For nearly half a century the U.S. and the West have serially appeased Iran, even as it has killed our troops, kidnapped our citizens, and supported proxy terrorists who attack our allies, while stringing us along with duplicitous negotiations and promises they violate, even as they pocket billions of dollars which they have used to finance their evil intentions.
This from frontpagemag.com.
President Trump may seriously be “considering an Iranian proposal for indirect nuclear talks” . . . and “the administration is now exploring next steps to begin conversations and trust building with the Iranians.”
However, the Iranians, despite holding an extraordinarily weak hand, are effectively offering the White House nothing: no direct talks, no negotiation over ballistic missiles or the regime’s support for its regional proxies, and nuclear negotiation only within the framework of the 2015 nuclear deal.
The world must not underestimate Trump’s commitment to deterrence, or doubt his will to follow through on his pledge to prevent Iran from going nuclear. So far, he has brought back “maximum pressure” sanctions on Iran, and deployed six long-range B2 stealth bombers to the joint UK-US military base on Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean––the only bomber able to drop “bunker buster” MOPS, “Massive Ordnance Penetrators,” 30,000-pound, precision-guided bombs capable of penetrating Iran’s underground hardened nuclear production facilities.
We the People too must anticipate President Trump has cards he is not showing. This nod toward Iran may very well mean something entirely different than what the world is reading at face value.
Also, as one expert points out, Iran is the weakest it has been since its 1980-88 war with Iraq.
To wit:
– [Iran’s] proxies in the region have been neutralized,
– its economy is on the brink of collapse,
– its currency is approaching Weimar Germany levels of inflation, and
– its people are boldly disgruntled and increasingly restless.
Now may be the best opportunity to end Iran’s nuclear ambition to destroy Israel, which it mocks as a “one-bomb state.” But we should not assume self-preservation from a threatened repayment in nuclear kind will restrain the mullahs.
NOTE: America’s relationship with Iran is based on misunderstanding. Recall during the Iranian hostage crisis of 1979, the Carter administration’s foreign policy team drastically misread the Iranian Revolution:
It was not, as the West assumed, about anticolonialism, national self-determination, human rights, or brutal autocrats. Rather, it was a religious movement to restore Islam’s 14-centuries-long divine mission to create a world order based on the Koran and sharia law.
As the Economist warned about Carter’s feckless floundering for a release of the hostages:
The denial of material things is unlikely to have much effect on minds suffused with immaterial things.
And we must not doubt jihadists when they say:
We love death the way you love life.
Another dimension of this misunderstanding: The “rules-based international order” which is important in the West to resolve conflicts, is insufficient when attempting to negotiate and bargain with the imperatives of passionate religious beliefs, traditions, and sacred doctrines created by Allah. As the godfather of the Iranian revolution, the Ayatollah Khomeini, allegedly said about the Iranian nation:
I say let this land burn. I say let this land go up in smoke,
provided Islam emerges triumphant in the rest of the world.
Yes, the West forged the so-called multinational “Iran nuclear deal” which the yet unindicted treasonous Barack Hussein Obama et al. negotiated and signed in 2015, at the cost of billions of dollars in Danegeld, including $6 billion for five American hostages. In the following 10 years, Israeli intelligence rifled Iran’s nuclear program records and exposed for all to see the extent of Iran’s cheating on the deal. But should we have expected anything different from BHO?
Now, however, We the People may rest assured President Trump will not be reduced to appeasing Iran for the sake of a deal or for the sake of diminishing America, as we believe both these intentions were on the mind of BHO. Rather, President Trump is well aware of Iran’s apocalyptic, messianic sect of Shi’a Islam, and the mullahs running Iran are pursuing the religiously inspired precepts of the founder of their state, the Ayatollah Khomeini:
We shall export our revolution to the whole world.
Until the cry, ‘There is no god but Allah’
resounds over the whole world, there will be jihad.
Consider the words of one expert speaking of Iran:
The highest goal of Iranian statecraft is regime preservation.
If the survival of the clerical leadership is directly and credibly threatened, Iran will modify its behavior.
We now have the tools and the will to create this threat in a meaningful manner.
Now also consider the words of Secretary of State George Shultz:
Negotiations are a euphemism for capitulation if the shadow of power is not cast across the bargaining table.
Final thoughts: Preventing disaster will not be achieved with “parchment barriers,” rather the strength of an iron fist and the brilliance of knowing our enemy’s next move.
God speed to the Trump-Vance team.
