Kenneth R. Timmerman
http://www.FrontPageMag.com
August 17, 2006
A new study of 115 Iranian school textbooks concludes that Iran is preparing its children for war, and is willing to risk massive casualties for the opportunity to defeat America in a world-wide cataclysmic confrontation.
“Iran’s is a war curriculum,” the study said. “Iran prepares its school children to fight the West – America in particular – as an indispensable complementary phase of the Islamic Revolution.”
From the Fifth grade on, Iran’s revolutionary regime portrays itself in government textbooks “as the champion of all non-Western nations, Muslim and non-Muslim, in a fateful struggle against Western hegemony in the world,” the study concluded.
In the vision of Iran’s leaders that is indoctrinated into young Iranians from an early age, “the Muslims, and the world oppressed nations in general, should wage a global war against the infidel oppressors, especially America,” the study reports, using language drawn directly from the Iranian textbooks.
Prepared by scholars Arnon Groisse and Navid Toobian of the Center for Monitoring the Impact of Peace in Jerusalem, the study will be released in the United States by the American Jewish Congress.*
This is the first comprehensive look at how the Islamic Republic of Iran has attempted to indoctrinate two generations of children since seizing power from the Shah in 1979. Until now, many Middle East experts and intelligence analysts who have studied the rants of leaders such as Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad or Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei have pooh-poohed their anti-Western tirades as mere made-for-the-masses propaganda.
This study shows that they are much more than just show. On the contrary, defeating America has been the goal of this Islamo-fascist regime from the very start.
Highly-respected Princeton University scholar Bernard Lewis warned recently that Ahmadinejad’s choice of August 22 for his response to the U.S.-backed ultimatum on Iran’s nuclear program could have a religious significance.
In an oped in the Wall Street Journal, Prof. Lewis pointed out that August 22 coincides with the date in the Muslim religious calendar when the Prophet Mohammad traveled to Jerusalem in a dream, tied up his horse, and ascended to the 7th heaven to speak with Allah directly.
(By the way, Muhammad’s dream adventure is the only claim the Muslims have ever been able to lay on Jerusalem as a city holy to Islam. On the basis of that dream, Muslim armies invaded Palestine and conquered Jerusalem after Mohammad’s death).
Prof. Lewis argues that the West must take such things seriously, not as mere coincidence, and warns that Ahmadinejad could use the opportunity to unleash “the apocalyptic ending of Israel and if necessary of the world.”
In support of his conclusion that Ahmadinejad and his followers in Iran are not wild-eyed fanatics but represent the mainstream of the Islamic Revolution since 1979, Prof. Lewis cites a well-known admonition by Ayatollah Khomeini that is found in an 11th grade Iranian textbook, Islamic Viewpoint.
“I am decisively announcing to the whole world that if the world-devourers [i.e., the infidel powers] wish to stand against our religion, we will stand against their whole world and will not cease until the annihilation of all them,” Khomeini says. “Either we all become free, or we will go to the greater freedom which is martyrdom. Either we shake one another's hands in joy at the victory of Islam in the world, or all of us will turn to eternal life and martyrdom. In both cases, victory and success are ours."
This and other chilling passages that reveal the intent of Iran’s current leaders can be found in this new study of Iranian textbooks. Indeed, the main finding of the new study is that Iran’s entire education system is focused “on fighting American world hegemony in the name of Islam.”
The study points to two main themes within the overall mission of world Jihad against the West.
“One, a massive effort is made to portray the West, with America at its head, as the incarnation of evil. Two, much emphasis is put on the three issues of preparing for war, Jihad, and martyrdom as Islamic ideals that should be followed in the present time.”
It also notes that the struggle against America is “neither religious nor cultural, but rather political.”
“The American danger threatening Iran is perceived to be imminent, which necessitates thorough preparation on a national scale,” Groiss and Tooobian write in their analysis of the textbooks.
How close in time must a threat be for our leaders – and their opponents, and the press – to agree that it is imminent?
And if they agree that the threat is imminent – as France and Britain agreed of the threat from Hitler in 1938 – will our leaders conclude as Daladier and Neville Chamberlin concluded that they can still have “peace in our time” through appeasement?
After all, even the Bush administration decided to give diplomacy one more chance when it opted for a UN Security Council resolution last month that calls on Iran to give its definitive answer to the Western nuclear ultimatum by the end of August – well after Ahmadinejad’s own chosen date.
As I discovered during in-depth discussions with top Israel nuclear experts shortly before Iran launched its proxy war against Israel through Hezbollah on July 12, no one really knows just how close Iran may be to actually possessing nuclear weapons.
That uncertainty itself is disturbing. It shows, for one thing, that both the U.S. and Israeli intelligence communities have failed to penetrate top government circles in Tehran to gain insight into the aims, intentions, and capabilities of Iran’s radical Muslim leaders.
Studying the texts they have been teaching their children for the past twenty-four years won’t answer the question of how close Iran may be to the bomb.
But it will tell you, with great precision, the goals of Iran’s leaders.: extermination of the Jewish state in Israel and the destruction of America, even if this entails a catastrophic world war that Iran will lose decisively.
The United States and its allies have squandered the opportunity to use the best possible tool to prevent a nuclear-armed Iran: aid to pro-democracy forces inside Iran.
If Ahmadinejad and his Revolutionary Guards nuclear team reveal to the world in the coming weeks or months that they have achieved nuclear weapons capability, then we will be left with the worst-possible option, which is war.
And unlike Islamic Iran, we have not prepared our children – or ourselves - for this fight.
* Interested readers can read the complete study of the Iranian textbooks, when it is released, at www.edume.org
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Kenneth R. Timmerman is the author of Countdown to Crisis: the Coming Nuclear Showdown with Iran (Crown Forum, New York), and Executive Director of the Foundation for Democracy in Iran.
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