After Hassan Rohani won the presidential election in Iran on June 14, 2013, I decided to keep a record of Western reactions to the unexpected victory of the moderate candidate, as the subject of an article to be published on the eve of his inauguration on August 3. However, the material I collected was so extensive, that I feared I might lose track of what's what, and so I decided to present them to the reader earlier before returning to the subject again when Rohani is sworn in. The neoconservatives and Likudniks of America were holding out for another Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to win, that is, a reckless hardline candidate. While this has been my opinion both before and after Rohani's election, I found that it is also shared by Bill Maher, star of the US television network HBO. Maher was born to a Catholic father and a Jewish mother, and is a very intelligent liberal. Maher wrote that the neocons in the Washington Post had wanted another ‘crazy' like Ahmadinejad to win, and thought that Rohani would not be allowed to become president, and also wrote about the neocons' desire to start World War 3. This has also been my own opinion on the neocons and the villains in the Israel lobby, who plan for new wars on Arabs and Muslims every day. My other opinion is that the Iranian nuclear program would continue, whether a moderate or a hardliner won. I have always supported an Iranian military nuclear program, and called on the Arab countries, namely, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, to start similar military nuclear programs, as long as there is a confirmed nuclear arsenal in Israel. The president-elect is a moderate and a centrist, and is known in Iran as the "diplomatic cleric." After he won the election, he declared that he would work to restore confidence between Iran and the United States, Britain, and other Western powers. The US administration, after Rohani's election win, declared that it wants to launch direct talks with the new Iranian government. While I accept both of these stated positions as I heard them, I realize that Iran's goals differ from those of the U.S. Indeed, Iran wants better relations to reverse the crippling international sanctions and embargo, while the US administration wants to reach a negotiated agreement to stop the enrichment of uranium in Iran to levels that could allow it to produce a nuclear bomb. Some background: Recall that Hassan Rohani, for many years, served in the Iranian Supreme Council for National Security, as the personal representative of the Supreme Leader. In 2005, Rohani proposed allowing Iran to enrich uranium under the supervision of the International Atomic Energy Agency, in line with the terms of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, to the extent that enables Iran to generate electricity and conduct medical experiments. However, the administration of George W. Bush, that is, the neocons who ruled with him as a front, rejected Rohani's offer, and the confrontation continued as a result. Today, if the new president were to succeed in building bridges with the Western camp, he needs to enlist the help of the US administration. However, there are those in this administration and among the advocates of war in the media and the think tanks, who call for sustaining the sanctions and the embargo on Iran, purporting that the victory of the reformist Rohani was but the result of the success of these sanctions in turning the majority of the Iranian people against the hardliners. Tomorrow, I will write about the warmongering gang, the Israel lobby, and the Likudniks of America and their position on Iran. But today, I conclude by saying that the Iranian nuclear program, which was exposed by Iranian dissidents, is more than 20 years old. Therefore, it must have survived under the ‘moderates' Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani and Mohammad Khatami, long before Mahmoud Ahmadi Ahmadinejad and Hassan Rohani, and I insist it will survive regardless of any successful or unsuccessful negotiations. So I once again call on the Arab countries to pursue a similar program. They are indeed able to do so, and they lack in nothing except the will. [email protected]
