By Abdul Masih —
Afghanistan and Iraq turned into forever wars because when allies tried “nation building,” they didn’t know how set in stone Islam was in the hearts of the Afghans and the Iraqis.
Iran is different. Islam is now a minority religion. People stopped going to mosque even before the January protests to the extent that two-thirds of them shut down. During the protests, Iranians burned the mosques. They were sick and tired of extremism. Iranians are now atheists, Christians and Zoroastrians (returning to their roots). Among those who practice Islam are many who don’t want it mixed with politics and terrorism.
Another reason why Iran will NOT become a forever war is that the ground war of rooting out all remaining Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps thugs will be carried out by Iranians, not U.S. troops. Israel is currently arming them.
When Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi called Iranians to the streets, millions poured out — and 40K got killed. Since the bombing, Pahlavi, the U.S. AND Israel has told them to stay home. A time will come when they get called on to take to the streets and to TAKE OVER — this time with guns.
A second round of eliminating high-level IRGC leaders (Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, parliament speaker; Gholam-Hossein Mohseni-Eje’i, the chief justice; Masoud Pezeshkian, president) would clear up all confusion for the IRGC that Trump wasn’t bluffing when he said they would all be eliminated if they didn’t defect.
But first critical mass must be reached — and that is what Trump has called Operation Economic Fury. The U.S. naval blockade has cut off Iranian income at an estimated $435M a day. Soon, the IRGC won’t be able to pay its troops, and its troops will be unable to feed their families and will be unwilling to carry out the wishes of their commanders.
“Not all of them are ideologically devoted,” says Janatan Sayeh, Iran analyst for Foundation for Defense of Democracies in Washington D.C. “They’re there for financial incentives.”
The Iranian regime is unpopular. Here’s the proof: the have checkpoints to guard against their own citizens, the import mercenaries to carry out deadly crackdowns, they substitute Persian national holidays with Islamist ones, they’re the #1 executioner nation worldwide.
“They find nationalism to be the main and only threat against them,” Sayeh says. “They commemorated the Persian New Year by public hanging of Iranian dissidents. That in itself tells you that they find nationalists and the majority of Iranians are increasingly more nationalist.”
Sources: Sky News Australia.
