Showdown with Iran? Jerome Corsi warns events unfolding toward confrontation - CSPAN

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In a Heritage Foundation address to be broadcast on C-Span, author Jerome Corsi warned events are unfolding that likely will lead to a showdown with Iran this year.

The United States and Europe are working toward peaceful change, but President Bush has said he will not accept another promise from Tehran to not build nuclear weapons unless it's accompanied by specific actions, said Corsi, author of "Atomic Iran: How the Terrorist Regime Bought the Bomb and American Politicians."

"That will probably produce a confrontation," he told guests of the Washington think tank.

The speech, which can be viewed here, also will be broadcast three times this weekend on C-Span. READ MORE

Corsi said President Bush's approach is that if Iran is serious about not producing nuclear weapons, it will destroy its centrifuges, heavy water plant and missiles that can deliver nuclear warheads, much as South Africa did.

But the author believes an agreement with Europe is not likely, sending the issue to the U.N. Security Council.

Israeli attack?

Then, Corsi foresees Israel launching a pre-emptive strike.

"I call it the 'Samson option' in the book ['taking down the temple around you'], because Israel cannot afford to wake up one day and find out Iran has nuclear weapons by seeing a mushroom cloud over Tel Aviv," he said. "They won't tolerate that risk."

Responding to a question, Corsi acknowledged the Iranians "have made it extremely difficult" for Israel, with more than 300 nuclear-related facilities.

"The government of Israel, from everything I can detect, has no enthusiasm for attacking Iran," Corsi said. "If it comes to it, it will be because the government is convinced that someday, in the lying and cheating the mullahs have done, they can no longer risk that Iran has reached the point of no return where they have everything necessary to make a bomb."

If Israel does attack, he said, it probably would target about 10 facilities in an air strike carried out in conjunction with the United States.

"We'd probably support it," Corsi said. "We've stated, the president has stated repeatedly, that Israel has a right to defend itself, and I believe we would accommodate Israel in that right."

What Iran would do in retaliation is not clear.

"It could be an extremely volatile situation," he said. "We ourselves have troops in the area that could be attacked even with conventional missiles by Iran."
Obviously no one wants a military solution, Corsi said, but if Iran gets nuclear weapons, it is distinct from other armed nations because of its history of "suicidal terrorism."

"If they do get nuclear weapons, you can count on it, just count the days down, there will be a nuclear war in our time, and the explosions will include Tel Aviv and cities in the United States."

25 years of lying

In his speech, Corsi argued Iran's insistence that its nuclear program is only for its energy needs is implausible.

"Iran is sitting on approximately one-fourth of the world's proven reserves of natural gas and oil," he pointed out. "Nuclear energy is a more expensive form of energy; one that the country does not need to go into the development of."

Even the U.N.'s International Agency for Atomic Energy has admitted that for 25 years Iran has been lying about its nuclear technologies capability.

Last week, it was reported the Iranian Republic secretly had purchased cruise missiles from the Ukraine capable of holding nuclear warheads.

Iran also has tested its Shahab-3 missile, which can fly 1,700 fast and accurately -- more than enough range to reach Tel Aviv.

"They have constantly been lying about their enrichment of uranium," Corsi said. "They have got one of the largest abilities to enrich uranium in the Middle East, including a heavy water plant whose main purpose is to produce plutonium."

200 million casualties

Corsi pointed out the cleric-led regime has said it's willing to take 200 million casualties in the world as long as a nuclear conflagration ultimately destroyed the state of Israel.

They mean it when they say "death to Israel" and "death to the United States," he said.

"Their rabid anti-Semitic Jewish hatred is almost identical to what we saw from Hitler, and with Hitler we had a holocaust that killed 6 million Jews and a World War that killed at least another 60 million."

Meanwhile, Corsi said, the mullahs are operating as a Mafia and living in luxury.

"They have offshore contracts where they're raking off oil profits and sharing them in many cases with their friends in Europe," he said. "They've bought for themselves and their families and their adult children high-rise luxury apartments in the United Arab Emirates. They have their bank accounts, private bank accounts stacked away in Syria or in Europe. At the same time, the average person in Iran is living on less than a dollar a day."

Corsi said, "$200 million a day to these mullahs are going to their personal enrichment, the development of nuclear weapons, and putting money into the United States in the various ways it gets here to buy legitimacy, to have our politicians say that we can work with them, to argue that they should be given nuclear fuel because it's their right as a nation."

Call for civil disobedience

Corsi noted he's part of the newly formed Iran Freedom Foundation, designed to carry out his book's call for peaceful change in Iran.

The foundation has produced a television commercia that will be launched this weekend with the hope of raising funds to enable further distribution.

Corsi also is developing means to take the message to Iran via radio, television and the Internet. He was on a radio station last weekend, run by an Iranian American, that reached an estimated 5 million in Iran.

The audience "heard the appeal that there are Americans who care; that what happened in Lebanon could happen in Tehran, and we could see peaceful change here. It could happen."

He announced a May 16 rally at the Liberty Bell in Philadelphia calling for freedom in Iran.

Corsi will join others in a 128-mile walk to Washington, D.C., as a demonstration to people in Iran of Americans' commitment.

On each day of the march, an update will be broadcast live to Iran expected to reach an estimated 40 million people.

"We're going to call for, on the 17th of June, civil disobedience -- hundreds of thousands of people to come to the streets in Iran and say: No, we won't vote."
The aim is "to show the world that this illegitimate regime cannot survive by depending on its ability to buy off American politicians, to use public relations, and to convince the world with fancy dinners in French restaurants that it's a legitimate regime that deserves to be worked with."