Great Satan

If Iran falls, the road to Eurasia is open. Despite their powerful nuclear deterrents, Russia and China may someday be victim of a tactical nuclear decapitation strike on their leaderships delivered by the US Air Force 

I missed my last column as I was hospitalised with a bad bronchial infection. The upside of an enforced, unplugged existence and involuntary time-out, is that you get to see things more clearly in the stillness. 

Much of it is individual: enhanced cherishing of spouse; greater awareness of life’s stages and transitions; magnified appreciation of older cousins and young nephews, political leaders and personal friends, concerned old professors and young former staffers/proteges who offered ready assistance. 

But as much of the lucidity is political.

Great Satan 

In a long series running through 1979, Lanka Guardian founder-editor, Mervyn de Silva hailed and analysed the Iranian Revolution, featuring Ayatollah Khomeini on the journal’s cover several times. 

Imam Khomeini, the historic leader of the Iranian Revolution and founder of the new Islamic  Revolutionary state, dubbed US imperialism ‘The Great Satan’. Donald Trump-Marco Rubio- Pete Hegseth have doubtless refreshed that definition.   

Trump’s USA and Netanyahu’s Israel commenced an unprovoked war of aggression on Iran. They assassinated Ayatollah Khamenei together with his daughter and grandchild. Though the longest ruler, he was no Mao, Ho Chi Minh or Fidel Castro figure: he was not the founder-leader of the Islamic Republic. He was a young participant and product of the Iranian Revolution led by Ayatollah Khomeini against  the Pahlavi monarchy (“the American Shah”) and the USA. That revolution has created many more militants and leaders than US-Israel can kill off. 

A US-Israeli strike killed 175 schoolgirls in Minab, Southern Iran, as we saw on TV. There were no apologies, explanations or excuses.  

The decapitation strike on Khamenei will bring to the fore new leaders and leadership collectives,  recomposing and renewing the Revolutionary state, hardening resolve and sowing the dragon’s teeth of hatred among a new generation of Muslims globally towards the US empire. 

Already six US soldiers have been killed and five seriously wounded in an Iranian counterstrike. However, the stated war aims of Trump as restated by Pete Hegseth are so maximalist that a rapid return to a negotiated cessation of hostilities is improbable.

This may become an all-out, history-making war. The objectives of Trump and Netanyahu are the overthrow of the Iranian state that came into being with the Iranian People’s Revolution of 1979, and the reversal of the 1979 Revolution. 

Iran is far too large to be swallowed or occupied by the USA. Israel seeks to ‘Lebanonise’ Iran, or break it up. 

The Iranian Islamic Republic is far to organic for the US to be able to do what it did to Saddam Hussein and the Baath party’s Iraq, and that took years of bloody conflict and US losses to stabilise.

For the world at large, i.e., for the ‘world’s majority’, the worst possible outcome would be a victory for the US-Israel and the decisive defeat of Iran. 

If Iran falls, the road to Eurasia is open. Despite their powerful nuclear deterrents, Russia and China may someday be victim of a tactical nuclear decapitation strike on their leaderships delivered by the US Air Force. Soviet and Chinese leaderships adequately armed Vietnam, preventing a US victory. Today, in their own interests, Russia and China should ensure Iran is able to protect itself and restore its conventional deterrence.

If one regretfully rules out the best possible outcome of a quick negotiated end to conflict, then that leaves the best possible outcome for the world’s majority, either: 

 A devastating Iranian strike on a US military target which sends enough coffins back Stateside to halt the war, or 

 A protracted war of steadfastness and resistance in which Iran plays the role of the 21st century Vietnam, inflicting unacceptable casualties over months and years, bleeding the arrogant, aggressive superpower and its genocidal ally Israel, forcing a US withdrawal in defeat and humiliation.   

Meanwhile Cuba, the ‘green alligator’ of the Caribbean, showed that it retained its strong jaws and sharp bite when in a gunfight it killed a boatload of terrorists from Miami, captured the rest and released the footage. If the US chooses to wage war on Cuba, Hegseth’s military will encounter an armed island and citizenry that will resist for years. (https://youtu.be/bPG-3b-rMAg?si=Hl5Yz_ca0cokohsP)