There has been no magic hand guiding Turkey and Russia as they form the axis of a new political formation. Turkey, once the ‘sick man of Europe’, is now ‘the only healthy man of Europe’, notes Eric Walberg.
The neocon plan to transform the Middle East and Central Asia into a pliant client of the US empire and its only-democracy-in-the-Middle-East is now facing a very different playing field. Not only are the wars against the Palestinians, Afghans and Iraqis floundering, but they have set in motion unforeseen moves by all the regional players.
The empire faces a resurgent Turkey, heir to the Ottomans, who governed a largely peaceful Middle East for half a millennium. As part of a dynamic diplomatic outreach under the Justice and Development Party (AKP), Turkey re-established the Caliphate visa-free tradition with Albania, Jordan, Lebanon, Libya and Syria last year. In February Turkish Culture and Tourism Minister Ertugrul Gunay offered to do likewise with Egypt. There is “a great new plan of creating a Middle East Union as a regional equivalent of the European Union” with Turkey, fresh from a resounding constitutional referendum win by the AKP, writes Israel Shamir.
Turkey also established a strategic partnership with Russia during the past two years, with a visa-free regime and ambitious trade and investment plans (denominated in rubles and lira), including the construction of new pipelines and nuclear energy facilities.
Just as Turkey is heir to the Ottomans, Russia is heir to the Byzantines, who ruled a largely peaceful Middle East for close to a millennium before the Turks. Together, Russia and Turkey have far more justification as Middle Eastern “hegemons” than the British-American 20th century usurpers, and they are doing something about it.
In a delicious irony, invasions by the US and Israel in the Middle East and Eurasia have not cowed the countries affected, but emboldened them to work together, creating the basis for a new alignment of forces, including Russia, Turkey, Syria and Iran.
Syria, Turkey and Iran are united not only by tradition, faith, resistance to US-Israeli plans, but by their common need to fight Kurdish separatists, who have been supported by both the US and Israel. Their economic cooperation is growing by leaps and bounds. Adding Russia to the mix constitutes a like-minded, strong regional force encompassing the full socio-political spectrum, from Sunni and Shia Muslim, Christian, even Jewish, to secular traditions.
This is the natural regional geopolitical logic, not the artificial one imposed over the past 150 years by the British and now US empires. Just as the Crusaders came to wreak havoc a millennium ago, forcing locals to unite to expel the invaders, so today’s Crusaders have set in motion the forces of their own demise.
Turkey’s bold move with Brazil to defuse the West’s stand-off with Iran caught the world’s imagination in May. Its defiance of Israel after the Israeli attack on the Peace Flotilla trying to break the siege of Gaza in June made it the darling of the Arab world.
Russia has its own, less spectacular contributions to these, the most burning issues in the Middle East today. There are problems for Russia. Its crippled economy and weakened military give it pause in anything that might provoke the world superpower. Its elites are divided on how far to pursuit accommodation with the US. The tragedies of Afghanistan and Chechnya and fears arising from the impasse in most of the “stans” continue to plague Russia’s relations with the Muslim Middle East.
Since the departure of Soviet forces from Egypt in 1972, Russia has not officially had a strong presence in the Middle East. Since the mid- 1980s, it saw a million-odd Russians emigrate to Israel, who like immigrants anywhere, are anxious to prove their devotion and are on the whole unwilling to give up land in any two-state solution for Palestine. As Anatol Sharansky quipped to Bill Clinton after he emigrated, “I come from one of the biggest countries in the world to one of the smallest. You want me to cut it in half. No, thank you.” Russia now has its very own well-funded Israel Lobby; many Russians are dual Israeli citizens, enjoying a visa-free regime with Israel.
Then there is Russia’s equivocal stance on the stand-off between the West and Iran. Russia cooperates with Iran on nuclear energy, but has concerns about Iran’s nuclear intentions, supporting Security Council sanctions and cancelling the S-300 missile deal it signed with Iran in 2005. It is also increasing its support for US efforts in Afghanistan. Many commentators conclude that these are signs that the Russian leadership under President Dmitri Medvedev is caving in to Washington, backtracking on the more anti-imperial policy of Putin. “They showed that they are not reliable,” criticised Iranian Defence Minister Ahmad Vahidi.
Russia is fence-sitting on this tricky dilemma. It is also siding, so far, with the US and the EU in refusing to include Turkey and Brazil in the negotiations over Iran’s nuclear programme. “The Non-Aligned countries in general, and Iran in particular, have interpreted the Russian vote as the will on the part of a great power to prevent emerging powers from attaining the energy independence they need for their economic development. And it will be difficult to make them forget this Russian faux pas,” argues Thierry Meyssan at voltairenet.org.
Whatever the truth is there, the cooperation with Iran and now Turkey, Syria and Egypt on developing peaceful nuclear power, and the recent agreement to sell Syria advanced P-800 cruise missiles show Russia is hardly the plaything of the US and Israel in Middle East issues. Israel is furious over the missile sale to Syria, and last week threatened to sell “strategic, tie-breaking weapons” to “areas of strategic importance” to Russia in revenge. On both Iran and Syria, Russia’s moves suggest it is trying to calm volatile situations that could explode.
There are other reasons to see Russia as a possible Middle East powerbroker. The millions of Russian Jews who moved to Israel are not necessarily a Lieberman-like Achilles Heel for Russia. A third of them are scornfully dismissed as not sufficiently kosher and could be a serious problem for a state that is founded solely on racial purity. Many have returned to Russia or managed to move on to greener pastures. Already, such prominent rightwing politicians as Moshe Arens, political patron of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, are considering a one-state solution. Perhaps these Russian immigrants will produce a Frederik de Klerk to re-enact the dismantling of South African apartheid.
Russia holds another intriguing key to peace in the Middle East. Zionism from the start was a secular socialist movement, with religious conservative Jews strongly opposed, a situation that continues even today, despite the defection of many under blandishments from the likes of Ben Gurion and Netanyahu. Like the Palestinians, True Torah Jews don’t recognise the “Jewish state”.
But wait! There is a legitimate Jewish state, a secular one set up in 1928 in Birobidjan Russia, in accordance with Soviet secular nationalities policies. There is nothing stopping the entire population of Israeli Jews, orthodox and secular alike, from decamping to this Jewish homeland, blessed with abundant raw materials, Golda Meir’s “a land without a people for a people without a land”. It has taken on a new lease on life since the collapse of the Soviet Union. Russian President Dmitri Medvedev made an unprecedented visit this summer, the first ever of a Russian (or Soviet) leader and pointed out the strong Russian state support it has as a Jewish homeland where Yiddish, the secular language of European Jews (not sacred Hebrew), is the state language.
There has been no magic hand guiding Turkey and Russia as they form the axis of a new political formation. Rather it is the resilience of Islam in the face of Western onslaught, plus — surprisingly — a page from the history of Soviet secular national self-determination. Turkey, once the “sick man of Europe”, is now “the only healthy man of Europe”, Turkish President Abdullah Gul was told at the UN Millennium Goals Summit last week, positioning it along with the Russian, and friends Iranian and Syrian to clean up the mess created by the British empire and its “democratic” offspring, the US and Israel.
While US and Israeli strategists continue to pore over mad schemes to invade Iran, Russian and Turkish leaders plan to increase trade and development in the Middle East, including nuclear power. From a Middle Eastern point of view, Russia’s eagerness to build power stations in Iran, Turkey, Syria and Egypt shows a desire to help accelerate the economic development that Westerners have long denied the Middle East — other than Israel — for so long. This includes Lebanon where Stroitransgaz and Gazprom will transit Syrian gas until Beirut can overcome Israeli-imposed obstacles to the exploitation of its large reserves offshore.
Russia in its own way, like its ally Turkey, has placed itself as a go-between in the most urgent problems facing the Middle East — Palestine and Iran. “Peace in the Middle East holds the key to a peaceful and stable future in the world,” Gul told the UN Millennium Goals Summit — in English. The world now watches to see if their efforts will bear fruit.
Eric Walberg writes for Egypt’s Al-Ahram Weekly. You can reach him at .
Cyrus the Great liberated the Hebrew from the Babylonian captivity to resettle and rebuild Jerusalem, earning him an honoured place in Judaism. (Click to enlarge)
By Brokhim Davoudian from Tehran for CAIS
LONDON, (CAIS) — The Cyrus Cylinder loaned by the British Museum to Iran and currently on show at the National Museum in Tehran has attracted attention nationally and internationally and has excited all Iranians including the small community of the Iranian Jews.
The Cyrus Cylinder signifies humanity and kindness and it is considered by many scholars to be the world’s first declaration of human rights issued by the ancient Iranian emperor, Cyrus the Great in 6thcentury BCE.
Amongst Iranians the most excited for the return of the Cyrus Cylinder being home after forty years, is the small Jewish community. The Iranian Jewish population better known as ‘Persian Jews’, constitute the largest among the Islamic countries.
A Tehran Rabbi excitingly stating: “it is wonderful and I’m much exited to see that the Cylinder is home – in fact I am doubley exited, as an Iranian as well as a Jew.”
He continued: “the Cylinder is a Persian artefact, but its contents concerns the history of Jewish people as much as Iranians, which echoes the past and is the voice of our ancestors – it tells us about the history of my ancestors, the Hebrews who were liberated by the ‘anointed of God’ from Babylonian captivity and their return to the holy land. It is the history of my forefathers who stayed behind and who had chosen Iran as their home.”
Shahram, a young Persian Jew who travelled from the city of Shiraz to visit the Cylinder said: “when I laid my eyes on the Cylinder I start shaking and tears ran down my cheeks, which I had no control over. I felt a bit embarrassed but when I noticed that I am not the only one drowning in the tears of excitement I let my emotions to run.”
Maurice another teenager who was not lucky as Shahram to visit the Cylinder, said: “I am going to see it no matter how long it takes. From my childhood my family told me about Cyrus the Great and who he was. This artefact has importance for me for a number of reasons: first and foremost because I am an Iranian and second, this is a historical document that tells me how my ancestors were freed from captivity.”
Daniyal, a patriot Persian Jew from Esfahan and a veteran hero of Iran-Iraq war in moving words told me: “I defended my country during the sacred defence against the Arab aggressors and served in the frontline and I have a shattered leg to prove it. My feelings of knowing Cyrus’s Cylinder is home, is the exact feeling of joy and excitement that I had when I was ready to offer my life defending my country. If I have to sleep behind the doors of the National Museum, I will do it to see the Cylinder.”
According to Iran’s National Museum over 2,000 peoples are visiting the Cylinder everyday. The number could be have been three times but since the visitors are divided into groups of 20 to 25 individuals and at a time to be led to a special room where the priceless Persian artefact is kept, the numbers are currently limited to 2,000.
Some Iranians called for the museum to be open 24 hours before the return of the Cyrus Cylinder to England.
With regard to attacking Cyrus the Great in Western Media, such as a ‘Cyrus-bashing’ article published by Der Speigel in 2008 rabbi said: “We are appalled by those in West who are attacking the character of Cyrus the Great and calling his Cylinder as a hoax, especially that neo-Nazi who wrote the article in the Spiegel. We the Jewish community in Iran are deeply insulted and consider his attack as anti-Semitism, which is no better than those anti-Semitics who are denying the Holocaust from taking place.”
He added “Cyrus deserves better respect, and I’m pleading to my Jewish brothers and sisters outside Iran to stop these anti-Semitic-Nazis, attacking the man who loved and liberated us from captivity.”
A prominent Persian Rabbi back in 2008 also called the author of the De Spiegel article a neo-Nazi and an anti-Semitic.
The Persian Jews
The Persian Jews trace their ancestry to the Babylonian Exiles of the 6th century BCE and, and like the Armenians and the Assyrians living in modern Iran, have retained their ethnic, linguistic, and religious identity.
The beginnings of Jewish history in Iran dates back to late biblical times. The biblical books of Isaiah, Daniel, Ezra, Nehemiah, Chronicles, and Esther contains references to the life and experiences of Jews in Persia. In the book of Ezra, the Persian kings are credited with permitting and enabling the Jews to return to Jerusalem and rebuild their Temple; its reconstruction was ordered “according to the decree of Cyrus, and Darius, and Artaxerxes king of Persia” (Ezra 6:14). As the result, sixth century BCE is considered as one of the greatest events in the Jewish history.
Scholars believe that during the peak of the Persian Empire, Jews may have comprised as much as 20% of the Iranian population.
Jews continued living in various part of the empire including Babylon during and after the fall of Achaemenids. Under the succeeding Iranian dynasties of Parthians and Sasanian, Jews lived freely and practised their religion until the 7th century and invasion of Iran by Arabs, the majority of which along with other Iranians faced execution or were forced to accept Islam.
The reaming which could afford to pay the Jizyya (poll tax) for not being Muslim to the Arab invaders chose to remain or emigrated to concentrated Jewish areas such as in Assuristan and Khvarvaran (nowadays Iraq), Khuzestan, Fars and Esfahan provinces. As the result the central Iranian city of Esfahan become one of the main hubs for the Persian Jews. Esfahan then divided into two major settlements of Yahudiyeh (the Jewish Quarter) and Shahrestan or Gey (the Zoroastrian Quarter).
The second major blow to the Jewish community after the Arab invasion of Iran was under the Mongol Ghazan Khan. In 13th century, he ordered a large number of synagogues to be destroyed and forced many to accept Islam. The policy continued under the Tamburlaine’s rule which resulted in more Jews converting to Islam and their resettlement in the north-eastern Iranian city of Samaqand (in modern Uzbekistan) to promote the textile industry.
The Jewish community however survived in large numbers until the reign of Shah Soltan Hossein (r. 1694–1722) when they forced the majority to convert to Islam once again. Their numbers were estimated in the Safavid capital, Esfahan around 3,000,000 (including the Zoroastrians). As the result Jewish scholars believe a large portion of modern Esfahani ancestry is of Jewish origin.
Some of the Jewish communities in Iran have been isolated from others, to the extent that their classification as “Persian Jews” is a matter of linguistic or geographical convenience rather than actual historical relationship with one another.
Persian Jews until the 19th to mid-20th century were still extant communities in the mainland-Iran and the Greater Iran (once were part of Iran) including the present-day Afghanistan, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Eastern Turkey, Georgia, Northern-Iraq, Kirgizstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan.
Before the establishment of the modern state of Israel in 1948, there was an estimated 140,000-150,000 remaining Jews living in Iran, the historical centre of Persian Jewry, the number were expected to be well over 500,000 by early 2000. Over 85% have since left Iran either for Israel or the United States.
Since the 1979 Revolution in Iran, the Jewish population of Iran dramatically decreased from 80,000 to less than 40,000 today, with around 25,000 residing in Tehran, and the remaining mainly living in the cities of Esfahan and Shiraz, the historical cities of Persian Jewry.
Modern Israelis of Iranian origin are referred to as Parsim meaning “Persians”.
It is widely believed the President Mahmood Ahmadinejad is of a Jewish origin who turned against his own people. His surname before conversion of his parents to Islam was Saburjian, meaning ‘cloth weaver’, a traditional Jewish family- name in Iran. Ahmadinejad rejected the claim.
, 24 September 2010
[2]
Falling for Ancient Propaganda
UN Treasure Honors Persian Despot
By Matthias Schulz
A 2,500-year-old cuneiform document ceremoniously displayed in a glass case at the United Nations in New York is revered as an “ancient declaration of human rights.” But in fact, argue researchers, the document was the work of a despot who had his enemies tortured.
Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlevi was planning a record-breaking gala. First he proclaimed the “White Revolution,” a land reform program, and then declared himself the “Light of the Aryans.” Finally, in October of 1971, he had taken it upon himself to celebrate “2,500 years of the Iranian monarchy.” The organizers of the celebration had promised to deliver “the greatest show on earth.”
The Shah had 50 opulent tents set up amid the ruins of Persepolis. Invited dignitaries included 69 heads of state and crowned monarchs. The guests consumed 20,000 liters of wine, ate quail eggs with pheasant and gilded caviar. Magnum bottles of Château Lafite circled the tables.
At the high point of the festival, the Shah walked to the grave of Cyrus II who, in the 6th century B.C., had conquered more than 5 million square kilometers (1.9 million square miles) of land in a long and bloody war.
Critics at the time complained that $100 million (€63 million) was a lot of money to spend celebrating the ancient Persian king. “Should I serve heads of state bread and radishes instead?” was the Shah’s brusque rejoinder.
Religious leader Ayatollah Khomeini, still in exile at the time, was also quick to issue his scathing criticism: “The crimes committed by Iranian kings have blackened the pages of history books.”
But the Shah knew better. Cyrus, he announced, was a very special man: noble and filled with love and kindness. The Shah insisted that Cyrus was the first to establish a right to “freedom of opinion.”
‘Ancient Declaration of Human Rights’
Pahlevi also ensured that his view of history would be taken to the United Nations. On Oct. 14, just as the party in Persepolis was in full swing, his twin sister walked into the United Nations building in New York, where she handed a copy of a cuneiform document, about the size of a rolling pin, to then Secretary General Sithu U Thant. Thant thanked her for the “historic gift” and promptly praised it as an “ancient declaration of human rights.”
Suddenly even the UN secretary-general was insisting that Cyrus “wanted peace,” and that the Persian king had “shown the wisdom to respect other civilizations.”
Then Thant had the clay cylinder (which contains a supposedly particularly humane decree by Cyrus II dated 539 B.C.) displayed in a glass case in the main UN building. And there it continues to lie today, directly adjacent to a copy of the world’s oldest peace treaty.
Those were grand gestures and grand words, but in the end it was nothing but a hoax that the UN had fallen for. Contrary to the Shah’s claims, the cuneiform degree was “propaganda,” explains Josef Wiesehöfer, a scholar of ancient history at the University of Kiel in the northern Germany. “The notion that Cyrus introduced concepts of human rights is nonsense.”
Hanspeter Schaudig, an Assyriologist at the University of Heidelberg in the southwestern Germany, says that he too would be hard-pressed to see the ancient king as a pioneer when it comes to equality and human dignity. Indeed, Cyrus demanded that his subjects kiss his feet.
The ruler was responsible for a 30-year war that consumed the Orient and forced millions to pay heavy taxes. Anyone who refused stood to have his nose and ears cut off. Those sentenced to death were buried up to their heads in sand, left to be finished off by the sun.
Did the UN simply believe this historical lie — concocted by the Shah — without any further examination?
‘The UN Made a Serious Mistake’
Art historian Klaus Gallas, who is preparing a German-Iranian cultural festival to take place in Weimar next summer, has now brought the matter to the public’s attention. During his preparations for the festival he discovered the inconsistencies between the Shah’s claims and the Cyrus decree. “The UN made a serious mistake,” says Gallas.
The limestone tomb at Pasargadae of King Cyrus the Great.
Despite having been contacted by SPIEGEL several times, the organization has declined to comment on the incident. Indeed, the UN Information Service in Vienna continues to insist that many still consider the cuneiform cylinder from the Orient to be the “first human rights document.”
The aftermath of the hoax has been disastrous. Even German schoolbooks describe the ancient Persian king as a pioneer of humane policies. According to a forged translation on the Internet, Cyrus even supported a minimum wage and right to asylum.
“Slavery must be abolished throughout the world,” the fake translation reads. “Every country shall decide for itself whether or not it wants my leadership.”
Even Shirin Ebadi, the 2003 winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, was taken in by the hoax. “I am an Iranian. A descendant of Cyrus the Great,” she said in her speech in Oslo. “The very emperor who proclaimed at the pinnacle of power 2,500 years ago that … he would not reign over the people if they did not wish it.”
The experts are now stunned at this example of a rumor gone wild.
If one thing is clear, it is that the figure at the center of this hoax radically shook the ancient Orient like no other ruler. With what German scholar Wiesehöfer calls “military strokes of genius,” Cyrus advanced with his armies to India and to the Egyptian border. He is considered the creator of a new kind of country. At the height of his power, he was the ruler of a magnificent empire bursting with prosperity.
But it all began far more modestly. Born the son of an insignificant minor king in what is today southwestern Iran, the young man mounted the throne in 559 B.C.
Even in antiquity, bizarre legends were associated with the king. According to one of them, Cyrus grew up in the wild and was nursed by a female dog. There are no contemporary images of him.
His neighbors to the west soon felt the brunt of this man’s determination. After conquering the neighboring Elamite people, he attacked the Median Empire in 550 B.C. with his army’s fast combat chariots and soldiers dressed in bronze armor.
After that, the upstart king invaded Asia Minor, or modern Turkey, where hundreds of thousands of Greeks lived in colonies. Well-to-do citizens from Priene were enslaved.
Part 2: ‘One of the Most Magnificent Documents Ever Written’
The general recuperated from the trials of war at his residence in Pasargadae. It was surrounded by an irrigated garden known as the “paradeisos” and was home to a sumptuous harem.
But Cyrus soon became restless in his palace and returned to the front, this time heading east to Afghanistan. His life ended at 71, somewhere in Uzbekistan, when a spear punctured his thigh. He died three days later.
The Walls of Babylon, now at the Pergamon Museum in Berlin.
Courageous in battle and adept in the politics of running his empire, Cyrus, says Wiesehöfer, was a “pragmatist” who attained his goals with “carrots and sticks.” But he was no humanist.
Some Greeks praised the conqueror. Herodotus and Aeschylus (who lived after Cyrus’s death) called him merciful. The Bible describes him as the “anointed one,” because he supposedly permitted the abducted Jews to return to Israel.
But modern historians have long since debunked such reports as flattery. “A shining image of Cyrus was created in antiquity,” Wiesehöfer says. In truth, he was a violent ruler, like many others. His army ransacked residential neighborhoods and holy sites, and the urban elites were deported.
Only the Shah, who had his own problems in the 1960s, could have come up with the idea of reinterpreting this man as an originator of human rights. Despite his SAVAK secret police’s notorious torture practices, there was resistance throughout the country. Marxist groups carried out bombings while mullahs called upon their followers to resist the government.
In response, the Shah attempted to invoke his ancient predecessors. Just as Cyrus was once the father of the nation, he insisted, “So am I today.”
“The history of our empire begins with the famous proclamation by Cyrus,” the Shah claimed. “It is one of the most magnificent documents ever written on the spirit of freedom and justice in the history of mankind.”
One thing is true, and that is the clay cylinder documents a banal story of political betrayal. When the text was written in 539 B.C., Cyrus found himself in what was probably the most dramatic part of his life. He had dared to attack the New Babylonian Empire, his powerful rival for dominance of the Orient, a realm that extended all the way to Palestine. Its capital, the magnificent city of Babylon, crowned by a 91-meter tower, was also a center of knowledge and culture. The empire itself was bristling with weapons.
Nevertheless, the Persian ruler decided to risk attacking the Babylonians. His troops marched down the Tigris River. After attacking the fortified city of Opis and killing all prisoners, they advanced on Babylon.
Babylonian Betrayal
There, barricaded behind an 18-kilometer (11-mile) wall around the city, sat Cyrus’ beleaguered enemy: King Nabonid, an old man of 80.
At that very moment, the priests of the god Marduk were committing treason against their own country. Angry over the loss of power they had suffered under their king, they secretly opened the gates and allowed hostile Persian negotiators to enter the city. Nabonid was banished and his son murdered.
Cyrus' Persian Empire
The conditions for a complete surrender were then hammered out. Cyrus demanded the release of fellow Persians who had been carried off in earlier wars. He also insisted on the return of stolen statues of gods.
These were the passages that the Shah would later reinterpret as a general rejection of slavery. In truth, Cyrus merely freed his own followers.
In compensation for their treacherous services, the priests were given money and estates. In return, they praised Cyrus as a “great” and “just” man and as someone who “saved the entire world from hardship and distress.”
Only after all the arrangements had been made did the king enter Babylon, riding in through the blue-glazed Gate of Ishtar. Reeds were spread on the ground at his feet. Then, as is written in line 19 of the Cyrus proclamation, the people were permitted to “kiss his feet.”
There is no evidence of moral reforms or humane commandments in the cuneiform document. Assyriologist Schaudig calls it “a brilliant piece of propaganda.”
But the legend of this prince of peace had been born, thanks to the wily priests of Babylon. And since it was placed on a pedestal by the UN, it has become even more inflated.
Iran’s mullahs have not escaped the Cyrus cult. In mid-June, the British Museum in London announced that it planned to lend the valuable original cylinder to Tehran. It has become an object of Persian national pride.
“The German Bundestag even recently received a petition to have the proclamation exhibited in a glass case at the Reichstag building,” says Gallas.
The petition was denied, and yet the distortion of history continues. With its disastrous tribute, the UN gave birth to a seemingly never-ending rumor.
As the saying from the Orient goes: “A fool may throw a stone into a well which a hundred wise men cannot pull out.”
(Reuters) – Turkish President Abdullah Gul said on Friday Turkey’s direct relations with Iran remain the best way to achieve a diplomatic solution for keeping Tehran from acquiring nuclear weapons.
Turkey voted against the latest round of U.N. sanctions aimed at putting pressure on Tehran, which says its nuclear program is for peaceful purposes only.
The United States, a key Turkish ally and fellow member of NATO, suspects Iran seeks to develop atomic weapons and is leading the effort to thwart its nuclear ambitions.
Gul, speaking to the Council on Foreign Relations while attending the U.N. General Assembly meeting, addressed criticism that Turkey was shifting its orientation away from the West by engaging with Iran.
“If you look at all our allies, which leaders among those countries have the ability to be able to have direct discussions with the Iranian leaders, including the supreme religious leader?” Gul asked.
“There isn’t anyone,” he said, adding its engagement is for moving the process forward and should not be misunderstood.
“As was the case in the past, Turkey is and will remain a strong committed and reliable ally of the United States,” he said.
Gul once again criticized Israel’s actions in its deadly raid on a Gaza-bound aid flotilla in May. The incident has damaged relations between the two nations.
“Having said that, I must also emphasize that Turkey and Israel are friends. There are strong, centuries-old ties of friendship between our peoples.”
On Turkey’s European Union accession talks, Gul said the country remains committed to completing the process despite slow progress that he blamed on Europe.
“Europe today lacks a strategic vision, a strategic perspective of what it wants to be 50-60 years down the road,” he said.
Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad addresses the 65th United Nations General Assembly at U.N. headquarters in New York, September 23, 2010. Credit: Reuters/Mike Segar
By Louis Charbonneau
(Reuters) – Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad told the United Nations on Thursday most people believe the U.S. government was behind the attacks of September 11, 2001, prompting the U.S. and European delegations to leave the hall in protest.
Addressing the General Assembly, he said it was mostly U.S. government officials and statesmen who believed al Qaeda Islamist militants carried out the suicide hijacking attacks that brought down New York’s World Trade Center — less than 4 miles from where the Iranian president was speaking.
Another theory, he said, was “that some segments within the U.S. government orchestrated the attack to reverse the declining American economy, and its grips on the Middle East, in order to save the Zionist regime.” Ahmadinejad usually refers to Israel as the “Zionist regime.”
“The majority of the American people as well as most nations and politicians around the world agree with this view,” Ahmadinejad told the 192-nation assembly, calling on the United Nations to establish “an independent fact-finding group” to look into the events of September 11.
As in past years, the U.S. delegation walked out during Ahmadinejad’s speech. It was joined by all 27 European Union delegations and several other countries.
Mark Kornblau, spokesman for the U.S. mission to the United Nations, said Ahmadinejad chose “to spout vile conspiracy theories and anti-Semitic slurs that are as abhorrent and delusional as they are predictable.”
White House spokesman Bill Burton said President Barack Obama thought the comments “utterly outrageous and offensive — especially in the city where the 9/11 attacks occurred.”
EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton said the remarks were “outrageous and unacceptable.”
‘COVERED UP’
Ahmadinejad said some evidence that could support alternative theories had been “covered up” — passports located in the rubble and a video of an unknown individual who had been “involved in oil deals with some American officials.”
As he had in past years, the Iranian president used the General Assembly podium to attack Iran’s other archfoe, Israel, and to defend the right of his country to a nuclear program that Western powers fear is aimed at developing arms.
“This regime (Israel), which enjoys the absolute support of some Western countries, regularly threatens the countries in the region and continues publicly announced assassination of Palestinian figures and others, while Palestinian defenders … are labeled as terrorists and anti-Semites,” he said.
“All values, even the freedom of expression, in Europe and the United States are being sacrificed at the altar of Zionism,” Ahmadinejad said.
The Iranian president previously raised doubts about the Holocaust of the Jews in World War Two and said Israel had no right to exist.
Tehran has been hit with four rounds of U.N. sanctions for refusing to halt its nuclear enrichment program. Obama earlier told the assembly the door to diplomacy was still open for Iran, but it needed to prove its atomic program is peaceful, as it says it is.
Adabank is to be sold, in a tender [offer], on October 19 by Savings Deposit Insurance Fund.
Bank Hapolaim of Israel, who owns the majority of the shares of Turkey’s Bank Pozitif, was announced his interest to buy Adabank.
Since Iranians entered the negotiations for Adabank, Mossad and CIA started to follow the deal.
The main concern of the Americans and Israelis is if Iran Government buys a bank in Turkey, they might launder money for their nuclear targets through an internationally recognized bank.
Farzad Farhangian, a 47-year-old press attache at the Iranian Embassy in Brussels, arrived in Norway on Monday night and is planning to hand an application for asylum to Norwegian authorities Tuesday, his lawyer told Babylon & Beyond from Oslo.
Farhangian’s move marks the third time in less than a year that an Iranian diplomat has defected and applied for asylum in a Scandinavian country.
Saying he was angered by the crackdown on dissidents during the Iranian presidential elections last year, Farhangian slammed Tehran’s hard-line government at a news conference in Oslo on Tuesday and said he had joined the political opposition to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
“I’m apologizing to the Iranian people. During the last 30 years I was of service to the Iranian people, 23 of them in the diplomatic service, but the deviation that the Iranian republic has reached leaves me no choice. I hope to be a voice of the opposition,” Agence-France Presse quoted Farhangian as saying before reporters.
Arild Humlen, a Norwegian lawyer who first met with Farhangian on Tuesday morning, says his client is receiving protection from Norwegian authorities.
According to Humlen, Farhangian had for some time expressed strong criticism toward the Iranian government. When a delegation of Iranian officials from Tehran recently showed up in Brussels to put some pressure on the diplomat, Farhangian knew it was time to go, Humlen said.
On his arrival in Norway, Farhangian joined a former colleague from the Iranian Foreign Ministry: Mohammad Reza Heydari, the former consul at the Iranian Embassy in Oslo who resigned earlier this year in protest of the government and became a campaigner for the Iranian political opposition.
Rahman Saki of the Norwegian-Iranian Support Committee in Oslo told Babylon & Beyond that he and Heydari have been working together since the former diplomat’s resignation in January. Together, they’ve reached out to Iranian diplomats and supported those who’ve contemplated quitting.
“We’ve been active in working with diplomats after Heydari came out and announced that he had resigned. Me and Heydari work very close. … We’ve sent faxes to them, and we’ve called Iranian diplomats and talked to them,” he said.
They reached Farhangian, who, according to Saki, contacted Heydari, an old friend, for advice. Discussions went on for months before Farhangian decided to take the final step, Saki said. He also said that Farhangian arrived in Oslo with his wife and son.
Saki says more Iranian diplomats are thinking of resigning from their posts.
“There are several who are interested, but the situation is difficult,” he said.
Just a few days ago, the former charge d’affaires at the Iranian Embassy in Finland announced that he had resigned. At first, Hossein Alizadeh remained tight-lipped about whether he would stay in Finland, but media reports said Monday that he would apply for political asylum there. Heydari obtained political asylum in Norway earlier this year.
