Iran's anti-Israel rhetoric targets Arabs
By Gareth Porter
WASHINGTON - After Iranian President Mahmud Ahmadinejad in October 2005 called
for an end to the state of Israel (as a geographical entity), Israeli leaders
began stepping up talk of an "existential threat" to the country.
Likud Party leader Binyamin Netanyahu, who is now forming a new government, has
even used it to support his argument that the Iranian president is threatening
a new "holocaust" against Jews.
Serious Israeli and Iranian analysts of Iran's national security policy,
however, have long viewed similar statements by Iranian leaders - and its
assistance to Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in
Lebanon - as having nothing to do with ending the Israeli state, much less
using military force to destroy it.
The Iranian condemnation of Israel and embrace of the Palestinian cause,
according to these analysts, have been largely a strategic ploy to turn Arab
public opinion against the Sunni regimes' policies of hostility toward Iran.
Shlomo Ben-Ami, who was Israel's foreign minister and minister of public
security from 1999 to 2001, observed in a lecture in Bologna in November 2007
that Iranian policy toward Israel has been misunderstood. Iran has been "more
an enemy of an Israeli-Arab reconciliation than of Israel as such", said
Ben-Ami.
The US-sponsored Oslo peace framework, which involved an Arab-Israeli peace
process, was a "nightmare" for Iran, Ben-Ami explained. "For the Iranians, the
best way to protect their regime," said Ben Ami, "is by rallying the masses in
the Arab world against the leaders who are selling out the interests of the
Palestinians and the Muslims' most precious assets in Jerusalem to the Jews."
Iran began to step up its anti-Israeli rhetoric and to reach out to the
Palestinian armed resistance group Hamas for the first time in response to the
Oslo peace process of the 1990s. Prior to Oslo, Iran had only minimal contact
with Palestinian resistance groups, according to Trita Parsi, author of Treacherous
Alliance, the most authoritative account of Iran-Israel relations.
Ben-Ami noted that Iran had no direct political dispute with Israel. The
Israeli threat to attack Iran's nuclear facilities in recent years, however,
has introduced a new factor in the equation.
University of Tehran Professor Hossein Seifzadeh, who is now a fellow at the
Middle East Institute in Washington, agrees that Iran believed it had to play
the Islamic card - which meant the anti-Israel card - in the Middle East, to
gain a more favorable image among the populations of Sunni Arab states.
Iran's anti-Israel rhetoric and support for Hamas and Hezbollah has been a
successful exercise in public diplomacy in the Arab world, according to
Seifzadeh. In an interview with Inter Press Service, he said, "The whole image
of Iran in the Middle East has changed. Ten years ago, Iran was regarded simply
as a Shi'ite state."
Because of his high profile position on Israel and the Palestinians, however,
Ahmadinejad has now become "the most popular figure in the Middle East",
according to Seifzadeh.
Another objective of Ahmadinejad's anti-Israel rhetoric appears to be to reduce
domestic Iranian opposition to possible negotiations with the United States.
Rejection of reaching agreement with the United States had been a red line in
Iranian politics prior to Ahmadinejad's presidency.
According to an Iran specialist who participated in a private meeting with
Ahmadinejad during his October 2007 visit to the United Nations, the president
explained his anti-Israel rhetoric as necessary to make an opening to the
United States acceptable politically in Iran.
The analyst, who asked not to be identified because the meeting was off the
record, quoted Ahmadinejad as saying, "I can't open up to the United States
unless I create an enemy who is even worse than the United States." When asked
if he couldn't have chosen to make Russia the enemy instead of Israel,
Ahmadinejad replied, "No, that wouldn't work," according to the analyst.
That private comment is consistent with the ironic fact that the
ultranationalist Ahmadinejad has gone farther than any previous Iranian leader
in publicly expressing a willingness to negotiate with the United States -
provided that Washington signals an end to its hostility toward the Islamic
Republic.
But his own right-wing conservative and ultra-nationalist political
constituency has been strongly opposed in the past to a political agreement
with the "Great Satan". Ratcheting up the anti-Israel rhetoric was a way for
Ahmadinejad to reduce the political risk of such negotiations.
Dr Hooshang Amirahmadi, a professor at Rutgers University and president of the
American Iranian Council, who has brought Iranian officials and former US
officials together for informal discussions, said in an interview that he would
not be surprised at such a statement by Ahmadinejad. The Iranian president has
been eager to open talks with the United States, he said, adding, "His concern
with domestic politics has made him seem more radical on Israel than he really
is."
Conservative editor and political strategist Amir Mohebbian, a long-time
supporter of Ahmadinejad, referred to Iran's two-level policy toward Israel in
an interview in Tehran last December.
"As a slogan, Iran says we can't accept the reality of Israel," said Mohebbian.
"But we have slogans and we have action. There is a difference between the
two."
Mohebbian, who no longer supports Ahmadinejad as the conservative candidate in
the next election, said a US-Iran accord could "help the United States solve
the Israel-Palestinian issue”, suggesting that Iran is ready to sacrifice its
public policy on ending the state of Israel as part of a settlement with the
United States that takes the pressure off the Islamic Republic.
Iranian financial and military support for Hezbollah and Hamas are portrayed by
Israel and the United States as evidence of the desire to eliminate the state
of Israel. Beginning around 1999, Iran gave Hezbollah thousands of rockets that
could be fired into Israel in case of an Israeli attack on either Lebanon or
Iran, but not for offensive use by Hezbollah. The rockets were regarded by
Israel as a key element of the Iranian deterrent to a US or Israeli attack on
Iran's nuclear facilities.
But Iran's May 2003 secret proposal for US-Iran negotiations on the full range
of issues appeared to propose to trading away Iranian support for Hezbollah and
Hamas as part of a broader negotiated agreement. It proposed as a negotiating
point "action on Hezbollah to become a mere political organization within
Lebanon" and "acceptance of the Arab League Beirut declaration" (the Saudi
proposal for a two-state solution in Israel-Palestine).
It also offered a "stop of any material support to Palestinian opposition
groups [Hamas, Jihad, etc] from Iranian territory" and "pressure on these
organizations to stop violent action against civilians within borders of 1967".
The proposed deal thus converted Iran's anti-Israel policy into negotiating
chips.
Every Iranian president since Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini's death in 1989,
including Ahmadinejad, has given itself such negotiating flexibility by saying
that Iran would support whatever solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
was acceptable to the Palestinians.
In testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee last week, former US
ambassador Frank Wisner recounted a conversation some years ago with
then-president Mohammad Khatami, in which he asked Khatami whether he realized
how dangerous Iran's arming Hezbollah could be in inviting a war with Israel
and possibly the United States.
Khatami answered, "You've got to remember we plan our defenses along external
lines," Wisner recalled. "We're trying to keep you from putting your hand on
our throat."
Gareth Porter is an investigative historian and journalist specializing
in US national security policy. The paperback edition of his latest book,
Perils of Dominance: Imbalance of Power and the Road to War in Vietnam, was
published in 2006.
Head
Office: Unit B, 16/F, Li Dong Building, No. 9 Li Yuen Street East,
Central, Hong Kong Thailand Bureau:
11/13 Petchkasem Road, Hua Hin, Prachuab Kirikhan, Thailand 77110
