Ayatollah Khamenei: "Set Israel on Fire."

3 February 2013: It is interesting how the Jerusalem Post announces one thing with its headline, yet the article launches into a discussion of something that is actually benign in comparison.

As if the EU's non-recognition of the Shi'a Hezbollah as a terrorist organization compares to what the Ayatollah has decreed as his personal mission twelve years ago.

In the first place, Hezbollah has from its first day of existence been an integral part of the armed forces of the Islamic Republic of Iran. Since its founding by Hassan Nasrallah in 1982 Hezbollah has been a a forward deployed branch of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC). The EU's failure to identify them as a terrorist organization seems a rather minor and blatant moot point, does it not? More than that, it's a patently stupid thing to be discussing at such a high-level think-tank of "global experts" in a conference setting.

Then, however, if you click the link to the main article URL you do get to the heart of the real issue facing the world-at-large and Israel in particular for the past twelve years.

Allow me to paraphrase two paragraphs of the article with all due emphasis:

Rafael Bardaji, is a former special adviser to former Spanish Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar. Bardaji, who attended a 2001 meeting between PM Aznar and Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, said when Khamenei was asked what his role within the Islamic Republic is he responded: “To set Israel on fire.”

It is a point of fact that Western leaders and other assorted talking heads are on record saying that they are waiting for hard evidence that Ayatollah Khamenei has issued a decree, a nuclear weapons fatwa, to Iranian scientists for the construction of nuclear weapons before launching preemptive military counter-measures.

It is not obvious to these Western leaders that the Ayatollah's response to former Spanish PM Aznar twelve years ago was the decree they have been so patiently waiting for? Is there some ambiguity in Iran pursuing nuclear weapons capability and the Ayatollah's stated role of "setting Israel on fire?"

The Iranian leadership, from the Ayatollah on down to his sock-puppet Ahmadinejad, will on a day-to-day basis to Western media and Muslims alike refer to Israel as the "Zionist entity." However, when they are being deliberate and direct in their comments they refer to Israel as Israel. Iranian intentions as decreed by Ayatollah Khamenei  in 2001 could not be more crystal clear.

The time for "coercive diplomacy" with Iran was over before it began. Military action against Iranian nuclear designs is now fully twelve years past its due date.