The Threat of Iran

A must read about Iran.  It was an interview conducted by Hugh Hewitt of Michael Ledeen regarding his new book, The Iranian Time Bomb.

This exchange caught my eye:

HH: ...I’m going to be talking about this book a lot over the next few weeks, because I think people need to read it, beginning with the idea we’ve got to remember who Khomeini was, that the revolution wasn’t because the Shah was too oppressive, but because the Shah was too liberal. Give people a walk back as to where Khomeini came from and what he stood for, Michael Ledeen. 

ML: Well, he hated the Shah because he saw the Shah as the agent of Western feminism, really, in a way, because what got Khomeini more excited than anything else was the very thought that women could teach boys in school, that women could participate in government, that women were increasingly having equal rights, that they didn’t have to cover up their heads, and so forth. And that just drove him crazy, and they were among his first targets when he took over in 1979. He threw the women out of the boys’ schools, he banned them from high office, and he required this humiliating costume that they all have to wear.

HH: I was coming to the Zarqawi connection, because although he is a Sunni extremist who would think that every Shia is Takfir, and especially the Iranian Khomeinists, nevertheless he, too, accepted assistance from, and well-documented in this book. Is that widely recognized or acceded to, Michael Ledeen, in the people who study Iran specifically? 

ML: No, because most people buy into the meme that Sunnis and Shiites can’t work together. It’s one of the great myths of our time. So even though the Revolutionary Guards were…the super-Shiite Revolutionary Guards were created by the super-Sunni al Fatah, which came right out of the Sunni Muslim Brotherhood, they think it’s impossible to find Sunni al Qaeda and Shiite Hezbollah working together. And so nobody can believe that Zarqawi was operating out of Tehran, even though a year before 2001, the German and Italian governments had evidence showing that Zarqawi was operating a European-wide terrorist network from Tehran, and they have hundreds of intercepts that…and this is public evidence at public trials in both Germany and Italy.

HH: ...A key observation, Michael Ledeen, they are not nationalists, but theocrats. You write, “To ask them to think like a nation state is like trying to use negotiations to convince the Pope that he should think of himself as the grand duke of Vatican City rather than the Vicar of Christ on Earth.” You quote Khomeini extensively on this. This was just…I guess I knew this, but I really didn’t. It’s not a nation state. 

ML: No, no it’s not. Khomeini has the great line, which is anybody…I’m not here to fight for Iran, I’m here to advance Islam. And anybody who is in it for Iran is a pagan. That’s pretty strong language.  

HH: It is. It’s also an insight into what we’re up against, because it’s not going to respond to the typical carrots and sticks that nation states do.

ML: No, so when a Rafsanjani or an Ahmadinejad says we’re going to bomb Israel as soon as we get atomic bombs, and even if the Israelis respond in kind, so what? Suppose they wipe us all out? We would have killed half the Jews, and there’ll still be more than a billion Muslims.

So when rational individuals in the West argue that for logical reasons Iran will not attack and would not use the bomb, when you read this and understand the religious zealous nature of the rulers of Iran, you have to worry about people and a culture that doesn't care about nation states, but more about the status of radical Islam.  When it is a numbers game and borders don't matter, you have to wonder -- would they detonate an atomic bomb in order to wipe out a good chunk of the Jewish state and accept casualties of a retaliation?  One of the reasons I think this is plausible was something Michael Ledeen points out in the interview: "...people say well, why would they [al Qaeda with regard to the Golden Mosque in Iraq] kill their own people, and I say look at Iran. They kill their own people everyday. Every day."

So if you think for a second that they would not sacrifice their own people, think again...  they execute their own people everyday...  in the name of god.  They are not seeking to look good in the eyes of the world, just an entity that they believe is above the world.

And to say that Shiites and Sunnis are incapable of working with each other is one of the greatest lies out of this whole war on terrorism.  In the end the United States and Western civilization are the common enemies of radical Islam...