{"id":1777,"date":"2010-06-07T01:52:37","date_gmt":"2010-06-07T08:52:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/?p=1777"},"modified":"2010-06-07T01:52:37","modified_gmt":"2010-06-07T08:52:37","slug":"gaza-activists-must-reject-irans-offer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2010\/06\/07\/gaza-activists-must-reject-irans-offer\/","title":{"rendered":"Gaza Activists Must Reject Iran’s Offer"},"content":{"rendered":"

I hope they are not seriously considering this:<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\"iran_military\"<\/a> Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guards are ready to provide a military escort to cargo ships trying to break Israel’s blockade of Gaza<\/strong>, a representative of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said Sunday.<\/p>\n

"Iran’s Revolutionary Guards naval forces are fully prepared to escort the peace and freedom convoys to Gaza with all their powers and capabilities," Ali Shirazi, Khamenei’s representative inside the Revolutionary Guards, was quoted as saying by the semi-official Mehr news agency.<\/p>\n

Any intervention by the Iranian military would be considered highly provocative by Israel<\/strong> which accuses Iran of supplying weapons to Hamas, the Islamist movement which rules Gaza.<\/p>\n

Iran does not recognize the Israeli state and President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has often predicted its imminent demise.<\/p>\n

Israel and its ally the United States decline to rule out military action against Iran if it looks like acquiring nuclear arms capability, something Israel sees as a threat to its survival.<\/p>\n

Tehran says its nuclear program is for energy generation and medical purposes and calls its nuclear-armed adversaries hypocrites for trying to block its technological progress.<\/p>\n

The Iranian state news agency IRNA said Sunday Iran would try to send humanitarian aid to Gaza in ships under an Iranian flag<\/strong>. It said Iran had decided to ditch previous plans to send its aid in ships flying the flag of another state.<\/p>\n

"The Iranian humanitarian assistance will include foodstuffs, medicines and medical equipment," the head of Iran’s Red Crescent Society, Abdolraouf Abidzadeh, was quoted as saying. He gave no more details\u2026 [emphasis added<\/em>]<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Inserted from <Raw Story<\/a>><\/p>\n

Personally, given Iran\u2019s track record where Israel is concerned, I speculate that Iran\u2019s goal here is to further destabilize the Middle East by provoking Israel to commit another atrocity.<\/font><\/p>\n

However, even if Iran\u2019s intentions are completely humanitarian and altruistic, It would be insane for activists, trying to get humanitarian supplies to Gaza and break Israel\u2019s cruel blockade, to accept either armed Iranian troops or relief ships under an Iranian flag.  Either virtually guarantees a violent reaction from Israel.  It would be like wearing an \u201cI  love Obama\u201d T-shirt to an open-carry machine gun party hosted by Teabaggers.<\/font><\/p>\n

While I believe Israel\u2019s blockade to starve out Gaza should be opposed and challenged at every opportunity, this approach can only exacerbate an already ugly situation.<\/font><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I hope they are not seriously considering this: Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guards are ready to provide a military escort to cargo ships trying to break Israel’s blockade of Gaza, a representative of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said Sunday. "Iran’s Revolutionary Guards naval forces are fully prepared to escort the peace and freedom convoys to […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1777","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","category-5-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1777","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1777"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1777\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1777"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1777"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1777"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}