Instead Of Savoring Diplomatic Triumph, Iran Invites Pushback
The attendance of 120 countries in Tehran is a sorry spectacle reminiscent of the1936 Berlin Olympics, but without Nazi guile.
First Publish: 8/31/2012, 12:13 AM
Ali Khamenei
Reuters
The regime imported 200 Mercedes luxury cars to transport the visitors and spruced up the major highways leading to the conference. It even invested in a new conference center despite aggravated economic conditions. Road signs were replaced to incorporate doves of peace.
To reduce traffic, the regime announced a 5 day holiday and
provided discount gasoline to encourage residents of the capital to
leave down. No less than 110,000 security
and paramilitary forces, including snipers, were brought to the capital
to stamp out any protests. The Iranian press was given a set of do's
and don'ts with the latter including stories about natural disasters,
power blackouts or crime.
However, the summit is not turning out to be a success.
First of all, the Iranian regime failed to learn from Nazi Germany. In
1936, in the run-up and during the Olympics, the Nazi regime toned down
the public displays of anti-Semitism and even allowed Jewish athletes to
try out for the German Olympic team.
This duped foreign visitors, who concluded that previous reports on persecution of Jews were an exaggeration. Ayatollah Ali Khamenei,
in contrast, opened the event with an address attacking the Israeli
regime of "Zionist wolves" and branding the United States a hegemonic
meddler.
Khamenei even accused the UN Security Council of being a
puppet of US influence. He thus made things extremely difficult for UN
Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, already under attack for his decision to
attend the conclave.
Such remarks forced Ban's hand and he upbraided his hosts
for Holocaust denial and threatening the destruction of the State of
Israel. This, of course, does not exonerate the UN Secretary-General for
his decision to attend the summit in the first place; it merely points
out the clumsiness of the Iranians.
Iran would have been better advised to keep the Syrian
issue out of the conference, unless it was certain that the reactions by
other delegations would suit Teheran's purposes.
The government-controlled media made a point of
highlighting Egyptian attendance as a diplomatic victory. It was
therefore blindsided when Egypt's president Mohammed Morsi
connected the Syrian uprising to the Arab spring, meaning that it was a
popular revolution. Iran could have expected that Egypt, as a Sunni
Muslim country aspiring to restore its leadership, could not avoid
taking such a position once the Iranians had broached the call for a
Syrian cease fire - a proposal previously raised by the Assad regime in
Syria.
The Egyptians called for outside intervention and India, a
founding member of NAM, called for a transnational solution, meaning
that affairs could not be left to the Syrians alone. India also intends
to tell Iran to abide by its international obligations on the nuclear
issue.
Labels: Iran, Islamism, Israel, United Nations
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