Ahmadinejads remarks: "If you committed this big crime, then why should the oppressed Palestinian nation pay? This is our proposal: If you committed the crime, then give part of your land in Europe, the United States, Canada or Alaska to them so that the Jews can establish their own country." (New York Times, December 15, 2005) "Why do you want to force Israel on the holy land of Palestine by killing Muslims? Give a piece of your land in Europe, the United States, Canada or Alaska so the Jews can create their own state." (Los Angeles Times, December 15, 2005) "Is the killing of innocent Jewish people by Hitler, the reason for their (the Europeans) support to the occupiers of Jerusalem? If the Europeans are honest they should give some of their provinces in Europe like in Germany, Austria or other countries to the Zionists, and the Zionists can establish their state in Europe. You offer part of Europe, and we will support it." (Washington Post, December 9, 2005) It is a standard practice, going back to at least WWI, if not earlier, to select an individual on whom all the fear and hatred whipped up by a deliberate program of pro-war propaganda can be focused. Where plans to pry open the Iranian economy are concerned, Ahmadinejad is that person, as Hugo Chavez (now described by the US as anti-democratic, though popularly elected (New York Times, January 14, 2006)) is in Venezuela, Fidel Castro is in Cuba, Alexander Lukashenko is in Belarus, Robert Mugabe is in Zimbabwe and Kim Jong Il is in the DPRK. Since the Second World War, it has been common practice to try to equate such individuals to Hitler, a fairly easy task in Ahmadinejads case, not because hes anti-Semitic, but because his hostility to the expulsion of Palestinians as the basis of Israeli can be readily twisted into an apparent anti-Semitism, while his opposition to the idea of a Jewish state in historic Palestine, featuring a single dominant ethnic group by design and intention, can be distorted demagogically to create the appearance hes committed to a second Holocaust. The hostility of Western powers to Iran, then, has little to do with the ideas of Irans leadership, especially as they pertain to Israel, for those ideas, as presented by pro-interventionists, are distortions deliberately twisted to build a case for economic strangulation, at the very least, and war, quite probably. Instead, the hostility is rooted in Irans economy, and the countrys assertion of economic sovereignty. It would, however, be wrong to say that Irans hostility to the idea of Israel as an ethnically-defined state, founded on a gross injustice perpetrated against Palestinians, is entirely insignificant to US foreign policy, for insofar as it signals an opposition to Israel, it strikes at part of the apparatus the US relies on to enforce its domination of the Middle East. But domination, to what end? Why Iran? (1) To stifle the countrys economic development by depriving it of nuclear power; (2) To prevent it from acquiring a nuclear deterrent to Western aggression; (3) To keep it from becoming powerful enough to challenge the US attack dog in the region, Israel; and the reason to which the preceding three are subordinate: (4) To put an end to Irans assertion of economic sovereignty, which conflicts with the profit-making interests of US investors and trans-nationals.
