Iranian Defiance Redux*

*Image courtesy of AP Photo/Vahid Salemi.

The West should not be fooled by Iran's sudden commitment to transparency in its nuclear program, no matter how encouraging such an unexpected development seems.

Granted, recent actions by this terrible regime appear to demonstrate positive progress towards genuine cooperation with reasonable international requests for inspection. But these are really just diplomatic delays designed to placate the growing concerns of occidental powers over that nation's ambitious tyranny.

Take, for example, the report that Iran is prepared to allow inspections of its supposedly peaceful nuclear program "without preconditions." Of course, this same rhetoric has been trotted out before, and the results have not been encouraging. And not coincidentally, it should also be noted that Iran is being pressured by a September deadline that is presumably enforceable with harsh economic sanctions should Ahmadinejad fail to comply--a veritable fait accompi at this point.

But Iran is also gambling on the continuation of a pathetically limp American response as President Obama remains overwhelmingly engaged in a punishing domestic debate over healthcare reform. Or at the very least, the regime is relying on squabbling in the U.N. as allies interested in their ideology or overabundance of oil ensnare any sanctions in weeks or even months of international bickering. Both scenarios are equally likely. And when all is said and done, all Ahmadinejad really needs is time for further development, a gift he will likely receive with little serious opposition in gross counterpoint to what is actually conceived for his militarized nuclear program--namely, the threat of absolute annihilation for Israel and the benefits accrued from becoming the unarguable savior for the extremists populating so much of the Muslim world at present.

Remarkably, this dramatic and dishonest reinvention of Iran's political stance comes just as the murderer of Neda Soltan is identified as Abbas Kargar Javid, a Basij militia member fleeing the scene after absurdly claiming that he only meant to shoot Soltan in the leg. Significantly, Iranian leaders are acutely aware of Western anger over their brutal and unconscionable crackdown on freedom seeking citizens. And they also know that undeniable government involvement in Soltan's death--a fact vehemently denied previously--could potentially galvanize both Iranian and American voices in harshly condemning months of wanton deceit and bloodshed.

Consequently, to avoid the utter abrogation of his government's agenda, Ahmadinejad has shrewdly offered a potential international victory to President Obama just as he needs a win most, while at the same time maintaining much of his own political power on the world stage for the critical near future. And regrettably, some period of time--likely not more than a few dozen months--harnessed with both religiously sanctioned authoritarian rule and interminable international apathy is all that he really requires to achieve nuclear weaponization and an intractable place among the major world powers.

So in the end, it seems that Iran's unmitigated embarrassment for lack of control over ten weeks of protest has been masterfully converted into a subtle power play by one of the Middle East's worst demagogues. And thus the pressing need for President Obama himself to reject this specious offer of transparency out of hand and to supply unqualified condemnation for the murder and torture of so many innocent Iranians at the hands of Ahmadinejad.

IN OTHER NEWS: European anti-Semitism unabashedly continues with an article written by freelance journalist Donald Bostrom published in Sweden. Therein, he claims to have witnessed IDF soldiers harvesting organs from Palestinians killed in clashes with Israel, a patently evil and inflammatory claim with roots as far back as the 1990s.

Of course, Bostrom also possesses no evidence--just his own devotion to bigotry and the excruciatingly small idea that Jews are responsible for all that is wrong in the world. But these facts also shouldn't stop much of Europe from embracing such claims; in fact, such anti-Semitism remains highly fashionable in that part of the world, regardless of their many vaunted claims to widespread cultural enlightenment.