New in PJ Media:
Mojtaba Khamenei, the new supreme leader of the Islamic Republic of Iran, still hasn’t been seen in public since he was named to his exalted new position. Reuters reported that “three people close to his inner circle” said that the world’s most prominent nepo baby was severely injured in the airstrike that killed his father, suffering disfigurement to his face and reportedly also losing a leg. Nevertheless, in a new message on Telegram Saturday, the younger Khamenei was full of threats and bravado, and ready to give the Great Satan and Little Satan a whipping they won’t soon forget.
“Iran’s navy,” Mojtaba (or whoever was writing the message in his name) declared, “is ready to inflict new bitter defeats on enemies.” That may be, but it’s more than a little improbable. As President Donald Trump put it on Monday, “Their military is destroyed, their whole navy is underwater. One hundred fifty ships are gone, their navy is gone.”
It was peculiarly fitting: the threat of a phantom navy from a supreme leader who may very well not be alive at all. The Islamic Republic has admitted that Mojtaba was indeed gravely injured: according to Reuters, “a newsreader on state television described him as a ‘janbaz,’ a term used for those badly wounded in war, after he was named supreme leader.”
On the other hand, Mojtaba Khamenei could be dead, and all this talk about his facial injuries and how he lost a leg is just an attempt to secure some legitimacy for a regime that is on the brink. A new supreme leader who is the son of the old supreme leader immediately commands more respect than a second- or third-line cleric who might have been pressed into duty after the killing of so many of the Islamic Republic’s top leadership.
Whatever his true condition may be, the Telegram version of Mojtaba was full of bravado. “Just as Iran’s drones strike like lightning against the US and Zionist criminals, Israel,” he wrote, “the brave navy is also prepared to inflict new bitter defeat on enemies.”
Nor is the Islamic Republic relying upon its navy alone. “The Army,” Khamenei added, “is like the nation’s child, which arises from within the heart of the people’s homes. The Islamic Republic of Iran’s Army is now courageously defending the land, water, and flag that belong to it. Iran’s Army is standing side by side with their comrades from other armed forces, battling the two leading armies of disbelief and Arrogance.”
Taking a page from Baghdad Bob, the spokesman for Saddam Hussein who provoked laughter around the world two decades ago when he insisted that the Iraqi army was dealing the Americans a humiliating defeat, even as American troops advanced in the background of his video shot, Mojtaba declared: “And the Islamic Army has exposed those armies’ weakness and humiliation to the world.”
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Alkflaeda says
They seem to have used Mojtaba to segue from a clerical theocracy to a military dictatorship (albeit that MK is unlikely to be the dictator. I have to admit to a suspicion that, once he no longer had his father’s protection, Mojtaba may have been given flying lessons off a tall building. Revealing intelligence about his sexuality and his impotence must have resulted in a significant loss of face for the regime.