As the West continues to pressure Iran to halt its uranium enrichment program to develop nuclear weapons, Tehran refuses to do so, assuring the outside world its nuclear program is for peaceful purposes.
For those wishing to believe Iran, they should take little comfort from such assurances. An analysis of its leadership’s words and actions over the past several years are bone chilling indicators what a nuclear armed Iran plans for our future.
For those unconvinced as to Iran’s evil intentions, they should reflect on that leadership’s words over the past several years including, more recently, the following:
- Threats to use military force to close the Straits of Hormuz for the West’s non-military act of imposing economic sanctions upon Tehran.
- The Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s declaration, “The Zionist regime is a true cancer tumor on this region that should be cut off and it definitely will be cut off.”
- Threats against the US Navy should its carriers return to the Persian Gulf.
For those still unconvinced as to the leadership’s evil intentions, choosing to dismiss such threats as mere bravissimo, they should reflect upon Tehran’s actual and attempted acts of violence including:
- Its failed attempt to assassinate the Saudi and Israeli ambassadors in the US.
- Its track record of aggression against the US ever since the mullahs came to power in 1979 including the seizure of the US Embassy in Tehran; its bombing of the US Marine barracks in Beirut; its bombing of Khobar Towers where US military personnel were housed in Saudi Arabia; its establishment of the terrorist proxy group Hezbollah in Lebanon; its establishment of a Hezbollah base in Venezuela from where terrorists have linked up with the Mexican drug cartels to penetrate US borders; its providing IEDs to Iraqi and Afghani militants that have been responsible for more than half the US casualties in those conflicts; its deployment of its special forces, known as “Qods,” to effect further US casualties in Iraq and Afghanistan—such as the 2007 kidnapping and execution of five US soldiers during a raid of the Karbala, Iraq, provincial headquarters; its deployment of Qods to Syria in an effort to prop up Iran’s ally, President Bashar Assad, by killing and torturing anti-government demonstrators there; etc.
For those still unconvinced as to the leadership’s evil intentions and who may be taking encouragement from Tehran’s recent resumption of nuclear talks, they should reflect upon the following:
- Such talks have consistently been used by Iran as a delay tactic, giving the West hope of conflict avoidance while giving Iran time to continue the pursuit of its nuclear armament goal.
- Despite these on-again/off-again talks, they have yet to produce from Tehran simple basics such as a plausible explanation for projects appearing to be related to nuclear warhead design.
- When such talks have failed to produce any substantive result, Tehran has sought to create a crisis to take the focus off its program. Such crises have included the arrest and prosecution of innocent US citizens as spies. (The extent to which Iran goes to create a crisis was evidenced by its 2007 seizure of fifteen British Royal Marines patrolling the Shatt-al-Arab waterway when they were seized by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps naval forces for allegedly straying into Iranian waters. The coordinates Iran gave as to where the Brits were seized supported the British government’s claim its Marines were not in Iranian waters. Recognizing its error, Tehran immediately changed the coordinates, using a new set that plotted within its territorial waters.)
For those still unconvinced as to the leadership’s evil intentions, they should reflect upon what Tehran does have in store for its enemies as set forth in a documentary Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad released last year in Iran to explain our fate to his followers.
- Iran’s leadership adheres to the religious concept of the return of the 12th Imam, or “Mahdi,” who disappeared in the ninth century, entered into a state of occultation and is destined to return in the future to restore Islam to greatness, creating a world where non-believers convert or die. (Ahmadinejad’s sincere belief Mahdi is soon to return is evidenced by his tenure as Tehran’s mayor before becoming president as he ordered the widening of boulevards there so throngs of Iranians can fill the streets to receive the 12th Imam.)
- Belief has it that Mahdi’s return will only occur in the wake of world chaos—a world in which he will then restore order. While most Shiites believe that chaos should evolve naturally, a very small minority believes man can be a catalyst in creating it. Among these is Ahmadinejad. It should come as no surprise, therefore, that Ahmadinejad seeks to obtain nuclear weapons to fulfill what he believes is his destiny to create the required world chaos to trigger Mahdi’s return. In his documentary, he lays out how he, Ayatollah Khamenei and Hezbollah leader Hasan Nasrallah will be the three critical players in precipitating Mahdi’s return. (Critical in this evolution is a pre-chaos visit by Mahdi to the principals; both Ahmadinejad and Khamenei claim Mahdi has already visited them. Tossing in the belief Mahdi’s return will occur in an even numbered year and Ahmadinejad’s term as president ends in early 2013, it would appear 2012 is shaping up as the year for Ahmadinejad to create the needed world chaos. While this runs contrary to Western intelligence assessments it will take longer for Tehran to develop a nuclear weapon, it would explain Ahmadinejad’s expedited efforts to pick up the pace of uranium enrichment.)
Anti-Israeli propaganda in Iran.
For those still unconvinced as to the leadership’s evil intentions, and the extent to which its religious zealotry blinds it to the basic dignity and innocence of human life, they should reflect upon Tehran’s actions against its own children during the 1980-1988 Iran/Iraq war.
- As Iraqi defenses deployed minefields which took their tally on Iranian soldiers attempting to penetrate them, Qods’ leaders—such as Tehran’s current President Ahmadinejad—used thousands of innocent Iranian children “volunteers” to race across those minefields, clearing a path for Iranian soldiers to then follow. Iraqi defenders looked on in disbelief as waves of these children charged fearlessly through the minefields, having been guaranteed doing so would win them entry into Heaven. The children were presented with little plastic keys to wear before charging a minefield, being told it would open the gates to Heaven upon their arrival. Most were too young to comprehend the detonated mines not only would vaporize the keys, but their bodies as well. For those old enough to wonder, they were told to wrap themselves in blankets and roll across the minefield as the blanket would hold their bodies together.
- If Ahmadinejad and the mullahs have no concerns over sacrificing the lives of their own children in this manner, one can only imagine what sacrifice they have in mind for the rest of us.
In 1981, Saddam Hussein’s efforts to build a nuclear reactor were stopped in one of the most daring missions in military history. Israel struck as Hussein vowed his reactor would “neutralize” the Zionist state. The odds of the attack being carried out flawlessly by the eight Israeli pilots and aircraft involved—flying defenseless (the aircraft were stripped of the capability to defend themselves to reduce weight load for a flight covering 1200 miles) through unfriendly airspace, dropping their bombs and returning home safely—were stacked against them. Yet it did go flawlessly and the reactor was destroyed.
Years later the Israeli pilots involved shared their thoughts on the mission. They saw Saddam, as Ahmadinejad is seen today, as a madman who cared nothing about human life. His possession of a nuclear weapon not only posed a threat to Israel but to the entire Jewish race. Fear engulfed the pilots as they departed—not of death but of mission failure. The pressure was on them, one pilot suggested for, as the sons and grandsons of Holocaust victims, they were driven to succeed to preserve the destiny of the Israeli people.
Today, Israel faces another nuclear threat. It recognizes there is only a limited amount of time left before Tehran enters into a “zone of immunity” when its advancements both in hiding its facilities underground and building the two or three nuclear weapons it needs to destroy Israel will be too far along to destroy the program, as was successfully done in Iraq 32 years earlier.
The challenges facing Israel in 1981 pale in comparison to those it faces today in trying to stop another nuclear threat to its existence for, in Ahmadinejad, Israelis confront a madman just as committed to wreaking global death among mankind in fulfillment of his destiny as they are to preserving human life in fulfillment of theirs.
Family Security Matters Contributing Editor Lt. Colonel James G. Zumwalt, USMC (ret) is a retired Marine infantry officer who served , the US invasion of Panama and the first Gulf war. He is the author of "Bare Feet, Iron Will--Stories from the Other Side of Vietnam's Battlefields" and frequently writes on foreign policy and defense issues.
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