In the February 12 issue of The Varsity, writer Ahmed Mahmoud asserted that Iran poses no real threat to world peace. If only this were the case. The reality is that President Ahmadinejad is pursuing a dangerous nuclear weapons program with a clear target in mind: Israel.
In 2005, Ahmadinejad gave a speech calling for the destruction of Israel. Instead of retracting his infamous statement that Israel should be “wiped off the map,” he continues to use genocidal language while boasting of his goal to eliminate the Jewish state.
In April 2006, Ahmadinejad renewed his verbal attacks, stating that “the Zionist regime is on the road to being eliminated.” In January 2008, Ahmadinejad claimed that “the occupiers’ days are numbered.” Months later, he stated that Iran would “not give up until the corrupt leadership in the world has been obliterated.”
During a 2007 visit to Columbia University, Ahmadinejad dodged questions about whether or not he sought to annihilate Israel. When pressed to respond “yes” or “no,” Ahmadinejad replied, “You ask the question and then you want the answer the way you want to hear it. I ask you, is the Palestinian issue not a question of international importance? Please tell me yes or no.”
Shortly after his visit to Columbia, an interviewer asked the President the same question. Instead of responding, Ahmadinejad requested a short break “for the interpreter.” After the break, he asserted that “the Zionist regime” had nuclear weapons, and that Iran’s uranium enrichment was for “fuel purposes.” Well, that certainly clears things up.
In his article, Mahmoud cites the National Intelligence Estimate’s (NIE) 2007 report on Iran’s nuclear development, which concluded that Iran “halted its nuclear weapons program” in 2003. Valerie Lincy and Gary Milhollin, experts in the field of nuclear arms, have warned of the consequences of this misleading report on the Iranian nuclear threat. In a New York Times op-ed, they pointed out that Iran’s gas centrifuges have no real civilian purposes. They note that Iran’s nuclear technology “is ideal for producing plutonium for nuclear bombs, but is of little use in an energy program like Iran’s, which does not use plutonium for reactor fuel.” Iran has the fourth-largest oil reserve in the world. The pursuit of nuclear energy should rank far down on its list of priorities.
The NIE report is a dangerous and misleading document that ignores the serious implications of Iran’s continual nuclear development. British intelligence and the United Nations recognized these implications. Soon after the NIE report came out, a British intelligence report concluded that there was a “strong possibility” that Iran would have “the ability to manufacture a nuclear device within a short period of time.” The chief nuclear inspector for the United Nations came to the same conclusion, along with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). After reviewing evidence of Iran’s nuclear technology, the inspector concluded that it was “not consistent with any application other than the development of a nuclear weapon.” A recent IAEA inspection of Iran’s nuclear program revealed that Iran understated by a third the amount of uranium it has enriched, and now has enough to make an atom bomb.
The threats against Israel did not begin with Ahmadinejad, and they will not end with him. Israelis remember all too well a leader whose anti-Semitic rhetoric was ignored until it amounted to genocide. Today, too many people are willing to diminish the threats posed by Iran’s nuclear weapons program. Maybe these threats will turn out to be nothing more than “heated rhetoric.” I’m not willing to wait around to find out.
