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My name is Banafsheh.
I escaped from Iran in 1979, a few months after the Islamist takeover
led by Khomeini.
It was total chaos.
The U.S. Embassy in Tehran has been invaded and occupied by Iranian students.
The Americans inside have been taken prisoner.
The entire country
was suddenly thrust
from being the Western-friendly
and progressive nation,
to living under the harshest form of Islamic law.
My father was one of Iran's leading journalists and intellectuals.
In 2001
my father was imprisoned
for the fourth time
and remained
a political prisoner until
last year when he committed suicide
as a final act of protest
against that inhumane regime.
i know it may sound radical to you,
but I'm here to speak the truth.
Iran has a plan
to destroy the West,
and the number one target is America.
Iran has doubled the number of supersonic centrifuges
spinning at over a dozen nuclear facilities.
According to the International Atomic Energy Agency
Iran could likely go nuclear
in under one year.
We need to be totally clear on why a nuclear Iran
would be a disaster for the world.
There are three reasons:
I imagine it would take about one day for Iran to pick up the phone
and give the Saudis an ultimatum.
And that would just be the beginning. Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain, Jordan, the UAE, Iraq
and various other countries in the area
would all fall like dominoes.
With these conquests,
Iran would dominate the Strait of Hormuz.
"Iran is threatening to close the Strait of Hormuz,
what the United States government calls 'by far the world's most important oil chokepoint.'"
"The over-the-top rhetoric makes countries stop and think
what would happen to their economy
if a vital chokepoint for Mideast oil became a war zone."
The fact is that a mere 10 percent stoppage
in the flow of Gulf oil
would make petroleum prices
double or triple overnight.
"American drivers are set to spend a record
$481 billion on gasoline."
"A lot of people are hurting."
"It takes my whole check just to get back and forth from work."
Iran could easily trigger a global economic paralysis.
Would the United States risk
nuclear war to protect these oil interests?
I don't think so.
And that would leave Iran in possession of the ultimate oil weapon.
What I'm saying is that a nuclear Iran is not just a security issue.
It's the single most important economic issue
facing America
and the free world today.
Think about everything you know about the volatile Middle East
and inject nuclear weapons into the equation.
The result is a critically-destabilized region.
Syria's closest military ally is Iran,
and the Assad government
is slaughtering men, women and children on the streets.
Iran has a whole string of terrorist proxies. In Lebanon, it's Hezbollah, "the party of God."
These are the same guys who attacked the U.S. barracks in Lebanon,
killing 241 marines.
In Gaza, it's Hamas --
one of the world's most violent
terror organizations,
best-known
for rocket attacks against civilians
and heinous suicide bombings,
and with no shortage of American blood on their hands.
"The reason you don't want Iran to have an active nuclear program is
you will never know whether the materials are being transported to terrorist groups."
Imagine how much more emboldened they will be as a patron of a nuclear Iran.
And we can't even fathom the horror of an Iranian plot involving al-Qaeda.
"A nuclear-armed Iran is going to spark an arms race in the Middle East."
These weapons will go straight into the hands of the Muslim Brotherhood.
Iranian leaders are explicit about wanting to annihilate
the entire state of Israel, along with the Palestinians
that Iran claims to support.
Iranian missiles do not distinguish
between Arab and Israeli, between Muslim, Christian or Jew.
This is not mere rhetoric. The center of Israel,
where 80% of the country's population resides in an area the size of suburban Chicago,
could be targeted by one nuclear bomb.
Israel is America's number one ally and prime strategic asset in the Middle East.
Can you possibly imagine a world without israel.
The crisis of a nuclear Iran
is not just localized in the Middle East.
Iranian leaders are on a
messianic warpath,
with the ultimate goal of hastening the Mahdi,
the messianic Twelfth Imam,
to usher in an era of global Islamic domination.
Iran's fanatical leaders envision
a world living under the most extreme form of Islamic Sharia law.
in jeopardy are the things that we in the free world
take for granted:
freedom of speech
freedom of assembly
freedom of the press.
"Public hangings in Iran are especially cruel.
Human rights activists say these two teenage boys were executed for being gay."
"A Christian pastor was sentenced to death in Iran
for refusing to recant his religious beliefs."
Even Muslims from non-Shiite sects are targeted for domination.
While a nuclear exchange could cost Iran millions of people,
Iranian leaders have declared
that to be a "small sacrifice" for advancing jihad --
where war is a religious obligation
and death brings eternal heavenly reward.
"Waves of young boys who volunteered to become 'martyrs,' clearing mine fields by running across them."
The Times of London reports that Iran has
40,000 suicide bombers --
trained and ready for action.
Iran has terror cells planted throughout the world --
just waiting to be activated.
"Senior American government officials say they've foiled a major terror plot
planned and organized by the Iranian government."
All the recent scenes of mobs storming the American embassies
is what you will see
with a regime that would have an atomic bomb.
Let's be very clear:
Iran has a plan to take over the world,
and they view the United States as the "Great Satan" which must be destroyed.
This is a fervently-held religious obligation
which is non-negotiable,
and where mutual nuclear destruction
is not deterrent
but rather an inducement.
Once Iran has the bomb
it changes everything.
The last time a genocidal madman tried to take over the world, we stopped him.
Because if Hitler would have had nuclear weapons,
who knows what might have been the outcome.
As is, the result was a world war
that killed 60 million people.
Today's nuclear weapons are
a thousand times more powerful
than what was dropped
on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
We cannot even fathom the cost
in human suffering if we had to go to
war to :"defang" a nuclear Iran.
Not to mention
the trillions of dollars needed to make it happen.
We must continue --
and even intensify the various diplomatic methods that world leaders
have worked so hard to implement.
But the reality is that Iran's nuclear clock
is ticking faster than the diplomatic clock.
"The Islamic Republic of Iran
will not stop its enrichment activities."
So we need an effective and reliable backup solution.
It's called the Red Line.
Here's how it works:
World leaders make a pronouncement
outlining a clear unambiguous set of criteria,
that will serve as fair warning to Iran
that crossing this line
will trigger a devastating
military response.
This is very different from a "deadline,"
an arbitrary date of, say
60 days.
Whereas the redline
is set at a point before
iran can make a final sprint
to the nuclear goal line.
This red line must be defined
by benchmarks like the quantity of uranium,
percentage of enrichment,
and the possession
of component parts
such as trigger devices
and a missile delivery system.
"This is the smoking gun.
There is a news report out of England, a document
which purports to show that Iran has been testing a neutron initiator,
which is a trigger for a nuclear weapon,
and has no civilian use."
I know what will speak to the Iranian regime.
You have to draw a line in the sand,
with an ironclad threat:
Do not cross.
For all of us,
the redline is a win-win.
If Iran comes to its senses and stops,
then we will have achieved the "remarkable"
in stopping this horrific threat --
without firing a shot
and without costing a penny.
Should Iran be so suicidally insane
to cross that redline,
then we are still in a far better position,
for two reasons:
First, with Iran having revealed its fanatical true intentions,
the redline allows us to proceed with confidence,
knowing that the monster has been unmasked.
Pragmatically,
the redline puts us in a much better position
of going up against a non-nuclear Iran,
than having to face the certainty of war
against a genocidal
and nuclear Iran.
The good Iranian people are once again out on the streets protesting.
"The question of a thin red line is something that everybody
seems to be dancing over and around."
Each of us can choose,
right now,
to become part of the solution.
Because although the leaders of the free world are the most powerful individuals,
there is another
more potent human force:
the collective voice of humanity
rising up together
calling out in unity.
So we're calling on everyone:
Sign the global referendum to stand up and declare:
We need everyone on the same page --
from soccer moms
to CEOs,
from the deserts of Sudan
to the gardens of Japan.
After you've signed the petition,
we want to try something that's never been done before.
We want to generate an avalanche
of separate YouTube videos.
We're calling on everyone
to record for own 10-second video
demanding that world leaders set that red line.
Join the global chorus by uploading your video onto YouTube.
Now it's crunch time and we need all hands on deck.
Post this on Facebook now. Or send it out on Twitter with the hashtag REDLINE.
This is not an issue of the left or the right,
of Muslims, Christians or Jews.
That's why I've come to deliver this universal message
from the city of Jerusalem,
which is the cradle of the three great monotheistic religions.
Because ultimately,
no matter how you personally interface
with the Iranian issue -- whether it's
a paralyzed economy,
or a dangerously destabilized Middle East,
, or even Islamic extremists
ruling our planet --
the reality is that this affects
each and every one of us.
This is arguably
the most crucial issue
in human history...
to forever be defined as
"before a nuclear Iran,"
and "after a nuclear Iran."
The clock is ticking.
The centrifuges are spinning.
Every one of us needs to stand up and say:
It's time to set the red line.
Because we cannot live
with a nuclear Iran.