Untergang (Downfall, 2004) is a movie about the last days of the Hitler regime, including Hitler's nine-millimeter-and-cyanide honeymoon with Eva Braun.
We are now looking at the final days of Iran's theocracy, which is likely to collapse by the end of the week; one week after Israel began military action.
It is well known from history that, when a country's leaders flee the battlefield, the war is over for them.
At Gaugamela in 331 B.C.E., the massive Persian army collapsed when King Darius turned his chariot to run from Alexander the Great, who was personally trying to kill him.
Once his army saw him flee, it lost its will to fight and that is why so many cities in that region are now named Alexandria or its equivalent, such as Kandahar (formerly Alexandria Arachosia).
It is now being reported that the Iranian leaders whom Israel has not killed are running like rats.
According to the Times of Israel:
Ali Asghar Hejazi — Khamenei’s senior intelligence advisor and a powerful figure within the Islamic Republic’s security apparatus — has entered secret negotiations with Russia to secure an escape route for himself and his family.
He might well not be the only one because Iran's leaders are dying like flies. The survivors know what the Persian people will do to them when the regime finally goes down, namely, what the Italian people did with Benito Mussolini.
Ordinary Iranians are meanwhile fleeing major cities wholesale even though they know or should know that Israel will not aim at noncombatants.
Why is Ali Khamenei Still Alive?
It has been reported widely that President Trump vetoed Israel's plan to kill Khamenei, but I doubt that Prime Minister Netanyahu is answerable to Trump. There might be an entirely different explanation, and one of which the Chinese general Sun Tzu might have approved highly. Maybe Netanyahu never intended to kill Khamenei, but needed a reason to refrain from doing so—and Trump provided it by playing good cop to Netanyahu's bad cop. Why would Israel want to spare a monster like Khamenei? Remember the original premise; when the king runs away, his side loses on the spot. If the king dies on the field, his side may fight on.
Suppose for example that Darius had stood his ground at Gaugamela, only to be killed by Alexander. The Persian soldiers might have said, "The king is dead, we've lost," but they also might have said, "Our king is dead, and we still outnumber the Macedonians, so let's avenge him" and fought on after one of Darius' satraps like Bessus or Mazaeus took over.
It's conceivable that Alexander wanted Darius to run rather than die, and Israel wants similarly Khamenei to run rather than die.
If Israel kills him, somebody else may take over (despite the fact that Iranian commanders now seem to have roughly the life expectancies of mayflies) but, if he flees the country, his regime will collapse on the spot.
This is not to say that Israel should give him more than a couple of days to make up his mind.
Khamenei needs to understand fully, and he probably does so by now, that if he does not flee to Russia, China, or North Korea, he will be taken out by Israel or else hanged by the Persian people that he and his associates have terrorized for decades. He should pay very close attention to the fate of Mussolini and his associates, a fate that would have been shared by Hitler had he not ended his own life.
The Times of India reports meanwhile, "Khamenei’s ‘SMASH ISRAEL’ Order Issued From Bunker?"
I recall that a certain individual in Berlin hid in a bunker during the last days of April 1945 and, like Khamenei, he ranted, raved, blamed the Jews, and gave orders to military forces that had long since ceased to exist.
As stated by Colin Farrell's Alexander the Great in the movie, "You can run to the end of the Earth, you coward, but you'll never run far enough."
Maybe Khamenei should start while he still can.
Civis Americanus is the pen name of a contributor who remembers the lessons of history, and wants to ensure that our country never needs to learn those lessons again the hard way. He or she is remaining anonymous due to being subjected to "cancel culture" for denouncing Black Lives Matter's incitement of civil disorder.
Image: Wikimedia Commons // public domain
