Some folks are commenting that Iranian President Ahmadinejad's genocidal remarks against Israel were for "domestic consumption only," and are not to be taken overly seriously. Not surprisingly, I respectfully disagree.

Iran sponsors real, non-rhetorical violence through multiple terrorist proxies, they have long been said to be allowing al Qaeda terrorists freedom of movement in their territory, they have been assisting the terrorists in Iraq, they have openly recruited suicide bombers, they have assassinated dissidents abroad and their own agents are responsible for bombings such as the 1994 bombing of an Argentinian Jewish Community Center.

Again, the nature of Iran's violence is decidedly non-rhetorical, it is quite real and ongoing, especially where Jewish targets are concerned. That means that it would be completely irresponsible not to take such statements seriously. Iran has one of the most highly developed terror-network infrastructures on the planet. It is utterly plausible that they would pass off a WMD and use it if they thought they could get away with it, and their highly developed terror network provides them a weapon in itself that will someday represent a deep temptation to use.

Further, even if Ahmadinejad's comments are not going to be coupled with orders to act, there is no shortage of people around him for whom he is providing the moral backing to do so on their own and who have the capability of doing so. There is no shortage of organizational structures as well that can act on this without explicit direction as well. "Will no one rid me of this meddlesome priest?"

War and terror require not only the means, which Iran certainly has and is well on its way to improving, but the moral justification, the reasoning and the rhetoric, and Ahmadinejad is up for providing that. He's providing the motive for murder.

People used to make this excuse for Arafat all the time. They'd write off what he said in Arabic, saying it was just typical Arab rhetoric and that it shouldn't be taken seriously, and anyway, he had his hardliners to appease. Then buses started blowing up, and people started paying a little closer attention to what he had actually been saying and they realized that he had meant everything he had said. Imagine that. And, of course, the reason there were so many hardliners he supposedly had to appease was in large measure, perhaps the largest measure, because of what he had been saying to create them.

Coincidentally, some people used to say the same thing about Hitler -- that he was just throwing red-meat to some of the Nazi extremists. So you see, we've heard this all before, more than once. It's all fun and games and sticks and stones until someone gets hurt.

Iran has been hurting people for some time.

If we write this off as just for the internal, and fail to take it as seriously as the words themselves call for, we are complicit in it. We allow it to continue. We allow this sort of murderously motivating language to continue to be used, and that has deleterious effects both inside and outside Iran. The President of Iran is responsible for his words and their meaning. There can be no compromise on that. We must hold him responsible.

Anti-Zionist paranoia is not the fringist joke in Iran (and across the Middle East) that it is here in America. They believe it. Their fantasies are real to them, and their fantasies are vicious and bloody. Given what Iranians actually believe about Zionism, there is no reason to doubt they would and have worked themselves up to act violently against this perceived threat.

Finally, to imagine certain changes in the governing structure in the Islamic Republic are meant as "moderating reforms" assumes that "moderate reform" means the same thing to the Iranian regime that it means to Western liberal intellectuals. It does not. The words moderation and prudence simply do not have the same meaning and end goals to a Mullah as they do to Western liberals. Our goals and definitions are not the same.

Confusing the two is a deadly error.

Update: Not surprisingly, Haaretz is in the "don't worry about it" camp, because after all, what Iran really wants is peace and justice for Palestinians. Thanks anyway.