Ari Siletz

Chess players dread being in a situation called “fork” (hamleh e dogaaneh) where in order to save one piece another has to be sacrificed. The Gaza naval protest is the political equivalent of a fork, where Iranians are damned if we support it and damned if we don’t. It is an annoying situation, but there’s no getting out of it. The rules of chess don’t include screaming your opponent out of the game.

 Here are the pieces threatened:

Rook (a valuable piece) =  Na ghazeh, na lobnaan, jaanam fadaaye Iran.

Queen (an even more valuable piece) = civil disobedience.   Drawing world condemnation of the IRI through civil disobedience dramatizing the repression is part of the toolkit of Iran’s freedom movement.

The fork: Do we rescue the power of civil disobedience (the queen), condemning Israeli violence against the protesters?  The price is that we sacrifice our nationalist rook.

My choice: Sacrifice the rook, save the queen. If the US does not get away with ignoring repression of the Palestinians in Israel, she will certainly no longer get away with ignoring Iran’s freedom movement. This chess fork is looking more and more like a clever trap set for the unwary opponent. I hope the US-IRI semi-alliance falls for it.

  PS: The above game is a happy example of a queen-rook fork where neither the queen nor the rook has to be sacrificed. Nice trap by black who tempted the fork. Black to move, do you see what he must do?