WarSclerotic

The claim that Iran has no territorial dispute with Israel is frequently voiced here. “Iran is 1,000 kilometers away, and makes no territorial claims on Israel,” experts write.

Is this really the case, though?

Twenty-five years ago, Iran instituted Al-Quds (Jerusalem) Day, which it marks every year on the last Friday of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. On this day, the motto is “Death to Israel” — a succinct and unambiguous call for the destruction of the Jewish state. On Al-Quds Day in 2013, “moderate” Iranian President Hassan Rouhani declared, “The Zionist regime has been a wound on the body of the Islamic world for years and the wound should be removed.”

The conflict is therefore over the entire territory of the State of Israel, over its very existence. Hatred of Israel is a pillar of the ayatollahs’ regime. In the foreword to his book “Hokumat-i Eslami” (“Islamic Government”), the late Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini wrote, “From the very beginning, the historical movement of Islam has had to contend with the Jews, for it was they who first established anti-Islamic propaganda and engaged in various stratagems, and as you can see, this activity continues down to the present.”

Khomeini noted that if Muslims had obeyed the divine ordinances to be prepared for war at all times, “a handful of Jews would not have dared to occupy our land and to burn and destroy Masjid Al-Aqsa [Al-Aqsa mosque].” In a sermon he delivered in Tehran, Khomeini said, “This regime, which controls Al-Quds, must be erased from the annals of history.”

For Iran, the State of Israel was established on Islamic lands, which it has the duty to liberate from the Zionist occupier. Israeli soldiers and civilians are one and the same, in the words of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah: “In occupied Palestine, there is no difference between a soldier and civilian, because they are all invaders, occupiers and usurpers of the land.”

In this school of thought, the conflict over the borders is fanatical; it entails wiping Israel from the map with no possible peaceful solution. Former Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad voiced that very sentiment: “Anybody who recognizes Israel will burn in the fire of the Islamic nation’s fury, and any Islamic leader who recognizes the Zionist regime means he is acknowledging the surrender and defeat of the Islamic world.”

The tip of the Iranian spear in this war against Israel is Hezbollah, which has sworn its allegiance to Iran’s supreme leader and openly aims to destroy the Jewish state. Even an atomic weapon is considered a legitimate tool with which to eradicate the Zionist entity. In this vein, former Iranian President Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani said: “If one day, the Islamic world is also equipped with weapons like those that Israel possesses now, then the imperialists’ strategy will reach a standstill, because the use of even one nuclear bomb inside Israel will destroy everything. However, it will only harm the Islamic world.”

Iran’s belligerent anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism does not perturb a Western world blinded by the fat contracts now available in Iran, following the lifting of economic sanctions. French President Francois Hollande, for example, despite his repeated vows to fight anti-Semitism, received Rouhani in Paris with the type of pomp reserved for kings, while the Italians covered ancient nude sculptures and removed wine from their menu, all to honor the distinguished Iranian guest.

There is real concern that the West is willing to sacrifice Israel on the altar of Iranian money. U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry confessed that unfrozen Iranian funds would be used to arm terrorists. And while Kerry said he had not yet seen evidence of this, Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Hossein Ansari said this month that Iran would continue to fund Hamas because “the war against Israel remains a primary objective of its policy.” Iran will also continue funding Hezbollah, through which it hopes to realize its dream of a Shiite Fertile Crescent stretching from Iran to Palestine, through Iraq, Syria and Lebanon.

Even if the odds of success are slim, Israel must launch a diplomatic offensive to repel this danger.

Dr. Ephraim Herrera is the author of “Jihad — Fundamentals and Fundamentalism.”