As The Complete Infidel’s Guide to Iran details, Kerry replied, “I don’t believe they’ve said that. I think they’ve said ‘Death to America’ in their chants, but I have not seen this specific.”
[snip]
To that, Kerry responded, “I think they have a policy of opposition to us and of great enmity, but I have no specific knowledge of a plan by Iran to actually destroy us. I do know that the rhetoric is uh, is beyond objectionable. I know that we, you know, are deeply concerned with Iran’s behavior in the region, deeply concerned with their past activities. Which is why President Obama felt—”
When Poe interrupted, Kerry interrupted him in turn, saying “If they did want to destroy us, they’ve got a much better shot of doing it if they had a nuclear weapon.”
[snip]
The Iranians, however, not only rejected Kerry’s request, but ramped up the genocidal rhetoric. On November 2, 2015, a commanding majority of the Majlis, 192 of its 290 members, agreed to this statement: “The martyr-nurturing nation of Iran is not at all prepared to abandon the slogan of ‘Death to America’ under the pretext of a nuclear agreement.”
The assembled parliamentarians also added their support to the assertion that “Death to America,” which continued to be chanted at every Friday prayer in Iranian mosques as well as at anti-American protests, had “turned into the symbol of the Islamic Republic and all struggling nations.”
Chanting “Death to America” was and is the “symbol of the Islamic Republic.” A communal desire to destroy the United States and commit mass murder of its citizens is the Islamic Republic of Iran’s very identity.
[snip]
Even as the Islamic State was horrifying the world with its barbarism, Netanyahu saw Iran as the greater threat: “Iran’s growing aggression is several times more dangerous than that of IS, which is dangerous enough. And this aggression, which aims to reach every corner of the world, has the ultimate true aim of taking over the world.”
That assertion met with widespread derision. The anti-Israel paleocon writer Justin Raimondo quipped: “For a country that’s on the way to world conquest, Iran should surely be spending more on the military: their $10 billion defense budget is relatively minuscule.
[snip]
Yet Netanyahu’s assertion was not as overstated as Cole and others wanted Americans to believe. Echoing the Israeli prime minister’s claim that Iran had global ambitions was Iran expert Ali Wambold, whose understanding of the aspirations and goals of the Islamic Republic was well founded: “I can claim some understanding of Iran…. My family ruled the country as Shahs of the Qajar Dynasty between 1785 and 1925, and again under a democratically elected prime minister, Mohammad Mossadegh, between 1951 and 1953.”
Wambold pointed out that the Constitution of the Islamic Republic “proclaims ‘the ideological mission of jihad,’ which it defines as ‘extending the sovereignty of God’s law throughout the world,’ through Iran’s Army and the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps.”
[snip]
The Islamic Republic may never have been able to realize this goal, but it has caused a great deal of trouble in attempting to do so. If it remains in power, it will keep on behaving the same way.
* Original Article:
The Islamic Republic of Iran’s Quest to Destroy the United States
