Daniel Pipes in FrontPage provides some important background to the Thug-In-Chief's recent saber-rattling regarding Israel (many good links in the original):
"Iran’s stance has always been clear on this ugly phenomenon [i.e., Israel]. We have repeatedly said that this cancerous tumor of a state should be removed from the region.”No, those are not the words of Iran’s president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, speaking last week. Rather, that was Ali Khamene’i, the Islamic Republic of Iran’s supreme leader, in December 2000.
In other words, Ahmadinejad’s call for the destruction of Israel was nothing new but conforms to a well-established pattern of regime rhetoric and ambition. “Death to Israel!” has been a rallying cry for the past quarter-century. Ahmadinejad quoted Ayatollah Khomeini, its founder, in his call on Oct. 26 for genocidal war against Jews: “The regime occupying Jerusalem must be eliminated from the pages of history,” said Khomeini decades ago. Ahmadinejad lauded this hideous goal as “very wise.”
In December 2001, Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, a former Iranian president and still powerful political figure, laid the groundwork for an exchange of nuclear weapons with Israel: “If a day comes when the world of Islam is duly equipped with the arms Israel has in possession, the strategy of colonialism would face a stalemate because application of an atomic bomb would not leave anything in Israel but the same thing would just produce minor damages in the Muslim world.”
In like spirit, a Shahab-3 ballistic missile (capable of reaching Israel) paraded in Tehran last month bore the slogan “Israel Should Be Wiped Off the Map.”The threats by Khamene’i and Rafsanjani prompted yawns but Ahmadinejad’s statement roused an uproar.
U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan expressed “dismay,” the U.N. Security Council unanimously condemned it, and the European Union condemned it “in the strongest terms.” Canadian prime minister Paul Martin deemed it “beyond the pale,” British prime minister Tony Blair expressed “revulsion,” and French foreign minister Philippe Douste-Blazy announced that “For France, the right for Israel to exist should not be contested.” Le Monde called the speech a “cause for serious alarm,” Die Welt dubbed it “verbal terrorism,” and a London Sun headline proclaimed Ahmadinejad the “most evil man in the world.”
The governments of Turkey, Russia, and China, among others, expressly condemned the statement. Maryam Rajavi of the National Council of Resistance of Iran, a leading opposition group, demanded that the European Union rid the region of the “hydra of terrorism and fundamentalism” in Tehran. Even the Palestinian Authority’s Saeb Erekat spoke against Ahmadinejad: “Palestinians recognize the right of the state of Israel to exist and I reject his comments.” The Cairene daily Al-Ahram dismissed his statement as “fanatical” and spelling disaster for Arabs.
Iranians were surprised and suspicious; why, some asked, did the mere reiteration of long-standing policy prompt an avalanche of outraged foreign reactions?
In a constructive spirit, I offer them four reasons. Ahmadinejad’s virulent character gives the threats against Israel added credibility. Second, he in subsequent days defiantly repeated and elaborated on his threats. Third, he added an aggressive coda to the usual formulation, warning Muslims who recognize Israel that they “will burn in the fire of the Islamic umma [nation].”
This directly targets the Palestinians and several Arab states, but especially neighboring Pakistan. Just a month before Ahmadinejad spoke, the Pakistani president, Pervez Musharraf, stated that “Israel rightly desires security.” He envisioned Muslim countries like Pakistan opening of embassies in Israel as a “signal for peace.” Ahmadinejad perhaps indicated an intent to confront Pakistan over relations with Israel.
Finally, Israelis estimate that the Iranians could, within six months, have the means to build an atomic bomb. Ahmadinejad implicitly confirmed this rapid timetable when he warned that after just “a short period … the process of the elimination of the Zionist regime will be smooth and simple.” The imminence of a nuclear-armed Iran transforms “Death to Israel” from an empty slogan into the potential premise for a nuclear assault on the Jewish state, perhaps relying on Rafsanjani’s genocidal thinking.
Ironically, Ahmadinejad’s candor has had positive effects, reminding the world of his regime’s unremitting bellicosity, its rank antisemitism, and its dangerous arsenal. As Tony Blair noted, Ahmadinejad’s threats raise the question, “When are you going to do something about this?” And Blair later warned Tehran with some menace against its becoming a “threat to our world security.” His alarm needs to translate into action, and urgently so.
We are on notice; will we act in time?
Ahmadinejad is only quoting the OIC stand:
From:
“SPEECH BY THE PRIME MINISTER OF MALAYSIA THE HON DATO SERI DR MAHATHIR BIN MOHAMAD AT THE OPENING OF THE TENTH SESSION OF THE ISLAMIC SUMMIT CONFERENCE AT PUTRAJAYA CONVENTION CENTRE, PUTRAJAYA, MALAYSIA ON THURSDAY, 16 OCTOBER 2003 AT 10.00 A.M.
“25. We are enjoined by our religion to prepare for the defence of the ummah. Unfortunately we stress not defence but the weapons of the time of the Prophet. Those weapons and horses cannot help to defend us any more. We need guns and rockets, bombs and warplanes, tanks and warships for our defence. But because we discouraged the learning of science and mathematics etc. as giving no merit for the akhirat, today we have no capacity to produce our own weapons for our defence. We have to buy our weapons from our detractors and enemies......
“34. It cannot be that there is no other way. 1.3 billion Muslims cannot be defeated by a few million Jews. There must be a way. And we can only find a way if we stop to think, to assess our weaknesses and our strength, to plan, to strategise and then to counter attack.......
“51. The enemy will probably welcome these proposals and we will conclude that the promoters are working for the enemy. But think. We are up against a people who think. They survived 2000 years of pogroms not by hitting back, but by thinking. They invented and successfully promoted Socialism, Communism, human rights and democracy so that persecuting them would appear to be wrong, so they may enjoy equal rights with others. With these they have now gained control of the most powerful countries and they, this tiny community, have become a world power. We cannot fight them through brawn alone. We must use our brains also.”
http://www.bernama.com/oicsummit/speechr.php?id=35&cat=BI#
No matter shiite or sunni or whatever stripe, they cannot move from the evil ideology.
Khomeini's speech 1981, look at the picture...is he not evil?
http://www.faithfreedom.org/Iran/KhomeiniSpeech.htm
The same ideals he had, are preached today.
'An Iranian on-line daily has reported that the hardline president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is riled by the decline in the Tehran stock exchange and would have liked to opt for a drastic solution. “If it had been possible to hang a couple of people, the Tehran stock exchange would already have been put in order," said Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the daily rooz-on-line reports, quoting sources close to the president.'
http://www.adnki.com/index_2Level.php?cat=Business&loid=8.0.224391786&par=0
Just when we were all getting bored with Chavez and Mugabe, along comes this guy. Truly off the fruit-o-meter scale.
Carolyn2, was that picture of Khomeini taken before or after he died?
Too sexy for his turban.
This is not to mitigate the Islamic Threat, but to provide some insight, that as their rhetoric against Israel and America ramps up, we are being provided a visible barometer of the deep internal trouble and contradictions that exist in Islam and especially Iran.
It is no secret that the Mullahcracy is unpopular, and corrupt, Shi'a Islam, even more than Sunni Islam, is nepotistic, as it is the families of mullahs who become mullahs and wealth and power accrue to the mullahs. In Iraq all the Shi'a players (mullah or not) come from the families of esteemed Ayatollah's, Islam is a ruling class society, be it tribal Shaykh or mullah.
As should be well known to everyone, the ruling elite use foreign affairs, foreign threats, and wars or fear of wars as a means of distracting the sheeple, deflecting criticism (who can criticize the commander in chief or Grand Mufti/Ayatollah/King/Sultan/Shaykh/Prime Minister) when one is at war with the other.
As Iran and other Muslim nations ramp up the rhetoric and turn up the heat, then that means that they have serious trouble on the homefront.
"Iran’s stance has always been clear on this ugly phenomenon [i.e., Israel]. We have repeatedly said that this cancerous tumor of a state should be removed from the region.”
I think Western civilization should have a clear stance on this ugly phenomenon ( i.e. Islam), and should repeatedly state that this cancerous tumor of a religion should be removed from the world.
We need a solution of our own.