OPINION:The winds of change may be blowing through some Middle East countries but Iran remains a brutal menace – to its own people and its neighbours, writes BOAZ MODAI
W HEN IRANIAN leaders disingenuously praised the protesters in Egypt one could not avoid remembering the protests that followed Iran’s rigged election in 2009. Revolt was harshly suppressed; dozens of leaders were executed and many are still in jail without contact with relatives.
The treatment of dissidents by the Iranian regime has been in keeping with its attitude towards its own people. The regime has imposed a second-class status on women, harassing and punishing them in the name of the ruling Islamist ideology. Barbaric sentences of lashing and stoning to death have been handed down on the flimsiest of charges.
Religious minorities are systematically persecuted. Since August, seven Baha’i leaders have been given 10-year sentences on baseless charges, and now languish in overcrowded cells.
Before and since President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad told a New York reporter “there are no homosexuals in Iran”, scores of gay men and women have been executed, sometimes publicly by hanging from cranes. There were almost 400 executions in each of the past two years, and, if the figure for January 2011 is a guide, the rate is set to increase.
Not only does the regime oppress its own people, but it poses a lethal threat to its neighbours. Ahmadinejad has outlined his vision of a new Middle East free of both US influence and Israel’s existence. Recently revealed cables have shown the full depth of what the world suspected for years: Arab states live in fear of their giant neighbour with its military arsenal, its nuclear programme and its sponsorship of terrorism.
In Lebanon, Hizbullah, a politico-military proxy of Iran, has overawed the state army. A few weeks ago, a new government took power in Lebanon with the backing of Hizbullah. This de facto Hizbullah takeover marks the fulfilment of one of Iran’s geopolitical dreams of the past 30 years: the first successful export of its Shia Islamic revolution.
Instead of disarming as required by UN Security Council Resolution 1701 under the 2006 ceasefire with Israel, Hizbullah has actually increased its arsenal and now possesses more than 40,000 rockets supplied by Iran and directed at all parts of Israel. In 2009, Israel's navy impounded the MV Francop, a ship carrying hundreds of tonnes of Iran-made weapons bound for Hizbullah. The rockets fired from Gaza at southern Israel since 2008 by Hamas and other terrorist groups also originated in Iran.
The Iranian regime has for years denounced the peace treaty between Israel and Egypt. A report from 2009 uncovered a Hizbullah network in Egypt involved in destabilising the country, terrorist attacks on Egyptian soil and smuggling weapons and terrorists into Gaza.
Ahmadinejad’s 2005 call for Israel to be “wiped off the map”, itself a reiteration of earlier calls by the Ayatollah Khomeini, has since been repeated by him and other government spokesmen in many different forms. Israel is a “cancerous tumour”, a “stain of disgrace [that] will be cleaned from the garment of the world”, “a dried, rotten tree that will collapse with a single storm”.
What relevance has all of this to the peace process between Israel and the Palestinians? Consider the strategic position of Israel, a country 80 times smaller than Iran, with a 10th of its population. On its northern and southern borders, proxies of Iran have already rocketed its territory thousands of times and are poised to do so again. If a Palestinian state in the West Bank was taken over by Hamas (by no means an unlikely scenario) this would mean yet another nearby base for terror attacks on Israel.
This makes any concessions by Israel fraught with risk. The history of previous concessions is not promising. The Oslo Accords that set up the Palestinian Authority were followed by waves of suicide bombings and other attacks which killed or injured thousands of Israeli civilians. The 2000 withdrawal from Lebanon emboldened Hizbullah to attack Israel. The 2005 disengagement from Gaza led to an escalation of the rocket attacks by Hamas.
Yet last week, the EU expressed “impatience” with the pace of the peace process and called for Israel to move it forward. Further concessions are expected from Israel, less than a month after the EU admitted its failure to win even the tiniest concession from Iran on its nuclear programme.
The two-state solution has been the policy of successive governments of Israel. The present government continues to hope that the Palestinian Authority will sit down in direct negotiations. But those who imagine that a settlement with the Palestinians is the key to the peace of the entire Middle East should think again. Arab leaders made clear to the US their belief that Iran’s agenda meant a resolution of the conflict would not end its machinations in the region. Putting the Palestinian issue first is putting the cart before the horse. As long as the threat from Iran remains, Israel’s adversaries will be less inclined to make peace, while Israel’s own room for manoeuvre is restricted.
Europe should not push Israel to take risks when Israel’s safety cannot be guaranteed.
Boaz Modai is Israel’s ambassador to Ireland