Post-Ahmadinejad Iran: A New Challenge to the West
Shlomi Eldar argues that with the upcoming elections in Iran, the international community should try another, more conciliatory approach.
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinehad has just a few months left in office. People in Iran, as well as in the West, are expected to sigh in relief when he finally exits center stage and leaves the presidential office as soon as the elections, scheduled for June 14, 2013, are finally over.
I am well-aware of the attitude that this particular Iranian president was “good for the Jews.” It is an approach that I have even seen expressed on this very website. According to this particular perspective, Ahmadinejad’s fundamentalism and his anti-Semitic comments were a strategic and public relations boon for Israel and its efforts to recruit the international community against Iran’s nuclear program. I dispute that point of view.
