That's a terrific question.
Yes, to answer your question succinctly, I do believe that plays some role. If you look at Iran in the 1990s up through the time that Ahmadinejad was elected...for example, before Ahmadinejad you had Mohammad Khatami as president. There was an attempt at reform. The way the Iranian government is set up, those attempts at reform can be squelched quite easily, and I think they were. I don't believe the election of Ahmadinejad in 2005 was free and fair; I think there was a lot of hanky-panky, if you will, and repression going on behind the scenes.
Because there is growing discontent with the regime, this is the perfect way to distract the population and say, look, here's what your problems are really all about; they are about Israel; they are about the plight of Palestinians and the sense of solidarity we have with them. That is a theme that we've seen throughout history, that a regime that is dictatorial and tyrannical, which the Iranian regime is, likes to find a scapegoat. It likes to find a whipping boy. And I think Israel has served that purpose quite well.
On the plight of the Palestinians, I would like to see peace in the Middle East. I would like to see the end of this problem of countries wanting to eliminate Israel. I'd like Israel to be able to live in harmony with the rest of the people of the Middle East. I hate to say it, but a lot of leaders in the Muslim world who are repressing their own people don't want to see that, for many reasons. One of the big ones is that they know it can help distract their own citizens and they can use it as an issue to distract the rest of the world from the terrible policies they are enacting, from the human rights violations they're committing. They don't want to see peace. They don't want to see it go away.
When I see Ahmadinejad leading the charge and being the most vocal in terms of this incitement, this hatred that he spews toward Israel, I absolutely have to believe that part of that is based on the fact that there are problems at home in Iran and this is a convenient way to try to distract the Iranian citizens from those problems.
I think it's an excellent question.