Ahmadinejad walks away with a win

Ahmadinejad walks away with a win



Bollinger clearly had an American audience in mind when he denounced the Iranian leader to his face as a "cruel" and "petty dictator" and described his Holocaust denial as designed to "fool the illiterate and the ignorant." Bollinger's remarks may have taken him off the hook with his domestic critics, but when it came to the international media audience that really counted, Ahmadinejad already had carried the day. The invitation to speak at Columbia already had given him something totalitarian demagogues -- who are as image-conscious as Hollywood stars -- always crave: legitimacy. Bollinger's denunciation was icing on the cake, because the constituency the Iranian leader cares about is scattered across an Islamic world that values hospitality and its courtesies as core social virtues. To that audience, Bollinger looked stunningly ill-mannered; Ahmadinejad dignified and restrained.

Back in Tehran, Mohsen Mirdamadi, a leading Iranian reformer and Ahmadinejad opponent, said Bollinger's blistering remarks "only strengthened" the president back home and "made his radical supporters more determined," According to an Associated Press report, "Many Iranians found the comments insulting, particularly because in Iranian traditions of hospitality, a host should be polite to a guest, no matter what he thinks of him. To many, Ahmadinejad looked like the victim, and hard-liners praised the president's calm demeanor during the event, saying Bollinger was spouting a 'Zionist' line."

All of this was bad enough, but the almost willful refusal of commentators in the American media to provide their audiences with insight into just how sinister Ahmadinejad really is compounded the problem. There are a couple of reasons for the media's general refusal to engage with radical Islamic revivalists, like Ahmadinejad. He belongs to a particularly aggressive school of radical Shiite Islam, the Haghani, which lives in expectation of the imminent coming of the Madhi, a kind of Islamic messiah, who will bring peace and justice -- along with universal Islamic rule -- to the entire world. Serious members of this school -- and Ahmadinejad, who was a brilliant university student, is a very serious member -- believe they must act to speed the Mahdi's coming. "The wave of the Islamic revolution" would soon "reach the entire world," he has promised.

How to Deal with Iran

Once merely a small-time populist politician in his hometown, Ahmadinejad has become a folk hero throughout the Muslim and Arab worlds thanks to his provocations against America, Israel and the West. Sunni Muslims and secular-minded Arabs who might otherwise oppose Shiite authoritarianism applaud him because they perceive him as standing up for them against Western oppressors. Each expression of American outrage against the Iranian president from afar, every screaming tabloid headline and radio rant, only inflates the significance of this unimpressive and fundamentally unimportant man. And the constant threats of war from within the Bush White House and its neoconservative echo chamber intensify the effectiveness of his propaganda, both within his own country and across the Middle East.

The moment of dialogue at Columbia, by contrast, shrank Ahmadinejad back down to a more realistic size. Unlike Tehran, where his thugs can intimidate, imprison and even murder those who dare to question him, he had to stand and listen meekly as Columbia students and president Lee Bollinger demanded answers about his government's repressive acts. Although Bollinger went over the top in parroting various White House themes in his brusque language, his commitment to free speech reflected well on the United States.

Open Letter to Lee Bollinger, President of Columbia University

I'm writing you to express my outrage over your vulgar treatment of President Ahmadinejad yesterday when you invited him to speak at your university. Simple human etiquette of the most primitive and elemental sort, was required in the situation, but you failed to deliver even that. You were obnoxious, insulting and displayed an appalling ignorance of President Ahmadinejad, Iran and politics, not to mention the rules that govern "civilized" human conduct (arguably "primitive" conduct is even more governed by politeness and elevated rules of conduct). Moreover, in a context that calls for objectivity, investigation, open mindedness and a willingness to learn and exchange ideas, you displayed a remarkable absence of any of those qualities. Instead, you showed yourself to be one with the bullying, abusive, ignorant and arrogant people who unfortunately govern our country at the moment and who are attempting to induce a phobic and neurotic xenophobia comparable only to what Hitler and Mussolini and Stalin inculcated in their countries during those moments of greatest darkness in human history. The irony of the situation is that you displayed all those qualities of which you accused President Ahmadinejad. Where was that display of that "great tradition of openness" in your callous, close minded speech? Your speech shows you to "exhibit all the signs of a petty and cruel dictator" and worse: a bully, a man who invites a guest into his house, then abuses him before a cheering crowd.

Ahmadinejad v. Bollinger: Words Were Spoken, But What Was Said?
How embarrassing then that such a thing could occur, at so prestigious a venue as Columbia University, so publicly and at the center of such media attention. How much worse, however, is that not one newspaper in this country chose to point out that Lee C. Bollinger acted appallingly and disgracefully? It is admirable that he chose to invite President Ahmadinejad to speak at his campus, to give a man excoriated by the American government and its oddly un-free press, a chance to state his case. But it is unforgivable that he would choose to backtrack on his initial gesture at the sad expense of his guest, and to the everlasting shame of his country.

I, for one, looked on with disgust. I also took away from the fiasco one new and not surprising bit of information: the President of Iran possesses a grace that neither his host nor the hecklers at Columbia University nor the press in this country nor, I might as well state the obvious, the president of this country can claim. Chalk one up, once again, for Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

The Bronx cheer: Columbia University welcomes Iran's president

We were alternately proud and dismayed by the way Columbia University treated Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Proud that, in the name of free speech and unbridled academic inquiry, an American university would invite the president of a nation that President George Bush has labeled part of the "axis of evil" to speak. Dismayed that, because of criticism of that decision by Jewish activists, the university's president would find it politically necessary to insult his guest while introducing him.
Make no mistake. Ahmadinejad represents a regime that is hostile to the United States. We take at face value reports by the U.S. government that Iran is arming, training and advising militia forces in Iraq that have killed American troops.
We also are troubled that Ahmadinejad is a Holocaust denier, that he will not acknowledge that Israel has a right to exist, and that his nation is fighting a proxy war against Israel through its support of Hezbollah in Lebanon. That sponsorship is one reason why Iran's nuclear aspirations are frightening.
But we also share the Iraq Study Group's belief that if the United States is to extricate itself from Iraq and create a more peaceful and stable Middle East, the United States must talk to its enemies there. Iran and Syria are at the top of that list.

The Whispers of War

A spokeswoman at Cheney's office confirmed to NEWSWEEK that Wurmser left his position last month to "spend more time with his family." A few months before he quit, according to two knowledgeable sources, Wurmser told a small group of people that Cheney had been mulling the idea of pushing for limited Israeli missile strikes against the Iranian nuclear site at Natanz—and perhaps other sites—in order to provoke Tehran into lashing out. The Iranian reaction would then give Washington a pretext to launch strikes against military and nuclear targets in Iran. (Wurmser's remarks were first reported last week by Washington foreign-policy blogger Steven Clemons and corroborated by NEWSWEEK.)

Cheney mulled luring Iran into war with Israel: report



WASHINGTON (AFP) — US Vice President Richard Cheney has considered provoking an exchange of military strikes between Iran and Israel in order to give the United States a pretext to attack Iran, Newsweek magazine reported in its Monday issue.

But the weekly said the steady departure of neoconservatives from the administration over the past two years had helped tilt the balance away from war.

One official who pushed a particularly hawkish line on Iran was David Wurmser, who had served since 2003 as Cheney's Middle East adviser, the report said.

A spokeswoman at Cheney's office confirmed to Newsweek that Wurmser left his position last month to "spend more time with his family."

A few months before he quit, Wurmser told a small group of people that Cheney had been mulling the idea of pushing for limited Israeli missile strikes against the Iranian nuclear site at Natanz -- and perhaps other sites -- in order to provoke Tehran into lashing out, the magazine reported, citing two unnamed "knowledgeable sources."

The Iranian reaction would then give Washington a pretext to launch strikes against military and nuclear targets in Iran, Newsweek reported.

When Newsweek attempted to reach Wurmser for comment, his wife, Meyrav, declined to put him on the phone and said the allegations were untrue, the report said.

A spokeswoman at Cheney's office told the weekly the vice president "supports the president's policy on Iran."

Iran, Israel ratchet up tensions
White House spokeswoman Dana Perino has lambasted Iran's latest statements against Israel, calling Tehran's pledge to strike back at Israel if attacked by the Jewish state as "totally unprovoked". Perino said, "I can't tell you why someone in Iran would say something like that about Israel. It's totally unprovoked and unnecessary."

One must wonder about the closed universe that White House officials such as Perino inhabit, since even a cursory look at the nearly daily threat of attacks on Iran by Israeli officials and pundits leaves no doubt that Iran's reaction has, indeed, been provoked by such threats.

Israel's threats against Iran
What is remarkable about this issue is the depth, extensiveness and consistent recycling of military threats against Iran, both veiled and unveiled, by the Israelis. Having convinced themselves, and a good part of the Western world, that Iran is about to reach the "point of no return" in its nuclear program, Israeli civilian and military leaders and their allies in the Israeli and US media have ratcheted up the threat of a military strike on Iran as a rational and feasible option.

This is in complete disregard for international law and the principles of the UN Charter, which forbids member states "from using the threat or use of force" against each other. (Incidentally, even a liberal paper such as Ha'aretz, on April 21, 2006, explicitly endorsed the idea of Ahmadinejad's assassination, arguing that "his elimination is likely to contribute more to stability than to detract from it".)

On June 9, Israeli Deputy Prime Minister Saul Mofaz stated that "the military option is on the table". On January 21, 2006, Mofaz had stated publicly: "We are preparing for military action to stop Iran's nuclear program." His boss, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, told the press in April that "nobody is ruling out" a military strike on Iran by Israel, adding: "It is impossible perhaps to destroy the entire nuclear program, but it would be possible to damage it in such a way that it would be set back years ... it would take 10 days and involve the firing of 1,000 Tomahawk cruise missiles."

Nicolas Sarkozy backs US on Iran bomb

President Nicolas Sarkozy of France has directly accused Iran of seeking a nuclear bomb and urged "stronger sanctions" against Teheran.

It was the latest sign that Mr Sarkozy is positioning France as America's key European ally in tackling Teheran's nuclear ambitions.

Mr Sarkozy said France did not want a war, but flatly declared in a television interview that "Iran is trying to obtain an atomic bomb".

He added: "That is unacceptable and I tell the French people it is unacceptable."

Russia bolsters ties with Iran

Russia couldn't be unaware that France is playing a double game. On the one hand, Sarkozy is closing ranks with the Bush administration's policies toward Iran. On the other hand, France is using US-French rapprochement to share the spoils of Iraq's oil wealth with US oil interests. France's Total and the United States' Chevron have agreed to collaborate on the Majnoon oilfields in Iraq.

The San Francisco Chronicle recently wrote, "The building of a US-French consensus on Iraq is largely the result of the willingness of US oil interests to share the spoils with their European counterparts in exchange for their military and military backing of Washington's foreign policy in the Middle East." In the coming period, Moscow will have to factor the "trans-Atlantic partnership" in dealing with the Iran nuclear issue.

French warmongering aids Iran's cause

Regarding the latter, former US president Jimmy Carter recently penned an article in the Guardian of London, lamenting the US's policies, worth reading by French officials:
By abandoning many of the nuclear arms agreements negotiated in the last 50 years, the United States has been sending mixed signals to North Korea, Iran and other nations with the technical knowledge to create nuclear weapons. Currently proposed agreements with India compound this quagmire and further undermine the global pact for peace represented by the nuclear non-proliferation regime.
Unfortunately, it is the US's and France's own nuclear policies and postures which have done much to undermine the cause of non-proliferation, given Sarkozy's statement at the Group of Eight summit in June that "the value of nuclear weapons is deterrence". He added that "France's nuclear strategy and nuclear doctrine are based on the protection of France's vital interests".

General Says Iran Can Strike Back at Israel

TEHRAN, Sept. 19 — A senior military official warned on Wednesday that Iran had prepared a plan to attack Israel if Israel bombed Iran, the semiofficial Fars news agency reported.

“We have drawn up a plan to strike back at Israel with our bombers if this regime possibly makes a silly mistake,” said the official, Gen. Mohammad Alavi, the deputy commander of Iran’s air force.

General Alavi spoke in the wake of remarks by the French foreign minister, Bernard Kouchner, who said Sunday that nations should prepare for a possible war with Iran if it continued with its nuclear work. Mr. Kouchner and the French Foreign Ministry subsequently toned down the remarks.

Bush's 'proxy war' claim over Iran exposed

But Petraeus then shattered that carefully constructed argument by volunteering in answering a question that the Quds Force, an elite unit of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, had in essence left Iraq. "The Quds Force itself, we believe, by and large those individuals have been pulled out of the country, as have the Lebanese Hezbollah trainers that were being used to augment that activity."

Petraeus' contradictory statements on the Quds Force are emblematic of a US administration propaganda line that has in essence fallen apart because it was so obviously out of line with reality. Nine months after the George W Bush administration declared that it was going to go after Iranian agents in Iraq who were threatening US troops, the US military still has not produced any evidence that Quds Force operatives in Iraq were engaged in assisting the militias fighting against US troops.

Abizaid: World Could Abide Nuclear Iran



The Iranians are aware, he said, that the United States has a far superior military capability.

"I believe that we have the power to deter Iran, should it become nuclear," he said, referring to the theory that Iran would not risk a catastrophic retaliatory strike by using a nuclear weapon against the United States.

"There are ways to live with a nuclear Iran," Abizaid said in remarks at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a think tank. "Let's face it, we lived with a nuclear Soviet Union, we've lived with a nuclear China, and we're living with (other) nuclear powers as well."

Time is running out to avert war with Iran

The Iranians also have reason to be sceptical. They hear some of the rhetoric coming out of Washington and conclude that, whatever they do, they will be attacked. So they may conclude that the only course of action is full acceleration towards a nuclear deterrent.

It is true that the US is increasingly bellicose. The balance of power in the Bush administration is shifting away from Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who favours cautious engagement with Tehran, and towards Vice-President Dick Cheney, who urges confrontation.

Bill O'Reilly vs. Ron Paul On Iraq War And Iran - 9/10/2007

Pentagon ‘three-day blitz’ plan for Iran

THE Pentagon has drawn up plans for massive airstrikes against 1,200 targets in Iran, designed to annihilate the Iranians’ military capability in three days, according to a national security expert.

Alexis Debat, director of terrorism and national security at the Nixon Center, said last week that US military planners were not preparing for “pinprick strikes” against Iran’s nuclear facilities. “They’re about taking out the entire Iranian military,” he said.

Debat was speaking at a meeting organised by The National Interest, a conservative foreign policy journal. He told The Sunday Times that the US military had concluded: “Whether you go for pinprick strikes or all-out military action, the reaction from the Iranians will be the same.” It was, he added, a “very legitimate strategic calculus”.

President George Bush intensified the rhetoric against Iran last week, accusing Tehran of putting the Middle East “under the shadow of a nuclear holocaust”. He warned that the US and its allies would confront Iran “before it is too late”.

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One Washington source said the “temperature was rising” inside the administration. Bush was “sending a message to a number of audiences”, he said � to the Iranians and to members of the United Nations security council who are trying to weaken a tough third resolution on sanctions against Iran for flouting a UN ban on uranium enrichment.

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) last week reported “significant” cooperation with Iran over its nuclear programme and said that uranium enrichment had slowed. Tehran has promised to answer most questions from the agency by November, but Washington fears it is stalling to prevent further sanctions. Iran continues to maintain it is merely developing civilian nuclear power.

Bush is committed for now to the diplomatic route but thinks Iran is moving towards acquiring a nuclear weapon. According to one well placed source, Washington believes it would be prudent to use rapid, overwhelming force, should military action become necessary.

Israel, which has warned it will not allow Iran to acquire nuclear weapons, has made its own preparations for airstrikes and is said to be ready to attack if the Americans back down.

Alireza Jafarzadeh, a spokesman for the National Council of Resistance of Iran, which uncovered the existence of Iran’s uranium enrichment plant at Natanz, said the IAEA was being strung along. “A number of nuclear sites have not even been visited by the IAEA,” he said. “They’re giving a clean bill of health to a regime that is known to have practised deception.”

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the Iranian president, irritated the Bush administration last week by vowing to fill a “power vacuum” in Iraq. But Washington believes Iran is already fighting a proxy war with the Americans in Iraq.

The Institute for the Study of War last week released a report by Kimberly Kagan that explicitly uses the term “proxy war” and claims that with the Sunni insurgency and Al-Qaeda in Iraq “increasingly under control”, Iranian intervention is the “next major problem the coalition must tackle”.

Bush noted that the number of attacks on US bases and troops by Iranian-supplied munitions had increased in recent months � “despite pledges by Iran to help stabilise the security situation in Iraq”.

It explains, in part, his lack of faith in diplomacy with the Iranians. But Debat believes the Pentagon’s plans for military action involve the use of so much force that they are unlikely to be used and would seriously stretch resources in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Showdown Over Iran
More rumors of war with Iran are circulating here (via Juan Cole), with inside scuttlebutt from inside the neoconservative network:

"They [the source's institution] have ‘instructions' (yes, that was the word used) from the Office of the Vice-President to roll out a campaign for war with Iran in the week after Labor Day; it will be coordinated with the American Enterprise Institute, the Wall Street Journal, the Weekly Standard, Commentary, Fox, and the usual suspects. It will be heavy sustained assault on the airwaves, designed to knock public sentiment into a position from which a war can be maintained. Evidently they don't think they'll ever get majority support for this – they want something like 35-40 percent support, which in their book is plenty."


This comes via Barnett R. Rubin, Director of Studies and Senior Fellow at New York University's Center on International Cooperation, and a leading expert on Afghanistan, who has it from "a friend who has excellent connections in Washington and whose information has often been prescient." According to Rubin's anonymous sibyl – or is that seer? – we can look forward to "a big kickoff on September 11."

This pretty much comports with what we've been reporting on Antiwar.com for the past few months, and with recent reports of an imminent US assault on Iran: see my last column on this subject. So have a nice vacation, soak up as much sun as you can, because dark days lie ahead.

The propaganda campaign is already picking up, but this time the battle is going to be less one-sided. In the run-up to the invasion of Iraq, the War Party had the field practically to themselves. Not a single major politician or political figure rose to question the "patriotic" lies that flooded the airwaves and inundated readers of newspapers and blogs – not a one. This time, however, it is going to be different: the War Party may win, in the end, but they won't triumph without a fight.

It's true that none of the major Democratic presidential candidates have dissented from the "approved" script on Iran, and that all are kowtowing long and low to the Israel lobby, which is the powerhouse behind this latest rush to war. It is also true that – naturally – the majorRepublicanpresidentialcandidates are even more vehemently calling for an attack – and they won't rule out using nukes. The only sane Republican in the lot – Ron Paul, of course – is plainly horrified by this, but the Republicans' willingness to contemplate a nuclear Armageddon in the Middle East is hardly surprising, coming from a party effectively in the grip of deranged "born-again" dispensationalists – for whom rumors of nuclear war are part and parcel of the "good news" that Christ is returning. It has been widely noted that the Republicans have become a party of authoritarians, but it's much worse than that: they've morphed into a party of lunatics, as well.

The Democrats, however, aren't taking advantage of this: indeed, Hillary Clinton, her party's leading candidate for the presidential nod, refuses to rule out using nukes in any situation – even when it comes to Pakistan, and, for god's sake, Afghanistan. The Lobby is just as firmly ensconced in the supposedly "antiwar" party as it is in the GOP, as the stripping of a provision from the recent defense appropriations bill that would have required the President to come to Congress for authorization for a strike on Iran made all too clear.

The war whoops are scheduled to reach a crescendo on September 11, at which point I expect the War Party to roll out a new narrative that portrays Iran as the protector and enabler of al-Qaeda, or even the real author of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Perhaps they'll run the complete works of Laurie Mylroie through a word processor, and, in true Orwellian fashion, insert Ahmadinejad's name where Saddam's once appeared, replacing "Iraq" with "Iran."

Presto, change-o! – and we have yet another war myth, a fresh load of prefabricated propaganda with which to bamboozle the masses, befuddle the media, and defuse dissent in the leadership of the major political parties.

The media, and the political leadership won't give them too many problems, although a few dissidents may protest loudly enough to provoke retaliation (a smear job, perhaps a firing or three, and the sudden loss of campaign funding in the case of candidates for office): but, really, not a whole lot of discipline will be required to yank the elites into line.

The real problem for the neocons is going to come with the supposedly indifferent and ignorant antiwar majority, which is firmly opposed [.pdf] to attacking Iran. Say all you want about the advanced state of decadent torpor that seems to define the 21st century American, but ordinary citizens are unlikely to sit idly by while the price of gas skyrockets and the Middle East goes up in flames. It is hard to say what form public outrage will take, but one can easily imagine the return of the kind of domestic unrest that roiled the 1960s and almost tore this nation apart. Massive demonstrations that turn into major riots: the unleashing of the vast spying-and-repression machine created with the passage of the PATRIOT Act, the Military Commissions Act [.pdf], and all the post-9/11 legislation that limited our rights in the name of "security" and the "war on terrorism" – and worse. Much worse …