Middle-east Arab News Opinion | Asharq Al-awsat

Iran’s Farcical Play | ASHARQ AL-AWSAT English Archive 2005 -2017
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The so-called trials that are taking place against the backdrop of the protests that swept Iran following the recent election results have exposed the Iranian regime to the Iranian public and the international community and can only be described as a farcical play. The regime put the accused on trail in order for them to repeat everything previously said in the regime’s media and by the Supreme Leader during his Friday sermon a few weeks ago with regards to the sedition of the protestors who were demonstrating against the recent Iranian election results.

We describe this as a play because everybody confessed according to the script, and nobody deviated from it, and the only difference [between this and a theatrical play] is the extent of the fatigue and weight-loss seen in the pictures of the accused that appeared in the official Iranian media as a result of what they were subject to during their interrogation. We must also not forget the bodies that were handed over to Iranian families, and it has been said that some of these bodies even exhibited broken teeth.

The question here is does the Iranian regime believe that this play will be able to fool everybody?

Of course not, and it pays to ask some urgent follow-up questions to this, such as; is the Iranian regime so fragile that a 24-year old French researcher, a Newsweek reporter, and an employee of the British embassy are able to destabilize or topple it, or incite hundreds of thousands of demonstrators to protest against the fundamentalist dictatorship?

Despite everything that happened, the tragedies that occurred in the wake of the recent election, and the protests undertaken by a broad swath of the Iranian people, a positive thing has emerged from this under the principle that the misfortune of one people can benefit another, and this is the exposure of the mullahs regime and the fraudulent democracy that is uses, not to mention a broad not insignificant section [of Iranian society’s] rejection of the Wali Al Faqih system.

Iran’s farcical play exposed a system that is far more internally fragile than we expected. It exposed a regime that does not hesitate not just to abuse its own people, but also pillars of its own existence and rule, and we have seen what has happened to Saeed Hajjarian, one of the loyal sons of the revolution, and a man who contributed to the establishment of the Iranian Intelligence Service. We have also seen how the regime has treated former Iranian Vice President Mohammad Khatami, Seyyed al-Abathi, and other icons of the regime such as [Mir Hossein] Mousavi, not to mention the attacks against one of the founders of the Iranian revolution, Mr. Hashemi Rafsanjani.

Iran’s extremists have saved us a lot of effort by exposing their intentions and the falsehood of their belief in democracy and stability to us, not just in Iran internally but also in our Arab world. The mullahs regime has found Arabs who we have previously described as being afraid [of Iran], as well as other [Arab] agents in the media and politics who have affiliated themselves [with Iran]. However today the Arab world has seen for itself how the Iranian regime tyrannizes its unarmed citizens, not differentiating between men and women, the young and the old.

Therefore the farcical play of the Iranian trial does not convince anybody of the legitimacy of the regime or the integrity of its position, rather it exposes the regime in Tehran, as well as all those in our Arab world who makes peace or alliances with it. The only difference between Saddam Hussein’s regime and the Iranian regime is in the details, and in the same way that every Sheikh has his own interpretation; every Dictator has his own approach.