Mahmoud Amadinejad is apparently determined to make it impossible for the U.S. to avoid war with Iran without appearing craven and weak. He's ostensibly thumbing his nose and sticking out his tongue at Israel, but the real target is the U.S:
The president of Iran again lashed out at Israel on Friday and said it was "heading toward annihilation," just days after Tehran raised fears about its nuclear activities by saying it successfully enriched uranium for the first time.
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad called Israel a "permanent threat" to the Middle East that will "soon" be liberated. He also appeared to again question whether the Holocaust really happened.
"Like it or not, the Zionist regime is heading toward annihilation," Ahmadinejad said at the opening of a conference in support of the Palestinians. "The Zionist regime is a rotten, dried tree that will be eliminated by one storm."
Ahmadinejad provoked a world outcry in October when he said Israel should be "wiped off the map."
On Friday, he repeated his previous line on the Holocaust, saying: "If such a disaster is true, why should the people of this region pay the price? Why does the Palestinian nation have to be suppressed and have its land occupied?"
The land of Palestine, he said, referring to the British mandated territory that includes all of Israel, Gaza and the West Bank, "will be freed soon."
He did not say how this would be achieved, but insisted to the audience of at least 900 people: "Believe that Palestine will be freed soon."
Ahmadinejad is taunting the world to try to stop him, perhaps because he believes that Bush is too weak politically to do it by himself and that no one else will join us in the enterprise. He may be right about the rest of the world, and he's right that Bush is wounded. Where he is very likely mistaken, however, is in his assumption that Bush will be constrained in his decisions by poll numbers.
I fear that Ahamdinejad is "misunderestimating" this president just as so many others have done in the past. Bush is going to do what he believes is right regardless of what everyone else thinks and that may well portend bad news on the doorstep for Mr. Mahmoud.
For more of the same from Ahmadinejad's underlings see here.