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| The Threat That is Iran | |
 by Ali Eteraz, September 14, 2007
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Ambassador Curtin Winsor, Jr., at Pipes' Mideast Monitor. Excellent section on Iran:
The Bush Administration's reluctance to challenge the Saudis after 9/11 initially encountered impassioned objections from conservative and liberal commentators alike, but the outrage has tapered off as attention has became increasingly focused on Shiite Iran and its nuclear weapons program. In the view of the administration, the Iranian threat to American national security not only supercedes the threat of Sunni theofascism, but supercedes it to such a degree that a more accommodating policy toward Saudi Arabia is warranted. However, while the prospect of militant Shiite clerics in possession of nuclear weapons is understandably disconcerting to many Americans, the Iranian threat is mitigated by several important factors.
For all of the shrill and unsettling words of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, his government's foreign policy is driven more by Iranian nationalism than Shiite Islamism (this is evident, for example, in Tehran's support for the predominantly Christian nation of Armenia in its dispute with Shiite Azerbaijan). This is not surprising, as Iran (known as Persia prior to the twentieth century) has existed in one form or another since biblical times, while it embraced Shiite Islam just 500 years ago. While Ahmadinejad exploits Iranian nationalism to win public support in his confrontation with the West, it can easily turn against him if he were to embark on a global adventure. Wahhabi clerics may support the Saudi royal family as a necessary evil in order to protect their global proselytizing mission, but they recognize no Saudi Arabian "nation" whose interests take precedence over their agenda. Such is not the case in Iran.
Furthermore, Shiite Islamism does not exhibit theofascist tendencies. Radical clerics in Iran have been responsible for horrendous abuses of power, but they do not regard non-Shiite Muslims as "unbelievers" who must be systematically purged - and even if they did, the fact that Shiites comprise only 10-15% of the world's Muslims would make such a project impractical. Even within the Shiite world, there is no prospect of a Wahhabi-style Iranian takeover of religious discourse because unlike the Sunnis, Shiite Islam is rigidly hierarchical. Iraqi and Lebanese Shiites gladly accept Iranian financial and military support, but they are fiercely loyal to their own clerical establishments.
An even greater fallacy is the widespread belief in Washington that a strong relationship with Saudi Arabia is an asset in confronting Iran. On the contrary, coddling the Saudis makes it more difficult for the United States to deal with Iran. The Bush administration's refusal to hold Saudi leaders accountable for their incitement of Wahhabi jihadists (who have murdered far more Shiites than Americans, mostly in Iraq and Pakistan) is a source of deep resentment in the Shiite world. It is no surprise that the only two major public demonstrations against Al-Qaeda in the Islamic world after the 9/11 attacks were both organized by Shiites (in Tehran and Karachi, Pakistan).
It is interesting to note that the recent escalation of US - Iranian tensions has made the Saudis less accommodating about Iraq than ever before. Reports that the Saudi Government is threatening to openly fund and arm Sunni insurgent groups if American forces withdraw from Iraq are a case in point. In effect, the Saudis are signaling to the Bush administration that they will thwart any American plan to cede control of Iraq to its Shiite-dominated, democratically-elected government, while signaling to the Sunni insurgents in Iraq that they can reject American efforts to broker a political settlement and not be left to face the consequences alone.
Iran has no history of direct aggression against its neighbors, and unlike Saddam's Sunni-dominated Iraq, they have never used weapons of mass destruction during invasions of neighbors or against their own people. The strongest argument for this approach lies with the extent that Iran craves recognition of its actual status as the historically authentic nation state in the Middle East. Iran has long aspired to be and probably will be the region's predominant Islamic regional power.
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Ali Eteraz, 27, is a columnist for Jewcy, a politics and culture magazine. He also contributes regularly to the More... |
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Mahler
On the other hand...
"We do not worship Iran, we worship Allah. For patriotism is another name for paganism. I say let this land burn. I say let this land go up in smoke, provided Islam emerges triumphant in the rest of the world." -Khomeini, 1980
"If one day, the world of Islam comes to possess the weapons currently in Israel's possession- on that day this method of global arrogance would come to a dead end. This is because the use of a nuclear bomb in Israel will leave nothing on the ground, whereas it will only damage the world of Islam.” -Rafsanjani, 2001
AdmiralAdama
Absurd
Is there any reason why Jewcy feels the need to import an apologist for Jihadism?
When last we saw the writer, he complained of "anti-CAIR rhetoric" about a group that was founded by hamas supporters, was called an unindicted co-conspirator in a terror trial, and whose leaders keep on getting jailed on terror charges.
Now it's an attempt to lull us to sleep about Iran -- a terrorist country whose leaders ordered the attack on the Jewish community center in Argentina, the US base at Khobar, and is now killing US troops in Iraq. Not to mention constant promises to "wipe out Israel" while building nukes.
What's next -- CAIR, Iran, what about a pro-Al Queda post? We wait for more of the disingenuous scribblings of this apologist for terror.
writer supporting CAIR
http://www.jewcy.com/daily_shvitz/experiments_with_an_islamic_netroots
writer being exposed by Islam scholar Robert Spencer
http://www.jihadwatch.org/archives/015482.php
http://www.jihadwatch.org/archives/015486.php
Danial
"Not to mention constant
"Not to mention constant promises to "wipe out Israel" while building nukes. "
Yet when Tom Tancredo called for nuking Mecca and Medina, you clowns were rejoicing.
Tool
Anonymous
I believe
it's quite different when the President of an Islamist Theocracy threatens to wipe out Israel, and when a fringe congressman of a democracy says we should retaliate with nukes if America is nuked by Islamist terrorist. But this type if insane moral equivalence is popular among the far left.
R Hampton
Saudi threat equal to Iranian threat
I've been tracking the rise of Saudi funded militant, extremist Wahhabi Islam on my blog, Wahaudi -- almost 700 stories from around the world in just 6 months. http://wahaudi.blogspot.com
Anonymous
Hey- You in back! Stop
Hey-
You in back! Stop talking and listen! No Iranian official threatened to "wipe Israel off the map". Didn't happen. No Santa Claus, no tooth fairy, no sasquatch. And no Ahmadinejad calling for Israel to be wiped off the map. Do a particle of research and stop hallucinating.
Don't make me come back there.
Mahler
Look
Semantic debates over what Ahmadinejad did or did not say are just academic. The bottom line is that Iranian regional hegemony is an existential threat to Israel. Iranian regional hegemony would not be so problematic if the country was free to express its secular, Persian identity. Instead the country is firmly under the control of an Islamic theocracy. Iran's historical role as a regional power is simply a vehicle for the curent regime to advance an aggressive, destabilizing, and arguably messianic agenda. As Admiral Adama pointed out, Iran is responsible for brazen acts of terrorism against targets as soft as a Jewish community center in places as remote as Buenos Aires. Iran is also the patron of Hezbollah, Hamas, and Islamic Jihad. Imagine how much more brazen Iran would become if it had nuclear deterrence. Imagine how DE-stabilizing this would be for the region and the world.
Don't let your opposition to the Iraq War or your hatred for Bush cloud your judgement.
Anonymous
"Don't let your opposition
"Don't let your opposition to the Iraq War or your hatred for Bush cloud your judgement."
How 'bout if I allow my appreciation of Israel's history of unremitting bellicosity and expropriation sharpen my judgement?
AdmiralAdama
Don't Worry Mahler
Ali Eteraz is here on Jewcy to tell us all that Iran is not a threat, the Muslim Brotherhood is a fine organization, and that America created Al Queda.
hadees
Ahmadinejad did say that according to Iran's offical translation
"No Iranian official threatened to "wipe Israel off the map". Didn't happen."
The NYT was accused of mistranslating it and thus did a story to look into it. Their findings were that the Iranian official translations refer to wiping Israel away.
From the article:
But translators in Tehran who work for the president's office and the foreign ministry disagree with them. All official translations of Mr. Ahmadinejad's statement, including a description of it on his Web site (www.president.ir/eng/), refer to wiping Israel away. Sohrab Mahdavi, one of Iran's most prominent translators, and Siamak Namazi, managing director of a Tehran consulting firm, who is bilingual, both say "wipe off" or "wipe away" is more accurate than "vanish" because the Persian verb is active and transitive.
Anonymous
RACIST COMMENT DELETED
Commenter made uncivilized reference to swarthiness of Iranians and advocated their extinction via nuclear weapons. --Ed.
Anonymous
Here are Ahmadinejad's exact
Here are Ahmadinejad's exact words (including the misquote of Khomeini's original phrase) along with the English translation:
"mam (the Imam, referring to Khomeini) ghoft (said) een (this) rezhim-e (regime) ishghalgar-e (occupying) qods (Jerusalem) bayad (must) az safheh-ye ruzgar (from page of time) mahv shavad (vanish from)"
The Farsi word for "map"-nagsheh-appears nowhere. I can't account for the controversy among the Iranian translators, but "vanish" sure looks like the passive voice to me, "map" doesn't appear, etc. Maybe we have a Farsi speaker out there?
What's uncontroversial, of course, is that Iran has no history of attacking its neighbors, contains an unmolested Jewish community with greater rights than Palestinian citizens of Israel enjoy (they may leave the country and return, for one thing), and that Israel would love it to disappear.
These issues of translation seem small until you locate them within the reticulum of deceit which led to our crimes in Iraq. When Ahmadinejad's remarks occupy more space than the actual and unending nastiness of Israel's behavior, one smells a purpose. The path to war was paved with lies about WMDs and such. Looks like things are going down the same road again.
Josh Strawn
It IS fascistic
I would actually take issue with far less in this article than most of the commentators, although I've posted many times on Iran at Jewcy explaining half of this stuff to be met with alarmists and right wingers and warmongers whose interest in war with Iran far exceeds their respect for the truth (or knowledge of Iran). Most of it is right on. But "Shi'ite Islamism soes not exhibit theofascist tendencies?!?!?!" That's just absurd. When one surveys the manifestations of theofascism in the last 50 years, the Iranian regime is tops on the list! Just because the balance of power within the country is more nuanced, just because the clerics can't exercise absolute power for fear they might overstep and stir up another revolt, NONE of this changes the character of the regime which is theocratic and fascistic. As to this nonsense about whether M.A. said or didn't say IT. He's a rabble rousing idiot, to be taken seriously as a rabble rouser. Which means you don't ignore the threats, but you don't also act as if you're dealing with the most effectual, trustworthy character. That opponents of Iran are so quick to take him at his word is silly, but it's also ridiculous to think that because Juan Cole nitpicked, the regime isn't officially anti-Semitic. A state with nukes run by men of cloth and spoken for by a populist asshole is undesirable, end of story. The nuances of Iranian society and culture though are extremely important to bring into the debate and the piece Ali posted is fairly excellent. I'd have chose to boldface the part about failure to confront Saudi Arabia myself.
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