Beyond rhetoric?

Iran throws its doors open to the Intifada summit. Azadeh Moaveni observes the guests vying for the limelight in Tehran
High above the hills of northern Tehran, Palestinian flags fluttering brightly in the spring sun announced the Al-Aqsa Intifada conference, Iran's latest foreign policy initiative. Intended to compensate for the failures of the recent Arab summit in Amman -- namely, producing aggressive rhetoric and actually delivering funds to the Palestinians -- the Tehran summit spoke most loudly about Iran's regional ambitions. The conference's final statement called on all Islamic countries to sever ties with Israel, and for the Organisation of the Islamic Conference (OIC) to financially support the Intifada.
Delegates from 34 Islamic countries assembled to hear Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei demand the annihilation of Israel and cast the Palestinian struggle as an Islamic cause, a spin that lends Tehran's bid for leadership some legitimacy. In a less than subtle nudge to Arab states, Khamenei pointed to the price Iran is paying: "The United States has said if Iran stops supporting Palestinians, the US will drop its hostility toward Iran, but Iran considers its support a duty."
Gazing at a giant model of Al-Aqsa Mosque made of garish yellow and red flowers, Khamenei claimed Israel exaggerated the number of Jews killed in the Holocaust to "lay the ground for its occupation." And after repeatedly declaring the liberation of southern Lebanon as a model for the Intifada, he concluded with a clear dictate for the Lebanese militia Hizbullah's role in the Palestinian uprising: "The Islamic Resistance shall be a guiding torch for other combatants."
President Mohamed Khatami attempted a more moderate stance. He critiqued Zionism intellectually and traced the current insecurity to the "racist nature of Israel." The president had previously proposed a referendum for Palestinians to decide their own fate, suggesting a quietly growing Iranian pragmatism. Khatami, nevertheless, demanded an international court to try Israel for war crimes and a full economic embargo.
Hizbullah leader Hassan Nasrallah, who spoke directly after the two Iranian leaders, was took up where Khamenei, rather than Khatami, left off. "This is a historical opportunity to do away with the Zionist cancer," he intoned. "We should not waste time in pointless discussion." Suggesting that Hizbullah would be prepared to fight in Palestine, the ever charismatic Nasrallah ended his speech with a fiery warning: "Zionists can get their luggage ready and go back to wherever they came from."
Palestinian Authority (PA) President Yasser Arafat was not invited and would have been uncomfortable, in any case, hearing Palestinian National Council head Salim Za'noun call the Oslo agreements a "fiction." The buzz on the sidelines of the conference was how far contacts between the PA and Tehran might develop, especially if the Iranian pragmatist strain is voted back into office with Khatami. The probability of this received a boost when Nasrallah reportedly told Khamenei in a private meeting that Hizbullah backs Khatami's re-election. "The Hizbullah youth in Lebanon see Khatami as a politician who managed to combine democracy and religion," Nasrallah said, according to a source close to Khamenei quoted in the Saudi daily Al-Sharq Al-Awsat. "He restored Iran's standing in Lebanon and the Islamic world and also succeeded in repairing the [Iranian Islamic] regime's image in the world."
Apart from listening to the plentiful and somewhat predictable oratory within the conference hall, delegates circulated outside to see who had come. The surprise guest was Saudi Arabia's head of the Shura (consultative) Council. The seating arrangements were also obsessively scrutinised -- the triumvirate of Hamas leader Khaled Mash'al, Islamic Jihad's Ramadan Abdollah Shallah and Nasrallah was placed more centrally than the Palestinian officials on hand.
For once, the Islamic Republic went all out, lining the streets with soldiers in full ceremonial dress, running an impressive (but only semi-functional) live Internet centre linked to the conference site and adorning the entrances with Intifada art. Only time will tell if all these efforts, the money promised and the coordination arranged at the conference will give more solid results than similar pledges made at the Amman summit. Tehran's credibility will rely on it.
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