Iran: Mojtaba Khamenei promises a response with "no geographical limit"

According to France 24, Iran's supreme leader, Mojtaba Khamenei, threatened on Saturday "an immediate, powerful response with no geographical limit" should speculation about a resumed war by the United States and Israel come to pass. Nothing in the dispatch indicates at this stage that a strike is decided or imminent. Nor do we know what those speculations rest on, or what means Tehran would actually put behind its formula. What follows is our reading, not an established fact.

First, the form. A conditional threat, issued before any hostile move, is a matter of deterrence: you announce the price so as not to have to make anyone pay it. "No geographical limit" is a message aimed at the Gulf neighbours and at foreign bases as much as at Washington. It says: if we are struck, nobody in the region will be safe. This is diplomacy by way of threats, and it is legible.

Next, the substance. Cui bono? Not the populations, Iranian, Israeli or Gulf, who would pay for a new war with their lives and their daily existence. The potential beneficiaries are elsewhere: arms manufacturers, defence suppliers, and all those whose positions depend on controlling a region that concentrates hydrocarbons and sea lanes. The word "security" here, as so often, covers a matter of spheres of influence.

This is the framework Lenin set out: at a certain stage, capital seeks outlets, raw materials and markets beyond its borders, and the great powers fight over the carve-up. Sanctions, military alliances and arms contracts are its political shell. The Middle East offers an almost textbook illustration. Washington and its allies want a regional order in which Iran has no say; Tehran wants precisely the opposite.

Let us be clear, however: the Iranian regime is no innocent victim of this machinery. It is also a state apparatus that defends the interests of its own elites, and it finds in verbal escalation a means of closing ranks at home. Khamenei's threat serves the cohesion of power as much as it serves deterrence. Each camp feeds on the other.

The risk, meanwhile, is real. When each side proclaims its response "immediate" and "unlimited", the margin for error collapses: one incident misread, one strike poorly calibrated, and the spiral runs away. The chancelleries will speak of "restraint" and "de-escalation", words trotted out after the munitions have been handed over. What to watch in the coming days: any official confirmation from the American or Israeli side, the movements of forces in the region, and the reaction of the Gulf capitals, the most exposed.

For now, a sentence has been spoken, not a missile fired. This is the moment when the pressure of peoples against war weighs most, and when governments listen to it least.