Day: June 9, 2013
The West needs to explain
Afghanistan’s President Hamid Karzai, one of the better speakers on the hummus circuit these days, started this evening’s rhetorical stemwinder at the US/Islamic World Forum in Doha pretty much the way all the other non-American speakers did: with the failure of the American efforts to produce an Israel/Palestine peace agreement on the two-state model. He has no objection to Israel he said, but the Palestinians are likewise entitled to a secure and peaceful state.
But he veered quickly to colonial Afghanistan, British rule and the Americans as heirs to it, stopping along the way to note the Soviet invasion. Hold on tight now, because the roller coaster ride is about to start. Read more
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Iran: something interesting
This I missed: Iran’s presidential candidates sweeping the floor with Saeed Jalili, the apparent front runner, for lack of seriousness in pursuing a nuclear agreement with the P5+1. I am grateful to the well-informed (and informing) Laura Rozen for pointing it out to me, along with her publication of the P5+1 proposal for confidence building measures.
Together these betoken some reason for optimism about nuclear talks that have appeared to be going nowhere. Saeed Jalili is clearly the Supreme Leader’s candidate. Would the others have piled on so blatantly about his shortcomings as a negotiator without believing that there is room for debate? That is room the Supreme Leader allows them, as they are all pretty much regime loyalists. It is also room they presumably think might help them in the general public, whose votes will decide the outcome of the Iranian presidential election June 14.
But ultimately whoever is elected president will have little impact on the nuclear issue, which is very much the Supreme Leader’s turf. He has issued a fatwa against the making and use of weapons of mass destruction, as sinful and prohibited by Islam. A religious judgment of this sort can be superseded. Its validity moreover extends only to the death of its author. Western religious leaders’ strictures against nuclear weapons have not prevented their manufacture and even use. We might expect better of a religious judgment in Iran, but would we get it? Read more
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