IN THE 1975 movie Monty Python and the Holy Grail there is a scene known as ‘Tis But a Scratch’.
A bemused King Arthur finds that fighting a lunatic follows no sane rules. Arthur chops off the Black Knight’s left arm. The Black Knight declares: ‘Tis but a scratch.’ Arthur chops off the Black Knight’s right arm. The armless Black Knight hops forward and kicks Arthur, asking pugnaciously: ‘Had enough?’
Arthur chops off the Black Knight’s legs and strides away as the limbless warrior calls: ‘Running away, eh? You yellow bastard, come back here and take what’s coming to you! I’ll bite your legs off!’
The scene, if written today, could be considered a comment on the US-Iran ‘war’ and declarations of Iranian victory. It’s a satire on the nature of fanaticism. The comedy is in the gap between the reality of the Black Knight’s utter defeat, the futility of his continued aggression, and his declarations of victory.
Today, though, not many people do comedy or indeed sanity that well. The world’s entire mainstream and alternative media are so fully on the side of the Black Knight that they, like him, declare victory.
We can’t blame this on Iranian propaganda. The Iranian mullahs aren’t very good at propaganda. Perhaps you’ve seen the ludicrous clip they released of a ‘captured’ US airman, hooded with face and features concealed, but standing at around five foot four with a portly frame? A short time later the US announced the successful rescue of the real airman. The mullahs try propaganda, but it’s as comically inept as their fighting. They don’t need to be good at either.
Terrorism targets civilians, not armies. And the mullahs don’t have to persuade Iranian citizens to support them. They just execute the ones who don’t. Having concentrated for 47 years on terror at home and abroad, both their conventional forces and their propaganda releases are pathetic.
Even as recently as the days of Saddam’s Comical Ali spokesperson, people were able to see the difference between on the ground reality and absurd claims of victory from the losing side. Today, that rational assessment is dead.
Let’s be clear on what has happened overall since October 7, 2023, and what happened prior to that.
The mullahs spent 47 years building a terror network that spanned Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon, Qatar, agents in neighbouring Muslim nations, credible reports of agents in Obama’s administration, and operatives across the Middle East. They funded international terrorism and they were a feared regional power, a major player that even opposed rivals (the Saudis, the Israelis, to some extent the Turks) were cautious of and very worried about. They had alliances with Russia, China and Qatar. They had terrorist proxies in Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthis.
The Israelis methodically smashed their way through every part of this 47-year strategy aimed by Iran primarily at the destruction of Israel and secondarily at the destruction of nations like the US and the UK.
Hamas were smashed in Gaza. Tunnels found and collapsed. Leaders killed. Most of those who took part in the October 7 outrage killed. Brilliant operations like the pager attack devastating the Hamas chain of command and illustrating the extreme competence of Israeli intelligence. Hostages rescued, or Hamas forced to return their bodies if already killed. Hamas capability has been massively downgraded in every way-bases, stockpiles, ammunition, personnel, leadership.
The left arm chopped off.
Hezbollah isn’t faring much better. That is what the current Israeli attacks on Lebanon are about. The same necessary process. The right arm hangs by a thread.
And what about the body of the beast, Iran itself? For 47 years they attacked with immunity and every US President was either too afraid to respond or, like Obama, probably more ideologically aligned with mullahs and terrorists than with genuine US interests.
Set aside what happened with neocon wars where a combination of absurd liberal nation-building hopes and vast in it for the contracts corruption ruined initial success. Neither of those factors, the ideological stupidity or the vast corruption, is a problem with this US administration. Look instead at the real condition of the Black Knight.
Iranian strategy and regional power has been chopped into pieces.
The US has proved it can attack Iran directly and with very little comeback.
CHOP: 8,000 or more targets hit. Iran itself being hit, not just its proxies.
CHOP: Iranian air defences obliterated. The Iranian air force destroyed. Tech supplied by Russia and China shown to be ineffective.
CHOP: The same with the Iranian Navy. The conventional forces incredibly vulnerable. What’s able to ‘block Hormuz’ is not a scary fleet able to face the US Navy. It’s drones and light craft and mines, able to attack civilian shipping. This is Iran’s sole area of success, and the success is a lot smaller than people think. What’s been exposed here is the long-standing apparent decision in the West that minesweepers are obsolete.
CHOP: The cherished nuclear programme destroyed. Iran spent vast sums with large scale assistance and advice from Russia and China building gigantic, well-protected underground facilities. The nuke programme was real and significant, both as infrastructure and as threat. It’s gone. It will be sensible to pursue the enriched uranium that made the threat very urgent, but the other parts of building a bomb have been obliterated.
The current ceasefire is the moment that Trump as King Arthur declares: ‘Look, you stupid bastards, you’ve got no arms left.’ Indeed, this is a better way to read the notorious Easter Tweet as well than the reading that was given by Trump-haters (I told them, repeatedly, that Trump was not about to drop a nuke on Tehran. Anyone sensible knew that. Most Western ‘experts’ didn’t).
There is no rational way to say that Iran is winning. It’s rational to say that the hoped-for Iranian uprising hasn’t come (partly because earlier delay let the regime slaughter 30-40,000 people). It’s rational to say that a lack of effective minesweepers has been exposed, and it’s certainly rational to say that the cowardice and uselessness of Western ‘allies’ and Nato has been exposed (particularly leftist governments who are pro-open borders and pro-Islam, like Spain, or who have aggressive Muslim populations they are afraid of, like the UK).
But several of these points merely confirm existing Trump administration suspicions. They don’t signal Iranian victory. The reality is that the US and Israel acting together have been quite sufficient to shatter Iran as a regional power. And what’s exposed too (as was exposed with Venezuela) is that Chinese and Russian backing is all mouth and no trousers. When it comes to the crunch they can’t offer, or don’t want to offer, serious support to their proxies. Just as Iran could act through Hamas but not protect them, China or Russia can act through Iran but not protect them.
This geopolitical reality has been entirely missed by those claiming that that the Black Knight has won. But how can they miss something so obvious? How can they regard the bombed and humiliated nation (or the limbless Black Knight) as the victor?
Surely the answer lies in who they WANT to win. They were always going to declare it this way – that is their job. They aren’t reporting, they are framing. While Iranian or Hamas propaganda is often amusingly amateurish, the propaganda of their Western backers is much more sophisticated and influential.
