Regarding the US, Israel and Iran, Ironies Abound
1. The Great Depression put a left-of-center Democrat, President Franklin D. Roosevelt, in the White House. FDR defeated both the economic crisis and the Nazi-Fascist menace. His Republican opponent, the incumbent President Herbert Hoover, was an anti-interventionist (but not a classic isolationist) who vigorously opposed America's entry into World War II. In contrast with the Presidential election of 1932, the Great Recession brought Barack Obama to power in 2008-- a left-of-center Democrat who ironically appears to have inherited Hoover's anti-interventionism and inherent faith in international law and arbitration as a means of resolving disputes, even with the world's worst despots. Following Pearl Harbor, for example, Hoover urged FDR to consider a hair-brained proposal for an international commission--possibly managed by the Scandinavian countries--to regulate and monitor Allied and Axis bombing raids.
Most important, Obama's appeasement policy recalls Neville Chamberlain, Britain's prewar Prime Minister, who misinterpreted Nazi Germany's intentions, mistakenly seeing its leader, Adolf Hitler, as a regional tyrant with limited territorial ambitions. Appeasement failed to preserve the peace and instead made war inevitable--on Hitler's terms. The outcome of Obama's appeasement policy is also likely to lead to war--on Iranian terms--as Tehran uses never-ending negotiations over its nuclear program to move closer to its strategic objective, namely, mass production of nuclear weapons. 
2. Nuclear-arming Iran aims to establish a new Persian Empire--with an Islamist character and purpose. The mullahocracy, which came to power with the aid of an Obama adviser, Jimmy Carter--a former President for whom appeasement is akin to a religious belief--intends to destroy Israel, drive the U.S. out of the Middle East and dominate the region, and challenge the U.S. in its own hemisphere, as U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton today noted. Iran is already establishing bases in Latin America from which the clerical fascist regime and its Hitlerian proxy, Hezbollah, can eventually attack the U.S. with nuclear and biological weapons.
Iran's newfound hatred of Israel is incredibly ironic. The ancient Persian Empire was established by Cyrus the Great, whose rule began sometime between 557 and 559BC, and included the kingdoms of Persia, Lydia, Media and the Neo-Babylonian Empire. Cyrus is mentioned in the Bible as the liberator of the Jews from captivity. After conquering Babylonia, he allowed the Jews to return to their native land of Israel 537 BCE. Cyrus also allowed the Jews to practice their religion freely. He ordered the rebuilding of the Second Temple in the same place as the first; however, he died before it was completed. Darius the Great came to power and ordered the completion of the temple. It was ready for consecration in the spring of 515 BCE, more than 20 years after the Jews' return to Jerusalem.
In recent times, Iran's nationalistic, modernizing monarch, Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, harbored dreams of Persian regional hegemony. But the Shah was a strong U.S. ally--and a tacit ally of Israel. Iranian Jews prospered under his reign. Israel's national airline, El Al, operated a direct air-link between Tehran and Tel Aviv; and Israeli business executives and entrepreneurs were frequent travelers to Iran. (This reporter, an American Jew, flew from Tehran to Tel Aviv after completing a reporting assignment in Iran for one of America's leading, national magazines. A senior China Confidential analyst, who has spent a great deal of time in Israel, also traveled between Tehran and Tel Aviv; and one of the main sponsors of China Confidential, a former senior vice president of a Fortune 500 company, who is also an American Jew, advised the Shah's government on modernizing and building up Iran's fishing industry.)
The late, anti-American Ayatollah Khomeini, who overthrew the Shah with the support of President Carter and his National Security Adviser, Zbigniew Brzeinski, was a throwback to another Persian personality with historical importance to Israel and the Jewish people. According to the Book of Esther, Haman was a vizier of the empire under Persian King Ahasuerus, whom Biblical scholars identify as Xerxes the Great (son of Darius the Great) in 6th century BCE. Haman and his wife Zeresh instigated a plot to kill all the Jews of ancient Persia; but the plot was foiled by Esther, Queen of Persia. As a result, the King ordered the hanging of Haman and his 10 sons. The events of the Book of Esther are celebrated as the Jewish holiday of Purim.
In short, it could be said that the U.S. has elected an anti-interventionist, pro-appeasement Hoover/Carter/Chamberlain who is committed to appeasing a Hitler/Haman. And the U.S. Jewish electorate, ironically, voted overwhelmingly for the new President. Incredible....
POSTSCRIPT: Iran's rise is in part made possible by China, which has aligned itself with radical Islamist and Arab forces while maintaining diplomatic relations and strong trade ties with Israel, which is one of China's most important military technology suppliers. Like Taiwan, a successful, self-ruled democracy that China regards as a renegade province--and against which China has ominously amassed an arsenal of more than 1,000 ballistic missiles--thriving, democratic Israel is being abandoned by its friends and allies. Taiwan, ironically, has historically supported the Arab states against Israel. 
Anti-Semitism in China
Another irony: China has no history of anti-Semitism. In fact, the absence of religious persecution allowed the ancient Chinese Jewish community to completely assimilate. However, some Chinese media outlets and Internet sites have recently embraced anti-Semitic conspiracy theories. A publishing company subsidiary of state-owned CITIC Group, for example, has brought out a book, Currency War, which claims that a "Jewish banking cabal" was behind the battle of Waterloo, Adolf Hitler's rise to power, the deaths of several U.S. Presidents, including the assassination of John F. Kennedy, and the deep recession in Asia during the 1990s.
The book's author, Song Hongbing, a Chinese computer engineer who resides in the U.S., has become a celebrated financial analyst in China in the wake of the global financial meltdown, which has made Currency War a bestseller in China. Sales are estimated at over a million copies, excluding countless copies downloaded off the Internet. The publisher says Song's book has been read by all leading financial executives in the country, as well as state leaders.
Saturday, 2 May 2009
As the United States prepares to appease Iran and abandon Israel--a strategic U.S. ally and the only democracy in the Middle East--your Confidential Reporter considers the many ironies (or, as President Obama might put it, "a whole host" of ironies).
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