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Dexter Vanzile: Ahmadinejad charms U.S. church leaders
By DEXTER VANZILE
Christian media analyst for The Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America
Hallelujah.

Americans worried about the threat to world peace and security posed by Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad can sleep easy. He is not the anti-Semitic madman the media makes him out to be. He is actually an affable gentleman willing to make peace with Israel and the United States. And whatever you may have recently heard from the International Atomic Energy Agency about Iran's two decades' worth of undeclared nuclear development activity, the country's president has no interest at all – none at all – in obtaining nuclear weapons.

That's the assessment of a group of U.S. Christian peacemakers who met with Ahmadinejad for two hours one Saturday last month and who held a news conference two days later to share the good news of peace in our time.

The Rev. Dr. Shanta Premawardhana, associate general secretary for interfaith relations at the National Council of Churches, offered these words of assurance: "Ahmadinejad insists that Iran is not developing a nuclear weapon. Indeed, the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khameni, under whose authority the nuclear program rests, has issued a 'fatwa' (edict) that making or using nuclear weapons goes against Islamic teaching."

Ahmadinejad even told the delegation, which included representatives from the Episcopal Church, the Mennonite Church and the National Council of Churches, that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict can only be solved through political, not military means and that he has "no reservation about conducting talks with American officials if we see some goodwill."

After extracting assurances like this from a man who has predicted Israel will be blown away in a "storm," one has to wonder why these guys are not working for the U.S. State Department.

Clearly the delegation had a calming influence on Ahmadinejad, a man who has funded Hamas and Hezbollah, two groups dedicated to Israel's destruction, called for Israel to be wiped off the map, and who late last year organized a Holocaust denial conference that outraged the world.

J. Daryl Byler, director of the Mennonite Central Committee's Washington office, described Ahmadinejad as "having a measured tone, seeming reasonable and having a witty personality."

Sadly, there were no American Jews or Israelis in this blessed group of peacemakers, but that may have been a factor in the group's ability to extract such extravagant promises of peace from Ahmadinejad. When you're a Christian living in the United States, and not an Israeli parent who has lost a child to a Hamas suicide attack, or a child from northern Israel who spent most of last summer in a bomb shelter, it's a lot easier to let bygones be bygones.

Thankfully, this group did not let Ahmadinejad off easy. Before he left the U.S., Premawardhana promised on his blog to "ask tough questions from the president regarding holocaust denial, Israel and nuclear issues, and to receive their perspective on these questions."

And the delegates really gave the man heck, even if their warnings didn't make it into the statement issued by the delegation the day after it met with Ahmadinejad. "We raised the issue as clearly as we know how to raise it," Byler said. "We hope Israel is more secure as a result of raising these issues."

If there is one thing the delegation can be proud of it is that Ahmadinejad was apparently able to restrain his rhetoric for four whole days after his meeting with the blessed peacemakers. The Iranian president did not fall off the wagon until Feb. 28, when he told a group of clerics in Sudan that "the Zionists are the true manifestation of Satan" and that "[t]oday the Zionist regime is a symbol of hedonism and the manifestation of the ugly soul of some usurper powers that support it."

Four whole days with no hostile rhetoric from Ahmadinejad. Neville Chamberlain would be proud.


Pertinent Links:

1) Dexter Vanzile: Ahmadinejad charms U.S. church leaders