Iran and the Great Satan

…by Jonas E. Alexis and Eric Gajewski

Question: What is Iran up to these days? The Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has recently proclaimed “death to America” again. What does that mean? Does he really aspire to annihilate the United States, as some US political pundits and Neocons have perpetuated over the years? Or are there some nuances here? Explain these intricate issues.

Answer: Yes, there are some nuances. First of all, Iran has never preached in its history “death to the American people.” Iranian leaders are rational human beings, and they know that their beef is not with decent Americans who are no different than decent Iranians. In fact, Iranian leaders have always sympathized with Americans, despite the fact that the Anglo-American establishment overthrew a democratically elected president by the name of Mohammad Mosaddegh in 1953.[1]

For example, right after the 9/11 attack, it was Iranian leaders themselves who offered to join forces with the US military in order to combat terrorism. The US, however, rejected the generous offer.[2]

Moreover, Iran, unlike America, has never been in the business of invading countries and destroying the moral and political fabric of those countries. We already know how catastrophic the war in Iraq was. It was calculated that the war itself would cost America at least six trillion dollars.[3]

The war also took the lives of thousands upon thousands of Americans and Muslims. The estimate of lives lost in the war in Iraq alone is between 100,000 to 600,000, including thousands of civilians. In 2003, at least 12,000 civilians lost their lives.[4] The first three years of the war produced between 104,000 and 223,000 civilian deaths. When it was over, 2.3 million Iraqis had been forced to flee their homes and towns; by 2008, another 2.7 million Iraqis were displaced, and nearly half a million civilians ended up losing their lives.[5] Thousands upon thousands of other people went missing by 2008.[6] This is out of a total Iraqi population of about 30 million people![7] The Iraq war, says Kukis, shook the entire nation and created havoc even by 2006.[8] Factions of society that once coexisted were dismantled.

In a nutshell, Iraq was in exponential decay. Buildings and farmlands were destroyed.[9] And the fringe benefits of the war? Between 300,000 and 360,000 veterans returned home with brain injuries,[10] some of which went untreated.[11] Listen to USA Today:

“Pentagon officials estimated…that up to 360,000 Iraq and Afghanistan veterans may have suffered brain injuries. Among them are 45,000 to 90,000 veterans whose symptoms persist and warrant specialized care.”[12]

In 2005, more than 6,000 suicides took place among our soldiers serving in Iraq.[13] By 2012, more soldiers committed suicide than died in combat,[14] making it the year with the highest suicide rate since 2001.[15] Homelessness among Iraq and Afghanistan veterans has more than doubled over the past two years, and by the fall of 2012, it was reported that at least “26,531 were living on the streets, at risk of losing their homes, staying in temporary housing or receiving federal vouchers to pay rent.” In addition, about 307,000 soldiers want to leave the military.[16]

In less than two years of the war in Syria, more than 60,000 people lost their lives.[17] At the end of December 2012, refugees in Afghanistan were the ones to suffer from the terrible cold weather with no place to go.[18] It is the same thing with the Syrian refugees.[19]

By January 2013, it was reported that around half-million Syrians were refugees.[20] By the middle of the same month, a bomb blasted the campus of Aleppo University, which was under the control of the government. It was estimated that eighty-two people were killed and one hundred and ninety-two wounded.[21]

You see, these insane and incessant wars have never been good for the entire world! And it is high time that we all call the people who are still asking for more wars Satanists. Satanism again is an apt description here because these people aren’t willing to listen to the voice of practical reason or the moral and political order at all.

**************************************************

So when Khamenei declares that America is “evil and wicked,” he is referring to the manifestation of a diabolical ideology that has come to wrap around arguably the entire planet.[22] He is in no way referring to the American people. Khamenei even today made it very clear that “death to America” has nothing to do with the average American but has everything to do with the Zionist ideology, which seeks to juice the entire planet. This policy was fleshed out in 1979,[23] and it is still relevant today. The Ayatollah Khomeini posited then:

“There is no crime America will not commit in order to maintain its political, economic, cultural, and military domination of those parts of the world where it predominates. It exploits the oppressed people of the world by means of the large-scale propaganda campaigns that are coordinated for it by international Zionism.

“By means of its hidden and treacherous agents, it sucks the blood of the defenseless people as if it alone, together with its satellites, had the right to live in this world. Iran has tried to sever all its relations with this Great Satan and it is for this reason that it now finds wars imposed upon it.”

“International Zionism” is an appropriate description of what was going on then. As I have already suggested, the United States and England had already overthrown a democratically elected president in Iran by the name of Mossadegh in 1953, and both countries were expanding aggressively in the Middle East to keep a diabolical empire alive and well.

By 1954, the CIA again overthrew a democratically elected official by the name of Jacobo Arbenz in Guatemala.[24] The documents for this unfortunate coup are readily available at the National Security Archive.[25] If one peel the ideological onion, then the logic becomes pretty clear: the United States has been in the business of overthrowing countries in the Middle East and elsewhere for a century.[26]

Going back to the Ayatollah Khomeini, he made an attempt to solve the “international Zionism” problem by appealing to Muslim unity. But that again was another problem because countries like Saudi Arabia were already prostrating before “international Zionism.” As E. Michael Jones puts it,

“At the very moment he invoked Islamic unity, Khomeini was forced to concede that Islam was breaking up into two warring factions. The grand climactic battle of the anti-Communist crusade disguised this split for decades, but now, as intra-Islamic wars raged in Yemen and Iraq, Khomeini showed himself more of a prophet than a politician who could bring about Islamic unity. Either way, the Great Satan was exacerbating division as a means of achieving geo-political goals.”[27]

Khomeini obviously lit up a prophetic fire which again is still relevant today. “International Zionism” is still sucking the blood of virtually every nation on earth through covert activities, espionage, and deceptive means.[28] And by metaphysically rejecting the moral and political order and embracing chaos and destruction, international Zionism has essentially become Satanism.

This principle was articulated by St. Athanasius, who posited that any metaphysical idea which ontologically denies Logos and its central place in the universe will end up being Satanic. In a Satanic universe, what is true is actually a lie and what is a lie is by definition true.

In fact, opposition to Logos “was deemed to involve an active allegiance to Satan.”[29] An “active allegiance to Satan” means that innocent people have to die in order to preserve a wicked ideology. If you doubt this, then take a look at what happened in Iraq in 2003, where the warmongers sent a six-trillion dollar bill to the American people.

In short, an “active allegiance to Satan” is the political ideology of the United States, Saudi Arabia, and indeed Israel, specifically when it comes to dealing with important issues in the Middle East. The Jamal Khashoggi debacle again makes this very clear. The recent war in Yemen is another example. Now the Zionist States of America is moving to antagonize Venezuela at this present moment.

So in the Zionist or Satanic world, everyone wants to get a piece of the pie. The only people who cannot get even a decent meal are the poor souls in Yemen, people who are now living on bread crumbs.[30]

*************************************************

Khamenei added that as long as US foreign policy remains “evil and wicked,”[31] then Iran and its leaders will continue to chant death to those who are perpetuating ethnic cleaning virtually everywhere in the Middle East. The representatives of evil in the Middle East, says Khamenei, are none other than Donald Trump, John Bolton, and Pompeo.[32] Khamenei continued to say: “The US is the embodiment of evil, but still complains when you chant ‘Death to America.”[33]

The US is the embodiment of evil because politicians have embraced an essentially Talmudic principle which basically says that perpetual wars and ethnic cleansing in the Middle East and elsewhere are good for America, despite evidence to the contrary. Abe Greenwald of the Neocon magazine Commentary himself declared last December that “Yes, Our Unpopular Wars Are Worth It.”[34]

What Greenwald ended up saying is that perpetual wars will lead America to prosperity, an ideology that is completely different from what the founding fathers had envisioned.[35] No serious person with an ounce of brain cells knocking together will even approach such a language. Jonathan Turley of George Washington University has shown that Einsenhower himself warned Americans about this military industrial complex. Turley wrote in 2014:

“In January 1961, US President Dwight D Eisenhower used his farewell address to warn the nation of what he viewed as one of its greatest threats: the military-industrial complex composed of military contractors and lobbyists perpetuating war.

“Eisenhower warned that ‘an immense military establishment and a large arms industry’ had emerged as a hidden force in US politics and that Americans ‘must not fail to comprehend its grave implications.’”

“The speech may have been Eisenhower’s most courageous and prophetic moment. Fifty years and some later, Americans find themselves in what seems like perpetual war. No sooner do we draw down on operations in Iraq than leaders demand an intervention in Libya or Syria or Iran.

“While perpetual war constitutes perpetual losses for families, and ever expanding budgets, it also represents perpetual profits for a new and larger complex of business and government interests. The new military-industrial complex is fueled by a conveniently ambiguous and unseen enemy: the terrorist.”

This is indeed very interesting precisely because incessant, Neocon wars have always been for the war profiteers and ethnic cleansers. USA Today itself reported in 2013:

“The business of war is profitable. In 2011, the 100 largest contractors sold $410 billion in arms and military services. Just 10 of those companies sold over $208 billion…These companies have benefited tremendously from the growth in military spending in the U.S., which by far has the largest military budget in the world.

“In 2000, the U.S. defense budget was approximately $312 billion. By 2011, the figure had grown to $712 billion. Arm sales grew alongside general defense spending growth… between 2002 and 2011, arms sales among the top 100 companies grew by 51%.”

What are those companies that are making a fortune? United Technologies (UTX), L-3 Communications, Finmeccanica, EADS, Northrop Grumman, Raytheon (RTN), General Dynamics (GD), BAE Systems, Boeing (BA), and Lockheed Martin (LMT).[36]

If there is no war, or if the United States and other countries aren’t using the products of those companies, then the Neoconservative establishment is going to have to find a decent job, perhaps changing tires. It was even reported that there were at least 25 companies that benefitted from the Iraq war.

In other words, when Iraqi civilians and American soldiers were dying by the thousands, companies such as Halliburton, Veritas Capital Fund/DynCorp, Washington Group International, Environmental Chemical, Aegis, International American Products, Erinys, Fluor, Perini, URS Corporation, Parsons, First Kuwaiti General Trading & Contracting, Armor Holdings, L3 Communications, AM General, HSBC Bank, Cummins, MerchantBridge, GlobalRisk Strategies, ControlRisks, CACI, Bechtel, Custer Battles, Nour USA, and General Dynamics were making millions and sometimes billions of dollars.[37] In 2013, the Financial Times itself revealed:

“An analysis by the Financial Times reveals the extent to which both American and foreign companies have profited from the conflict – with the top 10 contractors securing business worth at least $72bn between them.

“None has benefited more than KBR, once known as Kellogg Brown and Root. The controversial former subsidiary of Halliburton, which was once run by Dick Cheney, vice-president to George W. Bush, was awarded at least $39.5bn in federal contracts related to the Iraq war over the past decade.

“Two Kuwaiti companies – Agility Logistics and the state-owned Kuwait Petroleum Corporation – are the second and third-biggest winners, securing contracts worth $7.2bn and $6.3bn respectively.

“The US hired more private companies in Iraq than in any previous war, and at times there were more contractors than military personnel on the ground.”[38]

If people think that the military industrial complex has stopped screwing up people in the Middle East, then they’ve got another thing coming. The British newspaper, The Independent, reported last month: “Private military contractors could replace US troops withdrawing from Syria, Blackwater founder Erik Prince has suggested. The former security firm chief said contractors could protect US allies and counter Iranian influence after the US leaves the country.”[39]

So, when the war machine and New World Order agents like Abe Greenwald start the war drum, they are essentially supporting the companies that are actually profiting from the deaths of civilians and other precious lives.[40] Moreover, people like Greenwald are completely out of touch with reality. As military historian Andrew J. Bacevich points out,

“Apart from a handful of deluded neoconservatives, no one believes that the United States accomplished its objectives in Iraq, unless the main objective was to commit mayhem, apply a tourniquet to staunch the bleeding, and then declare the patient stable while hastily leaving the scene of the crime…”[41]

Bacevich argues elsewhere that “The most urgent priority is to staunch the hemorrhaging of American power,”[42] a statement which is quite congruent with what Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has cogently articulated. The United States, continues Bacevich, is spending no less than $10 billion per month in Afghanistan “in the hope of pacifying a country with a total annual gross domestic product of perhaps $27 billion.”[43]

This is complete madness, but the Neoconservative machine thinks that it is all good. As Thomas E. Woods has pointed out, the rise of US military means the rise of bigger government, which also means the fall of families. Woods quotes the late sociologist Robert Nisbet of the University of California, Berkeley and Riverside, saying:

“War and the military are, without question, among the very worst of the earth’s afflictions, responsible for the majority of the torments, oppressions, tyrannies, and suffocations of thought the West has for long been exposed to. In military or war society anything resembling true freedom of thought, true individual initiative in the intellectual and cultural and economic areas, is made impossible—not only cut off when they threaten to appear but, worse, extinguished more or less at root. Between military and civil values there is, and always has been, relentless opposition. Nothing has proved more destructive of kinship, religion, and local patriotisms than has war and the accompanying military mind.”[44]

We all need to get back to the moral and political order so that we can have the necessary tools to fight Satanism and all its political offshoots. It’s also important to know that despite all these incessant wars, Logos will triumph in the end. Both Hegel and Solzhenitsyn articulated that principle. And I think they were right.

• [1] See Stephen Kinzer, All the Shah’s Men: An American Coup and the Roots of Middle East Terror (Hoboken: John Wiley & Sons, 2003 & 2008); Christopher de Bellaigue, Patriot of Persia: Muhammad Mossadegh and a Tragic Anglo-American Coup (New York: HarperCollins, 2013); Ervand Abrahamian, The Coup: 1953, the CIA, and the Roots of Modern U.S.-Iranian Relations (New York: The New Press, 2015).
• [2] See Trita Parsi, Treacherous Alliance: The Secret Dealings of Israel, Iran, and the United States (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008); A Single Roll of the Dice: Obama’s Diplomacy with Iran (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2011).
• [3] Ernesto Londono, “Study: Iraq, Afghan war costs to top $4 trillion,” Washington Post, March 28, 2013; Bob Dreyfuss, The $6 Trillion Wars,” The Nation, March 29, 2013; “Iraq War Cost U.S. More Than $2 Trillion, Could Grow to $6 Trillion, Says Watson Institute Study,” Huffington Post, May 14, 2013; Mark Thompson, “The $5 Trillion War on Terror,” Time, June 29, 2011; “Iraq war cost: $6 trillion. What else could have been done?,” LA Times, March 18, 2013.
• [4] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casualties_of_the_Iraq_War.
• [5] Mark Kukis, Voices from Iraq: A People’s History, 2003-2009 (New York: Columbia University Press, 2011),xvii.
• [6] Ibid.
• [7] Ibid., xiii.
• [8] Ibid., xiv.
• [9] Ibid.
• [10] Gregg Zoroya, “360,000 Veterans May Have Brain Injuries,” USA Today, March 5, 3009; Denise Grady, “Brain Injuries Are Seen in New Scans of Veterans,” NY Times, June 1, 2011; “Mental Health Injuries Scar 300,000 U.S. Troops,” MSNBC, April 17, 2008.
• [11] Lizette Alvarez, “War Veterans’ Concussions Are Often Overlooked,” NY Times, August 25, 2008.
• [12] “360,000 veterans may have brain injuries,” USA Today, March 4, 2009.
• [13] Armen Keteyian, “VA Hid Suicide Risk, Internal Emails Show,” CBC News, July 30, 2010.
• [14] Allison Churchill, “The Military Is Losing More Troops to Suicide than Combat,” Business Insider, October 25, 2012; Helen Pow, “More U.S. Troops Committing Suicide Than Being Killed Fighting in Afghanistan in ‘Tough Year’ for Armed Services,” Daily Mail, October 24, 2012.
• [15] Kelley Vlahos, “Surviving War, Falling to Suicide,” American Conservative, January 1, 2012; for other similar stories, see also James Dao and Andrew W. Lehren, “Baffling Rise in Suicides Plagues the U.S. Military,” NY Times, May 15, 2013.
• [16] Gregg Zoroya, “Homeless, At-Risk Veterans Double,” USA Today, December 27, 2012.
• [17] See for example Anne Barnard, “Syrians Killed in Gas Line; U.N. Raises War’s Casualty Figures,” NY Times, January 2, 2013; Matthew Weaver, “Syria Conflict: U.N. Says 60,000 Dead-Wednesday 2 January 2013,” Guardian, January 2, 2013.
• [18] Rod Nordland, “Winter’s Deadly Bite Returns to Refugee Camps of Kabul,” NY Times, December 29, 2012.
• [19] Rana F. Sweis, “Syrian Refugees Strain Resources in Jordan,” NY Times, January 2, 2013; Liam Stack, “Winter Brings Misery to Syria Refugees,” NY Times, January 10, 2013; Jodi Rudoren, “A Desert Cold and Wet Multiplies the Misery of Syrian Refugees,” NY Times, January 12, 2013.
• [20] “UN Body: Around Half-Million Syrians Now Refugees,” Seattle Times, January 2, 2013.
• [21] Hwaida Saad and Rick Gladstone, “Dozens Killed as Explosions Hit Syrian University,” NY Times, January 15, 2013.
• [22] For a historical analysis of this manifestation in Afghanistan, see Paul Fitzgerald and Elizabeth Gould, Invisible History: Afghanistan’s Untold Story (San Francisco: City Lights Books, 2009).
• [23] See E. Michael Jones, “The Great Satan and Me: Reflections on Iran and Postmodernism’s Faustian Pact,” Culture Wars, July/August 2015.
• [24] Stephen C.. Schlesinger and Stephen Kinzer, Bitter Fruit: The Untold Story of the American Coup in Guatemala (New York: Anchor Books, 1990); Piero Gleijeses, Shattered Hope: The Guatemalan Revolution and the United States, 1944-1954 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992); Richard H. Immerman, The CIA in Guatemala: The Foreign Policy of Intervention (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2007); Nick Cullather, Secret History: The CIA’s Classified Account of Its Operations in Guatemala 1952-1954 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2006); Kate Doyle and Peter Kornbluh, eds., “CIA and Assassinations: The Guatemala 1954 Documents,” The National Security Archive, https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu//NSAEBB/NSAEBB4/index.html.
• [25] https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu//NSAEBB/NSAEBB4/index.html.
• [26] Stephen Kinzer, Overthrow: America’s Century of Regime Change from Hawaii to Iraq (New York: Times Books, 2006); Michael Grow, U.S. Presidents and Latin American Interventions: Pursuing Regime Change in the Cold War (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2008).
• [27] Jones, “The Great Satan and Me: Reflections on Iran and Postmodernism’s Faustian Pact,” Culture Wars, July/August 2015.
• [28] See Stephen Kinzer, The Brothers: John Foster Dulles, Allen Dulles, and Their Secret World War (New York: Times Books, 2013). David Talbot, The Devil’s Chessboard: Allen Dulles, the CIA, and the Rise of America’s Secret Government (New York: Harper Collins, 2015).
• [29] Jones, “The Great Satan and Me: Reflections on Iran and Postmodernism’s Faustian Pact,” Culture Wars, July/August 2015
• [30] “Yemen’s displaced live on bread crumbs, leaves,” Associated Press, November 2, 2018.
• [31] “‘Death to America’ means death to Trump, Bolton & Pompeo – Iran’s supreme leader,” Russia Today, February 8, 2019.
• [32] Ibid.
• [33] Ibid.
• [34] Abe Greenwald, “Yes, Our Unpopular Wars Are Worth It,” Commentary, December 21, 2018.
• [35] Stefan Halper and Jonathan Clarke, America Alone: The Neo-Conservatives and the Global Order (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004); Murray Friedman, The Neoconservative Revolution: Jewish Intellectuals and the Shaping of Public Policy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005); John J. Mearsheimer, Why Leaders Lie: The Truth About Lying in International Politics (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011); Paul R. Pillar, Intelligence and U.S. Foreign Policy: Iraq, 9/11, and Misguided Reform (New York: Columbia University Press, 2011); Michael MacDonald, Overreach: Delusions of Regime Change in Iraq (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2014); John M. Schuessler, Deceit on the Road to War: Presidents, Politics, and American Democracy (New York: Cornell University Press, 2015); Carter Malkasian, Illusions of Victory: The Anbar Awakening and the Rise of the Islamic State (New York: Oxford University Press, 2017).
• [36] Samuel Weigley, “10 companies profiting the most from war,” USA Today, March 10, 2013.
• [37] “The 25 Most Vicious Iraq War Profiteers,” Business Pundit, July 22, 2008.
• [38] “Contractors reap $138 bn from Iraq war,” Financial Times, March 19, 2013.
• [39] Richard Hall, “US troops in Syria could be replaced by private contractors, Blackwater founder Erik Prince says,” Independent, January 15, 2019.
• [40] For scholarly studies on similar issues, see John Tirman, The Deaths of Others: The Fate of Civilians in America’s Wars (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012); Andrew J. Bacevich, The New American Militarism: How Americans Are Seduced by War (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005 and 2008); Breach of Trust: How Americans Failed Their Soldiers and Their Country (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2013).
• [41] Andrew Bacevich, Breach of Trust: How Americans Failed their Soldiers and Their Country (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2013), 94, 105.
• [42] Andrew Bacevich, The Essence of Conservatism (The American Conservative, 2014), kindle edition.
• [43] Ibid.
• [44] Ibid.

Jonas E. Alexis, Senior Editor

Jonas E. Alexis has degrees in mathematics and philosophy. He studied education at the graduate level. His main interests include U.S. foreign policy, the history of the Israel/Palestine conflict, and the history of ideas. He is the author of the book, Kevin MacDonald’s Metaphysical Failure: A Philosophical, Historical, and Moral Critique of Evolutionary Psychology, Sociobiology, and Identity Politics. He teaches mathematics in South Korea.

• Read the Latest Posts from Jonas >>>
• Read Jonas’ Archives (2004-2015) >>>