By Tony Duheaume
AS far as the Iranian regime is concerned, deals are made to be broken, but not until its leaders have gained all of what they were seeking. The regime’s policy has always been to seek out weak leaders, either enemy states or those of its so-called allies, and to exploit them for whatever goal they wish to achieve.
In Shiite tradition, taqiyya – or concealment as it is in translation — can be used to deceive when dealing with an enemy, when threats are in the air. So with Khamenei feeling his back was to the wall with Iran’s economy being throttled by ever-increasing sanctions, it was goodbye to the snarling features of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and then in no time at all, a moderate Rohani was wheeled out to deceive the world with his smiling face and pleasant demeanor, and his well-practiced use of taqiyya. It was after the 2003 to 2005 nuclear negotiations with European states collapsed, Hassan Rohani first proved how taqiyya could work successfully for political gain, when at a meeting of leading Islamic clerics, he had admitted to blatantly lying about Iran’s intention to suspend nuclear activity, lies of which later came to light in a video clip from an Iranian news program interview. Using talks to woo the world into a false sense of security, a deceitfully charming Rohani, who was at that time the chief Iranian negotiator at those talks, led the West to believe that Iran was serious about suspending all uranium enrichment and other nuclear activities, until a deal had been reached. While in reality, Iranian nuclear boffins had, in fact, accelerated the program by installing new equipment in Isfahan, a nuclear facility where uranium ore is enriched, and also during this period of talks, a heavy water reactor at Arak was developed during 2004, which also flagrantly breached the 2003 agreement, and the only part of the nuclear program that was curtailed in any way was the suspension of 10 centrifuges at the Natanz enrichment facility.
During present negotiations over the Iran deal, the Iranian regime has played the West well, and with the smiling face of Hassan Rohani now in the seat of president, claiming to be a moderate, and making soothing overtures about seriously wanting to comply with the latest agreement to suspend his country’s nuclear program, he once again played Western leaders as the fools they are for embarking on such a farcical agreement.
With billions of dollars pouring into Tehran’s coffers for purportedly adhering to the Iran deal, the clerical regime has been able to strengthen its army, through domestically building a succession of military hardware, which includes fighter jets, long range missiles capable of reaching Europe, a new submarine, four types of UAVs, a collection of transporter erector launchers (TELs) which accommodate Iranian Shahab-3 guided ballistic missiles, which are said to be capable of striking Israel from Iranian territory, and deemed able to overwhelm Israeli defense systems.
But on top of this, Iran has been conducting war games in the Straits of Hormuz, blasting the mock-up of a US warship to smithereens, and has also unveiled its latest underground bunker full of medium and long range missiles, ready to be fired at US bases or Gulf states should Iran be attacked, and on top of all of this, Iran has defied a United Nations Security Council resolution by testing missiles capable of delivering nuclear weapons.
The strengthening of Shiite Iran comes at a time, when Sunni nations have been decimated through the deaths of Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein and Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi, both having fallen through sustained Western bombing campaigns, and military intervention. But when you consider how Iran with its long history of seeking nuclear weapons, has never been bombed, while Iraq suffered shock and awe through false intelligence, which claimed he was close to developing one, and Gaddafi was taken down at a time when he was coming in from the cold, the whole episode smacks of the West wishing to keep the clerics in power for some form of political advantage; possibly to replace the US as a policeman of the Middle East, now that a vast amount of their military has pulled out.
Then further strengthening the hand of the Iranian clerics, Iraq has now fallen under its spell, a virtual proxy state of the despotic regime, when through having a very severely weakened armed forces, which had been completely dismantled by the United States after the fall of Saddam, and then rebuilt in a very sorry state, had collapsed under the advance of Daesh (the so-called IS) invasion.
With the war against Daesh intensifying, the Iraqi government brought in Iranian-backed militia groups to aid the regular army, and it has been openly acknowledged by many of these militia volunteers, how they had been trained to despise all Sunnis, including the civilian population of whom they were supposed to protect, and feeling such animosity to their religious adversaries, they have no qualms when it comes to targeting them for kidnap or extrajudicial execution.
Then as the war vastly intensified, with Daesh seeming close to entering Baghdad, the US gave its approval for Iranian troops go in on the ground, and the Iranian clerics dreams of domination came true, as they not only had a firm military presence in Iraq, but they were also able to integrate Shiite militiamen into the ranks of the Iraqi army, virtually turning the country into proxy state of Iran, all brought to fruition by the Iran deal, and the power of lies.
— Al Arabiya English
