What about Iran?

By Aussiegirl

Caroline Glick, writing in today's Jewish World Review makes some excellent points regarding the curious and distressing lack of a strong U.S. response to the election of a terrorist in Iran. Glad to know I'm not alone in my trepidations on this matter. It does little good to cast the war in Iraq as the central battle ground of the war on terror when the emergence of a clearly terrorist and nuclear armed regime in Iran is met with such seeming equanimity and normality. Read Ahmadinejad's own words -- he's not hiding anything. As Glick says in her title -- the mask is off -- and no one cares.

Since his election to the Iranian presidency two weeks ago, ultra Islamist Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has done everything to make a strong first impression on the rest of the world.

On the nuclear issue, Ahmadinejad is planning to take a "new approach" towards Iran's ongoing negotiations with Britain, France and Germany on Iran's nuclear program. This new approach does not involve an Iranian pledge to end its uranium enrichment activities. On the contrary, it involves demanding that Europe butt out of Iran's nuclear weapons program. As Ahmadinejad said last Sunday at his first post-election press conference, "The EU should not talk to us from a proud distance and should come down from the ivory tower. The Iranian nation is a great, alert nation, and will protect its [nuclear] right seriously."

. . . The fact that the US and Europe have yet to make any strong statements condemning the terrorist about to take over the Iranian government should be a warning to Israelis. They are told by their leaders that if Hamas takes over the Palestinian Authority then the kid gloves will come off. Israel will finally have the international legitimacy to really take it to the Palestinians. But the Iranian situation seems to indicate that just the opposite is the case.

The question is, now that he is about to be sworn in as president, will Ahmadinejan abandon terrorism and become a responsible pragmatist who understands that he has to cooperate with the West?

Speaking of the role he envisions Iran playing under his leadership, Ahmadinejad said on Friday, "Thanks to the blood of the martyrs, a new Islamic revolution has arisen and the Islamic revolution... will, if G-d wills, cut off the roots of injustice in the world. The era of oppression, hegemonic regimes, tyranny and injustice has reached its end. The wave of the Islamic revolution will soon reach the entire world."

In short then, the answer is no. Ahmadinejad sees his role as promoting the same platform of global jihad he has been actively participating in since 1979.

IN A nutshell, Ahmadinejad is the personification of everything that the US and its erstwhile European allies claim that the war against global terrorism is seeking to defeat. He is a religious fanatic, a terror commander with global reach who seeks to destabilize the world and he is planning a no holds barred sprint to the finish line of Iran's race to acquire nuclear weapons which, he promises, will be used to protect the entire Islamic world.

This naturally begs the question, now that the mask of "reform" has been removed from the Iranian face, what will the US and Europe do? Will they accept that there is no diplomatic way of dealing with a regime that, in selecting Ahmadinejad as president has finally admitted that it remains fully committed to the destruction of Western civilization? Or will they try to ignore the obvious and tell themselves that a deal can still be reached if the payoff is high enough? The signs are mixed but discouraging.

On the one hand, the State Department was quick to state that its investigation showed that Ahmadinejad was not among the hostage takers in 1979-1980. US spokesmen have stated that in spite of the fact that the Iranian elections were a democratic farce, the US will still deal with Ahmadinejad as the legitimate president of Iran. As well, Patrick Laurent, the European commissioner responsible for Persian Gulf Affairs said that EU policy toward Iran, "will not suffer any changes with the election of Ahmadinejad."

So, from the side of the appeasers in Europe and the State Department, the election of a global terrorist who actively seeks nuclear weapons is no reason to change policies. They are just as willing to try to appease an unapologetic terrorist as they were a covert terrorist like outgoing president Muhammed Khatami who oversaw Iran's support for international terrorism and its nuclear armament program while passing himself off to the West as a moderate reformer.

. . . While it is not surprising that the EU will do everything humanly possible to continue to appease terrorists even if it has no plausible way to deny that they are in fact terrorists, that the US reaction to both Iran's new president and Hamas's increased empowerment has been so muddled is a major disappointment. It demands a reformulation of Israel's policy towards both the Palestinians and the Iranians.