Iran's foreign minister lifts the veil

De Velt Blog:

I'm sure he didn't mean it to sound that way. Normally he's more circumspect, if not downright duplicitous. Iran's Fars News Agency reports Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki as saying 'that the US aggrandizes such deceitful notions as democracy and human rights so as to impose its hegemonic policies.'

Now it happens to be true that there's a belief in the West that the spread of democracy and respect for human rights must eventually create a world in the West's own image: peaceful, prosperous and progressive. After all, as we're always being reminded, democracies don't go to war with each other.

Democracy and human rights are also considered in the West to be a Good Thing. As opposed to tyranny and oppression.

So it's interesting to see the Iranian foreign minister coming out in favour of the latter in an open rejection of these core Western values. For those who believe in the clash of civilisations theory the battle lines are being drawn with increasing intensity.

Most obliging of Mottaki to lift the veil of Iranian respectability. Because in fact it's Iran that's currently attempting to establish a hegemony over an increasingly apprehensive Middle East. Unless action is taken soon, the Shi'ite insurgents in Iraq, the Hizballah militia in Lebanon, and the Syrian regime of Basher Assad will soon be coupled to an implied or actual nuclear threat that will force the rest of the region to accept the ayatollahs as their de facto supremos.

What's the objective? To judge from past utterances of Shia clerics they want to spread their own brand of Islam among their heretic brethren and conquer the world. But could it be that traditional motives of power and greed are enshrined in religious terms in this culture clash? Either way, thank you Mottaki for stating it plainly so we all know.

They're against democracy and human rights. Got that everyone?