Iran, Not So Far Away

President Bush issued an executive order declaring a national emergency with respect to Iran --- exactly two years ago on Thursday, [March 13]. Bush declared: "The actions and policies of the [theocratic] Government of Iran ... threaten the national security, foreign policy, and economy of the United States." Bush designated Iran as part of an axis of evil following the Sept. 11 attack by Islamic terrorists.

Last week, the threat worsened. International Atomic Energy Agency director Mohamed ElBaradei announced that, despite intelligence estimates that such a feat was five years away, Iran is building a nuclear weapons plant.

According to Time magazine, it's a fast-track plant being built more quickly than expected. Time's sources say the plant is "extremely advanced" and ready to produce nuclear-grade uranium, with the capacity for fast, high-volume weapons assembly.

Iran's hostility for the United States is well known. The Ayatollah Khomeini, the Islamic dictator, called America The Great Satan and the Islamic dictatorship he ruled until 1989 has been pegged by the State Department as the most active state sponsor of terrorism in the world. Iran, which has sponsored countless terrorist attacks against Americans, has been arming and training groups cited by American intelligence officials as having established terrorist cells in the continental U.S.: Islamic Jihad, Hamas, and Hezbollah.

It's unlikely that Iran would hesitate to use nukes against the West. New Republic correspondent Yossie Klein Halevi reports that "Hashemi Rafsanjani, former Iranian president and currently chairman of the Islamic government's powerful Guidance Council, told a Teheran University audience that the vast Muslim world could easily survive nuclear war."

Recently, the Financial Times reported that 5,000 of Iran's military forces, under the command of Ayatollah Mohammad Baqir al-Hakim, have entered northern Iraq. There are persistent reports that Iran is harboring Al Qaeda terrorists, four bin Laden wives and several of bin Laden's children.

Iran's history is a steady progression toward becoming the world's foremost jihad state. The name Iran, which replaced Persia in 1935, is said to have been suggested by the pro-Nazi Iranian ambassador to Germany, according to Iranian scholar Ehsan Yarshater. Yarshater writes: "This would not only signal a new beginning and bring home to the world the new era in Iranian history, but would also signify the Aryan race of its population, as "Iran" is a cognate of "Aryan" and derived from it."

According to Cornell University history professor Barry S. Strauss, director of the university's peace studies program, the legacy of jihad originated in Iran, which was the first country to nationalize Western oil, in 1951. Professor Strauss argues that the assault on Sept. 11 began in earnest with the seizure of the American Embassy in Teheran, Iran, in 1979.

The late shah of Iran's son, Reza Pahlavi, agrees. Pahlavi, whose pro secularization satellite broadcasts from Los Angeles have become popular with Iranian youths, recently wrote: "Whatever Western pragmatists think ... through the past 22 years, the Iranian theocracy has thrived on terror. The record is unmistakable."

While the world seems locked in an endless debate over whether to strike even one state sponsor of terrorism --- Iraq -- the religious dictatorship chiefly responsible for the wave of Islamic fundamentalism that culminated in the Sept. 11 attack on America is becoming an imminent nuclear threat.

Bush, who declared Iran an emergency threat to America two years ago, has wasted precious time by becoming entangled with the United Nations over Iraq. In a somber press conference, Bush recently renewed his pledge to protect Americans from Islamic terrorists. The President should stop vacillating over military action and turn his attention to the regime that manufactures them --- before Iran finally takes aim at its longtime target and turns its nuclear weapons against America.

Notes: Origins of Iran's Name, Professor Ehsan Yarshater, published in Iranian Studies, Vol. XXII, No.1, 1989, Center for Iranian Studies: http://home.btconnect.com/CAIS/Iran/persia_or_iran.htm

Scott Holleran is a writer and journalist. His articles have been published in the Philadelphia Inquirer, Los Angeles Times and Wall Street Journal. Visit his Web site at www.scottholleran.com