The Monkey’s Paw in Tehran
A News Link Round-Up
The latest weekly round-up of links, covering: the evil of the Iranian regime, mixed feelings about our vague and directionless policy on Iran, presidential and congressional war powers, the battle for who counts the mid-term ballots, China’s military purge, and what comes after immigration.
Context for Iran
How Iran Crushed a Citizen Uprising With Lethal Force
On Friday, Jan. 9, Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, ordered the Supreme National Security Council, the body tasked with safeguarding the country, to crush the protests by any means necessary, according to two Iranian officials briefed on the ayatollah’s directive. Security forces were deployed with orders to shoot to kill and to show no mercy, the officials said. The death toll surged….
“This is not merely a violent protest crackdown,” said Raha Bahreini, a lawyer and an Iran researcher at Amnesty International. “It is a state-orchestrated massacre.”
There was no pause. No moment to step back and assess. You moved from one patient to the next, from one operating room to another. I have worked through earthquakes and seen mass casualties after major accidents. I have never experienced anything like this. Even in disasters, you might receive 20 or 30 injured patients over several hours. That night, and the night after, it was hundreds: gunshot wounds; severe trauma. One after another.
The exhaustion was total. Physical exhaustion, yes, but more than that, mental. As surgeons, our job is to save lives. That night we were saving people who had been shot by their own government. That contradiction stays with you. You keep operating because you have no choice, because people are still arriving, because stopping is not an option; but part of you is breaking.
While in the operating room, I heard weapons that do not belong on city streets. I heard the sound of DShK [Soviet designed] machine guns. Later, I saw them mounted on the backs of pickup trucks moving through the city. I am describing what I heard and what I saw, not what caused specific injuries, but the atmosphere was unmistakable. This was not policing. This was something else.
As the night went on, it became impossible to even think about counting the dead. There was no way to collect accurate numbers. The volume of casualties far exceeded the capacity of the hospitals, the staff and the infrastructure.
The Monkey’s Paw in Tehran
Israel’s initial strikes on Iran this morning reportedly targeted some 30 key Iranian regime leaders and military chiefs, headed by Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei.
Israeli officials have been widely quoted asserting that Khamenei was likely killed—in what is believed to be the first time Israel has directly sought to kill a serving head of a sovereign state — but there has been no official Israeli comment on this. Iran’s foreign minister Abbas Araghchi has said Khamenei is alive “as far as I know.”
An unsourced Channel 12 news report says Israel, having coordinated with the US, dropped some 30 bombs on Khamenei’s compound, and that Khamenei was underground at the location, but not in one of the two deepest bunkers that only US bombs could have penetrated. This report also claims Khamenei’s military secretary was killed, and unspecified members of Khamenei’s family. Satellite imagery has shown the compound largely destroyed.
Tehran after Khamenei’s Death: Rallies of Mourning But Also Dancing in the Streets
“It’s a mixed feeling. On the one hand, yes, we’re happy about the decapitation strikes and Khamenei’s death. But the surviving officials and commanders aren’t just going to raise their hands and give up,” said Hassan, a barber in Tehran who, like many interviewed, did not want to be named to avoid reprisals….
