Column One: Ahmadinejad’s target audience
By CAROLINE B. GLICK
By Iranian and Hizbullah accounts, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s visit to Lebanon next week will be a splendid affair.
The man who stole his office and then killed his countrymen to protect his crime will be greeted as a conquering hero. Billboards bidding him welcome and Iranian flags will line the roads from the Beirut airport down to the border with Israel.
Ahmadinejad’s visit to southern Lebanon will be the highlight of his two-day visit. In preparation for his arrival, in the border town of Maroun a-Ras, Hizbullah has built a replica of the Temple Mount in Jerusalem festooned with an Iranian flag. Ahmadinejad is scheduled to stand outside the structure and throw stones at IDF forces patrolling what he has reportedly referred to as “Iran’s border with Israel.”
Many Israelis are rattled by Ahmadinejad’s trip to our neck of the woods. It is unsettling that the man who personifies the Islamist goal of eradicating the Jewish people will be standing at our doorstep, provoking us.
Before we lose our composure, it is far from clear that Israel is Ahmadinejad’s primary audience.