For some reason, there are people who were actually shocked..shocked...at the Iranian president call for Israel to be `wiped off the map' at a `World Without Zionism' conference hosted by the Iranian government in Teheran. I can't imagine why.
While world leaders from Tony Blair to Kofi Annan expressed their `dismay', and in some cases even stronger sentiments, as in the US House of Representatives FOXNews.com - Politics - House Condemns Iran's Threats Against Israel the reality is that Iran has been saying this in thought, word and deed for some time. It can't have been a mystery to anyone. This was perhaps just a bit more blatent than the norm.
The Iranian press,of course, backed President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's remarks to the hilt, and tens of thousands of Iranians participated in anti-Israel rallies that obviously were planned long before these remarks surfaced and timed accordingly.
Speaking on the sidelines of the rally in Tehran, Ali Larijani, who shapes the foreign policy of the new government and heads the Supreme National Security Council, described the protests and international indignation over Ahmadinejad's comments on Irsrael as "all smoke and no fire".
"They cry scandal because they know that a world without Israel is a dream of more than a billion and half Muslims of the planet," said Larijani.
At least he's honest about his aspirations.
Israel, for its part went through the futile gesture of actually attempting to get the UN to abide by its own charter,which calls for the expulsion of any member state calling for the exterminaton of a fellow member state. Good luck with that. Here's betting it will take a couple of weeks to even come up with a Security Council statement watered down enough to please Kofi, the Russians and the Muslim bloc...if even that much.
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