Pepe Escobar: Another round of Ahmadineboom

With the official announcement this week that former president Mohammad Khatami, who served from 1997 to 2005, has dropped from the Iranian presidential elections, it seems increasingly likely that Obama's alleged "unclenched fist" Iran policy will have to deal with - yes - the "new Hitler" (copyright The Israel lobby) Mahmud Ahmadinejad. Khatami, former reformist icon, the man who launched the United Nations-approved "dialogue of civilizations" in contrast to the paranoid Huntingtonian "clash", had entered the race on February 9. Not only in Iran, chancelleries all over the world were betting, some of them actually praying, he might stand a very good chance of beating Ahmadinejad on June 12.

This Persian chessboard is just in its initial moves. Still, it does look bleak for reformists. Fists - in Washington and Tehran - may eventually unclench. But Hillary Clinton's State Department is not making things easier. The State Department could not even name the Persian Gulf correctly when Dennis Ross - a crypto-Zionist who by the way knows zilch about Southwest Asia - was appointed "Special Advisor to the Secretary of State for The Gulf and Southwest Asia". What Gulf? Mexico? Aqaba? Aden? Tonkin? The name is Persian Gulf - since at least 330 BC, when the Greeks coined it. And the "new Hitler" seems likely to keep presiding over the most powerful country that borders it in Southwest Asia. Bibi Netanyahu in Israel and Israel Defense Forces Chief of Staff Lieutenant-General Gabi Ashkenazi, who was in Washington this week, are already polishing their bombs.