by Bruce S. Thornton<\/p>\n
FrontPage Magazine<\/em><\/p>\n Iran\u2019s 30-year war against the United States may be reaching its decisive moment. Signs of the worsening crisis abound. Iran just announced it has begun enriching uranium at the Fordo underground nuclear site, a key step to producing more quickly fissile material for a nuclear warhead. As Europe moves closer to embargoing Iranian oil, deputy commander of the Revolutionary Guard Ali Ashraf Nouri threatens, \u201cIf enemies block the export of our oil, we won\u2019t allow a drop of oil to pass through the Strait of Hormuz,\u201d through which about one-fifth of the world\u2019s oil passes. In support of this threat, the regime continues to stage war games in the area and to warn American warships from passing through the strait into the Persian Gulf. Meanwhile the US and Israel have announced a joint missile defense exercise, as Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad visits America\u2019s enemies in Latin America, bearding the US lion in its own hemisphere of influence.<\/p>\n Iran may be just indulging bluster and bluff. Perhaps the mullahs recall the severe punishment inflicted on its navy in 1988 during the Tanker War, an earlier attempt to disrupt oil shipments transiting the Persian Gulf. That effort ended when Ronald Reagan retaliated for a missile attack on an American warship by eventually destroying two Iranian oil platforms, two Iranian ships, and six Iranian gunboats. Yet our current president has not shown as yet any of Ronald Reagan\u2019s guts and nerve, and the mullahs may be calculating that the bluff will work.<\/p>\n And why wouldn\u2019t they? Iran has been killing Americans for 30 years with impunity, from the 241 military personnel killed in Beirut by a suicide bomber, to the hundreds more soldiers murdered in Iraq and Afghanistan by Iranian proxy terrorist outfits trained and armed by Tehran. Repeated rounds of sanctions, threats, UN Security Council resolutions, and deadlines for cooperating with the International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors have been contemptuously ignored. Our citizens are arrested and held on trumped-up charges, our ally Israel is threatened with genocide, and incessant anti-American \u201cGreat Satan\u201d rhetoric daily pours from Tehran. Just this week a former American Marine was condemned to death by an Iranian court for allegedly being a spy and a \u201cmohareb,\u201d or \u201cfighter against God.\u201d Yet Obama has answered this aggression against our security and interests with appeasing diplomatic \u201coutreach\u201d offered \u201cwithout preconditions,\u201d and pleas for \u201cmutual respect\u201d that the regime correctly interprets as a sign of weakness and failure of nerve.<\/p>\n Given that Iranian aggression has so far provoked appeasement and empty threats, the mullahs very well could believe that since they are the \u201cbest of nations,\u201d as the Koran has it, in any conflict Allah will protect the Islamic Republic and render insignificant America\u2019s overwhelming military superiority. After all, Muslims for centuries have believed in their superiority based on Allah\u2019s special regard for them, as aviator Antoine de Saint-Exup\u00e9ry noted in 1939: \u201cTheir [Muslims] pride was born of the illusion of their power. Allah renders a believer invincible.\u201d The mullahs today will remember what the Ayatollah Khomeini said in 1980, after America\u2019s ill-planned and half-hearted mission to rescue the embassy hostages was ignominiously thwarted by a sandstorm that caused two helicopters to crash and burn: \u201cThose sand particles were divinely commissioned. . . . [President] Carter still has not comprehended what kind of people he is facing. . . . Our people is the people of blood and our school is the school of Jihad.\u201d<\/p>\n Thirty years later, we still have not \u201ccomprehended\u201d the nature of the Iranian enemy. We have continuously operated with a materialist calculus that ignores the spiritual motives that account for much of Iranian aggression. More depressing still, this is the same mistake the Carter administration made in 1979, when it ignored the religious roots of the Iranian Revolution, dismissed Khomeini as \u201cnutty\u201d and \u201ca crazy man,\u201d as Carter did, and assumed that the secular political parties and technical elites would eventually rule Iran and marginalize the mullahs, virulent Iranian hostility would wane, and \u201cafter a transition period common interests could provide a basis for future cooperation,\u201d as an assistant to the Secretary of State reported. Similarly the West today has assumed that economic punishment, or the desire for \u201cgreater international integration,\u201d as Obama put it, can change Iranian behavior. We still don\u2019t believe what a member of the Revolutionary Council said a few months after the seizure of our embassy: \u201cNo individual, no official and no Muslim has the right to show forbearance or compromise toward an enemy who is not defeated and is not overthrown.\u201d<\/p>\n We sophisticated modern materialists slight these religious motives, dismissing them as throwbacks to the Dark Ages, or cynical pretexts to camouflage the pursuit of the material goods we recognize, such as wealth and power. Because religion in the West has faded into a life-style choice or repository of comforting holiday rituals, we cannot fathom that for other creeds the spiritual world is a living reality in their lives. But even if those beliefs are mere ghosts, they still drive behavior in the here-and-now. As Orwell wrote in 1941 of H.G. Wells, the celebrated champion of internationalism and scientific rationalism, \u201cHe was, and is, quite incapable of understanding that nationalism, religious bigotry and feudal loyalty are far more powerful forces than what he himself would describe as sanity. Creatures out of the Dark Ages have come marching into the present, and if they are ghosts they are at any rate ghosts which need a strong magic to lay them.\u201d<\/p>\n The melancholy lesson of history is that force is the \u201cstrong magic\u201d that compels fanatical believers to abandon their murderous ideologies or keep them within their own borders. Equivocating about the use of force, or pursuing non-lethal ways to change behavior, such as diplomatic negotiation or economic sanctions, only convinces the fanatic aggressor that he has the gods or history or destiny on his side, that his enemy is weak and lacks conviction, and that a few more blows will achieve the aggressor\u2019s aims. Nor does it matter if the failure to retaliate actually reflects other concerns such as political expediency. There were many reasons Clinton withdrew our forces from Somalia in 1993 after the \u201cBlackhawk Down\u201d battle in which 18 US servicemen were killed, but political self-interest and survival were clearly the most important. Yet to bin Laden, the retreat from Mogadishu was like the withdrawal from Vietnam and Beirut after the Marine barracks bombing: the result of America\u2019s \u201clow spiritual morale\u201d and \u201ccowardice and feebleness.\u201d And that perception fed bin Laden\u2019s certainty that the US rested on \u201cfoundations of straw\u201d and could be toppled with spectacular terrorist attacks.<\/p>\n Settling the conflict with Iran and keeping it from acquiring nuclear weapons, then, will in the end be achieved with mind-concentrating force that convinces the mullahs to change their ways. One place to start would be to destroy Iran\u2019s navy and shore missile batteries in the Persian Gulf. Degrading the military assets, bases, and production facilities of the Iranian Republican Guard Corp and the paramilitary Basij might provide an opportunity for the dormant Green Revolutionaries to effect regime change. As Indiana University\u2019s Jamsheed K. Choksy wrote in\u00a0The Wall Street Journal<\/em>, \u201cOnce the power of the Basij and the IRGC to enforce the regime\u2019s will upon the people has been seriously compromised, it would not be surprising to see large segments of Iran\u2019s population casting off the theocratic yoke.\u201d A saner regime perhaps would be more amenable to abandoning the pursuit of nuclear weapons.<\/p>\n The time is fast running out on policies that refuse to accept the necessity of force in changing Iranian behavior. Military action obviously involves unknowable risks and costs; but allowing a rogue regime, one situated in the middle of a region that produces one-fifth of the world\u2019s oil, to acquire nuclear weapons will likely end up subjecting our security and interests to much greater risks and much higher costs.<\/p>\n \u00a92012 Bruce S. Thornton<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" by Bruce S. Thornton FrontPage Magazine Iran\u2019s 30-year war against the United States may be reaching its decisive moment. Signs of the worsening crisis abound.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[124,22,285,393],"tags":[233,12,499,1039,431,1019,500,169,403,162,1030],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p466Sb-hv","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":949,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/iranian-threat-heats-up\/","url_meta":{"origin":1085,"position":0},"title":"Iranian Threat Heats Up","author":"victorhanson","date":"February 26, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"by Bruce S. Thornton FrontPage Magazine Iran announced Sunday that it was cutting off crude oil sales to France and England, a mostly symbolic act given that Iran provides England less than 1% of its crude, and France claims that it \u201cpractically stopped importing Iranian oil,\u201d according to the head\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Iran"","block_context":{"text":"Iran","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/the-world\/the-middle-east\/iran\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":8559,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/more-sanctions-wouldnt-have-stopped-iran\/","url_meta":{"origin":1085,"position":1},"title":"More Sanctions Wouldn’t Have Stopped Iran","author":"victorhanson","date":"July 22, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"But one measure would have. by Bruce S. Thornton \/\/ FrontPage Magazine Critics of President Obama\u2019s recent deal with Iran have rejected the president\u2019s assertion that the only alternative to his deal is war. They think that more aggressive sanctions could have changed Iran\u2019s behavior, given the economic costs the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Iran"","block_context":{"text":"Iran","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/the-world\/the-middle-east\/iran\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"iran-nuclear","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/07\/iran-nuclear-500x281.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":984,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-final-countdown-israel-vs-iran\/","url_meta":{"origin":1085,"position":2},"title":"The Final Countdown: Israel vs. Iran","author":"victorhanson","date":"February 8, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"by Bruce S. Thornton FrontPage Magazine The 33-year farce of Western appeasement of Iran may be reaching its denouement. For the last few months, the pace of events have quickened as the West sanctions and threatens, and Iran blusters about closing the Strait of Hormuz, cutting off oil to Europe,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Israel"","block_context":{"text":"Israel","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/the-world\/the-middle-east\/israel\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1090,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/iran-on-the-brink\/","url_meta":{"origin":1085,"position":3},"title":"Iran on the Brink","author":"victorhanson","date":"January 11, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"by Bruce S. Thornton Defining Ideas Just in the last few months, events have hastened to a crisis in Iran\u2019s long confrontation with the West. The ongoing civil war in Syria looks more and more likely to end with the ouster of strongman Bashar al-Assad, one of Tehran\u2019s most stalwart\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Iran"","block_context":{"text":"Iran","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/the-world\/the-middle-east\/iran\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":907,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/iran-senses-western-weakness\/","url_meta":{"origin":1085,"position":4},"title":"Iran Senses Western Weakness","author":"victorhanson","date":"March 15, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"by Bruce S. Thornton FrontPage Magazine As the clock ticks closer to a nuclear-armed Iran, the Western powers are girding their loins for \u2014 more talks. Actually, they\u2019re getting ready to talk to Iran about the\u00a0conditions\u00a0for talking some more. EU foreign policy head Catherine Ashton announced that the \u201cP5 +\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Iran"","block_context":{"text":"Iran","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/the-world\/the-middle-east\/iran\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":3501,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/so-whos-afraid-of-an-iranian-bomb\/","url_meta":{"origin":1085,"position":5},"title":"So Who’s Afraid of an Iranian Bomb?","author":"victorhanson","date":"October 29, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson Tribune Media Services At first glance, it would seem a straightforward thing to stop a relatively weak but volatile Iran from obtaining a nuclear bomb. It would also seem to be something a concerned world community would be actively working to do. 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