Again, across the West they preferred to focus on the offhand "clown" remark rather than Ayatollah Khamenei's far-reaching analysis: Soleimani's death is actually a mighty blow against the West because there is no way the US can undo the damage done to their image.
It is undoubtedly accurate.
Americans might be subjected to analyst after analyst rationalizing the brutal, inhuman slaying - and the Orwellian attempt to call an anti-terror hero a "terrorist" - but nobody outside the US believes such nonsense for a moment. And certainly not in the Muslim World, where the US is (allegedly) trying to "win over hearts and minds", as Washington so often puts it.
Ayatollah Khamenei's analysis is astute - anyone who knows anything about Shia culture and modern Iranian culture knows that Soleimani's death will inevitably become to be viewed as an inspiration, not a failure.
Western journalists seem to only want to talk about a few things - the environment (a political issue which contains zero class component), celebrity culture and how Trump is a clown. When Ayatollah Khamenei says the last one - for some reason it is big news.
That is not the big news.
What is important is the slaying of Soleimani, the Washington-provoked war climate which caused the downing of the Ukrainian airliner, and the duplicitous refusal of the US and Europe to uphold their end of the JCPOA treaty on Iran's nuclear energy program.
Iran has a deeply-embedded revolutionary culture which repeatedly puts the focus on serious things, and that will not change. What will also likely not change is the tabloid, empty focus of Western journalists and politicians.
What is unfortunate for Iran and the Muslim World is that such a focus gives them so much cover to commit so much war and misery.
Ayatollah Khamenei gave the West a once-in-a-decade chance to listen and understand why he commands so much international respect - they foolishly chose to fault him for saying something which seemingly all the world has been saying for three consecutive years.
Ayatollah Khamenei's political intelligence is abundantly available online, in case Western journalists ever get serious. He does talk about Islam, which some non-believers will intolerantly get hung up on, but he also spends an equal amount of time talking about stolen natural resources, the vital importance of international resistance to colonialism, standing strong against any form of tyranny, and protecting the dignity of the oppressed.
Ayatollah Khamenei's speeches are so refreshing precisely because I never hear such ideas from Western politicians, even though they endlessly talk about the alleged moral superiority of Western humanism.
Perhaps the sad reality which the West doesn't want to admit is: they no longer care about such ideas.
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