NOW 80, Uri Lubrani is the grand old man among Israel’s Iran experts. As his country’s last ambassador to Tehran before the shah’s fall, he was the single senior figure anywhere who called Khomeini’s revolution right.
Now he’s worried again. About Iran. And nukes. And, above all, about the increasing madness of President Mahmoud Ahmedinejad and his regime.
“I take every word Ahmedinejad says seriously,” he says. Especially his threats to destroy Israel.
Lubrani also fears the West’s lack of will, its gullibility when faced with adroit Iranian maneuvers. He calls Tehran’s manipulation of negotiations “a masterpiece of hoodwinking the world.”
And he’s right.
Internally, Ahmedinejad wants to make Iran’s government and clerisy ever more radical. We view the Ayatollah Khamenei as extreme. To Iran’s president, he’s much too liberal – and he may be a marked man.
The old ambassador isn’t a soldier and doesn’t presume to give military advice. But he does believe that only the United States can solve the Iran problem – and we must begin by sending clear, consistent signals to the Iranian people. Washington’s sloppy rhetoric and self-contradiction only confuses Iranians – most of whom would like to see the current regime go.
And regime change is essential.
Lubrani has no faith in the worth of negotiations and cautions that Westerners shouldn’t underestimate the fanatics in Tehran. “Bear in mind three things: They have 3,000 years of culture; they’re patient – a nation of carpet-weavers, and of chess players.”
Right now, Iran’s priority is preserving Hezbollah, its advance guard against Israel. The longer-term view nudges Lubrani toward despair when he comtemplates the possibility that the regime might be able to stay in power. “The Iranians will have the bomb. All Iranians want it. The question is: Who will have his finger on the button?”
At the Biblical age of four-score years, Uri Lubrani’s a prophet in the Land of the Prophets. And the rest of us had better listen.