RUTHFULLY YOURS

The mullocracy in Iran is bragging that it has crushed the demonstrations against the regime that broke out on December 28. Regime change from within still remains a forlorn hope, as the theocratic police state has employed its usual brutal violence and intimidation to deny the protestors any momentum. Burning identification cards and electrical bills seem the last recourse for those brave Iranians abandoned by the so-called “global community” that averts its gaze from the destruction of human rights it pretends to worship.

So it goes in the 40-year history of bungling, indifference, greed, appeasement, and sheer stupidity that have defined the West’s response to the most consequential jihadist movement in modern times. A lot of blood has stained a lot of different guilty hands.

Start with Jimmy Carter and our terminally blinkered state department. Carter’s foreign policy team completely misinterpreted the Iranian revolution of 1979. Trapped in the fossilized narrative of anticolonialist resistance, nationalist self-determination, and hunger for human and political rights, our foreign policy savants missed the profoundly religious motives of the resistance to the Shah. The clerical class and the revolution’s godfather, the Ayatollah Khomeini, were driven by hatred of the modernizing, anti-Islamic program of the Shah and his father, such as the relaxation of sharia laws governing women, popular culture, and religious minorities, a program that Khomeini called the “abolition of the laws of Islam” and an existential threat to Islam itself. And they were particularly angered at the subsequent weakening of the clerics’ power and authority over social, private, and political life.

Indeed, the revolution was in fact a classic jihad against those modernizing “apostate” Muslim leaders who whored after Western “idols,” a dynamic that polluted the purity of the faith with anti-Koranic “innovations” derived from infidel culture. A cursory knowledge of Islamic history could have shown our analysts that such violent conflicts have consistently characterized Islamic history and its clash with Muslim traitors influenced by Christian rivals, from the Kharajites of the 7th century to the Wahhabis of the 18th to the Muslim Brothers of the 20th and to al Qaeda and ISIS of the 21st. Instead, we reacted in terms of our modern Western models of the inevitable progress of human rights, secularism, economic development, and political self-determination. We assumed that after the revolution, liberals, leftists, and technocrats would take over and start creating a Western-style state and integrating it into the global community on the basis of “shared interests” and “mutual respect.”

A silent war against French police and firefighters is in full swing. “2,280 firefighters were assaulted in 2016… As a result, the police are called to certain areas just to protect the firefighters.” — National Observatory of Delinquency, Radio Europe 1.

Two Paris police officers, who risked their lives to save children from a burning apartment, were attacked and stoned by a mob when they emerged from the blaze carrying the children in their arms.

As usual, politicians are minimizing the problem. The government does not consider the spread of urban violence to be terrorism. As usual, the government will try to buy peace with money.

France’s Minister of the Interior, Gerard Collomb, was clearly happy on January 1st. Why? No terrorist attack had occurred on New Year’s Eve. Collomb warmly thanked the 140,000 police officers, soldiers, firefighters, and civil security associations who had been mobilized to block any potential terrorist attack. To give just an inkling of the size of this security deployment on New Year’s Eve, consider that the entire French army (land forces only) consists of only about 117,000 active-duty soldiers.

All French governments since 2015 have denied that Islam is at war with France, but the Ministry of the Interior nevertheless mobilized higher numbers of security personnel than the French army has soldiers, to make sure that this New Year’s Eve would be a peaceful event.

In a press release, Minister Collomb said:

“Because of the strong police presence combined with efficiency of protection measures, the festivities of New Year’s Eve were able to happen peacefully for everyone in France.”

Although no terrorist attack took place on New Year’s Eve, calling it a “peaceful” night is, at best, a stretch. In keeping with the annual “tradition,” 1031 vehicles were intentionally burned (compared to 935 in 2016) in the majority-Muslim suburbs of many big cities.

250 cars were torched in the Paris area alone, and eight police officers and three soldiers of the Gendarmerie were attacked and wounded. A video went viral on the internet, showing a mob of “youths” (the euphemism used by the media for African and Arab young men) assaulting and savagely beating a female police officer. She had been trying to disperse a crowd of “youths” attacking a private party in the Champigny suburb of Paris.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of Canada has an nine-year long record of supporting the Islamist cause while refusing to engage with reformist Muslims.

Perhaps most disturbing were Trudeau’s comments to a gathering of Islamist front groups: he told them that he shared their beliefs, their set of values and their shared vision.

Canada will not be able to plead ignorance or inability while facing accusations of complicity from any future American terrorist victims.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of Canada has an nine-year long record of supporting the Islamist cause while refusing to engage with reformist Muslims. With respect to ISIS fighters returning to Canada, Trudeau has argued that they will be a “powerful voice for deradicalization” and that those who oppose their return are “Islamophobic.” Furthermore, the Government of Canada is not adding the names of returning ISIS fighters to the UN committee responsible for the listing of international jihadists.

Many Canadians (and others) are starting to believe that Prime Minister Trudeau’s position on reintegrating and deradicalizing ISIS fighters is unreasonable, if not delusional. Canada’s “Centre for Community Engagement and Deradicalization” has no leader and no deradicalization centre. Nor does it appear to have plans for a program which could operate inside or outside of government. It is also not clear that the law of Canada could force a returning ISIS fighter to attend such a program, even if it did exist. In France, a similar government sponsored program was a failure.

The “Lawrence of Arabia” syndrome goes back to Old Europe. It is the snobbery of people who become enamored with exotic cultures. There is a romanticism surrounding the Middle East, associated with magic carpets and Aladdin lamps. But with that romanticism comes fear, as well – fear of… invading Islamists who slit people’s throats.

This fear has led European states to try and do business with terrorist groups. In the early 1980s, for example, Italian officials forged a secret deal with Palestinian terrorists, which culminated not in cooperation, but in a series of deadly attacks…

Too many lies have been the basis of international relations. These include “dialogue” between religions to counter Islamist terrorism; the false notion of the “peaceful aspirations” of the Palestinians; the view that Turkey is a “bridge” to the Muslim world; the ridiculous view of Iranian President Hassan Rouhani as a “moderate”; the belief in a “united Europe” as the future of the old continent; and faith in the U.N. as a legal arbiter for international affairs. Policies based on these lies are not only fruitless; they are dangerous.

As an expert in global terrorism, anti-Semitism, Middle East wars and European policy, Fiamma Nirenstein has been following the popular uprising in Iran with particular interest. Nirenstein – award-winning journalist, best-selling author, former MP of the Italian Parliament and a fellow at the JCPA and says that just as former U.S. President Ronald Reagan’s election and foreign policy were instrumental in the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, President Donald Trump is probably responsible for the street demonstrations across Iran that could lead to the downfall of the ayatollah-led Islamic Republic.

Nirenstein says that Europe, which has been silent on the uprisings in Iran, can no more take credit for this welcome turn of events than it could for the defeat of the U.S.S.R. — or even of Hitler’s Third Reich. It is America, she asserts, that has always been at the forefront of the struggle for freedom from the bondage of dictators; it is America that always saves Europe.

Gatestone: Why is it not the other way around? Europe, after all, is geographically closer to those struggles than America.

Fiamma Nirenstein: Europe’s key approach always has been one of appeasement, because when you are weak, you try not to interfere too much, not say what you think. Deep in its heart, Europe probably would have liked to stop Hitler from the beginning, and see the Soviet Union collapse earlier, but it did not have the courage to voice this opinion loudly or strongly enough. The same applies to the situation with Iran today.

Gatestone: But hasn’t Europe been expressing, loudly and clearly, its antipathy to fascism? And hasn’t America exhibited what you call “weakness”?

FN: Europe is split. It has been both fascist and communist, and also has fought against fascism and communism – if not early enough. It therefore might suffer from guilt and humiliation relating to its past. The United States, too, seems to have guilt and humiliation relating to racism in its history. But there is a difference between Europe and America: As is the case with individuals, nations must confront and untangle their feelings. When a person does this, he becomes an adult. One could say that while America matured into adulthood, Europe never did.