RUTHFULLY YOURS

February 11 marks the culmination of the 10-Day Fajr (Dawn) festivities in Iran, in honor of the victory of the Islamic Revolution 35 years ago. It was on February 1, 1979 that a triumphant Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini returned home after 14 years of exile, on the heels of the departure of the deposed Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, to lead the Iranian people into the Dark Ages.

Not much has changed since then, other than a few shifts in manpower and a concerted effort to acquire nuclear weapons for regional and global hegemonic purposes. One such purpose — in the words of former President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad — was to “wipe Israel off the map.”

Western fantasies to the contrary, this aim did not disappear with the election of Hassan Rouhani to replace Ahmadinejad as the figurehead of the mullah-led regime. Nor did Iran’s November signing of the Joint Plan of Action with the P5+1 (the United States, Russia, China, the United Kingdom, France and Germany), which went into effect on January 20, put a dent in its nuclear ambitions.

And there’s nothing like the anniversary of the Islamic Revolution to bring the truth about Iran to the fore. Yet again.

On Friday, Admiral Afshin Rezayee Haddad of Iran’s Northern Navy Fleet told the Fars news agency that Iranian warships were “approaching the United States’ maritime borders, and this move has a message.”

Indeed.

On Saturday, chief imam and presidential puppeteer Ayatollah Ali Khamenei made a speech in which he referred to Western powers as “enemies,” and reiterated that Iran would never compromise on its goals, but needs to be prepared to change its tactics to achieve them. This was Khamenei’s signal to his hard-line critics in parliament that he is only playing the diplomacy game in order to buy time to complete the nuclear program.

He can be believed.

On Friday, Iran’s state TV broadcast “Nightmare of Vulture,” a film depicting the death and destruction that would befall Israel in the event of an American or Israeli military strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities.

The film shows real footage of an address Khamenei made to cadets in 2011, and a computerized simulation of a multipronged ballistic blitz of civilian and military targets across Israel, including Ben-Gurion International Airport.

“Anybody who thinks of attacking the Islamic Republic of Iran should be prepared to receive strong slaps and iron fists from the armed forces,” Khamenei declares. “And America, its regional puppets and its guard dog — the Zionist regime — should know that the response of the Iranian nation to any kind of aggression, attacks or even threats will be a response that will make them collapse from within.”

U.S. President Barack Obama is of the delusional opinion that such enmity can be eased, if not erased, through goodwill gestures. It is for this reason that he has been treating Congress — which wishes to step up rather than reduce sanctions — as a greater obstacle to preventing an Iranian A-bomb than Rouhani or Khamenei.

No wonder Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu devoted much of his Knesset faction’s meeting on Monday to a discussion of his upcoming trip to Washington on March 2. When there, he intends to restate the obvious to Obama — that the Iranian nuclear threat is a clear and present danger — and to call for “zero centrifuges” before sanctions are lifted any further.

He might as well save his breath. Even the International Atomic Energy Agency is grasping at straws of optimism regarding Iranian intransigence in relation to making its nuclear sites and material available for inspection.

On Monday, IAEA Deputy Director-General and Safeguards Department head Tero Varjoranta gave a press conference about talks on Sunday and Monday between the IAEA and Iran. He said that progress has been “good, [though] there are still a lot of outstanding issues.” Apparently, he is hoping that some of these “issues” will be ironed out at the next summit between Iran and the P5+1 on February 18.

No amount of starch in anyone’s collar, however, will be able to accomplish such a feat. Though the West is counting on breaking its impasse with Iran through diplomacy, Iran has but two interests: a removal of economic sanctions and an arsenal of genocidal weapons.

One might possibly forgive the U.S. and Europe for ignoring anything written or said in Farsi, in spite of the fact that translations are available. But last Tuesday’s interview on Iran’s web-based Press TV with Iranian Atomic Energy Organization head Ali Akbar Salehi was conducted in English.

Here are some particularly revealing excerpts, provided by the Middle East Media Research Institute:

Interviewer: “The United States says that it has managed to dismantle at least parts of Iran’s nuclear program. What do you say to that?”

Salehi: “Well, you can come and see whether our nuclear sites, nuclear equipment, and nuclear facilities are dismantled or not. The only thing that we have stopped and suspended — and that was voluntarily — is the production of 20% enriched uranium. That’s it. … The nuclear facilities are functioning, and our enrichment is proceeding.”

Interviewer: “If President Barack Obama is defeated by pro-Israeli lobbies in the Congress — the likes of Bob Menendez and Mark Kirk — and the United States decides to violate the terms of the Geneva deal, how long will it take, technically speaking, for Iran to get back on track?”

Salehi: “A few hours.”

The Islamic republic deserves to wish itself a happy anniversary. Three and a half decades ago, it brought the administration of Jimmy Carter to its knees. Today it has got Obama wrapped around its fingers.

Ruthie Blum is the author of “To Hell in a Handbasket: Carter, Obama, and the ‘Arab Spring.'”