Ahmadinejad is odious but I don’t think he’s dangerous. Some people do of course find him dangerous, especially in the Israel he gratuitously insults and threatens, and yet others — many more I’d say — find it convenient to find him dangerous.
...I read with interest in a recent piece by my colleagues John Markoff and David Sanger that “in the past year Israeli estimates of when Iran will have a nuclear weapon had been extended to 2014.” Given that various Israeli leaders have predicted that Iran would have a bomb in 1999 or 2004 or just about every year since 2005, that’s a decade and a half of the non-appearing wolf at the door...Still there is a dangerous pattern here of Israeli and U.S. alarmism...
Cool heads are needed...U.S. intelligence agencies hold that Iran has not made the decision to build a bomb; any “breakout” decision would be advertised because the I.A.E.A. would be thrown out...The Islamic Republic is a study in muddle but lucid over a single goal: self-preservation.
So there’s time...
Yes, Ahmadinejad is the bogeyman from Central Casting...Iran is a paper tiger, a postmodern threat...
And then ask yourselves, who really is the danger:
a) Iran
b) the U.S.
c) Israel
d) Roger Cohen
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