By Nooredin Abedian
November 23, 2007- The world does not have to go to war with Iran. Indeed, it should take sides in a war which is already going on in that country.
The United States recently blacklisted Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, IRGC, and its extraterritorial branch, the Quds force, as agencies engaged in terrorism and weapons proliferation. According to Condoleezza Rice, many of the Iranian regime’s most destabilizing policies in the region are carried out by the two.
The step marks the end to an era of futile diplomacy, taking at times the form of appeasement. A regime change policy rather a policy to change the behavior of the regime seems to be predominating now.
A prominent personality in the French Peace movement warned me: “They’re going to a new war; there is a real danger of a war breaking out.”
I had to correct him. The danger of war is real. It has been real for years. But not because of the recent US positions, nor because there was a predetermined decision for going to war on any western statesman’s mind. On the contrary, the danger stems from a lack of international resolve to stand firm against Iran. The danger today is not talk of “war” on the theocracy ruling Iran, but the desire to stay in “peace” with it. The clerics in Iran have long declared war on the civilized world, and sitting idle, wishing for the best is hardly a solution.
242 marines perished in an explosion in Beirut in 1982. Later, Iran’s Revolutionary Guards commander boasted of having exported to Lebanon the ideology, and the TNT needed for the explosion. The highest-ranking officials of this regime are sought by western justice in Europe, and elsewhere, on terror charges. The Interpol has recently issued “red notes” – status of the most wanted suspects – against a number of the regime’s officials for their role in the 1994 bombing of the Jewish community building in Buenos Aires, where 85 lives were lost. Among those wanted by Argentina are former Iranian intelligence chief and Revolutionary Guards’ chief.
More than 80,000 IEDs made in or by Iran have targeted American troops in Iraq during the past four-and-a-half years. Northern Israel is likely to come under attack by missiles provided by Iran. Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has said openly that he wants to wipe Israel from the world map, and to fill in the gap left by an eventual US withdrawal from the region.
The clerics’ war against their own people back home is second to no other war: several thousand members of the opposition Moudjahidin-e Khalq (MEK) were massacred in prisons throughout the country in a matter of months, with those directly involved in the carnage still in power. Religious and ethnic minorities are oppressed brutally.
Having finished a devastating war in 1918, the world was too tired to think of a new war in 1936, when Hitler revealed his plans to expand his regime. The world might be fed up with the idea of a third regional conflict after Afghanistan and Iraq, but the clerics’ need to expand their regime, in order to hold on to power, is as strong as Hitler’s quest for more “lebensraum.”
There is one party, however, that has already engaged in active conflict against the ruling regime: the Iranian people. In fact, they have never been at peace with the regime, which is why more than 250 people have been hanged in public in Iran this year. Student demonstrations are covering the country these days.
The world should stand beside those people. The world has to accept the challenge, but it may not have to fight a war. Instead, it should abandon the idea of peace with the clerics, and think about ways to help the Iranian people and their resistance in their plight for democracy. Wise sanctions are very effective, but the West should consider political steps as well.
Eager to normalize relations with the so-called “moderate” Iranian president Khatami in 1997, the Clinton administration listed the opposition MEK as a foreign terrorist organization. Apart from being the ones who blew the whistle on the clerics’ secret nuclear project in 2002, the MEK has been the main victim of the regime’s oppression and terrorism. Now that the henchmen are on the blacklist, their victims should be taken off. Pressure should be applied for relieving political prisoners in the clerics’ prisons.
The world does not have to go to war with Iran. Indeed, it should take sides in a war which is already going on in that country. For a long time, eyes have been kept closed to that war. It is time to open them now. It is time to take side along the Iranian people.
Nooredin Abedian is an Iranian engineer based in Germany, and a former lecturer at Tehran University. He writes from time to time on Iranian issues and politics.
