The Iranian Connection

Hello dear audience, today I welcome Dennis Horak to our podcast on. Dennis was our last Head of Mission in Iran until Canada broke relations with that country and retired after serving as Canadian Ambassador to Saudi Arabia.

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The Iranian Connection

From 1976 to 1978 I had the pleasure of serving at the Canadian Embassy in Iran. My posting coincided with the beginning of the revolution that culminated with the departure of the Shah in January 1979 and the arrival of the Ayatollah Khomeini in February.

During my time in Iran there were periodic terrorist attacks that the government blamed on Islamic Marxists – reflecting findings by their intelligence that the left had joined with the Islamists to drive out the regime.

Many students with whom I spoke were convinced that most Iranians would focus on democracy and thought that they were using the Ayatollah to foment the unrest required to unseat the Shah and create a democratic space.

Boy were they wrong.

Almost as soon as Khomeini’s plane touched down at Mehrabad Airport his forces began to isolate the leftists and plan their demise. The Islamists had been shaped and radicalized by a decade of hearing Khomeini’s taped speeches every Friday in mosques throughout the country and were ready to do his bidding.

By 1982, the Islamists were in full control of Iran and focusing on Khomeini’s stated objectives – the destruction of Israel, the Islamization of the world, and the destruction of the West. The leftists were either dead by the thousands or in exile.

Fast forward to today.

Last week the American Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines reported that Iran has been funding the current mass demonstrations and concomitant university occupations that have plagued the West since October 7^th.

This should come as no surprise to those who have followed Iran’s support for terrorism from Baghdad to Buenos Aires since the mid-eighties.

Crowds of Western students and demonstrators calling for sharia law, jihad and Islam underscores the extent to which Iran’s soft power has infected the West and, especially, our future “leaders” at elite universities and in leftist political parties.

At the same time, once again, the left has united with Islam to create an anti-Western synergy that is, in my opinion, a major threat to our way of life.

In France, Jean-Luc Melanchon’s leftist “Popular Front” sought to attract support by marching through the streets of France waving Palestinian and Hamas flags.

In Canada, the leftist New Democratic Party has joined forces with radical demonstrators and is toeing the Islamist line funded by Iran. They have been joined by the mayors and police chiefs of Montreal and Toronto and supported by the hapless university administrators who have taken nine months to begin apologetically dismantling a few of the occupation camps.

In the United Kingdom, the Labour Party has just assumed power, with a coterie of Islamists as members of parliament. The mayor of London and his police chief have let crowds rampage on the streets for nine months, only arresting those citizens with British flags or carrying signs against Islamism.

And in the U.S., leftist Democrats have come out in support of Iran and Islam and have accompanied the crowds that at times seem to have taken over the streets funded by Iran.

Am I being alarmist?

I simply invite you to look at the facts and look at media video reports.

The movement stopped being solely anti-Israeli almost at day one.

It has quickly evolved into support by Western students and leaders for the shibboleths of radical Islam with little awareness of or concern for the ultimate consequences of their action.

Meanwhile, the authorities tend to use “human rights” and “Islamophobia” as excuses to resist taking strong action, appearing to believe that radical Islam is playing on the same human rights field as are they.

They are wrong.

Iran continues to promote and fund radical Islam and will use the above tools to weaken the resolve of Western governments and societies while it continues to sink its tenterhooks into the minds of our students and our institutions.

Iran continues to subvert Western democracy and way of life through the creation of fifth columns in many countries as well as direct interference in Western politics and academia by its formidable intelligence agency and the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps.

Iran is not to be trusted.

Western sanctions must be tightened rather than loosened.

Frozen Iranian funds must be used to pay reparations to people and states that have suffered from Iranian aggression and not simply returned to Iran as some kind of reward when its behavior is anything but good.

The media should stop referring to the new president as “reformist” when in fact he has sworn to toe the party line and will continue to implement the dreadful policies of his predecessor known as the Butcher of Teheran.

Ayatollah Khameini continues to wield maximum power and, as long as he and his colleagues are in power, nothing will change.

 And that is why I see Iran as a clear and present danger.

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