Herald.com | 10/28/2005 | Take Iran leader's threat seriously

So, another Muslim fanatic has just called for the destruction of Israel. Big deal. Another day, another genocidal anti-Semite. That might have been the reaction of some at news of the Iranian president's declaration on Wednesday that Israel must be ''wiped off the map.'' Look more closely, however, and this is not your everyday spewing of poisonous extremism. Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has shown his cards and the world may live to regret its passivity if it fails to take him seriously.

The statement did not come from some masked teenage radical or from a fringe shadowy group. And the call to arms did not urge forcing Israel to withdraw from occupied territories or even for regime change. This was the president of a country, the man who recently represented his nation at the U.N. podium, urging his followers to obliterate another country from the face of the Earth.

As it happens, Ahmadinejad is not just the president of any country. He leads a nation that much of the world believes is actively working to arm itself with nuclear weapons.

For those who find solace in his threat to destroy only Israel, the Iranian president predicted, ``We shall soon experience a world without the United States.''

Palestinian state

The Iranian president also issued a veiled threat against the growing number of Muslim countries now seeking to improve relations with Israel, warning that nations moving to recognize Israel will ''burn in the fire of the Islamic nation's fury.'' Now that most Arab countries demand the creation of a Palestinian state, rather than the destruction of Israel, and even the president of the Palestinian Authority speaks of two nations living side by side in peace, Iran stands with the extremist rejectionists, who would accept nothing but the annihilation of Israel. The Iranian president has become more kosher than the rabbi, to use an expression he might not appreciate.

Ahmadinejad's speech comes a couple of days after the respected Jane's Defense Weekly reported details of an agreement between the governments of Iran and Syria. According to Jane's, Iran will work with Syria to help it establish four or five facilities dedicated to the production of chemical weapons.

Iran could hardly find a more suitable partner. The Syrian regime of Bashar al-Assad has just been found guilty by a U.N. investigator of plotting and carrying out the assassination of a former Lebanese prime minister. While the rest of the world cheerfully speaks of something it optimistically likes to call the ''Community of Nations,'' the two repressive regimes behave like members of an international mafia, taking out contracts on troublesome politicians, deciding which countries deserve to be wiped out, building up their deadly arsenals and encouraging killers in the region.

Just a few hours after the speech, a Palestinian suicide bomber detonated himself at an outdoor food stand inside Israel, killing five people who just happened to have walked up to get something to eat.

While Iran and Syria act, the international community mostly talks.

To their credit, Western governments did react promptly (with words, of course) to diplomatically protest Ahmadinejad's statements.

The West, however, has shown little backbone in standing up to these thoroughly thuggish and extremely dangerous regimes. European leaders continue to insist on negotiating a deal to end Iran's illegal nuclear projects, even with Iran calling for the destruction of other countries and actively arming militia groups dedicated to turning its vision of doom into reality.

Last August, the chief Iranian negotiator in the nuclear talks told an audience on Iranian television: ``Thanks to the negotiations with Europe, we gained another year, in which we completed the (nuclear reprocessing plant) in Isfahan.''

For Europeans who may take comfort that Iran's vision only includes a world without Israel and the United States, Ahmadinejad had another little hint of his worldview, saying he sees relations between the two sides as part of the ''historic war'' between Islam and the West.

Iran's cards are now plainly open and on the table. The West has the next play.

Frida Ghitis writes about world affairs.