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President Trump told accompanying newsmen aboard an Air Force One flight to Texas last Friday, ‘I’m not happy with the ongoing talks with Iran.’

It was the cue that was waiting for the beginning of a new international order to unfold upon the world that had until then lived in a phoney 75-year peace, naively believing with religious zeal that the United Nations’ Charter – hastily drawn up by the victorious Allied powers after World War II in 1945 – enshrined the sovereignty of all nations on the altar of equality and guaranteed world peace; and for all nations newly granted freedom, ‘the noninterference in the internal affairs of a sovereign state

Within hours of Trump expressing his unhappiness over ongoing unproductive talks with Iran, seven Israeli bunker-busting cruise missiles rained on Ayatollah Khamenei’s residence – where he lived with his wife and five children – leaving the compound destroyed beyond recognition.

Though Iranian TV continued to announce throughout the day that Ayatollah Khamenei had survived the missile attack – despite Israeli claims to the contrary – and maintained he would soon appear on TV screens to make a live broadcast to the nation, as the night wore on and as Iranian credibility began to wear thin with the non-appearance of Khamenei on TV screens, Iran’s TV was forced to admit as dawn broke on the Iranian landscape that their beloved ‘Supreme Leader, the Ayatollah Khamenei, was dead and had been transported to the highest realms of Heaven, whilst imbibing its divine nectar.’

The combined Israeli and American plan aimed at unleashing their epic fury on Khamenei and his senior military advisors while they were unsuspectingly gathered holding court in the fortified bunker below the Sa’dabad Complex where Khamenei lived and directed operations proved to be a tremendous success, exceeding all expectations.

The operation had been meticulously planned and executed with military precision, having been a year in the making. Throughout this time, CIA and Mossad agents secretly obtained CCTV traffic footage that monitored the vehicles streaming past Supreme Leader Khamenei’s residential compound round the clock.

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After scanning the footage for hours on end using high-speed computers, they successfully extracted a set of algorithms. From these emerged a behavioural pattern that could predict when Khamenei and his top defence staff would be meeting in the bunker below his home.

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As Britain’s Financial Times reported, ‘Israel hacked into numerous traffic cameras in Tehran to monitor in real time the movements of security personnel and drivers near Khamenei’s office.’ They had done it by analysing parking positions from one camera at a particular angle; they built detailed profiles – including home addresses, work hours, and the individuals they protected – using algorithms.

As one Israeli agent told the newspaper, ‘If we know Tehran like the neighbourhood we grew up in as children, even the smallest anomalies are bound to catch our eye.’

Years before the air strike, Israeli intelligence officials had been quietly mapping the daily rhythms of Tehran. As the Financial Times revealed, ‘When US and Israeli intelligence determined that Khamenei would attend a Saturday morning meeting at his compound, the opportunity was judged unusually favourable.

Two people familiar with the operation told the newspaper, ‘US intelligence provided confirmation from a human source that the meeting was proceeding as planned’.

With this level of certainty existing on the ground and providing an opportunity – which comes but once in a wartime – to decapitate the sole political leadership of Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei and his top military advisors as well, Israeli military commanders found their own hands tied in the decision-making process once the moment the green light was received to fire, which sealed the Islamic religious leader’s fate, even before the missiles had left their silos.

It was simply the final and formal execution of a sentence already passed in a military competent US court of law for the mass murder of Iranian street protesters by their own Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei, elected not by the Iranian people but by a secret conclave of Ayatollahs.

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Early this week, the question arose in the western world whether it was the Israelis who had launched the first cruise missiles to end the life of a married man who had been bestowed with the infallibility of a celibate pope for the last 37 years of his life on the earthly throne of unchallenged power? Did Trump arrive late for Netanyahu’s party only after it was too late to return home alone through the dark and uncertain desert night?

President Trump, however, dismissed these claims with a wave of hand and told reporters on Tuesday, ‘No. I might have forced their hand. You see, we were having negotiations with these lunatics, and based on the way the negotiation was going, I think they were going to attack first. And I didn’t want that to happen. So, if anything, I might have forced Israel’s hand. But Israel was ready and we were ready.’

No wonder history has repeatedly shown that in the event of hostilities breaking out between two world powers, the laws fall silent amidst the clash of arms, and Truth itself becomes its first casualty, with justice literally blindfolded and sent packing off to a wilderness exile; only the age-old realistic adage survives to remind us, ‘Everything is fair in love and war.’

Furthermore, small states – like Sri Lanka – must be warned to exercise extreme caution and care to avoid being unnecessarily dragged into the conflict by rashly expressing, either by word or deed, anything diplomatically incorrect at this perilous hour.

Unless they harbour a death wish and masochistically yearn to be impaled upon the stake of economic bankruptcy, they should tread lightly on the shifting sands of the nomad, lest they end up becoming expendable pawns on a global chessboard of geopolitical power play – a game which they can neither understand nor fathom in a hundred years, the high stakes involved in this costly bloodletting duel and why it is fought so intransigently to a decisive finish, even though both warring sides equally stand to lose in this bloody game of war.

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The sudden decapitation of the Ayatollah and his inner circle has left Iran a headless, thrashing beast. With the supreme command gone, the remaining Islamic Revolutionary Guard – now a restless torso running amok – has seized unrestrained powers and, hopelessly clinging to the posthumous dictates of their fallen leader, they are lashing out in a bloody frenzy of despair and raining the remaining stockpile of cruise missiles down on the oil-rich states in the neighbourhood.

And what is the heinous violation in the eyes of international law these states have so fragrantly committed that has entitled the Islamic Revolutionary Guard – whose legality to act on behalf of a pseudo state is itself in question – to take international law into its own unseemly hands?

Does not each independent sovereign state have the exclusive right to grant any portion of its land to anyone it desires, for any purpose it fancies? Can Iran legally object under international law that such an action poses a danger to its own existence, while Iran itself is in the process of secretly building a nuclear weapon that poses a danger to the entire region, if not the world?

Even the mighty emerging giant of South Asia, India, under Modi’s shrewd leadership, wisely took care not to trample on Trump’s sensitive toes and avoid offending him in the slightest as he boldly leads the joint US-Israeli military campaign with Netanyahu to prevent Iran – whatever it may cost, no matter how long it may take – from building a nuclear weapon and, with impunity, exerting its unchallenged dominance over the entire region of oil-rich states.

In the aftermath of Iran launching a series of retaliatory revenge attacks against its own neighbouring states, India expresses solidarity with the United Arab Emirates, while Modi calls the UAE President Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed to convey his condolences and condemnation of Iran’s actions.

In a similar diplomatic tone and tenor, a series of India’s solidarity with each of the six affected neighbouring states, followed by Modi’s personal phone calls to each of the six affected Heads of States, reveals without doubt India’s unspoken solidarity with Trump’s United States and India’s unwritten condemnation of Iran’s response.

In return for India’s indispensable support to further isolate Iran from the rest of the world’s civilised nations, Trump lifts the ban on India inporting oil from Russia.

The Lankan Government for once maintains impeccable behaviour in the crisis, taking the cue from India so as not to endanger the country’s economic, political and long-term diplomatic interests and, perhaps, under Modi’s guidance and astute advice, wisely restrains itself from giving vent to familiar anti-American rhetorical blasts and provoking Trump’s unpacifiable wrath.

Unfortunately, Opposition Leader Sajith Premadasa took a different view. As if possessed by the departed spirit of the late Ayatollah, he condemned America’s attack on Iran instead.

Like an academic dean who had newly emerged from his musty office room to deliver a scholarly lecture to first-year undergraduates of international law, the SJB leader quoted chapter and verse from his Holy United Nation’s Charter and sanctimoniously referred to the need to observe the legal niceties in times of war, as laid down in the first commandment: ‘Thou shalt not interfere in the internal affairs of a sovereign state.’

By trespassing in unwanted territory and condemning President Trump for launching the first attack on Iran to prevent Iran from striking first, Sajith may well have damned his prospects of becoming the next president of Sri Lanka. He may have also condemned his party members to dwell in the political wilderness for another five years.

And, unbeknown to him, may have extended the life of this government by another five years by making this statement in Parliament this week. A statement made in ignorance of the reality that lies beneath: Every being and state acts in its interest before canvassing the interest of another if it serves its own interest.

With the spectre of lies that has jinxed this government from day one and made it reverse every forward step it had taken and aborted every ambitious project it has undertaken, the unthinkable happened this week to entangle the government and to plunge it into another crisis not of its own making.

Thousands of miles away from the maddening theatre of war in the Gulf, fate inexorably brought an Iranian warship, torpedoed by a US submarine, to sink on our virtual doorstep. A valiant rescue was made on humanitarian grounds that passed the test of neutrality, bringing the survivors and dead to shore.

And just when this government thought it safe to return to the sea of problems in which it is submerged neck deep, another Iranian warship appeared off the Galle coast, asking for permission to enter Galle Harbour.

On Friday, as the war entered its seventh day, President Trump delivered an ultimatum to the armed forces in Iran.

He said, ‘There will be no deal with Iran except UNCONDITIONAL SURRENDER!

“After that, and the selection of a GREAT & ACCEPTABLE Leader(s), we, and many of our wonderful and very brave allies and partners, will work tirelessly to bring Iran back from the brink of destruction, making it economically bigger, better, and stronger than ever before.’

‘IRAN WILL HAVE A GREAT FUTURE. MAKE IRAN GREAT AGAIN (MIGA!).’