Iran's technological prowess has reached an all-time high. First it claims to have solved the metaphysical conundrums associated with time travel. Next up: an Islamic version of Google Earth, one free of the pernicious influence of "the U.S., England and the Zionists."
Ali Razeghi has not created a flux capacitor, and probably doesn't own a DeLorean. But the managing director at the delightfully-named Centre for Strategic Inventions claims to have put together a device that fits into a "personal computer case" whose algorithms can discern key details about the next five to eight years of a user's life based merely on a fingertip impression.
"It will not take you into the future," Razeghi told the state-run Fars news agency, according to the Daily Telegraph, "it will bring the future to you." With that, Razeghi becomes the most significant scientist since Albert Einstein.
Taking Razeghi at his word, today marks the day that Iran becomes a global economic and military superpower. It no longer matters how many aircraft carriers or afloat staging bases packed with laser cannons the U.S. idles near Iranian shores. The commandos who operate in secret across the Persian/Arabian Gulf are now irrelevant. Iranian air defenses will now know precisely where and when Israeli jets seeking to bomb Iranian nuclear facilities will enter their airspace.
Iran's woes at constructing an intercontinental ballistic missile now appear trivial. Nothing matters more than accurate, predictive intelligence for discerning an adversary's move before he makes it. An Iranian chrononautical effort gives the Islamic Republic a near omniscience: the ability to access, process and utilize data before it even enters existence. It is entirely possible that the implications of Iranian trans-chronal access are already rippling backward in time across the multiverse, transforming reality in ways that are difficult to comprehend.
There are limited countermeasures Iranian adversaries can design or field. One option would be to design son-of-Stuxnet malware to attack the device itself. But there is great likelihood Razeghi's machine will have already warned the Iranian security apparatus of a forthcoming cyberattack. A more fruitful option might be to out-invent Iran, and create a better forecasting device than the Iranians possess. Such a move carries heavy implications for the fabric of reality, but Razeghi has already crossed a Rubicon, and U.S. policymakers must now ask themselves how long they are prepared to tolerate an Iranian monopoly on time travel.
If that wasn't enough, Iran is about to displace one of Google's most significant products. "Basir" will be a 3-D mapping tool for the entire globe, competing with Google Earth, and due for a rollout within a mere four months. While the product suffers from an unclear explanation, one of its architects, Information Minister Mohammed Hassan Nami, says it will "take people of the world to reality" -- that is, an Islamic reality, perhaps overlaid as data upon the map.
"Our values in Iran are the values of God," Nami told the Guardian, "and this would be the difference between Basir and the Google Earth, which belongs to the ominous triangle of the US, England and the Zionists."
The Guardian expresses skepticism that Iran can build a sophisticated mapping tool on a compressed timetable. But it has clearly not taken into account that Nami has foreseen the success of Basir through Razeghi's chronological breakthrough. We may already live in the world Iran has created.
Update, 5:00 p.m.: Caitlin Dewey of The Washington Post reports Fars deleted the story after the Telegraph ran with it, and Josh Keating of Foreign Policy wonders if the story was ever genuine. Presumably this is all evidence that now the Iranians are able to travel back in time, not just discern the future.
