The catcalls were not enough to laugh Mahmoud Ahmadinejad off the stage at Columbia University during his address this week. Nor were they enough to laugh him off the world stage.
Most likely, Iran’s odious president couldn’t have been more pleased with his openly hostile reception. For him and his extremist constituency, his entire U.S. visit amounted to a PR coup. Simply put, he revels in our scorn.
Ahmadinejad remains a problem, and for Jews, an especially onerous one. A nuclear-armed Iran — which would likely trigger a Mideast atomic proliferation free-for-all — would be the gravest threat Israel has ever faced.
But we urge a moment or two of reasoned reflection.
Who exactly is this wily and bellicose leader? In truth, Ahmadinejad wields limited power in his country. He’s something of a figurehead, not unlike the Israeli president. Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khameni, is the man behind the curtain calling the shots, not his loudmouth president.
Moreover, there is talk that Ahmadinejad’s loose lips –– threatening to wipe Israel off the map, for example –– has raised the ire of many Iranian military and diplomatic figures. It’s not that they despise Israel any less, but they do understand that saber-rattling can’t help Iran’s geopolitical standing.
Some analysts predict Ahmadinejad will lose his re-election bid two years from now because he has done little to improve his nation’s economy; his megalomaniacal ravings have not exactly encouraged foreign investment.
But that Ahmadinejad was elected in the first place, let alone potentially re-elected, traces back to a series of blunders on the part of the United States. The bluntly stated threats of war against Iran uttered by the Bush-Cheney administration and its supporters play right into the extremist president’s hands (to say nothing of transforming Iran into a regional power via U.S. missteps in Iraq). No one should be surprised that Iranians rally ’round the flag when the West makes such clumsy threats.
Israel, the United States, Europe and the rest of the world must continue to exert maximum pressure on Iran to ensure the nation never develops nuclear weapons, yet do so in a way that doesn’t allow Ahmadinejad to cast himself as a crusading populist or martyr.
As for Ahmadinejad, whenever he opens his mouth, he exposes himself for the extremist, Jew-hating thug that he is. Throngs of protesters in the streets of New York were a sight to behold. Let us hope the United States and others can craft a foreign policy approach clever enough that such a scene may one day be witnessed in Tehran.
CopyrightJ, the Jewish news weekly of Northern California