The Principal
GSSI’s analytical output is the work of its founder and Principal Strategist, Shahin Iraninejad. The firm’s two standing Desks are not a content product. They are one analyst’s maintained record — built on primary sources read in their original language, and on a professional discipline formed pricing sovereign risk rather than commenting on it.
The Record Before the Practice
Before founding GSSI, Shahin Iraninejad spent more than a decade underwriting emerging-market sovereign and corporate transactions at Credit Suisse and Citi. Underwriting is a different discipline from commentary. An analyst who publishes a wrong view writes another piece the following week. An underwriter who prices sovereign behaviour wrongly carries the loss on the bank’s balance sheet.
That discipline — judgment with consequences attached — is the foundation the firm’s analytical method is built on. GSSI’s assessments are constructed to be acted on, priced against, and defended afterwards, because that is the only standard its principal has ever worked to.
The Contemporaneous Record
From August 2025 onward, GSSI delivered private briefings to named institutional recipients describing the constitutional and institutional architecture that would close the Strait of Hormuz in early 2026 — months before the events, and while the analytical mainstream maintained the opposite position.
That record was not published. It was delivered, dated, to identifiable recipients — which is what gives it standing now. The full record is maintained across the firm’s two Desks:
- the Hormuz Risk Desk, for the insurance market, and
- the Foreseeability Desk, for the international disputes market.
The Method
How GSSI Documents Foresight and Risk
GSSI’s method rests on three elements. Persian-language primary sources — constitutional acts, parliamentary records, institutional communications — read directly, not through translation or secondary reporting. Sovereign fiscal analysis conducted to the standard of an underwriting desk rather than a research department. And structural deconstruction of institutions: how power is actually organised and exercised, rather than how it is described.
The framing is deliberately non-Western-default. Most analysis of the region begins from assumptions formed elsewhere and corrects for the local reality afterwards. GSSI begins from the primary record and the institutional structure as they exist. Where that produces conclusions that sit uncomfortably with consensus, the discomfort is information.
Selected Public Writing
A small portion of GSSI’s analysis is written for the public record:
- “Hormuz: Hostile Takeover” — a narrative account of the constructed corridor, from the public facts alone.
- “It Doesn’t Matter When Hormuz Opens. It Matters How.” — on why reopening is the wrong question.
- SR-Weekly — the firm’s standing weekly briefing, published on Speevr Intelligence.
Engage the Desk
Access exclusive, confidential insights on the governance of the Strait of Hormuz. The Hormuz Risk Desk is offered on a confidential basis to a limited number of institutional subscribers. To discuss access, structure, or a specific exposure, contact the principal directly.