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Iran's Khamenei calls cartoons a Zionist conspiracy

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Joo Rip Gwa Rhhee

Joined: 25 May 2003

Posted: Tue Feb 07, 2006 4:29 am Post subject: Iran's Khamenei calls cartoons a Zionist conspiracy

Quote:

Tuesday » February 7 » 2006

Iran's Khamenei calls publication of prophet cartoons a Zionist conspiracy

Canadian Press
Tuesday, February 07, 2006

TEHRAN, Iran (AP) - The West's publication of the Prophet Muhammad cartoons was an Israeli conspiracy motivated by anger over Hamas' win in the Palestinian elections, Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said Tuesday.

Speaking to Iranian air force personnel, Khamenei said the cartoons were a scandal, particularly as they came "from those who champion civilization and free expression."

The cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad have led to demonstrations, boycotts and attacks on European embassies across the Islamic world. They were first published in Denmark in September and then reprinted recently by numerous European newspapers in the name of free expression.

"The West condemns any denial of the Jewish holocaust, but it permits the insult of Islamic sanctities," Khamenei said.

The cartoons have offended many Muslims because most Islamic teachers forbid any illustration of the prophet and because several drawings depict Muhammad as a man of violence.

The caricatures amounted to a "conspiracy by Zionists who were angry because of the victory of Hamas," he said, referring to the Palestinian militant group that won a surprise landslide victory in last month's elections.

© The Canadian Press 2006

http://www.canada.com/topics/news/world/story.html?id=dfb24b13-09ec-426d-85a2-56f3e773fc2a&k=90865

Kuros

Joined: 27 Apr 2004

Posted: Tue Feb 07, 2006 5:14 am Post subject:

Khamanei has his facts mixed up. Those cartoons were published in September of last year. How could they have been manufactured by Jews angry about the victory of Hamas?

mithridates

Joined: 03 Mar 2003
Location: President's office, Korean Space Agency

Posted: Tue Feb 07, 2006 5:35 am Post subject:

I can't believe he's the leader of a country and he wouldn't even make the upper 50th percentile of the posters on a Korean expat board (regarding intelligence, basic grasp of issues, etc). Neither would a lot of others now that I think about it. Sigh.

Bulsajo

Joined: 16 Jan 2003

Posted: Thu Feb 09, 2006 10:47 am Post subject:

mithridates wrote:

I can't believe he's the leader of a country and he wouldn't even make the upper 50th percentile of the posters on a Korean expat board (regarding intelligence, basic grasp of issues, etc).

Neither would a lot of others now that I think about it. Sigh.

No, he's not dumb, don't make that mistake and underestimate what he's doing.
I'm sure he knows what he is saying isn't true, but he also knows that it doesn't matter.
He's being inflammatory for the sake of being inflammatory.
As long as it's loudly anti-israeli and anti-west, the details and accuracy don't really matter.
The more outrageous, the better.

Compare to NK's "don't mess with us, we're lunatics, you'll never know what we might do" strategy.

If anyone is the bumbling fool these days it's Bashar.
He's got daddy's country but doesn't really know what to do with it, or how to keep it (unless pandering to religious passions is part of a new and coherent strategy...)

bucheon bum

Joined: 16 Jan 2003

Posted: Thu Feb 09, 2006 11:19 am Post subject:

Too bad his dad isn't alive to knock some sense into him. Apparently he doesn't recall Hama in 1982 very well.

Bulsajo

Joined: 16 Jan 2003

Posted: Thu Feb 09, 2006 2:06 pm Post subject:

No surprise that Stratfor evaluates Syria's performance in "Cartoongate" (as I'm starting to call it) as bumbling (or at least entirely transparent):

Stratfor wrote:

Syria: Taking Advantage of the Cartoon Controversy
February 06, 2006 20 34 GMT

Summary

The controversy over the publication of cartoons depicting the Prophet Mohammed has rapidly developed into a strategic tool for countering Western intervention in the Muslim world. The Syrian regime used this tool Feb. 4-5, when thousands of demonstrators set Danish and Norwegian diplomatic offices ablaze in Damascus and Beirut. While Syria intended to use the cartoon riots as cover to exacerbate sectarian tensions in Lebanon, the weekend riots did not conceal Damascus' obvious political ploy.

Analysis

Syria and Lebanon witnessed the most violent of riots that have erupted across the Muslim world in response to the publication of caricatures of the Prophet Mohammed. After protesters set fire to the Danish and Norwegian embassies in Damascus on Feb. 4, a seemingly spontaneous gathering of thousands of protesters in Lebanon attacked the Danish Consulate in Beirut.

There is no doubt that the Mohammed cartoon conflagration has given rise to a wave of animosity throughout the Islamic world. Unlike demonstrations elsewhere in the Arab and Muslim world against the caricatures of the Prophet Mohammad, however, the Damascus and Beirut riots were the only ones involving embassy burnings. The spontaneity of the Damascus and Beirut riots is thus highly suspect. In fact, the riots did not camouflage the Syrian regime's attempts to exacerbate Lebanese sectarian tensions with the cartoon controversy.

Almost 20,000 demonstrators arrived by bus to Beirut with identical green signs reading "shahadah," Arabic for "testimony of faith." The signs did not indicate affiliation with a specific political party, and were likely printed just prior to the planned demonstration -- despite claims that the demonstration spontaneously arose and evolved into a violent rampage. After a few hours of stone throwing, fire setting, window breaking and other mob-related activities, the streets were deserted by 3 p.m. local time after the protesters left the Danish Consulate in flames.

In contrast, while the Danish and Norwegian embassies burned in Damascus on Feb. 4, Syrian security forces strategically prevented protesters from storming the U.S. and French embassies. This likely reflects the regime's unwillingness to go too far and risk reviving the U.S.-led pressure campaign against Syria.

Syria is a police state, so any such demonstrations are unlikely to occur without the regime's sanction. Though Syrian security forces could very well have prevented the embassy attacks in Damascus, these incidents likely reflect part of Syria's overall design toward using the cartoon controversy for its own ends.

Syria and Iran have a growing incentive to use the cartoon backlash to illustrate the sweeping effect of Islamic fury to the West should the latter make any aggressive moves in the region. The motivation for this strategy has only increased in the context of Washington's threats of sanctions and/or military action against Tehran -- especially since Washington managed to shore up enough support to get the International Atomic Energy Agency to vote to report Iran to the U.N. Security Council. Regardless of Washington and Tehran's rhetoric, the Iranian regime's interests are served by railing against Western interference for domestic consumption. Tehran's idea is to signal to Washington that any action against Syria or Iran will only aggravate raw tensions in the region, and that the United States would not find it in its interest to isolate Iran, Syria, Hamas or Hezbollah through unilateral steps.

Tehran could certainly look to its allies in Syria to carry out such an objective by spreading the riots to the Levant. For its part, Syria has an interest in designing large-scale protests on its own territory to exhibit the potential consequences of breaking the al Assad regime and allowing radical -- or even moderate -- Islamist groups to rise in influence.

Syria's intentions toward Lebanon were much more obvious. The rioters were concentrated in the Christian areas of Achrafieh and Gemmayze, where they stoned private property and the St. Maroun Church, one of Beirut's main Maronite churches. Since Syria was forced to withdraw its forces from Lebanon in the wake of the Feb. 14, 2005, assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik al-Hariri, Syrian intelligence and security operatives undertook a mission to target Lebanon's Christian population in a bid to exacerbate the country's existing sectarian rifts and to keep Lebanon in its usual state of instability to ensure Syria remains the power broker in -- and "protector" of -- its western neighbor. It is therefore no coincidence that the spate of bombings targeting Beirut's majority-Christian neighborhoods has tapered off as the Syrian regime has sought to keep out of Washington's gaze in order to deal with its domestic issues while the Iranian nuclear controversy and Hamas' election victory take the spotlight.

The cartoon controversy has provided Damascus another opportunity to reassert its dominance in Lebanon. What the Syrian regime might have failed to realize, however, is that Damascus' directing role in its latest drama is all too obvious to the audience.

mithridates

Joined: 03 Mar 2003
Location: President's office, Korean Space Agency

Posted: Thu Feb 09, 2006 4:30 pm Post subject:

Bulsajo wrote:

mithridates wrote:

Understood. Loud and clear, Phoenix.

mithridates

Joined: 03 Mar 2003
Location: President's office, Korean Space Agency

Posted: Sun Feb 26, 2006 11:10 am Post subject:

Here's a really interesting paragraph from the NY Times about a possible civil war in Iraq:

Quote:

Some experts, however, say Iran may understand the dangers of a war. Even President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's denunciation of the bombing of the Shiite shrine in Samarra last week, in which he blamed Zionists rather than Sunnis, could be seen as an act of restraint, these experts say — an effort to play to Shiite anger without fanning flames between Iraq's Islamic communities.

You don't usually get hit by something completely out of the blue when reading the news but I'd never thought of it that way before.

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