Islamic Iran and the eleventh hour

Abu Dharr

Dhu al-Qa'dah 24, 1431 2010-11-01

Opinion

by Abu Dharr (Opinion, Crescent International Vol. 39, No. 9, Dhu al-Qa'dah, 1431)

This writer remembers the time — about 25 years ago — when friendly members of the Islamic Movement would ask: why can’t our brothers in Iran have a more subtle approach and a dodgy political posture when it comes to their official decisions as well as their public relations and information services? This question was posed at a time when the Islamic State of Iran was fighting for its survival against the combined forces of regional hypocritical regimes supported by superpower governments. At that time, when the Islamic Republic wanted to launch an offensive against the Iraqi occupying forces, it, more or less, came out and divulged its political move — not necessarily its military secrets.

Well, those days are gone. The struggling brothers and sisters in the Islamic State have come a long way since that time. They learned from their mistakes and they learned from their candidness, so much so that the same types of brothers who were offering their sincere advice 25 years ago can no longer keep up with the sophisticated and double-edged statements that are expressed nowadays by seasoned diplomats and tried-and-true officials of the Islamic Republic.

Let us see how far these spokespersons have gone in forking out their political statements and camouflaging their strategic objectives.

Take Iraq as an example. There is a general impression, borne of ignorance or superficiality, about the “Iranian” role in Iraq. People who gorge themselves on mainstream news information get the feeling that Iran and the US are communicating on the same wavelength in Iraq! The information cover may add credence to such an impression. But can it be? Is it possible for the Islamic State — especially at the cost of one million martyrs and handicapped war survivors — to come to terms with its arch-nemesis, the US, patron and preserver of Zionist Israel, and to share the same war front (Iraq) where streams of blood were flowing just one generation ago? Whoever comes to such a conclusion must have twisted and deformed common sense so badly as to equate the Islamic leadership in Iran with the secular and ungodly leaders who proliferate in imperialist and Zionist establishments.

The absent information that does not make it to the propaganda pitch is:

a. Supporters of the Islamic Revolution and leadership in Iraq are not clients of Washington and Tel Aviv even though they may be, with difficulty, going through the motions of puppets and quislings. From time to time, there appears a news item that says: “Iranian-backed forces in Iraq supplied insurgents attacking coalition troops [that is, primarily American occupation forces] with explosives or other war materiel…”

b. The relationship between Iran, Iraq, and Syria is one of the best kept secrets — as it should be. What political mileage would accrue if the media and political class in Tehran were to boast and bluster about the bridges that are being built among these three countries? Syria may be serving as a “safety valve” for those who still cannot understand, after 31 years, the political essence and the military crux of the matter of the Islamic will in Iran.

The political quagmire in Iraq is so messy that anti-status quo Shi‘is better known in times past for their opposition to Saddam and the Ba‘th agenda — both of which were tactical advantages of the Zionist-imperialist schemes — are now themselves perceived tactical advantages of the same Zionist-imperialist schemes. However, the unknown difference is that this new set of American-imperialist clients are potentially disposed toward a consolidated Islamic willpower emanating from Islamic Iran.

You would have to be brain dead not to know that the geographical, historical, cultural, denominational and demographic facts binding Iran and Iraq are not at work here. The US government in its lifelong duty to appease the Israeli Zionist regime wanted 20th-century Iraq to be the bloodsucker of Iran; as fate would have it Iraq is turning out to be the bloodsucker of the US. Rockets, magnet bombs attached to cars, lethal shaped bombs, side arms and missiles, etc. are turning the Iraqi people into a population bomb against the US occupation forces. As the years go by, Islamic Iran is gradually emerging as the most important power in Iraq in proportion to the slowly shrinking role of the US there.

When the Iraqis are able to put the two halves of their minds together they will realize they have been brutalized in the past three decades by direct and indirect imperialist orders that have resulted today in a population of 33 million having around two million killed and wounded, at least one million widows, five million orphans, around one-and-a-half million internally displaced Iraqis and around two million Iraqis who have left the country. This population that is suffering from a thousand wounds has two polarized mind-sets: one of them sees the role of US imperialism during the Ba‘th party rule but not today; and the other half of the Iraqi mind sees US imperialism’s role in ruling Iraq today but not during the Ba‘th regime. Does sectarianism run so deep in Iraq that the gulf between these two mind-sets obscures American imperialism in full spectrum? In all this, some blame Islamic Iran for opposing an American proxy war against it militarily in the 1980s and others for opposing an American proxy war against it today by all other means.

Contributing to the sectarian foggy mind about Iraq as well as to its politically groggy strategies is the Saudi ruling family’s liaison with the Global Islamic Movement as well as its supportive role for Arabian secularists inside and outside Iraq. We do not have space in this article for expiring secularists in that area. But we would like to take note of the “Islamists” who are in the financial pockets of these Saudi American collaborators.

The Saudis in their private talks give the impression that Iran is a schismatic and sectarian rogue that is out to take over the Muslim world. Next door to the Saudis are their “Ikhwan” in Egypt who are trying to run for office in the upcoming parliamentary elections (November 28). They are being rounded up by the hundreds; and they are not Shi‘is. So why can’t the Saudi Sunni sponsor come to the rescue of its Sunni brothers in Egypt? If Saudi Arabia would only be as concerned for Sunnis as Iran is for Shi‘is we would not be in the mess we are all in today. The Saudi regime is beginning to reap its own bitter harvest of the last 30 years of political foolishness and diplomatic stupidity. The Saudi royals are failing their “Sunni” co-religionists everywhere. Look at Lebanon. Behind the scenes they are intimating to the Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri that maybe he should consider resigning to spare that country a civil war in which, the Hariri-Saudi alliance (better known as the March 14 alliance) will eventually wind up on the Israeli side in a future war in Lebanon.

The Islamic Republic in the meantime continues to build a liberation front in Lebanon along with all the diplomatic power it can muster for the future deconstruction of the Zionist regime. Seeing all this unfold with their own eyes, the Israelis who do not suffer from sectarian blinkers, are working the corridors of power in Washington to obtain 20 F-35 stealth warplanes in addition to the 20 they have already purchased. And if the American administration honors its role as an Israeli instrument and dupe, it will oblige and deliver these planes on demand. In the meantime, Hamas has obtained from anti-Israeli sources missiles with a range of 80 kilometers. These missiles are capable of exploding inside Tel Aviv, according to one hostile intelligence source.

While Israel is becoming increasingly isolated and is politically shrinking, its poster-boy Barack Obama is bidding his enchanting years farewell. Difficult years lie ahead for an American government that takes orders from a Zionist regime. If it continues on this destructive course America — one nation under God — will become America — a few nations ever more divisible because of the blowback to a blind century of unconditional pro-Israeli policies and politics. There will be no comeback for an American superpower. Writing from the future, a person will look back at these times and see how, because of Israeli fiat, American hegemony bled its troops and its treasury into a second rate country. And how the Saudi ruling royals delayed and obstructed the worldwide Islamic Movement from identifying the independent Islamic political will in Iran. And how historical sectarianism blinded the Muslims to their common enemy in Iraq, Lebanon, and elsewhere.

In the presence of the Almighty you can sense the future from the present, “Allah’s alone is the knowledge of the ghayb. Wait, then, [until His Will becomes apparent]: verily, I shall wait with you.” In the meantime, the calculating Americans, the cunning Israelis, and the clumsy Saudis are blinded by their physical forces, their foxy formulas, and their financial flings — all of which will come to naught when D-Day arrives.