Yourish.com

The New York Times editorial on Ahmadinejad’s speech:

After weighing the issue, President Obama decided not to send an American delegation to the conference. Perhaps it would have been better if his administration had been present to fight for an improved communiqué until the end. Ceding the podium to Mr. Ahmadinejad and his ilk is not the most effective strategy — for defending Israel or for promoting human rights.

That assumes that Ahmadinejad’s speech was a bug not a feature of the conference. It was, of course, a perfectly predictable, if outrageous, symptom of what ails the UN of today. What else would you expect?

Roger L. Simon observes that the Ahmadinejad speech actually shamed the organizers of the conference. (h/t Instapundit)

In short, they have been humiliated big time by the Iranian despot’s racist screed. Non-attendance by the Americans was one thing, but mass walkouts by the almost always complaisant Euros was highly threatening to the UN machine. And, make no mistake about it, here in the small city of Geneva especially, the UN is a machine, a money machine that brings in a significant proportion of the local GNP. No wonder the Swiss President, despite much criticism, was eager to shake the hand of the Iranian leader. Even though the Iranian people are in disastrous financial shape, Ahmadinejad was more than willing to blow off the money for forty rooms in this swank hotel, plus banquets for five hundred, plus who knows what else? Middle Eastern despots are cash cows for Geneva and the proximity of the UN to the local banks is no accident. They come to the Palais, say a few bad things about Israel and make a deposit.

And Barry Rubin thinks that Ahmadinejad may have lost more than Europe.

But as for regional reaction, Mr. Rubin thinks the Iranian leader may have overestimated the appeal of his remarks. “Egypt and most other Arab states will see right through this speech and recognize it as a ploy to claim leadership in the Arab world.”

“With the exception of Syria, Sudan, Qatar and Yemen, Arab states oppose this guy.”

The editors of the Washington Post wonder how President Obama can continue to reach out to Iran. (This marks an encouraging trend; following the one about the Arab summit.)

Iran watchers point out that Mr. Ahmadinejad has sent other messages recently. He said he would welcome direct talks with Washington, and over the weekend he dispatched a letter to Ms. Saberi’s prosecutor urging that she be allowed to defend herself. These are not necessarily contradictions. What Iran is doing is inviting Mr. Obama to humiliate his new administration by launching talks with the regime even while it is conspicuously expanding its nuclear program, campaigning to delegitimize and destroy Israel and imprisoning innocent Americans. Mr. Ahmadinejad’s unlikely concern for Ms. Saberi’s defense, along with other regime statements suggesting her sentence could be reduced, sound like an offer to make her a bargaining chip — to be exchanged, perhaps, for members of the Revolutionary Guard Corps who are in U.S. custody in Iraq.

And Michael Rubin – commenting on Roxana Saberi and drawing a historical parallel – argues not just that the United States ought to be careful before engaging Iran, but must take a strong stand against the regime.

Once, the world bent over backward not to recognize Saddam Hussein for what he was; today, many foreign-policy and intellectual elites try to explain away Iranian actions.

Just as the Arab League rallied around Iraq and against the West between Bazoft’s execution and Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait four months later, today the Organization of the Islamic Conference and other international bodies rally around Iran. International organizations are fickle,and seldom adhere to their founding principles.

It is not possible to erase the noxiousness of rogue states with rhetorical flourish. In 1990, it took the death of a 31-year-old journalist to wake up the West. Let’s hope we needn’t make the same sacrifice today.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

At the end of the NY Times article on the fallout of Ahmadinejad’s speech, the paper reports:

Those who supported the Obama administration’s attending the conference said their attitude was not altered by Mr. Ahmadinejad’s remarks. “It is unfortunate that the inappropriate and out-of-line remarks of Ahmadinejad would obscure the only international forum to address racism, racial discrimination and xenophobia,” Representative Barbara Lee, Democrat of California, said in a statement by the Congressional Black Caucus.

Did it occur to Representative Lee that giving a platform to someone so steeped in hatred, was not the best way to fight “…racism, racial discrimination and xenophobia?” I notice that the title of the conference didn’t even specifically mention the world’s oldest hatred.

The point of the matter is that the very countries who use xenophobia and other hatreds as tools of maintaining power, are the ones most interested in the conference as it allows them to proclaim their opposition to one of the things they use to keep their hold on power. It is more a conference on hypocrisy than anything. (I would guess that efforts to promote economic growth worldwide would likely do more to banish these destructive forces. Certainly almost anything would be constructive than having a bunch of tyrants getting together to issue meaningless proclamations.)

The Washington Post notes this irony:

Ahmadinejad, who just a week ago had suggested that Iran was ready for a new relationship with the United States, blamed America and its allies for a long list of ills, including the world economic crisis. He suggested that the Western model of economic liberalism was exhausted and that Western leaders, in their efforts to contain the crisis, “are simply thinking about maintaining power and wealth.”

Yes criticizing the United States and jailing one of its citizens is a great way to start a new relationship.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad

Nichaols Kristof and Roger Cohen are the two most extreme anti-Israel columnists for the New York Times. For the past couple of weeks, Cohen has been distinguishing himself by writing propaganda for the murderous Iranian regime. Today he takes his pro-regime advertising to a new low with What Iran’s Jews say.

That may be because I’m a Jew and have seldom been treated with such consistent warmth as in Iran. Or perhaps I was impressed that the fury over Gaza, trumpeted on posters and Iranian TV, never spilled over into insults or violence toward Jews. Or perhaps it’s because I’m convinced the “Mad Mullah” caricature of Iran and likening of any compromise with it to Munich 1938 — a position popular in some American Jewish circles — is misleading and dangerous.

I know, if many Jews left Iran, it was for a reason. Hostility exists. The trumped-up charges of spying for Israel against a group of Shiraz Jews in 1999 showed the regime at its worst. Jews elect one representative to Parliament, but can vote for a Muslim if they prefer. A Muslim, however, cannot vote for a Jew.

When you are allowed a single token, that is proof positive of discrimination.

Among minorities, the Bahai — seven of whom were arrested recently on charges of spying for Israel — have suffered brutally harsh treatment.

So the Bahai suffer worse? That doesn’t mean that the Jews aren’t persecuted too. (And of course the suffering of the Bahai is much worse than Cohen acknowledges, That would contradict his assumptions of Iranian “civility” and “sophistication.”)

And one point he left out was that Iranian scientist was convicted and executed last year for spying for Israel. Given the opacity of Iran’s legal system, we have no idea if these charges were accurate or trumped up. That is the same charge the Bahai were arrested for. It’s unconscionable for Cohen to neglect this.

And his assertion elsewhere that Iranian Jews haven’t suffered as much Arab Jews, has to do with the relative openness towards Jews when the Shah was in power. Since the Iranian revolution, the position of Jews in Iran has become more precarious. I don’t know what the numbers are (and if he does, he doesn’t give a full picture) but those who could escape did, even though it meant trusting smugglers to take them across the borders into uncertain circumstances. One doesn’t do that if one isn’t threatened.

I don’t doubt that Iranian Jews now have some level of comfort there due to familiarity. But I hardly think that they are free and not persecuted.

In order to prove his point about Iranian tolerance, he interviews a few Jews. Here’s the first.

I’d visited the bright-eyed Sedighpoor, 61, the previous day at his dusty little shop. He’d sold me, with some reluctance, a bracelet of mother-of-pearl adorned with Persian miniatures. “The father buys, the son sells,” he muttered, before inviting me to the service.

Accepting, I inquired how he felt about the chants of “Death to Israel” — “Marg bar Esraeel” — that punctuate life in Iran.

“Let them say ‘Death to Israel,’ ” he said. “I’ve been in this store 43 years and never had a problem. I’ve visited my relatives in Israel, but when I see something like the attack on Gaza, I demonstrate, too, as an Iranian.”

No doubt if he interviewed a Palestinian shop owner in the Galilee he’d hear how terrible Israelis treat him. And no doubt that he’d cite that as proof by contrast that Israel is even worse than Iran. But I ask you, what would Mr. Sedighpoor’s fate be if he said, “While the Iranians make a show of tolerating us, we must all watch our steps. We mustn’t say what we really feel or we could find ourselves in jail?”

Does Cohen really believe that the Persian Jews to whom he talked were free to speak their minds? He is not only vile, he is credulous when it suits his needs.

The hypothetical Palestinian would be free to speak out because he has nothing truly to fear. The Iranian Jew who speaks to an American flack for his government, has to be circumspect.

In another op-ed today at the Times tells us that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, is actually a moderate whom the Obama administration ought to reach out to.

Mr. Obama has expressed interest in engaging in dialogue with Iran, and there is no time to waste. Over the next few months he should initiate negotiations without preconditions and establish formal diplomatic ties with Iran. Mr. Ahmadinejad, for all his faults, has taken unprecedented steps to reach out to the United States. Iran’s next leader may not be able to do the same. Mr. Obama must seize the opportunity to shake the Iranian president’s outstretched hand.

As Charles Krauthammer noted the other day, President Obama’s outreach was rebuffed when Iran denied the U.S. women’s badminton team visas to travel to Tehran.

The author of the op-ed is described:

Ali Reza Eshraghi, a former newspaper editor in Iran, is a visiting scholar at the University of California, Berkeley, School of Journalism.

I wonder how much journalism he actually practiced and how much he was merely acting as the official voice of the government or one of Iran’s permitted parties.

Finally, yesterday, there was a clear-eyed view of Tehran that explained why Iran’s satellite launch was a reason for concern. Uzi Rubin wrote in the Wall Street Journal:

To argue that the Safir is too puny to be used as an ICBM is to miss the big picture. It is the technology and talent behind the Safir that is cause for trepidation. Taken in context, the Safir demonstrates scientific and engineering proficiency coupled with global-range missile technology in the hands of a radical regime and a nuclear wannabe. Iran’s disclosed road map to space includes more capable, heavier and higher orbiting satellites. This will require heftier space launchers, the construction of which would enrich Iran’s rocket-team experience and whose building blocks could easily be used for ICBMs in due time.

Trivializing Iran’s first space launch as “largely symbolic” demonstrates a lack of appreciation of what it really symbolizes: That Iran is now poised to project power globally. If alarm bells aren’t yet ringing for the Obama administration, they should be.

So even as the NIE is disproved, the “mad mullahs” confirmed and the Iranian march towards a nuclear weapon proceeding apace, we have an American newspaper doing the regime’s work and telling us to look the other way. Ignore the tyranny. Ignore the threat.

Walter Duranty lives!

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

Don Surber observes:

… dictators are lousy economists

Case in point: Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. In an interview a few weeks ago with the New York Times, he assured the interviwer, Neil MacFarqhar that Iran’s economy was in fine shape.

NYT: I’ve been to Iran a lot, and I know people work two jobs to survive and they really are angry about the economy. When you talk to Iranians it is the one thing that they really criticize the government for all the time.

President Ahmadinejad: Let’s wait a few months and see how people will vote in the elections. We are always constantly in touch with the people, we live together side by side. I invite you to make the trip with me to Iran, to visit Iran so you can hear what people say. There is a lot of freedom in Iran. They express themselves, they participate in elections, they hold rallies and gatherings. We are not too concerned, and neither should you be concerned.

And then there was this exchange:

NYT: The other economic point is the question of gasoline. We know that Iran is one of the largest oil-producing countries in the world, and yet it imports 40 percent of its gasoline. That is another thing that people get upset about. Why is it so high, and why don’t you invest more money in refineries, for example?

President Ahmadinejad: Are people really angry over this?

NYT: Yes, occasionally they riot and burn gas stations.

President Ahmadinejad: That is not the reason why they put those on fire. We are actually about to build seven additional refineries. Of course gasoline is used at very high rates in Iran because it is extremely cheap. The government pays a lot of money to afford that.

People buy lots of gasoline because the government subsidizes it. Good sound economics there!

Anyway, the Times is reporting that all is not well with the Iranian economy.

In the latest sign of discontent with Mr. Ahmadinejad’s economic policies, the merchants went on strike to protest being included in the country’s first value-added tax, a 3 percent charge on all products except basic commodities like dairy products and bread.

In an effort to persuade the traders to end their strike, Mr. Ahmadinejad said last week that the new tax law would be suspended for two months. But the newspaper Sarmayeh reported on Sunday that the traders had demanded that the law be permanently revoked.

Further:

Last year, Parliament approved the tax in an effort to increase the government’s revenue and make the traditional trade more transparent. The government began enforcing the law in late September, at a time when the annual inflation rate was hitting 30 percent and traders were frustrated by a decline in sales. International sanctions were also taking their toll.

“Merchants do not want to pay sales tax,” said the carpet seller who declined to be quoted by name. “There has been little trade in the bazaar since March because of the inflation. We cannot import or export anything because of bad relations with most countries and economic sanctions. And the government is increasing the pressure by enforcing new regulations every day.”

The United Nations Security Council has imposed economic sanctions on Iran for refusing to halt its nuclear program. As a result, businesses must pay more for imports and cannot move money at major international banks.

So sanctions may not be stopping the Iranian nuclear program. But they seem to be fueling discontent with the regime. Not ideal, but at least a start.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.