WarSclerotic

The winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1921, French writer Anatole France, was profoundly knowledgeable and loved to write essays. Going against the tide never concerned him. Morality lay before his eyes, always. France never hesitated to protest against injustice, and, together with his colleague Emile Zola, called on the government to reopen the case into the falsely accused Jewish officer Alfred Dreyfus.

Today, we are missing someone like France. A great man such as him, a man who could stir and galvanize public opinion; a man who would have been able to explain how, just because (almost) the entire world says the developing agreement in Geneva is a good one, doesn’t mean that it’s the right thing to do. Anatole France might have said: “If 50 million people say a foolish thing, it is still a foolish thing.”

Global blindness in the face of the Iranian nuclear project is not the only problem with Geneva talks. The very nature of the international community’s behavior around Iran is also problematic. Exemplifying this issue, on Wednesday, Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei spoke about Israel, using expressions such as “Zionist dogs” and prophesying that Israel would “disappear from the map,” and not a single world power in Geneva raised its voice in protest. I witnessed this repulsiveness first-hand.

Actually, the U.S. delegation and the European delegations were asked to respond to Khamenei’s violent words, choosing instead to disregard his statements in English. Why spoil the new reality with facts? After all, Iranian President Hasan Rouhani presented the world with a different Iran.

This time too, it was France which protested the issue. Perhaps that would have consoled Anatole France, the Frenchman.