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Alan N. Levy
Author of Political Thrillers

An American’s Perspective: All Fiction Aside, the Iranian Threat is Quite Real

Intelligence communities of all nations have grand, and often bizarre, plans to destabilize and influence their enemies.

Several years ago, I read a fascinating novel entitled, Red Star Rogue. It’s based on the supposedly factual event in 1968 of a Russian submarine sinking while it attempted to launch a nuclear weapon at a West Coast target within the United States. The submarine’s launch point was designated at an optimal position within the Pacific Ocean so that the US Navy would conclude that the submarine was Chinese rather than Russian, and the sub had been modified to further the belief that the submarine was of the Chinese Navy. The goal of those deep within the Kremlin’s darkest planning rooms was to watch nuclear war commence between the United States and China, with Russia as the lone and unscathed victor. The Nixon Administration purportedly spent nearly half a billion dollars in order to recover the submarine from its deep water grave, leaving no doubt as to the submarine’s Russian origin.

The author’s introductory comment states, “Red Star Rogue reads like something straight out of a Tom Clancy novel, but it is all true. Today our greatest fear is that terrorists may someday acquire a nuclear weapon and use it against us. In fact, they have already tried.”

Enter the greatest current threat to this nation, the Islamic Republic of Iran.

Its leaders leave no doubt about their ambitions, and if allowed to create or purchase nuclear weapons, I have no doubt Tehran will use them. These are their words,

“Hojatoleslam Ali Shirazi, the Ayatollah Khamenei’s representative in the Revolutionary Guard: “The Zionist regime will soon be destroyed, and this generation will be witness to its destruction.”

“Ayatollah Khamenei: “This barbaric, wolflike & infanticidal regime of Israel which spares no crime has no cure but to be annihilated.”

“Hossein Salami, the deputy head of the Revolutionary Guard: “We will chase you [Israelis] house to house and will take revenge for every drop of blood of our martyrs in Palestine, and this is the beginning point of Islamic nations awakening for your defeat.”

Granted, those statements by Iran’s leaders are pointed squarely at Israel, but I also remain convinced that given an appropriate delivery system, Iran would eagerly use similar nuclear weapons against the United States, especially if they could achieve plausible deniability in the process.

I posted an article a couple of weeks ago that calls for bringing Iran to her knees with military force and using air supremacy as our principal weapon. My harsh justification is simple, “Better now than after nuclear weapons explode on our soil.” And certainly better than after nuclear weapons have been launched at Tel Aviv. I do not casually take that position. I’m advocating taking lives and actions that might very well cost American lives, in the mix. But our one true ally in the Middle East is the State of Israel, we cannot desert her, nor can we sit idly and watch Iran obtain nuclear weapons.

In the first of the two Democratic Party debates the other night, one candidate actually stated that the original Iran nuclear deal was a good one, since it delayed Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons for twenty years. Is that our definition of a “good” deal? To design a pact wherein we acknowledge the expectation that our enemy can cause us massive harm in a mere two decades? To put our heads in the sand and say, “This problem is my child’s, not mine?” Of course, I applaud a president, in spite of his arrogance and eccentricities (and am I ever being polite at this point, for I find little that he says or does that honors the office of the presidency) who walked us away from that absurd agreement.

There are surely others who agree with my (reluctant) stance on the need to attack Iran.

Just to name a few, The United States has, at the core of its intelligence agencies, the Intelligence and Security Command, the Central Intelligence Agency, the Defense Intelligence Agency, the Office of Intelligence and Counterintelligence, the Bureau of Intelligence and Research, the Office of Terrorism and Research, the Marine Corps Intelligence Activity, the National Reconnaissance Agency, the National Security Agency, and the Office of Naval Intelligence.

Allow me to imagine the heart and mind of just one of those who serves with a deep sense of patriotism within one of those agencies. And for the sake of this discussion, he serves within the CIA. He is one of our best clandestine planners, and he grasps massive presidential and congressional hesitation to enter yet another war in the Middle East, especially as we are currently unprovoked. But eventually, an incident magically occurs, and it is significant enough to cause us to act. Is it cleverly orchestrated, or real? Is it a figment of someone’s imagination, such as the claim that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, or something similar to the elaborate plot by Russia to orchestrate a nuclear war between the United States and China? We might never know. Given the severity of the incident, the United States moves quickly and attacks on Iran’s infrastructure commence. A reluctant United States has entered yet another war in the Middle East, but this time our adversarial nation has more than 500,000 men-at-arms.

I remain convinced that we have no viable choices here. Do I believe that Iran damaged those two tanker ships in their zeal to commit aggressive acts? I’m 99.5% sure they did, but I also think it odd that one unexploded mine just happened to be left behind as evidence of Iran’s involvement in the attack.

This comment is surely thought provoking … “The end justifies the means.” We cannot allow silence to ease the tensions between the United States and Iran. If the attacks on those two tankers were insufficient to precipitate a US military response, and in the absence of Iran doing something more aggressive and inappropriate, then the gentleman I mentioned at the CIA needs to place a broad stroke on the situation that will evoke a call to arms. I sincerely hope his plan does not cost precious, innocent lives, but if the product of his imagination yields our call to arms, then I commend his genius.

Again, we have no choice. To wait until Iran unleashes nuclear weapons at Israel and this nation is not an option, and to those who feel a false sense of security because our cities are several thousand miles away from Tehran and we are aware that Iran has no long range missiles, let me mention Nazi Germany’s Prufstand VII project … a simple towed array of two V2 rockets pulled across the Atlantic by a German U-boat with the goal of launching those weapons at New York City. Two insignificant explosions, but the psychological damage to the United States in 1944 would have been significant. In my novel, The Tenth Plague, to be released by Chickadee Prince Books on September 15th, Iran has copied that technology, launched submarines, and their towed arrays contain missiles armed with nuclear warheads. The thought behind my chapters is this. Iran does not need advanced missiles to bring nuclear weapons to bear on this nation. Nazi engineers solved that problem seventy years ago.

Any President of the United States will express disdain for entering into a conflict with Iran, so he or she must be prodded by an event, whether it is factual or orchestrated by our intelligence community. My position on all this is unfortunate, perhaps tragic. But it is not possible to negotiate with these Jihadists, nor can this or any future administration cause Iran to divert from their stated goals.

While we Americans may change our policies and priorities at the end of 2020 and every few years thereafter, the Iranians are unwavering and must be reckoned with. And now, as opposed to later.

About the Author
American author. My latest novel is entitled, "The Tenth Plague", release date to be September 15, 2019 by Chickadee Prince Books in Brooklyn, N.Y. It is set in the year 2028, Iran has nuclear weapons and Mossad is poised to eliminate the threat. According to Kirkus Reviews, the "prose is crisp" and some scenes are "breathtaking." Hope you read it, and what I predict in the novel never happens. Seventy-six years old with a passion for writing that seems to keep me young. BS in Mathematics and Engineering Physics, MS in Statistics, University of Illinois. Columnist for Audere Magazine, an online publication, Zionist, staunch supporter of Israel, and I write to awaken people to the perils of failing to learn the lessons of history.