Posted on 09/03/2009 5:25:34 PM PDT by SJackson
The US has said Iran is "taking a step backward" by appointing a cabinet minister suspected of terrorism.
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad chose Ahmad Vahidi, wanted by Argentina over the deadly 1994 bombing of a Jewish centre, as his new defence minister.
Mr Vahidi was strongly supported by Irna's parliament, the Majlis, with 227 MPs backing him out of 286, Iranian Speaker Ali Larijani said.
The US State Department described the appointment as "disturbing".
"Iran today is taking a step backward by putting into a high office a well-known individual suspected of participation in a terrorist act," said state department official PJ Crowley.
"For Iran, it is sending precisely the wrong message."
(Excerpt) Read more at news.bbc.co.uk ...
Oh our beloved State Department. What did they expect? Ahmadineblablajab, himself a terrorist appoints other terrorists. What did they expect?
Let’s give them some time and space.
Then we can Talk.
Later, we will all sing Kumbaya!
I didn’t know the Brits spelled defense that way! I guess it’s like flavour and colour.
If you’d like to be on or off, please FR mail me.
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Wow. Disturbing, the wrong message, we're really taking it to the Iranians diplomaticly
What does it take to get them royally POd? It seems their threshold has no limit. Everything is “unfortunate,” “disappointing,” “disturbing” and “regrettable”. At what point do they just say “this really sucks”?
“The US State Department described the appointment as “disturbing”
The US State Department can be as disturbed as it wants to be. I bet the same would feel less disturbed if Khatami, Moussavi, Karroubi or one of the perceived “moderate Islamic” faction of IRI were in charge. There are no “Moderates” in an Islamic Regime, where politics & often the society are mobilized based on edicts & fatwas of clerics. Hard decisions, in time regarding Iran, will have to be made.
On August 29, 2009, “moderate” Khatami said:
“The pretenders, and perhaps those in charge, who have no faith in the Revolution or the ways of the late Imam [founder of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini], or those who regret the Revolution, are doing their best to divert and metamorphose the Revolution, although they consider themselves revolutionaries,” Khatami said on Friday”
Today, we must press for the rightful demand of the Reformist movement – ‘Change’ – more than before … by which we mean a return to the basics of the [Islamic] Constitution and the ideals of the late Imam and the Revolution,” he elaborated. Khatami went on to condemn the televised mass trials of dissidents, which, he claimed, were “not accepted by any of the senior clerics, the elites of the seminaries or universities or the society.”
http://www.payvand.com/news/09/aug/1258.html
P.S. - A Clarification of terms used: A “dissident” means a person or group who does NOT want an Islamic government, be it a moderate version of it, in power/politics (separation of State & Religion).
Khatami, in using the term “dissident” can be misleading. Khatami is actually referring to the “Reformist” faction of the overall Islamic Regime in Iran.
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