Transcript

Host: Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, at a news conference in Saudi Arabia, denied that the Holocaust happened. "Some European countries insist on saying that Hitler killed millions of innocent Jews in furnaces," Mr. Ahmadinejad said. "We don't accept this claim," the Iranian president said, adding that if Europeans want to believe in the Holocaust, then they should make room for the state of Israel to move to Europe.

Of course, the Nazi German regime of dictator Adolf Hitler did in fact kill some six million Jews, and murdered millions of other civilians as well, during World War Two. Germany's chancellor, Angela Merkel, called the Iranian president's remarks "totally unacceptable." United Nations secretary general Kofi Annan was "shocked" by Mr. Ahmadinejad's claim. Adam Ereli is a U-S State Department spokesman:

Ereli: "These latest remarks, which we've seen reports of, are clearly both appalling and reprehensible. They certainly don't inspire hope among any of us in the international community that the government of Iran is prepared to engage as a responsible member of that community."

Host: President Ahmadinejad's comments come after having called Israel a "tumor" and saying the Jewish state should be "wiped off the map." Members of the U-N Security Council issued a statement to "condemn the remarks about Israel and the denial of the Holocaust." What is behind Iranian President Ahmadinejad's hostile rhetoric? I'll ask my guests: John O'Sullivan, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute; Roya Boroumand, executive director of the Boroumand Foundation for the Promotion of Democracy and Human Rights in Iran; and joining us by phone from Woodbridge, Connecticut: Roya Hakakian, author of the book: "Journey from the Land of No," a memoir of growing up a Jewish teenager in post-revolutionary Iran. Welcome and thanks for joining us today.

Host: Roya Boroumand, is this rhetoric coming from Mahmoud Ahmadinejad anything new in Iran?

Boroumand: Not really. We have heard this rhetoric for a long time. In the West there is always surprise about rhetoric like that coming from a head of state, but for us this is nothing new. Ahmadinejad is just one of the symptoms of the Islamic republic thinking, and what he says reflects what the leader of the Islamic republic has said and repeated over time in private or in public discourses. But most of it never gets here. And the details of these discourses often don’t get here, but this is nothing new.

Host: John O'Sullivan, is there a desire by the Iranian government to make something new of rhetoric that has always been there, by saying it publicly and repeatedly?

O’Sullivan: I don’t think that the government is entirely united on this. It seems to me that even if -- and I think you [Roya Boroumand] are right, that these opinions are widespread in the regime -- the regime has not agreed on expressing them as frankly and as outspokenly as the president has done. And I think that’s why the foreign office comes out and issues these soothing phrases. That doesn’t really mean it’s not a change of policy etc., etc. But of course, it is highly significant, when the president of a major state says something like this. We’ve just at the moment, talking of imprisoning the writer, David Irving for expressing a similar view of the Holocaust. Now if a writer can be imprisoned in Europe, are we going to do nothing about the president of a major country, and one which is acquiring nuclear weapons?

Host: Roya Hakakian, are you there by phone?

Hakakian: Yes, I am.

Host: Certainly it seems that this is not something inconsistent with the views of the regime. We had Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the supreme ruler of Iran, backing up Ahmadinejad and his comments. Hakakian: You’re right. Part of this regime has really stood on the foundation of three enmities and two of them have been with the United States and with Israel. Part of the reason why Ahmadinejad insists on bringing back the enmity with Israel and turning it into such a central issue is in a way, his way of paying homage to Ayatollah [Seyyed Ruhollah] Khomeini, and proving he is his disciple and wants to go back to the early spirit of the Iranian revolution, which during the last ten years at least had faded from the practical politics of the Iranian government. And he’s sort of trying to revoke that spirit back by refreshing those hostilities towards the United States and especially Israel.

Host: Roya Boroumand, does that mean that this is for internal consumption in Iran -- trying to rally those revolutionary troops? And why is that being done now?

Boroumand: Maybe it is a second cultural revolution. You can look at it that way. It is to rally troops. It’s also to remind what this regime is about. You have to remember that Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was as well as Ayatollah Khomeini, some of the high ranking members of the regime are all close to that thinking. They really truly believe in what they say and maybe this is a second cultural revolution because actually they – as Roya said, the ten past years have shown that the Iranian population is distancing itself seriously from the thinking of the founders of the regime. So, this might be a second cultural revolution. It also might be a symptom of the foreign policy of the Islamic Republic, if the Islamic Republic has gained ground in Iraq or has been having aggressive policies that have succeeded as well, then they become more arrogant about what they are about.

Host: John O'Sullivan, European countries have had much-improved relations with Iran in the last decade based on the belief that Iran was moderating, and that you had moderate influences coming to power in the government. How is Europe responding to the rather aggressivee hostile rhetoric that’s coming out of Iran?

O’Sullivan: Let me say, that all revolutions undergo their periods of Thermidorean reaction and corruption, and this regime is no different. It’s common belief among the Iranian people that the mullahs are enriching themselves at the expense of ordinary people. There are two reactions. You just expressed one and I agree with you. But I think there’ll also be, not just the populace, but some people in the regime will be taking a very different view of this -- will be reacting against it. And wondering how they will be getting themselves out of the mess that the mullahs are digging themselves into. You mentioned Europe. We had a similar situation in 1930s. We know there were people in the German government, who were not sympathetic to the Nazis, who wanted to carry out a coup, but the Nazis kept winning. Nobody resisted them. Consequently, the domestic opponents within the regime were increasingly discredited and disheartened. What you have to have in these circumstances is some clear statement -- you [the government of Iran] are not going to get away with this. There is a penalty to be paid. And a fairly sizable penalty at that. If that happens, then that will provoke developments within Iran, both within the populace, and within the regime, and that’s what we’re not really seeing at the moment from Europe, although we may see it. At the moment they are sticking with the kind of tired mantra about diplomacy. Now I’m not against diplomacy, I’m very much in favor of it, but it has to be back up by clear sanctions.

Host: Roya Hakakian, do you think that the expectation of there being diplomatic consequences for this kind of thing enters into the calculation at this point in the government of Iran.

Hakakian: After twenty six years, the world community has tried every diplomatic way in order to make headways with the Iranian regime, and I think there has to be a point –- the leaders can decide upon what that point is. There has to be a point however beyond which we say we’ve tried everything and we’re going to stop. And for Iranians -- especially those who have been watching from the diaspora the unfolding of events in Iran -- that point was reached a few years ago when President Khatami really failed to bring about the reform in Iran, as we had all hoped. And I think it took a lot longer for the international community to recognize that Khatami was not going to be able to be effective or to effectively bring about reform. And there has to be a point at which the rest of us, in the world community say that this regime cannot transform itself, and it’s not reformable, so what do we do next? I always go back to my own memories and recollection of what it was like in Yugoslavia when the students stormed the parliament and how glorious it was for me, as a viewer, to watch that happen. And I think Iran has reach that sort of a state, where we all say: Bring about a Milosevic-like decision and enforce it upon Iran when we say these are people we no longer are willing to deal with. And every other measure has been taken against them and we simply are going to stop negotiating.

Host: Roya Boroumand, what’s the situation within Iran, is there any dissent left in Iran. How effectively have the hardliners cracked down on liberal politics in Iran, how effective has that been at this point?

Boroumand: It has been pretty effective. There’s always dissent left and I will take a little bit of issue about the hardliners cracking down on liberals. I don’t think that any faction of the Islamic Republic leadership has been liberal per say. Unfortunately dissidents are liberals, but they never get to the point to be running for parliament or running for any kind of elections. The Islamic Republic has been pretty good at beheading any organized dissent. The dissent is very widespread, but they don’t let it be organized. And actually we can go back to Europe’s policies and diplomacy and support to reform in Iran. Europe has been pretty bad in supporting pro-democracy movements inside Iran, and if there is a point where you have to say stop, it’s not necessarily a point where you all can move troops inside the country, but it’s a point where you say, O-K, the United States and Europe agree that policies inside Iran are wrong and that dissidents should not be repressed, and laws should be reformed. And this would effect the nuclear policies as well, as well as this rhetoric. But we never had that. There would need to be a consensus, where you say, instead of saying I’m going to put all my money on this leader, or these people, or this faction, I’m just going to support them. No. You have to say, here is what you have, there is a system that doesn’t work, there’s a constitution that is extremely discriminatory vis-à-vis the population. You have a foreign policy that is explicitly violent and not peaceful, and seeking solutions to diplomacy, so you have to stop this and we will not play in the diplomatic game until we see concrete changes, and these we have never seen.

Host: John O'Sullivan, we have Muhammad El-Baradei of the International Atomic Energy Agency engaged in negotiations with Iran over its nuclear program, saying in the wake of its rhetoric that the international community was “losing patience with Iran.” What does that mean? Does that mean anything in terms of concrete action, or is there just sort of more rhetoric back and forth?

O’Sullivan: This, it seems to me, is the point at which everything becomes terribly difficult. Because I don’t know anybody who disagrees with the argument that there is no easy option in dealing with this regime. The military option – invasion doesn’t seem at all likely -- who would do it? I don’t see it on the cards. Taking out with air strikes the nuclear preparations – frankly, I’m told by the experts that these [nuclear sites] are now so widely dispersed that that is no longer the option it was with Iraq fifteen, twenty years ago. The regime change accomplished by assisting the opposition and giving it moral support the way we did with the oppositions of Eastern Europe? Again, I’m not against doing that. I think it’s a very good idea. But at the same time we shouldn’t expect any dramatic improvement on a short-term time scale. Yugoslavia is a good point. It took almost a decade and a half before we got the results of the democratic Serbia coming out of this. And then finally, there are non-military sanctions that the international community can take and these are available and I think that is the direction, frankly, in which we are going coupled with assistance to the democrats of Iran. But I’m afraid I probably differ from my two colleagues here in thinking that there are possibilities within the regime, not, I agree, liberals. But there were no liberals in the German government of the thirties, but what there were, were civilized conservatives, military officers who didn’t have genocidal attitudes to other people, and consequently they did eventually attempt to overthrow the regime and lost their lives. Now I don’t want to urge people to lose their lives in a doomed cause. But I’m sure there are other people in the Iranian regime -- we don’t know their names, just as we didn’t know the name of [Mikhail] Gorbachev until he emerged -- but they are there. And there has to be -- and we have to act in such a way as to make it possible for them at some point to say: This is a losing game. We’re unpopular throughout the world, even with our closest neighbors. We’ve got to do something different.

Host: Roya Hakakian, what’s your sense? Is change in Iran more likely to come from a sort of grass roots revolution, or from some sort of change by a set of realists within the government?

Hakakian: The realists within in government had their shot. President Khatami was the realist from the government. Everybody –- he had his own Carl Rove types around him, the masterminds and the architects who really envisioned the reform movement in Iran and were completely behind him. And really brought a very hopeful spirit to Iran in 1997. The greatest since then, the revolution, and they all failed. So we had our shot at creating another Gorbachev and it just didn’t work. Personally, I don’t think the change or the figure will come out of this cast of characters. To me the failure of Khatami is a glaring example of it being impossible for them to bring about. Hopefully from the grassroots movement within Iran, which needs probably a boost of support from the international community, some major change and wonderful changes would take place.

Host: Roya Boroumand.

Boroumand: I have to also add something to this. Which is that, we have to remember that Gorbachev was not the first generation revolutionary, and that the people that you are hopeful –- and that showed signs of moderation in the Iranian leadership are also the same people, including the architects, main architects of reform. The same people, whom in the 1980s, were running the Iranian government, and during whose government and leadership thousands of Iranians were executed. Iranians who were also pro-revolution, not only from the former regime, but pro-revolution Iranians who just differed in their vision of what should be done in a post-revolutionary Iran. So these people have a lot at stake and an open society is not good for them, and none of them wants –- any of these characters within the ruling elite who is more sensible now, and more amenable to a different policy is ejected from the leadership.

Host: John O'Sullivan, the regime in Iran as it draws criticism for these kinds of statements seems to assert its strategy for keeping there from being any actual consequences on, one, using the leverage it has as a major supplier of oil, with countries like China and India needing that oil. And on the other hand then, the potential threat of its nuclear program. How successful are they using those to prongs? And are they going to be able to keep the international community from taking any action, whether this rhetoric continues or even grows worse?

O'Sullivan: They have been quite successful at using the devices you are describing and exploiting the desire on the part of the Chinese, the Russians, and other powers, to have a defeat for the United States. Also, to some extent, they have been able to rally Iranian opinion, on the basis Iran is a great country, which is true, with a great history, which is true, and has to be prepared to stand up to the United States. Fortunately the President has undercut, all of these rather subtle and clever efforts by the nature of his rhetoric, and the fact that frankly, you can’t do -- after what happened in this century, and the last century -- you can’t dismiss this kind of talk as so much hot air. We did that last time and we were tragically mistaken.

Host: Roya Hakakian do you think that Europe and the rest of the international community are going to allow this to slide by and what’s the consequence, if this kind of rhetoric is dismissed in some way?

Hakakian: I don’t know what they are going to do, but, as a person, as an Iranian living outside of Iran, and as a person, who hopes, to see, one day, a free Iran where, the characters that Roya was referring to –- these people who brought about a great deal of suffering that Iranians have experienced over the past twenty-five years, see a sense of justice, and be brought to trial. I fear that the European community especially, and the international community at large, may strike some kind of a deal with Iran, where, in exchange for the giving up on the part of the Iranian government of the nuclear program, everything else, that they’re doing internally, especially with regards to their failures of bringing about civil liberties to the public, and abiding by the laws of human rights. The international community will then turn a blind eye to everything else, that’s really my fear.

Host: I’m afraid that’s going to have to be the last word for today. We’re out of time. Before we go, I'd like to thank my guests: John O'Sullivan of the Hudson Institute; Roya Boroumand of the Boroumand Foundation for Human Rights in Iran; and joining us by phone from Woodbridge, Connecticut: Roya Hakakian, author of the book: "Journey from the Land of No." We have created a new, interactive On The Line website which we hope you'll visit. The address is www.voanews.com/ontheline. For On The Line, I'm Eric Felten.