For internal consumption: Iranian rulers don't like USA, Israel

Iran's government leverages on US and Israeli anti-Iran moves to gain support at home. We can learn this from an AP article in the Jerusalem Post:    

 

Iran's hard-line President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said Saturday that Israel was the standard bearer of Satan and the Jewish state would soon fall apart, the official Islamic Republic News Agency reported Saturday.

 

...the elite Iranian Revolutionary Guards said they would not bow to pressure and threatened to "punch" the US, in their first response to Washington's plan to list them as a terrorist organization, newspapers reported Saturday.

Local newspapers in the Iranian capital of Teheran quoted Revolutionary Guards leader Gen. Yahya Rahim Safavi saying that he could understand Washington's ire towards the group because of their recent successes against the US.

"America will receive a heavier punch from the guards in the future," he was quoted as saying in the conservative daily Kayhan. "We will never remain silent in the face of US pressure and we will use our leverage against them."

The fact that the remarks, made on Thursday in the central Iranian city of Isfahan, appeared in local newspapers rather than the official state news outlets suggest the comments are for domestic consumption.

"For internal use only." The guards, and perhaps Ahmadinejad, are fighting an internal political fight for survival against more moderate forces.

 

Ami Isseroff

 

Cross posted: Israel News  Middle East Analysis