Spot the difference with Mehdi Hasan

Sorry to see Mehdi Hasan, who is one of the more thoughtful of the appeasement faction, returning to the scene of his folly.

Recently we had an exchange reviving the very old debate about the 2005 speech of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, in which the Iranian President said that Israel must be wiped from the pages of history.

Hasan said that he prefers Professor Juan Cole’s translation: “This regime occupying Jerusalem must [vanish from] from the page of time.”* In other words, he said what everyone thinks he said.

Ah, but that he was (mis)quoting Ayatollah Khomeini is supposed to make it better. Thus Hasan pretended to be puzzled as to why anyone should be alarmed by the prospect of the Iranian theocracy acquiring nuclear weapons.

Today, he returns to the subject, asking: “What about Israel’s nukes?”

I’ll tell him about Israel’s nukes. They’re not anyone’s favourite thing. But there is a difference between the governments of Israel and Iran. One of them has said that the other “must vanish from the page of time”.

I wonder if Hasan can guess which one?

Update: Hasan has replied to these 200 words with 1,850 of his own, pursuing the argument backwards by asking “Does Ahmadinejad really want to ‘wipe Israel off the map’?” when I had already accepted, for the sake of clarity (and brevity) of debate, that what the Iranian president wants is for Israeli regime to “vanish from the page of time”. Perhaps Hasan will reply to that point — why the warmongering IAEA should allow such a government to develop nuclear weapons — later.

*If anyone can explain the square brackets, no doubt they will.

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• JohnJustice

  My point applies even more if it is a mad mullah who is really in charge.

• takeoman

  And your evidence that Ali Khameni is mad comes from your extensive study of his medical records or are you doing a Rentoul and merely mouthing stock phrases.

• JohnJustice

  A definition of mad is bearing no relation to reality. Those who believe that killing innocents is the path to a place in Heaven (otherwise known as martyrdom) obviously fall within this definition.

• JohnJustice

  I think you are hair-splitting Joseph. This was never about literally obliterating the territory of Israel but about regime change,  eliminating the state of Israel by force e.g. by invasion as had been tried many times before or by terrorism , possibly using nuclear weapons in one way or another.

  Anything else is simply linguistic nitpicking.

• takeoman

  Checked a few dictionaries, strangely none of them came up with your definition of mad. I do find it interesting that you feel qualified to comment on Iran when you obviously know little about it but then that seems to be true of most western observers.

• Alienwoman

  The Iranian regime has no compunction in executing and raping its young women [and men] by giving condoms [permission] to the inmates of their prisons.
  Their thinking and moral code is in complete opposition to our own.
  Their deeply held belief in world peace led by their Mahdi over a worldwide caliphate, coming only after Armageddon and the destruction of two thirds of the world’s population starting with Israel, may seem like their way to worldwide happiness, however, do the rest of us see that as a good idea? Are we finding it hard to believe  that someone would create such a scenario?
  There have been leaders before who have tried for World domination. Why are we again doubting the words of men who openly state their ambitions?