January 10-2014
. . . new target
For decades, the Islamic Republic has blamed most of the world’s ills primarily on the alliance of the United States and Isarel. That trend may now be shifting.
Many regime officials, especially those in the military, continue to hammer the alliance of Israel and the United States. But on Friday, the clergymen Ahmad Khatami, leading Friday prayers in Tehran, saw all evil emanating from the vile alliance of the United States and Saudi Arabia.
Whether this is Khatami’s own flight of rhetoric or whether it is a new propaganda line of the regime remains to be seen.
Themes for sermons at Friday prayers are distributed to the multitude of Friday prayer leaders around the country by a central office in Tehran under the aegis of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenehi. If more Friday prayer sermons in the coming weeks sound the theme of a corrupt alliance of Washington and Riyadh, it will then be clear that the regime has a new theme to sell to the public.
Khatami told the congregation Friday: “The source of all acts of terror is the United States. The US wants a tense Islamic world. The agent that carries out US schemes is Saudi Arabia. They have said outright that they themselves had a hand in the crimes in Lebanon. They have a hand in the crimes in Iraq.”
In the past, it was the norm in Iran to say that Israel was planted in the Middle East by America to be its agent against Muslims. However, more than a decade ago, Khamenehi departed from that theme and, in a long policy speech, explained that Israel actually ran the United States like a puppet.
But Khatami’s shift was a very major change in propaganda rhetoric—and likely reflects the current Sunni-Shia battle across the Arab world. At the government level, some see that battle turning into a Saudi-Iranian war by proxy. Saudi Arabia has been challenging Iran in Syria for more than a year and appears now to have taken the challenge into Lebanon with its offer last week of $3 billion for the Lebanese Army.
There are also rumors of the Saudis preparing for much deeper involvement in Iraq challenging Iran. The Saudis also feel they countered Iran in Bahrain, although the United States says Iran was not deeply involved there. And the Saudis are concerned at what they see as growing Iranian involvement with rebel groups in Yemen—in Saudi Arabia’s backyard.
From Tehran’s perspective, therefore, the real battle underway at this moment is with the Saudi monarchy. If this is indeed the perspective of Tehran, one can expect to see much more anti-Saudi rhetoric from Iran in the coming weeks.
The goal for the Islamic Republic is to stop Saudi Arabia from becoming a greater power in the Islamic world. As Khatami said, “Like it or not, Iran is a world power and a great power in the Islamic world. Wherever it attends, there is logic, reason and compassion. That is why the world of arrogance [the United States] does not like it.”
