Persian doggerel

Is civilization bad for your health? Some would appear to think so over in the Islamic republic formerly known as Persia.

For Iran’s ambassador to the UN to lambast and attempt to implicate Israel in the Burgas terrorist attack on Israeli tourists is not only pathetic, but represents a contortion of truth and decency so far out in left field that it calls into question modern Iran’s already very thin connection to what in most places besides Iran is referred to as civilization.

Vile and mendacious rants against the West have become a signature of communications strategy in the Islamo-fascist regime’s very short history. It is easy to dismiss them for the garbage that they are, and it is also necessary to do so, because the regime’s lies are not just so much knee-jerk doggerel, they are toxic.

But if Iran chooses the path of barbarity, it doesn’t mean the West should stop at repudiation alone. We can reject and also reflect, for example, on the cultural regression of a nation that produced the great 14th-century poet Hafiz, who wrote many fine and sublime lines, such as:

“From the Shah’s garden blows the wind of Spring, The tulip in her lifted chalice bears a dewy wine of Heaven’s minist’ring..”

Repudiate and reflect: it’s a start.