By Lev Tsitrin
On the one hand, it is very easy to be Universe’s No. 2 (the No. 1 being God): you can boss people around all you want, and no one will object.
On the other hand, there is a bit of a problem with that position because there is a difference between thinking that you are a No. 2 (even after being proclaimed so by a solemn public acclamation), and being God’s actual No. 2. In fact, we saw the difference about a year ago, when Iran’s No. 3, then-President Raisi who was groomed to become a No. 2 by the present one, Khamenei, went up in a helicopter and descended much faster than was good for him. While he thought of himself as a No 2 in waiting (as did the current No 2), the No. 1 clearly had a rather dim view of their elevated views of themselves. “Man proposes, but God disposes,” and He “disposed” of Raisi very differently from how Raisi (and Khamenei) jointly “proposed,” sending Raisi not to Iran’s throne, but to one of its cemeteries.
Yet, Khamenei did not learn the lesson of humility from Raisi’s fast descend. It did not teach him that he is a No. 2 only in his own mind that feeds on forced acclamations of the captive public. He still holds himself as actually channel of God’s will here on Earth, so when The Great Satan — the US — made him an offer to keep Iran supplied with nuclear fuel, plus lift all sanctions, in exchange for Iran folding its nuclear enrichment program, he laughed it off in the appropriately haughty reply: Trump’s plan was but “nonsense!” How else do you talk to Satan?
Well, maybe that’s the right way to talk to Satan — but it is not the right way to talk to President of the United States — especially this president, President Trump. If Khamenei was a little less full of himself, and deemed it worthwhile to learn from the experience from others, he could have benefited from that of Ukraine’s President Zelenski who got rather unceremoniously kicked out of the White House for using far less disrespectful language, while publicly arguing with Trump. Zelensky learned his lesson, apologized, and evened the keel of the all-important relationship with the United States that got nearly derailed in that White House meeting.
Khamenei is no Zelensky, however. As is appropriate to the Universe’s No. 2, Khamenei’s pride has no bounds. To accept Trump’s Satanic proposal to deny Iran a nuclear arsenal is beyond Khamenei’s dignity.
Oh well. Though it would be far too naive for me to argue that Khamenei’s contemptuous attitude towards the Satans, Big and Small — US and Israel triggered the former’s tacit acquiescence to the latter’s unfolding attempt to dismantle Iran’s nuclear program without Khamenei’s consent, I think that it would have helped if Khamenei — a big shot though he imagines himself to be — was a little more polite. May be, with a bit more respectful attitude, he would have seen merit in Trump’s suggestion, and a benefit for Iran. And in fact, it is not too late to accept it — the American offer is still on the table.
Will Khamenei learning from Zelensky, and accept it? That would require too great a deflation of Khamenei’s immense, No. 2 ego, I suspect.
That’s a shame. As Trump said, Iran won’t have a nuclear weapon. Period. Even if the self-declared No. 2 in the Universe object, Iran’s nuclear project will be dismantled. Over Khamenei’s dead body, if needs be.
2 Responses
FAFO
Lots of Orwellian logic needed to digest the current Iranian “crisis”.
Our MSM (the same folks who once screeched that Trump was a Russian agent) gush about Israel’s unprovoked attack on Iran as a “sensational blow for freedom”; and Mr Tsitrin goes one further as he relates past and ongoing assassinations of Iranian leaders & scientists with undisguised glee. The justification for this war is “conclusive” intelligence by unnamed sources about the Iranian regime being on the verge of attaining a nuclear weapon. As usual, not a shred of evidence has been presented.
Fact: Israel is already a nuclear power. To become one, it employed devious deceptions from the 1950s through to the 1980s and is now estimated to have around 90 nuclear weapons. Israel, along with nuclear bedfellows North Korea, Pakistan & India refuses to sign the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons and, unlike Iran, denies access to monitors from the IAEA.
It’s too much to expect Mr Tsitrin to remove his blinkers, but better-informed readers will remember Saddam Husseins’s WMD and the “inconvertible proof” that he could launch a nuclear weapon which would hit Europe in less than 45 minutes? The playbook here is the same: regime-change is the game.
Here’s the catch: the only way Israel can continue to fight these wars is with a permanent blank cheque from the US. That requires the approval of US legislators, now facing polls that around 80% of Americans are opposed to war with Iran. Ergo Epstein. That 20+ year Mossad operation is the gift which continues to give!