By Stan Goodenough
Mar 02, 2008
Muslim megalomaniac and Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad - who foretells Israel's destruction in almost every one of his public speeches - received a hero's welcome when he arrived in Iraq on a state visit Sunday.
Ahmadinejad - the first Iranian leader to visit Iraq since the 1980s - is scheduled to meet with the country's US-planted president and prime minister during his tour of the country his predecessors waged war against for eight years.
The leaders of the two former enemy states were reportedly to hold their meetings behind closed doors.
Some of the issues to be discussed included deals of Iranian electricity supplies to Iraqi cities and Tehran's offer to build a powerplant for Iraq. Iran has already given Iraq $ 1 billion in aid.
While it is not difficult to assess what this strengthening of ties and Iraq's growing debt to Iran portends for the future of the region, we are left to speculate about what Ahmadinejad and fellow-Shiite, Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, will say in their meetings about Israel.
Ahmadinejad's hatred for the Jewish state is often in the news, but Al-Maliki's feelings are less well known.
The Iraqi did earn the ire of American lawmakers in the 2006 Second Lebanon War when he one-sidedly condemned Israel.
In a letter to Al-Maliki, Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada, Democratic Whip Dick Durbin of Illinois and Sen. Charles Schumer of New York described the Iraqi leader's comments as troubling.
"Your failure to condemn Hezbollah's aggression and recognize Israel's right to defend itself raise serious questions about whether Iraq under your leadership can play a constructive role in resolving the current crisis and bringing stability to the Middle East," their letter said.
In December of that year US President George W. Bush endorsed Al-Maliki as "the right guy for the job" of leading Iraq
Last August, the Iraqi flew to Syria for meetings with top officials in a country Iran has also been working hard to cement relations with.