Straight-faced claim: ‘We don’t support dictators’
Mitt Romney and Iran Foreign Policy

GOP Candidate Wants Genocide Incitement Charges


Arash Norouzi
The Mossadegh Project | November 4, 2007                    
[Updated October 24, 2012]


Mitt Romney Though Mitt Romney’s efforts to indict Iran’s President for inciting genocide, now spanning over five years, have yet to yield any results, the former Massachusetts Governor and Republican Presidential Candidate isn’t letting it go. In September 2007, he made the request in a formal letter to the UN Secretary General (seen below). He raised the matter again at the CNN Republican National Security debate on November 22, 2011, and most prominently, during the Foreign Policy debate with President Obama on October 22, 2012.

Romney’s entire case is based on Iran’s severely mistranslated and deliberately misreported anti-Zionist rhetoric. "Given his calls for Israel to be wiped off the map", reads a statement on Romney’s web site, "Ahmadinejad should be indicted for incitement to genocide under Article III of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide". Iran’s actual position, advocating the political demise of Israel, has been conveniently interpreted as a threat to annihilate the country and kill all of its people. Israel’s own Deputy Prime Minister has confirmed the faultiness of this narrative.

Is Romney’s understanding of the world based in reality? Consider some of his tangential statements. For example, Romney has repeatedly attempted to paint Barack Obama as a poor friend to Israel, implying that he has snubbed their leaders and withheld U.S. support. Yet rather than feel abandoned, most Israeli leaders have rated him very favorably. Ehud Barak, the Defense Minister and former Prime Minister, has even stated that of all U.S. Presidents, Obama is the strongest partner that his country has ever seen.

Romney also chastized the President for his 2009 speech in Cairo, Egypt, calling it the “Apology Tour”. While Obama made some conciliatory remarks, no apologies whatsoever were offered. CNN’s post-debate Fact Check concluded, “Romney’s claim is false. The president...has never apologized or gone on an “apology tour.” Nevertheless, the Romney campaign is still betting on this canard, featuring it in a subsequent promo video.



Romney’s signature line of the night was his claim that America doesn’t dictate to countries, it saves them from dictatorship. Yet the two men had already agreed that Egyptian dicatator Hosni Mubarak in Egypt had to go, neglecting to mention that America had supported him for decades — and still would had the people not revolted. America’s extensive history of overthrowing foreign governments and replacing them with brutal regimes is well documented. Roll call: Patrice Lumumba, Jacobo Arbenz, Salvador Allende, Mohammad Mossadegh......




September 16, 2007

To His Excellency Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon,

With the disturbing news that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is planning to address the United Nations General Assembly next week, I call on the United Nations to revoke any invitation to President Ahmadinejad to address the General Assembly. The only way he should be greeted in the United States is with an indictment under the Genocide Convention.

The Iranian regime under President Ahmadinejad has spoken openly about wiping Israel off the map, has fueled Hezbollah’s terror campaign in the region and around the world, and defied the world community in its pursuit of nuclear weapons – capabilities that make these threats even more ominous. As General Petraeus testified last week, Iran is also supporting Shia militia extremists and violence that is taking the lives of American soldiers and undermining the Iraqi government.

A failure by the United Nations to take a strong stand against Iran’s President Ahmadinejad would be especially disturbing given the United Nations’ record of failure to prevent genocide in other circumstances and the failure of the United Nations Human Rights Council to confront the Iranian regime and others among the world’s worst human rights abusers. Failure to act would mean that the United States must reconsider its level of support and funding for the United Nations as we look to rebuild and revitalize effective international partnerships to meet 21st century threats.

If President Ahmadinejad sets foot in the United States, he should be handed an indictment under the Genocide Convention. This approach has been called for by experts as diverse as Nobel Prize Winner Elie Wiesel, human rights advocate and former Canadian Justice Minister Irwin Cotler, U.S. Ambassador John Bolton and law professor Alan Dershowitz.

The United States and the world must take a strong stand against the terrorist Iranian regime and the time for action is now.

Sincerely,
Mitt Romney



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Related links:

Newt Gingrich’s False Predictions on Iran

Hillary Clinton Admits the U.S. Regrets 1953 Coup in Iran

VIDEO: Obama’s Speech to the Muslim World — June 4, 2009



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