Partners in Evil By Joseph Klein April 17, 2006 FrontPageMagazine.com Original Source: http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=22077 Last week, UN Secretary General Kofi Annan referred to the thugs running Iran as his “partners”, whom he hopes can be convinced “to come back to the table” for more negotiations. Here is how his “partner”, Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, defines partnership. He rebuffed Mohamed ElBaradei, head of the UN’s International Atomic Energy Agency, who made a personal visit to Tehran on April 12th to ask its leaders to assure the world of Iran’s good intentions by suspending the regime’s nuclear enrichment program and proving that it is not seeking to develop a nuclear bomb. Not bothering to meet with Dr. ElBaradei himself, Kofi’s most trustworthy partner Ahmadinejad made clear what the outcome of the visit would be, as reported by the official IRNA news agency: Our answer to those who are angry about Iran achieving the full nuclear fuel cycle is just one phrase. We say: Be angry at us and die of this anger. Today Iran is a nuclear country and enjoys the position of a powerful country. This followed Ahmadinejad’s announcement on April 11th that Iran’s scientists had successfully enriched uranium to make nuclear fuel, which in turn came only a week after Iran’s war exercises demonstrating its supposed prowess in missile and stealth torpedo weaponry. And back in February, 2006, Ahmadinejad showed just what he really thought of his “partners” at the United Nations when he told a gathering of Hezbollah, Hamas and other radical Arab leaders in Tehran that the UN “can pass resolutions until they are blue in the face, according to a report in the Wall Street Journal. To paraphrase the old saying, with partners like these, who needs any enemies? However, judging by Iran’s treatment in the halls of the United Nations, you would think that Iran is the model member state, rather than the clear and present danger to international peace and security that it actually is. For example, at about the same time that Iran made its announcement about their progress in nuclear enrichment, the United Nations Commission on Disarmament shamelessly elected Iran as “deputy for Asian nations”. The next day, in his message to the Conference of the Parliamentary Union of the Member States of the Organization of the Islamic Conference (“OIC”), Kofi Annan avoided any mention of the challenge posed by Iran’s actions to peace and stability in the Middle East. Iran, after all, is a member of the OIC. Kofi would not want to offend their sensibilities. In fact, it was the Islamists’ sensibilities that he had in mind when he told the OIC Conference that “(Y)our anguish over the publication of insulting cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed is clear and understandable” and went on to say that the right of free speech “should not be used to degrade, humiliate or insult any group or individual.” Kofi Annan is more concerned that he not publicly humiliate Iran’s mullahs, who claim that pursuing their nuclear ambitions is Allah’s will and their ”inalienable right”, than exposing Iran’s unacceptably provocative behavior. As usual, Annan catered to his Islamic audience, highlighting the Israeli-Palestinian issue that Islamists use to divert attention from their own problems and misconduct. He told the OIC that Israel should “halt all settlement activities” and stop its targeted killings of militant leaders of terrorist organizations (which he calls “extra-judicial killings”). But he said not one word about Iran’s threats to annihilate Israel altogether, which Ahmadinejad repeated on the second day of Passover (which was also Good Friday) in a speech at the opening of a conference in support of the Palestinians: Like it or not, the Zionist regime is heading toward annihilation. The Zionist regime is a rotten, dried tree that will be eliminated by one storm. Annan is living in a fantasy world if he thinks Ahmadinejad and the fanatical mullahs who run Iran can be dealt with reasonably as rational human beings. It is reminiscent of Annan’s quote about Saddam Hussein during the 1990’s that “Saddam Hussein is a man I can do business with.” It is only in such a fantasy world that a country which had threatened to wipe a neighboring member state off the map still merits the UN’s respect as a fair-minded negotiating partner -- even after its president also told the rest of the world that Iran’s destiny as a nuclear power was irreversible and that those who were angry about Iran’s future as a “nuclear country” will “die of this anger.” The fanatics running Iran are the heirs to centuries of hatred and mass murder inspired by an Islamic tradition of jihad against infidels. It is manifested today in the daily acts of terrorism financed by Iran and in the Iranian regime’s threats to destroy their enemies in the West. These threats precede the current crisis and cannot be justified as simply a warning against a pre-emptive strike by the United States. For example, Hassan Abbasi , who has reportedly been the principal foreign policy voice in President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's administration and an influential Revolutionary Guard intelligence theoretician, had this to say two years ago according to the Middle East Media Research Institute’s quote from the London Arabic-language daily Al-Sharq Al-Awsat: “We have a strategy drawn up for the destruction of Anglo-Saxon civilization and for the uprooting of the Americans and the English. Our missiles are now ready to strike at their civilization, and as soon as the instructions arrive from Leader ['Ali Khamenei], we will launch our missiles at their cities and installations.” Kofi Annan says that it is not his job to deal with Iran’s threat to international peace and security, his partnership rhetoric notwithstanding. He says that it is up to the Security Council to deal with the problem. This is a complete dereliction of duty. Here are three things that Annan can and should do immediately: * Issue a statement that the new Human Rights Council he had in mind in his proposal for reform should have no place for Iran so long as it continues its defiance of the will of the Security Council and its imprisonment, torture and execution of political prisoners. One such prisoner is scheduled to die on May 16th, a week after the General Assembly’s election of the first members to the new Council. Iran offered its candidacy for a seat with no accompanying written pledge to protect the human rights and freedoms of its own people or abide by the wishes of the Security Council with regard to its nuclear enrichment program. Until Iran shapes up immediately by canceling the scheduled execution and suspending its nuclear enrichment program, Annan should denounce Iran’s candidacy as a travesty in as many appropriate public forums as he can before the election on May 9th.   * Tell Iran that he will no longer appoint any Iranian representatives to UN bodies for which he has appointment powers and immediately remove those he has appointed (such as he did to the Alliance of Civilizations UN panel and the UN’s Working Group on Internet Governance) unless Iran agrees to abide by the wishes of the Security Council regarding its nuclear program and stops threatening Israel with “annihilation’.   *Cough up some moral courage for once and take sides against Iran’s flagrant disregard of the UN Charter’s fundamental purpose to protect international peace and security. Definitely do no repeat the craven legalisms to protect Iran as we saw Annan do with Iraq.   Speak truth to power, Mr. Annan, and save whatever shred of your legacy that you can. Confront the brutality of the Islamo-fascist regime that has gripped Iran in a rein of terror for the last twenty-seven years and now threatens the world with a nuclear holocaust. These thugs are not your partners, Mr. Annan. They are the civilized world’s mortal enemies.