Category Archives: Iran Israel

Iran ‘Richer’ Today Due to John Kerry

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The legacy of the Obama administration will not be Obamacare, it will not be amnesty, it will be eliminating America’s enemies and Iran has become the closest ally to the U.S. State Department under the edict of the White House with John Kerry leading the charge.

Obama wrote a letter to the Mullahs back in 2008 as he became the presidential nominee. The letters to the Ayatollahs continued and open talks have continued such that John Kerry led the charge to move the needle to stop the Iranian nuclear weapons program. The expiration date for the agreement was today and they failed. The talks have now officially been extended another 7 months.

Iran is a state sponsor of terror and has been an avowed enemy of the United States going back to the late 70’s but John Kerry has dismissed all the history. A deal with Iran or no deal with Iran on their nuclear weapons program is bad news either way….the point is the program needs to be destroyed, there is and never was a peaceful nuclear program.

Each day that passes, Iran’s centrifuges continue to spin putting a nuclear warhead only months away. Iran does have everything to hide and to lie about such that Iran refuses the International Atomic Energy Agency access for inspections which has been agreed to and performed in the past and often.

There is a nuclear arms race in the Middle East and not only is Israel in jeopardy with its virtual existence but Saudi Arabia is also.

The story gets worse however as additional sanctions against Iran have been lifted. Some early sanctions were lifted just to get Iran to the negotiation table, and indeed since many months have passed with no resolution, additional sanctions were lifted by John Kerry to keep Iran at the table for the next 7 months.

Iran’s economy has been slipping from stability for a very long time due to effective sanctions, but their economy has received huge positive money shots due to lifted sanctions but now it gets better for them as additional sanctions will provide Iran with an economic income of seized monies up to $700 million a month. Iran has been rewarded for bad behavior and for stonewalling talks, hence John Kerry is either being a naïve dupe or a willing participant in allowing Iran’s to thrive.

Now the question is what will occur during the 7 months of extended talks? Could Saudi Arabia get involved to stop the enrichment? Will Israel be drafting war plans? Will John Kerry continue on a fool’s errand during the next 7 months to keep the talks viable and will they ultimately fail then?

Congress has been purposely left out of the loop of the talks yet they are in fact aware of some conditions. This is a time they will use once the 114th Congress is seated in January to stop the madness, pass additional irrevocable sanctions and the division in Congress and the State Department will continue.

All sides have been working from a thin ‘framework‘ such that Iran had little to do for compliance and now Iran is asking for a secondary framework to be developed.

It is going to be difficult in coming months due to continued military sequestration, the expanding footprint in Afghanistan, the expanding footprint in Iraq, a new Congress and then immigration. 2015 will not start off well.

Question is who is gonna notice and be proactive?

 

 

Prisons, Cells for Terrorism

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On March 10, 2003, Senator Charles Schumer wrote a letter to the OIG requesting that we examine the BOP’s process for selecting Muslim chaplains based on concerns that the BOP relies solely on two Islamic groups to endorse its Muslim chaplains, the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) and the Graduate School of Islamic and Social Sciences (GSISS). Schumer noted that the ISNA and the GSISS allegedly are connected to terrorism and promote Wahhabism, which some consider an exclusionary and extreme form of Islam. In addition to Senator Schumer, Senators Jon Kyl and Dianne Feinstein expressed similar concerns and asked the OIG to examine these issues as they relate to the BOP.

OIG interviewed the BOP’s ten Muslim chaplains, the BOP detailee to the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s (FBI) National Joint Terrorism Task Force (NJTTF), and officials at BOP Headquarters who are responsible for religious services providers, including the Chief of the Chaplaincy Services Branch and the Senior Deputy Assistant Director (SDAD) of the Correctional Programs Division. We also interviewed FBI counterterrorism officials and representatives of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom at the U.S. Department of State (Commission).  Read more here.

Years later, prisons are in fact terror cells and no solution is in sight.

U.S. Prisons Churning Out Thousands Of Radicalized Inmates

Joy Brighton published a profound piece.

Back in 2006, then FBI director Robert Mueller prophetically described the radical Islamist conversion machine operating throughout U.S. prisons, to a Senate committee. He said that prisons were a “fertile ground” for Islamic extremists, and that they targeted inmates for introduction to the militant Wahhabi and Salafist strains of Islam.

The recent so-called “lone wolf” terrorist attacks in Oklahoma City, New York, and just over our northern border in the Canadian capital of Ottawa, may be the product of such radicalization.

In April 2010, Larry James murdered his mother, pregnant wife, 7-month-old son, 3-year-old niece and 16-year-old niece for refusing to convert to Islam. James converted in 2007, while in a U.S. prison.

Then two months ago Colleen Hufford, a 54-year-old grandmother and factory worker in Oklahoma, was beheaded with a produce knife by Alton Nolen who likely converted to Islam in a U.S. prison. Nolen is being charged with workplace violence.

Last month NYPD officer Kenneth Healey, 25, was axed to death with a hatchet to the side of the head. He was not attacked by a “lone wolf,” but by ex-con Zale Thompson. New York City Police Commissioner William Bratton has called it a terrorist attack, and the NYPD might want to look at Thompson’s record in California where he did two brief terms in California prisons.

The statistics are staggering, and woefully out of date. One out of three African-American inmates in U.S. prisons convert to Islam while incarcerated.

This statistic is no longer limited to African-Americans in prison. The Huffington Post reported an estimated 35,000 – 40,000 inmates convert to Islam each year, and that 15 percent of the total U.S. prison population or 350,000 inmates are Muslim.

This is more than 18 times the national representation of Muslims in America, reported to be 0.8 percent. Prisons are churning out converts to Islam who are taught they are righteously entitled to control the religion, speech, and dress of family, co-workers and strangers.

The key to conversion success is clear. Our government has been contracting and paying Muslim Brotherhood front groups, such as GSISS (The Graduate School of Islamic and Social Sciences) and ISNA (Islamic Society of North America) to screen and assign Muslim prison chaplains for at least 8 years.

While Egypt and Saudi Arabia have banned the Muslim Brotherhood, classifying it as a terror group, the White House, U.S. prisons, and the Departments of Justice and Homeland Security continue to work with Muslim Brotherhood groups.

For example, Paul Pitts served 14 years in prison for murder, where he converted to Islam and became Imam Abdu-Shahid. He was paroled in 2001 and hired as a prison chaplain in 2007 with an annual salary of $49,471. In Feb 2010, he was caught trying to bring scissors and razor blades into the Manhattan Detention Complex.

A New York City corrections department source told the New York Post: “It’s a disgrace that taxpayers are funding Muslim chaplains who not only have criminal records, but also are promoting violence.”

Abdu-Shahid’s boss – head chaplain Umar Abdul-Jalil – was hired at an annual salary of $76, 602 even though he served 14 years for dealing drugs. In 2006, he was suspended for two weeks without pay after declaring that “the greatest terrorists in the world occupy the White House.” He continues to oversee 40 prison chaplains.

According to the Wall Street Journal, Wallace Gene Marks converted under Imam Umar while in prison for weapon possession. He was hired as a one of the first paid Muslim chaplains in 1975 and has hired nearly 45 chaplains. Imam Umar says that prison “is the perfect recruitment and training grounds for radicalism and the Islamic religion” and that 9/11 hijackers should be honored as martyrs. “Funded by the Saudi government he traveled often to Saudi Arabia and brought that country’s harsh form of Islam to New York’s expanding ranks of Muslim prisoners.”

Just after 9/11, Aminah Akbar, a veteran female Muslim chaplain, told a crowd of 100 inmates at the Albion Correctional Facility for women that Osama bin Laden “is a soldier of Allah,” and added, “I am not an American, and I just live here.”

A New York City Corrections source told the  New York Post: ”It’s a disgrace that taxpayers are funding Muslim chaplains who not only have criminal records, but also are promoting violence. “Ignoring these red flags under the aegis of political correctness is literally killing us.”

​We must demand that the religion of Islam be separated from the totalitarian politics of Sharia-ism. Sharia-ism, like Soviet Communism and Nazism is bent on global control by silencing criticism and working within an unsuspecting political system to eventually overthrow it. Our taxpayer funded prisons have been co-opted by the leaders of Sharia-ism in America, the Muslim Brotherhood. More silence will likely mean the death of more innocent Americans.

Joy Brighton is author of Sharia-ism is Here: The Battle to Control Women and Everyone Else.

 

U.S. Constant State of Emergency

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From the White House on National Security:

Progress

Guiding Principles

The President’s highest priority is to keep the American people safe. He is committed to ensuring the United States is true to our values and ideals while also protecting the American people. The President is committed to securing the homeland against 21st century threats by preventing terrorist attacks and other threats against our homeland, preparing and planning for emergencies, and investing in strong response and recovery capabilities. We will help ensure that the Federal Government works with states and local governments, and the private sector as close partners in a national approach to prevention, mitigation, and response.

The National Security Strategy, released May 27, 2010, lays out a strategic approach for advancing American interests, including the security of the American people, a growing U.S. economy, support for our values, and an international order that can address 21st century challenges.

But the last time a National Security strategy was addressed in total was 2010.

Meanwhile, see below.

The United States is in a state of emergency – 30 of them, in fact

By Christopher Ingraham

The United States has been in an uninterrupted state of national emergency since 1979. Here in 2014, we’re not dealing with just one emergency – there are currently 30 of them in effect.

That’s according to data on presidential declarations of emergency compiled by Gregory Korte of USA Today. “Those emergencies, declared by the president by proclamation or executive order, give the president extraordinary powers — to seize property, call up the National Guard and hire and fire military officers at will,” Korte writes.

President Obama has declared nine so far, eight of which are currently in effect — they primarily deal with preventing business with people or organizations involved in global conflicts or the drug trade. Obama has also renewed many of his predecessors’ orders — just last week he renewed our ongoing state of emergency with respect to Iran for its 36th straight year.

Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush took a light touch on declarations of emergency – they invoked only a handful, none of which remain in effect. But Bill Clinton proclaimed 16 emergencies and George W. Bush declared 14, 13 of which are still in effect today.

Blocking business transactions with various interests may not seem like national emergency material. But the language underlying these declarations is often nearly apocalyptic. Obama’s recent continuation of a Bush-era emergency relating to “the property of certain persons contributing to the conflict” in the Democratic Republic of the Congo states that “this situation continues to pose an unusual and extraordinary threat to the foreign policy of the United States.”

The Obama administration also maintains that “the actions and policies of certain members of the Government of Belarus and other persons continue to pose an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States.”

You may wonder why the president needs to declare a state of emergency to deal with what appears to be fairly routine instances of corruption in far-flung corners of the world. Korte notes that Congress provides little oversight on emergency declarations, even through it’s mandated to do so by law. In an era when tussles over executive power are a near-daily occurrence, this is a strange incongruity.

“What the National Emergencies Act does is like a toggle switch, and when the president flips it, he gets new powers. It’s like a magic wand. and there are very few constraints about how he turns it on,” said Kim Lane Scheppele, a Princeton professor interviewed by Korte.

In the absence of a crisis, there’s little compelling reason for a government to adopt a permanent crisis stance. The danger is that a public desensitized to claims to extraordinary circumstances could be more likely to allow excesses of authority performed in the name of those circumstances.

As Korte writes, “A post-9/11 state of national emergency declared by President George W. Bush — and renewed six times by President Obama — forms the legal basis for much of the war on terror” — a war which has so far seen a rise in terrorism around the globe.

Detainees back to the Fight

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The Afghan government’s decision to release 65 suspected Taliban detainees from Bagram prison despite repeated protests from the U.S. has raised fears that some of them may return to fight for the insurgent group. In the past, the Pentagon has said that detainees released from Guantanamo have been found to be involved in attacks against coalition forces in Afghanistan.

Beyond rejoining the Taliban, there is Daesh (Islamic State) where there is guerilla fighting tactics, tactics, recruiting and fund-raising that is attractive to Gitmo detainees.

Gitmo ‘Poet’ Now Recruiting for Islamic State

By THOMAS JOSCELYN

An ex-Guantanamo detainee based in northern Pakistan is leading an effort to recruit jihadists for the Islamic State, an al Qaeda offshoot that controls large portions of Iraq and Syria.

Abdul Rahim Muslim Dost, who was detained at Guantanamo for three years, has sworn allegiance to Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al Baghdadi. Dost’s oath of allegiance was issued on July 1, just two days after Baghdadi named himself “Caliph Ibrahim I” and declared that his Islamic State was now a “caliphate.”

Pakistani officials have accused Dost of recruiting jihadists for Baghdadi’s organization. He is thought to be behind a graffiti campaign, which aims to spread pro-Islamic State messages throughout northern Pakistan.

According to Dawn, a Pakistani newspaper, Dost has even been named the head of the Islamic State’s presence in the “Khorasan,” an area that covers much of Central and South Asia, including Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iran.

U.S. officials have confirmed to THE WEEKLY STANDARD that Dost is recruiting for the Islamic State. It is not clear how effective his efforts have been, given that Dost and his supporters are operating in areas that are strongholds for al Qaeda and the Taliban, both of which are opposed to Baghdadi’s “caliphate” project.

Thus far, the Islamic State has had only limited success in Pakistan and elsewhere in attracting established jihadists to its cause. However, Dost, who is in his 50s, is a veteran jihadist leader.

Dost was originally detained in Pakistan in late 2001. He was transferred to U.S. custody and detained at Guantanamo for three years. Dost was already a veteran jihadist with a thick dossier at the time.

But U.S. officials transferred Dost from Guantanamo to Afghanistan in April 2005. Joint Task Force Guantanamo (JTF-GTMO), which oversees the detention camps, recommended that he be released or transferred due to his health problems. Dost “poses a low risk, due to his medical condition,” JTF-GTMO concluded in a memo that was subsequently leaked. A combatant status review tribunal (CSRT) at Guantanamo also concluded at some point that Dost was no longer an enemy combatant.

In 2006, however, Dost was detained in Pakistan once again. He was subsequently part of a prisoner exchange between the Taliban and the Pakistani government in 2008. Dost and Taliban fighters in Pakistani custody were exchanged for Pakistan’s ambassador to Afghanistan and dozens of Pakistani soldiers, all of whom were in the Taliban’s custody. The deal was reportedly brokered by Baitullah Mehsud, who led the al Qaeda-linked Pakistani Taliban until his death in 2009.

A statement by Dost explaining his reasons for swearing allegiance to Baghdadi was included in a jihadist propaganda video posted online in July. THE WEEKLY STANDARD has obtained a translation of the video.

Dost claims that he had a vision prophesizing the establishment of Baghdadi’s caliphate during his time in U.S. custody.

“While in Guantanamo in [2002],” Dost claims, “I saw a vision of a palace with a huge closed door, above which was a clock pointing to the time of 10 minutes before 12.” Dost says he “was told that was the home of the caliphate” and so he “assumed then that the caliphate would be established after 12 years.”

Coincidentally, the Islamic State declared its caliphate in 2014 – or 12 years after Dost’s supposed vision.

Dost argues that ever since the caliphate fell in 1924 the Islamic ummah [worldwide community of Muslims] “has experienced phases of disagreement, division, failure and disputes” and “become divided into fighting groups and different small states” that fail to represent Islam. All Muslim governments are now null and void, Dost says, as they have been replaced by the caliphate with Baghdadi, the “caliph of the Muslims, the emir of the believers,” as its leader.

Dost thanks Allah for the “opportunity to witness the establishment of the Islamic caliphate” under Baghdadi’s leadership. He swears allegiance to Baghdadi and calls on all other Muslims to do the same.

The video of Dost’s allegiance to Baghdadi includes a summary of his extensive biography. In the 1970s, Dost studied under a jihadist sheikh in Afghanistn. Some of the sheikh’s students would go on to join al Qaeda. Dost joined the jihad against the Soviets in the late 1970s.

In 1979, Dost was among the radicals, led by Juhayman al Utebi, who laid siege to the Grand Mosque in Mecca. Juhayman and his men challenged the Saudis’ right to rule over Islam’s holy sites, but were eventually extracted by force from the mosque. That incident influenced the next generation of Islamic militants, including some of al Qaeda leaders. Dost was arrested shortly after the siege, but somehow escaped and made his way to Peshawar, where joined the jihad once again.

Dost soon became a prolific writer, publishing three magazines and authoring numerous articles and books.

According to his biography, Dost had “good relations with the Taliban and the mujahideen.” Interestingly, Dost claimed the opposite during his combatant status review tribunal (CSRT) at Guantanamo, saying that he was at odds with the Taliban prior to his capture in late 2001. Dost is more forthcoming about his Taliban ties pre-9/11 now that he is free.

 

Will John Kerry Gain Accord on Iran Nuke Program?

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LONDON (AP) — With a deadline for Iranian nuclear deal fast approaching, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry has embarked on a frenzy of high-stakes diplomacy in a last-minute push to secure an agreement – or at least prevent the process from collapsing.

As senior negotiators huddled for a second day in Vienna in the latest round of talks, Kerry held separate meetings in London and was to travel to Paris on Thursday for further discussions before deciding whether or when to join the larger effort in the Austrian capital to forge a pact that would prevent the Islamic republic from reaching the capability to produce atomic weapons.

Despite his efforts, though, signs increasingly pointed to the prospect that Monday’s deadline will be pass without a deal and the negotiations will be extended a second time.

In London, Kerry met Wednesday at his hotel with Foreign Minister Yusuf bin Alawi of Oman, which has emerged as a key bridge between Washington and Tehran, a senior U.S. official said. Bin Alawi was in Tehran last weekend and met with Kerry on Tuesday. Their follow-up meeting, Wednesday however, was unannounced and confirmed only after an Associated Press reporter saw the foreign minister in Kerry’s hotel.

Oman is not party to the negotiations among Iran, the U.S., Britain, China, France, Russia, the European Union and Germany. But unique among the Gulf Arab states for the close ties it maintains with Iran, it hosted high-level nuclear talks earlier this month and was the site of secret U.S.-Iranian gatherings dating back to 2012. Those earlier discussions laid the groundwork for an interim nuclear agreement reached a year ago, which the so-called P5+1 countries are now trying to cement with Iran in Vienna.

Details of Kerry’s meetings with bin Alawi were not immediately clear and U.S. officials were tight-lipped about any role Oman might play beyond that of an intermediary.

German Ambassador Peter Wittig wouldn’t rule out an extension and said a nuclear deal could lead to better relations and partnerships with Iran and world powers in other regional issues, specifically Syria and Lebanon.

“If these negotiations fail, there won’t be any winners,” Wittig told reporters in Washington.

In Paris, Kerry will meet Saudi Foreign Minister Saud al-Faisal and French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius. Those meetings are key because French objections last year delayed the adoption of an interim agreement by several weeks, and Saudi Arabia remains deeply concerned about the potential for its arch-rival Iran to win concessions from the West.

In Washington, meanwhile, Obama administration officials, congressional aides and independent experts who’ve closely monitored the discussions said an extension of the talks was most likely. And, in a twist, many opponents of a deal now see prolonged negotiations as more preferable than an accord.

Even though many U.S. lawmakers opposed an extension when the last one was announced in June, aides in both parties said an agreement now would be viewed as a sign of the administration’s desperation to secure a diplomatic breakthrough at any cost.

Republicans in particular want more time so that they can attempt to pass new sanctions legislation that would pressure Iran into greater concessions. The Senate’s plan is to bring up a package of conditional penalties after January, when Republicans take the majority, according to aides who weren’t authorized to speak publicly on the matter and demanded anonymity.

Some Democrats are on board with that effort, though Obama has threatened to veto any new sanctions threatening the diplomacy.

The midterm elections have others weighing their approaches. The powerful pro-Israel lobby, AIPAC, issued a statement after the last extension urging the U.S. government to “make clear that Iran can expect no further extension of the talks.”

In Israel itself, which has been outspoken in opposition of a deal that it fears could leave it vulnerable to Iran, officials said they believe an extension is the way to go.

A senior Israeli official said Israel supports an extension in the talks’ deadline to allow time for a better deal to be negotiated through additional economic sanctions on Iran.

**

But what does a nuclear weapons program really mean for Iran?

How does religion really influence Iranian nuclear policy?

Ariane Tabatabai

One of the most enduring myths about post-revolutionary Iran is that the country’s policies, including those on nuclear matters, are shaped by its leadership’s obsession with martyrdom and Messianic ideals. Many observers, especially in the arms control community, base their analyses on this notion, and it leads to some harrowing conclusions. If, after all, a country’s stance is basically suicidal, there’s no telling what it would do with a nuclear weapon. A careful and more nuanced look at the role of religion in Iranian decision-making, though, debunks the idea that martyrdom rules in Tehran, and gives a much more realistic basis for understanding the regime’s behavior.

To be sure, there are reasons why some analysts see the Iranian government as driven by martyrdom. The idea originated with the 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq War, which helped shape the Iranian psyche and the image of the Islamic Republic in the world. During the war, Iran famously launched a series of “human wave attacks,” sending untrained and unprepared men (and occasionally boys) to the front, sometimes through minefields, to clear the way for the trained forces. This tactic went hand-in-hand with the notion of martyrdom, with members of this ill-equipped vanguard promised a place in paradise if they gave their lives for God and country. Mental images of young boys wearing plastic “keys to paradise” around their necks and running across minefields have haunted the war’s observers, and though whether such keys actually existed remains controversial, the picture lingers and contributes to perceptions of Iran.

Much later, former President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad probably encouraged the notion of martyrdom’s importance in politics with rhetoric deemed bizarre. For instance, in 2005 he said that some delegates at the United Nations General Assembly had seen a “halo” around his head. During his 2005-2013 presidency, Iranians joked that Ahmadinejad would always put out an extra plate at his table for the “Mahdi.”

Shia Muslims believe that the Mahdi, born in the ninth century and also known as the Hidden Imam or the Twelfth Imam, is the Prophet Mohammed’s last legitimate successor. They believe that he has gone into occultation—the state of being blocked from view—but will eventually return, much as Christians believe that Jesus Christ will return some day. According to Shia belief, the Hidden Imam will reappear along with Christ and together they will restore peace and justice, saving the world from the chaos into which it would otherwise descend.

The notions of martyrdom and “Mahdism” have led many to extrapolate that the Iranian leadership’s actions are governed by an inherent suicidal tendency and a willingness to cause chaos, even if it’s self-destructive, in order to facilitate the Mahdi’s return. But if one goes beyond the revolutionary rhetoric and examines the Islamic Republic’s actions, one realizes that more often than not, Tehran is driven by national or regime interests, rather than pure ideology and belief. In fact, Iran’s rulers often use ideology as a means, and do not see it as an end. It’s true that the regime sometimes makes decisions that seem irrational to outside observers. But this is not generally due to religious belief but rather to the fact that the regime’s interests and the national interest do not align—for example, Iran and Israel have many common strategic interests, yet Tehran has adopted anti-Israeli rhetoric and policies since the 1979 revolution. This stance may not serve national interests, but it certainly advances the Islamic Republic’s interest in a strong, external-enemy narrative.

The phantom fatwa. None of this is to say that Islam does not play any role in security decision-making in Iran. Most followers of the country’s nuclear affairs are aware of the famous fatwa reportedly issued by Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei prohibiting nuclear weapons. But this fatwa, or religious edict, has become a puzzle.

In order to issue a fatwa, a religious figure must be deemed an authority in Islamic jurisprudence. (This is why to most Islamic scholars, fatwas issued by Al Qaeda leadership in support of the use of nuclear weapons are void of any legitimacy.) But a fatwa does not have to be written. It can be spoken if it meets certain requirements, such as having been witnessed. In this particular case, Khamenei does not appear to have written the fatwa, but it has been communicated to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and repeated a number of times by Khamenei himself, as well as by other government officials. It is unclear whether the fatwa covers only the “use” of these weapons, or their “production and stockpiling” too, as Khamenei has been quoted saying both.

Some scholars and policy makers believe the Khamenei nuclear-weapons fatwa to be bogus because it is not written, and therefore irrelevant. Others believe it to be all-important. Neither side has seen a fatwa, and it has not been published on Khamenei’s otherwise extremely comprehensive website.

Adding further ambiguity to the fatwa’s status is the fact that such rulings can be overturned, allowing the faith to change and adapt to the times. The founder of the Islamic Republic, the Ayatollah Khomeini, famously overturned a number of fatwas. Even this possibility of reversal, though, does not necessarily make pursuit of an Iranian Bomb more likely, because while there is no religious constraint on canceling a fatwa, the geopolitical cost of overriding this one would be high. Iran has promoted the fatwa in various forums for more than a decade and it is finally being recognized and referred to by world leaders. In a way, by leading a public relations campaign promoting the edict, Tehran has constrained its ability to overturn it.

Nuclear weapons in Shia jurisprudence. Virtually absent from the debate is the fact that Shia scholars who have spoken on nuclear weapons show consensus. Few Grand Ayatollahs have discussed the issue, but those who have present arguments similar to Khamenei’s, regardless of personal political stance. Hence, whether they support the Islamic Republic or oppose it, and whether or not they believe that politics and religion should be intertwined (many Iranian Shia clerics say they should not), they believe weapons of mass destruction to be against the faith. What is unclear, however, is the scope of this prohibition. Clerics tend to be generalists, trained to cover all possible matters from which foot to enter the bathroom with (left!) to the use of technology in warfare. This means that the legal debate is neither elaborate nor nuanced.

But the basic principles underlying the Supreme Leader and the other clerics’ rulings are very close to those in international law. In Shia jurisprudence, like in international humanitarian law, there must be a distinction between combatants and non-combatants. Non-combatants, typically defined as women, children, the elderly, and those mentally unfit to fight, are not to be targeted. Hence, using poison in bodies of water and burning trees is not allowed. The environment too must be protected. These are among the key notions shaping Shia thinking on indiscriminate warfare.

Does it matter what the faith says? A dissident Iranian Shia cleric, Mohsen Kadivar, points out that when Saddam Hussein’s missiles targeted Iranian cities during the Iran-Iraq war, officials asked Khomeini for permission to retaliate in kind. At first he refused, hewing to the Shia ban on indiscriminate warfare. Eventually, though, he allowed similar attacks to be carried out. There are similar examples in which Iran has acted rationally with little or no regard to religious doctrine or sectarianism. Consider Tehran’s relations with two neighbors to its northwest, Azerbaijan and Armenia. Armenia is a Christian country, with good ties to Tehran, while Azerbaijan, a Shia-majority state, has had complicated relations with Iran. In Iranians’ view, Azerbaijan tries to arouse their own Azeri population’s separatism and enables some Israeli actions that target Iran. Tehran’s policies are not driven by sectarianism and ideology here, but rather by national interests.

The role of religion in post-revolutionary Iranian politics is complex and often misunderstood in the West. It seems clear, though, that the regime follows its practical interests. When ideology serves these interests, it is put forward as a rationale; otherwise, it takes a backseat. Observers who continue to argue that the regime wishes to hasten the return of the Mahdi, and that Iran will therefore withdraw from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and develop nuclear weapons, are contradicted by the facts. In actuality, Tehran highlights that it is party to a number of international treaties, and that its program has been in strict compliance with its international obligations. Whether or not this is the case is a different story, but a suicidal regime wouldn’t bother preserving appearances. The regime has not reversed the fatwa or withdrawn from the NPT—precisely because those would be suicidal moves. It is to the government’s advantage to be seen as unlikely to pursue a nuclear weapon, so it cites Khamenei’s fatwa. But the regime puts forward no religious rationale for the fact that 35 years after the US embassy hostage crisis, with the backing of the Supreme Leader, it is negotiating with what the revolutionaries then called the “Great Satan.” It would not be doing so if it did not believe it was acting in its own real-world interest.