AI creates some very weird and wonderful fake videos these days. One which brought a chuckle to me (despite the gravity of the situation) was an AI revision of the Flock Of Seagulls hit (their only hit FYI) ‘I ran’. Trump, with his distinctively wild hair, takes the place of the lead singer of that band at the moving synth keyboard, singing ‘Iran’ instead of ‘I ran’.
Since I last reflected on Iran in this blog, some 49 senior regime officials have entered the afterlife thanks to American and Israeli aerial bombardment. It probably is a much higher number by now, but I stopped paying attention to the count early on in this bemusing war.
One of those casualties was the Iranian Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Khameini, which represents the crossing of a long held line where heads of state usually do not get intentionally killed by their enemies in a war. [I notice that such a line goes back at least to the Hundred Years War, where French kings and princes went into battle and got captured rather than killed, although this is not a matter either in international jurisprudence or world history which I have ever studied]
With over four dozen senior officials of this extremely odious regime now no longer in a position to issue orders or participate in making decisions about the future of the Iranian theocracy, what happens now?
Well, the son of the Supreme Leader has now been chosen as his replacement in that role. He is even more hardline than his father. The Council of Experts, a theocratic college which chooses the Supreme Leader and vets (ie disqualifies) candidates for elections, is clearly still extant and making the decisions for which it was established.
The apparatus of repression of the regime, particularly the Revolutionary Guards and the Islamic vigilante militia known as the Basij, is still operating.
And whilst AI on Facebook has generated songs about the Shah-in-exile being the sole legitimate alternative to the current regime, Pahlavi Fils has not offered up an actual alternative, in the form of a constitution, which could be the initial foundation for a new regime.
So… what do I think is going to happen? The Israelis and the Americans have mostly achieved their real war objectives – preventing Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons by brute force. Once all the equipment is shattered, all the expertise exploded (I assume nuclear physicists in Iran were a high priority target), and the materials removed (Trump is now talking about collecting all of Iran’s uranium), Iran’s capacity to make nuclear weapons will be gone.
Aside from that, the people who have been sponsoring insurgencies (or terrorists, if you prefer) across the region will have been chastised with lethal force. The ability of Iran to sponsor mischief around the region will have been reduced, at least in the short term.
So then the US and Israeli forces will go away, and leave the theocracy to its own devices.
The alternative, which I do not see happening, is for the Shah to fly into Iran under cover of US armed might, and declare a newborn monarchy under a new constitution.
Nice dream, but whilst I am a Commonwealth Constitutional Monarchist, I am probably more of a republican about despotic regimes.
Lost For Words! 