Day By Day

Thursday, May 11, 2006

Tehari on Ahmedinejad's Letter

We all have been having fun with the letter Ahmadinejad sent to President Bush, but there is a serious side to it that we should not ignore.

Amir Tehari writes:
Ahmadinejad's epistolary exercise seem merely another of his quirks. But it must be seen as yet another sign that the new leadership in Tehran is determined to provoke a direct confrontation with the United States in the hope that, plagued by internal problems, the Americans will either back away or be humiliated....

It would be wrong to dismiss Ahmadinejad's letter to Bush as just another of the Islamic leader's many weird habits. It would be more prudent, and better politics, to take Ahmadinejad seriously and try and understand him in his own terms.

His letter contains a crucial message: The present regime in Iran is the enemy of the current international system and is determined to undermine and, if possible, destroy it.[emphasis mine].

Read it here.

The New York Sun makes it even clearer.
President Ahmadinejad's letter to President Bush, widely interpreted as a peaceful overture, is in fact a declaration of war.[emphasis mine]
Read it here [subscription required].

We have a tendency to turn everything into a joke, and are constantly told that this is a healthy trait [don't worry, be happy]. Well, some things are worth worrying about. A nuclearized Iran is one of them. We Western "sophisticates" can laugh at Ahmedinejad and his cohorts, but he's deadly serious [emphasis on the "deadly"] and perhaps we should take him seriously. Nuclear proliferation is a threat to all of us and if the mad mullas of Tehran, who dream of a global umma, should get the bomb everything that we cherish will be imperiled.

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