War of Words Escalating Between Iran and America

 

We wish to first cover the story of the IDF rescue of the eight-hundred White Helmets (Syrian civil organization of emergency responders) and their families from southern Syria war zone. Coverage by Arutz Sheva with a short video can be viewed here. This operation was carried out by Israel in response to pleas from President Trump, Canada and other European countries. One can only wonder how long before the same Europeans claim that Israel is not a nice nation as is their usual.

 

United States President Trump and Iranian President Rouhani have been exchanging verbal threats with President Trump adding in a social media Tweet just for good measure (see image below). President Trump even went so far as to use “caps lock” just for emphasis. President Rouhani promised in his retort to something President Trump stated which he found upsetting, that, “Peace with Iran would be the mother of all peace and war with Iran would be the mother of all wars.” We seem to remember a neighboring country’s ruler promising an American President the “Mother of all Wars” once before and that did not end all too well for Saddam Hussein. The reality is that Iran very well could be speaking from a position of relative strength unlike Saddam Hussein. We thought we would play with some thoughts, fears, and potential realities which should be taken into consideration and all intelligence gone through with a fine tooth-comb before stepping into the void.

 

President Trump Warning Tweet to Iranian President Rouhani

 

Iranian President Rouhani could have the ability to back up much of his threat with very real actions. Iran has been researching nuclear weaponry in various forms since the late 1980’s or, at best, the early 1990’s including specific research into EMP devices and miniaturized warheads. For argument’s sake, we will pretend that Iran had no real urgency about their research, something of which we actually believe they likely had a great deal, and their research proceeded at a leisurely pace. The Manhattan Project started in 1942 and developed the atomic bomb within three years and the United States tested their first hydrogen bomb, a thermonuclear bomb, within ten years of the start of the Manhattan Project. The United States had to start from scratch while the Iranians had knowledge on the architecture for both atomic and thermonuclear devices almost from the start. Their main difficulty was the processing or manufacturing of sufficient Uranium-235 or Plutonium-239 for the core of their devices. One item which is well known to those who have been paying attention to Iran is that they have been developing more and more advanced centrifuges capable of separating out enriched Uranium-235 at a fairly well advanced pace. Further, it can be assumed that their cooperation with North Korea has permitted them to test at least one or two devices over the years if not numerous more. They also would probably have exchanged information back and forth both on nuclear weaponry and guided missile technology which explains both nations’ fairly rapid advancement in both areas. Lastly, as the Chinese very likely had stolen or otherwise received the complete schematics and machining and design specifications for the United States W-88 warhead, it can be assumed that both North Korea and Iran have had access to that same information, though one could hope such is not the case. We are attempting to avoid using hope as our main argument in this instance.

 

So, it is painfully obvious that by the year 2000 Iran would easily have built sufficient processing facilities to produce the fissile and fusion elements for the production of thermonuclear warheads and the sole question is how many devices might they have produced. This is where estimates have been all over the board. According to sources reported and quoted by the Times of Israel, “Tehran has crossed all points of no return and already has its first nuclear weapon, and maybe more.” The same article also reports that the IAEA has assured the world that Iran in no way could have conceivably developed and built a nuclear bomb. We recall that the IAEA are the same people who claimed Saddam Hussein was not working on nuclear weapons, that Syria had no nuclear weapon dreams, that Libya had no nuclear program and that North Korea was years from being able to produce a nuclear weapon days before their first nuclear test. The IAEA has not been the most reliable source on nuclear proliferation as they are presumed to be preventing it and have decided that if they see no evil and hear no evil then they are able to speak no evil. Below we have included an artist’s rendition of two IAEA inspectors and one spokesperson. The evidence is that should Iran have desired to construct nuclear weapons, then the only question remaining is exactly how many of them have they produced, what are their projected yields and how distant can their missiles deliver them. These are serious questions which deserve answers which should be made known to the world through the United Nations or by the nation who knows the reality making the knowledge more generally known. This means if the CIA has solid evidence proving that Iran has nuclear tipped missiles, they should be producing such evidence for the world to see and reveal the perfidy of the Iranian claims of innocence and having no desire to become a nuclear-armed nation.

 

Three monkeys of “See no evil, Hear no evil, Speak no evil”

 

As things currently stand, it would be more prudent to assume that Iran has nuclear tipped missiles in the ready and that these missiles are capable of striking anywhere on the planet. It should also be assumed that they would have such shorter-range missiles stored within what appear to be normative cargo vessels as they have developed such vessels to use to strike at cities along the shores of the United States and Europe should hostilities become to their advantage. These missiles would be extremely difficult to intercept, as their targets would be struck within minutes of the missile launching, as the ship would be only one-hundred miles offshore or closer. Iran has tested these systems finding them to be accurate and an efficient and difficult to deter system for delivering a warhead. The cargo ships they would utilize would more than likely be registered with a country other than Iran making them all but invisible unless the warhead could be detected. Iran is also rumored to have developed a non-nuclear EMP device which is capable of destroying the electrical grid for a city and surrounding region depending on the level of hardening the electrical grid has had installed. One can pretty much expect that at least the streetlights and traffic signals would be affected and stop functioning for a period of time. The real problem is if transformers are destroyed and the larger the transformer, the more serious the outage. The largest transformers can take up to two years to produce in sufficient numbers should an entire grid region be destroyed.

 

The truth is that both President Trump and President Rouhani are playing with fire and their bellicose threats can escalate potentially leading to one or the other taking the decision that the insults have reached a level beyond that which they are willing to accept and in order to save face they must act. This could lead to problems and further escalations which could end further than desired from the starting point. The Iranians including Iran Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) Commander Mohammad Ali Jafari has promised that should the United States prevent Iranian oil sales, they will prevent all oil from traversing the Straights of Hormuz. According to Xinhua, Jafari stressed, enemies can understand the meaning of Hormuz Strait “either for all, or for none.” The United States has promised that they will protect the use of the Straights of Hormuz for the oil shipments of both Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, so should President Trump prevent Iranian oil shipments and Iran act on their threat, there would necessarily be a confrontation. Iran today is not the same Iran which fought Saddam Hussein during the 1980’s. They have more potential and are well practiced at their swarming tactics which create a great deal of difficulty against which to defend. Any naval confrontation within the Arabian Gulf and especially the Straights of Hormuz would also include Iranian shore batteries which would take time, short as it may be, to render inoperative which would also be seen as a further escalation. One can readily see how any confrontation over the free movement of oil in and out of the Straights of Hormuz could very quickly spin out of control. One can only guess as to how the United States would react should one of their nuclear aircraft carriers be attacked and actually sunk. Such would lead to reprisals which would provoke reprisals in return and back and forth until something inevitable and regrettable resulted. Wars have started over far less; take World War I for example. How many people died over a single terrorist act murdering Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife Sophie the Duchess of Hohenberg. So, now we are at the point of which leaders lower their level of vitriol, and let us pray one of them sees the wisdom in doing exactly that.

 

Beyond the Cusp

 

Kurdistan Independence Referendum

 

Day before yesterday, the Kurdish People in Iraq voted in a referendum on whether they desire to declare their independence from Iraq or remain part of a nation which craves their oil but wishes them the worst. The vote was decisively for independence with over ninety percent of the Kurds voting claiming their desire for their own state at long last. As seventy-two percent of eligible Kurds voted, that brings the result to close to two-thirds of all Kurds eligible voting for independence. That is an overwhelming result in anyone’s book but should they act on this they will face Iraqi troops invading and a boycott or worse from Turkey along with a closed border militarily enforced. Iran may also invade in order to quash the movement. The Iraqi Prime Minister, Haider al-Abadi, has ordered the Kurds to hand over control of airports and borders by Friday; the Iraqi parliament passed a thirteen-point resolution Wednesday aimed to chip at Kurdistan autonomy and posing new challenges with some expected threats. Fortunately for the Kurds, their Kurdish Peshmerga Militias who performed so admirably against the ISIS threat will also be the ones defending their freedom should invasions result. The similarities to what Israel faced on May 15, 1948 when declaring Jewish independence and what the Kurds are likely to face is unavoidable, especially when the friendship between the two peoples is taken into account.

 

Despite the fact that the Kurdish are mostly Sunni Muslims as was Saddam Hussein, when he was the dictatorial President of Iraq he regularly used the Kurdish population in military experiments as the subject or target of new weapons or simply for practice. The attack has been chronicled well by Aljazeera English quoted below.

“On the morning of March 16, 1988, Iraqi war planes and artillery pounded the Kurdish town of Halabja in northern Iraq with mustard gas and the deadly nerve agent sarin.
Some 5,000 people – mainly women and children – died on the day, and up to 12,000 have lost their lives since. The method was the same as the Ghouta gas attack in Damascus, on August 21, 2013, just over 25 years later.
In both instances a conventional pre-bombardment – to break windows and doors and to get people underground – was followed by the deadly chemical weapons, sarin and mustard agent.
Heavier than air – and with no windows and doors to stop the “gas” – it found its victims helpless and unprotected in underground cellars and air-raid shelters. These crimes against humanity were then followed up with a conventional bombardment to destroy the evidence.”

The Kurdish Village of Halabja, unfortunately, was far from the only Kurdish village attacked by Saddam Hussein though it was the most well documented and was used heavily in his war crimes trial. Saddam had also regularly had Kurdish farmers strafed while they worked their fields watching from his command craft enjoying the spectacle. And after Saddam was deposed and the United States prematurely abandoned the Kurdish to the new bosses, the Shia in the south were out for a little payback after Saddam Hussein. The best that can be said for the Shia government of Iraq, which is largely controlled by Iranian officers, is that they largely ignore the Kurdish areas other than Mosul from which there comes oil and a command over much of the central and all the northern highways thus controlling the infrastructure of roadways plus the large Mosul Dam and hydroelectric generating plants which produces a significant amount of the total electrical output in Iraq. The dam is also in need of repair without which it is in danger of failure which would cause major flooding and damage in Baghdad as well as Mosul and across the nation all the way to where it feeds the Arabian Gulf.

 

Montage of Saddam Hussein’s Chemical Gas Attack on Kurdish Village of Halabja

 

Since the United States withdrew under orders from President Obama, Mosul was taken over by the Islamic State. They were threatening to destroy the Mosul Dam just because. Did Iran with their military come and free the city or did their puppets in Iraq come with their military or the Sunni militias to free Mosul? They did get credit for doing so in the New York Times who gave the Kurdish Peshmerga Militias bare mention when truth be told, had the Kurdish Peshmerga Militias not cleared the entrance to Mosul and performed much of the heavy lifting, Mosul would have taken far longer to have been retaken, if it had been at all. The Kurdish forces also did a large part of the clearing of the northern half of Mosul of Islamic State fighters who remained hidden trying to merge with the population to attack at a later time when fortunes might be changed. Now the Iraqi government is claiming Mosul largely because Iran desperately desires to control this pivotal and central city. Mosul is at the core of the Kurdish hopes as they believe that Mosul belongs to them as many of the Kurds who were forcably removed under Saddam Hussein have now returned following the defeat of the Islamic State with a large and formidable Kurdish effort. The world owes the Kurds across the region much thanks as it was the Kurdish forces who put an end to the spread of Islamic State when it was known as ISIS and was swallowing up large swaths of central Iraq and Syria defeating every force they encountered until they were pushed to a halt and then backed right out of Kobani, Syria and that proved to be the turning point as after that the Kurdish YPG forces in Syria backed by Peshmerga started the push-back against the Islamic State which also contributed to the retaking of Mosul. Had Kurdish forces not proven that the Islamic State could be beaten, their reputation might have continued winning many battles for them by the Syrian or Iraqi military troops fleeing before their rumored advance. The Kurds are the reason the world is now talking about taking Raqa, the presumed Islamic State capital city.

 

Our Idea for a Proposed Kurdistan

 

What is so very disturbing is that much of the world is not prepared to give the Kurdish their due by backing them should they declare independence. The United States State Department requested the Kurdish officials postpone the vote as it was an inconvenient timing for the State Department and they informed the Kurds that they would get back to them on a better time to schedule their referendum. One can be assured that the State Department would promptly forget that the Kurdish People desired independence and would eventually sell them out to the highest bidder just as the British did after World War I when they reneged on their promise to back the formation of a Kurdish homeland. They succeeded in forcing the Kurds to accept Arab rule in much the same manner as they attempted to do with the Jews as the British also opposed a Jewish State and wanted the Zionists to accept Arab rule or shared rule with the Arabs having the majority vote. Israeli officials defeated the British finally in 1948 and ignored the United States State Department which requested that the Zionists wait until it would be a more convenient time for the State Department to be able to support a Jewish State, better known as never. The Kurds deserve their own state and the recognition of the world as well as their thanks for being the ones who stepped up and started the initial defeat of the Islamic State. The United Nations, United States, NATO, Russia, Iran, Iraq and almost anyone else you care to mention are against Kurdish independence. The Kurds have received support from some of the Sunni Arab villages along their proposed border preferring the Kurds to the Iranian and Iraqi Shiites. There has also been support from Saudi Arabia which is reasonable, as they will prefer anybody over the Iranians who are their enemies. Iraq, Turkey, Iran, Syria and seemingly the world is against Kurdish independence with one obvious exception, Israel. That is the single supporting state which has quietly provided the Kurds with intelligence, equipment, logistics, weapons and training all in a very clandestine manner.

 

The final item we believe and feel we absolutely need to express, should the Kurds in Iraq declare their independence, we hope that more nations and organizations than just Israel and Saudi Arabia recognize their declaration. Hopefully the fact that Israel and Saudi Arabia recognize the newly formed Kurdistan, assuming the declaration is approved, will prevent any military attempts at intervention by the government in Baghdad, Tehran, Damascus or Ankara. Further, it would be very helpful if the United Nations would at least hold a General Assembly vote supporting the Kurdish independence as soon as possible as it becomes appropriate and have that followed by a Security Council recognition granting them recognition as a state by the United Nations. Finally, the map we posted above would be something for the far future as the current declaration is regarding only the Iraqi Kurds. The border would remain within the current borders of northern Iraq and hopefully move south to include Mosul. The rest of the Kurdish regions would need to be addressed separately and if they were to desire to also vote for independence and desire to merge with the Iraqi Kurds, the first item they would need renounce is their socialist political principles as the Iraqi Kurds have stated their desire for democratic elections and a capitalist free economy. One of the rules of joining an established system is that you must accept that system, not demand it alter to meet your expectations. One thing which is clear, if the Kurds desire to ever gain the recognition from President Trump, the first thing they must not become is a socialist run nation. President Trump kind of made his feelings known concerning anything tinged by socialism during his United Nations speech. Thankfully, the Kurds of Iraq desire a free state and economy unrestricted by the chocking restraints of socialism. All that remains is the final count of their referendum. Obviously, we are hoping they choose to be free and run their own lives and nation, as we now have seen. We can only hope and wish them the best and pray that other free nations will assist the Kurds in their bid for freedom, though as was proven by Israel, friends will be as scarce as hens’ teeth.

 

Beyond the Cusp

 

Egyptian President al-Sisi the Man in the Middle

 

Egyptian President, back when he was a mere general commanding the Egyptian military, saw the peoples distress was an exceedingly and rapidly worsening situation and understood their protests where they were risking life and limb, against the crushing and oppressive governance of the Muslim Brotherhood and acted replacing the Muslim Brotherhood and returning them to their banned and criminal status so well deserved, contrary to the beliefs and hopes of United States President Barack Obama, which is the greatest verification of walking the correct track as ever existed. The overwhelming election victory was won by the General, where he risked all as he had by removing his uniform and surrendering his privileged rank and status as General of the Armies in order to run for the Presidency, where he has proven the faith placed in him by the people. He has started reforms both economic and political which will further empower the people as things progress, and there exists progress in Egypt, slow but steady progress. Perhaps the even paced progress is best as the Egyptian people have lived under dictatorial rule from the times of the pharaohs which has hopefully ended and President al-Sisi will prove with the ultimate test for any leader of a nation finally stepping out of oppressive rule, that President al-Sisi voluntarily leaves office and does not assume to be President for Life. President al-Sisi has chosen a difficult and challenging target for his life’s work moving forward, and should he succeed it will be a momentous step forward for much of mankind.

 

President al-Sisi has throughout his career shown a propensity to challenge the status quo when and where he has felt was required. His new and apparent life’s challenge, and by far his greatest, is to challenge the very structure of Islam and its supersessionism by which it denigrates all of humanity which does not follow the tenets of Islam, and not just Islam but each substructure in Islam, Sunni/Shiite being the best known but there are others even within these two largest such as al-Qaeda/Islamic State/Muslim Brotherhood subsets of Sunni each against the others. President al-Sisi did not take a shy road creeping forward making a hesitant statement here and another there always leaving himself an exit strategy whereby he would live to fight another day. No timidity from President al-Sisi as his coming out set of statements was punctuated with a bold red and flashing exclamation point as he took his Jihad straight to the heart of the opposition. Al-Sisi made his speech announcing his Jihad to be an inner fight within Islam to soften its outer sharp edges it uses to attack all that is not of Islam and either convert or kill all that they see as the others, those who reside in Dar al-Harb, which literally means ‘territory of war,’ and not within Dar al-Islam, which literally means ‘territory of Islam.’ President al-Sisi initially took his Jihad to al-Azhar University, Cairo, Egypt, on December 28, 2014 where he delivered a speech insisting that Islam was in need of a reformation if not a transformation in which it would be transformed into a more tolerant and accepting of other religions and those who were not Muslims which was an assault on extremist Muslims. He questioned on how it could be that 1.6 billion Muslims should murder 5.4 billion non-Muslims implying it was a ridiculous notion. This while in the first rows before him were the highest ranking Imams who teach and administrate at al-Azhar University where future Imams are instructed in that very notion and that of supremacist Islam and the requirement for Islam to be taken to the world and spread by all means even including by the sword as Muhammad had once done when he took Islamic sword to the Jews of Medina for refusing to accept him as their prophet. This was taking the fight to the heart of Islamism and to the very teachers and university where this view of a receptive form of Islam is a heresy for which al-Sisi could have been murdered on the spot for even questioning the supremacy and requirement that Islam become the one and only pure religion on Earth.

 

 

President al-Sisi initially Took his Jihad to al-Azhar University, Cairo,
Egypt, Where on December 28, 2014 al-Sisi Delivered his Speech
Insisting that Islam Was in Need of a Climactic Reformation if not a
Transformation Redefining Jihad from External Violence To the
Ongoing Internal Purification In the Eternal Search for Perfection

 

 

A crucial excerpt can be seen below which gives three crucial parts in his speech; he questions whether the 1.6 billion Muslims should stand against the 7 billion people of the Earth and be a threat that makes Muslims feared, that the Imams must change before Islam can be reformed, and lastly his direct challenge, which can be witnessed in his body language as he turns to look straight at the man of whom he speaks, challenging the Grand Sheik of al-Azhar University. This is one of the most influential and revered teachers, Imams, in all of Sunni Islam and held in respect for his knowledge of the Quran in its purest form by all Islam and as the one man who sets the framework by which thousands of Imams are trained and millions are influenced. When al-Sisi directly looking at the head of al-Azhar University respectfully addresses him as “Honorable Imam, you bear responsibility before Allah. The world in its entirety awaits your words, because the Islamic nation is being torn apart, destroyed, and is heading to perdition.” The words he chose were a serious accusation stating, “the Islamic nation is being torn apart, destroyed, and is heading to perdition.” President al-Sisi comes from and speaks for those Muslims who are good, obedient, fervent, religious, honorable, and believing Muslims who are members of a ‘religion of peace’ but are being instructed that they are deficient and poor excuses for Muslims because Islam demands violent Jihad, not simply being a good person. They are instead told a good Muslim is more than a respected and caring Muslim because a true follower of Islam goes in the way of Muhammad. They are told that Muslims must not emulate the Muhammad of Mecca as the Muhammad of Medina has destroyed, killed the Muhammad of Mecca and writ a new Muhammad by the acts of Medina which show the true path is one of conquest, of blood and violence. These moderate Muslims who do exist also know that when that 10%, 15% or even just 0.5% demand that they act as they are instructed, that minority has the majority vote of one holding a sword and having the willingness to use it, though today it is a rifle.

 

The same is true of the Muslims who would never on their own take another persons’ life but are threatened by that minority for whom such is no more difficult than praying five times a day and given equal weight in their version of Islam which originated from some Imam likely trained at al-Azhar University directly or indirectly, but through some twisted or direct trail their instruction came from the very Imams addressed by President al-Sisi.

 

 

 

 

Such a transformation had once before been attempted with initially great success but as is all too often the case, which had been done by one man becomes undone by another man. The country where Islam was disconnected from the governance of the nation was Turkey where after the fall of the Ottoman Empire a remnant of their holdings were left to form the nation of Turkey under the guidance and rule of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk who formed the Turkish Constitution leaving the military to be the guardians of liberties, freedoms, and a secular society where the State was to be protected from the ravings of religious zealots thus protecting the people from their own proclivities to fall for mesmeric religious zealots and desiring the world they weave as only accessible through transformative means which start with a national religion, this was the point that the military was to put on the brakes, remove the leader, declare new elections and make sure this person was not on the ballot ever, and even preferably, by removing their party from existence thus forcing the religious parties to reconstruct if they were unable to respect the secular nature of the government. The Turkish military had stepped in and performed admirably keeping the restraints on successive Muslim Brotherhood political parties which attempted to instill a national religion with them as the guardians of the purity of Islam and the ensuing application of Sharia as the law of the land. So, what went wrong? In one name, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, the current successor of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk who has carefully since 2003 while holding the office of Prime Minister reaching the end of that position transferred most of its powers and a few more he personally required in order to cement his changes assigned to the Presidency which he then won election as the first President of Turkey, or should we just assign the term which is more applicable, Sultan of Turkey and rightfully the next Caliph. There are so many claiming that title it is becoming difficult to remember which are current and which have left this mortal coil, Saddam Hussein, Muammar Gaddafi, Saudi King Salman bin Abdulaziz, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal and so many more even to include Syrian leader of an ever shrinking area Bashir al-Assad, any more takers, get your name in fast before ballots close.

 

As you can see from the list that there is a conspicuous name missing, other than Mahmoud Abbas who has likely given up his delusions of grandeur and instead turned to concentrate on remaining amongst the living, but Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi who might actually be the exact transformational Caliph the world could use right about now in history if human history is going to continue much further into the future. With the stealth invasion and Civilizational Jihad threatened by Islamic State, Hamas, Hezballah and Iran, and with just as likely some unannounced Jihadists being sent by the Wahabbists and al-Qaeda plus a plethora, a virtual cornucopia, of other possibilities; if we only take the energy to seek out the terrorists with human screening, the problem is too large for such a method of detection. But President Sisi is not to be dismissed as any shrinking violet as he was far from silent on matters as General of the Egyptian Army, though in that position his statements were general comments even some of which inferred his present path but always nonpolitical and never criticizing President Mubarak as he did not shy away from challenging Muslim Brotherhood President of Egypt Morsi, the man he replaced. When they held the trial for Morsi the commentaries came from virtually every direction, the Muslim Brotherhood and their fellow travelers such as Hamas, other political groups looking to pile on and get their rational reasons that they did poorly in the initial election was due to the fixing of the election by the Muslim Brotherhood, never mind if they did not do all that much better in the second election. Conspicuous in his absence from piling on Morsi was al-Sisi whose campaign mostly pictured a nation in desperate need of an improved secular education, job training for those unemployed, protection of all Egyptians, equality for all Egyptians, an end to inter-religious criminal acts, an end to terrorism and bringing quiet and lawfulness to the Sinai, the one promise most obvious in its absence though the efforts have been obvious and strong. Will al-Sisi succeed in his efforts to transform Islam? The bets and all of Islam appears to be against him but he has a secret weapon, the common people who if shown a better path, one where they are able to provide a positive and viable future for their children even if it may be too late for themselves, then things could change at least in Egypt. We must remember that as Egypt is the most populous of the Arab Muslim States in the MENA region (Middle East and North Africa) and if things turn around and Egypt become the Shanghai of the Muslim world and they combine with other more progressive Muslim nations such as Azerbaijan, then perhaps together the nations of Islam which reject the idea of Jihad as the means of conquest but rather on self-improvement in order to perfect the world, an idea which may be familiar to many of our readers, then the Islamic world may have taken the initial steps to a reformation, perhaps a Illumination Showered as Light Ascending to Mecca and Muhammad (ISLAMM), or simply put, Islam as defined in Mecca, a return to the birthplace of Muhammad and his dreams.

 

Beyond the Cusp