On Oct. 25, Israeli newspapers ran headlines quoting Israeli army Chief of Staff Aviv Kochavi, who said, “On both the northern and southern fronts, the situation is tense and fragile, and could deteriorate into a confrontation.” That’s why it is important to understand the background of this situation: the relentless obsession of Iranian leaders with the destruction of Israel that also threatens the wider Middle East.
On Sept. 30, Major General Hossein Salami, commander of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) said, “We have managed to obtain the capacity to destroy the imposter Zionist regime. This sinister regime must be wiped off the map and this is no longer … a dream (but) it is an achievable goal.”
Iran’s obsession with the destruction of Israel has had deadly repercussions, and not only for Israelis. The tragedy of Syria is a prime example.
Since the outbreak of the Syrian civil war in 2011, the world has largely ignored Iran’s central role in the Syrian tragedy. Today, there are more than half a million dead civilians and more than 6 million refugees for three reasons: Iran, its loyal proxy Hezbollah, and Russia.
Iran provided the brutal regime of Bashar al-Assad with massive financial support and an endless supply of ammunition and weapons. With the help of Hezbollah, Iran recruited, trained and deployed thousands of foreign fighters to Syria from Afghanistan, Iraq, and Pakistan.
And why did Iran go to all this trouble?
Over the past two years, Iran has been working to build a military infrastructure in Syria to create a platform to launch a future war against Israel. Israel has been pushing back against this effort with hundreds of air strikes against Iranian targets.
In a April 2018 article in The Atlantic, titled “Iran’s Real Enemy in Syria,” Karim Sadjapour, a leading expert on the Middle East, addressed the question of Iran’s motivations in Syria. He wrote: “Tehran’s steadfast support for Assad is not driven by the geopolitical or financial interests of the Iranian nation, nor the religious convictions of the Islamic Republic, but by a visceral and seemingly inextinguishable hatred for the State of Israel.”
The implications of his statement are profound: The leaders of Iran helped to destroy one country so that they could pursue the destruction of another country.
Iran’s pursuit of the destruction of Israel is also a key factor that explains why there is still no peace between Israelis and Palestinians. After the signing of the 1993 Oslo Accords, the government of Iran did everything possible to literally blow up the hopes for peace.
Between 1993 and 2008, no less than 168 Palestinian suicide bombers exploded themselves on Israeli buses, in restaurants and shopping malls, and elsewhere. These suicide bombings, and other terror attacks, killed 1,000 Israeli civilians and wounded many thousands more.
Although Palestinian terror groups provided the hateful ideology and the suicide bombers, it was the government of Iran that provided the means to commit murder by providing weapons, funding, and training to Palestinian terror groups, especially Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad.
Today, Iran continues to provide Hamas and Islamic Jihad with $100 million a year in financial support which provides the means to manufacture rockets in Gaza. Since the Israeli withdrawal from Gaza in 2005, these terrorist organizations have fired more than 10,000 rockets at Israeli civilians.
Finally, there is the growing threat to Israel from Hezbollah, the Lebanese terror organization backed by Iran, which explains the recent tensions on Israel’s northern border.
Since the 2006 Lebanon war, Iran has supplied Hezbollah with 130,000 rockets and missiles. What makes the current situation so explosive are the ongoing efforts of Iran to upgrade the accuracy of this vast arsenal through an initiative called “the precision guided missile project”.
It’s also important to mention that the people of Iran have been victims of their own government, a brutal regime that abuses their human rights and squanders their wealth on supporting terrorism.
The obsession of Iranian leaders with the destruction of Israel has had deadly consequences for Israelis and the people of the Middle East. So long as the international community ignores this threat, innocent people will continue to suffer and die, and peace will remain a distant dream.
Source » southbendtribune