Too many Americans are content with the Iranian nuclear deal because they believe that it will curb Iran’s efforts to produce a nuclear weapon. Aside from the fact that the deal doesn’t do nearly enough to accomplish even this, the forgotten truth is that Iranian aggression is not solely limited to a nuclear weapon.
The Iranian regime has many goals—from exporting radical Shia Islamism to destroying the state of Israel and the Western world—but a nuclear weapon is not a necessity. What is essential is the money and power that Iran depends on in order to fund its Middle Eastern proxies that fulfill its radical goals. As Iran’s own General declared, “Our ideal is not [nuclear] centrifuges but the destruction of the White House and the annihilation of Zionism.” Tehran has known all along that it could never obtain a nuclear weapon capable of threatening the region—and certainly not one anywhere close to threatening Israel—without having their nuclear capabilities instantaneously demolished. What the Iranian leaders did know, however, was that they could take advantage of the naïve and politically driven leaders of the West to acquire funds that have long been locked up. Specifically, the well over 100 billion dollars solely from un-freezing assets and also tens of billions of expected dollars from new trade each and every year.
Supporters of the nuclear deal sure don’t seem to mind—Iran won’t have its hands on a nuclear weapon in the next few years, they justify. Too many, however, have blinded themselves from Iran’s true involvement in nearly every part of the Middle East and almost always to our peril.
In the fight to destroy Israel and also spread the Shiite revolution, Iran has commissioned its proxy—and infamous terrorist group—Hezbollah to fight for its interests from the Lebanese side of the Middle East. Founded on the principles of Shia radicalism, with the Supreme Leader of Iran as the highest clerical authority, the U.S. Department of State reports that this terrorist organization receives most of its “financial, training, weapons, explosives, political, diplomatic, and organizational aid from Iran” at a rate of about 100 to 200 million dollars per year.
Iran also relies heavily on Hezbollah to ensure that one of its greatest allies in the region, Assad, remains in power. Over the past three years, Hezbollah has funneled money, fighters and weapons into Syria to back Assad’s regime. As of this past summer, it is believed that Hezbollah has “roughly 6,000 to 8,000 fighters on the ground” and that since 2013, “roughly 700 to 1,000 fighters have been killed or wounded in battle.” In addition, Iran spends an estimated $6 billion each year to support the Assad regime–not including Hezbollah or the funds that the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps uses to support its own Iranian military initiatives such as the deployment of “hundreds of trained snipers” to bolster the Assad forces. If it were not for Iran, the civil war in Syria would have certainly taken a less deadly path.
Although Iran is engaged in an Islamic revolution to prop up Shiite regimes, there is at least one Sunni ally that Iran has remained loyal to. Hamas, while Sunni, shares the common goal of annihilating the state of Israel and has been an open-handed recipient of Iran’s generous aid. During the first few months of 2015—yes, during the nuclear deal negotiations—Iran transferred tens of millions of dollars to Hamas so that it could rebuild the tunnels it used to carry out terrorist attacks against Israel in the 2014 summer war and to rebuild its stockpile of rockets that will sooner or later be launched at Israeli civilians. As the head of Iran’s Parliament kindly summarized, “We proudly say we support the Palestinians, military and financially…The Zionist regime needs to realize that Palestinian military power comes from Iranian military power.”
If Iran’s motives are not yet clear, I can continue. Iran’s assertion of its influence in the region dates all the way back to the conclusion of the 1979 revolution and the creation of the Quds Force, the branch of the IRGC responsible for military operations outside of Iranian territory and tasked with exporting the principles of the Shiite revolution.
In Iraq, Iran pledged to support stability but has done the opposite. In its report on terrorism, the U.S. Department of State notes that, for years, Iran has provided “Iraqi Shia militant groups targeting US and Iraqi forces, as well as civilians,” with weapons, funding, training and lethal support. The Quds Force, along with Hezbollah, trained Shia militants on how to use advanced IED technology and weaponry kindling further instability and increased causalities among US forces. Now, with the rise of the Islamic State and the vacuum created by the U.S. withdrawal, Iran’s Shiite militias have remobilized in Iraq and are asserting their influence from Amerli to Tikrit—Iraq’s second largest city.
In Yemen, the Shiite Houthi rebels certainly did not take over the central government without help. Iran had been sending weapons shipments to the Houthi rebels for years, hoping that they would play “a role similar to that of Hezbollah in Lebanon.”
In Afghanistan, Iranian shipments of rockets and ammunition to the Taliban have been intercepted multiple times.
In 2011, the United States foiled an Iranian-backed terror plan to assassinate Saudi Arabia’s ambassador to the United States in Washington, D.C.
Iran is not an innocent country burdened by our sanctions, as some like to portray it. It is a country that deprives its citizens of basic needs in order to bankroll terrorism and violence throughout the world. Iran’s interests are far different than our own and to believe that handing over billions of dollars to this regime will go without bolstering our enemies is ludicrous. To ignore Iran’s intentions in the world is foolish. And to believe that this is a good deal is simply naïve.
Barak Biblin is a Trinity sophomore. His column runs on alternate Wednesdays.
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