TEHRAN, 10 December 2005 — Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has knowingly played up to radicals within the regime by risking increased international isolation with his latest anti-Israeli remarks, analysts said yesterday.
Ahmadinejad unleashed a storm of controversy with his comments Thursday that Israel should be established on German and Austrian soil and also giving credence to historians who play down the significance of the Holocaust.
The Iranian president appeared unafraid of the inevitable hostile global backlash, after his notorious comment earlier this year that Israel should be “wiped off the map” drew expressions of outrage from around the world.
Russia yesterday joined the chorus of international condemnation of Ahmadinejad who created uproar by saying the “tumor” of the state of Israel should be relocated to Europe.
“It is hard to comment on such unacceptable statements,” the Foreign Ministry in Moscow said.
Russia, which has a close relationship with Iran, criticized Ahmadinejad’s earlier comments about wiping Israel off the map.
Ahmadinejad’s remarks were greeted with outrage from Austria, Germany, Israel and the United States, at the forefront of an international campaign to prevent the Islamic regime from acquiring nuclear weapons.
The Austrian Foreign Affairs Ministry yesterday summoned the Iranian ambassador who was told by ministry General Secretary Johannes Kyrle that Austria strongly rejected Ahmadinejad’s proposition, a ministry statement said.
Analyst Mashallah Shamsolvaezin said that Ahmadinejad’s comments were a gaffe more than anything else, but also acknowledged they would be seized on with glee by radicals.
“As Ahmadinejad is a political novice, he has no experienced political adviser and is very stubborn, he has shot himself in the foot,” Shamsolvaezin said.
He is also seeking to “profit from the fact that even in Europe there is a debate on the Holocaust, whose magnitude Iranian officials have contested in the past.” Such comments are a boost to radicals who “see a way of sounding the starting gun for a confrontation with Western countries.”
UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan expressed “shock” over Ahmadinejad’s remarks while British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw described them as “unacceptable.”
In another development, former Iranian President Mohammad Khatami yesterday accused the United States of committing a “crime” by refusing to sell modern airplanes and parts to Iran, following a deadly plane crash that killed 108 people.
“To deprive Iran of the most modern and secure (flight) apparatus is a crime against people that a power like the United States does not have the right to commit,” the former reformist president said in an interview with the student-run news agency ISNA.
IAEA Chief Warns
Against Military Strike
In Oslo, the head of the UN nuclear watchdog, Mohamed El-Baradei, yesterday warned against the possibility of a military strike against Iran if it refuses to abandon its alleged nuclear weapons ambitions.
“I don’t believe there is a military solution to the issue” at this time, El-Baradei told reporters in Oslo where he is to receive the Nobel Peace Prize today. “I think that a military solution would be completely counterproductive,” he said.
The International Atomic Energy Agency and its director, who will share the 2005 Nobel Peace Prize and an accompanying check worth $1.3 million (1.1 million euros), have been instrumental in thorny nuclear negotiations with Iran, threatening to take the country before the UN Security Council for violating nuclear non-proliferation rules.
