The Birmingham Post, Nov. 17 – In 2002 President Bush labelled Iran as part of the "Axis of Evil"; now Tony Blair is saying this state – in conjunction with Syria – may hold the key to a peaceful Middle East. Lord Corbett of Castle Vale, former MP for Erdington, argues why taking a firm line with Tehran’s rulers is the only option.
Western leaders are scratching their heads in desperate search for a new Middle East policy as the dire situation in Iraq worsens and tensions in Lebanon and Palestine rise.
Yet a combination of short term economic interests and a lack of will have prevented the West from confronting the primary source of instability in the region and the fuel that keeps these conflicts burning – Tehran’s theocratic rulers.
Following the Republicans’ defeat in the US mid-term elections, a change of Middle East policy has taken on a new significance. The media continues to speculate about the likely recommendations of the Iraq Study Group, better known as the Baker Commission, which was formed to consider US policy options towards Iraq.
Those who favour ‘engagement’ of Iran’s Ayatollahs, sometimes described as appeasement, have taken this opportunity to call for ‘dialogue’ with Tehran as a means of resolving the various crises in the Middle East, including in Iraq. That is like asking a serial arsonist to assist in putting out one of the many fires he has started and continues to fuel.
The ‘engagement’ camp portrays this policy as a grand new idea, but it sounds very much like a well-trodden, fruitless and dangerous path – the same path that has led to the present international crisis.
The proponents of engagement hoped that by providing the Tehran regime with concessions and offering it incentives, they would empower the so-called ‘moderates’. Over the past decade, Iran has been offered everything from trade and co-operation agreements to assistance with a solely civilian nuclear programme. At the same time, Western governments acceded to Tehran’s demand to blacklist its main opponents.
Rather than strengthening the so-called ‘reformers’, this policy has resulted in the hardliners, led by former Revolutionary Guards commander, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, taking full control in Iran. Other officials have boasted in public about nuclear advances made while the West was busy dancing to Khatami’s ‘moderate’ tunes.
Engagement with the Ayatollahs was never going to work, because it relies on two fundamental misconceptions – the willingness of the mullahs to moderate and to be persuaded to abandon their nuclear programmes.
Before giving evidence by video-link to the Baker Commission, the Prime Minister set out what Tehran’s policy has been. In his annual speech at the Lord Mayor’s banquet this week, he said that Iran is being confronted over its nuclear weapons ambitions and is refusing to abide by UN demands to stop uranium enrichment. He added: "Instead they are using the pressure points in the region to thwart us. So they help the most extreme elements of Hamas in Palestine; Hizbollah in the Lebanon; Shia militia in Iraq."
In fact, Iran’s theocratic leaders have since the start of hostilities in Iraq been aggressively interfering in the internal affairs of that country with a view to setting up a satellite fundamentalist state under their control. Success in this would seriously affect the strategic balance of power in the Middle East.
It is widely recognised that Tehran has been responsible for a large proportion of the terrorist attacks that take place in Iraq. The Iranian regime is also reported to have been responsible for the assassinations of Iraqi dissidents, the arming and funding of a network of insurgents and militias with the express purpose of committing violence against US and Coalition forces, infiltration of Iraqi governmental and security institutions, running secret torture chambers, and interfering in the Iraqi elections through vote rigging and fraud.
Over the weekend, British commanders stated the weapons used to attack British troops on a daily basis come from Iran. On Remembrance Day, a British patrol boat was attacked near Basra using improvised explosive devices, leaving four British servicemen and women dead and three seriously injured. These are the sorts of weapons that the Iranian regime has been supplying to terrorist groups in Iraq.
What do the Iraqi people think of all this? In June, 5.2 million Iraqis signed a statement warning of the dangers posed by the Iranian regime in Iraq and affirming their support for Iran’s principal opposition group, the PMOI.
It is not the further involvement of the Iranian regime in Iraqi affairs that will bring about stability in that country, but rather the expulsion of the mullahs and their forces.
To continue appeasement of Iran at a time when it has failed to comply with UN Security Council Resolution 1696 calling on it to suspend uranium enrichment and instead openly defies the international community by announcing the operation of a second cascade of centrifuges for the production of uranium, whilst also stepping up its terrorist activities across the Middle East, is to reward it for its rogue actions. This would have serious consequences for the entire Middle East, as well as peace and stability in the world.
Instead, as part of the present policy review, the West must ask itself what it is that the brutal oppressors of the Iranian people most fear. It is certainly not the US or Britain.
What they fear is democracy and those that can bring it about – the 95 per cent of Iranians who despise this regime and the Iranian resistance, National Council of Resistance of Iran. The NCRI is led by a courageous woman, Mrs Maryam Rajavi, who is the antithesis of everything that the Ayatollahs represent.
Tehran’s wild reaction to Mrs Rajavi’s travels during the course of this year to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, the European Parliament, the Belgian Senate and the Norwegian Parliament is a great indicator of how much the Ayatollahs fear the true representative of the Iranian people.
In Norway, Mrs Rajavi made clear that the world does not have to choose between foreign military intervention and appeasing Iran’s religious rulers. She said: "There is a third option: Democratic change by the Iranian people and their organised Resistance. I have a dream: An Iran free of execution and torture, a free and democratic Iran, an Iran where tolerance and peace shall flourish and an Iran at peace and friendship."
This is where the solution to the present crises in the Middle East rests. The West must immediately adopt a firm policy towards the Iranian regime.
At the same time, it must remove the obstacles it placed in the path of the Iranian people’s quest for freedom, beginning with removal of the unjust terror label from the PMOI.
Should the West have the courage and the will to follow this course, we will soon see a very different Middle East.
Should it not, further conflict is inevitable.