Stand for Israel

It’s no longer news that Iran wants a world without Israel and that it’s leaders seek to wipe Israel off the map.  But, if it were news, we’d want to report to you that the Tehran improv comedy troupe known as “the Iranian government” was at it again today.  “The Zionist regime is a cancerous tumor and it will be removed,” said Ayatollah Ali Khamenei at Friday prayers in Tehran.  No word yet on whether they’ll use the latest Israeli-made techniques for treating cancer. 

We’ve come to look at these guys as a joke – and their own words make it easy.  In the same speech, Iran’s Supreme Leader claimed that the Islamic Revolution that installed his theocracy in 1979 had “replaced dictatorship with democracy.”  He said that war with the United States – which only Iran is seriously talking about right now – “would be 10 times worse for America.”  Usually when they speak, we roll our eyes and maybe laugh at them.  And that’s okay – they deserve to be laughingstocks.

But we should keep in mind that the threat they pose is not a joke.  Today, Iran announced that it had successfully launched an advanced observation satellite into space. The concern here is twofold: first, Iran claims that the imaging and surveillance capabilities of the satellite are far more advanced than they’ve had access to previously; and, second, the continued development of Iranian rocket technology means that we’ve taken another step closer to one of the world’s worst regimes having Inter-Continental Ballistic Missiles (ICBMs).

And, as if we need further reminders of how close Iran is to developing nuclear weapons, the news today also carries a report that UN inspectors were, just today, denied access to a key Iranian military facility.  Such denial is a violation of Iran’s treaty obligations under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (which they’ve been serially violating for decades and been sanctioned for by the UN Security Council four times…so at least it’s familiar territory).