"Bringing Clarity, Acuity and Veracity to Vital Issues and Events at Home and Around the Globe"

 The Iranian Threat:
Finishing the Job in the Middle East
Posted Tuesday, March 29, 2006*

By Rand Green
Editor & Publisher, Perspicacity Press
Founder & Executive Director, Spread Freedom Institute

A defiant gesture from Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.     IRNA Photo

EVERYONE KNOWS
the story of the boy who cried “Wolf!” It may be tempting today, with the U.S. military’s failure to find the expected stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and with an Iranian nuclear threat now looming, to apply the moral of that story to President George W. Bush’s foreign policy. “He cried ‘Wolf!’ in Iraq when there was no wolf. How does he expect anybody to believe him now if there really is a wolf in Iran?”

But tempting though it may be, the allegory does not apply to this situation. To make my point, let me tell another version of the traditional fable.

There once was a very cunning wolf who wanted to devour the sheep that a young boy was tending, but he knew that the moment he began doing so, the boy would run back to the village and the men in the village would return and kill him before he had his fill. So the wolf came up with a shrewd scheme. He approached the flock menacingly, which sent the boy running to tell the villagers, but then he disappeared without harming the sheep, so when the men came looking for him they could not find him and they thought the boy had lied. His plan was to return later, knowing that next time the villagers would pay no mind to the boy’s insistence that “there really is a wolf!”

But other wolves were watching, and they, too, were cunning. When they saw that the boy had lost credibility with the villagers, they, too, knew that at a time of their choosing they could ravage the flock and that no one would come hunting them until it was too late.

Early in his Presidency, George W. Bush warned Americans that tyrannical regimes in three rogue states – Iraq, Iran and North Korea – possessed or were in pursuit of weapons of mass destruction, including nuclear weapons, that posed a grave threat to the United States and the free world, particularly as there was a great risk that those weapons might fall into the hands of terrorists who would not hesitate using them to kill millions of innocent people.

In March 2003, President Bush led the United States and an international coalition to war against a defiant Saddam Hussein in Iraq who was known to have – and to have used – WMD. Already, Saddam had used chemical and biological agents to murder many of the half-million people for whose deaths he was responsible.

 But Saddam was cunning. Rather than allow the U.S. military to find his WMD, he made sure they could not be found, so that President Bush’s political enemies in the United States would call Bush a liar and the American people would not listen to him again.

Saddam was taken captive, something he probably did not count on. But he still has expectations of returning to power, and the remnants of his Baathist party continue to conduct guerilla warfare against U.S. and Coalition troops and a terrorist campaign against the supporters of a free and democratic Iraq, convinced that if they can keep blood flowing, Americans will weary of the fight, that President Bush’s successor will bring the troops home, and the Baathists can take over once again.

But there are other wolves in the woods as well.

Al Qaeda, which lost its foothold in Afghanistan but found uneasy refuge in Western Pakistan, has opportunistically joined the fray in Iraq, hoping to not only help the Baathists bring an end to the U.S. presence there but to seize control in the aftermath, turning Iraq into a Taliban-style Islamist state such as Afghanistan was before the U.S. invasion. They now see Iraq as a launching pad for their campaign of global conquest.

The ruling Mullahs in Iran have plans of their own for Iraq. They, too, would like to rule the world, and control of Iraq figures prominently in their game plan, followed by the annihilation of Israel.

Iran has been watching the opinion polls and the op-eds in the United States and is now feeling bold, cocky and contemptuous.

 The United States has the most powerful military in the world, and the most sophisticated military technology. No one can defeat the United States on the battlefield. But the Iranian Mullahs, who were quaking in their sandals following the successful U.S. invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq, have now come to view us in the same light that Osama Bin Laden and Saddam Hussein have done for some time: squeamish, irresolute, afflicted with a collective attention deficit disorder, and therefore ultimately impotent.

Not only do the Iranian despots expect to turn Iraq into a radical Islamic republic dominated by and molded in the image of the Islamic Republic of Iran, but they feel free to pursue vigorously their development of nuclear weapons. They are now convinced that the political mood in the United States is such that any threatened use of force against them would be hollow.

Unfortunately, unless the American people come to their senses, they may be right.

It is a dangerous situation, because Iran is, in fact, determined to develop nuclear weapons. They claim they only want nuclear technology for the peaceful purpose of generating electric power. That is not convincing, coming as it does from one of the world’s leading producers of oil and natural gas. Iran can generate electricity much more economically from natural gas than from nuclear power.

“Not since the failure of the League of Nations in the 1930s to confront the aggression of the dictatorships in Japan, Italy, and Germany have we seen the willful avoidance of reality which is now underway with regard to Iran,” said Newt Gingrich, senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and former speaker of the House of Representatives, in testimony before a Senate subcommittee on November 15, 2005.

The seriousness of the Iranian threat and of the world’s seeming indifference to that threat could hardly have been put more plainly – or more accurately.

Iran’s leaders openly threaten “to destroy the United States and Israel, and any country allied with them,” said Gingrich. “Meanwhile the civilized world wrings its hands and the United Nations acts with contemptible weakness.”

Iran would be impotent to act on such threats if the United States, its allies and the United Nations would take a firm and unified stance regarding Iran’s illegal weapons development programs, nuclear and otherwise, backed up by a credible promise of enforcement.

But that appears unlikely to happen. We can’t even get anything close to unity in the United States for the current campaign in Iraq, thanks to powerful political factions here at home that want America to lose and want Iraq’s fledgling democracy to fail. A relentless propaganda campaign continues to undermine public support for the war in Iraq and for the war against terrorism and tyranny in general.

Disgustingly, some prominent conservatives have recently joined hands with the extreme Left in calling the Iraq war unwinnable and repudiating President Bush’s vision of spreading freedom and democracy.

Time and time again, Bush critics say that Iraq was a diversion from the War on Terror. Those critics either lack a clear understanding of the nature of radical Islam or, if they do understand, are ignoring the truth for political gain. The reality is that bringing freedom and democracy to Iraq, as well as to Afghanistan, is integral to a brilliant strategy for defeating Al Qaeda and other Islamo-fascist organizations who see the United States, Israel, the West and all of Christianity as their common enemies.

Al Qaeda understands better than most Americans, it seems, just how severe a blow a free and democratic Iraq would be to its ambitions. Al Qaeda’s leaders have said exactly that. But for some reason, many Americans can’t seem to make the connection.

The potential potency of the Bush strategy has not been lost on the Iranian Islamists, either, and that is why they are working so hard to destabilize Iraq. If the Iraqi experiment in democracy succeeds, the democracy movement in Iran, which already has wide popular support, would be encouraged and empowered. The Mullahs fear that even more than they fear U.S. military might.

President Bush could well have chosen to take on the Iranian problem first and deal with Iraq later. The case could certainly made for reversing the sequence. It was a judgment call. Strategically, the effort to liberate Afghanistan and Iraq, leaving Iran sandwiched between two free democracies, was ingenious, and the prospects of the strategy succeeding would have been high if the American people had stood solidly behind their president.

Unfortunately, it seems that many Americans don’t even have the resolve to see the Iraq phase of “the long war” against Islamo-fascism through to completion and would balk at any suggestion that we may need to face down the Islamic Republic of Iran in the same way we did Saddam’s Iraq.

Yet not to deal with Iran – and with Syria and several other terrorist-supporting regimes in the Middle East as well – would be a strategic blunder in the war on terror that will cost us dearly in the long run. We need to recognize that it is all part of the same war – a war the Islamo-fascists have declared and are waging against us.

But Iran wasn’t responsible for 9/11, you say, and neither was Iraq.

No, and neither was Hitler responsible for Pearl Harbor. But to focus our efforts only on Al Qaeda and ignore the Islamo-fascist threats from Iraq, Iran, Syria and elsewhere would be analogous to fighting Imperial Japan in World War II but ignoring Hitler and the Nazis.

I keep hearing the absurd contention that because the various regimes and terrorist organizations and religious factions in the greater Middle East are rivals, they would never cooperate. That argument is just unbelievably lame. The most bitter antagonists will ally themselves temporarily against a common enemy. Do not forget that in World War II, the United States allied with Communist Russia in the fight against Hitler.

Again, our enemies seem to understand this better than we. In an article in The Daily Star, a Lebanese newspaper, a writer sympathetic to the Islamist cause said that “in the eyes of Arab and Islamic militants, the war against American forces in Iraq and Palestinian resistance to Israeli occupation are increasingly seen as one and the same battle. In the absence of any prospect for peace on either battlefield, alliances are being formed and command structures established which suggest that the struggle is entering a new and more lethal phase.

“Western intelligence sources report that a new high command is emerging made up of Hizbullah, Hamas, the Muslim Brotherhood (represented in the occupied Palestinian territories by Islamic Jihad); and, last but not least, the Islamic Republic of Iran. The striking features of this alliance are that it bridges the Sunni-Shiite divide and unites Arab nationalists and Islamists in a common cause.”

If we fail to recognize that reality, we run a very real risk of ultimately losing the war against Islamo-fascism.

What that means with regard to Iran is that if we fail to see the necessity of dealing firmly with Iran now, we will find ourselves down the road being forced to deal with an even more belligerent and much more dangerous nuclear-armed Iran or with Iranian-made WMD in the hands of terrorist organizations

Sadly, garnering public support from a battle-fatigued constituency for a “come clean or face the consequences” ultimatum to the Iranian Mullahs is going to be a tough sell for President Bush.

That is particularly true as a consequence of the propagandists’ success in convincing almost everybody, including many supporters of President Bush, that the president “lied” about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. The big debate seems to be over whether it was a deliberate lie or whether he just had faulty intelligence. Many conservatives point out that former President Bill Clinton and other Democrats said the same things before President Bush was even elected, so if President Bush lied, “then they were lying, too.”

But it was no lie. As we have reiterated constantly in these pages, there is incontrovertible proof that Saddam Hussein did have – and actually used – WMD prior to 2003. The true question remains not whether he had them but what happened to them, and the answer is that they were hidden, destroyed or removed from the country on the eve of the war for the specific intent of discrediting the United States and the Bush Administration.

Iran is a threat not only to the United States and Israel but to the entire free world. And rhetorically, at least, several of our European allies seem to be taking a strong position in insisting that Iraq forgo its nuclear weapons ambitions.

But for much of the international community, and particularly the power players at the United Nations, when the rubber meets the road, we can probably expect nothing more than hot air, as usual.

Russia and China have both told Iran that it should abide by the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. Yet both of them have strengthened their ties with Iran, economically and militarily, as a cantilever against American hegemony. Any get-tough action that might be considered by the United Nations Security Council is certain to be vetoed by Russia and China.

Germany’s former Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder has said that it is important for Iran not to gain Atomic weapons and that Europeans and Americans need to maintain a strong negotiating position to prevent that from happening. Yet the same breath, he declared, “Let’s take the military option off the table. We have seen it doesn’t work.”

We’ve heard this song before. It’s not called, “Talk softly and carry a big stick.” It’s called “Say ‘pretty please’ and brandish a wet noodle.” Can’t you see Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei or President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad now, saying, “Ooh, I’m so scared. I’ll do anything you say.”

Fortunately, Germany’s new chancellor, Angela Merkel, has taken a tougher stance.

Meanwhile, France, its tricolor flag long-since bleached white by the peroxide of perpetual appeasement, has continued to be quintessentially French – that is, until February 10, when French Foreign Minister Philippe Douste-Blazy showed some uncharacteristic starch in his backbone. On French TV, he refuted Iran’s claims that its nuclear ambitions were for peaceful purposes only. “No civilian nuclear program can explain the Iranian nuclear program,” said Mr. Douste-Blazy. “It is a clandestine military nuclear program. The international community has sent a very firm message in telling the Iranians to return to reason and suspend all nuclear activity and the enrichment and conversion of Uranium, but they aren’t listening to us.”

The U.K., which to date has been among our staunchest allies in Iraq and in the war on terror, continues to be so with regard to Iran as well. But Prime Minister Tony Blair’s credibility with his constituency has been compromised by the same propaganda campaign that has battered the Bush administration in the United States. That difficulty was highlighted in an interview with U.K. Foreign Secretary Jack Straw on Britain’s C4 News on January 16, when the interviewer said, “Today you’ve used the phrase of Iran that they have a history of concealment and deception, yet that is precisely the same phrase that was used of Iraq by the Prime Minister in February 2003. Isn’t that your problem, basically nobody believes you?”

The doubts that have been pounded into people’s minds about the reasons for going to war in Iraq are going to make getting tough with Iran a hard sell not just in America but in Europe.

And yet, not to get tough would be a dire mistake.

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice has said that military action in Iran is not on anyone’s agenda. Jack Straw said exactly the same thing. Yet both of them were very careful not to say that military action is being taken off the table as a last resort. Ultimately, if the use of force is not a credible threat, diplomatic pressures will bear no fruit – not when dealing with the kind of fanatical tyrants that constitute Iran’s Supreme Council.

Iraq, under Saddam Hussein, was serious and growing threat to American and the free world. It will be again, and to a far greater degree than before, if we do not stay the course until the new democratically elected Iraqi government is strong enough to stand on its own. Iran, under the rule of its present Islamo-fascist dictators who have openly articulated a goal of world domination, is at least as great a threat as Iraq ever was, and that threat intensifies as we procrastinate.

 Ã¢â‚¬Å“The virulence of the ideology of Iran’s current regime and advanced military capabilities it is working energetically to acquire – when added to Iran’s inherent endowment – its strategic location, natural resources, population, and proximity to the vital resources of other nations in the region and the seaways through which these sources reach the rest of the world – poses a threat of such scope and magnitude which leave us with no choice but to take it with the utmost seriousness,” said Newt Gingrich. “We must prepare and take actions of the same intensity and seriousness as the threat. Yet, time is not on our side.

“By word and deed for the last 25 years, the tyrannical ruling class of the Islamic Republic of Iran has shown itself willing to murder Americans, murder Israelis, and murder anyone who threatens its illegitimate and corrupt rule, including Iranians who wish to live as free men and women.

“And just last [October] we had the extraordinary speech by the new President of Iran [Mahmoud Ahmadinejad] who openly called for the destruction of the United States and Israel” and any country allied with them, Gingrich continued.

“These threats should worry the entire world,” he said. Iran “may soon have the capability to deliver on its publicly declared and unambiguously stated intentions to inflict mortal harm on the United States on a massive scale. A nuclear tipped intermediate-range Iranian missile launched from a merchant ship off the coast of the United States could do just that. That, or Iran could simply supply its terrorist handmaidens with a small scale nuclear device to use against U.S. targets here at home or abroad.”

Ahmadinejad’s threat was not the first to come from Iran. In August 2004, Hassan Abbassi, a Iraqi Revolutionary Guards intelligence advisor reported to his superiors that “[Iran’s] missiles are now ready to strike at their [the West’s] civilization. As soon as the instructions arrive from [Supreme Leader ayatollah Ali Khamenei], we will launch our missiles on their cities and installations.”

The same month, Ayatollah Ahmmad Jannati, secretary general of the Guardian Council, said, “Every Muslim and every honorable man who is not a Muslim must stand against the Americans, English, and Israelis, and endanger their interests wherever they may be.”

In June 2004, Mohammad Ali Samadi, spokesman for the Global Islamic Campaign, said, “Some 10,000 people  have registered their names to carry out martyrdom operations on our defined [American and Israeli] targets.”

Gingrich concluded, in his Senate testimony, that “the current Iranian regime is the most dangerous in the world and is the single most urgent threat to American national security.” He stated further that “the threat posed by Iran can only be properly understood in the context of the Long War Against the Irreconcilable Wing of Islam, which is a worldwide war in which the United States and its allies are unavoidably engaged, and in which the U.S. has active campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan.”

Gingrich further declared that “Iran is a member of a small group of nations whose behavior is so indefensible and at odds with norms of the civilized world … that the only moral and practical policy objective of the United States government towards these governments is regime change.”

Finally, Mr. Gingrich concluded that “while we must preserve a strong military capability to deter and/or remove the threat posed by the current Iranian regime, there is an extraordinary opportunity for every peace loving and civilized country in the world, led by the United States, to support a democracy movement within Iran to achieve regime change short of armed conflict. Indeed, the most significant allies in a U.S. policy of regime change in Iran are likely to be the Iranian people themselves. This when combined with victory against the terrorists in Iraq and the formation of a democratic government in Iraq, is the best strategy for regime change in Iran.”

Mr. Gingrich is absolutely correct.

I have said that our enemies perceive us as squeamish, irresolute, afflicted with a collective attention deficit disorder, and therefore ultimately impotent.

As Americans, we are faced with a critical choice.

Are we going to prove them wrong by demonstrating our untiring resolve in the Long War against Islamo-Fascism and our unshakable faith in freedom and democracy? We must -- and we will! Because if they are right about us, our days are numbered.

*Copyright © 2006 Rand Green Communications. Do not reproduce or re-post without this notice. This article was originally published in Perspicacity Press, March 2006 print edition.

Home

Special Reports Archives
(chronological)

Point & Counterpoint
Brief news reports and  terse retorts

Mission Statement

Contact Us