Christopher Hitchens has recently wondered if the current unrest in the streets of major Iranian cities after the presidential election there had anything to do with the fall of Saddam Hussein in 2003. Hitchens wrote in Slate, the online magazine, that the Ayatollah Khamenei, the Supreme Leader of Iran, is becoming increasingly isolated, challenged by the former president Rafsanjani, who recently traveled to Najaf, in Iraq, to visit the Ayatollah Sistani, the spiritual leader of Iraq’s Shi’ites. Hitchens furthers states there is a serious undercurrent in the statement issued from the Iranian holy city of Qum, to the effect that President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has no claim to be the representative of the Iranian people, leading one to wonder if the clerics in Qum are opposed to clerical rule.

 

 

The noble Hitchens wants to know

If events in Iraq

Could in their way effect to show

What seems to be the tack

Some certain circles in Iran

Have taken to of late

That caused the unrest in Teheran

That may have been…but wait!

Are not the same guys still in charge

Do not they want the bomb

Does not the whole wide world at large

Look on with pleased aplomb

When Ahmadinejad insists

That Israel must die

Which is the reason he persists

In giving it a try

Whatever stuff is going on

And this is just my take

Is like a child who’s blowing on

The candles on his cake

We clap and laugh and cheer out loud

We pat his little head

We make the toddler feel so proud

He made the candles dead

They aren’t dead and here is why

The bomb is coming soon

The IAF is set to fly

The first dark of the moon

It’s clear to rhymers like myself

The ticking clock’s in Qum

I don’t need words from off the shelf

They all rhyme with kaboom