Telling it like it is of Focusing on the Wrong Enemy
Col Mike Walker, USMC (retired)
All,
To seek a relationship with the Islamic Republic is the ethical equivalent of having sought a relationship with Adolf Hitler’s Nationalist Socialist Germany – a more morally bankrupt and despicable goal is hard to imagine.
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 "Satin, "evil" etc. rhetoric).
We are the number one enemy and will remain so as long as the Islamic theocracy remains in place.
Further, that Iran is fighting ISIL is a given -- a freebie. They will fight them with or without us and we need not give up anything for that. Only fools and suckers would pay for that free ride.
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, ISIS, etc) are to be feared as efficiently savage murders but for little else.
They 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 because we have backed off our demand for Assad's removal. That foolish policy strengthens Iran and weakens our regional allies.
They have backed 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 their 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 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 operations in Guyana directed by the Iranian embassy in Caracas, Venezuela.
Iran continues to build its intelligence and clandestine operations capability in Latin America as an attempt to bring the struggle closer to America.
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 Iranian attempts to escape justice.
On 30 May 2013, Manssor Arbabsiar was sentenced to a 25-year prison term 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.
Finally, we now have proof of what US intelligence professionals had long argued, that the Ayatollahs had aided and abetted al Qaeda beginning, at least, within weeks of the 9/11 attacks.
The Ayatollahs have both the will and ever-growing means to attack the United States. That makes them the dominant threat to the United States.
Having written that, I do not propose an aggressive policy against Iran, only a containment policy with strong sanctions against a real and active threat.
Semper Fi,
Mike
