THE WORLD’S STUPIDEST MILLIONAIRES

The world’s wealthiest exiles are the Iranians – folks who fled Iran after Jimmy Carter betrayed the Shah and let him be overthrown by Ayatollah Khomeini. The Cubans who fled after Castro took over Cuba and amassed fortunes in Miami are financial pikers compared to the Iranians.

Cumulatively they are worth billions. There are thousands of millionaires among them. And they are the stupidest millionaires on the planet.

From London to Los Angeles, they’ll whine all day long about the evil mullacracy oppressing their beloved country. They’ll open their mouths but they won’t open their wallets.

As Michael Ledeen puts it, “If the Iranians in America, much less in Europe, raised money for a democratic revolution and lobbied Congress to support it that was a tiny fraction of their wealth, that was a fraction of American Jews raise in support of Israel, Iran would be a free country today. It would have been a free country years ago.”

I have met a number of these folks, folks who are easily capable of financing an Iranian version of Ukraine’s Orange Revolution, or if it came to it, a Nicaraguan Contra-type rebellion. They much prefer to bellyache than write a check.

Because of their stupidity, they now face the extinction of their country. For the catastrophe Iran faces is far greater than the one Michael Ledeen discusses this week in From an Embarrassment to a Catastrophe.

Michael fears a catastrophic fallout of terroristic revenge should the US militarily attack Iran’s nuclear facilities. The real fallout comes from not attacking them (or far more preferably, destroying them through sabotage.)

For if there is anyone stupider than Iranian exile millionaires, it’s Iran’s president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Beyond all the crazed Nazi pronouncements – Israel should be “wiped off the earth,” the Holocaust is a “myth” – he is completely illiterate regarding nuclear weapons.

He actually said in public this week that “one nuclear bomb can destroy all of Israel.” This means he hasn’t got a clue about the destructive capacity of nukes. As we discussed last month in Shouldn’t The Palestinians Be Terrified of Iran?:

Iran might be able to build a handful of firecracker fission (“atom bomb”) nukes in the 10 to 20 kiloton range. Set any of these off in an above-ground airburst to maximize lethality and the heat fries everyone within a mile radius, the neutrons travel about a mile and a half, the gamma rays much less, killing folks with radiation poisoning. The radiation effects are very localized. Anyone five miles away would just get a sunburn.

Ahmadijejad doesn’t understand that it is impossible to “destroy all of Israel” with one Hiroshima-type nuke. Which means he’ll try once he gets one. And once he does, once he hits, say, Tel Aviv, and kills 200,000 people or about 3% of Israel’s population, it is Iran that will be wiped off the map, not Israel.

Israel will do to Iran what Rome did to Carthage. Thermonuclearly. Several dozen nukes ten to twenty times the power of Iran’s firecrackers raining down on Iran’s cities will ensure that Iran – and the Iranian people – will cease to exist.

So Michael may well be justified in complaining about the stupidity and short-sightedness of US politicians and diplomats regarding their refusal to engender regime change in Iran.

But the consequences of the stupidity of Iranian millionaires are far greater. Iran is their country, not ours. If it vanishes, we’ll shrug our shoulders and see that folks move in to keep pumping the oil out. Iran is not only the Iranian exiles’ country, it is their responsibility. They need to cease being stupid – and very quickly.