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North Korea has long topped the tantrum list

China’s communists likewise harbour a weakness for a good insult, as the recently transferred ambassador to Canada demonstrated in various denunciations of Canadians as dolts, bigots and white supremacists. Iran is another contender, especially in regards to the U.S. (the “Great Satan”) and Israel, which former president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad called an “insult to all humanity.”

It’s questionable whether tantrum tactics produce results, though it’s no doubt a lot of fun. And, until the election of Donald Trump, there was virtually no risk of blowback. Presidents and prime ministers, chancellors and other Western types just showed no taste for spewing scorn. Trump, as in so many ways, is different. Whether he’s gained anything for the U.S. or its Western allies remains open for question: Trump’s current Twitterized screaming match with Tehran may be the — highly dangerous — test of whether matching a dog’s bark is a good way to preclude its bite.

Photo by Kimimasa Mayama/AFP/Getty Images

It’s certainly one hell of a contest, sparked by Iran’s destruction of a U.S. drone over the Strait of Hormuz, and escalating to the point that pushing one wrong button could spark a war of frightening prospect. Both sides accuse the other of lying about the location of the drone. When the White House imposed new sanctions, Tehran declared it had become “mentally retarded” and denounced the sanctions as “idiotic.” Secretary of State Mike Pompeo dismissed the remarks as “a bit immature and childish.” Tehran accused Trump of “annihilating all of the international and established mechanisms for maintaining world peace and security” — a rich remark from a country that’s spent decades helping ramp up the death toll in Syria, Iraq, Lebanon and Gaza, to mention a few.

Obviously, supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei hasn’t quite grasped the full flavour of Donald Trump, however. “Iran leadership doesn’t understand the words ‘nice’ or ‘compassion,’ they never have,” Trump tweeted. “The wonderful Iranian people are suffering, and for no reason at all. Their leadership spends all of its money on Terror, and little on anything else.”