On the anti-Israeli rhetoric of the Iranian president
War: A divine blessing and saviour of Islam

Soraya Shahabi

Mahmoud Ahmadi-Nejad, the new Iranian president, in an address to a conference held in Tehran entitled “A World without Zionism”, declared that Israel should be wiped out off the map. No doubt that Ahmadi-Nejad himself and his colleagues have experience of mass murders and genocides. Soon after the Islamists came to power in Iran, they launched a campaign of mass murder of the atheists, “infidels”, communists, labour activists and their political opponents. Further to these atrocities, during eight years of senseless war in the eighties, they despatched millions of people to the war fronts. People like Ahmadi-Nejad were responsible for sending hundreds of thousands of teenagers to walk the minefields of war fronts to pave the way to Jerusalem.

If he could have his way, Ahmadi-Nejad has earned the right credentials to put his intention to practice. The question, however, is that he is not capable of doing it. Such a threat is not the sign of strength; it is rather an indication of their weakness and desperation. Having said this, such a statement is sufficient to incite brainwashed soldiers of Islam, the suicide bombers of Hamas and Islamic Jihad to start blowing up innocent Israeli citizens, and Ariel Sharon sending his tanks to flatten Palestinian homes.          

Ahmadi-Nejad’s rhetoric and threats, deplorable as it is, and potentially dangerous as it is, is not aimed at opening up a new war front with Israel. It is rather an attempt to open up a demos tic war front to save the Islamic Republic. People of Iran are familiar with such cries. Whenever the Islamic rulers are under the siege, they incite religious and nationalist fervour to focus on more pressing domestic battles.

The Iranian regime, following the bankruptcy of their so called “Reform” and the “Dialogue of Civilisations” initiatives are resorting to their usual way of governing.  Dragging the country into a war, any war which lessens the threat of people against the regime will be welcomed as a divine blessing. They have successfully played such games in the past.

If more than twenty years ago, the Political Islam managed to consolidate its grip on the Iranian society through an eight year long bloody war and scarifying the lives of a generation of young people, this time they are very much mistaken. The cracks within the ruling clique are too wide to be glossed over. The ever growing discontent and frustration with the state has escalated to a level that can not be contained through their normal means. The regime is threading along from crisis to crisis. The Iranian regime is too vulnerable to enter any real war.

The other side of this anti-Israeli rhetoric is the warmongering attitudes of the US and its allies. The US threat of war only fans the fire of the war between the two camps of world terrorism, (the state terrorism of US and its allies and the political Islam). The political Islam thrives on the Palestinian problem. As long as Sharon demolishes Palestinian houses over the heads of their occupants, the Islamists of Hamas, Islamic Jihad and Ahmadi-Nejad would call for the elimination of the Jewish people. The truth is that Ahmadi-Nejad feeds on Sharon.

 As far as the Iranian society is concerned, Ahmadi-Nejad’s remarks are aimed at Iraqisation of Iran. Those remarks were made to seek a way to save the Islamic regime from collapse. The Islamic regime owes its survival to deaths and destruction. Wiping out the political Islam from Iran and the region, and getting rid of Ahmadi-Nejad and his regime, is the task of the progressive and free-minded Iranian people and our party, the Hekmatist Party at the forefront of a movement to eliminate the threat of war and misery from the country.