Suggested Answers to the First Short Quiz

[johnkarls]

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Question 1

Has Ayatollah Ali Khamenei been “The Supreme Leader” of Iran since 1989?

Answer 1

Yes.

Question 2

Does that mean that Ayatollah Khamenei makes every important decision in Iran even though he periodically permits the election of a new puppet as “President”?

Answer 2

Yes.

Question 3

Is the “Office of the Supreme Leader” an elective one?

Answer 3

Most political scientists would be tempted to answer negatively.

However Iran, which is Persian and not Arab and which is also Shiite Muslim rather than the Middle East’s majority Sunni Muslim, has a system (or tradition) that the rank of each Muslim cleric is determined by how many of the faithful “pray behind him.” (NB: “behind HIM” because there are no female clerics.)

Accordingly, Iran’s Supreme Cleric is indeed a democratic position even though there are no elections as Westerners are accustomed to seeing.

Question 4

Have both Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and his predecessor as The Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini who led the overthrow of the Shah of Iran in 1979, threatened on almost a weekly basis to annihilate Israel which they call a “one bomb country”? Have both also talked on almost a weekly basis about domination of the Middle East?

Answer 4

Yes. Yes.

Question 5

Is Ayatollah Ali Khamenei perceived as so dangerous and unstable that if Iran goes nuclear, 8 countries have announced that each will also immediately go nuclear = Turkey, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, The United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Bahrain and Oman?

Answer 5

Yes.

Question 6

Do 50% of the world’s oil supplies come from the Persian Gulf or down-wind from the Persian Gulf?

Answer 6

Yes.

Question 7

Is oil not only the source of fuel and petro-chemicals from which many pharmaceuticals and all plastics are made, but is it also virtually the sole source of the world’s agricultural fertilizers?

Answer 7

Yes.

Question 8

Accordingly, if 50% of the world’s oil supplies became radioactive overnight, would 3.5 billion of the earth’s human population become immediately unsustainable?

Answer 8

Yes.

Question 9

In other words, would a nuclear holocaust in the Persian Gulf quickly result in a worldwide life-and-death free-for-all war to determine which half of the world’s 7 billion human population would starve?

Answer 9

Yes.

Question 10

Did General Charles de Gaulle, as President of France, pull France out of NATO and develop France’s own nuclear weapons because he had no faith in America’s “Nuclear Umbrella” Policy that the U.S. would actually engage in a nuclear war with the Soviet Union in order to save France?

Answer 10

Yes.

Question 11

Accordingly, would Turkey, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, The United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Bahrain and Oman merely be prudent in following the example of French President Charles de Gaulle if each of them followed their announced intention to go nuclear immediately if Iran goes nuclear?

Answer 11

Of course!!!

Question 12

Even if America’s Nuclear Umbrella Policy were credible, does Saudi Arabia’s disdainful refusal yesterday (10/18/2013) to accept its election to fill one of the rotating seats on the United Nations Security Council demonstrate, from the announced reason for its disdainful refusal, the anger and lack of trust Saudi Arabia feels toward the United States?

Answer 12

Yes.

Question 13

Has Saudi Arabia been seething since at least two years ago when, during the so-called Arab Spring, Saudi Arabia was so upset over its perception that the U.S. had thrown Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak under the bus and upset over how the U.S. had been lecturing Saudi Arabia through the media about how it should not have sent its military forces into Bahrain to prop up its ruling family, that Saudi Arabia famously refused to permit U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates to visit Saudi Arabia to deliver that lecture in person?

Answer 13

Obviously!!!

Question 14

Even if Turkey, Egypt and the Gulf State Six were each willing to believe, unlike French President Charles de Gaulle, that America would engage in a nuclear war in order to save them, isn't Ayatollah Ali Khamenei so dangerous and unstable that he cannot be deterred for long from having his nuclear war?

Answer 14

What do you think??? Let’s discuss this at our meeting!!!

Question 15

In other words, like the leaders of the Soviet Union who grew up in farming families and loved the Russian people so much that they would never have risked a nuclear war, does Ayatollah Khamenei love the Iranian people enough to make workable nuclear détente (aka Mutual Assured Destruction) or is he crazy enough to be willing to sacrifice them on the altar of some ideology such as Domination of the Middle East (which he regularly advocates) or Annihilation of Israel (which he regularly advocates)?

Answer 15

What do you think??? Let’s discuss this at our meeting!!!