Iran: 35 years of success against democracy, human rights and peace in the Middle East and world
By Rebwar Rashed: Kurdistan Tribune : President Carter spent New Year’s Eve in 1977 with the Shah and toasted Iran as “an island of stability in one of the more troubled areas of the world”. Less than two years later came the so-called Iranian Revolution. Iran was not as stable as the Carter administration thought.On 4th November 1979, 52 American diplomats and citizens were held hostage for 444 days (They were released on January 20, 1981).Then came the Iranian war against the Kurdish people, one of the most original nations of the Middle East, and against the Arab people of Ahwaz, the Balochs and the leftists and democratic-minded of Iran. Then the Iran-Iraq war became a reality on 12th September 1980, followed by the Iranian intervention in Lebanon, Syria, Sudan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, the Arab Emirates, Yemen, Afghanistan, Syria and Iraq.
The Iranian ideological war against Israel and Jewish people, which is based on Shia-Islam ideology, requires more attention than it is possible in this article. The first days of the Islamic revolution were celebrated by hundreds of thousands of extremist Shia-Muslims, shouting hysterically “Death to Israel”. The Pakistani Shia-Muslims, inspired and organized by Iran, never hid the slogan “Jews, remember Khyber”, as a reminder to Islam’s horrible slaughter of the Jews living in the oasis of Khaybari in the year 629.
“Death to America” and death to Western Europe and down with Western civilization were the Islamic revolution’s main banners.
The Islamic State death squads, the so called ‘Army of the Guardians of the Islamic Revolution’ (in Persian Sepāh-e Pāsdārān-e Enqelāb-e Eslāmi), which was found by Ayatollah Khomeini himself on 5th May 1979, have killed more than 50,000, mostly innocent, people in Kurdistan, Arab Ahwaz and Baluchistan alone! Kurdistan´s destruction and isolation, and the deportation of thousands of the Kurds to other areas of Iran, driving Kurdish people deliberately into poverty and so on, is beyond imagination.
Mustafa Chamran
The genocide of Kurdish people in East Kurdistan was led by Mustafa Chamran, a Shia gunman with 21 years of terrorist organisation experience in Egypt and the Lebanon. Chamran worked directly under Ayatollah Khomeini and became the Commander-in-Chief for military operations in Kurdistan and he later became Iran’s firstdefense minister. He is one of the most important terrorist figures in Iran´s history, one of Khomeini’s reliable terrorists and someone who has killed more Kurds than anyone else in Iran´s history.
The outcomes of the Iranian religious war against Iraq have been considered in hundreds of different reports, books and documentaries. There were at least 1 million deaths and more wounded and hundreds of thousands of veterans suffering combat trauma. There were millions of widows and a working class left without a piece of bread for the day and a middle class that is tired and fed up with economic, political and social corruption.
The prostitution, trafficking, drugs, child and woman abuse and other criminality which have direct linkage to the Shia-ideology of the Islamic state of Iran have turned Iran into a maximum security prison for Iranian people with no way out.
To not let Mr. President Carter forget his vision of “an island of stability in one of the more troubled areas of the world”, the Islamic State started, as early as its first days’ in power, to export its Islamic (read: Shia-Islam) revolution. The Shia-Islam world stretches from Pakistan through to Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and ‘Palestine’ and must be a “Shia-world” with one ideological and geography entity. The other Shia-Islam pockets in other Arabic countries must be organized and used as bases for instability and disturbance.
Since 1982, Lebanon, once the France of the Arab world, has been a symbol of war, hatred between people and violent political conflict. ‘Palestine’ has become a platform for disagreements with the Jewish state rather a partner of peace. Iran make its own Revolutionary Guards of the Palestinians. Today´s rocket bombardments of Israel by Hamas is part of this strategy.
The history of the Middle East countries from the 1990s until today, perhaps with the exception of Jordan and Israel, is the history of turbulence made by Tehran.
There is no Iranian ‘intervention’ in Syria, Iraq and ‘Palestine’. These states are in fact led by the Islamic State of Iran. Arab Shias have somehow abandoned their Arabic nationalism and surrendered to the Persian Shi’ism which is aggressive, violent and not in truth worthy.
The West´s offhand approach, and especially the USA’s believe in fairy tales – when it comes to dealing with Iran´s internal human rights abuses, from the first days of the Islamic revolution, and its will to build Atomic bombs – have made the Ayatollahs and Mullahs of Iran unmannerly and impertinent. The Ayatollahs know that they can cheat when they please.
Iran has proved that ‘the end justifies the means’ on every single issue since 1979.
While threatening the world with instability, especially in the Middle East and more specifically in Iraq and Syria, Iran at the same time offers a helping hand and assistance to the US in dealing with what it calls “terrorism”. On the other hand the Sunni Muslims, who have held the upper hand of Islamic political power for the last 1400 years, have shown themselves as powerless and incapable of making a good analysis of the situation and presenting a road map to answer the Shia dominance and aggression – until a month ago when, on 10th June, the gaining of ground by ISIS changed many things abruptly.
The recent victories of ISIS (now IS) in Sunni areas in Iraq and Syria have crushed the Iranian dreams of having a Shia-crescent throughout Iran-‘Palestine’. If the US start to listen to Israel carefully, specifically when it comes to Iran´s Atomic bomb ambitions and the national security of Israel and other sovereign nations, this can be a start to push the Ayatollahs back to their real frontiers in Qum and Tehran.
The democratic and civilized world, including the USA, must understand that:
- The geography of IS political power is the area of the Sunni-nation. The Sunnis’ aim (not that of the IS) is not to fight against USA or West, but rather to challenge the Iranian political sphere. Now the Sunnis have separated Iraq and Syria. Iran can no longer provide military assistance/ logistics etc. to Syria as easily as before.
- Iranian threats against the Kurdish people must be understood in the framework of the domino-effect . If the Sunnis can manage a land/ statehood of their own, the Kurds can do the same. This means that the Iranian influence in the Middle East will become much smaller than it seems. The historical irony here is that there are Kurds in Iran (read: East Kurdistan) too. Any kind of success for Southern Kurds means or could mean likewise success for East Kurdistan. But there are Arabs, Baloches and other nationalities in Iran and they would also love to have a sovereign political entity of their own. This would mean that Iran would no longer comprise of the same components. The Iranian Shia-world would shrink even more. All of a sudden there would be neither be a Shia-crescent nor the same factors of instability in the Middle East.
- The Islamic state of Iran has murdered and abused many people for 35 years. Iran’s religious totalitarian regime must be held responsible for all it has done.
Such developments will:
- Stop the sectarian war between Sunnis and Shias.
- End the Sunnis’ suspiciousness towards the West and USA.
- Ensure a safe passage of Kurdish and Iraqi oil to the Mediterranean.
- Ensure a better political agreement between peoples in the Middle East and that nations (for example Sunnis and Kurds, and minorities such as Christians and Assyrians) do not disbelieve the USA and the West.
- Prevent further US military involvement in the Middle East which has cost American taxpayers lots of money.
- Pave the way for increased trade and business between the Middle East and the rest of the world.
- Cause terrorism and other kinds of political violence and aggression to wither away.
- Give Israel a break and enable people to have a chance to understand each other and start to developing a vision of brother- and sisterhood.
- Give democracy gets a new chance. Millions of widows, orphans, disabled people and other so called deviant groups will get a new chance to survive, to develop and to afford to have a dream of a better future.
- No doubt reduce the Islamic movement and political Islam to low/ acceptable levels when as Iran is out of the picture.
Steps forward:
The Islamic state of Iran is now trying to develop better relations with the United States. The reasons can be many; the most important ones might be as follows:
- Iran thinks that it can separate Israel and the USA.
- Iran thinks that it can delude the USA about its ambitions to build at least a few atomic bombs, and win time.
- Iran thinks that the USA and other Western states are by nature against the Kurdish people and will therefore deny Kurds their right to have a state of their own. This preserves Iran´s empire structure and consequently its hegemony and terrorism.
- The Islamic state of Iran believes that violence and aggression have a function as a policy of threats and intimidation. Iran thinks that by showing itself as a powerful and determined state, this will force USA to make further concessions.
The Iranian regime’s influence will progressively weaken when it can no longer play any role in making sectarian war and then Iran´s Shia-ideology will gradually die out. This will contribute to a more concrete and realistic behaviour towards Israel and other secularist nations as the Kurds.
Finally, the USA and the West must start to show Iran a more steadfast will so that it agrees to stop funding terrorism and terrorist groups and cease exporting Shia-Islam. The last 35 years of history of Iran, which includes atrocities and destruction, is evidence of how Iran has been the main source of instability, war and destruction in the Middle East.
This chapter of a history of violence must come to an end.
The “Island of stability” is no true narrative of the current history. Iran is rather a living hell for many nations inside Iran and for other people in the Middle East.
Rebwar Rashed was born in Kurdistan and resides in Sweden. He has translated several books into Kurdish, written a novel (‘The Shadow of Helebce’) and also many articles in Kurdish and English about the Kurdistan National Liberation Movement, human rights, equality between the sexes and ethnicities, and the need for a democratic and peaceful struggle.