Ahmadinejad calls for annihilation of Israel

(Does the world need any more reason to stop Iran's nuclear weapons program immediately? The Iranian regime is not only insane; it's demonic. Israel continues to make noise about an impending unilateral strike on Iranian nuclear facilities. While the United States has made recent declarations of its willingness to use military force to stop Iran, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamian Netanyahu remains openly and publicly skeptical. Historic precedents suggest overwhelmingly that when the Israelis say they will stop a threat, they mean it. Is the world ready for some fireworks? [For further proof, check out Iran's game of denial and deception.]  - R.O.)

Ahmadinejad calls for annihilation of Israel

By JOANNA PARASZCZUK
08/02/2012 15:49

In Ramadan speech to ambassadors from Islamic countries, Iranian president calls Zionism “plight of world history,” says liberating Palestine would solve all the world’s problems.


Photo: REUTERS/Raheb Homavandi

In a speech published on his website Thursday, Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said the ultimate goal of world forces must be the annihilation of Israel.

Speaking to ambassadors from Islamic countries ahead of ‘Qods Day’ (‘Jerusalem Day’), an annual Iranian anti-Zionist event established in 1979 by Ayatollah Khomeini and which falls this year on August 17, Ahmadinejad said that a “horrible Zionist current” had been managing world affairs for “about 400 years.”

Repeating traditional antisemitic slurs, the Iranian president accused “Zionists” of controlling the world’s media and financial systems.

It was Zionists, he said, who were “behind the scene of the world’s main powers, media, monetary and banking centers.”

“They are the decision makers, to the extent that the presidential election hopefuls [of the USA] must go and kiss the feet of the Zionists to ensure their election victory,” he added.

Ahmadinejad added that “liberating Palestine” would solve all the world’s problems, although he did not elaborate on exactly how that might work.

“Qods Day is not merely a strategic solution for the Palestinian problem, as it is to be viewed as a key for solving the world problems,” he said.

He added: “Anyone who loves freedom and justice must strive for the annihilation of the Zionist regime in order to pave the way for world justice and freedom.”

The Iranian president said that Israel reinforced “the dominance of arrogant powers in the region and across the globe” and that Arab countries in particular – he cited Bahrain, Yemen, Libya, Syria and Turkey – were affected by Israel’s “plots.”

Ahmadinejad, who has called the Holocaust a myth, has previously called for Israel’s annihilation, in a 2005 speech in which he used a Persian phrase that translates literally as “wiped off the page of time.”

Dangerously Doubting the IAEA Report on Iran

My op-ed published last week in Canada's National Post, was picked up and published today in the Windsor Star. I feel my op-ed is even more prescient now, given that the U.S., UK, and Canada went ahead with unilateral sanctions against Iran's central bank, just as Israel has conspicuously gone silent about the threat posed by Iran. The unwillingness of Russia and China to further sanction Iran, or contemplate additional Security Council resolutions, may ultimately force Israel to act alone. If you haven't read the full version of my article, check it out below here. -R.O.
http://www.windsorstar.com/news/death+truth/5776603/story.html

"The Death of Truth"
By: Robert D. Onley
Published in the Windsor Star: November 28, 2011

Fallout from the misleading intelligence that led to the 2003 war in Iraq is now leading the international community into dangerous, reactive skepticism of the IAEA's damning report on Iran's now exposed nuclear weapons program.

Despite the wide-ranging report, Russia and China have already rejected the possibility of increasing sanctions against Iran, arguing on disingenuous grounds that the U.K., France and U.S. will use sanctions as an "instrument for regime change in Iran." Major news outlets are similarly casting complete doubt on IAEA claims that Iran is actively working on nukes.

While the IAEA report was indeed preceded by loud sabre-rattling from the American and Israeli political establishments, the supposed "leak" of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's readiness to conduct unilateral airstrikes certainly was no accident.

Designed to spark global discourse on Iran prior to the report's release, the leaks underscored Netanyahu's long-standing fears about the truth of Iran's "peaceful" nuclear program.

Thus the sabre-rattling should not discredit the catastrophic implications of the report, which sets out in unprecedented detail the extent of Iran's nuke program.

Some skeptics dismissively claim that Iran's research into the design of nuclear weapons is not a breach of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, which Iran is a signatory state and internationally bound not to "manufacture" or otherwise "acquire" nuclear weapons. However, this suggestion completely misses the point, highlighting the dangerous naivety of reactive skepticism.

The indisputable facts about Iran's nuclear weapons research are as follows. Since 2003, Iran has:

. Conducted extensive research into bomb designs and detonators

. Continued development of intercontinental ballistic missiles

. Covertly constructed numerous weapons-related facilities, notably the Fordow uranium enrichment facility - built inside of a mountain, itself inside of a military base.

Iran did so while repeatedly claiming its nuclear program is "peaceful." This blatant stall tactic deliberately impeded progress during years of nuclear negotiations with the West.

Russia and China have dismissed the IAEA report as a manufactured casus belli to attack Iran, and have painted Yukiya Amano, the IAEA head, as a pro-western dupe. Russian FM Sergei Lavrov obliquely warned the West that attacking Iran would be "a very serious mistake."

The tragic casualty in all of this misguided skepticism is the truth itself. The fact that a 25-page report from the IAEA - the one global institution tasked with preventing the proliferation of nuclear weapons - can so blithely be dismissed as a lie, emphasizes the abject depravity of the international community's moral core.

A country - the Islamic Republic of Iran - with a president who openly and callously denies that the Holocaust occurred, is now at the threshold of possessing the very weaponry that could cause the Second Holocaust.

In the face of this utterly malignant, horrifying historic juncture, the world's instinctive reaction is to render the IAEA's years of painstaking intelligence-gathering not as a terrifying truth, but rather as an unremitting lie.

Beset with widespread protests, a faltering global economy and a Middle East already in turmoil, hesitation to greenlight another conflict in the region is wholly understandable and with merit.

However, for these same nations to then simply ignore the threat of another country's obtaining nukes, out of fear of causing temporary instability in the Middle East, is to abandon the world's future to the enemies of peace, destroy the NPT and spark a nuclear arms race.

Israel, the one nation most directly threatened by the potential of a nuclear-armed Iran, is today at its gravest geopolitical crossroads since coming into existence.

If Israel decides to undertake unilateral military action against Iran, Netanyahu must convene with the UN Security Council and reveal all of Israel's intelligence on Iranian nukes. Israel must irrefutably prove that Iran is developing nuclear weapons and thus represents a threat to the peace of the world under UNSC Article 39.

The truth on this matter cannot be left in any doubt, because the truth - about Iran's nuclear weapons program and the threat from Iran's theocratic Shia "Twelver" leadership - is Israel's only ally in the long-standing fight for its very survival as the world's sole, immovable, Jewish state.

Robert D. Onley is vice-chair of YouthCan for International Dialogue and president of the Students' Law Society at the University of Windsor's Law School.
© Copyright (c) The Windsor Star

Is Israel about to unilaterally bomb Iran?

Two leading articles seem to suggest so.


The Atlantic Magazine has just published a long and detailed piece on the Iranian nuclear crisis, exploring in great depth exactly what an Israeli strike on Iran's nuclear facilities might look like. Click here to read "The Point of No Return".

The very fact that a magazine is running such an article should be worrying. Israel's rumoured preparations for a strike suggest the Obama administration has (at some level) told the Israelis that the United States will not stop Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons, or at the very least, that the U.S. will not conduct air strikes to do so.

It is tragic that Israel will potentially feel it necessary to undertake such an incredibly risk-fraught mission unilaterally. The United States has always been Israel's strongest ally. In the face of Iranian intransigence and blatant deception throughout the course of negotiations on their covert nuclear program, one would think President Obama would show resolve and stand with Israel given the threat of Iran going nuclear practically any day now.

Of course Israel's greatest fear is not that Iran would be stupid enough to launch a nuclear missile at Israel, but that Iran might supply a crude nuclear device either to Hizbullah (it's proxy army in Lebanon) or Hamas (in Gaza), or even worse, to Iranian supported terrorists inside Israel. Such a crude nuke (think: pick-up truck dirty bomb) could obliterate Tel Aviv and create a nuclear wasteland with horrific consequences for both Israelis and Arabs.

But for Israel to decide to fly all the way to Iran and attempt to destroy nuclear facilities buried deep underground is arguably the single most significant decision the tiny nation will ever make. The international repercussions will be devastating for Israel, there is no question of that.

Israel's leaders are balancing two unbelievably fateful contingencies: do they allow Iran to go nuclear, hope that their deterrent capability keeps Iran at bay, and pray that Iran never supplies terrorists with dirty nuclear weapons? Or do they perform an incredibly dangerous, unpopular and globally-damaging unilateral mission to prevent Iran (and her terrorist proxies) from acquiring the very weapons that could literally wipe Israel off the map?

Today the Israeli paper Haaretz tackled this question in an excellent piece, "The Morning after the Attack on Iran". The article briefly summarizes the enormity of the present situation, the timing and the ramifications for Israel immediately after it attacks Iran.

These are perilous and incredible times, to say the least. We need to pray for Israeli and American leaders, that they will make the correct decision, that they will be wise and focused. We must also pray for the leaders of Iran, for the Islamic Regime to come clean about its nuclear weapons program, to return to sanity and join the rest of the international community in productive, transparent negotiations. Because the alternative is downright frightening - not just for Israel, but for the rest of the world.