Looking… on at Iran

Even though expected, the confirmation by Iranian officials that their Supreme leader Khameni – with ultimate authority over all branches of government, the military and the judiciary, while also being the country’s spiritual leader – was killed by one of the Israeli or US bombs that rained down on Teheran on Saturday morning, was shocking!! While these sorta operations are normally carried on during the night – to create maximum disorientation of the surviving victims – Operations Urgent Fury (USA) and Roaring Lion (Israel) were launched during the day to ensure that the targeted regime officials such as Ali Khamenei and dozens of officials were in their offices!! According to the Israelis, the entire top core of the military – some forty of them – were also wiped out.
So what’s ahead?? Contrary to what some have been predicting, your Eyewitness doesn’t expect any mass uprising that’s gonna overthrow the entire regime and establish a new one. It’s been forty-six years since Khomeini overthrew the Shah and established the present Islamic Republic. In that time the new institutions – such as the Revolutionary Guards – have become institutionalized so deeply that cutting off their heads just means “another Rasta” will take their place!! And the new leaders will come in on a tremendous groundswell of support – in view of the sneak attack after concessions made during talks!!
The Israelis can’t on one hand boast about their “superior intelligence gathering network” that guided their “pin point” accurate missiles from the over 200 aircraft that took part in the attack – and then disavow the bombing of a girls’ elementary school that killed over one hundred and fifty children!! The’ll see this war – which they insist it is and as such bombing civilian targets are a “crime against humanity”!! – in civilizational terms! The US and Israel should expect a prolonged conflict. They’ve been around for millennia and think long term!! Their response has already begun – deploying drones to bomb Israeli targets and American-aligned Arab countries that have US military bases.
There will also be the asymmetrical responses that have been honed to a fine art since the western invasions from Iraq to Afghanistan!! “Improvised Explosive Devices” (IEDs – whether strapped to bodies willing to perish for the cause against the “infidels” and go to heaven – or from trucks, will be driven into buildings and groups!! Guerrilla warfare, ambushes, sabotage and terrorism against civilians will become standard as we saw in the above-mentioned theatres – and which ended with western troops eventually withdrawing and leaving a bitter populace!!
Sadly for us, we’ll become immune to the toll of human lives snuffed out – as we have by the Israelis in Gaza!! Numbers of deaths will become impersonal statistics on a scorecard.
…back
The passing of the WPA’s leader Rupert Roopnarine has elicited much comment – almost uniformly lauditory!! There is, of course, the dictum that was drilled into the heads of Roopnarine’s generation in its original Latin: “de mortuis nil; nisi bonnum” – “of the dead speak only the good”. But being human, Roopnarine wouldn’t have been so monochromatic and he deserves a more nuanced review.
Born during WWII in 1943 to urban schoolteachers,he attended Queens and won a scholarship to Cambridge in 1962. That spared him the experience of the 1960s ethnic riots that shaped his generation’s world view!! He continued his foreign sojourn and education in the US elite Ivy league Cornell Uni and didn’t return to Guyana until 1976 – on the encouragement of his schoolmate Walter Rodney, who’d returned two years before!!
They were to play outsized roles in the newly-launched WPA and Roopnarine saw Rodney on the evening of his assassination.
That he refused to give testimony at the COI into that assassination and then crafted a coalition with the PNC remains a mystery!!

…the UN’s irrelevance
The UN’s sputtering at the attacks on Iran reminds your Eyewitness of dogs barking at passing cars. They do so not because they’re aggressive, but because they’re trying to create distance from something that scares them.