Simply Spectacular Sanctimony

Nothing like offering a vicious bully some of his own threats, right back at him. Nothing like observing the reaction. Astonishment, disbelief, hurt feelings, belligerence. A fascinating exercise in human reactions and relations. For a bully always on the offensive, to be confronted by a matching offensive comprises a threat to his equilibrium.

That bully feels very intimate ownership with the issuing of threats and generally throwing his weight around. He's confused and confounded when he's the recipient of his own type of threats. Not that he would make the link. Whatever issues from the bully's condescending thought-track is egotistically entitled. Anything similar bounced back at him is an uncalled-for assault on his tender sensibilities.

So then, what does it represent - an opportunity for a belly laugh, a scornful rejoinder, a relaxation of reality into the world beyond the looking glass; serious world threats become the stuff of psychedelic illusion - when someone of the incomparable ilk of Iran's deputy ambassador to the United Nations takes huge umbrage over the fact that Senator Hillary Clinton has offered to his country what his country so casually and assuredly offers, for example, to the State of Israel?

Not to mention the allusions to grander aspirations, encompassing the destruction of liberal democracy wherever it exists? Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has boasted that his country will soon possess the means by which it can extinguish a neighbour, another member of the United Nations. He makes no secret of his country's ambitions on a much wider scale. He hints that Iran's security cannot be breached, and if it were, it would be of no moment.

His religious zealotry, his belief in the existence of the "Hidden Imam", upon whose re-appearance on earth at a time of great turmoil, is anticipated with fervid devotion. For he will re-appear to defeat the forces of evil. And Ahmadinejad and the Ayatollahs know evil when they encounter it. As for Ahmadinejad, his urging of Iranians to welcome the coming of the Mahdi speaks volumes of his dedication to this holy vision.

And if he can be instrumental through his provocative and inherently dangerous machinations by creating sufficient chaos on the world stage, he will also have been successful, according to his spiritual beliefs, in bringing the Imam Zaman back to the present. More succinctly, he views the final triumph of Islam to be imminent, and his part in that success is provoking a nuclear war with Israel or with the United States.

Nothing ventured, nothing gained. So, when Senator Clinton responded to a query that, should Iran attack Israel with nuclear weapons, how would she, as U.S. President react - by responding that a counter-attack would be mounted by the U.S. against Iran, that country took grave offence. "I want the Iranians to know that if I'm the president, we will attack Iran", she stated clearly.

"In the next 10 years, during which they might foolishly consider launching an attack on Israel, we would be able to totally obliterate them." Rhetoric, to be sure. The use of nuclear weapons, in a deliberate attack against a country is unthinkable. One would dearly love to believe that this scenario would never advance beyond threats, words of warning. To think otherwise is to believe in hellfire and brimstone.

In response, Mehdi Danesh-Yazdi, Iran's second representative to the UN has written to Ban Ki-moon, and the Security Council, denouncing Senator Clinton. Hmm, sounds kind of familiar; wasn't Iran similarly denounced for threatening to attack Israel? And unabashedly stood its ground, repeating the threat over and over again, unequivocally, righteously.

But Ms. Clinton's comments, according to Mr. Danesh-Yazdi, were "provocative, unwarranted and irresponsible; a flagrant violation" of the UN charter.

Admittedly so. But this thunderously-offended characterization was proffered without a blush of recognition? Of course it was. Hilarious, if it weren't so downright depressing.