A Demonic Revolution
On November 4, 1979, the U.S. Embassy in Tehran would be overrun by fanatical Muslims. This happened despite the Carter Administration’s support for the deposing of the secular Shah of Iran, who was ousted in favor of the religious cleric and extremist, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini in the Iranian Revolution, which established Iran as theocratic and radical Islamic state.
A March 1979 referendum gave the Iranian people only two basic choices for which to vote: Yes, they wished an Islamic Republic; or no, they did not wish an Islamic Republic. Overwhelmingly, the people voted yes, although few Iranians knew what Khomeini meant by “Islamic Republic.” The new constitution drawn up by Khomeini’s emerging Islamic Republican Party was vastly different from that proposed by the moderates. The core of the resulting document endowed Khomeini as the ruler of Iran for life, or velayat-e faqih (guardianship of the jurisprudence.) The rule of law, of course, was Islam.
By summer’s end in 1979, Khomeini’s true vision began to be revealed. Far from establishing the enlightened, democratic government anticipated by some U.S. State Department employees, Khomeini, now the supreme leader of Iran, created a medieval Islamic totalitarian state controlled by the mullahs and ayatollahs. It was defined by intolerance, censorship, revenge, tyranny, vile torture, and executions. Khomeini’s murderous attacks against the Shah’s former officials had spread to include ethnic and religious cleansing.
Rule by “scapegoat” seemed to be the order of the day under Khomeini. When his government or authority was challenged, he looked for someone to blame. His first target were the Kurds in Northern Iran. They were avowed enemies of the Ayatollah and his Islamic Republic, and open season was declared against the Kurdish population.
Khomeini soon found an enemy to unite his people—the “Great Satan,” the United States of America. In an illegal act of war, he unleashed his forces on the U.S. Embassy in Tehran, capturing diplomats and security officials stationed there. For more than a year, the hostages were held, facing the threat of execution as spies at any moment. A failed military attempt to rescue them and the lingering crisis helped prevent the reelection of Jimmy Carter in 1980.
Empowered by his assault on the Shah and the success of his Islamic Revolution, Khomeini set forth to spread his particular brand of Arab nationalism throughout the Middle East. Next on his list was Saddam Hussein’s Ba’athist regime in Iraq. Khomeini’s tactic of engaging the people had worked in Iran; why would it not work again in Iraq? The Ayatollah had begun to exhort the Iraqi people to rebel against Hussein’s government. Iranian terrorists had attacked principal Iraqi leaders. In response, Saddam Hussein invaded Iran.
Khomeini saw the Iraq invasion as the perfect vehicle to bring the Ba’athist regime to its knees. He was forced to repair relations with other Persian Gulf states, reach out to the Europeans, and even contemplate talks with the dreaded “Great Satan.” It was a setback to his hopes of uniting the Arab world under the banner of his Islamic revolution. His only real success was the export of Hezbollah to Lebanon, and even that was tied more to the destruction of Israel than to a globe-encircling Arab state. Khomeini firmly believed Israel was simply a diversion instituted by the West to keep Muslims from uniting as one.
Lured by the turmoil in Iran, seduced by visions of power, and backed by other Persian Gulf regimes, Hussein was determined to conquer his equally oil-rich neighbor. Like so many others, Hussein may have thought the chaotic take-over in Iran, the execution of so many of the military hierarchy, and Khomeini’s lack of experience in conducting warfare, would open the door to a swift and decisive victory for the Iraqis. He was as wrong as those who thought Khomeini was only interested in spiritual matters. Khomeini rallied the troops in Iran and somehow produced an effective war machine to repel the Iraqis.
It seemed that nearly the entire world sided with Saddam Hussein against Iran. In Iraq’s corner were Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, which infused Iraq’s coffers with billions in loans and grants. Support came primarily from the Gulf States that viewed Iran as the greater danger. Also involved in furnishing arms and other war materiel to Hussein were Egypt, Jordan, the United States, France, the USSR, and the PLO. Iran’s backing came from Syria, North Korea, Libya, and China…mostly in the form of missiles.
It took two long years of death and destruction before the UN Security Council stepped in to seek troop withdrawals. It would be another five years before questions of chemical warfare used by Hussein against Iran’s troops and civilian population would arise.
Khomeini’s newly-instituted “Government of God” failed to draw the majority of the Arab world to his side; in reality, the opposite was true: Iran became abhorrent and friendless, especially in the Gulf region, and squandered its most productive resource—oil revenues—by slowing oil production. At the same time, Saddam Hussein was taking advantage of the chaotic situation in Iran to bolster his relationship with the U.S. There are those who believe the U.S. may have subtly encouraged the Iran-Iraq conflict because of what it surmised to be the benefits of such an encounter. Khomeini, who had shunned both Washington and Tel Aviv, was suddenly faced with the dilemma of how to hold off an invasion by Saddam Hussein without much-needed spare parts and arms from both the U.S. and Israel.
After eight long and bloody years, on August 20, 1988, an embittered Khomeini agreed to the UN Security Council Resolution for an immediate ceasefire. In the aftermath, nothing was resolved between the two nations. Besides the horrific loss of human life, the toll to achieve this impasse was a cost of hundreds of billions of dollars and the disruption and wreckage of the oil fields in both countries. One major outcome of the war, however, was to produce a growing alliance between Iran and Syria and a slackening of the relationship between Khomeini and Arafat’s PLO.
TERROR’S PAYMASTERS
A precedent was set with Iran under President Jimmy Carter which still proves true today. The U.S. (and the rest of the civilized world) appears to cower behind a group of allies that are powerless to implement any viable restrictions on the former Persian Empire. The world is once again being challenged by a new generation of leaders who were trained in Khomeini’s madrasas (Islamic schools).
The reach of the mullahs who effectively rule in Tehran is not restricted to Iran. In a treatise by Israeli General (Ret.) Moshe Yaalon, he writes, “According to Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and Iran’s Syrian partners, the Second Lebanon War [August 2006] was launched by Hezbollah—Iran’s proxy—as a hostile probe of U.S. reflexes via the engagement of Israel, which for Iran and Syria is a direct extension of Washington in the Middle East.”
It is apparent that Tehran wishes to neutralize America’s influence in the Middle East as a major step in the plan to defeat Western civilization. This was on bitter display during the Second Iraq War when Iranian explosives and military experts wrought the deaths of numerous American troops in IED explosions, suicide bombings, and more. Iran is the greatest source of funding for terrorism in the modern world.
We have seen the result of that funding over the last 15 months as the nation of Israel has been under constant attack from both Hamas and Hezbollah. Every Jewish man, woman, and child killed by terrorist guns, rockets, mortars, knives, drones, and missiles is dead because of Iran. Even though Israel has had some success weakening Hezbollah and Hamas and removing their leadership, there is still a grave threat.
It is obvious to me that Iran has a long-term plan to take control of the Middle East by using proxies: Hamas, Hezbollah, and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, along with Shiite groups in Iraq and the Houthi rebels in Yemen. Unless the Western world takes this threat seriously, things will rapidly get much worse.
Tragically, one of the final acts of the Obama Administration was to send a plane loaded with hundreds of millions of dollars of untraceable cash to the mullahs of Tehran. This payment, supposedly part of a settlement of a legal dispute dating back almost 40 years, was a massive windfall for Iran. The declining price of oil combined with economic sanctions leveled because of their illegal nuclear program had put a serious crimp on Iran’s economy. But this cash infusion gave them the resources to both continue their nuclear progress and increase their funding of terrorism. They have used the four years since President Trump left office to further both of those evil goals.
One of the most disturbing facets of the extremely radical version of Islam that rules in Tehran is the belief that an apocalypse must occur before the Mahdi returns. So, regardless of the suicidal nature of such an action, the leaders of Iran believe they have a divine mission to bring about this apocalypse by triggering an international war through a nuclear attack on Israel. There is no higher status than that of martyr in the Iranian version of Shi’ite Islam. A religious fascination with suicide fundamentally changes the definition of the behavior which rests at the center of all calculations—that the risk of mutually assured destruction will deter a head of state from initiating a nuclear war. Ironically, a suicidal leader motivated by religious mysticism might actually be attracted to a nuclear war. And if not, the threat of Iran arming one of their terrorist proxies with nuclear weapons they hope might not be traced back to them looms dark as the centrifuges continue to spin.
IRAN’S NUCLEAR
WEAPONS PROGRAM
I was speaking to one of Israel’s top nuclear scientists following a high-level briefing on the security situation facing the Jewish state, and he told me something I haven’t been able to forget: “Mike, Iran is a screwdriver turn away from having a nuclear bomb.”
Though the Western world has done a lot of talking about stopping Iran’s nuclear program, there are more centrifuges spinning today across the Islamic republic than there were at the beginning of the talking, and Iran’s stockpile of highly enriched uranium has continued to grow rapidly. No serious observer doubts that Iran already has enough nuclear material to make atomic bombs, and there have been disturbing reports that they are partnering with North Korea and Russia to improve their missile capacity as well.
This is a serious threat…to Israel…to the Middle East…to America…and to the rest of the world.
Powerful demonic spirits are at work in the world, and they have blinded the minds of world leaders to the evil Iran is doing…and the even greater evil they are plotting. It is a proven fact that Iran is the leading sponsor of terrorism in the world. I was in Beirut, Lebanon, in 1983, when a Hezbollah terrorist, armed and trained by Iran blew up the barracks killing more than 240 American Marines that I had preached the Gospel to just the day before.
Over half of the U.S. soldiers killed in Iraq were killed by IEDs provided by Iran or by terrorist groups that they armed and trained. Iran has given Hamas and Hezbollah tens of thousands of rockets and missiles to fire against Israel. Iran is working on nuclear weapons—and they are terrifyingly close to achieving that goal—to allow them to become the dominant force in the Middle East and force the other nations, including Israel, to bow to their will or else.
Iran has repeatedly violated the UN and international treaties and restrictions on their nuclear weapons program. They have bought and sold weapons of murderous warfare in defiance of international law. They are working on an illegal nuclear weapons program and the ballistic missiles necessary to launch nuclear warheads across the world. Iran has lied, cheated, and broken every promise made. Unless they are stopped, they will continue until their evil work is done.
