Turning Ahmadinejad into public enemy No. 1

Demonizing the Iranian president and making his visit to New York seem controversial are all part of the neoconservative push for yet another war.

By Juan Cole

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad waves as he leaves Tehran Sept. 23 to attend the U.N. General Assembly in New York.

Sept. 24, 2007 | Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's visit to New York to address the United Nations General Assembly has become a media circus. But the controversy does not stem from the reasons usually cited.

The media has focused on debating whether he should be allowed to speak at Columbia University on Monday, or whether his request to visit Ground Zero, the site of the Sept. 11 attack in lower Manhattan, should have been honored. His request was rejected, even though Iran expressed sympathy with the United States in the aftermath of those attacks and Iranians held candlelight vigils for the victims. Iran felt that it and other Shiite populations had also suffered at the hands of al-Qaida, and that there might now be an opportunity for a new opening to the United States.

Instead, the U.S. State Department denounced Ahmadinejad as himself little more than a terrorist. Critics have also cited his statements about the h0Ɩ0cαųst or his hopes that the Israeli state will collapse. He has been depicted as a Hitler figure intent on killing Israeli Jєωs, even though he is not commander in chief of the Iranian armed forces, has never invaded any other country, denies he is an αnтι-ѕємιтє, has never called for any Israeli civilians to be killed, and allows Iran's 20,000 Jєωs to have representation in Parliament.

There is, in fact, remarkably little substance to the debates now raging in the United States about Ahmadinejad. His quirky personality, penchant for outrageous one-liners, and combative populism are hardly serious concerns for foreign policy. Taking potshots at a bantam cock of a populist like Ahmadinejad is actually a way of expressing another, deeper anxiety: fear of Iran's rising position as a regional power and its challenge to the American and Israeli status quo. The real reason his visit is controversial is that the American right has decided the United States needs to go to war against Iran. Ahmadinejad is therefore being configured as an enemy head of state.

The neoconservatives are even claiming that the United States has been at war with Iran since 1979. As Glenn Greenwald points out, this assertion is absurd. In the '80s, the Reagan administration sold substantial numbers of arms to Iran. Some of those beating the war drums most loudly now, like think-tank rat Michael Ledeen, were middlemen in the Reagan administration's unconstitutional weapons sales to Tehran. The sales would have been a form of treason if in fact the United States had been at war with Iran at that time, so Ledeen is apparently accusing himself of treason.

But the right has decided it is at war with Iran, so a routine visit by Iran's ceremonial president to the U.N. General Assembly has generated sparks. The foremost cheerleader for such a view in Congress is Sen. Joseph Lieberman, I-Conn., who recently pressed Gen. David Petraeus on the desirability of bombing Iran in order to forestall weapons smuggling into Iraq from that country (thus cleverly using one war of choice to foment another).

American hawks are beating the war drums loudly because they are increasingly frustrated with the course of events. They are unsatisfied with the lack of enthusiasm among the Europeans and at the United Nations for impeding Tehran's nuclear energy research program. While the Bush administration insists that the program aims at producing a bomb, the Iranian state maintains that it is for peaceful energy purposes. Washington wants tighter sanctions on Iran at the United Nations but is unlikely to get them in the short term because of Russian and Chinese reluctance. The Bush administration may attempt to create a "coalition of the willing" of Iran boycotters outside the U.N. framework.

Washington is also unhappy with Mohammad ElBaradei, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency. He has been unable to find credible evidence that Iran has a weapons program, and he told Italian television this week, "Iran does not constitute a certain and immediate threat for the international community." He stressed that no evidence had been found for underground production sites or hidden radioactive substances, and he urged a three-month waiting period before the U.N. Security Council drew negative conclusions.

ElBaradei intervened to call for calm after French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner said last week that if the negotiations over Iran's nuclear research program were unsuccessful, it could lead to war. Kouchner later clarified that he was not calling for an attack on Iran, but his remarks appear to have been taken seriously in Tehran.

Kouchner made the remarks after there had already been substantial speculation in the U.S. press that impatient hawks around U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney were seeking a pretext for a U.S. attack on Iran. Steven Clemons of the New America Foundation probably correctly concluded in Salon last week that President Bush himself has for now decided against launching a war on Iran. But Clemons worries that Cheney and the neoconservatives, with their Israeli allies, are perfectly capable of setting up a provocation that would lead willy-nilly to war.

David Wurmser, until recently a key Cheney advisor on Middle East affairs and the coauthor of the infamous 1996 white paper that urged an Iraq war, revealed to his circle that Cheney had contemplated having Israel strike at Iranian nuclear research facilities and then using the Iranian reaction as a pretext for a U.S. war on that country. Prominent and well-connected Afghanistan specialist Barnett Rubin also revealed that he was told by an administration insider that there would be an "Iran war rollout" by the Cheneyites this fall.

 It should also be stressed that some elements in the U.S. officer corps and the Defense Intelligence Agency are clearly spoiling for a fight with Iran because the Iranian-supported Shiite nationalists in Iraq are a major obstacle to U.S. dominance in Iraq. Although very few U.S. troops in Iraq are killed by Shiites, military spokesmen have been attempting to give the impression that Tehran is ordering hits on U.S. troops, a clear casus belli. Disinformation campaigns that accuse Iran of trying to destabilize the Shiite-dominated Iraqi government -- a government Iran actually supports -- could lay the groundwork for a war. Likewise, with the U.S. military now beginning patrols on the Iran-Iraq border, the possibility is enhanced of a hostile incident spinning out of control.

The Iranians have responded to all this bellicosity with some chest-thumping of their own, right up to the final hours before Ahmadinejad's American visit. The Iranian government declared "National Defense Week" on Saturday, kicking it off with a big military parade that showed off Iran's new Qadr-1 missiles, with a range of 1,100 miles. Before he left Iran for New York on Sunday morning, Ahmadinejad inspected three types of Iranian-manufactured jet fighters, noting that it was the anniversary of Iraq's invasion of Iran in 1980 (which the Iranian press attributed to American urging, though that is unlikely).

The display of this military equipment was accompanied by a raft of assurances on the part of the Iranian ayatollahs, politicians and generals that they were entirely prepared to deploy the missiles and planes if they were attacked. A top military advisor to Supreme Jurisprudent Ali Khamenei told the Mehr News Agency on Saturday, "Today, the United States must know that their 200,000 soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan are within the reach of Iran's fire. When the Americans were beyond our shores, they were not within our reach, but today it is very easy for us to deal them blows." Khamenei, the actual commander in chief of the armed forces, weighed in as well, reiterating that Iran would never attack first but pledging: "Those who make threats should know that attack on Iran in the form of hit and run will not be possible, and if any country invades Iran it will face its very serious consequences."

The threat to target U.S. troops in Iraq and Afghanistan and the unveiling of the Qadr-1 were not aggressive in intent, but designed to make the point that Iran could also play by Richard M. Nixon's "madman" strategy, whereby you act so wildly as to convince your enemy you are capable of anything. Ordinarily a poor non-nuclear third-world country might be expected to be supine before an attack by a superpower. But as Mohammad Reza Bahonar, the Iranian deputy speaker of Parliament, warned: "Any military attack against Iran will send the region up in flames."

In the end, this is hardly the kind of conflagration the United States should be enabling. If a spark catches, it will not advance any of America's four interests in the Middle East: petroleum, markets, Israel and hegemony.

The Middle East has two-thirds of the world's proven petroleum reserves and nearly half its natural gas, and its fields are much deeper than elsewhere in the world, so that its importance will grow for the United States and its allies. Petro-dollars and other wealth make the region an important market for U.S. industry, especially the arms industry. Israel is important both for reasons of domestic politics and because it is a proxy for U.S. power in the region. By "hegemony," I mean the desire of Washington to dominate political and economic outcomes in the region and to forestall rivals such as China from making it their sphere of influence.

The Iranian government (in which Ahmadinejad has a weak role, analogous to that of U.S. vice presidents before Dick Cheney) poses a challenge to the U.S. program in the Middle East. Iran is, unlike most Middle Eastern countries, large. It is geographically four times the size of France, and it has a population of 70 million (more than France or the United Kingdom). As an oil state, it has done very well from the high petroleum prices of recent years. It has been negotiating long-term energy deals with China and India, much to the dismay of Washington. It provides financial support to the Palestinians and to the Lebanese Shiites who vote for the Hezbollah Party in Lebanon. By overthrowing the Afghanistan and Iraq governments and throwing both countries into chaos, the United States has inadvertently enabled Iran to emerge as a potential regional power, which could challenge Israel and Saudi Arabia and project both soft and hard power in the strategic Persian Gulf and the Levant.

And now the American war party, undeterred by the quagmire in Iraq, convinced that their model of New Empire is working, is eager to go on the offensive again. They may yet find a pretext to plunge the United States into another war. Ahmadinejad's visit to New York this year will not include his visit to Ground Zero, because that is hallowed ground for American patriotism and he is being depicted as not just a critic of the United States but as the leader of an enemy state. His visit may, however, be ground zero for the next big military struggle of the United States in the Middle East, one that really will make Iraq look like a cakewalk.

Turning Ahmadinejad into public enemy No. 1

The article's author is mocking freedom or the desire for freedom - and which might be the more apt title.

Demonizing the Iranian president and making his visit to New York seem controversial are all part of the neoconservative push for yet another war.

Demonizing anyone is said to be, unreasonable. Calling a killer a killer, on the other hand, a tyrant a tyrant, that is not unreasonable if that man is the present pick of the Iranian mullahs. Even the Iranians don't want these guys there, in that position of power.

Believe me.

Sept. 24, 2007 | Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's visit to New York to address the United Nations General Assembly has become a media circus. But the controversy does not stem from the reasons usually cited.

He is a ruthless dictator acting on behalf of a cabal of hypocritical and ruthless dictators, as dictators are. He has pledged to destroy Israel as soon as he has the weapons to do so, meaning nuclear bombs, perhaps even H-bomb immediately. Saddam made the same threats and gave every impression that he, too, has a nuclear weapons program about to produce the anti-Israel bomb.

That's the "controversy". This is a nation run by loons. They featured a parade, as I understand it, right out of a Simpson's cartoon, in which a nuclear rod was paraded through the streets. Someone correct me if that didn't happen.

Sept. 11 attack in lower Manhattan, . . . Iran expressed sympathy with the United States in the aftermath of those attacks and Iranians held candlelight vigils for the victims. Iran felt that it and other Shiite populations had also suffered at the hands of al-Qaida

I never saw word one, at the time, from any source, that the Iranian mullahs decried the 9/11 attacks. I would think many Iranian people were appalled. I have no doubt of that. But then they are appalled by the mullahs, most of all.

Remember, this is a regime that has openly threatened to unilaterally launch a nuclear attack on Israel, if and when they are able to do so.

Instead, the U.S. State Department denounced Ahmadinejad as himself little more than a terrorist. Critics have also cited his statements about the h0Ɩ0cαųst or his hopes that the Israeli state will collapse.

This is a regime, and this man personally, that has openly threatened to unilaterally launch a nuclear attack on Israel, if and when they are able to do so.

He has been depicted as a Hitler figure intent on killing Israeli Jєωs, even though he is not commander in chief of the Iranian armed forces, has never invaded any other country, denies he is an αnтι-ѕємιтє, has never called for any Israeli civilians to be killed

This is a regime, and this man PERSONALLY, that has openly threatened to unilaterally launch a nuclear attack on Israel, if and when they are able to do so.

and allows Iran's 20,000 Jєωs to have representation in Parliament.

Small comfort if they would be the only ones left alive after the attack.

The real reason his visit is controversial is that the American right has decided the United States needs to go to war against Iran.

Not because of what the regime has been threatening. Not because that regime has POURED its troops into Iraq in an effort to destabilize any effort to establish a national government. That couldn't be it. Golly.

It doesn't take away from the fact that the Dem finally hit on a legitimate complaint about Iraq, namely the 'political situation'. But that is being addressed in the way that Gingrinch and others have often suggested, bypassing a somewhat illegimate and powerless Bagdad and having the US and remaining Allied forces deal with the local chieftans, perhaps promoting some of them ultimately to Bagdad, in order to get that aspect of reconstruction moving forward.

The neoconservatives are even claiming that the United States has been at war with Iran since 1979. As Glenn Greenwald points out, this assertion is absurd. In the '80s, the Reagan administration sold substantial numbers of arms to Iran.

Arms for hostages. And Iraq was also supplied. During the Soviet attack on Afganistan, the US also supplied the Taliban.

None of that demands that the Taliban should not have themselves been attacked, prior to 9/11. None of that demands that the Iranian radicals should have been promoted against the Shaw, or that the Shaw was doing all, or anything, that he could toward a just administration. Same for Saddam. That the US supplied the Ba'athists, at one time, in no way demanded that they should continue to support them when they rolled into Kuwait - lest people forget. Foreign entanglements, someone once called it. But it's unavoidable in such a 'global village' as today.

Some of those beating the war drums most loudly now, like think-tank rat Michael Ledeen

Rat? The author of this screed is really going to convince me now, and all readers. Rats. Like crawling in sewers and stuff, or out sewer grates in vast numbers. One can almost imagine the film being made.

I believe Mr. Ledeen is Jєωιѕн.

were middlemen

Or the author of this piece is a middleman for the Iranian mullahs.

in the Reagan administration's unconstitutional weapons sales to Tehran. The sales would have been a form of treason if in fact the United States had been at war with Iran at that time

Reagan regretted what he did. Ollie North still bears some blame I don't think he's yet confessed. But ultimately, Reagan did take the blame. He said he thought it was the best way to release the hostages.

But the right has decided it is at war with Iran

Iran has practically declared it is at war with Israel. Or else they plan to launch a nuclear attack without even declaring war. For the US, treaty obligations, and such.

so a routine visit by Iran's ceremonial president to the U.N. General Assembly has generated sparks.

Good point on the ceremonial. He's appointed, basically, by the mullahs. When he speaks - think of it as all of them speaking. These are the guys running Iran, and right into the ground.

administration insists that the program aims at producing a bomb, the Iranian state maintains that it is for peaceful energy purposes.

Or perhaps even the production of 'baby milk'. Who knows what cleverness? All one has to go on are the public threats and bizarro behavior of the regime. Noted above.

Washington wants tighter sanctions on Iran at the United Nations but is unlikely to get them in the short term because of Russian and Chinese reluctance.

I can only wonder why. Could it be that Iranian nuclear fuel rods have been SUPPLIED by Putin's neo-Soviet Union?

For a Catholic board, I'm surprised so many forget how ardent an anti-Communist was Fulton Sheen, and many others. And this sort of provocative behavior by the Soviets is one reason why. The last thing you give an Iranian religious regime which has said the things it has - is the ability to produce explosives grade uranian and plutonium for nuclear weapons!

The Iranian government declared "National Defense Week" on Saturday, kicking it off with a big military parade that showed off Iran's new Qadr-1 missiles, with a range of 1,100 miles.

A bunch of idiots. A least it's a step up from a nuclear rod.

The display of this military equipment was accompanied by a raft of assurances on the part of the Iranian ayatollahs, politicians and generals that they were entirely prepared to deploy the missiles and planes if they were attacked.

One might be careful what they wish for. They may just get their wish. They've certainly been asking for it. Even their defenders have to admit that much.

Dust 7

He is a ruthless dictator acting on behalf of a cabal of hypocritical and ruthless dictators, as dictators are. He has pledged to destroy Israel as soon as he has the weapons to do so, meaning nuclear bombs, perhaps even H-bomb immediately.

A "ruthless dictator."  All of our perceived enemies are "ruthless dictators," aren't they.  They must be.  That is the way the game is played.  
I was not aware that Ahmadinejad has pledged to destroy Israel using nuclear bombs.  Could you supply a quote to that effect?  And "immediately," no less.

I would imagine that in Iran and throughout the ME, someone like Sen. Joseph Lieberman may be percieved as a powerful and  "ruthless" politician.  He is the one, after all, who prepared the resolution authorizing the invasion of Iraq in 2003.  Now he is working just as assiduously to turn our armed might upon Iran.  Would you not describe him as "ruthless?"

Dust 7 is apparently not concerned at all about the present nuclear threat posed by Israel.  He points only to a presently non-existent, perceived Iranian nuclear potential.  Not only does Iran NOT have a nuclear arsenal, it does not even have a viable domestic nuclear program for peaceful uses, and is not expected to have one for years to come.  On the other hand, Israel's nukes are a very real and present danger.  They have at least 300 war heads and bombs, complete with delivery systems which can direct them to targets anywhere in the ME and beyond.  How do we know?  An Israeli named Vanunu first revealed to the world Israel's then secret nuclear arms program.   That courageous individual blew the lid off the sinister intentions of this perfidious bunch.  And for the trouble, he spent the following 18 years in an Israeli prison.  Israel would launch a nuclear attack on Iran in a minute, were they not restrained by the few sane, (non-Zionists) elements still remaining  in the U.S. government.

Vandaler tells us that anyone "of legal drinking age is aware" that Israel has pledged to destroy Israel.  It is a ridiculous assertion on its face.  Applying this silly remark, we understand that the entire population 21 years old and above is aware of these sinister Iranian intentions.  When V.'s intellect fails him, (which is frequently), he normally resorts to being cute and smarmy.  
I ask for a simple quote, (even a written docuмent ascribed to Iran's president will do), indicating that Ahmadinejad is determined to wreak nuclear destruction upon Israel.  He answers vapidly that a politician's intentions are not necessarily signalled by "public quotes"  Which means, simply, that this evil, ruthless tyrant, Ahmadinejad, exists in the mind of the beholder.  He is the creation of V.'s fancy, having no solid basis in the former's stated intentions and clearly declared future plans.  "Not all intentions are publicly disclosed," he says.  Well, V., you must be an insider with information that the general public is not privy to.  Please reveal your sources, unless, of course, they are merely the wild wanderings of your mind.
BTW,V. always shows up when he perceives that the Jєωs and Israel are under attack.  Tell me, V., are you, by chance, a Jєω?  I don't know too many informed traditional Catholics that think as you do.


 
 

 

A "ruthless dictator."  All of our perceived enemies are "ruthless dictators," aren't they.  They must be.

If they are. Limbaugh made the observation that those speaking of free speech for this guy might do well to travel to his country, and attempt to say something against his regime.

If they are - then they must be.

That is the way the game is played.  
I was not aware that Ahmadinejad has pledged to destroy Israel using nuclear bombs.

It's the reason for their nuclear program. They want the bomb, to bomb Israel. I know he's denied it. But it's the means, the only real means, that they would have.

You don't understand the situation over there. This guy sees the late Khomeini as some kind of hero. The entire regime does. Their pledge to destroy Israel was that of Khomeini. It's their desire, as well. They've been very public, and very up front, about that.

That's partly why those in Iran want to be out from under these kooks, yesterday, if not today. These guys don't deserve any defense.

As for quotes:

Al-jazeera of all sources

And IRIB Iran

Would you not describe him as "ruthless?"

Joe Lieberman is neither ruthless, nor a dictator.

How could anyone suggest that he is?

Dust, are you always trusting the lying media? The President of Iran did not call for eradicating Israel, but for eliminating the Zionist regime in Israel.

That is Israel. By Zionism, they mean the desire for an Israeli state, and certain things that might have been done to secure that, such as the terrorism of Irgun, and whoever else, under the lingering British mandate, and perhaps even ginning up some numbers in counting up the dead from Hitler's 'Final Solution to the Jєωιѕн Question', as the nαzιs themselves termed it.

Israel, Zionist Israel - same thing.

And this is what he had to say:

"As the Imam said, Israel must be wiped off the map," said Ahmadinejad, referring to the late founder of the Islamic Republic of Iran, Imam Khomeini.

Addressing some 4,000 students gathered in an interior ministry conference hall, Ahmadinejad also called for Palestinian unity, resistance and a point where the annihilation of the Zionist regime will come.

LINK

And if you can't trust Iranian news, who can you trust?

Maybe Al-jazeera?

Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Mark Regev issued a vague response. "Today, Israelis heard two extremists speak openly about destroying the Jєωιѕн state. One was the new president of Iran, and the other was the leader of Hamas, Mahmoud Zahar.

Scott McClellan said US fears have proved accurate

 "And it appears the problem with these extremists is that they followed through on their violent declarations with violent actions."

The United States said Ahmadinejad's remarks proved the accuracy of Washington's fears about Iran's contentious nuclear programme.

"I think it reconfirms what we have been saying about the regime in Iran. It underscores the concerns we have about Iran's nuclear intentions," White House press secretary Scott McClellan said.

Ebrahim Yazdi, a former Iranian foreign minister, said Ahmadinejad's remarks harmed Iran.

LINK

I neither agree with you or Dust-7 on this particular issue.

I'm curious as to what our point of disagreement might be.