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Monday
May 14, 2001

Speculation no substitute for analysis

Mr. Rajaee, thanks for your kind and cordial comments, I found the discussion to be quite enlightening ["They've heard that song"]. I hope I didn't cause you any offense, but I think you again misconstrued the point of bringing up Israel's misdeeds. I did not "raise the issue of Israeli transgressions in order to make any headway in rehabilitating Iran." Indeed, I have no intention to rehabilitate anyone and couldn't even if I wanted to because I have no special knowledge of the facts or the evidence. It was simply to point out that a historic event known as the Lavon Affair acts as a precedent to support a hypothetical scenario of Israeli involvement in the Khobar bombing.

The point is that speculation should not substitute for analysis, but if speculation is all we have, then it should apply evenly to all the potential culprits. Now, whether the politicians will find this arguement convincing or not, I agree that they probably won't. And you know what? I don't care! To paraphrase Nelson Mandela, they can all go jump in a lake. In a democracy people have a duty to express their opinions about the policies of their government especially if the powerful find it distastefull, and maybe if enough people speak up, they'll listen.

I also can't quite agree with you on the issue of whether the Republican Right in Congress constitutes a cohesive anti-Iran group. They simply promote the interests of their paymasters, nothing more, in my opinion. Benjamin Gilman, for example, couldn't be more pro-Israeli. If the Israelis told them tomorrow that night is day and up is down, he'd agree vehemently and hold Congressional hearings on it (and, ironically, all of the people invited to testify would also agree that up is down and night is day - this is the farcical dog-and-pony show that they had when they recently held hearings on renewing ILSA.) Politicians do whatever promotes their perceived interests, that's all. Just because they won't agree with you doesn't mean you don't speak up. There is an entire world outside Gilman's committee, after all.

I also will have to disagree about the Israel issue. Like I said, its not a question of the Arabs. Even if there were no Palestinians, the nature of the relationship with Israel would be fraught with tension anyway, and Iran would and should seek to contain the inherent threat posed by the presence of a militarstic and expansionist force which is inadequately balanced in the region. As for what "the Arabs" have done during the Iran-Iraq war versus "the Persians", I for one don't see international relations as a tribalistic blood feud. If that were the standard, then we should only be friends with Syria and be "ghaar" with the Germans, French, British and even the Americans, all of whom actively backed Saddam against Iran.

John Mohammadi

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