Worthy Christian News » Iranian Supreme Leader: U.S. Has Taken Military Option Off the Table

The difficulty in assessing anything Iran’s Supreme Leader Khamenei says is like navigating a lab rat’s maze. Just when you think you smell the cheese, you hit a dead end. So it’s like with anything Khamenei says. Unfortunately since the Iranian constitution vests him with final authority over all foreign policy matters, what he does say has real import, it’s just hard to figure out what he is really saying. In the case of his comments last week, he pronounced alive and well Iran’s jihad against America and Western culture and declared absolute Iran’s commitment to maintaining its nuclear infrastructure and expressed confidence in the West eventually caving in to Iran’s demands to lift sanctions. Now in his most recent comments, Khamenei lays claim to the recent Arab Spring revolts in Muslim nations against totalitarian regimes (with the convenient exception of Iranian ally Bashar al-Assad in Syria) and claims the U.S. would never attack Iran. Too bad he can’t make the same claim against Israel.

But those comments point to one of the chief issues bedeviling Western negotiators dealing with Iran over nuclear issues. Just who do we believe? Do we believe a Hassan Rouhani and Foreign Minister in Zarif, long loyal apparatchiks of Iran’s military and intelligence services, as born-again moderates? Or do we believe a Supreme Leader who’s rants remind the West uncomfortably of the slightly psychotic rants of past president Ahmadinejad. The tea leaf reading is eerily reminiscent of Western analysts poring over May Day photos of the old Soviet Politburo membership to find out who was calling the shots based on where they stood. Couple that with Iran’s horrific human rights record under Rouhani with grisly public hangings of political dissidents (over 800 and counting so far), the arrests and crackdown on social media and internet access and the funding of foreign adventures in Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen and Lebanon to name a few. It all adds up to a disturbing picture that has caused the West to pause, and rightly so, in these negotiations.