I haven't blogged on the Iran earthquake, mostly because (a) earthquakes are a phenomenon of nature that should not be taken lightly, but there's not much you can do about them other than improve building standards and emergency services; (b) the Iranian mullahs have apparently chosen not to follow the advice offered in (a), but have instead spent their country's scarce resources on pursuing nuclear weapons and a campaign of terror against Israel; and (c) the scale of the tragedy is so overwhelming that there's no easy way to grasp it.
But certainly the Iranian people deserve better than what they are getting from their government in this. Jeff Jarvis has more, including a link to a report that the mullahs are accepting aid from all countries except for one. That is, in and of itself, a terrible injustice, not against Israel, but against the Iranian people who need the most competent and logistically convenient assistance available.
Israeli expertise in rescue operations would be a natural choice, if it were not for the mullahs' intractable philosophy of hate against the Jews. The mullahs' political position on Israel is indeed to fundamental to their philosophy that any acceptance of Israeli aid would seem to largely negate their raison d'etre, and therefore undermine their authority. After all, where would the mullahs be without their enmity toward Israel? What would they have left to burnish their Islamist credentials? They would probably be in danger of being marked for assassination by their own hard-line radicals.
But carrying on this hatred of Israel to such a ridiculous extreme could have other repercussions; it could really piss off the Iranian people who need nothing more right now than warm clothes, food, shelter, and assistance in burying the dead and locating the missing.
Comments