The recent monster explosion at a Revolutionary Guards base outside Tehran has attracted the usual assortment of speculation. There is still a scarcity of hard information, but I’m reasonably confident that:
–There were two explosions at the RG base at Bidganeh, one smaller, the other very large.
–At almost the same time, there was an explosion at another military base in the west, in Luristan. The explosions seem to have been coordinated.
–The area around Bigdaneh is a military zone, with various facilities including two air fields, thus questions like “was it a munitions depot or a missile base?” are best answered “yes. Both.”
These attacks on the Guards — the symbol of the regime’s intensifying repression and slaughter of the Iranian people — are part of a pattern that includes explosions at refineries and pipelines. At the same time, strikes have been spreading (and no wonder; up to 30,000 retired teachers have been waiting for their pensions for many months). In short, people have lost patience, and the smaller of the two explosions at the RG base was aimed at Major General Hasan Tehrani Moghaddam, one of the most brutal of the country’s military leaders.
Contrary to the inevitable suspicions (the Americans did it! no, the Israelis did it! no, it was an accident!), the operation was planned and carried out by Iranians from the opposition-that-does-not-exist. They intended to demonstrate that no leader is safe from the people’s wrath (if that base can be penetrated, any place can, and if that man can be assassinated, anyone can), and that the opposition knows its gravediggers.
The second, larger, explosion was not planned, nor was the extremely high number of casualties (I am told that hundreds of people, including some “very important foreign dignitaries,” were blown up). That second blast was apparently from a quantity of liquid fuel designed to extend the speed and accuracy of Iran’s Shahab-3 missile, the one the mullahs hope will someday carry a nuclear warhead. My sources claim that the fuel caused the big white plume seen in the photograph (above). The cloud may well have caused respiratory problems for the survivors.
There is another report that right after the explosions, the two main Green Movement leaders, Mir Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi, were taken from house arrest, leaving their wives behind. This bespeaks a high level of anxiety within the regime, suggesting that they feared an all-out assault was under way, and under those circumstances they would take vengeance on the two Green leaders. Whether or not the rumor is true, its existence suggests that Khamenei et. al. take a more serious view of the opposition than some of our own expert analysts.
What this all means is clear enough. As I forecast some time ago, it was only a matter of time until the opposition abandoned its commitment to non-violence. We are now in a new phase. A French analyst, Jean-Jacques Guillet, understands the situation very well, and has called for a Western policy to intensify the pressure on the Iranian regime in order to bring it down. “If we press the regime strongly,” he said, “there could be an implosion. The real objective these days should be the regime’s implosion, not more talk.”
Decades ago Marshall McLuhan observed, “The medium is the message.” As the print and electronic media penetrate more and more every aspect of life, their influence increases greatly in shaping views and behavior of the public. The power of the media is a mixed blessing. On one hand, it can serve to expose injustices, wrongdoings, and flaws. On the other, it is able to propagate misinformation and outright disinformation.
Manipulation and control of the media is of critical importance to the rule of totalitarian states. Free societies, although less subject to laundered information, are still at considerable risk of being selectively informed or misinformed outright. The public can be deceived more easily by the overlords of the media when political correctness is used as subterfuge for promotion of certain ideas.
A case in point is the media’s portrayal of Islam, articulated by politicians and pundits—the talking heads on television and radio, as well as the analysts who write for newspapers and magazines in the West. Time and again we hear and read that Islam is a religion of peace, in spite of the fact that Islam has been a religion of violence from its inception to the present. This mantra, “Islam is a religion of peace” is repeated so often that it has become an indisputable statement of fact in the minds of many.
While radical Muslims kill, behead, and rape, the MSM remains silent and repeats the same mantra of Islam’s peacefulness in the name of multiculturalism. They insist that the civilized world accept Islamic culture, under the rubric of multiculturalism. Muslims and their frequently well-paid apologists use the multiculturalism umbrella only in non-Islamic lands to shield themselves from the torrent of legitimate criticisms that those who know Islam better shower on this cult of violence peddled as the religion of peace.
Don’t listen to me and don’t listen to these conniving dissimulators. Find out for yourself. See if the euphemism of multiculturalism is ever printed in the Islamic press, or ever appears in any form anywhere in Muslim countries. This multiculturalism gambit is Islam manufactured to pull the wool over the eyes of non-Muslims while Muslims carry on with their unrelenting campaign of eradicating anything or anyone non-Islamic everywhere in the world.
Those of us, through reason and tremendous act of will, who have freed ourselves from the enslaving yoke of Islam placed around our necks from birth, know about all the heinous inside dirt of this plague of humanity. We have experienced Islam first-hand and up close from the inside. We have studied the Quran, the Hadith, and the Sunna. We have seen Islam in action where it holds sway. Some of us even tried desperately to cling to this security blanket that was wrapped around us from birth. Yet, the more we studied and the more we experienced Islam, the more our efforts to remain in the fold became untenable.
We broke away from Islamic slavery and found it to be our solemn duty to expose this fraud of a religion, help other Muslims to free themselves from it, and warn the good-hearted and gullible non-Muslims against falling prey to it.
Recall former President George W. Bush on several occasions repeated the mantra and attributed the horrific violence committed under the banner of Islam to a small band of extremists? The former President’s assertion was either based on ignorance of the facts about Islam or his attempt at political correctness. Perhaps the President’s reticence to speak on the true nature of Islam was due to his desire to avoid inflaming the already charged feelings of many about Islam. In any event, truth is sacrificed and the public continues to cling to the false notion that Islam is a peaceful religion. People who dare to disclose the true nature of Islam run the risk of being castigated as a bigot or a hatemonger.
Even a cursory examination of Islam’s history and Islamic texts conclusively proves the exact opposite of peacefulness. Islam was, and continues to be, a movement of unbridled violence.
The Arabs who sallied out of the Arabian deserts did not fan out to the outside world with the Quran in one hand and flowers in the other, preaching love and peace from street corner to street corner, thereby capturing the hearts and minds of the people. Islam was forced upon every people at the point of the sword and the imposition of backbreaking jazyyeh (special taxes) levied on those who were spared death and allowed to retain their religious beliefs. In spite of paying heavy Jazyyeh, the non-Muslims were treated, at best, as second-class citizens in their own homelands.
The abominable persecution of non-Muslims in Islamic countries is a standard operating procedure. In many Islamic countries non-Muslim marriages are not recognized as legal unions and the children of the couples are stigmatized as bastards. Never mind Saudi Arabia, the cradle of barbarism, and even Egypt, the more civilized Islamic country and recipient of billions of dollars in U.S. aid, treat non-Muslims as second-class citizens and deprive them of their legitimate human rights.
The pundits, the analysts and the politicians are doing a great disservice to the public, each segment for its own expedient reasons, by parroting the mantra regarding the peaceful nature of Islam. As a matter of fact, the so-called small band of Islamic extremists is the true face of Islam. Admittedly, from time to time and place to place, Muslims have shown a degree of tolerance for non-Muslims. This tolerance dates back to the very early years of Muhammad himself. Early on, Muhammad was meek and proclaimed, “For you, your religion, and for me, my religion.” This assertion lasted but a few years until Muhammad’s movement gathered strength and Islam became the only alternative to death or heavy taxation. The imposition of Jazyyeh was a clever ploy for filling the Islamic coffers to support its armies and to finance its further conquests.
A longstanding Islamic practice is to be meek while weak and assume despotic intolerant power as it gains strength. Recent migration of Muslims to non-Islamic lands began as a seemingly harmless, even a useful, trickle of cheap needed labor. Before long, greater and greater numbers of Muslims deluged the new territories and as they gained in numbers—by high birth rate as well as new arrivals—Muslims began reverting to their intolerant ways by, for instance, demanding legal status for Shariah (Islamic laws), the type of draconian laws that for the most part resemble those of humanity’s barbaric past.
Islam is indeed misrepresented. Islam is not misrepresented by its “detractors.” It is misrepresented by Islamic mercenaries: organizations and individuals generously funded by states as well as wealthy believers who are making billions of dollars pumping and selling oil at astronomical prices. Prestigious universities in the West, always looking for handouts, are tripping over one another to establish Islamic studies programs staffed by professors who sing the praise of Islam. Islamic associations routinely intimidate newspapers if they dare to print the truth about Islam. Legions of lawyers, both Muslims as well as hired guns, are on the lookout to intimidate and silence any voice speaking the truth about Islam. The media that fall in line may receive generous advertising and other incentives from Islamic lobbyists.
Hence, it is a fact that Islam is misrepresented. It is misrepresented very effectively by non-Muslim individuals and institutions who are generously rewarded by the modern day Islamic conquerors. This time around the Muslims are using the immense petrodollar they extract from the addicted non-Muslims.
The sword is temporarily replaced by just as deadly a weapon—the petrodollar. Before long, the Muslims aim to add a more deadly modern version of the sword—the Islamic bomb. With the bomb on one hand and the other hand on the oil spigot, the non-Muslim world will be brought to its knees by the religion of peace and brotherhood.
In the real war, our major enemies are the evil regimes in Iran and Syria, and both are hollow and wobbling, needing only one good push to go over.
Syrian soldiers are defecting in significant numbers, while brave, peaceful demonstrators continue to fill the streets despite the likelihood of arrest, torture, and death. The regime is unleashing mass slaughter, as army troops fire blindly into the crowds from a safe distance, a sure sign that Assad has lost control, despite massive Iranian assistance.
In Iran, the war of all against all at the highest levels of the regime continues unabated. The latest tumult revolves around the theft of billions of dollars from the major banks, and it is accompanied by strikes at bazaars and factories, explosions in pipelines and refineries, and open warfare along the borders with the Kurds, where, despite the regime’s usual disinformation campaign, Iranian casualties have been significant. Somehow the Kurds are being armed, and they are notoriously good fighters.
The defeat of Assad and Khamenei would be a world-changing event, pulling the plug on the ominous strategic alliance that runs from Tehran and Damascus to countries quite close to us, such as Cuba, Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador and Nicaragua. It would weaken Putin’s ability to sponsor dangerous mischief in the Middle East and our own hemisphere. And it would deprive the terror network of safe havens, funding, weapons, logistics, and intelligence, along with the sort of documentation they need (think false passports) to travel safely.
In Iran, the opposition is overwhelmingly pro-Western, and eminently worthy of our support (once again, for those tuning in late, I’m talking about political, technological, and financial support, not military anything), while in Syria we should steer away from those many characters linked to the Muslim Brotherhood and the Salafist crowd. But there are plenty of good democrats fighting against Assad. Having dithered so long, we are now facing some nasty scenarios, and it may well be that the Free Syrian Army — the defectors from the regular armed forces — will need some sort of military assistance.
These decisions will have to be made by people who know more about the actual battlefield than you or I, but they should be made within a narrow context: what is the best way to bring down Assad and Khamenei? Despite decades of bad policy, the fates have delivered our enemies to us. They are waiting for a swift kick, or a decisive thrust from our side. One will get you ten the tyrants have already made plans for life in exile.
How did this happen, without anyone seeming to notice? I think it is because we are not permitted to tell the truth about the war: we defeated al-Qaeda, Iran and Syria in Iraq, and the consequences of that defeat have been very serious for our enemies. They preached that Allah had blessed their jihad, and when they were beaten, it raised terrible questions to which they have no truthful answers. But the truth is quite obvious to the would-be enemy fighters, who know that the promise of victory was not fulfilled on the Middle East’s major battlefield, and whatever your view of the Afghan fighting, nobody I respect really believes that we are being beaten by the Taliban.
We’re right on the edge of an historic watershed, in which our totalitarian enemies can be driven into history’s bin of losers. It is time for us to declare victory and then impose our will on our enemies by giving their oppressed people the opportunity to free themselves from the bloody tyrants.
It’s up to our leaders to demonstrate they have the will to win. Win a real war, not just a political poll. And by the way, if our current leaders were to do that, they’d do a lot better in the polls.
For days after Libyan rebels swept into Tripoli, Gaddafi loyalists still put up fierce resistance in several parts of the city. The rebels assaulted a pro-Gaddafi neighborhood, and continued an attack against an apartment complex in the Abu Salim district, to which pro-Gaddafi fighters are said to have escaped from the nearby former Gaddafi family compound.
“Just days into the battle, nothing is certain in Tripoli,” writes al-Jazeera.
In other parts of the city, rebels go house-to-house, looking for the former Libyan leader, since their victory is incomplete without Gaddafi’s death or capture, after which resistance is expected to collapse. To hurry up the process, Libyan businessmen in Benghazi, the rebel stronghold, have offered a $1.7 million cash reward for Gaddafi’s death or capture.
Newspapers published stories that Gaddafi could be in the Abu Salim complex, accounting for the fierce fighting there. But these reports may be part of a disinformation campaign to lower his troops’ morale, much like the falsely reported capture of Seif Gaddafi last week. But if Gaddafi is in the Abu Salim complex, expect him and his men to fight their way out rather than surrender, if their situation becomes untenable.
“This is not over yet,” said Britain’s foreign secretary, William Hague, referring to the pro-Gaddafi support remaining in the country. “There are huge numbers of weapons out there and some thousands of forces are continuing to fight for a regime that is finished.”
It was estimated that 20,000 Libyans had died in the conflict before the attack on Tripoli. Fighting at close quarters in the capital’s close confines has brought about the expected additional “hundreds of wounded fighters and civilians.” Reports have also now come in of massacres committed by both sides. Fifteen prisoners, possibly political activists held at the Gaddafi compound, were reported shot, while about 30 captured pro-Gaddafi soldiers were found murdered.
The Libyan people, numbering about six million, have been traumatized by the conflict, in which, like many civil wars, only a small number have participated. This is indicated by the size of the rebel force fighting in Tripoli, a city of about two million. It is estimated to be only 4,000 strong, while the number of pro-Gaddafi fighters is unknown.
Libya’s infrastructure is so badly damaged from the violence that countries, including the United States, are pledging tens of millions of dollars to the rebuilding effort. While humanitarian in nature, these pledges can also be viewed as an attempt to curry favor with the rebels’ Transitional National Council (TNC) for oil exploration deals that are expected to be made once the fighting dies down, and for the guaranteeing of existing contracts.
But even with the defeat of Gaddafi’s regular forces in Tripoli and elsewhere, the Libyan people’s sufferings are most likely far from over. If Gaddafi escapes death or capture, the former Libyan dictator will simply go underground and launch a guerrilla war against the TNC, much like Saddam Hussein did after his downfall in Iraq. Assassinations and car bombings will then become the order of the day. The guerrilla war has probably already started, since some Gaddafi soldiers have likely already donned civilian clothes in order to foment resistance and conduct operations behind rebel lines in Tripoli.
Perhaps even worse for Libyan civilians, Gaddafi has a supply of mustard gas. A U.S. State Department spokeswoman, however, said “it was monitoring the sites where the stockpiles are held” and believes they are “secure.” Hopefully, she is right. In his latest tape, released on Syrian television, Gaddafi told his supporters, or the “sweeping majority,” as he called them, to “destroy” the rebel “rats.” He also asked women and children to “purify” Tripoli. With his mental health always a subject of speculation, one has to be very concerned that Gaddafi has access to poison gas, especially when he is talking about purifying a city and annihilating an enemy.
Many analysts expect the TNC to eventually implode along tribal and/or ethnic lines. This is now Gaddafi’s main hope. Taking advantage of the fractionalization, he could build new alliances with disgruntled elements in the hope that he or one of his sons can make a political comeback several months down the road. Of course, if this does occur, it will only happen after more violence and killing – and if he lives long enough.
The Islamists might also attempt to take advantage of the expected turmoil. They were always strong in western Libya, where the rebellion has its greatest support, and have fought among the ranks of the rebels. While persecuted by Gaddafi, they likely see in his ouster the opportunity, like in other Muslim states in this “Arab Spring,” to establish an Islamic state.
The winners in the Libyan war are thought to be the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) countries of Great Britain, France, Italy, and the United States who, along with Qatar, will now have preferred access to future oil exploration deals in Libya, thanks to their support of the TNC. Libya has the largest oil reserves in Africa. The oil it produces is also of a highly sought-after variety, called “sweet crude,” that is refined into gasoline.
“But what BP, Total, Exxon Mobil, and the Qatar oil company really want is serious involvement in new fields,” writes a columnist in Asia Times. “They want the full bonanza they didn’t get in Iraq – where some of the juiciest contracts went to Russian, Chinese, or Malaysian players.”
By Ted Belman www.IsraelNationalNews.com
The first half of this article appeared in the September 2011 issue of the Levitt Letter (page 21).
Israel is sitting pretty. Sure it has problems, but its future is bright. Even its present is not too shabby.
Of immediate concern, is the attempt by the PA to gain recognition and membership in the UN in September. To this end the PA has agreed to unify with Hamas to unify, but unification is proving more difficult to achieve than implied, due to their unwillingness to share power.
Even if the PA gains recognition by the General Assembly, such recognition will change nothing on the ground. The US has made clear that it will veto the PA’s admission to membership. Furthermore, Israel has succeeded, diplomatically, in turning the EU around on the matter of recognition. A few months ago, Britain, France, and Germany were threatening Israel to accept the armistice lines as the basis for negotiations, failing which they would vote for recognition. Now they are lined up with the US and Israel in urging the PA not to go to the UN for recognition.
Israel has successfully made the case that such a unilateral move by the PA would be a violation of the Oslo Accords which mandate no unilateral moves and a negotiated settlement. Israel has made clear that such a move would result in unilateral moves by Israel and the end of the Oslo Accords. This means the end of the PA created pursuant to these accords.
The primary unilateral move mooted by Israel is the extension of Israeli law to the settlement blocs which would make the blocs sovereign territory of Israel. Many in Israel are demanding that Israel not stop there but do the same for all of Area “C” over which it has full control pursuant to the Oslo Accords. These lands contain 300,000 Israelis and 10,000 Arabs. Israeli grassroots are campaigning to increase Israeli support for such a move.
A new poll conducted by Egypt’s ruling military regime showed that a 67 percent majority of Egyptians want to maintain their nation’s peace treaty with Israel. This contradicted an earlier poll which showed that 54% of Egyptians wanted to scrap the agreement.
Jordan wants Israel to remain in Judea and Samaria (West Bank) because it’s in Jordan’s best interest. Palestinian nationalism is a threat to the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan. It prefers the status quo, thank you very much.
Syria is on the ropes and is expected to go down for the count. Turkey has been threatening to invade Syria ostensibly to set up a safe zone for refugees but may remain there and perhaps end up controlling Syria and by extension, Lebanon. The US is coordinating all this with Turkey and Israel. Remember, Syria and Lebanon used to be part of the Ottoman Empire. The US and Saudi Arabia have been trying to separate Syria from Iran for years and this may just be the way to do it.
At the same time, there are reports that the US is propping up the Assad regime by calling for it to talk with the opposition rather than calling for it to resign. Hopefully, the US will come to its senses and follow the Turkey option above set out. In fact, we see the fruits of the US coordinating efforts in the fact that Turkey did not back the most recent flotilla.
Hezbollah, according to the leading Arab international daily, alsarq alawsat, it is under duress because the majority of Lebanese do not want a sharia state nor do they want Hezbollah to involve them in a devastating war with Israel. To make matters worse four top leaders of Hezbollah have just been indicted for killing Lebanon’s beloved PM Rafik Harari. Finally, Hezbollah may be losing its Syrian patron and has begun removing its arms stored in Syria.
Greece, previously in the Arab camp, switched sides in the last year. Israel and Greece have been warming relations since Israel’s relations with Turkey cooled. Israel plans to export gas to Europe through Greece and Israelis are vacationing in Greece rather than in Turkey. And Greece stopped the flotilla from leaving its ports, at least for now.
The Quartet (the United Nations, the United States, the European Union, and Russia. Tony Blair is the Quartet’s current Special Envoy.) issued a statement in which it supported Israel and discouraged the flotilla:
“The Quartet recognizes that Israel has legitimate security concerns that must continue to be safeguarded. Members of the Quartet are committed to working with Israel, Egypt, and the international community to prevent the illicit trafficking of arms and ammunition into Gaza and believe efforts to maintain security while enabling movement and access for Palestinian people and goods are critical.”
Good news, indeed.
Saudi Arabia recently threatened to acquire nuclear weapons as a needed defense against Iran who will soon be nuclear. It is noteworthy that Israel has had the bomb for four decades but Saudi Arabia saw no need to acquire its own capability until now. Israel was not perceived as a threat. In any potential war with Iran, the Saudis see Israel as an ally.
The Palestinians in Israel do not rise up against Israel because they have no reason to. They have more rights and economic well-being than Arab citizens of Turkey, Syria, Jordan, or Egypt.
The primary threat to Israel is the possibility that Iran or its proxies will use WMDs—be they chemical, biological, or atomic—to bring Israel down even if it means their own destruction. But one thing is certain: neither Syria nor Lebanon wants war with Israel because it will result in a massive defeat for them and the loss of power by Assad and Hezbollah.
On the economic front, Israel is coming up roses. Its economy grew “by 4.7 percent last year according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development against an average of 2.8 for its member countries. The OECD forecast for Israel in 2011 is 5.4 percent.”
Israel should be pumping oil within three to four years and will match Canada in oil exports to the U.S.
Gas finds off Israel, including the Tamar and Leviathan discoveries that together hold an estimated 25 trillion cubic feet are sufficient to meet Israel’s domestic needs eventually and enable it to export gas, industry executives and government officials have said.
These resources will change the global balance of power.
Presidents Obama and Bush called Islam “a great religion” which has been “distorted” by a small number of “extremists” to justify committing acts of violence against the West.
But the Koran itself, the holy book of Islam, contains over 100 verses calling for violence against Christians and Jews. To give just one example, Sura 9:5 says, “Slay the idolaters wherever you find them.”
During a panel discussion last January, retired Army Lt. Colonel Allen West responded to a Marine who asked the question, “How do you answer people who say that terrorists are following a warped version of Islam?”
The panel consisted of a number of former military personnel who fumbled around in discomfort, trying to evade the question. Col. West finally answered the question directly and truthfully, a former military man who understands the nature of the enemy we face.
Col. West’s straightforward assessment: “This is not a perversion. They are doing exactly what this book (the Koran) says.”
Details trickle in from unnamed sources outside of the White House.
By Josh Voorhees http://slatest.slate.com
White House Press Secretary Jay Carney
Details about Osama Bin Laden’s death continued to emerge Wednesday, but the latest batch of specifics suggests that the White House may be losing control over exactly what becomes public and when.
First, the latest development: The al-Qaeda leader had 500 euros in cash and two telephone numbers sewn into the clothing he was wearing at the time of his death. The revelation suggests that Bin Laden was prepared to flee his secret compound at a moment’s notice if he got wind that the U.S. military had learned where he was hiding.
But what is nearly as interesting as the news itself is how those particular details seeped out to the media.
Politico first reported the story Wednesday morning, citing three unidentified lawmakers who attended a classified national intelligence briefing Tuesday. Other outlets, including CBS News and Fox News, then confirmed the story through other sources. (Fox cites an unidentified U.S. official; CBS does not provide details on how it confirmed the news.)
That marks a slight departure from how many of the details have emerged since news of Bin Laden’s death first became public. With the exception of the rough outline provided by President Obama during his televised address Sunday, most information has come from a handful of U.S. officials within the executive branch who have spoken to the media.
While those officials have occasionally contradicted one another, taken together their comments paint a picture of a White House eager to micromanage the news narrative. Administration officials have been quick to push back against reports of unflattering characterizations by the press, such as reports that the mission was a “kill operation” or that Obama was anything but decisive in ordering the raid that killed Bin Laden.
But for every hour that passes since the successful mission, more and more people are being briefed on still-classified details. Meanwhile, Pakistan reportedly has custody of several members of Bin Laden’s family, at least one of which—his young daughter—appears to have been an eyewitness to Bin Laden’s killing.
That will make it increasingly difficult for the White House to remain in control of the story.
(Don’t be confused by the unidentified U.S. officials that have been quoted in many of the early reports. Those people have almost certainly been given permission by the White House to talk to the media “on background,” which is media parlance for sharing information with the agreement that their name and specific position is not shared.)
Even before the recent inconclusive nuclear talks with Iran in Geneva, President Barack Obama undoubtedly agreed with France’s national security adviser, Jean-David Levitte, when he described Tehran’s approach to nuclear negotiations with the West as a “farce” and the dictatorship of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei as “fascist.” More aggressively than any president since Jimmy Carter, Obama has used sanctions against the Islamic Republic. The White House and the State Department have deployed a “coalition of the willing.” Washington has assiduously avoided punishing any major European, Russian, or Chinese transgressor of U.S.-mandated sanctions; rather, the administration has chosen to encourage compliance by underscoring the common threat of an Iranian bomb while suggesting that an American economic hammer, wielded by an increasingly pugnacious Congress, will eventually come down on malefactors.
Administration officials will tell you that the president aims only to coerce Khamenei into a compromise; privately, they’ll admit that his aim is to contain a nuclear Iran if sanctions fail to stop uranium enrichment. But few in the administration now believe that Khamenei will compromise unless sanctions endanger his regime. And containment, which is what Washington does when it wants to wage war without direct confrontation, is a regime-change strategy: Political and economic isolation is designed to nurture Iran’s convulsive internal contradictions, vividly on display after the June 12, 2009 elections. The contentious issue in Iran policy isn’t the goal—do we want Khamenei and his Revolutionary Guards to fall? Democrats and Republicans differ on this far less than they did when President George W. Bush saw an “axis of evil.” The issue is timing: Can we put enough pressure on Khamenei and his praetorians to either crack the regime or make the supreme leader believe that the nuclear program actually threatens his rule?
The administration may try to avoid the inevitable—sanctions that significantly curtail the export of Iranian oil—by playing with the idea that the West and Tehran can settle for some enrichment inside the Islamic Republic that doesn’t allow for processing the quality and quantity of uranium for nuclear weapons. But such a “compromise” doesn’t pass the pinch test: There is no way the West can monitor Iranian compliance without an intrusive inspections regime, which Khamenei has adamantly refused. Tehran has often dodged the International Atomic Energy Agency’s current, polite inspection procedures and questions about suspicious Iranian behavior. And as the French, who’ve been deadly serious about nuclear proliferation since the first Gulf war in 1990-91, constantly point out, any enrichment will now allow Tehran the intellectual and mechanical means to advance weaponization. Western advocates of some enrichment are usually the same folks who don’t see Khamenei’s and the Revolutionary Guards’ possession of nuclear weaponry as all that worrisome. If you’ve already conceded the supreme leader an atomic bomb, enrichment isn’t an issue.
A negotiated “deal” with Tehran that concedes Iranian enrichment is a face-saving way for the West to avoid confessing that it would rather risk Khamenei’s having a nuke than face the two alternatives: a crippling sanctions regime, which could spike the price of oil, or an American preventive military strike.
But this avenue of escape isn’t open to the White House for a few simple reasons. First, such a deal would leave Khamenei apoplectic. Any agreement that would effectively stop the bomb potential of Iran’s 20-year nuclear program would be an enormous defeat. It’s now clear that the supreme leader wasn’t particularly fond of the nuclear talks with the European Union that began in 2003. Those talks, which dead-ended in 2005, became unacceptable when EU demands for a (temporary) suspension of uranium enrichment and the “Additional Protocol”—providing for intrusive inspections—became unavoidable. Since the elections of June 12, 2009, we have watched the supreme leader unleash his security forces to torture his country into political quiescence. He has manhandled, driven into exile, and imprisoned most of the “moderate” forces with whom the West once hoped to deal. Seyyed Hossein Mousavian, one of the architects of the enrichment-pausing “Paris Agreement” of November 2004, now lives in exile in the United States, having fled Iran with his family. Has Khamenei triumphed over his internal enemies only to trade away the historic achievement of his regime? Psychologically, culturally, and religiously, this option for him makes no sense.
Conversely, no one else in the region will believe that a deal that leaves Iranian uranium enrichment in place is anything other than a rout of the West. The “EU-3” nuclear negotiations with Iran are the most important diplomatic undertaking that Brussels has attempted. (France, Great Britain, and Germany have represented the EU in these talks.) The Europeans, like the Americans, like the United Nations Security Council, have stated repeatedly and clearly that uranium enrichment by Iran without a full accounting of its nuclear program and complete access by IAEA inspectors to Iran’s known and suspected nuclear facilities is “unacceptable.” Such an enrichment “compromise” now would most likely guarantee that the Saudis would remind the nuclear-armed Pakistanis that it’s time for a little brotherly, Sunni Muslim tech transfer. The odds that others—especially the Egyptians and Turks—will also start down the nuclear path aren’t small. And unless Benjamin Netanyahu and much of Jerusalem’s political elite are just bluffing, the countdown for an Israeli preventive strike starts when the West concedes uranium enrichment to the supreme leader and his Revolutionary Guards.
And third, such a deal politically offers Obama nothing. Many Democrats and most Republicans would pounce on him for agreeing to “monitored” Iranian enrichment, which would likely collapse before American negotiators could fly home. The U.S.-led sanctions regime has shown that Washington can still have a significant impact on the Islamic Republic’s economy and politics (the foreign minister just got fired, and to minimize the impact of sanctions, the regime is cutting gasoline subsidies, which will either save the treasury billions or lead to crushing inflation). The near-miraculous attack of the centrifuge-destroying Stuxnet virus has bought the administration time and further strengthened those who want to use sticks to stop Khamenei’s nuclear aspirations.
In Washington, an unrelenting sanctions logic has developed. It has also anchored itself in Ottawa and jumped the Atlantic and the Pacific. United Nations Security Council resolution 1929 has been much more powerful than the three resolutions before it because the Europeans, the Japanese, and the South Koreans have chosen to interpret it more aggressively than they have in the past. The trick for Washington now is how to ratchet up significantly the pain in Tehran while encouraging our allies to continue to do more than they’d originally thought possible. The administration may be right (though we remain skeptical): As long as the Americans, the Europeans, and some of the big Asian players are voluntarily implementing more and more sanctions, the cumulative effect may be a punishing tidal wave, which any transgressions by the Chinese, Russians, and our allies are powerless to stop. Washington needs an incremental approach—implemented rapidly—that does not spook the oil markets and that allows for the market and increasing oil supplies from Iran’s competitors to dull the effect of less Iranian crude being traded. We need to continue to invest the Europeans in the project, allowing them to own, as they have since 2003, negotiations with the Islamic Republic.
Thinking always of Khamenei’s Achilles’ heel, Washington should aim its efforts at cutting foreign Iranian crude oil purchases. The Europeans have already cut tech transfers to and future investments in Iranian oil and natural gas, severely damaging Tehran’s ability to sustain current production. The Chinese, while backfilling on some of these investment deals, are sharply reducing their purchases of Iranian crude. China cut crude imports from Iran between January and September 2010 by approximately 17 percent from the same period in 2009, even as the world’s biggest energy consumer bought more oil. Japan, too, is cutting back. The Japanese reduced purchases of Iranian crude by over 19 percent in the first eight months of 2010; in August alone, Japan cut its purchases by 31 percent. While Iran was Japan’s third- largest supplier of oil in June 2010, by August of this year it was in sixth place. Neither the Japanese nor the Chinese want to bet their economic security on an Iranian energy sector in rapid decline.
The administration can greatly intensify the “hassle factor” in buying Iranian crude by exposing the role of the Revolutionary Guards in the crude-oil export supply chain—and then using the law prohibiting commerce with the Guards to sanction foreign enterprises involved with them. The Treasury Department’s recent decision to sanction the Pars Oil and Gas Company, which is a Revolutionary Guard front company involved in gasoline trading and the development of some of the largest oil and natural gas fields in the Middle East, is a good example of the type of punitive designation that can greatly complicate Iran’s energy planning.
Using the preamble of Security Council resolution 1929, which establishes the nexus between Iran’s cash-generating energy sector and the sanctioned nuclear program, the United States and its allies can also pass additional measures to prohibit long-term purchase contracts for Iranian oil and natural gas. And large up-front cash payments by foreign companies for Iranian oil and natural gas can be banned, as well as any energy bond issued by an Iranian entity (by prohibiting any foreign underwriter, purchaser, or financial institution from facilitating the issuance of a bond).
Current U.S. and EU rules severely limit investments in the Islamic Republic’s oil and natural gas sectors. In the case of U.S. law, the investment limit is $20 million per year. Large upfront cash payments on oil or natural gas purchases give the Iranians instant access to money to invest in their increasingly capital-starved energy sector. And by using long-term supply contracts to collateralize billions of dollars in energy bonds, the regime could circumvent sanctions. Bondholders require evidence that Iran can make payments on bonds, and one simple way to produce such evidence would be to sign a long-term supply contract, using the resulting guaranteed revenue stream in hard currencies to collateralize the paper issued.
The United States and the EU need to close any loopholes that would allow this kind of investment activity. Using the political cover of the preamble of resolution 1929, Washington or the EU can also introduce measures to sanction any pipeline project (and its participating partners) transporting Iranian oil or natural gas, or any shipping company, insurance company, or financial institution that provides support to an Iranian oil or natural gas trade. Needless to say, Washington or the EU can disqualify for any government contracting in America or Europe anyone buying Iranian oil or natural gas. As crude oil and natural gas buyers find it increasingly difficult to use banks to settle or extend credit for Iranian oil and natural gas trades, these buyers will seek alternative sources. Washington can also bar the participation in any U.S. energy deal (shale and offshore leases, for example) of any company that buys or facilitates the purchase of Iranian oil or natural gas. Nor would it be difficult for Western governments to sanction any company participating in overseas energy development or production involving an official Iranian company or any Revolutionary Guard Corps-affiliated entity.
Such punitive measures could significantly reduce the Islamic Republic’s ability to produce 3.7 million barrels of oil per day, just over 4 percent of daily world production. Provided the United States and its allies could get more oil on the market—the Iran-loathing Saudis could increase production, for example, and more oil from Canada’s enormous tar sands could hit the market, and President Obama could lift the moratorium on offshore oil rigs in the Gulf of Mexico—then the world oil market would have considerably more elasticity than does the Iranian economy, which is already under stress.
Some of the possibilities above have been introduced into the Sherman-Casey-Brown bill in Congress. It would probably take little time for this legislation and other measures like it to cause a financial crisis in Tehran the likes of which the mullahs have not seen since the Iran-Iraq war.
The issue for the Obama administration is whether it will have the foresight to accelerate sanctions that are probably coming in any case. The next round of Euro-American talks with Iran is scheduled for January. Gary Samore, the White House’s nuclear proliferation point man, has already let it be known that more sanctions are on the way. Yet it is one thing for the administration to know intellectually that Khamenei will not buckle without the severest pain; it is another matter to overcome the State Department’s love of diplomatic gradualism. Anyone who has spoken to administration officials who are doggedly trying to stop the Iranian bomb knows how easily the love of the sanctions process can turn that process into an end in itself. But the key to successful diplomacy with Khamenei’s Iran is to view engagement as the supreme leader does: All scenarios are win-lose. If the West is to stop Tehran’s quest for a nuke, it must convince the supreme leader, and the Revolutionary Guards who oversee Iran’s nuclear program, that their pursuit of the bomb will destroy the regime.
When dealing with Tehran, it’s always good to remember Ruhollah Khomeini, whose iron-willed charisma gave birth to the Islamic Republic. The ayatollah relented in his war against Saddam Hussein, who’d invaded Iran in 1980, when he finally saw that the conflict would destroy his new nation. One of the men who convinced Khomeini that Iran had to sue for peace was Khamenei. He understood that the Islamic Republic could not possibly win with the West—especially the United States—aligned against it. (The accidental downing of Iran Air Flight 655 by the USS Vincennes in the Persian Gulf in July 1988 was viewed as an intentional, heart-stopping act of war by Tehran’s ruling elite.) Khamenei undoubtedly remembers what it took to break his will—what it took to crack Khomeini’s bellicose determination—to fight. The objective of American diplomacy should be to reanimate those memories.
Indirect demand-side sanctions on the Islamic Republic could possibly accomplish what an embargo could do without the diplomatic trauma. If the European Union can lay the groundwork for the slow-motion death of Iran’s oil and gas exploration business, which it already has, it can probably see its way to further constricting Iran’s energy sector. Nuclear counterproliferation is a holy of holies for Europeans. This is even truer in Washington, where surrender just isn’t an option for a Democratic president soon facing reelection.
So let us see whether Khamenei can withstand a united West. With these sanctions, we just might not need the Chinese and the Russians to help out. Even though the Stuxnet virus has bought us some time, Iran’s nuclear program is still advancing. The old Persian counsel against complacency and sloth would be wise to remember. Harcheh zudtar behtar —the sooner we find out whether we can make the supreme leader conceive again of the awfulness of 1988, when surrender became thinkable, the better. Current sanctions and the regime’s atrocious economic management have brought hard times. For the United States and its allies to be successful, the times need to be made a good deal harder still.
The major threats to Muslims around the world don’t stem from U.S. or Israeli military actions or civil- liberties violations by Western governments in countering the jihadist threat. Instead, Salim Mansur, a professor of political science at the University of Western Ontario, identifies Muslim-on-Muslim violence as the cause of more death and destruction than anything else.
In a recent interview with the Investigative Project on Terrorism, Mansur, a Muslim born in India, made a powerful case that the U.S. government and Western mainstream media ignore the real danger to Muslims around the world: terror, intimidation, repression and genocide committed by their fellow Muslims.
An example came earlier this year, when 40 people died at their wedding party in Kandahar that was attacked by a suicide bomber.
Like his anti-Islamist counterparts in the United States, Mansur is waging a fierce intellectual struggle against established Islamist organizations claiming to speak for the country’s Muslims. A prolific writer on subjects including Islamic history, interfaith relations and international politics – he has a column in the Toronto Sun and has written about Muslims in America. He has traveled widely in the Muslim world and has experienced such violence firsthand. As a teenager, he narrowly missed becoming a victim himself.
Like millions of other Muslims in the late 1940s and early 1950s, Mansur’s family moved from India to East Pakistan (now called Bangladesh). In March 1971, the Pakistani military invaded East Pakistan to suppress a popular independence movement there. By December of that year, hundreds of thousands of people were dead and almost one-fifth of the population (close to 10 million people including Mansur and his family) had become refugees. Mansur’s family moved back to India and he emigrated to Canada in 1973.
“For the Jews, the issue of genocide is not an abstract discussion. Jews and Israelis bear the imprint of the Holocaust. It’s an everyday, living issue in the sense of what you’re contending with the forces in the world. So, for me, the question about Muslim-on-Muslim violence is not some remote historical discussion,” Mansur said. “This crime has been an ongoing thing in Muslim history and Muslim politics. I am a personal witness to that.”
He points to a more recent example taking place right now in Darfur in Western Sudan. Janjaweed militias linked with Sudan’s Islamist government are responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Muslims. Yet major American Muslim organizations and Muslim governments around the world have been largely silent about the Darfur genocide, instead aiming most of their fire at targets like the FBI, the Transportation Security Administration and Israel.
The U.S. government and the media help facilitate this skewing of priorities, Mansur said, one which benefits Islamists at the expense of ordinary Muslims.
The Obama Administration is sending “a confused message,” by courting Islamist groups like the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), and the Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC) while shutting out non-Islamist Muslims.
According to Mansur, these groups, frequently quoted in the media as representatives of American Muslims, are often linked with radical organizations like the Muslim Brotherhood. As a result, Americans haven’t heard “clear, unambiguous, categorical” denunciations of suicide bombings from U.S. Muslim organizations attacks since September 11. These Muslim groups have also failed to speak out clearly against Sharia and the repression of women in the Islamic world.
“Neither CAIR nor ISNA – nor any of the other [Islamist] organizations, as far as I know, have come out and said that we as Muslims in the West have a different perspective on the question of Sharia…and we’re going to revise it,” he said.
A better idea, Mansur said, would be to “unload” Sharia:
“What relevance have the views and opinions of the 8th-, 9th- and 10th-century men got to do with my life as a Muslim in the 21st century?”
These organizations operate as “PR operatives for the Middle Eastern states with which we have problems,” Mansur said.
The biggest problems Muslims currently face are not with the United States or Israel, but “with their own governments,” Mansur said. Groups like the Organization of the Islamic Conference(OIC) serve to deflect internal anger by manufacturing foreign policy grievances with non-Muslims on issues like Kashmir and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Mansur regards Islamist advocate Tariq Ramadan, grandson of Muslim Brotherhood founder Hasan al-Banna, as a representative of the dark forces in the Muslim world.
In April, Ramadan made a largely triumphal visit to the United States after the Obama Administration lifted a ban imposed in 2004 after he contributed money to an organization supporting Hamas. In Mansur’s view, the celebratory tone of Ramadan’s supporters during his visit serves to illustrate the naiveté of American elites’ approach to Islamists. Mansur said he was “surprised, shocked and dismayed” when he learned Ramadan was invited to speak at Cooper Union, a New York City landmark where Abraham Lincoln denounced slavery in 1860.
American organizations “were inviting Tariq Ramadan, grandson of Hasan al-Banna, associated in the deepest sense with the ideals that came together” in the 9/11 attack on the United States, Mansur said. Noting that Cooper Union is located just a few miles away from Ground Zero, Mansur likened the Ramadan invitation to inviting the grandson of Japanese strongman Hideki Tojo to speak at a location near Pearl Harbor.
Cooper Union is a “sacred place” in American history “and you open it up to the people who want to subvert and destroy America; destroy freedom; destroy what America represents, ” Mansur said. “It’s a very serious problem.”
He added that Ramadan’s visit is symptomatic of a larger problem. American elites, including the White House, academia, the New York Times and Washington Post and the major television networks, are “preoccupied” with the views of a narrow, segment of the Islamic world that does not represent the interests of most Muslims.
Close to 80 percent of the world’s Muslims are non-Arabs who are much more interested in bread-and- butter economic issues than in issues on the Islamist agenda like the Arab-Israeli conflict. “I think there is a profound distortion taking place, and we are getting a very narrow view of what is a Muslim perspective on history and politics,” Mansur told the IPT.
“Underlying Grievances” and Blaming the West
Mansur was scathingly critical of comments by President Obama suggesting a connection between poverty and the attempted Christmas Day bombing near Detroit, and by White House senior adviser John Brennan, who suggested that dealing with “underlying grievances” is critical to defeating Islamist terror.
“I would say it’s a totally disingenuous argument. The fact that it is being said from the highest pulpit in a free society, a political pulpit of the President of the United States, is very troubling. The Christmas bomber was not a man who was living on a dollar a day; he was the son of a millionaire. Faisal Shahzad, who tried to blow up Times Square, was not some poor peasant from Pakistan; he was the son of a two- or three-star general in the air force,” Mansur said. “Most of…the people who did 9/11 came from Saudi Arabia, and they were not people working in the field barely scratching out a living.”
If poverty were the cause of terrorism, “why don’t we hear about Indian Muslims strapping on bombs” and carrying out suicide attacks? Mansur asked.
A wide variety of Islamists ranging from Tariq Ramadan and the Muslim Brotherhood to Al Qaeda are making the same false argument “to further their own causes,” he said. They “are using the poverty argument to create a smokescreen, to pass the blame, to make the West in that sense responsible” for producing the conditions that cause terrorism, Mansur said.
Mansur finds these arguments objectionable because they absolve Muslims of responsibility for their actions. They enable Muslims to blame the United States and the West instead of taking a careful look at the role of their co-religionists in making 9/11 possible.
Muslim-on-Muslim Genocide
Few Americans realize that the most victims of Islamism have been Muslims, Mansur argues. As an example, the Algerian civil war that began in 1992, killed more than 150,000 people in a fight pitting the nation’s military regime against Islamist radicals. In Darfur, estimates range from 200,000 to 500,000 dead and millions more driven from their homes.
In East Pakistan (now Bangladesh), an estimated 500,000 to 1 million people were slaughtered in 1971 by the rampaging Pakistani Army. Mansur refers to it as “one of the great genocides that Muslims committed against Muslims.”
In this case, “the Pakistani military was killing their own citizens, and none of these people, by the way, have been brought to [judgment.]” The perpetrators of these crimes are “still running around in the West,” Mansur said. “So you see the barbarity…the savagery, with which a Muslim state treats its own population.”
In Mansur’s view, The East Pakistan genocide bears disturbing similarities to today’s events in Darfur. “Half a million or more people have been killed in western Sudan, and there is not a peep about that,” Mansur said. “There’s a preoccupation, whenever the issue of violence or ethnic cleansing and war crimes…are talked about – the West is focused on the Arab-Israeli conflict.”
But groups like CAIR show little interest in discussing the mass murder of Muslims in Darfur, Pakistan or anywhere else. According to Mansur, when the topic is raised, Islamists typically assert that the figures have been “inflated” by “enemies of the Muslims” such as Hindus or Zionists.
“In all of these cases, there is not a whit of taking responsibility, ” Mansur said. Instead of using the Arab-Israeli conflict as a way to put pressure on Israel, the international community should take action to bring to justice “these criminals who were responsible for the genocide, whether it is in Darfur or Pakistan.”
“There is no statute of limitation…for crimes against humanity,” he noted.
Mansur said he sees some signs of positive change in Islamabad’s response to the recent wave of terrorist attacks by the Taliban. The reality of suicide bombings in Pakistan’s major cities is making it increasingly difficult for government officials and intellectuals to argue that terrorism results from India’s machinations or “blowback” from the Arab-Israeli conflict.
Pakistani elites are coming to the realization that their jihadist terror problem is homegrown. A growing number of voices are acknowledging “that we have to take responsibility, that [jihadism] is what we have nurtured and created,” Mansur said. “I see that as a hopeful sign. I think that if Pakistan is going to be saved from its own tendency to self-destruction, that these voices have to be reinforced and given support, which means the building of a civil society and the downgrading of the military side.”
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