The difference between the illusion of power and its reality is the difference between the Ayatollah Khamenei and President Donald Trump. Trump is on the cusp of joining the very small number of American presidents who reorder the world. Khamenei is on the cusp of history’s abyss reserved for murderous fanatics.

The belief in the unlimited power of a totalitarian government to maintain itself and protect its rulers is a dangerous conceit, as Syria’s Bashar al-Assad and Venezuela’s Nicholas Maduro have both discovered.

It may be that Ayatollah Khamenei is in the process of discovering the same hard reality: No government, no matter how ruthless, can endure for centuries or even decades in the face of a resentful population.

Not even the rulers of Rome at the height of the Caesars were guaranteed an endless run of power.

If either the U.S. or the Israeli’s provide the final push, the great people of Persia will re-emerge and regain their place among the great civilizations on the planet.

We wish them well.