A war-comedy in seven convulsions, with prophecy and blood-smoke
I. The Lantern Peace
They stitched a peace from moth-eaten treaties,
hung it over the region, a paper kite in crosswind....
and congratulated themselves
for taming the wind.
But the wind was only waiting.
It circled, patient as a wolf,
while diplomats posed for photographs
on the lip of a crater
still breathing the warm breath of yesterday’s dead.
II. Enter the Clowns of Empire
Then, cue the spotlight,
the two great jesters of the age
burst through the curtain.
as if history were a circus
and the audience had paid extra for calamity.
Trump, lacquered in grievance,
mistaking volume for destiny.
swaggering like a man who believes
the universe is contractually obliged
to applaud his every misstep.
Netanyahu, measuring time
the way generals measure borders ....
always shrinking,
always defended with someone else’s blood.
They tripped over their own red lines,
slipped on the banana peel of diplomacy,
and declared the fall
a masterstroke of strategy.
The orchestra, confused,
played the overture to a tragedy
as if it were a patriotic march.
for a parade no one survived.
III. The Heirs in the Wings
Backstage in Tehran,
the heir apparents sharpened their silhouettes.
Eje’i counting punishments like rosary beads.
Hejazi whispering to the shadows
that loyalty is a blade with two edges.
Hassan Khomeini adjusting the ancestral halo
to fit his skull
as if it had been waiting there
since the first sermon of the Republic.
They watched the stage burn
and nodded ....
for this too was written
in the margins of the Revolution,
in ink that never dries.
IV. The IRGC Chorus
Then rose the chorus ....
boots pounding
like a second heartbeat beneath the earth.
They marched through smoke
thick with the ghosts of martyrs,
eyes fixed on the Strait of Hormuz,
that narrow throat of the world
where oil, ambition, prophecy
choke on the same passage.
They sang the old song:
We survive.
We endure.
We outlast the empires
that mistake us for a footnote.
V. The Awakening
Across the region,
minarets carried the tremor
of a billion unanswered prayers.
Some cried for vengeance,
some for justice,
some simply for the dead
who had no names left to bury.
The streets filled like riverbeds
after sudden storm ....
a flood of grief, fury, memory,
and the knowledge
that the innocent always pay
for the theatre of powerful men.
who never stay for the final act.
VI. The Aftermath
And what of the architects,
the self-appointed custodians of law,
fluent in its exceptions,
eloquent in its evasions?
They will stagger from this war
like gamblers from a burning casino,
pockets full of ash,
eyes stinging with the smoke
of their own cleverness.
They will ask how the fire started
when they were only playing with matches.
But the world remembers.
The world always keeps score.
VII. The Traverse
Around the corner lies the traverse ....
a long descent into a conflict
that will not obey its makers.
A war that eats its own script.
A region reshaping itself
in ways no general can predict.
The heirs rise.
The guards tighten their grip.
The streets remember the carnage.
And when the dust settles,
when the lanterns of peace
are nothing but charred wire,
the prophets will step forward,
ink dripping like blood,
and speak the line history prefers to whisper:
THE WARNING WAS WRITTEN.
THE MATCH WAS YOURS,
AND THE FIRE?
THE FIRE ANSWERS TO NO ONE!
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2 March 2026