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Ahmadinejad climb-down, the tactical admission of defeat and surrender!

Iqbal Latif - 8/27/2006

"Israel to be wiped off the map."
- Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on October 26, 2005

"Iran no threat to Israel."
- Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on August 26, 2005

The damaging repercussions of the disastrous and botched 'Hezbollites adventures' are emerging. The climb down has already begun. The world waited anxiously on 22nd August for the cataclysmic events which the distinguished Professor Lewis was extremely worried about. However, what came out on August 26th was a pleasant surprise for the world and a discreditable climb-down from President Ahmadinejad. At least, once again, calling the bluff of an adversary has proven to be a better strategy than appeasement. The ramifications in the aftermath of this self-delusional destructive exercise in Lebanon by their proxies and suffering a major defeat, where Nasarullah's free hand is soon to be compromised by 15,000 strong UN forces, has resulted in a new language for Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, saying that the Islamic Republic of Iran is 'no threat' to Israel.
The myths of martyrdom and false victories of Arabs over Israel since the last 58 years have become epic legends, like modern versions of Homer's ancient imaginative classics, The Iliad and Odyssey – a lot of heroics but little authenticity. The radicals love to live in their cocoon of 'imaginary sanctuaries' where worldly defeats are promoted shamelessly as great victories in heavens. The body bag counts are irrelevant since the rewards in the heavenly abode outstrip the miserable worldly existence. If one talks to anyone on the streets of the Middle East, they invariably talk about the great victory of Hezbollah, of having taken on the might of the Israeli army, the inability of the Israeli army to clean out the crude missiles in the caves and tunnels until the last day of the ceasefire, and their inability to cut a swathe through the Hezbollah guerillas.
Iran's Ahmadinejad was intending to give his final answer to the world community about nuclear development by Aug. 22, which this year corresponded to the 27th day of the month of Rajab of the year 1427. It was the date that by ritual, was the night when Muslims revere the voyage of the Prophet Muhammad on the winged horse, Buraq, first to 'the farthest mosque,' identified with Jerusalem, and then to heaven and back. Ironically, there's a Lebanese saying: "The mountain roared and delivered a mouse!" The President did speak, but what a dismount from a zealot and born-again 'Hujjati' when on 26th October 2005 he declared that 'Israel must be wiped off the map; four days later, a startling statement surfaced from the Iranian President that, 'Iran is no threat to Israel.'
When a nation acts beyond the sum total of its tactical and strategic abilities, there comes a time where a nation needs to withdraw and dismount from the self-induced high. In typical circumstances of a lost warrior, President Ahmadinejad offered a retreat which practically means burying the Imam Khomeini's injunction that Israel must be wiped off the map. This statement sums up the blunders and strategic errors that have led to a retreat, the overestimation of the crude systems, the overplaying of its proxy in Lebanon and underestimation of the enemy's response. The Economist, in a front page article like their 'Oil under 10 $' blunder, gave premature victory to Hezbollah, but the fact is that this is a very big statement; this renounces his earlier condemnations, provocations, censures and ultimatum where he practically put Iran on a collision course with the rest of the world. It is not too late, the only worry one would have is if it is not an act of 'Dissimulation (Arabic: Taqiyya).' It is part of a strategy predominantly used by Shi'as, the dissimulation of one's religious or political beliefs when one fears for one's life and the lives of one's family members. The defeat in Lebanon and the indiscriminate bombing of Lebanon's infrastructure has opened the eyes of Ahmdeinejad that no heavenly Imam is forthcoming to save his nation in the near future, because only pragmatism would.
There is a radical difference between the Islamic Republic of Iran and other governments with nuclear weapons. This dissimilarity is articulated in what can only be described as the apocalyptic worldview of Iran's current ideological junta. In Islam, there are certain beliefs regarding the cosmic struggle at the end of time — Gog and Magog, anti-Christ, and for Shiite Muslims, the long awaited return of the Hidden Imam, ending in the final victory of the forces of good over evil. This recent change of tone from the apocalyptic worldview is based apparently more on Taqiyya than anything else. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad "and his followers clearly believe that this time is now, and that the terminal struggle has already begun and is indeed well advanced." Iran's ambitions for acquiring nuclear weapons have been well-known. The most well-known one that was made by Ayatollah Mohajerani, that "as long as the Zionist regime is a nuclear power, every Islamic country, especially the Islamic Republic of Iran, must be capable of developing a nuclear weapon."
The genuine query is whether this worthless war was pursued with verve by the Hezbollah sponsors with a clear-cut strategy to divert the attention of the international community and UN Security Council away from the arguable issue of uranium enrichment. The abduction of soldiers had a clear purpose, a bargain, where Hezbollah would secure the release, as a matter of precedent, thousands of their imprisoned men back and continue to exert disproportionate leverage through the balance of terror. Thousands of armed suicide guerillas continue to hang over the northern borders of Israel encapsulating and infringing the sovereignty of the two nations unswervingly trapped in this terror web, the coalition government of Lebanon and the government of Israel. The forceful encampment of the UN forces is the first step to break this self-serving terror web. Rockets and abductions cannot happen and Syrian-assisted gunrunning from Iran would be a difficult task. The wings of Hezbollah are practically clipped; no one else but the Iranians comprehend it thoroughly.
The Hezbollah proxy was most brilliantly and fiercely used by the strategists of the axis of evil; Hezbollah extracted far greater advantages by being the 'real government' in the south on the back of huge arsenals of antiquated deadly missiles and gun running operations across the Syrian border. An axis of evil that includes Syrians, Iranians and Hezbollah stretching their link into the heartland of Lebanon; this was an effective control of the Lebanese territory by virtue of an armed mafia. The sponsors of Nasarullah in Tehran had effectively built a direct hot border contiguous to the soft belly of Israel. It was this proximity of a hot border and 15,000 missiles that gave Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad the cheek and the resources to pronounce on 26th October 2005, openly calling for Israel to be wiped off the map. These were his exact words: "The establishment of the Zionist regime was a move by the world oppressor against the Islamic world," the president told a conference in Tehran on Wednesday, entitled The World without Zionism. "The skirmishes in the occupied land are part of a war of destiny. The outcome of hundreds of years of war will be defined in Palestinian land," he said. He unashamedly reiterated the position of leader Ayatollah Khomeini. "As the Imam said, Israel must be wiped off the map," although soon after, his foreign minister, Manouchehr Mottaki, tried to undo the damage by suggesting that: "Nobody can remove a country from the map." Mottaki said that comments from Ahmadinejad made in October referred to the current Israeli regime which Tehran does not "recognize legally".
Iran and Syria have woken up to the new realities in a post ceasefire world that the political damage they have suffered from the adventures in Lebanon is immense. The indiscriminate destruction of Lebanon's infrastructure, irrespective of its location in Hezbollah-dominated areas, have made the cross section of the secular Lebanon politicians and militia realize the necessity to supervise the 'God Fatherly' control of the Hezbollah over their government. As their opponents' proxies lie heavily damaged, overplaying the terror card in Lebanon has revived the unity of diverse political and militia forces. Lebanon's most virulent anti-Syrian politician, the head of the Lebanese Forces and Hariri-ally, Samir Jaja, Waleed Junblaat, Nasrallah, Cardinal Sfeir, leader of the Maronite Church and Saad Hariri are on a common platform, a platform of Lebanese nationalism. Michel Aoun, the only serious player so far aligned with Hezbollah, is in an untenable position in face of the UN forces being installed in the south. To save Lebanon from the horrors of the war, the radical Hezbollah and their sponsors' aims have to be curtailed. This is the new ground reality; it is this reality that gave birth to the famous statement that anyone who uses the Lebanese territory for aggression is a Lebanese traitor. No one else was the aim of this brave statement but the Hezbollah.
It is the worry of Natanz, Arak , and Bushehr destruction in a pre-emptive strike that worries the President the most. After seeing the shock-and-awe and accuracy of the weapons in Lebanon, it is not the loss of innocent civilians in basements and caves that disturbs, it is the possibility of usage of these weapons against his own clandestine programme that worries him more.
He had only one way to climb down. The Natanz, upon completion, will house approximately 1,000 P-1 gas centrifuges, he only requires running of 750 gas centrifuges for one year to enrich enough HEU to make one nuclear bomb. This may be a strategy of 'Dissimulation,' he is well aware of the Israeli air force's abilities and remembers that Israel launched an air raid on the French-built, Tamuz [July] nuclear reactor in Iraq in June 1981, almost one year after the onset of the Iran-Iraq War. Iranians are also conscious of the fact that as early as 1995 General Uzi Dayan, Israel's chief of the Planning Branch in the Israeli army, in a lecture he delivered in Tel Aviv University's Moshe Dayan Center for Strategic Studies and the Middle East, highlighted that "if no other power is able to prevent the Islamic Republic from acquiring nuclear weapons…" implying Israel would. Since 1995, the shock and awe campaign and accuracy of Israeli weapons in recent Lebanon destruction has send the President back to his drawing board. Iran needs to buy time and this statement should be seen in that light.
Syria and Iran are the principal agents of aggression in making Lebanon a hostage nation. With strategic initiative seized by boxing Hezbollah along the northern borders, the dream of self-governance now looks a reality. If Lebanese Army is allowed to exercise its authority, the strategic balance in the Middle East will deeply alter.
Removal of Saddam Hussein from Iraq had already weakened Syria's regional ambitions. Iran with all its ideological affinity with Iraq is poles apart from Iraq's Sistani. He holds papal authority over his fold. The Iranian-born ayatollah adheres to the Shi'ite ritual known as quietism, which holds that though clerics can articulate at moments of national crisis, they must not take part directly in politics. Sistani's quietism conflicts directly with the theocratic ideology of Shi'ite Iran. When Sistani speaks out on political matters, his words carry colossal weight among Iraqi Shi'ites, about 60 percent of the country's population. He rarely mentions religion in his political pronouncements. "Not a word he's written couldn't have been written by a member of the political theory faculty at Harvard," remarked Noah Feldman, professor of law at New York University and former senior constitutional adviser to the Coalition Provisional Authority. Middle East is going through a huge realignment and transformation; like the fall out from Yugoslavia in the backyard of Europe which was bloody and painful in the early nineties, new realities are emerging fast and will settle in time. The wounds and centuries-old hatred is being covered live and broadcasted in our living areas; instant gratification demands that everything is settled in quick time, but slowly and surely things are falling in place, wars are futile and peaceful coexistence the only way.
Sistani detachment in this 'Shiite war' in Lebanon was remarkable. It is he who reigns supreme in Iraq, and not Iran, and the Iranians know it well. Bashar feels strategically quite orphaned to handle Israel on his own; with the help of Iran and Hezbollah, he sees his role as a spoiler but in doing so has dropped the political support of Saudis and Sunni Arab hinterland and streets. The core of the Arab leadership, like Ghaddafi and Mubarak, seldom raised their voice in favour of Hezbollah or Iranian-Syrian axis. They practically deserted them. The recent war has re-established the principle of pre-emption. The reconciliatory statement of Ahmdeinejad has to be seen in this context.
It is not easy to stand up against Hezbollah or the Iran-Syrian axis; one does it at his own peril; one does not need to be reminded of Hariri's callous murder and 2005 bombing of An-Nahar's publisher Gibran Tueini, MP; the Lebanese voices of dissent and nationalism are quietened with extreme response. The weakest and smallest of the Arab nations is being used as a proxy to further their own evil games of freeing Golan heights which they cannot, and a bomb that Iranians find difficult to hide unless bigger Middle eastern conflict camouflages the real intentions. Behind the freedom of farms lie bigger objectives. Lebanon is a mosaic of ideologies and a secular country and it is abode for every strain of mankind; orthodoxy and proxy wars have no place in Lebanon. Iran and Syria should realize it for their own good. May be a dose of Ibn al-Arabi vision will bring some sense to Bashar and Ahmadinejad.
"My heart has become capable of every form; it is a pasture for gazelles and a convent for Christian monks, and a temple for idols and the pilgrim's Ka'ba, and the tablets of the Torah and the book of the Koran. I follow the religion of Love: whatever way Love's camels take, that is my religion and my faith."