I’m utterly infuriated by Iranian-Americans or Iranian-Swedes who shamelessly promote the Islamic Republic’s agenda in our own backyard and get away with it. The latest dispatchee of IRI puts Joseph Gobbles to shame by invoking nationalism and glories of the Iranians past while in reality the likes of her hate everything Iranian and non-muslim. The Joseph Goebbels incarnate is a woman this time and a PhD candidate in Utah, which potentially makes her even more lethal.
All nations have a right to nuclear programs or I would even go as far as to say nuclear weapons. But Iran is not a Nation and doesn’t view itself in those terms. True muslims and believers do not subscribe to such notions as 'nations'. Utopian Islamic Ummah is the Allah's will and every muslim is duty bound to fulfill the will of Allah . The Islamic Republic of Iran occuping the nation of Iran has caused and will cause enough havoc and mayhem around the world through its foreign legions and proxy terrorists without nuclear weapons and it should be stopped with or without it.
Iran is not a Nation but A "Cause:" Islamic Revival and Neo Islam:
The Islamic republic doesn’t view itself as a 'nation' because in Islam the concept of nation is non-existence and the allegiances are to the Islamic Ummah and not the Iranian Nation..
We tolerate India's and Israel's arsenals largely because we have some faith that their governments will not use them. Were Iran ruled by a reasonable government who had not self-appointed itself to be a "cause" rather than a nation and live peacefully among others; to be a vanguard of opposing the “Arrogant Power” and bringing the US empire down, “A world without America”, and establish it’s Islamic Ummah per "Khomeini's Manifest destiny", we would not care about Islamic Republic's weaponary. Mahan Abedin of Asia Times puts it eloquently:
On balance, the Iranian revolution was more about introducing new ideas into the religio-political lexicon of Muslims than it was about asserting Iranian independence and sovereignty.
From the very beginning the revolution's leaders made clear that theirs was an "Islamic" revolution and as such it constituted the greatest Islamic revivalist project of the modern era. Iranian revolutionaries saw the charismatic leadership of ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini as the culmination of the legacies of Islamic revivalists beginning with Seyed Jamaledin Afghani (Asadabadi), Mohammad Abduh, and Mohammad Rashid Rida and continuing with Hassan al-Banna and Sayed Qutb.
There are at least three core reasons Iran's Islamic Revolution constituted the most strategic breakthrough for the modern Islamic movement that emerged in the late 19th century. First and foremost, it marked the first time that modern "Islamists" were propelled into power. Second, Iranian revolutionaries embarked on an ambitious long-term plan to Islamize Iranian society. Third, the new regime (despite its Shi'ite appearance) was wholeheartedly wedded to exporting the "Islamic revolution" to sympathetic audiences the world over.
While the Saudis (with much encouragement from the Americans) tried hard to limit the significance of the revolution to Shi'ites in the first instance - and subsequently tried to reduce it further to Iranian Shi'ites only - the Islamic Republic, from the very outset, projected itself as a non-sectarian entity wholeheartedly devoted to the politics of pan-Islam. To consolidate and export the revolution, Iranian leaders developed an entire infrastructure of new Islamic rhetoric based on timeless Islamic terms and concepts. Such terms as mustazafin (dispossessed), estekbar (arrogance) and taghout (satanic rule) gained wide currency throughout the Arab world.
Today, these terms are widely used by the so-called Jihadi Salafis who - on the surface at least - profess profound contempt for the Islamic Republic. More broadly, these terms constitute the basic language of Islamists everywhere, irrespective of their position toward the Islamic Republic. While the Iranian revolution has failed to develop a significant political constituency in the Muslim world (with the obvious exception of Lebanon), its language and imagery have been adopted everywhere. On this account Iranian leaders can claim a measure of success.
Targeting the 'Great Satan' From the outset, Iranian revolutionary leaders focused some of their strongest rhetorical invective against the United States. This found its strongest expression in Khomeini's reference to the US as the "Great Satan". The message of the Iranian revolution was simple: the United States - on account of its heritage, values, power and ambitions - posed the greatest threat to the security and prosperity of the global Muslim community. In the 1980s this conception of the United States as a "Great Satan" and the pinnacle of "global arrogance" was limited to militant Shi'ites only. The Sunnis did not initially respond to this message for three reasons. First and foremost, the conditions for anti-American Islamic militancy had not yet developed in Sunni Islamist circles. Second, Saudi propaganda was effective in countering the message of the Iranian revolution. And last but not least, the Afghan jihad not only consumed much of the energies of Sunni Islamists but it also neutralized much of their anti-American feelings on account of the fact that their "jihad" was partly bankrolled by the United States.
While Hamas is firmly rooted in the Muslim Brotherhood, it is nonetheless a complex organization. At its extreme right-wing fringe there are elements close to the so-called Jihadi Salafis. At the other end of the spectrum lie elements that are indistinguishable from Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), which to date is the only Arab Sunni Islamist organization that professes strong loyalty to Iran's Islamic Revolution. But Hamas as a whole is close to the Islamic Republic. It is unfortunate that while Western commentators usually exaggerate Iran's influence over Lebanon's Hezbollah, they tend to play down the Islamic Republic's significant leverage over Hamas. Both the PIJ and Hamas were instrumental in spreading the idiom and long-term strategic vision of Iran's Islamic Revolution to Arab Sunni Islamist movements. This includes al-Qaeda and the broader Jihadi Salafi movement. While on the surface the Jihadi Salafis are dismissive of Hamas (on account of its participation in elections and the increasingly "nationalist" nature of its resistance to Israel), they have been influenced by its methodology and success.
More broadly, while the Jihadi Salafis express deep contempt and hatred toward Iran's Islamic Revolution, they are parasitic on its rhetoric, heritage and long-term geopolitical vision. Ironically, as the Sunni Islamists adopted its language and vision (if not the model itself), the Islamic Republic moved away from ideological anti-Americanism in the 1990s. This not only reflected the cooling down of revolutionary fervor but was also indicative of Iran's growing geopolitical weight. The conclusive defeat of Saddam Hussein's armies in the Gulf War of 1991 was a turning point for post-revolutionary Iran and once again positioned the country as the foremost power in the region. While Ahmadinejad and his supporters are deeply loyal to Ayatollah Ali al-Khamenei (the Islamic Republic's supreme leader), they look beyond his reign and are planning accordingly. They want to prevent a leadership deficit in the event of Khamenei's death. This may require seriously altering the institution of velayat-e-faqih (rule of the jurisconsult), the cornerstone of Iran's unique system of Islamic government. While Ahmadinejad and his supporters have suffered a setback in the recent elections for the Assembly of Experts (a body tasked with electing and - in the event of poor performance - dismissing the supreme leader), this is unlikely to affect their long-term planning on this issue. On the external front, Ahmadinejad and his neo-Islamist allies want to align Iran with the growing Islamic movement in the region and beyond. From their perspective, Iran has an abiding stake in the future of peaceful Islamic movements as opposed to the perpetuation of autocratic Arab regimes… Instead, Iranian leaders see Islamic movements that are modeled, or at the very least influenced, by the Islamic Revolution as the key to the "modern, strong and peaceful" region that Kissinger talks about. Ahmadinejad wants to align the Islamic Republic ever closer to the Islamic opposition in the Middle East and beyond, even if that sparks confrontation with Arab regimes. This will inevitably deepen the divide with the US.
And let’s not forget, Iranian nuclear program started more than 18 years ago and was kept a secret from the world and IAEA until an Iranian opposition group disclosed the location of the its nuclear plants. Why the secrecy if it was for peaceful purposes in a first place?
So, those who claim that Iranians attempt to acquire nuclear weapons is in direct response to US policy in Iraq or Afghanistan had better find another ruse to spread around. The Iranian’s feverish attempt to become a nuclear power has everything to do with the foreign policy of Iran which was set by Khomeini more than 27 years ago, which was to expand and export the militant version of Islam (i.e., Khomeinisim) and establish the utopian Islamic society ((Nab-e-Mohammadi) not only in Iran but around the world under Shia tutelage...And onward to Jerusalem via Karbala and bring it under its rightful owners. Amir Taheri tell us that the "truth, however, is that terrorism is not always necessarily connected with any particular grievance. At its deadliest, it could be the expression of an ideal, if not an actual ideology.
The Red Brigades in Italy and the Red Army Faction in Germany in the 1970s had no particular grievances that they could not have expressed through peaceful means in their democratic societies. They did not want anything in particular the granting of which would persuade them to end their killings. They wanted everything. Their successors, the Islamist terrorists of the new century go even further because they want everything and more. The Red Brigades and the Red Army Faction would have been content with seizing political control and imposing a dictatorship of the proletariat, whatever that meant. The Islamists, however, look beyond mere political power. They want to control every aspect of the lives of every individual, including what one eats, wears and does in the privacy of one's home. To treat this new terrorism as a purely political phenomenon is intellectually dishonest and potentially suicidal for the afflicted societies."
A liberal and democratic Iran would be less paranoid about its security and therefore less reliant on nuclear weapons to defend itself. Incidentally, whom are we kidding? Iran with a GDP of less than $2900 and Per capita income of $8700 even with a nuclear weapon (a 70-year old technology) and
declining oil exports and its eventual
economic suicide will not pose any major threats to the US and have to bury its vain dream of being a superpower in the region because it doesn’t have the economic wherewithal to sustain it’s hegemonic expansion. The only reason these murderous occupiers want to become a nuclear power is because they want to rape and pillage Iran and Iranians indefinitely without being harassed by their masters, the EU. It would give them leverage in trade negotiations with the EU because the EU can no longer use their violation of human rights as a bargaining chip.
In defiance of United Nations (UN) resolutions, the Iranian regime is developing
a nuclear weapon capability, and has engaged in a campaign of
systematic deception vis-à-vis the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) about the scope and pace of its nuclear effort. Iran is also actively expanding its ballistic missile arsenal, and will soon be capable of holding at risk targets far beyond the Middle East. At the same time, Iran has become a serial proliferator, demonstrating both the capacity and the intent to transfer WMD technology and know-how, including those related to nuclear weapons, to rogue states and terrorist organizations alike. The Iranian regime remains the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism, fueling the activities of proxies and its foreign legions such as Hezbollah, Hamas and Shia death squads funded and trained by Iran , buying influence in Afghanistan and funding
Somali Islamists, etc. Fundamentalist movements, which were mostly isolated and weak in the past, became the clerical regime's arms for the export of terrorism and fundamentalism after 1979, and as such, the menacing phenomenon of terrorism became global.
Attempts to separate terrorism from fundamentalism are dangerous or futile at best.
During the 1980s and 1990s, at least 90 percent of the major terrorist attacks were linked either to Tehran, the heartland of militant Islam, as the epicenter of Islamic fundamentalism and terrorism or to its surrogates and agents and movements that managed to thrive only under the direct backing of Tehran's mullahs. All roads of international terrorism meet and the traffic circle of Tehran. The Nation of Iran exports terrorism. Some of the terrorist attacks carried out either by Tehran or fundamentalists under its hegemony and influence are:
1. The occupation of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran and the taking of American hostages in 1979. This was, in fact, a clear declaration of war by this new phenomenon that effectively demonstrated its anti-west potential and hysteria.
2. Taking Westerners, especially Americans, hostage in Lebanon in the 1980s.
3. The explosion of the U.S. Marine barracks in Lebanon in 1983.
4. The bombing of Pan Am flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, in 1988. The explosion of an Air France 747 passenger jet in Tehran's airport in 1983
5. Several bombings in the streets of Paris in 1986, which caused many deaths and injuries among civilians
6. The hanging of U.S. Colonel William Higgins, who worked for the United Nations, in Lebanon.
7. The shipment of 51 packages of explosives to Saudi Arabia (which were discovered before detonation) in 1986 in order to kill many pilgrims.
8. The massacre of more than 400 pilgrims to Mecca in 19878. The bombing of the Israeli Embassy in Buenos Aires.
9. The killing of antifundamentalist intellectuals and authors in Turkey. . The assassination of dissidents abroad.
10. Killing of 19 Americans in Khobar towers.
There's a comedy that SNL writers would envy about the invocation of law by
Javad Zarif, the Iranian embassador to the United Nations, in connection with a regime that took a diplomatic mission hostage and has defied international laws since its inception across the globe.
The Iranian regime has been a moral cesspool and international rogue state for over twenty seven years. Anyone's free to say, of course, that that would be "illegal", but in the absence of a justice system that means about as much as saying it's pink.
"Through more than years of bogus diplomacy with the EU , the Islamic Republic has
expanded its influence in the Caucasus, Central Asia and Latin America as well, and is actively attempting to forge anti-American coalitions in those regions. So far, however, the United States has not formulated a comprehensive strategy to address this complex challenge. Rather, Washington has wedded itself to a dangerous—and deeply flawed—diplomatic process aimed at addressing just one aspect of the contemporary Iranian threat: its nuclear program. In doing so,the U.S. has placed its reliance on the United Nations system, as well as its allies in Europe, none of whom have shown much appetite for confronting Iran over the nuclear issue. Yet both Russia and China, which have extensive economic, political and military ties to Iran, remain an impediment to meaningful diplomatic and economic efforts to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons, and can be expected to continue obstructing forceful action against their
client state. "
And let's get another thing straight: it would be nice if the Iranian people finally took it into their heads to rid themselves of their "hardliners" (aka genocidal fanatics), but our concern is to see to it that that regime doesn't continue to fan the conflict in Iraq, Lebanon, Somalia, Afghanistan, Syria and above all doesn't get its hands on the means to carry out its genocidal fantasies against its own people and others in the world. In that context, rest assured it will be the US, not the Iranians that decide whether or not US soldiers set foot in Iran. The Iranians can do what they like -- rally to a fanatical, brutal, vicious, and tyrannical regime, or finally turn against it.
I hate to break it to
CASMII et al and other appeasers of all stripes that Pentagon and State Department are not waiting for their pearls of wisdom to determine what’s in the strategic and national interests of the United States. Given the recent toothless sanctions, it looks like Iran doesn’t pose enough of a risk to the US at least not in the near future.
The only losers are the Iranians who will not see freedom for the next hundred years if Iran gets the bomb (read A Jacksonian Comments to Gracchi).Look at China even with its free market economy, it’s no where near anything called democracy and respecting human rights.
Read more!
ABF, for the promotion of human rights and democracy in Iran
