Could we be witnessing an unclenching of fists in the Mideast?
In his speech on Wednesday, April 15, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad stated his intention to pave the path for a new relationship with the West. His offer of a fresh start for dialogue with the United States was apparent throughout his delivery: “The Iranian nation is a generous nation. It may forget the past and start a new era.”
This came just hours after the Obama administration expressed its interest to get Iran back on the negotiating table. A senior official for the Obama administration pointed out this would involve allowing Iran to continue enriching uranium at its current level; a stark departure from the former Bush administration’s long-standing demand that Iran halt uranium enrichment as a condition for any talks to take place between the two adversaries. So it appears Obama’s talk of no preconditions stands.
But are Ahmadinejad’s statements really a step forward for U.S-Iran relations? Or do ACTIONS speak louder than words?
His words at the United Nations anti-racism conference in Geneva, Switzerland yesterday seemed all but encouraging. Yom HaShoah (יום הזיכרון לשואה ולגבורה) is Holocaust and Heroism Remembrance Day — a day when the world recalls the heinous massacring of millions of Jews and other minorities throughout European concentration camps. Yet Ahmadinejad chose to use his time on the platform at yesterday’s conference to condemn Israel — a staunch U.S. ally –, citing the country as having “the most cruel and racist regime”.
Not only was he publicly humiliated when a man dressed in a rainbow coloured clown wig chucked his red clown nose at Ahmadinejad after he insulted Israel, but a good number of European nation states got up and walked out mid-speech.
This criticism of Israel comes from the same man who denounced gays in his September 2007 appearance at Columbia University — “In Iran, we don’t have homosexuals like in your country” — and whose country’s devolving government has killed innocent civilians for practicing Christianity and other ‘minority’ religions; this is not to mention the countless transgressions against humanity Iran’s backwards Islamic regime has committed.
- Why doesn’t Iran have gays? Maybe because they are either in hiding or are executed (such was the fate of Mahmoud Asgari, 14, and Ayaz Marhoni,16).
- Why does Iran shed the blood of individuals whose religious beliefs differ from those outlined in Islam? Perhaps it has something to do with the possibility that the extreme Islamists running Iran truly believe they are the supreme race after which Hitler fashioned his systematic slaughter of ‘lesser beings’. Superiority complex anyone?
So has recent dialogue from the Iranian president really been a show of efforts toward the advancement of U.S.-Iran relations? Or is this just a sneaky guise with which Ahmadinejad is attempting to better his own public image as he runs for a second term in office? After all, his poll numbers have been a long time slipping…
