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Last update - 13:36 23/09/2008
Erasing Ahmadinejad from the map
By Bradley Burston
Tags: Ahmadinejad, Israel, UN 

The wager of the year goes something like this: A year from now, which is more likely to remain on the map of the world - Mahmoud Ahmadinejad or the state of Israel?

The call is no cinch, since:

  • Two weeks ago, the head of Atomstroiexport, the state-run Russian company building Iran's first nuclear plant, said that work on the project was in its final stage, and that by the end of the year the company would take steps that will make the launch of the Bushehr plant "irreversible" by February next year.

  • In a wide-ranging report issued last week, the International Atomic Energy Agency declared that it was "gravely concerned" over Iran's stonewalling inspectors seeking to evaluate its uranium enrichment projects, and its refusal to answer questions about 20 years of past research into designing a nuclear weapon. The IAEA revealed indications that Iran may have received foreign expertise in experiments on a detonator that could be used in the implosion of a nuclear weapon.

  • Russia has been providing advanced anti-aircraft systems and upgrading Iran's air defenses to protect nuclear facilities against possible Israeli and/or American aerial offensives. Reports have said the system is slated to be operable by January. At the same time, the IAEA believes Iran has acted to modify Shehab-3 missiles, whose range includes Israel, to carry nuclear warheads.

  • The U.S.-Russian-Chinese-French-British-German initiative to persuade Iran to halt its uranium enrichment program in return for a package of political, economic and technological incentives appears to be deadlocked for good, with Iran insisting that it will never give up the project. On Saturday, Russia went on record as strongly opposing western pressure for tougher UN sanctions against Iran.

  • Iran has markedly increased the efficiency of the centrifuges at the heart of the enrichment program. The chief of IDF Intelligence' research division said Sunday that Tehran had produced about 480 kilograms of low-level enriched uranium, up to one-half of the amount of fissionable material needed to create an atomic bomb.

    Perhaps most troubling of all, media reports have said that 50-60 tons of uranium, which if enriched to weapons grade level would be sufficient to produce five or six atom bombs, have gone missing from the Isfahan complex, which enriches raw uranium "yellow cake" into material that can be used for either nuclear power or atomic weapons.

    Before you resolve to put your money on Mahmoud, however, you might note and factor in the following:

  • Iran, the world's fourth largest oil exporting nation, is a society in growing economic distress. There are mounting and potentially incendiary discrepancies between rich and poor. Despite, and to an extent because of, its energy resources and the high price of oil, the inflation rate is fast passing an annual rate of 25 percent. Merchants in the open market of Tehran have complained that electric power to the bazaar is often cut off six to eight hours a day. While consumption of fuel is rising, output of oil is falling. If European states cut fuel imports further, the government will be in a very vulnerable position.

  • Ahmadinejad faces re-election on June 12, 2009. Analysts believe that the election will center on economic issues, particularly inflation, and not on foreign relations, the nuclear issues, or conflict with Israel.

  • . The Islamic Revolution of 1979 is increasingly showing its age. It is the nature of revolutions to turn pathetic as they gray. Yet they often surprise us when they do. Next year will mark three decades since Iran's Islamic Revolution and Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini came to power.

    It bears consideration that it was the Soviet Union, not Ronald Reagan, that in the end toppled the Soviet Union. Iranians are not unaware of the freedoms and the prosperity of their brethren in the west.

    It is true that failing revolutions often turn especially dangerous toward the end, and the bottom-line risk implied by a nuclear Iran is world war.

    But if the Iranian people, pragmatic and perceptive as they are, can see their way past Ahmadinejad and the excesses of radical rule, a new Middle East could be the true result.

    After all, this month marks the 30th anniversary of an impossibility, an event which at the time beggared all belief.

    Israel's largest, most implacable and powerful foe, a Muslim nation which had threatened the Jewish state with annihilation and had sought to acquire nuclear weapons and missiles to deliver them, agreed in writing to a permanent state of peace.

    There is no small irony, then, in the timing of Ahmadinejad's annual field trip to Manhattan this week, a spectacle which makes the 1979 Camp David peace treaty between Israel and Egypt seem all the more distant, and, sadly, all the more singular, all the more unrepeatable.

    It may be said that it is the nature of aging revolutions to repeat themselves, first as tragedy, later as farce. The 10-year Iran-Iraq war was the tragedy, a million lives lost senselessly, needlessly, in what was called the The March to Jerusalem.

    Herewith the farce:

    This week, Ahmadinejad will headline a series of events in Manhattan, beginning with a Tuesday address to the UN General Assembly and a toast and ceremonial dinner from General Assembly President Miguel d'Escoto Brockmann, the Los Angeles-born, Sandanista-raised friar of radical chic.

    Two days later, in what may prove a perverse echo of his appearance at Columbia University exactly a year ago ["In Iran, we don't have homosexuals, like in your country."], Ahmadinejad is to take part in a Religions for Peace dialogue with church leaders. Perhaps, in full farce, he'll try his hand at comedy again, as he did at Columbia a year ago ["So let me just joke -- try to tell a joke here. I think the politicians who are after atomic bombs or are testing them, making them, politically, they are backward, retarded."]

    Ahmadinejad may well be having the time of his life over all of this. He may be tickled 12 shades of pink over the Hillary Clinton-Sarah Palin debacle. He may believe he has Israel, the EU, Washington, the UN, even his Russian creditors, exactly where he wants them. Just a matter of time, he must be humming to himself, before the stinking corpse disappears.

    For the record, though, I'd put my money on Israel.

    In fact, as dark as these days certainly are for Israel and the west, if I were Ahmadinejad and the ayatollahs, I'd begin to worry. Not so much about an aerial onslaught and the attendant World War III. I'd worry more about the society they've created. And about the cost-benefit analysis which ordinary Iranians are increasingly forced to draw. How Ahmadinejad has benefited the Iranian people by his exploitation of - and damage to - the Palestinian cause, by turning Iran into a pariah state, by his Holocaust denial and smirking disingenuous death threats to Israel, by the billions dumped in pursuit of the bomb, by a fortune wasted on funding suicide terror half a world away, by a fortune wasted on colonizing and arming south Lebanon and destabilizing the north.

    This coming year, Iran will celebrate three decades of a terrible social experiment. The lessons learned may not be kind to Ahmadinejad, nor to radical Islam. Age and folly and the brutality of self-righteousness are beginning to catch up with both of them.

    Never trust a revolution over 30.

    Previous blogs:

    What is truly frightening about Sarah Palin
    Seven ways Israel could haunt the 2008 campaign
    Why the Jewish Vote matters - a guide
    Hurricane Mahmoud
    What really scares us about Barack Obama
    Ten Mideast traps for Barack Obama to avoid
    The pleasure that Hezbollah takes in torture
    • Bookmark to del.icio.us  
     
    Seeds of the future
    An Israeli biofuel project using Africa's jatropha plant may end Mideast oil power.
    PFLP threat
    A Palestinian militant group vows to kill MK Lieberman to avenge Acre riots.
      1.   Erasing the bad boy the correct way 08:54  |  Shimon Cleopas 23/09/08
      2.   Ahmadinejad 08:59  |  Jean Van Daem 23/09/08
      3.   Bradley Psss! I`ll Whisper It! 09:01  |  Yosemite 23/09/08
      4.   Bradley Confusesious Say! 09:11  |  Yosemite 23/09/08
      5.   When will be the day Ahmadinejad will be "finished"....???? 09:15  |  Swiss (Dino) 23/09/08
      6.   This is why the UN is a sad joke 09:21  |  Rick & TC 23/09/08
      7.   As always brilliant 09:28  |  ScotGuy 23/09/08
      8.   Enough is enough: Fix the CAUSE, THE OCCUPATION, not the symptoms 09:32  |  Ivar 23/09/08
      9.   #5 The Swiss Dinosaur strikes again 09:33  |  Hastaroth 23/09/08
      10.   #5 The Swiss Dinosaur strikes again (part 2) 09:37  |  Hastaroth 23/09/08
      11.   Re: Ivar 09:42  |  Nick 23/09/08
      12.   Cutie Burston`s wishful thinking which had also led to Oslo disas 09:43  |  Absolute Sweden 23/09/08
      13.   Man, that`s bad propaganda 09:47  |  Johnboy 23/09/08
      14.   #8 Ivar, Israel did not invent Wahabism 09:51  |  Rick & TC 23/09/08
      15.   Mr.Ahmadinejad and "his future"..! 09:53  |  Stephen. 23/09/08
      16.   Man, that`s bad journalism 09:55  |  Johnboy 23/09/08
      17.   Raising the stakes....no free lunch 10:01  |  allang 23/09/08
      18.   While you are at it... 10:09  |  Natallie Durson 23/09/08
      19.   # 9 / # 10 Hastaroth, instead of making rather silly puns..... 10:15  |  Swiss (Dino) 23/09/08
      20.   Father Miguel d`Escoto Brockman and the Sandinista. 10:19  |  Maureen Ann 23/09/08
      21.   #15, Stephen, "religious crusade of Shia dominance" 10:23  |  Cipora Julianna Kohn 23/09/08
      22.   #8 ivar has finally passed the point of no return 10:24  |  victor hardman 23/09/08
      23.   Why did Haaretz hire Bradley? 10:25  |  Iranian 23/09/08
      24.   Natalie "18" sweetheart, you forgot one thing darling 10:31  |  Harvey 23/09/08
      25.   Ivar - Peace is an abused word... Whores are also abused.. Your 10:33  |  Ben 23/09/08
      26.   Swiss: what dose one have to do with another? 10:46  |  David G 23/09/08
      27.   As usual #20 MORON-ann posts on the subject 10:47  |  Ari ben Yisrael 23/09/08
      28.   Natalie - #18 10:48  |  Michael 23/09/08
      29.   #23 - Iranian - I`ll explain you why 10:58  |  ScotGuy 23/09/08
      30.   this guy A has to be hospitalised "dakhouf" 10:59  |  guy 23/09/08
      31.   JONBOY Deliberately avoiding the critical point made.ENRICHMENT 11:02  |  PETER SM 23/09/08
      32.   # 26 David G, actually the topic of the article was Ahmadinejad.. 11:21  |  Swiss (Dino) 23/09/08
      33.   Bradley misses the mark by a mile 11:22  |  Natallie Durson 23/09/08
      34.   Bradley Burston 11:25  |  Cipora Julianna Kohn 23/09/08
      35.   #.21Cipora Julliana Kohn. Cette la vie. 11:26  |  Stephen. 23/09/08
      36.   daydreamers 11:29  |  Al 23/09/08
      37.   Nuti-dinejad is not so liked by a lot of Iranians 11:33  |  roberto 23/09/08
      38.   Under International law it is illegal 11:51  |  Rab C Nesbitt 23/09/08
      39.   Why Zionists Cry from NAJAD 11:53  |  Abdul 23/09/08
      40.   #23 Iranian 13:03  |  EZ 23/09/08
      41.   WOW 13:11  |  samos 23/09/08
      42.   #41 - You`re wrong Samos 13:26  |  ScotGuy 23/09/08
      43.   What is the Jewish religion meant for? 13:30  |  Edith 23/09/08
      44.   fear not 13:37  |  albert paul ortiz 23/09/08
      45.   Nuti-dinejad`s audience 13:41  |  roberto 23/09/08
      46.   Erasing Ahmadinejad from the map 13:46  |  Gabi 23/09/08
      47.   Rab C 38, I know your Dad Rab B, and your mum, Elaine C 13:52  |  Harvey 23/09/08
      48.   #38 the govan man and international law 13:57  |  victor hardman 23/09/08
      49.   The madman from IRan 13:57  |  Baruch Hashem 23/09/08
      50.   The madman from IRan 13:57  |  Baruch Hashem 23/09/08
      51.   The madman from IRan 13:57  |  Baruch Hashem 23/09/08
      52.   Bradley has run out of ideas and he has to keep Haaretz readers 14:03  |  lakshmi 23/09/08
      53.   swiss (dino) 14:06  |  scallywag 23/09/08
      54.   Ivar # 8 14:09  |  Christian Van Nieker 23/09/08
      55.   TRUTH IS NOT ANTISEMITIC 14:17  |  Big Pimpin 23/09/08
      56.   lakshmi`s " intelligent zionist propaganda" is THE oximoron... 14:23  |  S 23/09/08
      57.   Iran is 3000 years old, Israel is 60 years 14:26  |  Lori 23/09/08
      58.   Always Israel will be more vulnerable, because of bigotry 14:58  |  Israeli citizen 23/09/08
      59.   #14 Rick & TC 15:11  |  Said 23/09/08
      60.   Both. Better learn to get along. 15:23  |  Moshe Mahmoud