In a little noticed comment made in September 2020, Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei praised the 21 July 1988 decision of his predecessor, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, to accept a cease-fire in the eight-year war with Iraq. Khomeini had vowed jihad to total victory, but after a devastating toll in lives, Khomeini referred to his halt in the fighting as “taking poison.” In his speech, Khamenei evoked Khomenei’s “drinking the chalice of poison” in a way that had observers wondering whether he was hinting at some decision of his own to save the Iranian regime from collapse.
