Looking At The Wrong Threat: Iran v. ISIL
Col Mike Walker
All,
Below is a response to a question posed by a knowledgeable colleague: Which is more dangerous, Iran or ISIL?
The simple answer is that Iran is the greatest threat to the United States in the region.
Iran is an aggressive and revolutionary regime with a global vision: It wants to destroy and replace the current "unjust" world order.
To the Ayatollahs, the heart and soul of the unjust world order is the United States (hence the "satan, " evil" etc rhetoric).
We are the number one enemy and will remain so as long as the Islamic theocracy remains in place.
Kind-hearted people want to believe that Iran only wants its rightful place under the sun. That is why our attempts to reach detente with Iran fail over and over again and will continue to fail.
In addition to having us in their crosshairs, Iran is the greater threat not because they are more “evil” but because they are more competent. Iran grows in strength and influence and capabilities. The Sunni extremist factions (al Qaeda, ISIL, etc) are to be feared as efficiently savage murders but for little else.
Iran created Hezbollah in Lebanon, making that poor country a potential Iranian vassal state. As if to make their point, Mohamad Chatah was assassinated by pro-Iranian terrorists on 27 December 2013, a few days after his open letter to Iran was published. The letter can be found at:
Teheran declared Bahrain the 14th province of Iran. They have strong influence in Iraq. The most lethal IEDs used against Americans by Sadr's forces (Mahdi Army) were designed and often manufactured in Iran.
Assad in Syria now owes his rule to the Ayatollahs -- that is why Turkey and the Sunni Arab states won't fully support U.S. policy in Syria. We have backed off our demand for Assad's removal and that foolish policy strengthens Iran and weakens our regional allies.
Iran backs the Houthi in Yemen, further destabilizing the region. Iran hates the Saudi form of Islam so the Saudis may go into Yemen if they see it becoming an Iranian satellite.
Now lets move on to Iran's international maneuvers.
Morocco broke off diplomatic relations with Iran in 2008 because MOIS/VEVAK was using fake NGO and cultural organizations to destabilize the regime there.
Iran continues to build its intelligence and covert operations capability in the Western Hemisphere as an attempt to bring the struggle closer to America.
Iran aided and abetted our enemies in Afghanistan and was barely foiled in a plot to place a bomb at the JFK Airport in 2007 that resulted in a life sentence for Abdul Kadir, the former-head of clandestine Iranian intelligence operations in Guyana. Kadir received direction from the Iranian embassy in Caracas, Venezuela.
In April 2009, a Canadian of Iranian ancestry was arrested for trying to illegally ship a number of pressure transducers to Iran, which he had originally purchased in the US. The transducers are needed in making nuclear weapons.
More recently, on 25 May 2013, Argentine federal prosecutor Alberto Nisman released a study detailing the Iranian regional terrorism network in Latin America built on his previous 2006 investigation that indicted seven Iranians and one member of Hezbollah for the 1994 bombing of a Jewish community Center in Buenos Aires that killed eighty-five people.
Nisman was apparently murdered last week just as he was issuing a report on illegal Iranian attempts to escape justice.
On 30 May 2013, Manssor Arbabsiar was sentenced to a 25-year prison term in Federal Court for his role in the foiled Iranian plan to assassinate the Saudi Ambassador to the United States and detonate bombs at the Saudi Arabian and Israeli embassies in Washington, D.C.
The Ayatollahs have both the will and ever-growing means to attack the United States. That makes them the dominant threat in the region.
Having written that, I do not propose an aggressive military policy against Iran, only a containment policy against a real and active threat.
Semper Fi,
Mike
