RUTHFULLY YOURS

The Arab Spring is turning into an American Winter, Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, believes. Countries from Tunisia and Egypt to Yemen and Bahrain, he insists, are struggling to overthrow ties to the West and embrace Islamist movements, which in the end will look to Iran for leadership.

And the leadership Iran would provide in such a scenario could bring on Armageddon as it amasses nuclear weapons in its quest for Islamic world domination.

“The developments currently unfolding in the world are different than those of the past since they are anti-U.S. and popular in nature,” Khamenei said recently, according to MehrNews, the mouthpiece of the Islamic regime in Iran. “Some assume that the United States is stage-managing these developments behind the scenes, but it is sheer delusion. … Today what we hear in the Arab streets are the same slogans that the Islamic nation of Iran has been saying for the past 30 years.” he said.

“The fact that Western media outlets have predicted and acknowledged that Islamists will emerge victorious in the elections that will be held in countries in transition also prove the Islamic nature of regional revolutions,” Khamenei said.

The Iranian dictator also criticized the U.S. for adopting a double standard toward the developments occurring in Egypt and other countries, adding that any popular, democratic and patriotic person who comes to power in one of those countries will definitely oppose the United States and the Zionist regime of Israel.

In recent months, many Iranian clerics have issued statements of admiration for Khamenei, calling him the deputy of the last Islamic messiah, Mahdi, the Shiites’ 12^th Imam, and even going so far as announcing that disobeying the supreme leader is equivalent to “apostasy from God.” According to Shiite belief, Mahdi will reappear after great world chaos and destruction, and Islam will rule the world.

One prominent ayatollah, Mesbah Yazdi, one of Iran’s leading advocates of Islamic end times’ ideology, has stated that Khamenei ascends to the sky every year for five hours to meet with Imam Mahdi and to consult about what action to take next. It is said that Khamenei has been told by Imam Mahdi to continue full speed with the Iranian nuclear program and not to fear anyone or any threats.

That fanatical belief could become a self-fulfilling prophecy should Revolutionary Guard forces launch a nuclear attack against Israel. Iranian leaders have often stated their goal is to destroy the Jewish state.

The radicals ruling Iran believe that Khamenei is the mythical figure who will pave the way for the Mahdi’s return. They believe the current uprisings in the Middle East — as they call it, an “Islamic awakening” — are another sign that the end is near and that Khamenei is on a righteous path for the final destruction of Israel, America and the infidels.

According to an Iranian secret documentary revealed back in April, titled “The Coming Is Upon Us,” the current unrest in the Middle East is a divine signal that Iran will soon help usher in the end of days and the return of their messiah, Mahdi.

Khamenei, since being appointed the supreme leader of the regime, has shown to be a vengeful and cruel dictator, ordering the assassination of opposition figures outside the country, and the arrest, torture and execution of thousands of Iranians inside the country who voiced their resentment against the injustices of the Islamic regime. Khamenei was responsible for the fraudulent elections of 2009 in selecting President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to a second term and ordering the suppression of the Iranians with their uprising against the regime.

Iran’s Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi, the son of the late Iranian Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, recently announced that he plans to ask the United Nations to bring Iran’s supreme leader before the International Criminal Court on charges of crimes against humanity.

Reza Pahlavi is among the exiles working for regime change in Iran. He said at a Paris news conference recently that Khamenei must be held responsible for the executions, jailing and torture of political dissidents.

Pahlavi said he will submit a complaint about Khamenei to the five permanent U.N. Security Council members along with a report of the cleric’s alleged crimes.

It is time for the world community to stand on the side of justice and condemn the crimes done by the Islamic regime in Iran and hold its leaders responsible, for if we remain silent, we are complicit.

And silence could very easily lead to that self-fulfilling prophecy.

Reza Kahlili is a pseudonym for a former CIA operative in Iran’s Revolutionary Guards and the author of the award winning book, A Time to Betray. He is a senior Fellow with EMPact America and teaches at the U.S. Department of Defense’s Joint Counterintelligence Training Academy (JCITA).