Taking Offence : U.S. Harming Iranian Sensibilities

"Repugnant WH statement & Senate sanctions as Iranians counter terror backed by U.S. clients."
"Iranian people reject such U.S. claims of friendship."
Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif

"There is this belief in the world that Saudi Arabia is the ideological source of these terrorist movements, but it is too soon to say Saudi Arabia was behind the attack because we don't want to make statements without evidence."
Mahmoud Alavi, Iranian Intelligence Minister

Members of the Iran’s Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) secure the area outside the Iranian parliament during an attack on the complex in the capital Tehran on June 7, 2017. (Photo by AFP)

Official Iran speaks disparagingly of President Donald Trump's note of condolence over the double attacks in Tehran, tinctured with his aside warning that violence begets violence: "We underscore that states that sponsor terrorism risk falling victim to the evil they promote". One of the more coherent and spot-on statements to issue from this man's mouth. And as such, calling the Islamic Republic of Iran the spade that it is.

This is, after all, the very same administration in Tehran that speaks of the "Great Satan", the United States, and the "Little Satan", Israel. And when it comes to conspiring against them, and in the process hoping to do each great harm in the process through of course, a terrorist agenda, Iran has few equals.

The former, a country of huge power and influence that Tehran imagines itself capably matching in both power and influence, the latter an insignificant irritant on the local scene that the Republic plans at some future date to extinguish through the kind of violence that would ensure no Jews would be left to call the State of Israel their very own.

Although Tehran is fond of stating that the Holocaust is a figment of Jewish imagination, the Islamist theocracy aspires to destroy what the Nazis did not. Who now recalls that Nazi Germany, proud of its Aryan status, acknowledged Iran in that category? Both Nazi Germany and Shiite Iran shared a hatred of Jews; fascists have that in common.

Iran is also one of four countries in the Middle East -- comprised of Turkey, Iraq, Iran and Syria -- hosting a large Kurdish population. That Kurdish population lives, in fact, within the historical geography that was always Kurdish; it is the border nations of Turkey, Iraq, Iran and Syria that have absorbed Kurdish territory, calling it their own. And the millions of Kurds -- an estimated 40 million in all -- that has been cheated out of their sovereign territory, ruled by others and who despite the Kurdish desperation for recognition, refuse to surrender that land back to greater Kurdistan.

Little wonder, then, that Iran, which formed, trained and armed Shiite Lebanese to become a death-loving terrorist group which they use as their own non-state militia, is affronted that Kurds living in Iran, their needs ignored by the government are as restive as the Kurds in Turkey, determined to regain their historical lands. Some of whom joined the Sunni terrorist group Islamic State to fight Shiites. And then with the experience they gained in Syria and Iraq, returned to Iran as a potential threat, under watch by Iranian intelligence.

Which, though it claims to have apprehended earlier terrorist plots, evidently had little advance warning of the two that transpired on June 7th when the seat of government and the tomb of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini were attacked by five gunmen who managed to kill 17 Iranians and  wound an additional 52. Security forces responding to the attacks killed the five men after they opened fire and created violent havoc.

Since then hundreds of Kurds under suspicion have been detained, and Iranian authorities claim to have killed the commander and planner of the attacks.

A gunman entering Iranian parliament building June 7, 2017, Tehran, Iran. © IRIB / Reuters

The Iranian government speaks of the attackers as "long affiliated with the Wahhabi", identifying them as having been influenced by the Salafist form of Sunni Islam that Saudi Arabia holds dear. Along with the five men there was a female who blew herself up as a suicide bomber at the Khomeini mausoleum. While another woman was captured, held as a participant in the attacks, and was being interrogated. Her fate can most certainly be guessed at with a fair amount of accuracy; torture, then an unfortunate death due to some mysterious and fatal medical condition.

Tehran June 9, 2017. © Atta Kenare / AFP

So, robust calls for "Death to America!", "Death to the Zionist entity!", have now been joined with "Death to the Kurds!", in Iran. None of these imprecations are held by the Iranian regime to be outside the bounds of polite nation-to-nation diplomacy. So the reaction of the regime to the U.S. president's note of condolence with its little addendum is fairly amusing in an absurdly dark, sinister way that reflects the peculiarly illogical and deadly mindset of revolutionary Iran.