The US is at war against terror. Bin Laden is dead; ground zero for world terror is now Iran
T is for Terror
By Michael D. Evans
The Obama administration, or at least Vice President Biden, announced on Saturday, February 2, that the United States was still open to one-on-one talks with Iran. In an address to the Munich Security Conference Biden reiterated that:
“There is still time, there is still space for diplomacy backed by pressure to succeed…the ball is in the government of Iran’s court…that offer stands but it must be real and tangible and there has to be an agenda that they’re prepared to speak to.”
Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi responded: “We take these statements with positive consideration. I think this is a step forward…”
Having personally met with Mr. Salehi, who arranged an exclusive interview with President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad for me and the Fox News Network, I am outraged. For the administration to invite an anti-Semitic regime and the world’s largest sponsor of terror to chat over tea defines the meaning of the expression: “How dumb can you be and still breathe?”
Iran’s president claims the Holocaust is a myth: “They (the Western powers) launched the myth of the Holocaust. They lied, they put on a show and then they support the Jews.” He has called for the “stinking cancer”—Israel—to be “wiped off the map.” Iran’s proxies have killed or wounded more people than Osama bin Laden. Would the mastermind of 9/11 have been invited to the White House for tea to discuss his agenda?
On October 23, 1983, I met with US marines stationed in Beirut, Lebanon. I carried pocket-sized New Testaments to give to each of them as a Christmas gift, and it was my privilege to share the Gospel with them. One, a nineteen-year old from Wooster, Massachusetts, said to me, “Wish my mom a Merry Christmas, and tell her that her prayers have been answered. I found the Lord today.”
Two hundred forty-one of those young men were slaughtered during a terror attack on the barracks in which they were housed. I had slept on the beachhead the night before the attack, and was awakened by the sound of the explosion the following morning. We would soon learn that as the American troops were beginning a new day, a marine sentry at the gate looked up to see a yellow Mercedes truck barreling down. The truck was on a course for the lobby of the barracks. The sentries, armed only with loaded pistols, were unable to stop the speeding vehicle.
The Mercedes carried explosives equal to about six tons of TNT. The driver rammed into the lower floor of the barracks discharging his deadly cargo. The explosion caused the four-story building to collapse in a heap of rubble. Many of the dead were not killed by the blast itself, but were crushed beneath the cinder-block building as it pancaked in on itself.
News soon spread that Islamic Jihad, a pseudonym for Iranian armed and funded Hezbollah terrorists, had taken credit for the attack.
Since that day, Iran has been involved in hundreds of acts of terrorism. Not only has it provided funding, weapons, training, and sanctuary to al Qaeda and terrorists from Iraq, Afghanistan, and Lebanon, but it has become the central repository for world terror. It has provided paramilitary training to terrorists fighting American troops in Afghanistan and Iraq, but has also been the preeminent supplier of the armor-piercing improvised explosive devices (IEDs) in both those countries that have been so deadly to US troops.
Iran was behind the 1996 truck bombing of the Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia when nineteen US servicemen were murdered. Its Revolutionary Guard is presently the chief funder and coordinator of the terror that grips Syria. In 2011, Iran’s leaders plotted to assassinate the Saudi ambassador to the US, and bomb the Israeli embassies in Washington and Argentina.
On a state visit to Kurdistan hosted by President Masoud Barzani, I met with the entire Kurdish cabinet, including the prime minister, speaker of the house, secretary of state, and foreign minister. I was told again and again that there was an Iranian hiding behind every rock in Iraq armed with weapons and IEDs.
The vast majority of Jews murdered in Israel have been killed because of Iran’s terrorist proxies—Hamas and Hezbollah. In an interview on this subject with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, he said:
“They don’t hate you because of us; they hate us because of you. They say we are the ‘Small Satan,” and you are the ‘Great Satan.’”
The logic of the current administration for holding talks with Iran is that Iran does not currently have the ability to either create an atomic bomb or to deliver it via missile. I had this discussion at the home of James Woolsey in Georgetown, former director of the CIA under Bill Clinton. Woolsey said, “That is ridiculous! There are other ways to get nuclear weapons into the United States. These include ‘dirty bombs’ that could be smuggled into Israel and the US. The amount of nuclear materiel needed for such a bomb is 25 to 35 pounds—about the size of a basketball or volleyball. Iran could also launch a bomb as a SCUD in a bucket.” A SCUD is a short-range ballistic missile that can travel a couple of hundred miles. It could be launched from a tramp steamer a hundred miles off the coast of New York City or Tel Aviv.
The United States is at war against terror. Osama bin Laden is dead; ground zero for world terror is now Iran. The American people had developed a tolerance for terror before 9/11. Now, appeasement has become the offshoot of self-loathing. The only thing that will stop Iran is courage, intellectual honesty and willingness. A tea party is not the answer.
It was Winston Churchill who said that the world lacked the democratic courage, intellectual honesty, and willingness to act to stop Hitler’s war machine in 1935. If it had been stopped then, more than sixty-two million people would not have died.
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Dr. Mike Evans is a #1 New York Times bestselling author. His latest novel, The Locket, is the riveting story of a young Jewish girl who realizes that her neighbor, Adolf Eichmann, grew up to be the architect of the “final solution.” It documents her struggle to survive the Holocaust and bring Eichmann to justice. For information, visit www.Timeworthybooks.com.