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Playing with Fire

by Carlos

December 14, 2006 - Finally the solution to the world's problems has been revealed.

"The Zionist regime will be wiped out soon the same way the Soviet Union was, and humanity will achieve freedom," declared Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad at a conference he convened for the purpose of legitimizing Holocaust denial.

Humanity will achieve freedom! That would be quite an accomplishment. Does humanity include all the Iranian dissidents who have been thrown into jail or out of the country?

Ahmadinejad's comments brought applause from those attending the conference. "Thanks to people's wishes and God's will, the trend for the existence of the Zionist regime is downwards, and this is what God has promised and what all nations want," he elaborated. "Just as the Soviet Union was wiped out and today does not exist, so will the Zionist regime soon be wiped out."

Some have said we should dismiss Ahmadinejad's anti-Jewish comments as simply a political maneuver. He doesn't really mean it; he is just playing to his base. The problem with that, however, is he seems to be enjoying himself too much. He is obsessed. He can't let go of Israel, and threatens the Jewish state every chance he gets.

Should anyone care outside of Israel?

If you were Israel, and if you heard the leader of the most ambitious and arguably the most powerful nation in the Middle East repeatedly threaten your extinction, and you knew that nation was trying its best to acquire nuclear weapons as quickly as possible, what would you think?

Any open conflict between Iran and Israel would have global implications. At the very least, the world economy would be shaken. If things really got out of hand, there would be environmental and demographic disaster. The interests of every nation on earth are at stake.

Iran seems to be trying its best to provoke such a conflict. It is searching for a gas leak with a lighted match. So why isn't the world more concerned? Simply for their own sakes, why don't the members of the U.N. loudly and unequivocally tell Iran to stop?

Perhaps Israel really is to blame. If Israel were not the target of Iranian racist hatred, none of this would be happening.

Sources:

Associated Press. "Iran: Israel will be 'wiped out'." CNN.com, December 12, 2006.

Reuters News Staff. "Iran's leader: 'Zionist regime will soon be wiped out'." CNN.com, December 13, 2006.

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