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Revue <strong>de</strong> Presse-Press Review-Berhevoka Çapê-Rivista Stampa-Dentro <strong>de</strong> la Prensa-Baszn Ozeti<br />
archy. But if the sectarian war in Iraq<br />
worsened, the Saudis would be likely to<br />
line up with Sunni tribal lea<strong>de</strong>rs.<br />
The Saudi ambassador to the United<br />
States, Prince Turki al-Faisal, who told<br />
his staff Monday that he was resigning<br />
his post, recently dismissed Nawaf<br />
Obaid, a consultant who wrote an opin~<br />
ion piece in The Washington Post two<br />
weeks ago contending that "one of the<br />
first consequences" of a U.S. pullout<br />
from Iraq would "be massive Saudi intervention<br />
to stop Iranian-backed Shiite<br />
militias from butchering Iraqi Sunnis."<br />
Obaid also suggested that Saudi Arabia<br />
could cut world oil priees in half by<br />
ical discrimination to Moscow tô embarrass<br />
Washington, Ahmadinejad enjoys<br />
pointing out that countries like<br />
Germany, France and Austria claim to<br />
champion free <strong>de</strong>bate yet make Holocaust<br />
<strong>de</strong>nial illegal.<br />
He has also repeatedly tried to draw<br />
!DoraI equivalency between questionmg<br />
the Holocaust and the <strong>de</strong>cision in<br />
Europe last year to publish cartoons<br />
lampooning the Prophet Muhammad. It<br />
wins him favor at home and across the<br />
Arab world for standing up to the West<br />
and allows him to present himself a~<br />
morally superior to the West.<br />
But there is another important point.<br />
Ahmadinejad actually seems to believe<br />
that the volumes of documentation,<br />
testimony and living memory of the<br />
Nazi genoci<strong>de</strong> are at best exaggerated<br />
and part of a Zionist conspiracy to falsify<br />
history so as to create the case for Israising<br />
its production, a move that he<br />
said "would be <strong>de</strong>vastating to Iran,<br />
which is facing economic difficulties<br />
even with today's high oil priees." The<br />
Saudi government disavowed Obaid's<br />
column, and Turki en<strong>de</strong>d his contract.<br />
But Arab diplomats said Tuesday that<br />
Obaid's column reflected the view of<br />
the Saudi government, whieh has ma<strong>de</strong><br />
clear its opposition to a U.S. pullout<br />
fromlraq.<br />
ln a speech in Phila<strong>de</strong>lphia last week,<br />
Turki reiterated the Saudi position. "Just<br />
pieking up and leaving is going to create<br />
a huge vacuum," he told the World Affairs<br />
Council. "The U.S. must un<strong>de</strong>rline<br />
Evi<strong>de</strong>nce of that came in a revealing<br />
interview last May with the German<br />
magazine Der Spiegel. The interviewer<br />
mostly wanted to discuss Iran's nuclear<br />
ambitions and its refusaI to give up<br />
uranium enrichment, but the discussion<br />
kept returning to the Holocaust. At<br />
one point, the exasperated interviewer<br />
actually lectured the Iranian presi<strong>de</strong>nt<br />
on Germany's culpability.<br />
"ln our view, there is no doubt that<br />
the Germans unfortunately bear the<br />
guilt for the mur<strong>de</strong>r of six million," the<br />
Spiegel journalist said to Ahmadinejad.<br />
The presi<strong>de</strong>nt gave little ground, saying<br />
Germans should rid themselves of<br />
such guilt. "1 will only accèpt something<br />
as truth if 1am actually convinced<br />
of it," he said.<br />
Across the Middle East, contempt for<br />
Jews and Zionism is wi<strong>de</strong>spread and utterly<br />
mainstream. Many say the Holoits<br />
support for the Maliki government<br />
because there is no other game in town."<br />
On Monday, prominent Saudi clerics<br />
called on Sunni Muslims to mobilize<br />
against Shiites in Iraq. The statement<br />
called the "mur<strong>de</strong>r, torture and displacement<br />
of Sunnis" an "outrage."<br />
The resignation of Turki, a former<br />
Saudi intelligence chief, was supposed<br />
to be formally announced Monday, officiaIs<br />
said, but had not happened by late<br />
Tuesday. "They're keeping us very<br />
puzzled," a Saudi officiaI said.<br />
Hassan M. Fattah contributed reportingfrom<br />
Dubai.<br />
Holocaust conference:<br />
As much about Iran's<br />
ambition as its beliefs<br />
Dy Michael Slackman<br />
CAIRO: Iran's so-called Holocaust<br />
conference earlier this week was billed<br />
as a chance to force the West to reconsi<strong>de</strong>r<br />
~e. historical record and, thereby,<br />
the legttlmacy of Israel. The question,<br />
then, is why the Iranians would invite<br />
speakers with so little credibility in the<br />
West, including a former Ku Klux Klan<br />
grand wizard and disgraced European<br />
scholars.<br />
But that question misses the point.<br />
Iran's presi<strong>de</strong>nt, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad,<br />
sees conference partie-<br />
News<br />
Analysis<br />
ipants like David Duke, the<br />
former Louisiana Klan lea<strong>de</strong>r,<br />
and France's Robert<br />
Faurisson, who has <strong>de</strong>voted his life to<br />
trying to prove the Nazi gas chambers<br />
were a myth, as silenced truth-tellers<br />
whose stories expose Western lea<strong>de</strong>rs as<br />
the hypocrites he consi<strong>de</strong>rs them to be.<br />
Just as Soviet lea<strong>de</strong>rs used to invite<br />
Americans who suffered racial or polit-<br />
rael. As a former member of the Revolutionary<br />
Guards, he was indoctrinated<br />
with such thinking, political analysts in<br />
Tehran said, and in fact as a radical stu<strong>de</strong>nt<br />
lea<strong>de</strong>r, he championed such a view.<br />
Now he bas a platform to promote his<br />
theories and try to position himself regionally<br />
as a reasonable man simply asking<br />
the hard questions. The meeting inclu<strong>de</strong>d<br />
no attempt to come to terms with<br />
the nature of the well-documented Nazi<br />
slaughter, offering only a platform to<br />
those pursuing the fantasy that it never<br />
happened. ln addition, the organizers of<br />
the conference, a small circle around the<br />
presi<strong>de</strong>nt, have been building ties with<br />
neo-Nazi groups in Europe.<br />
"He is connected to people in Iran<br />
who trust his way of doing things and<br />
who seriously believe the Holocaust did<br />
not take place," said Martin Ebbing, a<br />
German journalist based in Tehran who<br />
bas closely followed the issue with the<br />
presi<strong>de</strong>nt. "They seriously believe it."<br />
caust has been wildly exaggerated and<br />
used to justify the creation of the Jewish<br />
state in 1948at the expense of Palestinians,<br />
a move viewed as yet another example<br />
of Western imperialism.<br />
Anti-Western rage fueled the 1979Iranian<br />
r~volution, and Ahmadinejad has<br />
tried to rekindle the energy of the revolution<br />
by spreading Iran's influence beyond<br />
its bor<strong>de</strong>rs. Battling Washington,<br />
chiding Arab lea<strong>de</strong>rs and claiming to<br />
promote the Palestinian cause have<br />
ma<strong>de</strong> him extremely popular on the<br />
streets from Cairo to Morocco.<br />
Such actions have also helped turn attention<br />
away from his inability so far to<br />
<strong>de</strong>liver on promises of economic populism,<br />
including a redistribution ofIran's<br />
enormous economic wealth and greater<br />
social justice for the bulk of the country<br />
that is struggling to make ends meet.<br />
The presi<strong>de</strong>nt's i<strong>de</strong>as do not resonate<br />
in aIl corners of Iran, though, and some<br />
political scientists there say they have<br />
served to embarrass officiaIs who, even<br />
if they agree, do not want to see a focus<br />
on Holocaust <strong>de</strong>nial further isolate Iran.<br />
"1raise two questions about this conference,"<br />
said Ahmad Shirzad, a reformist<br />
politician and former member of Parliament.<br />
"First, how much does this solve<br />
the problems our people are faced with?<br />
And secondly, which one of our goals<br />
were realized? It looks like he wants to<br />
make news and do provocative things."<br />
Others see an even more ambitious<br />
post-Iraq agenda reflected in Ahmadinejad's<br />
high profile on the issues of<br />
Jews, the Holocaust and Israel.<br />
"It is for public consumption in Arab<br />
countries," said Mustafa EI-Labbad, editor<br />
of Sharqnameh Magazine, which<br />
specializes in Iranian affairs and is<br />
published in Cairo. "It is specifically directed<br />
toward <strong>de</strong>epening the gap between<br />
the people and their regimes and<br />
toward embarrassing the rulers so that<br />
the regional power vacuum, especially<br />
after Iraq, can be filled by Iran."<br />
l{t'ralb~(!tribllnt'<br />
December 14, 2006<br />
43