The Islamic Republic of Iran is the mirror of our Western weaknesses and cowardice. Those who oppose this war for reasons of ideology, interests or blindness, will end up in the dustbin of history. Opinion.
Giulio Meotti is an Italian journalist with Il Foglio who writes a twice-weekly column for Arutz Sheva. He is the author, in English, of the book “A New Shoah”, that researched the personal stories of Israel’s terror victims, published by Encounter and of “J’Accuse: the Vatican Against Israel as well as other books in Italian.
The Iranian atomic bomb was an open secret until a talented Argentine, Rafael Mariano Grossi, became head of the UN Atomic Agency.
Thus it was discovered that Iranian violations had become flagrant, both in terms of the volume of enriched uranium and the level of enrichment, with particles found up to 83 percent, one step away from the 90 percent needed for the bomb. A level not justifiable for civilian use (nuclear power plants operate with uranium enriched to 3-5 percent). Today Iran could have over 230 kilos of uranium for military use in three weeks, enough for ten atomic weapons in the underground plant of Fordow.
What is pushing Iran towards the atomic bomb?
Boualem Sansal, the Algerian novelist in prison, explained it to me a year ago: “Iran is convinced that if it succeeds in destroying Israel, all Muslim countries will pass under its flag and it will form the largest empire in the world with two billion followers. The Islamization of the world is planned and organized over the course of a century. The only solution is to overthrow this regime before it acquires nuclear weapons, which would make it completely immune to any threat”.
Jacques Chirac, the French president aligned with the Islamic world for interests and ideology, said for example that the Iranian atomic bomb would not be “very dangerous.” Maybe a little dangerous?
There comes a moment when “moderation” becomes cowardice and ambiguity turns into complicity.
This is one of those moments.
Now the war can end in three ways:
-Iran surrenders and gives up its nuclear program (unlikely that Khamenei goes to Moscow to keep the Assads company and lets the Pahlavis return to Tehran);
-Israel continues to bomb them alone until it deems its objectives achieved and stops, that is, sends them back in time (probable);
-The United States and Israel join forces against the regime (then the possible scenario of the fall of the Ayatollahs will open up, with all the dramatic consequences of a possible regime change).
I don’t trust Americans much, not only because they have never understood much about Islam and the Middle East. Andrew Young, the American ambassador to the United Nations under the Carter Administration, said that Khomeini was “a saintly social democrat” and compared his Islamic revolution to the American civil rights movement.
And then, when America is involved, it never ends as it should: the Taliban have returned to Afghanistan, ISIS has arrived in Iraq, the “Arab Spring” has ended with civil wars and coups, in Syria after the dictator the caliph has arrived…
The Islamic Republic of Iran is meanwhile the mirror of our weaknesses and our cowardice. Its creation, fifty years ago, owes its success in part to the favorable reception given to Khomeini by Valéry Giscard d’Estaing and then to his sending to Iran to take power, after having gotten rid of his left-wing ally. And how many famous intellectuals, like Michel Foucault, praised the ayatollahs…
Since 1979, Iran has been a rogue regime that has seized one of the world’s oldest and most cultured civilizations (Persian and Zoroastrian, not Islamic) and turned it into a weapon of terror and destabilization. A theocratic dictatorship that has been slaughtering its people for fifty years.
This is what Khomeini said in 1980:
“We do not worship Iran, we worship Allah. Because patriotism is another name for paganism. I say: let this land (Iran) burn. I say: let this land go up in smoke, provided that Islam emerges triumphant in the rest of the world.”
Yet too many in the West continue to pretend that there is a moral or strategic equivalence between this regime and the democratic state of Israel, which – whatever one’s opinion of its government – is an open society, an ally of the West, and a victim of ongoing terrorist aggression.
Already in 2001, Ali Akhbar Rafsanjani, president of Iran between 1989 and 1997, a realpolitiker, a “centrist,” said:
“The Jews must truly expect the day when this superfluous limb will be amputated from the body of the Muslim area and the Muslim world, and all the peoples who have gathered in Israel will once again scatter around the world and become refugees.”
A number of Western voices warn that the Israeli attack on Iranian facilities could provoke a further escalation. But the truth is that Israel has done what many in the West privately admit had to be done.
“Israel is doing the dirty work for all of us in Iran.” This was said during the G7 by the new German Chancellor, Friedrich Merz, not so privately.
Christoph Heusgen, who was Angela Merkel’s foreign policy advisor for twelve years, told Der Spiegel: “The West has become a negative word. The West is yesterday’s news”.
“Today’s news” is that a small Jewish state, no bigger than Puglia and which has known no peace since its founding in 1948, is making the Islamic Republic of Iran, the empire of the Ayatollahs, dance (and perhaps fall).
In the 1930s, only a small minority appreciated what Stefan Zweig said: “The most terrible monstrosity will become the subject of a course.”
It is time to wake up to the new apocalyptics, to have strength in the face of terror and freedom in the face of submission. Those who oppose this war for ideology, interests or blindness, will end up in the dustbin of history.
Thanks to Israel for leading the fight and opening our eyes (maybe).
