The Iranians are on a religious crusade that can only be stopped by deadly force. Pictured: a mural of the Battle of Chaldiran.
On August 23rd, 1514 on the Chaldiran plain in northwest Iran, the Safavid Shiite Muslims clashed with Sunni Muslims from the expansive Ottoman Empire. Believing that their leader, Ismail, was the twelfth infallible imam of Islamic teaching, the Safavid troops fearlessly charged into battle with inadequate training and archaic military equipment. Needless to say, the Safavids were soundly defeated, and their supposedly infallible leader slipped away from the battlefield and died ten years later. Today, the Safavid Empire – now called Iran – is attempting yet again to assert its authority over the known world; but this time around, the military equipment involved is neither archaic nor inadequate. And frighteningly, the same disturbed rhetoric that propelled thousands of Safavid cavalrymen to ride to their deaths almost five hundred years ago has only intensified.
In a recent speech to a crowd of youths in Tehran, Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Khamenei cheerfully proclaimed that Allah’s “divine promise” would be fulfilled through the destruction of Israel and America. This divine promise is, according to Khamenei and thousands of radicalized Muslims around the world, the extermination of all those who do not believe in the Islamic faith. This promise is what has driven radical Islamic terrorists to fly fully-fueled jet airplanes into the World Trade Center and to slaughter innocent Israeli schoolchildren with well-placed rocket strikes. And it is this promise that has been the motive behind Iran’s hostile actions toward the United States and Israel. Yet, President Barack Obama and other world leaders continue to champion economic sanctions as the solution to this inherently religious dilemma.
Thus far, however, economic sanctions have proven to be absolutely worthless. Iran has continued to pursue an aggressive development of its conventional armaments in spite of these deterrent sanctions, and Iran has also continued to enrich its nuclear material for the creation of a powerful nuclear warhead. As a theocracy, the government of Iran is meant not to serve the people whom it controls but to serve the violent and vengeful God to which it is devoted. Thus, no matter how much the people of Iran suffer under economic sanctions, Iranian leaders will persist in their defiance of international authorities to accomplish their publicly-proclaimed religious objective: the utter annihilation of the United States and Israel.
Iran only offers to negotiate to buy time and prevent a foreign strike from crippling its nuclear program.
For the same reason, nuclear negotiations between the United States and Iran have been fruitless. In fact, they have emerged as a positive for Iran’s nuclear program. Negotiations have consumed years of precious time, yet have won no concessions from Iranian authorities. And over these many years, Iran has been slowly building a nuclear weapon. Today, Iran is closer than it has ever been to acquiring a nuclear capability, and neither Israel nor the United States can afford to bear the devastating loss-of-life and the catastrophic economic costs that would be incurred by a nuclear strike. However, there is still time for the United States to play its winning hand.
Towards the end of World War II, imperial Japan refused to capitulate to the Allies’ demand for an unconditional surrender. Because of this, a troubling choice lay before the Allied Forces. A full-scale invasion and suppression of the Japanese Islands would take the lives of more than a million Americans and even more Japanese. However, by choosing to drop atomic bombs upon Japan, the Allies made a hard but necessary decision that saved millions in the long run. Similarly, a devastating preemptive strike upon Iran’s military installments, missile stockpiles, and nuclear facilities would save the lives of more than seven million Israelis, who would otherwise be at the mercy of Iran’s dangerous weaponry and zealous pursuit of jihadist genocide.
The stakes are too high for the global community to accept anything less than a comprehensive dismantling of Iran’s offensive capabilities. A preventative strike would eliminate or severely limit Iran’s ability to attack its enemies and would thus inaugurate a lasting peace and security for Israel and the world.
