World
NEWS ANALYSIS
Inconsequential
Will pro-Israel groups really miss Ahmadinejad?
Ron Kampeas
Jewish Telegraphic Agency
Washington
F
or several years, Israel and
pro-Israel groups have been
holding up Iran's president as a
would-be Adolf Hitler. But with Mahmoud
Ahmadinejad facing re-election June 12,
the question arises whether they would be
worse off if they didn't have the Holocaust-
denying leader to kick around anymore.
Ahmadinejad's main challenger is
Mir-Hossein Mousavi, a one-time hard-
liner who was prime minister during the
Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s who since has
evolved into a Western-looking moderate.
Mousavi, whose chances in the June 12
election have been buoyed by a faltering
economy, seems to be saying the right
things. Denying the Holocaust, he has
argued, is counterproductive and dishon-
ors the Jewish dead.
He also wants to negotiate peaceful rela-
tions with the United States although not
at the expense of Iran's nuclear program.
The problem for pro-Israel groups is
that saying the right things is meaning-
less so long as Iran remains committed to
acquiring game-changing nuclear weap-
ons capability. More than that, they worry,
it could be dangerous if the election of a
relative moderate like Mousavi undercuts
efforts by Israel to make the case that
dealing with Iran's nuclear program is
urgent.
Strategic Time
Any amount of time the West gives a
new president Mousavi to consolidate his
moderation in the Iranian establishment,
according to this thinking, is time Iran
will use to develop the bomb — some-
thing that Israel believes could happen
within a year.
"Cynics would say: Maybe we're better
with Ahmadinejad, rather than someone
who is a master of public relations who
still believes Israel should be wiped from
the map," said Abraham Foxman, the
national director of the Anti-Defamation
League.
Nonetheless, Foxman said, he'd rather
see Ahmadinejad and his poisonous rhet-
oric gone. "Anyone would be better than
Ahmadinejad," he said.
Still, the message flooding inboxes in
recent weeks — from groups like the
ADL, the American Israel Public Affairs
Committee, the Conference of Presidents
of Major American Jewish Organizations
and the Washington Institute for Near
East Policy, as well as the Israeli Foreign
Ministry — is that whoever wins the elec-
tion, the strings remain in the hands of
Ayatollah Ali Khameini, Iran's supreme
leader.
Israel's Foreign Ministry has, according
to a report in Ha'aretz, ordered an intensi-
fication of protests and information brief-
ings ahead of Iran's elections, "to show the
world that Iran is not a Western democ-
racy," according to a ministry official not
named by the newspaper.
One recommended tactic is to organize
mock stonings and hangings — the exe-
cution methods Iran uses to punish gays
and adulterers.
"All the candidates are selected and
approved by the Mullah-run Guardian
Council, which approves a few and spikes
hundreds, so it's more like an 'election' in
the old USSR than anything else," said Josh
Block, AIPAC's spokesman.
"As the spokesman for Iran's Supreme
Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei told
Reuters, it doesn't matter who wins the
elections when it comes to Iran's pursuit
of nuclear weapons capability and its ties
to the U.S."
Moderate Moves
Block referred to a June 1 Reuters inter-
view with Mehdi Kalhor. "No one but
the leader can decide about any move to
renew ties with America and Iran's nuclear
work," Kalhor said in the interview. "Such
issues cannot be traded by any president."
Kalhor noted that it was during the
presidency of the previous "moderate,"
Mohammed Khatami, that Iran removed
U.N. inspectors' seals at a nuclear plant
and resumed uranium enrichment.
He also categorically rejected "freeze for
freeze," a deal under consideration by the
Obama administration under which the
West would freeze sanctions for six weeks
while Iran freezes enrichment at current
levels.
If it is true that Khameini is in control,
it begs the question of why pro-Israel
groups and Israel have made Ahmadinejad
a boogeyman over the years.
of a substantive offer in return,
Ahmadinehad has intensified his
anti-Israel rhetoric and Iran seems
more determined than ever to
advance its nuclear prospects.
Analysts were not enthused by
Iran's reaction last week to Obama's
outreach speech in Cairo.
Some supporters of diplomatic
outreach hope a new Iranian presi-
dent would produce a more con-
structive Iranian response to U.S.
overtures. But the fear in many
corners of the pro-Israel community
is that a change in president simply
would mask the true nature of the
Iranian regime — and buy it more
time.
"It's change, but within a narrow
parameter," Foxman said. "A change
based on a candidate approved by
those who approve Ahmadinejad
may result in a change in tactics and
PR, but it doesn't change the essence
of a fundamentalist regime."
Would a new Iranian president really be an
improvement over Mahmoud Ahmadinejad?
Western diplomats and some Iran
scholars say that while it is true that the
ayatollah is the final address for decision-
making, he, nonetheless, would have to
heed a moderate tilt by the electorate. The
Iranian president, moreover, is not entirely
powerless and has the influence to set the
tone.
"Although it is conventional wisdom
to dismiss the presidency as relatively
unimportant and totally subservient to
the leader, that grossly underestimates
the influence that the Iranian president is
able to exert, especially on foreign policy,"
Gary Sick, an Iran expert now at Columbia
University, wrote on his blog.
"In the three presidential elections in
Iran since the death of Ayatollah Khomeini
in 1989," said Sick, "Iran has undergone
a series of very important changes that
were attributable almost exclusively to the
incumbent president."
Among these, he listed Mohammed
Hashemi Rafsanjani's outreach to the Arab
world after the Iran-Iraq war ended.
U.S. diplomats already are frustrated
with Iran's failure to respond to Obama's
message of outreach in March. Instead
Answering
Israel's Critics
The Charge
Prior to President Obama's Middle East
trip last week, Arab representatives
in the region complained that Israeli
diplomacy remains evasive and does
not commit to any substantial peace
move to redress the situation of con-
flict.
The Answer
The Arab world continues its "blame
Israel only" position, ignoring that
most Arab nations don't recognize
Israel, isolate it economically, have
prosecuted several wars against Israel,
support terrorism and don't publicly
object to Iranian threats against it.
— Allan Gale,
Jewish Community Relations Council
of Metropolitan Detroit
© Jewish Renaissance Media June 11, 2009
June 11 . 2009
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