MORNING GLORY: Trump and the radical theocrats of Iran
"They were there for Norway…"
"They" are nine Norwegian commandos cross-country skiing through deeply wooded, mountainous terrain in 1943, then trudging through deep snow to reach the Vemork hydroelectric power plant in the town of Rjukan, high above a waterfall and as formidable an edifice as one can imagine from that era.
Vemork was also site of the world’s only plant for mass production of "heavy water," on which the Nazis had placed their primary bet to produce atomic weapons during World War II. After the invasion and occupation of Norway in April 1940, the Reich’s munitions research team soon figured out that Vemork was critical to their plans.
Physicist Werner Heisenberg was one of the key leaders of the Nazi nuclear program, and in 1942 he had promised all of the Nazi and Wehrmacht leadership a bomb "the size of a pineapple" that could destroy cities.
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The key to that bomb was the heavy water produced at Vemork, so the Nazis hardened the defenses around the plant and kept increasing them as the Allies’ interest in destroying the plant became obvious.
The tale of the race between the Nazis and the Allies for nuclear weapons and the specific drama surrounding Vemork is recounted in the bestseller of a decade ago: "The Winter Fortress: The Epic Mission to Sabotage Hitler's Atomic Bomb" by Neal Bascomb. Director and producer Michael Bay optioned the rights to make the movie based on the riveting account by Bascomb, but it has not yet been made.
It is a shame that Bay hasn’t made the movie yet, as such a film would be a short-cut for those who don’t understand why President Donald Trump is singularly focused on ensuring the Islamic Republic of Iran cannot make or buy a nuclear weapon.
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Trump is motivated by the same conviction that drove British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and American President Franklin Roosevelt to throw everything into the Manhattan Project while also doing everything to disrupt Hitler’s bid for nukes. The leaders of the United Kingdom and United States knew that German dictator Adolf Hitler would use any weapon he could obtain, even as Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu know the fanatics atop the rump regime in Iran would use any weapon they could build or buy.
The conviction that your enemy cannot be deterred by any ordinary means but is in fact a theocracy run by fanatics who believe they can usher in the end of times and the return of the "Twelfth Imam" focuses the mind. Or ought to.
"Twelver" beliefs — the anchor religious convictions of the regime established by the Ayatollah Khomeini when he led the Iranian Revolution of 1979 — astonish the secular West, especially its progressive activists. The left in the West dismiss the Iranian theocratic convictions as absurd fantasies that surely no government could embrace.
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They ought to watch 16 minutes of the recent episode of "Life, Liberty and Levin" in which Mark quickly traces the core ideology of the remaining "leadership" in Iran with the help of the writings of late scholar of Islam Bernard Lewis and of the deceased Khomeini himself.
Trump and Netanyahu have directed the destruction of the physical plant of Iran’s nuclear program though not the new facility under construction in the deep caverns being dug at Pickaxe Mountain in Iran. Fanatics don’t stop even when they are set back. The religious extremists of Iran are certain to try again to build — or buy — the nuclear weapons they will use.
The German National Socialists — the Nazis — were of course led by Hitler who had no scruples about burning everything down even as his Reich collapsed in on every front. The same is true of Iran’s religious fascists who have been led by Ayatollahs Khomeini and Khamenei from 1979 to February 28 of this year. These Islamist fascists murdered tens of thousands of their own people over two days in January. They have no limits when it comes to violence.
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It may be Khamenei’s son now calling the shots in the wounded and reeling Iran, or it may be the latest commander-in-chief of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, Ahmad Vahidi, profiled on June 13 in The Wall Street Journal.
Whoever is the new "Supreme Leader" may approve of a deal with the United States but the nature of the regime cannot change. The acquisition of nuclear weapons as a means to destroy Israel first and then the United States is a matter of deep theological conviction to the regime. (There are no "moderates" in the regime’s leadership, only extremists with camouflage and unapologetic Twelvers who are always the ones with guns.)
Base camp for understanding the current and future battles with Iran should be reading or listening to "The Winter Fortress." The Allies eventual and thrilling success at Vemork did not end the Nazi push for nukes. The third and successful operation against the plant — followed by intense bombing — only damaged and delayed Hitler’s plans and programs.
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The courage and heroic success of the commandos did not end the war but did allow for time for victory in the European Theater. Another massive bombing mission was required the next year to force the Nazis to abandon their plans for Vemork.
Whether President Trump has achieved as much as is possible to end the Iranian regime’s nuclear program and destabilize the regime’s grip on the vast majority of Iranians who loathe their tyrants without the deployment of ground forces remains to be seen. The necessity of a president finally willing to take action to devastate the program has existed for two decades. Bravo to Trump for his orders.
But there is no destroying the knowledge about how to get to their bombs, knowledge the Iranians have steadily gained since 1979. There is no altering Twelver theology or Khomeinist ideology. The new radicals atop the ruins will try to start again, just as the Nazis did in 1943. Shattered and broke with a suffering population, the quarter million radicals ruling Iran with iron fists and terrorist tactics are not a group of Gorbachevs about to launch a "glasnost" and "perestroika."
That’s the reality. How America deals with it ought to be led by the example of FDR and Churchill when the threat was as real as it remains today.