[News] Iran’s President (Tries to) Speak Out

[Anti-Imperialist News]

Dr. Lawrence Davidson: Iran’s President (Tries to) Speak Out

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23. Sep, 2010
http://www.intifada-palestine.com/2010/09/dr-lawrence-davidson-irans-president-tries-to-speak-out/

by Dr. Lawrence Davidson

Iran’s president Ahmadinejad was at the United 
Nations on September 21, 2010 to address the 
Millennium Development Goals Summit. What he had 
to say was, as usual, a mixed bag of worthwhile 
insights and questionable assertions. We will get 
to some of them in a moment. But first something 
odd. As soon as the Iranian president took the 
podium and began speaking the audio feeds 
supporting the UN translators started to have 
“technical” problems. It is a sign of the 
suspicious world we live in that few astute 
observers are ready to believe that explanation 
without further proof. On the other hand, very 
few media outlets even commented on the glitch. 
Al-Jazeera, however, did prosaically refer to the 
incident as 
“<http://english.aljazeera.net/news/americas/2010/09/201092116192899599.html>Ahmadinejad 
lost in translation.”

According 
to<http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=6107339> 
a written transcript of his speech, and apropos 
of the subject of the summit, the Iranian 
president stated that the global decision making 
bodies such as the UN Security Council, 
International Monetary Fund, World Bank, and the 
like are unjustly monopolized by aggressive and 
hegemonic great powers. And, if you really want 
to know why poverty persists in the modern world 
you have to take a long and hard look at the 
avaricious economic policies of those same 
powers. Actually, he has a point on both scores. 
It would be easy to produce the evidence for 
these assertions but much harder to get anyone of 
authority to listen. Thus, the hall in which he 
was making his address (sans translation) was 
nearly empty and he got very little media 
coverage. Ahmadinejad might very well complain 
that he was “talking to the wall.” This time, at 
least, the problem is with the wall and not the speaker.

There are other claims, all substantially true, 
that the Iranian president may soon be making for 
the one hundredth time (he speaks to the General 
Assembly on Thursday the 23rd). He will probably 
tell the world body 
<http://www.csmonitor.com/layout/set/print/content/view/print/326379>all 
or some of the following:

1. That Iran has no nuclear weapons program and 
there is no hard evidence to the contrary.
2. That his country is pursuing the development 
of a peaceful nuclear energy program which is 
legal under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty to which it is a signatory.
3. That on September 6, 2010 the International 
Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) verified, yet again, 
that no declared nuclear material in Iran has been diverted for military use.
4. That the total amount of Iran’s enriched 
nuclear stockpile is for domestic energy and medical isotope programs.
5. That all of this is safeguarded by the IAEA.
6. And, finally, that any recently observed “lack 
of full cooperation” on Iran’s part is a product 
of persistent U.S. and European hectoring about 
the alleged insufficiency of the fairly good 
cooperation they have got. In other words, the 
West has created a self-fulfilling prophecy in 
this regard. If you continuously question a 
people’s character, don’t expect them to fully cooperate with you.

Despite a policy of insisting that if Iran wants 
to “come back into the international community” 
its government must prove a negative, there was 
this week<http://www.cnbc.com/id/39211693> a 
glimmer of reason coming out of Washington. 
President Obama publically stated 
<http://english.farsnews.com/printable.php?/nn=8906301215>http://english.farsnews.com/printable.php?/nn=8906301215that 
“we don’t think that a war between Israel and 
Iran, or military options, would be the ideal way 
to solve this problem.” Given the American media 
distortions on the topic of a “nuclear Iran,” 
President Obama ought to repeat this obvious, 
common sense fact every day of the week indefinitely.

Getting back to Amadinejad, I think it is fair to 
say that the man does head a civilian controlled 
government that can be quite ruthless and any 
claims that his regime does not target peaceful 
protesters are false. On the other hand, it is 
equally as accurate to say that he is not the 
crazy person the Zionists and their allies make 
him out to be. For instance, he repeated 
<http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article17925.htm>his 
assertion that he is not anti-Semitic, although 
he certainly is anti-Zionist. Unfortunately, he 
does question the extent of the Holocaust and for 
various historical and political reasons that is 
enough to earn him the anti-Semitic label here in 
the West. But, while he is factually wrong about 
the Holocaust, his disavowal of anti-Semitism is 
believable for two reasons: one is that attacking 
the Zionist nature of the Israeli state, which is 
what the Iranian president does, is not the same 
as attacking Jews. Zionists may claim it is but 
they too are factually wrong. There are an 
increasing number of Jews worldwide who see 
Zionism as just a racist political ideology and 
absolutely not a stand-in for their Jewishness. 
The second point is the relatively prosperous and 
stable position of the 25,000 Iranian Jews. If 
Ahmadinejad was such a flaming anti-Semite, these 
people would not be in as good a shape as they are.

The political hype in the U.S. over Iran is, in 
good part, a combined product of Zionist and 
neo-conservative political pressure, media 
irresponsibility, and periodic indiscretion on 
the part of the Iranian president–the latter 
unfortunately feeding the former. And, we can 
rely on Israel and its supporters to keep calling 
for the destruction of Iran’s nuclear program as 
some sort of litmus test for world peace. 
Israel’s Defense Minister, Ehud Barak, told Fox 
News recently that 
“<http://www.israelnationalnews.com/SendMail.aspx?print=print&type=0&item=139733>history 
will judge the [Obama] administration
on whether 
Iran has nuclear weapons or not.” It is a red 
herring, Ehud. Go home, make a truly just peace 
with the Palestinians, and you will grow old safely and die in bed.

Sensibly, President Obama seems to be backing 
away from all this hype. He knows that it 
represents the same formula worldview used 
against Iraq in the run up to the invasion of 
that country. He probably got pressured to replay 
it by Congressional supporters of Israel and Ron 
Emmanuel. It is a dangerous game to play, even 
for the sake of a president’s domestic politics. 
The Iraq invasion resulted in the death of over 
one million people. Who wants to do that again? 
Well, it appears that the Zionists and the neo-cons do!

Let us hope that the Democrats do well in this 
November’s elections. If they do, we may see an 
Obama more insistent on real peace policies when 
it comes to places like Iran and Israel. Then he 
can call in the opposition (including his 
Democratic “blue dogs”) and tell them that, if 
they want to reduce the world’s population, it 
would be easier and cheaper and quite a bit 
saner, to promote contraception rather than bloody war.

Lawrence Davidson
Department of History
West Chester University
West Chester, Pa 19383
USA




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