Barack Obama and the Iran War

Order Jamie Glazov’s new book, ‘United in Hate: The Left’s Romance with Tyranny, Terror, and Hamas’: HERE.

Most of American contemporary history casts the presidency of Barack Obama as the psalter of America’s salvation from their original sin of race-based slavery and racism that has forever tainted the people of pallor. The liberal, i.e. mostly white, media, as is their wont, anointed the mixed-race, bougie, private-school-raised African-American as the savior. This background has much to tell us about the current war with Iran and its history. The context of this story reflects the leftist clichés that Obama, like most university-educated students, relied on blacks to display their teachers’ au courant political correctness.

The history starts with the Iranian Islamic Revolution that birthed the theocratic nation. For the Western Marxist Left, any revolution, especially one in the Third World, is necessarily an indictment of Western imperialism and colonialism –– while liberal-democratic, sovereign states are proof that such states are the default aim of people liberated from the tyranny of other political structures.

Either way, this hubris ignores or idealizes the variety of global governments, along with the West’s cultural dominance, which especially has led to misunderstanding many religions and cultures –– most obviously Islamic ones. The Wall Street Journal recently reported on one distortion that exposes the widespread ignorance of Islam and its doctrines, as well as the mainstream media’s political prejudices:

“So much of today’s media framing of the Iran war relies on a mythology of what came before. The gist is that Iran was contained by Barack Obama until Donald Trump mucked it up, and now the regime will really pursue nuclear weapons.”

As the Journal continues, “Naive is too kind a word for this deceptive, partisan history. The real history is worth rehearsing because it shows that Iran’s regime has been relentless for decades in its quest for the bomb, which is why President Trump is weakening it by force.”

And the agent of Iran’s near success in going nuclear was Barack Obama, “who made a nuclear deal with Iran a top priority. The talks dragged on for years, as Iran pressed forward with enrichment, repression at home and terror abroad while Mr. Obama did little in response. The regime’s negotiating goal was to win economic relief from sanctions while preserving and legitimizing its nuclear program. Iran finally agreed to a deal in late 2015 after a series of U.S. concessions.”

For example, “The Obama team allowed enrichment and let Iran keep the infrastructure that could be used to reach weapons-grade when Iran felt the time was right. Mr. Obama backtracked to let Iran operate at Fordow and Arak and keep 5,000 centrifuges at Natanz. He gave up on ‘anytime, anywhere’ inspections. Iran didn’t even have to detail all of its past nuclear activities.”

That Iran was “contained” by the joint multinational agreement that it serially violated with impunity was challenged by the Journal, which documents the undermining of the agreement. What ultimately stopped the Mullahs was the common-sense realism of Donald Trump’s perseverance.

What has been missing in the past is the failure of Western analysts and politicians to understand, or even have a moderate familiarity with, Islam and its doctrines. Decades before the creation of Iran, Catholic writer Hillaire Belloc warned that the dismantling of the Ottoman Empire and the Caliphate –– a result of the Arabs allying with Germany during World War I –– did not mean that Islam was weakened and perhaps extinct.

Belloc’s premise was that Islam’s fierce fidelity to its beliefs and doctrines is the source of the ferocity of Islam’s fighters. Those beliefs were in part borrowed even from Christianity, but consequently, without the West’s capacity for methodical doubt and self-accusation.

“In Islam, there has been no such dissolution of ancestral doctrine—or, at any rate, nothing corresponding to the universal break-up of religion in Europe,” Belloc wrote.

Consider the following statements preached in 1942 by the Ayatollah Khomeini, the godfather of Iran’s Islamic Revolution, about the importance of jihad, the holy war demanded by Allah to restore the global greatness of Islam:

“Those who study jihad [sic] will understand why Islam wants to conquer the whole world.  All the countries conquered by Islam or to be conquered in the future will be marked for everlasting salvation.” That’s the purpose of holy war. . . Islam says: “Kill all the unbelievers just they as would kill you!”

Anyone who disbelieves that Islam is a religion of violence, or scoffs at historian Samuel Huntington’s infamous phrase “Islam’s bloody borders,” should consider the following statements of Khomeini: “Those who know nothing of Islam pretend that Islam counsels against war. Those [who say this] are witless. Islam says: Kill all the unbelievers just as they would kill you! … Islam says: Whatever good there is exists thanks to the sword and in the shadow of the sword! People cannot be made obedient except with the sword! The sword is the key to paradise, which can be opened only for holy warriors!”

After he took power, Khomeini reiterated his jihadist program: “The great prophet [Mohammed] of Islam carried in one hand the Koran and in the other a sword; the sword for crushing the traitors and the Koran for guidance…Islam is a religion of blood for the infidels but a religion of guidance for other people.”

The goal of this jihad, moreover, was the global triumph of Islam: “We shall export our revolution,” Khomeini promised, “to the whole world. Until the cry ‘There is no God but God’ resounds over the whole world, there will be struggle.”

And if anyone still believes that negotiation can resolve Iran’s and the U.S.’s conflicts, consider Khomeini’s response to President Carter’s Western materialist and political assumptions during his failed and humiliating attempt to negotiate with the Ayatollah for the release of the American embassy hostages in 1979. The 52 hostages were held by Iran for 444 days.

That rejection was meant to show the world the power of Islam, marginalize the infidel Western nations, and humiliate the “Great Satan.” As Khomeini denigrated Christianity’s spiritual truth as well as the U.S.’s political and military power, he believed the seizure of the U.S. embassy demonstrated to the world the real “superpower” –– Allah and its only true religion, Islam.

Thanks to the Journal’s important editorial in revealing the imaginary brilliance of Barack Obama and giving its readers a much-deserved reminder of his dangerous incompetence. More important, thanks to President Donald Trump’s managing of the war with Iran, and his dismantling of its nearly operational nuclear weapons, the world is a safer place. Seven previous presidents –– commanders-in-chief of the most lethal militaries in history –– did little, if anything, to stop “the religion of blood” from acquiring nuclear weapons and exporting its beliefs to the whole world. Now we the people need to make sure that terminal TDS trolls don’t keep President Trump from finishing the job.