Pen and Sword
***Chris Floyd***
Tuesday, 09 May 2006
Via Le Monde, a translated text of the letter from Ahmadinejad to Bush.
This week, for the first time in 27 years, an Iranian leader has written directly to an American president. As Juan Cole notes, the letter from Iranian President Ahmadinejad to George W. Bush is either badly translated, or equally likely, an accurate reflection of Ahmadinejad's own muddled thoughts. (In the less-than-towering nature of his intellect, his embrace of rabid fundamentalism, his ascension to power through a fixed electoral process and his incessant appeals to the worst instincts of his people, Ahmadinejad is in many ways a Persian Dubya.) But the fact of the letter is important in itself, almost a "Nixon goes to China" moment for the Iranian leadership.
And it is worth noting here, yet again, that despite the attempts by Bush and the corporate American media to turn Ahmadinejad into another Saddam, he is in fact not the ruler of Iran, he is not the dictator of Iran, he has very little real power -- and no power at all over Iran's armed forces or its nuclear program. Iran is ruled by the Ayatollah Khamanei and his Supreme Council of clerics. But herein lies the importance of the Ahmadinejad letter, for it would never have been sent without Khamanei's approval. It does represent an unprecedented public step for the Iranian regime.
(Although there has of course been much backroom dealing between the two nation's leadership in the past decades --- such as the Reagan-Bush Administration dealing illegal arms to the fundamentalist regime in the Iran-Contra scam, and, of course, the clandestine "October Surprise" negotiations in 1980 between candidate Ronald Reagan's campaign team and the Khomeini regime that was holding American hostages. These secret talks, confirmed by some of the Iranian principals involved and directed -- according to eyewitness testimony -- by then VP candidate and ex-CIA chief George H.W. Bush -- were aimed at preventing the Iranians from releasing the hostages before the 1980 presidential election. [Robert Parry has the whole story here.] It goes without saying, of course, that such secret dealings by private citizens with foreign governments is high treason. And Iran's agreement to abide by Bush's request to prolong the suffering of the American hostages and their families by several months was very likely the deciding factor in Reagan's elevation to power. So there is your "conservative movement" for you, there is your "morning in America": the conservative ascendancy was founded on high treason and has now culminated in an unprovoked war of aggression and a self-declared presidential dictatorship above the reach of law.)
A good deal of Ahmadinejad's letter is a religious rant that Bush will doubtless feel quite at home with: "The Almighty has not left the universe and humanity to their own devices. Many things have happened contrary to the wishes and plans of governments.These tell us that there is a higher power at work and all events are determined by Him." These lines could have been lifted directly from any boilerplate Bush speech. But amongst the Bush-like blather, there are also a few substantial points made, most notably the one we mentioned above: that Iran has the right, by treaty, to enrich uranium for a nuclear energy program,
There is also the point -- again, almost entirely ignored by the mainstream media -- that Iran has denounced, over and over, in every way possible -- any intention to develop nuclear weapons. Khamanei has issued a fatwa against such a move, calling it un-Islamic, raising the prohibition to the highest possible level in the theocratic regime. Ahmadinejad also denounces -- yet again -- any act of aggression and the taking of innocent life, and reaffirms -- yet again -- the Iranian people's condemnation of the September 11 attacks, a spontaneous outpouring of sympathy for America that, in those brief, post-attack days -- before Bush and his gang began cynically exploiting the tragedy to pursue their long-held goal of "full spectrum dominance" -- made it seem that the world had indeed been changed.
The letter represents yet another move by Tehran to call Bush's bluff. The superheated rhetoric of Bush and his embattled minions -- desperate for war or rumors of war to stave off the Dear Leader's inexorable slide into the black hole of Nixonian poll-number oblivion -- have raised the intensity of what should be a knotty but manageable diplomatic challenge to a dangerous pitch of bellicosity entirely unwarranted by the reality of the situation. (Then again, when has the reality of a situation ever deterred the professional fearmongers of the Bush Regime from unwarranted bellicosity?)
Link Here
Tuesday, 09 May 2006Via Le Monde, a translated text of the letter from Ahmadinejad to Bush.
This week, for the first time in 27 years, an Iranian leader has written directly to an American president. As Juan Cole notes, the letter from Iranian President Ahmadinejad to George W. Bush is either badly translated, or equally likely, an accurate reflection of Ahmadinejad's own muddled thoughts. (In the less-than-towering nature of his intellect, his embrace of rabid fundamentalism, his ascension to power through a fixed electoral process and his incessant appeals to the worst instincts of his people, Ahmadinejad is in many ways a Persian Dubya.) But the fact of the letter is important in itself, almost a "Nixon goes to China" moment for the Iranian leadership.
And it is worth noting here, yet again, that despite the attempts by Bush and the corporate American media to turn Ahmadinejad into another Saddam, he is in fact not the ruler of Iran, he is not the dictator of Iran, he has very little real power -- and no power at all over Iran's armed forces or its nuclear program. Iran is ruled by the Ayatollah Khamanei and his Supreme Council of clerics. But herein lies the importance of the Ahmadinejad letter, for it would never have been sent without Khamanei's approval. It does represent an unprecedented public step for the Iranian regime.
(Although there has of course been much backroom dealing between the two nation's leadership in the past decades --- such as the Reagan-Bush Administration dealing illegal arms to the fundamentalist regime in the Iran-Contra scam, and, of course, the clandestine "October Surprise" negotiations in 1980 between candidate Ronald Reagan's campaign team and the Khomeini regime that was holding American hostages. These secret talks, confirmed by some of the Iranian principals involved and directed -- according to eyewitness testimony -- by then VP candidate and ex-CIA chief George H.W. Bush -- were aimed at preventing the Iranians from releasing the hostages before the 1980 presidential election. [Robert Parry has the whole story here.] It goes without saying, of course, that such secret dealings by private citizens with foreign governments is high treason. And Iran's agreement to abide by Bush's request to prolong the suffering of the American hostages and their families by several months was very likely the deciding factor in Reagan's elevation to power. So there is your "conservative movement" for you, there is your "morning in America": the conservative ascendancy was founded on high treason and has now culminated in an unprovoked war of aggression and a self-declared presidential dictatorship above the reach of law.)
A good deal of Ahmadinejad's letter is a religious rant that Bush will doubtless feel quite at home with: "The Almighty has not left the universe and humanity to their own devices. Many things have happened contrary to the wishes and plans of governments.These tell us that there is a higher power at work and all events are determined by Him." These lines could have been lifted directly from any boilerplate Bush speech. But amongst the Bush-like blather, there are also a few substantial points made, most notably the one we mentioned above: that Iran has the right, by treaty, to enrich uranium for a nuclear energy program,
There is also the point -- again, almost entirely ignored by the mainstream media -- that Iran has denounced, over and over, in every way possible -- any intention to develop nuclear weapons. Khamanei has issued a fatwa against such a move, calling it un-Islamic, raising the prohibition to the highest possible level in the theocratic regime. Ahmadinejad also denounces -- yet again -- any act of aggression and the taking of innocent life, and reaffirms -- yet again -- the Iranian people's condemnation of the September 11 attacks, a spontaneous outpouring of sympathy for America that, in those brief, post-attack days -- before Bush and his gang began cynically exploiting the tragedy to pursue their long-held goal of "full spectrum dominance" -- made it seem that the world had indeed been changed.
The letter represents yet another move by Tehran to call Bush's bluff. The superheated rhetoric of Bush and his embattled minions -- desperate for war or rumors of war to stave off the Dear Leader's inexorable slide into the black hole of Nixonian poll-number oblivion -- have raised the intensity of what should be a knotty but manageable diplomatic challenge to a dangerous pitch of bellicosity entirely unwarranted by the reality of the situation. (Then again, when has the reality of a situation ever deterred the professional fearmongers of the Bush Regime from unwarranted bellicosity?)
Link Here
posted by Kangaroo Brisbane Australia at 12:02 AM
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