Who needs the Nobel Peace Prize when you can have the Biden War Prize? That's right, the Biden administration announced this week that it plans to give the Iranian regime another $10 billion in unfrozen assets from Oman, apparently as a small token of appreciation for helped orchestrate a war in the Middle East and targeting US troops in the region at least 56 times, wounding at least 56 US servicemen, many with traumatic brain injury -- in just one month! Where does everyone sign up?
The total number of attacks on US troops by the Iranian regime since US President Joe Biden assumed office, is (so far) 139: 83 before March, 56 since. This new $10 billion comes on top of the earlier "closer to $60 billion" it already gave the regime by not enforcing sanctions against it.
One fairy tale making the rounds is that the funds will only be used for "humanitarian purposes." As your pet cat knows, that just frees up other funds that would have been used for humanitarian purposes to do anything else the mullahs want– as they already announced about an earlier $6 billion deal that was reportedly quietly scuttled "for now." The mullahs' priorities no doubt include further funding their proxy militias -- a sophisticated example of outsourcing other people to die for you. Their proxies include Hamas, Hizballah, and the Houthis, all of which since October 7, been ganging up on Israel, while the mullahs stay home and watch. If a million Palestinians and Israelis die in the process, to the mullahs, at least it wasn't them. The dedicated funds that this new $10 billion will release can now be used to put the finishing touches on the mullahs' nuclear bomb – to threaten their Sunni neighbors in the Gulf, Europe, and above all, "The Great Satan, the United States. Iran's plans for cutting "The Great Satan" (and others) down to size are already underway in Cuba and throughout South America. Earlier this month, Israel helped Brazil thwart an attack by the Iran-backed terrorist group Hizballah on Brazil's Jews.
As Iranian dissident and Nobel Prize nominee Masih Alinejad reminded the world this week, "...for the Islamic Republic, eliminating Israel is [a] humanitarian cause!"
The Biden administration may be hoping to bribe Iran's mullahs not to rock the Middle East further until after the US presidential election on November 5, 2024 – but so long as the West does not recognize the sad fact that payments, concessions and appeasement have only emboldened the theocratic establishment of Iran and its new allies, Russia and especially China, the mullahs will simply feel more empowered -- and presumably act accordingly, if not on Biden's watch, on that of the next president. The blackmail price for a short-term, fake peace goes only one way: up.
The Iranian regime's organizations and the ministry of education have recently been promoting in their schools a new practice that has now become compulsory: "Hello Commander." Children are obliged to sing "Hello Commander! Sayyid Ali [Khamenei] has called his children [to mobilize]!" and they say that they are prepared to sacrifice their life for the "Commander". In response to this propaganda, a tweet read: "In his last years, like all other dictators, Hitler resorted to performance of a 'Hello Commander' song in schools to reassure his supporters but this didn't save him from defeat because it was too late".
One of the Iranian regime's most non-negotiable and fundamental revolutionary ideals is exporting its ideology and system of (Velayat e Faqih: Guardianship of the Islamic Jurist) to other countries. The late founder of the Islamic Republic, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, introduced a revolutionary notion in Islamic Shiite thought with the concept, which means an Islamic Shia clergy or an ayatollah should have custodianship and power over the people across the world, should rule over people and should be the final decision maker.
The regime calls this core mission, Jihad; it can be achieved only through hard power and violence, never through peace and negotiations. As the Islamic Republic's constitution points out: "The Army of the Islamic Republic of Iran and the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps ... will be responsible not only for guarding and preserving the frontiers of the country, but also for fulfilling the ideological mission of jihad in God's way; that is, extending the sovereignty of God's law throughout the world."
Ayatollah Khomeini repeated this important Islamic mission on several occasions. He famously said, "We shall export our revolution to the whole world," he said. "Until the cry there is no god but Allah resounds over the whole world, there will be struggle." [Emphasis added.]
From the Iranian regime's perspective, annihilating Israel and the Jews would presumably be a major breakthrough, giving them a dominance over the Muslim world, even greater than Saudi Arabia's.
For the revolutionary regime of Iran, all that matters is the triumph of Islam. "We do not worship Iran," stated the regime's current leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, "we worship Allah. For patriotism is another name for paganism. I say let this land [Iran] burn. I say let this land go up in smoke, provided Islam emerges triumphant in the rest of the world." "Islam," he added, "is politics or it is nothing."
To achieve this revolutionary ideal of creating one nation under Islam, the ruling mullahs believe that whoever does not obey them, including other Muslims, is an infidel and must be eliminated. As Ayatollah Khomeini warned, "If one permits an infidel to continue in his role as a corrupter of the earth, the infidel's moral suffering will be all the worse. If one kills the infidel, and this stops him from perpetrating his misdeeds, his death will be a blessing to him." He adds, "All those against the revolution must disappear and quickly be executed."
The regime's key mission is securely incorporated in Iran's current constitution:
"The constitution provides the necessary basis for ensuring the continuation of the revolution at home and abroad. In particular, in the development of international relations, the constitution will strive with other Islamic and popular movements to prepare the way for the formation of a single world community."
Iran's predatory, radical regime, whose mission is to "Export the Revolution" bring Islamist rule to the rest of the world by means of its military and terror groups, will not stop its Jihad and alter its aims through appeasement. From the regime's perspective, annihilating Israel and the Jews would be a major breakthrough, giving them a dominance over the Muslim world, even greater, they might expect, than Saudi Arabia's.
Sadly, the $10 billion looks suspiciously like a "pretty please" bribe not to try to drive the US out of the region this year; instead, wait for next year.
In the 1930s, Britain pursued a policy of appeasing Hitler and Nazi Germany in the hope of avoiding a war. To the contrary, as we know, that view only empowered Germany to invade and attempt to take over other nations. The policy of appeasement led to World War ll.
The solution is not to give Iran $10 billion as a prize for practicing extensive regional aggression and engineering mass-murder. Real solutions would include cutting the flow of funds by re-imposing -- and enforcing -- primary and secondary sanctions; incapacitating the port from which Iran sends oil to China; sending Ayatollah Khamenei and the leaders of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRCG) pictures of their homes; making the ruling mullahs seriously aware of military options, such as taking out the training bases and leadership of the IRGC, and employing significant military force when required -- for instance now.
Dr. Majid Rafizadeh is a business strategist and advisor, Harvard-educated scholar, political scientist, board member of Harvard International Review, and president of the International American Council on the Middle East. He has authored several books on Islam and US Foreign Policy. He can be reached at Dr.Rafizadeh@Post.Harvard.Edu
Harvey Radnor