U.S. Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta is not denying a column by the Washington Post’s David Ignatius which asserts that,
Panetta believes there is a strong likelihood that Israel will strike Iran in April, May or June — before Iran enters what Israelis described as a “zone of immunity” to commence building a nuclear bomb. Very soon, the Israelis fear, the Iranians will have stored enough enriched uranium in deep underground facilities to make a weapon — and only the United States could then stop them militarily.
And I hope what Panetta surmises reflects reality.
Despite the pleadings of the Iran-o-fantasists of all ilks, the preponderance of the Iranian people are not secular and/or Western leaning, but religious Shiites and Jew-hating, consistent with their Safavid/Qajar Shiite theocracy forbears–forbears who rendered areas of Iran “Judenrein”–the exact word used by the great scholar of Iranian Jewry, Walter Fischel—via annihilationist pogroms in the 16th, 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries.
The so-called Khomeini “revolution,” was in reality accompanied by a simple, straightforward revival of this traditional Shiite doctrinal Jew-hatred albeit within the even more incendiary context of a an established Jewish State liberated on real estate deemed “fay territory” and a permanent part of the Dar al-Islam, which must be destroyed by jihad—notwithstanding the further invocation of Shiite/Sunni eschatology, wherein destruction of the Jews is a central motif. For example, Al-Majlisi—the Khomeini of his era who was the de facto ruler of Iran for 6-years at the end of the 17th century—wrote a self-explanatory treatise entitled, “Lightning Bolts Against the Jews” which was typical of Shiite Iran’s Jew-hating theology in word and prescribed—and practiced—deed.
See my three-part series in Pajamas Media, “Jihad and Genocidal Islamic Antisemitism in Shiite Iran” (here, here, and here), and much more extensive material included in “The Legacy of Islamic Antisemitism”
That’s the sad doctrinal and historical reality that makes Israel’s decision—if this story is in fact true–right—and righteous.
