure into a tangible experience. From this perspective, fiction writing and strategic research, despite their methodological differences, are not entirely unrelated for me.

In my literary projects, I have also paid attention to translation and expanding linguistic access, and I have pursued work on English and other language versions. This orientation is part of my broader interest in bringing works beyond geographic and linguistic borders.

Ultimately, I do not want to reduce literature to a tool for proving political theories. A story is valuable when it can give room to breathe to characters, human conflicts, and the moral consequences of decisions—even when political and social questions are at its center.

8. Strategy: The Art of Seeing What Is Not Seen at First Glance

The study of strategic works and books related to power is another part of my intellectual path. In working on The 33 Strategies of War by Robert Greene, I have prepared analytical chapter-by-chapter summaries in Persian—work whose aim is not merely to shorten the text, but to extract the logic of the strategies and understand their application and limitations.

My interest in this field arises from the belief that many failures, whether in politics or in individual and organizational life, are not only related to a lack of resources. Sometimes the problem lies in misdiagnosing the situation, choosing the wrong time, failing to understand the motives of the other side, or becoming trapped in a mental framework that does not allow other options to be seen.

However, strategy should not be considered synonymous with deception, domination, or victory at any cost. A good strategy must be proportionate to the goal, environment, resources, constraints, and consequences of the decision. A strategy that appears successful but whose long-term costs exceed its achievements is not necessarily a successful strategy.

For me, the study of strategy gains real value when it can be used to think better—not to construct a fixed template for all situations.

This same perspective is present in my other research projects: the effort to find patterns without substituting patterns for reality.

9. My Working Method: Between Doubt, Document, and Conclusion

If I were to identify one common principle in my projects, it would be the effort to distinguish what we know from what we imagine or consider probable.

In historical, political, and strategic subjects, a claim may be repeated many times, but repetition does not make it fact. A number may appear in several reports, but without examining the origin of the data, the method of calculation, and the date of publication, it cannot be used with confidence.

For this reason, in my writings I attach importance to verifiable sources, clear citations, direct links, and matching claims with documents. In analyzing controversial subjects, too, I try to distinguish among established fact, probable inference, and disputed hypothesis.

This approach is especially important to me in subjects where public emotions, national identity, political disputes, or fear of war can affect judgment.

I do not want merely to produce a text whose conclusion the reader agrees with from the start. I prefer to write a text that even a reader who disagrees can follow the line of reasoning, examine the sources, and judge the conclusions.

This standard is not easy. Sometimes it means rewriting a large part of a text, discarding an attractive claim, or accepting the fact that the evidence is not sufficient for a definitive conclusion.

But if research is to play a role beyond confirming prior beliefs, it must retain within itself the possibility of revising its view.

I also avoid the excessive use of technical jargon and a dry academic tone. It is important to me that the complexity of the subject be preserved, but that the reader not be forced to pass through a linguistic barrier to understand every sentence. Precise and clear language is not the enemy of deep thought; it can be one of its signs.

At the same time, I know that these principles alone do not guarantee the correctness of my works. No method is a substitute for independent review, expert criticism, and continuous revision. What I can emphasize is a commitment to trying to observe these standards, not a claim of always achieving them.

10. Writing Under Constraints

One of the realities of my life is the gap between intellectual capacity and available resources.

Writing books, printing limited editions, international publication, access to sources, and maintaining research quality all cost money. In conditions where I must simultaneously support my family and continue my day job, covering these costs is not always easy.

Sometimes, in order to continue a project, the main problem is neither a lack of ideas nor even a lack of knowledge, but a lack of time, liquidity, or the opportunity to work with focus.

These constraints cannot be removed with motivational phrases. An interest in writing does not pay printing costs, and the quality of a research project does not by itself guarantee that an audience or income will be found for it.

For this reason, in recent years I have thought about various ways of publishing works, open access, scholarly repositories, digital publishing, and creating connections with international audiences. Projects related to publishing works on platforms such as the Internet Archive and Zenodo are also part of this path; however, the status of each work—from final publication to review and awaiting acceptance—must be assessed separately.

I care about intellectual independence, but I do not mistake independence for denying material needs. An author needs time, tools, relative economic security, and the possibility of planning in order to continue working.

One of my personal and professional questions is precisely this: how can independent intellectual activity be transformed from a stage of scattered and costly efforts into a sustainable path, without the independence of judgment and research orientation being sacrificed to financial necessities?

I cannot yet say that I have found the final answer to this question. But the question itself is part of a reality about which I want to write honestly.

11. Me and Artificial Intelligence: Tool, Intellectual Collaborator, and the Necessity of Verification

In the process of research and writing, I also use artificial intelligence tools. For me, these tools can be useful in organizing ideas, critiquing arguments, rewriting, translation, reviewing structure, and the initial development of projects.

But the use of artificial intelligence does not eliminate the author’s responsibility. A fluent answer may be wrong; a seemingly credible source may not support the claim in question; and a coherent analysis may rest on an unproven assumption.

For this reason, the use of these tools must be accompanied by the same sensitivity that is necessary in other stages of research.

This issue is linked to another of my concerns: the risk of tools for producing and processing information becoming factors that intensify error in sensitive environments. If artificial intelligence systems can be effective in the speed of information production and decision-making, then serious thought must also be given to their errors, the methods of verifying them, and the possibility of correcting decisions based on their outputs.

In my view, technology is neither inherently the solution to all problems nor necessarily the source of all dangers. Its importance depends on how it is designed, used, and monitored, and on the place given to it in the decision-making system.

12. Family, Responsibility, and the Meaning of Success

Among all these projects, family is an important part of my life. I have a wife and two children, and I know that no honest narrative of my life can separate family responsibilities from it.

I do not want to create an image of myself as though my entire life is summarized in books and ideas. Life, before being an object of analysis, is an everyday experience: working, caring for family, making decisions about expenses, facing worries, and trying to preserve the possibility of a better future.

Sometimes a conflict may arise between the time needed for writing and the time my family needs me. Sometimes financial or job pressures can reduce the mental energy needed for research. These are not marginal to my intellectual life; they are part of the real conditions of its formation.

For me, success cannot be measured merely by the number of books, the amount of fame, organizational position, or income. Of course, the importance of income and professional achievement cannot be denied—especially when the lives of several people depend on one person’s decisions.

But I want to have a broader criterion: Does the work I do add something to existing knowledge? Can it help achieve a better understanding of a problem? Does it open a way to reduce suffering or prevent a costly error? And can I continue this work in a way that also takes seriously my responsibilities to my family?

The answers to these questions are not always clear. Sometimes the result of work appears late; sometimes a work on which much time has been spent finds only a limited audience; and sometimes one must prioritize one among several valuable goals.

Nevertheless, I do not want to mistake the difficulty of the path for its value. Not every intellectual effort is useful merely because it is difficult. Its value must be measured by the quality of the work, the honesty of the method, and its possible consequences.

13. What I Want to Leave Behind

If I were to find one common thread among my projects, it would be the effort to understand power and reduce the human costs of wrong decisions.

In translating a book about money and the financial system, I have attended to economic mechanisms. In studying America, I have addressed the link among religion, energy, the market, and politics. In research on forged documents, I have attended to the durability of narratives that can continue their life even after the truth is exposed. In “Hot Summer,” I have examined the durability of structures in a crisis situation. In “Operation Red Shadow,” I have pursued the possibility of a literary treatment of power and its human experience. And in frameworks for preventing the escalation of crisis, I have addressed the question of how to prevent error and misunderstanding from turning into disaster.

These projects are not the same, and the differences among scientific method, political analysis, literature, and policy proposal should not be ignored. Nevertheless, in all of them there is a kind of common curiosity: how structures operate, how people decide within them, and what ways exist to reduce destructive consequences.

I do not know which of my works will ultimately endure. I do not know which idea will attract attention, which research will require revision, and which path will not reach the result I now imagine.

But I know that I do not want to measure the value of my intellectual life solely by the amount of attention I receive during my lifetime.

If a book of mine can reach a reader years later and help that reader understand a problem better, if a research project can reveal part of an analytical error, or if an idea for preventing the escalation of a serious crisis is taken seriously, that work can have value beyond my personal success.

This view, of course, does not mean disregarding the needs of today. I live in this time and must be answerable for my livelihood, family, work, and future. I cannot postpone all of life’s responsibilities in the hope of a possible future legacy.

Perhaps my main challenge is precisely this: how can one continue an activity whose ultimate value cannot always be measured in money and income, in a world that needs material resources to survive?

I am still trying to find the answer to this question.

14. The Future I Want to Build

I see my future not as a definite path, but as a set of possibilities.

I want my works to reach a level in method, citation, structure, and language that allows them to be exposed to serious evaluation. I want my writings, if they have the necessary quality, to cross linguistic borders and find their way into a broader dialogue. I want my strategic research to go beyond the level of describing events and, where possible, to help design practical solutions.

I also want to increase the economic possibility of continuing this activity—not by sacrificing intellectual independence, but by creating more sustainable methods for publication, reaching an audience, and turning intellectual work into a sustainable activity.

These goals are not easy. There is a great distance between having an idea and proving its value, between writing a book and finding an audience, and between presenting a proposal and turning it into implemented policy.

I regard these distances as part of the reality of the path, not as a definitive sign of failure or success.

If I were to introduce myself in one sentence, I would say: I am an independent writer and researcher who, alongside the ordinary responsibilities of life, tries through books, analysis, and the design of strategic frameworks to understand the complex world around him better and to make a share—however limited—in reducing human errors and suffering.

I do not claim to have found the answers to all questions. I prefer to keep the right question, take evidence seriously, be flexible before criticism, and not deprive myself of the possibility of correction if an error becomes apparent.

For me, thinking is valuable when it helps achieve a more precise understanding of reality; writing is valuable when it offers something more than a repetition of existing beliefs; and strategic research is valuable when it can, at least as a possibility, reduce the gap between knowledge and better decision.

My life is not yet a completed narrative. Parts of it pass in daily work, parts in the books I write or translate, parts in questions for which I still have no answers, and parts in the effort to build a future that is more meaningful intellectually and more sustainable economically.

Perhaps the best description of my current situation is this: building, learning, and trying to turn thought into a lasting work—without forgetting that real life, with all its limitations and responsibilities, is ongoing at the same time.

Fouad Shabani

Independent Writer and Researcher in Strategic Studies

Tehran, Iran — 28 October 2026