From the gaudy gold-leafed Oval Office – the centre of international squalor in diplomacy – Donald Trump, the idiot king, pronounced the American equivalent of a fatwa. Directed at the equally loathsome leadership of the Islamic Republic of Iran, it warned against the execution of any opposition political figures involved in massive street protests which occurred over the last three weeks across Iran.

More than this, the septuagenarian draft dodger urged the people of Iran, young and old, to take to the streets to topple the regime of the ayatollahs.

Encouraged by Washington, street protesters had their ranks swollen by huge numbers of fellow citizens in the hope and expectation that decades of misrule by the Shia hierarchy would come to an end.

Reports from Iran indicate that many thousands of Iranian civilians have lost their lives in a brutal repression presided over by their supreme leader.

Quite how many have perished is unknown, but while there are political motives both for minimising and maximising the death toll, it seems that between 8,000 and 12,000 street protesters have been murdered by Iran’s security forces. Red lines imagined by the idiot king for action against Iran were well and truly exceeded before being washed away in........

© The Irish Times