Iran, Israel and the Theatre of War | Egypt's Handling of Colonizer Activists

Okay. So shall we talk about the, terror that's going on in Iran and

Okay. Okay. Yeah. In fact, that's a good way to start it because there's a misunderstanding. And Evan, for anyone who hasn't looked at his tweets, Evan writes on x.

I've mentioned him a number of times, and interacted with him. And I've said that, his analysis is very very it mirrors my own about what's going on in the region. And I think everyone should look at his account on X and read his tweets, because he also has the patience to explain things

Yeah.

That I maybe regard as obvious and don't explain. Or or if you read his tweets, you sort of see like a whole process of things that go on inside my head and then don't come out my mouth, and I just tell you sort of the end of that process. Whereas Evan tells you step by step and he explains to you in much greater detail. But he had a tweet where he was talking about the misunderstanding of what's meant when we say theater. That what's going on between Iran and Israel is theater.

It's not it doesn't mean that there's no conflict. That doesn't mean that there's no conflict. And when you say it's theatre, people think, oh so it's all for show and they're actually friends with each other. What I've always said is that they have a symbiotic relationship. That doesn't mean that they're friends.

But they have a function for each other. And together they have a function for the West in the region. And there is a function to the conflict. And the function of the conflict is not what most people think it is. That's what makes it theater, because it appears to be an existential clash between the Zionist regime and the so called Islamic Republic Of Iran.

That they're going to wipe each other out, or that Iran is going to destroy the Zionists once and for all, or that the Zionists are going to destroy Iran once and for all. These are things that both of them have talked about for decades. And so the theater aspect of it is that you they want it to appear to you this way when that's not really what's happening. And it's also important to note though that not necessarily everyone who's involved in this on their side knows that this isn't what's happening. They have their own ideologues.

I don't personally think, this is where I have a a difference of opinion with Evan for example. He thinks that Netanyahu is in on it. I don't think he is. I think Netanyahu is just a straight up psycho ideologue with very few options left. And his predictable behavior is being manipulated.

And I think to a certain extent, to a certain extent that's the same thing going on with Iran except that Iran is much more aligned with the regional plan. Yeah. They became more aligned with the regional plan. They have an idea of what they need to do to change in order to be included in the regional plan and to actually save their regime.

To be in the friends. They want to be continually in the friends group. Right. You said they've been included in October 2023.

Yeah. You

had mentioned

how Yeah.

Iran has now been included into the friends group. No. You know, so they want to be touring the line.

Correct. Yeah. And they've and they've done everything that was required of them. Mhmm. They've cut loose their militias.

Uh-huh. They cut loose Hezbollah. They they cut loose Bashar al Assad. They let in my opinion, you can think what you wanna think, but in my opinion, they let Ismail Haniye be assassinated. Potentially, they even let their former president be assassinated, potentially, and in my opinion, they needed to do a cleaning house in Iran to get rid of the most hard line militant ideologically stringent, strident rather, elements.

They need to show to Brix, they need to show to the GCC, they need to show to the A National OC GFC that they can play ball in a region that is stable and peaceful. They can't however, defang themselves without severe consequences within their country domestically, from the domestic population and from the military. So, you know, you have to the only way that you can get rid of, for example, proxies, is either to disown them, has political, rhetorical, ideological, and popular consequences on you, if you do it, after you've built them up as the great heroes, the resistance messiahs of the Middle East, you can't just disown them. So you have to have them eliminated through what they're there for, through combat. And that's what they did, that's what they have done.

What's gonna what's what's eventually gonna happen with the Houthis is remains to be seen because now the Houthis are more beholden to two different masters. Their first master obviously was Iran. They've always had a degree of independence and autonomy, but they're also more closely aligned now with Saudi Arabia than they ever were before. Doesn't mean again that they're friends, it means that they have mutual interests. But so the proxies have been let go, the proxies have been decapitated, and now the military command in Iran is being decapitated.

But what I think is happening is what I've said, and again, you know, I won't talk about it in great detail because for anyone who wants to know what I think about the current conflict between Iran and so called Israel. I've been talking about it ever since it started on on the Telegram channel. So you can join the Telegram discussion, and and I I have spent a great deal of time talking about it and explaining it, and the discussion there has been going on since the twelfth or thirteenth. And then my x account, and then also again I would recommend Evan writes on x, his x account for more detail. But what's happening is mutual degradation of Iran and Israel in terms of their capabilities.

Yeah. For Israel, it's just becoming blatantly clear that The US has doesn't want any involvement.

You shouldn't yeah. No one should no one should believe for a second that this is a real actual potential out of the out of control escalatory war. No one should believe that for a second. And if you're older than 40 years old, you will know that that's the case because you have some kind of a memory of history, and you will know that the moment a missile strike hits Tel Aviv from Iran, America would be bombing Iran around the clock. That's what they did when Saddam Hussein launched Scud missiles at Tel Aviv, and that's what they would have done in April against Iran if they had not if they if they were not in the process of cutting Israel loose.

So if you can't see that they're cutting Israel loose right now, then I don't know what to tell you. Geopolitics is not your game.

Let's remind the listeners, April was after the the the the assassination of Paniye. Right?

When when the when the Syrian embassy, the the Iranian embassy in Syria

embassy.

Yes, sir. Or consulate. When there was the first the first time that Iran actually launched missiles against and drones against or sorry, that Iran launched against Israel. Yes. In the past, Iran would have been decimated for having done that.

Now, the scale is beyond what anyone could have ever seen happening ten years ago, twenty years ago, forget thirty years ago, even five years ago. It's it's it's like I said I said in the chat, if you see and you do see Tel Aviv burning, it's only because the power structure is fine with Tel Aviv burning. And the Israeli should should be should clock into that. They should understand that power dynamics have shifted. We're not getting the reaction from the West that we used to.

We're not getting the the the immediate support and backup that we used to get. They should be they should be registering that, but they're not. Anyway Netanyahu is not, he still lives in the nineteen nineties. He still thinks that it's the nineteen nineties. So the end result of that is I don't see anything that's going on now except what I've always talked about, which is the reorganization of the region into a integrated collective sovereignty group of states that are more or less cohesive, and that includes the integration and the absorption of Israel.

But now you can't get Israel to do it until you have humiliated them, until you have degraded their capabilities, and you have made it very clear to them that everyone has cut them off, that you have no options left but to align with the region, but to correct yourself, rehabilitate yourself, and get all of your fanatic elements out, and they're fleeing now.

Yes.

I mean, allegedly, Netanyahu himself isn't even there right now. Allegedly, he's in Greece. So I mean people have always asked me like, according to your plan, the integration and so forth, the radical Zionists, they're never gonna go along with that. They'll never accept that, they'll never agree to that. They're not gonna be there.

They'll leave. Yeah. Because they're gonna see that their project is not going the way they want it to go. Uh-huh. They all have somewhere else to go because they have to go, they can easily go back to where they came from.

So they all are gonna leave. A lot of them are going to leave anyway, the ultra orthodox ones because they don't want to serve an army. The freeloaders, the freeloaders among the Zionists, they just they will leave anyway. But as soon as they see the this is something you have to understand also what the Jews have been very good at. Whether you, you know, whether you accept or don't accept that they are Jews because technically speaking none of them are, barely any of them are actually Jews, ethnically or religiously, they're atheist, white, Europeans.

But they have the instinct for survival which makes them adaptable and they can see when the wind is going this way, they'll go that way. They're not gonna go up against the wind and if the wind is blowing in the direction of integration into the wider region, stability and no longer basing the the reason for your existence on your ability to destabilize. Mhmm. Well

Basically the

You'll know which way to go and it's and it's back home, you'll go back home. Because you know that you don't really belong there.

Yeah. Because your master your master is changing spots now, I mean.

Well, your master is changing. You're getting a new landlord, like I've said. You're getting a new boss, you're getting a new landlord. And again, as I say, in order for that to happen, there there are certain things that have to happen, like the degradation of Israel and the degradation of Iran, mutual degradation in terms of their ability to act autonomously and in noncompliance with the regional vision. Both of them are being downgraded and for Iran, they are cleansing themselves of the militant ideologues that would have been a barrier to this integration.

That's why it's theater. It doesn't mean that the conflict itself isn't real. But it's not war, it's not an out of control escalatory war that's gonna bring us to the brink of all the way into across the threshold into World War three. That's not what's happening. And if you look at even the markets, they know that that's not what's happening.

The oil price went up a little bit, but it went to what is the normal price price where it should already be. It didn't spike out of the it should if okay. If this was a real war, oil would already be over $100 a barrel. Straits Of Hormuz would have already been cut off. US bases and US military facilities in the region would have already been struck by Iran.

Potentially, they would have already launched attacks even against the Gulf States. They've done it in the past during the during the war the Iran Iraq war. Markets would be in a free fall. None of these things are happening. Even commercial air space isn't closed in the region.

Some of it is being rerouted to go, you know, to avoid the the closed air space, you know, rerouted, but commercial air space is still active over Saudi Arabia, over Jordan, over Lebanon, Syria, UAE, so on. So no one is really in panic mode over what's going on. Means this isn't what you think it is, means it's theater. But that doesn't mean it's fake. It just means that it's not what you think it is.

You know? So again, I don't wanna I I can't really. I I feel like I've talked about it so much on telegram. And I tweeted about it. And like I said, Evan on x has explained it in great detail.

For anyone who wants to know. And here I'll say also. If you are someone there's an extent to which anyone should be willing to accommodate your inability to do research or your lack of time to do research, maybe I'll be generous, maybe you have a lack of time to do research, maybe you don't know how to do research. There's an extent to which we can accommodate that. But when we're talking about, for example, me, and I have a thousand videos, all you have to do is watch them, passively you can just watch them, or Evanon X, all you literally have to do is scroll his feed and you can get an education that explains everything for you in detail.

So if you can't even do that much, which doesn't even amount to research, if you can't even do that much, then that means that you're someone who will only ever be spoon fed information. And I'm sorry, but my spoon is never gonna be as big as the spoon of mainstream media. So even if I go to the trouble to spoon feed you factual analysis, factual information and so on, you will immediately take another spoon much bigger than mine of mainstream coverage, so mine will just get washed down, you know, with the rest of it. Mhmm. So there's not any point.

But if you're someone who really is genuinely interested in understanding what's going on, you can just look at you can you can do a search of my videos that I've done about Iran. Come You to the telegram channel and participate in what we have as daily discussion with me with me present almost daily. Or you can look at X and look at Evan on X. Yeah. I think it's because we're dealing with humanity, we're dealing with the human condition, we're dealing with suffering, we're dealing with hardship and wrongs and injustices and what not, and everyone feels, you know, and of course as Muslims we're one body, the ummah is one body, so everybody wants to Okay.

Okay, but that that if you if you are obligated in terms of responsibility, if you have any actual responsibility, which is dubious, that's ambiguous. Whether you have any responsibility for something that's happening thousands and thousands of miles away, that's ambiguous and debatable. But if you have a responsibility, then your responsibility extends only to the skill set that you have. To employ the skill set that you have, the resources that you have, material resources, intellectual resources, talent resources and so on. Use what you have.

Don't get into areas that you don't have talent, you don't have skills, you don't have resources. And there's so many people that are getting into what they're calling geopolitical analysis, but that's like calling someone who skips rocks on a pond an oceanographer. You don't know what you're talking about. You're dealing with incredibly at an incredibly superficial level, and all of the information, so called information that you're getting is misinformation, especially if you're an English language speaker exclusively, then I don't know what information you have that's valid. And neither do you, but you don't even discern.

Yeah.

You just see anything, for example people will actually go Netanyahu said such and such, Netanyahu said this and that. Why on earth would you react to a habitual liar? Who To a delusional psychopathic, psychotic habitual liar. Why would you react to anything that this person says? You know?

But again, this is just like, I can't I can't go through the steps of getting you up to speed with the basic level of discernment that you need to have to be able to even approach Yeah. Understanding geopolitical issues.

Now which brings me back to now, earlier on what we were talking about, the the march to Gaza Yeah. In Egypt.

Yeah. The march on Egypt is what it was.

Okay. That's

They they called it the march the global march to Gaza, but it was a march on Egypt Yeah. By western colonial activists.

And how did that okay. So it's it's caused

It went exactly the way I said it would go. Yeah. And and and anyone who got through the airport and got into Egypt, then you'll know now if you have any sense, which hasn't been established so far. But if you do have any sense, maybe you got some now after your experience in Egypt, then you'll know that I was right in telling you that the best case scenario for you is that you don't get even admitted into the country. That's the best case scenario.

And and the the problem is I I think that probably there was just too many of you, that they couldn't stop all of you at the airport. So some of you got through, but obviously, they're gonna get you at any number of checkpoints or at your hotel. I don't know what you thought. You thought that you thought I think that you thought that passport control at Egypt was just gonna be some fat guy smoking a cigarette writing in pencil Because you have a very derogatory view Yep. Of the Arab world.

You have a very very dismissive, superior minded projection of inferiority on the whole Arab world, and you don't think that they have authorities, you don't think they have a security and intelligence apparatus that can rival yours. You probably don't even think they've got Internet or computers.

On the flip side, you think very highly of the other side.

This is the thing. This is the thing. I actually talked to the organizer of that thing or one of the organizers of that thing and suggested you should actually be going to eat to Israel to do this march in Israel because they are the ones who are committing the crimes. They are the ones who are actually responsible for preventing aid from entering Gaza, not Egypt. Egypt is not the one who's preventing aid from entering Gaza.

They don't have unilateral control over the Raffah checkpoint. Israel is the one that's preventing aid. Israel is the one who's causing the need for aid. Israel is the one who's imposing the siege. You should do your march in Israel.

Also, we all have the golden passports that allows you entry into into

I mean, this is a whole other discussion.

Yeah.

Because it's the fact that they have those passports that made them think that they could just waltz into Egypt and be treated with kid gloves, in fact, that everyone would be grateful for them coming and saying, we're coming there to break the law. We're coming here to to illegally protest because after all, your laws don't apply to us. We can do what we want and you should just thankful be thankful to us for the little dollars that we're bringing into your economy. This is what they thought. This is what they said.

I'm not I'm not putting words in their mouth. I'm saying what they said. This is literally what they said. They don't think, this is this just shows the the extent to which they really have an a view of the Arab world and the Muslim world as being inferior and beneath them. They really don't think that they even have to try to understand us.

They don't think there's anything that they have to learn, anything that they have to study, anything that they have to research, anything about the culture, the society, the laws, anything. They don't think they have to learn any of that. Because none of it applies to them, because we're all less than, we're all lower than them. And they can just waltz in and dictate, and no one would dare touch them. And I'm happy what happened to them.

I'm happy. I'm happy for more than one reason. The last reason is that I told you so. That always satisfies me, even when it's not something pleasant. But for these particular people you got exactly what you should have gotten when you came to Egypt.

And the beautiful thing about it to me is that your white western privilege didn't save you. That in and of itself signals Egypt's sovereignty. That in and of itself signals a shift in the global power dynamics. That your white western privilege, your your your western passports, did not immunize you from the consequences of your really belligerent actions. You got treated just like anybody else who breaks the law in Egypt.

And that's to me that's a beautiful thing. And that's a that's a that's a an assertion of sovereignty, of Egyptian sovereignty. It doesn't matter who you are, which country you come from, what passport you hold, what color your skin is. You're gonna get treated just like everybody else if you break the law. Because you did, don't don't kid yourself.

You went there to break the law and the organizers knew that they were breaking the law. They knew perfectly well that they were breaking the law and they said we're gonna proceed anyway. Thinking that that's in their hands to to decide. Because again, you have a dismissive view. Mhmm.

You don't think that that that the Arab world is organized. You don't think that they have security, intelligence, laws, authorities, and you don't respect any of that. But you respect it in Israel because Israelis are westerners. They're white westerners. The overwhelming majority of them are white European western atheists and you respect them.

So you wouldn't do it with them because you know that you won't get the privilege or you think that you won't get the same awe that you expect you'll get from Egyptians. Because you have that racist mentality that you think that you're just gonna be greeted with awe when you walk in and no one would dare touch you. But you know that you're that that the same Israeli who's gonna check your passport, you probably saw him at a mall in Florida. You're all on the same page, you're all from the same place, you're all from the same culture, you all have the same background, you all have the same white privilege. So it doesn't count there.

You won't do it in Israel because you respect them and you don't respect the Muslims and you don't respect the Arabs. That's why you that's why you did it in Egypt. And as I said, from the beginning, you're doing it because you're trying to draw attention away from Israel and put the attention on the Arab regimes, put the attention on Egypt and try and make them responsible for what you and your countries are doing. That's the whole reason for this march and that's what I said from the beginning. So I'm glad what happened to you.

The fact that there are people who are saying well maybe Egypt should have been nicer to them for the public relations value, for the media value because it makes them look bad in the media. Whose media? Yeah. It makes you look bad in the media that no one even cares about anymore And that's the most beautiful aspect of it. That that that trying to placate and appease and pander to the white liberal western media doesn't matter to anyone anymore.

No one cares. And rather, we want to convey the message. They this was a media opportunity for them. They understood that. We know perfectly well that you're gonna send these videos out.

Yeah. And the message that we're sending out is we don't care about your white western liberal savior complex coming to our part of the world trying to tell us what to do and how to be and how to act and trying to put blame on us for what your countries are doing. No. You're gonna get whooped upside the head just like anybody else who does that mess.

Yeah.

So so it was a very positive media opportunity for Egypt in terms of messaging to the rest of the global South. Standing up against really western colonizer activism. And don't tell me about all of the people who went who weren't westerners. There wasn't anyone there who who participated in that except that they were westerners or they were westernized. Even if they're not from the West, the West is inside them.

All of those people who came from North Africa, Tunisia, whatever, all of those people who are from Turkey or other parts of the world, we know why you went, we know what kind of a people you are, we know what class you're from because you've got the expendable income, the disposable income to even participate in this. You're not like the rank and file normal average people. You're from a certain class of privileged people, means that you probably went to English language schools, international schools or what have you. And you're westernized, you're liberal and I and I include in that and this is gonna throw people for a loop. I include in the western liberal mentality the Muslim brotherhood.

Everybody thinks that they're these Islamists and so forth. No, these are colonized, this is a colonized organization. It maybe wasn't from the beginning but that's what it evolved into, that's what it morphed into. Now it is a colonizer institution, a colonizer organization. So I'm glad what happened.

Don't do it again. If you wanna do something, even though that even though I can't personally stand that Greta Thunberg, if you wanna do something, do a flotilla, where you're putting all of the attention on Israel. Put all of the attention on the one who's perpetuating the genocide and who is actually enforcing the siege of Gaza. Don't but don't put it on our governments. Shame on you.

That makes me so mad. I'm glad what happened. They were they they treated them with kid gloves as far as I'm concerned. I mean, saw I've seen a video going around of a guy, you know, pleading so called with the Egyptian authorities. All we wanna do they're starving, we just want to deliver but they're not the ones who are preventing it.

And that's not why they're arresting you. They're arresting you because you're breaking the law in Egypt, which is supposed to not matter. And because even what you're saying now, right now, is nefarious what you're saying. You're trying to put responsibility on Egypt for what Egypt isn't responsible for rather than putting it on Israel. Really, these are these are diabolical people.

It's been I

don't I don't care about your like, I said this in the chat and I've said it many times. I don't recognize your so called compassion, your so called caring for the Palestinians. When if you actually cared, then you would have you would do the basic thing of educating yourself about the region, educating yourself about the issue so you actually understand what's going on and why.

Yeah.

And who. But you don't even do that, that means you don't really care. That means there's some other reason behind your so called activism and it's either that you have a psychological problem, an emotional problem, or you're an agent.

Yeah. Or you're just easily put to use.

Yeah. You're a yeah. You're a useful idiot. Yeah. You're a useful idiot.

But that but that's also an element of

But we're making your useful idiots useless now. Yeah. That's what Egypt that's what Egypt showed. Exactly. Your useful idiots are no longer useful to you.

Yeah. But I I I have to point out that the kind of really, you know, the the complete how little you think of Muslims, that this guy who clearly does not identify or claim to be Muslim, but is invoking Islam and once iman into getting the guards to acquiesce. Like you think that if you just you know, it's the Islamic people, they care I care about them. I had them in my heart. As if it just takes that much to move the Muslims Because in your mind, you actually think that we are foolish.

Mhmm. We are we are we are stupid and we

are Right.

So easily Right. Again, you know, it's everything that video And

you used to. Yeah. Incriminating against you. Absolutely. Disdain for us used to go unchecked.

And what Egypt showed is not gonna go unchecked anymore. Mhmm. No one has to pander to you. The the the thing is you can believe now I'm gonna go back to this topic. You can believe whatever you want to believe about why what's going on now is going on now between Iran and Israel.

You can believe whatever you want. You can go ahead and believe that Iran is the great resistance messiah. It's a giant nation incarnation of the Mahdi. You can believe whatever you want. It doesn't matter to me.

But the reality of the existence of a plan for the region is undeniable, is unarguable. That it includes the richest and most powerful and most influential players in the region, Saudi Arabia, The UAE, it has the support of Brix, it has the support of Blackrock, it has the support of all of the major players among the AE National OCGFC. That's the thing that exist. So either you can, as I say, you can believe whatever you want. But at the end of the day, it all plays into the actualization and the realization and the achievement of that plan in the region.

You can say that that's a coincidence, if you want, that's fine, it doesn't matter. Because already anyway, your geopolitical opinion is not something to be taken seriously. If you believe that Iran is exclusively moral actor and is just virtuous in doing the right thing and blah blah blah. Already you're just you're living in another world. It doesn't matter.

But the way this plays out benefits that plan for the region. And it will help to bring about everything that I've been talking about, which is the subordination of Israel and and its integration into the region under GCC management and financial economic control. Everyone is on board with it. Everyone in the region. This is the thing.

Everyone is clearly on board with this plan from Saudi Arabia, UAE, Egypt, Turkey, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan. The only outliers have been Israel and Iran, but even Iran is on board with the plan. And like I said, they've been doing the needful to to show because they're in a very deep hole of distrust regionally. People people don't understand, again outsiders who don't understand and don't think they need to bother to understand before they opine about something. Outsiders don't understand that Iran is not viewed fundamentally differently by the region than how they view Israel.

It is viewed as a bad actor. It is viewed as a destabilizing actor, and it and it has been for decades. And not without reason. You can you can, you know, maybe you can argue they exaggerated or it's ideological it's but it's not just based on it's not even just based on religion. It's based on actions, it's based on tangible actions that Iran has taken.

That have made the region distrustful of them. But Iran is doing the needful, has been doing the needful to try to repair that trust and try to show that they can be a team player. And and again, you can believe whatever you want to believe, but either way the way this pans out, the way this plays out is all, it all facilitates and expedites the accomplishment of that plan for the region. And and like we were talking about the other day, The Levant, Greater Palestine, is going to be the center of the world. It's going to be the center of the world politically, economically in terms of trade, culturally, in every way that you can imagine.

Belarus Shem, Greater Palestine, is going to be the center of the world for the foreseeable future. I don't see any anything that would cause that position to slip. Once it has been established, I don't see anything that would cause that position to slip. That's where to think about anything that would cause that position to slip is getting into territory where you are trying to predict literally hundreds of years in the future. Because it has everything, geographically, geopolitically, geo strategically, economically, resource wise, everything to be the center of the world.

That's what it has been historically and that's what it will be. And obviously, also along along with that, if we're looking at the future, there is no civilizational block of people that can hold a candle to the Muslims in terms of the inevitability of our preeminence as a global force, as a global influential force that we will be you can forget about countries, but as a civilizational block there's nobody but us. And there's and there's also nothing that you can foresee that would cause that to slip. So the future very clearly is a Muslim future. We're talking about we have control of the most natural, the most important resources.

I've said I've said it a million times, the most important resources, the most strategic locations, the most geopolitically and geo strategically important locations, the choke points of the world are in our hands. And we're the only, again, civilizational block that has a bulge in youth, rather than bulging youth, which is what you have in the West, whatever youth you have, they're all overweight. Our demographics are good and very healthy and robust, and again, we have a common, we have a we are cohesive demographic despite any ethnic religious, not religious, ethnic, linguistic, locational differences, geographic differences. All of these things are irrelevant in terms of our cohesion as a civilizational block. So the future is very clearly Muslim and I can't see again anything, I can't foresee anything that would cause that to slip or that would that would that would prevent that from happening.

It's an inevitability, just just factually speaking, if you take a religious narrative out of it, in terms of geopolitical basics, there's no there's no other way that the world can go but Muslim preeminence. And this is a part of that. You can believe that, you know, Iran is helping to achieve that by destroying Israel. You can believe whatever you want. And and and and kudos to Iran for what they're doing.

They're making everybody happy. Everybody is happy by seeing the videos. Everybody is happy about that. You're giving joy to to millions of Muslims around the world for seeing what we're seeing. But they wouldn't be able to do that if this wasn't the plan that's in motion.