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Source: http://blogs.cfr.org/abrams/2012/06/27/the-voice-of-iran/
The Voice of Iran
(Council on Foreign Relations) Elliott Abrams - The Iranian vice president's anti-Semitic speech at a UN forum is significant because it reminds us that the assumptions behind the nuclear negotiations with Iran are questionable at best. Those assumptions include the belief that Iran's regime will make the sorts of "rational" calculations the governments of the EU and U.S. would make in their place. How do we factor in irrational hatred of Jews? How do we weigh a deep desire to destroy the Jewish state? How do we calculate the effect of beliefs that seem to us in the West to be preposterous, ludicrous, impossible? Just because we think it irrational for Iranian officials to make such speeches, or wreck their economy to pursue nuclear weapons, or threaten Israel, does not mean that such things are not happening and will not happen.