I am again indebted to my friend Iqbal Latif for the substance of this article. It is, for all practical purposes, a translation and rewrite of his thoughts and those of his brother Zachary. Though I added much to it, it is not to be considered my own.

The art of making enemies is perfected by radical regimes within the crescent of Islam. Iran’s intolerant mullahs seem hell-bent on confrontation with all and sundry. Where Libya’s Khadafy and to a lesser extent North Korea’s Kim have seen the benefits of cooperation and coexistence, however cynically they may have reached those conclusions, Islam’s radical regimes have chosen the route of angry isolation leading to self-destruction. The mullahs of Iran are engaged in a wholesale plundering of the legacy of a great nation. The mullahs and their sock puppet Ahmedinejad are transforming Barack Obama from a soft-glove politician into a much sterner man through their bizarre and fluctuating notions of national sovereignty. It is idiocy: Iran faces economic ruin.

On July 25th, Barack Obama said the use of military force should not be taken off the table: the Iranian "regime is a threat to all of us.” Where once Obama said he would meet Iran’s leaders without preconditions, now he says such meetings will be on his timeline, not Iran’s.

Obama’s foreign policy tour is a process of reinvention. His former pastor and Jesse Jackson must surely be writhing in rage to watch Obama work out a more muscular foreign policy, morphing from his softy far-left positions to a stance more akin to his opponent John McCain. Indeed, he must out-McCain McCain. Let history show a soft liberal cannot deliver peace. Israel’s Begin and India’s Vajpayee, both far-right politicians, delivered much-needed peace, however unpalatable, with Egypt and Pakistan respectively. .If Obama is to be elected, he must carry the swing states of the Midwest, where foreign policy may prove decisive.

Obama has three foreign policy planks: Iraq, Afghanistan and Iran. Iran’s troublesome dealings with IAEA compel Obama to adopt a far more aggressive stance than his preferred route of pleasantries and diplomacy, as his statements in Paris and Jerusalem clearly demonstrate. Iran has needlessly provoked a celebrated dove in Obama, transforming him into a hawk. These are the acts of an immature and negligent regime oblivious to the day-to-day needs of the Iranian people.

A Statement of Principles

Any relevant social order must support three principles:

The rule of law,
The rule of reason
Freedom of religion

These conditions do not exist where theology infests government in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the Islamic Republic of Iran, the present cores of the Islamic world.

Though both KSA and Iran have indirectly aided and abetted the terrorism which now violently shakes the branches of humanity’s tree, neither seems to be directly involved. Iran is far too sophisticated to engage in suicide bombing: this is mostly a Sunni / Salafi vice. Shi’a Islam has a long tradition of self-immolation and self-flagellation, and there were suicide charges in the war against Saddam Hussein, but the notion of suicide bombing is an alien concept in Iran. Though Shiites venerate martyrs, they do not venerate murderers.

An Outline of the Farsi Thought Process

Cyrus the Great once said he would not rule over a people who did not want his rule. He compelled no man to change his religion. Iran’s current policy of human rights abuses is heartbreaking: it is not the Farsi way of doing things.

Iran is the cradle of civilization and law. From the time of the Medes and Persians, law has governed disparate societies. Iran gave rise to the three principles enumerated above. Zarathustra, the prophet of the Zoroastrian faith wrote 21 holy books, the Nask. Seven of these were works of law, seven were works of science and seven were works of religion. Compare and contrast this long tradition with Iran in present times: one sees a scandalous and disgusting descent into to the lowest rung of civilization, where an intolerant regime persecutes its own citizens.

The very notion of universally applicable law itself arises in Iran. We in the West generally consider Hammurabi to be the first lawgiver, but the tradition is far older, and begins in what would become Persia. Before Islam, Iran was the home of the Zoroastrian faith, still practiced secretly in that benighted land. Their faith was in their laws, which governed every aspect of their society from the behavior of soldiers to soil conservation. It is deeply shocking to see an ancient and honorable culture trampled down over the last three decades. Where once no man was coerced, where the concept of human rights was born, where Live and Let Live was not only the law of the land but the tenet of a faith now terror campaigns exact terrible damage to this sacred trust, this basis of all civilized societies. A clerical tyranny has descended upon Iran.

The world turns a blind eye to the human rights abuses within Iran, flippantly dismissing it as “political Islam”, making special exception for Islam’s tyrannies. The social contract evolved over millennia, the Darwinian survival of the fittest idea, respect for life, the universality of our need to peacefully co-exist, the need for justice, all these are tossed aside by “political Islam” which now attempts to forge a new social contract, where arrogant mullahs like Khomeini and Mullah Omar shall give us a new and terrible interpretation, a definition of the world governed by medieval diktat and fossilized law, summary death sentences without trials, the murder of innocents, plunging a dagger into the very heart of the social contract where first that contract was enacted.

The heart of every terrorist has become a horrific perversion of a Temple of Justice. In this death cult, the high priests are clothed in the Harness of Ayyash the Bomb Maker, bearing five kilos of dynamite and steel bolts, dealing out swift and terrible revenge to any who dare to question their dark hegemony. Though they preach a return to an ancient mode of life, their new Islamic Social Contract is a new and horrible thing in human history. To a man who believes suicide and the deaths of innocents will bring justice to the world, human life is consequentially of no value.

This ‘political Islam’ is fundamentally a suicide cult. Islam firmly condemns suicide: these jihaadi do not revenge the weak upon their tormentors. The jihaadi are summary and inhuman recapitulations of the inquisitors of old, justifying monstrous crimes against innocent persons in the cause of an anarchic ideal not shared by the rest of humanity. Of cultural diversity, of the richness of tradition, of humankind’s essential decency they are blankly ignorant. Human society cannot tolerate such as these. The West, indeed the whole world must view ‘political Islam’ as a threat to every society individually and humanity collectively. Humankind has seen such movements before and has overcome in the face of terrible adversity. Political Islam has sown the seeds of its own demise: we must now stamp out this movement before it destroys us all in its own suicide.

Iran’s Choices

Iran’s choices are fairly obvious and equally limited: the mullahs understand confrontation will end in catastrophe. Iran’s mullah-ocracy first faced Jimmy Carter, then Ronald Reagan. Carter was publically soft, but he patiently out-waited out the hostage crisis: Carter’s quiet threat to lock down Iran from the air and the sea was written out by hand and delivered to Iran: the hostages were not tried as Iran had promised to do. Reagan was publically hard-line against Iran, but he treacherously sold arms to them, negotiating for hostages, which Carter had not done. Clinton and the Bushes condemned Iran, but contained and eventually eliminated Iran’s greatest threat, Saddam Hussein, freeing Iran to meddle in Iraq as it does today. Iran is therefore of two minds about the USA. Which is America’s true face, confrontation or appeasement, or perhaps both?

Iraq’s Maliki viciously slapped Iran’s meddling hand in Basra and New Baghdad. The Sunnis and Kurds snickered behind their hands and their opinions of Maliki shot up enormously: here at last was a Shiite capable of defending Iraqi interests from the predations of Iran. Iran’s proxy Moktada Sadr is on his last legs politically. That tubby little imam sits stunned in the safety of Iran as his Mehdi Army is shot to pieces and Iran’s Special Guards are rounded up. Huge and expensive arms caches, gifts from Iran to the various troublemakers within Iraq are now routinely detected and put into Iraqi Army inventories. If the USA has blundered in Iraq, Iran blunders are catastrophic. Maliki’s mukhabarat has obviously penetrated Iran’s operations. The Americans, to their lasting credit, are only interested in stabilizing, not dominating Iraq. Though it is not widely understood, Iraqi intelligence has a good working relationship with the Americans: surely Iraqi agents are our best source of operational intelligence about Iran.

Ahmedi-nejad plays a dangerous game. After 9/11, every other surviving Islamic regime backed down. Musharraf of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan might have played the confrontation game as did his patsy regime in Afghanistan and the odious regime of Saddam Hussein. The Americans countered that game with Shock and Awe: they are the ruthless and dispassionate masters of the Confrontation Game, a game they play with precision and cruel insight. Iran backed down in the wake of 9/11: there were public demonstrations of mourning and solidarity against Al Qaeda. Perhaps Ahmedi-nejad has forgotten the limits of American patience: Pakistan has not forgotten. India would have gleefully capitalized on any such foolish confrontation: Pakistan would have quickly been reduced to a balkanized set of Indian vassal provinces, its nuclear program dismantled and India would have rid itself of a thorn in its side.

In an Islamic country, cooperation with the West is a damned if you do – damned if you don’t proposition. Ahmedi-nejad’s fire-breathing idiocy, the continual chanting of Death to America at every possible occasion will lead to Shock and Awe eventually, and everyone knows it. The lasting lesson of our War on Terror is this: America can be goaded to war, even against its own better judgment and best interests. Though America may not achieve its desired outcome, no political regime survives Shock and Awe.

Ahmedi-nejad is merely a hired flute player: he plays tunes for the clerics. While he plays, Iran becomes ever more backward, more disconnected from technology and finance. He lacks mandate and therefore cannot make unpopular decisions such as Musharraf made after 9/11. The Americans have an unfortunate model for the aftermath of Shock and Awe: a subsequent invasion of contractors to rebuild bombed infrastructure. Iran would be best served to keep its money in its own pockets, serve the needs of its own public and thereby quell public uprisings.

Naught of him hath changed, but hath suffered a sea change

In its arrogance and stupidity, Iran has seemingly alienated Barack Obama. Now it’s Big Carrots but mostly Big Sticks on offer, a radical shift in his rhetoric. If confronted, convinced Big Carrots aren’t working, Obama will not be afraid to use that Big Stick and the aforementioned contractors will follow in the wake of that Big Stick as surely as night follows day.

In its turpitude, its hegemonic notions of supremacy, its clumsy and arrogant rhetoric of confrontation, Iran’s leaders have closed the doors to cooperation and opened the door to self-obliteration. Iran is horribly governed by mullahs intent upon its destruction. It is painful to recollect the ancient greatness of Iran, its history and culture. Will the Iranian Diaspora around the world rise to state “enough is enough”? Our noble nation does not deserve to be bombed for the sake of uranium enrichment, a course of action which brings us no safety and calls down destruction upon us all.

Iran is the cradle of civilization itself. We have been here for five thousand years. We have given poetry and culture and history to the nomads of the world. Iran’s innate cultural supremacy gave rise to lawgiving itself. Forged of many cultures, we are deeply humanistic, we have given precious gifts to the world, our poets and writers, Rumi, Hafiz Saadi, Abdul Baha, If we entertain notions of supremacy, it is because we dream of a world of oneness, a world of love. We give this dream to you as well.

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