On March 8 Mojtaba Khamenei, the son of Ali Khamenei who was killed in a targeted strike on February 28, was announced as Iran’s new Supreme Leader.  He has not been seen in public from that day to this, and the speculation is he may have been badly wounded in that strike.  His first address to the people was read for him by a TV news anchor.

If US President Donald Trump had been hoping that Iran’s new leader would be open to negotiate a better future for its people, he has been sadly disappointed.  Mojtaba Khamenei is very much his father’s son.  He is generally viewed as hardline and anti-West politically, and strongly aligned with the IRGC (Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps). 

In short the regime’s elite has done its best to reconstitute itself and proceed on its quest to achieve the basic purposes of the Islamic revolution that, half a century ago, swept away Iran’s Pahlavi dynasty.  Ever since, most world leaders have been unable, or perhaps unwilling, to acknowledge the underlying motivation of its instigator, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.  They have also refused to accept that the same objectives have driven the regime ever since.

In his writings before the revolution, and in his speeches after, Khomeini affirmed repeatedly that the foundation stone of his philosophy was to impose Shiite Islam on the whole world by destroying Western-style democracy and its way of life.  To achieve this aim, he identified Israel and the United States (and also, at one time, Soviet Russia) as his prime targets.

“We wish to cause the corrupt roots of Zionism, Capitalism and Communism to........

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