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Alan N. Levy
Author of Political Thrillers

An American’s Perspective: Iran to Label U.S. Military Personnel Terrorists

I had to Google this to get it right …

From “Brer Rabbit and the Tar Baby.”

“’Drown me! Roast me! Hang me! Do whatever you please,’ said Brer Rabbit. ‘Only please, Brer Fox, please don’t throw me into the briar patch.’

“’The briar patch, eh?’ said Brer Fox. ‘What a wonderful idea! You’ll be torn into little pieces!’

“Grabbing up the tar-covered rabbit, Brer Fox swung him around and around and then flung him head over heels into the briar patch. Brer Rabbit let out such a scream as he fell that all of Brer Fox’s fur stood straight up. Brer Rabbit fell into the briar bushes with a crash and a mighty thump. Then there was silence.

“Brer Fox cocked one ear toward the briar patch, listening for whimpers of pain. But he heard nothing. Brer Fox cocked the other ear toward the briar patch, listening for Brer Rabbit’s death rattle. He heard nothing.

“Then Brer Fox heard someone calling his name. He turned around and looked up the hill. Brer Rabbit was sitting on a log combing the tar out of his fur with a wood chip and looking smug.

“’I was bred and born in the briar patch, Brer Fox,’ he called. ‘Born and bred in the briar patch.’

“And Brer Rabbit skipped away as merry as a cricket while Brer Fox ground his teeth in rage and went home.”

I read this morning that the United States is poised to designate the Islamic Republic of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards a terrorist organization. Great idea, but really quite meaningless so far, unless we’re prepared to do something about that.

And immediately, Heshmatollah Falahatpisheh, Chairman of the National Security and Foreign Policy Commission and head of the Iranian parliament’s national security committee, warned that if the United States moves forward with that declaration, Iran will follow suit and declare the entire U.S. military a terrorist organization in retaliation.

Classic Sir Isaac Newton, “For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.”

“The briar patch, eh?” Throw us there, will they? Consider us dastardly demons, evildoers, and label us as such? Oh, no! Does this mean that Iran may no longer abide by classic rules of engagement in warfare or by the Geneva Convention in the treatment of prisoners? If Tehran rules that all U.S. military personnel are terrorists, Iran is warning the world that even more brutal treatment of her enemies’ combatants will be a gruesome fact of life. We should not take this semi-comical statement by Iran’s leaders lightly, and I, for one, need only quote what we already know in response.

“An eye for an eye”, “a tooth for a tooth” or the law of retaliation, is the Islamic principle that a person who has injured another person is to be penalized to a similar degree, and the person inflicting such punishment should be the injured party. Muslim countries that use Islamic Sharia law, such as Iran or Saudi Arabia, apply the “eye for an eye” rule literally.

The Quds Force or Qods Corps is a unit of Iran‘s Revolutionary Guards chartered to carry out unconventional warfare and intelligence activities and is responsible for extraterritorial operations. It is commanded by Major General Qasem Soleimani, and the Quds Force supports non-state activities in many foreign countries that include close ties with Lebanese Hezbollah, Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, Yemeni Houthis, and Shia militias in Iraq, Syria, and Afghanistan. The United States has designated the Quds Force a supporter of terrorism since 2007.

“An eye for an eye.”

The headquarters of the Quds Force is in the former U.S. Embassy to Iran, the facility that was overrun in 1979, and its coordinates in Tehran, for mapping purposes are these, 35°42′29″N 51°25′26″E / 35.708°N 51.424°E. If I can learn those coordinates in less than ten minutes of research online, then surely the Fire Control Officer on board the Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyer USS Laboon on station in the Persian Gulf knows them as well. And with the appropriate green light, that warship can place a BGM-109 Tomahawk missile, speeding at 550 mph with a warhead consisting of 1,000 pounds of high explosives, down the chimney of the Quds sanctuary.

If the Islamic Republic of Iran brazenly and foolishly treats our citizens with brutality, whether they are uniformed combatants or not, and treats in a similar manner the citizens of our only true ally in the region, the State of Israel, those in Tehran must ultimately understand what Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto said after the Imperial Japanese Navy’s attack at Pearl harbor on December 7th, 1941.

“I fear all we have done is to awaken a sleeping giant and fill him with a terrible resolve.”

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.