My Take | Kim Jong-un in Beijing shows why it is good to have nuclear bombs
The essential difference between the North Korean leader and Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is that between the haves and the have-nots of the ultimate weapon
In a beauty pageant, the three winners would hold appeal to different members of the audience who would naturally focus on their favourites. I wonder if something similar happened as the world looked on last week while Xi Jinping, Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong-un stood together at the massive military parade in Beijing.
If you are a grand geostrategist, you might be fascinated or astonished by the three leaders standing together like long-lost brothers. If you were Donald Trump, you might be envious, seeing how instead of himself, Xi was the one sandwiched between two of the US president’s favourite strongmen.
If you were Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelensky, you might focus your anger on Putin. But if you were Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the supreme leader of Iran, you might be overwhelmed by jealousy at the sight of Kim smiling and acting like a world leader, while Khamenei himself was only recently hiding in a bunker with most of his top generals wiped out during the 12-day war with Israel and the United States in June.
Consider the vast difference in life’s outcomes between Kim and would-be proliferators of nuclear weapons and/or other weapons of mass destruction, who tried but were either prevented, or stopped themselves, from pursuing them.
The hanging of Iraq’s Saddam Hussein almost completely decapitated him. Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi died with a machete stuck in his posterior. Syria’s Bashar al-Assad is reportedly hiding somewhere in Russia, under the protection of Putin.
The lesson here for Khamenei and other surviving Iranian leaders is unmistakable.