August 6, 2013 16:47
by Pesach Benson
“Iran Nominee Seen As Olive Branch to United States,” blares a headline from Reuters. His appointment, asserts Bloomberg News, “suggests the new Iranian president would like to break a 34-year impasse between the Islamic Republic and the U.S.”
Anything’s possible, but those expecting a breakthrough from Mr. Zarif might want to consult video of a visit he made to Columbia University in 2006. It shows Mr. Zarif sounding a lot like now-former President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the Holocaust-denying firebrand that Tehran’s apologists like to portray as an aberration in Iranian politics.
Iranian ex-pat Peyvand Khorsandi warns anyone who will listen not to drink the proverbial Kool Aid about Hassan Rohani’s moderation:
You can’t be a moderate in Iran. Protecting the sanctity of the Islamic Republic’s founding Khomeini-ist principles, and its resulting injustices, is your raison d’etre and if you’re not up to the task, you’re dead.
It’s all very Cosa Nostra – you can’t stray; you can’t pull the wool over anyone’s eyes and thuggish credentials are a must: it’s a gangster regime, pure and simple.
For years this guy was the Secretary of Iran’s feared Supreme National Security Council.
Countless killings occurred under his watch; not least during the student uprising of 1999 which Rouhani vowed to “crush mercilessly and monumentally”.
Source material can be found at this site.
