Learning Persian
Writing in YNet, Shaul Rosenfield suggests that it's time for the world to learn Persian (and Arabic). Yet more than anything else, many Western leaders do amazingly well in coming up with reasons why we must not use forceful means to counter mad thugs such as Hitler, Saddam Hussein, Kim Jong Il, or Ahmadinejad while they are younger and less damaging.Read the whole thing.
The “great surprise” of Western leaders upon discovering that Iran hid its second uranium enrichment facility from the IAEA, just like Barak Obama’s call on the Iranians to prove that their nuclear program only has peaceful aims, is yet another demonstration that many in the West, including many members of the current American leadership, continue to simply “not understand” Persian or Arabic (or any of the languages and secret acts used by crazy rulers.)
The argument that the recently uncovered nuclear facility near Qom serves as proof of parallel nuclear activity, and that finally the “smoking gun” has been found, is somewhat similar to the claims made by some Israelis upon the seizure of the Karin A weapons-smuggling ship in 2002. These Israelis claimed that the seizure revealed Arafat’s true intentions, as if we did not see the accumulation of plethora of evidence regarding his actions and aspirations since 1993.
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Above all, any logical person would realize that no state, as mad as it may be, would be willing to pay intolerable economic, social, and diplomatic prices only in order to acquire nuclear energy for civilian needs; certainly not a state that is home to giant oil and gas reservoirs.
After all, anyone who has not allowed naiveté to undermine his judgment is supposed to understand that even in the view of Ahmadinejad and the Ayatollahs, no civilian nuclear program is worth the heavy price of isolation, sanctions, and possibly a threat to the regime. If they are indeed willing to bear such heavy costs, it could only be for the purpose of acquiring the bomb.
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 9:34 PM
2 Comments:
Great article. Anyone who doubts Iran's ill will is naive, and the more you can read in the Iranian gov's Persian, the more patently obvious that becomes. I've actually been working on this myself. I was learning Arabic when I started college, and I'm still maintaining what I supposed could be considered an "intermediate" knowledge, at least as far as reading and writing are concerned, but with the track I'm into with the Army, Dari will probably become a necessity.
Great blog, by the way. I'm not Jewish myself, but my adoptive father is a (non-practicing Jew) whose family is still active religiously, and even when I considered myself more of a liberal, Israel's existence and safety have typically defined my foreign policy leanings.
Persian is an Indo-Iranian language written in the Arabic script. Its been around in one form or another since the days of the Persian Empire. Its nearly as old as Hebrew. Arabic - a Semitic language, is more recent.
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