Tehran, the Terror Capitol of the World

By Alan Caruba

In ancient times the expression was “All roads lead to Rome.” An impressive network of roads had been built to maintain the Roman Empire, but it eventually broke apart and failed. These days all roads lead to Tehran, the capital of Iran, the terror capitol of the world, and to its supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

The attacks on Israel were ordered by Khamenei and the support for Syria’s dictator Bashar Assad come from Khamenei. Perhaps inspired by the success of the al Qaeda attack on a U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya, on the anniversary of 9/11, Hamas—a proxy for Iran in Gaza—increased its rocket attacks on Israel.

Among the rockets raining down on Israel is a Fajr-5 that is made in Iran.

It is important to keep in mind that these rocket attacks have been made for a decade. However, following the reelection of President Obama, they increased and it is my view that the Iranians have taken his measure of the four years of his first term and concluded that he would do little to support Israel and that they could increase their efforts to create nuclear weapons with which to destroy Israel and threaten the Middle East and the world.

DEBKA File, an Israeli news agency reported on November 17^th that President Obama had called Israel’s Prime Minister Netanyahu to reiterate “his support for Israel’s right to defend itself.” In addition, he called Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi to urge him “to persuade Hamas to accept Israel’s terms for a ceasefire.”

The reality is that there has been no ceasefire from Hamas since it seized control of Gaza from Fatah, as the Palestinian Liberation Organization is also known. The PLO governs the West Bank, an area Israel secured as the result of an earlier war.

Israel is under fire as the direct result of Obama’s actions and statements during his first term. This is what happens when sixty years of support and cooperation are abandoned in an effort to curry acceptance by Middle Eastern regimes and people.

It is useful to consider the record of wars waged against Israel since it declared its sovereignty in 1948. The announcement was followed immediately by the 1948 Arab-Israeli War that ended in July 1949. Military actions were carried out against Israel throughout the 1950s and 60s from Syria, Egypt, and Jordan. There was conflict when Israel joined Britain and France after Egypt announced its intention to occupy the Sinai Peninsula and take over the Suez Canal. The Six-Day War in June 1967 was triggered by Egypt and joined by Jordan and Syria. Israel won a decisive victory, expanding its territory to include the West Bank, the Golan Heights, and Gaza.

Another war of attrition followed from 1967 to 1970. In October 1973 Israel was attacked on its holiest day, Yom Kippur, by Egypt and Syria. From 1971 to 1982 led to an invasion of Lebanon in 1978. In 1982, another war was fought with Lebanon which had become a staging area for the Iranian proxy, Hezbollah. More conflict continued from 1987 to 2000. From 1987 through to 2005, a Palestinian uprising known as the Intifada continued. And in 2006 another war with Lebanon was triggered by the abduction of two Israeli reserve soldiers by Hezbollah.

The first Gaza war, December 2008 to January 2009, was waged against Hamas, an Iranian proxy, and now, as the result of months of rocket attacks on Israel, it has been renewed.

The Iranians are within months of achieving their long time goal of creating a nuclear arsenal. On October 19 DEBKA File reported that its intelligence sources had learned that Iran “had finished installing in Fordo the last set of advanced centrifuges for enriching uranium to 20 percent purity” which will give the ability to enhanced these stocks to the 90 percent bomb-making level.

“American experts,” said DEBKA File, “now estimate that this jump would take no more than two to three weeks from the moment a go-ahead order came down from Khamenei.”

Writing in the November 16 Wall Street Journal, Saul Singer said “Even the debate over sanctions and military action against Iran’s nuclear program largely misses the point. The solution is for Iran’s regime to fall, and the key to that isn’t sanctions or even military action. It is for Western governments to star saying to Iran’s leaders what they told Egypt’s Hosni Mubarack, Libya’s Moammar Gadhafi, ad Syria’s Bashar Assad: You must go.”

Singer said that “There is a reason why Iran is desperately trying—with money, personnel and weapons—to keep Assad’s brutal regime afloat in Syria. What the mullahs fear more is the Arab Spring spreading to Iran.”

Even former Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger, writing in a recent issue of the Washington Post, said, “The most urgent decision facing the president is how to stop Iran from pursuing a military nuclear program.”

World War II began because the nations of Europe sought appeasement with the Nazi regime. They delayed preemptive action until it was too late. The U.S. and the nations of the world have followed the same path with Iran. The Obama “apology tour” to the Middle East has been a total failure and has brought the world to the brink of a war there that could spread to wherever there are nations with large Muslim populations. And Europe has large Muslim populations.

All this is happening as a U.S. government in gridlock faces a “fiscal cliff” that would require huge cuts to our defense budget at the worst possible time. A profligate Obama regime has increased the national debt to $16 trillion and large numbers of Americans are unemployed. This mirrors the 1930s in which a recession from which the nation could have recovered was so badly botched that it became the Great Depression.

The only option the U.S. and the West has is to join with Israel to destroy or significantly disable Iran’s nuclear program and attack its military capabilities. The Gaza attacks on Israel are part of the Iranian effort to test and “soften up” its defenses, to engage the Israeli Defense Force in a ground war that will deplete its armed forces.

Americans and Israelis embrace life, but our enemies embrace death. They are taught from birth that dying in a holy war—a jihad—opens the gates to paradise.

We are on the brink of a Third World War intended to bring about a new Islamic caliphate, the control of the world by Islam.

© Alan Caruba, 2012