by Abu Dharr (Guest Editorial, Crescent International Vol. 38, No. 2, Rabi' al-Thani, 1430)
If it were another government it would have caved in by now, but the heavenward Islamic government in the world has survived. The Islamic Republic of Iran, whatever one’s view of it, has weathered political pandemonium, economic earthquakes, and media twisters the likes of which we have not witnessed. This is a government and leadership with a people and population extending beyond its geographical frontiers. The Islamic strategic depth of this goal-directed body of people is phenomenal. Just to put things in perspective, there are two major sources of war against this Islamic unit of governance: the worldwide imperialist structure and the transverse sectarian structure. The imperialist global network is centered around the American regime and the intra-Islamic sectarian web is centered around the Saudi regime. The see-saw motion between Washington and Riyadh is to cut through and chop off the strategic potential of this Islamic political system. The coordination between Arabia and America concerning an Islamic Iran is a matter of top-secret classification. The policies and actions though are out there for every observer to watch.
Let us take a look at American gyrations when it comes to the Islamic Republic. Recently, Islamic Iran with its independent character developed — on its own — a new generation of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) with a range of one thousand kilometers (620 miles). When the Deputy Defense Minister Brigadier General Ahmad Vahidi announced this important achievement the imperialist and Zionist officials began to express themselves as if they are going to have to respond in an aggressive military manner to the growing military successes of the Islamic Republic. They watched and said: the new Iranian UAV could reach as far as East India, west to Israel, south over Saudi Arabia, and northwards toward some of the recently acquired American military bases in central Asia. Expressed more bluntly, independent Islamic Iran could deploy these UAVs over every US military installation, diplomatic mission, or client regime in the Middle East. It has been a few decades now with the US flying its own sophisticated aerial vehicles for surveillance, reconnaissance or attack missions. The use of these deadly devices has been and continues to be deployed in Pakistan, Iraq, Yemen, Somalia, Afghanistan and many other regions in the Muslim world. And the US and its Israeli sidekick have been in the UAV business for generations now without a twitch of conscience. But now that an Islamic Republic with a sovereign character has managed to harness the technology that will begin to challenge the imperialist-Zionist monopoly of the skies these officials are looking with squinting eyes upon this development!
For the first time in modern history a country in the Muslim world has developed a capability and willingness to manufacture pilotless aircraft and radio controlled aircraft that shadow US fleet movements in the Persian/Arabian Gulf and to keep an eye on events in Iraq and Afgha-nistan. This imperialist and Zionist reading of events have led over-strung officials and overanxious observers in Israeli and American military and political establishments to anticipate “suicide drones” invisible to radar with multipurpose utility as guided missiles to be deployed by a free and independent Islamic Iran against US ships that are “patrolling” the Persian/Arabian Gulf! The Japanese kamikaze attacks of World War II memory are resurfacing anew. The thoughts induced by fear in the twin military hierarchies of Israel and America is that Islamic Iran will be able to conduct its own “pinpoint attacks” against any aggressor in a manner parallel to the US “pinpoint attacks” in Afghanistan and Pakistan, or the Israeli “pinpoint attacks” in Ghazzah or Lebanon. “Targeted explosions” or “surgical strikes” will no longer be a monopoly of the US and Israel, who shift the blame after such incidents on “Islamic terrorists.” Imagine a “Hariri assassination” in reverse! Drones and UAVs commandeered by Islamic freedom-fighters “taking out” an Israeli or American general or diplomat as a result of “actionable intelligence!”
It is the American-Israeli occupation of Islamic skies without any challenge from toady’s regimes in both republican and royal Araby that has produced the assassination from the sky of Sheikh Ahmad Yasin, Dr Abdulaziz al-Rantisi, Siyam, and many others. A nightmarish situation develops when guilty cowards in uniform begin to project their own contrivances on their enemies — thinking that Iran will supply Hizbullah and Hamas with drones having biological, chemical, radiological or even nuclear warheads! In the minds of these xenophobic military personnel UAVs are blown up into strategic and offensive weapons systems, as if a drone is a B-52 bomber.
Meanwhile on the Saudi side of this pincer movement against the Islamic Republic the weapon of choice is accusations, slander and vilification. In the eyes of the Saudi officials Islamic Iran can do no good. If, out of Islamic brotherhood and solidarity, Islamic Iran extends a hand of support to its Palestinian brethren who are fighting for freedom and survival, the Saudi diplomatic and press corps accuse Iran of meddling in “other people’s business.” If Islamic Iran is building its defense industry and capabilities it is accused by the same Saudi motor-mouths of being a threat to the stability of the region! How come an Islamic state in possession of peaceful nuclear technology is a threat to the region when a Zionist state in possession of war-intended nuclear weapons is not even noticed by the Saudi royals and their army of journalists and pundits? When the Islamic Republic of Iran hosts a yearly conference that brings together Islamic scholars and ‘ulama from all over the world to sooth the “Sunni-Shi‘i” abrasion, the Saudis cry foul and deride such a meeting of hearts and minds?
We have no kind word to say about the official royals — the children of Sa‘ud who sold their souls to the imperialist-Zionist Satan. Israel is in possession of hundreds of nuclear bombs that everyone knows are intended to be used one day against the Islamic groundswell of social and political self-determination from the Islamic mashriq to the Islamic maghrib. Why aren’t the “intellectuals” and spokespersons of Bani Sa‘ud moved to action by a Zionist Israel that has had offensive nuclear weapons and bombs for over forty years but are infuriated and neurotic about an Islamic Republic that does not have one nuclear bomb?
Just like the nuclear monster in Tel Aviv and Washington, we have a sectarian monster in Riyadh and Jeddah. We know that every time the fraudulent Arabians in the kingdom of Sa‘ud see Sayyid Hasan Nasrallah, their vital signs go haywire. In their minds they cannot understand how a Shi‘i Nasrallah can be support Hamas of the Palestinians who are Sunnis. The Saudi ruling class as well as the Saudi moneyed class go to Lebanon to plough through the red light districts of Beirut and the summer resorts in Mount Lebanon. They have call girls coming to them in their plush villas and five star hotel suites. They buy and sell politicians with their checkbooks and bank accounts. Rab‘i ibn ‘Amer who left Arabia 1400 years ago told the Persian king, “We have come to pull people out of a mundane and oppressive materialistic life into the expansive and ethical and equitable life of Islam. Today we have Arabians who leave Arabia to pull people back into the oppressive and materialistic life of merriment, base instincts, and sexual gratification. Contrast that with Islamic vanguards arriving into Lebanon from Persia who are building an infrastructure for the freedom and well-being of the population there. They come with assistance for Hizbullah and Hamas. They, unlike the Saudi testosterone beasts, are not in five star hotels and villas of pleasure; they are at the military line of contact between Zionism and Islam.
The contrast in Lebanon between a Saudi-American sectarian agenda and an Islamic Hizbullah order of Islamically-inspired priorities can no longer be concealed.
From the American nuclear threat to the Saudi sectarian threat the Islamic buildup in Iran could not have survived without the care of the Almighty. To all the silent workers, the good Samaritans, the unknown soldiers, and the unsung heroes of the Islamic Revolu-tion, Republic, and rank and file we recall HIS words:
And remember the time when you were few [and] helpless on earth, fearful lest [official] public proclivities do away with you – whereupon HE sheltered you, and strengthened you with HIS sustentation, and provided for you provisions out of the good things of life, so that you might have cause to be grateful (8:26).