https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/15115/middle-east-facades
The state-controlled media in Tehran are advising the “authorities” in Beirut and Baghdad to crush the popular uprisings “by all means necessary”. One of Tehran’s Iraqi propagandists even advised Prime Minister Adel Abdul Mahdi “to kill leaders of sedition (fitna)” who had gathered in a restaurant in Baghdad.
In building their empire, the mullahs made a big mistake: they prevented the emergence of genuine local authorities, including national armies that could hold things together in a semi-autonomous way.
The Houthis, the Assad clan, Hezbollah, PMF and kindred groups are puppets in a surrealistic show scripted by faceless puppet-masters in Tehran. That they, in turn, hide behind secondary puppets, playing president and/or prime minister, makes for an even more absurd flight into fantasyland. Just over 1,000 years ago, Nizam al-Mulk noted that what appears legal is not necessarily legitimate and that being in office but not in power produces the worst kind of tyranny.
For the past two weeks or so, the state-controlled media in Tehran have been wondering how to cope with news of popular uprisings in Lebanon and Iraq.
In the first phase, the official line was that the protests reflected anger at poor economic performance and defective public services. The narrative echoed media coverage of last year’s popular protests in Iran itself. It was inconceivable that “the people”, always an abstraction, might not appreciate the blessings of the system, let alone revolt against it.