Iran’s toxic foreign policy: A deluge of terrorism, drugs and refugees

In 1985 when Soviet diplomats were kidnapped by Islamist extremists, the KGB resolved the misunderstanding by castrating a relative of the Lebanese Shia Muslim leader, sending him the severed organs and then shooting the relative in the head. It is rumoured the KGB then informed Iran’s Supreme leader, Ruhollah Khomeini, that while the USSR had many nuclear weapons, accidents can happen. The hostages were released and no Russian officials have been kidnapped in the Middle East since.

Similarly, United States President Trump had his own unique way of communicating with Islamists. US Congressman Wesley Hunt explains how in a meeting with Taliban leaders, Trump declared, ‘I want to leave Afghanistan, but it’s going to be a conditions-based withdrawal,’ before issuing a stark warning. ‘If you harm a hair on a single American, I’m going to kill you.’ The translator conveyed this exact message. Trump then ‘reached in his pocket, pulled out a satellite photo of the leader of the Taliban’s home, handed it to him, got up and walked out the room.’ It was one of the quietest periods of US troop deployment to Afghanistan, until the botched withdrawal in 2021.

In today’s alt-post-modern world with Western leaders including those in Australia hyper-active to mean tweets, and victim-based sensitivities, these anecdotes may offend. Yet, many of us are not interested in offending our enemies, as much as we are communicating with them in a language they understand. When you don’t, eventually its our young men and women in uniform who end up paying the ultimate price.

Not so with how the West has been dealing with Iran today. Australia and the Biden administration have a strange fascination with appeasing Iran and its proxies. This is despite the fact its foreign policy is based on terrorism, drugs, refugees and kidnapping for geo-political ransom. During a 2018 counter-terrorism conference in Tehran, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani threated the US with a ‘deluge of drugs, refugees and terrorism in the West’. Consider where we will be if Iran obtains a nuclear weapon.

As Hamas and Hezbollah flags fly and Allahu Akbar is heard on our streets, according to the Iranian Ambassador to Australia, Ahmad Sadeghi, the gates of heaven are open to international terrorists. Ambassador Sadeghi, has been publicly honouring the life of Hezbollah’s Hassan Nasrallah, killed in an Israel missile strike, as a ‘prominent standard-bearer’ with a designated path to heaven. Sadeghi’s statement reveals a toxic foreign policy that has no place in Australia.

The boldness of Sadeghi’s statement is not that it is pitched to his masters in Tehran, it’s that he knows empathy for Islamist extremism is growing across Western communities as well as many institutions we used to trust. Why else would so many of our political leaders, academics, and commentators, seek to mainstream Hamas and Hezbollah, if there wasn’t a change occurring within the fabric of our country? One that is irreversible.

We paid dearly for appeasing extremists last century. In Tim Bouverie’s work on how Britain fell for a delusion with Hitler, Lord Hugh Cecil stated, ‘It was like stroking a crocodile and expecting it to purr’. The lesson from Israel’s fight against terrorism, but lost on many in the West, is simple – you cannot befriend a terrorist. Just ask former US Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton. Under Clinton the US thought it clever to arm and train Islamist militias against Isis. Instead, it turned Syria-Iraq into a thriving arms bazaar for head-cutting extremists. It never pays to let snakes live in your sleeve. In Australia, they are granted tourist visas.

An Arab proverb says, a fool may be known by six things: anger without cause, speech without profit, change without progress, inquiry without object, putting trust in a stranger, and mistaking foes for friends. Iran is not a friend.

Australia is not alone in this Western trend to appease jihadists, and Iran knows it. The killing of British Conservative MP Sir David Amess in 2021, at the hand of suspect Ali Harbi Ali, should have been called out for what it was – a tactic of Islamist extremism. Instead, limp-wristed British politicians called for ‘a kinder, gentler dialogue’. People who seek the intimacy of death, fed on a mind-diet of graphic violence with a licence to kill from God, are not looking for a hug. And neither is Iran.

Iran funds and supports some of the most effective terrorist organisations in the world such as Hamas, Hezbollah as well as the Houthis in Yemen. Abducting hostages for geo-political ransom is a tactic Iran has been using since the 1979 Islamic Revolution.

These terrorist networks are some of the best armed non-state actors on the planet. Thanks to Iran, Hezbollah has amassed weapons systems such as the Fateh-110/M-600 short-range ballistic missile, Shahab short-range ballistic missiles, Toophan antitank guided missiles, M113 armoured personnel carriers and T-72 main battle tanks. They are better equipped than New Zealand.

Tehran-backed Shia terror groups also use targeted assassinations. In 2019 the EU slapped sanctions on Iran after The Netherlands, Denmark and France revealed Tehran was behind the assassination of two dissidents, in 2015 and 2017. In 2018, French security services determined Tehran was behind the plot to bomb a rally of the People’s Mujahedeen of Iran opposition group in a Paris suburb. In 2011 the FBI revealed a Quds Force plot in which a Mexican drug cartel was paid $US1.5 million to assassinate the Saudi ambassador in Washington.

Hezbollah’s reach also extends to Australia beyond flag-waving fanatics. In 2017 it was revealed a Sydney-based money launderer and crime figure, identified as a ‘Hezbollah functionary’, had brokered an arms deal between China, Iran and Hezbollah in 2011. The shipment was discovered as part of an international investigation into Hezbollah’s links with narcotics traffickers in Latin American, the Middle East and China.

Then there is the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corp (IRGC). The IRGC is the clenched fist at the end of Iran’s foreign and domestic defence arm. Prior to his elimination in a drone strike outside Baghdad Airport under US President Trump, IRGC’s commander, Major General Hossein Salami, declared, ‘This sinister regime (Israel) must be wiped off the map and this is no longer… a dream (but) it is an achievable goal’. Waiting until Iran has a nuclear weapon would be a grave dereliction of duty on behalf of the international community.

Yet Joe Biden is warning Israel not to strike Iran’s nuclear facilities as Australia pleads for Israel to take it easy on these extremists. To be sure, the Biden administration has displayed weakness and appeasement with Iran all along. Four weeks prior to the 7 October atrocities, Biden handed the biggest sponsor of global terrorism $US6 billion in exchange for five hostages held in Tehran and left an open door to renew negotiations on a revised nuclear agreement. That’s right, a nuclear agreement with the nation planning to wipe Israel off the map.

All these weaknesses bring us to where we are today. Modern nation states don’t traffic drugs and weapons, and terrorism as their foreign policy. Responsible modern Western nations, wanting to be free, cannot continue to accommodate the wicked to appease the virtuous. Even if there is no wider war in a conventional sense with Iran, perhaps Sadeghi recognises what our leaders are failing to see; that Australia has been irreparably changed. We now risk losing what was a generous, compassionate and down-to-earth nation. Once gone you can bet none of these pro-Islamist protestors will fight to get it back.

https://www.spectator.com.au/2024/10/irans-toxic-foreign-policy/

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Black Clergy Stand With Israel Against Terrorists

Star Parker

My organization, the Center for Urban Renewal and Education, co-hosted a press conference Monday with Michigan Lighthouse Ministries. Over 50 pastors from across Michigan noted the atrocities committed a year ago to the day by Hamas terrorists against Israeli citizens. They expressed solidarity with Israel.

We chose a church in Michigan for this program because the state is home to the largest Arab-American population in the country.

Michigan is also home to Rep. Rashida Tlaib, a Democrat who is the only Palestinian-American representative in the U.S. House of Representatives and one of the nation’s most strident voices against Israel.

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Were these clergy, mostly black, expressing opposition to Arab Americans? Certainly not. On the contrary, their support of the Jewish state, and the values it embodies and expresses, is an expression of support for the welfare and betterment of all mankind.

Of great concern to these Christian evangelicals is the cloud of darkness spreading and enveloping so much of our world today.

The miraculous return of the Jewish people to their historical homeland after 2,000 years in dispersion and their transformation of desert and swamp into a thriving modern state, with per capita income higher than most European countries, shines laser-like light into the thick dark cloud of evil around us.

Hamas terrorists noted the first anniversary of their Oct. 7 attack by firing missiles into Israel, saying that, given the opportunity, they would commit the same atrocities again and again.

By atrocities, we’re talking about murder, rape, beheadings, burning of babies, mutilation of corpses.

How is it that there is sympathy for this depravity?

Iran, which provides the billions financing Hamas, Hezbollah, and other terrorist organizations, had a gross domestic product of just $5,740 per capita in 2023, according to tradingeconomics.com. This is only 13.5% of Israel’s $42,674 per capita GD, despite Iran having the fourth-largest holdings of oil reserves in the world.

The difference is that Israel is about choosing life and personal responsibility and creativity, and Iran is about a government stealing the wealth of its citizens to finance a hateful, destructive ideology.

Similarly, the Hamas terrorists. The billions infused into Gaza over the years from Iran, but also from European countries and America, was used to fund terror rather than build a country and create wealth.

When I first visited Israel, I saw the similarities of the culture of blame and denial of personal responsibility among the Palestinians that have caused so much destruction in America’s own inner cities. We see a corrupt political leadership exploiting the worst tendencies in people by attributing their suffering to others, fostering a culture of blame, rather than taking personal responsibility for their own lives.

The black clergy that gathered in Michigan on Monday, Oct. 7, did so to stand for truth and to stand for a better world.

Inscribed on America’s Liberty Bell in Philadelphia are these words from the book of Leviticus in the Hebrew Bible: “Proclaim Liberty throughout all the land unto all the Inhabitants thereof.”

The bell was commissioned in Pennsylvania in 1751 to commemorate the 50th anniversary of William Penn’s first constitution for the future state in 1701. Penn observed, “If we will not be governed by God, we must be governed by tyrants.”

This is the message our pastors convey to a world swimming in darkness.

When our own country was attacked by Muslim terrorists on Sept. 11, 2001, evangelical pastors pleaded that the nation do its own soul-searching for its sins. They were chastised for saying this.

But we see, over the 23 years since then, that those sins continue to weaken our nation.

The appeal of our pastors is unwavering support for the one Jewish state, for the Bible we have received from the Jewish nation, and to end, everywhere, the sick and evil culture of blame.

https://www.dailysignal.com/2024/10/09/why-black-clergy-speak-out-for-israel/

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