The Persian Shiite Regime operates by its own sense of ethics and morality, and chooses which laws and international customs it cares to follow. An unmitigated hatred of the USA and Israel, a brazen support of terrorism against its perceived enemies, and an extraordinary determination to acquire nuclear weapons are hallmarks of the Regime.
It has taken a while to see clearly the Regime’s dreams and ambitions. Like a puffed up peacock, acting under the illusion that it is a superpower, the Regime’s rulers parade across the globe collecting or buying sycophants who share the Regime’s hatred of the USA. In addition to its Syrian, Hezbollah, and Hamas puppets, the Regime has quietly expanded its network in Latin and South America and is currently trying to do the same in Africa. The only rational goal of this policy is to allow the Regime to evade UN sanctions and free it to continue to develop nuclear weapons.
The Regime seems to be following in the footsteps of the defunct USSR in trying to construct a global network to bring down the capitalistic West. Like the USSR, the country the Regime has created is attractive to no one—except for oil, the Regime produces nothing the world wants or needs, it has no respect for individual liberty or freedom, and it routinely hangs its own citizens in public for cockamamie religious or whimsical transgressions.
In the last staged Iranian election, the hard-liners in the Regime were so insecure that they stuffed the ballot boxes to insure that the soft-liners in the Regime lost; so now the Revolution is beginning to feed on itself, a sure sign that the Regime is losing the support of its own people.
In recent weeks, the grand strategy of the Regime to bring the West to its knees has finally come into clear view. For years, the Persian Shiite Regime has lobbied hard in OPEC to raise the price of oil by decreasing production. By and large, the Regime’s strategy failed because Saudi Arabia refused to go along with it. Saudi Arabia does not regard itself as a mortal enemy of the USA—as the Regime obviously does—and, on the contrary, understands that the USA and Saudi Arabia are co-dependent. A Persian Shiite Regime armed with nuclear weapons, however, will be able, one way or another, to arbitrarily set the price of all oil leaving the Persian Gulf.
On December 26, 2011, the Regime’s Vice President Mohammed Reza Rahimi threatened to close the Strait of Hormuz, cutting off all oil shipments, if the West imposes sanctions on Iran’s oil shipments. This week, to put teeth behind the threat, the Regime’s navy started practicing doing precisely that. If the Regime gets away with this threat, as it has with all of its previous ones, then here is the next threat we will shortly face: “The Persian Shiite Regime will block all oil from leaving the straits if the West does not end its sanctions against Iran”. Once the Regime gets nuclear weapons, we can expect a threat like this: “To get any oil out of the Persian Gulf, the West will have to pay $200 a barrel, stop all support for any country in the Middle East, and withdraw all of its forces there, including its aircraft carriers”. The West will finally lose all control of its independence and be bled dry.
So what are we to do? Since the Regime routinely lies to the rest of the world whenever it is cornered, none of their promises can be believed. They will lie, stall, and con everyone in order to buy the time needed to develop nuclear weapons. Thus, as quickly as possible and with a minimum loss of innocent life, it is time to militarily destroy the Regime’s nuclear weapons installations. As we prepare for this job, we must honestly face what kept us from doing this for so many years.
One of the West’s greatest fears, that has paralyzed it from taking military action against the Regime, has been the belief that such an attack would be viewed by the Arab world as an attack against Islam itself. Today, nothing could be further from the truth. The support for the Regime among Arab populations has unexpectedly precipitously dropped over the last decade according to the latest polling by Dr. James Zogby of the Arab American Institute. In 2006 Iran’s positive rating in the mind of the Arab public stood at 68-82%, but by December, 2011 the rating declined to only 6% in Saudi Arabia, 14% in Morocco, 22% in the United Arab Emirates, 23% in Jordan, and 37% in Egypt. Expectedly, the rating remained high in Lebanon at 63%.
In Zogby’s opinion, the plummeting Arab support for the Regime can be traced to Tehran’s meddling in sectarian politics in Arab states and to the Persian Shiites Regime’s opposition to peace in the Middle East.
Sunni Arabs no longer identify with the Regime and do not view it as the leader of the Islamic world. Equally important, Zogby found that, except for Lebanon, the great majority of Arabs wanted to keep nuclear weapons out of the Middle East. Clearly, then, the bid by the Regime to ascend to the leadership of the Arab world by adopting Nasser’s belligerent policies towards Israel has failed. The Regime stands alone, with very few genuine allies in the world, and from a military point of view, none of them count.
Certain historical truths are essential to keep in mind as we move to knock out one of the most important props keeping the Persian Shiite Regime in power.
A country that could not defeat Saddam Hussein’s armies after almost eight years of war is not a military threat to the West. But a Persian Shiite Regime armed with nuclear weapons is another matter. Did you ever wonder why the Regime finally decided to end its stalemated war with Iraq? In the last year of this war (1988), the Persian Shiite Regime tried four times to end the stalemate and finally defeat Saddam Hussein’s armies. However, backed-up with poison gas, Saddam Hussein’s armies skillfully defeated all four of the Regime’s attempts at victory. These defeats must have been bitter for the Regime to face since it threw everything it had at the Iraqis, including the martyrdom of unarmed Iranian children sent through Iraqi mine fields.
At the end of the fourth of these defeats, the Regime caved and signed a peace treaty with Saddam Hussein that the Regime meticulously kept. Years later, the humiliated Regime watched as the armies of the Great Satan defeated the armies of Saddam Hussein in only 23 days! The moral of this story is that the Regime has a big mouth and is good at making blood-curling threats, but its military power is no match for ours. Whatever casualties we suffer by attacking now would pale compared to what they would be if we were forced to do this after the Regime acquires nuclear weapons. Backed-up by the military experience gained in Iraq, the US—as the regional superpower and leader of the West—is the natural country to organize the assault: Israel should stay out of it unless attacked. This would maximize support for the operation in the Arab world. Although it pains me to say this (I am a physicist myself), the obliteration of the Regime’s nuclear weapons facilities should take place at 11 a.m. on an Iranian workday to maximize the losses of the technical personnel now working hard to produce bomb-grade uranium-235.
How will the Regime respond to the attack, beyond the usual verbal threats?
Soon after it seized control of the 1979 revolution that toppled the Shah of Iran, the Khomeini Shiite clique took control over the American embassy in Tehran and kept 51 American diplomats hostage for 444 days, in conditions that included beatings, torture, solitary confinement, and mock executions. Operating without any fear of retaliation, the Shiite Regime could not care less about the rules of diplomatic immunity and civilized treatment of defenseless diplomats. The inability of the U.S. President at that time, Jimmy Carter, to settle the dispute peacefully through diplomatic means cost Carter his re-election. It mattered not to the Regime that Carter, a great believer in civil rights, helped bring down Shah Pahlavi thereby paving the way for Ayatollah Khomeini to seize power in the first place.
Khomeini waited until the last day of the Carter Administration to sign the Algiers Accords ending the crisis, and released the hostages only the next day, minutes after Ronald Reagan, who had sworn to settle the crisis by any means necessary, was inaugurated as the new American President. Khomeini was not willing to test Reagan’s promise to the American people to use force if necessary to free the diplomats.
In 2006, Hezbollah, the Regime’s puppet in Lebanon, provoked a war with Israel that the terrorist organization lived to regret. In response, Israel conquered Hezbollah territory and destroyed much of its military and civilian infrastructure. For the 34 days that the war lasted, the Regime shouted bombastic threats against Israel, but militarily did absolutely nothing. Interestingly, although Hezbollah has repeatedly threatened to attack Israel if Israel attacked Iran, Iran does not apparently see the need to return Hezbollah’s favor! Why didn’t the Regime open up a second front in this war by attacking Israel? If it really wanted to “wipe Israel off the map”, here was its chance—why didn’t it do it? Answer: Israel would have obliterated the Regime, and the Regime knew it.
Interestingly, the same thing happened in 2008 when Hamas’ rocket attacks on Israeli cities finally provoked Israel to retaliate by invading the Gaza strip. During this three-week war both Hezbollah and the Regime, allies of Hamas, did absolutely nothing to help Hamas. [This constitutes the proof that Israel defeated Hezbollah in the 2006 war, and not the other way around, as Hezbollah continues to claim.] Of course, both Regimes shouted their usual threats at Israel, but militarily they knew better than intervene.
So here we have the bottom-line truth about the Persian Shiite Regime. It fearlessly hangs unrepentant members of the Baha’i religion from public gallows, including teen-age girls (children!) along with their parents, but when the opportunity arises to put their money where their mouth is regarding Israel, we see cowardice instead. The Regime’s current threat to close down all oil shipments from the Persian Gulf must be viewed as a bluff, just like its threat to attack Israel if the USA bombed the Regime’s nuclear weapons facilities.
What happens when this Regime of fakers gets nuclear weapons is impossible to know. However, we cannot afford to wait to find out whether the Regime’s threats really represent its true dreams. It is better to be safe than sorry: it is time to act, and in doing so, to make not only the Middle East, but the world, a safer place.
(Ivan Kramer is an Associate Professor of Physics
at the University of Maryland Baltimore County.)
