Eradicating the "Little Satan".

• Author: Williams, J. Edgar
• Position: Israel foreign relations

ERADICATING THE "LITTLE SATAN"

http://www.commentarymagazine.com/viewarticle.cfm/eradicating-the-little-satan-13900

By Ze'ev Maghen, Department of Middle East Studies at Bar-Ilan University, Israel

In addition to chairing his department, Ze'ev Maghen is also Bar-Ilan University's Senior Lecturer in Islamic History. In this article, he maintains that the greatest danger to Israeli and American interests in the Middle East comes from Iran and that this danger has sharply increased since Ahmadinejad became its president in 2005. He therefore challenges what he describes as "the prevailing opinion among Middle East experts" in the United States, and the West in general, that the new and more menacing proclamations from Iran calling for, and apparently threatening, the destruction of Israel are simply politically useful rhetoric. According to Maghen, most analysts believe that this rhetoric, appearing daily in Iran's media and often reinforced by mass demonstrations, serves two purposes: It distracts the Iranian population from the economic failures of the revolution and serves as a bargaining tool with the West, especially America. Iran will diminish its enmity towards the West, which will in return abandon Israel, the "Little Satan" (the "Great Satan", of course, being the United States).

Maghen shows that the Iranian leadership considers Israel a cancer that must be excised from the Muslim world and that Iran fully intends to do so, "whether in one fell swoop or through a relentless process of attrition and erosion." The Ahmadinejad regime thinks that...