Great article by Guardian..very well analysed.
enjoy!
Dangerous bluster
Guardian Unlimited-
[FONT=arial,helvetica,sans-serif][/FONT][FONT=arial,helvetica,sans-serif][/FONT]
[FONT=arial,helvetica,sans-serif]The Iranian President's call for the destruction of Israel only benefits Israel[/FONT]
[FONT=Geneva,Arial,sans-serif]Peter Beaumont
Sunday October 30, 2005
The Observer
[/FONT][FONT=Geneva,Arial,sans-serif]Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Iran's belligerent new President, wears his revolutionary heritage on his sleeve. On Friday, he was revisiting his days as a student follower of Ayatollah Khomeini and rallying demonstrators in the street against Israel to mark 'Jerusalem Day', the fourth Friday of Ramadan, reiterating his predictions of Israel's demise.
Ahmadinejad has been playing with fire these last few days. Twice last week, he has appeared to threaten Israel, attracting almost universal opprobrium. It is certainly dangerous, but how worried should we be?
There is an element of bluster. After weeks and months of fractious diplomacy, after accusations and counter-accusations in Iran's belligerent Cold War with the UK, after the noises from Washington about changing regimes, Ahmadinejad is confronting us with the default position that was once the favourite fall-back of Saddam. That is, when under threat, publicly wrap yourself in the cloak of the defender of Palestine and the hammer of Israel.
If the President's words, made to a conference on a 'World Without Zionism', and repeated defiantly the following day at a street demonstration, tell us anything, it is how little certain factions in Iran have been paying attention to world events in the past few years. For if Iran should have learned anything from recent history, especially from events on its own borders, it is that as a tactic, whether offensive or defensive, threatening Israel publicly is counterproductive in the extreme.
Iran is already under close scrutiny for its pursuit of a nuclear programme which the international community sees as a threat to world peace. For that country's President to voice a desire to 'wipe Israel off the map' at such a time is a serious and dangerous misjudgment and casts serious doubt on Iraq's claim to harbour only peaceful ambitions for its nuclear technology.
An indication of the scale of the misjudgment can be found in the fact that the most powerful of the condemnations in the past few days came not from a member of the Security Council but from a Palestinian - Saeb Erekat, the Palestinian Authority's chief negotiator. He denounced the comments as 'unacceptable', adding for good measure that the PA itself 'recognised the state of Israel'.
But loathsome as the comment is, it is worth maintaining some perspective. The fact that the Iranian regime is hostile to Israel (and the US) is hardly news: Iran refuses to recognise the legitimacy of the foundation of the Jewish state; it backs both Hizbollah and Hamas; and anti-Israeli diatribes are common at Friday prayers. Indeed, the conference at which Ahmadinejad was speaking has been an annual feature of Tehran's political scene since the days of Khomeini.
All this has long been grist to the mill of Israel's diplomacy, which, in the aftermath of the Iraq invasion, has been focused on persuading Washington that Iran was always actually the greater threat and is ripe for similar treatment. But, despite the history of mutual animosity, the deliberately antagonistic nature of last week's comments still demand an explanation of why Iran - or Ahmadinejad and the hardliners who surround him - has decided to indulge in poisonous rhetoric at this time.
His speech had as much to do with Iran's complex internal and regional politics as with Israel. At the centre is the nature of Ahmadinejad's power base and ambitions, a reprise of the revolutionary fervour of Khomeini's rule and an attempt to reassert its original ideals. Ahmadinejad believes these have been diluted by the years of reform during the Khatami years. By his own admission, when Ahmadinejad made his remarks about the inevitability of Israel's demise, he was quoting Khomeini.
But today's President has a less firm power and support base. Remarkably, in a country where 'death to Israel' chants have been an almost permanent feature of street politics, the President's comments have caused a furore.
The reason is that Iran has changed since Khomeini. Despite the continued grip on power by institutions set up by Khomeini, a large part of its youthful population has made complex accommodations between life lived in public and private. That has masked the loosening of those institutions' grip on the individual. The newly resurgent hardliners, with their strongest support among the poor and ill-educated, are now trying to reimpose that grip.
It is clear, however, that they will have a struggle. The fear and control of the Khomeini years has been diluted. Power has been diffused through competing institutions: religious, governmental and military. Ahmadinejad has responding by trying to use the simple certainties of the past as a nationally uniting theme.
But there is a second, increasingly noisy, theme - the enunciation of a growing sense of Shia power, not least via the Shia ascendancy in Iraq. This has given Iran a new sense of entitlement as a coming regional power, reflected in its dogged pursuit of the right to have a nuclear programme. To Iran's growing irritation, this vision of its growing importance is taken insufficiently seriously on the international stage.
In short, Iran has felt assaulted on multiple fronts: accused by the West of interfering in Iraq, accused of supporting terrorism and accused over the nature of its nuclear ambitions and its tutelage of Hizbollah in Lebanon which it is now being told should be disarmed.
All these pressing issues require a more skilful diplomat and politician than Ahmadinejad. The hectoring revolutionary jargon of his speech last week, with its talk of hegemonies and struggle and appropriate revolutionary behaviour, suggests a lack of any subtlety.
It was left to his political rival, the reformist-minded and more subtle former President, Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, to attempt to defuse the row by insisting: 'We have no problems with Jews and highly respect Judaism as a holy religion. We only have problems with Zionist circles in Israel which we hold responsible for the suppression of the Palestinian nation.'
Iran acts like a dictatorship and yet proudly proclaims its democracy; its isolation has bred a particular kind of paranoia and its sense of being has been thwarted in its regional ambitions. All this has bred a sullen inferiority complex. Put under pressure, Ahmadinejad has retreated behind the old and troubling slogans of the past. Still, this affair should be regarded as only the latest spike in the rapidly worsening relationship between Iran and the West after the encouraging years of tentative engagement during the Khatami regime.
That has seemed in the past few months so much like ancient history. Instead, the whole trajectory of recent diplomacy with Iran - from Washington, and particularly from London - has been a series of hamfisted, confused and hyperventilated interventions, culminating in the Prime Minister's retreat to his own fall-back position: to mutter vaguely about military action.
But at the very heart of it, what is most shocking is that there is a pointlessness about this international kerfuffle that almost defies belief. Iran knows it will never carry out its threat. Ahmadinejad's comments, if anything, are an indication of his own weakness. The bellicose noise on Britain's side, however, is no less pointless with the Prime Minister's veiled threat made in the knowledge that while embroiled in a war on Iran's border, the chances of meaningful military action to enforce change in Iran, even if it were desirable, are negligible.
Ahmadinejad's comments do not signify a real and heightened threat. They express a vicious stalemate. The beneficiary, ironically for Iran, is Israel whose hand in Washington is strengthened. But such speeches bolster extremists. The lesson of Iraq is that talking up a crisis can become a self-fulfilling prophesy. And it is bringing us no closer to solving the urgent problems posed to world peace by an increasingly complex Iran.[/FONT]
enjoy!
Dangerous bluster
Guardian Unlimited-
[FONT=arial,helvetica,sans-serif][/FONT][FONT=arial,helvetica,sans-serif][/FONT]
[FONT=arial,helvetica,sans-serif]The Iranian President's call for the destruction of Israel only benefits Israel[/FONT]
[FONT=Geneva,Arial,sans-serif]Peter Beaumont
Sunday October 30, 2005
The Observer
[/FONT][FONT=Geneva,Arial,sans-serif]Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Iran's belligerent new President, wears his revolutionary heritage on his sleeve. On Friday, he was revisiting his days as a student follower of Ayatollah Khomeini and rallying demonstrators in the street against Israel to mark 'Jerusalem Day', the fourth Friday of Ramadan, reiterating his predictions of Israel's demise.
Ahmadinejad has been playing with fire these last few days. Twice last week, he has appeared to threaten Israel, attracting almost universal opprobrium. It is certainly dangerous, but how worried should we be?
There is an element of bluster. After weeks and months of fractious diplomacy, after accusations and counter-accusations in Iran's belligerent Cold War with the UK, after the noises from Washington about changing regimes, Ahmadinejad is confronting us with the default position that was once the favourite fall-back of Saddam. That is, when under threat, publicly wrap yourself in the cloak of the defender of Palestine and the hammer of Israel.
If the President's words, made to a conference on a 'World Without Zionism', and repeated defiantly the following day at a street demonstration, tell us anything, it is how little certain factions in Iran have been paying attention to world events in the past few years. For if Iran should have learned anything from recent history, especially from events on its own borders, it is that as a tactic, whether offensive or defensive, threatening Israel publicly is counterproductive in the extreme.
Iran is already under close scrutiny for its pursuit of a nuclear programme which the international community sees as a threat to world peace. For that country's President to voice a desire to 'wipe Israel off the map' at such a time is a serious and dangerous misjudgment and casts serious doubt on Iraq's claim to harbour only peaceful ambitions for its nuclear technology.
An indication of the scale of the misjudgment can be found in the fact that the most powerful of the condemnations in the past few days came not from a member of the Security Council but from a Palestinian - Saeb Erekat, the Palestinian Authority's chief negotiator. He denounced the comments as 'unacceptable', adding for good measure that the PA itself 'recognised the state of Israel'.
But loathsome as the comment is, it is worth maintaining some perspective. The fact that the Iranian regime is hostile to Israel (and the US) is hardly news: Iran refuses to recognise the legitimacy of the foundation of the Jewish state; it backs both Hizbollah and Hamas; and anti-Israeli diatribes are common at Friday prayers. Indeed, the conference at which Ahmadinejad was speaking has been an annual feature of Tehran's political scene since the days of Khomeini.
All this has long been grist to the mill of Israel's diplomacy, which, in the aftermath of the Iraq invasion, has been focused on persuading Washington that Iran was always actually the greater threat and is ripe for similar treatment. But, despite the history of mutual animosity, the deliberately antagonistic nature of last week's comments still demand an explanation of why Iran - or Ahmadinejad and the hardliners who surround him - has decided to indulge in poisonous rhetoric at this time.
His speech had as much to do with Iran's complex internal and regional politics as with Israel. At the centre is the nature of Ahmadinejad's power base and ambitions, a reprise of the revolutionary fervour of Khomeini's rule and an attempt to reassert its original ideals. Ahmadinejad believes these have been diluted by the years of reform during the Khatami years. By his own admission, when Ahmadinejad made his remarks about the inevitability of Israel's demise, he was quoting Khomeini.
But today's President has a less firm power and support base. Remarkably, in a country where 'death to Israel' chants have been an almost permanent feature of street politics, the President's comments have caused a furore.
The reason is that Iran has changed since Khomeini. Despite the continued grip on power by institutions set up by Khomeini, a large part of its youthful population has made complex accommodations between life lived in public and private. That has masked the loosening of those institutions' grip on the individual. The newly resurgent hardliners, with their strongest support among the poor and ill-educated, are now trying to reimpose that grip.
It is clear, however, that they will have a struggle. The fear and control of the Khomeini years has been diluted. Power has been diffused through competing institutions: religious, governmental and military. Ahmadinejad has responding by trying to use the simple certainties of the past as a nationally uniting theme.
But there is a second, increasingly noisy, theme - the enunciation of a growing sense of Shia power, not least via the Shia ascendancy in Iraq. This has given Iran a new sense of entitlement as a coming regional power, reflected in its dogged pursuit of the right to have a nuclear programme. To Iran's growing irritation, this vision of its growing importance is taken insufficiently seriously on the international stage.
In short, Iran has felt assaulted on multiple fronts: accused by the West of interfering in Iraq, accused of supporting terrorism and accused over the nature of its nuclear ambitions and its tutelage of Hizbollah in Lebanon which it is now being told should be disarmed.
All these pressing issues require a more skilful diplomat and politician than Ahmadinejad. The hectoring revolutionary jargon of his speech last week, with its talk of hegemonies and struggle and appropriate revolutionary behaviour, suggests a lack of any subtlety.
It was left to his political rival, the reformist-minded and more subtle former President, Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, to attempt to defuse the row by insisting: 'We have no problems with Jews and highly respect Judaism as a holy religion. We only have problems with Zionist circles in Israel which we hold responsible for the suppression of the Palestinian nation.'
Iran acts like a dictatorship and yet proudly proclaims its democracy; its isolation has bred a particular kind of paranoia and its sense of being has been thwarted in its regional ambitions. All this has bred a sullen inferiority complex. Put under pressure, Ahmadinejad has retreated behind the old and troubling slogans of the past. Still, this affair should be regarded as only the latest spike in the rapidly worsening relationship between Iran and the West after the encouraging years of tentative engagement during the Khatami regime.
That has seemed in the past few months so much like ancient history. Instead, the whole trajectory of recent diplomacy with Iran - from Washington, and particularly from London - has been a series of hamfisted, confused and hyperventilated interventions, culminating in the Prime Minister's retreat to his own fall-back position: to mutter vaguely about military action.
But at the very heart of it, what is most shocking is that there is a pointlessness about this international kerfuffle that almost defies belief. Iran knows it will never carry out its threat. Ahmadinejad's comments, if anything, are an indication of his own weakness. The bellicose noise on Britain's side, however, is no less pointless with the Prime Minister's veiled threat made in the knowledge that while embroiled in a war on Iran's border, the chances of meaningful military action to enforce change in Iran, even if it were desirable, are negligible.
Ahmadinejad's comments do not signify a real and heightened threat. They express a vicious stalemate. The beneficiary, ironically for Iran, is Israel whose hand in Washington is strengthened. But such speeches bolster extremists. The lesson of Iraq is that talking up a crisis can become a self-fulfilling prophesy. And it is bringing us no closer to solving the urgent problems posed to world peace by an increasingly complex Iran.[/FONT]
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