Really moderate, or just for show? Iranian President Rouhani. Illustrative. FEMA/Marty Bahamonde.
As if Iran test firing long-range missiles wasn’t bad enough, one of them literally conveyed an anti-Israel message—and Iran made sure their most hated enemy got the point. The Iranian Fars News Agency reported that one of the Qadr missiles capable of hitting Israel and tested on Wednesday had written on it “Israel should be wiped off the Earth”—in Hebrew, not the Iranian Farsi language.
The intentional message hearkens to the many times Iranian leaders have said Israel should be destroyed, a shocking comment to say about another member of the United Nations. The expression of such bravado has had its ups and downs, especially recently. But the missile test implies that the efforts to appear moderate are just a façade. Assurances from the US, meanwhile, sounded hollow in the face of the missile tests.
US Vice President Joe Biden, in Israel on a visit, was quoted by an Israeli press release as telling Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu the same day as the tests, “We’re united in the belief that a nuclear armed Iran is an absolutely unacceptable threat to Israel, to the region and to the United States. And I want to reiterate which I know people still doubt here. If in fact they break the deal, we will act.”
However, Biden then implied the missile tests would not necessarily result in such action. “All their conventional activity outside of the deal is still beyond the deal, and we will and are attempting to act wherever we can find it,” said Biden.
In Iran, the leader of the powerful Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) paramilitary group was quoted by Fars as saying on Tuesday that they would do their best to defend Iran, saying, “It is the enemies of the Islamic Revolution and regional security that should be afraid of the IRGC missiles.”
(By Joshua Spurlock, www.themideastupdate.com, March 9, 2016)