Perfidious Persia Put in Her Place

That wily old negotiator Lord Mandelbrot the Infinitely Recurring has exerted his hobnailed powers of persuasion upon the mad mullahs of Iran, who still have the temerity to imagine that their country has some sort of sovereign right to generate its own energy, and may even hold a sneaking belief in the doctrine of nuclear deterrence. Whether by way of appeasing the Trumpster and his head-tribble or merely from his own innate suavity, Lord Mandelbrot eructated a long, loud public gloat about the weakness of Iran and its proxies (allies are for the higher cultures) and then proclaimed that he and the Trumpster could not accept a weak nation strengthening itself, because Heaven forfend that British values should verge upon sympathy for the underdog. The mad mullahs, who treacherously responded to the Trumpster's reneging on a previous agreement by acting as if that very same agreement were no longer in force, seem to have greeted Lord Mandelbrot's diplomacy in a similarly unconstructive spirit.