While the recent defeat of Iran’s proxies Hamas, Hezbollah, and Assad’s Syria has brought a sense of relief to many, especially in Israel, it is premature to celebrate.
Iran’s goals have not faded simply because of the demise of its proxies. The real threat the Islamic Republic continues to pose to all humanity lies in plain sight in its foundational document, its Constitution.
Adopted in 1979 and amended in 1989, the Constitution of the Islamic Republic is a clear articulation of a future world order that Iran believes it is destined to impose, first on the Islamic world, and then on all humanity. The preamble is unequivocal that the raison d’etre of the Islamic Republic is global, to assure “the development of man in accordance with the noble and universal values of Islam.” Iran believes it has the divine mandate to be the agent for the fundamental reordering of the world and all its people under Islam.
Imposing Shia philosophy
The Constitution explains that its first target is the Muslim world. Article 11 cites the Quran: “This your community is a single community, and I am your Lord, so worship Me” (21:92), and then explains that it means Iran’s role is to impose “political, economic, and cultural unity of the Islamic world.” For Iran, this “unity” means forcing its Shia ideology on the Sunni Muslim population, which constitutes 85-90% of the Islamic world.
However, the regime’s aspirations don’t stop there. Its fundamental goal is to impose Islamic law on every human being on the face of the earth: “The Constitution will strive with other Islamic and popular movements to prepare the way for the formation of a single world community.”
Whereas attempting to spread Islam via education or diplomacy could be legitimate, Iran assigns imposing Islam to its military. The preamble: “The Army of the Islamic Republic of Iran and the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps... will be responsible not only for guarding and preserving the frontiers of the country but also for fulfilling the ideological mission of jihad in God’s way; that is, extending the sovereignty of God’s law throughout the world.”
For Iran’s faith-driven regime, the collapse of its proxies and the resurgence of Sunni power in Syria will never change its mission, has created the need for a change in strategy. Iran can no longer depend on slowly expanding its sphere of influence. Fulfilling its mission of world subjugation now depends on possessing overwhelming force – the kind that can be achieved only through weapons of mass destruction.
Even before the defeat of its proxies, Iran was behind in its timetable. The constitution expressed with assurance: “[T]his [20th] century will witness the establishment of a universal holy [Islamic] government and the downfall of all others.” Iran understands that possession of weapons of mass destruction as the means to impose Islam is now even more urgent.
Tragically, the West has failed to recognize that it has been at war with Iran for decades. This was made clear again immediately after Israel delivered a crippling blow to Iran’s air defenses.
Instead of that being the trigger for it to follow up and destroy Iran’s nuclear program, the West, led by the US, pressured Israel to be satisfied with the great but limited achievement. Hopefully, the Trump administration will recognize the dangers and seize the unique opportunity to reverse this policy.
However, even destroying the nuclear program will not change Iran’s fundamental goals expressed in its constitution, nor the threat it presents to humanity. Weapons of mass destruction today come in various guises, including biological, chemical, and radiological, and the Islamic regime would pay any price to acquire them and for other proxies to deploy them.
Blackmailing humanity with the choice of submission to “God’s law throughout the world,” or facing mass casualty events would become the foreign policy of Iran, should it ever possess a weapon of mass destruction. Iran will cease to be a threat, only after the tyranny of a minority of Islamists is replaced by the rule of the majority in a free and democratic Iran.
Preventing Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons followed by dismantling the regime are both urgent priorities, for the Iranian people and the free world. Both objectives are achievable.
Significantly, unlike countries in which toppling of many dictators that have resulted in the liberated people choosing another, even worse, tyrant, before the Islamic Revolution the Persian people had a record of moderation – and even had good relations with Israel. A liberated Iranian people today would immediately dissolve the Islamist constitution and seek harmony with its neighbors and the world, thus removing the greatest threat humanity faces.
Since weapons of mass destruction are now coming in smaller packaging, and Iran’s defenses have not yet been rebuilt, there will never be a better time to impose a regime change and put Iran’s constitution and its dreams of world subjugation into the dustbin of history.
Itamar Marcus is director of Palestinian Media Watch. Bill Siegel is the author of The Control Factor- Our Struggle to See The True Threat