The "Iranian Letter" and What It May Portend

[Annie]

Link to letter and other things at site:

http://www.jihadwatch.org/archives/011363.php

May 09, 2006
Ahmadinejad's letter a call to accept Islam?

An initial thought on Ahmadinejad's letter to Bush. When he says this, he is calling Bush to accept Islam -- since in traditional Muslim belief it is only Islam that guarantees "monotheism, worship of God, justice, respect for the dignity of man, belief in the Last Day."

Do you not think that if all of us come to believe in and abide by these principles, that is, monotheism, worship of God, justice, respect for the dignity of man, belief in the Last Day, we can overcome the present problems of the world – that are the result of disobedience to the Almighty and the teachings of prophets – and improve our performance? Do you not think that belief in these principles promotes and guarantees peace, friendship and justice? Do you not think that the aforementioned written or unwritten principles are universally respected? Will you not accept this invitation? That is, a genuine return to the teachings of prophets, to monotheism and justice, to preserve human dignity and obedience to the Almighty and His prophets? Mr President, History tells us that repressive and cruel governments do not survive.

In a Hadith, Muhammad tells his followers to call people to Islam before waging war against them:

Fight in the name of Allah and in the way of Allah. Fight against those who disbelieve in Allah. Make a holy war…When you meet your enemies who are polytheists, invite them to three courses of action. If they respond to any one of these, you also accept it and withhold yourself from doing them any harm. Invite them to (accept) Islam; if they respond to you, accept it from them and desist from fighting against them….If they refuse to accept Islam, demand from them the Jizya [the tax on non-Muslims specified in Qur’an 9:29]. If they agree to pay, accept it from them and hold off your hands. If they refuse to pay the tax, seek Allah’s help and fight them. (Sahih Muslim 4294)

In light of that, this letter could be -- but is not necessarily -- a prelude to an attack.
Posted by Robert at May 9, 2006 03:39 PM

 

[Annie]

Looks like Spencer is not along:

http://www.captainsquartersblog.com/mt/archives/006950.php

Iran Expert: Ahmadinejad Letter A Defiant Challenge

The German magazine Der Speigel interviewed an expert on Iran regarding the letter from Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to George Bush and its purpose. Wahied Wahdat-Hagh tells Der Spiegel that far from an act of potential conciliation, the Iranian president sent the letter as an act of defiance -- and warns that Ahmadinejad is not bluffing in this crisis:

SPIEGEL ONLINE: Mr. Wahdat-Hagh, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad wrote a letter to US President George W. Bush. In the letter, he once again questions Israel's right to exist, accuses the US of lying about Iraq and insists on his country's right to use nuclear technology. What message is Ahmadinejad trying to communicate?

Wahdat-Hagh: The purpose is to show strength. It's Ahmadinejad's way of saying: "We are powerful! You are a cowboy! Islam, though, is the true democracy and your system will collapse." Former Iranian President Khatami used to give interviews to CNN. But Ahmadinejad has gone directly to Bush and told him straight to his face that Iran is going to continue with the strategy it has thus far followed.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: The letter, in other words, doesn't open up any new options for the West to convince Iran to give up its nuclear program.

Wahdat-Hagh: Ali Ardashir Larijani, the head of the country's Supreme National Security Council, has already said that the letter can't be read as a watering down of the Iranian position. On the day that the UN Security Council once again addresses the issue of Iran, Ahmadinejad could have said: "I'll make some concessions on our uranium enrichment program." But he's not willing to do that. Instead, he points to American mistakes -- for example in Iraq.​

That gets to the heart of the hyperbole over this supposed attempt at a breakthrough. If Ahmadinejad wanted to create an opening for peace, all he needed to say was that Iran would negotiate on uranium enrichment, perhaps accepting the Russian offer to supply Teheran with uranium suitable for peaceful energy production and not weapons. He didn't need to write George Bush a letter; he could just as easily sent Larijani to the IAEA or to the UN Security Council to negotiate their compliance with the NPT.

Wahdat-Hagh, who works for MEMRI, also disagrees with those who claim that the Iranian nuclear program amounts to a giant bluff. He tells Der Spiegel that the Iranian rocket program is very real, and that their nuclear-weapons program is no vaporware either. The Iranian mullahcracy intends on transforming itself into Southwest Asia's leading military power, and have developed the rockets and new domestically-produced submarines to show its reach throughout the region. It has a strategic point with which to extort concessions from nations around the world: the Straits of Hormuz, through which most of the oil produced in the area gets shipped. Nuclear weapons represent the final key, the most powerful component with which to catapult Iran into the same class as Pakistan, India, and the West.

In fact, as Wahdat-Hagh points out, the arrogance of a Muslim leader posing as a lecturer on Christianity is quite deliberate and intended to humiliate Bush in the eyes of Iranians. Ahmadinejad does not want Iranians to see him as respectful or deferential to the Great Satan, but scolding and condescending. It establishes him as Bush's superior and shows Iranians that he does not fear the US, but is contemptuous of it. On the other hand, Ahmandinejad knows that the West will interpret this much differently -- as an extension of dialogue, and a potential diplomatic opening. Ahmadinejad wanted Bush to respond to his missive with a plea for more contact, a reaction that would have had a much different impression in Iran and the Middle East than it would in the West.

Many people assume that Ahmadinejad enjoys popular support, or at least his nuclear program does, but Wahdat-Hagh disputes this. He points to surveys performed under careful conditions that show much less unity than the mullahcracy will adknowledge, and even the peaceful use of nuclear energy has some in Iran nervous about the regime's intentions. The amount of domestic support has always been overestimated; it's possible that this might even fuel the mullahcracy's drive for nuclear weapons -- in order to keep outsiders from empowering democratic activists.

Right now, it appears that many in the West have fallen into Ahmadinejad's trap with his letter. Fortunately, it also appears that Bush and his foreign-policy team are not among them.
Posted by Captain Ed at 08:12 PM

 

[Annie]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060510/ap_on_re_mi_ea/iran_letter

Letter Shows Iran's President Seeking Bond

By NICK WADHAMS, Associated Press Writer 2 hours, 15 minutes ago

UNITED NATIONS - With his 18-page letter, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad delivered
President Bush a history lesson, philosophy lecture and religious sermon laced with references to Jesus Christ.


The document gives rare insight into a man who has largely been a mystery to the West, showing him as fixated on a long list of grievances against the United States and seeking to build on a shared faith in God.

Ahmadinejad, whose Islamic government is suspected by the West of pursuing nuclear weapons, questions whether Christ and other religious prophets would have approved of U.S. policies and actions in the Middle East.

"I have been told that Your Excellency follows the teachings of Jesus (Peace be upon him) and believes in the divine promise of the rule of the righteous on Earth," Ahmadinejad wrote Bush, who has said that Christ is his favorite philosopher.

"If Prophet Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Ishamel, Joseph, or Jesus Christ (Peace Be Upon Him) were with us today, how would they have judged such behavior?" he wrote.

As Ahmadinejad asked Bush to do some soul-searching and atone for past U.S. transgressions, the United States dismissed the letter as irrelevant and devoid of any concrete proposals whatsoever.I guess that is just rude.

U.S. officials portrayed the document as a stalling tactic in the contentious negotiations among the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council over Iran's nuclear program.

White House spokesman Scott McClellan accused Iran of trying to change the subject from demands that it abandon uranium enrichment. He refused to say whether Bush planned to respond.

"It's not an issue of whether we respond, it's an issue of whether the regime will respond to the demands of the international community," McClellan said Tuesday. "The international community is concerned about the regime's pursuit of nuclear weapons under the cover of a civilian program."

Iran sent an English translation of the letter to Washington on Monday. The United States later distributed it to some of the permanent five members U.N. Security Council, a U.S. official said.

On Tuesday, Ahmadinejad called his letter "words and opinions of the Iranian nation" aimed at finding a "way out of problems" facing humanity, according to the official Iranian news agency.

Yet its only proposal is an invitation, over the letter's last several pages, to join in with those believers who adhere to the teachings of prophets, to monotheism, and human dignity. Ahmadinejad quotes the Quran throughout, reminding Bush that everyone will someday face God for judgment. No doubt, the Iranian president is the better person. Yeah. Right.

It portrays the world as filled with people who are tired of corruption and poverty and who have joined an "ever-increasing global hatred of the American government."

Woven throughout the document are apocalyptic warnings that the world is on the brink of a major upheaval that will see its people rebel against "cruel governments" and move closer to God. Democracy and liberalism have failed, he says.

"Those with insight can already hear the sounds of the shattering and fall of the ideology and thoughts of the liberal democratic systems," it says. Ahmadinejad also accused the U.S. media of leaving Americans in a state of panic after the September 11 attacks and spreading hype that led to the war in Afghanistan.

The letter covers a list of grievances that have made Bush deeply unpopular among Muslims: The Iraq war, the U.S. support of Israel, and the treatment of prisoners in Guantanamo Bay.

Ahmadinejad, a former engineer, teacher and Tehran mayor who took office last August, ranges even further afield, blasting the U.S. for its support of Latin American dictatorships and for "looting" Africa.

Several of its main points have been made before, and with far more vitriol. The letter follows to the pattern heard in his speech to the U.N. General Assembly last September, when he focused on broad themes of religion and philosophy rather than the specifics of policy.

In places, he strikes a soft, almost fatherly stance. On its first page, Ahmadinejad strikes a tone of a man who is troubled by a friend's actions and decides to sit down and give him a little advice.

He later casts himself as a humble teacher and man of faith who mingles with students and common people.

The issue of Iran's nuclear program gets only brief mention. Ahmadinejad accuses Bush of portraying Iran's nuclear program as a threat to Israel and declares Tehran's right to "scientific R&D."

"You are familiar with history. Aside from the Middle Ages, in what other point in history has scientific and technical progress been a crime?" the letter asks.

Though the United States didn't get what it wanted from the letter, some Iranians worried that Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's dismissal of it was too abrupt and warned she may have missed an opportunity to ease the strain between the longtime enemies.

Iran's former ambassador to France, Sadeq Kharrazi, said the letter "could have been a turning point in relations." But he said Rice squandered the opportunity with what he called a "hasty reaction."

"This gives a pretext to those in Iran who oppose re-establishment of ties with America," he said.

The two countries broke relations after Iranian students stormed the U.S. Embassy in Tehran in 1979 and held its occupants hostage for 444 days to protest Washington's refusal to hand over the toppled shah, the late Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. The U.S. and Iran have had no diplomatic ties since then.

The U.S. backing of the 1953 military coup that brought the Shah to power also came in for criticism in the letter. Ahmadinejad chastised the United States for opposing the Islamic revolution, backing
Saddam Hussein during the Iran-Iraq war, and botching the investigation into the September 11 attacks.

He ends the letter with what appears to be a last-ditch plea to Bush.

"How long must the people of the world pay for the incorrect decisions of some rulers?" Ahmadinejad writes, adding on the last page: "Undoubtedly through faith in God and the teachings of the prophets, the people will conquer their problems. My question for you is: 'Do you not want to join them?'"

 

[Annie]

Looks like the US populace gets it:

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,194793,00.html

05/09/06 FOX News Poll: Do Not Trust Iran

Tuesday , May 09, 2006

By Dana Blanton

NEW YORK — The latest FOX News poll finds that Americans think Iran cannot be trusted, and a majority thinks Iran either already poses a threat to the United States or that it will soon.

The poll finds that an overwhelming 85 percent of Americans say they do not trust Iran to tell the truth about their nuclear technology program, including large majorities of Republicans (91 percent), independents (90 percent) and Democrats (78 percent).

In addition, a majority of voters thinks Iran is a threat to the United States. A quarter of the public — 24 percent — sees Iran as a “clear and present danger,” and another 33 percent think it will be a threat in the near future. Almost a third think Iran will be a threat sometime down the road (30 percent) and one in 10 think the country, which is known as part of the “axis of evil,” is not a threat to the United States at all. These results are in line with polling conducted at the beginning of the year.

Opinion Dynamics Corporation conducted the national telephone poll of 900 registered voters for FOX News on May 2 and May 3, before Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s letter to President Bush.

By a three-to-one margin Americans say they do not believe the United Nations can prevent Iran from building nuclear weapons. About one in five (22 percent) think the U.N. can stop Iran, but a 74 percent majority disagrees.

Democrats (31 percent) are nearly twice as likely as Republicans (17 percent) and independents (15 percent) to think the U.N. can stop Iran.

Moreover, given Iran’s defiant rhetoric, including its president’s claim that his nation “won’t give a damn about such useless resolutions,” half of Americans say at a minimum the U.N. should impose economic sanctions right away (51 percent), while 39 percent say despite the rhetoric the U.N. should still try diplomacy.

This week the United States is working to get a resolution passed by the U.N. Security Council that could ultimately lead to sanctions on Iran.

Respondents were asked about a couple of hypothetical situations regarding Iran and nuclear weapons. First, the poll asked about taking military action if there is “any chance” of Iran obtaining nuclear weapons before President Bush leaves office. Americans are divided on this issue: 48 percent support President Bush taking military action if there is a chance Iran could get nukes, and 44 percent oppose.

What if Iran did obtain nuclear weapons and President Bush had not used military force to stop it — would he be blamed for not using force? Just over a third say the president would have “failed in his duty” to protect the United States by not using force (35 percent), while a 44 percent plurality says they think he would have done the right thing by not using force, even though Iran got nukes.

“It is clear that while Americans are worried about Iran obtaining nuclear weapons, at least half of them have reservations about the use of force,” comments Opinion Dynamics Chairman John Gorman. “The war dragging on in Iraq has clearly made people wary of engaging in another war at this time — particularly against a larger, stronger and more committed adversary. Many people simply see no good choices. They feel the U.N. and sanctions can’t do the job, but they don’t want another fight.”...

 

[Annie]

Ok, I'm the only one interested in this currently, I can live with that. :teeth:

Seems someone else think it's important, make that monumental:

http://www.blackfive.net/main/2006/05/the_letter.html#more

The Letter
Posted By Grim

Iran has sent a letter to the United States for the first time since the 1970s. The early responses indicate that the government has completely misread it, and is blind to the threat it represents.

After the jump, an examination.

Here is a translation of Iran's letter to the United States.

It is astonishing because it is nothing like it was described to be. "Some American officials have said the letter appeared to be aimed at disrupting talks on Iran this week among top envoys of the United States, Britain, France, Germany, Russia and China," the New York Times tells us, and that's correct: we were told this was intended as a ploy, a bit of gamesmanship by the Iranians. Since the possibility of direct negotiations was open, the Russians and the Chinese could plausibly claim that UN Security Council action was not needed.

If that was indeed the reading of the professional diplomats, we are poorly served by their insights. The letter is not a negotiating ploy. If our best thinkers misread this so badly, we ought to be concerned.

The letter has two clear antecedents in world politics: the American Declaration of Independence, and the Communist Manifesto. This is a document of that type, and if we are not careful, it will be remembered for as long.

Like the Declaration and the Manifesto, the letter spends much of its time with a list of grievances. These grievances serve the same purpose in all three documents: they purport to demonstrate that the existing system is a moral failure, and that it has create affronts which can only be addressed by its overthrow. The American Declaration limited itself to the removal of the King's government from the colonies; it was only later, in Woodrow Wilson's time, that we began to think of American democracy as a universal human value. The Manifesto assumed a worldwide revolution from the start. In its summation, following sixteen pages of grievances, the Iranian letter proposes the same:

Liberalism and Western style democracy have not been able to help realize the ideals of humanity. Today these two concepts have failed. Those with insight can already hear the sounds of the shattering and fall of the ideology and thoughts of the liberal democratic
systems.

We increasingly see that people around the world are flocking towards a main focal point – that is the Almighty God. Undoubtedly through faith in God and the teachings of the prophets, the people will conquer their problems. My question for you is: “Do you not want to join them?”

Mr President,

Whether we like it or not, the world is gravitating towards faith in the Almighty and justice and the will of God will prevail over all things.

And there we have it. Liberalism and Western style democracy have led to war and invasion; international institutions that do not protect the people; many various abuses of human rights which are detailed; and a departure of mankind from the revealed design of God, as shown to us primarily through Koran, but also reflected in the other Abrahamic religions.

We are invited to join this progress to a world in which the will of God prevails over all things. That is the beginning and the end of the outreach: we may submit. Won't you, Mr. President, accept this invitation?

In addition to being a declaration of open defiance, the letter is a cunning first strike. We have heard much discussion of funding or reaching out to the Iranian opposition groups, in an attempt to exploit cracks in Iranian society that might lead to internal discord and disruption. Much discussion, but we have done nothing.

The Iranians have not only spoken, but acted. This letter could not be clearer in its attempts to exploit the cracks in Western society: between Europe and America, between Republicans and Democrats, conservatives and liberals, pro-Israeli and anti-Israeli; it calls libertarian and human rights advocates, Christians and even Jews, to join Iran in defiance of the Western failures to perfect the human condition. It references every claim made by any dissident organization against America's policies in the world. It works them together, and almost makes it sound rational to believe that the Iranian way -- and the Taliban's way! -- could point to a better world, with fewer evils, than this nasty abusive democracy.

This is a call to arms not just for those who might think Allah the enemy of America, but for those within the West who think America is the enemy of Europe, of their social program, of their politicis -- even to those, within America, who would oppose Bush. It is a call for an end to Western style democracy and liberalism, and the transition of the world to the service of God. It is at once a declaration and a manifesto, an attack and a defense, a statement of principles for Islamists and a stroke designed to shatter the West along our fault lines.

My respects to a master of the art. We shall see if we have any who are wise enough to reply. Or even, to understand.

Posted by Grim