CONNECTING THE DOTS

 We interrupt this regularly scheduled program to bring you a major news bulletin from KGHW (God’s Holy Word). Regular programming will continue subsequent hereto.

 While tensions have been building now for forty-two years, a very significant event occurred on April 18, 2021, which has highlighted the extreme importance and seriousness of the threats converging on Israel; and has put the Middle East on a razor thin edge of war between Israel and its major and mortal antagonist, Iran. But let’s go back to 1979 to start this exercise.

1979 was a very bad year for the world because events of that year set it on a course that now sees us all confronted with the spectre and real reality (intended, not mistaken) of Islamic Jihadism with nuclear capabilities; and the mental and moral perversity to self-immolate itself and all others to accomplish its goals (“Islamic paradise”). Well then what, pray tell, happened? 

A country known for at least a couple of centuries as Persia, until it changed its name in 1935 to Iran, had a revolution in that ominous year of 1979; and deposed its leader, Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, also known as the Shah of Iran, who was a friend, not only of the United States, but also of Israel. And in his place entered onto the world stage the never smiling, bearded, Iranian, muslim emigre  from his santuary in France, (thank you, France) the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. Ta Da!!!

What follows in very short order will be a new name for Iran: The Islamic Republic of Iran. Be sure and get that Islamic part. But, not only a new name, but a new attitude; and one the world has been having to deal with ever since: A NASTY ONE!!!!  

 When President Carter attempted to extend humanitarian aid in the form of cancer treatment to the dying Shah, the Ayatollah and his minions seized the US Embassy in Tehran and its staff for 444 days in November 1979. There is that very nasty year of 1979 again. When President Reagan was sworn in as President on January 20, 1981, the American hostages were released. Our nations, however, have been at “odds” with one another ever since. Remember Qassem Soleimani in January 2020, for just a brief reminder of our “cuddly” relationship and connections (targeted assassinations) with The Islamic Republic of Iran. I’ll tell you about another episode called Stuxnet later.

But there was sadly, another major event in that very, very, very bad year of 1979 which would create a tar baby for our nation (remember Brer Rabbit and the tar baby?). In the latter half of December, 1979, the former Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan to prop up a “socialist government” in that country, initiating a war with much of the Afghan population. America under President Reagan decided to resist Soviet expansionism and by 1984 the US was earlobe deep in aiding the Afghan “freedom fighters”. So successful were the Afghan resistance efforts, primarily enabled with weaponry from the United States, particularly the Stinger Missile, which pretty much cleared the skies of Afghanistan of Soviert airpower, that by January 1989, Premier Gorbachev withdrew Soviet military forces from the nation. Within another year the Soviet Union found itself and remains to this day in history’s trash can. 

America, on the other hand, came home celebrating hanging one on the Soviets after they and China had hung one on us in Vietnam; but yet unaware that those “Afghan freedom fighters” were the mere precursor of THE TALIBAN AND THE FUTURE SUCCORISTS OF ONE OSAMA BIN LADEN AND HIS GANG KNOWN AS AL QAEDA!!! YOU KNOW, THE 9-11 GUY AND GANG!!!

 In mentioning the Iranian hostage crisis from November, 1979, to January, 1981, I neglected to note that President Carter ordered a special military unit called Delta Force to attempt a rather complicated rescue of the Americans in Tehran. In the initial stage of the operation, one, if not two, giant Sea Stallion helicopters were forced to abort the mission due to a sand storm in flight. When the remainder of the airborne force landed at a remote area located south of Tehran, designated Desert One, to refuel preparatory for its final stage flight to the American Embassy; it was then reluctantly acknowledged that there were just not enough helicopters now available to get everyone to be evacuated and the rescue force itself into the remaining aircraft. Consequently, Carter ordered the mission scrubbed.

Sadly, as the small air arm of helicopters and fixed wing C-130s began maneuvering for take-off from Desert One, inadvertent contact was made between a helicopter and one of the C-130s resulting in an explosion, fire, and ultimately the death of eight of our servicemen. As I read of this in the Gazette or the Democrat, I also learned that one of the deceased was a young airman from Pine Bluff, and that his father was an attorney. I did not know him, but I paused to pen a note of deep condolence for his loss and heartfelt appreciation for his son’s service to and sacrifice for our nation.

So as we and our ally Israel entered into the 1980s, this former ally of both our nations, and wealthy beyond comprehension with its deposits of oil, was turning into a rabid islamic motivated nation and becoming what it is today: THE WORLD’S CHIEF STATE SPONSOR OF INTERNATIONAL TERROR. Recall please, in sadness and respect, the death of 241 US Marines and 58 French soldiers who died on October 23, 1983, in almost simultaneous suicide truck bombings in Beirut, Lebanon. And who were the perpetrators traced back to? You guessed it! The national epitome of and poster child for devotion to that peaceful religion, Islam: The Islamic Republic of Iran and its Lebanese proxy, Hezbollah (meaning Party of God which by now, and for all intents and purposes, is the dominant power in Lebanon), under the leadership of another Islamic grizzly, Hassan Nasrallah; as well as some Syrians thrown into the mix for good measure.  

 And, by the way, these two incidents are merely two of a myriad of mass murderous acts of terror carried out by Iran across the world (even in Argentina, my friends, where they destroyed a Jewish center and killed at least 84 unfortunates who got in the way of that peaceful religion’s doctrine) through its national institutional agencies such as the IRGC (Iranian Republican Guard Corps) and The Al-Quds Force (which is another name for Jerusalem) which are Iran’s regime enforcers as was the SS for Nazi Germany); and Iran’s other agents, allies, and proxies such as Hezbollah (Lebanon), Hamas, Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Tanzem, Tahid and Jihad, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, Fatah, the Palestinian Liberation Organiszation (all of the wanna-be-Palestinian state), Houthis (Yemen), Abu Sayaf (Philippines), Al-Shabab (Somalia), and on and on and on. 

Recall our nation’s Beirut CIA station chief William Francis Buckley who was kidnapped and would die from the tender effects of Iranian highly tuned investigative and questioning techniques during 1984-85; or our US Marine Colonel William Richard Higgins who was attached to the United Nations peacekeeping forces in southern Lebanon (UNIFIL-United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon) and was kidnapped by Hezbollah in 1988, tortured and murdered by July 6,1990. Hezbollah lovingly and empathetically left a photo of his hanging body for a memento to his loving family! Recall, too, the suicide bombing and destruction of the US Embassy in Beirut on April 18, 1983, which would kill 63 Americans and Lebanese, at least one Shiite suicide bomber, and wound an additional 120. Some of those wounds left the survivors wishing they were dead instead of a survivor.  

How about twenty-three year old US Navy diver Robert Stethem who was tortured, then shot in the head, June 14, 1985, on a terrorist hijacked airliner out of Greece, and was unceremoniously dumped out of the aircraft onto the hot tarmac at Beirut International Airport where he would finally “expire approximately ten minutes later.” Another reserve US Army officer was savagely beaten at the same time but survived.  And on, and on, and on it goes. Including on this day of writing, April 28, 2021, when the American warship, USS Firebolt, apparently feeling threatened by Iranian gunboats in the Persian Gulf (remember this Persian connection, cause that is where all this is leading) fired a warning shot at three Iranian Republican Guard Corp gunboats to warn them off. At least they weren’t taken prisoner as ten of their fellow sailors were on January 12, 2016, and held by the Iranians for a few days before being kindly returned to our US fleet in the gulf.  Remember that old song that goes “on and on, on and on, on and on?”

Iran, during the 80s, in its relentlessly increasing hostility and enmity toward the great infidels America and Israel, established new names for both her arch enemies: The Great Satan (America) and The Little Satan (Israel). Nice, no? But rhetoric itself doesn’t carry much punch or power. So the talent of the Iranian nation, which is prodigious, was harnessed by the Ayatollahs, Ruhollah Khomeini and Ali Khamenei, the current Supreme Leader, to begin a surreptitious and covert nuclear development program to add some, if not the ultimate, in ooomph to their rhetoric. 

And as the years of this 21st century have begun to accumulate, evidence is overwhelming that indeed Iran is now very near to a break out stage for the acquisition of the BOMB!!!! And in keeping with the proximity to that accomplishment, Iran has now coined another name for its arch-enemy in the immediate region, Israel. The name and phrase is: A ONE BOMB COUNTRY!!! Nice, no? Just looking at a map of Israel shows that even one primitive nuclear weapon in the central most populous zone of coastal Tel Aviv would truly devastate, if not obliterate, much of its citizenry and eradicate its national infrastructure.

 One might be inclined to say that the ayatollahs, mullahs, imams, and  clerics along with their fellow Islamist colleagues across the Middle East are just blowing hot air (no pun intended); but the history of the people of Israel that unfolded upon them just eighty years ago (let alone the previous three thousand years ago) gave and gives those people and their leadership a totally different perspective on this matter. 

 For “poppycock” is precisely what most of the world and the Jewish people of the European continent actually thought in the 1920s and very early early 1930s; when the words of a little known Austrian, one Adolf Hitler, were published in his book: Mein Kampf, or My Struggle. Within that tome of his, he declared his intention to wage war on all of Judaism and its offspring, the Jews. No one believed him, or at least very few did, until he and his fellow demoniacs initiated and strove mightily to apply the Fuhrer’s idea of a Final Solution to their “Jewish problem.” By the time France and Britain hazily perceived Hitler’s true intentions, racially and militarily, it was too, too, too, late; and then it would take six years of war; a mind boggling devastation of Europe; 50,000,000 million gentile lives; innumerable and unnumberable casualties, physically and emotionally; and the lives of two of every three Jews in Europe, 6,000,000, before that demoniac and his demons of Nazism were returned to the recesses of hell from which they had come. 

Israel has CONNECTED THE DOTS from that horror and terror, while Western civilization seems to have lost all recollections of WWII and the lessons of how and why it started: APPEASEMENT. Israel has learned from that history. And now, when someone, anyone, and particularly an Iranian Islamic terrorist state, whose leaders hate Israel with a visceral passion and believe that they can guarantee themselves a place in paradise by killing just one infidel (allahu akbar!), let alone a whole nation of infidels, and Jewish ones at that, (allahu, allahu, allahu akbar!!!!!!) with just one little ole bomb; well, as the Israelis have said since the Holocaust: NEVER AGAIN!!!! AND THEY MEAN IT!!!! 

They do not give one !@#>< about this oh so craftily crafted JCPOA (Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action) agreement which President Barack Hussein Obama and his Secretary of State, John “Mekong gunboat” Kerry, entered into with The Islamic Republic of Iran in 2015; and now being resuscitated by Nod (the president), Winken (the vice-president) and Blinken (the Secretary of State) along with the Russian Federation, France, England, Germany, and China, and a slavering, drooling United Nations (of which 53 of the 194 member nations are Islamic) cheering them forward. An agreement that, already grudgingly admittedly by its crafters, will eventually and ultimately allow the peace loving mullahs et al, nuclear weaponry. Who knew there was soooo much koolaid in this world.

President Trump put the kibosh on United States participation in that modern day Munich Pact agreement of 2015; but as already noted, the Biden regime sees no problem of Islamic fanatics with the BOMB; and are desperately trying to woo the unwooable, fanactical, Islamic, Iranian, mullahs into playing nice, at least for a while; and thus enable them, ultimately and eventually to warm their little twinkies during the cold winter months with their own nuclear hearth. Gives one the real fuzzies, doesn’t it? That and a hookah pipe would spell heaven, er, paradise. 

Unfortunately, the moolahs seem intent on using that anticipated nuclear power to do more than just warm their feet. The Israelis know that they do not want to just warm their feet, but to incinerate the State of Israel; and they have absolutely no plans of cooperating with their efforts through malaise and wishful thinking. In fact, they will do any and all things including eventual war to prevent the Iranian leadership’s fondest dream. Of which the event of April 11, 2021, (erroneously mentioned as the 18th at the beginning of this article) at Natanz, Iran, was a strong reply to all these and those Iranian nuclear goings on. Remember, the mantra in the Jewish world since the Holocaust has persistently and continuously ever been: NEVER AGAIN. And I have not the slightest doubt that Israel means every word of it with every fibre of their national will. 

While Israel has failed over these last three thousand years to learn from the warnings, admonitions, and repeated consequences of their horrific history of ignoring God’s Word; and their ultimate rebellion against their, our, and all creation’s God in the crucifixion of His Son and their Messiah two thousand years ago; Israel has learned from the rather recent mistakes and history of Britain and France’s attempted and failed placation and policy of appeasement toward another radical, demonic regime once on the planet: Hitler and Nazi Germany from 1933 to 1945. 

Rather than recognizing the mortal danger Hitler and his Nazi minions posed to a now peaceful but still smoking post WWI Europe of just fourteen years prior; fears of another war and their admiral dreams of peace caused Britain and France to ignore reality and the deadly threat to that restored peace, rather than take the violent but necessarily appropriate action against Hitler: yes even war, particularly when history has shown that the allies were even aware of significant German opposition within the German High Command, who were begging and urging the allies to stand firm so that Hitler, upon ordering war, could be eliminated by a military coup with astronomically less cost in lives and treasure, even as late as October, 1938. Thus they allowed a moral, spiritual, political, and militarily malignant nation, and an oh so deadly, deviant, depraved, demented, debauched, and destructive ideology to become the most powerful military force in the world. One which would almost destroy them and the rest of Europe between 1939 and 1945.

For Israel, their attitude now is: assume the worst; if anyone or any nation utters death threats, believe them and respond before it is too late. Never disbelieve an enemy’s stated intentions; NEVER AGAIN!!!!; and even more so when that nation menacingly appears to be acquiring nuclear capability. Which leads us back to Iran/Persia of April 11, 2021.