Iran and Your Pocketbook
An Associated Press (AP) article caught my eye recently. Readers know, if they’ve visited my blog, that Iran and its nuclear aspirations is of significant interest to me and with the present political upheaval that is in play in many Middle-Eastern Muslim nations a nuclear armed country with ‘edgy’ leadership concerns me. The article at http://t.uani.com/hpv5IZ reports that NATO forces seized powerful Iranian-made rockets being smuggled into Afghanistan for the Taliban’s upcoming spring campaign. The prospect of those rockets being unleashed on Coalition forces is a dreadful thought and the willful—not so clandestine—effort on the part of Ahmadinejad is just another piece of evidence underscoring the edgy leadership must be neutralized.
Remember the Cold War standoff between the USSR and US, the threat was always there that collectively both countries could literally incinerate each other. That same ominous prospect also kept us—and them—safe. Mutually assured destruction (MAD) in and of itself was a great deterrent but today it offers very little in the way of restraint when one considers the fact that Muslim extremists are manipulating the minds of their youth with martyrdom nonsense, feeding the young and vulnerable myths of what to expect from Allah after they’ve given their mortal lives with a bomb strapped to them.
Trying to understand and simultaneously untangle the current political set of circumstances in Iran is a futile effort. There seems to be no head on this snake, so to speak, no one entity or person that stands out as a leader we and the mentally stable citizens of that country can put their trust in. Another analogy might be that there are too many heads on this snake. There is the Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s Supreme Leader and his group. Then there is Ahmadinejad, the President and his followers. You can’t overlook Mojtaba Samareh Hashemi, Ahmadinejad’s right-hand man who has implicit power within Iran’s secular government and Mohammad Taqi Mesbah Yazdi, spiritual advisor to Ahmadinejad, described as fanatical and extremely hostile to the West. Yazdi advocates suicide bombing attacks against Israel and is a vocal supporter of Iran’s quest for nuclear weapons. The Islamist group Hamas, Iran’s proxy militants governing the Gaza Strip, set off a bomb at a bus stop in Jerusalem killing one and injuring thirty yesterday a fulfillment of but one of Yazdi’s extremist’s wishes.
All of this; NATO’s capture of 50 powerful rockets, Iran’s quest for nuclear weapons, the recent bus stop bombing in Jerusalem and much, much more only highlights a growing threat that emphasizes the fragile relationship between the West and Iran. We all know, whether we consciously acknowledge it or not, the US has entered the ring in a no-holds-barred fist fight to the finish. As many political, military and economic strategists have warned—it is time to tighten our belts and prepare for true austerity. The money to support this fight has got to come from somewhere and that somewhere is our pockets. I am not opposed, many are, but the alternative to not winning this fight, I am afraid, is a scenario I prefer not to consider, one much worse than we can imagine.
A RECENT COMMENT I MADE ON DEBKAfile
According to DEBKAfile Iran’s defense minister Ahmad Vahidi carried a message to Damascus where he was attending the Iranian-Syrian defense committee that indicated Tehran expects Israel to attack early in 2010. According to their intelligence, Jerusalem will take its green light from President Obama when he admits his policy of dialogue and stiffer sanctions have failed in the face of Tehran’s rejection of the IAEA proposal to send its uranium out of the country for processing. Vahidi said to the joint defense committee, “…we must get our strategic partnership in shape ahead of time.” And below is my opinion on these troubling remarks.
Tehran makes its living stirring the pot of mid-east soup by adding fuel to any Israel-obliterating fire. According to Robert Baer’s book, The Devil We Know, Syria is as much a proxy for Iran as is Hezbollah and Hamas. And when Vahidi speaks the words he uses are unambiguous code. Unambiguous (obvious) so that the CIA and MI-5 can’t possible misinterpret the ulterior message Tehran is communicating. The words are simply strategic rhetoric carefully crafted with one purpose in mind and that is to create a distraction in order for Tehran to buy more time for nuke construction meaning get ready you are about to be called into action. I also believe that Iran’s defense minister Vahidi is playing a strategic card on the part of Tehran. By announcing to the world that an Israeli attack is imminent because Barack Obama will admit his policy of dialogue and stiffer sanctions failed, the Ayatollah, Ahmadinejad and the Revolutionary Guards are actually creating a bit of controlled chaos. More Iranian smoke and mirror slight-of-hand. Another delaying tactic while they move closer to a nuclear armed state.
After Copenhagen and after Christmas President Obama and his national security advisors will be tap dancing to music forced on the U.S. by Iran, once again showing shrewdness only the craftiest posses. Craftiness the U.S. has yet to develop to Middle Eastern standards. Our political leadership—I’m referring to all parties, liberals and conservatives—say they understand the rules of geopolitics, and I’m sure some do, but for the most part very few in Washington understand the complexities of the Middle East. And to that end Obama will spend valuable time repairing the intentional consequences of what Vahidi said at the defense committee meeting in December of 2009.
Marvin Wiebener