His name is Ali Khamenei, and he has a lot to say about Jews. With the return of Iran to the world scene, he will emerge as the symbol of hate like never before.
One of the constants of the Iranian revolution has been its eliminationist rhetoric toward Israel, which has continued unabated in the wake of the nuclear deal.
On August 25, the unfortunate Hammond had the rug snatched out from under his “more nuanced” comment by Hussein Sheikholeslam, who is the foreign affairs adviser to Ali Larijani, a former nuclear negotiator and the current speaker of the Iranian parliament. (In 2009, Larijani openly defended his country’s state doctrine of Holocaust denial before a stunned audience at the annual Munich Security Conference, which included Germany’s foreign minister.) “Our positions against the usurper Zionist regime have not changed at all,” Sheikholeslam declared. “Israel should be annihilated and this is our ultimate slogan.”
There are two ways to interpret this comment. One is the domestic consumption theory, which holds that such fulminations are intended to reassure a domestic audience that Iran will not waver on matters of fundamental principle. The other is to accept these statements at face value; in particular, Sheikholeslam’s assertion that the goal of annihilating Israel is “our ultimate slogan.”
“Ultimate” is the operative word. “We should not be satisfied with what we have [the Islamic Revolution] within our borders; we should not think we are done,” declared Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in a Qods (Jerusalem) Day speech. “As long as this stinking wound and infected gland called ‘the Israeli Government’ is in the heart of Islamic territories, we cannot feel we have won.”
This speech is one of many pontifications on the subject of Zionist ignominy collected in Palestine, a 416-page book issued by Khamenei shortly after Secretary Kerry and Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif shook hands over the nuclear deal. The shrillness of its rhetoric is closely modeled on the ravings of Nazi leaders like Hitler, Goebbels, and Julius Streicher, replete with the gruesome imagery of bodily infection and the odor of decay. Behind it, however, lies the core mission of Iran’s Islamic Revolution.
Over and over again, Khamenei’s writings and speeches underline the centrality of defeating Zionism to the Islamic Revolution. “Palestine is the most important issue in the Islamic world. No other international issue is more important than Palestine in the world of Islam,” he told an audience at the shrine of the Islamic Republic’s founder, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.
“Palestine is not a strategic but a belief issue,” said Khamenei in another address. “It is about a heart connection. It is a religious issue.” And again, “Without winning the battle of Palestine, our victory is incomplete. Since the first days of his mission and struggle in Iran, our deceased great imam[Khomeini] gave the first priority to the issue of Palestine.” And again,
Israel is a malignant cancer gland that needs to be uprooted. In contrast to what shallow people believe, it is not impossible to defeat Israel and the United States. Superpowers have come and gone throughout history. Materialistic powers are neither everlasting nor infinite. Yesterday, there was a power called the Soviet Union. It was one of the superpowers, but it no longer exists. A similar historical contemporary [sic] change is still before us.
What, then, can we conclude? First, that Iran does not perceive its enmity towards Israel as an inter-state conflict—only Western politicians and diplomats see it that way—but as a battle against an adversary that dates back to the days of the Prophet Muhammed.
In that regard, asking or expecting Iran to recognize Israel is an absurdity; it would be the equivalent of demanding that the Iranians eschew the entire Islamic revolution. The integrity and purpose of Khomeini’s revolution, and not the fantasy of “domestic consumption,” is what explains the continuing stream of anti-Semitic, eliminationist rhetoric from Tehran. It will end only when the regime behind it is no more.
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