Deluded Rant
Iran prez’s laughable claim to want peace
IRANIAN President Hassan Rouhani suffers, or benefits, from what the shrinks call “projection” — seeing in other people one’s own faults.
“Moderation is the inclination as well as the chosen path of the great Iranian people,” Rouhani told the UN General Assembly Wednesday.
This from a man who told supporters back in May, after winning an election that included only mullah-approved candidates, “We are proud of our armed forces, the Revolutionary Guards, the Basij and the security forces.”
These thugs are the skullcrushers of regime opponents at home and exporters of the Islamic Revolution abroad, where they create proxy armies like Hezbollah. Rouhani’s Iran also sends weapons to the Houthis in Yemen, Hamas in Gaza and Shiite proxy gangs from Afghanistan to Africa. Its troops and militias help keep Syrian butcher Bashar al-Assad in power.
Yet, Rouhani told the United Nations, his Iran is the same country that once defended Jews and now defends the people of Palestine. It’s “supporting justice and seeking tranquility,” he said. And “our ambassadors are our poets, our mystics and our philosophers.”
The real threat, as he sees it, to that tranquility? You can probably guess.
“It is reprehensible that the rogue Zionist regime that threatens regional and global security with its nuclear arsenal and is not committed to any international instrument or safeguard has the audacity to preach to peaceful nations,” said the man Obama officials swore was a “moderate.”
Which may explain why his regime annually celebrates the future erasure of those Zionists from the map, while chanting “death to America.”
Oh, America. President Trump said a day earlier, much to the horror of some in the UN hall, that Iran “masks a corrupt dictatorship behind the false guise of a democracy.”
Rouhani wouldn’t have it. “The ignorant, absurd and hateful rhetoric, filled with ridiculously baseless allegations, that was uttered before this august body yesterday, was not only unfit” for UN ears, but also slows everyone’s attempt “together to combat war and terror,” he said.
In a press conference later, Rouhani also demanded an “apology” from Trump for “insulting the Iranian people.”
He misses Trump’s predecessor, who gave us the nuclear deal, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action. A delusional Rouhani sang its praises.
“Just imagine for a minute how the Middle East would look had the JCPOA not been concluded,” Rouhani told the UN. “Imagine that along with civil wars, Takfiri terror, humanitarian nightmares and complex socio-political crises in West Asia, that there was a manufactured nuclear crisis. How would we all fare?”
Well, perhaps without the deal’s cash windfall, Iran would find it harder to fight in civil wars, promote terrorism and give nightmares to its neighbors. And maybe its nuclear program would become such an economic burden that the mullahs would be forced to scrap it.
But enough of alternate realities. Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif was scheduled to attend a meeting of the deal’s principals Wednesday evening with Secretary of State Rex Tillerson.
“We have our complaints” about America’s compliance, Rouhani told reporters, perhaps mirroring America’s complaints about Iran exceeding its permitted production of plutonium, limiting access to UN inspectors and testing missiles in violation of the UN resolution that endorsed the deal.
Meanwhile, even once-enthusiastic deal supporters have started worrying aloud about its “sunset clause,” which allows Iran to legally manufacture nuclear bombs immediately after the deal expires, in a decade or so. Rouhani warned them that renegotiation is out of the question.
“Iran will not be the first country to violate the agreement, but it will respond decisively and resolutely to its violation by any party,” he told the UN assembly.
Trump appears unintimidated by all this. He has been instructing his aides to find ways to decertify and renegotiate what he calls “an embarrassment to the United States.” Rouhani, naturally, wants to keep the deal, which is good for Iran and good for his political career.
The UN types that applauded Rouhani’s speech — there were many — are increasingly convinced Iran is a beacon of moderation and Trump’s America is the rogue regime.
You might call that a masterful switcheroo. Psychiatrists call it projection.