"Socialism only works
in two places:
Heaven where they don't
need it and hell where they already have it."
-Ronald Reagan
'Of the four wars in my lifetime, none came about because the U.S. was too strong.
- Ronald Reagan
'I have wondered at
times about what the
Ten Commandments would
have looked like if Moses
had run them through
the U.S. Congress.
-Ronald Reagan
'No arsenal, or no weapon in the arsenals of the world, is as formidable as the will and moral courage of free men and women.'
- Ronald Reagan
===
Let's assume, for the moment, Hillarious was entitled to use a private server instead of an official government issued server. The fact, as she claims, she used it incessantly for wedding, yoga and grandma plans suggests she worked more for herself than for us and she should reimburse the American people for over payment.
Of course, I also believe she put our nation at grave risk by her desire to place self above nation.
====
Crowd control moves to a new level: https://www.youtube.com/watch?
===
I listened to The Pope address Congress. I suspect Bibi did as well.
In his soft and simple style of speaking he engaged in a dialogue not only with Americans, but also the entire world.
I am somewhat conflicted when I note the pomp and circumstance of the events surrounding and connected with this simple and decent man. That said, he gave an inspiring speech that one would expect from a man of God who heads one of the world's great and largest religions.
He used the lives, accomplishments, goals and social activism of Lincoln, MLK, Dorothy Day and Thomas Merton as the backdrop of his message pertaining to man's search for dignity, security and the opportunity to live a productive life for themselves and their family. In doing so, he used the thesis of "The Golden Rule" as a guide for resolving immigration and called for the elimination of the death penalty.
He also acknowledged the difficulty of judging the past by the current..
He stated business, and the use of technology, must be used to create jobs for the common good, use resources for the benefit of all and be mindful of the environment. ThePope touched upon the matter of wealth distribution, arms trade, the threat to the family and the beauty of its richness. with particular emphasis upon the young and the problems and threats they face as being our problems.
Pope Francis also praised the middle class and their contribution through the creation of various worthy organizations and noted it was his duty to build bridges between nations and overcome historic differences (obviously referring to Cuba and possibly Iran.) obliquely praising Obama.
He ended by praising America and asked God to bless our nation.
Obviously much of what Pope Francis had to say is dreamy in nature, even unrealistic in terms of potential accomplishments but his role is not to be constrained by practicality and/or even reality but to keep before us the road we need to travel, ie. walk with God.
I would hope that what he had to say would help cool the rhetoric of the Republican candidates.
This man has captured the heart and spirit of many, many Americans.
That said,let's get practical and how would The Pope respond : (See 1,1a, 1b ,1c and 1d below.)
===.
Accolades of my recent memo and former candidacy continue: "Great stuff, former candidate! I'm kind of glad you decided to drop out so I can throw all of my support (including my $4) to my boy, Rubio! B------"
===
Dick
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1)Washington Free Beacon
Iran Promises to Violate Nuke Deal
Never signed official nuke deal
Multiple senior Iranian officials have vowed in recent weeks to violate the recently inked nuclear accord that aims to constrain the Islamic Republic’s contested nuclear enrichment program, according to multiple comments by top Iranian leaders.
Iranian leaders, including President Hassan Rouhani and Foreign Minister Javad Zarif, have said that the country has “no intention” of abiding by a United Nations Security Council Resolution that encompasses the deal and other restrictions on Tehran’s rogue activities, according to these comments.
These officials said that Iran views the recent Iranian nuclear deal secured in Vienna as separate from the resolution endorsing the deal and further prohibiting Iran from developing advanced ballistic missiles and purchasing other types of arms, according to the Middle East Media Research Institute, or MEMRI, which issued a report compiling recent statements by Iran.
The agreement, which was made earlier this year, is a non-binding set of resolutions focused on Iran’s nuclear program. The deal was transferred to the United Nations and officially endorsed as UNSRC 2231.
The accord itself “is not a contract between Iran and the P5+1 countries as a group or any single one of them, and hence no document was signed,” MEMRI noted.
Senior Iranian leaders have expressed opposition to the formal resolution adopted by the U.N. and say the country will not abide by any further restrictions on its ballistic missile development.
“President Hassan Rouhani, Foreign Minister Zarif, and Deputy Foreign Minister and senior negotiator Abbas Araghchi emphasized that Iran has no intention of abiding by UNSRC 2231, which includes the JCPOA [Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action] and another element; rather, that they will abide only by the original JCPOA,” which is a nonbinding international agreement, according to MEMRI.
Araghchi said Iran would violate the U.N. resolution formalizing the deal.
When asked in a recent interview whether Iran can violate that agreement, Araqchi responded, “Yes we can; just as we refrained from complying with UN Security Council resolutions, we can do so with regards to 2231.”
He also said this would not technically violate the non-binding and unsigned nuclear agreement reached earlier this year in Vienna.
“The Iranian Foreign Ministry statement explicitly noted that Iran does not attach legitimacy to any restriction and any threat,” Araqchi said. “If UNSCR 2231 will be violated by Iran, it will be a violation of the Security Council resolution and not of the JCPOA, similar to what happened 10 years ago when we violated Security Council resolutions and nothing happened.”
“The text of the JCPOA notes the fact that the content of the JCPOA and of the U.N. Security Council resolution are two separate things,” he claimed.
Rouhani has issued similar statements about Iran’s intentions to disregard the U.N. resolution formalizing the deal. Rouhani took particular exception to restrictions on Iran’s missile program.
“There is nothing about the topic of missiles, defense, and weapons in the JCPOA,” Rouhani said late last month. “Whatever we have about it is in Resolution [UNSCR] 2231.”
“Moreover, we have formally announced that we are not committed to all the sections that appear in the resolution [2231], and we specified in the JCPOA that violation of the resolution [2231] does not mean violation of the JCPOA,” Rouhani said, explaining Tehran’s interpretation of the accord.
Zarif has also claimed that Iran can violate U.N. measures without repercussions.
“There is a difference between the JCPOA and UNSCR 2231. Violating the JCPOA has consequences, while violating UNSCR 2231 has no consequences,” he was quoted as saying last month.
It is unclear whether the Obama administration shares this interpretation of the agreement and subsequent U.N. resolution.
Araqchi has maintained that while the United States sought to include the missile restrictions in the document solidified in Vienna, it failed due to Iranian opposition.
“The Americans sought their inclusion in the JCPOA, claiming that otherwise they could not face criticism from Arab countries in the region,” he said. “When they said that they could not lift the sanctions altogether, we told them explicitly that in that case there is no agreement.”
“We told them that the national security issues are non-negotiable and that we will not accept an agreement which continues the embargo on weapons and the sanctions on missile development,” he added. “In the end, the Americans said, ‘We will put the issue of the embargo and the missiles in the U.N. Security Council Resolution separate from the agreement.’”
1a)
Daily Brief No.58
Iran Openly Declares That It Intends To Violate UNSCR 2231 That Endorses The JCPOA
By: Yigal Carmon
In statements, three Iranian leaders – President Hassan Rohani, Foreign Minister Zarif, and Deputy Foreign Minister and senior negotiator Abbas Araghchi – emphasized that Iran has no intention of abiding by UNSRC 2231, which includes the JCPOA and another element; rather, that they will abide only by the original JCPOA.
The Iran nuclear deal consists of the following:
A. A set of understandings between Iran and the P5+1 powers (as well as the remaining disagreements) all in a single package called the JCPOA. It is not a contract between Iran and the P5+1 countries as a group or any single one of them, and hence no document was signed.
B.
C. This set of mutual understandings (as well as disagreements) packaged in the JCPOA was transferred, following the conclusion of negotiations in Vienna on July 14, 2015, to the UN Security Council, for endorsement as a UN Security Council resolution. The resolution, UNSCR 2231, was passed on July 25, 2015 and it includes, in addition to the JCPOA, another element (Annex B) with further stipulations regarding Iran. For example, it addresses the sanctions on Iran's missile development project.
D.
To understand why UNSCR 2231 is structured in this way, we can look at statements by top Iranian negotiators about the process that led up to it:
In a July 20, 2015 interview on Iranian Channel 2, Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister and senior negotiator Abbas Araghchi said that there had been tough bargaining between the Iranian and American delegations over the issue of the arms embargo on Iran and the sanctions related to Iran's missile development project. "The Americans sought their inclusion in the JCPOA, claiming that otherwise they could not face criticism from Arab countries in the region. When they said that they could not lift the sanctions altogether, we told them explicitly that in that case there is no agreement. We told them that the national security issues are non-negotiable and that we will not accept an agreement which continues the embargo on weapons and the sanctions on missile development. In the end, the Americans said, We will put the issue of the embargo and the missiles in the UN Security Council Resolution separate from the agreement."
In the same interview, Araghchi was asked whether Iran could refrain from carrying out UNSCR 2231; he replied: "Yes we can; just as we refrained from complying with UN Security Council resolutions, we can do so with regards to 2231."
Araghchi also referred to the Iranian Foreign Ministry statement issued following the passage of UNSCR 2231: "The Iranian Foreign Ministry statement explicitly noted that Iran does not attach legitimacy to any restriction and any threat. If UNSCR 2231 will be violated by Iran, it will be a violation of the Security Council resolution and not of the JCPOA, similar to what happened 10 years ago when we violated Security Council resolutions and nothing happened. The text of the JCPOA notes the fact that the content of the JCPOA and of the UN Security Council resolution are two separate things."[1]
Foreign Minister Zarif, in an August 9, 2015 media interview, reiterated the Iranian position regarding the difference between the JCPOA and UNSCR 2231, with a focus on the consequences of possible violation of the two by Iran. He said: "There is a difference between the JCPOA and UNSCR 2231. Violating the JCPOA has consequences, while violating UNSCR 2231 has no consequences."[2]
Indeed, the restrictions regarding missiles are mentioned only in UNSCR 2231, and not in the JCPOA.
On August 29, 2015, Iranian President Hassan Rohani said: "There is nothing about the topic of missiles, defense, and weapons in the JCPOA. Whatever we have about it is in Resolution [UNSCR] 2231... Moreover, we have formally announced that we are not committed to all the sections that appear in the resolution [2231], and we specified in the JCPOA that violation of the resolution [2231] does not mean violation of the JCPOA...[3]
The meaning of all this is that in everything related to the issue of missile development, Iran will disregard UNSCR 2231. Already during the negotiations, it insisted on no imposition of sanctions on Iran regarding its missile development (and no sanctions at all). When the Americans moved the sanctions on the missile program to UNSCR 2231, Iran did not object, as, according to their statements above, they can violate Security Council resolutions, as they have done in the past, and this will not be regarded as a violation of the JCPOA.
1b)Washington Free Beacon
Iran on Israel: ‘We Are Going to Destroy Them’
Vows ‘this task will be done’
Ataollah Salehi / AP
The commander of Iran’s army said on Tuesday that the Islamic Republic would destroy Israel at all costs despite the recent nuclear deal aimed at reining in the country’s rogue behavior, according to comments by these officials.
Ataollah Salehi, commander of Iran’s army, said that no matter how many weapons are given to Israel, “we are going to destroy them,” according to comments reported in Iran’s state-controlled press and independently translated from Persian for the Washington Free Beacon.
The comments follow reports that Iran has unveiled new advanced military hardware and intends to violate international prohibitions on its construction of ballistic missiles, which could be used to carry a nuclear payload.
“Israel only barks, no matter how much weapons are given to [it], we are going to destroy them, we will promise this task will be done,” Salehi was quoted as saying by the Fars News Agency.
Salehi expressed pride in Iran’s support for terrorist groups such as Hamas and Hezbollah that seek the Jewish state’s destruction. The military leader also said that Iran has been directly responsible for attacks on Israel.
“We are glad that we are in the forefront of executing supreme leader’s order to destroy the Zionist regime,” he said. “They have been hit by those supported by us [Iran] even though they have not confronted us directly; if they confront us directly they will be destroyed.”
Meanwhile, other Iranian military officials lashed out at Republican politicians in the United States, claiming that they do not have the strength to start a war with Iran.
“The backward Republicans want to go back to the era of the mad [President George W.] Bush,” Hassan Firouzabadi, chief of staff of the Iranian Armed Forces, was quoted as saying in separate comments. “Bush did all he could to invade Iran but was not successful.”
Iran views such threats as empty rhetoric.
“If Republicans want to take Bush’s path, they cannot start a war with Iran, war will not benefit them, what Republicans say are just empty words,” Firouzabadi said.
Saeed Ghasseminejad, an Iran expert and associate fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, argued that Iran’s military has become emboldened by the Obama administration’s
“Due to the extreme weakness shown by this administration, Iran’s military establishment neither fears nor respects the U.S. anymore,” Ghasseminejad said. “The U.S. faces a credibility problem in the region; the problem will be there as long as President Obama is in office.”
Iranian leaders also vowed earlier this week to violate portions of the nuclear deal that seek to restrict Iran’s construction of ballistic missiles and arms.
Instead of abiding by the United Nations Security Council Resolution, which was recently passed along with the terms of the nuclear accord, Iran’s leaders insisted that they may violate any restrictions without facing repercussions.
1c) Tasnim News Agency (Iran)
Ayatollah Khamenei: US Evil Policies, Israeli Crimes, Muslims’ Main Worries
TEHRAN (Tasnim) – Supreme Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyed Ali Khamenei said the crux of the matter for Muslims is the US vicious policies towards the Middle East as well as the Israeli regime’s atrocities against Palestinians and frequent desecration of Al-Aqsa Mosque.
“Today, the US malicious policies in this region (West Asia and North Africa) - which have caused wars, bloodshed, destruction, displacement, poverty, underdevelopment and ethnic and sectarian rifts - in addition to the Zionist regime’s crimes… and its frequent desecration of Al-Aqsa Mosque and trampling over the lives and properties of the oppressed Palestinians, is the main problem of you Muslims,” Ayatollah Khamenei said in a message to the Hajj Congresson Wednesday.
The Leader also urged the Muslim clerics and political, cultural elites not to neglect their responsibility to deal with those main problems.
Imam Khamenei stressed that the tragic events in Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Bahrain, the West Bank and Gaza, and some other countries in Asia and Africa emanate from the plots hatched by the global arrogance.
The Leader then urged the Muslim nations to ask their respective governments to exercise their responsibility to address those problems.
The Hajj pilgrimage and its magnificent gatherings provide the best opportunity for Muslims to exercise their “historic responsibility” about the Islamic world’s problems, the Leader noted.
Making a reference to a recent collapse of a crane in Mecca that claimed scores of lives, Ayatollah Khamenei said those in charge of ensuring safety of the Hajj pilgrimage should not shirk responsibility and should honor their commitments.
On September 11, a large construction crane toppled over during a rainstorm and crashed into Mecca’s Masjid al-Haram (the Grand Mosque), killing more than 100 pilgrims and wounding many others.
Hajj is an Islamic pilgrimage to Mecca and the largest gathering of Muslim people in the world every year. The pilgrimage occurs in Dhu al-Hijjah, the last month of the Islamic calendar.
This year’s annual pilgrimage is expected to have brought 2 million people to Mecca.
1d)
Our Iranian Interlocutor
Ali Khamenei’s dark obsession with Jews and Israel
Antisemitism has never been an easy subject for America’s foreign-policy establishment. Read through State Department telegrams and Central Intelligence Agency operational and intelligence cables on the Middle East and you will seldom find it discussed, even though Jew-hatred—not just anti-Zionism—has been a significant aspect, if not a core component, of modern Arab nationalism, Islamic fundamentalism, and what usually passes for critical thought among sophisticated Arab elites.
Western scholars, too, generally avoid the subject. The Israeli-Palestinian imbroglio is an omnipresent and divisive issue in the academy, and academics who might be inclined to explore antisemitism among Muslims could risk their reputation among colleagues who view such study as tendentious, even bigoted. And those with the languages to appreciate this distemper are often inclined to downplay its importance precisely because of its commonness. The threshold for what constitutes shocking Jew-hatred, as opposed to routine hostility, has gotten pretty high in the Middle East in part because Western leftist sympathy for Israel has been declining. Middle Eastern intellectuals are still influenced by the preferences and vicissitudes of the European left. However, former Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s exuberant, Holocaust-denying antisemitism crossed the line. He played a not insignificant part in changing the atmospherics about Iran within Europe by amplifying elite European fear that Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu might strike Tehran’s atomic program. The European oil embargo, designed to punish the clerical regime for its nuclear aspirations—the single most forceful diplomatic action ever by the European Union—rose up in the summer of 2012 in Ahmadinejad’s antisemitic wake.
However, his Jew-hatred was no uglier or less menacing than that of the supreme leader, who has far greater power and influence than an Iranian president. Yet Ali Khamenei’s obsession has received far less attention, especially after President Barack Obama’s nuclear diplomacy kicked into high gear with the presidential election of Hassan Rouhani in June 2013. With the notable exceptions of the Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg and the Washington Post’s Richard Cohen, who both support the president’s nuclear accord, prominent left-leaning journalists have downplayed Khamenei’s rampaging antisemitism, usually by balancing it with more optimistic assessments of Persian culture, Rouhani, and the American-educated foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif. (Such optimists inevitably cite the irenic Jewish holiday tweets of Rouhani, who once remarked to CNN’s Christiane Amanpour that Holocaust denial was a subject best left to historians to debate.)
The president and senior administration officials, except when they are answering Goldberg’s questions, have preferred to talk about other things, like the utility of “snapback” sanctions, Israel’s nuclear deterrent, or the possibility of future Iranian moderation. Seriously discussing the ruling elite’s antisemitism could lend too much credence to the deal’s critics. However fierce Khamenei’s Jew-hatred may be, it is more abstract for many than the fear of American preemption against Iran’s nuclear sites. Commentary that could reinforce an argument for military action isn’t commentary worth making.
Yet it is a good idea to revisit the antisemitic mainspring of Khamenei’s thought. Unless he soon drops dead from cancer, he will determine Iran’s atomic future. He has assiduously backed the growing power of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, which oversees the country’s nuclear and long-range ballistic missile programs, serves as the regime’s expeditionary force in Syria and Iraq, and has primary responsibility for liaison work with foreign Islamic militants. This organization’s incessant anti-semitic rhetoric mirrors the supreme leader’s conspiratorial rants. Given that Khamenei controls the Assembly of Experts, the body designated to choose his successor, there’s no reason to believe the Islamic Republic will become less antisemitic in the coming decade.
President Obama wants to believe that the supreme leader’s economic and strategic “rationalism,” and by extension the ratiocination of the Revolutionary Guards and other senior revolutionary mullahs who have a thing about “global Jewry,” sufficiently mitigates the irrational mentality that embraces antisemitism as an explanation for the evils of this world. Irrespective of the details of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, a nuclear agreement with clerical Iran can thus make sense even if Holocaust-denying mullahs and guards firmly believe that the “Islam-destroying” Jewish-led West is trying to hamstring the mullahs’ four-decade-old nuclear project. The whole point of acquiring nuclear weapons for Iran is to protect the most important Muslim country from Western conspiracies.
However logically strained, the president’s gamble is not without some historical comfort: The clerical regime has long possessed chemical and biological weapons, and it has so far chosen not to release these arms to its favorite terrorist offspring, the Lebanese Hezbollah, or to Sunni radical outfits, like Hamas and al Qaeda, which Tehran has abetted. If these groups had these weapons, they would likely use them against Israel (and in the case of al Qaeda, against the United States). Khamenei and the Revolutionary Guards—or Rouhani—haven’t yet revealed any ethics that would discourage jihadists from killing Israelis; it’s reasonable to conclude that the Iranian regime has not delivered such lethal weaponry to these holy warriors because they don’t wish to risk Israeli reprisal. At a minimum, the regime’s antisemitism hasn’t switched off the kind of self-interest that fears nuclear retaliation.
And yet antisemitism is a derangement with a history. Westerners in the Middle East, especially those on a goodwill mission, are unwise to glide over and excuse its constant eruptions, which among Islamic fundamentalists certainly won’t be solved by a Zionist state with its capital restricted to West Jerusalem. One needs to be attentive to the disease’s genesis and metastasis. European history tells us how antisemitism can mutate rapidly, even within countries considered open and tolerant towards Jews. As Richard Cohen pointed out,
antisemitism can grow savage in fundamentally decent societies through the machinations of wicked elites. Historically, the Islamic lands—unlike Christendom, where antipathy towards Jews often arrived at the baptismal font—didn’t have “bottom-up” Jew-hatred. Muslim antisemitism has always been nastiest among the better educated, among those most absorptive of and reactive to the ideological maelstrom of the West. Those who see the Israeli-Palestinian/Arab clash as part of a great collision between two civilizations have been the most likely to embrace antisemitism with conviction. Throughout the Middle East, fundamentalists have been on the cutting edge of this titanic struggle. Looking more closely at the evolution of Khamenei’s Jew-hatred allows us a window not just into how the most anti-American ruler in the Muslim Middle East thinks, but how militant Muslims in general see Western power.
The rise of an antisemitic mullah
References to Jews and Israel in Khamenei’s speeches demonstrate a near-pathological obsession. Two important Persian-language sources for such references, as well as for Khamenei’s actions toward Jews, are Hedayatollah Behboodi’s biography of Khamenei, Sharh-e Esm (The Elucidation of the Name), and Saeed Solh-Mirzaei’s Felestin Az Manzar-e Hazrat-e Ayatollah al-Ozma Khamenehi (Palestine from His Holiness Grand Ayatollah Khamenei’s Perspective), a compilation of mentions of Israel in Khamenei’s speeches from 1979 to 2011.
Every Christmas, Iranian state television shows Henry King’s 1943 movie The Song of Bernadette, the story of a young French girl (later Saint Bernadette) who kept seeing the Virgin Mary in Lourdes. Also obligatory at Christmas is a filmed encounter of Khamenei visiting the parents of Vahik Baghdasarian, an Armenian Christian draftee killed in 1984 in the Iran-Iraq war (1980-88). The supreme leader thanks the parents for their son’s “martyrdom.” The regime is always eager to depict the tolerance and magnanimity of mullahs. But Khamenei has yet to visit families of Jewish martyrs of the war. Presidents Ali Akbar Hashemi-Rafsanjani, Mohammad Khatami, and even Ahmadinejad all took pains to embrace representatives of Iran’s ever-shrinking Jewish community (now approximately 10,000 people).
Ahmadinejad also made a highly publicized point of visiting the anti-Zionist, pro-Palestinian rabbis from Neturei Karta International in New York. The Neturei Karta has accepted Iranian invitations to attend Holocaust-denial gatherings in Tehran. Khamenei has never met them.
Khamenei appears to avoid any personal contact with Jews, treating them in practice as if they were a rung or two up from the untouchables, the Baha’is. These last commit the worst religious crime in Islam by recognizing prophets after Muhammad, notably, Bahá’u’lláh, the 19th-century founder of the Baha’i faith. By contrast, Jews, Christians, Zoroastrians, and Sabians (a mysterious people who have disappeared since the 7th century) are the Koran’s ahl al-kitab, or possessors of divine books, and therefore “clean.” On his official website, Khamenei condemns the Baha’is as “enemies of your religion and faith.” They are najis, religiously impure. Muslims should always avoid physical contact with them and seek ritual purification in case of accidental touching. Jews, Christians, and Zoroastrians may not be sought out by devout Shiites, but they are not untouchables.
Khamenei is different. He thrived on Western literature in his youth, only to become a devoted admirer of Sayyid Qutb (1906-1966), the Egyptian theorist of jihad, in his adulthood. The roots of his antipathy for Jews and Israel lie in the crisscrossing religious and political currents in his hometown, Mashhad, in the 1950s and ’60s. In the literary salons that Khamenei frequented, Marxist and nationalist currents depicting Israel as an instrument of Western imperialism were common; concurrently, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, a rising star among the religiously militant, attacked “Jewish influence” in the royal court. Khomeini also railed against Western imperialism, Israel, and Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi’s ambitious reform program, “the White Revolution,” which, among other things, nationalized the lands of religious endowments and gave voting rights to women. The young Khamenei was not a member of the close circle around Khomeini, but he claims that in May 1963 he carried a handwritten letter from Khomeini to religious authorities in Mashhad. The message read: “Prepare for the fight against Zionism. . . . Israel is in control of the country’s economic and political affairs.”
Little is known about Khamenei’s personal views at that time, but fragments of the sermons the young cleric delivered in small religious gatherings were reported by informers of the SAVAK, Iran’s prerevolution intelligence service, and are reproduced in Behboodi’s book. Reflecting on the Six-Day War in his sermon at the Al-Javad Mosque in Tehran in March 1969, Khamenei attacked the shah’s regime for not aiding Arabs in the wars against Israel and concluded his sermon with the call: “Gentlemen! Jihad is needed in Iran. . . . May God plant the rebellion of Hussein in our body,” referring to the third imam of the Shiites, who chose martyrdom rather than pledging allegiance to an Umayyad caliph in Damascus.
By March 1973, Khamenei was a frequent lecturer at the Imam Hassan Mosque in Mashhad. There he presented his interpretation of Al-Baqara (The Cow), the second and longest surah of the Koran, in which the Prophet Muhammad among other things discusses the relationship between Muslims, Jews, and Christians in a Muslim polity. According to reports compiled by SAVAK informers, Khamenei discussed “the characteristics of the Jewish tribe” and praised “the Jews who helped His Holiness Moses,” who according to Islamic theology was a hanif, a Muslim prophet before the coming of Muhammad; but he condemned “some present day Jews who are like the lackeys of the Pharaoh.” In the same lecture series, Khamenei also discussed “the nature of the opposition of the Jews to the prophet [Muhammad],” “the greed of the Jews,” and “the black arts of the rabbis,” which finally led SAVAK to dissolve the class. The SAVAK’s closure of the class must have made a deep impression on Khamenei, who after the revolution referred to the incident as among the “hardships” he endured under the shah: “From a political point of view, life was hard. . . . I used to talk a bit about Judaism and the Israelites. During the interrogations, they accused me of having spoken against Israel and the Jews. This is how the political situation was back then!”
The freedom and power to hate
Both anti-Jewish and philo-Jewish sentiments were common in prerevolutionary Pahlavi Iran, and they often centered on a similar assessment: Jews were well educated and commercially successful. Religious suspicion of Jews, always present in Muslim society, could be counterbalanced even among the devout with an appreciation for Jewish antiquity and for the intimate integration of Jewish life into Persian culture. The revolution of 1979 changed all that, just as it put an end to Khamenei’s “hardships.” Antisemitism, once an underground political current, was elevated into a state ideology. What Khamenei had preached at the modest Imam Hassan Mosque in Mashhad, he now declaimed from the pulpit of Friday prayers at Tehran University.
Khamenei’s August 5, 1980, Quds [Jerusalem] Day sermon, which is quoted in its entirety in Solh-Mirzaei’s book, clearly builds upon the mullah’s 1973 lectures. This sermon set the tone and has defined the vocabulary of his commentary on Jews and Israel until today. “The Iranian nation is the vanguard of the struggle for the liberation of Palestine,” Khamenei said. “Iran’s revolution reached victory within the borders, but we should not be content thinking we have achieved final victory. As long as an infectious sore, a filthy tumor called the usurping Israeli state in the heart of Arab and Islamic lands exists, we can’t feel victory and can’t tolerate the presence of our enemy in the usurped and occupied lands.”
Khamenei recited “The Night Journey,” or the Bani Isra’il surah, of the Koran, as proof of divine promise of “the second defeat of the Israelites.” “And We decreed for the Children of Israel in the Book: Ye verily will work corruption in the earth twice, and ye will become great tyrants. So when the time for the first of the two came, We roused against you slaves of Ours of great might who ravaged (your) country, and it was a threat performed.” He then turned to the plight of Palestinian refugees and “the crimes of the Fascist government” of Israeli prime minister Menachem Begin, whom Khamenei accused of “imprisoning Muslim youth, subjecting them to torture, and even tapping their blood with syringes to save in their blood banks for mercenary Israeli elements.” According to Khamenei, it was “the imperialists” who “planted this filthy cancerous tumor . . . in our Islamic and Arabic fatherland” who created “division amongst Islamic states.”
Khamenei distinguished Zionism from Judaism—“We do not consider Zionism a part of a religion and do not consider it a part of Judaism”—but simultaneously claimed Israel was a place where “a bunch of antihuman criminals have gathered and engage in nothing but conspiring against revolutionary nations and states.” Like most Islamic militants, Khamenei has a difficult time locating a time and place when Jews have not been a threat to the Muslim body politic. Iran’s Jews—few, subject to Islamic law, and extremely careful not to give offense to the authorities—are tolerated. On his website, Khamenei the jurisprudent finds commercial dealings with Iran’s Jews to be permissible. Synagogues while not thriving, are open. But, following his heroes Ayatollah Khomeini and Sayyid Qutb, Khamenei connects the Jewish enemies in the Koran with Israel. As Princeton’s Michael Cook has put it:
Fundamentalism also assists with the . . . demonization of enemies. Generally, it can work to erode the legitimacy of later accommodations between Muslim and non-Muslim populations by invoking the values of an earlier age in which Islamic dominance was clear-cut. Specifically, it highlights confrontation with Christians and Jews. . . . The Jewish case is more dramatic. The Jews were intimate enemies at the beginning of Islam by virtue of their opposition to Muhammad in Medina, and through a remarkable turn of modern history they are once again intimate enemies by virtue of their establishment of the State of Israel.
Who is to blame? According to Khamenei, “Arab regimes that are satisfied chanting the slogan of supporting Palestine” and “imperialist powers” which they alleged had “planted Israel” in the midst of the Islamic world. What was to be done? The “liberation of Palestine” and “annihilation of Israel.” How? By the ways of “sacrifice,” “martyrdom,” and “miracles.” Quoting Khomeini, Khamenei counseled that “if each member of the one-billion-large Islamic community of believers throws a bucket of water at Israel,” Israel will be drowned by the flood, and should each one throw a stone at it, “Israel will be buried.”
The themes, and even exact words, of this sermon are reflected in Khamenei’s later commentary on Jews and Israel, but there are also antisemitic innovations reflecting the times. In the wake of the Iran-contra affair, in February 1990, Khamenei went to great lengths to dismiss rumors of Iran importing Israeli arms. “In order to reduce the Islamic Republic’s influence among the nations, they whisper a rumor about a deal, claiming someone has procured something from someone and has sold something in return,” the mullah affirmed. “These rumors are spread by those who themselves have secret liaisons with Israel.”
In June 1991, Khamenei started attacking Jewish migration to Israel from the Soviet Union, Ethiopia, and India. In December 1994, he attacked Palestine Liberation Organization chairman Yasser Arafat and denounced Arab states negotiating peace with Israel as “traitors.” In March 1999, in a Persian New Year’s address, he endorsed, it appears for the first time, the Holocaust denial of Roger Garaudy, the French Communist convert to Islam. In an April 2001 speech, however, Khamenei moved away from total denial, saying, “Zionist propaganda exaggerates the number of Jewish victims,” and dwelling upon “the proof of Jews cooperating with the Nazis.” In April 2001, he described the conflict in Palestine as a “continuation of the Crusades,” either unaware or not acknowledging that the Holy Land’s Jews, like some Jews in Europe, also fell victim to Latin Christendom’s effort to reconquer the Near East for Christ. Occasionally, Khamenei offers practical guidance on how to achieve his goal of annihilating Israel. In an April 2001 address, he touted “reverse migration from Israel because of sustained Arab resistance.” In May 2002, he praised the use of suicide bombers as a means to provoke Jewish emigration.
Contradictions do abound in Khamenei’s statements about Jews and Israel. At times Khamenei claims the United States is controlled by Israel, in particular “Zionist capitalists.” But the cleric simultaneously asserts that Israelis “are instruments in the hands of the United States” and the “poisonous dagger in the side of the Muslims,” which helps the United States “gain a foothold from the Nile to the Euphrates.” Khamenei calls Israel “the chained dog of America” and “a microbe, which grows well protected by the United States.” Khamenei does not see any peaceful solution to the Israel problem—only a “military solution” is possible—and claims “Iranians are ready to fight Israel on Palestinian soil.” He does not find current circumstances, however, “expedient” for Iranians directly to enter the fray. “The Palestinians should do the fighting,” Khamenei advises. The cleric emphasizes that Iran can’t send arms or soldiers, but should send money. He insists that it is the duty of all Islamic states to arm the Palestinians, but at the same time says Iran can’t do so at the moment. Khamenei is certain that the United States and Israel will go the way of the Soviet Union. He claims that Palestinian resistance has nothing to do with Iran, but simultaneously claims supporting Lebanon and Palestine is the Islamic duty of Iranians and has been Tehran’s strategy since the Islamic revolution.
The Islamic Republic has certainly produced some dissent from Khomeini and Khamenei’s vision of Iran as a vanguard against the Jewish state. A strong supporter of the Lebanese Hezbollah’s war against Israel, Khatami, the former reformist president, nevertheless remarked that “we can’t be more Palestinian than the Palestinians.” The pro-democracy Green Movement’s taunt against the regime—“Neither Gaza nor Lebanon, let my life be sacrificed for Iran!”—cut to the heart of an imperial Islamist-Iranian vision, which still holds sway with the inner circle around President Rouhani. Rouhani has ardently backed Islamic militants in Gaza, Lebanon, and Iraq, as well as the barrel-bombing Assad regime in Syria. But the regime’s real dissidents who wanted to break from Khamenei’s fierce antisemitism and anti-Zionism have all been pummeled: The students and disillusioned revolutionaries who drove serious critiques of theocracy under President Khatami and powered the even more convulsive Green Movement have gone quiet, gone into exile, or are languishing in prison.
The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action hasn’t moderated Khamenei’s views on Jews and Israel. It appears to have provoked a new wave of speeches against Israel. This ought to serve as a reminder and litmus test for those assessing 36 years of religious revolution: An Islamic Republic that does not take its antisemitism seriously seems more than ever an oxymoron.
Ali Alfoneh and Reuel Marc Gerecht, a contributing editor, are senior fellows at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.
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