The Blue Voice

Saturday, April 15, 2006

Confronting Iran and the Iran war hawks

Our latest bad-as-Hitler enemy who must be urgently conquered - at least according to our Iran hawks - has been shooting off his mouth again: Peres: Ahmadinejad to end up like Iraq's Saddam Hussein Ha'aretz 04/15/06. Given the fact that the hawks are trying to use his every word - and maybe even sloppy English translations of his words - to promote war, it's worth paying close attention to how these article spin things.

This part further down in the article seems more newsworthy to me than anything Ahmadinejad has to rant about:

The chief of Israeli military intelligence, Major General Amos Yadlin, was quoted Wednesday as saying Iran could develop a nuclear bomb "within three years, by the end of the decade."

Three years is on the pessimistic side of what the reality-based estimates are running, and that in the worst-case mode. Three years is quite a bit longer than the 16 days claimed by a Bush administration spokesman this past week. Again, that's three years, not three weeks.

More important than what Ahmadinejad says is what Iran's main leader Ayatollah Khamenei has to say.

The Iranian president has relatively little actual governmental power, as the Iran hawks kept reminding the world when Iran's previous, reform-oriented president was in office. Now suddenly the Iranian president is powerful enough to do whatever set of nasty things the neocons are conjuring up this week.

The occasion of public statements by both the president and the ayatollah was a conference to support the Palestinians against Israel, a cause shared to some extent by virtually every Muslim in the world:

Also Friday, Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei called on the Islamic world to support Hamas and its resistance against Israel.

"The Islamic world is obliged to help [Hamas] in all possible ways and support continuation of this holy path [of resistance against Israel]," Khamenei said in the opening ceremony of the conference.

One of the main aims of the international conference is to raise funds for the Palestinian Authority, which has lost much of its international aid since Hamas formed the new Palestinian government. Hamas refuses to renounce violence, accept Israel's right to exist or abide by peace agreements signed by the previous PA government.

The Ayatollah called on the United States and the West to respect the democratically-elected government in Palestine and control Israeli aggression.

"Like the U.S. failed in gaining victory in Iraq, the Americans will also fail in realizing their aim of a Zionist-dominated Middle East," said Khamenei, who constitutionally has the final say on all state affairs in Iran.

Iran is a fierce supporter of Hamas and had termed the group's victory in last January's parliamentary elections as "Palestinians' democratic choice for resistance."

The only thing that I see new about this is that the cutoff of funds to the Palestinian Authority (PA) by the US and Israel encourages the Hamas government of the PA to rely more on supporters like Iran. That's not good or bad in itself. It's a consequence of the policy chosen toward Hamas.

But it does mean that we look at what's happening, not just at the fantastic bogeymen conjured up in the minds of neocon propagandists and Pentagon-dunded Iranian exile groups.

And speaking of bogeymen, what Ha'aretz quotes Ahmadinejad as saying doesn't strike me as terribly different from standard Muslim government rhetoric about Israel. That doesn't make it pleasant or justifiable. But it doesn't by itself signify any shift in Iranian policies toward Israel:

Speaking at the opening ceremony of the Qods (Jerusalem) conference in Tehran on supporting the Palestinians, Ahmadinejad said "like it or not, the Zionist regime is heading toward annihiliation."

"The Zionist regime is a rotten, dried tree that will be eliminated by one storm," he said.

"The existence of the Zionist regime is tantamount to an imposition of an unending and unrestrained threat so that none of the nations and Islamic countries of the region and beyond can feel secure from its threat," Ahmadinejad said.

Shimon Peres, the second-ranking leader in the new Kadima Party that is Israel's leading party after the last election, had a response:

Speaking to an Israel Radio reporter, Peres said "Ahmadinejad's statements remind those of Saddam and he will end up the same way as Hussein has." ...

Peres gave the statement as personal commentary. Israel did not, however, make an official response to Ahmadinejad's latest speech.

"Ahmadinejad represents Satan, not God," the veteran statesman said, adding that "history knew how to denounce madmen and those who wave their sword, and all those who acted this way ended their careers accordingly."

Ahmadinejad "represents Satan, not God"? Isn't it bad enough that he's the new Hitler?

A loudmouthed and not-particularly-powerful Shi'a president is a menance that can be dealt with by practical policies. An emissary of Satan is a bit harder to picture negotiating with on a good-faith basis.

May God save us all from religious fanatics: Christians, Muslims, Jews, the whole lot of them.

posted at 4:25:00 PM by Bruce Miller

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