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Frontpage Interview’s guest today is Michael A. Ledeen, a noted political analyst and a Freedom Scholar at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies. He is the author of The Iranian Time Bomb, Machiavelli on Modern Leadership and Tocqueville on American Character, and he is a contributor to The Wall Street Journal. His latest book is Accomplice to Evil: Iran and the War Against the West.
FP: Michael A. Ledeen, welcome back to Frontpage Interview.
I would like to talk to you today about how Iran is killing our troops and why nobody is really doing anything about it.
Share with us what is going on.
Ledeen: They have been killing Americans for 30 years. That’s what the chants of “Death to America!” are all about. From the Hezbollah suicide attacks on the US Embassy and Marine barracks in Beirut in the early 1980s, to the use of Iranian-made roadside bombs and mines in Iraq and Afghanistan by terrorists trained in Iran, to armed assaults against American troops by members of the Quds force, Iran is at war with us.
Every so often a military leader calls attention to this fact, but no publication, and no political leader, makes it a central theme of our national debate. Why? Because if you accept the fact that the Iranian regime is killing Americans almost every day, you are compelled to do something about it. And hardly anyone is willing to do anything effective. The only evil action by the mullahs that interests the West is the nuclear program, even though they have demonstrated very clearly that they don’t need nukes to murder and maim thousands of Americans.
FP: Why did Iran declare war on us? Why is it waging war on us? Is there anything we can do to get them to stop?
Ledeen: Declaring war on us is at the heart of the Iranian Revolution; war on the modern world was Khomeini’s dream. That’s why he called us The Great Satan. I don’t think we can talk them out of their core values. As Jonathan Swift said, you can’t reason a man out of something he didn’t reason himself into in the first place.
FP: Can you expand for us a bit on the process by which Iran kills our troops today? You mention Iranian-made roadside bombs and mines in Iraq and Afghanistan and armed assaults against American troops by members of the Quds force. Tell us some more what’s happening here.
Ledeen: Thousands of Americans have been killed and wounded. Those who plant the mines and bombs–the IEDs and the EFPs–are often trained by Iranians in Iran. And many of the suicide bombers are also trained by Iranians.
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