Read The Terrorist Next Door Online
Authors: Erick Stakelbeck
The Terrorist Next Door (27 page)
The Iranian regime is indisputably committed to the destruction of the United States and Israel. It has made its intentions in that regard abundantly clear for thirty-two years, through both words and deeds. Why, then, would the Obama administration persist in attempting to woo the mullahs, for whom anti-Americanism forms the bedrock of their regime? The short answer is that the U.S. government is plagued by the same blind spot in its dealings with messianic, Shia Iran that it has shown in its approach to Sunni jihadist groups from al-Qaeda to the Muslim Brotherhood: a complete misunderstanding of the ideology that drives the enemy.
In chapter one I introduced you to “Reza Kahlili,” who worked as an undercover agent for America inside the Iranian regime. Kahlili told me the Iranians are driven by an apocalyptic ideology that pines for the return of the mythical Shiite “twelfth imam,” also known as the Mahdi. According to legend, the twelfth imam disappeared when he was a young boy, purposely hidden by Allah sometime in the late ninth century. Many Shia, including Ahmadinejad, believe this Islamic messiah figure is currently hiding at the bottom of a well in the Iranian city of Jamkaran, awaiting the end of days. It's then that he will supposedly reemerge, accompanied, ironically enough, by Jesus Christ, to lead Muslims to victory over the hated Christians and Jews and subjugate the world to Islam.
To review, a little boy who has been hiding at the bottom of a well in Iran for ten centuries will appear one day soon, Jesus in tow, to establish global Islamic rule. Although this scenario sounds like sheer madness, Kahlili, who became intimately familiar with the regime's end times propaganda through his espionage activities inside the Revolutionary
Guards, told me that “Twelver” ideology is an animating force behind Iran's policymaking:
Guards, told me that “Twelver” ideology is an animating force behind Iran's policymaking:
I was there so I know the ideology. This is a messianic regime. They go from the centuries old hadiths, which has predicted this day. This day for them, is the ultimate day in Islam. It's the day of justice in their view. And in that day, â
of the world population has to die due to nuclear wars, another 1/3 due to hunger and chaos and havoc. And then Imam Mahdi the Shiites' 12th imam will reappear, kill the rest of the infidels and raise the flag of Islam in all corners of the world. ... They deeply believe this. Government organizations are analyzing current events and comparing them to hadiths. ... Everything is in place. And the only part missing is for them to become a nuclear powered state. Then they are going to attack Israel, they are going to attack oil fields in the Persian Gulf and European capitals. Millions are going to die, there's going to be a total breakdown in the global economy. There's going to be havoc, lawlessness and hunger. We are going to witness the most destruction humanity has witnessed and the biggest depression they have experienced. And this is exactly what they are after.
How seriously does the Iranian regime take its “Twelver” dogma? Each year, before he begins his rambling address to the UN General Assembly in New York, Ahmadinejad publicly calls for the swift return of the Mahdi. Both he and Iranian supreme leader Ali Khamenei have gone on record as saying they believe the Mahdi's reappearance will happen very soon, amid a time of great global chaos. Despite these pronouncements, not once when discussing the Iranian nuclear threat have President Obama or his predecessor, George W. Bush, referenced the apocalyptic belief system of Iran's leadership. Yet it's fair to say that a regime that believes its messiah will return only when the world is gripped by violent upheaval would seek
to create just that sort of condition by, say, attacking America or Israel with nuclear weaponsâparticularly when martyrdom, or dying for the sake of Allah, is elevated above all. Here's more on that, from Kahlili:
to create just that sort of condition by, say, attacking America or Israel with nuclear weaponsâparticularly when martyrdom, or dying for the sake of Allah, is elevated above all. Here's more on that, from Kahlili:
The sermons were every day. And the ideology of martyrdom and ending up in heaven next to Imam Ali and prophet Mohammed was the main focus of the clerics. Khomeini preached the ultimate sacrifice. ... You have to die for the glorification of Allah: this is the ultimate prize for a Muslim. ...The reason for the failure of every American administration [in dealing with Iran] is that they do not understand the ideology.
The Iranian regime showed just how willing it is to sacrifice its citizens during the Iran-Iraq War in the 1980s, when it sent thousands of brainwashed teenagers and young boys to clear minefields while wearing plastic “keys to paradise” around their necks. The wide-eyed recruits were assured they would receive eternal rewards in heaven.
The fatalistic mindset of the Iranian regime ensures that we could throw the Cold War doctrine of Mutually Assured Destruction, or MAD, out the window if Iran acquires nuclear weapons. The atheistic Soviets were living for this world; the Iranians are living for the next. As a result, the Iranian regime has no qualms about sacrificing millions of Iranians forâin their viewâthe greater good of wiping Israel off the map. This means that nuking Tel Aviv is worth weathering what would surely be a devastating Israeli retaliation against Iranian cities. Iran's leaders believe their 70-million-strong population can survive such an exchange, but that tiny Israel's population cannot. As former Iranian president Hashemi Rafsanjani put it back in 2001:
If a day comes when the world of Islam is duly equipped with the arms Israel has in its possession, the strategy of colonialism would face a stalemate because application of an atomic
bomb would not leave anything in Israel but the same thing would just produce damages in the Muslim world.
27
bomb would not leave anything in Israel but the same thing would just produce damages in the Muslim world.
27
Obama administration officials hear such threats against Israel and America and conclude that the Iranians are just blowing smoke, that no one can be
that
crazy. “The Iranians are like anyoneâthey have a price,” they say. “We can negotiate with them. At the end of the day, they're reasonable people and they want to remain in power. They would never be so foolish as to actually use a nuclear weapon. And all that talk about the Mahdi and wiping Israel off the map is just gibberish for domestic consumption.”
that
crazy. “The Iranians are like anyoneâthey have a price,” they say. “We can negotiate with them. At the end of the day, they're reasonable people and they want to remain in power. They would never be so foolish as to actually use a nuclear weapon. And all that talk about the Mahdi and wiping Israel off the map is just gibberish for domestic consumption.”
Indeed, it seems the Obama White House has resigned itself to the fact that Iran will acquire nuclear weapons. As far back as July 2009, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said that the United States would protect its allies in the Middle East with a nuclear defense umbrella that would dissuade Iran from using its own nukes.
28
Iran didn't even have the bomb, and already a top Obama administration official was referring to a day when it would, as if it were inevitable.
Containment
is a term that is back in vogue in Washington.
28
Iran didn't even have the bomb, and already a top Obama administration official was referring to a day when it would, as if it were inevitable.
Containment
is a term that is back in vogue in Washington.
The message from Jerusalem, however, is quite different. Based on my conversations with Israeli officials, both on and off the record, since 2005, I believe Israel will use every means at its disposal, including a military strike, to prevent the existential threat posed by a nuclear-armed Iran. This means Israel will have to do America's dirty work and deal as best it can not only with the likely retaliatory onslaught by Iran, Syria, Hezbollah, and Hamas, but also with the thunderous condemnation of most of the world, possibly including the Obama administration. Welcome to the not-so-brave new world of American “soft power,” where allies are abandoned and terrorists are emboldened.
CHAPTER EIGHT
IT'S THE IDEOLOGY, STUPID
D
uring the summer of 2000, Noman Benotman stood face-to-face with Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan, listening as the al-Qaeda kingpin described, in detail, his plans for an upcoming major operation against the United States that would later be known simply as “9/11.”
uring the summer of 2000, Noman Benotman stood face-to-face with Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan, listening as the al-Qaeda kingpin described, in detail, his plans for an upcoming major operation against the United States that would later be known simply as “9/11.”
Benotman, a former top commander of an Islamic terrorist organization called the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG), was one of 200 global jihadist leaders summoned to Afghanistan by bin Laden one year before 9/11 for a meeting to discuss strategy.
Benotman's participation in that fateful terrorist summit was no coincidence; he was held in high regard by al-Qaeda's hierarchy as a veteran
mujahid
, or holy warrior, and trusted confidante.
mujahid
, or holy warrior, and trusted confidante.
Now, nearly a decade later, I was standing face-to-face with Benotman in a London hotel room.
Benotman, who says he left the jihadist world behind shortly after 9/11, had agreed to meet with me to discuss, among other things, his former close associations with both bin Laden and al-Qaeda's second-in-command, Ayman al-Zawahiri. Throughout my hour-long interview with
Benotman, he recounted face-to-face meetings with bin Laden and Zawahiri in which the two al-Qaeda leaders gleefully discussed murdering American civilians with a bloodlust that seemed insatiable.
Benotman, he recounted face-to-face meetings with bin Laden and Zawahiri in which the two al-Qaeda leaders gleefully discussed murdering American civilians with a bloodlust that seemed insatiable.
According to Benotman, his warnings to Zawahiri that a major operation on U.S. soil would provoke an overwhelming American response were greeted with laughter and quickly dismissed. Today, ten years after the 9/11 attacks sparked an American “War on Terror” that has seen al-Qaeda's leadership severely weakened and the group's operatives pursued to the ends of the earth, Zawahiri's flippant response to Benotman's concerns sounds unbelievable. How could al-Qaeda have been so confident that the most powerful nation in the world would take 9/11 lying down?
Simple: Benotman told me that, based on their study of recent history, both Zawahiri and bin Laden firmly believed America was a “paper tiger” that would respond weakly when attacked. Indeed, the roll call of U.S. fecklessness in the face of Islamic terror up until 9/11 was shameful and well documented: from the Iranian hostage crisis to the Beirut Marine barracks massacre; from the 1993 World Trade Center bombing to Black Hawk Down in Somalia; and from the Khobar Towers attack to the African embassy bombings and the attack on the USS
Cole
destroyer in Yemen, in which seventeen U.S. sailors were killed by an al-Qaeda suicide bomber.
Cole
destroyer in Yemen, in which seventeen U.S. sailors were killed by an al-Qaeda suicide bomber.
In each case, the U.S. response was either to cut and run, issue a “strong” condemnation, or simply not to respond at all. The lone, pitiful exception was the Clinton administration's response to the 1998 African embassy bombings, which consisted of lobbing a few cruise missiles into Afghanistan and into an empty pharmaceutical factory in Sudan. During Clinton's presidency we witnessed no fewer than five major Islamic terrorist attacks against U.S. interests, each of them gradually escalating in their ferocity and boldness. Yet the most Clinton could muster in the face of this growing terror onslaught by al-Qaeda and its surrogates were those cruise missiles to nowhere. Is it any wonder, then, that by the summer
of 2000, bin Laden and the boys were confident that the United States would take 9/11 on the chin?
of 2000, bin Laden and the boys were confident that the United States would take 9/11 on the chin?
Yet that attack would finally propel our political class into action, with the 9/11 Commission exposing the defective institutional mindset that caused American leaders to ignore the Islamic terrorist threat for so long. And what did the commission identify as the root cause of the 9/11 attacks? Notably, they didn't cite the supposed reasons so often trumpeted by the liberal political establishment and media elites, such as poverty, mental illness, or lack of education. Nor did they blame the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, that other trusty crutch of the Left's arguments on national security.
No, what motivated the 9/11 attackers, according to the bipartisan 9/11 Commission, was a seductive jihadist ideology rooted in Islamic law that had been lying dormant during the decline of the Ottoman Empire, but had been revived and renewed in the twentieth century.
My numerous interviews with current and former Islamic terrorists and radicals over the years have repeatedly confirmed this point. Ideology is the lubricant that makes the international Islamic terrorist machine operate.
During our interview, Noman Benotman stated that jihadist ideology did not represent some new, distorted interpretation of Islam, as Obama administration officials have steadily maintained. Benotman argued it was rooted in the Koran itself:
If any Muslim appears and says ok, there is no jihad in Islam whatsoever, please believe me, he is a liar. A pure liar. People, they need to face it because it is a serious issue. Jihad, it's part of Islam because it is something that's in the Koran. There are more than 40 verses, I think, in the Koran that mention jihad. Not just one or three or ten. From a Muslim perspective, the Koran is not a book written for someone or a constitution. It's the words of God.
When it comes to jihadist ideology and what motivates terrorists, who are you going to believe: a former Islamic terrorist like Noman Benotman who has rubbed shoulders with al-Qaeda's leadership, or those two noted Islamic scholars, Eric Holder and Janet Napolitano? Call me crazy, but for a realistic assessment of the jihad threat, my money is on Benotman.
Nevertheless, since the 9/11 Commission published its report in 2004, the U.S. government has steadily removed from its national security strategy documents and terrorism assessments any reference to Islamic ideology, jihadist teachings, or Koranic injunctions to subdue the earth. Federal agencies charged with protecting the American public have issued guidelines forbidding their employees from making any mention of Islam, the Koran, or jihad.
In short, the people tasked with preserving our national security have stopped listening to what our jihadist enemies are saying about why they hate us and why attacks against Americans are justified. Instead, American officials, crippled by political correctness, have chosen simply to ignore the fact that Islamic terrorism does not just occur out of thin air, but is driven by a rigid, longstanding, and Koranically inspired ideological system. They ignore what guys like Noman Benotman have to say, to America's great detrimentâbecause it was evident from my lengthy conversation with Benotman just how alluring that jihadi ideology truly is. While the former terror commander has left the battlefield behind and publicly broken with his former al-Qaeda comrades, he still clings to some of the ideological tenets, like “defensive jihad,” that drove him into bin Laden's world in the first place.
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