In this satirical report, Iran responds to the reported appointment of Mohsen Rezaei by installing a motorised carousel that rotates established officials through senior posts. The fictional machine turns elite recycling into visible government procedure while other capitals quietly admire the engineering.
TEHRAN — Iran’s security establishment has responded to the reported appointment of longtime commander Mohsen Rezaei to a top security post by unveiling a motorised personnel carousel that will rotate senior officials through government vacancies without the customary nuisance of pretending anybody new has entered the building.
The appointment was reported in August 2026 by The New York Times and examined by Al Jazeera. The carousel, by contrast, is the single and entirely fictional premise of this satirical report: an enormous circular conference table that slowly carries established officials from one title to the next while preserving the solemn expression traditionally associated with continuity.
Rezaei, a longtime figure in Iran’s military and political establishment, is therefore imagined not as having entered a new office so much as having arrived at the correct point on the circumference. This represents a considerable advance over the old system, in which officials had to stand up, cross a corridor and sit down again before the state could announce strategic renewal.
The table’s manufacturers describe the mechanism as quiet, dependable and capable of completing a full institutional cycle without spilling anyone’s tea. Its speed has reportedly been calibrated to convey momentum without producing detectable movement, a specification familiar to governments everywhere.
A revolution in going round
At the centre of the fictional machine sits a polished brass hub marked “Continuity,” though officials stressed that the label is decorative and does not constitute a policy commitment. Around it are identical high-backed chairs, each aligned with a different governmental title. When a vacancy occurs, the motor engages, the table turns several degrees and the nearest experienced figure is delivered to the post.
No one is required to submit a fresh curriculum vitae. This is regarded as both efficient and humane, given that the relevant documents would otherwise consist largely of previous senior jobs performed by the same collection of people.
Dr Farhad Bezorgmehr-Chairsworth, the entirely fictional deputy under-secretary for rotational affairs created for this satire, said the device had removed the last element of uncertainty from elite succession.
“The public used to wonder who might be appointed,” he said. “Now they need only consult the direction of travel and wait for the furniture to stop.”
According to Bezorgmehr-Chairsworth, the carousel does not select policy. It merely ensures that responsibility is redistributed with sufficient ceremony to resemble change. A full revolution returns every participant to the original position, at which point the government may declare a period of stability.
Engineers considered installing an emergency reverse setting but abandoned the idea after constitutional experts warned that going backwards might be mistaken for an admission.
Experienced hands, familiar armrests
The reported elevation of Rezaei provides an obvious occasion for satire about the durability of senior political careers. Institutions confronting danger have always preferred a familiar hand on the wheel, particularly when the wheel is bolted to a table and the table is going in circles.
Goli Paykar-Windershins, fictional director of the imaginary Institute for Institutional Momentum, said the carousel should not be dismissed as a mere revolving door.
“A revolving door allows people to leave,” she explained. “This is a closed-loop meritocracy. The loop is closed, and surviving inside it is treated as the merit.”
She added that the mechanism solves an old communications problem. Governments often describe veteran appointments as both proof of continuity and evidence of decisive change, forcing citizens to hold two incompatible thoughts before breakfast. Under the carousel system, the contradiction is visible in one handsome piece of furniture.
Security analysts — the real sort, who have not been invented for comic relief — would naturally examine any reported appointment in terms of institutional influence, policy direction and the balance among powerful bodies. This article will not fabricate their conclusions. The carousel simply translates the universal ritual into cabinetry: when faced with a fresh crisis, power consults its contacts book and discovers that every page contains somebody already seated nearby.
It is a habit hardly confined to Tehran. Capitals from London to Brussels and Washington have long recycled ministers, advisers and envoys with the care normally reserved for glass bottles. Iran’s fictional innovation is merely to mechanise the process and spare officials the walk.
International interest gathers slowly
The imagined unveiling has prompted interest among foreign bureaucracies, many of which possess the personnel but lack the engineering. Whitehall is understood, within the boundaries of this entirely invented premise, to admire the carousel’s ability to produce a reshuffle without requiring removal vans, farewell notes or anyone learning a new route to work.
Nigel Featherstonehaugh-Bland, a wholly fictional former British administrative grandee, said Britain had operated a comparable system for generations using lunch, patronage and a sequence of increasingly urgent telephone calls.
“We had the revolving cabinet before anyone thought to attach it to a motor,” he said. “Our mistake was believing tradition would turn it by itself.”
European officials would presumably demand a common technical standard, followed by a prolonged disagreement over whether the carousel should rotate clockwise, anticlockwise or according to a compromise schedule translated into 24 languages. Washington, meanwhile, would commission rival models, hold hearings on the direction of rotation and eventually install both.
These are not claims about actual government plans. They are consequences of the same absurd machine, which has the rare diplomatic advantage of making every political system look faintly familiar.
The comforting geometry of power
For the public, the carousel offers clarity. A linear promotion suggests that history is proceeding somewhere. A circle makes no such boast. It promises only that the names will pass again, the titles will migrate and every arrival will be presented as a new chapter despite the reader’s distinct recollection of the previous volume.
Bezorgmehr-Chairsworth said operators had been instructed not to accelerate the table during emergencies. “Speed creates the appearance of panic,” he said. “The preferred setting is grave inevitability.”
The machine’s control panel therefore contains only three settings: consultation, transition and continuity. All move at the same pace. The difference lies in which word appears in the official statement while the chairs turn.
By late evening, the fictional carousel had completed one full circuit. Every official was back where he had started, every title had briefly belonged to someone else, and the polished central hub continued to gleam beneath the chamber lights. The exercise was hailed by its imaginary administrators as a successful transfer of responsibility.
Outside, nothing in particular had moved. Inside, the mechanism hummed with the confidence of an institution that had mistaken repetition for resilience. History, as ever, declines to take notes.
