It’s a shame that the MTV Movie Awards have closed voting for their newly-added ‘WTF?’ section for this year! If you didn’t see it yesterday, it’s Ahmadinejad’s speech going into total meltdown at the UN Durban Review Conference on racism in Geneva. Obviously, there’s nothing that your kid sister couldn’t predict in this (well, that said, my kid sister’s just been accepted to SOAS. Woop!), but the whole drama of the scene produces a very “woah dude!” moment.
What exactly is going on here?
Because I’ve chosen to post the raw footage, I should explain here that the protestors in wigs are French Jewish students. Evidently, they and the delegates who have all simultaneously realised that they left something really important in their hotel room are pissed because Ahmadinejad is calling Israel racist and questioning Israeli sovereignty, as usual.
Those delegates won’t include the US, Israel, Italy, the Netherlands, Australia and New Zealand. Germany has sent an observer instead of a participant, and the UK, France and the Czech Republic are sending their ambassadors who happen to be in the hood anyway (and by that I mean from the Permanent Missions to the UN in Geneva – for the record I think that those should be officially renamed “ambassadors who happen to be in the hood anyway”).
Why are they not there? Do they want to look like they cherish and enjoy racism or something?
You would think that a bunch of representatives would be able to sit down at the UN and say “racism is really bad” and be home in time for Hollyoaks, but disappointingly, even such a simple activity is overtaken by small print and big headlines. This is much better explained by Paul Reynolds of the BBC news website. Here’s your cut-and-and-keep guide to the Durban beef.
While all this is understandable, the fact that the conference has been overtaken by this dispute (or that this was the only thing deemed newsworthy!) is a shame because it overshadowed some really important issues about racism and discrimination that are on the agenda over there in Geneva, an example being discrimination against Roma people. For those uninitiated in international politics, this is how political disputes can ride over international consensus – though here I would be loathe to criticise any party involved in the Israel-Palestine dispute.
Is Ahmadinejad crazy?
It does seem like he’s baiting a beating. On the other hand, he’s been baiting a beating for a while, his views on Israel are no secret and Israel still hasn’t initiated a missile strike. It would be totally unthinkable for Israel to bomb Iran based on Ahmadinejad’s grandstanding at the UN. A strike would hinge on the Iranian nuclear issue. If Iran really totally ignores calls to suspend its programme (and it sort of has, adding more uranium centrifuges and all , but I mean, if it went further), that could mean a shit-hitting-the-fan sort of situation. As usual, the world is relying on Obama sorting it out. Yeh, I don’t envy him either.
Hm, so you think it is ok for Big A. to make those allegations simply because he is already known to be a nutt-job?
As for Israel: do you really think Israel would hesitate to fly an attack agains Iran? The country is in a continous state of paranoia and since it is so small that a single warhead is enough to wipe out most of it they are determined to hinder Iran getting the bomb. With or without international support.
Surely Ahmadinejad’s a mention to the presidential elections looming in June is in order. Two fingers to the world over Isreal still carries weight with the Iranian electorate.
I wasn’t suggesting that the statement was ok, just not unexpected. I wouldn’t be adding anything particularly new if I blogged about why the speech was bad.
Also, I think that asking why Israel hasn’t launched a strike yet is as interesting a question as why they would, in much the same way that asking why a dirty bomb hasn’t happened yet is interesting to me (as discussed in my earlier post, “Mars Attacks”). This is not because I challenge the likelihood of these events, but because timing tells us important things, constraints and priorities, etc. Unfortunately, I’m no expert on such things, but I would be interested to hear hypotheses on this.
As for the elections, of course, the fact is that foreign policy is domestic politics.
Well, the strike question is somewhat arbitrary as Israel has done so in the past, why should it not do so in the future?
Well, no. It’s not an arbitrary question. A lot of things have happened that could happen again, like, I just ate a whole tray of Ferrero Rocher, but we need to look at contingencies, triggers and perspectives or we end up living in a world inhabited only by undefined threat. I’m assuming that we’re talking a strike on the nuclear facilities at Natanz (and Esfahan and Arak) here. Pundits have been talking up a strike for some years now, but it hasn’t happened yet. Ambassador Bolton even said that the election of Obama would precipitate the bombing! (Don’t do it kids!)
But yeh, of course, Israel did bomb the Osnirak facility in Iraq in 1981, and there’s now all of this talk of the military being ready to do it on the word go. So when exactly does the word come? This is where I’m not an expert, and much of this may hinge on Israeli domestic politics. But I imagine that if Ahmadinejad announces that he’s suspending all the uranium centrifuge production and gets some nice pictures of himself shaking hands with Hilary Clinton up on his Facebook, a strike doesn’t look as good. Though of course, it’s not just about uranium production, it’s about the possibility of diversion of fissile materials for military purposes, which of course, is the IAEA’s game. Anyway, I’m gassing now.