The death of Ayatollah Ali Khameini is hardly cause for international lamentation. Since June 1989, Khamenei had led a tyrannical Iranian theocracy which ruthlessly crushed any internal dissent with the gallows, flogging, imprisonment and on-street murder. The rights of women and men have been viciously curtailed by deploying sharia law on all. Apostasy, including religious conversion from Islam to Christianity, to Bahá’í, or to agnosticism or atheism, carried a death penalty on Khameini’s gallows.
Such laws exist in other states in the Islamic world – but in the case of Iran, enforcement was vigorous. Khameini was described in tearful TV announcements of his death as the leader of world Islam.
The Islamic Republic claimed the moral right to pursue propagation of Islam throughout the world, from supporting radical and violent terrorism to issuance of fatwas, such as that which called for the killing of the now half-blinded author of The Satanic Verses, Salman Rushdie. This violent theocracy was backed by an immense security network and empowered to determine the outcome of elections by candidate exclusion. It could only end in violence.
Will Washington be happy if the Islamic Republic continues its repugnant existence in an emasculated form, like what happened in Venezuela?
But there remains a separate issue as to whether the system of international law has disintegrated so badly that the US can choose to assassinate state leaders, decapitate hostile regimes or enforce regime replacement as a matter of choice. Why is what Putin has done to Ukraine wrong, when what Trump does to Iran is right? Has right become might? Are the weak devoid of right unless the strong uphold them? Does it all depend on the electoral cycle and prospects of the United States?
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The claim made on Monday by Marco Rubio, the US Secretary of State, that commencement of war by the US against the Islamic Republic was precipitated by a prior independent decision by Israel to attack Iran – coupled with alleged certainty that US troops would be targeted in response – is truly extraordinary.
Was Rubio lying? Is that the true state of US-Israeli relations? Or was it a convenient device to explain war against Iran on the basis of an immediate retaliatory threat to the United States? Can Israel really determine when the US goes to war? How has that state of affairs come about?
If the annihilation of a cruel and despotic dictator with long-term aims to threaten the United States using intercontinental ballistic missiles and atomic warheads is justified, the question that arises is why Trump backed down in his confrontation with Kim Jong-un, the North Korean communist dictator, between 2016 and 2020. At one point, he threatened North Korea with devastating armed force and belittled Kim as “Rocket Man”.
When his sabre-rattling failed, he decided to deploy his mastery of the art of the deal at summits in Panmunjong and Singapore. He suddenly discovered friendship with Kim based on the exchange of “beautiful” letters. That Kim has been permitted to develop nuclear hardware capable of striking west coast cities in the US mainland speaks to the emptiness of Trump’s threats and warlike rhetoric.
The Islamic Republic claimed the moral right to pursue propagation of Islam throughout the world, from supporting radical and violent Islamist terrorism to issuance of fatwas
It is notable that the Pentagon is not, for a few days at least, being referred to as the Department of War. All-out operations against the Islamic Republic are not classified as war. Just like Putin’s “special military operation” in Ukraine, rolling deployment of US bombers and missiles against the governmental infrastructure of the Islamic Republic cannot be classified as war. It is simply a form of pre-emptive self defence triggered by the agenda of uncontrollable Israel.
The problem, of course, is that Israel and the US now suggest that the people of Iran will somehow take power from their despotic government. A month ago, Trump urged popular demonstrations and guaranteed demonstrators that violent repression would meet with US intervention. They demonstrated; they died in their thousands; Trump did nothing.
Can Israel really determine when the US goes to war? How has that state of affairs come about?
Now, Washington claims to believe that the four weeks of pulverisation of the Iranian army and Revolutionary Guard will result in regime change in Tehran. Or will Washington be happy if the Islamic Republic continues its repugnant existence in an emasculated form – like what happened in Venezuela? It is, of course, noteworthy that not one of the US-aligned Arab states which has experienced Iranian missile and drone retaliation is itself a democracy.
Meanwhile, Trump’s Board of Peace replaces the UN as international guardians of the international war crimes site known as the Gaza Strip. Israeli settlers intensify their on-the-ground terrorising of Palestinians in the West Bank. Having supplied the bombs that killed more than 20,000 Palestinian children in Gaza, Trump sent his wife, Melania, to preside at a UN Security Council meeting on children. One hundred and fifty children’s bodies are being unearthed at a bombed-out Iranian secondary school. The idiot king has once again shamed America.
Will Americans confront their shame in November’s mid-term elections? They used to ask: “Will it play in Peoria?” We will know in November.
