Matthew Duss, "Iran’s Nixonian Anti-Semitism, and What It Means for the Nuke Deal": Making the Case for Impotence and Naivete

In a Tablet article entitled "Iran’s Nixonian Anti-Semitism, and What It Means for the Nuke Deal," Matthew Duss, president of the Foundation for Middle East Peace, would compare the anti-Semitism of President Nixon with that of Iran's mullahs. Contending that Iran's leaders are not willing "to risk national suicide in order to achieve anything," Duss concludes:

"As with Nixon, and unlike Adolf Hitler, there’s no evidence that hatred of Jews is so foundational to the Islamic Republic’s governing ideology that they would drop everything else to pursue it. (Indeed, shortly after taking power in 1979, as the Ayatollah Khomeini was in the process of wiping out political competitors and consolidating control of the revolution, Khomeini received a delegation of Iranian Jews and promised them protection.) None of this is to say that Iran’s anti-Israel rhetoric should be ignored; it certainly shouldn’t. Iran should continue to be treated as a pariah and sanctioned until this threatening rhetoric, along with a whole range of other behaviors, ceases. But the nuclear agreement now being negotiated isn’t based on trusting that Iran won’t act upon its rhetoric, but on ensuring, through the deepest and broadest nuclear inspections regime ever created, that it can’t."

Yeah, right. As if Nixon ever threatened Israel with annihilation as does Iran on a routine basis.

As reported earlier this week in a Times of Israel article entitled "Ex-Iran president: Israel a fake, temporary regime" by Tamar Pileggi:

"Former Iranian president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani told a Hezbollah-affiliated outlet that he was confident that the 'forged and temporary Israeli entity' would be wiped off the map, the state-run IRNA news agency reported. According to the report, Rafsanjani, often described by Western media as a moderate in Iranian politics, said that Israel was an alien existence forged into the body of a nation which would eventually be destroyed."

Rafsanjani? He's the cleric who declared, "Israel is much smaller than Iran in landmass and therefore far more vulnerable to nuclear attack." No mention of Rafsanjani by Duss.

And then there's also that "small matter" involving the supply to Hezbollah, Iran's Shiite proxy in Lebanon, of some 100,000 missiles, all pointed at Israel. In fact, the existential threat to Israel today is greater than that presented by Egypt, Syria and Jordan immediately prior to the Six Day War. Iran can instruct Hezbollah to let these missiles fly, to the accompaniment of Hamas rocket and missile fire from Gaza, without suffering any repercussions. No mention of Hezbollah or Hamas by Duss.

The Islamic Republic of Iran is rational and would never do anything that might threaten its own existence? No mention by Duss that Iran hangs gay men, stones to death women accused of adultery, savagely persecute Baha'is, Christians, Kurds and Sunnis, jails and brutalizes journalists and political opponents, backs Shiite militias in Iraq that are engaged in ethnic cleansing, bombed a Jewish community center in distant Argentina, and executes poets for "waging war on God." Yes, I know, none of this has caused Iran to "risk national suicide." On the other hand, should the United States place its trust in an agreement with a regime that engages in such actions?

Duss, of course, suggests that America need not place its trust in Iranian adherence to the upcoming deal, inasmuch as Obama and friends are negotiating "the deepest and broadest nuclear inspections regime ever created." However, Russia will not agree to the "snap back" of sanctions, "anytime, anywhere inspections" have been whittled away, and Kerry has dismissed the need to obtain information concerning the past military dimensions of Iran's nuclear program.

Go back to sleep, Matthew.