We are at a critical juncture in our time in history. The Iran nuclear deal, known as the Joint Comprehensive
Plan of Action (JCPOA), has entered now its third year.
As
the Trump White House is pending its Iran policy there is increasing support
for regime change. All the while the Iran appeasement camp are boosting their
efforts of claiming any firm policy on Tehran will lead to war. The question is
do the measures professed by this party truly prevent war?
When Iranian
opposition National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) recently held its annual convention in Paris, with Trump
“emissaries” such as former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani and former House
Speaker Newt Gingrich speaking powerfully of regime change in Iran. Former US
ambassador to the UN John Bolton went as far as declaring the Iranian regime
will not witness its 40th anniversary in February 2019.
In
response, Iran and its lobbies in the West, terrified of such a surge behind
the NCRI as the sole alternative able to bring about true change in Iran, have
not remained silent. Iran apologists are yet again seen resorting to the old
tactic of warning about a new war in the Middle East.
For
decades now pro-Iranian regime writers have cautioned against adopting a firm
policy on Tehran, allowing the mullahs’ regime to plunge the entire Middle East
into havoc.
As
we speak Iraq, Syria and Yemen are in ruins thanks to Iran’s support of proxy
elements fueling sectarian conflicts and deadly civil wars.
The
war in Afghanistan has yet to finalize after 16 years, and reports continue of
Iran supporting the Taliban and al-Qaeda in this country.
Lebanon has yet to witness political stability in decades as Iran continues to funnel millions of dollars and arms
to its offspring, the Hezbollah, brought to life by Iran’s Revolutionary Guards
(IRGC) back in 1982.
Many
other Arab countries can follow suit after Kuwait expelled Iran’s ambassador
and more than a dozen other “diplomats” from its soil based on espionage
charges.
But
of course, the Iran apologists conveniently consider such matters as irrelevant
or at best second hand. These very Iran lobbyists are the actual warmongers as
their efforts have provided Tehran the opportunity to bring upon utter
devastation to all Middle East nations.
Pat
Buchanan in a Townhall piece argues,
“After Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria and Yemen, would America and the world
be well-served by a war with Iran that could explode into a Sunni-Shiite
religious war across the Middle East?”
Neglected
here is the passivity encouraged by such Iran-apologists has actually empowered
Tehran. The end result has been Iran engulfing Iraq and Syria into a horrific
abyss of Shiite militias massacring innocent Sunni civilians.
Former
MEP Struan Stevenson sheds light on such an unfortunate phenomenon.
“800,000
people have been rendered homeless from Mosul alone, millions when you count
the refugees who fled from Ramadi and Fallujah. Thousands of innocent Sunni
civilians have been killed, and tens of thousands among them were injured,” he
wrote in a recent Al Arabiya article.
There
is no question that the 2003 Iraq war was a strategic mistake. Yet why do
Iran-apologists, again conveniently, neglect another drastic error of Obama
prematurely pulling all US troops out of Iraq in 2011? This left the fledgling
state of Iraq at the hands of wolves, being Iran, its puppet, former Iraqi
prime minister Nouri al-Maliki, and Shiite proxies and death squads.
We simply
cannot deny the fact that al-Maliki in Iraq, Bashar al-Assad in Syria,
Hezbollah in Lebanon, all supported financially and logistically by Iran, paved
the path for the rise of ISIS. They massacred Syria’s Sunnis, parallel to
Maliki’s crackdown of the Iraq’s Sunni minority. This allowed ISIS to spread,
and first in Iraq and Syria, and thus throughout the Middle East, Europe and
beyond.
The
regime in Iran actually benefited extremely from the rise of ISIS to claim
legitimate its involvement in Iraq and Syria through Shiite proxy groups.
Again,
as Iran-apologists across the board in the US and Europe encouraged engagement
and rapprochement with Tehran, climaxing unprecedentedly during Obama’s tenure,
Iran’s mullahs continued their killing spree across the region.
Looking
back at the past several years, one can dare to accuse these Iran-apologists of
paving the path for Tehran to legitimize its horrific killing sprees, and
causing a horrible number of deaths. Can we not accuse them of warmongering?
These
Iranian lobbyists, including Trita Parsi, head of the so-called “National
Iranian American Council”, raise the flag of war being bad for business, and
thus cheering diplomacy to encourage business. Yet he neglects Iran’s own
warmongering in the Middle East.
All
said and done, with the Trump administration seriously weighing regime change
as policy vis-à-vis Iran, the international community sees before it the
opportunity to finally adopt the right policy on Iran.
Engagement
has failed. Wars in the Middle East have been disastrous. We do not want to go
down that road in regards to Iran. And there is no need.
The
Iranian people and their organized opposition, the NCRI, are more than capable
of toppling the mullahs’ regime in Tehran. This organization has everything in
place and seek only the international community to recognize their struggle and
end the disastrous Iran appeasement approach. A course correction vis-a-vis
Iran policy regarding is needed, too, in order for the people of Iran and their
opposition to take on the rest.
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