“buried” for what he says are American threats of a military attack on Tehran’s nuclear program.
Ahmadi-nejad is known for brash rhetoric in addressing the West, but in his speech Sunday he went a step further, using a deeply offensive Persian insult in response to US statements that the military option is still on the table.
“May the undertaker bury you, your table and your body, which has soiled the world,” he said, using language reserved in Iran only for hated enemies.
Several top US officials including Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, have said in recent months that the military option remains on the table. In response to a question, Mullen recently said the obvious, that the Pentagon has a plan in its files for an attack on Iran, a comment that was portrayed in Iran as an announcement by Mullen that he was eagerly working out the details for an attack. But Mullen actually has been one of the most vocal American officials criticizing the idea of military force, saying he is very concerned that the after effects would be great.
The truth is that no American official has threatened to attack Iran. Even under the Bush Administration, the standard language held that “all options are on the table,” a choice of words meant to sound strong while actually being hollow. If all options are on the table, then abject surrender is on the table.
Ahmadi-nejad spoke to a crowd of military men and clerics in the town of Hashtgerd just west of the capital. They laughed at the president’s insult and applauded his language.
The speech was broadcast by both state television and the official English-language PressTV, but the latter glossed over the insult in its simultaneous translation.
Ahmadi-nejad often uses strong language against the United States, even while a standard line of official Iranian rhetoric holds that Americans do not respect Iran and do not treat it fairly in their public comments.
In Sunday’s speech, Ahmadi-nejad again questioned who was behind the Sept. 11 attacks in the US. During his speech to the United Nations General Assembly last month, he said majorities of people in the US and around the world believe the American government staged the attacks. Polls do not show a majority outside the Middle East believes that, although large minorities do.
A recent Scripps-Howard poll of 1,010 Americans found 36 percent believed it likely that US officials either participated in the attacks or did nothing to stop them. But that is nowhere near the 82 percent of Americans that Iranian officials have said believe the American government launched the 9/11 attacks.
Ahmadi-nejad often resorts to provocative rhetoric. He has compared the power of Iran’s enemies to a “mosquito,” saying Iran deals with the West over its nuclear activities from a position of power and he has likened the United States to a “farm animal trapped in a quagmire” in Afghanistan.
