An Iranian Doomsday Scenario
A high-pitched spate of hate-filled threats issued from Tehran in the last four days. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was the shrillest, with yet another call for Israel’s destruction and the expulsion of its Jewish inhabitants to Europe.
The influential secretary of Iranian Supreme National Security Council, lead nuclear negotiator Ali Larijani claimed that US special services were using the territories of Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan “against Iran.”
If an American military operation were to be launched, he said, Iran may respond with an attack on the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline and the oil facilities in Azerbaijan.
Supreme ruler Ayatollah Ali Khamenei went all the way:
“American interests around the world will be harmed if America launches an attack against Iran,” he said. “The Iranian nation will respond to any blow with double the intensity,” he thundered.
DEBKA-Net-Weekly usually prefers to confine itself to facts and their analysis. But this exceptional outbreak of verbal saber-rattling has prompted our Iranian sources and experts to draw on their insights and foresight for a scenario that posits the potential effects of Iran’s acquisition of a nuclear weapons capability – a prospect more realistic than ever before – on the Gulf, the Middle East and Iran itself.
THE SCENARIO
A Grand Announcement
Iran’s Supreme Ruler proclaims the Islamic Republic’s success in producing a nuclear weapon at the climax of a prayer ceremony at Tehran’s grand mosque broadcast live on radio and television.
He chooses the ritual marking the birthday of the Shiite Muslims’ holiest saint, Imam Ali (which falls on August 8 in 2006).
The diminutive Ahmadinejad stands beaming at Ayatollah Khamenei side wearing a Palestinian keffiya round his neck.
Khamenei breaks into his sermon to deliver the bombshell:
“On the birthday of the Prophet who bestowed on Islam the spirit of battle and withstood the injustices of the world, I bear glad tidings: with the help of valiant and vengeful Allah, a nuclear bomb reposes in our arsenal ready for the task of annihilating the enemies of Islam and safeguarding the only Islamic state in the world.
“Our heroic scientists, aided by the Mahdi and Islam, have succeeded in making a deterrent weapon, such as was possessed until this moment only by infidels and the enemies of mankind”
A pre-arranged gun salvo thunders over Tehran and Iranian cities. It is the cue for many thousands of citizens, Revolutionary Guards Force troops and Bassij volunteers to surge into the streets singing revolutionary hymns and shouting Marg bar Amrika, Marg bar Esrail, Estekbar-e Jahani – Death to America! Death to Israel and to the Jews of the World!
Demonstrations of joy erupt spontaneously in Beirut and southern Lebanon.
Victory marches are staged in the Gaza Strip by the Tehran-funded Jihad Islami.
Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood launches similar rallies, which are quickly dispersed by security forces.
The Shiite towns of Pakistan join the rejoicing, while prayers of thanksgiving are given up in the mosques of the Shiite holy cities of Najef and Karbala in Iraq and the Shiite suburbs of Baghdad.
Iran’s national celebrations go on for seven days.
On Day Two, Ahmadinejad tells the world that Iran has brought to completion the development of the advanced Shahab-4 missile capable of carrying a nuclear warhead to a distance of 4,000-km to the big cities of central Europe.
Defense minister Mohammad Mostafa Najjar and Revolutionary Guards chief Yahya Rahim Safavi jointly tell a news conference the missile’s range will soon be extended to 5,000 km and reach as far as West Europe.
Gulf States destabilized
Two days later, Iran announces its coming seizure of Bahrain – half of whose inhabitants are of Iranian origin and some Farsi-speaking. Its spokesmen accuse the Arabs of handing the island to the forces of “world arrogance” (US and the West), an act of treason against Islamic Iran.
Iranian agents start fomenting riots in the Shiite regions of northeastern Arabian Peninsula where most of Saudi Arabia‘s oil wealth is concentrated.
From Kuwait, Tehran demands that citizens of Iranian origin be awarded a license for separate political activity and appropriate parliamentary representation.
Iraq‘s Shiite parties and factions are directed to embark on subversive operations to drive the US army out of the country.
Iranian intelligence agents meanwhile hand out extra arms, explosives and money to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi’s terrorists and the Sunni insurgents to boost their offensive against US troops.
Iranian Revolutionary Guards’ naval commando units carry out hit-and-run attacks on US vessels in Persian Gulf waters and ports. All units of the US Army in the Persian Gulf region go on high alert.
Qatar and Dubai are engulfed with violent unrest stirred up by Iranian agents and inhabitants. As casualties rise, Tehran demands that local security forces in the two emirates desist from operations to quell the disturbances and put on trial any officers who harm Iranian nationals.
Syria is drawn into the nuclear cycle
Tehran shoots a second nuclear bolt a week after the first.
Production has begun of nuclear shells, some of which will be transferred to Syria for the nuclear cannons to be supplied that country, runs the official statement from the Iranian capital. This weapons system is to be deployed in South Lebanon up against the Israeli border, with a warning to Israel that military action against the nuclear-armed artillery will elicit an Iranian missile attack on the Jewish state.
Tehran simultaneously launches a diplomatic offensive.
A sharp note of complaint is posted to the UN Secretary General charging that Muslims are being persecuted in the countries of western Europe, specifically France, Germany and Britain, with a demand that the victimization stop.
A propaganda campaign is also launched against alleged suppression in the United States of the rights of Muslims, Blacks, and immigrants.
A few days after the world is informed of Iran’s nuclear bomb, oil prices soar to $120 per barrel. Ahmadinejad announces that this price is still below the just level and member governments of the OPEC oil cartel are directed to cut production until the price reaches $150.
Massacre of Israelis is justified under Islamic tenets
The secretary-general of the International Organization for the Support of the Palestinian Resistance, Ali Akbar Mohtashami-Pour, declares that Iran and the Muslims of the world may not stand by for “the Zionist crimes of targeted assassinations and the killing of women and children in Palestinian territories.”
Mohtashami-Pour enjoys high prestige as the founder of the Lebanese Shiite terror group Hizballah during his stint as Iranian ambassador to Damascus.
The hardline president’s mentor, the extremist Ayatollah Meba-Yazdi, adds his dispensation: While Islam forbids the resort to weapons of mass destruction for genocide, he rules that the cases of Israel, which possesses such weapons, and the enemies of Islam, which threaten Iran with nuclear arms, leave Tehran no choice but to manufacture such a bomb. The fiery cleric judges this exception to be in keeping with the Islamic injunction: strike first to kill the enemy before he kills you.
Contingency plans
While still part of the Scenario, the contingency plans mocked up here are not too different from the plans already sitting in the drawers of Ali Khamenei’s advisers and the staff generals of the Revolutionary Guards and military. They are kept ready as punishment for an American or Israeli preventive nuclear strike against Iran’s weapons program.
In view of the climate of extreme rancor prevailing now, those plans may no longer repose in the bottom drawers of the desks of Iran’s decision-makers…
The projected punitive blows would include:
1. The bombardment of Israel’s Dimona reactor.
2. A nuclear attack on Tel Aviv.
3. The scuttling of ships in the Straits of Hormuz, so blocking this bottleneck waterway to oil tankers carrying Persian Gulf oil out to export markets.
4. Sabotage of the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline carrying Central Asian oil to the Turkish terminal and of Azerbaijan‘s oil facilities (actually threatened this week).
5. Air and missile strikes against US and British military camps and installations in Iraq and Afghanistan.
6. Guerilla, missile and other attacks on US Sixth Fleet and coalition naval units deployed in the Persian Gulf.
7. An ultimatum to Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan to shut down American bases and close their air space to US flights.
8. A similar warning to Turkey.
9. A threat from Tehran to counter any military attack with a nuclear bombardment of all America’s friends, and a vow to set the entire world ablaze.
10. On orders from Tehran, unidentified groups kidnap American citizens in Lebanon, Iraq and Bahrain.
11. Another set of orders sends Tehran’s Kurdish agents in northern Iraq and Shiite operatives in the south on a bombing rampage of oil pipelines and installations. Iraq’s oil exports are brought to a total halt
12. Iran activates its terrorist and subversive networks in Europe and the United States, using al Qaeda’s infrastructure.
13. Iranian authorities launch a crackdown on potential dissidents.
Khamenei exploits the popular jubilation over the disclosure of a nuclear bomb capability to ban human rights groups, including Amnesty, as well as UN and European Union agencies.
Ahmadinejad declares war on the “anti-Islam enemy threatening the regime from within” and calls on “believers to vent their fury to burn them.”
This is the signal for the wholesale liquidation of Iran’s opposition groups.
