Netanyahu makes the most of Iranian anti-Israel rhetoric
This posting has a large cast of actors: Ayatollah Khameini and the commander of a volunteer militia, Speaker John Boehner and PM Netanyahu, Queen Esther, the countries taking part in the nuclear talks in Lausanne; apocalyptic Shmuley Boteach; Saudi Arabia and its role in blocking Iran; the sides in the Sunni-Shi’ite split.
Too much for one posting, but they are all interlinked, so take your pick according to taste.
1) Independent: Netanyahu condemns nuclear talks after Iranian commander vows to ‘wipe Israel off the map, surprisingly unquestioning report from the Indie;
2) Press TV: Iranian commander pokes fun at Bibi’s congress speech, state-sponsored news agency reports the Brig-Gen’s speech with no mention of Israel. Did Mohammad Reza Naqdi actually say what Israel TV reported? Or did Fars suppress it, or ignore it as trivial attention-grabbing?;
3) MEE: The long history of Israel gaming the ‘Iranian threat’, well-informed piece by Gareth Porter about the history of the Iran/Israel relationship and ‘Holocaust syndrome’ – relevant also to the piece below;
4) Vox: Iran’s foreign minister says Netanyahu got Jewish scripture wrong, inset on Esther as rhetorical device;
5) JPost: No holds barred: Iran pays no price for threatening Jewish annihilation, Shmuley on form against the Great Satan in his Jew-centric, Manichaean world-view;
6) NY Times: For Boehner, Visit to Israel Isn’t the Time to Speak Out, Speaker and PM further their friendship with speak-out on Iran;
7) Fars: Basij commander: Saudi aggressors to experience Saddam’s fate;
8) Notes and links on Brigadier General Mohammad Reza Naqdi, Iranian rhetoric, the Houthis.
Brigadier General Mohammad Reza Naqdi, [above] says Israel will be ‘wiped off the map’ according to Israel TV.
Netanyahu condemns nuclear talks after Iranian commander vows to ‘wipe Israel off the map‘
Mohammad Reza Naqdi also threatened Saudi leaders over Yemen conflict
By Lizzie Dearden, The Independent
April 01, 2015
Benjamin Netanyahu has warned that Iran has been put on an “unconscionable” path to building nuclear weapons by the continuing talks with world powers.
Speaking this morning, the Israeli Prime Minister also condemned an Iranian military commander who reportedly vowed to “wipe Israel off the map” and claimed Saudi leaders will face “Saddam Hussein’s fate”.
Brigadier General Mohammad Reza Naqdi, who leads the Basij volunteer force*, made the declaration to mark Islamic Republic Day in Tehran on Tuesday.
“Wiping Israel off the map is not up for negotiation,” he said according to Kol Yisrael radio.
Mr Netanyahu responded today by calling Iran’s regime “murderous” and condemning any deal over its nuclear capabilities.
“Yesterday an Iranian official said that Israel’s destruction is non-negotiable,” he said, according to the Jerusalem Post.
“However, giving Iran’s murderous regime the bomb is negotiable. This is unconscionable.
“Iran is accelerating its campaign of terror and conquest throughout region, most recently in Yemen.”
Houthi fighters inspect the damage caused by Saudi air strikes on the airport of Yemen’s northwestern city of Saada, a Houthi stronghold near the Saudi border, March 30, 2015. Warplanes struck the Yemeni capital of Sanaa overnight and after daybreak on Monday, residents said, the fifth day of a campaign by Saudi-led forces against Houthi forces opposed to President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi. Photo by Naiyf Rahma
Iran has been accused of supporting the Houthi rebels fighting Yemen’s government, meaning it is effectively part of a proxy war with Saudi Arabia and its allies. A member of the Houthi militia near vehicles destroyed by a Saudi air strike in Sanaa yesterday A member of the Houthi militia near vehicles destroyed by a Saudi air strike in Sanaa
Iran’s Fars news agency [see below] reported comments made by Brigadier General Naqdi in the same speech, threatening the Saudi-led international coalition fighting the Houthis.
“Imposing war on Yemen will, God willingly, have no result other than Saddam’s fate for the aggressors and the US that is the direct sponsor of this crime will have to leave the region forever after losing its puppet, the Al Saud regime,” Brigadier General Naqdi said.
Saddam Hussein was deposed and later hanged during the Iraq war after 24 years in power.
Brigadier General Naqdi has made threats against Israel before, saying in 2014 that Iran was supplying weapons to Palestinians in the West Bank. Mohammad Reza Naqdi Mohammad Reza Naqdi has wants to ‘wipe Israel off the map’
“The Zionists should know that the next war won’t be confined to the present borders and the Mujahedeen will push them back,” he added.
In 2012, the Brigadier General Naqdi said only the “burning of the White House” and the hanging of US commanders would atone for the alleged burning of the Koran at an American military base in Afghanistan.
His Basij force is made up of mostly religious volunteers who act as an Islamic moral police and suppress political dissent.
Female section of the Basij militia at a ceremony to mark Basij week in Tehran Nov. 26, 2009. Photo by Ahmad Halabisaz / Xinhua
Mr Naqdi’s latest comments came as Iran and six other nations including Britain meet in Switzerland in efforts to reach an agreement in nuclear negotiations that have stretched beyond yesterday’s deadline. Saturday – Iran Iran’s basij militia is made up of women and men and enforces a strict religious code
Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, Russia and Iran expressed optimism that an initial agreement was within reach but Philip Hammond was more cautious.
“I think we have a broad framework of understanding, but there are still some key issues that have to be worked through,” the Foreign Secretary told the BBC.
“Some of them are quite detailed and technical so there is still quite a lot of work to do but we are on it now and we’ll keep going at it.”
Leaders are hoping to bridge significant gaps and hammer out details of a framework accord.
If they succeed, those understandings would form the basis for a comprehensive agreement to be reached by the end of June. Iran has always insisted that it has acquired and processed uranium for a peaceful nuclear programme Iran has always insisted that it has acquired and processed uranium for a peaceful nuclear programme
Israel’s Prime Minister criticised the expected deal for “paving the way” for Iran to be able to build an atomic bomb.
Mr Netanyahu has been a vocal critic of the negotiations, claiming they would fail to keep the Islamic Republic’s suspect nuclear intentions in check.
Accusing Iran of developing weapons, the recently re-elected leader said the emerging deal would leave intact much of Iran’s nuclear infrastructure, including underground research facilities, a plutonium reactor and advanced centrifuges capable of enriching uranium.
“Iran’s breakout time to have the tools to make a nuclear weapon won’t be years, as was said in the beginning,” he added. “In our estimate, it will be reduced to perhaps a year, most likely much less than that.”
Additional reporting by agencies
Iranian commander pokes fun at Bibi’s congress speech
By Press TV
March 08, 2015
TEHRAN (Tasnim) – Commander of Iran’s Basij (volunteer) Force Brigadier General Mohammad Reza Naqdi described the Israeli prime minister’s recent address to the US Congress as a show to “comfort” an ailing regime that is on the brink of collapse**.
Speaking to reporters in Tehran on Saturday, General Naqdi underscored that Iran does not care about Israel’s opposition to a nuclear deal between Tehran and world powers.
Pointing to the Israeli prime minister’s speech in Washington, the commander said the US Congress let Netanyahu deliver a speech in order to “comfort the beleaguered Zionist regime, which is on the brink of collapse.”
In a Tuesday speech to the US Congress, Netanyahu warned of a “very bad” nuclear agreement between Iran and world powers, accused Tehran of seeking a nuclear bomb, and proposed the idea of war on Iran as an alternative to a deal.
Asked about the specifics of a good nuclear deal, Brigadier General Naqdi said a good agreement is the one that recognizes Iran’s entire nuclear achievements and its right to uranium enrichment, and also leads to the removal of the whole anti-Iran sanctions immediately after taking effect.
While Iran and the Group 5+1 (Russia, China, the US, Britain, France and Germany) are in talks to hammer out a final agreement to end more than a decade of impasse over Tehran’s nuclear energy program, Iranian officials insist that a possible deal should have all sanctions lifted.
The UN Security Council and a number of Western countries have imposed a series of sanctions on Iran, suspecting that its civilian nuclear program has been diverted to nuclear weapons production.
Tehran has constantly rejected the allegations as baseless, reiterating that its uranium enrichment program is for peaceful purposes only.
Several rounds of nuclear talks have been held in the past, and the current negotiations are aimed at securing a lasting accord by the end of July.
The long history of Israel gaming the ‘Iranian threat’
By Gareth Porter, Middle East Eye
March 05, 2015
Western news media has feasted on Prime Minister Netanyahu’s talk and the reactions to it as a rare political spectacle rich in personalities in conflict. But the real story of Netanyahu’s speech is that he is continuing a long tradition in Israeli politics of demonising Iran to advance domestic and foreign policy interests.
The history of that practice, in which Netanyahu has played a central role going back nearly two decades, shows that it has been based on a conscious strategy of vastly exaggerating the threat from Iran.
In conjuring the spectre of Iranian genocide against Israelis, Netanyahu was playing two political games simultaneously. He was exploiting the fears of the Israeli population associated with the Holocaust to boost his electoral prospects while at the same time exploiting the readiness of most members of US Congress to support whatever Netanyahu orders on Iran policy.
Netanyahu’s primary audience was the Israeli electorate. He was speaking as a candidate for re-election as prime minister in an election that is just two weeks away. His speech was calculated to play on the deep-rooted anxiety of Israeli voters about the outsiders who may want to destroy the Jewish people.
Fear of the Persians
Netanyahu reminded his Israeli audience that, “In our nearly 4,000 years of history, many have tried repeatedly to destroy the Jewish people.” That was an obvious allusion to the annual Jewish ritual at Passover of repeating the warning that “in every generation they have risen up against us to annihilate us”. But Netanyahu drew a parallel between the story in the book of Esther about a “powerful Persian viceroy…who plotted to destroy the Jewish people 2,000 years ago” and “another attempt by another Persian potentate to destroy us”.
continued below inset
Iran’s foreign minister says Netanyahu got Jewish scripture wrong
Updated by Zack Beauchamp on March 5, 2015
VoxThis is a weird one: Iran’s foreign minister has been giving bible lessons to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
NBC’s Ann Curry interviewed Foreign Minister Mohammed Javad Zarif on Wednesday evening, quizzing him on Netanyahu’s controversial speech to Congress this week. Zarif took offense at Netanyahu’s comparison between Iran and a biblical genocide-monger.
“Tomorrow night, on the Jewish holiday of Purim, we’ll read the Book of Esther,” Netanyahu said in Tuesday’s speech. “We’ll read of a powerful Persian viceroy named Haman, who plotted to destroy the Jewish people some 2,500 years ago.”
He added: “Today the Jewish people face another attempt by yet another Persian potentate to destroy us.”
The Iranian foreign minister brushed off this assertion of modern-day genocidal intent, and endeavored to correct the Israel’s prime minister on Jewish scripture while he was at it:
It is unfortunate that Mr. Netanyahu now totally distorts realities of today. He even distorts his own scripture. If– if you read the book of Esther, you will see that it was the Iranian king who saved the Jews.
That’s technically true, but incredibly misleading.
Briefly, for those of you who didn’t go to Hebrew or Sunday school: the Book of Esther is about a Jewish woman, Esther, who marries the Persian King Ahasuerus after he angrily disposes of his last queen, Vashti. Ahasuerus’ chief advisor, Haman, was a nasty anti-Semite. After Esther’s cousin Mordecai refuses to bow to him, Haman draws up a plan to kill all of the Jews in Persia — one that Ahasuerus initially approves. At the last minute, Esther reveals her previously secret Jewish identity, and asks the king to spare her people. Ahasuerus agrees, Haman is hanged on the gallows he had prepared for Mordecai, and the Jewish people are saved.
So yes, it is technically true that the Persian king saved the Jews — but only because he called off a genocide that his own government was planning.
It is certainly not fair to imply, as Netanyahu did, that this millennia-old Biblical story somehow proves modern-day Iran can’t be trusted. Still, his interpretation of it does support a broader point he made in the speech, that Jews can only depend on themselves to defend against would-be killers.
In response to Netanyahu’s comparison between the current Iranian regime to Haman’s government, Zarif points to the fact that Iran has a significant Jewish population, as well as a Jewish member of parliament, to prove his government isn’t like its Biblical-era predecessor.
The 1979 revolution that founded the Islamic Republic sparked a mass exodus of Iran’s Jews, but the country is still home to thousands of Jews. The extent to which Iranian Jews live their lives freely is hotly contested. Despite living under a regime that has said Israel should be destroyed, many Jews there report a thriving communal life. Others speak of discrimination at work and in education, and by law, Iran’s religious minorities are banned from senior government and military positions.
The Iranian government’s rhetoric and policy towards Israel, without a doubt, crosses the line from anti-Zionism into anti-Semitism. Still, that of course is not the same as Tehran intending to launch a genocidal war against Israel, as Netanyahu implied.
Actual reality, as it turns out, is just a touch more complicated than a biblical morality tale.
Update: This post initially stated that there are 20,000 Jews living in Iran. While this number is within the range of common estimates, the exact figure is disputed. For example, AFP, citing a 2011 Iranian census put the number at 8,736. The Associated Press reports a 20,000 estimate. And the Washington Post reports that the number is between 20,000 and 30,000.
continued from above inset
Netanyahu was taking advantage of what former Israeli deputy national security adviser Chuck Freilich calls the “Holocaust Syndrome” or “Masada complex” that is woven into the fabric of Israeli politics. His ranting about an Iran intending to wipe out the entire country has appealed especially to his Likud constituency and other Israelis who believe that the outside world is “permanently hostile” to the Jewish people.
Other Israeli prime ministers have played the Holocaust card for domestic purposes too. Yitzhak Rabin actually started it during his tenure as Prime Minister from 1992 to 1995, pointing to the alleged “existential threat” from Iran in order to justify his policy of negotiating with the PLO. It was also Rabin who established the propaganda theme of Iran as a terrorist threat to Jews across five continents that Netanyahu continues to cite today.
Phantom of genocide
Later, however, Netanyahu would use the alleged Iranian threat to do exactly the opposite – refuse to reach an agreement with the Palestinians. Many former senior military and intelligence officials have never forgiven Netanyahu for what they consider a reckless policy toward Iran that they link to his failure to deal with the Palestinian problem.
The demonisation of Iran has also served Netanyahu’s political interest in manipulating the policy of the US government and other other world powers. By portraying Iran as bent on the genocide of the Israeli Jews, Netanyahu has sought to get the Americans to threaten war against Iran, hoping for a real military confrontation that would lead to actual war with Iran that would reduce that country’s power. A key element in Netanyahu’s manipulation of the United States and other states has been the suggestion that it if they don’t take care of the problem he may be forced to attack Iran’s nuclear facilities.
He has failed to achieve that maximum objective, but he has been successful in his lesser objective of getting the United States to organise a system of “crippling sanctions” against Iran.
Rabin and the nuclear threat
The portrayal of Iran as a serious threat to Israel’s existence has been serving Israeli diplomatic interests ever since Rabin reversed more than a decade of low-key policy toward the Islamic Republic and suddenly began claiming that Iran would have nuclear weapons and missiles capable of hitting Israel within three to seven years and appealed to the United States to stop it. The government even hinted in January 1995 that it might have to attack Iran’s nuclear reactors (Iran had only one) as it had done against Iraq 12 years earlier.
Rabin, who did view Iran as a threat to Israel in the long run, deliberately exaggerated that threat, as one of his advisors later acknowledged, in part to ensure that the United States would continue to see Israel as its irreplaceable ally in the Middle East and not be tempted to come to terms with Iran. In fact, as Rabin’s director of Mossad recalled two decades later, Israeli intelligence still considered Iran to rank much lower than Iraq and other threats to Israel during Rabin’s tenure, because Iran was still preoccupied with Iraq and would have no missile that could reach Israel for many years.
Mossad has also repudiated Netanyahu’s political manipulation of the Iran threat. Since 2012, at least Israeli intelligence has agreed with US intelligence that Iran has not made any decision to try to acquire nuclear weapons. And a series of Mossad chiefs have taken the unprecedented step openly rejecting Netanyahu’s use of the term “existential threat”.
‘Existential danger’ dismissed by Mossad
Tamir Pardo, the current chief of Mossad, has said that a nuclear Iran would not necessarily pose an existential threat to Israel even if it did acquire nuclear weapons. His predecessor Meir Dagan, who has made no secret of his disdain for Netanyahu’s handling of policy toward Iran as dangerously reckless, said flatly in 2012, that “Israel faces no existential threat,” and another previous Mossad chief, Ephraim Halevy, has also criticised Netanyahu for talking about an “existential threat” from Iran.
Interestingly, Netanyahu stopped using the term in his AIPAC and congressional speeches, while continuing to make the claim that Iran has genocidal intentions toward Israel.
Netanyahu’s dishonesty on the subject of Iran is best documented by the fact that he was so persuaded by Mossad’s briefing on the subject when he first became prime minister in 1996 that he appointed the Mossad briefer, Uzi Arad, as his national security adviser and abandoned the Labor government’s exaggerated depiction of the threat from Iran’s nuclear and missile programmes. For six months the Israeli government stopped claiming that Iran was threatening Israel.
Israel’s fear of US-Iran rapprochement
What induced Netanyahu to start selling the snake oil of Iran as menace to Israel was not any new evidence of Iranian interest in nuclear weapons or hostility toward Israel. It was the fear of a rapprochement between the Clinton administration and the newly elected Khatami government and the hope of depriving Iran of what was assumed to be Russian assistance for building missiles that could reach Israel.
Netanyahu was alarmed by the signals from both Tehran and Washington in the summer of 1997 indicating interest in reducing tensions between the two countries. That would have represented a real threat to Israel’s political and strategic interests, and he was determined to cut it short. Netanyahu’s response was to start to begin sending messages to Iran through other governments that Israel would carry out pre-emptive strikes against Iranian missile development sites unless it stopped its ballistic missile programme.
It was a reckless tactic that would not cause Iran to stop working on missiles, but could well provoke a much tougher Iranian public posture toward Israel. That, in turn, would allow Netanyahu to put pressure on the Clinton administration to steer clear of any warming relations with Iran.
Netanyahu’s indirect threats did cause Iran to focus much more on the potential threat from Israel in its missile programme, making Iran and Israel strategic adversaries for the first time. Netanyahu bears personal responsibility for having created a conflict with Iran that had never existed before. But it is not the conflict that he has been alleging all these years.
Gareth Porter is an independent investigative journalist and winner of the 2012 Gellhorn Prize for journalism. He is the author of the newly published Manufactured Crisis: The Untold Story of the Iran Nuclear Scare.
No holds barred: Iran pays no price for threatening Jewish annihilation
Why is it that threatening to murder the Jews is acceptable?
By Shmuley Boteach, JPost
April 02, 2015
Imagine if Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was threatening to murder all blacks in the Middle East. What if he tweeted regularly that people of dark skin are of the devil and must be annihilated. Would the American government be negotiating with him? Or would the US face international opprobrium for legitimizing a government with racist, genocidal intent against an identifiable ethnic group.
Or what if he was threatening to murder every fifth woman in the Middle East due to some ritualistic, orgiastic requirement of his demented worldview. Would the US be treating with this man absent his repudiation of such murderous intent?
Khamenei has threatened to annihilate 6 million Jews in Israel at least as many times as Hitler threatened the extermination of European Jews in the 1920s and ‘30s. In November he tweeted that “there is no cure for Israel utter than annihilation.” And here we are witnesses to the world’s foremost republic and sole superpower negotiating with a government with a clearly defined agenda of carrying out a second Holocaust.
On MSNBC’s The Ed Show this week, I debated Joe Cirincione of the Ploughshares Fund about the Iran deal. We’ve had many debates on MSNBC over the last few weeks. He is an honorable opponent. But I made this point: How can we be legitimizing a government that openly and repeatedly calls for the extermination of all Israel’s Jews? Would we do the same if the Iranians called for the annihilation of another ethnic group, say, blacks in the Middle East? Gays in the Middle East? (Oh, Iran is already doing that). Joe got upset and worked up. “Now wait just a minute.” But he didn’t answer the question.
There’s got to be one redline in world negotiations today and that line has to be genocide. Any government that is engaged in genocide or that is building weapons to carry out a genocide or that is actively calling for a genocide cannot receive international legitimacy. It’s the reason we don’t talk to Islamic State. Aside from its obvious brutality and beheadings, which Iran also practices, it is engaged in the wholesale slaughter of Yazidis and Christians. So why does the president of Iran get a phone call from President Barack Obama joking about New York traffic when his government is repeatedly calling for the liquidation of all Jews?
And this is just one of the mystifying aspects of President Obama’s engagement in the Iran deal. The other: How could a leader who showed such courage and resolve in taking out America’s foremost enemy, Osama bin Laden, now surrender, capitulate to, and appease its foremost threat, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the terrorist overlord who just last recently yet again promised “Death to America.”
In full-page ads that our organization, The World Values Network, took out in The New York Times and The Washington Post, we put in a bold headline: “Mr. President, fighting al-Qaida made you like Churchill. Appeasing Iran will make you like Chamberlain.”
In 1938, British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain believed he could satisfy Hitler’s ravenous ambitions with the sacrifice of Czechoslovakia in the infamous Munich Pact. The doomed agreement was endorsed by the New York Times as “the price for peace.” A more lamentable, discrediting editorial has seldom been written. The price turned out to be 60 million lives.
Today, the United States is on the verge of concluding a pact that will enable the world’s foremost state sponsor of terrorism to become a nuclear power, leaving Iran with a military-grade, 6,500-centrifuge-strong uranium enrichment capability, along with long-range missiles. Here is today’s “price for peace.”
But just as there was no “peace for our time” in appeasing Hitler in the 1930s, there will no peace by appeasing the Hitler-wannabe Khamenei in the 2010s.
The comparison is not extreme. Hitler publicly promised the extermination of the world’s Jews. Khamenei promises exactly the same.
President Obama is a historic figure, the first African-American president. Every year he honorably conducts a Passover Seder in the White House. He is very familiar with the long, painful history of the Jewish people, later mirrored in the painful African-American experience.
I do not doubt that President Obama is a friend of the Jewish people, even as he has shown unfortunate and undisguised loathing for Israel’s elected leader, Benjamin Netanyahu. But the president is a witness to how Jews today are being murdered all the world over. He likewise understands that just 70 years ago, one out of every three Jews on earth was shot, or gassed and cremated.
We need him to stand up for us. We need him to fight evil. Signing this calamitous Iran deal does precisely the opposite.
The president must demand that Khamenei personally and publicly repudiate all genocidal threats against Israel.
Second, he should demand that Iran, which has murdered thousands of American troops through Shi’a proxies and is called by his State Department the world’s “most active state sponsor of terrorism,” cease all support of terrorism worldwide.
Third, the president should condemn the stoning of women and the hangings of gays before any deal is signed. America cannot legitimize a government engaged in such barbarity.
Finally, the United States cannot sign a deal with a catastrophic one-year weapons-breakout period which endangers America, Israel and the world.
Iran now has control of five Middle Eastern capitals. President Obama himself said that its obtaining a nuclear weapon is “a game changer” for the world. Faced with a threat of this magnitude, the American people deserve the right to have the final say on any deal with Iran by allowing their elected leaders in Congress to vote, rather than the current plan of taking it to the United Nations Security Council where Vladimir Putin’s veto will decide.
There are currently some 65 senators prepared to vote for the Corker-Menendez-Schumer bill that will require Senate review of the president’s arms control treaty with Iran. In all of American history there has never been an arm-control treaty that was not ratified by the Senate. This would be the first one.
There are also 367 members of the US House of Representatives from both parties, and many of Iran’s neighbors, including Egypt, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar, that have expressed grave concern about the Iran deal.
Winston Churchill prophetically warned Neville Chamberlain: “You were given the choice between war and dishonor. You chose dishonor, and you will have war.”
The shortest road to war is always the path of appeasement. It is a road we dare not choose, so that we are not confronted shortly with a much more ruinous Middle East war. Iran cannot be allowed to become a nuclear power.
Shmuley Boteach is the international best-selling author of 30 books, including The Fed-up Man of Faith: Challenging God in the Face of Tragedy and Suffering. Follow him on Twitter @RabbiShmuley.
Speaker John A. Boehner and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel in Jerusalem on Wednesday. Pool photo by Debbie Hill
For Boehner, Visit to Israel Isn’t the Time to Speak Out
By Jodi Rudoren, NY Times
April 01, 2015
JERUSALEM — If the speaker of the House visits Israel and does not say anything substantive, does it have any effect on the troubled relations between Washington and Jerusalem?
Much ado was made in both capitals when it was discovered that Speaker John A. Boehner, Republican of Ohio, would lead a congressional delegation to Israel this week. It was Mr. Boehner, after all, who had invited Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel to speak before Congress, against White House wishes, about the emerging nuclear deal with Iran.
The Israel visit, coming two weeks after an election that handed Mr. Netanyahu a fourth term and coinciding with a deadline in the Iran negotiations, was derided as an unseemly victory lap. Critics said it could only deepen accusations of mutual meddling in domestic politics, especially amid the post-election furor in the Obama administration about Mr. Netanyahu’s campaign statements ruling out a Palestinian state and appearing to denigrate Arab citizens.
But after the original deadline for the Iran talks came and went without an announcement from negotiators in Lausanne, Switzerland, Mr. Boehner came and went without making news.
The prime minister and the speaker were originally scheduled to make statements for the cameras at noon. (Print reporters were not allowed to attend.) Instead, Mr. Netanyahu appeared alone to issue his latest attack on the nuclear negotiations, using the word “unconscionable” as he said, “Now is the time for the international community to insist on a better deal.”
“Yesterday, an Iranian general brazenly declared, and I quote, ‘Israel’s destruction is nonnegotiable,’ but evidently, giving Iran’s murderous regime a clear path to the bomb is negotiable,” Mr. Netanyahu declared. “Iran must stop its aggression in the region, stop its terrorism throughout the world, and stop its threats to annihilate Israel. That should be nonnegotiable, and that’s the deal that the world powers must insist upon.”
Returning to the podium a bit later with Mr. Boehner by his side, Mr. Netanyahu did not utter the word “Iran,” speaking only generally about “anti-Western, anti-democratic and anti-American extremism.” He thanked the speaker and his colleagues “from both sides of the aisle for the warm welcome” at last month’s speech before Congress, and spoke of “the enduring bond that unites our two nations.”
Mr. Boehner, for his part, said hardly anything at all — not about the Iran talks, and not about the divisions the two leaders have engendered with the White House. He had led a group of eight Republican House members to Iraq, Jordan and Saudi Arabia, and in Israel he visited a military base near the Gaza Strip where he toured a tunnel dug by Palestinian militants. The group is scheduled to depart Thursday morning.
“The bonds between the United States and Israel are as strong as ever,” Mr. Boehner offered. “While we may have political disagreements from time to time, the bonds between our two nations are strong, and they’re going to continue to be strong.”
Then Mr. Netanyahu said he would like to serve the group lunch. Mr. Boehner said he was hungry, and they left.
Basij commander: Saudi aggressors to experience Saddam’s fate
By Fars news agency
March 31, 2015
TEHRAN – Commander of Iran’s Basij (volunteer) Force Brigadier General Mohammad Reza Naqdi condemned the Saudi aggression against Yemen, and said that the Al Saud dynasty will have a fate similar to that of former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein.
“Imposing war on Yemen will, God willingly, have no result other than Saddam’s fate for the aggressors and the US that is the direct sponsor of this crime will have to leave the region forever after losing its puppet, the Al Saud regime,” Brigadier General Naqdi said in a statement on the occasion of the anniversary of the Islamic Republic Day in Tehran on Tuesday.
On Monday, Senior Advisor to the Chief of Staff of the Iranian Armed Forces Brigadier General Seyed Mohammad Baqerzadeh also lashed out at Saudi Arabia for attacking Yemen, warning that Riyadh is playing with fire.
“This aggression is playing with fire and the Al Saud regime will never be able to bring Yemen under its control,” Brigadier General Baqerzadeh said.
He said what is presently going on in Yemen will eventually result in the hatred of the international community for the US and its regional mercenaries and proxies.
Brigadier General Baqerzadeh reiterated that the Saudi army is unable to fight long-term wars due to its lack of the needed capabilities, and said, “This war will have dire repercussions for the US and Saudi interests in future just like the wars in Syria and Iraq.”
On Saturday, Chairman of Iran’s Expediency Council Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani voiced deep concern over the ongoing crisis in Yemen, and said the Saudi attack on Yemen means playing with fire.
“Unfortunately, some Arab countries on lame excuses and with aimless bombardments in Yemen have committed a clear and dangerous mistake and, in fact, they have started playing with fire,” Rafsanjani, a former president who is known to have had very good ties with senior Saudi rulers when he was in power said, addressing a group of Iranian officials in Tehran.
He blasted the few Arab countries that have formed an anti-Yemen coalition led by Saudi Arabia, saying, “They have not taken the slightest effective action against the Quds occupying regime for over 50 years, but have become united against a regional Muslim state which is quite regrettable.”
Also on Saturday, Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Hossein Amir Abdollahian warned Saudi Arabia against the dire consequences of Yemen invasion, describing the move as “a strategic mistake”.
“The Saudi military attack on Yemen is a strategic mistake,” Amir Abdollahian said.
The Iranian deputy foreign minister also cautioned that the Saudi attack on Yemen’s infrastructures and people is unacceptable.
Amir Abdollahian also cautioned that the Saudi aggression has negative consequences for the region and the Muslim World, and said, “Riyadh should not forget that Saudi Arabia’s military presence in Bahrain has created a more complicated situation for the Bahraini people.”
“Riyadh should not count on US support for its military invasion of Yemen,” he added.
Saudi Arabia has been striking Yemen for five days now, killing, at least, 60 civilians and injuring hundreds more.
Five Persian Gulf States — Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Bahrain, Qatar and Kuwait — backed by the US have declared war on Yemen in a joint statement issued earlier Thursday.
US President Barack Obama authorized the provision of logistical and intelligence support to the military operations, National Security Council Spokesperson Bernadette Meehan said late Wednesday night.
She added that while US forces were not taking direct military action in Yemen, Washington was establishing a Joint Planning Cell with Saudi Arabia to co-ordinate US military and intelligence support.
Riyadh claimed that it has bombed the positions of the Ansarullah fighters and launched attacks against the Sana’a airport and the Dulaimi airbase.
Despite Riyadh’s claims that it is attacking Ansarullah positions, Saudi warplanes have flattened a number of homes near Sana’a international airport.
Notes and links
* It is the sign of an ambitious Iranian that he must make rhetorical statements about the annihilation of the execrable interloper, Israel. No doubt Brig. Gen. Mohammad Reza Naqdi, whose frequent declamations against Israel in the past brought him to prominence feels that his position is not prominent enough. He does not command a fighting force but a large militia of volunteers whose primary role (apart from being canon fodder in the Iran-Iraq war) has been to police the streets ensuring the faces of all women are concealed and that unrelated males and females are not meeting each other.
However, he himself has been responsible for counter-intelligence, tracking down and crushing political protesters against the Iranian regime. He is directly responsible to Ayatollah Ali Khameini.
** Predicting the collapse of Israel as an inherently unstable country has been a feature of Iranian rhetoric since the start of preparations for the P5+1 talks with Iran, which Khameini supports and Netanyahu opposes.
“The Zionist regime is a regime whose pillars are extremely shaky and is doomed to extinction,” Ayatollah Khamenei told commanders of the hardline Basij militia force in Tehran.
“Any phenomenon that is created by force cannot endure,” he said in comments broadcast live on state television. “The enemies of Iran sometimes and particularly the rabid dog of the region – the Zionist regime – malevolently claim that Iran is a threat to the entire world,” Khamenei said. Ynet news, November 20th, 2013
Houthis
Ansar Allah (“Supporters of God”), known more popularly as the Houthis (Arabic al-Ḥūthiyyūn), are a Zaidi group operating in Yemen. The group takes its name from Hussein Badreddin al-Houthi, who launched an insurgency in 2004 and was reportedly killed by Yemeni army forces that September. Led by Abdul-Malik al-Houthi, the group succeeded in a coup d’état in 2014–15 and currently retains control of the Yemeni capital Sana’a and the parliament. The Houthis have received significant support from Iran in the form of weapons, money and training since 2004.