The Middle East Institute hosted Carol Prunhuber, my colleague Sharif Behruz who works as the PDKI’s U.S. representative and my brother Idris Ahmedi to speak about the political, social and human rights status of Iran’s Kurds Below you can watch videos from the discussion.
VOA-Persian visited one of our bases and spoke to a couple of our female Peshmergas, Audio in Persian.
I want to introduce Hiwa Abdelzadeh, who will as of tomorrow begin to work as a Political Aide to myself. You can follow his work by visiting his blog, in which he will:
write about the coverage of Iran and Kurdistan in the United Kingdom […]. I will more specifically write about the United Kingdoms foreign policy towards Iran and I will also follow politicians, journalists and different organizations statements, articles and work that is related to Iran and Kurdistan.
You can get in touch with him by sending an email to hiwa.abdelzadeh@pdki.org
In memory of our dear friend Yousef Faghihi who was killed together with three other brave Peshmergas by Iran’s Revolutionary Guard on the 21 of August last year. Today would have been Yousefs birthday. We all miss him very much.
Some pictures of Yousef:
At the same time as the Islamic Republic of Iran sends millions of dollars to extremist Arab organizations in Lebanon, Palestine and Iraq the Arab population of Ahwaz in Iran suffers extreme poverty and discrimination.
The Islamic Republic of Iran portrays its self as the champion of Arab rights in all of the above-mentioned countries, but the Arab population of Iran faces discrimination and violence in all spheres of life. Every year hundreds of Arab-rights activists are imprisoned, tortured, raped and executed in Iran just because they raise their voices about the gross living conditions of Arabs in Iran.
The province of Khuzestan, which has an Arab majority, produces the majority of Iran’s oil, but none of the benefits of the oil reach the people living in the region. The Islamic Republic of Iran drains Khuzestan of its riches and systematically oppresses the Arab population, only to send its oil profits to Arab-extremists in other parts of the region.
This kind of policy is expected from the regime in Tehran, but what strikes Arabs in Iran as strange is that no Arab country or organization raises their plight or objects to Iran’s treatment of their kinsmen.
Pictures showing the living conditions of Arabs in Iran:
According to Iran’s penal code an individual that is convicted of conducting “Mohareb”, (which means waging war) against God should be executed. The regime in Iran has used this notion of “Enemy of God” to crack down on all forms of dissident since the establishment of the Islamic Republic in 1979.
It began when Ayatollah Khomeini labelled the Democratic Party of Iranian Kurdistan the “party of Satan” and declared “Jihad” holy war against the Kurdish on the 17th of August 1979. Since then thousands of Kurdish political activists have been executed after being charged with being an enemy of God.
Kurdish political activists have since 1979 been charged with being enemies of God for everything from handing out leaflets to carrying a message for the Kurdish opposition.
Article 186 of Islamic Penal Code states that when any group or organization attempts confrontation against the Islamic Republic of Iran, so long as its leadership is intact, all its members and supporters who are aware of the organization’s positions and take steps to further its objectives, are “enemies of God”.
Article 190 of the Islamic Republic of Iran’s Penal Code states that there are four possible punishments for “war against God or corruption on earth”: death, death by hanging; amputation of the right hand and then the left foot; or permanent internal exile. Article 191 of the Islamic Penal Code gives the judge the discretion to choose the punishment.
After the June 2009 election fraud and the demonstrations that followed the regime also targets people and groups that were loyal to the Islamic Republic with charges of Mohareb. The Associated Press has an interesting article on the subject, read:
A traditional Islamic concept about protecting the faith and its followers has become a judicial weapon for Iran’s rulers: charging opponents as so-called enemies of God with the threat of possible death sentences.
Iran’s accusations of “moharebeh” — literally “waging war” in Arabic — have opened deep rifts between ruling clerics and Islamic scholars questioning how an idea about safeguarding Muslims can be transformed into a tool to punish political protesters.
Iran’s selected president, Mahmoud Ahmedinejad, is currently in Afghanistan to meet with Afghan president Hamid Karzai. During a press conference yesterday Ahmedinejad claimed that the United States has created the terrorists in Afghanistan.
It has been evident for years now that Iran supports different armed groups in Afghanistan. Iran even supports its former archenemy, the Taliban’s. From the Taliban’s takeover of Afghanistan in 1996 to the US invasion, the Taliban confronted Iran. The Taliban undermined both the Iranian regime’s claim to moral leadership of Muslims in the region and they also threatened Iran’s security by conducting cross-border attacks from time to time.
But this has not stopped the Iranians from supplying the Taliban with both weapons and money:
Iran’s Revolutionary Guard has also opened a corridor for drug smuggling inside Iran for the Taliban to use to export Afghanistan’s vast amount of opium to countries outside of the region.
As in the case of Iraq, Iran has a large influence in Afghanistan and one of the major threats to the stabilization of Afghanistan comes from Iran and its proxy war against the United States.
On Sunday Iraqis voted in the country’s parliamentary election and according to early reports no party, or blocs of parties, managed to win enough votes to be able to form a single-majority government.
The election process has been hailed as relatively democratic, despite evidence of fraud (tens of thousands of Kurds was according to reports denied the right to vote). The election results haven’t been announced yet, but whatever the result the different blocs will be forced to negotiate some kind of coalition government.
But beneath the surface of the election process the influence of Iran is evident. Long before the election campaign began Iran provided millions of dollars, campaign materials, political training to several groups and political parties in Iraq in order to influence the election.
Both influential and less influential Iraqi politicians travelled to Tehran before the election to secure Iranian backing and Iran welcomed all of them. The different political organizations that do not have any direct link to Iran attempts to avoid any form of conflict with Iran; everyone knows that a conflict with Iran will have serious consequences for any organization in Iraq.
For most Iraqi politicians Iranian support is vital and Iran is utilizing this need of support to its own benefit. The Iranians are everywhere in Iraq, in the political, economical and social sphere. There is no other country in the region that has as much influence in Iraq.
Iran supports everyone from secular to Islamist to militant groups and from small to large political organization. The strategy seems clear; Iran wants to have influence in all of the different political groupings in Iraq and Iran is some times pitting the different groups against each other and at other times Iran attempts to force them to collaborate with each other when it suits the interests of Iran.
And now that the election is over the political process of forming a government in Iraq will begin and Iran will do everything in its power to secure a pro-Iranian government. Iranian diplomats and secret agents are jockeying back and forward between different political groups attempting to bribe them and if that fails they will try to force them to do what Iran wants.
Based on the United States decision to pull its troops out of Iraq different political groups in Iraq are more inclined to do as Iran wants, because Iran will without a doubt become the major power in Iraq when the Americans leave. The different political groupings in Iraq knows this and this will have an crucial mark on the formation of the next government in Iraq.
Obama’s remarks on the election in Iraq and his decision to pull out the American forces (see video below) might sound as a President keeping his election promise, but in the ears of Iraqi politicians it sounds like a signal to start rethinking their political future and for the Iranians it sounds like another victory.
Iran will also continue to use its influence in Iraq and other parts of the region, like Lebanon, Afghanistan and Palestine, to push back the United States from the region. The Iranians will also use their nuclear program to continue to push for more power and as long as the United States only focuses on Iran’s nuclear program and don’t take pre-emptive measures to halt Iran’s growing influence in the region, the regime in Iran will be able to continue to do as they want in the region.
It seems that no one in the West knows what to with Iran. The Obama administration and its allies are grasping for any solution, even if the solution would lead to other problems. Pundits and self-described experts on Iran are proposing everything from sanctions, military attacks and unconditional engagement to ignoring Iran.
The Obama administration’s Iran policy has failed dramatically. Obama’s efforts to engage the regime in Iran failed, its efforts to pressure Iran on the nuclear issue are failing and has even led to a potential conflict with China. The EU follows suit. But a noteworthy change is that the IAEA, after that El-Baradei left the agency, has stepped up its pressure on Iran. But this will not change Iran’s policy to pursue nuclear weapons, because the framework in which the agency works makes it possible to manipulate.
Efforts to impose sanctions on Iran (especially in its “crippling” form) will most probably fail; China and Russia will hinder any such efforts. A military attack, especially if it only targets Iran’s nuclear plants, will also fail and could even lead to strengthening the regime. The IAEA’s new approach could help the U.S. and its allies to put more pressure on Iran, but it in the end it will not bring about any real change.
As for the self-described experts proposal to unconditionally engage Iran, one can only hope that the proposal is rooted in some kind of ultra-radical realism and that the individuals working for this approach are not stooges of the Islamic Republic. The proposal to ignore Iran and hope that the problem will wither away is quite amusing but not a practical.
The mistake that both governments and pundits in the West does in regard to Iran is that they change their policies and views based upon social and political changes in Iran, which they often misunderstand or misinterpret due to lack of understanding and information about the reasons behind these changes. A very recent example is that when the expected demonstrations on the anniversary of the 1979 Revolution in Iran didn’t turn out to be as large and as violent as expected, pundits and so called experts declared the opposition movement, that staged several anti regime demonstrations after the June 2009 presidential elections, dead.
Assuming that the regime has total control and that there will be no more demonstrations because the regime managed to prevent large demonstrations on the anniversary of the revolution is wrong. The opposition will grow and become more effective.
Even though the first demonstrations began as a reaction to the election fraud that took place during the Presidential election, the actual reason behind the demonstrations was a deep-rooted dissatisfaction with the rule of the Islamic regime.
Realistically, the only chance that Iran’s nuclear program is halted is if the regime is changed and the system of the Islamic Republic is changed into a secular and democratic system of government.
The fact that the demonstrations have not spread to regions in which Kurds, Balochs, Arabs, Turkoman and Azeris are in majority is the largest problem that the movement faces. These nationalities fear that their legitimate demands will not be met if individuals that are loyal to the Islamic Republic comes to power.
But as the demonstrations have continued and the real demands of the people in large cities like Tehran have become similar to those of the different nationalities, the possibility that these nationalities will join the demonstrations have increased dramatically.
For this to be possible, the struggle of the freedom-seeking people of Iran needs the support of governments that have a direct interest in removing the current regime. This support should not be short termed and it should not depend on the current regimes willingness or unwillingness to negotiate about its nuclear program.
Western governments should support the opposition morally, politically and in any other way that could help the democratic opposition to overthrow the Islamic Republic. Regime change will not only be in the interest of the people of Iran, but it will also bring about stability in large parts of the Middle East and it will also be in the direct interest of Western states.
