Iran: The Radical Wins Again

N.Y. Post ^ | February 28, 2007 | Amir Taheri

[nuconvert]

Iran: The Radical Wins Again

February 28, 2007

New York Post

Amir Taheri

As the Tehran leadership prepares to go to the wire in its confrontation with the international community over the nuclear issue, one thing is clear: President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is emerging with his position in the Khomeinist establishment strengthened.

Just a few weeks ago, we were told that Ahmadinejad's star was on the wane, that "moderate mullahs" had persuaded "Supreme Guide" Ali Khamenei to restrain the firebrand president. Yet last week, as the U.N. Security Council's ultimatum to the Islamic Republic expired, it was Ahmadinejad who gave the regime's final word.

Addressing a provincial crowd, the president announced that Iran's nuclear program has no reverse gear. The Islamic Republic would stop uranium enrichment only if all nations with a nuclear industry - that is to say, some 30 countries, including all permanent members of the Security Council - did so.

Ahmadinejad has the great merit of seeing the problem for what it really is.

Fantasists such as Javier Solana, the European Union's ineffective foreign-policy czar, have tried to present the Islamic Republic's uranium-enrichment program as a technical issue. Others, like French President Jacques Chirac, have advised acceptance of what they regard as a fait accompli.

For Ahmadinejad, however, the issue is political in the grand sense of the term - with nothing less at stake than the survival of the Khomeinist regime.

The 1979 revolution had a tripartite slogan: "independence, liberty and Islamic government" - and the regime that emerged tried to build its legitimacy on that basis. Over the last quarter-century, however, it has failed to deliver.

[etradervic]

we were told that Ahmadinejad's star was on the wane, that "moderate mullahs" had persuaded "Supreme Guide" Ali Khamenei to restrain the firebrand president.

Moderate Mullahs are the ones that just want to nuke the West as opposed to Radical Mullahs who want to poison, terrorize, and then nuke the West.

[Anti-Bubba182]

"Moderate Mullahs are the ones that just want to nuke the West as opposed to Radical Mullahs who want to poison, terrorize, and then nuke the West."

You got that right! Moderate Islam is the wishful thinking of people who do not pay attention to what the Koran says.

[etradervic]