Rhetoric & Realpolitik

By Paul Iddon

The Iranian regimes fanciful rhetoric and its telling Realpolitik.

Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khameini.

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei spoke warmly of the Egyptian Revolution on the February of last year. As a despot was being forced to capitulate at the behest of the Egyptian people Khameini addressed them as did Ahmadinejad. Both the Supreme Leader and the President advocated the right of the Egyptian people to choose their own government and in a broader sense their own destiny. Both these men made these statements with straight faces only days before employing their mentally stunted brainwashed 14-year old Basij thugs to ruthlessly crush a peaceful gathering of demonstrators in Tehran whom were clearly distraught with the destiny outlined for them by Khameini's authoritarian regime.

Khameini also spoke of an “Islamic awakening” sweeping the Arab world. A somewhat curious statement to make considering the Iranian regime is still giving its support to Bashar Al Assad, the brutal dictator who rules Syria and uses the same Ba'athist divide and rule policies to keep the Sunni majority oppressed as Saddam Hussein did in Iraq to that country's Shia majority.

Whilst some have translated Khameni's rhetoric and tried to give it some semblance of reality by pointing out that the Muslim Brotherhood are doing well with Egypt's electorate these are very superficial interpretations of the Ayatollah's rhetoric and don't exactly vindicate his pronouncement of an “Islamic awakening”. The Muslim Brotherhood after all were the main organizational grassroots opposition to Mubarak's dictatorial rule. Whilst the US did pay the Mubarak government in grants every year that money never properly filtered down to the majority of Egyptians. As CNN's Christiane Amanpour pointed out during a visit to Egypt in 2007, the Muslim Brotherhood worked on the communal level, giving people their “bread and butter needs” when the Mubarak dictatorship had long since alienated itself from the majority of the Egyptian people.

The Muslim Brotherhood in Syria whom also form a lot of the grassroots opposition against the fascistic dictatorship of Assad launched a revolt against his father in 1982 in the town of Hama and were brutally crushed. 10,000 Syrians at the very least were killed in the horrific scorched earth policy the Syrian Army conducted against the residents of Hama.

It was just earlier this week that the Iranian ambassador to Lebanon said that Iran is quote "not at odds with the Muslim Brotherhood out of Islamic unity that we work towards and preach for,” around the same time the Muslim Brotherhood accused Iran – as well as Russia and China following their recent UN veto – of being an accomplice to the horrible massacre being carried out by Assad's forces against the Syrian people.

Khameini's regime is helping Assad to stay in power through the supplying of tools, equipment and technical assistance to monitor - among other things - opposition activity on the internet through the Quds Force. Khameini himself has essentially washed his hands of the scandalous fact that he is actively supporting a despot whom represses his country's Muslims through brutal divide and rule tactics - the same kind Khameini has accused the west of leveling towards the Egyptians - by blaming the unrest in Syria on the United States and Zionist conspirators. He is obviously in a morally depraved manner trying to convey that the Arab Spring and his professed “Islamic awakening” that has spread far and wide across the Arab world doesn't apply to Syria since the oppressive Ba'athist regime there happens to serve Tehran's broader interests in the region.

The Islamic Republics strategic imperatives in the region would face a major setback if the Assad regime was forced to capitulate at the behest of Syria's Sunni majority. As Syria is the so to speak conduit line between Iran and Hezbollah, the regimes primary military and political force in the Levant. If Syria were to be ruled by its majority and their outlook reflected in that countries foreign policy one doubts that they'd have ties as close to the regime in Tehran as Assad has at present.

And speaking of the wider Arab Spring, who could forget the events of those days and weeks following Khameini's pronouncements about Egypt in Bahrain?
Bahrain; a country where the same family has ruled for 200 years and a country where the close-knit Sunni minority through policies that stink of sectarianism marginalize the country's Shi'ite majority. The protests and the brutal crushing of the massive public gathering at Pearl Roundabout in the centre of Manama showed that the Bahrain situation wasn't a case of some sudden “Islamic awakening”. The graphic and moving scenes we saw at Salmaniya hospital weren't of people demanding a theocracy on the model of Saudi Arabia or Iran be put in place to rule over them, nor were they of Bahraini's demanding one sect rule over another, they were simply campaigning for equality and a tangible hint of compassion in their government.

The Saudi led GCC intervention into that country was given vocal support by the Israel's premier Netanyahu whom asserted that the Saudis had every right to secure their interests alluding to that fact that an Iranian controlled Bahrain would put Iran within “spitting distance” of the gulf states. This contemptible statement shows how Khameini's rhetoric is being used by some of the more hawkish elements in western governments to justify such deplorable actions.

It also shows that the biggest theocracies in the region that represent the two respective sects of Islam are facing widespread discontentment within their own borders. And this failure to make their own predominately Muslim populations contented seems to have led both to become overly paranoid and reactionary. Which is evident from the Saudi intervention in Bahrain and the billions that are being spent in concessions to quell further domestic protests. It is also evident in the Iran, where the regime has continued to give support to Assad's regime as well as continued to propagate such wishful rhetoric whilst trying to convey that it possesses some semblance of truth.