The daevas lived on in the Avesta—the holy book of the Zoroastrians. Ahriman (previously the designation for male daevas), the lord of all evil in Zoroastrian duality (pitted against the good Ahura Mazda), is the Demon of Demons (Daevanam Daeva), and the prince of lesser demons, many of whom were later adopted by the Jews: Lilith, Leviathan, Rahab, Azazel, et al. Sadly, however, Persian culture, art, and religion was annihilated by Islam, as happened to so many cultures which had the misfortune of meeting with the death cult from the Peninsula, when the Arabs conquered Persia less than a decade after Muhammad's death.

Today, though it would be anathema to the mad mullahs of Iran to see it as such, there is a new Aesma Daeva in the form of ambitions for a nuclear Islamic state. Pakistan is bad enough, but Pakistani leader, General Pervez Musharraf is largely secular himself, and for now seems able to keep his diehard warrior imams and sheikhs in check. Iran is another story. It is led by highly religious men with a full-blown medieval mind-set in the form of the uncompromising shari'ah law of Shi'a Islam.

The nutty Islamic theocrats took control of Iranian politics in January of 1979, led by Ayatollah Seyyed Ruhollah Khomeini, who had been living in exile. The following fall, in the mullocracy's first major act of diplomacy with the West, Iranian students, calling themselves the Imam's Disciples seized the American embassy in Tehran which resulted in Iran held 52 Americans hostage for 444 days, demanding the deposed Shah in exchange (he died in Egypt in 1980).

Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Khomeini, was not one to mince words. He was unashamed of the belligerent tenets of his faith, and he was unafraid of voicing them, even if his Western admirers sought to coat his hateful rhetoric with honey. In response to the Islamic apologists and taqiyya-gushing Muslims in the West, Khomenei had this to say:

Islam makes it incumbent on all adult males, provided they are not disabled or incapacitated, to prepare themselves for the conquest of countries so that the writ of Islam is obeyed in every country in the world.

But those who study Islamic Holy War will understand why Islam wants to conquer the whole world... Those who know nothing of Islam pretend that Islam counsels against war. Those [who say this] are witless. Islam says: Kill all the unbelievers just as they would kill you all! Does this mean that Muslims should sit back until they are devoured by [the unbelievers]? Islam says: Kill them, put them to the sword and scatter [their armies]…. Islam says: Whatever good there is exists thanks to the sword and in the shadow of the sword! People cannot be made obedient except with the sword! The sword is the key to Paradise, which can be opened only for the Holy Warriors! There are hundreds of other [Qur'anic] psalms and hadiths urging Muslims to value war and to fight. Does all this mean that Islam is a religion that prevents men from waging war? I spit upon those foolish souls who make such a claim.

The Islamic leaders in Iran, not to mention pious Muslims worldwide, are crystal clear on what Islam's mission and goals are. Why aren't we? Are we so complacent in the assumption that everyone must respect the rule of law, equality, plurality, and other benefits of liberal democracy, that we are unable to conceive of entire cultures holding such concepts in utter contempt? Because the teachings of the Qur'an, the sunnah, and shari'ah law are absolutely hostile to our way of life, and jihad is the primary tool employed by Islam to handle such a clash. It always has been that way since Muhammad came up with this madman's vision of a religion fourteen centuries ago: in Iran, Syria, Israel, Egypt, Algeria, Morocco, Cyprus, Constantinople, Spain, Bosnia, the Caucasus, India, and anywhere else Islam's expansion met with resistance from the native population, the jihad mowed them down, enslaved their women and children, and subdued their lands in the name of Allah.

Iran is currently one of the most brutal and repressive totalitarian states in existence, thanks to the rule of law being in the form of the literal interpretation of a poorly written, archaic, violent, weird, barbaric, and intolerant hate manual which passes as a holy book. Women are stoned to death or hanged for fornication, even if they are teenage girls. Bloggers are arrested and tortured for any departure from the regime's ideology. People are lashed to within an inch of their lives, or all the way, for the most absurd of offenses, if the mullahs feel that God has been affronted. Just imagine if the United States or Israel was governed by the book of Leviticus. That's what Iran and Saudi Arabia are like. Chances are as you are reading this, someone is about to be killed in Iran on charges that were decided upon in a court of shari'ah law, using a legal system devised by hyperreligious men many centuries past.

Jews and Israel are constantly reviled in Iranian media and culture, as is the United States. America the great Satan, while Israel is the little Satan. The antisemitism, institutionalized misogyny and suppression of free speech, and virulent, xenophobic hatred is mind-boggling in this day and age, when in my country we worry about offending people who have come here illegally. Salman Rushdie has had a holy contract out on his life since 1989 for writing a novel which the mullahs consider to be blasphemous. Antisemitic and anti-American television programming are de rigueur in the Islamic Republic where, basically, hatred and murder in God's name are righteous and just, because that's what God wants—he told Muhammad as much. The Qur'an verifies this. Because it comes from God.

So, why have we dragged our feet for so long while the mullahs have become increasingly bellicose and brazen about their Tehranhattan Project? Are we really going to let it happen? Does anyone doubt that an ayatollah with a black football in his hand wouldn't throw a Hail Mary at Israel if various global blackmail schemes didn't work? Or just if Allah willed it?

The UN and the EU are obviously not averse to such a prospect. They have both appeased the mullocracy with meaningless rebukes, ineffectual warnings, and little else. In the Islamic world, diplomacy and compromise equal weakness, deserving only disdain and enmity. When we speak of human rights, they laugh and sneer. When we offer a seat at the international table, they check underneath for a bomb, and seeing that one isn't there, leave one themselves for when they leave, and play nice 'til they get what they want.

Underground nuclear labs are uncovered, heavy water treatment plants turn up, and the Islamocrats themselves plainly say via Reuters, AP, and AFP, "No, we will not stop enriching uranium. The answer is no, infidel—deal with it." Everyone knows that Iran sits atop the second largest proven oil reserves on the planet, yet we accept that they need to build nuclear reactors to "meet the peaceful energy needs of the civilian population." I know I'm not extraordinarily sophisticated in the sphere of geopolitics, but if I'm Bush, Blair, Sharon—heck, even Chirac or Schroeder (payouts and contracts be damned)—I've got my cabinet yelling in my ear to act now, now, now, and I'm marshaling all of my experts—real experts, not State Department androids—on Islam to aid in making preparations the moment I hear the words "nuclear" and "Iran" even remotely near each other. We're talking about Israel in the crosshairs here, and a potential suitcase full of high intensity diplomacy... wherever.

Maybe Sharon and Bush are just playing some sort of kafir taqiyya right now. Perhaps that shipment of several hundred GBU-28 bunker busters has already arrived in Israel, and perhaps there is enough actionable intelligence to pull off an Osiran (an Osirak redux). I can't imagine either of these two cowboys toeing the European milquetoast line for too long, especially when it comes to a real, and effectively avowed, existential threat. Time is running out, though. No one really believes that sanctions will work. Israeli intelligence indicates that Iran is on the threshold of the proverbial point of no return—of firing up the centrifuges one last time and enriching some sweet jihad fire, hotter than the sun. And then, missiles or no missiles, how far away is Hizbollah, al-Qaeda, or any other Allah-crazed mujahideen group from procuring just one finger of God to blot out Tel Aviv or New York City?

Underneath all of this foreign policy madness, fear-mongering, and saber rattling, are human beings—our brothers and sisters in Iran who, by all accounts, have had enough of the brutal totalitarian regime of God's henchmen. I know that the suffering of everyday people doesn't always get the lead role on the big geopolitical stage, but can't the free world get it together for long enough to agree that regimes like Iran and North Korea not only should not have nukes, but shouldn't exist period? Maybe I suffer from residual leftist idealism from my younger days, but I don't understand why the concept of helping people out, while taking care of business can't be employed in Iran. We did it in Iraq. It's not just that we're short on troops vis-à-vis confronting Iran militarily, we're short on decent allies who would be willing to work with us and get the job done, because it needs to be done and should be done. I don't know who is worse—these people who are timid as a newborn lamb about stepping up to do the sane and right thing, or the moral relativists who say that Iran deserves nukes if Israel has them. The fact that Israel still exists explains why they should have nukes and why Iran shouldn't.

This new Aesma Daeva is coming out of the same land where its innocuous literary/religious predecessor was crushed under the ruthless heel of Islamic jihad. It is coming to deliver the wrath of its makers to Israel, America, and any other mushrikeen state that stands in the way of Islamosupremacy. It must be stopped. Not later, but now, while there is yet time to do it right. We sat on our hands for three years after a hitherto little-known Saudi sheikh declared war on the United States. We paid for that inaction and inattention. Surely we wouldn't do such a thing again. Right?

_____
originally posted at Clarity & Resolve