Daily Alert Archives

Is the Whole World "Crying Wolf" Over Iran?

[Wall Street Journal] James Taranto - Eliminationist anti-Semitism has long been a staple of Iran's fundamentalist regime, where government-organized mobs are led in chants of "Death to America!" and "Death to Israel!" Over the past few years, Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has stepped up the rhetoric, saying in 2005 that the Jewish state "must be wiped out from the map of the world." At the same time, Iran has been pursuing nuclear weapons. If this pursuit succeeded, Tehran would have the means to make good on its genocidal threats. Yet Roger Cohen of the New York Times argues that the Iranians are bluffing. The Israelis have been consistent in sounding the alarm about Iran's pursuit of nuclear weapons. So have the U.S. government (under Presidents Clinton and Obama as well as Bush), America's European allies, the International Atomic Energy Agency, and to some extent the regimes in Russia, China and some Arab lands. Is the whole world crying wolf as well? If, as Cohen suggests, the Israelis are perpetrating a fraud by claiming that Iran's pursuit of nuclear weapons poses an existential threat to Israel, they are doing so with a lot of help from the Iranian regime. No one would believe Israel were it not for Tehran's eliminationist rhetoric and its open pursuit of nuclear arms.
2009-04-10 06:00:00
Full Article