WarSclerotic

One of the lowest points in Nobel Prize history — perhaps the lowest after the peace prize granted to arch-terrorist mass murderer Yasser Arafat — was the peace prize bestowed on Mohamed ElBaradei in 2005. ElBaradei, who served as the secretary-general of the International Atomic Energy Agency during the critical years of 1997 to 2009, is responsible for one of the greatest threats to world peace since Nazi Germany: the arming of fundamentalist jihadist Islam with weapons of mass destruction.

Over the last 20 years, Israel’s governments have been warning the world of the dangers of the nuclearization of Iran. But entrusting the IAEA with protecting the world from this danger was like trusting a cat to guard the cream. After having won the dispute with the U.S. over Saddam Hussein’s rumored possession of WMDs, the IAEA served as a global sedative, countering Israel’s warnings of the dangers of a nuclear Iran. ElBaradei’s emissaries and inspectors submitted to Iran, while Iran played them for fools with endless ploys aimed at buying time. That is how the IAEA became a central player in helping Iran to present Israel’s warnings as hysterical “crying wolf” and in paralyzing the Western world, preventing any decisive pre-emptive action.

And now, even the IAEA is becoming disillusioned. The agency’s latest reports confirm Israel’s repeated warnings over the years. And still, the world continues to respond lackadaisically and moderately, even though time is rapidly running out. U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s remarks at the Non-Aligned Movement summit in Tehran last week were decisive and sound, but the positive remarks were far outweighed by the negative impact of his very presence in Tehran, and his consorting with Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, which granted their leadership international legitimacy.

I am writing this column on the 73rd anniversary of the start of World War II — the most terrible of all wars. It was preceded by the world’s conciliatory attitude toward Hitler. This policy allowed Hitler to amass power to the point of endangering the entire world.

The biggest threat facing the world since Hitler is the rise of fundamentalist jihadist Islam. It is a movement drunk with power, possessed by a mad messianic demon, on a mission to take over the world and Islamize it. It is not one body, it is comprised of many sects that are at constant bitter odds with each other, but from a global and historic vantage point these differences are negligible in the face of the threat it poses to the future of humankind. Fundamentalist Islam has two main enemies: Israel is little Satan — a Jewish, democratic, modern, progressive, successful and thriving state, smack dab in the center of the Islamic region, seen as an intolerable Western provocation that must be eliminated. The big Satan — the U.S. — is the enlightened leader of the Free World, of Western civilization.

American society was subjected to fundamentalist Islam on Sept. 11, 2001 — the worst terror attack in the history of world terror that hit the U.S. in its soft underbelly. This attack was carried out with knives (!) and signified fundamentalist Islamic terror’s brazen absence of boundaries and morals. It was what Israeli society had been experiencing first hand during those days of terror attacks and suicide bombings along Israel’s streets.

The capital of fundamentalist Islam is Iran. Nuclear weapons in the hands of Tehran do not only pose an immediate threat to Israel, but to the entire Free World. It is the world’s duty to stand strong and to stop the Islamist madness and prevent Iran’s nuclearization.

The world has so far failed to deal with Iran’s burgeoning power, and there is no more room for delay. There is no more room for diplomacy that plays into the hands of the Iranian sham. The U.S. and the West must toughen sanctions on Iran immediately, imposing a total siege on its economy while presenting an ultimatum: Stop the nuclear program, or face military action in the near future.

If the Free World fails to do this, Israel will most likely have no choice but to take matters into its own hands and target Iran’s nuclear facilities.