Iran’s president is on a South American tour, hoping to expand Iranian influence.
Ahmadinejad’s good relations with Venezuela’s openly anti-American regime are well-known. As well as President Hugo Chavez, the Iranian leader has already nurtured relations with Nicaragua’s President Daniel Ortega and Ecuadorean President Rafael Correa. But this is the first time an Iranian leader has visited Brazil, a country with major international aspirations.
The one-day visit is the first leg of a Latin American and African tour that will also take in Venezuela, Bolivia, Gambia and Senegal, and is being seen as part of a concerted Iranian campaign to win influence in parts of the western hemisphere.
And it’s working.
Iran’s leader got a welcoming bear hug from the Brazilian president, who urged Western nations to drop threats of punishment over the Iranian nuclear program and instead negotiate a fair solution.
Hezbullah cells are well ensconced in South America—with America’s enemies, of course.
The commander of U.S. forces in Latin America says the Iranian-backed Lebanese militant group Hezbollah is involved in drug trafficking in Colombia. The admiral is worried about increased Iranian and Hezbollah activities throughout the region.
Meanwhile, back at home, the Iranian leadership is making sure of two things. First, that the opposition is decapitated.
A former Iranian Vice-President and leading reformist has been sentenced to six years in prison for fomenting unrest after President Ahmadinejad’s disputed re-election in June.
Mohammad Ali Abtahi, who “confessed” to his alleged crimes at a trial widely denounced as a charade, is the most senior of hundreds of dissidents who have been locked up over the past five months.
Next, setting up education camps for the young, controlling communications, and effectively creating a police state (though the scaries element has to be the Basij centers in elementary schools).
In recent weeks, the government has announced a variety of new ideological offensives.
It is implanting 6,000 Basij militia centers in elementary schools across Iran to promote the ideals of the Islamic Revolution, and it has created a new police unit to sweep the Internet for dissident voices. A company affiliated with the Revolutionary Guards acquired a majority share in the nation’s telecommunications monopoly this year, giving the Guards de facto control of Iran’s land lines, Internet providers and two cellphone companies. And in the spring, the Revolutionary Guards plan to open a news agency with print, photo and television elements.
These actions, and Iran’s other aggressive actions, are triggering an arms race in the Persian Gulf.
Saudi Arabia, long the major arms-buyer in the region, is now being overtaken by relative minnows such as the United Arab Emirates as they share their neighbour’s fear of the growing military strength of their Shia neighbour.
And of course, the specter of a nuclear-armed Iran haunts Israel as well as the Arab nations.
Most Israelis believe the key to enduring peace in the Middle East is convincing Israel’s adversaries that ejecting Israel through force is an impossible task not worth pursuing. As the Palestinian-American political scientist Hilal Khashan’s work on Arab attitudes toward peace has shown, the willingness of Arabs to make peace with Israel is a direct function of their perception of Israel’s invincibility. The Iranian nuclear program threatens this perception.
An additional threat posed by Iran’s nuclear program is its potential to unleash a cascade of proliferation in the Middle East, beginning with Egypt and Saudi Arabia. The development of nuclear weapons by these countries would pose a grave danger to the Jewish state, despite the fact that Egypt has signed a peace treaty with Israel. This is because leaders who have reconciled themselves to Israel’s existence have done so because they believed Israel was strong but unlikely to endure in the long term.
Just as an Iranian nuclear capability would imply a nuclear guarantee for anti-Zionist proxies, an Egyptian or Saudi nuclear capability would reduce incentives for other Arab states to make peace with Israel because, shielded under an Arab nuclear umbrella, they would no longer fear catastrophic defeat or further loss of territory.
So what can we do to stop Iran’s aggression? Well, the opposition is reaching out to the United States.
After more than five months of going it alone, Iran’s opposition Green Movement is reaching out to the United States for help. Via public and private channels, the Obama Administration has received several appeals in recent weeks to take a stronger stand against human-rights abuses in Iran, avoid military action and impose more aggressive and rapid-fire sanctions against the Revolutionary Guards and its vast business interests.
It’s time for President Obama to stop tsk-tsking about Iran’s behavior, and begin actively supporting the Iranian opposition. Iran’s aims are to become a regional hegemon, to spread its Islamism over the world, and to subjugate any and all who seek something different for Iran. The Iranian aims are quite clear. While it may be an exaggeration to say they want world domination, at least for now, it is their ultimate goal. The United Nations might want to take a look at the elephant in the room for a change, instead of focusing so strongly on Israel. Israel does not seek world domination, and not even hegemony in the Middle East. You cannot say the same for Iran, which is currently arming the Yemeni opposition, trying to build nuclear weapons plants in Syria, controlling Lebanon through Hizbullah, working for the destruction of Israel, setting up Hezbullah cells in South America, and fomenting unrest wherever and whenever it benefits Iran.
Sanctions should be the least of our actions.