10th Sept 2015 – Ben Cohen – Senior Editor at The Tower Magazine, New York-based writer on international affairs.

His name is Ali Khamenei, and he has a lot to say about Jews. With the return of Iran to the world scene, he will emerge as the symbol of hate like never before.

At the height of negotiations with the Iranian regime over its nuclear program, Western advocates of a deal found themselves rationalizing the Islamic Republic’s uncompromising belligerence towards Israel. They did so as part of their bid to persuade a skeptical public that the mullahs would honor their agreements. Thus was born the “domestic consumption” theory of Iran’s internal politics, advanced by, among others, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry.

In a conversation with The Atlantic, Kerry acknowledged Iran’s “fundamental ideological confrontation” with Israel, but wondered aloud whether the regime was materially committed to the goal of eliminating the Jewish state.

One month after the signing of the Iran nuclear deal, UK Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond made a similar observation on a visit to Tehran for the reopening of the British Embassy. “We’ve got to distinguish between revolutionary sloganizing and what Iran actually does in the conduct of its foreign policy,” Hammond told the BBC. “We’ve got to, as we do with quite a number of countries, distinguish the internal political consumption rhetoric from the reality of the way they conduct their foreign policy.”

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