As has been widely reported, when the election was afoot in Iran, Neo-con Daniel Pipes came out in open support of Ahmedinejad. In a talk at the Heritage Foundation on Wednesday, Pipes said:
I’m sometimes asked who I would vote for if I were enfranchised in this election, and I think that, with due hesitance, I would vote for Ahmadinejad
He followed up on his blog, with a post titled "Rooting for Ahmadinejad". There he wrote:
This means that whoever is elected president, whether Mahmoud Ahmadinejad or his main opponent, Mir Hossein Mousavi, will have limited impact on the issue that most concerns the outside world – Iran's drive to build nuclear weapons, which Khamene'i will presumably continue apace, as he has in prior decades.
Therefore, while my heart goes out to the many Iranians who desperately want the vile Ahmadinejad out of power, my head tells me it's best that he remain in office. When Mohammed Khatami was president, his sweet words lulled many people into complacency, even as the nuclear weapons program developed on his watch. If the patterns remain unchanged, better to have a bellicose, apocalyptic, in-your-face Ahmadinejad who scares the world than a sweet-talking Mousavi who again lulls it to sleep, even as thousands of centrifuges whir away.
And so, despite myself, I am rooting for Ahmadinejad.
Now, Kathryn Lopez has kindly granted a mini-interview with Pipes on NRO to allow him to obfuscate clarify. Here’s the key part of
the exchange:
Kathryn Jean Lopez: Were you ever really "rooting for Ahmadinejad"?
Daniel Pipes: Oh yes, I wrote a piece specifically titled "Rooting for Ahmadinejad." The kernel of the piece argued that "whoever is elected president, whether Mahmoud Ahmadinejad or his main opponent, Mir Hossein Mousavi, will have limited impact on the issue that most concerns the outside world — Iran’s drive to build nuclear weapons, which Khamene’i will presumably continue apace, as he has in prior decades. Therefore, while my heart goes out to the many Iranians who desperately want the vile Ahmadinejad out of power, my head tells me it’s best that he remain in office."
Lopez: I gather you’ve gotten some Internet grief?
Pipes: Yes, I've never had a view of mine get so much attention in the blogosphere. The Left seemed to conclude that it had a "gotcha" quote here, one so self-evidently absurd that merely to quote it indicts my intelligence and good sense. Of course, they made their case easier by distorting my argument, presenting it that I prefer Ahmadinejad because his presidency would be harder line — something I never said.
OK, Pipes is claiming that leftist bloggers have distorted his original statement by indicating "that I prefer Ahmadinejad because his presidency would be harder line — something I never said."
Interesting. It is true, Pipes never used the precise words "harder line" to justify his reason for supporting Ahmadinejad. His exact words are that it is
better to have a bellicose, apocalyptic, in-your-face Ahmadinejad who scares the world
Sounds like a textbook hardliner to me. But Pipes wants us to believe that this does not describe a hard liner. Not really plausible, but just for a moment let’s grant him the benefit of his extremely stretched definition.
Even then, Pipes expressed clear, public support for Ahmadinejad. At a time when he has been a known "hard-liner", which in the context of the time means that Ahmadinejad has been willing to use massive brutal force to maintain dictatorial rule in Iran. In Pipes' twisted and hard to believe claim on NRO, that is not why he supported Ahmadinejad.
But even if that were true, the fact remains that he was rooting for him even though he has been a hard-liner. Pipes gave public support to the Iranian regime right when it was preparing to beat and shoot down democracy activists in the streets of Iran’s cities. The fact that Pipes supported Ahmadinejad, for whatever reason, lifts the veil on this grotesque conservative worldview, where courageous Iranian pro-democracy activists can be considered "collateral damage" as it were, just so the possibility of war with Iran can be maintained. Words fail. But perhaps if some go-getting Basij want to impress their boss in Tehran, they may want to send off a little Tweet of thanks to their man on the American right. He came through when the chips were down, after all.
A last comment: note that Pipes preferred Ahmadinejad because he was "belligerent" and "in-your-face". Precisely the posture that the rightwing is clamoring for Obama to assume toward Iran now. How thoughtful.
There can be no doubt that Zbigniew Brezinski was right on the mark when over the weekend he equated the Iranian regime’s hardliners with American Neo-cons.