Ahmadinejad vs. Livni: The War of Words Continues

Ze'ev Ben-Yechiel

Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad used a United Nations summit on global food security Tuesday as a forum for his latest verbal attack on Israel, calling it a “false Zionist regime” that is “doomed to go.”



Appealing his European audience, Ahmadinejad said that "European peoples have suffered the greatest damage from Zionists and today the costs of this false regime, be they political or economic costs, are on Europe's shoulders." Speaking to the summit attendees through an interpreter, he defended his statements: "I do not believe that my declarations create problems. People like my comments, because this way the public can save themselves from the imposition of the Zionists." He also reiterated his firm belief in the destruction of the Jewish state, saying that Israel is a "fabricated regime" that is doomed to go whether or not Iran is involved.



Following the remarks, Ahmadenijad was shunned by Western leaders at the summit, including Italian Premier Silvio Berlusconi and Foreign Minister Franco Frattini, who made it clear that they will not meet with him. The Italian television network RAI reported that the government was embarrassed by the Iranian leader's remarks, and that his name was removed from the summit's closing gala event guest list. Pope Benedict XVI also turned away a request for a private audience with the Iranian president. Spokesmen for the Vatican quickly denied, however, that the pope was snubbing Ahmadinejad, claiming that the religious leader was declining all similar requests from summit delegates.



In the meantime, Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni continued to warn Iran with the threat of military action in response to Iran's continued development of a nuclear weapons program. "Iran needs to understand that the threat of military action exists and has not been taken off the table," Livni told Knesset ministers during a meeting of the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee. "As long as that's made clear, the need to use [military force] will be reduced."



Livni stressed the urgent need to take timely action and the Foreign Ministry's attempts at communicating that need to a reluctant world: "The time for a decision is now. Weakness can be interpreted as a form of acquiescence."



"We are clarifying to every official that we meet, that in this region, either you beat up the neighborhood thug, or you join him, and the world needs to be measured by its action," insisted the foreign minister.



"The day of decision is not the day of the bomb, and when they have the technology, but rather now," declared Livni. "Every hesitation on action against Iran creates an impression of weakness", she affirmed, on the part of Israel and the international community in its confrontation with the oil-rich and recalcitrant Persian Gulf state.



The FM continued by criticizing the international community for failing to force Iran to abandon its nuclear ambitions. "The uranium enrichment continues and the international condition for conducting negotiations with them is the cessation of enrichment," she noted. "Israel is acting so that the international community will continue to stand by its condition."



Livni also cited growing uneasiness of Iran's Arab neighbors at the prospect of an atomically armed Iran, telling FADC members that the international community must act on these fears to convince Arab leaders that a nuclear Iran is a threat to them as well. "There are still more moderate parties in the Arab world which are 'sitting on the fence' and debating the question of whether they could come to terms with a nuclear Iran. These are states which are directly threatened by Iran, and some of them border the country," she pointed out. "There is a big gap between what they say in the back rooms and what they say - and their willingness to act or to speak - in public."



Iran is also a major concern for Israel due to its comfortable relationship with Syria. Amidst continued Israel-Syrian negotiations over the Golan Heights, Syrian President Bashar Assad demanded Sunday that Syria's borders must extend "all the way to Tiberias". The Turkish agency Champress reports that Israel has already agreed in the first round of talks to hand over the entire Golan Heights to Syria, easily placing Iranian nuclear rocket launchers at Israel's doorstep and rendering the defense against a missile strike virtually impossible for Israel in the event of a Syrian-Iranian pact.