I don't have any beef with the Islamic Republic in Iran or the Iranian people. But I do have a big problem with the policies pursued by Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and with the Artabs who support the Iranian regime, whom I consider to be a fifth column. We at Al-Hayat had established a direct relationship with the Iranian government, ever since this newspaper resumed publication. We sent a correspondent to be based in Tehran, to provide us with Iranian news on a daily basis. We found that Mohammad Khatami was a high-caliber intellectual, and so invited him to write in Al-Hayat. We thus published his articles focusing on regional and international relations, and the future of the region. Then Khatami became president and gained more prominence, after which we republished his articles so that people may learn how the Iranian president thought. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad then succeeded Khatami as president. I saw him afterwards in the hall of the UN General Assembly, where he gave a speech that was in line with my political ideas for the liberation of Jerusalem. Since I attend the sessions of the General Assembly each year as a member of the delegation, not as a journalist, and thus am usually seated in the seats designated for Arab delegations, I went to see him after his speech. He was standing near Iran's seats which were close to those of Lebanon, because of the alphabetic order, and congratulated him on his speech, and told him that it was better than many Arab speeches I heard. All Iranian officials I know, be they ambassadors, ministers or other officials, speak Arabic by virtue of their religious learning. However, Ahmadinejad needed an interpreter to translate to him what I said in Arabic and English. I asked those who were with them to ask him in what verse and which chapter [of the Quran] is it understood that Muslims are prohibited from possessing a nuclear weapon, since he mentioned that in his speech. They then interpreted my question to him, and he asked questions and spoke to them, then turned to me smiling and shook my hands, saying: Thank you, thank you. In other words, Al-Hayat's relationship with Iran was always good, and I have supported Iran's bid to acquire nuclear weapons, which is the main issue in its standoff with the West. But then came Ahmadinejad, and I gradually discovered him to be reckless and demagogic. He raised the ire of Iran's neighbors and the whole world. I know from Arab decision makers directly that he threatened two countries in the Gulf, and gave Israel an argument against him by insisting on denying the Holocaust, as though he is the one accused of perpetrating it, not his nemesis, the Christian West. As an aside, I move on to an article I wrote and published on the third of this month, in which I said that the problem of Arab Shiites is with Iran not the Arab countries, “because Arab Shiites are suspected of owing their allegiance to Iran even when they're not”, i.e. I refuted this accusation made against them. I quickly discovered that Ahmadinejad's supporters resemble him, when I received a few dozen messages accusing me of bias against Arab Shiites. This is certainly not true, and my last words in the paragraph quoted here was “even when they're not”, i.e. I refuted the accusation against them. Even though I replied to all the messages, I did not receive any apologies or admissions of error except from one reader only. Then I read other messages in the same vein in Al-Hayat's mail, and I believe that the errors in them were not unintentional. I had the worst exchange with a Kuwaiti Shiite, with whom I had previous correspondence. He sent me an e-mail message with faulty, weak English that would have been incomprehensible, were it not for the fact I knew where he was going with it. He said that I do not have the right to talk about the thousand-year old relations between the countries of the Gulf and Iran. I told him that he was a fool and advised him to learn proper English, and he replied that the message was composed by 20 researchers, whom he claimed to include 12 Sunnis, 5 Shiites, and three Christians (the word he used for Christians in English made them Circassians or Caucasians). He then ‘ordered' me not to send him any messages, and I told him that I replied to the messages he sent first, and that I found them to be despicable like him. Of course, he was lying. I told him that he is just a Shiite militant, and that I had no time for extremists from any sect. He replied with a hint of a threat that his group is studying the writings of 45 journalists including myself, and that the group would publish its opinion through the new media. He accused me in several successive messages of being a ‘Wahhabi', although I doubt that the Wahhabis would want anyone like me in their midst. I revisited my archives and I found that I had a previous dispute with the same man or so-called group. When I was writing about the UN General Assembly sessions near the end of last September, I received a message that said that these lads were ‘shocked' by what I wrote, because the best speech given at the General Assembly was that of Ahmadinejad. Once again, I am a Wahhabi, and they are not just Shiites. And Ahmadinejad holds a PhD, probably in idiocy. The dispute then moved to Hezbollah, which I categorically support against Israel. I said on Al-Jazeera TV that I would have preferred it if Hezbollah had waited for the indictment to be issued before attacking it, rather than doing so against something that does not yet exist. This was somehow explained to be biasness against Hezbollah, even though I have always supported the resistance. All the e-mail messages were signed “A group of 20 readers from Kuwait”, and I don't know whether they are one person, ten or twenty. What I know is that they are a fifth column and are extremists like Ahmadinejad or worse, and I do now understand why the people of the Gulf are concerned and are trying to protect themselves against internal and external foes. [email protected]
