Biden is apparently trying to rekindle Obama’s 2015 nuclear deal with Iran which saw the lifting of onerous economic sanctions against that country in exchange for its abandonment of the pursuit of nuclear weaponry. Critics saw the deal as relatively meaningless inasmuch as Iran in no way renounced its terrorist activities throughout the Middle East. Trump, of course, withdrew the States from the agreement.
It is a political dilemma to which there is no easy solution. Sanctions against Iran inevitably punish those millions within the country who have no sympathy whatsoever for their leaders. But at the same time those leaders continue to subscribe to beliefs and values that are barbaric if not definitively evil. Is it even possible to forge a meaningful accord with those locked in medieval ignorance? Does asking this question make me a White Supremacist or is it utterly justified by the FACTS?
In early Jan. of this year, at an event commemorating the 2020 death of Qassem Soleimani in an American drone strike, top Iranian general Esmail Ghaani promised the American people: “We will get revenge that you will not forget for the rest of your life.” Soleimani was targeted because he was a military strategist key to Iran’s terrorist exploits while Ghaani seemed to be threatening innocent American citizens with something comparable to 9/11.
In late Nov., Brig. General Abolfazl Shekarchi said: “We will not back off from the annihilation of Israel, even one millimeter.” Completely uninterested in a peaceful solution in the Middle East, he has openly expressed his disgust with the governments of Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates for “normalizing” their diplomatic relations with Israel in a deal arranged by the Trump regime.
On Feb. 5, in the Iranian city of Ahvaz, a grinning Sajjad Heydari was filmed walking the streets carrying the severed head of his 17 year old wife, Mona. Forced to marry him as a 12 year old, she had escaped the constant abuse to which she had been submitted by running off to Turkey, only to be convinced by her family to return for the sake of her three year old child. Sajjad and his brother who assisted him in the “honor killing” have since been arrested.
While Iranian law does not tolerate such barbarities, certain abhorrent Islamic assumptions continue to infect the country’s culture, and the nuances of Culture are often more important than the officially sanctioned law of the land. [i.e., see North America!] As is also true in Pakistan, the genital mutilation and forced marriage of young girls is considered acceptable to many Iranians, females being seen as little more than the possessions of men who are therefore entitled to slaughter them should they dare bring “dishonor” upon them.
Yonah Diamond, an international Human Rights lawyer who has written extensively of China’s genocidal treatment of the Uyghurs, refuses to exonerate the government of Iran, saying it generally treats Women’s Rights advocates with little more than scorn. Of Sajjad Heydari’s disgusting crime he has since stated: “The Iranian authorities enabled the barbaric beheading of Mona Heydari,” adding “This is not an isolated murder in Iran, nor did it happen in a vacuum.”
So how does the West deal with a state governed by religious fanatics utterly convinced that the “truth” of their beliefs entitles them to slaughter others [Jews, Americans, Women, etc.]? How does one convince “progressives” such as Obama and Biden that human Evil is an enduring reality, that some people simply cannot be trusted, that deals with regimes such as those presently ruling Iran and China are mere exercises in futility?
Socrates maintained that human evil is always the result of ignorance. Our “intellectuals” like to blame Western Colonialism for the ills that continue to plague much of the rest of the world. But is the West responsible for the medieval fanaticism of the Ayatollahs who rule over Iran, zealots who in fact believe that everyone else is “unenlightened”? I am not suggesting all or even most Muslims subscribe to their dehumanizing dementia, but surveys have shown that tens of millions around the world absolutely do. My point is simply that the application of Man’s Mind to the human condition is not simply a Western eccentricity but a Universal Existential Imperative, one that various sectors of the species have unequivocally failed. This of course violates the “progressive” [Postmodern] notion that there actually is no such thing as Truth, that all Cultures are equal, that those of a Western European perspective have no right to judge others, that the urge to do so is always rooted in racism, indeed that the very notion of “evil” is a hateful “conservative” invention.
Hence Biden’s naive belief that he can negotiate with an arrogant Iranian regime which doesn’t see itself subject to the same standards as much of the rest of the world! Hence Obama’s naive 2014 carbon emissions agreement with China which continues to be by far the greatest polluter on the planet! Admitting that there are in fact vile governments and peoples who simply do not care about either the truth or the rights and welfare of others, simply doesn’t fit the superficial narrative of the Left.