Robin Shepherd
Think Tank Blog
13 October 09
According to a dispatch from memri.org (see link below), Khatami scoffed at talks in Geneva the week before last which western leaders and their supine media supporters had hailed as a potential breakthrough in preventing Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons.
On the contrary, Khatami said: “The meeting was a great victory for the Islamic Republic of Iran to such an extent that even the Western and Zionist media had to admit defeat.”
And, he went on:
“Prior to the talks, they (Westerners) used to speak of suspension and sanctions against Iran, but after the talks, there has not been any word of suspension or sanctions, rather, Iran’s package of proposals was the axis.”
Well, that is not quite the version of events we were offered at the time. From President Obama to the leaders of Europe, the talks were hailed, to use Obama’s words, as “a constructive beginning”. Iran, it was widely, reported still had much to do but it was showing signs of bending to our will on everything from the inspections regime to the export of enriched uranium for reprocessing in Russia and France.
As National Security adviser Jim Jones said on CBS’s “Face the Nation” earlier this month: “We now have an Iran that is willing to come to the table.”
Fine. They’ll come to the table, string things out for a few more months, all the while telling their own people a different story and continue apace with the process of acquiring nuclear weapons.
One thing about the Iranian regime is that unless you close your ears and shut your eyes to the evidence, it is really leaving very little doubt about what its real intentions are. Anyone still labouring under any illusions should read “The Rise of Nuclear Iran: How Tehran Defies the West”, a devastating new book by Dore Gold, Israel’s former ambassador to the United Nations (see link below).
As for President Obama’s new approach to the Iranian regime, he got his answer to what they think of his new-look United States on the very day he was awarded his Nobel Prize. Memri quoted Ayatollah Khatami as saying:
“The world arrogance [i.e. the U.S.] should know that Islamic Iran is powerful and strong. Our doctrine is deterrence and not aggression. They (the arrogant states) should not erroneously think of harming the (Islamic Republic) system, because they know pretty well that if they wish inflicting the least damage on the system, they will be slapped in the face so heavily that will never be able to rise up again.”
So even after all the diplomatic initiatives it is still “the world arrogance” that will be “slapped in the face” if it pushes too hard against the Islamist regime.
He also threatened Israel with a third Intifida, which given Iran’s leverage over Hamas should not be taken as idle words. Any such Intifada, he said, “will put an end to the dirty existence of the forged Zionist regime.”
Taken together, the evidence on Iran points only in one direction. The Iranian regime remains as it has always been: an aggressive Islamist tyranny, contemptuous of western values, fully aware of how to play on western weakness, undaunted in its role as the world’s greatest sponsor of terrorism, dishonest in what it says to western journalists as opposed to what it tells its own people, fully committed to the destruction of Israel and firmly on track to get nuclear weapons.
But why face up to the harsh realities when we can just stay asleep?
To read the memri report in full, click here:
http://www.memri.org/bin/latestnews.cgi?ID=SD259309
To buy Dore Gold’s excellent new book, click here:
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