Category: Iran

On Wednesday, the House of Representatives passed a non-binding resolution that calls on the United Nations to charge Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad with genocide. The bill states that:

…on October 27, 2005, at the World Without Zionism Conference in Tehran, Iran, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad called for Israel to be “wiped off the map,” described Israel as “a disgraceful blot [on] the face of the Islamic world,” and declared that “[a]nybody who recognizes Israel will burn in the fire of the Islamic nation’s fury”

…on December 12, 2006, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad addressed a conference in Tehran questioning the history of the Holocaust and said that Israel would “soon be wiped out”

…on August 3, 2006, in a speech during an emergency meeting of Muslim leaders, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad stated that the Middle East would be better off “without the existence of the Zionist regime,” called Israel an “illegitimate regime” with “no legal basis for its existence,” and accused the United States of using Israel as a proxy to control the region and its oil resources

The resolution passed the House with 411 votes and has been forwarded to the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations. You can read the entire resolution here.

I find it both sad and ironic that Congress is so easily moved to action against rhetoric, but lacks any strength of resolve to fight actual acts of genocide.

John Bolton, the outgoing US ambassador to the United Nations, will be joining the call to bring charges against Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadi-Nejad for inciting genocide. The idea of charging Ahmadi-Nejad arises on the heels of the Iranian Holocaust conference, which has been drawing huge complaints internationally. A study produced by the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs and the International Association of Jewish Lawyers and Jurists concluded that the President of Iran was promoting a campaign of hate against Israel and the Jewish people.

A series of remarks by Mr Ahmadi-Nejad, including one in which he reportedly questioned whether Zionists were human beings, “constitute direct and public incitement to genocide”, the study alleges. While reminiscent of incitement before the Rwanda genocide, “the critical difference is that while the Hutus in Rwanda were equipped with machetes, Iran, should the international community do nothing to prevent it, will soon acquire nuclear weapons,” it says.

Even as the Iranian Mission to the UN countered that the international court should be looking at the genocide of Palestinian people by the Israeli government, the lack of movement to “prevent” a genocide from occurring in parts of the world where “vulnerable populations [can’t] defend themselves” continues to be an enduring problem.