Iran

Iran is a Muslim republic that is run by the Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei , and has final say in all internal and foreign policy and is elected by the Assembly of Experts. The President of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad , is in charge of the government but the Supreme Leader still has some executive powers such as over the military and declaring war.

The Muslim religion is a peaceful religion unless you talk about the fringe elements just as in any religion. (Catholics and Protestants fought for years in Northern Ireland.) The problem is today the Muslim fundamentalists are powerful, outspoken and have hijacked the religion in world’s view when reality is they are the minority. This minority is what is governing Iran. Ahmadinejad has made many inflammatory statements, “...the main solution is for the elimination of the Zionist regime...”, Israel should be “wiped off the map”, the Holocaust is a “myth”, and more recently “the life of the regime has come to an end”. These statements clearly exhibit his intentions in the Middle East. Let’s make no mistake about it, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is a terrorist and has supported terrorist activities in Iraq since the war began as well as others in the region.

Ahmadinejad has been acquiring the ability to enrich uranium, a process in attaining nuclear power/weapons. He states it is for energy purposes but his statements lead us to question his intentions. The U.S. has insisted they are developing nuclear weapons and has worked with the world community to put as much pressure on Iran to abandon their nuclear goal. The European community agreed this was more of a regional problem and worked to come up with their own solution to no avail. Israel has stated that they will use preemptive strikes to eliminate the threat only to have Iran as well as Russia claim that their response would be “devastating.” Israel has been carrying out military exercises to demonstrate they are capable of destroying Iran’s nuclear program.

Iran has given every indication they want to destroy Israel and is developing the nuclear weapons that can carry out the threat. Israel cannot wait to respond to Iran’s actions that would be devastating and too late. Iran is daring Israel to take action which would bring the world community down on them but it may be too costly to call Iran’s “bluff” if they are bluffing. Hopefully this plays out like the Cold War with the threats being enough to provoke restraint but this very well could be the beginning of something much bigger.

If attacked Iran promises to shut off the oil supply from the Persian Gulf and if you look at the map they could easily accomplish this feat. We would be talking gas prices 4 to 5 higher at the minimum. Talk about crippling our economy. We need to begin to drill for oil if for no other reason national security in case the unspeakable happens. If we wait and if what some say it will take 10 years to harvest the oil the U.S. as well as much of the free world suffer extreme hardship. I think this is a very real possibility considering the parties involved.

I hope all of you who think I am nuts can show me where my logic fails me