IN A SPEECH following Friday prayers in Tehran, Ayatollah Ali Khomeini, launched a series of threats against the West, and Israel. He also publicly acknowledged Iranian support for Hamas and Hezbollah promising support for ‘…any nation or group [that] confronts the Zionist regime, we will endorse and we will help. We have no fear expressing this’. Referring to Israel, he compared it to a ‘cancerous tumour that should be cut and will be cut’.
Given the fundamentalist nature of the regime, and the status within it of the Ayatollah; his language cannot be dismissed as mere hyperbole. He foresees Iran’s holy mission to rid the Middle East of the Jewish state; and day by day and month by month, his country is developing a nuclear weapon with a missile capable of delivering it as far as parts of Europe.
Iran has built from scratch every element needed to create such a weapon, and she has done so by stringing the international community along with time delaying talks which Western liberals went along with, rather than face up to any kind of military confrontation with Iran. Now, if there is such a confrontation, the price could be much higher, depending on how far advanced they are with their nuclear aspiration.
What we are told by the various intelligence agencies, is that Iran will have realised her ambition within a range of just a few months to two years. Once Iran becomes a nuclear power, the Arab world will have as much to fear from such a development as Israel and the West - Saudi Arabia is already talking of advancing her own nuclear capability in response to Iran’s.
Iran will effectively hold hegemony over her part of the Muslim world once she is a nuclear power; yet still there are those in the West, who think Iran would be prepared to negotiate the abandonment of a project that promises such rich rewards.
Millions of Arabs from the streets throughout of the Arab world, whether Sunni or Shia, will, as Muslims, look toward Iran to bring about the end of Israel as well as stand up to the West. The Arab Spring is turning into a rather chilly autumn for the West. In Egypt the Muslim Brotherhood looks increasingly likely to take advantage of events, as they will in other parts of the Arab world.
If Assad is overthrown in Syria, which the West hopes will happen (at least publicly), then what will replace his regime? Once more the Muslim Brotherhood await their opportunity. One thing is for sure, if the people of Syria are successful and manage to overthrow their regime, it is my guess that they will not look as favourably upon the West as did the Libyans.
BY BELIEVING THEMSELVES vindicated by the events in Afghanistan and Iraq, our liberals[1] are now complacent regarding Iran. While many of them still believe that Iran can be brought to the negotiating table via sanctions, others are even frightened of this – especially after Iran threatened to close the Straits of Hormuz.
Military confrontation seems the most likely outcome, as the most optimistic of analysts cannot possibly countenance Iran giving up the prize; and why should she?
Iranians’ know that the West, despite her military might, lack the ruthlessness to do what is needed to stop them. If they had such merciless and hard-nosed qualities, the Iranians have calculated; they would never have allowed her to progress so far with her ambitions. The only country Iran has any kind of respect for as an enemy is the state of Israel.
It has been Israel’s fate that America has a liberal President, at a time when they needed another Nixon or Reagan in the Whitehouse. Israel has wanted to put an end to Iran’s nuclear ambitions from its infancy; but was dissuaded by her greatest ally from so doing. Instead Israel, despite her natural denials, has had to resort to the assassination of nuclear scientists working for Iran.
Now there is talk of Israel launching a military attack on Iran’s nuclear infrastructure, after Iran threatened closure of the Straits of Hormuz. Because of the Western liberals lack of Will in the past, this action now threatens greater and untold consequences. Untold because we do not have any concrete knowledge of Iran’s advancement. But what we do know is that by attacking today, it carries graver consequences than such an action would have done two years ago when Israel first wanted to act – at a time when we in the West procrastinated.
TWO YEARS AGO we knew that Iran was nowhere near reaching its goal. It was the ideal time to eliminate militarily her nuclear facilities, as Israel did Syria’s in the 1980s.
Now the liberal fence-sitters throughout the West are left biting their finger nails, still hoping against reason that Iran will forgo her nuclear ambition through some kind of negotiated settlement.
To Iran, negotiating with the West or the United Nations, was always a means to buy time, and I do not think Iran needs anymore time.
So for once the liberals must cross their fingers and hope not to have to salvage their consciences by making the wrong decision, and support some kind of militarily confrontation of Iran, despite the consequences.
By sitting on the fence, the liberals have brought us to this point: prevarication has always been the liberal’s main weapon of preference whenever a moral decision was to be made. Liberal guilt has helped drag the West to its present condition regarding Iran.
The Ayatollah Ali Khomeini, as well as the Iranian president Mohammed Ahmadinejad have, between them, realised that within the West, but especially Europe, the liberals have always supported the Palestinian course and are therefore pliable when it comes to an attack on the state of Israel.
One gets the feeling we are nearing some kind of endgame regarding Iran; and Iran’s resistance to any compromise which means her forfeiting the chance to become a nuclear power that would boost her hegemony throughout the region, leaves us with fewer and fewer options.
The international community has, through it procrastination, allowed Iran to progress so far; and, if now seems likely, Israel finally takes a hand, then the international community are culpable for whichever way Iran reacts.
[1] By liberals in this context, I refer to all such like minded people in all political parties in the West, who are in and out of government, but dominate the political agenda.
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