Mark Dankof's America

     Philip Giraldi’s post on Iran for the American Conservative Defense Council, is laced with wisdom.

     Perhaps the most significant portion of the piece is his reminder of how laughable it is that any of the candidates in the June 12 Iranian elections are depicted as reformers or advocates of anything approaching Western concepts of law, jurisprudence, democracy, human rights, or freedom of expression.

     Ahmadinejad, of course, is the subject of absolute demonization in mainstream Western media. Yet his opponents include Mir Hossein Mousavi, historically an IRI hardliner, whose credentials include the beginning of Iran’s nuclear program, an assist in the founding of Hezbollah, and a possible role in directing the attack on the US Marines at the US Embassy in Beirut in the early 1980s. Giraldi states that Mousavi is "heir to the corrupt Iran of the post-revolutionary period when the country was looted by the senior clerics cooperating with the business class, the bazaaris." Mousavi’s money man is The Shark, former Majlis speaker Ali Akbar Hashemi Rasfanjani, the international poster-boy for IRI corruption and intrigue, whose role on the Guardians Council, the Assembly of Experts, and the Expediency Council, has been one of suppressing any freedom of speech or truly independent elections in Iran for decades.

     The Iranian people fare no better with the other main rivals in the June 12^th election, "reformist cleric" [the ultimate oxymoron used with a straight face in the June 25^th Wall Street Journal] Mehdi Karroubi; and former commander of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards military force, Mohsen Rezaie. These men all have one thing in common. They are clearly crooks and thugs.

     The basic problem in Iran is not any of the personalities involved in the current electoral controversy. The core issue is the doctrine of velayat-e-faqeh, or "guardianship of the jurist", which holds that in an Islamic state, a scholar of Islamic law, anointed by God, must exercise absolute authority over elected officials and the entirety of government. As pointed out in the June 26^th edition of the Wall Street Journal, the theocratic theology of velayat-e-faqeh was formulated by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini in a 1970 tome authored in the Iraqi city of Najaf, the traditional center of Shiite learning. It has plagued Iran since 1979.

     The core task for the Iranian people is to rid themselves of velayat-e-faqeh, even as the world needs a simultaneous disenfranchisement of the Temple Mount kooks in Israel, and the Armageddon-oriented sickos in America’s Christian Right, who believe that promotion of the apocalyptic visions of Avigdor Lieberman is a necessary precursor to a desired Third World War which subsequently paves the way for the Second Coming of Jesus Christ. The lesson in each of these instances is the same: theocracy is a dangerous concept, especially in the nuclear age. It does not matter whether it comes in Islamic, Jewish/Zionist, or Christian guises. It is inherently demonic, regardless of the package wrapping. Its endgame is repression, destruction, and death on a global scale.

     What then, is the alternative to velayat-e-faqeh? Clearly the doctrine’s demise must be accompanied by the elimination of the Guardians Council, Expediency Council, Assembly of Experts, and other IRI institutions designed to maintain economic and political power in the hands of the mullahs, enshrouded in the evil illusion that God has spoken through these institutions and the men who cynically wield the sword through them. No serious political reform in Iran is possible aside from this step as the foundation for anything that subsequently transpires.

     But beyond this critical move, what will then follow?

     No one presently knows, including this commentator. But my own preliminary proposal for the Iranian people would involve the re-establishment of two institutions–the 2,500 year old Persian monarchy, and a truly secular, independent Majlis operating free of theocratic restraints.

     This proposal has several critical caveats attached. Pahlavi must be able to seriously convince his people and the world, that a revived monarchy can be compatibilized with a legitimate parliamentary system reflecting mass popular will in clean elections. The wielding of absolutist monarchial power as a viable substitute for velayat-e-faqeh, is a notion to be deemed dead-on-arrival. Can he convince the domestic Iranian electorate and expatriate communities? It remains to be seen.

     The final caveat is even more critical. Iranians across the political spectrum, including the monarchists, must diametrically oppose any Israeli and/or American neo-conservative military intervention and intelligence intrigue in Iran, advocated by a dangerous element in the Western media and a Jewish-dominated American Congress.

     On this latter score, the documented Israeli PAC money funding American politicians, and chronicled by Hugh Galford in the May/June Washington Report on Middle East Affairs (WRMEA), suggests that millions of Americans would be well served to worry about the legitimacy and independence of their own government, and its severance from a foreign lobby more than happy to use corrupt amounts of cash, media manipulation, and provable espionage, to further policies designed to destroy what was once the old American Republic.

Mark Dankof (San Antonio)

Dr. Jerome Corsi and Mark Dankof will be the guests of Sarbazan's Shirin Neshat on the Los Angeles-based Ariamehr TV show.
 
The telecast will air live on Sunday, June 21st, on the GLWiz.com  Internet television network.  The broadcast time is 11 am to 1 pm Pacific/1 pm to 3 pm Central/2 pm to 4 pm Eastern time.
 
Dr. Corsi has an earned Ph. D. from Harvard University, is a correspondent with World Net Daily, and has authored the best seller Atomic Iran.  Mark Dankof is the host of Mark Dankof's America on the Republic Broadcasting Network, and is an occasional guest contributor to the American Free Press.  A past activist in the Republican Party, Mr. Dankof was the Constitution Party's candidate in the U. S. Senate race in Delaware in 2000.  His father, the late Colonel Karl E. Dankof (USAF-ret.), was a director of logistics for Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi's Imperial Iranian Air Force in the 1970s.

Michael Collins Piper, Mark Dankof, and Mark Glenn at the No More Wars for Israel Conference/Oct 2007/Atomic Ballroom/Orange County, California