The Iranian Job
By: Ret Colonel Charbel Barakat
April 15/08

During the Shah time Iran was becoming one of the major players in the Middle East region, being an oil country with a liberal regime and an ally to the West at the borders of the Soviet Union, the Shah had the best army in the Gulf very well equipped and trained in the Western military academies. We still remember the celebration of Persepolis with the fortune the Shah spent to show the glory of the ancient Persia. The French President then, Mr. Ponpidou, refused to assist to this celebration, to which all the world leaders were invited, claming that it is not fair to spend so much money for such a celebration while the Iranian people is in need of it.

Less than a decade later, after the agreement that ended the Vietnam War and repatriated the US Army from South Asia, the Shah, who couldn’t stop the oil embargo to the west in 1973, was moved by Ayatollah Khomeni the religious leader successively refuged in Iraq and France. He died in exile in Egypt and Iran became, for the first time, the Mother of the Islamic Religion and the exporter of the Islamic Revolution.

With the fourth Iranian President after the Islamic revolution 25 years later, that student who was a known figure in the American embassy hostage’s problem in the eighties, where Iran is now? and what can we expect from such a regime and such a President?

Ahmadi Najad the radical Moslem, one of the followers of Ayatollah Khamenei and one of the leaders of the so called Revolutionary Guards, is drawing the future of Iran and pushing it to become a nuclear power. Najad is preparing for the worst, he knows that the International community will not allow him to get nuclear weapons, but he insists in defying it. Where is he going with Iran and what is his real goal?

Some of the Arab leaders, since the collapse of the Iraqi regime of Saddam, are talking about the Shiite Crescent which will include Iran, Iraq, the Syrian Alawet’s regime, the Lebanese Shiites and may be the Shiite’s Azerbaijan. They are claiming that there is a plan to divide the Moslem power spreading from the Chinese Central Asia to the Atlantic shores and from the borders of Russia to the African equator. This Billion People Entity will threat the European Union as well as Russia, India, the Far East including China and even the US. The world has to be aware of its expansion for at least three main reasons; first its oil reserve that happen to be ¾ of the world’s reserve, second the manpower that is expanding all over the Industrial countries and third the easy way to manipulate these masses through religion. So, by dividing this Moslem world in two with the Shiite Crescent, we will have the Eastern Sunni countries of the South old Soviet Union plus Pakistan, Afghanistan and even Bangladesh, cut from the Arabs of the Middle East and Africa. Turkey then, separated from its Sunni brothers in the East and the South, could be contained within the European Union as a modern secular country. As for Indonesia and Malaysia, which have always been separated with a non Moslem continent namely India, will not be a problem.

The war in Iraq between Al Qaeda and Al Mehdi Army could be the spark that will engage in such a project, but the Sunni regimes at the Gulf countries, and especially Saudi Arabia and Egypt, are not pushing into more hatred to the Shiites, they are even trying to contain Iran. It seams, though, that the Iranian price is too high, in the same time the Iranians, in their offensive, are trying to steal the main Arab and Moslem cause of Palestine through Hezbollah and Hamas.

The Iranian President Najad is threatening to erase Israel from the map, he is using an old Nazis speech, in this way, and with the help of the Jewish State who is giving Hezbollah, the Lebanese Iranian subject, more opportunities to show as the only one to defy Israel, Iran is getting more chances to win the sympathy of the revolutionary Moslems in the Arab world who sees in Israel the devil. If this Iranian tool (Hezbollah) is not defeated, the Sunni regimes will have nothing but the religious differences to defend their position.

Iran is for sure working to get nuclear weapons because then it will have the supremacy over all the other players of the region out of Pakistan, but in the same time it is trying to push the US to control the Pakistani nuclear weapons in helping growing the threats of Al Qaeda which is influencing more and more the Pakistani society.

The Iranians want to have a role in the control of this region and some of them are still dreaming the same Shah dream of the ancient Persia, they do not differ from him much in spending the oil money on a show of power, they are playing the Israeli card fully, trying to push the Western countries and the Arabs in the same time to give them what they need. They know that the Western societies are easily maneuvered when the fate of Israel is in question, and the Arab regimes consider Israel as the best enemy they can use to control the ground when needed.

But in this game between Arabs and Persians, or between Shiites and Sunnites, will Israel accept a hostile nuclear arsenal threatening its future, and if we can imagine a possible deal between Israelis and Iranians in the future, will Europe, threatened by a nuclear missiles’ deployment on the East Mediterranean shores that reaches certainly its capitals, accept to let the Iranians have nuclear weapons?

Even if the Iranians are bluffing and trying to foul both the Arabs and the West to get more power in the new Middle East final set up, is the US ready to just keep the destiny of the world energy into the hands of the Arabs or the Iranians, and what about the other world’s players then?

The weeks to come may be very decisive in the fate of the region and in the future of the main Middle Eastern players, but will we assist to the end of the Moslem revolution and by then to AL Qaeda’s problem too, or are we getting into a new cold war between new players; Iran leading the Axis on one side, and the G8 as the Allies on the other, and what will be then the position of the neighboring two nuclear “billion people entities” India and China?

Ret Colonel Charbel Barakat
Toronto- Canada
Apr 15/2008