Everyone fails to recognize an absolute
truth about Islamicism. A true believer
accepts that it is his sole mission to forcibly convert all non Muslims to the
true way of Islam and all acts of leadership and of one’s life are committed to
that purpose.
Any other interpretation is pure
fantasy and is laughed at by the true believers. Recall that the Koran is very much a guide
book extorting the faithful in the arts of sedition when living in a minority
situation. The religion accepts nothing less than submission to Allah and
nicely empowers the leadership with divine authority to boot.
Had any of what I just said been
untrue, then it would have been written out of the Koran a long time ago. We certainly have done just that in terms of
accepted texts in the Bible.
Thus we come to the natural mindset
of the Iranian Mullahs. They are dedicated
to conquering the whole world in the name of Allah. Not only have they never rejected such a
position, they have consistently moved toward that end in setting up and
supporting proxies wherever they could.
Thus their present rush to capitalize on the Arab Spring in the hopes of
grabbing even greater adherents.
The temptation was just too great
and it will need strong US
action to block it. However, the great
and present threat is the temptation offered for intervention in Iraq .
We continue to hope that a
democratically informed Muslim majority will finally take charge throughout the
Muslim world and the outcomes will begin to improve. The Arab Spring is such a hope. I cannot help but think that we are fumbling the
hopes and aspirations of the rising middle class in this world, but it is also
a case of just too many balls now in the air.
Obama has visibly abandoned Iraq , Afghanistan
and Libya
to their fates. The only comparable
gamble was Jimmy Carter abandoning Iran to its fate by pulling the
plug on the Shah without insuring a viable replacement. I am sure Obama would also like to abandon Israel but may
not be allowed to. Never has so much of
this world been completely out of the control of US foreign Policy in such an
apparently reckless manner.
The military will reclaim control
in Egypt and likely in Syria and Yemen by trading out faces. The world has become much more dangerous and
the probability of a part spinning out of control has heightened.
The question outstanding is what
will the price be?
Sunday, November 06, 2011
By Walid Phares
Walid Phares
My first book, The Iranian Islamic Revolution, published way back in
1986, dealt with the historicity of the 1979 Khomeinist Revolution in
Iran. In it, I exposed the Khomeinist regime’s long-term
ambitions and revisionist account of events that led to the Shah’s overthrow
and Ayatollah Khomeini’s ascent to power in the alleged Islamic “Republic” of Iran .
From my observatory in Beirut where Hezbollah and the Iranian Revolutionary
Guard (IRG) were growing into a force to be reckoned with in the region and
beyond, I absorbed and digested the thinking and logic of Tehran’s
strategists. Boiled down, that strategy involved sending as many mixed
signals in as many directions as possible so as to confuse opposing forces and
make them tentative. This would allow theKhomeinists to pursue their
global ambitions with minimal opposition.
First, Tehran formed an alliance with
the Assad regime in Syria .
Next, Hezbollah was established in Lebanon
and later, in 2003, penetrated Iraq ’s Shia communities.
Now, Tehran is
about to achieve its most important goal since the inception of the Islamist
regime— a strategic intercontinental ballistic missile arsenal capable of
delivering nuclear and other lethal warheads. Military historians will
undoubtedly debate the ins and outs of the Iran ’s long trek to join the
nuclear club. What they will find is a Western world that was fooled for
decades. It remains to be seen whether the West’s current leaders will be
able to stop this final phase in Iran ’s jihadist strategy.
The 2003 U.S.
National Intelligence Estimate asserted that Tehran had frozen its nuclear program.
This led many analysts in Washington
to suggest that an opening might exist to engage the Iranian regime. The
Bush administration’s approach to Tehran
was cautious but the Obama has been far more aggressive in its
diplomacy. U.S.
dealings with Tehran
peaked in June 2009 when it abandoned principle by ignoring the developing
“Iranian Spring” to garner favor with the ayatollahs. The official
position in Washington was “we won’t meddle in
Iran ’s
internal affairs.” This posture allowed the Revolutionary Guard to
take back the streets of Iran
using force with little or no restraint. Meanwhile, the U.S. was
preoccupied with the regime’s progress toward manufacture of a nuclear bomb and
the realization of “Iranium.” Sanctions attempted to delay Tehran’s
nuclear program while policy negotiations took place behind closed doors, but
did nothing to deter the Iranian regime which continued its strategic quest,
with nuclear weapons representing only one element in that strategy.
In 2007, I published an article in which I argued that the mullahs
intended to develop its missile systems at the same time they were developing
nuclear weapons. I predicted that the U.S. and its Western allies would
be preoccupied with fissile material while the Iranian regime would be focused
on delivery systems. Each subsequent year, the world has witnessed new
Iranian missiles with longer ranges unveiled in military exercises. The
reach of Iranian missiles has increased dramatically while the international
debate was mired in nuclear material. To lend credibility to this obfuscatory
maneuver, Tehran ’s leaders even pretended to
engage in stressful, back-and-forth negotiations, leveraging the assistance of
friends like Turkey ’s AKP Government
and Brazil ,
to mediate unusual “solutions” to fissile material “issues.”
During this charade, Iran ’s
real focus was on building the most sophisticated missile systems possible and
protecting them with antiaircraft batteries. More importantly,
the Khomeinists have extended Iran ’s
launch radius far from mainland Iran .
Hezbollah in Lebanon, the increasingly pro-Iranian Iraqi government and, at
least for now, the Assad regime in Syria offer potential launch
sites. The Iranians have a presence in Eritrea
and Sudan , and they even
have allies in South America (Chavez’s Venezuela ). And, last but not
least, Iran ’s commanders
boasted about their ability to deploy ships off the coast of the United States en route to refueling in Venezuela
and other possible Latin American safe havens.
Experts rushed to respond asserting that the “Iranian navy” was no
match for an American naval superpower. True, but the ayatollahs are not
seeking a battle on the high seas but to display their ability to strike
the U.S.
at least once, possibly with nuclear weapons. Basically, the Iranian
regime is seeking the stalemate of mutually assured destruction. Iran wants to stockpile delivery systems that
can be rapidly outfitted with nuclear warheads, so that the U.S. and its
Western allies will not be able to destroy them before it is too late. The
stakes would be too high to attack if Iran has both the bomb and the
ability to use it anywhere.
Dr. Walid Phares is the author of "The
Confrontation: Winning the War against Future Jihad," and "The Coming
Revolution: Struggle for Freedom in the Middle East ."
He advises members of Congress and the European parliament. www.walidphares.com
No comments:
Post a Comment