Horsing around with the Persian Godfather

Throttle and Threaten, Manipulate and Weaken

Avner Boskey

June 9, 2026

In a scene from Mario Puzo’s The Godfather, mafia Don Vito Corleone declares that he would extend “an offer he can’t refuse” to a corrupt movie producer, in order to get him to cast Corleone’s godson in an upcoming movie. This Hollywood mogul did not agree to the Don’s suggestion.

The producer had recently bought a prize racehorse – a Triple-Crown winner named ‘Khartoum’ – for $600,000, and was quite attached to the animal. So the Godfather sent one of his heavies to decapitate the horse and to delicately place the detached head under the satin sheets of the Hollywood producer’s gold-lamé-covered bed. The bloody horse’s head would serve as ‘an encouragement’ for that mogul to hire the Godfather’s godson. This is an outstanding Hollywood example of what can happen when one horses around with a Godfather.

Similar dynamics are occurring today in the Persian Gulf involving Iran, the Houthis and Lebanese Hezbollah on one side, and the US and Israel on the other.

‘Don Corleone’ of the Persian Gulf

On May 17, 1900, Ruhollah (Arabic for ‘Spirit of allah’) Mostafavi Musavi Khomeini was born in Khomeyn, part of the ethnically Persian Markazi province, into a family of merchants, small land owners and clerics. Prior to 1921 his family patronymic was ‘Hindi’ (‘from India’), because his ancestors had migrated to Kintoor, Uttar Pradesh province, India in the late 1700’s. Ruhollah’s grandfather returned to Persia/Iran in 1839.

Ruhollah trained at the Shi’ite seminaries of Arak and Qom, becoming a leading scholar and lecturer at Qom and Najaf (considered perhaps the holiest city in Shi’ite Islam). After a prolonged exile in Turkey and France, Khomeini returned to Iran in 1979, becoming Leader of the Revolution on February 4 of that year, and then First Supreme Leader (rahbar-e mo’azzam) of Iran on December 3, 1979,

Here is some of the historical heritage of ‘Don Khomeini’: He supported the taking of American hostages in November 1979. He issued a February 14, 1989 Islamic fatwa calling for the murder of Indian-born British novelist Salman Rushdie. He labeled the United States as the ‘Great Satan‘, the Soviet Union as the ‘Lesser Satan‘ and Israel as the ‘Little Satan‘.

On September 22, 1980, the Iran-Iraq War broke out, catalyzed by a snap Iraqi invasion of Iranian territory. Over 500,00 deaths were caused in total, making it the deadliest conventional war ever fought between regular armies of developing countries.

The Iraqi government – led by President Saddam Hussein – had various goals in mind here: to prevent Ruhollah Khomeini from exporting his Shi’ite anti-Sunni revolution to Iraq, which might conceivably have caused its Shia majority to rebel against ‘the Butcher of Baghdad.’ Iraq also wanted to dislodge Iran from becoming the most powerful leader of the Arab-Islamic world as well as the main military power in the Persian Gulf. Saddam Hussein also wanted to seize and occupy Iran’s adjacent oil-rich province of Khuzestan.

After 18 months of fighting, Iran had managed to regain all territory lost to Iraq up to that point. Khomeini then refused an Iraqi offer of a truce, and demanded both Iraqi reparations and the toppling of Saddam Hussein. By March 1984 two million of Iran’s most educated citizens had left the country. The collateral damage of the war which ended on August 20, 1988, was (for Iran) nearly 250,000 Iranian casualties and a cost of over US $300 billion.

At the close of that war, Khomeini insisted that Iran’s clash with Iraq had not been a mistake. In his ‘Letter to Clergy’ radio broadcast of July 20, 1988, he wrote that “we do not repent, nor are we sorry for even a single moment for our performance during the war. Have we forgotten that we fought to fulfill our religious duty and that the result is a marginal issue?”

Behind Khomeini’s words lay a strong jihadi world view: He believed that Shi’ite Iran needed to conquer Sunni-controlled Iraq and annex its Shi’ite majority. Iran’s Supreme Leader saw this as a critical first step in the fulfilment of Shi’ite eschatological expectations. Khomeini believed that it is Shi’ite destiny first to conquer Sunni Islam and cleanse Mecca; then to destroy Israel; and after that to bring the entire world under the domination of a Shi’ite dictatorship. Both of his successors, Ayatollah Ali Hosseini Khamenei and the present Ayatollah Mojtaba Hosseini Khamenei, also subscribed to this Shi’ite End of Days eschatology.

Khomeini knew that any agreement which would leave Saddam in power, as the 1988 pact did, would delay the Last Days realization of this Shi’ite religious destiny. Today’s leaders in Iran believe much the same about the need to crush and conquer Israel.

Death of a Don

Khomeini’s iron rule over Iran was infamous for its blood-drenched Shi’ite ‘revival’; for its anti-Western policies and murderous anti-Semitism; for its crushing anti-democratic suppressions, and for its massive human rights violations. These included the Iranian Cultural Revolution purges; the 1981–1982 Iran massacres; the 1988 mass executions of Iranian political prisoners; and for using suicide child soldiers extensively during the Iran–Iraq War in human wave attacks. In May 1979 ‘Don’ Khomeini established what is today the world’s largest terrorist organization – The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), also known as the Pasdaran.

Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini died on June 3, 1989 from stomach cancer, after suffering five consecutive heart attacks in ten days. At his initial and interrupted funeral, at least 10 mourners were trampled to death, over 400 were badly hurt, and several thousand were treated for riot-caused injuries.

At his second funeral, the gathered crowds pushed past makeshift barriers on the way to the cemetery, and at that point the authorities lost control of the event. According to journalist John Kifner of The New York Times, here is a graphic description of the burial of Iran’s Godfather:

“The crowd, much of it made up of Revolutionary Guards detailed to maintain order, pulled the coffin from the helicopter and began parading it around the makeshift compound surrounding the gravesite. As the excitement grew, the body of the Ayatollah, wrapped in a white burial shroud, fell out of the flimsy wooden coffin, and in a mad scene people in the crowd reached to touch the shroud. The soldiers pushed and wrestled, finally firing warning shots, to get the body back. Ayatollah Khomeini’s son, Ahmad, was knocked from his feet. But even as the soldiers pushed the body back into the helicopter, the crowd swarmed over the craft, dragging it back down as it tried to take off. Others jumped into the hole dug for the Ayatollah’s body. The troops drove the crowd back, finally clearing the compound enough to allow the helicopter to take off, its rotors scattering more mourners.”

“It was not until more than five hours later that the Ayatollah was buried. A succession of camouflage-painted helicopters touched down and lifted off from the now-cleared area. Finally, one of the Shah’s old American-supplied Huey helicopters, carrying the Speaker of Parliament, Hojatolislam Hashemi Rafsanjani, landed, quickly followed by two more. Ahmed Khomeini, in his black clerical turban, emerged from the third helicopter, and then the Ayatollah’s body, held in a metal box resembling an airline shipping container, was carried out.”

Horses’ heads and Persian strategies

Subsequent to the outbreak of hostilities between Iran, the US and Israel on February 28, 2026, the world’s media have been catching up on battlefield results and on decoding Iranian strategies. Here is some background updated information:

Back in 2014, IRGC Qods Force Chief Qassem Suleimani had outlined an Iranian revolutionary strategy of toppling Sunni Arab governments, through Shi’ite military movements funded and controlled by by Iran. Suleimani stated that Iran’s goal was to occupy “80 percent of the world’s oil.”:

“The revival of Shia under the leadership of Iran creates a polarity and power for Iran, which has a political dimension and also a security dimension and also an economic dimension . . . We know that three countries Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Iraq contain the most oil in the world. [Saudi] Arabia is first, Iran and Iraq are second and third, and that approximately…about 80 percent is where the Shia live . . . The political leadership of Shi’ism exponentially adds to Iran’s ethnic power.”

The wise writer of Proverbs counsels generals: “Prepare plans by consultation, and make war by wise guidance” (Proverbs 20:18).

It may surprise some of us to discover that Iran struck the United Arab Emirates nearly as much as it struck Israel during hostilities. The facts show that UAE and Saudi Arabia are considered the most pro-Western and strategically friendly to the USA among the Gulf States. Iran struck them as a warning to all Gulf States, in a similar way to how Don Corleone had ‘encouraged’ the Hollywood mogul – by decapitating his prize race-horse Khartoum – ‘to make the right decision’.

Since February 28, 2026 the UAE has been hit by 537 ballistic missiles, 26 cruise missiles and 2,256 drones. Jordan was hit by 204 missiles and drones during that season. Qatar was stuck by 203 missiles and 87 drones, while Bahrain was hit by 132 missiles and 234 drones. The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia was struck by 38 ballistic missiles, 26 cruise missiles and 435 drones.

From February 28 to April 8, 2026, Israel was the recipient of 650 missile and over 1,000 drone attacks from Iran, the majority of which carried cluster munitions. About 16 of the missiles that made it past Israeli missile defenses carried conventional warheads, while 50 had cluster munitions. The attacks killed a total of 24 people, all of them civilians, and resulted in approximately 7,000 injuries. Of the 24 civilians killed, 14 were struck by warheads with conventional explosive warheads and 10 were victims of cluster submunitions; two of the deaths were inside a sheltered space, with the other 22 fatalities being people in unprotected areas.

Godfather tactics indeed!

Some battle losses caused by Iran

Iran was able to destroy some significant American ground assets during the first week of the war (February-March 2026). These included at least 47 USAF fighter jets, UAV drones, refueling tankers and surveillance planes. To be more specific, these included four F-15E Strike Eagle fighter jets, one F-35A Lightning II stealth fighter, an A-10 Thunderbolt II ‘warthog’ attack aircraft, seven KC-135 Stratotanker refueling planes, an E-3 Sentry AWACS surveillance aircraft, two MC-130J Commando II special operations aircraft, a HH-60W Jolly Green II rescue helicopter, 24 MQ-9 Reaper drones and an MQ-4C Triton high-altitude surveillance drone.

As well, 20 major US radar facilities were taken out by Iranian missile and drone attacks:

The largest American radar in the Gulf is the AN/FPS-132 Upgraded Early Warning Radar, valued at $1.1 billion. It is a fixed radar system designed to detect drones, jet fighters and missiles. Located at al Udeid Air Base, Umm Dahal in Qatar, it was hit with a Iranian missile on Saturday, February 28, 2026 and was irretrievably damaged.
Raytheon’s AN/TPY-2 transportable x-band radar is the radar component of America’s THAAD (Terminal High Altitude Area Defense) Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) system. On Sunday March 1 or Monday March 2, Iran hit this x-band radar which was deployed at al-Ruwais Industrial City in the United Arab Emirates. The destroyed radar component is estimated to be worth $500 million. N.R. Jenzen-Jones, a munitions specialist and director of the research company Armament Research Services (ARES), told CNN the radar cannot be easily replaced and called it a significant loss. “The AN-TPY/2 radar is essentially the heart of the THAAD battery, enabling the launch of interceptor missiles and contributing to a networked air defense picture. It also happens to be an incredibly expensive piece of kit. The loss of even a single radar of this type would be an operationally significant event.”
Two other THAAD AN/TPY-2 x-band radar systems were also hit by Iran – one at Prince Sultan AFB al-Kharj in Saudi Arabia, and one in Jordan at the Muwaffaq Salti Air Base.

Twenty-one ISRAEL UAV drones were destroyed by Iran in this 40-day war. Two UAVs from the United Arab Emirates were destroyed, as well as three Italian drones, one Saudi and one Qatari UAV. A geo-strategic aspect of this battle connects to Russia, which supplied intelligence information to Iran in real time, detailing locations of US fighter jets, warships and radar installations.

Wake up and smell the hummus

Iran’s new strategic ‘Godfather’ thrust in this past round of hostilities has involved major attacks on its Arab Sunni neighbors. This new targeting resurrects old specters of Sunni-Shia clashes, events which go back to the dawn of Islam. The Sunni-led countries of Qatar, Bahrain, Oman, Saudi Arabia, UAE and Azerbaijan were all targeted by Iranian missiles and UAVs. The Gulf States, known up until now for being awash in petrodollars and gold-plated Lamborghinis, discovered that none of their gleaming skyscrapers and palaces have bomb shelters – no-one thought there was any need for such trifles. Their citizens were left defenseless in the face of incoming Iranian Shi’ite missiles.

The Saudis never expected that their core energy infrastructure would become a missile target in this conflict. But the Saudi Ras Tanura refinery was hit on March 2, 2026 and again on March 19, 2026, while on the night of April 7-8 (shortly after the announcement of a ceasefire between the US and Iran) the following petroleum facilities were hit by Iranian attacks: ARAMCO’s East-West pipeline, its Manifa oil field, and its refineries in SATORP (jointly operated with TotalEnergies), Yanbu/SAMREF (ExxonMobil and ARAMCO) and Riyadh, as well as its Juaymah facility (a massive Saudi Aramco hydrocarbon processing and export hub for processing and shipping Liquefied Petroleum Gas [LPG] and Natural Gas Liquids [NGL]). This has contributed to a staggering $33.5 billion first-quarter deficit in Saudi Arabia, married to financially destabilizing oil tanker backups in the Strait of Hormuz.

Another strategic Iranian ‘Godfather’ goal is to throttle and threaten Western economies by blocking shipping lanes for oil exporters. The mining and closing of the Strait of Hormuz by Iran’s navy (fast attack and missile boats), combined with its Houthi proxy closing off the Bab al-Mandab (Arabic for ‘Gate of Grief’), has the potential of shutting off 20% of the world’s petroleum supply and 25% of the global seaborne oil trade – approximately 20 million barrels per day, as well as most commercial activity coming out of the Gulf States. The Bab al-Mandab is a critical maritime chokepoint situated between Yemen (on the Arabian Peninsula) and Djibouti and Eritrea (on the Horn of Africa). It serves as the southern gateway to the Red Sea, connecting the Indian Ocean and Gulf of Aden to the Mediterranean Sea via the Suez Canal.

IRGC is leveraging its tactical geographical location to control and profit from taxes on all trade coming through international waters in the Strait of Hormuz and Bab al-Mandab (through its Houthi proxy). This would threaten the economy of the entire Middle East, Israel, and Europe, placing their prosperity and survival in the hands of a maniacal jihadi revolutionary dictatorship. Add to this equation Iran’s willingness to attack its Arabic-speaking neighbors with ballistic missiles, cruise missiles, UAV drones and (potentially) with nuclear weapons, and it becomes rather clear what the Iranian Godfather has in mind: taking over the Middle Eastern ‘hood’ and committing genocide against its Jewish inhabitants.

The current tactics of the Persian Godfather – the Iranian Hitler – involve stalling American and Israeli attempts to crush its plans for Middle East domination and worldwide Islamist take-over. This includes getting POTUS Trump to defer all unresolved issues to the foggy future; to flip the entire sequencing of ‘peace talks’ by refusing to make any nuclear-related commitments or concessions regarding stockpiling at this stage; to demand immediate economic rewards from the US, including the unfreezing of blocked assets (which would then be immediately used to bolster the terrorist armies of Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis and Iraq’s Kata’eb Hezbollah); and to condition the entire agreement on an ‘all fronts ceasefire’ that would effectively force Washington to strip Israel of its freedom of action against Hezbollah in Lebanon.

US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee posted June 8, 2026 on Twitter, a statement that sums up the Iranian Godfather’s goals and recent activities: “Iran and its proxy agents of evil want to incinerate America & Israel. Mothership of Satan is in Tehran.”

How shall we then pray?

Pray that the God of Jacob will break through to America’s leadership and grant them counter-strategies which will reveal, successfully confront and block these jihadi evils

Pray for the wisdom and revelation of the God of Jacob to be given to Arab leaders in the Gulf States – instructing them on how to stand for God’s heart-purposes for the Middle East in general and for Israel in particular

Pray for the entire people of Israel to be protected and preserved from their enemies (see Luke 1:68-75), and that they would seek and find salvation in Messiah Yeshua