In statements announcing the ceasefire the President invoked his idealistic notion – one shared by generations of American business leaders – that trade and economic upward mobility leading to improvements in the quality of life for their people will lead the leaders of hostile states to maintain peace.
In a sharp about-face from his previous calls for Iranian “unconditional surrender” and hints at regime change Mr. Trump said of Iran after the ceasefire, “The Iranians are very good traders, very good businesspeople, and they got a lot of oil. They should be fine,” he added. “They should be able to rebuild and do a good job. They’re never going to have nuclear. But other than that, they should do a great job, which is exactly what I’ve been saying for years.”
The problem with President Trump’s aspiration for the Iranian people is that it is completely contrary to the reason for the very existence of the Islamic Republic of Iran, and the centrality of Shi’ite religious belief to how the Iranian state conducts its affairs.
Iran is governed according to “Absolute Wilayat al-Faqih” (Guardianship of the Jurist).
Article 4 of the Constitution of the Islamic Republic of Iran says, “All civic, penal, financial, economic, administrative, cultural, military, political, and other laws and regulations must be based on Islamic criteria. This principle governs all the articles of the constitution, and other laws and regulations. The determination of such compatibility is left to the Foqaha of the Guardian Council.”
The preamble the Constitution of the Islamic Republic of Iran says the purpose of the Islamic Republic is to bring the entire world under Islam and Islamic law:
The Constitution of the Islamic Republic of Iran establishes that the armed forces of the Islamic Republic are "an Ideological Army.“
“In establishing and equipping the defense forces of the country, the focus shall be on maintaining ideology and faith as the foundation and the measure. Consequently, the Army of the Islamic Republic and the Islamic Pasdaran Revolutionary Corps are formed in accordance with the aforementioned objective. They will undertake the responsibility of not only guarding and protecting the borders, but also the weight of ideological mission, i.e. striving ( jehād) on the path of God and struggle on the path of expanding the sovereignty of the law of God in the world; in accordance with the Qur’anic verse: ‘Against them make ready your strength to the utmost of your power, including steeds of war, to strike terror into (the hearts of) the enemies, of Allah and your enemies’ (8: 60).”
Article 5 of the Constitution of the Islamic Republic of Iran says, “During the absence (ghayba) of his holiness, the Lord of the Age, (the Mahdi) May God all mighty hasten his appearance, the sovereignty of the command [of God] and religious leadership of the community [of believers] in the Islamic Republic of Iran is the responsibility of the faqīh who is just, pious, knowledgeable about his era, courageous, and a capable and efficient administrator, as indicated in Article 107 of the Constitution of the Islamic Republic of Iran.
True believers of Mahdaviat or the coming of Mahdi, believe the twelfth Shi’ite Imam, will rule the world before the end times. The Mahdi is believed to be in “Occultation” or spiritual hiding in a well next to Jamkaran mosque in a village on the outskirts of the city of Qom, Iran. This is not myth to believers: When he was mayor of Tehran Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, later President of Iran, had a road built especially for the Mahdi that led to the mosque.
How is this different from other millennial or apocalyptic religious beliefs?
The difference is that men can act to hasten the appearance of the Mahdi by creating war and chaos.
When the choices are Western-style luxuries or the appearance of the Mahadi and the creation of a worldwide Islamic utopia, the leaders of Iran will choose hastening the appearance of the Mahadi every time.
As Catherine Perez-Shakdam, a Jewish woman who concealed her identity and spent ten years infiltrating the Islamic Republic’s leadership explained, the West is failing to take the Iranian threat seriously out of “sheer arrogance” and the Islamic Republic of Iran’s ideology is just as terrifying as Hitler’s Mein Kampf.
“A mistake we make is to assume [Khamenei] cares about his country. He doesn’t. He will literally see it burn if it means Islam will triumph.”
“We have a sociopath with a gun loaded telling you, ‘I’m going to kill you.’ And we’re looking him straight in the eyes, convincing the people standing behind us, who we mean to protect, that he doesn’t mean what he’s saying.”
What President Trump and his advisors seem to have missed is that Iran’s nuclear weapons program isn’t merely a technical aspiration to demonstrate that Iran is not a second-class power, it is the means to a religiously mandated end – the appearance of the Mahadi and the apocalyptic war to usher in the worldwide rule of Islam.
Iran’s stockpile of highly enriched uranium remains unaccounted for, trucks and construction equipment are already mobilizing at the Fordow nuclear site our B-2s hit, and there is renewed activity at the even deeper Iranian nuclear weapons site at Pickax Mountain near Natanz. What’s more, CBS News reported officials in the Islamic Republic have made it clear that, regardless of the damage actually caused to Iran's nuclear program, the country's theocratic rulers intended to not only resume, but accelerate its enrichment work — and without any oversight by the United Nations' atomic watchdog agency, the International Atomic Energy Agency.
Far from being the first step in a permanent peace, the Trump-imposed ceasefire is in the eyes of Iran’s theocracy merely a truce or "hudna," a temporary cessation of hostilities that can be used by Muslim fighting forces to gather strength, resupply, or regroup. Under Qur’anic military doctrine this is not considered a permanent peace agreement but a tactical maneuver in the larger conflict with America and the West.
Having abandoned his initial policy of “unconditional surrender” and taken the notion of regime change in Iran off the table, from Iran’s accelerating nuclear weapons program, to the activation of its terror networks around the world, to the issuance of a Fatwa targeting him for death, President Trump now owns whatever comes next in the Islamic Republic of Iran’s war on the West.
George Rasley is editor of Richard Viguerie's ConservativeHQ.com and is a veteran of over 300 political campaigns. A member of American MENSA, he served on the staff of Vice President Dan Quayle, as Director of Policy and Communication for Congressman Adam Putnam (FL-12) then Vice Chairman of the Oversight and Government Reform Committee's Subcommittee on National Security and Foreign Affairs, and as spokesman for retired Rep. Mac Thornberry formerly a member of the House Intelligence Committee and Chairman of the House Armed Services Committee.
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