An Indication of His Own Weakness

Some of us may have been alarmed at Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's remark that Israel should be "wiped off the map". Luckily we have the Observer's Peter Beaumont to set our minds at rest:

Put under pressure, Ahmadinejad has retreated behind the old and troubling slogans of the past. Still, this affair should be regarded as only the latest spike in the rapidly worsening relationship between Iran and the West after the encouraging years of tentative engagement during the Khatami regime.

That has seemed in the past few months so much like ancient history. Instead, the whole trajectory of recent diplomacy with Iran - from Washington, and particularly from London - has been a series of hamfisted, confused and hyperventilated interventions, culminating in the Prime Minister's retreat to his own fall-back position: to mutter vaguely about military action.

But at the very heart of it, what is most shocking is that there is a pointlessness about this international kerfuffle that almost defies belief. Iran knows it will never carry out its threat. Ahmadinejad's comments, if anything, are an indication of his own weakness.

Well that's a relief. For a moment there we were thinking the man may have meant what he said.

Ahmadinejad's comments do not signify a real and heightened threat. They express a vicious stalemate. The beneficiary, ironically for Iran, is Israel whose hand in Washington is strengthened.

Yes, I imagine Israelis must be rubbing their hands with glee at this new development. We should all be so lucky as to be threatened with extinction by a hard-line religious maniac who's president of a country in the process of acquiring nuclear weapons.

But such speeches bolster extremists. The lesson of Iraq is that talking up a crisis can become a self-fulfilling prophesy. And it is bringing us no closer to solving the urgent problems posed to world peace by an increasingly complex Iran.

So we should do nothing, and say nothing, in the hope that they'll calm down, like sensible chaps.

Comments

[oliver]

I think it's our old friend, cultural relativism. Yestday I listened to Any Questions feedback, which included lots of nice-sounding British people saying that the statement was essentially fine, because it was "for domestic consumption" and not really meant in a grown-up geopolitical context. Yet if any politician here or in the US said a similar thing for "domestic consumption" they'd hear the riot act. Also, how does he know Iran will never carry out its threat?

[Professor Froward]

Oliver, "risk" is something like probability multiplied by cost, isn't it?

So their sense of the "risk" of Israel being nuked is, roughly, the cost to them, times the likelihood. The cost to them is zero.

An acquaintance of mine (a lefty) mentioned last year that it would be no skin off the US's national interests if somebody nuked Israel, so therefore it would be okay. I asked him if he generally approved of using nuclear weapons on civilians. He did a bit of a double take, because he'd never thought of it that way. It hadn't ever occurred to him that Israelis were members of the human race. That's not a figure of speech, it's literal. He's not a bad kid, really. He just has a few blind spots due to his upbringing.

There are a lot of very nice, well-mannered, progressive liberals running around loose who would be appalled at the thought of using nuclear weapons on a dog, for example, but are absolutely comfortable with the thought of using them on Israelis.

What do you call it when a particular non-self-selected group of people is regarded as being outside the human race? I think there's a term for that, isn't there?

[AbbaGav]

Very nice. Sorry I didn't comment sooner but it was hard to type while rubbing my hands with glee.