Who is he now, then?

If the aim this week was to put Iran in the crosshairs, the Bush administration barely needed to lift a finger, it seems. People were climbing over one another to denounce president Ahmadinejad and none so much as those who invited him to speak at Morningside campus. Is it possible that his invitation was the result of some kind of clerical error? Perhaps they meant to invite some other president – someone committed to democracy, the rule of law, and the whims of the Bush clan, like “president” Pervez Musharraf. Whatever the case may be, Columbia was ground zero in the clash of civilizations for a few hours, with Ahmadinejad being decried as the “Hitler of the Middle East”. (Hmmm… that has a familiar ring to it.) Hell, over there, you can hardly take a bath without six or seven Hitlers jumping in with you. I guess the standard for Hitlerianism has lapsed somewhat over the past few years. Used to be you had to, you know, invade someone. Now it’s just saying a few laughably absurd things, like there are no gays in Iran.

Much is made of the Iranian leader’s propensity towards denial of the Holocaust, but he’s hardly alone in the middle east on that score. As Norm Finkelstein has pointed out, Bush’s favorite Palestinian Mahmoud Abbas has something like a degree in Holocaust denial. Frankly, I find it to be a bit like claiming the sun is a figment of our collective imaginations. Has there ever been more evidence of a crime than what there is with respect to Nazi extermination programs? (The “9/11 truth” movement is a mild version of this goofiness.) Still, people are encouraged to focus on Ahmadinejad’s comments because he has also had harsh words for Israel. Of course, most of what he has said has been in the context of quite public ruminations by both the U.S. and Israel about bombing the living piss out of Iran. That bit usually gets left out of mainstream press reports.

When thinking about the Iranian president, it’s best to remember a few things. First, as I’ve mentioned here before, he is not the supreme leader of Iran. The presidency of Iran is a constitutionally limited office, answerable to the ruling council of mullahs and the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who is commander-in-chief of the Iranian armed forces. Second, Iran does not have the capability to destroy either America or Israel, but both of these powers have the ability to destroy Iran. Israel has hundreds of nuclear weapons and effective delivery systems; the U.S. has thousands, plus large military deployments across the border on both sides of Iran and in the Persian Gulf. This would tend to encourage the Iranians to, well, start building bombs. (One would think Ahmadinejad would be roundly criticized for not doing so.) Finally, to the extent that Iran is interested in building nuclear weapons (which they don’t appear to be, it should be said), it’s as a deterrent to the forces arrayed against them. That is the only use for nuclear weapons, frankly. And even if he were irrational enough to want to provoke a massive retaliation that would destroy his entire country, he wouldn’t have the authority to order it.