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Iran forced to choose lesser of two evils
US-led war threats against Iraq are facing Iran with a stark choice - accept the massive troop buildup on its borders of arch foe the United States or risk Iraq maintaining the capacity to repeat its chemical attacks of the 1980s. As the question weighs heavily, Iran's influential former president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani voiced the Islamic republic's dilemma on Friday in a sermon at Tehran university. "We are clearly in favour of disarming Saddam of weapons of mass destruction and we are clearly opposed to US presence in the region," Rafsanjani said in a sermon to the faithful at the main weekly Muslim prayers.Tough choice, isn't it? But "the US presence is worse than Saddam's weapons of mass destruction," he charged, adding that Washington "is pressuring the countries in the region for cooperation (and) this is not acceptable from a civilised government." Neither was gassing 100,000 Iranian troops. So shuddup. "We believe that a regime like Iraq should not be allowed to have weapons of mass destruction, including chemical, biological and nuclear arms," said Rafsanjani, who heads the influential Expediency Council which arbitrates political disputes. It's kind of funny, watching them wiggle like that... Posted by: Fred Pruitt 2003-02-09 |
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