Posted on 06/12/2003 6:27:54 PM PDT by DoctorZIn
Just as, in the end, the Soviet Union was the only country in the world completely surrounded by hostile communist nations, the tyrannical mullahs who have oppressed Iran for the past quarter-century fear encirclement by hostile Islamic nations in league with the great American Satan.
The Kremlin knew that the people under Soviet rule wanted an end to communism, and the mullahs in Tehran know that the Iranian people want an end to the theocratic tyranny of the Islamic Republic. The pro-democracy forces in Iran have called for a general strike on July 9 to bring down the regime, so that there can be a national referendum that would create a free, secular government, subsequently elected by popular vote.
It is always difficult for outsiders to gauge the strength of a democratic opposition to a tyrannical regime, and just as the West underestimated the power of the Soviet dissidents, Western leaders today are busily gainsaying the strength and resolve of the Iranian democratic opposition. Yet there is far less reason to misread Iran today than there was to botch the analysis of the Soviet Union during the latter stages of the Cold War, and there is no excuse -- aside from lust for oil revenues -- for the West's failure to support the Iranian opposition. Both recent history and the regime's current behavior show that Iran today is in full political, economic and social crisis.
Over the past two years, millions of Iranians have taken to the streets in open rebellion. For the most part, these demonstrations have been led by "students," but these are not the kids in Paris or Berkeley in the 1960s. Iranian "students" are considerably older (some of the leaders are in their late thirties or early forties), and hardened by years of street fighting, imprisonment and torture. Soviet dissidents like Vladimir Bukovsky and Natan Sharansky are better models than Mario Savio and Daniel Cohn-Bendit. We do not know the names of the pro-democracy leaders (a good thing, because if they were known they would be either dead or under torture). But we do know they are there, because you do not get hundreds of thousands of people in the streets of a vicious dictatorship without effective leadership.
The regime knows that a strong force is working for their destruction, as proven by the recent special order to the security forces to use "lethal force" against any demonstrators, especially in connection with the general strike called for the ninth of July -- the fourth anniversary of a massive uprising against the regime. A special committee has been established to quash demonstration, the country's scholars and intellectuals have been forbidden to talk to leading Farsi-language foreign broadcasters (notably exempting the BBC, Radio Moscow and Radio France International, apparently judged friendly by the mullahs). And at least two outspoken critics of the regime -- Mohsen Sazegara and Qasem Sholleh Sadi -- were blocked at Tehran airport last week, and their passports were confiscated. But the regime is unsure of the loyalty of their own security organizations, and has taken to importing foreign thugs (whom the Iranians call "Afghan Arabs") to do the dirty work in the streets.
The Iranian people have every reason to seek the end of the mullahcracy. Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and his top henchman, Ayatollah Mohammed Hashemi Rafsanjani have not only stolen billions of dollars from the Iranian people, they have wrecked the economy, impoverished the people, and reduced a once-proud civic culture to humiliation. There are virtual epidemics of teenage prostitution and drug abuse, an ongoing exodus of able-bodied and talented Iranians, an endless repression of freedom of press (nearly one hundred publications shut down in two and a half years), assembly and speech, and a mounting tempo of violence, arrest and execution, even including the revival of once-rare forms of shariah punishments such as dismemberment, public decapitation and stoning.
For this alone, the Iranian people deserve the support of the West, and it is only half the story. The other half is terrorism, and the frantic efforts of the mullahs to export their Islamic "model" of state and society. Every expert agrees that Iran is the leading national supporter of terror, a conviction reiterated recently by the State Department in Washington, and confirmed by the discovery that the al Qaeda commanders of the latest suicide bombings in Riyadh were operating from Iran. Hezbollah is an Iranian creation, and the Revolutionary Guards Corps operates a "foreign legion" that sends Muslims of dozens of nationalities as far afield as North Africa and South America. And Iran's support of the hard core Palestinian terrorists, from Hamas to Islamic Jihad, is one of the major obstacles to any hopes for a viable peace settlement.
Iraq's support of terrorism was miniscule compared to Iran's activities. If we are serious about winning the war against the terror masters, the Tehran regime must fall.
The mullahs are mortally threatened by the spread of freedom to Iraq and Afghanistan, and they believe they cannot survive if the coalition succeeds in creating stable, free countries on Iran's borders. Consequently, they are doing everything in their power to thwart it. Much of the guerrilla activity in Afghanistan -- rarely reported, but ongoing and very lethal -- comes from their creatures on the ground, notably the warlord Gulbatin Hekmatyar. And in Iraq there is a vast campaign, abundantly funded with a sea of cash, ranging from radical Shiite mullahs to a dozen radio and television stations (compared to zero for the coalition) and thousands of terrorists. As America's man in Baghdad, Jerry Bremer, put it recently -- and as the Syrian dictator, Bashar Assad, announced in an interview on the eve of Operation Iraqi Freedom -- the mullahs are attempting to repeat in Iraq their success against American forces in Lebanon in the 1980s. On May 3, in fact, the regime announced that thousands of suicidal volunteers were prepared to kill Americans.
It is only a matter of time before the coalition has to come to grips with the Iranian campaign in Iraq, and it would be a shame if the U.S. and its allies did not support the general strike in July. But the showdown is inevitable. Three governments are fighting for survival in Iraq: the Iranian, the American, and the British. If Iran drives the coalition out of Iraq and establishes an Islamic republic there, George Bush and Tony Blair will be humiliated and defeated, and we will have lost a major battle in the war on terrorism. If we defeat the mullahs and freedom triumphs in Iraq, Iran and Afghanistan, we will have changed the world, and the terrorists' days will be numbered.
faster please.
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I think this may be happening faster than we would like!
The sabotage in the southern oil fields of Iraq may very well be coming from Iran agents!
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We call 'em "Al Qaida"
Yes, we do, Shermy...
That's exactly who they are.
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