Shunned in Rome, Ahmadinejad Bullies and Blusters
Foxnews, June 5, 2008
Transcript
Score one for the Italians.
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the thug par-excellence president of
the ayatollahs’ regime in Iran, has been shunned by the Pope
and the Prime Minister of Italy. In a humiliating rebuff
which demonstrates Tehran’s pariah status abroad, both
leaders refused to meet him in Rome, where he arrived on
June 3, 2008 to attend the UN’s annual food summit.
Ahmadinejad tried to grab the headlines with another
bombastic attack against the United States. In a bid to
shift the public relations firestorm over his visit, he told
reporters shortly before his departure for Italy that the
“satanic powers” of the United States will be “uprooted” and
that Israel is “about to die and will soon be erased from
the geographical scene.”
He renewed his diatribe upon his arrival in Rome on Tuesday,
saying that "Europeans have suffered the biggest damage from
the Zionists and today the weight of this artificial regime,
both political and economic, is on Europe's shoulders.”
One thing is sure: this Qods Force
Commander-turned-president thrives on being the center of
attention. Controversy is how he, in a depraved manner,
infuses vigor into his increasingly lackluster power base.
And that is why he is eager to make these high-profile
visits to western countries, such as his annul presence at
the UN General Assembly.
Like many demagogues, Ahmadinejad is crazy to grab
headlines. He claimed he was bringing solutions to the
global food problem. Iran, he says, “as an influential
nation in the economy and agriculture, has clear solutions,
programs and suggestions for the fair production and
distribution of food supply in the world.” Never mind that
his regime, despite being flush with unprecedented oil
revenues, has failed economically and is directly
responsible for widening poverty and hunger in Iran. “Iran
can play a decisive role in today's world management.”
His visit was billed as a one-man diplomatic nightmare by
the Italian media, and caused an uproar among human rights
and political circles in Italy. Italy’s Foreign Ministry
said a meeting between Ahmadinejad and Prime Minister Silvio
Berlusconi would only happen if Ahmadinejad was prepared to
retract his comments on Israel and his denial of the
Holocaust, as well as ending his regime’s defiance of
international demands relevant to Iran’s nuclear program.
Meanwhile media reports from Italy indicate that Zimbabwean
President Robert Mugabe and Ahmadinejad were excluded from
the opening dinner at the UN summit hosted by Prime Minister
Berlusconi and Ban Ki-moon, the U.N. Secretary-General.
This latest political humiliation for Tehran and its
president comes on the heels of a damning report by the
International Atomic Energy Agency released last week on
Iran’s nuclear program, and more evidence of international
terrorism. As always, Tehran’s outward belligerence is the
flip side of its inward suppression; there were also new
reports on human rights violations.
On Monday, even Mohamed El Baradei, the see-no-evil, hear
no-evil head of the nuclear watchdog agency, had to complain
to reporters about Tehran’s continued defiance of its
commitments and three UN Security Council resolutions. He
said that “Iran has not yet agreed to implement all the
transparency measures required to clarify this cluster of
allegations and questions," adding that “Iran has not
provided the agency with all the access to documents and to
individuals requested ... nor provided the substantive
explanations required to support its statements.”
The composition of the new Parliament (Majlis) whose new
speaker Ali Larijani, is a protégé of Supreme Leader Ali
Khamenei and a former top commander of the Islamic
Revolutionary Guards Corps, heralds a strengthening of
Tehran’s hard line on the nuclear issue. In his first day on
the new job, Larijani drew the regime’s nuclear “red line,”
vowing the Majlis will never go along with any deals about
enrichment suspension.
Adding to the mix, ABC News released an exclusive report
last week that “Senior U.S. officials tell ABC News that in
recent months there have been secret contacts between the
Iranian government and the leadership of al Qaeda.”
Meanwhile executions continue unabated in Iran. On June 2,
three young men, all under 18 at the time of the alleged
crimes, were given death sentences. They will join at least
75 juveniles on death row, according to human rights
organizations. The New York Times reported from Tehran that
Iran’s judiciary has also sentenced to death a Kurdish
teacher, Farzad Kamangar, and two other people for political
reasons.
Emboldened by the West’s talk about an “updated” incentives
package, already rejected by the regime’s Supreme Leader
even before its content has been made public, Tehran remains
undeterred and defiantly refuses to change its behavior.
The regime does, however, have an Achilles’ heel: its
isolation from its own people, who desperately yearn for
democratic change. Tehran is worried about the landmark
ruling in early May by Britain’s Court of Appeal, ordering
the UK government to promptly remove Iran’s main opposition,
the People’s Mojahedin Organization (PMOI/MEK) from its
blacklist of proscribed organizations. Tehran understands
the wide-ranging political and diplomatic implications of
this ruling in strengthening the movement for democratic
change in Iran.
The UK government obeyed the court ruling and last week laid
before Parliament an order for the revocation of the group’s
designation.
The UK court ruling marks the end of an era, and Tehran is
deeply concerned at the rising specter of ouster from within
by the non-nuclear, secular, and democratic resistance
movement.
Alireza Jafarzadeh is a FOX News Channel Foreign Affairs
Analyst and the author of "The
Iran Threat: President Ahmadinejad and the Coming Nuclear
Crisis" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2007).
Jafarzadeh has revealed Iran's terrorist network in Iraq and
its terror training camps since 2003. He first disclosed the
existence of the Natanz uranium enrichment facility and the
Arak heavy water facility in August 2002.
