Threatening Israel like former Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Iran’s Deputy Commander of the Revolutionary Guards Brig. Gen. Hossein Salami said its Hezbollah militia now has 100,000 missiles ready to hit Israel. When Ahmadinejad threatened Oct. 27, 2005 “to wipe Israel off the map,” Israeli Prime Minister Bejamin “Bibi” Netanyahu called Iran and “existential threat” to the Jewish State. Today’s reminder by Salami shows that things haven’t changed since Israel battled Hezbollah to loggerheads July 12, 2006 to Aug. 14, 2006, losing 121 Israeli Defense Forces, wounding 1,244. Lebanon’s 71-year-old Prime Minister Tamman Salam wants no part of Iran’s war-mongering, knowing full-well if Hezbollah fires rockets at Israel, Beirut will pay a draconic price. Salami speaks for Iran but not for Hezbollah or Lebanon’s democratic government.
With diplomatic relations severed by Riyadh with Tehran, Iran’s Shiite President Hassan Rouhani wants to mend fences with Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia practices the most extreme Sunni sect known as Wahhabism, something that that doesn’t sit well in Tehran. Ahamadinejad liked to find common ground with Sunnis, especially Saudi Arabia, threatening to “wipe Israel off the map,” hosting a Holocaust deniers’ conference in Tehran Dec. 11, 2006. Ahaminejdad’s actions placed Iran as a pariah state with former President George W. Bush and the U.S. State Department. More belligerent rhetoric from Tehran reinforces the prevailing view on Capitol Hill that Iran is the world’s chief state sponsor of terrorism. Democratic presumptive nominee former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and former Bush-43 Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld share that view.
Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khaemenei echo’s Salami’s anti-Israel rhetoric urging the student association to create a “unified anti-U.S. and anti-Zionist Front,” after signing a nuke deal July 14, 2015, greatly restricting Iran’s nuclear enrichment program, believed by the West to seek nuclear weapons. Khamenei’s harsh rhetoric toward the U.S. and Israel panders to Iran’s hard-liners, looking to suppress Iran’s growing pro-Democracy movement, consolidating the Mullah’s stranglehold on Iran’s military. “By using advanced means of communication in cyberspace, general campaigns can be formed by Muslim [Shiite] students based on the opposition policies of the U.S. and the Zionists regime of Israel, so that when needed millions of young Muslim students create as big movement in the Islamic World,” said Khamenei, knowing the split between Sunnis and Shiites.
Iran’s propaganda campaign against the U.S. and Israel only serves to alienate Tehran from anyone but the most radical states or fanatical groups. Even Saudi Arabia, the leading sponsor of Sunni Islam’s conservative Wahhabi sect, can’t join Tehran’s outrageous anti-U.S. and anti-Israel rhetoric. When you consider the over five-year-old Saudi-funded proxy war against Bashar’s al-Assad’s Shiite Syrian government, Iran finds itself, as a Shiite nation, more hated than Israel. Sunni-on-Shiite violence accounts for the almost daily suicide bombings of Shiite Muslims, especially in Iraq. Yesterday’s Islamic State of Iraq and Syria [ISIS] bombing in Baghdad, killing 130, injuring 200, demonstrates the ongoing sectarian war between Sunnis and Shiites. Whatever hatred toward the U.S. and Israel, it pales in comparison to the very real Sunni extremist violence against Shiites.
President Barack Obama backs the current Saudi proxy war against the Shiite regime of Syria’s Bashar al-Assad. Supporting Wahhabi opposition groups seeking to topple the Shiite Damascus government, the U.S. government fights on the same side as ISIS and al-Qaeda’s al-Nusra Front, both seeking to topple al-Assad. Saudi Arabia’s U.S.-educated Adel al-Jubeir has publicly stated that the Syria War won’t stop until al-Assad leaves Damascus. With over 250,000 Syrians killed, 11 million more displaced, the Saudi-funded proxy war in Syria has been called the worst humanitarian disaster since WWII. Floods of Syrian refugees have stressed the Mideast and European Union and led the U.K.’s June 23 vote to leave the EU. Despite failed U.N. peace efforts in Geneva, neither the U.S. nor EU has confronted Saudi Arabia about its destructive proxy war in Syria.
Talk about the “annihilation and collapse” of the Zionist regime gives Tehran a needed diversion away from its sectarian war against Sunni Islam. Losing up to 500,000 during the eight-year-long Iraq-Iran War [1980-1988], the Sunni-Shiite conflict is nothing new to the Middle East. Focusing hatred Israel, Iran hopes divert attention away from its sectarian war with Sunni Islam. “Today, the grounds for the annihilation and collapse of the Zionist regime are [present] more than ever,” said Salami, hoping to find common ground with Sunni Islam. Salami insists “tens-of-thousands of destructive long-range missiles” directed toward Israel by Iran’s Shiite Hezbollah militia. Instead of talking about Hezbollah’s losses from ISIS and other Wahhabi terror groups, Salami keeps his rhetoric trained on Israel. Salami talks of waging war in the so-called “occupied territories,” another chance to massacre more Sunnis.
