The average Swede, Norwegian, Dane or Finn has very little understanding of the messianic fanatiacism of the shi’ia. Here’s a Swede writing in the Swedish Expressen who has his eyes wide open. KGS
When it explodes?
17th November – 2011 – Kl. 13:56
Swedish Expressen writer, Ulf Nilsson, hits the “bulls eye” with this cash column
How big will the catastrophe be? Tens of thousands dead? A partially poisoned and radioactive world? Iran destroyed? Israel smashed?
The above questions are asked daily by the media in the U.S., where I (Ulf Nilsson) landed a few days ago. In Sweden – peaceful, beautiful Sweden – we do not like to discuss possible disasters, but this time the concerns are clearly motivated.
Basic facts:
Iran is led by fanatical Muslim clerics, mainly Ali Khamenei, and the little crazy Ahmadinejad. Both belong to Islam’s Shia sect that celebrates martyrdom and relentless struggle against the “infidels”, ie us!
Shi’ites believes that Israel should be destroyed – or in plain text: that any Jew, man, woman or child should be killed. Yes, they mean it – it’s hard to understand for a Swede – but they think it’s true. For real. They want to see a pile of flaming corpses…
So the risk is great for Iran to attack Israel with one or more nuclear warheads carried by missiles produced with help from China and Russia. That also London or – less likely – Paris is attacked is possible. Stockholm survives because we are so insignificant.
That Iran is near, very near, to have nuclear weapons, is confirmed by the UN International Atomic Energy Commission, the IAEA, in Vienna. Maybe in a year, maybe a little longer…
In short, we have reached a point where everything should be done to avoid disaster. Fanatics in Iran – I remember those awful days in Tehran, when Khomeini came to power! – cannot be allowed to have nuclear weapons. That the Israelis think like that is obvious. When the killer presses a knife against your throat, it is natural to do anything to get loose.
So far, the Israelis, discreetly supported by the US, have only threatened. But the Jews, whom Adolf Hitler (and later, Nasser, Saddam Hussein, and others) wanted to erase from the face of the planet, cannot escape the fact that they are worried, maybe even scared to death. Israel, with 22,070 square kilometers, is much smaller than Sweden’s Småland (30 000), but has about 7.4 million people – it’s packed by humans and at the same time surrounded by enemies and therefore more vulnerable than any other nation on earth. Can such a situated country quietly wait for their implacable enemy targeting them with their nuclear weapons?
The answer is no.
An Israeli leader who is – by all means, let me repeat: by all means – trying to prevent the 2nd Holocaust, will not betray his people. He will also, I think personally, not betray our entire civilization. The perception is undoubtedly controversial. To kill thousands of innocents – which is more or less inevitable, if Israel strikes – is an odious act. Yes!
On the other hand:
Negotiations have so far failed to bring the parties a millimeter closer together. What happens if Iran gives Hezbollah and Hamas, a couple of warheads, relatively easy to smuggle into Tel Aviv? A simultaneous attack on two oil countries will soon cripple – and maybe get the western world to shut down. What happens then?
All sensible people, like myself, hope the problem will be solved through negotiations. But is it possible in the fevered atmosphere that is the reality in the Middle East today?
Translation by Hans Erling Jensen, Eticha.dk
“Stockholm survives because we are so insignificant.”
for now, at least…………………
Iran has been gradually losing control of its primary strategy in the ME. By supporting their natural companions Hizballah (Twelver Shi’ites, just like the mullahs of Iran) to the north of Israel, the Syrian (Shi’ite) Alawite regime that supplies Hizballah, and simultaneously supporting Hamas (an offshoot of the Sunni Muslim Brotherhood) to the south, Iran has tried to consistently demonstrate that Shi’ite Islam was able to do something that no Sunni government in the vicinity had been capable of. Namely, keeping Israel in a stranglehold at both border regions, like in a sort of static pincer movement. In fact, ever since Khomeiny came to power in 1979, the official policy of Tehran has been to try to elevate the status of Shi’ites within Islam as a whole and hence shake off the dim view the majority of Sunnis have of them.
Whereas the main issues between Shi’ites and Sunnis derive mainly from eschatological differences, related to the succession dispute after Mohammed died, there is another particular reason why both groups find themselves at loggerheads with one another. The history of Iran itself explains quite poignantly why this still has repercussions in ME politics today. The Safavid conversion of Iran from Sunnism to Shiism made Iran the spiritual bastion of Shia Islam against the onslaughts of orthodox Sunni Islam. And nowadays, as a majority Shi’ite country, all Shi’ite minorities in other Muslim countries, consider Iran to be the protector of Shi’ism as a whole.
When Shah Ismail I conquered Iran and established his rule in the early sixteenth century, he decided to eradicate all Sunnism from the country. Iran, at that time being majority-Sunni, was de facto proselytized to Shi’ism. One of the main reasons why Ismail and his followers pursued such a severe conversion policy was to give Iran and the Safavid lands as distinct and unique an identity as was possible compared to its two neighboring Sunni Turkish military and political enemies, the Ottoman Empire and, for a time, the Central Asian Uzbeks — to the west and north-east respectively. The Safavids were engaged in a lengthy struggle with the Ottomans — including numerous wars between the two dynasties — and this struggle continuously motivated the Safavids to create a more cohesive Iranian identity to counter the Ottoman threat and possibility of a fifth-column within Iran among its Sunni subjects. In order to enable the conversion, Ismail I, who held a vehement disdain for Sunnis, regularly resorted to violent measures. With the exception of cultural minorities on the fringes of society, like many Kurds and the nomadic Baloch, who remained Sunni, the sedentary population of Iran became gradually majority Shi’ite.
Whereas Sunnis deem Shi’ites to be heretics by default, they are also feared by Sunnis for violent prosecution and conversion of Sunni Muslims up to this day ! The historically justified paranoia of (among others) the Sunnis of the Arabian Peninsula carries over well into this century. With the growing sphere of Shi’ite influence in Iraq, it became pivotal for Sunni leaders to block the advance of the Shia oil slick on other fronts, out of sheer fear, plus the frustration of Shi’ite Iran claiming to be able to keep Israel in check at the borders and the added threat of developing nuclear weapons !
This is basically the main reason why the neo-Ottoman Erdogan decided to step in, with the intent to wean Sunni Hamas away from Tehran, and to assume the role of protector of all Sunnism in the region of the Mediterrenean. Erdogan has made himself the counterweight to Shi’ite Iran, in fact mirroring Iran’s intent to gain control of Lebanon (through Hizballah) and Syria (through the Alawite regime) by undermining Syria first and then marching on to Lebanon. As soon as Hamas will find Iran’s role severely diminished, it will switch sides. The Iranian mullahs however know that they are losing ground with regards to their grasp on Israel at its borders, and that’s why they have been stepping up efforts to speed up the development of nuclear weapons, the only means they’ll have left to keep claiming they can keep tabs on Israel. To them this is a geostrategical project of the highest importance. And they’ll be very reluctant to lose it.