An open letter to the ordinary people of Iran

“Israel and Iran are moving closer to open warfare.”

There’s a well-known wise Persian proverb: “Risk – If one has to jump a stream and knows how wide it is, he will not jump. If he doesn’t know how wide it is, he’ll jump and six times out of 10, he’ll make it.”

In response, I say to the people of Iran, remember Shakespeare’s words: “A fool thinks himself to be wise, but a wise man knows himself to be a fool.” What are you?

Let’s reflect on the last 10 years.

Ten years ago, in May 2008, quoting sources from Agence France Presse (AFP) and Islamic Republic New Agency (IRNA), Iran’s Minister of Defense and Armed Forces Logistics Brigadier General Mostafa Mohammad-Najjar stated: “Iran’s strength is now regarded as Syrian strength which proves that the two sides enjoy mutual cooperation in all fields.”

That same month, Iranian media reported Iran and Syria had signed a new defence cooperation pact.

One month later, in June 2008 I reported in the jewishinfoNews, “Teheran had offered to share its nuclear experience with Syria. The offer came from Iran’s ambassador to Syria, Sayyed Ahmed Moussavi. He cited July 2008 as the date for their officials to meet. Iran’s offer to Syria, therefore, defied its obligations under the non-proliferation treaty by offering a nuclear capability to Syria.”

On or about December 4, 2008, the Kuwait News Agency (KUNA) reported, the Iranian envoy to the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM), Ali Asghar Soltanieh “condemned the shameful silence of Israel’s Western allies about the nuclear exclusivity of the Jewish state. Soltanieh called on the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to suspend Israel’s membership for its failure to join the [Non-Proliferation Treaty] NPT and its air strikes against nuclear facilities in Arab countries. He recalled the Israeli attacks against the Iraqi nuclear reactor in 1981 and the Syrian Al-Kiber military facility in September 2007.”

One year later, on September 27, 2009, Heshmatollah Falahatpishe, member of Majlis the national security and foreign policy commission, said “that construction of a new uranium enrichment plant indicated that Iran’s nuclear program is in progress on schedule, in spite of political pressures.  He added, Iran is able to build a plant for every field of its nuclear program, because, “we have gained access to the nuclear technology and this issue is not reversible, a fact that has already been acknowledged by IAEA analysts.” The MP added unlike Libya and Iraq, who bought nuclear technology in the markets, Iran, upon its own ability, has turned threats into an opportunity. (IRNA)

On November 30, 2008, your government continued on its quest to share its nuclear development by proposing Persian Gulf states form a consortium for developing nuclear power plants in the region.

“The proposal was made by the head of the Iran Atomic Energy Organization Reza Aqazadeh in his address to the opening session of the first International Seminar on Nuclear Power Plants, Environment and Sustainable Development,” reported the Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA).

And what was America’s response to all of this?  Let’s look at what Melanie Phillips, the British journalist and author, had to say at the time in the Spectator:

“The Iranians are amongst the most shrewd and sophisticated strategists around. They can see that the election of Obama is a signal of American weakness. The question no-one can currently answer, however, is whether President Obama will now repudiate his history and turn through sheer force of circumstances into a centrist and war leader – which would be remarkable but by no means unprecedented — or will remain true to his radical past. Upon the answer to that question, the ability of the free world to defend itself against the onslaught now depends.”

One year later, in August 2009, Anne Bayefsky writing in the National Review Online stated:

“Pres. Barack Obama has decided to let Iran acquire nuclear arms. Unless Israel acts in self-defense against the president’s wishes, the world’s most dangerous regime will command the world’s most dangerous weapon. Notwithstanding the White House’s misinformation campaign to the contrary, the evidence of the president’s agenda is incontrovertible.”

On June 12, 2011, Iranian PressTV published: “Iran will host an international summit on fighting terrorism in which officials from 80 countries as well as regional and international organizations will take part. The Global Fight against Terrorism International Summit will be held on June 25 and 26…

In the report, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad described the Zionist regime as the centre of world terrorism and oppression against innocent people.

“The reason for our insistence that the Zionist regime should be wiped out and vanished is that the Zionist regime is the main base for imposing oppression and harbors the main terrorists of the world,” Dr. Ahmadinejad said in a meeting here on Sunday with participants in the “Tehran International Conference on Global Alliance against Terrorism for Just Peace”.

In June 2012, jewishinfoNews reported, “Last month, former President of Spain José María Aznar visited Iran and met with elements of the Iranian regime, including Iranian Supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who was  “accompanied by a circle of Ayatollahs.”

Aznar stated the meeting was “something between tense and harsh.”  He added, “Israel to him [Khamenei] was a kind of historical cancer anomaly, a country to be put in flames and condemned to disappear.” Aznar, at a briefing recorded at the Jerusalem Centre for Public Affairs, said Khamenei stated very clearly to him, “the open confrontation against the US and Israel was inevitable…”

On November 8, 2013, in an exclusive report published by WND, formerly WorldNetDaily, they stated the “Fars News Agency, an outlet run by the Revolutionary Guards, last week posted an audiotape of excerpts of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s speeches to Palestinian officials and others with a title “Palestine will surely become free. In the audiotape, which is partly in Arabic, Khamenei gives blessings to those who fight against Israel and says, “Peace be upon the children of our nation, peace be upon the brave jihadists in Palestinian and Lebanese resistance. Today the Islamic world and the whole world are witnesses to great revelations that show a change in international affairs. The ayatollah promises a restructuring of the Middle East: “Palestine will be free, have no doubt in this. … Palestinians will return there and there will be a Palestinian government … and that is based on the truth revealed by God. The new Middle East will be … an Islamic Middle East.”

Which brings us to yesterday’s bleak news items.

Earlier yesterday, May 1, 2018, Debka dot com reported:  “A law empowering the [Israeli] security cabinet to authorize a war or order a substantial military operation without recourse to the full cabinet passed its second and third reading in the Knesset Monday night. The text contained a clause that vests in the prime minister and defence minister the authority to commit the country to fighting a war or conducting a major military operation without prior approval by the full cabinet or the security panel.”

A few hours later Debka reported, “Three US officials are quoted by NBC TV as disclosing that the air strike Sunday night which killed two dozen Iranian soldiers near Hama and targeted arms recently delivered from Iran was carried out by Israeli F-15s. This was seen as the latest sign that Israel and Iran are moving closer to open warfare. The targeted arms were recently delivered from Iran to the base of Iran’s 47th Brigade and included surface-to-air missiles. The same US sources claimed that the second air strike on an Iranian base near Aleppo was the work of unidentified Syrian rebels.  “On the list of the potentials for most likely live hostility around the world, the battle between Israel and Iran in Syria is at the top of the list right now,” said one senior US official.”

As Iranians, you will remember that during the Iran–Iraq war, beginning on September 22, 1980, an estimated 190,000 Iranian combat personnel were killed. How strange it must be now for you to admit that Israel supported you in your war.

“2,100 Iranians have been killed fighting in Syria the past few years”

Sadly, 38 years later in Syria, your children are still being killed. The Iranian regime revealed last month that “2,100 Iranians have been killed fighting in Syria the past few years, more than double the previous death toll announced 16 months ago…

“As a proportion of the population, that is a greater loss than the United States has suffered in all its wars in the Middle East since the start of the century…

“Iran has said it does not send combat troops to Syria, only military advisers, most of whom are Pasdar officers…

“Given that the United States has four times the population of Iran, the Iranian losses in Syria are proportionately about a quarter greater than the US losses throughout the region this century.”

Recently, Gregory Radabaugh, Director of the Joint Information Operations Warfare Center and Major Scott Stanford, Joint Information Operations Warfare Center U.S. Army, co-authors of “How the internet facilitates the propagation of terrorist narratives,” had a few choice words to say about your country:

“Iran’s aims are clear even to its own population: to facilitate its propagation of terror across the region from India to the Mediterranean. Yet Iran routinely claims Daesh was created by the United States, and that it has liberated Iraq and Syria from this threat. It is absurd that one of the primary sponsors of terrorism in the world, Iran, tries to couch any of what it is doing as counterterror.

“Iran’s meddling in Iraq is a main, causative factor in the emergence of Daesh because Zarqawi [the self-styled leader of “al-Qaida in Iraq] leveraged the harshness of the anti-Sunni environment in Iraq to grow AQI/ Daesh.”

“The Arabs or the Sunni Muslim nations are not going to lose any sleep should Iran go under, really go under.”

Some time ago, Major-General Vinod Saighal, a former general director of the Indian army’s military training and commander-in-chief of peacekeeping forces in the Near East said: “The Arabs or the Sunni Muslim nations are not going to lose any sleep should Iran go under, really go under. . . When the chips are down nobody is going to come to its aid.”

As it’s been said many times, your government’s primary objective is not protecting Iran’s national security, but to spread Shi’a Islamist ideology across the entire Middle East and Muslim world. Yet Shiites represent only an 11% minority of Muslims. And as Antisthenes, the Greek philosopher said: “Pay attention to your enemies, for they are the first to discover your mistakes.”

Notwithstanding the frolics of your Ayatollah Khamenei, you are a proud and educated people. Keep it that way! Fighting Iraqis, fighting in Syria, and now using your so-called “axis of resistance” (Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Yemen and Gaza), which forms the growing “Shiite Crescent” to do all your dirty work, is one thing. However, you Iranian people should remember Israel has been fighting in this war zone for 70 years. You are the military newcomers, already with thousands of your children returning to Iran in body bags. So, I suggest you pick your primary battles very carefully.

Too many of your own children have died.  Let your mothers now have a long and quiet life ahead of them!

Go in peace!