Bush's hate speech against Iran draws UAE opposition

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Bush's Iran speech draws UAE opposition

Mon, 14 Jan 2008 12:11:03

Several Emirati officials and commentators have voiced opposition to military action against Iran after the US president's UAE speech.

US President George W. Bush, who is on a Middle East tour hoping to rally up Arab support against Iran, attacked Tehran, in a speech he delivered in Abu Dhabi on Sunday. The speech drew interesting reactions in the United Arab Emirates (UAE).

"The Iranians choose their own government, whether we agree (with their choice) or not. They don't need what he said," said Jamal al-Suwaidi the Director General of the Emirates Center for Strategic Studies and Research, a government-backed think tank which sponsored Bush's address.

He was referring to parts of the speech where Bush claimed that Iran was 'the world's leading state sponsor of terror' and told the Iranian people they deserve a better government.

"It would be very dangerous if Iran develops nuclear weapons. But to hit Iran is something else... Nobody wants it [a US strike on Iran]," al-Suwaidi told AFP after Bush delivered the address.

Mariam al-Hammadee of the UAE's Federal Environmental Agency said she would have preferred a less confrontational speech. "The region cannot put up with another war ... In fact, the world badly needs peace," she said.

She noted that the UAE has wide-ranging trading links with Iran and hosts a large number of Iranians, who are estimated to number around 400,000 in the oil-rich country.

An official UAE source also told AFP that he did not expect Bush's remarks to harm ties between Abu Dhabi and Tehran. Bush's remarks "do not commit the UAE to anything", he said, requesting anonymity.

"[Iranian President] Ahmadinejad also came here [last May] and spoke," the source noted, referring to a speech in which he warned that Iran would retaliate strongly for any US attack.

The UAE faces Iran across the Persian Gulf, which means that "the option of the negotiations [to resolve the nuclear row] failing is not an option", the official added.

http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=38678&sectionid=351020101

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I am hoping they won't have time to do another Iraq, but they are trying the same tactics even after those tactics were exposed as misleading or in some cases intelligence they knew at the time to be false.

Bothersome Intel on Iran

Quote:

In public, President Bush has been careful to reassure Israel and other allies that he still sees Iran as a threat, while not disavowing his administration's recent National Intelligence Estimate. That NIE, made public Dec. 3, embarrassed the administration by concluding that Tehran had halted its weapons program in 2003, which seemed to undermine years of bellicose rhetoric from Bush and other senior officials about Iran's nuclear ambitions. But in private conversations with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert last week, the president all but disowned the document, said a senior administration official who accompanied Bush on his six-nation trip to the Mideast. "He told the Israelis that he can't control what the intelligence community says, but that [the NIE's] conclusions don't reflect his own views" about Iran's nuclear-weapons program, said the official, who would discuss intelligence matters only on the condition of anonymity.

Bush's behind-the-scenes assurances may help to quiet a rising chorus of voices inside Israel's defense community that are calling for unilateral military action against Iran. Olmert, asked by NEWSWEEK after Bush's departure on Friday whether he felt reassured, replied: "I am very happy."

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The agenda of the Bush White House is exposed as irrelevant, myopic and counterproductive. Most Arab countries are in open defiance of Washington and are actively reaching out to Iran.

“As long as they [Iran] have no nuclear program … why should we isolate Iran? Why punish Iran now?” Arab League Secretary-General Abu Moussa told The Washington Post.

The chief of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Mohamed ElBaradei, is in Iran for talks. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad attended December’s Gulf Cooperation Council summit. The Iranian president attended the just-completed hajj in Mecca at the invitation of the Saudi monarch, King Abdullah. Tehran is exploring the resumption of diplomatic ties with Egypt, cut since the 1979 revolution, and has offered to cooperate with Cairo in the production of nuclear energy. And the Syrian and Lebanese governments have ignored Washington’s warnings to sever ties with Hezbollah and Hamas.

It is the end of the road for George Bush. The world takes less and less notice of him. He strutted and swaggered across the stage. He bellowed and raged. He plundered and murdered. And now he wants to be anointed as a peacemaker. His presidency, like his life, has been a tragic waste. But he at least he has a life. There are tens of thousands of mute graves in Gaza, Lebanon, Iraq and Afghanistan that stand as stark testaments to his true legacy. If he wants to redeem his time in office he should kneel before one and ask for forgiveness.
http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2008/01/14/6354/

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Bush's hate speech against Iran draws UAE opposition

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