April 24, 2009
Posted: 1:00 am
April 24, 2009

IRANIAN President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad may have shot himself in the foot. Ahmadinejad gave a vitriolic anti-American and anti-Israeli speech at the "Durban II" anti-racism conference in Geneva April 20 as part of an effort to launch his re-election campaign with a big bang and to bolster the claim that he is the global standard-bearer of anti-Western movements. The speech was designed to shock and provoke, and it did that -- but it also highlighted the Islamic Republic's increasing diplomatic isolation.

Ban Ki Moon, who briefly pulled off his earpiece so as not to hear the translation of Ahmadinejad's incendiary claims, later took an unprecedented step for a United Nations secretary-general by singling out the Khomeinist leader for sharp criticism.

"I deplore the use of this platform by the Iranian president to accuse, divide and even incite. We must all turn away from such a message in both form and substance," Ban said.

Protesters interrupted Ahmadinejad's speech on several occasions, while the representatives of European Union nations walked out after a few minutes. (The United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Holland stayed away from the beginning.)

Ahmadinejad had hoped that his Geneva sortie would generate momentum to carry him to victory in the June 12 presidential election. But his scheme began to unravel even before he flew back to Tehran.

A Swiss legal adviser to the Islamic Republic's UN delegation told the diplomats there that some passages of Ahmadinejad's speech would violate Switzerland's strict laws on anti-Semitism and incitement to racial hatred. Ahmadinejad could make those remarks at the conference because the venue was part of the UN, where Swiss law doesn't apply, but publishing and distributing his speech on Swiss territory could be a criminal act. After hours of deliberations, the Khomeinists decided to publish a censored version of the speech, taking out passages that Swiss lawyers had flagged as "unacceptable."

Another of Ahmadinejad's key objectives in Geneva was to divert attention from the Khomeinist regime's repressive policies against Iran's religious, ethnic, racial and lifestyle minorities. Ahmadinejad arrived in the city with a retinue of 180 specially trained street fighters known as Ansar Hezbollah (Supporters of Hezbollah), who sought to disrupt side events protesting the Khomeinist regime and to attack anti-Iranian student demonstrators. Their widespread presence reflected Ahmadinejad's fear of confronting a hostile reception both inside and outside the conference. But that, too, backfired, as large numbers of people attended side events organized to highlight those policies.

The speech even received a mixed reception in Iran. Some mullahs took Ahmadinejad to task for using the wrong word to describe the Prophet Muhammad. In Arabic, the right word is "khatim" (the seal); Ahmadinejad, who doesn't know Arabic, used "khatam," which means "ivory inlay."

As if that weren't enough, Ahmadinejad's principal adversary in the June election, Mir-Hussein Mussavi, lashed out at him, saying his extremism had led the country into "isolation and a pariah status." Conscious that his exercise would not produce the desired effect, Ahmadinejad decided to limit the coverage of his trip to the state-owned media. In the end, however, most Iranians saw the whole exercise as a fiasco.

Commentators in Tehran criticize Ahmadinejad for making it difficult for the Obama administration to accept the Iranian nuclear project as a fait accompli. In his Geneva speech, Ahmadinejad used a higher-than-usual dose of anti-Americanism, repeatedly returning to his claim that the American-led global system has failed and is crumbling. He claimed that the Islamic Republic offered the only credible alternative to the American model, which he described as "world arrogance." The speech left no room for any concessions on Iran's part.

The Khomeinist leader is not content with President Obama's partial surrender -- his acceptance of unconditional talks with the mullahs. He wants it to be total. Some in the Khomeinist establishment understand, however, that even Obama might not be able to retreat as far as Ahmadinejad wants. They think that it's in the regime's interest to accept Obama's partial retreat to consolidate the nuclear project and expand Khomeinist influence in the Middle East.

Has Ahmadinejad gone too far even for the Khomeinist elite? The answer will come in Iran's June presidential election.

Amir Taheri's latest book is "The Persian Night: Iran Under the Khomeinist Revolution."