"Obama's Gamble with Iran's Theocratic Regime" published by the Gatestone Institute

Pleased to share my latest article which was published today by the Gatestone Institute, a New York-based think tank. I am honoured to be published by the Gatestone Institute for the first time, alongside many distinguished writers, thinkers and political leaders.

The Iran deal represents a disconcerting transaction between the West and the radical Shi'a Islamist regime in Tehran. Please read and share widely. Special thank you to Nina Rosenwald for her assistance on the final draft. - R.O.

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"Obama's Gamble with Iran's Theocratic Regime"
Gatestone Institute - July 28, 2015
http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/6237/obama-iran-gamble

• Obama's Iran deal is a direct manifestation of the President's fundamentally misguided worldview, one that wishes away danger and then believes in the wishes.

• Even more concerning is that the Iran deal may directly conflict with U.S. obligations as a signatory of the Non-Proliferation Treaty. The Iran deal may be unconstitutional, violate international law and feature commitments that President Obama could not otherwise lawfully make. By seeking approval of the deal under the UN Security Council, Obama has bound the U.S. under international law without Senate consent.

• The gravest consequence of Obama's Iran deal is that the world bestowed ideological legitimacy on the Islamic Republic's radical theocracy, and in so doing has consigned the people of Iran to near permanent rule under the iron fist of Shi'a Islamism.

• A total reversal of the Iranian regime's behavior should have been, and still can be, a precondition for the removal of any sanctions related to Iran's nuclear program. An end to Iran's financial and material support for terrorist forces such as Hezbollah and Hamas must be demanded, along with the return of the four American hostages Iran is holding.

• There is still time for a better deal that can be had.

As President Obama and Secretary Kerry dominated the airwaves with rounds of media interviews to defend the Iran deal last week, German Vice Chancellor and Economic Minister Sigmar Gabriel flew straight to Tehran for the first of what are certain to be countless meetings by P5+1 leaders to capitalize on new business opportunities in Iran.

In Europe, it seems, there is no debate to be had over the Iran deal; rather, it is a fait accompli.

But in the United States, the domestic debate is heating up, fueled by a Presidential primary campaign and increasingly justified bipartisan anxiety over the bill.

Independent of these political realities, however, the immediacy and tenacity of the White House's defense of the Iran deal (which now has its own @TheIranDeal Twitter account, no less), betrays an acute unspoken discomfort by many Democrats with the practical flaws and global security dangers that the deal presents.

Obama's Iran deal is a direct manifestation of the President's fundamentally misguided worldview, one that wishes away danger and then believes in the wishes.

Haunted by his electorally-motivated premature withdrawal from Iraq in 2011; his refusal in 2013 to confront Syria's Bashar Assad when he used chemical weapons on his own people; his betrayal by Russia's Vladimir Putin to whom he had offered a reset button, and his impotence in failing to respond to the aggressive expansionist moves of Russia, ISIS, Iran and China, the President and Democrat Party, in signing the Iran deal, seem to be trying to absolve the United States of its role at the forefront of the global fight against Islamic radicalism and other threats.

Citing the failed EU-led negotiations with Iran in 2005, which resulted in Iran's massive expansion of centrifuge production, defenders of the deal, such as Fareed Zakaria, have painted a bleak and zero-sum counterfactual argument. It is claimed that the result of Congress's opposition will be an international community that forges ahead on renewed trade relations with Iran, while leaving the United States outside the prevailing global reconciliation and supposed love-in with the Islamic Republic.

There are several serious problems with this defense, and similarly with the White House's blitzkrieg public relations campaign to fend off detractors of the Iran deal, with Secretary of State John Kerry commanding the preemptive, and often totally inaccurate, strikes against Congress. In consideration of the colossal failure represented by the North Korea nuclear precedent, let us consider the issues unique to Iran.

Foremost, opponents of the Iran deal are not universally suggesting the Iran deal be killed outright or immediately resort to "war." This is simply disingenuous. Instead, the opponents' fundamental premise is that a better deal was left on the table, and thus remains available. The very fact that the Iranian regime was at the negotiating table was indeed a sign of Iran's weakness; any timelines for the P5+1 to "close" the deal were artificial constraints that surely erased further achievable concessions.

Second, much ink has already been spilled about the technical weaknesses of the Iran deal. Namely: that Iran's vast nuclear infrastructure remains in place; that the most important restrictions expire in 10 years (a mere blip for humanity); that Iran's uncivilized domestic and regional behavior was a naughty unmentionable; and finally, that the deal undoubtedly initiated a regional nuclear arms race while supercharging the Iranian regime's finances.

Third, the gravest consequence of Obama's Iran deal, and the most damning of its continued defense, is that the world bestowed ideological legitimacy on the Islamic Republic's radical theocracy, and in so doing has consigned the people of Iran to near permanent rule under the iron fist of Twelver Shi'a Islamism.

This capitulation occurred precisely at a time when the West and the broader Middle East are facing off against the Islamic State -- a terrorist force which, when stripped of its social media allure, is ultimately a Sunni-branded spin-off of the extremist Shi'a Islamism that has ruled in Iran since 1979.

The Iranians may be convenient allies as enemies of our enemies today, but not for one second have Iran's rulers suggested their ultimate intent is anything other than the all too familiar "Death to America" and "Death to Israel" propaganda seen for the past 36 years. In what is objectively and wholly a strange deadly obsession, the Supreme Leader of Iran, Ayatollah Khamenei, has been rousing crowds with calls for the destruction of two nation-states both during and after nuclear negotiations.

In spite of this public malice, defenders of the deal suggest that "the [Obama] administration is making a calculated bet that Iran will be constrained by international pressure." Why exactly then is Khamenei making clear the opposite?



President Obama's willingness to concede Iran's new-found normalized membership in the community of nations on the basis of this nuclear deal is an affront to the liberal, free, democratic principles that have stood against the forces of tyranny throughout American history.

It is also an affront the American political system and to the members of both parties who are now being cornered by the President into supporting, or not supporting, such an intrinsically dangerous and needlessly flawed bargain with an avowed enemy.

Even more concerning is that the Iran deal may directly conflict with U.S. obligations as a signatory of the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). As a number of critics have pointed out, the Iran deal may be unconstitutional, violate international law and feature commitments that President Obama could not otherwise lawfully make.

By seeking approval of the deal under the UN Security Council, President Obama has bound the United States under international law without Senate consent.

If the United States is to remain the vanguard of human liberty, President Obama must distinguish between the vain pursuit of his legacy, and the civilized world's deepest need at this consequential hour for the American President to defend comprehensively the fundamental principles that underpin the modern order. Unless his desired legacy is actually to destroy it.

As opponents of the Iran deal have noted, there is still time for a better deal that can be had.

To start, a total reversal of the Iranian regime's behavior should have been, and still can be, a precondition for the removal of any sanctions related to Iran's nuclear program. Congress can lobby for this change, and should maintain American sanctions and applicable provisions in the U.S. Treasury Department's SWIFT terrorist tracking finance program.

Next, while Iran's regional malignancy may run deep in the regime's veins (through the many twisted arms of Tehran's Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps), an end to Iran's financial and material support for terrorist forces such as Hezbollah and Hamas must be demanded, along with the return of the four American hostages Iran is holding.

Third, those who argue that Iran's human rights record was not "on the table" in Geneva have needlessly abdicated the West's moral and intellectual high ground to the forces of barbarism and hate that are now waging war across the region. Respect for international humanitarian norms should never be discarded in such negotiations.

At the end of the day, the deeper questions for Obama and the entire P5+1 are this: By whose standards were negotiations conducted? And whose worldview will rule the 21st century?

In defense of Obama's approach, the deal's supporters point out that the Iranians are a "proud, nationalistic people," which is undoubtedly true, but irrelevant, just as it was for the leadership of Germany's Third Reich.

The Iranian regime, by virtue of its radical religious nature, weak economy and political experiment with theocracy, should have borne the burden of coming to the negotiating table with the most to lose. Instead, President Obama, on behalf of the free world, is allowing this pariah state to guarantee its place among the nations, lavishly rewarded for having violated the Non-Proliferation Treaty, and in all its about-to-be-well-funded lethality.

• Robert D. Onley is a lawyer in Ottawa, Co-Founder of the Young Diplomats of Canada and a "Global Shaper" in the World Economic Forum.
• Follow Robert D. Onley on Twitter

"Islam and the West at War" - NY Times

Islam and the West at War

By: Roger Cohen – Feb. 16, 2015

After a Danish movie director at a seminar on “Art, Blasphemy and Freedom of Expression” and a Danish Jew guarding a synagogue were shot dead in Copenhagen, Helle Thorning-Schmidt, the prime minister of Denmark, uttered a familiar trope:

“We are not in the middle of a battle between Islam and the West. It’s not a battle between Muslims and non-Muslims. It’s a battle between values based on the freedom of the individual and a dark ideology.”

This statement — with its echoes of President Obama’s vague references to “violent extremists” uncoupled from the fundamentalist Islam to which said throat-cutting extremists pledge allegiance — scarcely stands up to scrutiny. It is empty talk.

Across a wide swath of territory, in Iraq, in Syria, in Afghanistan, in Pakistan, in Yemen, the West has been or is at war, or near-war, with the Muslim world, in a failed bid to eradicate a metastasizing Islamist movement of murderous hatred toward Western civilization.

To call this movement, whose most potent recent manifestation is the Islamic State, a “dark ideology” is like calling Nazism a reaction to German humiliation in World War I: true but wholly inadequate. There is little point in Western politicians rehearsing lines about there being no battle between Islam and the West, when in all the above-mentioned countries tens of millions of Muslims, with much carnage as evidence, believe the contrary.

The Danish filmmaker Finn Norgaard was killed a little over a decade after another movie director, Theo van Gogh, was slain in Amsterdam for making a film critical of Islam’s treatment of women. The Islamists’ war is against freedom of expression, freedom of conscience, freedom of the press, freedom of blasphemy, sexual freedom — in short, core characteristics of democracies seen by the would-be rebuilders of the Caliphate as signs of Western debasement.

Do not provoke them with cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad, some say, show respect for Islam, the peaceful faith of some 1.6 billion people. But what, pray, was the “provocation” of Dan Uzan, the Jewish security guard outside the Copenhagen synagogue?

Islam is a religion that has spawned multifaceted political movements whose goal is power. Islam, as such, is fair game for commentators, caricaturists and cartoonists, whose inclination to mock the depredations of theocracy and political Islam’s cynical uses of the Prophet cannot be cowed by fear.

Over the more than 13 years since Al Qaeda attacked America on 9/11, we have seen trains blown up in Madrid, the Tube and a bus bombed in London, Western journalists beheaded, the staff of Charlie Hebdo slaughtered, Jews killed in France and Belgium and now Denmark. This is not the work of a “dark ideology” but of jihadi terror.

On the right of Europe’s political spectrum, anger is rising against Islam, against marginalized Muslim communities, who in turn feel discriminated against and misrepresented, with cause. Several thousand young European Muslims troop off to join ISIS. Europe’s Jews are on edge, with cause. Israel calls them home. In the United States, three Muslim students were killed this month by a gunman in a possible hate crime denounced by Obama as “brutal and outrageous.” A tide of retaliatory menace rises.

Who or what is to blame? There are two schools. For the first, it is the West that is to blame through its support for Israel (seen as the latest iteration of Western imperialism in the Levant); its wars (Iraq); its brutality, (Guantánamo, Abu Ghraib); its killing of civilians (drones); its oil-driven hypocrisy (a jihadi-funding Saudi ally).

For the second, it is rather the abject failure of the Arab world, its blocked societies where dictators face off against political Islam, its repression, its feeble institutions, its sectarianism precluding the practice of participatory citizenship, its wild conspiracy theories, its inability to provide jobs or hope for its youth, that gives the Islamic State its appeal.

I find the second view more persuasive. The rise of the Islamic State, and Obama’s new war, are a direct result of the failure of the Arab Spring, which had seemed to offer a path out of the deadlocked, jihadi-spawning societies of the Arab world.

Only Arabs can find the answer to this crisis. But history, I suspect, will not judge Obama kindly for having failed to foster the great liberation movement that rose up in Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, Syria and elsewhere. Inaction is also a policy: Nonintervention produced Syria today.

I hear the words of Chokri Belaid, the brave Tunisian lawyer, shortly before he was gunned down by Islamist fanatics on Feb. 6, 2013: “We can disagree in our diversity but within a civilian, peaceful and democratic framework. Disagree in our diversity, yes!”

To speak of a nonspecific “dark ideology,” to dismiss the reality of conflict between the West and Islam, is also to undermine the anti-Islamist struggle of brave Muslims like Belaid — and these Muslims are the only people, ultimately, who can defeat the black-flagged jihadi death merchants.

The Islamic State's Third Target - An Interview with Joel C. Rosenberg

This week I was honoured to interview New York Times bestselling author Joel C. Rosenberg about his new novel, The Third Target. As a longtime fan and follower of Rosenberg's work, I was intrigued at the opportunity to speak with him again, following my first interview with him back in June 2010 in an article later published in the Jerusalem Post.

Below is my latest interview with Rosenberg, published today in the Times of Israel. Read it here: http://blogs.timesofisrael.com/the-islamic-states-third-target/

The Islamic State's Third Target
By: Robert D. Onley - Times of Israel - January 17, 2015

With reports indicating that Islamic State militants are managing to gain territory in Iraq and Syria in spite of US and coalition air strikes, the world is witnessing a nightmare scenario unfold across the Middle East: what if the Islamic State simply cannot be stopped?

In New York Times bestselling author Joel C. Rosenberg’s latest novel, The Third Target, this troubling question is examined in serious, careful detail. Known for eerily prescient political thrillers whose plots accurately predicted hijacked airliners attacking the United States, the Iraq War, and the death of Yasser Arafat (among other major geopolitical events), Rosenberg and his books rocketed in popularity over the last fifteen years.

The Third Target

After writing extensively about radical Islam in both fiction and nonfiction, from Sunni jihadists with AK’s to Shia theocrats pursuing nuclear weapons, last year Rosenberg set out to examine whether a terror threat existed that he was not yet aware of, but ought to be.

Helping his investigative efforts, Rosenberg is a former advisor to Prime Minister Netanyahu with an extensive network of friends and officials whom he tapped to explore the question above. In researching The Third Target, Rosenberg met with two former heads of the CIA, R. James Woolsey and Porter Goss, and the former head of the Mossad, Danny Yatom, among many other intelligence officials. Months before the Islamic State, or ISIL, burst onto the international scene, the answers Rosenberg heard separately from these intelligence chiefs were both unanimous and chilling.

“They each were concerned that Al-Qaeda in Iraq was morphing into something new, something more dangerous,” Rosenberg says. In early 2014, while President Obama went on the record claiming that ISIL was merely a “jayvee team” and hardly worth worrying about, Rosenberg stated, “These officials warned me that what kept them up at night was the rise of this Al-Qaeda offshoot, ISIL, and the reality that an Islamist-led overthrow of Jordan was a genuine worst-case scenario and a possibility.”

Rosenberg meeting with Jordan’s Prime Minister Abdullah Ensour in Amman as part of the research for “The Third Target.”

These foreboding comments prompted Rosenberg to dig further. After more meetings in Washington, he traveled to Jordan, meeting with Jordan’s Prime Minister Abdullah Ensour, Foreign Minister Nasser Judeh, and Interior Minister Hussein Al-Majali to discuss regional threats. Mentioning potential plot ideas, including a chemical attack and the risk of an overthrow, Al-Majali responded to Rosenberg, “the King has appointed me to make sure the scenario that you are writing about will never happen in our country. But it is a plausible scenario, and that is the problem.”

“What if ISIL tries to set into motion attacks on a number of targets – and what if one of those targets was Jordan, Israel, or the United States?”

After digesting countless intensive interviews with Western and Middle Eastern officials, Rosenberg sat down to write The Third Target, which, soon after the first draft was finished and in light of ISIL’s rapid rise across the Middle East, had its release date pushed up by three months. Published early on January 6th of this year, The Third Target imagines a scenario in which ISIL captures a cache of chemical weapons in Syria, and threatens to deploy them against an unknown city. Rosenberg says,“The question I wanted to ask in this book was, what if ISIL tries to set into motion attacks on a number of targets – and what if one of those targets was Jordan, Israel, or the United States?”

As if the plot was ripped from the headlines and bringing the pages of The Third Target alive, Jordan’s King Abdullah recently stated publicly on CBS News that the battle against ISIL, is, in effect, “our generation’s Third World War.” But in order to stop ISIL and thwart any attempt to attack Jordan, Rosenberg believes that President Obama and the leaders of NATO must view ISIL as “such a significant threat to national security” that the US takes “decisive military action, with no more half measures.”

Rosenberg cites a long-list of realistic military actions that the US is not currently conducting to help destroy ISIL, including not allowing U.S. Special Forces on the ground to provide precise targeting for air strikes, and not permitting 24/7, 7-day a week airlifts of supplies to Kurdish troops fighting in northern Iraq, “even though the Kurds are the most aggressive fighters and the most immediately endangered by ISIL.”

Critiquing the Obama Administration, Rosenberg pulls no punches, saying of Obama’s half-hearted campaign against ISIL that, “This is not working. This is not decisive action. This is foreign policy by press release.” Arguably Obama’s failure to act decisively also lends credibility to the terrifying potential for the ISIL-led chemical weapons attack that is envisioned in The Third Target.

“Obama is also missing the greatest strategic alliance against radical Islam in history.”

But beyond the US not showing up in Paris to show solidarity following the Charlie Hebdo attacks, Rosenberg notes that, “Obama is also missing the greatest strategic alliance against radical Islam in history.” Rosenberg believes three men emerging who are the “Winston Churchill’s of our time, and none of them are in London, Paris or Washington. They are all in the Middle East.”

Rosenberg lists Israel’s Prime Minister Netanyahu, Jordan’s King Abdullah II, and Egypt’s President el-Sisi, as the only global leaders who truly see the existential threat posed to them and to their people by two different, but equally radical Islamic forces: the Shia radicals in Iran, and the Sunni radicals of ISIL. “President el-Sisi and King Abdullah have no qualms calling this a battle against radical Islam,” Rosenberg pointed out, “while President Obama and his Press Secretary refuse to use the term ‘radical Islam’ for fear of being ‘offensive.’” The difference in mentality could not be more stark.

Not only is Jordan committed to fighting radical Islam militarily, Rosenberg says King Abdullah II and his team are also committed to deconstructing radical Islam theologically, stating, “I sat with the King’s men, who explained how they are rallying support among hundreds of Islamic scholars all across the Middle East and the world to explain their version of moderate Islam, and to deconstruct what they call takfiri Islam, which is what the radicals believe.”

“President el-Sisi told the imams that they “must revolutionize and reform modern Islam”, with Rosenberg adding, “Sisi did so at a real risk to his own life in Egypt.”

Rosenberg further cited Egyptian President el-Sisi’s recent speech to Muslim clerics on New Years Day, where el-Sisi told the imams that they “must revolutionize and reform modern Islam,” with Rosenberg adding, “Sisi did so at a real risk to his own life in Egypt.” Netanyahu similarly has spoken out against the threat of radical Islam on numerous occasions. All the while, Rosenberg says, “These are allies at risk, and Obama simply won’t help these men win the battle.”

As ISIL marches, the regular stream of their grotesque snuff films continues to inundate the mainstream news. On the surface, the incomprehensibly evil actions of ISIL seem to be the product of mass delusional hysteria – violence for the sake of violence. But Rosenberg hints at a deeper motive for ISIL and their ilk, one grounded in a strict interpretation of the Quran and hadiths.

“Both the radical Sunnis and Shias have an eschatology – or End Times belief system – that talks about establishing the Islamic Kingdom or Caliphate: the radical Shias are waiting for their Messiah while they build nuclear weapons, before picking an apocalyptic fight with the West or another nation in the region,” Rosenberg explains.

“ISIL…[is] building the Caliphate now, desperately trying to usher in End of Days by killing and enslaving those caught up in their apocalyptic, genocidal vision.”

However Rosenberg contrasts this belief with those of radical Sunnis, such as ISIL, who he says have decided not to wait: they are building the Caliphate now, “desperately trying to usher in End of Days by killing and enslaving those caught up in their apocalyptic, genocidal vision. I spoke to one Pastor in Iraq, who said to me: ‘Joel, this is demonic. When ISIL chops off someone’s head, this is not just terrorizing – these are blood sacrifices to the Islamic State’s ‘God’.’ These are the genocidal conditions emerging in Iraq and Syria.”

In writing The Third Target, Rosenberg hopes to bring readers into the ‘living room’ of the savage, barbaric mindset of ISIL, to help people see how urgent the threat is, and explore why we must act decisively to crush it, “When I started to write this book, I was thinking that the threat was 4 to 5 years away. It moved much faster than I expected.”

Underscoring the intensity of Joel Rosenberg as an author and advocate, and emphasizing his passion when speaking out about these issues, Rosenberg and his family recently made Aliyah to Israel after living their entire lives in the United States. As an evangelical Christian with a Jewish father, Rosenberg says that he wants to use his novels “to inform people in the West, generally, and Christians in particular, that now is the time to stand with Israel, Jordan, Egypt, and all people of good will who will fight against radical Islam.”

He says that he is honoured to stand with Israel in this fight, and notes that in due time his sons will be drafted to serve to protect Israel, “I believe that there is a great movement of Christians around the world who love Israel, who are standing with the Jewish People, and that my role and contribution to Israeli society is trying to educate and mobilize that Christian support for Israel, especially at this time, when the battle against radical Islam is so urgent.” The Third Target is his latest salvo in that fight.

Why Foreign Fighters are Joining ISIL (Part 3 of 3)

I invite you to read the conclusion of my three-part series on "Why Foreign Fighters are Joining ISIL", published today by The Huffington Post. Be sure to read Part 1 and read Part 2 first. - R.O.
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Why Foreign Fighters are Joining ISIL (Part 3 of 3)
The Huffington Post
By: Robert D. Onley - October 16, 2014

Part 3 of 3 in a series. Read Part 1 and Part 2.

Defeating ISIL and its ideology
For peaceful democratic societies, the challenge is this: how do you stop a destructive force like ISIL, one which cherishes death? How do you convince the globe's Islamic radicals, and ISIL in particular, that life -- for its fighters, supporters, and its persecuted victims -- is in fact far better than death? Or is the only choice for Western and civilized societies one that grants these deranged men their wish, through laser-guided swift deaths which kill as many ISIL fighters as possible? As civilized nations which value the preservation of life, reaching this conclusion is as disturbing as recognizing the stark reality that it is in fact the only option.

Once more in fulfilling its role as the vanguard of global liberty, the United States has led air strikes against ISIL fighters in Iraq and Syria in support of advancing Kurdish Peshmerga soldiers. In spite of President Obama's reticence in doing so, the United States government understands that the only way to stop the physical military advance of ISIL fighters is to use military force in kind. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel is one of the few American leaders to public comment on ISIL's End Times goals, when he acknowledged that:

"[The Islamic State] is an organization that has an apocalyptic, end-of-days strategic vision which will eventually have to be defeated."

Hagel further added that ISIL is:

"...beyond just a terrorist group. They marry ideology, a sophistication of ... military prowess... [that] is beyond anything we've seen."

As world leaders express their horror at ISIL's tactics, unrelenting oppression and brutality toward religious minorities, few leaders or media commentators have assessed why it is that such an evil group can recruit so many new soldiers -- and foreign fighters -- to begin with. Thus the need for a public discussion about Islamic End Times beliefs has never been greater.

Wake up to ISIL's End Times beliefs now
In attempting to understand this global enemy, Western leaders would be wise to consider the role that their governments must play in halting ISIL's End Times goals and in preventing the long-term survival of an "Islamic State."

ISIL fighters are under no illusion about what their ultimate objective is: to usher in the Islamic "End Times". Thus Western leaders and military planners must be equally convicted about their goals. President Obama's overdue assertion that ISIL "will be defeated" was a welcome show of Western resolve. ISIL territory cannot become a national safe haven for terrorists, and moreover the West cannot permit the theological notion that Caliph Ibrahim has in some way fulfilled the Qur'an's prophecies concerning the Islamic End Times. Indeed there is no doubt that the entire global Islamic community is watching to see whether ISIL will be defeated in Syria and Iraq.

It is ISIL's End Times beliefs and the urgency of their battlefield success which has inspired the growth of the terrorist organization. Unless stopped now, the terror group only has the potential to grow larger, fiercer, and more determined in achieving Allah's Judgment Day vision. Western foreign policy commentators must break out of their comfort zones and begin to speak publicly about the genuinely religious nature of the ISIL threat and against the beliefs which drive the movement.

Simply claiming that ISIL's acts are "un-Islamic" does nothing to respond to the deeply prophetic Islamic agenda that ISIL espouses. ISIL is an enemy clearly communicating its aims, blatantly using the Qur'an as its guiding doctrine. Rather than gloss over this fact, the foreign policy world needs its brightest lights to expose this doctrine and overpower its distorted message in response.

Providing proper analysis and with due regard for the sincere religious beliefs of hundreds of millions of Muslims who do not seek to create a revived Islamic Caliphate under the repressive purview of Sharia law, it is possible to initiate global dialogue about the reality of ISIL's End Times goal, with candor, clarity and objectivity. Millions of lives are at stake in a battle that has already claimed countless innocent human beings. After the call from the UN for a humanitarian aid mission in Iraq, the international community has admitted that what was perhaps at first a domestic Iraqi counter-terror operation is now a global religious freedom and a human rights crisis which threatens to envelop more people and draw in ever more militant forces.

With the civil war festering in Syria claiming 200,000 lives, the two-month conflict between Israel and Hamas still smoldering, worsening strife in Libya and Pakistan, and ISIL's rampage across Iraq and Syria, the world is steadily marching toward an Islamist-driven End Times nightmare with global ramifications.

Stop for a moment to consider the intellectual weight of ISIL's extreme belief system: potentially hundreds of thousands of otherwise normal men have become "foreign fighters" who are convinced that a martyr's death in the cause of Allah offers a ticket to Jannah (Islamic heaven), a ticket upon which they are granted permission by their God to perpetrate the most grotesque violence imaginable in order to expedite the Qur'an's prophesied "End Time". President Obama rightly condemned this horror when he stated at the UN General Assembly that "no God condones this terror."

But not since Adolf Hitler's Mein Kampf failed at establishing the Third Reich has the earth witnessed the murderous power of a single doctrine to unite tens of thousands of men toward executing terrifying plans of ideological and territorial conquest. It is imperative that the West understands the ideological threat posed by ISIL's End Times theology and knows how to stop both its fighters and the radicalized foreigners ready to join them. Otherwise these will indeed be the End Times for far too many people to come.
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Why Foreign Fighters are Joining ISIL (Part 2)

Part 2 of my three-part series on "Why Foreign Fighters are Joining ISIL" was published yesterday by The Huffington Post. Check out Part 1 here and read Part 2 below. - R.O.
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Why Foreign Fighters are Joining ISIL

The Huffington Post

By: Robert D. Onley - October 13, 2014

Part 2 of 3 in a series. Read Part 1.

A Global Caliphate for Islam's messiah
Whether ISIL fighters are "brain-washed" or self-inculcated via the internet, the ISIL brand of radical Islam is turning men into remorseless killers. Western, African or Arab, these men are being deluded by End Times visions of reviving the Islamic Caliphate from which they believe that the Islamic messiah, the Mahdi, or "Guided One", will one day rule and eventually conquer the world.

To that end, as a sophisticated, modern jihadist enterprise, ISIL has released its 3rd issue of Dabiq digital magazine. Its title, "A Call to Hijrah", likens Muhammad's "emigration" from Mecca to Medina in 622 AD, which first established Islam as a militant state. As described in the Qur'an, it was in Mecca that Muhammad's message was shared as one of peace. However, in Medina, his message called for the violent overthrow of all non-Muslims. It is clear that ISIL is adhering to the call for the latter.

ISIL is further cognizant of Islamic prophecies found predominantly in the hadiths, which state that the Mahdi will return after a time of great turmoil and suffering upon the earth, and will establish justice and righteousness throughout the world by eradicating tyranny and oppression. The hadiths add that the Mahdi will lead a world revolution and establish a 'new world order' through military action against all those who oppose him. The fact that the hadiths also say that the Mahdi will rule the world from Jerusalem helps elucidate the perpetual fixation on conquering Israel which is espoused by nearly all global jihadist movements.

Comparatively, the prophetic emergence of the Mahdi would be to the majority of Muslims what the return of Jesus would be to Christians. These prophecies also state the Mahdi is the awaited final Caliph of the religion of Islam as a whole, and thus, of the "Islamic State". To date, Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi has not referred to himself as the Mahdi, perhaps understanding that many Islamic prophecies have yet to be fulfilled and moreover that discerning Islamists are carefully watching ISIL's actions before potentially joining the movement.

Nonetheless, it is the very prospect of an emergent future leader with the theological and prophetic capacity to unite Sunni and Shi'a forces which may serve to most prominently "fulfill" Islamic prophecies concerning the End Times.

Can the "Islamic State" unite Sunni and Shi'a Islam?
Much like Biblical scholarship on the prophesied end of humanity, interpretative views on Islamic "End Times" differ sharply between Sunni and Shi'a Muslims.

As a Sunni Islamic movement, ISIL is committed to the restoration of the Islamic Caliphate with Jerusalem as the capital of the new global "Islamic Empire". Author Daniel Pipes, a recognized scholar on Islam and Islamic radicalism, has stated that while he does not expect ISIL to survive, it will "leave a legacy", adding:

No matter how calamitous the fate of Caliph Ibrahim [Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi] and his grim crew, they have successfully resurrected a central institution of Islam, making the caliphate again a vibrant reality. Islamists around the world will treasure its moment of brutal glory and be inspired by it.

It appears that Sunni Islamist militants are more than inspired; the total acceptance of these Islamic End Times views is geographically diverse and pervasive within radical Islamist groups. Islam's broader end of days themes have also been adopted by Israel's arch foes Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and Hezbollah (albeit a Shi'a Islamic interpretation of the End Times), along with Boko Haram in Nigeria (which has also declared an "Islamic State"), al-Shabaab in Somalia, and the terrorist stalwart al-Qaeda.

While opposed to ISIL and joining the fight against the group, the Ayatollah of the Islamic Republic of Iran's Shi'a Muslim theocracy has also publicly stated that the return of Shi'a Islam's 'Hidden' Imam, or Mahdi, is imminent, and that the Mahdiwill kill all infidels. Such proclamations add contrast to ISIL's apocalyptic narrative, and also frame the Sunni-Shi'a prophetic divide as one which contains common and intriguing threads.

Beyond prophecy, on a tactical military level, ISIL's success is also attracting potential alliances from other terrorist organizations, such as with the Taliban's ally Hezb-e-Islami. Under unified leadership, whether from the current Caliph, or perhaps one day from another leader from Saudi Arabia, Iran, or Turkey, ISIL could theoretically bridge internal Sunni divides while co-opting disparate jihadist and resistance factions under a common banner.

Unified leadership could also quiet the vocal opposition to ISIL which has percolated up from within numerous Islamist factions who believe that Al-Baghdadi is an illegitimate 'Caliph'. But as Caliph Ibrahim's ISIL army continues to march in the face of air strikes, such speculation is within the realm of possibility down the road.

ISIL's Longevity
The bigger picture of Islamic eschatology and prophecy includes the return of Isa (Jesus), the rise of the Dajjal (Islam's anti-Christ), and the reign of the Mahdi (Messiah), all of which will usher in Allah's 'Day of Judgment'. Thus, if ISIL maintains even partial military success and territorial control for the foreseeable future, the allure of ISIL's End Times ideology will only become more intoxicating for foreign fighters and ISIL adherents around the world. Moreover, despite a UN Security Council Resolution, it is improbable to think that Western legislative measures will definitively halt the growing number of foreign ISIL recruits in the immediate term. This poses a serious threat to regional and global stability.

Add into this mix the possibility that the US and its "core coalition" could fail to conclusively stop ISIL in Syria and Iraq through military action. What exactly is the West's plan if ISIL manages to maintain its territorial grip, first for a year, and then a second year? Why have President Obama and Secretary of State Kerry been quick to assess that this battle will not require "boots on the ground"? (Pay no attention to the boots of military "advisors" already on the ground.)

If ISIL manages to maintain the semblance of a mini Islamic Caliphate in Iraq and Syria, the complete picture of the Islamic End Times (set out above) would come into view for ISIL fighters and would-be ISIL members across the world. These fighters might perceive the continued expansion and existence of ISIL as the actual fulfillment of The Promise of Allah.

Policy planners must imagine and plan for the current or future ISIL Caliph calling for a Second Arab Spring of uprisings to overthrow the remaining dictators across the Middle East. Alternatively, the Caliph could call for these sitting leaders to form a military alliance with ISIL to wage war against Israel, or else face civil unrest stoked by ISIL provocateurs.

These possibilities may sound like a distant Islamist fantasy, but as the Western world struggles to agree on how to confront ISIL, let alone "defeat" it, the ISIL movement continues to grow more legitimate and capable of recruiting more supporters. Does comfortable Western civilization have the stomach to confront such a barbaric enemy?

Part 3 will be published soon.

Why Foreign Fighters are Joining ISIL

It has been a few months since any updates here, and so on this occasion I'm pleased to share my first feature article for The Huffington Post, titled: "Why Foreign Fighters are Joining ISIL". The article explores the underlying ideology of ISIL, examining the eschatological (study of the "End Times") roots of the conflict in Iraq and Syria today.
Enjoy. - R.O.

Why Foreign Fighters are Joining ISIL (Part 1 of 3)
The Huffington Post
By: Robert D. Onley - October 8, 2014

Part 1 in a 3 part series.

The beheading of American journalist James Foley by a British ISIL foreign fighter marked the first of several instances in which militant radical Islam appeared to defeat all precepts of Western civilization.

At the same moment, a revived "Islamic Caliphate" emerged as both a nascent "State" and a veritable threat to the free world. Even the president of the United States seemed caught off guard by ISIL's celebration of death, which is so counter-cultural and contrary to all that humanity has achieved and continues to achieve. Both Western governments and media outlets have been slow to acknowledge theabsolute threat posed by ISIL's belief system.

While minority Muslims, Christians, Yazidis, Turkomen and Jews across the Middle East are physically hunted by ISIL fighters, it is mosques across the Western world which appear complicit in churning out radicalized foreign fighters. These fighters reject all notions of a pluralist, free Western life, in favor of the most regressive philosophy on earth. But much blame can also be laid at the feet of the West's modern lifeblood: the Internet. Witness this terrifying example of a Canadian who self-radicalized, joined ISIL and now threatens terrorist attacks on New York City.

At such a troubled time as this, appreciating the core theology of ISIL is a necessity for Western policymakers, military planners, and media personnel, who are now scrambling for means to collectively defeat this most barbaric enemy after the bombing stops.

Understanding Islamic Eschatology
When global progress, both social and technological, is greater than ever, how is it possible that ISIL is growing around the world? What exactly are young Canadians,Brits, Scots, Frenchmen and Germans being taught in their Western mosques and online before being convinced to fly off to carry out jihad abroad?

The nebulous answers to these questions are found in a religious term which the secular Western mind and media might scoff at: eschatology -- that is, the branch of Islamic theology concerned with the final events in the history of the world or of humankind. In other words, The Islamic End Times.

To understand why ISIL has so rapidly advanced -- both in its military and through its ideology - any serious observer of global affairs must explore the Islamic beliefs and statements about the "end of the world". This knowledge will facilitate a discerning perspective on the grave realities represented by the return of the"Islamic Caliphate" in Syria and Iraq, and will reveal the intellectual threat posed to the world by the ISIL ideology and its growing cadre of sympathetic followers globally.

Islamic Prophecies

On June 29, 2014, when Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi declared the creation of the "Islamic State", identifying himself as "Caliph Ibrahim," he was issuing a rallying cry to all Muslims, stating that the Qur'an's prophesied "Day of Resurrection", orYawm al-Qiyāmah will soon be upon humanity.

The gravity of the creation of ISIL is captured in the title of Caliph Ibrahim's manifesto: The Promise of Allah. Akin in spirit to the Charter of Hamas in its explicit hatred of Christians, Jews and non-Muslims, The Promise of Allah proclaims to the world:

Here the flag of the Islamic State, the flag of tawhīd (monotheism), rises and flutters... The Muslims are honored. The kuffār (infidels) are disgraced. Ahlus Sunnah (the Sunnis) are masters and are esteemed. The people of bid'ah (heresy) are humiliated. The hudūd (Sharia penalties) are implemented -- the hudūd of Allah -- all of them. The frontlines are defended. Crosses and graves are demolished... There only remained one matter, a wājib kifā'ī (collective obligation) that the ummah sins by abandoning. It is a forgotten obligation... It is the khilāfah (caliphate). It is the khilāfah -- the abandoned obligation of the era.

By speaking the "Islamic State" into existence, the Caliph asserted that the world's most powerful terrorist force believes that humanity, in 2014, will imminently face Allah's prophesied Judgment Day, Yawm ad-Dīn. Belief in Judgment Day is one of the six articles of faith in Islam, which underscores the theological importance of the revival of the Islamic Caliphate to the global ummah (Islamic community).

The appeal of the Caliph's simple end times narrative forms the foundation of an Islamist movement which is driving men to commit unthinkable acts of murder, genocide and suicide attacks against strangers with different religious beliefs. The Promise of Allah describes this disturbing, violent modus operandi in systematic detail, fuelling the expansion of the "Islamic State":

...We took it forcibly at the point of a blade.
We brought it back conquered and compelled.
We established it in defiance of many.
And the people's necks were violently struck,
With bombings, explosions, and destruction,
And soldiers that do not see hardship as being difficult,
And lions that are thirsty in battle,
Having greedily drunk the blood of kufr [infidel].
Our khilāfah has indeed returned with certainty
And likewise our state, becoming a firm structure.
And the breasts of the believers have been healed,
While the hearts of kufr have been filled with terror.

Through social media, internet forums and well produced promotional videos, ISIL's agenda is being broadcast to the world without hesitation. While Western powers recognize the terrorist threat posed by ISIL, aside from the United States and a few close allies, many Western European leaders remained convicted to avoid military action initially, lest they stir up unrest within their local Muslim communities.

But this is no problem for ISIL's growth. ISIL foreign fighters have already heeded the Caliph's call in The Promise of Allah that all Muslims must:

"disbelieve in democracy, secularism, nationalism, as well as all the other garbage and ideas from the West, and rush to your religion and creed, then by Allah, you will own the earth, and the east and west will submit to you."

What exactly are the implications of Muslims heeding this call? Part 2 of this series will examine this critical question.