AIPAC HEARTS MAHMOUD, really they do

From Mondoweiss:

Two pro-Israel speakers at the AIPAC policy conference said yesterday that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the bete noir of the lobby, is also a boon to the lobby; for if the Iranian President is not reelected next month, AIPAC's case against Iranian nukes will be damaged.

At a breakout session on the Iranian elections, Ilan Berman, vice president of the American Foreign Policy Council, said of the Iranian government:

“You have those cross-chains of command, where the Supreme Leader [Ali Khameini] is in charge of all foreign and defense policy in the Islamic republic, and the president is very much on the sideline. There’s been discussion for four or five years now about how powerful or powerless Ahmadinejad is. We know that he’s the gift that keeps on giving. He keeps telling us that he wants to kill us, and therefore, we have to take him seriously. But can he actually do what he says? And the answer is… we don’t know.”

Later a questioner raised the issue again. What if Ahmadinejad is defeated in June's election and replaced by “someone less inflammatory”-- what would that do to efforts to publicize Iran’s threat?

Ken Pollack of the Saban Center of the Brookings Institution acknowledged the concern. Throughout the panel, Pollack had struck a hawkish stance in line with the AIPAC position of stiff sanctions to hurt the Iranian economy if Iran goes ahead with nukes. He said:

“There is that issue out there, there is definitely that risk. [OH NOES!!!! - ed.] [Someone in the Bush administration, name unintelligible] would say that Ahmadinejad was the best diplomat we had out there. Because every time he opened his mouth, he drove another country into our camp. And if we get somebody who basically is pursuing the exact same policies but doing so in a less inflammatory manner, that may make things even more difficult… to get countries on board with the kind of sanctions and kind of pressure [we need to bring to bear]... Without Ahmadinejad it will be an even more challenging task.”

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