Ahmadinejad Leading the Blind
“The Iranian nation is prepared to study any proposal by any country and if [it] is a good proposal, it will be accepted and if it is not proper it will be rejected bravely,” the president said at a meeting with a group of blind people.
Is Ahmadinejad sending a message to someone by addressing, literally, the blind, a day after the Bush administration levied substantially meaningless but symbolically inflammatory "sanctions" on Iran's Revolutionary Guard and a few state-owned banks for their alleged support of terrorism? Bush is by any rational estimate being foolish by dropping more incendiary bombs on top of his recent "World War III" talk over Iran's nuclear ambitions ("I've told people that if you're interested in avoiding World War III," Bush said during an Oct. 17 news conference, "it seems like you ought to be interested in preventing them from have the knowledge necessary to make a nuclear weapon"). The advantage is in Iran's favor. As the Washington David Ignatius notes in tomorrow's column,
Many Arabs argue that the Iranians actually want America to attack. Politically, that would help the hard-liners rally support. And militarily, it would lure the United States onto a battlefield where its immense firepower wouldn't do much good. The Iranians could withdraw into the maze of their homeland and keep firing off their missiles -- exacting damage on the West's economy and, most important, its will to fight.
Bush's clear-eyed skills in foreign affairs have never been his strong point. Ahmandinejad has the the temperament of a populist who, like Bush, knows just how to play to his base. In this case, Ahmadinejad also knows that the more Bush fuels up the war chatter, the stronger he'll make Ahmadinejad by rallying radicals to his side and further sidelining what passes for moderates in the Iranian theocracy. Ahmadinejad can afford to stick his finger in Bush's eye, as he seemed to be doing by using that audience of "blind people" to convey his message--a message that wasn't without a crack in the Iranian president's one-sidedness on the nuclear issue. Iran is "prepared to study any proposal by any country"? Idle words, to be sure, Ahmadinejad having laready called the nuclear issue a closed case. But that wasn't the point of the story. The setting was.
Either way, not a single western newspaper picked up the story. On the Iranian issue, the blind are everywhere.
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Comments
In this case, Ahmadinejad also knows that the more Bush fuels up the war chatter, the stronger he’ll make Ahmadinejad by rallying radicals to his side and further sidelining what passes for moderates
Moderates already side with Iran’s right to nuclear technology.
Moderates:
The non-Alighned movement (all 118 of them) support Iran’s right to a nuclear program.
The IAEA says that Iran does not possess nuclear weapons nor weapons-grade uranium.
Why quotation marks around “technology” and “blind”? Do you mean to convey that Iran does not have the right to nuclear technology (though your country does) and that the blind people he addressed were in reality not so? If so, why not state so openly?
Anyway, congratulations on your Middle East chair. If you continue doing a good job of not questioning Western imperial prerogatives, perhaps you will also be granted the Latin American chair. God knows we have enough anti-neoliberals and anti-imperialists to lambaste.
Lupita technology is bracketed because it’s a euphemism for bombs as it is used by the Iranians. I think that’s the point.
Keep up the good work Mr. Tristam.
Seems like Ahmadinejad has found a friend in George Bush. I have read elsewhere that the Iranian regime is quite unpopular outside the circle of hard-liners, therefore Washington’s sabre rattling is very useful in quieting dissent in Iran. Osama must be laughing his ass off.
Ohdave, thanks for taking the words out of my mouth. Lupita, it seems to me there’s a 180-degree difference between what I wrote and how you interpreted it.
it’s a euphemism for bombs as it is used by the Iranians
Those evil, violent Iranians. The US, that has threatened non-nuclear states with nuclear attacks in contravention of the Non-Proliferation Treaty is, of course, virtuous and the legitimate enforcer of the Treaty.
it seems to me there’s a 180-degree difference between what I wrote and how you interpreted it.
How should the following be interpreted?
Ahmandinejad has the the temperament of a populist
the Iranian president’s one-sidedness on the nuclear issue.
Idle words
Could it be that Iran really does have the right to develop nuclear technology for peaceful purposes and that there is no evidence that it is developing a bomb? Your article sidesteps the rights Iran has under the NPT while gratuitously ridiculing its head of state. How should it be interpreted?
Western propaganda, I say.
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