Yes, Secretary Kerry: Iran Does Want to Destroy Israel

It’s the first rule of war: know your enemy.

Understand the enemy’s ideology and beliefs–what drives him. Steep yourself in his history and patterns of behavior. Identify his weaknesses and vulnerabilities. And then, achieve victory.

In recent times, Ronald Reagan employed this plan to perfection in helping to bring down the Soviet Empire. In fact, Reagan studied communism and the Soviet system for decades before he became president.

The result? Once in office, he employed a strategy that enabled America to win the Cold War (although Stalin admirer Vladimir Putin now has Russia on the march once again in the face of a feckless Obama administration).

If only we had leaders in the West today who shared Reagan’s intellectual curiosity and honesty–not to mention his moral clarity.

Instead, we have John Kerry.

In an interview last week with The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg in which he defended the catastrophic Iran nuclear deal he helped secure, Kerry expressed doubts that the Iranian regime truly wants to destroy Israel. Goldberg writes:

Though [Kerry] says he is in tune with this set of Israeli fears, he does not endorse a view widely shared by Israelis—and by many Americans—that Iran’s leaders, who have often said that they seek the destruction of Israel, mean what they say. “I think they have a fundamental ideological confrontation with Israel at this particular moment. Whether or not that translates into active steps to, quote, ‘Wipe it,’ you know …” Here I interjected: “Wipe it off the map.” Kerry continued: “I don’t know the answer to that. I haven’t seen anything that says to me—they’ve got 80,000 rockets in Hezbollah pointed at Israel, and any number of choices could have been made. They didn’t make the bomb when they had enough material for 10 to 12. They’ve signed on to an agreement where they say they’ll never try and make one and we have a mechanism in place where we can prove that. So I don’t want to get locked into that debate. I think it’s a waste of time here.”

In other words, the regular, longtime pronouncements (like this one) by Iran’s leadership that it wishes to wipe Israel off the map are merely empty threats meant for domestic consumption. Kerry apparently believes that if Iran really wanted to wipe Israel off the map, it would have already tried to do so via an all-out onslaught against the Jewish State. And after all, according to Kerry, speculating on Iran’s genocidal ambitions towards Israel when discussing the Iranian nuclear deal is “a waste of time.”

Kerry’s statements reveal a stunning ignorance of–and indifference about–the Iranian regime’s ideology and the role it plays in Iran’s every move. Now, Kerry’s maddening inability (refusal?) to grasp the true nature of the enemy (yes, the Iranian regime remains an avowed enemy of the United States, according to its own leaders) has been further exposed with the publication of a revealing new book by Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. According to Amir Taheri of the New York Post:

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has published a new book called “Palestine,” a 416-page screed against the Jewish state. A blurb on the back cover credits Khamenei as “The flagbearer of Jihad to liberate Jerusalem.”

Obama administration officials likely hope that no American even hears about it…Khamenei makes his position clear from the start: Israel has no right to exist as a state.

He uses three words. One is “nabudi,” which means “annihilation.” The other is “imha,” which means “fading out,” and, finally, there is “zaval,” meaning “effacement…”

Khamenei insists that he is not recommending “classical wars” to wipe Israel off the map. Nor does he want to “massacre the Jews.” What he recommends is a long period of low-intensity warfare designed to make life unpleasant if not impossible for a majority of Israeli Jews so that they leave the country.

His calculation is based on the assumption that large numbers of Israelis have double nationality and would prefer emigration to the United States and Europe to daily threats of death.
Khamenei makes no reference to Iran’s nuclear program.

But the subtext is that a nuclear-armed Iran would make Israel think twice before trying to counter Khamenei’s strategy by taking military action against the Islamic Republic.

In Khamenei’s analysis, once the cost of staying in Israel has become too high for many Jews, Western powers, notably the US, which have supported the Jewish state for decades, might decide that the cost of doing so is higher than possible benefits.

Khamenei’s strategy, then, is clear. The Iranian regime is ideologically committed, with every fiber of its being, to wiping Israel off the map–incrementally, for now–until it acquires nuclear weapons. Then the timetable and the method for the destruction of the “Zionist entity” changes–and not for the better if you live in the Tel Aviv metro area.

But Secretary Kerry doesn’t want to hear any of this. He likely has never heard of Khamenei’s book and if made aware, would have no interest in reading it. Because Secretary Kerry not only doesn’t know the enemy: even worse, he has no desire to. Neither does his boss, President Obama, who’s spent the past week shamefully peddling charges of dual loyalty and nefarious Jewish influence in a downright sinister attempt to silence critics of his Iran deal.

In the meantime, the centrifuges continue to spin and Iran continues with its advanced ballistic missile program, including the development of ICBM’s that could one day reach the United States (as this video from my friends at the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews so vividly illustrates). The Iranian regime is doing this because–memo to the Obama administration–America is the “Great Satan” and ultimate target of the mullahs.

For the Iranians, Israel–the “Little Satan”–is just a bump on the road to the bigger prize: us.

Ignorance has consequences.

Particularly when it willful.

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