Iran

Axis of  Evil

1) Iran helped bring down the Carter administration. On April 24th, 1980, helicopters from Operation Eagle Claw went down in the desert in a failed attempt to rescue American hostages held in Teheran.  So we can be grateful to Iran for one thing!

2) Iran nearly brought down the Reagan administration with the Iran Contra scandal which exploited Reagan's naiveté and better nature.

3) From 1980 to 1988 Iran waged a pointless and devastating war with Saddam's Iraq that claimed the lives of 1 to 1 1/2 million of its young men.

4) Iran is a theocratic government that systematically denies human rights to 1/2 of its citizens.

5) Iran is a closed police state where as much as 20% of the total population is in the Basij which is a para-military force. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basij)  Iran is a what Natan Sharansky would call a "fear  state" not a free state.  The Case for Democracy, Natan Sharansky, 2004.  http:/www.amzn.com/1586483544

6) Iran is positioned on a virtual lake of oil (3rd largest oil reserves in the world with over 150 billion barrels) that allows it to finance terrorism throughout the Middle East, shipping  IEDs to Iraq and funding Hezbollah.

7)  Iran's leader since 2005, Ahmadinejad (or "I'm  a dinner jacket") , is given to making a variety of outrageous statements such as denying the holocaust, calling for Israel to "vanish from the pages of time," denying the existence of gays in Iran, and making "truther" claims about 9/11 on his most recent visit to the UN in 2010.  Every time he says something ridiculous the price of oil seems to gyrate upwards.  How moderate would your political views be, dear reader, if your net worth increased every time you made an outrageous political statement?


8) Blessed are the Peacemakers, but not in Iran where the assassins of peacemakers are honoured; there is a street in Tehran named after Khaled El-Islambouli, the assassin of Anwar Sadat.  http://al-shorfa.com/cocoon/meii/xhtml/en_GB/features/meii/features/2008/08/06/feature-02  A movie, Assassination of a Pharaoh, glorifying El-Islambouli aired on Iranian Television.  Last year, El-Islambouli was honoured with a mural in Tehran. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/1117379.stm

9)  Iran's actions, particularly with regard to its ongoing development of nuclear weapons, are far more alarming than Ahmadinejad's statements.

10)  Iran plotted and funded an attempted assassination of a Saudi diplomat in Washington DC just last year.  The plot was foiled by US intelligence forces, but had it been carried out, it would have been an "act of war." http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/us-iran-tied-terror-plot-washington-dc-disrupted/story?id=14711933#.T22zSmC5emc

Commander Kelly asks, "Where is Iran on the OODA loop?" and "Where is the West positioned in relation to Iran on the OODA loop?" (See earlier post, Colonel John Boyd 1/6/12)

Our Choice on Iran

More background on Iran