From day one of the Islamic revolution in Iran the United States has been referred to as the Great Satan. Any student of history can probably tell you why this happened. Simply put, unstable governments need outside boogeymen upon whom guilt for failures can be blamed. Agents of this boogeyman will operate inside the country in an attempt to bring down the rightful rulers; so say the Theocrats. Thus, restrictive measures must be put in place to counter such influences and anyone who resists these measures must, then, by right of “Post hoc ergo propter hoc” be agents of the boogeyman or as he is known in Iran, the Great Satan (Sheytân-e Bozorg).
Having an outside enemy with internal agents is not new to Iran. It is as old as totalitarian governments whether, kingdoms, empires, or repressive republics. In “1984” Eric Blair (George Orwell) describes well the process of how having an outside boogeyman keeps the populace under control. Sometimes the threat is real but even then it will be overstated by the government. By hyping the threat in the minds of the populace the government can justify any number of repressions of individualism and privileges like free speech or assembly or protection against arrest without due process.
Most governments that rely on external boogeymen also have internal secret police who remove the “agents” of those boogeymen. In many cases throughout history the internal threat has been the Jews. In 1903 Russian intelligence (Okhrana) created the “Protocols of the Elders of Zion” and covertly published and distributed it throughout Europe as the Jewish plot to control the world making, then, every Jew, an agent of an international conspiracy. Hence, both the outside and internal threat. Hitler used the “Protocols…” to justify some of the early actions he took against the Jews in Germany. Even today the “Protocols…” are used as evidence of a world-wide Jewish conspiracy. This even though we know them to have been created by the Okhrana.
Sometimes the external threats are real. Sit quietly and think about history and you’ll come up with any number of existential threats where sovereign states have faced absorption or destruction over a long period of time from a larger neighbor or international conspiracy (oh yes they do exist, think Comintern). Intriguing to think that the Okhrana invented the “Protocols…” in 1903 trying to ignite Europe against the Jews and at the very same time in Whitefield Chapel on Tottenham Road in London the Bolshevik Marxists were emerging from the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party. The Bolsheviks would be dominated by Jewish members and it truly was a conspiracy to overthrow the Government of Russia. For example, with the exception of Lenin senior members of the Bolshevik government installed in Russia who were Jewish were: Leon Trotsky headed the Red Army and was initially the chief of Soviet foreign affairs. Yakov Sverdlov was both the Bolshevik party’s executive secretary and – as chairman of the Central Executive Committee – head of the Soviet government. Grigori Zinoviev headed the Communist International (Comintern), the central agency for spreading revolution in foreign countries. Other prominent Jews included press commissar Karl Radek, foreign affairs commissar Maxim Litvinov, Lev Kamenev and Moisei Uritsky.
So, in essence the Okhrana got it right with one exception, it wasn’t a group of Religious Jews led by Rabbis who were seeking world domination, it was a group of secular Jews.
Consider that aside as just a little of what people don’t know about events today being directly affected by events of yesterday. But we can do a little extrapolation and note how the Soviets always used the West and the U.S. in particular as their boogeyman. That’s because they didn’t want a peaceful coexistence but rather world domination and had to have something to push against. So too, was Iran’s plan for regional domination and installation of a number of vassal Islamic republics in the Middle East and Africa including Syria, Yemen, Palestine, Qatar and Sudan. These countries would surround the Sunni Kingdom of Saudia Arabia and also isolate the Kingdom of Jordan which could be undermined by it’s overwhelming Palestinian population. The ultimate goal was a Shia Caliphate in the Middle East centered in Iran. All previous caliphates have been Sunni so this was tremendously ambitious on the part of the Iranian mullahs. For this reason they needed nuclear weapons and a ballistic missile capability.
Standing in their was was, as always Israel, which must be destroyed, and the Great Satan had until recent U.S. administrations stood firmly with Israel. Given the solidarity of anti-Israeli sentiment within member states of the United Nations and support from Russia and China there was a reasonable expectation of success within a decade more of pressing the issue.
However, it looks like Israel, with the backing of the Great Satan, has managed to subdue Hezbollah, Hamas, the Houthis and the Palestinian movement, thus depriving Iran of their means of making proxy war. Now Iran itself is in the crosshairs of the “demons from hell” and the idea of a Shia Caliphate is imitating Margaret Mitchell’s one and only novel.
“So let it be written, so let it be done.” Said an earlier opponent of Yahweh’s people. (Hint: Pharaoh to Moses or Yul Brenner to Charlton Heston).