Let's Help the Mullah's Self-destruct

Let's Help the Mullah's Self-destruct

by Mark Luedtke

Iran has the third largest oil reserves in the world, yet economists estimate it will no longer be able to export oil by 2014. Oil production has dropped by 1/3 since the revolution in 1979. The government spends 38% of its budget subsidizing gasoline, nearly all of which it imports, resulting in rationing, riots, and the burning of gas stations. We're watching the death throws of the Mullah's failed revolution.

Iran is dying from central planning. It may be a theocracy, but the government is modeled after Soviet government with the trappings of Islamic radicalism. Socialism has broken another wealthy, proud nation, and Iran's tyrannical government is fighting to survive.

Instead of delivering an improved standard of living, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's government is arresting tens of thousands of its citizens for dress code violations, purging its universities of dissenters, and arresting trade union leaders. His government has declared emergencies in several provinces, and big-government corruption is running rampant. The increasingly desperate Iranian regime is shutting down opposition newspapers, TV and radio, and preparing show trials for opposition leaders.

Iran is traveling Friedrich Hayek's Road to Serfdom, religious trappings aside, and the Iranian people are fed up. A groundbreaking poll recently showed that Iran's citizens want no supreme leader or confrontation with the west. They don't want to fund Hezbollah and Hamas. They want nuclear power, and would happily allow inspectors to verify their peaceful program.

Skyrocketing oil prices and desperation make the Iranian government dangerous. Iran is building powerful anti-vehicle explosives and supplying then to the Mahdi army and other Shiite militias in Iraq. Iran has employed their elite military QUDs force and Hezbollah to train attackers and plan and execute attacks against US forces in Iraq. They're arming Iraqi militias and the Taliban with Chinese weapons, kidnapping British sailors and US citizens on vacation.

Then there's Iran's nuclear program. Someone once said that Iran needs nuclear power like it needs sand. While there is a grain of truth to that, Iran needs power because exploding energy demand requires increasing fuel imports. But Iran's nuclear plants are designed to make material for weapons, not power. The world would support a peaceful, nuclear power program in Iran if the government really wanted that.

We would be foolish to think Iran wouldn't use a nuclear weapon. Ahmadinejad has trumpeted his desire to wipe Israel off the map. His phony Holocaust conference ironically highlighted his desire to repeat the horror. Ahmadinejad has declared that Britain and the US will be destroyed as well. We better take him at his word. Muslim clerics have already issued fatwas claiming that using nuclear weapons against the US is justified. And religious extremism enables the Mullahs to go where even the Soviets wouldn't – nuclear extortion to save their failing regime. All they have to do is claim they've planted a bomb in a major American city and demand anything they want from the infidel.

We can't allow Iran to get the bomb. With China shipping Iran weapons and Russia supplying Iran's nuclear program, we can't count on the UN for support. Dick Cheney and John Bolton champion striking Iran to destroy its nuclear facilities. Hawks fear that tunneling near Iran's nuclear sites is intended to harden the targets against attack, and may make it impossible to destroy their weapons program with military strikes.

Reports claim that President Bush is waging a covert war in Iran in response to Iran's covert war against the coalitions in Iraq and Afghanistan. If this is true, it's ineffective. Terrorists and their weapons continue to flow freely from Iran to both countries. US policy should include covert action that accelerates the fall of the Mullahs and saves American lives, but the danger with both military strikes and covert action is that they could turn Iranian public sentiment in favor of the government.

Bush recently issued an executive order allowing the seizure of assets of organizations promoting violence in Iraq, clearly targeted at Iran and its proxies, but the US has far more powerful economic tools that we have yet to employ to help finish the Mullahs. US companies are banned from conducting business with Iran's energy industry, but the Dodd-Lantos bill would impose sanctions on any international company who did the same. Europeans would howl with rage over being forced to choose between doing business with Iran or the US, but it beats risking any American lives. Mass divestiture by large pensions can also force companies to stop doing business with Iran.

By far the best way to end the Mullah's reign is to reduce the price of oil by increasing supply. Anybody obstructing drilling in Anwar and the Gulf is prioritizing the convenience of caribou and fish over the lives of people who will die if we have to strike Iran. If Congress passed legislation allowing drilling, oil futures and oil prices would fall. Progress toward drilling would continue to drive down oil prices and deprive the Mullahs of their funds.

We should unleash our economic might to end the Mullahs' reign and reserve military strikes as a last resort.