Colleagues:
Two pieces today on Iran, one hopeful about the future and the other a somber reminder of the real nature of the current regime and those who rule it.
First, COL Tim Geraghty, who commanded the Marine detachment in Lebanon in 1983 when a suicide bomber drove a truck into the compound and killed 241 U.S. Marines. writes about the horrors of that catastrophe. However, the op-ed really directs our attention to the pervasive influence of the Iranian regime and the multiple subordinate and allied entities that Tehran directs in its global terror activities.
Geraghty’s piece is a reminder that those of us who feel that some form of U.S.-Iranian rapprochement is in the interest of both countries must temper our ambitious strategies. However, the second article (abridged) speaks to the chasm that now exists between the ruling “Mullah-Military” elite and the young, well educated next generation–a group that constitutes a vast majority of the population. The article gives hope that despite the oppressive regime now in power, that its days may be numbered.
— Ty
New York Post
October 23, 2009
Deadly Anniversary: Remembering ’83 Beirut attack
By Timothy J. Geraghty
AT 6:22 on Sunday morning, 26 years ago today, a huge explosion rocked my headquarters at Beirut International Airport, where the US Multinational Peacekeeping Force had been operating for more than a year. It was followed by enormous shock waves, sending equipment, papers and shards from blown-out windows flying. The office entry door had been blown off its hinges.
Outside, through a dense fog of ash, I saw the Battalion Landing Team’s four-story headquarters demolished. A suicide driver had penetrated our southern perimeter, rammed a 19-ton Mercedes truck bomb into the lobby of the building and detonated it. A similar truck bomb struck the French paratrooper HQ at Ramlet-el-Baida minutes later, killing 58 French peacekeepers.
The death toll eventually reached 241 Marines, sailors and soldiers — my men. It was the highest loss of life in a single day since D-Day on Iwo Jima in 1945. The coordinated, dual suicide attacks — supported, planned, financed and organized by Iran and Syria using Shiite proxies — achieved their goal: the withdrawal of the Multinational Force from Lebanon and a dramatic change in US policy.
The synchronized attacks had killed a total of 299 US and French peacekeepers and wounded scores more. The cost to the Iranian-Syrian supported operation was two suicide bombers dead. This was the beginning of the asymmetrical war radical Islamists waged against America and our allies. It has evolved today to be the major national-security threat to Western civilization.
Perhaps the most significant development that grew out of our Beirut mission was Iran’s ascent. Since Iran doesn’t share a border with Lebanon or Israel, in the early 1980s it deployed a contingent of its Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps into Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley. There, the Iranians established an operational and training base that is active to this day. Having created a state within a state, they founded, financed, trained and equipped Hezbollah to operate as a proxy army and used these Shiite surrogates to attack the US and French peacekeepers that October morning.
Iran’s entry into Lebanon was a game-changer. With Syrian complicity, Iran still destabilizes Lebanon and attacks Israel indirectly, which raises its stature, popularity and influence throughout the Arab region and globally. Today Iran is capable of causing havoc on several fronts and on its own schedule, which provides convenient distractions while its nuclear centrifuges spin.
Shiite Iranian mullahs, looking to fuel instability, support al Qaeda, Hamas, Hezbollah and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, even though three of these groups are Sunni. They also back the Taliban in Afghanistan against NATO forces and use the IRGC’s elite Quds Force to train, finance and equip Sunni and Shiite militias in Iraq.
Recent events offer insight into US-Iranian relations. With August’s Iranian election in dispute, the Obama administration was able to engage Iranian leaders only by ignoring those who risked their lives to protest the election’s illegitimacy. On cue, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad increased his challenges of Israel’s right to exist, while deflecting attention from the carnage in Tehran’s streets. Notably, Iran brought IRGC-trained Hezbollah thugs from Lebanon to subdue the protestors.
Meanwhile, some leaders implementing the mullahs’ policies hearken back to the Beirut days. Mostafa Mohammad-Najjar, a veteran commander of the 150,000-man IRGC, was named defense minister in 2005. Najjar was commander of the IRGC contingent in the Bekaa Valley in 1983 and was directly responsible for the truck bombings. Najjar’s ideological loyalty is exceeded only by the butchery he has wrought.
Gen. Ahmad Vahidi, Ahmadinejad’s choice as the new defense minister, also took part in the Beirut attack and later succeeded Najjar as commander. Recognized by the mullahs for his successful service there, he was promoted in 1991 and founded the elite Quds Force.
Vahidi has an extensive background in intelligence operations and in special operations abroad. He’s on Interpol’s most wanted list, the Red Notices, for example, for orchestrating Hezbollah’s bombing of the Jewish Community Cultural Center in Buenos Aires in 1994, in which 85 people were killed — the worst attack on a Jewish target outside Israel since World War II. Last year, the European Union linked him to Iran’s nuclear activities. Vahidi’s assignment and background lays out a bloody road map of Iranian intentions.
Add to this the recent reports, confirmed by the Drug Enforcement Administration’s former chief of operations, that Hezbollah operatives have formed a partnership with the Mexican drug cartels, using smuggling routes to get people and contraband into the United States.
At dawn today, Beirut veterans and families and friends of those killed in the bombings were scheduled to gather for a candlelight vigil at the Beirut Memorial in North Carolina to honor the fallen peacekeepers. Some of us with long memories are still waiting for justice to be served on Iran and Syria, while the rest of the world awaits their next affront to humanity.
Col. Timothy J. Geraghty, USMC (Ret.), is the author of “Peacekeepers at War: Beirut 1983-The Marine Commander Tells His Story.”
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Nazila Fathi: Iran’s Politics Open a Generational Chasm
By NAZILA FATHI
NYT: October 21, 2009
TORONTO — It had been years since Narges Kalhor could talk about politics with her father, Mehdi, a senior adviser and spokesman for President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran. He advocated greater restraints on social and political expression, while she favored more freedom. Still, they had always managed to get along.
But after Iran’s disputed presidential election in June and the protests that followed, the disagreement exploded into a breach. Last week — as her father accused her of being manipulated by the opponents of the government — Ms. Kalhor, now 25, applied for refugee status in Germany.
“The difference between my generation and my parents’ generation, who are very ideological, is just increasing day by day,” she said in a telephone interview from Germany. “Their goals have not materialized, and it is our turn to lead the way.”
While Ms. Kalhor’s case has been widely publicized, she is hardly alone. Numerous children of prominent Iranians have become estranged from their powerful parents since the election, which the opposition says was rigged. Thousands more middle-class families have been divided by the generational chasm that opened over the summer.
Mohsen Ruholamini, the son of a senior commander of the Revolutionary Guards, was arrested during the protests in July and tortured to death, according to his father, who has staunchly defended the government’s handling of the unrest.
Mehdi Khazali, the son of Ayatollah Abolghassem Khazali, a senior cleric close to Mr. Ahmadinejad, criticizes the country’s top leadership on his blog, drkhazali.net. At one point, he wrote that his father supported Mr. Ahmadinejad and the conservatives only because he had been “cheated, lied to and taken advantage of for his religious beliefs.”
Because of the growing alienation of young Iranians, family dynamics could be complex, particularly among the families of elite government officials. “These children are more affected by society and even Facebook and Twitter on the Internet than their families,” said Alireza Haghighi, an Iranian political analyst at the University of Toronto. “The younger generation has been very frustrated with the political situation.”