November 08-2013
Supreme Leader Ali Khamenehi has told the political elite to stop criticizing those Iranians who are negotiating with the Big Six powers over Iran’s nuclear program.
Khamenehi said the negotiators are loyal people who must be supported by all Iranians.
He repeated his previous assessment that the likelihood of ever reaching an agreement with the Big Six was dim. But he said that shouldn’t stop Iranians of all political stripes from giving their support to the initiative.
It was yet another in his many efforts over the years to convince politicians to lower their voices, trim their rhetoric and cease confronting their opponents with ridicule rather than logic. The impact is likely to be the same as in the past. Politicians and commentators will pay lip service to his appeal—and then go right on knifing their rivals.
Khamenehi spoke out Sunday in a speech on the eve of the celebrations marking the 34th anniversary of the seizure of the US embassy, which he called “the brave retaliatory movement by the students.”
The primary thrust of the speech was, of course, anti-American. And Khamenehi took great pleasure in pointing out the US had just been exposed for using many of its embassies around the world to spy on its allies.
“Our young students captured and called the US embassy the ‘Den of Spies.’ Now, after more than three decades, the US embassies in Europe are called ‘dens of spies,’ which indicate that our young students had been ahead of the times,” Khamenehi said.
The Supreme Leader continued: “The US government is a government with a penchant for dominance. It grants itself the right to interfere in the affairs of all nations.
”But the Iranian people stand against the bullying and domination of the US, and, after the revolution, they extirpated the roots of American influence inside this country. And, unlike some other countries, Iran did not abandon the revolution,” he said.
Then he turned to the issue of the negotiations with the Big Six, and lauded the Iranian negotiators, who are dismissed by hardliners as naive at best. “The negotiators are all the children of the revolution and are the agents of the Islamic Republic…. No one should disrespect them or call them compromisers.”
He said, “They have a difficult mission and no one may demoralize an official who is busy with his work.”
Khamenehi pointed out that the negotiations deal only with nuclear issues and no other topic. “With providence from God, we will suffer no damage from these negotiations; rather, we will gain experience very similar to that obtained during the temporary suspension of enrichment from 2003 to 2005, which will enrich our people’s analytical capabilities.”
Elaborating on the experience of those years in an apparent effort to convince his listeners that the negotiations are useful for Iran, he said, “A decade ago, during negotiations with the Europeans, we accepted a temporary [enrichment] suspension, which, in reality, was imposed on us…. After two years of suspension, everyone came to the conclusion that no hope could be invested in cooperation with the western side.”
He said, “The temporary suspension revealed to all that those across the table were seeking other [hidden] objectives; so, we resumed the [enrichment] program and went forward.”
The Supreme Leader berated “naive, tendentious propagandists” who “wage attempts to mislead the public and promote the idea that if we compromise on the nuclear issue, all economic and other problems will be solved overnight.”
He laughed at that idea, citing history. “When, on the eve of the revolution, the US sanctioned Iran, did the nuclear issue exist? When they targeted and downed our passenger jet over the Persian Gulf, was the nuclear issue the pretext? When they launched a coup d’etat at the Nojeh military base [a July 1980 military plot for which there is no evidence of US involvement], did they have the nuclear issue as an excuse? And when they politically and logistically supported the opposition groups after the revolution, was there any nuclear issue?”
Then he got to his point, which was to disparage all talk that the nuclear negotiations might actually solve Iran’s problems with the world. “If we suppose that one day, the issue is solved by our concessions, they would just find other ways to resume their enmity toward us—missile technology, Iran’s hostility to the Zionist regime, our support for the [anti-Zionist] Resistance front being among them,” he said.
This is an argument Kha-menehi has often made—that the Americans just hate Iran and Iranians, Islam and Muslims, and that the nuclear issue is but a tool with which to hammer the revolution.
“The US animosity toward Iran is based on the fact that the Islamic Republic rejected their demands, and that we believe that the US can achieve nothing against us,” he said.__“The US opposes the existence of the Islamic Republic of Iran and its influence, prestige and power.”
Khamenehi mentioned the large American debt, political infighting among US officials that produced the 16-day government shutdown, and what he called discord between the US and the EU on issues such as military intervention in Syria as examples of Western flailing about.
The Supreme Leader announced his full support for President Rohani’s initiative on negotiations. “If it succeeds, all the better. However, if it fails, this will mean that we should rely on ourselves in handling such issues,” he said, repeating his frequent assertion that a smiling enemy should not be trusted.
“Deal with the other side’s words and actions with due caution. They will smile, and, at the same time, say all options are on the table. However, they will not reveal their true intentions,” he said. “They are obliged to the Zionists, but we are not.”
In one of his misstatements of fact, Khamenehi said the United States is the most despised and distrusted country in the world, although repeated polls show it in the upper half though far from the top in respect while the Islamic Republic is unfailingly at or near the very bottom.
