As I was saying back in 2013... - Melanie Phillips

 

by Melanie Phillips

Hat tip: Dr. Jean-Charles Bensoussan 

But the west still refuses to acknowledge the apocalyptic religious cult running Iran

 

Question Time panel, June 20 2013. With Russell Brand, Tessa Jowell, Boris Johnson, Ed Davey and me

In June 2013, I provoked uproar on BBC TV’s Question Time show. This was because, in a discussion about the atrocities in Syria, I said that Iran was actually the real issue and that it should be neutralised because its regime posed the greatest danger in the world to the west. 

As certain members of the audience shouted in outrage, I told them that the reason the Iranian regime was so dangerous was that it was dominated by members of the Shia Muslim “Twelver” sect, who believed that if they brought about the apocalypse they would bring to earth the Shia “messiah”, the Twelfth Imam (also known as the “Hidden Imam”). 

This provoked even more apoplexy. Members of the audience shouted that I had merely exposed my ignorance and had no idea what I was talking about — a view endorsed by a fellow panel member that evening, one Boris Johnson, who was then Mayor of London. He told the audience that he disagreed with everything that I had said, and that Iran posed no threat to anyone in the world. Thus spoke the man who would go on to become Britain’s Foreign Secretary and then Prime Minister. You can watch that show here.

Earlier this month, Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps commander, General Esmail Qaani, said in a speech on Iranian TV that gone were the days of “hit and run” when the enemies of Islam and the Iranian Revolution could do as they pleased in the world; now they must prepare to “take a beating”. 

He said that the US still had time to choose to withdraw from the region of its own accord, lest it be driven out like it was from Afghanistan. He warned that if the Americans made “the slightest mistake” they would be “punched in the mouth so hard that their teeth will shatter”. And then, as recorded and translated here by MEMRI, he said this: 

With the help of the Lord, this path of the martyrs will conquer all the relevant targets, one phase at a time, and as I have said, it will reach the final goal of establishing the global rule of the Hidden Imam. Inshallah.

So exactly as I told that jeering BBC audience eight and a half years ago, the reason the Iranian regime is uniquely dangerous is that it believes itself to be acting in pursuit of a divine and supernatural goal — to bring the Twelfth or “Hidden” Imam down to earth, which will require the conquest of the world to establish his rule. 

In other words, the Iranian regime is not, as the US, UK and EU repeatedly tell themselves, composed of rational individuals with whom the west can negotiate to arrive at a compromise. It is run instead by apocalyptic fanatics who, although able to strategise like chess grand-masters in their steady manoeuvring towards their infernal goal, are as immune to reason as the members of any brainwashed cult. 

Moreover, General Qaani spelled out what the US, UK and EU also seek to deny — that while Israel is Tehran’s first target, the regime intends to destroy all its enemies 

one phase at a time.

As the crowd screamed in response to his words: 

“Allah Akabar! Allah Akabar! Allah Akabar! Khamenei is the leader! Death to those who oppose the Rule of the Jurisprudent! Death to America! Death to England! Death to the hypocrites and infidels! Death to Israel!”

These are the individuals who the Biden administration think don’t mean what they say about building nuclear weapons and whom it thinks it can buy off by throwing money at them; and this is the agenda the Biden administration will empower by doing so.

 

Melanie Phillips

Source: https://melaniephillips.substack.com/p/as-i-was-saying-back-in-2013

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