The Redhunter

"If the West does not support Israel, this regime will be toppled. As it has lost its raison d' tre, Israel will be annihilated."

"Israel is a tyrannical regime that will one day will be destroyed."

Now, if this was coming from some pipsqueak who ran a no-name nation in some godforsaken corner of the planet, we could be excused for ignoring such insanity. But Iran is in the process of developing nuclear weapons, and it's anybody's guess as to when they'll have them.

Holocaust Denial Confence

The official name of this monstrosity, if you are interested, is the "Review of the Holocaust: Global Vision". It is being held right now in Tehran, under the official auspices of the Iranian government, and has been personally endorsed by Ahmadinejad. MSNBC provides some details

Ahmadinejad announced the conference would set up a “fact-finding commission” to determine whether the Holocaust happened or not. The commission will “help end a 60-year-old dispute,” he said.

The Tehran conference was touted by participants and organizers as an exercise in academic freedom and a chance to openly consider whether 6 million Jews really died in the Holocaust, away from Western taboos and the restrictions imposed on scholars in Europe, where some countries have made it a crime to deny the Nazi genocide during World War II.

It gathered 67 writers and researchers from 30 countries, most of whom argue that either the Holocaust did not happen or that it was vastly exaggerated. Many have been jailed or fined in France, Germany or Austria, where it is illegal to deny the Holocaust.

And their preliminary conclusion? That the Holocaust didn't happen

“Results of surveys so far show Holocaust is no more than a myth,” concluded Ali-Akbar Mohtashamipour, secretary general of the International Congress to Support Palestinian Intifada and former Iranian interior minister, in an interview with the Islamic Republic News Agency. He may be right about those results — staggering numbers of gun-toting, bomb-belt-wearing Hamas and Fatah members undoubtedly claim the Holocaust was a myth. “Saying that Holocaust is a myth does not mean that the Nazis committed no crimes in the course of World War II,” continued Mohtashamipour, as if to establish his credibility — it’s not that they like Nazis; they just hate Jews.

Guess who is there from the United States? David Duke.

Why the Conference?

It is no secret that throughout much of the Muslim world there is a schizophrenia about the holocaust; they deny that it occured, but then weirdly celebrate that it did. On the surface it may seem that Ahmadinejad is just engagin in more Jew-hatred. But I think he has something more in mind.

Michael Rubin over at The Corner found a story in the Tehran Times which reveals all:

“If the holocaust is questioned officially, then the existence of the Zionist regime will also be questioned,” Iranian Foreign Minister Manuchehr Mottaki said here on Monday at a conference on the holocaust.

Get it? They're setting Israel up. They're getting all the pieces in place. First you delegitimize Israel, then you destroy it.

Meanwhile, Back at the Ranch

So what are we doing about all this? In a piece today on NRO, Rick Santorum isn't optimistic that official Washington will do anything to stop Iran

The president is not unaware of the situation in Iran, but his view of the country is informed by the advisers who surround him, a collection of people from the various sectors of the foreign-policy establishment. His intelligence team, led by the director of National Intelligence, will advise him that the opposition in Iran is weak and divided and that there is no legitimate exile community; thus we have no real alternative to either bombing the country or establishing by diplomacy a modus vivendi. The Pentagon will advise the president that our already stretched forces are unable to engage in another conflict. The State Department and our new secretary of Defense do not think that there is a casus belli and that our best hope for mitigating the many crises of that region is to negotiate with Iran. ...

The Democrats of course would never confront Iran because they attribute their wins in November to America’s growing dissatisfaction with Iraq. If continued instability in Iraq works to their political benefit, why would they change the subject to Iran, particularly when they have no solution to propose and have always been skeptical that military force will do anything to stop Islamic terrorism

Half of me thinks he's right. The other half thinks that in a year or so, if the President thinks that a Democrat will be elected in '08, he'll say the hell with it and order our military to hit Iran with everything we've got.

If we stay on our current course of of endless negotiations, not backed by any credible threats of sanctions or reprisals, Iran is going to get the bomb. Period. A few months ago I laid out three scenarios for what I think will happen when they get the bomb. None are pretty.

In another post shortly after that one, I proposed several courses of action designed to stop Iran from going nuclear. Most do not involve full-scale war, but some come very close.

Those who object to strong measures will point out the various risks associated with them. And let there be no doubt, the Iranians can hit us in several ways.

Imagine if the Western powers had invaded Germany in the mid 1930s. The resulting war would have cost many lives. We know today that it would have been less costly than World War II turned out to be, but of course we wouldn't have known that then.

I don't think the time is quite right for a military strike on Iran. But we have to act fast, and negotiations alone will prove fruitless. It's time for more serious measures, like the ones I outlined in the post linked to above. When Ahmadinejad says he's going to wipe out Israel, we need to take him seriously.