A good fisking required

Guardian Unlimited - This high-octane rocket-rattling against Tehran is unlikely to succeed

The above article is by Tariq Ali, who (as one would expect from his past writing) naturally springs to the defence of Iran in the current atomic programme confrontation.

It seems very likely that this could be the subject of a very good fisking, but I don't have the detailed knowledge or time to undertake it. Christopher Hitchens would be the obvious journalist to do it.

Ali seems to deal with one issue - Iran's hope for the obliteration of Israel - in a confusing way. This is the paragraph:

Nor is fundamentalist backwardness exhibited in the denial of the Nazi genocide against the Jews and the threat to obliterate Israel, a basis for any foreign policy. To face up to the enemies ranged against Iran requires an intelligent and far-sighted strategy - not the current rag-bag of opportunism and manoeuvre, determined by the immediate interests of the clerics.

Maybe it is just me, but I have read that first sentence several times and its meaning is still not clear. I think (from the second sentence) that Ali does not agree that Iran should be making such threats, but why does he not give these statements the importance they deserve in relation to the world's strong reaction to the prospect of a nuclear armed Iran?

Ali talks of Washington having "manufactured this crisis". Sure, and Iranian hopes to see Israel wiped off the map have nothing to do with it.

In the bigger picture, how has America helped make the Iranians feel insecure lately? By giving their fellow Shia the major role in the government of Iraq? From the Washington Post:

Iraq's president appealed for national unity and the renunciation of sectarian violence ahead of a parliament meeting set for Wednesday, saying he had met with Sunni Arab insurgent leaders and observed a "great change" in their war aims.

The insurgents "do not think that the Americans are the main enemy," President Jalal Talabani said in an interview on al-Hurra television Tuesday night. "They feel threatened by what they call the 'Iranian threat.'

He referred to the insurgents' fear of Iraq's Shiite Muslim majority, which many Sunnis believe is dominated by the neighboring Shiite theocracy in Iran.

I would also be happy to see if anyone can come up with any credible Israeli politician who has ever talked of the elimination of the state of Iran.

A link that gives some more background as to this problem (from the Israeli perspective) is here.

That's as much as I have time for now.