Many Western journalists, diplomats and others seem desperate to believe that Iran’s foreign minister, Javad Zarif, is a moderate in a sea of hardliners, a rare Iranian with whom the West can and has done business. … Zarif has a very different mission. The Iranian foreign minister’s job is not to change Iran’s behavior, but to pretend that Iran is no different from any other Western country, with hardliners and moderates, national interests and diplomatic imperatives. If Zarif were foreign minister of Belgium, he wouldn’t have to work so hard at getting people to believe him. But he is the top diplomat for the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism …
Zarif is most brazen when he is asked about Iran’s upcoming Holocaust cartoon contest. His first answer is that the government of Iran is not hosting the contest. ‚It’s an N.G.O. that is not controlled by the Iranian government. Nor is it endorsed by the Iranian government,‘ he said. … Jonathan Greenblatt, the CEO and national director of the Anti-Defamation League, told me that Zarif was the ‚master of double-speak.‘ When asked for his reaction to Zarif’s claims about the Holocaust cartoon contest, he said: ‚The idea that they don’t control this contest is farcical. This is a country where you can be put in prison for liking something of Facebook, where the intelligence ministry monitors every tweet and every blog.‘“ (Der Kolumnist Eli Lake auf der Website der Nachrichtenagentur Bloomberg View: „Show Iran a Little Disrespect“)
