Apologists for the Islamic Republic—including Secretary of State John Kerry—have tried to explain away the anti-Semitic rhetoric of its leading political and religious figures, along with their frequent calls for the destruction of Israel, as mere populist rhetoric, intended for “domestic consumption only.” Ben Cohen highlights the dangerous absurdity of this line:
[It is] puzzling . . . that, while there is now an expectancy in Western societies that politicians will be held to account for everything they say as well as do, the bellicose threats of Iranian leaders should, by contrast, be ignored. The implication is that Tehran’s leaders, in threatening Israel’s very existence, are catering to a domestic desire to hear such rhetoric. This assumes that erasing Israel from the map is a bigger priority for ordinary Iranians than rescuing their economy or bolstering the miserably poor levels of political freedom they currently enjoy.
Most importantly, the domestic-consumption theory elides the revolutionary Islamist identity that has defined the Iranian state since the overthrow of the shah in 1979. Yet it is precisely this identity that should stop us from treating Iran as just another country. What distinguishes revolutionary states is the belief that history is leading to a pre-ordained outcome. In Iran’s case, this is a transcendent Islamic state grounded in sharia law. In an Islamic state, there is no place for such liberal indulgences as women’s rights or a free press. And above all, there is no place for a Jewish state, which is regarded as the primary source of oppression and injustice in the world.
Read more on Tower: http://www.thetower.org/article/global-anti-semitism-now-has-a-leader/