Tuesday, March 10, 2009

Iran's Anti-Israel Rhetoric Aimed at Arab Opinion

By Gareth Porter

"After Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad called in October 2005 for an end to the state of Israel, Israeli leaders began stepping up talk of an "existential threat" to the country.

Likud Party leader Binyamin Netanyahu, who is now forming a new government, has even used it support his argument that the Iranian president is threatening a new "holocaust" against Jews.

Serious Israeli and Iranian analysts of Iran's national security policy, however, have long viewed similar statements by Iranian leaders – and its assistance to Hamas and Hezbollah – as having nothing to do with ending the Israeli state, much less using military force to destroy it.

The Iranian condemnation of Israel and embrace of the Palestinian cause, according to these analysts, have been largely a strategic ploy to turn Arab public opinion against the Sunni regimes' policies of hostility toward Iran......."

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