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Iran Believes It Can Deceive the West
(Atlantic) Yair Lapid - Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif's article in The Atlantic this week is full of lies, distortions, and half-truths. Iran didn't improve the accuracy of its missiles to avoid "civilian or non-combatant deaths" (I had to read that sentence twice to believe he wrote it), but rather to intensify the threat and ability to sow destruction. Iran is not a democracy, as he portrays it, because a democracy doesn't hang homosexuals from cranes and doesn't enshrine in law the right to stone adulterers to death. Iran does not show "good will and peaceful intentions," because if it did, it wouldn't have sent the Revolutionary Guard to help the Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad murder more than half a million people in Syria. Iran is not interested in the "promotion of peace, stability, progress, and prosperity in the region" because Zarif's boss, Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, has announced that Iran will support anyone who aims to "wipe Israel off the map." The ayatollahs always believed in their ability to deceive the West. In their view, the West is weak and immoral, and will do anything to avoid conflict. Sadly, the deal signed with Iran in 2015 only strengthened that conviction. The Iranian regime hasn't forgone, even for a moment, the desire to turn into a dominant nuclear power and to sow chaos in the Middle East. They won't stop until they are stopped. The writer is chairman of the opposition Yesh Atid party and a former Israeli finance minister.