Iran Focus
Editorial
Last week, Iran’s madcap president made a series of pompous claims about his regime’s potentials and objectives while warning the international community to “sit like polite children and talk”.
On 22 August, Tehran unveiled an unmanned bomber drone, which Mahmoud Ahmadinejad called an “ambassador of death”.
In some of the most ambitious claims, even on the Ahmadinejad bluff scale, the embattled president faced with increasing social unrest, said: “Placing a satellite at a geosynchronous orbit of 35,000 km will be easy. … Once at 35,000 km, we will then manage the Earth’s affairs with our satellites”.
It is hardly surprising to see petty and repressive dictators infatuated with the idea of “managing the Earth’s affairs”, and Ahmadinejad harps on this obsession at every chance he gets. What is astounding, however, is that he is absolutely convinced that the entire world is completely blind to the truth: the regime’s decline.
Recently, it was revealed that Ahmadinejad’s government had generated a $140 billion debt even after spending more than $250 billion of oil revenues over the past four years. The rate of unemployment has spiked dramatically – with some officials now admitting the 25% figure – while protests and strikes in streets, factories, bazaars and universities continue to haunt the clerical rulers. At the same time, the regime is rotting at the core with its Supreme Leader’s authority rapidly eroding. Various officials now complain that “nobody listens to him anymore”.
President Ahmadinejad is scheduled to attend the UN General Assembly in September. And the world will certainly see him for what he is: A small dictator dancing with a large inflatable globe that is bound to burst at any moment, as portrayed by Charlie Chaplin’s memorable satire “The Great Dictator”.
