What Think?

If it is true as two writers claim, both Iranians -- Sara Akrami, a political science student at York University, Toronto, and Saeed Ghasseminejad, a finance PhD candidate at city University of New York -- that Grand Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, apart from being the current real tyrant of the Islamic Republic of Iran, a theocracy whose nuclear ambitions is seen as a direct threat to world peace and stability, is also a corrupt multi-billionaire, perhaps there is yet hope.

The two writers claim that the country's nuclear program direction is dependent upon both Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the Supreme Leader of the country, and the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps' top generals' determination to proceed with their intentions to achieve nuclear armaments. That much is clear to any observer of that particular scene. The level of their intransigence relating to the inspections of the International Atomic Energy Agency and international calls on the limitations to Iran's plans is undeniable and indefensible.

All the more so that their intention clearly -- and based on their frank, unabashed admissions in the public sphere -- is also to destroy another country located in the Middle East, alongside which their ambition well enough known to their neighbours is to dominate the entire geography on the strength of their eventual nuclear weapons cache, the country poses a threat both locally and globally to peace and stability.

The religious fervor of the fundamentalist Shia-sectarian Islamists who control Iran is witnessed by its oppression of the minority religious B'hai, by its merciless crackdown on political dissent, its insistence on Sharia law being obeyed in female dress code and male observation, on its rabid hatred of the Sunni sect, the United States, democracy, western culture, and any vestige of revolt from among its oppressed population.

Its adherence to the belief that there will be a return of an earlier imam, called the Hidden Imam, to signal the end of times, that will result in a major upheaval of universal proportions, leaving only pious Shia Muslims to live everlasting in Paradise, while unbelievers will be consigned to the lower levels of spiritual hell, is an advent that the ayatollahs and their believers among the population pine for.

Because they are so spiritually invested in the prospect of Armageddon and delivery of the faithful to Paradise, it is assumed that they would not hesitate to invite a cataclysmic world upheaval of their own devising, as in initiating a nuclear war. Rational judgement that was previously exercised by intelligent, practical humans living in the real world held the world back from nuclear night through 'mutual assured destruction', an understanding of detente between the former USSR and the United States, mortal enemies.

No such assurances exist with the pathology of extremist Islamism that is practised by the Islamic Republic of Iran. On the other hand, according to these two writers, Ayatollah Khamenei controls a huge portion of the Iranian economy through holdings and foundations the heads of which are appointed by the Supreme Leader. Those foundations pay no tax, cannot be audited by the judiciary or parliament, and operate as personal properties of the ayatollah.

They speak of a net worth value of $45-billion in real estate assets, and the ownership in addition of 36 companies on the Tehran stock exchange. The ownership in addition, of the Iran Telecommunication Co., ceding billions more to the private estate of the Supreme Leader. Making the ayatollah both politically and spiritually powerful, but also powerfully wealthy beyond calculation.

The writers contend that it has taken Ayatolla Khamenei decades to acquire this fabulous wealth, and to position himself and his holdings at the very centre of the commercial life of the country. Which makes the current UN- and US-inspired global sanctions that have curtailed the Iranian economy and done great harm to its financial stability, a hindrance to achieving even greater wealth for the ayatollah if such a prospect can even be imagined.

But here's the nub of this new information. If it is true, that this man's financial empire is so incredibly diverse and rich, and he values that status as he must, to have taken such steps to acquire it all, then he must surely wish to retain it, and even build upon it. And it is not just he himself that has been enabled to acquire such wholesale personal gains, but the elite leaders of the Republican Guard as well. Would they not all be particularly invested in maintaining what they have so laboriously gained for themselves?

Would they really be willing to risk it all for the end goal of achieving nuclear arms and instigating a wide retaliatory response if they did indeed proceed as they have intimated they plan to, once they have gained a modest nuclear arsenal, the better to test their prospects for their envisioned future as world rulers? Glumly, perhaps, yes, since they are, after all, delusional to the core.

But then, who really knows? And are we willing to risk it, supposing the world waits long enough to see the eventual -- sooner than we think -- outcome?