Following an overwhelming military victory in Iraq, the Bush administration has renewed its pursuit of creating a Palestinian terrorist state, instead of focusing on the premier sponsor of anti-American terrorism: Iran.
While the administration once again entangles itself in “peace” talks with Palestinian terrorists, freedom-loving rebels in Iran have stepped up the revolt against their Islamic fundamentalist rulers who enforce religious social decrees, impose strict censorship, and imprison or execute political opponents.
Iran remains the ideological center of the America-hatred pervading the Islamic Middle East. That theocracy began warring with America when its rulers took 52 Americans hostage in 1979. Highlights of Iran’s terrorism on Americans include the bombing and murder of 241 Marines in Beirut in 1983 and the killing of 19 US servicemen bombed at Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia in 1996.
More recently, intelligence sources believe Iran harbors Al Qaeda operatives who orchestrated the bombing of a Western residential compound in Saudi Arabia last month that killed nine Americans. Iran sends Islamic agitators and militants into both US-controlled Iraq and Afghanistan, and sponsors such terrorist groups as Hezbollah, Hamas and Islamic Jihad in Lebanon, Israel, Gaza and the West Bank.
In January 2002, Israel intercepted a ship from Iran delivering 50 tons of weapons to the terrorist Palestinian Authority. A month before this, former Iranian “President” Hashemi Rafsanjani stated publicly that when the Islamic world has nuclear weapons “the strategy of the West will hit a dead end, since a single atomic bomb has the power to completely destroy Israel.” Last month, an Iranian opposition group discovered another secret nuclear facility in Natanz, undoubtedly part of Iran’s advanced nuclear weapons program.
Clearly, Iran is the root of Islamic terrorism, and destroying its theocracy would be a major victory in the war on terrorists. But in this war the Bush administration takes an inverted, appeasing approach. Bush not only fails to declare that the US will us force to topple Iran’s regime; he’s busy appeasing Palestinian terrorists that are mere heads of the Iranian hydra.
Meanwhile, the Iranian rebels fighting to establish a government that separates mosque and state and upholds free speech will stage a nationwide general strike on July 9 that they hope will spell the end for their ruling mullahs and ayatollahs.
Since September 11, 2001, these rebels consisted largely of students who demonstrated monthly in Tehran. But last week Michael Ledeen, author of “The War Against the Terror Masters,” told Fox News that the rebels are now comprised of up to 90 percent families taking to the streets daily in various cities. Moreover, whereas they once demanded reforms to the regime, they now call for its overthrow and for the head of supreme leader Ayatollah Khamenei. The regime is now “obviously desperate,” Ledeen added, and distrusts its own army, since many of its commanders said they would not fire upon the protestors.
Obviously, the time is ripe for the Bush administration to topple this regime. Last week Bush gave his usual brief comment about circumstances in Iran, stating that the protestors need to know “America stands squarely by their side.”
Cartoon by Cox and Forkum
“For us, what the President said
