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Friday, March 27, 2015

IRAN UPDATE: 3.27.15 - Iran's Supreme Leader: "Death to America"


 
As the current U.S. Administration said it would take Israel's Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu "at his word," it is, of course, safe to assume that it will take Iran's Supreme Leader at his word, as well.
 
On Sunday, March 21, as U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry was lowing about progress in the "peace talks," Iran's Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei, was calling for "Death to America." Mercifully, his call came before the P5+1 (the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council, plus Germany) - illegally, under the rules of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) - tried to allow Iran to bolt its obligations under the NPT and acquire nuclear weapons.
 
Khamenei's announcement, reported by the Times of Israel, appears to vindicate the views of Israel's farsighted, newly re-elected Prime Minster, Benjamin Netanyahu, and the voters who overwhelmingly elected him, as well as France's courageous former Foreign Minister, Laurent Fabius.
 
Netanyahu recently explained that the circumstances of escalating extremist Islamism in the region at this time make handing over more land to terrorist groups, such as the Palestinian Authority's government and Hamas, inauspicious. U.S. President Barack Obama said he would take Netanyahu at his word. It is therefore safe to assume, of course, that the current U.S. Administration will take Iran's Supreme Leader "at his word," as well.
 
When Netanyahu spoke from the podium of the U.S. Congress to warn of the dangers of a nuclear-armed Iran, the clock was already ticking towards March 31. That is the deadline for a final resolution of an agreement on nuclear affairs between the P5+1 and the Iranian regime on limits to Iran's quest for nuclear power in return for the lifting of sanctions currently imposed on it.
 
 
By now, everyone has read page upon page of commentary on the likely consequences of what such a deal may be, with a preponderance of analysts agreeing that U.S. President Barack Obama's drive to secure a resolution is likely to put Iran on a clear course to being able to use their nuclear weapons after about ten years, as well as a galloping nuclear arms race among other countries in the Middle East. Given Iran's tendency to enrich uranium in secret, that time may well before ten years.
 
Obama's vehement opposition to Netanyahu's mission of telling Congress what these negotiations could result in - not only for Israel but for the entire free world in general - is a desperate sign of how far his political advantage apparently takes precedence over any concern for the danger in which Iranian nuclear bombs will place Israel, the Middle East, Europe and even the United States. Over the years, Iran's threats to destroy Israel, "to wipe it" from the page of history, or to flatten Tel Aviv and Haifa have been direct and unambiguous. The last threat was made just a few weeks ago, on March 1 of this year; and Iran's Foreign Minister and lead negotiator, Hassan Rouhani, recently described Iran's diplomacy with the U.S. as an active "jihad."
 
Joshua Teitelbaum and Michael Segall, at the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, have compiled an exhaustive list of genocidal threats by major Iranian politicians between 2009 and 2012. It is highly unlikely that Barack Obama, John Kerry, or anyone else in the U.S. Administration or the State Department have ever read it, or, if they have read it, that they care.
 
What is worrying more than anything is that the U.S. president and his allies seem not to understand, even a little, the country now working to build nuclear weapons: its culture, its religion, and its apocalyptic obsessions.
 
Obama seems to think the Iranian leadership is made up of pragmatic politicians who favor an almost areligious approach to world affairs. This calculation seems based on a wished-for interpretation, which is almost secularist, of a religiously-defined and faith-inspired culture.
 
In a recent statement made by President Obama during a press conference with German Chancellor Angela Merkel on February 9, 2015, he argued that a nuclear deal with Iran was possible because "according to their Supreme Leader, it would be contrary to their faith to obtain a nuclear weapon." Not only has no such "fatwa" [religious opinion] ever been found, but, sadly, this comment reveals that the U.S. president is as ignorant of Islamic scripture as he is of Islamic history.
 
Obama has gone out of his way to say - directly contradicting what many terrorists say - that Islamic terrorism has nothing to do with Islam. He insisted, at a White House summit later in February, that "We are not at war with Islam. We are at war with people who have perverted Islam." He failed, however, to explain how reams of accurate quotes from centuries of theory and practice of the Qur'an, the hadith (traditions) and works of Islamic jurisprudence, could constitute "perversion."
 
The Islamic State and other terrorists do not represent an idealized vision of normative Islam, and the majority of Muslims may not even support them. But its scriptural and historical roots frankly have plenty of precedent, and far from minimal support.
 
In speaking about the "faith of the Iranian people," one ignores a few sizeable minorities in Iran. Moreover, Shi'i Islam is a very different belief system from Sunni Islam. Regrettably, it seems that neither Obama nor his advisors knows a thing about the theology, history, rituals and mechanisms of Shi'ism, its clerical system, its seminaries, its sects, or its modern manifestations. Many of these matters are very relevant to the question of whether or not, once Iran had nuclear weapons, it would use them.
 
Even if it is unreasonable to expect that the American president embark on a study of the intricate metaphysics of Ishraqi philosophy, Babi apocalypticism, or Usuli ejtehad, at least he has at his disposal universities full of scholars, who could bring him up to speed on the most basic elements in modern post-revolutionary Iranian beliefs. The problem is that he seems not to want to listen to people who might tell him what he does not know, in case he might disagree with it. This willful blindness calls into question the wisdom of enabling Iran to be a nuclear-armed country - ever. Unfortunately, a nuclear-armed Iran is something Obama and his supporters apparently intend to make a reality.
 
Professor Bernard Lewis, in 2009, said on the question of Iran's nuclear weapon, "For most of the Iranian leadership MAD would work as a deterrent, but for Ahmadinejad and his group with their apocalyptic mindset, mutually assured destruction is not a deterrent, it's an inducement."
 
 
True, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is no longer the Iranian president, and the current president, Hassan Rouhani is often deemed by the west a pragmatist and a reformer, but he has openly bragged about hoodwinking the United States in the past.
 
Further, the apocalyptic mindset is not something unique to Ahmadinejad and his followers. It has deep roots in Shi'ite belief. That - plus raw superstition, a large measure of religious fanaticism, and a cult of martyrdom - makes Iran the most dangerous country on the planet today.
 
Put another way, if someone boasts of uncontrollable urges to slaughter everyone he considers his enemy, is it really advisable to buy him an assault rifle and a few of boxes of bullets? Imagine what he could do with a batch of nuclear-tipped intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs). These are not needed to reach Israel or Europe; Iran can already do that. Iran is already working on building even longer-range missiles. The only likely target for those is what Iran has obligingly been calling "The Great Satan," the U.S., as opposed to "The Little Satan," Israel.
 
Iran has killed thousands of U.S. troops in Lebanon, Africa and Iraq. It recently practiced naval drills on a mock-up of a U.S. Navy ship. In Arabic there is a saying: "He spits in your eye and you call it rain."
 
The idea was that by fighting the Iraqi army in a war between truth and falsehood, Iranians would hasten the return of the Hidden Imam.
 
The expectation of the arrival of a messianic figure called the Mahdi, peripheral in Sunni Islam, has, additionally, always been a key feature of Shi'ism. In this belief, a war that will bring on the "End of Days," the Apocalypse, will also bring to Earth the Mahdi, the "Hidden Imam," a distant descendent of Mohammad. After that, there will be universal peace.
 
Modern Iranian messianism is no longer the passive style of centuries past, but activist, and can lead to military action.
 
Between 1997 and 2005, the key figure in the Reform movement of Iran was Mohammad Khatami, President of Iran, who supposedly sought to replace clerical rule with a more secular system. Although a cleric, Khatami opposed Khomeini's theory of rule by religious guardians (velayat-e faqih). Yet even in the years of his second term, 2001-2005, selective mosque networks and Islamic associations were exhibiting an enhanced yearning for the return of the Twelfth Imam.
 
That this happened under a genuine reformist who is said to have wanted to bring about a true democracy in Iran is of considerable importance in any analysis of what may happen under Iran's current president, Hasan Rouhani.
 
Rouhani has been widely interpreted as a reformer, but the intensification of hangings, strictures on veiling, mistreatment of the Baha'i community and more suggest he is a very different man from Khatami or from those belonging to the suppressed Green movement. Supreme Leader Khamenei's support for Rouhani is itself an indication of his adherence to traditional norms. There is no sign of a let-up of superstition or wishes for an apocalypse under his presidency.
 
The continuing appeal of extremely religious thought and behavior may be seen in the growth of a major cult based around what is now a huge mosque complex on the outskirts of Qom.
 
With this sort of thinking - the willingness to sacrifice, whatever the cost - it is critical to remember the words of former "reformist" president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani in 2000:
 
"If one day, a very important day, of course, the Islamic World will also be equipped with the weapons available to Israel now, the imperialist strategy will reach an impasse, because the employment of even one atomic bomb inside Israel will wipe it off the face of the earth, but [such a bomb] would only do damage to the Islamic World. It is not unreasonable to consider this possibility."
 
Militant messianism is as dangerous as ever today. Expectation of the Hidden Imam and the activist struggle to bring about his advent are not only matters of pious belief. According to Mehdi Khalaji, the former Iranian cleric, apocalyptic ideas have a strong following within the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and the Basij militia. He points out that Ahmadinejad's followers, who believe in the coming apocalypse, "are linked to an influential group of the IRGC that has responsibility over Iran's nuclear program."(p. viii) There is no reason to suppose that this group within the IRGC has abandoned its apocalyptic beliefs, or the link between them and control of nuclear arms.
 
Iran today resembles a medieval European state more than a modern secularized democracy. The Muharram processions, when men march through city streets naked to the waist while whipping themselves with chains and razor blades, bring to mind the ritual marches of medieval Flagellants. Like the Flagellants, the Shi'a of Iran expect the imminent end of the world.
 
In a country sunk in economic misery, subject to a harsh system of government and justice, where young people are desperate to flee abroad to seek normal lives, where nothing works, where corruption is rife at all levels, not least among the "spiritual," it is not surprising that so many seek escape through superstition, pilgrimage, writing letters to a man who died centuries ago, and connecting their Saviour's return to military might and the conquest of the world - starting with the oil fields of Persian Gulf, "The Little Satan," Israel, and "The Big Satan," the U.S.
 

 
The Islamic regime could produce a nuke in a matter of months
 
It has been known in the nuclear arms community for the last six years that the Iranians had secured enough enriched U-235 for the creation of a first-generation implosion bomb. Further to this point, the construction of an actual bomb small enough to be dropped from a transport plane, or carried by a fishing trawler or small freighter, has been judged to be available since 2010.
 
Using International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) reports, the Wisconsin Project on Nuclear Arms Control tracked the availability of Iran having nearly 8,000 kilograms of weapons-grade uranium through February 2015. This figure points to the ability to create seven original implosion-type bombs if the enrichment was brought to 90 percent. The usual time element for such enrichment is calculated at three to 12 months. There is no reason to believe this minimal time element has not been accomplished.
 
This information is not hard to obtain, so what is the real mission that Secretary of State John Kerry is so steadfastly pursuing and to which President Obama is so committed as a March 31 deadline for an agreement looms? It's been obvious for some time that the Iranians have invested billions in cash and materiel in building a string of heavily protected nuclear development facilities. It is accepted internationally that these variously clandestine installations are, among other tasks, capable of enriching U-235 to weapons-grade and marrying the detonation mechanism appropriately reduced in size with an intercontinental missile capability. Tehran has already announced it has succeeded in creating such intercontinental missile hardware, as indeed so have their grateful friends, the oil-needy North Koreans.
 
U.S. government nuclear strategists have long agreed that Iran's use of nuclear material to fuel its powerful electricity producing power plant at Bushehr has in no way hindered the accumulation of uranium hexafluoride (UF6) enriched to 3.5 percent U-235. Adding to this information is the last IAEA report that at just the Natanz fuel enrichment plant, 9,000 first-generation IR-1 centrifuges were "being fed with UF6." Theoretical estimates have been made that this means only 1.7 months would be necessary "to produce enough enriched uranium for one bomb," Valerie Lincy and Gary Milhollin of the Wisconsin Project on Nuclear Arms Control wrote on Feb. 24 in "Iran's Nuclear Timetable."
 
Apparently, the White House is willing to overlook these obvious and publicly available facts in order to arrive at some form of entente with the leadership in Tehran. The Persian proclivity for calculated prevarication has been well reviewed previously in discussion of the Shia concept of "taqiyah," defined as "dissembling for the protection and extension of the faith."
 
Somehow Mr. Obama and his national security team have lost sight of the basic elements of intelligence analysis in order to seek a treaty with a country under radical Islamic clerical control. For an American administration to say that it seeks a broad-ranging accord that "will prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon" borders on the absurd. The rest of the world knows well the substantial extent to which Tehran already has gone in order to acquire that capability. The question, therefore, arises: What exactly is the Obama White House's aim?
 
It appears that Mr. Obama believes allowing Iran surreptitiously to arm itself with basic nuclear weapons actually insures it will not use them. It is an interesting theory that hearkens back to the logic personified by Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain in 1938 to justify the Munich agreement with Adolf Hitler that the British prime minister heralded as bringing "peace in our time" while stripping Sudetenland from Czechoslovakia.
 
Just as Chamberlain's belief in granting aggressive opponents what they wish in order to avoid physical conflict, Washington in recent years has pretended that economic sanctions were an adequate device to force the Iranians to halt nuclear weapon development. This futile policy was carried out while ignoring the nuclear ambition that Tehran has espoused going all the way back to Shah Reza Pahlavi. The Saudi and other Gulf intelligence services have tracked and reported on the many foreign technical advisers - Russian, North Korean, South Asian and Latin American - who have become rich in their roles of advice and assistance in Persian nuclear weapon development. The most successful of these "contractors" was Dr. A.Q. Khan, the nuclear scientist hero of Pakistan who admitted assisting North Korea and Iran in their scientific and technical nuclear development.
 
It is in this arcane environment that the Obama government has chosen to create a broad-ranging dialogue with the clerical leadership of Iran over the latter's ventures into nuclear armament. Does Mr. Obama actually think that Iran will cease its ambition to dominate the Middle East? Is he unaware that the key to such domination is a military prowess capable of threatening its neighbors and the region at large? The answer is to be left to future historians. At this stage, however, the potential is deadly, and the next American chief executive will have to deal with it - if he or she can.
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