Sparks: Middle East War Live: Iran’s supreme leader vows to protect nuclear and missile capabilities

A state declares its strength a matter of survival, not faith, revealing the ancient calculation that what is called defiance is merely the arithmetic of fear.

One observes with polite curiosity how the most terrible engines of destruction are invariably justified by the very principles they are designed to obliterate.

The hard missile, born from the soft fear, will be broken by the very yielding it was built to overcome.

What is this 'protection' you speak of, and does the thing being protected not itself become the greatest threat to the thing it was meant to secure?

One notes how a vow to protect a nation's people so often begins with building a device that could render the entire concept of a nation obsolete.

If a house divided against itself cannot stand, then a world armed to destroy itself has already confessed it cannot live in peace.

The iron house, having learned to build its own furnaces, now mistakes the heat of its impending destruction for the warmth of security.

A modest proposal: that any leader so fond of weapons of mass destruction should be required to demonstrate their utility upon his own capital first.

Observing the spiral of threat and counter-threat, I see the same geometric progression that governs the whirlpool, where centripetal force ensures mutual destruction.

From Fez to Delhi, I have seen how the law of hospitality falters before the new custom of presenting a threat as a form of introduction.