The Obama-Clinton Legacy: Iran’s ‘Big Bang’

A bombshell awaits America — one that, for all intents and purposes, will permanently define the legacy of President Barack Obama and, if elected, Hillary Clinton.

As the November 8 presidential election has now become a virtual toss-up due to the FBI’s recent announcement that it would re-open its investigation into Clinton’s use of a private email server, whether the bombshell drops will be determined by the election’s outcome.

Ironically, despite the significance of this event, presidential debates have come and gone with little mention of this looming threat, debate moderators apparently choosing to focus on less important issues, leaving the American public in the dark.

But, a “big bang” awaits the world pending the election’s outcome in its truest sense. In fact, the big bang is one of nuclear proportion. And, when it occurs, it will have both Iranian and North Korean fingerprints on it.

In July 2015, President Obama negotiated a nuclear agreement with Iran – after promising us he would never agree to a deal giving Tehran nuclear weapons – doing exactly that. While he and Clinton boasted they stopped Iran’s nuclear program without firing a shot, that shot will ultimately be a nuclear one fired by Iran.

In an agreement even more one-sided than U.K. Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain’s 1938 deal with Germany’s Adolf Hitler that was supposed to guarantee “peace for our time” but ultimately failed, President Obama paved the way for the mullahs to have nukes either sooner (if they violate the deal) or later (if they abide by it).

The deal’s supporters probably took comfort believing, just as the concept of Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD) kept the former Soviet Union and the U.S. from initiating a nuclear attack against each other, the thought of U.S. retaliation would ensure Tehran’s mullahs also kept their nukes sheathed. But such comfort dissipates upon heeding the words of the late Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, who first put Tehran on the path to obtaining a nuclear arsenal.

Khomeini, whose ultimate goal was for Islam to dominate the world, made it clear he did not fear such retaliation. In 1980, he said: “We do not worship Iran, we worship Allah. For patriotism is another name for paganism. I say let this land burn. I say let this land go up in smoke, provided Islam emerges triumphant in the rest of the world.”

There should be no doubt, as Iran’s spiritual leader, Khomeini was willing to sacrifice the entire country (“let this land go up in smoke”) if that was the price to pay for Islam to emerge “triumphant in the rest of the world.”

As our media focused public attention on the presidential candidates’ personal issues, it left more important issues concerning this national security threat in the shadows.

Again, there will be supporters of the deal who believe Iran only seeks nukes to be able to respond in an uncertain world. But one need only reflect on Tehran’s ever-increasing global aggression to realize what a nuclear-armed Iran is capable of doing.

In fulfillment of its extraterritorial constitutional mandate, one totally contrary to any other state’s constitution, Iran has been spreading its Islamic Revolution throughout the Middle East. The mullahs have targeted Lebanon, Iraq, Syria, Libya, Yemen, the Palestinian territories, and Latin America.

Even as nuclear negotiations were ongoing and Obama considered military action against Syria in 2013 for using chemical weapons, Iran brazenly threatened brutal attacks against Americans and even Obama’s family if he did so. Since the 2015 nuclear agreement was reached, the number of U.S. naval confrontations with Iran have doubled, accompanied with threats to shoot down U.S. spy planes in international airspace. Undeterred by international law, Iran most recently boasted its enemies are not safe “as the revolutionary forces will chase them and kill them anywhere in the world.”

A leadership that believes it is faith-bound to establish Islam as the global religion and boasts it is unconstrained by international borders and law to do so is capable of using all means at its disposal to achieve that end. Once it is nuclear armed, we will better understand this.

For supporters who naively believe the nuclear agreement stopped Iran’s nuclear arms program, they not only ignore the failure of that deal to implement verifiable inspections but also ignore that the mullahs are using North Korea as its research lab for nuclear arms and missile development. Despite knowing this was being done, Obama inserted no restrictions upon Tehran in the agreement to continue doing so. Iranian scientists and military observers have always been present at Pyongyang’s nuclear and missile tests. It is absurd to suggest Obama’s nuclear deal halted Iran’s research.

Additionally, it later came to light Obama made several “secret” sub-deals as part of Iran’s nuclear agreement that were not disclosed to Congress at the time. Had their details been shared with Clinton, perhaps we would all know their content now by reading her emails.

As Clinton has strongly endorsed Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran, it is doubtful she will do anything to deter Iran’s march to a weaponization. If four years of a Clinton administration does not see Iran complete that march, eight years definitely will see it become a reality. And a nuclear weapon in Tehran’s arsenal will gather no dust. Only two questions will remain at that point: where will it be detonated and what will be the means of delivery?

When the big bang is heard, the mullahs will rejoice in Tehran with no fear of facing the consequences of their actions. For them, retaliation is simply their ticket to the afterlife guaranteed to those who further Islam’s cause, unabashedly leaving behind a world in chaos, suffering and destruction for non-believers.

But rest assured: the big bang theory will play out under the Obama-Clinton legacy!

Lt. Colonel James G. Zumwalt, USMC (Ret.), is a retired Marine infantry officer who served in the Vietnam war, the U.S. invasion of Panama and the first Gulf war. He is the author of “Bare Feet, Iron Will–Stories from the Other Side of Vietnam’s Battlefields,” “Living the Juche Lie: North Korea’s Kim Dynasty” and “Doomsday: Iran–The Clock is Ticking.” He frequently writes on foreign policy and defense issues.