Israel: Iran's Natural Ally in Middle East

[oberliner]

After reading Mr. Ahmadinejad's inflammatory remarks about Israel and recent news media reports that Israel is preparing to strike Iran's nuclear facilities with small tactical nuclear weapons, I personally felt an urgency to write this opinion piece hoping that the two sides might cool off the rhetoric some. Israel won't be "wiped off" the face of earth and both the Israeli government and her civic population would not truly consider using nuclear weapons against the ancient and peace loving people of Iran.

I know these words will tick off some of my fellow Iranian Americans. However, in the interests of the greater Iranian Nation and peace in the Middle East, I have to speak of a truth that has long been kicked aside for political and ideological reasons. I am a Moslem, a Shiite Moslem. I believe that Israel is the closest ally Iran has in the region. A look at the ancient history of relationship between Old Persian Empire and Jewish Nation will highlight this fact.

<snip>

When Ayatollah Khomeini came to power in 1979, the Mullahs saw it as convenient to take an anti-Jewish state foreign policy. There were, and perhaps still are, varied reasons for this policy, the least of which was domestic consumption, to deceive the Moslem masses in Iran so the regime could solidify their grip on power. After all, the Mullahs claimed a monopoly on Islam. Anyone slightly against their domestic or foreign policy was dubbed "corrupt on earth." So, the anti-Israeli foreign policy became the cornerstone of the "Islamic Republic."

The Islamic regime's open animosity towards Israel supposedly originated in the Mullahs' defense of Palestinians' right to an independent state. In reality, it is solely politically motivated. Not too far from Iran, in Chechnya, Moslems are being targeted by Russian security forces; nevertheless, Iran's government has always turned their face the other way and pretended they did not see the systematic attacks on Moslems in Chechnya. Why do the Mullahs in Iran supposedly defend the Palestinian cause but not the Chechnyan cause? You guessed right. The mullahs need Russia's backing. Defending the Mullahs' version of Islam takes the back seat here.

http://www.payvand.com/news/07/feb/1082.html

[bemildred]

1. Well yeah.

This is one of the ways that Israel's unhealthy dependency on the US distorts their foreign policy. In a normal world with no Uncle Sugar to appease and rely on, Israel would be buddies with Iran the way it is friends with Turkey, for slightly different reasons, instead of having these weasely stooge "friends" in Egypt and Jordan and Saudi Arabia.