The Final Move Beyond Iraq: The Final Solution While the World Sleeps (21 page)

Soon after seizing power during the Carter administration, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini began to realize that he had no use for Iraq’s Baathist-led government. Having taken refuge in al Najaf after being expelled from Iran, Khomeini had seen firsthand Hussein’s repression of the Shiite Muslims in that country. To add insult to injury, Hussein had deported Khomeini from Iraq at the request of the shah in 1978 just as his influence was growing.

So it was that Khomeini encouraged the Shiites across the border to remove Saddam from power and establish an Islamic Republic like that in Iran. In response, Hussein had Grand Ayatollah Muhammad Baqir al-Sadr arrested, his sister raped and murdered in front of him, and then al-Sadr himself brutally killed. Five days later, Hussein declared war on Iran.

The bombing of Iranian airfields and military outposts in September 1980 signaled the beginning of the Iran-Iraq War. While Hussein’s initial raid into Iran resulted in the capture of territory that included the port city of Khorramshahr and oil facilities in Abadan, it soon became apparent that Iran had the advantage. Iran’s population was concentrated far from the border with Iraq, while the majority of the Iraqis lived near Iran’s eastern border, easy prey for air attacks.

Throughout the war, both Hussein and Khomeini continued attempts to incite the inhabitants of the other’s country to rebel—Hussein the Sunnis in Iran and Khomeini the Shiites in Iraq. Few from either group seemed willing to submit to the pressure, however.

As the war dragged on and trained military personnel dwindled in Iran, Khomeini induced young Iranians to volunteer for suicide missions. He conscribed youngsters as early as twelve years old to become living minesweepers. The children were manacled together, and each was given a red plastic key with which to open the gates of paradise. Then they marched off across the fields to clear the way.
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Hussein could raise only disinterested Shiite conscripts and Kurds with no interest in fighting against Iran. When the Iraqi military became severely depleted in 1983, Saddam brought out his supply of chemical weapons, including mustard gas. It was one of several nerve agents used by Saddam during the war.

America, for the most part, stood on the sidelines as the two countries battled for supremacy in the region. Under Ronald Reagan’s administration, Donald Rumsfeld was appointed special emissary to Iraq. In meetings with Hussein, Rumsfeld explored Iraq and American hostility toward both Iran and Syria but failed to confront Hussein’s use of chemical weapons. He did discuss that fact with Saddam’s deputy prime minister Tariq Aziz, but not with the dictator. It was a clear signal that the Reagan administration would not pursue justice for Iraq’s use of chemical weapons against its enemy. In fact, the administration actually opposed a UN resolution that condemned Hussein’s use of such weapons.

Reagan had a valid reason for supporting Iraq during the war with Iran: a winning Iran would result in its controlling the oil reserves of both countries, as well as the Persian Gulf. It would present an unparalleled opportunity for Khomeini’s Islamic revolution to spread. There was also the fact that the Reagan administration actually saw Hussein as both a political and economic ally in the Middle East.

In the mid-1980s, however, the Reagan administration did a sudden about-face and began a clandestine program to arm Iran. The resulting Iran-Contra scandal sent the Reaganites scrambling to repair the damage and caused a further tilt toward Hussein’s regime in Iraq. In May 1987, the USS
Stark
was hit by two missiles fired from an Iraqi warplane. The two Exocet missiles killed thirty-seven American sailors. The administration accepted Iraq’s explanation that the attack was an accident.

In March 1988, Iraqi planes dropped gas-filled canisters over the Kurdish city of Halabja, which at the time was held by Iranian troops. Accustomed to taking shelter underground from Iranian warplanes, the families in Halabja took refuge in basements across the city. What they could not know was that the gas would seek the lowest places in the city. The basements literally became death chambers for those seeking asylum. It is estimated that more than five thousand residents of Halabja perished as the gas spread over the city and from the complications of inhaling the foul concoction.

The U.S. Senate reacted to the horror that was Halabja by passing the Prevention of Genocide Act. The House, however, passed an emasculated version of the Senate proposal. The administration, still believing that Hussein might become a viable ally in the region, was prone to overlook this and similar acts that killed the Kurds in northern Iraq.

The Iran-Iraq War would last more than eight years with neither side ever really gaining much of an advantage. Millions of Iraqis and Iranians died in the conflagration, at least two million were injured, and the two nations spent a combined total of over $1 trillion. The war was ever a stalemate, neither side being able to defeat the other, nor being able to agree with the other on conditions for a truce. The fighting only finally ended in response to UN Resolution 598 that called for a ceasefire, but even that was ignored for over a year as each side made one final attempt at victory.

Much like the war in Iraq today, the war between the two neighboring nations was a war of ideologies and divergent civilizations. Hussein saw himself as the Arab leader who would defeat the Persians. Khomeini saw it as an opportunity to export his Islamic revolution across the border to the Shiites in Iraq, and then beyond that to other Arab countries. Though this dream for Khomeini would prove unattainable during his lifetime, it never died. It was revived and revitalized with the election of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to the presidency of Iran in 2005.

It is the duty of Muslims to prepare as much force as possible to terrorize the enemies of God.
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—O
SAMA BIN
L
ADEN

The Iran crisis is serious because the clock is ticking. Iran is trying to develop a complete nuclear fuel cycle, going from uranium mining to converting the uranium ore to uranium gas, compressing that gas into yellow cake and then creating a feed stock which can be enriched…into nuclear fuel which would go into a bomb. Marry that fuel with a delivery system like a missile and you have a threat not only to Israel and Saudi Arabia, but probably to portions of Southern Europe.
^?

—P
ROFESSOR
R
AYMOND
T
ANTER

I
ran’s president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is either mad as a hatter or wily as a fox. He has managed, during his presidential tenure, to discomfit and confound political analysts with a rabid determination to achieve his nuclear ambitions. Today, Iran is well on its way to becoming a nuclear power, and its target is none other than what Ayatollah Khomeini first dubbed “The Great Satan,” America, and “The Little Satan,” Israel.

Ahmadinejad has a zealous belief that he is an instrument of Allah’s will and that all infidels deserve at best to be placed in subservient roles in his society, or, in many cases, killed outright. In the words of James Woolsey, former CIA director, Ahmadinejad’s extremist arm of Islam consists of “theocratic, totalitarian, and anti-Semitic genocidal fanatics.”
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Iran’s president believes he was placed in his position to finish the work of his hero, Ayatollah Khomeini, and bring about an apocalyptic event that would result in the spread of the Islamic revolution far beyond the boundaries of Iran. He will use whatever means are at his disposal—suicide bombers with conventional dynamite-laden backpacks, dirty bombs, and/or missiles carrying nuclear payloads—in order to achieve his goals.

With the exception of the two attacks on the World Trade Center in 1993 and 2001, America has, thus far, escaped the barrage of suicide bombers that have long plagued Israel—but for how long? While Ahmadinejad and his volunteer army of jihadists might see the “dirty bomb” approach as being the most effective against the United States, Israel, on the other hand, is well within range of Iran’s missiles—any one of which could be armed with a nuclear warhead that would wreak untold devastation on that tiny country.

And which nations will step into the fray and take the initiative to call a halt to Iran’s nuclear objectives? France? Germany? Spain? Great Britain? We simply cannot depend on our so-called Western allies to face down the likes of Ahmadinejad and his fanatical backers. Our only real ally in this Middle East mess is Israel, a tiny David in the midst of a sea of Goliaths. How long will Israel sit by and allow the giant, in this case Iran, to hurl epithets across the barren desert before she reaches into her arsenal and fells this deadly antagonist?

Not long enough for it to arm itself with nuclear weapons, that is for sure.

There are no countries other than the United States and Israel that seem willing to take on the likes of Iran’s mad mullahs. It appears more and more likely that the United States, not Israel, will be the one to go it alone in order to stop the snowballing process of nuclear enrichment in Iran—and its decision to do so will more than likely have to come in 2007.

Even while American and European diplomatic sources try new and improved ways to dissuade Iran’s nuclear ambitions, Israel prepares for the worst: the need to attack Iran’s nuclear facilities just as it took out Iraq’s Osirak facility in 1981.

Is such a thing really a possibility? As one Israeli security source said, “If all efforts to persuade Iran to drop its plans to produce nuclear weapons should fail, the US administration will authorise Israel to attack.”
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According to that same source, “Iran’s nuclear future is under construction on a spit of land…150 miles east of Kuwait. The Bushehr nuclear site is the home to a nearly completed Russian-built plant that will be capable of producing a quarter of a ton of weapons-grade plutonium a year—enough, say nuclear experts, to build 30 atomic bombs.”
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And this is only one of a line of nuclear-based facilities around the country. Some are so deeply buried as to be virtually impossible to penetrate. These include sites such as Saghand, Ardekan, and what will probably be Israel’s first target: Natanz, an enrichment facility.

The obstacles to a successful attack by Israel are enormous and daunting. Israeli planes would have to fly over Turkey, American coordination would be absolutely necessary, retaliatory assaults would be swift and certain, and the targets are many—some number them around one thousand—and perhaps not all yet identified. Israel’s F-15 pilots, however, will be ready and waiting for the signal. And, while the mission may be hazardous, Israel knows it must act to preserve itself, just as it did at Entebbe and later at Osirak. Israel will not permit its existence to be jeopardized, especially by regimes that have never quieted about their desire to give Israel’s land to the Palestinians.
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T
HE
G
REATEST
E
QUALIZER

In 1945, after months of agonizing fighting in the Pacific theater, U.S. president Harry S. Truman finally issued orders to drop two atomic bombs on Japan in an attempt to end World War II more quickly. On August 6, “Little Boy” fell on Hiroshima with a payload whose explosive power was equivalent to 15,000 tons of TNT. Three days later, “Fat Man” was released over Nagasaki and carried a 23-kiloton (23,000-ton) punch. Approximately 130,000 people were instantly vaporized and more than 340,000 would die from the effects of those two blasts over the next five years.

Several survivors of the blast recalled their horrific experiences:

One U.S. naval officer said of Nagasaki: “Like the ancient Sodom and Gomorrah, its site has been sown with salt and Icabod is written over its gates.”
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J. Robert Oppenheimer had been absolutely correct. While witnessing the first nuclear test at Alamogordo, New Mexico, on July 16, 1945, Oppenheimer was reminded of a line from the
Bhagavad Gita
, the Hindu scripture: “Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.”
¹⁵

In their book
Endgame
, Lt. Gen. Thomas McInerney and Maj. Gen. Paul Vallely have this to say when discussing the threat of weapons of mass destruction being used in a terrorist attack:

Today even a relatively small atom bomb—say, 20 kilotons, roughly the explosive power of what was dropped on Nagasaki, though now capable of being transported in a much more compact container—would kill hundreds of thousands almost instantly, and many more would die from the radiation exposure in the days following. Millions would suffer the effects of the blast for the rest of their lives. Were such a bomb strategically placed—say, in the Library of Congress, for example—the blast would destroy the Capitol Building and the Supreme Court as well as a great number of governmental office buildings, including the Department of Health and Human Services—the very office that would have otherwise organized the rescue and emergency care operations for just such an attack. Thousands of key government officials would be dead in a split second. When the attacks of 9/11 took place, the entire U.S. economy shuddered—what would happen after a nuclear attack in Washington? Or what if the attack hit Wall Street instead? Or even both?

According to former CIA director James Woolsey:

In a meeting with Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz in 2006, I asked him about Iran’s threat to the United States. Dr. Dershowitz said:

Former prime minister of Israel Benjamin Netanyahu had this to say: