Sometimes You Don’t Destroy Your Enemy, You Forge Him

Imagine being unable to attend your own father’s funeral.

Not because you are ill.

Not because you are imprisoned.

But because your security advisers believe there is a very real chance that Israel will try to finish what it started.

Now imagine that your wife is being buried at the same funeral.

Your daughter too.

Your mother.

Your entire immediate family, wiped out in a joint American-Israeli bombing campaign.

And all you can do is watch from a bunker, knowing that if you appear in public, you may be next.

This is the reality Mojtaba Khamenei now lives with.

According to multiple reports, he survived the strike, but only just. His face was left permanently disfigured. He suffered devastating injuries to his legs, with reports from people close to his inner circle saying he may have lost one of them. He has also reportedly undergone surgery to his hand and continues to recover months later.

Whether you agree with his politics or despise everything he represents is almost irrelevant.

The point is that wars create memories that outlive the wars themselves.

Every scar on his face reminds him who bombed his family.

Every step he takes—or struggles to take—is a reminder of the country that changed his life forever.

Every empty chair at the dinner table reminds him of the wife, daughter, mother and father who are no longer there.

And Washington believes this is the man with whom it can simply negotiate a new beginning.

History suggests otherwise.

The West has not created a grateful adversary. It has almost certainly created a leader whose entire life has become a monument to loss, vengeance and survival.

That is the strategic consequence of believing military victory automatically produces diplomatic opportunity.

Sometimes it produces the opposite.

Sometimes you don’t destroy your enemy.

You forge him.