It is time to disarm Iran.

The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, who themselves admitted two years ago that Iran has an "impressive" nuclear power infrastructure, still haven't adjusted the silly "Doomsday Clock" by which they profess to gauge the threat of nuclear war. Nevertheless, the world has today moved much closer to a nuclear weapon being used offensively by a totalitarian regime. Iran's messianic President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad announced today that his nation has successfully enriched uranium, a crucial step towards building a bomb.

Being a scientist, I am unfortunately very familiar with the products of our modern higher education system, many of whom seem to know more and more about less and less as they "progress" in their quest for greater knowledge. Yes. Some very intelligent people can somehow tell when a country is nearly ready to build a bomb, but can't decide that such a development is a threat to civilized human beings! Such people are nearly beyond hope. I am not writing for them, but for anyone who is open to the idea that we might have to act militarily against Iran. We'll start by reviewing some well-documented things Iran's elected (and undeposed) leader is known to have said.

About September of last year, Madman Mahmoud made quite a stir at the United Nations.

[Ahmadinejad] often raises the topic [of preparing for the return of the Mahdi, at the end of the world], and not just to Muslims. When addressing the United Nations in September, Ahmadinejad flummoxed his audience of world political leaders by concluding his address with a prayer for the Mahdi's appearance: "O mighty Lord, I pray to you to hasten the emergence of your last repository, the Promised One, that perfect and pure human being, the one that will fill this world with justice and peace."

On returning to Iran from New York, Ahmadinejad recalled the effect of his U.N. speech: "[O]ne of our group told me that when I started to say 'In the name of God the almighty and merciful,' he saw a light around me, and I was placed inside this aura. I felt it myself. I felt the atmosphere suddenly change, and for those 27 or 28 minutes, the leaders of the world did not blink. And they were rapt. It seemed as if a hand was holding them there and had opened their eyes to receive the message from the Islamic republic." [links dropped, one link added]

Ahmadinejad wasn't drugged, or joking, or hamming it up for the world stage. In fact, he has indulged and acted upon such fantasies at home as well.

When he was still mayor of Tehran in 2004, for example, Ahmadinejad appears to have secretly instructed the city council to build a grand avenue to prepare for the Mahdi. A year later, as president, he allocated US$17 million for a blue-tiled mosque closely associated with mahdaviat [The return and rule of the Mahdi. --ed] in Jamkaran, south of the capital. He has instigated the building of a direct Tehran-Jamkaran railroad line. He had a list of his proposed cabinet members dropped into a well adjacent to the Jamkaran mosque, it is said, to benefit from its purported divine connection.

Oh yeah, and more recently, the news reported a bit more on what he and his pals have said.

"At this historic moment, with the blessings of God almighty and the efforts made by our scientists, I declare here that the laboratory- scale nuclear fuel cycle has been completed and young scientists produced enriched uranium needed to the degree for nuclear power plants Sunday," Ahmadinejad said.

"I formally declare that Iran has joined the club of nuclear countries," he told an audience that included top military commanders and clerics in the northwestern holy city of Mashhad. The crowd broke into cheers of "Allahu akbar!" or "God is great!" Some stood and thrust their fists in the air.

How's all that for "impressive"? Oh yeah. And I haven't even touched that whole "Holocaust never happened but the Jews would have deserved it so let's make it happen" schtick. Really. Just what does it take for those bozos at the Bulletin to reset their silly clock? I suggest we keep time for ourselves instead.

And, being a scientist, I spend my working days surrounded by liberals and leftists. The latter are definitely sympathetic to the enemy, but a few of the former are belatedly realizing what's going on. Hearing "We might have to drop something on them," recently from a Kerry voter was music to my ears, except that we need to bump up the volume just a bit.

Many liberals, who would agree with my caution about the political goals of the religious right seem oddly unconvinced -- despite the near-daily occurrence of violent acts by Moslems -- that Islam might be even half the threat that fundamentalist Christianity is! So let's put the Iranian theocracy into context by considering Islam's historical record in additon to its current state. (HT: TIA Daily)

In our own time there is a reluctance to consider the true and emerging nature of Islam, what the faith teaches and its doctrines. For tactical reasons, many politicians in the West call Islam a religion of peace; some say it is a religion hijacked by extremists and others maintain that Sufis (a small minority sect) represent the true nature of Islamic pacifism.

Very recently, however, MEMRI reports that an Islamic scholar Dr. Kamel Al-Najjar challenged these suppositions by restating the obvious: intellectuals, who call for a condemnation of violence among Moslems and an openness in Islam, do not understand the history of this religion.

According to Dr. Al-Najjar, Islam was tolerant during only one brief period in its history. Islam was humane and tolerant when it was relatively weak, during the so-called Mecca period. Later Koranic verses call on Muslims to fight anyone who does not convert to Islam: "And kill them wherever you find them, and drive them out from whence they drove you out." The "verse of the sword" and other warlike verses were said to abrogate tolerant verses of the Mecca period. [bold added]

They not only have a religion that preaches violence over there, but the Iranians also actually believe it. In fact, they believe it to the point that their leader openly talks about seeing lights and feeling auras without fear of being removed from office and sent to an asylum, where he arguably belongs. This is a people with a medieval mindset who will soon have nuclear weapons at their disposal unless WE stop them. What we eventually had to do to to rid ourselves of Saddam Hussein might be an accurate gauge of the value of protracted diplomatic efforts.

These are the facts, and yet, as Robert Tracinski of TIA Daily recently pointed out:

Over the weekend, the mainstream media finally caught on to the fact that US military strikes against Iran are actively being planned and considered, and for the most part, the MSM has tried to make this sound like a crazy, impractical idea. They are trying to stop US action against Iran before it begins.

If considering the above facts has convinced you that attacking Iran is necessary, or if you were in no need of convincing, I think that Tracinski offers some sound advice for you.

Now is the time for a war mobilization by all of us whose contribution to the war effort is made with a keyboard instead of a rifle. Many of us having been saying for years that Iran is the ultimate enemy in the War on Terrorism -- and now war with Iran is openly being considered and debated. This is the moment we have been waiting for. This is the time for us to make the case for war with Iran.

Use whatever medium is open to you: blog entries, letters to the editor, phone calls, e-mails, and letters to your congressman and to the White House, one-on-one debates with friends and coworkers. Make the case that war with Iran is not just "thinkable" -- it is mandatory. We need to attack Iran, not just to keep it from developing nuclear weapons, but to topple the largest remaining state sponsor of terrorism, and to discredit Islamic rule.

Let's roll.

-- CAV

Updates

4-14-06: Cox and Forkum have a good roundup on Iran and note how the anti-war/pro-Islamic left plan to wage their battle in favor of American inaction.

And, in yesterday's TIA Daily, Robert Tracinski said the following.

In response to my "mobilization alert" yesterday, a TIA Daily reader noted that some of the reporting on US military planning for a strike against Iran has been overblown, and that routine war-planning has been portrayed as evidence of an imminent attack. The war planning has actually gone a bit further than the routine -- e.g., negotiations to line up British military support for action against Iran -- as TIA Daily has covered.

But this reader has a point: a US attack on Iran is not inevitable. The report below, for example, gives us evidence in the opposite direction, portraying the talk about war planning as just a gimmick in the diplomatic game, to put pressure on the Iranians, in a "war of words" instead of a "war of action." And that is precisely why we need to mobilize.

...

Since September 11, there has been a small number of people (inside and outside Objectivist circles) arguing that Iran is America's most important enemy in the War on Terrorism, and that we won't win the war until we topple the regime in Iran. But up to now, direct American action against Iran has not been part of the mainstream political discussion. It has not been "on the table." Now it is -- and this is our big opportunity.