The Final Move Beyond Iraq: The Final Solution While the World Sleeps (5 page)

History documents the birth, death, and achievements of Cyrus the Great. His name is recorded in the Bible over twenty times.
Encyclopedia Britannica
recognizes that “in 538 [b.c.] Cyrus granted to the Jews, whom Nebuchadnezzar had transported to Babylonia, the return to Palestine and the rebuilding of Jerusalem and its temple.”
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It is ironic that the descendants of the very nation that were instrumental in returning the Jews to Jerusalem during the reign of King Cyrus now want them wiped off the map.

Darius I wrested the Persian kingdom from the descendants of Cyrus the Great, but the establishment of his rule was fraught by skirmishes with the surrounding provinces. Darius proved to be quite the tactician. His trusted generals used the small army of Medes and Persians to great advantage and were able to solidify Darius’s rule over the entire Persian Empire.

Darius was a forward-thinking ruler whose legal expertise produced the “Ordinance of Good Regulations” used to create a uniform code of law throughout the empire. He created a system of mail transport much like the Pony Express. Darius built a system of roads that reached 1,500 miles from Sardis in Turkey to Shustar (the site of Daniel’s overnight visit to the lions’ den). Darius I was succeeded by his son, Xerxes I—also known as Ahasuerus—the king who took the Jewess Hadassah (better known as Esther) as his queen.

The story of Esther has all the elements of a modern-day love story: a beautiful young Jewish girl torn from her homeland and taken as a captive to Persia; a tyrannical ruler who banishes his queen from the royal throne—and initiates a search for her successor; and, of course, a dastardly villain, Haman, who desires to perpetrate genocide against the Jews:

Esther’s cousin, Mordecai, challenges the queen to approach the king (a move that could be punishable by death) and ask for the salvation of her people. In encouraging her to do so, Mordecai confronts Esther with these timeless words:

Esther’s response to Mordecai is magnificent:

With great trepidation, Esther approaches Ahasuerus and is granted an audience with the king. The plan for the destruction of the Jews by the foul villain, Haman, is thwarted, and Esther’s people are allowed to live in peace in Shushan.

Many empires fall prey to the march of time. However, in Persia—or Iran—the Arab onslaught produced a cultural mix that was unique. Persia would forever be dramatically influenced by the armies of Muhammad, but so would the conquerors be influenced by their Persian subjects. Arabic became a new language in addition to Farsi, Islam became the new religion, mosques were built, and Islamic customs became the norm for the people of Persia.

Political correctness is not an invention of modern-day America; it has dictated the actions of people from the beginning of time. For many Iranian nobles, conversion to Islam was a politically correct move that enabled them to keep their vast holdings and coveted social position.

For others, the impetus for conversion was tax evasion. Their Muslim superiors had levied an exorbitant tax against all non-Muslims, which they wished to avoid. Some Jews living in Iran were forced, on forfeiture of their lives, to convert to Islam. Many, such as the Zoroastrian priests, simply fled the country.

Although the conquest of Iran by the Arab hordes was relatively violence-free, the ensuing struggle for leadership culminated in a bloody and lopsided battle. Hussein, the grandson of the Prophet Muhammad, and forces loyal to Caliph Yazid met on the plains of Karbala—today one of the holiest cities in Iraq. (It was to be a watershed event in Islam, for it was here that Hussein died, and it was here that the irreparable division between the Sunnis and the Shiites began.)

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Shia Islam was founded in a.d. 661 by Ali ibn Abi Talib. It was from his name that Shia evolved. It is literally a derivation of
Shiat Ali
—“partisans of Ali.” As a descendant of Muhammad, Ali was thought to be the last of the true caliphs. He was wildly popular until he came face-to-face in a battle with the army of the governor of Damascus in a.d. 661. It is said that the Damascene soldiers attached verses from the Quran to the tips of their spears. When faced with fighting a force hiding behind the words of Muhammad, Ali’s army declined to fight. Ali, left only with the option of negotiating with his enemy, sought appeasement. While he escaped death at the hands of his enemy in open combat, Ali was eventually killed by one of his own rabid followers.

When Ali died, the governor of Damascus, Mu’awiya, anointed himself caliph. Ali’s son, Hassan, the rightful heir to the caliphate, died under suspicious circumstances, while the next in the line of succession, Hussein, agreed to do nothing until Mu’awiya died. He was soon disappointed yet again, however, when Mu’awiya’s son, Yazid, appropriated the position of caliph and went to battle against Hussein. The bloody battle of Karbala that erupted resulted in the deaths of Hussein and his army. Only Hussein’s baby boy survived the carnage, and he became the hope of reestablishing Ali’s claim to the caliphate.

With the ascension of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to the position of power in Iran, we have heard much about the last known descendant of Hussein, Muhammad al-Mahdi, or the
Mahdi
. Al-Mahdi was the Twelfth Imam in the line of Ali who disappeared down a well at the age of four. Refusing to believe that he was dead, his followers imbued him with timelessness. They declared him to be merely “hidden,” and that on some future date he would suddenly appear to reestablish an Islamic caliphate worldwide. Their eschatology, however, proved problematic; it espoused an apocalyptic upheaval in order for the Mahdi, or Hidden Imam, to ascend to his rightful place of leadership. These “Twelvers” championed the belief that every individual, regardless of their religious belief, would one day bow to Islam—or die.

As time passed and the Mahdi failed to make an appearance, authority passed to the
ulema
, a body of mullahs endowed with the power to appoint a supreme leader. Perhaps one of the best-known imams was Grand Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.

Notable among the various dynasties of Persia were the Safavids who ruled from 1501 to 1736. It was under this dynasty that Shia Islam became Iran’s official religion. It was also during this time that Persia was united as a single sovereignty that became the bridge to what we now know as Iran.

It was the Afsharid leader Nadir Shah who first declared himself the shah of Iran in 1736. He invaded Khandahar in Afghanistan, and two years after assuming the throne in Iran, he overran India. He amassed great wealth, including the seizure of the renowned Peacock Throne and the 105-carat
Koh-i-Noor
(Persian for “mountain of light”) diamond. (The magnificent diamond was presented to Queen Victoria in 1851 and is now part of the celebrated British Crown Jewels.) Nadir Shah was a tyrannical ruler; his reign ended with his assassination in 1747.

The Afsharid dynasty was followed by the Zand and Qajar dynasties. In 1906, Iran experienced a constitutional revolution that divided the power of rule between the shah and a parliamentary body called the
Majlis.
The last of the Qajar dynasty rulers, Ahmad Shah Qajar, was overthrown in a coup in 1921, and the Pahlavis—who sat on the Peacock Throne until 1979—took the power as shahs. Ahmad Shah Qajar died in exile in France in 1930.

It was the first Pahlavi, Reza Shah Pahlavi the Great, who in 1935 asked the world to stop referring to his nation as Persia and to use the name Iran instead.
Iran
means “land of the Aryans” and was the name the natives used in referring to their country.
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During more than twenty-five centuries of history, Persians have maintained their unique sense of identity. Though they converted to Islam, they have not always followed the accepted views of the religion. To an extent, Zoroastrianism, the religion of the early Persians, colors the Iranian variety of Islam.

Iran is now one of the largest countries not only in the Middle East, but also in the Islamic world. Because of past experiences, Iran has developed a thorny separatism. Invaded during both World Wars and later set upon by Iraq, Iran has reason to fear foreign influence.

The borders of Iran remained largely unchanged during the twentieth century, but the desire to recapture the glory of the vast Persian Empire has apparently lain dormant. Perhaps this pragmatism is the driving force behind Iran’s seemingly sudden emergence as a budding player in the world’s nuclear superpower game.

It was during the reign of the last shah of Iran, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, that plans to bring Iran into the nuclear age began. Bushehr was to be the site of the first two reactors, and, indeed, building on the site began in 1975. While the shah was still in control, research and development on fissile material production was also initiated. This, however, as well as all of the shah’s other ambitions, ended with the Islamic revolution of 1979.

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In my book
Beyond Iraq: The Next Move
, I discussed many of the biblical implications of the second Gulf War, including the fact that Saddam Hussein saw himself as Nebuchadnezzar reincarnate. It is odd to note that since the publication of that book, Hussein’s end was very much like that of Nebuchadnezzar:

Daniel had just prophesied to Nebuchadnezzar that he was going to go insane, be driven from his kingdom, and end up in the field hiding, looking like a wild animal. Precisely what happened to Nebuchadnezzar happened to Saddam Hussein. On December 13, 2003, U.S. soldiers found him completely disoriented, hiding in a hole, his hair and fingernails grown out, and looking like a wild man. It was no different.

While Hussein’s “Babylon” fell with him, the spirit of Babylon identified in the Book of Revelation did not. It is important to note that Persia is not mentioned in the Book of Revelation, while Babylon—likely the name used to represent the entire region around where the ancient city sat—is used several times as the head of the forces that rise against those represented by the city of Jerusalem—the Jews. In Scripture, Babylon is the seat of Satan’s evil as much as Jerusalem is the seat of God’s righteousness. They symbolize the two alliances that meet against one another in the final battle of Armageddon.

At the same time, however, the Book of Ezekiel describes the force that will rise against Israel during the End Times with these words, mentioning Persia and others by name: