Lifting the Iron Veil

The fateful actions by Iranian mullahs to remove IAEA seals on centrifuge components and on uranium hexaflouride cylinders at the once-secret Natanz nuclear facility have rightly produced (finally) calls for referral of Iran to the UN Security Council for future punitive actions. The United States and Iranian opposition have consistently maintained that the referral is the right thing to do and long overdue. The so-called EU3- Britain, Germany, and France- now appear resigned to pursue this serious matter in front of the Security Council. So much and so long for the modus operandi of "continuing dialogue", which in effect, amounted to a straitjacketing the decision-making with regard to Iran. To date, the United States lacks a credible and coherent policy on what to do with a theocratic regime that has wreaked so much havoc in the middle east and elsewhere.

Much has also been written on dealing with the crisis on military terms; whether Israel or the US would jointly or solely strike at Iranian suspected nuclear facilities, something that has not been lost to the terror mongers in Tehran. Rafsanjani, the Iranian equivalent of a teflon politician, said in a sermon on Wednesday (January 4, 2006), "If our enemy and opponents take an irrational and unjust step, they will do injustice to the world … We cannot give up our right [to a nuclear program] and they should know we will achieve this right,”. This is code argot for terrorism. At every turn and each time the Iranian regime has found itself mired in a crisis, it has dispatched one of its notables to make similar-sounding proclamations. Even more direct, Khaled Meshaal, the Hamas chief, said so last month in Tehran, "If Israel attacks Iran then Hamas will widen and increase its confrontation of Israelis." Terrorism by proxy was perfected by the mullahs in Tehran; witness what Israel faces in Hezbollah and in Hamas. The common-day expressions "international terrorism" and "suicide bombing" entered our lexicon since a day in October 1983 in Beirut, when a suicide truck bomb on the US Marine barracks inflicted the largest single-day casualty on the American forces since the Vietnam war.

This bombing is a singular event in the modern history of the middle east, for how it has politically reverberated throughout the region. Soon after this bombing, the United States ended its military presence in Lebanon, an action that to this date is viewed by the Iranian mullahs as a direct response to their blatant act of terror. We posit that it is in this context that any analysis of current or past events with regard to the Iranian mullahs must proceed. Indecision and cajoling by the international community have been interpreted as weakness and acted upon vigorously and decisively by the mullahs. Witness the current developments in Iraq. The terror paymasters in Tehran enjoy a tremendous advantage in Iraq; their proxy organization, the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), bred and fed in Tehran, now appears to have a virtual monopoly in the next Iraqi parliament. On the ground in Iraq, the British have acknowledged, echoing the sentiment of the US defense department, that bomb-makers targeting their forces in southern Iraq have been trained by an elite arm of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards, the so-called Qods or Jerusalem regiment. The brazen nature of Iranian interference and meddling in Iraq is evident in last August abduction and killing of Steven Vincent, who reported on the infiltration of Shiite militia, supported by Iran's intelligence units, into Basra police force, days after his report appeared in the New York Times.

Iran's nuclear portfolio must be sent to the Security Council and now. This much should be crystal-clear. No further dialogue or transparency, as the IAEA Director, Dr. General Mohamed ElBaradei, has suggested will pass muster. Never mind that to the Iranian mullahs honesty is as foreign as democracy. The new Iranian chieften, Ahmadi-nejad, is a bona fide revolutionary guard who earned his stripes by torturing the regime's opponents in prisons and by spreading the message of hate and fear across the middle east and beyond.

Iran has the natural and human resources and technical know-how to conduct research in fissile technology and to develop it. The harsh realities of a post-war Iraq and the rising discontent in Iran call for a sound and wise policy that would address both concerns. The United States should make every effort to break out of the legacy of Irangate which sought to cultivate “moderates” in a fundamentalist regime. A coherent and cogent Iran policy would seek to bring about change by encouraging and supporting the democratic opposition and organized resistance to the mullahs. After all, the greatest stakeholders in this dangerous game of nuclear roulette, are the people of Iran who have suffered so much and have lost so many in their struggle to lift the Iron Veil. Only a democratic and internationalized Iran would guarantee a just peace in the region and security for all; Israel included. India, as a possible model, comes to mind. The democratic world, is the least bit concerned with a nuclear India. We do not suspect or have reasons to expect that India will use its weapons on us.