The Purposes of Iran
Al Qaeda and ISIS are not the only islamic jihadist organizations to worry about; there is Iran as well. The Washington Times has cited a release from the Iranian Fars News Agency, which quoted Iran’s supreme leader, the Ayatollah Ali Khamanei as saying:
Those [Iranians] who want to promote negotiations and surrender to the oppressors and blame the Islamic Republic as a warmonger in reality commit treason.
Also he was quoted as saying
The reason for continuation of this battle is not the warmongering of the Islamic Republic … Logic and reason command that Iran, in order to pass through a region full of pirates, needs to arm itself and must have the capability to defend itself. Today’s world is full of thieves and plunderers of human honor … [who] commit crimes and betray human ideals and start wars in different parts of the world.
A final quote of the Ayatollah makes it quite clear that enmity between Iran and the United States will be perpetual.
Battle and jihad are endless because evil and its front continue to exist. … This battle will only end when the society can get rid of the oppressors’ front with America at the head of it, which has expanded its claws on human mind, body and thought. … This requires a difficult and lengthy struggle and need for great strides.
As far as the supreme leader of Iran is concerned, jihad will continue until “the Great Satan” America is wiped out, along with the “little Satan” Israel of course. From his language he has no doubts as to the righteousness of his cause.
So are all of these fulminations just bluster and hot air? There are many hard indications in Iran’s actions in recent years showing that at the very least Iran aspires to be the regional suzerain in the Middle East, and possibly to be the central state in a worldwide Shiite imamate. As we noted in the post Iran: the Present and Future Enemy, Iran has used its Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps-Qods Force (IRGC-QF) to project force and foreign policy in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Bahrain, and Yemen. Currently IRGC-QF is playing a big role in the military support of Iraq against ISIS (see here and here).
Meanwhile the U.S. Defense Department has noted extensive work by the Iranian military to increase both their defensive and offensive capabilities with “more advanced naval mines, small but capable submarines, armed unmanned aerial vehicles, coastal defense cruise missile batteries, attack craft, and antiship-capable missiles.”
The same unclassified Defense Department report to Congress (Fiscal Year 2014 Annual Report on Military Power of Iran, January 2015) has also taken note of Iranian ballistic missile development, including intercontinental ballistic missiles, which would make absolutely no sense if they did not intend to arm them with nuclear weapons.
This brings us finally to the 800 pound gorilla in the room: prospective Iranian nuclear weapons. Supposedly, the U.S. along with the four other permanent members of the UN Security Council (China, France, Russia, and the United Kingdom) plus Germany, the so-called P5+1, have negotiated an agreement with Iran limiting Iran’s ability to enrich uranium to weapons grade. Iran has a long history of developing a nuclear capability for making enriched nuclear fuel that makes sense only if they wanted nuclear weapons. Yet they have also claimed that their only purpose was the benign one of providing nuclear energy for their country. A good history of Iran’s duplicity with the West over the issues of nuclear enrichment and weapons can be found here. An actual admission on this deception from Iranian President Hassan Rouhani was captured on film. In it he brags that by drawing out negotiations with the West, he was able to provide the time necessary to complete the nuclear reactor at Bushehr and the Arak heavy water plant, and to increase the number of centrifuges purifying uranium at Natanz from 150 to 1700.
How can any “agreement” with Iran be trusted? When the latest negotiations during the Obama administration began, the agreement sought was to dismantle Iran’s nuclear capability to produce weapons. Instead, the agreement seems to allow Iran essentially to do everything they were doing in the past for the price of eliminating all economic sanctions on Iran. The agreement does require some reduction of capability, but the supreme leader of Iran, the Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, declared on June 23 that Iran’s military sites were strictly off-limits for any verifying inspections. The deal does require inspection of suspect facilities with 24 days notice (more like three months when all prescribed procedures are followed according to the Wall Street Journal). This gives Iran plenty of time to disguise or dismantle any evidence. There is also some confusion about whether or not the agreement allows Iran to inspect itself at the military sites! See here and here and here and here.
One of the consequences is the very large amount of Iranian economic assets being freed for use by the lifting of sanctions. These increased assets will give Iran increased ability to aid their terrorist allies, such as Hezbollah and Bashar al-Assad of Syria. The U.S. State Department considers that in 2014 “Iran’s state sponsorship of terrorism worldwide remained undiminished”
More evidence for Iran’s intentions comes from a de facto alliance with Russia and China. As we noted in the post The Growing Threat of Russia, while the nuclear agreement was being negotiated, Russia decided to build two additional nuclear reactors at Bushehr, with an option for six more. Also, as soon as the framework agreement for the Iran nuclear deal was produced on April 2, Russia lifted a self-imposed ban on selling sensitive defense systems to Iran. It then immediately sold Iran an advanced S-300 air defense system.
The missile in this system has a range of about 93 miles, can engage multiple targets, and hit targets as high as 90,000 feet in altitude. Satellites associated with the S-300 (and controlled by the Russians) can track targets as far as 150 miles away. Using this system Iran can quite possibly neutralize any air attack from U.S. Navy aircraft carriers in the Persian Gulf. It would make Iran’s nuclear sites all but invulnerable to any but stealth aircraft, and therefore safe from Israeli attack.
Ties between Iran and China began a number of decades ago with trade from Iran in oil and other resources for railroad equipment, arms, cars, and other industrial equipment. With nuclear sanctions being removed from Iran, China is already positioning itself for expanded trade with Iran. With China proposing a more formal military security relationship between itself, Russia, and Iran, we can expect further conventional military and cyber-warfare cooperation. Also see here and here.
What we see when we look at Iran is an incipient empire in the Middle East.
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