To understand Iran’s calculations, you must understand their eschatological vision
Why did they pursue the destruction of Israel like Ahab pursued Moby Dick, from the very moment they took over Iran? What had Israel ever done to them?
Why did the fierce attacks by the US and Israel last summer not dissuade them from their destructive goals?
Why were they seemingly not listening to Trump’s warning that if they didn’t give up their nuclear weapons and stop killing their own people in droves, they would suffer more attacks from the US?
Yes, nuclear weapons would make them untouchable; this was a good part of North Korea’s motives, too, in obtaining them. But North Korea is an island of sanity compared to the mullahs in their belief system and goals.
Please read this description of what drives the mullahs. Here’s an excerpt:
… [T]he late Ayatollah Khomeini’s Twelver-influenced Shi’i revolutionary theology, promotes a worldview that elevates death, martyrdom, and chaos as instruments of divine purpose.
Most wars can be halted through political pressure, negotiation, or deterrence. But this conflict is grounded in a dogma that sanctifies destruction and bloodshed as necessary steps toward redemption. Within this framework, Israel’s destruction is not simply a strategic objective; it is portrayed as a sacred duty. Iran will therefore persist in waging this war because its leaders believe they are carrying out God’s work, and that only through Israel’s elimination will redemption arrive. Until the West grasps this theological dimension, its response to Iran will remain inadequate—and dangerously naïve. …
The Iranian regime considers their nation to be chosen by Allah to prepare the world for the coming of their messiah, the Twelfth Imam (whom they call the Mahdi) who will establish justice in the world. They believe that catastrophic world chaos and the defeat of their enemies, especially Israel, are prerequisites for this event. Their murder and mayhem is not only a means to an end; according to their religion it is an end in itself, and their foreign policy is guided by the desired impending apocalypse. This makes them a most dangerous foe, since there is no chance of negotiating with them or resolving the conflict peacefully; peace and justice will come only through their own martyrdom, in their view.
The leader for whom Iran prepares the way is the Twelfth Imam, or the Mahdi. Twelver Shia Muslims believe that the Mahdi disappeared in the 9th century and was placed into “divine occultation” (ghaybah), where he will remain until he reappears to declare victory over all the world’s Islamic infidels and establish a global Shia Islamic kingdom. Chaos and war, however, are necessary to bring his return.
If you keep that in mind when you think about the leaders of the Iranian theocracy, I think many of their actions become understandable. And the need to eliminate their rule becomes not a choice, but a necessity. The chaos and destruction they seek to cause involves not just Israel, but other Muslim nations not in accord with them (the Gulf States, for example, which they have attacked recently), Western nations and in particular the US, and ultimately the world.
Perhaps the real reason the Iranians told Witkoff and Kushner at the recent negotiations that they had retained enriched material and could easily build eleven nuclear weapons in short order (see this) was a combination of their thinking that the US didn’t have the guts to do much about it, plus a way to say, “Hey, bring it on!”
It’s said you can’t win a war with someone who’s willing to blow himself up to kill you.
That presumes “win” means some kind of negotiation and the guy agrees not to try to kill you.
There’s another option.
But it requires eternal vigilance and moving first.
When one guy agrees to not try to kill you, behind him is somebody putting together a bomb, large or small. He didn’t agree.
Gonna require a new way lf looking at the world.
This information about the Iranian leadership has been available in the West since 1979, and it sure as heck means sending them literal pallets of cash was not only stupid, but dangerous.
Amen, Kate.
It was good to hear the Secretary of War say we were in it to win, something the US hasn’t been since WWII, in my opinion. With the US, Israel (and neighboring Arab states if the IRGC keeps sending missiles their way) serious about ending this once and for all, hopefully the current regime and their capacity to wage and support war on Israel and the West will be negated.
They’ve been shouting “Death to America!” and “Death to Israel!” for decades, and meaning every word. FINALLY someone is taking them seriously, and doing something about it.
Kate is correct. The question is why or how has the political leadership of America, and much (all?) of the rest of the West not comprehended this? Or was it intentional ignorance? The eternal question, “Ignorance or malice?” I’m old enought to remember Bush and his crew telling the world that “islam” means “peace.” Did they know the truth? Or were they kept in the dark by those who did and chose not to inform them? Regardless, the only way to deal with these islamic fanatics is the same as the way America dealt with Japanese banzai troops; kill them all and let God sort it out. But will the fifth column that calls itself “the democrat party” ever allow that to take place? Or is their irrational hatred for their country so strong that they prefer its destruction even though it is also their own destruction that must result?
Pretty sure we’ve seen this film before…you know: regaining paradise by eradicating—WHAT IS THE LATEST DEFINITION OF—“evil”…
But where? where?
Most Americans were very ignorant about Islam before 9/11. I was. I knew about the Iranian mullahs, but not very much. By the time Obama was removing sanctions and sending pallets of cash, the information was widely available, however.
Mullahs who live in luxury into their 80s and 90s are not acting like their one goal is to die as a martyr. The rhetoric is for the little people, the tools. The child minesweepers in the 80s, for example, given little keys with which to enter Paradise. The clerics weren’t out minesweeping. Had they really wanted martyrdom instead of preaching about it they had lots of opportunities they didn’t take.
Re: Enriched uranium
I’ve heard some talk about the US or Israel sending in special operators to find the enriched uranium and deal with it.
Assuming it exists. There have been rumors that it did since Operation Midnight Hammer last summer. I can’t tell.
In any event it seems a terrible miscalculation on Iran’s part to boast like that to Trump. Sure, he would prefer to negotiate, but he will not be trifled with. He has consistently been following through on his red lines.
@huxley: it seems a terrible miscalculation on Iran’s part to boast like that to Trump.
Trying to have it both ways is something they’ve always done. Since 2006, every year they’ve had a National Nuclear Technology holiday where they publicly celebrate how successful they are with enriching uranium. You can see the videos on YouTube.
It’s a fine line they’ve been walking. For their own people, they say we do what we want no matter what the West tries to keep us from doing. For the West, they say they don’t have any sinister intentions but you know they do enrich lots of uranium for totally peaceful purposes.
When a socialist with three houses talks about rich people being too rich, we can tell he doesn’t really believe what he preaches. When a televangelist lives in luxury and preaches poverty, we can tell he worships Mammon and not God.
Seems we can do the same with the actions of the clerics versus their words. We’re certainly able to do that when they speak publicly about nuclear weapons being against Islam and nonetheless still pursue them. Not sure why it’s so difficult to tell this about their supposed seeking of martyrdom. Their actions reveal them to be primarily motivated by desire for power and then money, neither of which can be enjoyed by martyrs.
I’m not saying they’re reasonable people who can be expected to keep their side of an agreement. Their actions speak for them there too. It just the difference between their words and their actions. You can say anything you like and you can change what you say whenever you want, but actions have a cost in time and money and actions constrain future actions. They don’t act like they personally seek martyrdom.
When Khamenei said this in 2015, he was obviously lying, his actions prove it. And his actions prove that he personally did not desire martyrdom, since he had so many opportunities to achieve it in his 86 years that he refused to take.
I’m pretty sure Trump always knew where this was going to land.
But negotiations with Iran gave him extra time to get his plans all worked out with Israel and for some diplomatic cover with Democrat leaders and the UN/EU. For whatever the latter was worth.
The mullahs would have been better off agreeing to Trump’s demands, then cheating like hell and waiting for Democrats to come back to power. But the mullahs really believe the Twelfth Imam stuff and the apocalypse which comes with it.
Just as well.
Why bother listening to what the Iranian mullahs say and do Nick, when you have your own box to put them in?
I think that whatever the Iranian negotiators said to Witkoff and Kucher in the last go round must have been enough make them realize that the Twelvers were dead serious about creating a sheet of radioactive glass and bring about the return of the Mahdi, or at least, finishing off Israel for good and all. The risk that that the Iranians were just bluffing was too much to take.
So, may as well finish off the running sore that has been Iran under the mullacracy since 1979.
The other thing is that I am pretty sure that conventionally-devout (or even agnostics) have a problem in really understanding the determined mindset of the fiercely, fanatically devout of any religion. It just doesn’t compute. We know that it exists, of course – but we don’t fully comprehend it.
Zealots are found in many faiths, including atheism.
One of the reasons I ended moving to the political right after 9/11 was because I comprehended that we were fighting not just an ideology, but an eschatology. Lefties of all sorts, including Classical Liberals, simply suck at understanding eschatologies, because 1) they don’t have one, 2) eschatologies are too theologically complex and abstruse for outsiders to easily understand & 3) lefties tend to see such doctrines as Not The Real Reason Governments Do Things, but as a smoke screen to fool the rubes. In this case, they simply can’t believe that the Iranian government seriously believes these Occulted Imam fairy tales!
The Right, however, because of the strong Christian contingent within it, still has an appreciation of the power of eschatologies because of the importance of Christian eschatology for so many of its members. They understand that others will die for “fairy tales” because they know they’d die for theirs.
“To understand the Iranian calculations…” we might find we’re back to attempting to divide by zero.
Steve at 1230pm:
“Or is their irrational hatred for their country so strong that they prefer its destruction even though it is also their own destruction..”
My take on the Ds/leftists I know is that they all claim to love the US and they are desperate to save the country from Trump and MAGA. Their hatred, white hot, is for Trump and us. That permeates all their thoughts.
physicsguy:
We have been “othered” by the Ds/leftists. The “America” they love needs to be purged/cleansed of those deplorable, irredeemable others. Those subhuman “-ists.”
They want to start with the Susan Rice lawfare and escalate.
The Japanese had the bushido code and we won. We’re dealing with a similar group, they believe that to die in the furtherance of their religious beliefs means a promotion, they’ll be defeated also.
There’s that lovely moment at the end of “The Wizard of Oz” where the Winkie Guards hand Dorothy the charred remnant of the witch’s broom and shout, “Hail to Dorothy! The wicked witch is dead!” Can we expect such a moment from the IRGC when the last of the mullahs is killed? Or are the IRGC all, or some, or most, ‘bitter-enders?’
If by some means we can destroy or capture all the enriched uranium, and eliminate all offensive military capabilities of the regime, it might not matter. At this moment, however, I don’t see how even that is done–not militarily, but politically.
Trump periodically signals that he expects this operation to be reasonably short, like Cornhead predicted yesterday. Is Trump prepared to do all that might be necessary to terminate this regime?
The Bushido code didn’t work out in Burma/Malaya, the Phillipines, the other Pacific Islands, or with the Soviets. And after the Army Air Force and the US Navy were done with their cities and their waters it took two newer weapons to convince the Emporer that the Bushido code was not operable. So the Japanese people didn’t starve to death or die pointlessly.
I doubt that the “twelvers” have anything remotely similar to the 1945 Japanese cultural Bushido mindset. Thousands may be willing to be misted (HE effects) or overpressured, not hundred thousands, nor millions. I’ve read that Shia in Iraq aren’t to keen on dying for Iran.
Hop along mullah fellah.
@ Jim Melcher > “are the IRGC all, or some, or most, ‘bitter-enders?’”
Watch what they do.
If they continue to “man the missile launchers” (many of which were apparently set by Khamenei on automatically determined missions in event of his death, which explains to some extent the counter-productive bombing of even some quasi-allies*), or if they take their money and run (the IRGC collectively owns most Iranian business and infrastructure), that will tell you which ones are what.
*Tom Lehrer’s “We’ll All Go Together When We Go” appears to be the mullahs’ theme song, although “they have to eschew personal martyrdom for the sake of guiding the poor benighted Islamic public” (they don’t say it, but that’s what their actions show).
While I understand the frustration with the fickleness of many prior administrations related to Iran (though the policies of the Obama administration go all the way to traitorous), I think it’s good to keep in mind the geopolitical situation has changed a lot since 1979. Iran is a big country with a lot of oil to sell and with smart people capable of handling sophisticated weapons. The Shah, IIRC, helped fund the development of the US Navy F-14 Tomcat fighter, and Iran was the only other country to fly them. They were capable of making a lot of trouble in the region, and when Europe and Japan were heavily dependent on oil shipments through the Straits of Hormuz, giving the Iranians reasons to get spicy was asking for big economic troubles world wide. With the development of alternate oil supplies in North America, South America, the North Atlantic, and Africa, as well as alternate shipping via pipelines to the Med and Red Seas, the cost of irritating the Iranians has gone down is likely being born mainly by the Chinese who are heavily dependent on Iran’s illicit shipments. Trump deserves credit for seizing the moment in a way neither Obama or Biden did due to their ideological blinders but he’s only able to do this due to the changes.
“Iran will therefore persist in waging this war because its leaders believe they are carrying out God’s work, and that only through Israel’s elimination will redemption arrive.” Tim Orr, Times of Israel
The elimination of Israel, “the Little Satan” is simply at the top of the list. A list that consists of every non-Muslim nation.
Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood and Saudi Arabia’s Wahhabi sect are every bit as dedicated to the triumph of Islam as are the Twelver Mullahs. Not to mention Hamas, Hezbollah and ISIS.
The ‘moderate’ Islamic regimes simply prefer soft jihad, along with hijrah ‘migratory jihad’. It’s hardly accidental that the vast majority of Muslim ‘refugees’ are young adult males.
There aren’t enough cousins for those young, migratory, predatory males back home.
Do the mullahs really seek martyrdom? Probably not. They’ve had their chances and have always declined. They like wealth and power and martyrdom is for the gullible little people. Do I want them to obtain a nuclear weapon to test the theory that they wouldn’t actually use it? Nope.