Updates

Press TV, an Iranian state-controlled media outlet, has reported Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad seemingly blaming some kind of pro-Israel conspiracy for the anti-Iranian sentiment permeating the Middle East, 

“In the final days of their existence, plotters intend to cause difference and clash in our region to save the Zionist regime (Israel),” said President Ahmadinejad in the southwestern city of Ahvaz on Thursday.

The Iranian chief executive added that regional developments should lead to the awakening of nations and their historical decisions and the shattering of the grandiosity of hegemonic powers, IRNA reported.

In a possible attempt to replace the old expression “the pot called the kettle black”, Ahmadinejad then went on to accuse “arrogant powers” – presumably, the US and Israel – of selling arms and creating conflicts in the region.

Arrogant powers are selling their arms and creating conflicts in the region. They then use such weapons to damage countries and plunder assets and oil of nations under the pretext of making progress in their countries, he stated.

This comment comes just as Iranian weapons-smuggling into Gaza seems to be increasing and its arming of Hezbollah in Lebanon is attracting significant flak.

Moreover, the US finally seems to be waking up to the fact that, as previously noted in this blog, Iran is actively supporting violence against the US military. The editorial in today’s Wall Street Journal praises the Obama administration on finally sanctioning a terrorist organisation that is harboured by the Iranian government, but exists principally to fund al-Qaeda linked groups.

Yet it was only yesterday that the U.S. government formally acknowledged the connection between the world’s most dangerous terrorist group and the leading state sponsor of terrorism. In a move by the Treasury Department, six members of a terrorist network based in Iran were sanctioned for serving as “the core pipeline through which al Qaeda moves money, facilitators and operatives from across the Middle East to South Asia,” principally meaning Pakistan and Afghanistan. The leader of the group, Ezedin Abdul Aziz Khalil, is a Syrian who has been operating from Iran under an agreement signed in 2005.

… The Obama Administration has come a long way since the days when it thought it could strike a “grand bargain” with Iran’s mullahs, and yesterday’s move is another good step. Above all, it’s a reminder of why a regime that has no qualms serving as al Qaeda’s facilitator can on no account be permitted to build a nuclear bomb.

Iran has been permitted to fight a proxy war against the US and her allies – Australia included – for far too long. Hopefully, yesterday’s sanctions will not be an isolated move, and the West will increasingly direct its attention to the dangers that Iranian-funded terrorism has long posed to the region and world.

Daniel Meyerowitz-Katz