One gloomy morning at the State Department a very long time ago, a colleague brightened my day by saying “you know it’s a good thing we don’t have an embassy in Tehran any more.” “Why?” I asked. “Because then we’d have to read yet another cable saying “yes, it’s true these guys are bad, but we’d better support them because if they fall, the extremists will take over.”
There are several variations on this theme, ranging from “if only Stalin knew what his people are up to, he’d take care of it,” to “well you know he (pick your dictator) can’t control some of these crazy people.”
The latest version is the attempt to portray the various aggressive actions of the Revolutionary Guards and its Qods Force as independent of the true leaders of the regime. The BBC has long excelled at peddling this nonsense, and trots it out again this morning.
Iranian political scientists say there are factions in the Revolutionary Guards who are spoiling for a fight – extreme hardliners who think if a confrontation with the West is inevitable it is better it happen over the nuclear issue than Iran’s human rights record.
But for the most part, the BBC contents itself by repeating the old cliches of moral equivalence: Khamenei’s fierce New Year’s speech is equated with Bush’s “Axis of Evil” address, and what-can-you-expect-from-the-poor-darlings-since-the-ugly-americans-have-backed-them-into-a-corner?
It’s ridiculous. Khamenei’s speech was cut from the same cloth as hundreds of similar tirades going back to Khomeini’s teachings long before the overthrow of the shah. And the notion that the Revolutionary Guards are in any way “independent” is utterly fanciful. Outfits like the BBC are running from the truth as fast as possible, trying to paralyze the West. Just like Nancy Pelosi and the fat ex-Marine from Pennsylvania.
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