RUTHFULLY YOURS

The Eid el-Adha holiday began Thursday. This is the “Feast of the Sacrifice” during which Muslims make their annual hajj (pilgrimage) to Mecca. Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei prepared and aired a televised message to the global flock over which he claims patronage.

As is his wont, Khamenei took the opportunity to infuse his religious sermon with politics and radical ideology. And due to the abundance of current events relevant to the chief mullah and his “congregants,” he had more to stew and spew about than usual.

Let us not forget that Tehran is monitoring the lead-up to the U.S. presidential election with as much nail-biting anxiety as the rest of us. Tehran is not happy about the prospect of a changing of the guard in Washington on November 6. Indeed, if there’s one thing the Islamic republic knows, it is that U.S. President Barack Obama has been the best person to have in the White House since Jimmy Carter. While Carter sat by and let Iran fall into the hands of the mullahs in 1979, Obama has stood at attention as Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s regime marches full-force forward with its nuclear program.

This is not to say that Khamenei has developed any fondness for the United States during the past four years. On the contrary, just as his predecessor Ayatollah Khomeini loathed Carter for being both American and weak, so, too, does Khamenei harbor nothing but hatred and contempt for Obama. This is particularly the case as he watches the U.S. president squirm over getting caught lying about his response to last month’s murder of four Americans, among them the ambassador, at the consulate in Benghazi on the anniversary of September 11. It is precisely Obama’s kind of pathetic posturing on behalf of the Islamic world, however, that serves Khamenei’s interests.

That is why he fears a Mitt Romney victory. He figures that the Republican contender would be more likely to get in the way of his grand plan for the Middle East (and beyond, eventually). He also worries that a Romney administration would be less inclined than the incumbent crew to put “daylight” between America and Israel. Such a possibility spells danger for him and his nukes. It also bodes ill for his alliances with the Arab Spring radicals whom he already controls, and those — such as in Syria —whom he is trying to defeat.

Meanwhile, as if he didn’t have enough trouble already, an Iranian-sponsored missile factory in Sudan was blitzed this week, allegedly by Israeli fighter jets. If Israel is responsible, the motive is clear: to disrupt the massive supply of missiles from the Islamic Republic, via Egypt, to the terrorists in the Gaza Strip, who have been stepping up rocket attacks on civilians in southern Israel.

To top it all off, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced Thursday that his Likud party is merging with Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman’s Yisrael Beytenu. Such a move has the potential to guarantee electoral victory in January for the camp that is most likely to launch a preemptive strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities — especially if Romney wins the American election.

So Khamenei wasn’t exactly in a festive mood when he wrote the Eid el-Adha statement that was read Thursday on Iranian television. The following excerpts are enlightening:

“At this juncture, one of the most crucial issues of the Islamic world and especially related to the destiny of the Islamic Ummah are the revolutionary events taking place in north Africa and the region. These events have resulted in the fall of several corrupt regimes subservient to America and hand in glove with Zionism… In the course of these great uprisings, Muslim men and women rose up against the despotism of the rulers and American dominance, which had together insulted and humiliated these nations and resulted in alliances with the criminal Zionist regime. In this life and death struggle, they found a savior in Islam and its liberating teachings and ideals… These are the things which reinforce the foundations of reform within the Islamic Ummah… The enemy wants to hit these foundations… After despairing of eliminating Islam and Islamic slogans altogether, they have now turned to inciting discord among Muslim sects and frustrating the unity of the Islamic Ummah through the gimmicks of Shiaphobia and Sunniphobia.”

“They have created a crisis in Syria with the assistance of their agents in the region… and towards a gory scenario deliberately staged by them. The civil war in Syria and the bloodshed of her Muslim youth at their own hands is a criminal enterprise launched by the United States, Zionism and their docile governments… The Syrian issue is one of wreaking vengeance upon a government that has stood singly against the Zionist usurpers and defended resisting groups in Palestine and Lebanon…”

“The treacherous plots meant to create discord amongst Muslims and to create cynicism between the revolutionary countries and the Islamic Republic of Iran is the next… and the anti-Islam propaganda of Western governments and their support for those who profane the sanctity of the Supreme Apostle… are the third category…”

“These… are among problems that need reflection and study during the opportunity provided by the Hajj pilgrimage…”

There it is, right from the horse’s mouth. The Arab Spring is an Islamic uprising against the West. The only dictator whose ouster the Islamic republic opposes is Syria’s Bashar al-Assad.

It is fitting that this is what Muslims all over the world are being told as they honor the prophet Ibrahim’s willingness to sacrifice his son, Ismail, as an act of submission to Allah — not the fact that Allah intervened at the last minute and gave Ibrahim a ram to slaughter instead.

Is this the Ummah in whose hands we want nuclear weapons?

Ruthie Blum is the author of “To Hell in a Handbasket: Carter, Obama, and the ‘Arab Spring,’” available on Amazon and in bookstores in Europe and North America – and now on sale at Pomeranz Bookseller in Jerusalem.