The Greatest Day in Modern History

Zarathustra spoke and the Light returned to Persia.

Today was unprecedented. Unrivalled and extraordinary. For today I felt a feeling that I’ve never felt in 42 years of life. The exhilaration of foreign policy success. 

For up to this moment, I’ve only known the performative. The condemnatory statement. The calls for de-escalation. The lip service for peace. 

I’ve heard calls for a two state solution that will never come; faux fury virtue signalling in the corridors of power.

Political debate has been to rage, to vent. To dog whistle your followers that you “stand on the right side of history”. To gain advantage come election day.

Until today, reality was hidden 160 feet below a mountain.

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For so long Israel has been a cipher and not a place. Code for “evil enemy”, A cartoon baddy on the pages of Marvel Comics. 

Palestinians have just been waiting for the State they’ve never wanted. So they said.

The Islamic Republic has been “resisting oppression”. 

No-one’s believed it, but they were never meant to. Sin requires a scapegoat for our burden and Israel has served that purpose.

Worn down by the druggery of comfortable boredom, Western youth has sought meaning.   Once upon a time, sci-fi was enough; the weekly, joyful chance to escape the real world. But come the modern age, our youth got greedy. They strove to find fantasy on the streets of Jerusalem.

So with banner in hand, they galloped off to find some windmills. There, on the plains of La Mancha, the monsters spoke. One-note ogres that personified evil. “It’s in your head,” Sancho cried.  But they cancelled him, shut him down and accused him of apartheid.

Next they strayed off course to the plains of Persia. There in the shadow of the mountain, Zarathustra spoke. He spoke of a god that was good and a god that was evil. Unless the evil were defeated, the very balance of creation was in the balance. Oh how they marvelled at his words. Now, at last, the lost of Shropshire had a purpose, a meaning, a will to power!  So they strode out onto the stage of life in search of Justice. 

But they failed. Stumbled at the first hurdle. The Islamic Revolution had come.

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There in the courts of Persepolis, they waited for the Great Bearded One. He emerged. He uttered. He spoke: of oppression, of freedom, of redemption. The battle between good and evil had been joined and they were the handmaidens of this great quest.

1979 was the year that the downtrodden youth could soar in self-made blindness. The Messiah had come and now they knew the path to peace. 

Israel must be removed from the map! The Great Bearded One had proclaimed it so. Only then could harmony be restored to the cosmos. Only then would hate cease and love fill the Earth. 

How would this dream be fulfilled? Child martyrs on the fields of war. Bombs in the coffee shop and murder on the bus. Men, death, obedience; not women, life, freedom. So they heeded the prophet’s word; after all, it was the One True Philosophy. Once battle had been joined against the Jewish Satan, then peace would reign. 

Instead evil rained, and not down from Heaven, but upwards from hell, in complete opposition to nature. The Persian prophet had mixed good for evil and evil for good; truth inverted by the god of the lie.

They spoke of justice. They meant injustice.
They spoke of peace. They meant conflict.
They spoke of freedom. They meant slavery.
They spoke of law. They meant war.
Thus they destroyed the cosmos of civilisation.

International law was their tool of perverted choice.  Statutes conceived to maintain international order were wielded to forment international chaos. Human rights were weaponised. NGOs designed to crush.

Zarathustra had called on them to save the world, but they destroyed it. Or ever so nearly. Ahriman had smiled unrepentently from the salt plains of Iranshahr.

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But today the god of the lie has been silenced. Order has returned, Quixote has retired and the youth are bored once more. Blessedly bored. For though the echoes of the Sasanian Empire have long departed, the Great Fires have returned to light up the world. Fires that have extinguished nuclear flame so that we may live again. 

From the tempestuous hallways of the White House, moral clarity has finally reigned– and Ahura Mazda is at peace.  

No more failed diplomacy that we all know will fail. 
No more fake talk and false words.  
No more desecration of international law in the name of its protection. 

Instead action. Decisive action. A true defence of nuclear non-proliferation so that the human race may live another day.

The god of the lie had tempted us; whispered sweet nothings in our ear so that we would die in the embers of nuclear winter. He said that terrorism was love and “genocide” was relative. 

He laughed as Zarathustra riled in agony. He laughed at the 46 dark years of Iranshahr. He laughed at the destruction that was to come.

But He failed. The light returned as it always does. Evil’s destruction, when it came, was easy. As feeble as its sand-enforced foundations. For the light is eternal and it calls patiently on those that seek the way.

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Today, my friends, we may be happy.

Today, my friends, we may rejoice.

The days of theatre have ended. The days of truth have come. And the Great Fires of Persia will light the way to a better future. They were never extinguished.