Tehran, September 22 – Let us be clear from the outset, as the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps has always been clear: the Supreme Leader is alive, functioning, issuing guidance, and in full command of the Islamic Republic. Also, we would prefer not to confirm anything about his pulse until the dollar buys three million rials.

Pay no attention to that cardboard cutout. Zionist misinformation!

A succession announcement is a sensitive instrument. Deployed too early, it invites questions about who is actually signing the decrees, who is sitting behind the curtain passing notes to the president, and why the Leader has not been photographed since the opening hours of the war that killed his father. Deployed too late, it looks like we were hiding something. The correct window, our Planning Directorate has determined, is the moment a loaf of bread requires a wheelbarrow and a scientific calculator.

With the rate at which Israel has been taking out our nuclear scientists, those machines will soon be the only things left in the country with “scientific” in their names.

We are close. The street rate is already in the low two-millions. We’ll call it “patriotic depreciation.” Every additional zero acts as a force multiplier: it prices imported luxuries out of the reach of the weak-willed, it makes martyrdom pensions look generous in nominal terms, and it gives the Central Bank something to do besides print cardboard cutouts.

Those are getting expensive, anyway, what with the weakened currency and all.

Rumors that the Leader died of his wounds, or that we have been running the country off a signed blank pad and a very patient actor in a turban, are psychological warfare. We reject them. We also decline to produce video, audio, or a live handshake until the FX target is met. Security, you understand. The Zionist entity would love nothing more than a clear image of the Rahbar. They would love a currency that still buys medicine even more.

In the meantime, governance continues: “the Supreme Leader” threatens missile strikes; others prod our proxies to make trouble. Officials meet “the Leader” for hours at a time in rooms no one else may enter. This provides continuity, which, especially under current currency conditions, is cheaper than a funeral, and a funeral is cheaper than an election, but neither is as useful as a rial that makes the word “salary” into performance art.

Also, anyone want to barter some political prisoners for food?

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