|
Trending Topics
|
Source: http://www.usnews.com/usnews/opinion/articles/060130/30edit.htm
Moscow's Mad Gamble
(U.S. News) Mortimer B. Zuckerman - * Iran today is the mother of Islamic terrorism. Tehran openly provides funding, training, and weapons to the world's worst terrorists, including Hizballah, Hamas, the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, and it has a cozy relationship with al-Qaeda. It has given sanctuary to major al-Qaeda terrorists, including senior military commander Saif al-Adel, three of Osama bin Laden's sons, and al-Qaeda spokesman Suleiman Abu Ghaith. * It supports many of the barbaric terrorists in Iraq who are murdering innocent civilians, flooding Iraq with money and fighters. It is infiltrating troublemakers into Afghanistan, supporting terrorism against Turkey, sustaining Syria, and had a hand in the Khobar Towers bombing in Saudi Arabia. * Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, is a revolutionary firebrand who has directly threatened the West. In his own words, "We are in the process of an historical war between the World of Arrogance [i.e., the West] and the Islamic world." He casts himself as Hitler reincarnated, calling for Israel to be "wiped off the map." Who can think that Iran poses no threat to world peace? History tells us that when madmen call for genocide, they usually mean it. * And Russia has made the threat more real. It sold the nuclear power plant at Bushehr to Iran and contracted to sell even more to bring cash into its nuclear industry. Russia provided critical assistance in the development of Iran's Shihab missile, which has an ever expanding delivery range and can carry a warhead designed for a nuclear charge. Within a very few years, in all likelihood, Iran will be able to launch nuclear missiles. * We must urgently find a way to persuade Moscow to reinforce the civilized world rather than subvert it.