The Shiite Islamic Cancer

It is hard to believe that the war with the Islamic Republic is only 10 days old.  The United States and Israel have been working hand-in-hand in a well-coordinated, integrated war. The Israeli military has been working seamlessly, alongside the American military  and intelligence officials, each fulfilling their mission with remarkable accuracy.

Using GPS targeting systems, we have decapitated Ayatollah Ali Khameini and at least 40 of his inner circles of Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. We targeted and murdered Farhad Shakeri, the Iranian special envoy who was responsible for the plot to assassinate and murder President Trump. Israel has decimated much of Hezbollah in Lebanon, striking over 500 targets.

As Bradley Bowman, a Senior Director at FDD has reported, compared to the first 24 hours of the war, the quantity of ballistic missiles being launched by Iran have declined by 90 per cent since the first days of the war. “It reflects that we are severely damaging their command and control and communications abilities”, he stated, “And we are going to hit anything, at will, just about any place we want.”

It might not be so easy, however.  Russia has been providing knowledge to Iran with targeting information of US military assets, including warships and aircraft.

The entire Islamic Regime is predicated upon hatred and the desire to obliterate both Israel and then the United States. We saw what they did to at least 32,000 protesters who gathered to protest last January. Those that were shot were taken to hospitals where they were strangled or suffocated.

How did we get here?

Ever since 1953, fearing Communist expansion into Iran, the United States and Britain oversaw the overthrow of the Iranian Prime Minister Mohammad Mosadeigh. That is when the seeds were sown for resentment of the United States. They installed the Shah, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, who was trusted and respected by some, but greatly feared by others.

Under the Shah, for a number of decades, Iran’s economic power grew immensely. He nationalized the British owned oil industry, increasing both  private ownership and manufacturing ability of automobiles, appliances and other goods that created a wealthy mercantile class, making Iran during that epoch, one of the fastest growing economies in the world.

  During the period of The White Revolution, the Shah privatized land ownership, urbanization and westernized the economic infrastructure. He also undertook massive literary and educational reforms and land reform laws and worked on the emancipation of women. These initiatives helped create a prosperous mercantile class.

Agricultural workers flocked to bigger cities where they were often met with unemployment and poverty. In 1957, the SAVAK, the Bureau for Intelligence and Security of the State was established, together with assistance from the CIA, and a period began where there was massive monitoring of the population.

Political parties that questioned the Shah’s absolute power were, however, silenced, and relegated to the fringes of society or marginalized. Unfortunately, the late Shah used the SAVAK against his political opponents to arrest, imprison and torture them. At that time, many Iranians were desperate for a simplistic answer to the extensive repression, torture and surveillance of the SAVAK.

This repression was cunningly leveraged by Ruhollah Khomeini.  Ruhollah Khomeini was drawn to the relationship between Islam, political philosophy and ethics. He gained tremendous ground by attacking the Pahlavi dynasty, its lavish lifestyle and the surveillance and torture of the SAVAK.

During this epoch, simple, radical and theocratic ideas gained traction among the Iranian populace. Islamic jurisprudence and attacks against the Pahlavi dynasty began to quickly take shape within the Iranian intellectual climate. These concepts were rapidly absorbed by the discontented masses, who were now hungry for an easy, facile alternative, and gravitated toward the teachings of Ruhollah Khomeini. Islamists and leftists alike naively lapped up whatever Khomeini was serving.

Like the proverbial bees to honey, hordes of student protesters flocked towards Ruhollah Khomeini. Their first act was in 1979, when Iranian students, backed by Khomeini seized the US Embassy, and held 52 workers there for 444 days.

Then, in 1983, at the US Embassy in Beirut Lebanon, a suicide car bomb killed 63 people, including 17 Americans. In October of 1983, a truck laden with explosives, attributed to the Iranian proxy Hezbollah, killed 241 US service members.

These were just a few of the regime’s “opening acts.” The list is far too numerous to articulate, and includes the bombing of the USS Cole, killing 17 sailors, and injuring 37 others. It includes the AMIA bombing in Argentina, murdering 85 people and injuring 300 others.

We now know that the entire world has been suffering by this amalgamation of toxic anti-Americanism and rabid antisemitism. And we also know that tens of thousands of young student protesters have suffered the most at the hands of the IRGC and the Basij. Like a malignant tumor, this is a cancer must be eliminated from our body politic. And the sooner the better.

Sarah N. Stern is Founder and President of EMET, a DC based think tank and policy institute, specializing in the Middle East.