Ahmadinejad and the perpetual state of war.

The Iranian president has been doing some political maneuvering and public relations games. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad decided to make a trip to NYC to lay a wreath at the former W.T.C and than to make a speech at Columbia University. The N.Y police department and City officials denied him the clearance to the W.T.C to do this obviously politically motivated photo-op opportunity. He will still speak at Columbia and appear at the U.N. Local N.Y politicians also condemned him and said a visit to the site of the 2001 terror attacks would violate sacred ground. This was the exact reaction Ahmadinejad was looking for, a knee jerk reaction of panic. Local politicians are playing on the Holocaust denial and Anti-Israel sentiment he has expressed in the past, to create the negative sentiment which resulted in Anti-Ahmadinejad rally which was held on Sunday Now certain NY politicians are now calling (post speech at Columbia0 for the defunding of the university!! All knee jerk reactions!
Ahmadinejad most likely planned these events to see how America would react and we played right into his game, we over reacted and continued to paint him as the "next Hitler", this only makes him more popular in the Middle East, where he can turn around and point out to the Arab world how "hostile" we were to him on his diplomatic trip.
To top it off on 60 minutes Ahmadinejad declared that the US and Iran and the US are not headed for war and that the nuclear bomb is not a solution to the issues, the Washington Post reported. All political moves to bolster his standing in Iran and Middle East. Iran is interested most in having a friendly relationship with Iraq, which they are more likely to have with the current Shite government. Remember these two countries were involved in a bloody conflict that lasted 8 years, when the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini responded to an Iraqi invasion of Iran. Saddam Hussein declared war initially on Iran. The desire of Ahmadinejad to have a friendly Shite Iraq is the most important reason why we are going to have to deal with Ahmadinejad in heavy diplomacy. We created this opportunity by overthrowing Saddam Hussein after all....

Ray Takeyh wrote an op-ed which appeared in the L.A Times late last year which puts Ahmadinejad's actions into perspective.
On Iran and Iraq he writes:

Iran is intervening in Iraq and arming various Shiite militias—but such conduct is designed not to export Iran’s model of governance but to prevent the rise of a state dominated by Sunni elites whose pan-Arab aspirations have in the past led to tense relations, and even war, with Iran. Tehran has no delusions that the Shiites of Iraq will subordinate their communal interest to Iran’s national ambitions, but it does hope that a Shiite-dominated regime will provide it with a suitable interlocutor.

Another interesting point Takeya brings up is the Anti-Israel sentiment and Holocaust denial.

Why has Ahmadinejad persisted in his contemptible denials of the Holocaust and his repeated calls for the eradication of Israel if, in fact, they are more bluster than anything else? As a cagey politician, Ahmadinejad appreciates that his incendiary denunciations actually enhance his popularity in the Middle East. The carnage in Iraq, the failure to broker a peace between Israel and the Palestinians and the Arab rulers’ inability to stand up to Washington have generated a popular clamor for a politician willing to defy the U.S. and Israel. Ahmadinejad has taken on that role, successfully capturing the imagination of a region prone to rely on conspiracies to explain its predicament. In this context, his persistent religious exhortations are designed not to prepare the path for the return of the Hidden Imam—the Messiah-like figure of Shiite Islam who some believe will reappear in a period of global war, chaos and bloodshed—but to advance himself and the cause of Iranian influence.

His "wipe Israel off the face off the map" rhetoric is more political posturing than reality,
and on Nuclear capability and the threat to Israel, he writes

Iran’s pursuit of the bomb has less to do with the destruction of Israel than with deterring a United States that has invaded two states that border Iran in the last five years. This is a moment of heightened tension between the U.S. and Iran, with the Bush administration routinely calling for a change of regime in Tehran, so perhaps it’s not so surprising that the Islamic Republic feels it requires a deterrent capability to ensure
both regime survival and territorial integrity.

In other words Ahmadinejad's possible attempt to build a nuclear weaopon is more a self-defense mechanism against the United States than it is an effort to destroy Isreal. What do you expect when Bush, right after September 11th put Iran into the "Axis of Evil"? The plan from the start was to create this friction between the US and Iran. Our Invasion of Iraq contributed to the nuclear weapons coming into play obviously. Still the nuclear threat may indeed by exaggerated. Recently the head of the IAEA Mohamed ElBaradei

is quoted at a conference by BBC news in Vienna as saying:

There are rules on how to use force, and I would hope that everybody would have gotten the lesson after the Iraq situation, where 700,000 innocent civilians have lost their lives on the suspicion that the country has nuclear weapons," he said.
"I do not believe at this stage that we are facing a clear and present danger that requires we go beyond diplomacy," he added.

The Bush crime family and the Neo-con's want Iran and this has very little to do with Israel or even Iran having nukes, it is all about the oil. We are looking for an excuse to start the bombing, and according to reports from News week magazine as covered by Haaretz, Dick Cheney considered pushing Israel to actually initiate the bombing of Iran!

Anything for the endless war, and anything for oil. Ahmadinejad and Bush need each other, Ahmadinejad needs Bush and the knee-jerk reactions by the US to bolster his popularity in Iran and The Middle East and Bush needs Ahmadinejad's threats as an excuse to start the bombing. In reality it is really all about the oil. One has to only look recently at the way the Federal Reserve slashed interest rates, which than decreased the value of the USA dollar to a 15 year low, resulting in Saudi Arabia becoming nervous about continuing to deal with the American dollar and possibly switching to Euros, telegraph UK reports. Are the neo-cons counting on a continued war in the Middle East in Iraq and Iran, with the ultimate goal of privatizing both countries oil wells for the future economic stability of the United States??

In that case we need Ahmadinejad to continue our perpetual state of war in the Middle East.