The Supreme advisor to the Iranian Republic, Ali Khamenei said recently “we should know well our enemy, know his tricks and his games, and based on that we take our stance with regards to the issues in Syria. We do not seek any bloodshed targeting any Muslim, and this hurts us. We say that those who are dragging Syria to the Civil war will be held responsible to what’s happening there, as the people’s demands should be realized through known and normal methods, away from any violence.”
These statements coincide with the murder of the Iranian activist and blogger Sattar Bahshti by torture, while Khamenei didn’t feel any pain or take any action, as he himself, like his predecessor Khomeini, considers as a faithless anyone who acts against the regime of the Iranian Republic.
Khomeini once said about the events in the Iranian Azerbaijan region that “they are standing out against Islam, and they are acting against the rule of Islam. We don’t want to initiate any bloodshed, but rebelling against the Islamic government deserves a harsh punishment; it is similar to unfaithfulness, one of the biggest crimes.” And on his footsteps goes Khamenei who threatened to kill the protesters against the results of the previous presidential elections if they don’t stop their demonstrations.
On the Syrian front, although he expressed his concern over the bloodshed, he doesn’t acknowledge the Syrian revolution and considers it as an “American made chaos” the same way he described the former protests in Iran.
Khamenei, who always uses the idiom of “external enemy” in most of his statements, cause problems to the Syrian people, and problems paid by the blood of children, women and freedom fighters.
The support of Iran, Russia and China for the Syrian regime claimed until now the lives of thousands of Syrians, while Khamenei claims that he knows the enemy and calls on the Islamic countries to be cautious of it.
This is not the first time that the Supreme advisor to the Iranian Republic builds his position on the basis of caution from the policies of the “enemies,” but everyone knows that Ahmadinejad became president with the support of Khamenei and caused scores of problems; and Khamenei forbade MPs from questioning Ahmadinejad and from pursuing the case of government corruption which caused the loss of $3 billion, because of the implication of close collaborators of the regime in what was described as the biggest corruption in Iran’s history.
In spite of all this, Khamenei sent his troops to fight “the enemy”, and no one was able to question him about the blood of the Iranians who are killed and buried secretly in Syria, while their parents are warned against revealing the real cause of their death.
The Iranian people don’t know as well the amount of money spent by Khamenei in other countries such as Syria, Iraq and Lebanon, as Syria is at the forefront of the resistance, and Iraq is a suitable place to intervene and instill religious problems!
In parallel, we hear about the death of a number of school children in remote villages in Iran because of the lack of resources, and the same official statistics say that the Iran has 1,200 schools that use tents as classrooms, while Iran signs an agreement to build 3,000 schools and residential compounds… in Iraq.
In fact, the Iranian officials are used to interfere in other countries’ affairs, and they don’t care less for the fate of the Iranian people, and they are obsessed with exporting their revolution, although it is outdated, to the extent that Khamenei announces rudely that the Arab revolutions are the fruit of the Iranian Islamic revolution.
In spite of these claims, the Syrian people are taking the right way to freedom and democracy, and they will get there like what happened in Egypt and Tunisia, in spite of the generous aids given to Assad’s regime by tyrannical countries such as Iran, and in the contrary to what the Iranian leaders think, the revolution of the Syrian people is not based on “the Islamic awakening” promoted by Iran but because they wanted to put an end to the tyranny of al-Assad regime.
There isn’t much left before the ousting of Assad, and the rumors that are said here and there, going around the will of Assad to seek asylum, is an indicator that his regime is reaching an end, but the Iranian people have a long way to walk before reaching what the Syrians are about to accomplish.
And it goes without saying that Iran will be the biggest loser from the fall of Assad’s regime, because of its unrealistic positions, built on fiction and intransigence.
(Dr. Behrooz Behbudi is the founding president of both the Center for Democratic Iran (CDI) and Global Unity Partnership. In 2009 and in support of the protest movement of the Iranian people Behbudi launched his W I N TV channel. The U.S. Senate has awarded Behbudi with its “Medal of Freedom” for democracy advocacy.)
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