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May 19, 2024

The Iranian president’s helicopter crashed. God? Bad luck? The Mossad?

By Andrea Widburg

News broke a few hours ago that the helicopter carrying Iranian president Ebrahim Raisi and his foreign minister, Hossein Amirabdollahian, has crashed in the mountainous, wooded terrain of Eastern Azerbaijan, with a search ongoing for the crash site. Sometimes bad things happen, but when the President of Iran’s helicopter crashes, and his foreign minister was on the copter, too, one wonders if it's more than coincidence. People are already wondering whether this was an accident or something more.

It’s no secret that Iran is a worldwide state funder of terrorism. Along with Qatar, it’s the money behind both Hezbollah and Hamas, which are fighting Israel from the East and the North. Violence in the Middle East would be dramatically diminished if Iran’s bankroll were cut off. The same is true for the military support it provides in terms of weapons, training, and strategy.

But it’s not just Israel that’s a target of Iranian malevolence. Since 1979, Iran’s battle cry has been “Death to America.” The official government policy is that it is in an existential war with the United States. Israel is the “Little Satan,” while America is the “Great Satan.”

For forty-five years, the Iranian people, once the most sophisticated, successful Muslim people in the world, have been laboring under the Mullahs’ fanatic yoke. And when I say “fanatic,” I mean that. The Shia faith is an apocalyptic faith that waits for the return of the hidden or missing Imam:

The Shia call all the male descendants of the Prophet Muhammad “imams” and ascribe to them a quasi-divine status. Hussein, who was killed at Karbala by Yazid, was the third Imam. His son and grandson were the fourth and fifth. At the end of this line, there is the “Twelfth Imam,” who is named Muhammad.

Some call him the Mahdi (the “divinely guided one”). He was born in 869, the only son of the eleventh Imam. In 874, he disappeared without a trace, thereby bringing Muhammad’s lineage to a close. In Shia mythology, however, the Twelfth Imam survived. The Shia believe that he merely withdrew from public view when he was five and that he will emerge from his “occultation” in order to liberate the world from evil.

[snip]

According to Shia tradition, legitimate Islamic rule can only be established following the twelfth imam’s reappearance.

Khomeini, however, had no intention of waiting. He vested the myth with an entirely new sense: The Twelfth Imam will emerge only when the believers have vanquished evil. To speed up the Mahdi’s return, Muslims had to shake off their torpor and fight.

This is the apocalyptic ideology driving Iran. Here in America, leftists sneer at Evangelical Christians who believe that an apocalypse is coming and prepare accordingly by trying to live a morally good life and by stocking up on supplies in case they’re left behind after the Rapture.

The Mullahs, though, believe that their obligation is not just to prepare for the apocalypse but to instigate it. That is what makes them so exceptionally dangerous. Note well that these are the people with whom the Obama/Biden axis has allied itself and the ones whom they’ve put on the brink of acquiring a nuclear weapon.

President Raisi, the Mullahs’ pick and a hardliner, comes from squarely within this tradition. While real political power rests with the mullahs, he is their living symbol, reflecting both their fanaticism and their bloodlust:

Given Raisi’s importance as a figurehead, the fact that his helicopter went down in mountainous terrain, taking his foreign minister with him, matters a great deal:

Iranian president Ebrahim Raisi’s ‘life is at risk’ after he was involved in a helicopter crash near the border with Azerbaijan.

A frantic search mission is underway after the aircraft, which was traveling in Iran‘s East Azerbaijan province near Jolfa, around 375 miles northwest of Tehran, suffered a ‘hard landing’ on Sunday, according to Iranian state television.

The helicopter was one of a convoy of three and foreign minister Hossein Amirabdollahian, Friday prayer Imam Seyyed Mohammad-Ali Al-Hashem and other high-ranking officials were also reportedly on the helicopter with the president.

The lives of President Raisi and foreign minister Amirabdollahian are at risk following the crash over mountain terrain, an Iranian official told Reuters.

It’s certainly possible that this was an accident. I’d prefer, though, to think that this was either the hand of God or a warning from the Mossad that there is nowhere the Mullahs can hide if they continue to fund Israel’s destruction. And while I’m not religious, if it were indeed the hand of God, Israel’s enemies might want to take note. (“And I will bless them that bless thee, and curse him that curseth thee.” (Genesis 12:3))

I’ll end this with a few early X responses to the news. Check in again because I will be editing this post to add more good ones as I find them:

Here’s my contribution, made using AI, showing that “austere religious scholar” going where he belongs:

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