Ahmadinejad speech sets edgy tone for nuclear meeting

April 23, 2012
Iran raised the stakes of an important meeting about its nuclear plans by insulting Arabs and picking a new fight over islands in the Strait of Hormuz.

Iran raised the stakes of an important meeting about its nuclear plans by insulting Arabs and picking a new fight over islands in the Strait of Hormuz.

That's right: the Strait of Hormuz, which Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has threatened to close in retaliation for international resistance to his country's nuclear program.

Iran says its plans are wholly peaceful. But neighbors, especially Israel but including most nearby Arab states, are worried.

Ahmadinejad gave them more reasons to fret on Apr. 11 when he became the first Iranian head of state to visit Abu Musa, the largest of three islands over which the Islamic Republic and the United Arab Emirates have argued for 40 years. The others are called Greater and Lesser Tunb.

Iranians have occupied the tiny islands since withdrawal of Britain from the Trucial States in 1971. The Trucial States became the UAE, which claims the islands and surrounding oil. In that position, it receives consistent support from key regional alliances such as the Gulf Cooperation Council and Arab League.

So it wasn't just the UAE that Ahmadinejad incited with his visit. Indeed, he used the occasion to argue for legitimacy of the name "Persian Gulf" over against "Arabian Gulf," as preferred by his non-Persian neighbors.

"Since thousands of years ago," he said, "Iranian culture and civilization [have] been dominant in a vast part of the world, and it was natural to name places after this culture and civilization."

No one missed the acidic message. The UAE's Federal National Council denounced Ahmadenijad's "provocative rhetoric." GCC Sec. Gen. Abdul Latif Al Zayani also condemned the Iranian leader.

For meetings Apr. 14 between Iran's top nuclear negotiator and representatives of the United Nations Security Council, Ahmadenijad's theatrics set an edgy tone.

But his words always have domestic purpose. He might have been preparing treacherously insular Iranian politics for concessions to outsiders on the nuclear program.

The day before the meeting, that was the happy interpretation. Others were possible.

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