If you’re feeling sad that the close of the election cycle will mean an end to distortions, half-truths and outright lies, never fear! Iranian leaders are picking up the slack even before Nov. 6.

The theater of the absurd emanating from Iran is comical at best, pathetic at worst. While Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei continues to assert no impact to Iran from the stinging economic sanctions, his English-language network is accusing the West of harm emanating from imposing restrictions on medical imports that are tantamount to genocide.

No, really, here’s the story as reported in the Jerusalem Post: “PressTV quoted a unnamed patient as asking why ordinary Iranians should die because of medicine shortages, while in a previous report, the state-run channel claimed that the sanctions are causing ‘carnage’ and that six million Iranian lives were at stake, using the figure to hint that the U.S. and Europe were committing genocide in Iran.

“‘Is the West taking sadistic pleasure in incurring genocidal deaths or does the West naively believe that they are achieving their fiendish goals in the Muslim country?’ the report questioned.”

This, by the way, is apparently at the same time that Porsches are continuing to be imported into Iran for the benefit of the ruling regime.

It is hardly surprising that Iran would utilize genocide terminology. After all, its institutional anti-Semitism, anti-Zionism and Holocaust denial lead the world. What’s different at this juncture, however, is how chaotic and inconsistent the messages coming out of the country are becoming.

Khamenei for his part continues to claim the Iranian “resistance economy” is building self-reliance, all the while causing supposed protests across the West.

None of it makes sense, of course, and there’s very good reason for that. The nation is split in two right now, with the hypocritical religious ruling class keeping their power through the fear and might of the military and the dread Revolutionary Guard, as the mainstream populace is being sacrificed into an economic abyss.

It remains to be seen what all this will do for the prospects of a nuclear weapons program in Iran, but the mullahs seem to be doing everything in their constricting world to keep up either the work or the perception thereof. Anything of true cultural import has been scuttled; the national orchestra was shut down recently for lack of financial support, and the impacts on families and children are substantial with Iranian currency plunging continually to all-time lows. Anything for the good of weapons of mass destruction.

There’s a bit of Iranic — oops, ironic — justice in all this as it pertains to oil prices in the United States. As you may have noticed at the pump recently, prices have recently dipped about as low as they’ve been in quite some time. And not only is demand in Europe mitigated by the flailing economies, but their economies have been used to pricey gas (much more so than us) for awhile. So the only ones really feeling the squeeze are Iranians and their limited set of terrorist allies.

This is all probably pretty good news for most of the Arab nations throughout the Middle East as well, though they would be reticent to say so publicly. There are many more nations that don’t want Iran to have nuclear capability than do, and other than perhaps Russia and China (for selfish reasons of their own) and terrorist groups like Hezbollah, no one is likely to come to their defense on the international stage.

Will this economic deprivation and isolation be enough to bring a seriously weakened Iran to the negotiating table for real? Who knows; almost everything the regime has done in the past is a stall tactic designed to stretch out the timeframe long enough for them to enrich uranium to a sufficient level to allow for warhead capability. The Iranians have become the world’s master liars, and there’s plenty of reason to assume they won’t stop.

But that’s not really the issue right now. Until and unless the Americans and Israelis together determine when and how to implement a plan for bunker busting through mountainsides and subterranean tunnels (a plan, by the way, that almost surely requires American military might), everything else – economic deprivation, cyberdamage, diplomatic isolation – must be done, and done as aggressively as possible to keep the thumbscrews on the mullahs.

It is sad beyond belief that the lying, wholly untrustworthy Iranian leadership continues to subject its own populace to brutal hardship to perpetuate its own madness. But as sad as it is, the alternative of a whole world of sadness should Iran get the bomb is even worse. And that’s why the pressure must be relentless and unforgiving.