Palestinian Issue, a Divert for Iran leader’s shortcomings

The recent major development in stepping towards the establishment of peace within the region of Middle East, namely the Israel, UAE, Bahrain and recently Saudi Arabia peace agreement, or the Abraham Accord, will certainly unite multiple nations and groups, and ultimately isolate those who thrive from the existence of conflict and war!

The vast majority of people in Arab countries are seekers of peace in the region and encourage the development of healthy civil and political relations with Israel and the Jewish people. There are however, a number of extremist groups within these countries who use extreme rhetoric and anti-Semitic propaganda to disrupt the peaceful will of the people in Arab nations. Similarly, the vast majority of Iranians want peace in the region, whilst the ruling regime in Iran has been advocating for the total elimination of Jews for the last 44 years, using the Palestinian conflict as a pretext for their political gains. Whereby the Supreme Leader of Iran, Khamenei, called for the eradication of the Jews by referring to the “final solution”, in which he is asking all the Muslims around the world to roll up their sleeves, and to take action in fighting the Jews in Israel in order to protect Palestinians.

More than twenty years after the end of the Cold War and the change in the nature of the international system from a ‘Hard Bipolar’ to a ‘Soft Multi-polar’, the Palestinian conflict is still one of the unresolved problems left over from the post-World War II era. Despite the recent developments, these efforts have not yet given the outcome many would have hoped for.

On the surface, it seems that the Palestinian conflict itself should not have been such a complex and insurmountable issue to become one of the world’s longest running controversial conflicts. As in other parts of the world similar problems, through similar solutions and projects have been successfully resolved. Resulting in people with different religions or races coexisting peacefully. Examples include the successful coexistence of the Walloon and Flanders groups in Belgium especially in Brussels.

The Palestinian conflict remains unresolved, whilst the interference of the ruling regime in Iran and its systemic abuse of this conflict for political leverage has been the source of many other problems in the international arena like the 2 propagation of fundamentalism, and the emergence of terrorist groups such as al-Qaeda. Which had led to the emergence of many anti-humanitarian tragedies like 9/11 and other terrorist incidents, further leading to a series of unavoidable chain reactions, with dramatic and irreversible effects on human life.

To understand the complexity of the Palestinian question, one must realise that in history, there has never been an independent state named "Palestine". Palestinians have always been a part of another empire or state.

In 1921, a new state called "Trans-Jordan" was formed under the rule of the Hashemi Dynasty, which included modern-day Iraq and Jordan, and the Palestinians lived in the westernmost province of the newly established country, the West Bank.

There are many documents showing that during the nineteenth century, the number of Arabs living in the region of Israel was less than the number of Jews. In fact, the migration of non-native Arabs to Palestine intensified when Jewish settlers in the late 19th century made great efforts to dry up swamps to eradicate malaria, creating the conditions for intensive migration. Non-indigenous Arabs from other parts of the Ottoman Empire came to the region of Palestine and Israel in the early years of the twentieth century.

Later, on May 15, 1948, a day after the declaration of Israel's existence under UN Resolution 181 of November 29, 1947, UN General Assembly, some military units from Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Yemen, Egypt, as well as volunteer battalions from other Islamic countries, who rejected the UN resolution, attacked Israel.

This attacking force was repelled by the Israeli army, and as a result suffered heavy defeat and was forced to retreat. Following this declaration, many Palestinians started to leave Israel voluntarily. However, those who remained were welcomed as citizens of the state of Israel.

In the following years, the Arab states did not give up and tried to recuperate their losses. Perhaps, the establishment of an organization called the ‘Palestine Liberation Organization’ in 1964, could be seen as a prelude to the 1967 conflict. The PLO was an organization composed of various groups, mainly left-wing Palestinians, formed in 1964 with the approval of the then pro-soviet government of Syria and the government of Jordan, as residence country of Palestinians, in order to mobilize and implement all their capacities and possibilities in the coming war against Israel.

In its first statement, regardless of its historical background, and geopolitical realities and facts, the PLO called, for the first time, for the establishment of an independent ‘Palestinian State’ and the annexation of Israel in favour of Palestine. Since then, the PLO has been used by the Syrian and Jordanian governments, and to some extent by Egypt, as a tool to contain, and direct the Palestinians. For example, during the first months of 1967, Syria, Egypt, and Jordan called on Israeli Arab residents to leave the country, as soon as possible to protect themselves. But after the Six-Day War between the Arab states and Israel, and the complete defeat of the Arab states in this war, millions of Palestinians who left Israel voluntarily, and entered the neighbouring Arab countries, were no longer allowed to return to Israel.

In this way, a wave of Palestinian immigrants emerged in Egypt, Syria, Jordan and Lebanon. But, since none of the host countries had ever been interested in entertaining uninvited guests, they set up refugee camps in the deserts away from all the basic facilities, which made life harder for these immigrants than the life they had in Israel. The inhumane and deplorable conditions in the Palestinian camps, especially in Jordan and Lebanon, attracted the attention of the world's public opinion, and for the first time a problem called the ‘Palestinian Conflict’ troubled the international community.

It is important to emphasize that the Palestinians were never forcibly expelled from Israel, but voluntarily left their homes, and went to neighbouring countries to cooperate with the project of extermination of the Jews, which was designed, and implemented by the Arab governments.

Thus, it becomes clear that the Palestinians unknowingly became the agents of the aspirations of a number of Arab statesmen.

Now, one may ask, how and when did Iran enter the Palestinian conflict? In this context, it is important to note that a series of events that led to the fall of the Shah and the change of regime in Iran in February 1979, were planned and carried out by various Iranian opposition groups, who had received training in numerous Palestinian and Lebanese camps. The Palestinian groups such as Al-Fatah, the People's Front for the Liberation of Palestine and the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine, as well as the Amal Movement in southern Lebanon, had a stake in the future of the Iranian government. As a result of the Islamic Revolution in Iran, a wealth of oil and gas resources worth hundreds of billions of dollars, in a land with large human resources, had been seized by a group that was trained by Palestinian groups.

After the Islamic Revolution, it became clear that Iranian leaders intended to use the conflict of Palestinians as a pressure tool; however not in the same way that the leaders of the Arab states had used. The Islamic Republic of Iran’s ultimate goal was to establish a single world ‘Islamic government’ in Tehran. To do so, they needed to impose their leadership on the Islamic world, in order to create an "Islamic superpower" or, as they call it, an Islamic ‘Umm al-Qura’ in Tehran. This gave the newly formed Islamic regime a legitimacy that they needed.

Umm al-Qura is a theory that explainsthe Islamic Republic of Iran’s foreign policy in regards to the expansion of its boundaries of power and position in the Islamic world. This theory was proposed by Mohammad Javad Larijani, the Iranian deputy Foreign Minister in 1981. According to this theory, the Islamic world is a single nation, and the criterion for the unity of the nation is in its leadership. If a country can raise its level of leadership beyond its territorial boundaries by forming an Islamic government, it will be in the position of being the leader of the Islamic world.

In order to establish such leadership, the Iranian leaders used the case of Palestine as a ‘pressure tool’ to weaken and destroy Arab governments. Almost from the very beginning of the establishment of the Islamic State in Tehran, the leaders of Iran, especially Khomeini himself, blamed the failure of the Palestinian conflict, on the spoiled and corrupt structure of ruling governments in Islamic countries, especially the Arab states who were friendly towards the United States. Therefore, the Iranian regime consistently invited the all Arab and Muslim nations to rise up against their governments and overthrow them. For example, when Khomeini called on the Egyptian people to rise up against then-Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak.

Iran's leaders cited and used the Camp David Peace Agreement as an example, in order to identify what they deemed as traitorous leaders in the Islamic world. This was an attempt to ignite Arabs to rise up against their governments and to overthrow their leaders.

The Camp David Accords was signed on September 17, 1978 by then-Egyptian President Anwar Sadat and First Deputy Prime Minister of Israel Menachem Begin. Although this was not directly related to the Palestinian conflict, it was the first lasting peace treaty between the two sides in the Middle East, after thirty years of conflict, and at least five periods of bloody strife. It provided a clear vision for the final settlement of the Palestinian conflict as well as possible 5 future steps. The outlook at that time was so bright and promising that it led to the awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize to Anwar Sadat and Menachem Begin.

It was clear that with the establishment of peace in the Middle East and the peaceful resolution of the Palestinian conflict, the very valuable tool being used by the Iranian leaders, would lose its power. Therefore, it was in the Iranian regime’s best interest to set out a strategic plan to stop the peace process in the Middle East at all costs.

In order to counter the establishment of a lasting peace in the Middle East, Iran's leaders put the project of promoting and strengthening fundamentalism on their agenda. As a result, two years later, the clear vision of a lasting peace in the Middle East was destroyed by the unexpected assassination of Mohammad Anwar Sadat, the Egyptian President by several Egyptian army officers who were members of the Islamic Jihad terrorist group. Khalid bin Ahmad Shawqi Islambouli (January 15, 1955 in Mania, Egypt - April 15, 1982) along with several of his associates, were responsible for this assassination on October 6, 1981.

Despite diplomatic traditions, the Iranian government supported the assassination of Mohammad Anwar Sadat and even named a street in Tehran in the memory of his assassin, Captain Khalid Islamabouli. It is worth mentioning that one of Captain Khalid Islambouli's companions during the assassination of the Egyptian leader, was Egyptian doctor Ayman Zawahiri, who later created the al-Qaeda terrorist organization with Osama bin Laden. He was tried at the time along with Khalid Islambouli, but was sentenced to prison and later, after his release from prison, along with bin Laden, organized terrorist attacks against Western interests.

Although Khaled Islambouli is known around the world as a ‘terrorist’, the Islamic Republic of Iran has called him a "martyr" which garnered support among large number of Arab citizens, who were outraged and felt humiliated by the inaction of their governments against Israel.

In fact, Iran's leaders have used a ‘pressure tool’ called ‘Palestine’ to vent the rage of a few generations of Arabs, and used it as a powerful instrument towards achieving their ambitious goal of becoming a super power.

In the following years, Iran was able to frustrate Arab citizens, with what they called the failure of Arab governments, through the use of propaganda, as well as engineering the hatred of humiliated Muslims, by convincing them that the 6 only possible solution to the Palestinian issue is the one designed by the Islamic Republic of Iran.

At the same time, we can understand the importance of the Palestinian case for Iran's leaders when we become more familiar with the challenges that Iran faces in establishing its leadership role in the Islamic world.

It should be noted that Iran was not alone in claiming to be the leader of the Islamic world, as countries such as Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Turkey have similar claims. Meanwhile, Egypt on the one hand was less an issue for Iran, due to the ten-year isolation caused by the signing of a direct peace treaty with Israel, and on the other hand the fact that Egyptian leaders were more willing to play a leading role in the Arab world rather than the Islamic world.

However, Saudi Arabia and Turkey each have their own reasons for claiming leadership in the Islamic world: Saudi Arabia has traditionally been a centre for Islam and the Qur'an, as well as holding the two holiest Islamic sites in the world, Mecca and Medina. Moreover, it welcomes more than two million Muslim pilgrims each year to perform the annual Hajj. Also, Arabic is the mother tongue of all Arabic-speaking countries, and because Arabic is the language of the Qur'an, it is respected by many Muslims. Furthermore, in recent decades, the high oil revenue has made it possible for Saudi Arabia to play a greater role in the Islamic world, by providing generous aid to the Islamic world, especially to various Palestinian organizations and groups.

Turkey, on the other hand, also has many reasons to play a leading role in the Islamic world, as it sees itself as the successor to the Ottoman Caliphate, which encompasses all the lands of the Western Caliphate and Arab countries, including Syria, Iraq, Saudi Arabia and North Africa, and parts of the Balkans in Southeast Europe. All of which were under the control of the Ottoman emperors for around five hundred years, and thus called themselves the caliphs of the Muslims. At the height of their power, the Ottoman Caliphate advanced to the heart of Europe and even laid siege to Vienna.

Turkey is considered by many to be one of the most modern Islamic countries, and possesses one of the most powerful military forces among Islamic countries. Moreover, Saudi Arabia and Turkey are predominantly Sunni. The Saudi government is officially a Sunni Wahhabi, and although the Saudi government has greatly reduced its influence in recent years, Saudi Arabia is considered by many Muslims to be an example of an Islamic state.

The Turkish state is officially non-religious, but the presence of an Islamic party that has apparently come to power through democratic channels has effectively made the country an ideal example for some Muslims in other countries.

Iran, however, lacks all these advantages. Under Iran's constitution, the government has officially chosen the Shiite religion, which means that Iran can at best claim control of only ten percent of the Muslim population. It should be noted that the Sunni religion includes four groups that have a tacit agreement with each other, and large part of the Muslim population around the world consider the Shiites infidels and atheists. Now, if we know that 90% of the world's Muslim population is Sunni and only 10% of them are Shiites, then we can understand how difficult it is for Iranian leaders to impose their leadership on the Islamic world.

Iran does not have the necessary historical background to play a leading role in the Islamic world either. Given the wars that took place between Iran and the Ottoman Empire during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, many religious leaders in the Islamic world blamed Safavid Iran for the failure of the Ottoman Caliphs to expand Islam throughout Europe. However, despite all these facts, the Iranian authorities consider Iran to be the Umm al-Qura of the Islamic world.

Iran uses domestic and foreign media as propaganda tools, all of which are financed by Iranian money, such as "Press TV" and "Al-Alam" where the leader of Iran is referred to as the ‘leader of the Muslims of the world’. However, Iran was at war with its Muslim neighbour, Iraq, for eight years, and is considered by many Muslims to be an enemy.

So, how can the Iranian government officials impose the claim of leadership and guardianship over other Muslims? The answer to this question can be summed up in two words: ‘Palestinian conflict’. The Iranian rulers by raising the Palestinian issue, as the first priority for all Muslims around the world, are able to divert the Muslim world’s attention from Iran’s shortcomings. This point is not only relevant in terms of international dimension, but also internally.

The Palestinian case is also tied to the ‘crisis of the legitimacy’ of the ruling regime in Iran, and provides one of the main reasons for Iran's leaders to survive for one more day. For more than forty years, Iran's leaders, by raising and fuelling the Palestinian conflict, have been able to control and maintain a ‘revolutionary war’ condition inside of Iran. By this manner, Iran has managed to control their 8 own citizens whilst being able to avoid fulfilling the minimum obligations to provide a sustainable and a flourishing society, and at the same time, to legitimise the formation of an Islamic superpower.

Statistics show that the establishment of an Islamic regime in Iran since the revolution has not only failed to benefit Iranians, but has cost Iran more than hundreds of billions of dollars in foreign exchange resources. All of which has completely destroyed the country's domestic infrastructure, causing millions of Iranians to live below the poverty line, not to mention the dire human rights conditions.

Therefore, any progress towards the establishment of peace in the Middle East means the destruction of the Islamic State in Iran that always tried to garner its legitimacy from the ‘permanent battle’ with the hypothetical enemy. In this regard, the two theories of ‘Permanent Revolution’ and ‘A World in Revolution’ are considered the two main pillars of legitimacy for the system, which mainly define the goals of the Iranian Foreign Policy, and inevitably lead to the theory of issuing a revolution, the translation of which outside Iran is synonymous with organising disorder and instability all over the world. These include proxy wars within the region, propaganda through media channels, cyber wars and promoting fundamentalism and radicalisation.

Disagreements between Palestinian organizations and Iranian leaders from the very first days after the establishment of an Islamic regime in Iran showed that the fate of the Palestinian people had no place in Iran's macro-policies, and that Iranian leaders viewed the case of Palestine only as a tool. These differences have led Iranian leaders to distrust existing Palestinian movements and to pursue "loyal and obedient" organisations. As a result, Hezbollah was born from the Amal movement in southern Lebanon, and then created terrorist organizations such as the Palestinian Islamic Jihad Movement or the Islamic Resistance Movement. Although Hezbollah was a Shiite organization, the other two were Sunni, and Iran created them as a model for Sunni organisations that could, and should follow the Shiite State of Iran.

It should be noted that although Iran is recognised as a country with a Shiite majority, the government has never published reliable statistics. Iran has a truly diverse population based on many different religions and cultures, where almost all province borders are inhabited by Sunnis. Even within the Shiite population, most people oppose government policies, such as the largest Sufi order of 9 Gonabadi dervishes, which accounts for around eight million of the national population.

Since the Islamic Revolution in 1979, Iran has never taken the Palestinian issue genuinely and always tried to use it as a tool for their own advantage, in order to reach their ambitious goals at the cost of the suffering of the Palestinian people.

Iranian leaders also, dreaming about the destruction of Western civilization, have repeatedly described Israel as a ‘cancer node’ that needs to be removed and have envisioned Palestine as the decisive battle in their war with the Western world. They also look at the Palestinian conflict as a useful tool for their dangerous adventures and have never given the Palestinians the right to decide. Their goal is to strike a blow at Israel and the West through Palestine so that they are able to impose their leadership on the entire Arab and Islamic world and fulfil the dream of an Islamic superpower under the rule of Iranian leaders as described. Iran's undeniable military cooperation with terrorist organizations such as al-Qaeda and the Taliban can be explained in this context.

For Iranian leaders, the establishment of an everlasting peace between Israel and its neighbours is the worst-case scenario. In this frame, Iran’s unconditional support of regime of Assad in Syria can be better understood. They have created their own reliable organizations for Palestinians such as ‘Hamas’ and the ‘Islamic Jihad Organization’, to block any peace between Israel and the Palestinians. Terrorist operations are manually being carried out, creating an inflamed situation on the necessary occasions.

This article has by no means attempted to provide a solution, as we have only scratched the surface on this complex issue, and the influence of the Iranian Regime. However, it is clear thus far, that so long as the Islamic Republic of Iran persists, so will the biggest opposition to the establishment of peace between Palestine and Israel and the entire middle East.

By Cllr Mattie Heaven

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