By Andrew L. Jaffee

It is noteworthy that there have been voices in Iran criticizing President Ahmadinejad’s anti-Semitic/anti-Israeli rantings and nuclear saber-rattling. The question is: Will these voices of discontent have any effect on the apocalyptic course Ahmadinejad has set his country on?

On Friday, Ahmadinejad reiterated:

“Whether you like it or not, the Zionist regime is on the road to being eliminated.”

On Monday, Iran announced that it has “successfully produced the enriched uranium needed to make nuclear fuel.” Tuesday, Iran’s leader took his nuclear saber-rattling to a new level. From the Globe and Mail:

Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad vowed Thursday that Iran won’t back away from uranium enrichment and said the world must treat Iran as a nuclear power.

The comments were made as Mohamed ElBaradei, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, arrived in Tehran for talks aimed at defusing tensions over Iran’s nuclear program.

“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,” the official Islamic Republic News Agency quoted Mr. Ahmadinejad as saying.

“We won’t hold talks with anyone about the right of the Iranian nation [to enrich uranium].”

Earlier, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad urged that Israel be “wiped off the map,” has denied that the Holocaust ever occurred, called for Israel’s Jews to be moved to Europe (ethnically cleansed), and has planned to host a conference to “prove” that Hitler’s extermination of Jews (and gypsies and gays) was a “myth.”

This hyperbole has stoked a reaction, even amongst Iran’s party elite. From the BBC:

Ex-Iranian President Mohammad Khatami has called the Holocaust a historical reality, clashing with controversial comments by the current president. …

He [Khatami] added: “We should speak out if even a single Jew is killed. Don’t forget that one of the crimes of Hitler, Nazism and German National Socialism was the massacre of innocent people, among them many Jews.”

Even Iran’s generally docile Jewish community has reacted to Ahmadinejad’s ravings. Again, the BBC:

The chairman of Iran’s Jewish Council has strongly criticised the country’s hardline president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad for saying the Holocaust was a myth.

In a letter to the president, Haroun Yashayaei said the leader’s remarks had shocked the international community and caused fear in Iran’s Jewish community.

Mr Yashayaei described the Holocaust as one of the most obvious and sad events in the 20th Century.

Six million Jews were killed in Nazi persecution during World War II.

This is the first time that a senior Iranian Jewish leader has openly criticised President Ahmadinejad for denying the Holocaust.

In his strongly-worded letter, Mr Yashayaei asked the president how he could justify what he termed the crimes of Hitler.

Note that Yashayaei has not yet received a response from Ahmadinejad.

But if Iran’s pretend democracy were really a democracy, why would an official government poll show that 90 percent of Iranians were so disillusioned that they did not intend to vote in 2004 elections?

Some would tell you that Iranians support their government and hate America, but an official government poll found that

• 74% of respondents over the age of 15 support dialogue with the US
• 45.8% believe Washington’s policy on Iran is “to some extent correct”.

Very rarely are brutal dictatorships 100% secure in the power, precisely because their brutality against their own people breeds discontent. Ahmadinejad may just be the lynchpin that snaps and pushes Iran’s populace en masse into a popular revolution. One can only hope…

The key is Iran’s young people. 70 percent of Iran’s population is under the age of 30. Under previous reforms, young people got used to shopping for the latest Western fashions in Tehran. Music blared from car radios. Parties were held.

But Ahmadinejad has turned the clock back, outlawing Western music, and banning hand-holding and dancing. Now, Iranians complain that they must plan their weddings to seem like funerals, for fear of being turned in by the Islamist thought police. And Iran’s young people certainly must be nervous about confronting Israel, one of the strongest military powers on earth. If Iran would attack Israel, as its rhetoric now indicates, it would be horrible, but Iran would be the biggest loser as Israel ironed out its nuclear weapons capabilities years ago. If Ahmadinejad sees himself as the usher to bring the end of times, that doesn’t mean his young people want to end their lives early under nuclear mushroom clouds.

It seems that all we need is a spark to set off popular discontent, which would lead to an over-throw of the mullahs.

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Related: Israel, Iran, War Against Islamo-fascism

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