Khameni's mission
Cliff May quotes extensively from a talk given recently at the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs by former Spanish President Jose Maria Aznar. Some of you might recall that I think quite highly of Aznar. A few days before that, José Maria Aznar, former prime minister of Spain, speaking at the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, recalled a “private discussion” in October 2000 with Iran’s current supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who told him: “Israel must be burned to the ground and made to disappear from the face of the Earth.”Read the whole thing.
Dore Gold, the former Israeli ambassador to the United Nations who now heads the JCPA, wanted to be certain there was no misunderstanding. He asked Aznar: Was Khamenei suggesting “a gradual historical process involving the collapse of the Zionist state, or rather its physical-military termination?”
“He meant physical termination through military force,” Aznar replied without hesitation. Khamenei called Israel “an historical cancer”—an echo of Nazi rhetoric he has used on numerous occasions, the last time in public on February 3.
Khamenei told Aznar in 2000 that the mission of the Islamic Revolution always has been and always will be to rid the world of two evils: Israel and the United States. Khamenei said he expected that sooner or later there will be an “open confrontation.” It is his duty, he said, to ensure that when that happens, Iran has the power to prevail.
This is why the acquisition of nuclear weapons is such a high priority for Khamenei. Not long ago, Anthony Cordesman, the respected security analyst at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, was skeptical about Iran’s nuclear ambitions. Then he sat down and examined hundreds of pages of evidence compiled by the International Atomic Energy Agency. His May report, Rethinking Our Approach to Iran’s Search for the Bomb, concludes:
“Iran has pursued every major area of nuclear weapons development, has carried out programs that have already given it every component of a weapon except fissile material, and there is strong evidence that it has carried out programs to integrate a nuclear warhead onto its missiles.”
So the notion that Iran’s nuclear programs are merely, as Reuters charmingly phrases it, “a peaceful bid to generate electricity,” or that Khamenei has not decided whether he really wants nuclear weapons, or that he has issued a fatwa declaring possession of nuclear weapons a sin (not a shred of evidence suggests that such a religious ruling exists), or that he wants nukes only as a deterrent because he fears American aggression, or that he looks forward to compromise, détente and rapprochement, with believers and infidels clinking glasses of pomegranate juice—all of that is wishful thinking or self-delusion or disinformation.
In his presentation in Jerusalem, Aznar recalled another meeting, this one with Vladimir Putin, in which he advised the Russian president against selling missiles to Iran. “Don't worry—I, you, we can sell them everything, even if we are worried by an Iranian nuclear bomb,” Aznar quoted Putin as saying. “Because at the end of the day, Israel will take care of it.”
Aznar had recounted that story in Washington earlier, but, at the time, he asked those of us in the room to keep it off the record. He had added incredulously: “But that’s the Russian policy? To let Israel take care of it?”
Labels: Ayatollah Ali Khameni, Iranian nuclear threat, Israeli attack on Iran, Jose Maria Aznar, Vladimir Putin
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 9:32 PM
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