Out to Launch

“Dear Iranian nation, your children have placed the first indigenous satellite into orbit.” From a February 3^rd television address by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Indeed, during Iran’s continuing celebrations of the fall of the Pahlavi monarchy and establishing of the Islamic republic in 1979, Iran launched a locally-built rocket into space and placed a satellite into geosynchronous orbit around the earth.

The February 4^th New York Times, noting that Iran was the eighth nation on earth to join the satellite space race, presented this observation: “ ‘In the face of world opposition and sanctions, Iran has joined a very exclusive club,’ said Geoffrey E. Forden, a missile expert at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He called the step a genuine ‘technological feat.’” Oh joy!

A budding nuclear power, not too far away from having its own capacity to build and deploy nuclear warheads, is evidencing the ability to create intercontinental weapons delivery systems; it is not much of stretch to imagine Iran’s building and testing an intercontinental ballistic missile system, one capable of reaching its arch enemy, the United States. Right now, the technology deployed in Iran’s two-stage rocket suggests a limited range of just over 1,500 miles, hardly a threat to North American shores, and Iran has had the ability to reach Israel through more primitive missiles for some time. Troubling enough as Iran’s leaders constantly call for the total destruction of the Jewish state. But given Iran’s research vectors, they are clearly on a path to be the most powerful Islamic nation on earth.

In recent blogs, I have noted how Iran, a Shiite nation (Shiites represent on 15% of all Muslims; the majority are Sunni), has migrated its financial and military support from other Shiite radical groups (like Hezbollah) to include destabilizing Sunni forces (like Hamas in Gaza) – a clear departure from the traditional Sunni-Shiite mutual hatred. That Iran has chosen its groups among those specifically that threaten Israel as well as those that desire to topple regional despots (like Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak) and monarchs (including the Saudi Royal family) suggests that it seeks to be viewed as the spiritual and political leader for the masses of ordinary disenfranchised and humiliated Muslims, regardless of their particular Islamic branch.

Iran has risen in the eyes of the people in the entire region. They funded Hamas’ attacks against Israel, are beginning to support radicals of all Islamic factions, they joyfully defy the West and continue their nuclear program and now have joined the highest profile space race. They understand all too well that for an Islamic world looked down upon for over two centuries by the West, a nation that can defeat Muslim humiliation and extol and evidence Muslim pride is most necessarily a global power with influence that extends well beyond its territorial boundaries.

Just as President Obama has extended peace feelers to this self-described enemy of the United States, Iran proudly ignores the entreaty and performs a technological feat that is traditionally associated with the Western powers. Ahmadinejad seems hell bent on maintaining his nation’s nuclear program – still telling the world it is only intended for peaceful purposes – and both Israel and the U.S. seem equally determined to prevent Iran from possessing nuclear weapons. But if Ahmadinejad backs down and accept Western limitations on his weapons program, he also risks losing the valuable ground he has achieved in the eyes of the Islamic world and cedes that hard-fought power – an unlikely scenario.

All of this saber rattling, support for Islamic radicalism and construction of the highest tech weapons with the ability to deliver them at long range seems headed to a military confrontation that threatens to be both a spark that will ignite escalating conflict as well as a wedge between that oil producing region as a whole and the non-Muslim world. Conservatives running for election in Israel – the leading candidates – are taking a very hard line against Iran’s nuclear capabilities. Even as those Arab leaders, whose very power is threatened by Iran, rejoice at any defeat of radical Islam, they can see the writing – in very large letters – on the wall. Containing Iran, a necessary corollary to any Israeli-Palestinian solution, will prove to be one of the Obama administration’s most daunting tasks.

I’m Peter Dekom, and I approve this message.