Chomsky’s Razor

Noam Chomsky’s in the Guardian today. He employs his trademark political and epistemological principle: “Anything that in the realms of possibility could be attributable to the insidious and omnipresent forces of Western imperialism is attributable to the insidious and omnipresent forces of Western imperialism.” For example:

Meanwhile Washington may be seeking to destabilise Iran from within. The ethnic mix in Iran is complex; much of the population isn’t Persian. There are secessionist tendencies and it is likely that Washington is trying to stir them up – in Khuzestan on the Gulf, for example, where Iran’s oil is concentrated, a region that is largely Arab, not Persian.

But flippancy aside, he could have a point with this:

In the west, any wild statement by President Ahmadinejad is circulated in headlines, dubiously translated. But Ahmadinejad has no control over foreign policy, which is in the hands of his superior, the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. The US media tend to ignore Khamenei’s statements, especially if they are conciliatory. It’s widely reported when Ahmadinejad says Israel shouldn’t exist – but there is silence when Khamenei says that Iran supports the Arab League position on Israel-Palestine, calling for normalisation of relations with Israel if it accepts the international consensus of a two-state settlement.

More to the point, Ahmadinejad has said that Israel “must be wiped off the map.” A statement that might include the sentiment that it “shouldn’t exist,” but means something manifestly different. And Al-Jazeera are hardly an arm of the Western propaganda machine. But either way, the western media could indeed be overlooking Khamenei’s more moderate (if you can call them that – he still firmly supports Hezbollah) views in favour of Ahmadinejad’s apocalyptic nonsense.