Guardian: Ahmadinejad accepts Israel's right to exist

[laststeamtrain]

Ahmadinejad accepts Israel's right to exist
The Iranian president has said he would accept a two-state solution if the Palestinians agree. So where are the headlines?

Peter Tatchell

Iranian President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has made a remarkable announcement. He's admitted that Iran might agree to the existence of the state of Israel.

Ahmadinejad was asked: "If the Palestinian leaders agree to a two-state solution, could Iran live with an Israeli state?"

This was his astonishing reply:

"If they want to keep the Zionists, they can stay ... Whatever the people decide, we will respect it. I mean, it's very much in correspondence with our proposal to allow Palestinian people to decide through free referendums."

Since most Palestinians are willing to accept a two-state solution, the Iranian president is, in effect, agreeing to Israel's right to exist and opening the door to a peace deal that Iran will endorse.

Ahmadinejad made this apparently extraordinary shift in policy during an
interview last week when he was in New York to address the UN general assembly.

<more>

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/sep/29/iran.israel.ahmadinejad

[ChairmanAgnostic]

1. sheesh, you want that MSM not have a war war topic? Boy, you are mean.

that means mccain's position is even mcLamer! we can't have that.

[chupacabranation]

2. Wow. Great news. Unless you're McSame. n/t

[madrchsod]

3. i guess the boys behind the curtain

realize that they may be able to deal with obama and biden. another positive effect of the obama-biden ticket

[IndyOp]

4. This is the same thing he's been saying for over a year...

AMY GOODMAN: So, do you think Israel should be eliminated?

PRESIDENT MAHMOUD AHMADINEJAD: We believe that people have to decide and choose their own fate, the right to self-determination. If they would like to keep the Zionists, they can stay; if not, they have to leave. What do you think the people there want?

AMY GOODMAN: You would support a two-state solution, if they do?

PRESIDENT MAHMOUD AHMADINEJAD: Wherever people decide, we will respect it. I mean, it’s very much in correspondence with our proposal to allow Palestinian people to decide through free referendums. We’ve been saying this for several years as a proposal. But those who use democracy as a pretext everywhere else are not—don’t think the Palestinians need democracy.

AMY GOODMAN: Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Right now, we’re joined on the phone by the Iranian American activist Kourosh Shemirani from Queer Iran Alliance. He’s published widely on the subject of how international gay rights advocacy about Iran can face the danger of slipping into pro-war propaganda.

KOUROSH SHEMIRANI: He’s been recently playing cat and mouse with the media, is asking about these questions. Before coming, he had a very long interview with an official Iranian news agency, Press TV, about the question of Palestine-Israel, and he has been stressing the fact—the idea that the Iran government is not against Israeli people, they’re just against Zionism. And this has become a very big sort of debate in Iran about whether or not, you know, Iranians and the Iranian president should say that we’re friends with the Israeli people, and he stood by that. So, he’s changed his rhetoric on that to a large extent. And this year, he’s getting a lot more play with the way he’s talking about Israel. I think he has said—this point that he’s made about the Palestinian people having the right to choose their own destiny, and the referendum, choosing whether they want to live in a Zionist regime, he’s said these things before. It’s just the US media has not reflected it until this year.

http://www.democracynow.org/2008/9/26/iranian_president_mahmoud_ahmedinejad_on_iran

[TheWraith]

5. Well duh. Not that what he says ever mattered.

The trash talk that comes out of his mouth has never been anything more than what it looks like--a pathetic attempt to rally support for Iran around a boogeyman, with as much substance as Bush doing the same thing with the names reversed.

[hay rick]

6. This is America.

We don't do nuance.