WHAT NOW?
Islam already has the bomb. How are How are Sunni nuclear weapons any less threatening than Shiite weapons?
Far from being moribund, Mohammedanism is a militant and proselytizing faith.
— Winston Churchill
For a while there seems to have been two wars in progress in the Levant; the war against Hamas/Hezbollah and then a joint US/Israeli blitz against Iran. Of the two, the 12 day campaign against Iran is arguably the more significant, unprecedented for a number of reasons beyond the obvious nuclear threat.
For many observers, the air campaign against Iran is just another episode in a larger “clash of civilizations,” that global archipelago of border blisters where Islamic irredentists rub against the secular, the democratic, and/or unbelievers of any stripe.
Islamic religio-political fascism is, if nothing else, perennial, persistent, and uncompromising. Albeit, we can all agree on the difficulty of recognizing 1600 years of Islamic history as a political continuum.
Withal, Iran is a known Shiite sponsor state for a number of proxy kinetic jihad actors including Hezbollah, Hamas, and the Houthis, just to name three. Heretofore, no developed Islamic sponsor state has been called to account for surrogate jihad or proxy terror. Indeed, after 9/11, the Bush administration and NATO pretty much ignored Saudi, Emirati, and/or Egyptian complicity with ISIS and al Qaeda terrorists, just as the US continues to ignore Pakistani support for Taliban terror and abuse in South Asia.
Alas, the most perplexing implication of the move against Iran, if it were not already obvious, is that America has come down on the Sunni side of the Islamic Shiite /Sunni schism.
There is good news and bad news.
The good news is that Israel and America, in an unprecedented combined operation, have now cemented their informal alliance in battle, if not blood. America now seems willing to act alone against selective Islamic state sponsors of terror who target Israel or America.
The bad news is that NATO and the EU have proved themselves to be impotent, if not useless, with threats from any variant of Islamism; whether the threat be immigration, terror, political sedition, proxy jihad, or even nuclear threats from A-list bad actors like Iran or Pakistan.
If Vladimir Putin believes that NATO is a paper tiger, he may be on to something.
Between NATO and the EU, those annual cocktail parties in Brussels and Davos might be the most expensive military/political charades in the history of utopian fantasies. Ironically, in the wake of last week’s NATO summit, EU hypocrites are celebrating the successful Israeli/American, bi-lateral strike on Iran.
Beyond the NATO fail, many questions remain.
How is an Islam bomb in Sunni Pakistani hands any less threatening than a nuclear weapon in Shiite Iranian hands? Given their proximity to Afghanistan, the world’s newest Sunni theocracy, the Paki janissary in Islamabad might be one bullet away from two theocracies in South Asia.
Think about a world where an Islamist political party, like the Taliban, acquires a ready-made nuclear arsenal. Unlike, Hezbollah, the Taliban already has one American scalp on their spear.
The problem with all small wars, like the most recent with Iran, is that they are tactical and operational, not strategic. Small wars allow alpha players in the West to take their eyes off the ball.
The strategic problem of Islamofascism is undiminished. Indeed, with Pakistan, Islam still has the bomb.
Those Shiite or Sunni labels are realpolitik distinctions without a difference if the subject is intifada, jihad, anti-Semitism or “death to America.” The perfect illustration was the barbarous proxy attack against Israel on 7 October where the mix of Islamic actors came from both sides Sunni Arab and Shiite schism.
The driver for jihad anywhere is a toxic religion, not race or nationality. Religion is the tie that binds. Both Shiite Hezbollah and Sunni Hamas made common cause against Israel in their most recent anti-Semitic depredations.
Most critics of Israel and America are loath to recognize Islam, a political religion, as a strategic threat. Indeed, the West, at large, refuses to even see the known financiers of Islamic jihad, countries like Iran and Saudi Arabia, as strategic threats.
The threat paradigm for America once included German fascism and then Russian totalitarianism. As a political theology, Islam is much more formidable. How many seditious immigrants are required to take any country in the Commonwealth or Europe with the vote?
Like a Ukraine under Zelensky, the first elections in Europe under Mohamed would probably be the last.
Indeed, as long as naïve American and European utopians see Islam as a morally equivalent theology or morally equivalent politics, then Mecca is poised to do to the West what could never have been done by force of arms in the last 1600 years. Immigration and the vote have already been Islamicized and weaponized in London, Paris, Berlin – and now New York City.
Islam and fascism are still trending.
Consistent and persistent naiveté are not necessarily the hobgoblins of small minds alone.
Originally published in the July,1925 edition of the New English Review.
G. Murphy Donovan is a retired USAF Intelligence officer who formerly served as the Senior USAF Intelligence research fellow at RAND Corporation and later at the Pentagon as the monitor of USAF Intelligence projects at RAND. Follow him on X.
