mr president the horrific events in gaza during the past two weeks have brought international condemnation against israel
we have witnessed colleagues during this debate today lining up to see who could express the strongest outrage against the jewish state
however for one country in the middle east this was exactly the outcome it had sought iran has supplied missiles munitions and other sophisticated weaponry to hamas for years
it has provided money and training for hamas fighters
its objective was to provoke israel into a ground war and the bloody result with gruesome photos of dead children on tv screens and in newspapers around the world is the best possible recruiting sergeant for fundamentalist islam and the iranian mullahs vision of a global islamist movement united against the west
the fascist regime in tehran is the main sponsor of war and terror in the middle east and the tragic outcome is exactly what tehran wanted
it distracts domestic attention in iran from the economic crisis caused by the collapse in the price of oil and it distracts international attention from the mullahs rush to produce a nuclear weapon
iran's foreign policy objective is to become the dominant regional power in the middle east
it wants to unite the islamic world in submission to its own austere and disturbing vision of a totalitarian islamic brotherhood where human rights women's rights and freedom of speech are ground into the dust and shamefully the west has done nothing to confront or expose iranian aggression
faced with mounting evidence of the mullahs <unk> of terror the west has gone out of its way to appease tehran even agreeing to its primary demand of disabling the main iranian opposition movement the people's mujahedin of iran by placing it on the eu terror list
this must stop
