Funerals and Forensics

This Friday afternoon is shaping into one of those days where the absurdity of my job outweighs the fatigue.

On one side of my desk, I’ve got readers like you - dear 2.71 readers of this blog, and 1.93 of my books - demanding cold, professional analysis of the latest spectacular fuck-up in the Middle East. Or the one in Ukraine (I’ll not go into the one in Sudan)…

On the other, producers from News18 in India are demanding my appearances in form of two live interviews per day there, and thus I’ve got to saturate poor Indians with my explanations of - between others - what and how is the IRGC-regime in Tehran doing and thinking. Which, inadvertently, is earning me the reputation of an ‘apologist’ and ‘opinionist’, because the mass of people watching these news-shows are never going to read even one of my books, so to find out just how much are my conclusions based on facts (and then: most often, first-hand facts). While, sigh, it is so that lots of people crawling around this planet nowadays can’t handle the fact that my conclusions are hitting the mark while their emotions are missing the target…

Finally, my mailbox is filling up with different e-mails from Iran. One of these really startled me: it contained a request from an Iranian author for my ‘first impression’ of the Supreme Leader, Khamenei, assassinated in an Israeli air strike on 28 February this year. Read: the butcher whose state funeral is taking place from 3 to 10 July, is about to finally get under the ground - or in several places of ground, depending on what reports from Iran, Iraq, or Israel one reads - and people want me to eulogise like I’m at a wake…

And, so, instead of explaining you about such ‘miracles’ like the IRIAF showing off its fighter jets - ‘all’ of which were declared for ‘destroyed’, several times over, and then both by the morally superior ones, and by IQ47 - I ended up ‘paralysed’. Couldn’t think about more but to come up with this blog.

A Northrop F-5E of the 141st TFS, IRIAF, as seen on finals to its home-base outside Mashhar (NE Iran).

So, you want my ‘first impression’ about Khamenei, dear Iranians?

This is a fascinating one, because it’s forcing me to pause my usual, analytical dissection of military commanders, ORBATS, equipment, capabilities, intentions, and logistics - to consider the human element. It is also forcing me to ‘ignore’ the fact that the IRGC’s Judge Salvati has issued an arrest warrant on my head (which means, as long as this ‘government’ of Iran is in power: I’m banned from ever visiting that highly fascinating country and meeting Iranian people in person, at least in their homeland).

Sure, honesty compels me to admit that as of the last few years of his life, my immediate, instinctive impression of Ayatollah Khamenei was rather at odds with what he really stood for. Indeed, my ‘first image’ of Khamenei – if stripped of the context of his office and the trail of blood he’s left in his wake - was, ironically, that of a ‘sympathetic grandpa’. A mild, unassuming figure: an image standing in stark, grotesque contrast to the butcher he became.

Despite his ‘open’ admission of his lack of qualification for being elected as the Supreme Leader of the Islamic Revolution (expressed during his very election to that position), he seized power through a de-facto coup. ‘Just for the start’. And, just this January, his IRGC-thugs mass-murdered at least 7,000 to 12,000 peaceful, unarmed protesters across Iran (arguably: at least some of protests were organised by the Israeli Mossad).

In other words: that ‘sympathetic grandpa’ was the architect of a regime that is foremost excelling in slaughtering its own citizens.

Arguably, it is precisely this incongruity that made the phenomenon of his power so compelling. The terrifying efficiency of the apparatus he controlled - indeed: an apparatus meanwhile clearly defeating the tripartite aggression of the USA, Israel, and the UAE, too - stood in stark contrast to that ‘mild’, ‘grandfatherly’ exterior. It serves as a reminder that the most profound and often ruthless exercises of power in history rarely wear the face of a monster; they often present themselves as mundane, even gentle, masking the machinery of the state behind a veil of ordinariness.

Overall, the fact that he’s dead doesn’t make him a ‘sympathetic grandpa’. It just makes him a dead mass-murderer. One less… few others to go…

If you think I’m disrespectful to your fallen religious leader, mind that his body was hauled around in - between others - a truck wearing the logos of Kesko: one of biggest hypermarkets in Finland….

No, I’m not curious about winning any popularity contests in Tehran.

…nor in Tel Aviv or Washington, Brüssel, or Vienna, for that matter.

Because, there’s that other side of the equation. The Axis of Pure Incompetence - currently running the show in Washington and Tel Aviv. Where I’m supposed to dissect the strategic brilliance of a US administration that can’t find its own ass with both hands and a GPS, and an Israeli government so blinded by rage it’s running a true kaleidoscope of horrors - including a genocide and mass-murder of its own hostages.

Both are excelling foremost in one discipline: how not to run wars. So much so, even the top incompetents in Kyiv can still larn a lot from them.

So, who am I explaining this to? The Indians. A people who, generally speaking, understand the concept of chaos better than anybody I can think of. That tolerate differences, and navigate complexity. And are obsessed with… no, no both- but multi-sidism.

…chances are good: maybe they’ll actually listen.

Me, you ask?

Oh, just the neutral observer, standing at the edge of the road and watching the caravan passing by. An Austrian from Austria: an اتریشی in Farsi, and a Namsawi for the Arabs. Arguably, armed to the teeth - with a keyboard and a complete lack of patience for bullshit. But: specialised in writing forensic reports and happy to leave it to you to decide what to do with the body.