Last week’s talks with the Iranians ended badly. The Iranians actually hardened their position. Instead of agreeing to shut down uranium enrichment at its new underground facility at Fordo, a facility which they undoubtedly believe can survive an Israeli attack; they stated that they planned to increase the number of centrifuges there. This should have ended any pretense, any fictitious notion that talking to the Iranians has any value other than buying time for Mullahocracy. Instead the spineless western negotiators agreed to meet next month for more talks in Moscow. Just what the Iranians wanted.
A belief that negotiating with Iranians is likely to dissuade them from their nuclear ambitions is tantamount to asserting that Neville Chamberlain was a skilled negotiator. Just as Hitler’s Nazi party fervently dreamt of a thousand-year Third Reich and could not be appeased, the apocalyptic Shiites ruling Iran believe that their acquisition of nuclear weapons is nothing less than messianic.
All the men in Khamenei’s inner circle, including Ahmadinejad, are fervent “Twelvers.” They believe that their messiah will return only after a great apocalypse consumes the earth, making Shiite Islam dominant over the world.
While we moderate rational westerners look down upon such religiosity as deranged, so too were western powers unable to conceive of the holocaust brought about by the deranged men of the 1930’s then running Germany and Japan. The prospect of a nuclear war with Israel my not be a deterrent to the Mullahs running Iran, rather as they drift into their waning years, an inducement. In November of 2009, two and half years ago, in a cover article published in Townhall magazine entitled, We’re All Infidels Now, I prophetically wrote:
Ahmadinejad’s chief spiritual advisor, the Ayatollah Mesbah Yazdi, is considered to be Shiite Islam’s premier authority on the Twelfth Imam and has proclaimed that Ahmadinejad is the “chosen” of the Hidden Imam, the person “designated for his return.” Ahmadinejad, himself, has said he is in communication with the Twelfth Imam.
Pre-eminent Middle Eastern Scholar Bernard Lewis has stated that the concept of “mutually assured destruction” may not be a deterrent but rather an incentive for the Iranian regime. Given that the heads of this regime believe they can accelerate the coming of their messianic figure through a great conflagration, they may choose war over peace. According to its rhetoric, we are attempting to negotiate with a regime that claims to seek Armageddon.
In my new book, Lessons from Fallen Civilizations, I developed a list of ten immutable principles that contribute to the fall of great civilizations and can be seen to repeat over the millennia.
Immutable Law # 3 states: Appeasement of a ruthless outside power always invites aggression. Treaties made with ruthless despots are always fruitless and dangerous.
Negotiating with the Mullahs running Iran is worse than a fool’s errand. They are ruthless. And what every liberal/progressive statesmen seems unable to comprehend is that small ruthless bands of thugs have always been able to take over large docile populations. In the twentieth century alone, small ruthless bands of thugs, the Brown Shirts and the Bolsheviks took over Germany and Russia. The liberals running western statecraft may look down their noses at the ruthless thug, while never stopping to consider that ruthlessness is a strategy that works.
The Iranian Mullahs ruling Iran actually, and fervently, believe in the cult of the Twelfth Imam who disappeared down a well in the Iranian city of Qom in 874. Although invisible, he is not absent from this world; that the Hidden Imam will return; that all infidels will be vanquished, including the Sunni Muslims; and that Shiite Islam will impose its dominion over the earth in the aftermath of a great apocalypse.
While Obama may or may not know this, he looks to be gambling that the day of reckoning with a nuclear Iran will come after the election in November. Yet it seems apparent that he has no idea what cards the Iranians are holding or when they will play them.
So what should the western powers be doing about Iran now? (To be continued)
* “War is Deceit,” is attributed to the Prophet Mohammad by his most reliable biographer, Muhammad al Bukhari (810-870)
