There are some people who are so repugnant that not even they themselves can listen to their own discourse. The “president” of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, is one of them. Russia’s Vladimir Putin, shown above holding hands with Ahmadinejad, is another.

This week marks the 60th birthday of Israel, and here’s what Ahmadinejad had to say about it:

Those who think they can revive the stinking corpse of the usurping and fake Israeli regime by throwing a birthday party are seriously mistaken. Today the reason for the Zionist regime’s existence is questioned, and this regime is on its way to annihilation.

On its way to annihilation? Hasn’t one who is a “stinking corpse” already been annihilated? Or does the “president” of Iran really believe that a “stinking corpse” can be “revived”? It’s possible he does, of course, because he claims the Jewish holocaust in Germany never happened and that there are no homosexuals in Iran. In fact, Germany wiped out 40% of the world’s Jews while under Hitler’s rule and there are just as many gays in Iran as in any other nation of similar size — though, to be sure, they are forced to hide in the shadows.

It really does seem that Iran’s “president” isn’t listening to himself. Maybe because he realizes he’s such an idiot that few are likely to pay him any heed, and certainly because, like the famous Emperor with his New Clothes, he receives no feedback at home (much less criticism) due to the horrifying religious dictatorship he has imposed, Ahmadinejad feels free to utter any kind of outrageous nonsense — as if he were not the president of a country, bound to set an example and project an image of his nation, but a common street thug pontificating from a bar stool. According to Freedom House, only ten nations on the entire planet have less freedom of the press than Ahmadinejad’s Iran.

So the hypocrisy of this man is able to reach truly breathtaking heights and nobody within Iran is able to say a word about it. What would Ahmadinejad’s reaction be if George Bush referred to Iran as a “stinking corpse”? How is the arrogance embodied in Ahmadinejad’s remark any different from that which he so bitterly criticizes as coming from the United States?

Disturbing as those questions are, there is a much larger and more ominous inquiry to be undertaken: How is it possible that this madman feels powerful enough to make these provocative statements? Israel’s military is more than a match for Iran’s, as it has shown before on many occasions, and behind Israel stands the United States. Who stands behind Iran?

Russia does. Russia has supplied Iran with the ability to built atomic power stations, and it has thumbed its nose at the civilized world’s attempt to impose economic sanctions on the rogue regime. Russia has supplied Iran with a missile system to defend its nuclear capacity from attack by Israel, and it has routinely taken Iran’s side in the United Nations, slowing and obstructing the world’s efforts to verify that Iran is not using its new nuclear technology to build weapons of mass destruction that Ahmadinejad could use to make his reference to “stinking corpse” a reality.

Iran ranks #185 in the world in terms of the amount of press freedom it allows, according to Freedom House, and Russia ranks #170. In other words, these two fanatical nationalist dictatorships are birds of a totalitarian feather, and its not surprising to see their leaders in bed together.

Putin’s record of shockingly crude public pronouncements easily rivals that of Ahmadinejad. When an Israeli diplomatic delegation visited Moscow last year, for instance, Putin congratulated them on the multiple rape charges that were then pending against their president Moshe Katsav, saying he was impressed by what a real man Katsav was.

If Putin and Ahmadinejad are capable of making remarks of this kind in official public statements, do you dare imagine what they might be capable of saying behind closed doors? Russia itself, of course, is infamous for having carried out various pogroms against its own Jewish population, many of whom have fled to other countries including Israel and the United States.

Happy birthday, Israel. As American philosopher Eric Hoffer has written: “I have a premonition that will not leave me; as it goes with Israel, so will it go with all of us. Should Israel perish, the holocaust will be upon us.” The world needs to understand that, no matter what it thinks about Israel, it is faced with a new axis of evil that runs between Tehran and Moscow. It can confront that reality now or, as it did with Nazi Germany, it can wait until the crisis boils over. There is no third path.