Iranian Israeli War

The famous greenhouses in Gaza.

Now used to hide terrorist tunnels.

Things may be about to heat up in Iran’s Gaza Front. Hundreds of Hamas terrorists are being sent to Iran for advanced training by Republican Guards. Also advanced weapons such as those used by Hezbollah are also being smuggled in through our friend Egypt. Those who said giving up Gaza would only result in a new staging area for terrorism against Israel were unfortunately right; instead of taking this opportunity to show the world that they could govern a state civilly and successfully they instead turned Gaza into a violent circus fought over by differing sects, criminal gangs, clans, and terrorist cells like Hamas, Fatah, and Al Qaeda. Regardless of whether Iran orders things to heat up or the IDF decides it’s had enough of daily rocket attacks Iran’s Gaza Front is about to erupt.

Update: DEBKA file has a report that the Mujahiddin Brigades units that are firing Al Buraq 2 rockets into Israel at a rate greater than two a day, despite a so called truce, are commanded by an Iranian Revolutionary Guards officer. Also, the US forces in Iraq are holding two of five Iranians captured during a raid on the compound of Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, a high ranking Shia politician. The Iranians are implicated in the smuggling of weapons to Iraqi terrorists that have used them against American and Iraqi forces as well as civilians.

Our friends the Iraqis

When Shia and Sunni in Iraq kill each other it is easy to take into effect the underlying political stakes behind the violence. This goes hand in hand with trying to found an Islamic Democracy where Islam and politics can not be separated. That one Islamic principle, no separation between church and state, is why many claim that Islam and freedom can’t coexist and therefore an Islamic Democracy is an oxymoron. When Shia and Sunni kill Christians, Jews, Yizidis, Mandeans, Baha’is, and Kaka’I, none of whom have any political power in Iraq, it is just plain religious intolerance and nowhere is this more prevalent than in Iraq. Nina Shea explains the plight of non-Muslims in Iraq at NRO. Why the US stays silent on this topic is beyond me, other than hoping more bad news out of Iraq will go away if ignored by Bush.

Basiji Book Burners

Most Iranians are proud of their Persian heritage. The Basiji, enforcers of Iran's Islamic codes, are not. Militant Basiji gathered up and burned Persian classics and history books in Tabriz, Iran. Shades of 1930's Germany but please don't call them Islamofascists.The Basiji are doing far worse than book burning, they are hunting down students who gave Ahmadinejad a less than warm welcome when he spoke last week at Amir Kabir University. The Amir Kabir Newsletter reports that three of the students photographed have gone into hiding. Meanwhile we hear nothing from the international community or our own President. That would be Bush, the one who said:

And to the Iranian people, I say tonight: As you stand for your own liberty, America stands with you.

There has been precious little support for Iranian dissidents from Mr. Bush so far but now may be a critical time when any support would have far more serious consequences to the regime. Supreme Leader Khamenei is dying and should reach room temperature sometime this spring. The Mullahs sent a message to Ahmadinejad this last election; he will not become Supreme Leader. The coverage of the Iranian President’s humiliation at the university by official Iranian press also sent the same message. Ahmadinejad and his supporters will not take this lightly so now would be a great time for the people of Iran to rise up while the Mullahs and the Revolutionary Guard are at odds. The Bush administration should tell the opposition that we will render every bit of aid, including enforcing a no fly zone should civil war break out. Besides the students there are others need our help. Christians are being arrested in time for Christmas. Bus drivers are arrested for being unionized. Arabs are sentenced to death for being Arab.

Iran War

Damn, Iran is at war with Bahrain too?

It has been reported that the Iranian government has formed and financed more than 24 Shia organizations in Bahrain. Each organization has been allocated one particular task but the overall objective of all of them is to overthrow the traditional government of Bahrain and install an Iranian style Islamic Republic. In the recent elections in Bahrain, the Shia coalition secured 23 seats of the parliament. Although they officially accepted the results of elections, they have now started a campaign for destabilising the system which is one of the most competent systems in the Arab world.
The Shia community always had a major share in political and economic power in Bahrain although the ruling family is Sunni. After the elections a Shia was appointed as the deputy Prime Minister and another one as the Minister of State for Foreign Affairs. There are other Shia politicians in the government too. In spite of being part of the government, the Shia groups of Bahrain are following the same strategies that Hamas is implementing in Palestine and Hezbollah is carrying out in Lebanon.
The process of the destabilisation of Bahrain has begun. Al-Wefaq Islamic Society led by Chairman Ali Salman is playing the same role that the Hezbollah of Lebanon is playing.

Update: The Sudanese Thinker has Iran meddling in Sudan also.

Ahmadinejad's Pilgrims

It looks like the Champion of the dispossessed, the Global Everyman is going to shake things up in the upcoming Hajj ceremonies.

The Islamic Republic itself is expected to send 200,000 pilgrims, representing almost 10 percent of the total. Saudi officials claim that some 5 percent of the Iranian pilgrims have always been identified as members of the Islamic Revolutionary Corps and the Islamic Republic's various intelligence services. This year, however, the profiles of Iranian applicants for pilgrimage visas indicate that more than 20 percent may belong to the military or security services.

To these must be added professional street-fighters from the various branches of the pan-Islamic Hezbollah movement, which Iran created in the 1980s as a way to "export" Khomeinism to other Muslim countries. The movement's best-known branch, the Lebanese Hezbollah, has announced it will sending over 3,000 pilgrims this year - all paid for by Iran.

With so many men with military and security backgrounds in Mecca, the mullahs leading the Iranian pilgrims would be in a position to seize control of the space around the black stone of the Ka'aba (The Cube) and use it as a venue for political demonstrations.

Interesting times ahead.

Death to Israel

Maybe the suggestion that we negotiate with Iran wasn’t the worst thing to come out of the Iraq Surrender Group. On page 41 we have this little gem:

Sustainable negotiations leading to a final peace settlement along the lines of President Bush’s two-state solution, which would address the key final status issues of borders, settlements, Jerusalem, the right of return, and the end of conflict.

The Palestinian population has grown from 711,000 in 1950 to current estimates ranging from 5 to 8 million. Right of return means that any or all of those Palestinians may return to Israel and receive Israeli citizenship with all the privileges therein. That would effectively end Israel's status as a Jewish state, as Israel's current population is composed of about 5.5 million Jews and 1.3 million Muslims not to mention the massive overpopulation this would cause. Asking Israel to give the Golan Heights back to a Syria that would allow Hezbollah to set up artillery and rockets in which to much more effectively kill Jews was dumb enough, but asking Israel to commit suicide is far worse. There have been many claims that Baker is Anti-Semitic but really, this is ridiculous.

The Report

The Iraq Surrender Group has released its much heralded report. The worst part of the report:

Diplomatic efforts ...should seek to persuade Iran that it should take specific steps to improve the situation in Iraq

As Milblogger T. F. Boggs puts it:

Baker and Hamilton want us to get terrorists supporting countries involved in fighting terrorism!

Anyone who reads my blog knows where I stand on dialog with Iran, a country that I feel is at war with us. Nevertheless suppose we do give Iran enough to get them to agree to back off in Iraq. What have we gained? Ahmadinejad has already stated:

Iran will stand by its neighbor Iraq to help the country boost security and achieve peace.

Don’t we believe him? If not, why would we believe him anytime in the future?

One thing that permeates the report is the disdain the authors seem to have for the military. Sgt. Boggs saw it.

Not only are the findings of the ISG a joke but the people who led the group (Baker and Hamilton) treat soldiers like they are a joke.

What the group desperately needed was at least one their members to have been in the military and had recent experience in Iraq.

You would think a commission looking to make recommendations on how to move forward in a military conflict would include a few Generals much less someone familiar with the conflict. However the assertions from the MSM that this was a repudiation of Bush’s policy seemed to have missed a few of the reports good points.

[W]e believe it would be wrong for the United States to abandon [Iraq] through a precipitate withdrawal of troops and support. A premature American departure from Iraq would almost certainly produce greater sectarian violence and further deterioration of conditions.

We agree with the goal of U.S. policy as stated by the president: an Iraq that can ‘govern itself, sustain itself, and defend itself.’

Seems more of a repudiation of the cut and run crowd. I’ll leave you with one more quote from the Sergeant’s great post.

War sucks but a world run by Islamofacists sucks more.