Long live the Iranian opposition
As Iran’s despotic regime launched its face-saving attack on Israel sending hundreds of drones and missiles a distance of some 1000 miles the other day it was hardly surprising to find the usual truth inversion from some “anti-war” activists who blame Israel for the escalation in events.
I cry no tears for the senior commander in the Al-Quds force of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) Mohammad Reza Zahedi and his deputy who were killed in the airstrike on the Iranian Consulate in Damascus recently. Frankly, I only wish that the two letter bombs sent to Alois Brunner, the wanted Nazi war criminal who was protected in Damascus for decades in return for sharing secrets of torture techniques had achieved similar success. Instead, that murderer of Jews lived out his days protected by the Syrian state until he died in 2012.
Zahedi was involved in stamping out the anti-government protests in Iran in 2019 where up to 1500 protesters were killed. Sick of the government’s financing of terrorist organisations in Gaza, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and Yemen – while Iranians lived in poverty – one of the slogans demonstrators used was “Neither Gaza nor Lebanon, My Life for Iran”.
What is breathtaking is that the Iranian regime and its shills in the West condemn the attack on the consulate for its illegality yet are rather quiet about the attacks on Israel as if the Hamas massacre and rape of civilians on October 7 was a legitimate act of warfare. In fact, the response by some progressives to the largest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust has been similar to that of deniers of the Holocaust itself, spanning the spectrum from relativism to outright denial.
Which is the pariah state?
Long-time “anti-Zionists” have been gleefully rubbing their hands at Israel’s misfortune in the wake of October 7 as they call the country a “Pariah State” for its subsequent actions in Gaza and the massive death toll that has been exacted in its war with Hamas.
Pariah is a particularly nasty term that I’m not keen to use but if it applies to any state then surely it applies to the Islamic Republic, the enemy of progressives worldwide.
I vividly recall the Morning Star coverage of the execution of Iranian communists from the Tudeh Party in 1988 by the Islamic Republic and the protests by British communists and others at the time. Former comrades in arms in the revolution that overthrew the dictatorship of the Shah in 1979 were turned on by the Islamists, purged, imprisoned, tortured until they renounced Marxism, and murdered if they didn’t. Hundreds of communists were killed amongst the thousands of political prisoners who were executed in this period. In 2022 an investigation by Human Rights Watch concluded the mass executions were a crime against humanity and that the senior officials implicated should be investigated and prosecuted.
Of course, we can add to this a litany of outrages, from the 1989 fatwa against author Salman Rushdie to the 2022 murder of 22 year old Mahsa Amini while in the custody of the Islamic Republic’s morality police for not wearing her hijab in line with strict government standards.
Iran’s war against the Jews
Iran has been pursuing a war against Israel for decades using proxies to attack not only Israel but Jewish communities worldwide. Argentina’s highest criminal court said this month that the bombing of the 1994 Argentine Jewish Mutual Aid Association community centre in Buenos Aires – the deadliest attack in the country’s history – was planned by Iran and executed by its proxy, Lebanon’s Hezbollah. The community centre was flattened killing 85 people and wounding 300.
The court said that the attack came in retaliation for Argentina reneging on a nuclear cooperation deal with Tehran. The court also described the bombing of the Jewish community centre as a “crime against humanity.”
Also in Argentina was the 1992 suicide bombing of the Israeli Embassy in Buenos Aires by the Iranian linked Islamic Jihad Organisation which the organisation claimed was in retaliation for the assassination of Hezbollah General Secretary Sayed Abbas al-Musawi. The embassy, a Catholic church and school building were destroyed. Most of the 29 dead and 242 wounded were Argentine civilians, many of them children: 4 Israelis died. Alberto Nisman, the prosecuter who was investigating the attack, was found dead at his home in 2015 after accusing Argentine President Fernández de Kirchner of concealing Iran’s alleged responsibility in the attack.
Hezbollah operative Imad Mugniyah was implicated in both the embassy attack and the attack on the Jewish community centre. Eventually justice was served and he was killed by a car bomb in Damascus in 2008. Again, an extra-judicial killing that is difficult to condemn.
In Germany, authorities said that Iran was behind a string of recent attacks on synagogues in 2022. The attacks included shots fired at a synagogue in Essen, the firebombing of a synagogue in Bochum and an attempted arson at a synagogue in Dortmund. These attacks came three years after a gunman killed two people in the eastern city of Halle after failing to storm a synagogue on Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the Jewish calendar.
More recently, in Sweden, Iranian agents suspected of targeting Jews were deported earlier this year after local authorities in Stockholm thwarted their plans.
For every murderous outrage perpetuated by the Iranian regime and its proxies there are many more that were planned and prevented. In July 2023 – so absolutely nothing to do with the current conflict with Hamas – the Israeli defence minister Yoav Gallant claimed that more than 50 terrorist attacks against Jewish communities worldwide had been planned by the Iranian regime. He said that many of these had been thwarted at the last minute due to international cooperation.
Opposition in Iran
In Iran there is tremendous opposition to the regime. Of course, the Islamic Republic is quick to blame this on foreign interference as if living in a repressive theocracy wouldn’t create enough discontent without the need for outside interference.
When Mahsam Amini was murdered in 2022, and there was an explosion of street protests, Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei claimed that “these riots… were designed by America and the Zionist regime.”
Opponents of the regime made clear the conspiracy theory was nonsense.
“The Islamic Republic has never passed up an opportunity to label [protesters] agents of Western imperialism,” Tudeh Party of Iran international secretary Navid Shomali told the Morning Star at the time.
“No, the movement which has yet to show any sign of abating despite brutal repression expresses popular revulsion against the theocratic dictatorship, the culmination of more than four decades of the Iranian people’s anger, disgust, and hatred at the ruling criminal regime.
“Of course there are discredited organisations in exile, chiefly the monarchists and [People’s Mojahedin], that would happily hijack the protests to their own ends — but they have little traction inside Iran as evidenced by one of the key slogans of the protests, ‘down with the oppressor, whether shah or supreme leader’, he added.”
Hopefully there will be more waves of protests as Iran embarks on an ever more reckless course. Protests that will bring down the regime, and the sooner, the better.