Reply #6: Very good discussion in Asia Times: [View All]

Yet Ahmadinejad's primary audience was the Muslim world. Indeed, he hardly cares about what the West thinks about him. Moreover, he spoke in Mecca, on the sidelines of the extraordinary summit meeting of the Organization of Islamic Conference (OIC). He has made an important point - he is in sync with the Muslim opinion that despite the ambivalence of some pro-American Arab regimes, there is a near-insurmountable barrier at present in reconciling with what today's Israel has come to represent.

Nothing graphically reflects this paradigm more than an interview published recently by the prominent Arabic newspaper al-Hayat with Fouad Siniora, the cosmopolitan prime minister of Lebanon: "I, Fouad Siniora, am a Lebanese, Arab patriot. I will not stand with Israel against Syria, or accept seeing Lebanon become a center for weakening Syria."

We are also seeing in Ahmadinejad's remarks a colossal breakdown of the "dialogue of civilizations" - and Iran's own disillusionment with it, though former president Mohammad Khatami had first mooted the idea some years ago with noble intentions. And that has everything to do with American regional policies in the Middle East.

It is tempting to point a finger at Ahmadinejad's alleged impetuosity as having prompted his remarks about Jews and the Holocaust, and to rush into wishful thinking that he was thereby placing himself out on a political limb in Iran's labyrinthine corridors of power. But Tehran lost no time in signalling it wasn't so. Ahmadinejad was hardly winding his way back to Tehran from Mecca when Iran's religious leadership at the highest levels also spoke out about Zionism.

Asia Times