Middle-east Arab News Opinion | Asharq Al-awsat

The harmful Iranian conference in support of Bashar | ASHARQ AL-AWSAT English Archive 2005 -2017
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Can you ever imagine wishing that a particular country would not declare its support for the Palestinian cause? Unfortunately, Iran is the only country that many people wish would not declare its “propagandist” support. This is simply because it has exploited our Arab nation with such hollow support, at the expense of the political and sectarian unity of the Arab people, as was exposed by the Arab Spring revolutions.

It is true that the spark of the Arab revolutions is yet to strike Iran, but it is certain that the Syrian revolution has caused more damage to the image of Iran than if the spark of all other Arab revolutions had set fire to it. Therefore, the conference in support of Palestine recently held by the Iranian government was, in the best of cases, met with sluggish reactions.

This is because the support that Iran used to garner from some Arab political parties and popular currents was due to the fact that they were under the delusion of Iranian propaganda, which long raised pro-resistance slogans and called for ending the suffering of the Palestinian people. Yet, the injustices committed by the Syrian regime against its own people are far worse and more horrific than what the Israeli war machine is doing to the Palestinians. As a result, Iran became stuck between a rock and a hard place: it could either support the Syrian revolution in the same manner that it had supported other Arab revolutions, which practically means advocating the overthrow of a loyal political and ideological ally, or it could support the massacres which the Syrian regime has been committing for six months, meaning that Iran would lose its false popularity in the Arab and Islamic world that was built upon cheap “resistance” propaganda.

Iran chose the latter option of aiding al-Assad, which completely destroyed its relations with the Arab people, and so it has recently began to apply cosmetics to cover up the ugliness it had exposed on Syrian soil. Thus Iran held a conference in support of the Palestinian cause, which if anyone entered its corridors and heard what was going on behind closed doors, he would believe that it was a meeting in aid of the Syrian regime against its own people. The conference was attended “unwillingly” only by Hamas and the Islamic Jihad movement, two groups which Iran has continued to exploit in return for financial aid. It is interesting that Jordan’s branch of the Muslim Brotherhood – close associates of Hamas – adopted a firm stance declining to attend the “harmful” conference, in protest against Iran’s shameful position towards the suppression being committed against the Syrian people. In fact, other branches of the Muslim Brotherhood and Islamic trends all over the Arab world should act similarly and denounce Iran’s shameful stance towards the Syrian revolution, in a clear and explicit manner. It was sad that Iran took desperate action towards Sudan in a bid to gain its support and silence with regards to Bashar’s crimes. The Iranian regime’s back was broken in Syria, and now it has sought to heal its bones in Sudan.

Iran should be aware that if the free Arabs had a choice, they would choose a Syrian regime that was peaceful towards Israel, but under which the entire Syrian population could live with dignity, rather than living under a “resistant regime” that oppresses, kills, tortures and insults its own people in the name of opposition, let alone a superficial opposition which does not fool anyone. Suffice to say, there is no clearer evidence than the state of silence and anxiety currently gripping the Zionist government of Israel, concerned that the Syrian regime will fall, a regime that has resisted and opposed no one but its own people, and robbed them of their dignity.