After an absence of some duration
from the debating arena, Clifford D. May is back doing what he had been doing
before he disappeared. This time he wrote an article under the title: “Iran taking advantage of the focus on ISIS ” and the subtitle: “Allowing the Islamic republic to
acquire nuclear weapons now would be a historic blunder.” It was published on
September 30, 2014 in the Washington Times.
Like the title and subtitle
suggest, May is saying that Iran
wants to acquire nuclear weapons. Allowing it to do so will prove to be a bad
idea, he goes on to say. This being the message he has been giving before, the
question is whether or not he changed the approach by which he used to argue
his case. The answer is: No, not really. His approach remains the same,
consisting of badmouthing Iran
and those who govern it. However, given that much has happened in the world
during the time that he was absent, he now brings into the discussion some of
the developments that have taken place.
One of those developments has been
the rise of the Islamic State (IS), also known as ISIS and ISIL. And Clifford
May wastes no time milking this phenomenon, which he does in two ways. One of
those is the old way of saying that Iran
is as bad as someone else; this time ISIS . For
now, he mothballs the comparison of Iran with the Nazis, the Fascists
and what have you … what used to be the insults of yesteryear. The other way he
milks the rise of ISIS is to say what he put into the title: Iran is taking
advantage of the distraction caused by the phenomenon to continue working on
acquiring nuclear weapons.
To give strength to his argument,
he sets himself in opposition to President Obama in the very first sentence
that he writes. It is this: “last week, Obama called the conflict in the Middle East 'a fight no one is winning.' He is wrong. I
think Iran
is making significant gains.” Upon this, he starts the business of drawing
parallels between Iran and ISIS . He says that both are committed to waging jihad. To
document this assertion, he cites a quotation which he says was uttered in 1984
(30 years ago) by someone that's now dead and buried. He was the leader
of the 1979 Iran
revolution Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.
No matter that he is dead, that
man had disciples, says May, two of whom are the current supreme leader of Iran ,
Khamenei and its current President, Rouhani. To be sure, the author wastes no
time badmouthing them too, and goes one step further by linking Rouhani with
Obama. He does it this way: “Rouhani's most strategic action to date: pushing
back Mr. Obama's red lines on Iran 's
acquisition of a nuclear-weapons capability.” What? What's that? What
nuclear-weapons capability? How did this creep into the discussion without
warning?
That was a logical defect. Aware
that there is a hole in his argument, Clifford May pulls a standard Jewish
trick to hide it. The trick is called playing the incestuous game of quoting
someone he knows while making the move sound like he is quoting a great expert
on the subject. He thus writes the following: “My colleague Mark Dubowitz
observes that Mr. Obama has gone from 'dismantle and disclose' to 'disconnect,
defer and deter.'”
For now, he suspends his attacks
on the Iranians to attack Obama whom he accuses of retreating from the previous
tough positions he had taken against letting Iran develop the capacity to build
nuclear weapons. To make his point, he quotes the President as saying different
things at different times. This done, he finds himself with three characters:
the American President, the Iranians and the terrorists – none of whom he is
particularly enamored with. What to do with them?
Well, like a veritable fiction
story, there is one thing that the author can do. Bring the three characters on
the same stage at the same time for an explosive finale. To this end, Clifford
May says that the flamboyant barbarism of ISIS has made it easy to forget that Iran sponsors
terrorism. In fact, he goes on to explain, Iran
was behind Hezbollah's decision to bomb the US Marine barracks in Beirut more than 30 years
ago.
He cites a few more examples in
that vein, and then says this: “Iran 's
rulers don't like the Islamic State – it's a Sunni rival – but they are
responsible for its growth … pav[ing] the way for its stunning military
conquests in Iraq .”
He goes on: “It was Mr. Obama's withdrawal from Iraq
that made it possible for Tehran to call the
shots in Baghdad .
His passive response to the Assad regime created the vacuum that was filled by
foreign jihadis.”