A
dust storm over the
Holocaust By M K Bhadrakumar
An entire panorama of issues unexpectedly
comes into view in the international reaction to
recent remarks by Iranian President Mahmud
Ahmadinejad, implying that European powers should
have salved their historical sense of guilt, if
any, over their persecution of Jews by sanctioning
a homeland for them on European soil itself.
What is most striking is that the hue and
cry of the "international community" has been
mainly restricted to the Christian world (European
and Slavic), apart from Israel, of course.
In
the Muslim world itself, there was a deafening silence.
Arguably, Ahmadinejad's
remarks did not come as a surprise to the Arab
street. At any rate, the fact remains that Jews
did not suffer persecution at the hands of the
Muslim world. In fact, through centuries, Jews
often took refuge in the Ottoman Empire while
fleeing from the Christian world. But that alone
does not explain the reaction - or lack of it - in
the Middle East and the Gulf countries to
Ahmadinejad's remarks.
Yet Ahmadinejad's
primary audience was the Muslim world. Indeed, he
hardly cares about what the West thinks about him.
Moreover, he spoke in Mecca, on the sidelines of
the extraordinary summit meeting of the
Organization of Islamic Conference (OIC). He has
made an important point - he is in sync with the
Muslim opinion that despite the ambivalence of
some pro-American Arab regimes, there is a
near-insurmountable barrier at present in
reconciling with what today's Israel has come to
represent.
Nothing graphically reflects
this paradigm more than an interview published
recently by the prominent Arabic newspaper
al-Hayat with Fouad Siniora, the cosmopolitan
prime minister of Lebanon: "I, Fouad Siniora, am a
Lebanese, Arab patriot. I will not stand with
Israel against Syria, or accept seeing Lebanon
become a center for weakening Syria."
We
are also seeing in Ahmadinejad's remarks a
colossal breakdown of the "dialogue of
civilizations" - and Iran's own disillusionment
with it, though former president Mohammad Khatami
had first mooted the idea some years ago with
noble intentions. And that has everything to do
with American regional policies in the Middle
East.
It is tempting to point a finger at
Ahmadinejad's alleged impetuosity as having
prompted his remarks about Jews and the Holocaust,
and to rush into wishful thinking that he was
thereby placing himself out on a political limb in
Iran's labyrinthine corridors of power. But Tehran
lost no time in signalling it wasn't so.
Ahmadinejad was hardly winding his way back to
Tehran from Mecca when Iran's religious leadership
at the highest levels also spoke out about
Zionism.
One of Iran's top religious
leaders, Ayatollah Mohammad Emami Kashani, while
addressing the weekly Friday prayer congregation
at the Tehran University campus, commended
Ahmadinejad for "echoing" at the OIC summit the
very same concerns that Supreme Leader Ali
Khameini had raised at the OIC summit in Tehran
five years ago.
He criticized the Western
media for its prejudice towards Ahmadinejad.
Ayatollah Kashani went on to speak with
deliberation some highly appreciative words for
Ahmadinejad's government, which he said was "wise
enough to run the country". He expressed
confidence that Ahmadinejad's leadership would
"spare no efforts in meeting the problems of the
people and in advancing the country and the
society to a higher level".
Even more
significantly, Supreme Leader Ali Khameini put his
own imprimatur on the manifestly assertive tone in
Iranian statements on the Palestine issue. He
pointedly received a Tehran-based non-governmental
organization (NGO) campaigning against Zionism,
and said that the Palestine issue had become "more
dynamic" and that the struggle against Zionism had
been "stepped up" so much so that it had become a
"strong tree" in the Muslim ummah
(community), which the Americans could not
possibly hope to "uproot". The functionaries of
the NGO subsequently announced that an
international conference on the Palestine problem
would be held in Tehran next March.
Where
is it that the apparent mismatch between Western
perceptions of Iran and "real Iran" lies? The
first point is that nothing seems to have been
learnt from the catastrophic error of judgement in
Western capitals over the likely outcome of Iran's
presidential elections in June. It is a bit like
sleep-walking - vaguely aware that there is an
unreality about the professed perceptions about
Iran but unwilling or incapable (or both) of doing
anything about it.
The London-based
British American Security Information Council
(BASIC) last week put its finger precisely on
where the problem lies. An extraordinary statement
titled "A Constructive EU-US Approach to the Iran
Nuclear Dispute", signed by a galaxy of British
and American specialists, scholars, thinkers and
political activists, warned: "Stereotyping of Iran
and Islamic culture, often latched on to by the
Western media - of bearded fanatics, support for
suicide bombers and veiled gunmen - is also
hindering progress. It is important to offer a
truer, broader picture of contemporary life in
Iran. Otherwise, similar half-truths and
manufactured fears to those that were used to
build support against Iraq may be used to demonize
Iran."
Equally so, the question here is
why Israel is being allowed to set the tone and to
raise the ante on the Iran nuclear issue. The
mismatch is so striking. United Nations Secretary
General Kofi Annan springs to attention, with his
earnestness in taking exception to Ahmadinejad's
statement. Yet, neither he or the "international
community" had anything to say about the spate of
belligerent statements emanating from the Israeli
leadership at key levels in recent days and weeks
threatening Iran with military attack.
Israeli military chief Dan Halutz
volunteered only last week to go "two thousand
kilometers" to tackle Iran's nuclear program.
Senior Israeli politicians, including former prime
ministers, have been straining at the leash,
threatening to go beyond barking and take an
actual bite at Iran.
And the BBC broke a
story over the weekend, by piecing together
recently declassified British archival documents,
that contrary to what London has maintained up
until now, Britain in 1958 facilitated the
shipment of 20 tons of heavy water from Norway to
Israel, knowing it was critically needed for
Israel's clandestine nuclear weapons program.
Israel's single biggest worry at the
moment happens to be that given the dangerously
poised impasse over the Iran nuclear issue, the
protagonists may finally be showing signs of
moving toward the path of negotiation. More
alarming for Israel would be the probability of a
"softening" in Washington's stance, in consonance,
of course, with the US's own broader regional
interests in the Middle East at this time.
Israel would be uneasy that Washington
might come to realize that its ability to restrict
Iran's nuclear program was limited and that it
would be far more realistic to seek controls over
Iran's nuclear cycle that were fair and equitable
- which in turn could, in certain ways,
necessitate factoring in Israel's own nuclear
weapon program.
It would be worse still
for Israel if Washington were to recognize sooner
rather than later, as the BASIC statement put it,
that "a limited vision can only feed tensions
between Iran and the West"; that the "current
nuclear dispute is not the cause, but a symptom,
of a failed relationship" - a relationship that
must therefore be improved.
There are
straws in the wind that surely unnerve Israel and
the neo-conservatives in the US. The director
general of the International Atomic Energy Agency
(IAEA) , Mohamed ElBaradei, acknowledged during an
address at the International Institute of
Strategic Studies in London last week that most of
the issues on the Iran nuclear file have been
resolved and "after three years, we need to bring
this to a close". He expressed the hope that the
IAEA's Iran file could be "concluded by next
year".
More important in immediate terms
is the statement by Iran's head of the Atomic
Energy Agency Organization, Gholam Reza Aquazadeh,
on Saturday that Iran did not intend to proceed
with any nuclear activity, such as gas injection
and enrichment, at Natanz pending the upcoming
negotiations with the EU-3 (Britain, France and
Germany) and that Iran was prepared to be
"flexible" in discussing the Natanz nuclear
facility.
Referring to Iran's proposal on
foreign participation in Natanz's enrichment
project, Aquazadeh said that it was a "big and
time-consuming project", which had also become
"politicized". He expressed the confidence on the
whole that Iran would proceed with the production
of nuclear fuel "some time in the future".
The strategy advocated in neo-conservative
circles in the US is predicated on the assumption
that by isolating Iran, a regime change can be
effected, to Israel's advantage. There is no basis
today, and never has been, for making such an
assumption. It is a flawed strategy. It is
fanciful.
All evidence points toward the
religious leadership perceiving clearly enough
that the centerpiece of Iran's national agenda at
this historic juncture is to restore the moribund
connectivity between the Iranian revolution of
1979 and the people, and that with all the
inevitable hiccups of early days, Ahmadinejad's
presidency remains committed to that task.
Ahmadinejad himself succinctly spelt out
the complex equations in Iranian politics during
his recent visit to the impoverished region of
Ilam as part of his unprecedented campaign to make
his cabinet ministers meet common people: "Justice
is the main pillar for the establishment of an
Islamic society, minus which an Islamic government
will be meaningless, and the guarantee for an
Islamic system, too, is observance of justice."
Most of the time, clearly, the Holocaust
and the Jews are far from Mahmud Ahmadinejad's
thoughts.
M K Bhadrakumar served
as a career diplomat in the Indian Foreign Service
for over 29 years, with postings including India's
ambassador to Uzbekistan (1995-1998) and to Turkey
(1998-2001).
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