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Loading...Iran: Mahmoud and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Week
Boy, this has not been a very good ten days for Iranian President Mahmoud “the Mad” Ahmadinejad. Consider the following:
1. Last Thursday, the White House announced that it was ending the so-called “missilie shield” plan devised by his predecessor, thus making Russia (which until then had been holding out on sanctions) happy and openly questioning Iran’s ICBM capacity. To add insult to injury, the Obama Administration made it pretty clear that existing U.S. technology could more than handle any short- or medium-range missile capacity.
2. On Friday, the largest anti-regime protests in two months erupted in Iran:
In Tehran and other cities, tens of thousands of demonstrators hijacked Iran’s annual al-Quds Day rallies in support of the Palestinian cause and turned them into protests against the oppression of Iranians. The security forces hit back with teargas and baton charges. There were violent confrontations between government and opposition supporters in the squares and avenues of central Tehran and numerous reports of arrests and injuries. . . .
There had been no major demonstrations since July 17 but the Government could hardly cancel al-Quds Day, an event initiated by Ayatollah Khomeini, the founder of the Islamic Republic, and the opposition seized its chance. Its supporters turned out in huge numbers and paralysed the centre of Tehran; estimates of the turnout ranged from 100,000 to 500,000. They were young and old, male and female, rich and poor, and came with green wristbands, T-shirts, balloons and banners to show support for Mr Mousavi’s green movement.”
Things got so bad that Ahmadinejad had to cut short an interview with state-controlled because chants of “Ahmadi, Ahmadi, resign, resign!” could be heard in the background.
3. That same day, Ahmadinejad gave a fiery speech in which he once again denounced the Holocaust as a “lie” and a “myth.” As Trita Parsi subsequently noted, the timing of the speech was probably not unintentional. Ahmadinejad had not ranted about the Holocaust for more than two years. For him to raise it now, in the middle of continued demonstrations at home and growing concern about Iran’s nuke program abroad has to be more than a coincidence.
Given both the protests at home and the outrage over his statements overseas, it doesn’t look like his plan worked.
4. On Wednesday, Obama went before the General Assembly and singled out Iran’s nuclear ambitions (along with those of North Korea):
In their actions to date, the governments of North Korea and Iran threaten to take us down this dangerous slope. We respect their rights as members of the community of nations. I’ve said before and I will repeat, I am committed to diplomacy that opens a path to greater prosperity and more secure peace for both nations if they live up to their obligations.
But if the governments of Iran and North Korea choose to ignore international standards; if they put the pursuit of nuclear weapons ahead of regional stability and the security and opportunity of their own people; if they are oblivious to the dangers of escalating nuclear arms races in both East Asia and the Middle East — then they must be held accountable. The world must stand together to demonstrate that international law is not an empty promise, and that treaties will be enforced. We must insist that the future does not belong to fear.
Obama’s words weren’t significantly different from those uttered by his predecessor, except, of course, for the inconvenient fact that he has had significantly greater success in buiding consensus among the Group of Six” (Russia, China, USA, Britain, France, and Germany) for sanctions.
5. That same day, Russian President Dmitri Medvedev made it clear that Russia would now support sanctions if Iran failed to comply with the Non-Proliferation Treaty and the IAEA (which earlier this month had announced that it was in a “stalemate” with Iran). Medvedev went on to say that sanctions don’t always produce the desired results, but that sometimes sanctions are “inevitable.”
6. And if that wasn’t enough, Wednesday was also the day that Ahmadinejad took his turn before the UN General Assembly, only to see most of the delegates walk out. During his speech, he defended his recent “election” as “glorious and fully democratic” but then went off-script, claiming that “a small minority” (which most observers took to mean Jews) controlled the world’s political and economic system through “private networks.”
In one sense Ahmadinejad was lucky: Lybian dictator Moammar Khaddafi’s speech earlier in the day was so off-the-wall, Ahmadinejad’s ravings seemed fairly mild in comparison, getting significantly less media attention than they would have otherwise.
7. Thursday should have been fairly quiet — other than Obama chairing a session of the UN Security Council. All the UNSC did was pass a resolution on nuclear non-proliferation that only further boxed in Iran.
Oh, and then there was this.
Nothing like a little full-blown-crazy-in-the-face-of-photographic-evidence to make the day a little less fun. And if you have your doubts about whether Ahmadinejad is a full-blown psychopath, note how he smiled as Couric showed him the photo.
8. Finally, just when he thought things would calm down, Obama, along with Prime Minister Gordon Brown of the U.K. and President Nicolas Sarkozy of France, held a press conference in Pittsburgh this morning:
“President Obama and the leaders of Britain and France accused Iran on Friday of building a secret underground plant to manufacture nuclear fuel, saying the country has hidden the covert operation from international weapons inspectors for years. . . .Mr. Obama said that the Iranian nuclear program “represents a direct challenge to the basic foundation of the nonproliferation regime.” President Nicolas Sarkozy of France, appearing beside Mr. Obama, said that Iran had a deadline of two months to comply with international demands or face increased sanctions. “The level of deception by the Iranian government, and the scale of what we believe is the breach of international commitments, will shock and anger the entire international community,” Prime Minister Gordon Brown of Britain said.”
At about the same time that Obama et. al. were dropping this bomb, Ahmadinejad was meeting with TIME magazine’s editorial board. When Time editor Rick Stengel asked him about what Obama was saying, Ahmadinejad was taken aback, asking twice for confirmation before responding. He then described the allegations as “definitively a mistake. We have no secrecy.” A little later, he suggested that the allegation “adds to the list of issues to which the United States owes the Iranian nation an apology over.”
Now this is not merely a small building in the desert. Nope. It’s a Dr.-Evil’s-secret-complex-in-the-mountain kind of facility. And the Administration went public at least in part to demonstrate to the Iranians that it had the intelligence capacity to find out about such stuff. In response, Ahmadinejad canceled subsequent media appearances, including a press conference scheduled to take place this afternoon.
Maybe Ahmadinejad can convince the West that it’s an amusement park ride. At this rate, I bet he can’t wait to get back to Tehran.
The only problem is that it’s the one city where he’s even less popular than in New York.
Read more: ahmadinejad, democracy, general assembly, green revolution, human rights, iran, nuclear proliferation, nukes, obama, obama administration, politics, united nations
UN Photo by Marco Castro
Charles J. Brown is Senior Fellow and Washington Director at the Institute for International Law and Human Rights and the host of Undiplomatic, a blog on the intersection of foreign policy, politics, and pop culture. You also can follow him on Twitter.
Disclaimer: The views expressed above are solely those of the author and may
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+ add your ownHI - The majority in the west seem to have been spun into thinking that the Ahmadinejad leadership fixed the Iranian elections. If you are interested in the truth of the matter and fixing elections/coups in general - look at this article
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=14291
I don't say it's necessarily all perfectly true though it may be - things need to be checked - but it at leas presents us with more of the necessary information needed before we judge these matters
yours truly
http://www.szura.org/pandora/practical.html
I can see where people really know what they are writing about here. The US spends billions on what's called covert operations just to overthrow other governments so they can put puppet governments in. In the June 1, 2009 issue of Newsweek they tell how the CIA and British got the Shah in place in Iran and then in 1957 the US agreed to assist Iran in the development of nuclear technology. !973 The Atomic Energy Organization of Iran is established and the US supplies fuel, technology and training. Add to this the US got caught in the Iraq-Iran war saying they were neutral but were playing one side against the other so the US had to choose sides which ended up being Iraq. In 2000 Secretary of State admits to overthrowing Iran's government when they put the Shah in. After 911 Iran was helping the US and Bush put them in the 'Axis of Evil' with only words. So now the sanction push is just about as sick as our US has always been. We did the same exact thing to invade Iraq. Obama knew about this new sight from day one he went in office. His BS excuse is they were making sure it was correct yet the point the US picked up on it long ago and only put out now is totally sick on our part for letting our own government play games with human life this way. At the very same time our president did this another news article told how the civilian deaths are up in Afghanistan. We sure became a sick society when we buy into this reckless game playing and don't care about those killed by us.
"Nothing like a little full-blown-crazy-in-the-face-of-photographic-evidence to make the day a little less fun. And if you have your doubts about whether Ahmadinejad is a full-blown psychopath, note how he smiled as Couric showed him the photo."
um, I didn't really see a crazy in the face psychopath in this video. I think he is a dangerous man, but I think the media (even on care2) can blow things a little out of proportion.
I'm a little surprised by the number of people on the poll who think it is pointless to try and talk to the guy. Uh, don't you remember anything about the actions of the last USA president and where its brought us?
I should add that Ahmadinejad is the only political leader I know of who routinely calls for complete global nuclear disarmament. His problem is that he is too logical for the geopolitical games being played by the so-called superpowers.
This article is perfect example of how people are tricked into dissociative thinking. The writer calls Ahmadinejad a "psychopath" for smiling when shown a photo purported to be of dead Jews - a photo I'm sure he's seen a thousand times. But he is really smiling at Couric's deliberately naive question. And he makes it patently clear that he includes the Jews in his assessment of the horrors of WWII, but asks a very logical question: "Why do we focus only on the holocaust when 60 million people died?" That is hardly the same as being a "holocaust denier" - yet Couric and the media supporting American hegemony says he is one so it must be true, right?
We focus on the "holocaust" because it is a well-advertised industry - ask Norman Finkelstein, whose parents were holocaust survivers - and because it justifies the theft of land and the genocide of the Palestinian people - who are in the same situation as our own native North Americans were when the "white" man came, and who, as Ahmadiejad rightly points out, were not to blame for the "holocaust".
Very interesting, I am stunned at the "if we disarm Iran will disarm" opinion.
Maybe I'm just a pessimist, I shall listen and learn?
Is it so bad that in the near future Iran might be able to talk to Israel on an even keel and perhaps order them to treat the Palestinians humanely? Instead of fearing being attacked by Israel. I am not an Arab or whatever, I just believe in fair play.
Will america ever allow Iran to inspect their weapons and see their torture camps & methods?
What are the options? If we do not talk to the Iranian Government, do we just bomb them off the face of the earth? We can only hope that the people will one day gain control of the government and their lives. We can only do this by interacting and slowly infiltrating their world.
US has prooven that it doesn't deserve the right to ve weapons "irak" and "Afghanistan",it made most of countries want to protect their selves so please don't speak about psychopaths because you ve Bush as a big psychopath and you are supporting the most crazy psychopaths in the world
what about what happened in GAZA did u see the photos?
i ve put some in my page on facebook
so please see those photos befor judjing other presidents
if iran gives up its nuclear program,what do u thing is going to happen?
US or ISRAEL ll start a new war,thats all
Great post, Charlie... we have our own "horrible mad" (and best friend of this one) here in Latin America... you guess, Chavez. Guys like them have trashed logical thinking long ago, and only respect a strong stick policy. Read their acts... no more words with them. Just actions. Strong actions.
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