Suspect Claims

The mad mullahs of Iran, as we know to our cost, are notoriously suspicious. The present titular leader of the world's biggest nuclear power and sometime supporter of Iran's oppressor Mohammed Reza recently branded Iran part of an "axis of evil"; yet Iran's mad mullahs are suspicious. Iran's eastern neighbour, Afghanistan, was invaded some years ago by the world's biggest nuclear power and its little helper, and is arguably no better off; yet Iran's mad mullahs are suspicious. Iran's western neighbour, Iraq, was invaded some years ago by the world's biggest nuclear power and its little helper, and is now a basket case; yet Iran's mad mullahs are suspicious. In the nuclear-armed land of milk and honey, Olmert bar Sharon is comparing Iran's legally elected president to the proto-Saddam, Adolf Hitler, and claiming that he (the Iranian president, that is, not Olmert bar Sharon) is "ready to commit crimes against humanity" and "has to be stopped"; yet Iran's mad mullahs are suspicious.

The suspicions of Iran's mad mullahs have been provoked by a Google Video website entry locating the city of Tabriz "in southern Azerbaijan, currently in the territory of Iran". Southern Azerbaijan in this case means not the ex-Soviet republic but a province which has belonged to Iran for about four thousand years; or, on present estimates, since about seven hundred years before Moses led the Israelites from Egypt to collect on that divine promise of real estate which Arthur Balfour so kindly ratified early in the twentieth century. The notoriously suspicious mad mullahs think that Google, an American company, may be attempting to interfere in Iran's affairs by propagandising for Azeri separatists. Of course it is possible, even probable, that Google are guilty of nothing more than good old-fashioned American ignorance; but one would hope they could be a little more sensitive. It is not so very long, after all, since America itself was threatened on all sides - the USSR lurking just across the Bering Strait, Cuba squatting in the Caribbean ready to smash America's shipping, and the Nicaraguan hordes poised for a blitzkrieg through Mexico. Granted all this, from the founding of Tabriz onwards, took place before the collective human psyche was rearranged by the advent of 9/11; but still, if good intentions can go awry to such an extent - if the defender of truth, justice and enlightenment values should start, however accidentally, to re-write history - why, in that case I don't know what we'd do.