It is the holiday season and we all have received this most welcome present: the U.S. National Intelligence Estimate about Iran’s nuclear problem. Since 2003 the mullahs running Iran have, on their own and through their own goodwill, have ceased all activities aimed at acquiring the bomb, so says the report.
Therefore, there is nothing to worry about folks, nothing to spoil the holiday season, and there is good reason to be upbeat about a safe and secure world.
Superficial reading of the CIA’s presentation of the findings is the comfort pill that successfully sugar-coats swallowing even the most unpalatable news.
A word of advice for President Bush: now you can also relax and give the celebratory mood a boost by ordering the armed forces to stand down. We have enough trouble in Iraq, Afghanistan and other hot spots of the world. This huge worry about the mullahs’ bomb is a distraction and doesn’t rate anything. Why listen to the warmonger alarmist Dick Cheney and his Neo-cons and keep us all in a jittery mood about the men-of-Allah mullahs?
Mr. President, in addition to the comforting NIA report (which was incidentally ordered by your adoring fans, Congress Democrats), you probably want to hear the dissenters and the skeptics before impulsively singing the praise of the mullahs, as Jimmy Carter did, or hastily launching a re-enactment of “ Shock and Awe,” this time on Iran.
* Prudence demands that you, as our President, make your decision on the basis of facts, first and foremost, and then weigh the opinions, conjectures, and advice of others. You need to do the same with the report. Don’t let the medium, the clever packaging of the report, become or even obscure the message. Once you do that, you will find an awful lot of troubling issues. Let me summarize things as I see them.
* Iran, under the late shah, launched a plan to achieve “Surge Capacity:” A code word for getting all the ingredients and procedures down pat for making the bomb quickly, short of actually making it; a clever power-play.
* A saint and revered man of God, according to none other than Jimmy Carter (who considers himself as another great man of God), the late Ayatollah Khomeini cancelled the nuclear program with the same saintly and prompt edict that he cancelled the life of thousands of Iranians for daring to disagree with his system of medieval Sharia rule.
* After Khomeini’s demise, another mullah much more crafty and ambitious, Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, became the president and re-activated the program secretly, while the IAEA watchdog snoozed contentedly on the job.
* Decades later, some Iranians opposed to the rule of the murdering mullahs finally by-passed the watchdog and showed the world proof positive that the mullahs were racing tirelessly with their scheme of getting the ultimate weapon. This information greatly alarmed the United States of America and Israel. The revelation seemed to bother no European nation, the Russians, or the Chinese. Somehow these nations figured that they would let the U.S. do all the worrying about the looming menace while they focused on the lucrative business deals they had diligently worked out with the mullahs: something reminiscent of the cozy deal the French and the Russians had going with the butcher of Baghdad, Saddam Hussein.
* As time went on, you, Mr. President vowed that Iran would never be allowed to achieve its goal during your watch. You kept using all kinds of threats and promises in order to persuade the mullahs to drop the project, to no avail. When a belligerent end-of-the-worlder, Holocaust-denier Ahmadinejad, became the Islamic Republic of Iran’s president, things started heating up greatly. Time and again, the bellicose Ahmadinejad kept vilifying the Great Satan and its sidekick Israel for having the gall to demand Iran abandon its program while his two main adversaries had their own arsenal of nuclear weapons. Ahmadinejad informed the world that what the Islamic Republic does is within its own national rights. He shored up his credibility cleverly by dispatching endless series of negotiators to meetings with the Europeans. He was successfully stalling for time, while working around the clock to get to the Surge Capacity.
* The NIE report assures us that the IRI abandoned its nuclear weapon program some three years ago. So, there is really nothing to fear and even less reason to maintain the dangerous game of brinksmanship with the mullahs. Upon superficial reading of the report one may get the impression that the mullahs are not exactly the saints of Allah as Jimmy Carter had thought them and helped bring them to power. Yet, they neither are as scheming un-repenting villainous zanies that their enemies portray them.
* Now we have something that no one could imagine was possible only weeks ago. The latest comprehensive NIE report has something in its sleigh to appease, if not please, all the quarrelling children. Ahmadinejad boasts to the world that it stood up to the Great Satan, embarrassed it and didn’t even blink. You, Mr. President, can meekly end your term without having to make good on the threat of using force to make the mullahs drop their bomb quest. The Democrats who hate you and the Republicans more than they dislike or fear the zany bomb-wielding mullahs can happily celebrate and have new ammunitions for their weapons to capture the White House. The IAEA can keep its plush job of trotting around the world and doing nothing to warrant its existence. The Europeans can keep on doing lucrative business with the gas station the mullahs operate. The U.N. Security Council can stall, water down, or completely abandon any new sanctions on the IRI. The Russians and the Chinese can delight at the U.S. humiliation and keep on making money from their nuclear and oil deals. See how great it is? Just one report and a huge problem is solved and everyone is happy.
* But I hate to be the dissenting voice. I hate to be the bearer of bad news, particularly now that the West and much of the non-Islamic world is preparing for holiday festivities. Threats to my life by the Islamists have failed to silence me. I have not taken to remaining silent just to keep people in their comfortable deadly delusions. Here is my take on the whole thing.
1. The best predictor of the future is the past. The religious fanatic mullahs’ record is one of deception, dissimulation, treachery, violence and much more. These Quran-trained and directed agents of a wrathful Allah can never be trusted. They are master schemers. They have been at the business of scheming for centuries. They have perfected the art of deception, doubletalk, double-dealing and treachery. Hence, for the NIE’s report to be based primarily on supposed interception of secret conversations of high-ranking Iranian leaders is nothing more than a practice in gullibility. Prudence demands better proofs, much better proofs.
2. The defected/abducted Iranian general Askari a while back was seen by some as a veritable trough of inside information about Iran’s nuclear program. Yet, this man may simply be a planted mole.
3. If indeed the IRI has abandoned its entire program to achieve Surge Capacity, then why is it that it does not allow the IAEA unimpeded access to over some 30 known facilities? The IAEA is allowed to visit only a handful of them, and only with prior notice.
4. The bleeding heart liberals, otherwise known as the Useful Idiots, citing the NIE demand in chorus that we should immediately begin negotiating with the mullahs with no pre-conditions at all. We never had much leverage with the mullahs. What little leverage we had is wiped out by our own NIE. What these Useful Idiots don’t seem to understand is that one can only negotiate with a party who is indeed interested in negotiation.
The extortion-high oil money has intoxicated the mullahs. They see themselves as the Tolooi (ascending like the rising sun) and non-Islamic world as the Ofooli (sinking like the descending sun). Why negotiate any live-and-let-live arrangement with a dying adversary, they reason. The mullahs are only interested in the eventual full surrender of the non-Islamic world. Any concession they make is either tactical or altogether worthless. These villains have a mile-long sheet of past broken promises and treachery. The Useful Idiots neglect to tell us how one negotiates with these inveterate connivers. They seem to think that throwing a couple of bones to the mullahs will keep them gnawing at the bones and leave their own flesh intact: a deadly delusional and wishful thinking.
5. Some influential pundits pontificate that we can live with a nuclear Iran, if it comes to that. They say that Iran would never use the bomb. Because the mullahs, the fanatic zanies as they may be, are not going to risk Iran becoming a radioactive parking lot by the massive U.S. retaliation. Wrong. Once again, these well-healed arrogant know-it-all pundits are seeing things through their own spectacles.
The civilized people cherish and celebrate life. The Islamists relish death as stated in their ideology and practiced daily. Recall what Hassan Nasrullah; the leader of Lebanon Hizbollah had to say about why his people would prevail in the war with Israel. He said, “Israelis love life. We Muslims love death.” These fanatics firmly believe in an incomparably magnificent pleasure-filled next world that awaits the faithful Muslim. To them, this world is nothing but a heap of dust, while the next is a paradise of eternal lust.
6. It is fine for Hassan Nasrullah to claim the love of death by the faithful. But, do these soldiers of Allah actually walk the walk and actively seek death? The answer is indeed a resounding yes. It is a pillar of belief in Islam that whichever side is killed, Islam and Muslims are the beneficiaries of the death. Based on this horrific ideology of death, the Muslims have visited death on untold numbers of both Muslims as well as non-Muslims. The Khominist regime of the IRI sent tens of thousands of its own children to their death to clear minefields in its holy war with Iraq’s Saddam Hussein. Not limiting itself to this horrific act, the Khominists executed tens of thousands of political dissenters without the least due process. Islam wins, either when you kill or you get killed. That’s the motto of the religion of death.
7. The killer Muslims joyfully strap on bomb vests and detonate them in a marketplace, in a wedding hall, in schools, in hospitals, in funeral processions, and even in mosques. These acts of killing and maiming innocent people happen daily. The bomber kills himself for the privilege of killing as many as possible in the process. The rewards that the killer is convinced awaiting him warrants the most hideous act. And there is an over-abundance of these murderers who vie with one another to kill and get killed.
8. Suicide bombing that maims and kills dozens is often dismissed as an act of aberration by an individual deceived by ruthless conniving handlers. But, no one would ever contemplate using the nuclear bomb when it entails the certainty of his own destruction as well as his country, so goes the deterrence logic.
Logic, what logic? Fanaticism generated by belief defies logic at every bend. A zealot end-of-the-worlder Ahmadinejad has already climbed to a position of great power. What if another Ahmadinejad-type gets to have his finger on the bomb’s trigger? Would he pull it, even if it is going to kill him and all his people? Only a fool would bet against it.
My advice to the President and the people of my adopted country is: go ahead and make merry, enjoy the gift of life, but don’t let down your guard and make sure that no one lulls you into the deadly trap of complacency. Yes, if the mullahs get the bomb, they will make use of it in numerous ways. They will use it for blackmail, they will use it in small packages through untraceable proxies, and they might even launch it by their missiles in a homicide-suicide fashion which is their trademark. After all it is the mullahs’ deeply-held belief that their cataclysmic act will expedite the coming of the Saheb-ul-Zaman (the Lord of the Age), whence he would set the world on the righteous course while those who have hastened his coming will be immersed eternally in the joys of pleasure in Allah’s promised paradise.
