Iran the destabilizing factor in the Middle East and beyond.

Iran the destabilizing factor in the Middle East and beyond.

Iran is the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism and seeks one of the world’s most terrifying weapons: a nuclear bomb.

Iran also has developed the largest ballistic missile force in the Middle East, which poses a growing threat to U.S. bases, U.S. allies, and numerous other countries in the region.

The rogue regimes in Iran pose some of the most dangerous threats to U.S. national security interests. Iran is the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism and is rapidly expanding its nuclear program and ballistic missile force plus other offensive weapons and methods of terror. Regrettably, the Obama Administration has failed to formulate effective policies to address the challenges posed by the rising power of Iran and its unpredictable regime.

Iran has been hostile to the United States since 1979, when a revolution brought to power a cadre of anti-Western Shia Islamist revolutionaries who dubbed the United States the “Great Satan.” Iran has tried to export its Islamist revolution violently to Iraq, Yemen, Syria, Libya, Lebanon, Bahrain, Afghanistan, Gaza and Saudi Arabia by supporting Shia radical Islamists in each of these countries. Tehran helped to create the Hezbollah terrorist group in Lebanon and has supported a wide variety of terrorist and revolutionary groups throughout the Middle East. It became the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism to advance its foreign policy goals and punish its enemies.

In recent years, Iran’s hostile regime has been one of the chief beneficiaries of the political turmoil that convulsed the Middle East during the “Arab Spring,” which distracted the United States and other countries from the ongoing standoff over Iran’s nuclear program. The dramatic events diverted international attention from Tehran’s stubborn defiance of four rounds of U.N. Security Council sanctions resolutions on the nuclear issue. The political upheaval in the Arab world also has toppled a government in Egypt, and recreated a new government headed by Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, Iran undermined governments in Jordan, Bahrain, and elsewhere, that firmly opposed Iran. Although Bashar al-Assad’s pro-Iranian regime in Syria also has been weakened, strong support from Iran appears for the moment to have evened the balance of power in Syria’s civil war fueled by Assad.

Some of the consequences has been the growth of ISIS and its goal for a Caliphate Dominion. The horrific pictures of beheadings and atrocities that defy human comprehension, only awaken our resolve to stop terror and violence before it engulfs the whole world and threaten our own survival.

U.S must force the halt of Iran’s nuclear weapons program. Washington must do a better job of enforcing its red line against an Iranian nuclear weapon than it did in enforcing the Obama Administration’s ill-considered red line against Syrian chemical weapons. Tehran must be forced by additional sanctions to comply with its non-proliferation obligations. The U.S. must demonstrate the willingness and capacity to defend its vital interests in the region. The U.S. should not agree to lift or ease anymore sanctions until Iran has taken concrete and irreversible actions to stop uranium enrichment, ship medium-enriched uranium stocks out of the country, close the uranium enrichment facility at Fordow, and halt work on the heavy water reactor at Arak and other location in Iran or its accomplices.

Imagine Iran with nuclear capability and some terrorists getting a hold off a backpack with a nuclear device or dirty bomb and detonating it in the middle of Times Square in New York or any other congested area with hundreds of thousands in casualties. Do you think the American people will tolerate such a potential threat.

I think 9-11 has shown to the American people that threats and weapons of mass destruction in the possession of terrorists is a national threat to America and the rest of the free world.

It is time for the free world to take the gloves off and treat the threat with utmost force and cleanse the terrorists and its sponsors from existence.