That's the headline for an opinion piece by Amir Taheri in the
Gulf News that I think is important to note. The article begins thusly:
Surprised by the radical reformulation of Iran's foreign policy by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, many commentators in the West have tried to either dismiss it as hyperbole or a suicidal desire to provoke conflict.
Seen from Tehran, however, the picture looks somewhat different.
In our post election joy and fierce determination to take our country back in '06- '08, and with all that is going on with Iraq, Treasongate, etc., we mustn't lose sight of some of the other dangers facing the world. Iran may not have been an imminent danger to the world when Bush called it part of the "Axis of Evil", but things are looking pretty grim there now.
The article goes on to say
...unlike the previous administrations led by the two mullahs Hashemi Rafsanjani and Mohammad Khatami, the new leadership enjoys the full support of the "supreme guide" Ali Khamenei. This was highlighted last Friday when, in a major address marking the end of the fasting month of Ramadan, Khamenei endorsed Ahmadinejad's call for Israel to be wiped off the map like "a stain of shame".
Khamenei described Ahmadinejad's controversial remarks as a re-statement of "the well-established and long-held positions of the Islamic Republic".
"We have always said that the only future for the Zionist entity [i.e. Israel] is death and destruction," he told the cheering crowds.
(emphasis mine)
-snip-
To help promote the "one-state" plan for Israel-Palestine, the Islamic republic has invited a number of anti-Zionist Jewish activists, anti-Israeli Western European intellectuals and representatives of radical Palestinian movements to a special conference in Tehran next February. The hope is that they will come up with "an Islamic alternative" to President George W. Bush's two-state plan for Israel-Palestine.
Please take the time to read this sobering piece. There are a lot of balls in the air that we need to keep an eye on; this is one of them.
Again, click here for the story.