Las Vegas Sun

March 28, 2024

WHERE I STAND:

Ayatollah leading Iran back to the past

Enough with the absurdities of Donald Trump and his mangling of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Enough of all this talk about the tens of thousands of lives that researchers have concluded Trump’s dithering, narcissism, incompetence and intellectual vacuousness has added to the body count in the United States.

Enough of Trump’s misdirection during the time of coronavirus, during which he has dismantled an American way of life before our very eyes but beyond our ability to see, to the extent that when we awaken from our self-imposed and so very necessary quarantine slumber, we may hardly even recognize the place.

And enough of my spending a good part of many Sunday mornings recounting all the ways in which American citizens have voluntarily undermined their values, their dreams and expectations, and their Constitution by electing the one man most undeserving of the honor and responsibility of being our president.

Enough, I say, with dwelling on our own idiocy as a country, since we will have the opportunity in a few months (unless Trump manages to cancel or ignore the presidential election) to rectify our potentially existential mistake and reclaim our country — the United States of America.

Today, I want to focus on the idiocy of another country, one we can all agree is not our friend. A country we can all agree is not the world’s friend and one we can agree should be encouraged at any and all costs to change its murderous, malicious and mischievous ways.

Yes, I am talking about Iran.

For the past 40 years or more, Iran has turned from a country supportive and consistent with Western and American values to a place hardly recognizable as a center of culture, creativity and contribution. It also has climbed to the very top of the list of those countries most in need of an “attitude adjustment,” if you get my drift.

In short, the leadership in Iran has made that country an international pariah, so much so that even the other heretofore pariahs in that part of the world want nothing to do with it and want to do everything they can to make it go away — or at least to make the Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei go away.

In trying to ignore the latest trumped-up disaster in the making for the United States, I happened upon an article written by David Horowitz for The Times of Israel that I found almost hilarious. There is nothing hilarious about Iran’s relationship with Israel, America or any other country the ayatollah deems unworthy of earthly existence. But I have to admit the story itself provided some dark comic relief.

Iran’s parliament recently passed a law that bans all cooperation with Israel on any level because it is a “crime against God.” Now, we all know how hard it is to get anything in Iran passed unanimously — the wave of an ayatollah’s hand, perhaps (the way Trump would ultimately like to rule the United States) — so we know this act of doing God’s will against God’s chosen people is, well, a bit conflicted.

But since when has a small detail like a biblical conundrum ever stopped an ayatollah from doing whatever he could to rile up his people in the name of religious purity? A people, I might add, who are tiring of rule by fiat when the price to be paid for such malefaction is all theirs.

Horowitz did some checking around to see what the supreme leader’s “final solution” to the Israel problem would mean to a country like Iran, which would no longer be able to enjoy, use or rely on anything Israeli as it goes about its daily routine of causing havoc around the world.

The list is endless but here are few highlights:

The first thing that would never happen would be the generous aid sent by the United Arab Emirates to help save the Palestinian people from the ravages of coronavirus. Why? Because the plane carrying medical aid had to land at Ben Gurion Airport. Remember, nothing Israeli.

But that wouldn’t matter all that much, because chances are really good that no Iranian would ever know that Palestinian deaths would be on the ayatollah’s hands. After all, they would never hear, see or watch the news about such a tragedy.

Why? Because for decades, every major chipmaker, smartphone producer, computer manufacturer and internet-improving company has been working from and with Israeli technologists to the point that removing Israel from the equation would do what only slogans have called for — not sane leadership around the world — which is to send Iran back to the Stone Age, or at least the Stone Age of communications technology, which is at least half a century ago.

Pick the familiar names — Intel, IBM, Microsoft, Google, Pentium, Cisco Systems, General Electric and many of the major drug innovations that are saving lives as we speak — and each of them has an indelible and inextricable Israeli stamp on their products.

You cannot separate Israel from 21st-century advances in health care, communications technology, space travel, ground, sea and air transportation, and practically every facet of human endeavor (think Boeing, Daimler, Hyundai, LG, Renault, Samsung, Siemens, Volkswagen, Volvo, to name just a few). That means if Iran wants to separate itself from everything Israeli has made or contributed, it would have to take a trip back in time. A very long trip.

It would be so much so that the people of Iran, already exhausted from being led to the Promised Land by an ayatollah who doesn’t seem to know the way, will finally revolt successfully against the repressive regime.

After all, the people will have modern, Israeli-influenced technology (at the very least a cellphone to be able to communicate who is winning and losing) on their side and the supreme leadership will have the equivalent of yesterday’s rocks.

As Horowitz concludes, this is one time the world should encourage the leadership of Iran to have its way and do its will. Who will need a nuclear agreement, who will need an army, who will need the most advanced weapons on the face of the earth to destroy Hamas or Hezbollah or any Iranian proxies doing the devil’s evil deeds around the globe?

Without Israel in the mix, it would take very little to blow Iran’s leadership over like a feather.

Go for it, ayatollah. Implement the law.

Brian Greenspun is editor, publisher and owner of the Sun.