Iran refuses to roll back rogue policy

By Yoram Ettinger

The July 2015 nuclear agreement with Iran is perceived by the United States as a binding, strategic agreement for peaceful coexistence. In contrast, Iran's ayatollahs view it as a tenuous, tactical agreement that advances their offensive strategy against "the arrogant, infidel American Great Satan" that, like other agreements with "infidels," can be abrogated according to the Quran and the legacy of the Prophet Muhammad.

The ayatollahs consider the agreement to be a phase in the removal of the infidel "crUSader" from the Persian Gulf and the Indian Ocean, so as to advance Iran's 2,500-year-old goal of dominating the Persian Gulf, the Middle East and the globe.

Moreover, they consider the agreement a reaffirmation of Western vacillation and retreat, allowing them to intensify their rogue conduct, as documented in their domestic, regional and global track record and school textbooks. These clearly reflect their strategies, tactics, character, worldviews and general direction, and effectively produce cadres of "martyrs" -- namely, terrorists and suicide bombers.

A constructive agreement with the ayatollahs would require a dramatic transformation of their school textbooks, strategies and tactics. An agreement with the ayatollahs without such changes could start the countdown to the first nuclear war.

Bolstered by billions of dollars in cash transfers, the reclaimed $150 billion of frozen assets, and the suspension of U.S. and global sanctions, the Iranian regime has expanded its subversive and terrorist involvement in every pro-U.S. Arab country in the Persian Gulf and the Arabian Peninsula.

Moreover, while the U.S. has rolled back its sanctions against Iran, Iran has rolled back most of its inhibitions in its strategic ties with Russia. Pro-U.S. Arab regimes such as Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Morocco have also softened their positions on Russia, in response to the dramatic erosion of the U.S. posture of deterrence since the signing of the Iran deal, which the pro-U.S. Arab regimes perceive as a machete at their throats.

The ayatollahs have intensified their involvement in the civil war in Yemen and are striving to control the critical oil and military waterways in the Bab el-Mandab Strait, which connects the Indian Ocean to the Red Sea and the Mediterranean, and the Strait of Hormuz, which connects the Indian Ocean to the Persian Gulf. Meddling in Yemen also advances the ayatollahs' goal of regime change in Saudi Arabia, which borders Yemen.

The ayatollahs' long reach stretches to Latin America, where they have bolstered strategic and cultural ties with Cuba, Venezuela, Ecuador and Bolivia, and deepened their presence -- directly and via Hezbollah and other Islamic terror organizations -- in the tri-border region of Brazil, Argentina and Paraguay.

Reflecting Iran's determination to become a nuclear power, the ayatollahs have tightened their nuclear and ballistic cooperation with North Korea, which enables them to circumvent the monitoring of the nuclear program in Iran. They have exceeded their quota for heavy-water production, acquired illegal technology and have test-fired ballistic missiles that are capable of delivering nuclear weapons, in violation of the July 2016 U.N. Security Council Resolution 2231, which calls for Iran to desist from such testing for eight years.

Relying on Western eagerness to sustain the July 2015 agreement at any price, they have repeatedly harassed U.S. military forces in the Persian Gulf.

Taught to hate

The rolled-back sanctions have not rolled back the Iranian regime's hate-education, as recently documented by Professor Eldad Pardo, of the Hebrew University and the Institute of Monitoring Peace and Tolerance in School Education, who has researched Iran's school textbooks for the last 11 years.

Pardo wrote that "child martyrdom is revered" in a sixth-grade textbook ("The Little Leader," pp. 58-64), and that "the martyrdom of girls has recently been introduced into the curriculum" in a 10th-grade book ("Defense Readiness," pp. 59-63). In 12th grade, "students are instructed to join a frenzy of training and preparation, constant emergency, blind obedience and actual participation in conflicts, at home and abroad" ("Religion and Life," p. 124).

Iranian students, he found, "study about dissimulation and misleading the enemy. They learn that in times of need, dissimulation and temporary pacts -- even with 'ungodly, idolatrous governments' -- are proper, but only until such time as the balance of power should change. We know from [Ayatollah Ali] Khamenei's own words, that the recent nuclear negotiations followed the pattern of a historical treaty with an 'illegitimate' government … which was concluded in 661 BCE between Imam Hassan and Mu'awiyah -- intending to gain time, build power and gradually undermine the rival dynasty, but never genuinely reconciling, leading to the fateful battle of Karbala two decades later ('Religion and Life,' grade 12, pp. 103-104)."

Iran's curriculum stipulates "the need for jihad, child martyrdom and inevitable sacrifices are intensively and vividly inculcated into young minds. ... [Iranian students] know that a jihadi war -- requiring their possible martyrdom, for which they practice from first grade -- could be launched as part of an attack on countries ruled by 'oppressive regimes.' ... Education for child martyrdom continues, beginning with the first grade, all the way to grade 12. ... Iranian girls and boys are educated to go to war at any moment, taught to see the world as overflowing with enemies of the Revolution, who resist the 'true program of God.' ... The students receive much instruction about the martyrs from the 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq War. ... Children are instructed not to obey their parents in matters regarding martyrdom (Religious Rulings, grade 11, p. 14)."

According to Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, the U.S. is the chief target for the ayatollahs' wrath, because it constitutes the most effective obstacle on their megalomaniacal road to Islamize the global order and subjugate humanity to their agenda: "We have a fundamental problem with the West and especially with America. ... This is because we are claimants of a mission, with a global dimension."

The link between the ayatollahs' curriculum and their overall supremacist, global strategy behooves the U.S. Congress -- the co-equal and co-determining branch of government -- to conduct a series of hearings on the merits of adhering to the July 2015 nuclear agreement as long as Iran does not roll back its millenarian, anti-U.S. curriculum.