Peace Through Strength: Defeating Iran’s Megalomania
By: Deji Yesufu
The latest news proceeding from the conflict between Iran and Israel is that the two countries have agreed to a ceasefire. America has forced the hands of the Iranians to admit to terms for a truce because that country has been sufficiently pummeled into submission by both Israel and the United States of America. In the past weekend, the United States sent their stealth B-2 bombers to Iran, and they destroyed all the nuclear sites owned by that one-upon-a-time Persian kingdom. This war has not been a war against Iran alone; it has also been a war waged against an evil and pervasive ideology that is resident within the American nation itself. That ideology has rightly been referred to as the Left. It was under the sitting-duck government of Joe Biden, which is ridden through and through by hardened leftists, that Iran developed very threatening nuclear capabilities. If Iran had developed nuclear powers, it would mean that for the first time in the history of our world, an Islamic militant country possessed nuclear weapons. The question many have been asking is this: why should America, Israel, and even Russia possess nuclear weapons, while Iran cannot? I will take some time to answer that question and then I will return to the subject of this article: maintaining world peace via strength.
The First and Second World Wars were wars that were fought over ideologies. The whole of Europe had come under varying degrees of socialist worldviews that had been propounded by Marx and Engels in the previous century. Some were far right and would prefer a communist government, while others were not too extreme and preferred a socialist position that had varying degrees of capitalism within it. The latter position was what Adolf Hitler took, but he extended the realization of his ideas to a murderous extent – when he began to posit that the Jews were the cause of the economic woes in the world then and that the German people were the foremost human race. At the close of the two conflicts: two political ideologies emerged into our world – America’s capitalism with a dose of socialism within it; and, Russia’s communism with a dose of capitalism in it. Most countries will not wage war with each other merely on ideological positions alone; they however need weapons to protect those ideas.
Therefore, both the American and the Soviet blocs of nations developed those weapons. The challenge however is not possessing the weapons but possessing the sense of responsibility to use it. When Harry S. Truman authorized the use of nuclear weapons on Japan in 1944, the United States had one of two options: it was either they brought the Second World War to a quick end by dropping a nuclear bomb on Japan, or they sent their men into that country to overthrow the government – with the risk of losing a million Americans in the process. Choosing the first option appeared easier, and that is what they did. When America was losing close to three hundred men a week in the Vietnam War, the nuclear bomb option was not mentioned. The point is simple: nuclear warheads can only be possessed by nations with responsible governments. Governments that are reeking of corruption; nations that cannot carry out free and fair elections; governments that are constituted with hardline Islamic fundamentalists; etc, cannot own nuclear weapons. It is as simple as that. So, while any kind of weapon can be developed by any country that has the capability to do it, some weapons cannot be owned by some countries because those countries do not have a responsible track record. Having made this point clear enough, we now return to the subject of peace through strength.
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The phrase “peace through strength” was first coined by the presidency of Ronald Reagan. Reagan came into American political life at a time when the country was floundering on many points in its foreign policies. It was under Reagan’s predecessor in office, Jimmy Carter, that Iran was overrun by Islamic Fundamentalists and the once great Persian nation was taken over by the Ayatollah. The year was 1979. America was also disgraced when staff of its embassy in Tehran were held hostage by supporters of the revolution for over a year. The Reagan presidency also had to deal with the question of Russia and the simmering Cold War between the two superpowers. Reagan’s doctrine of peace through strength meant that America would invest in military armament to the extent that no country in the world could rival it. Russia, as a competing superpower, also followed the United States in this quest. Unfortunately, the more resources the Russians invested in its military, the less money available for the economy. With time, suffering in Eastern Europe became unbearable – it led to the pulling down of the Berlin Wall, and the shattering of the USSR. America became the world’s sole superpower. America learnt from Reagan that war, the Cold War, in that case, can be won without even shooting a bullet. It is this doctrine of peace through strength that Donald Trump has introduced to the Israeli/Iranian conflict.
The biggest challenge right now is not the crisis in the Middle East. Eventually, the two sides will sheath their swords, and life will return to normal. The biggest problem that we have in our world today is the rise of a radical left ideology. At the heart of this movement is atheism – a hatred for the Christian religion and the whole connection it has historically with the nation of Israel. These are people who tell you that the God of the Bible is a blood-sucking demon because he ordered the killing of children in the Old Testament. They then link that to what is happening in Gaza and they say that a religion that champions the slaughtering of children is a religion of hate – and no one should heed such a religion. Unfortunately, in their haste to condemn religion, they lose the point of scripture. Time is divided between three epochs: the past, the present, and the future. The people that consist of our world today are both the living and the dead. Whatever you and I are doing, is a carryover from what others have done. There are no new concepts or new ideas. We build essentially upon what others have done. Therefore, whatever happens today is the consequence of what has happened yesterday.
There is no way we can talk about our world without talking about its origin, its maker, and the history behind the lives of our forefathers. God made the heavens and the earth. After God created Adam and Eve, sin crept into human life and has become part and parcel of how we live. The reality is that sin is so entrenched in some societies that if a new thing will begin with such a society, the people of that society will all have to be wiped away – including women and children, as hard as that may sound. This is why God often told his people in the Old Testament to wipe out whole communities. In our day and time, there is no need to wipe out whole communities to cleanse them of their evil ideologies. Such people can be educated and appealed to, and they may accept a new way of life, while they renounce the way of death. However, if these people persist in the way of death, they should not be surprised that death visits their community and some of their children suffer the consequences. Those who know Palestinian communities tell us that the chief doctrine these people teach their children is the eradication of Israel. If a doctrine of death is taught to a whole nation, that nation should not be surprised that death visits them.
Therefore, when the radical left joins up with Islamic fundamentalists to continue to perpetuate a doctrine of hate for the Jews, the very foundation of civilization, which is a Judeo-Christian one, is threatened. In its place will be the rise of the Christian God haters and the rise of Islamic fundamentalism. As it stands, the Iranian nuclear weapon efforts have only been set back a few years. Another leftist government will rise in America that will look the other way and will allow Iran to develop nuclear weapons. With nuclear weapons in the hands of Islamic fundamentalists, we all could begin to imagine what a nuclear holocaust would look like.
Deji Yesufu is the pastor of Providence Reformed Baptist Church Ibadan. He is the author of HUMANITY. He can be reached at [email protected]
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