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Jewish World Review Oct. 1, 2002 / 25 Tishrei, 5763
Michael Ledeen
The terror network - from al-Qaeda to Hizbollah, from Islamic
Jihad to Hamas and various Palestinian Liberation
Organisation groups - is as potent as it is because of the support given by four
tyrannical regimes, which I term the "terror masters": Iran, Iraq, Syria and Saudi
Arabia. Without the support of those regimes, the terrorists would be gravely
weakened and would become easy prey.
The Middle East phase of the war against terrorism must focus on these regimes
and, while each country requires a different strategy, our most lethal weapon will be
the people who suffer under the four tyrants.
Ever since President George W. Bush's "axis of evil" speech, the terror masters have
been organising a common front against the US and its allies. Wherever we strike
first, we are almost certain to find all the others retaliating. It is dangerous to believe
we shall have the luxury of dealing with them one by one; we shall find ourselves in a
regional conflict as soon as we move.
Of the four terror states, the most important is Iran, which invented modern Islamic
terrorism at the time of the Khomeini revolution of 1979. Iran created, trained,
protected, funded and supported the world's most deadly terrorist group - Hizbollah -
and has been a pillar of support for the others, including al-Qaeda. But terrorism is
virtually the only success of the Islamic Republic; it has ruined the country and earned
the hatred of the overwhelming majority of Iranians.
In what must be something of a record, even for a failed tyranny, the regime recently
conducted a poll that showed 90 per cent of Iranians strongly critical of the regime.
Hardly a week goes by without violent demonstrations in a big city, ironically driven by
the disillusioned former supporters of the "reformist" President Mohammad Khatami,
who has proved powerless. The regime, knowing it can no longer rely on its military
and paramilitary forces to suppress the demonstrations, is constantly importing new
thugs, restructuring the armed forces and shifting commanders from region to region.
Iran is in a similar condition to Yugoslavia in the last days of Slobodan Milosevic,
Poland and Czechoslovakia in the last days of the Soviet empire, and the Philippines
in the last days of Ferdinand Marcos. One does not need a military assault to bring
down the regime; it should be sufficient to support the Iranian people themselves,
who want to be free of the mullahcracy that has oppressed them. As in these other
cases, the US could simply provide opposition groups with funding and technical
support and encourage them through broadcasts.
It would be very difficult for the Syrians, Saudis and Iraqis to fight the Iranian people on
behalf of a failed regime. By contrast, if we begin with a military attack on Iraq, it will be
much easier for the terrorists and armed forces at the disposal of the Syrian, Saudi
and Iranian regimes to find ways to kill US and British soldiers on Iraqi soil and
elsewhere.
The fall of the radical Islamic Republic would eliminate the terrorists' greatest source
of support and the subsequent joy of the Iranian people would cut the heart out of
Islamic fundamentalism, demonstrating to an entire generation of Muslims that such
regimes fail utterly, whether in their (Iranian) Shiite or (Afghan) Sunni versions. And the
successful overthrow of the Tehran regime would inspire great public support for
similar revolutions in Baghdad and Damascus, which is precisely what we want. We
shall have far greater success if we arrive as credible liberators than if we come as
invaders; and it would be well to show the Iraqis - who have twice been betrayed by
feckless US presidents in the past decade - that this time we know what we are
doing.
As for Saudi Arabia, while there are certainly pro-western members of the royal family,
this fossilised remnant of an outmoded medieval culture must stop funding the global
organisation of radical mosques and religious schools in which the next generation of
terrorists is being brainwashed and recruited. And the royal family must cease to
support terrorist activities against their nominal friends in the west. It will probably be
easier to convince them of the colossal error of their ways once we have shown our
power and determination elsewhere in the region; and indeed they already seem to
understand that they need to co-operate to escape a certain doom.
It sounds an enormously ambitious mission; but there is no escape, for the terror
masters are bound together in a common enterprise by their shared hatred of us. It is
a mission altogether worthy of the world's lone superpower. As President Ronald
Reagan once remarked, the US is too great a country to settle for small dreams.
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