October-18-2013
The Rohani Administration has canceled an anti-Zionist conference in an apparent effort to show moderation to the West and help it carve out a new diplomatic path for Iran.
The annual event was set up by Rohani’s predecessor, Mahmud Ahmadi-nejad, and showcased the former president’s vitriolic anti-Israeli rhetoric and the regime’s anti-Israeli sentiments.
But the regime’s anti-Israel posture goes back to the first days of the revolution and has nothing at all to do with Ahmadi-nejad, who merely rode that ideology to ever-greater rhetorical heights.
There is no sign the government is abandoning its anti-Israel stance. To do so would likely set off a fury from the hardliners. But the cancellation and statements made by Rohani in recent weeks indicate he wants to keep put the anti-Israel policy on a higher political plane of defending Palestinians from the seizure of their land and to avoid anything that hints of crude anti-Semitism.
Iranian news websites, including jahannews.com, said Friday that the Foreign Ministry scrapped the gathering in Tehran because it was seen as undermining the government’s policy of “interaction with the outside world.”
Hard-liners accuse Rohani of selling out on Iran’s ideological values. One of the organizers of the anti-Israel conference, dubbed New Horizon, said the cancellation was a “disaster” and a “big mistake.”
“Cancellation of the anti-Zionist New Horizon festival is a disaster. It was the most powerful anti-Zionist conference in Iran,” the website mashregh-news.ir quoted the organizer, Nader Talebzadeh, as saying.
Talebzadeh said 63 foreign scholars and 50 Iranian speakers were expected to address the gathering, which was supposed to have taken place this month. He added that he began inviting foreign speakers back in May, when Ahmadi-nejad was still in office.