The Iranian Occupation Of Arab Land

For all its talk about Israeli aggression, Iran appears to be involved in some Arab persecution of its own:

This week Iran cut off drinking water supply to Arab villages along the left bank of the Shatt al-Arab, causing social unrest and fears of an outbreak of disease in the indigenous population. Ahwazi Arabs are the most deprived and persecuted ethnic group in the Middle East, with human development indicators at an African level and far below those of the Palestinians. This ethno-national group has been subjected to forced relocation, land confiscation, cultural repression, state terrorism, mass executions and economic disadvantage, despite their land being one of the most oil-rich regions in the world. In all, at least 300,000 hectares of Arab land have been stolen by Tehran since 1979.

The issue is about more than just taking away Ahwazi land. There is also the issue of what Iran is doing on Ahwazi land:

Indigenous Ahwazi Arabs have condemned the construction of a nuclear power plant on their traditional lands in Iran's southwest province of Khuzestan.

Ahwazi criticism mounted as Iran began construction of a nuclear facility at Darkhovin. Iran has been building its first nuclear power plant near the southern city of Bushehr, where test operations could start this year. Final deliveries of nuclear fuel by Russia arrived at the plant last month. The plants in Khuzestan and Bushehr are being built on or near an earthquake fault line which destroyed the historic city of Bam.

..."Ahwazi Arabs are concerned about safety, fearing that the use of Russian technology in inexperienced Iranian hands could lead to a Chernobyl-like disaster, which will affect the entire region.

Iran is not the only country taking advantage of the Ahwazi Arabs--after all, where Iran leads--Syria follows:

Syria arresting Ahwazi Arabs to please Iran

According to The British Ahwazi Friendship Society (BAFS) more Ahwazi Arabs have been arrested in Syria, including the leader of the Al-Ahwaz Liberation Organization, and at least one Ahwazi political refugee has been deported to Iran.

Considering how little attention is paid to the Syrian assassination of Lebanese officials, it is not surprising that the media is not making much of this.

Technorati Tag: Iran and Ahwazi Arabs.

Bernard Lewis: The Syrian president is no Sadat

This may not exactly be news, but apparently coming from Bernard Lewis-it is, according to an article in Now Lebanon:

Historian Bernard Lewis, one of the twentieth century’s most learned and most controversial Western experts on the Arab, Islamic and Turkish worlds, has come down hard on Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, saying the man cannot be reasoned with and that he must be replaced. This unequivocal position is a major U-turn from when Lewis believed that the Syria of Bashar’s father, former-President Hafez al-Assad, could, in time, sign a peace treaty with Israel and enter into co-existence with the West.

Lewis still wants to see an eventual peace between Damascus and Jerusalem, but if even he cannot see Assad changing his recent behavior – aiding the insurgency in Iraq and thwarting Lebanon’s democratic aspirations through any means at its disposal – he believes that America, which has for so long taken his advice, should think twice about engaging Syria.

Lewis sees Syria with its current leadership as being out of sync with the rest of the Arab world that is not as impervious to the "Sadat Syndrome" as in years past:

“The late Egyptian president Anwar Sadat didn't make peace with Israel because he was suddenly convinced of the case for Zionism. He did it because in the late 1960s and early '70s, Egypt was becoming a Soviet colony. … In desperation, he turned to Israel, on the perfectly correct assumption that on the worst assessment of Israel's intentions, and on the best assessment of Israel's power, Israel was less dangerous than the Soviet Union.”

Lewis argues that other parts of the Arab world – but not Syria – are currently going through the “Sadat syndrome” – only this time, the threat pushing them towards Israel is from Iran. “What we see now is a similar process in a number of Arab governments. You will have noticed that in 2006, when Israel was fighting Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Arab governments did not break out into the usual chorus of indignation,” he told the Jerusalem Post. “On the contrary, they seemed to be waiting hopefully for Israel to finish the job, and they seemed to be rather disappointed when that didn't happen. I think that now, particularly due to the Iranian radical movement and its increasing Shi'ite network all over the Arab world, many Arab leaders consider it to be much more of a menace than Israel could ever be.”

So basically we have the Mearsheimer's and Carter's claim Israel destabilizes the region, the Arab world looks to Israel to stabilize the region, and the rest of the world just wants to handcuff Israel.

Technorati Tag: Israel.

Silence.

Just how quiet has the world been about Israel's September air strike in Syria?
This quiet:

The U.N., which condemns Israel as a matter of routine, even when it's clearly protecting itself by killing terrorists, for some reason can't bring itself this time to consider a resolution against Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's government.

With all the talk about Syria--one moment admitting that Israel attacked a nuclear facility, the next moment denying it--don't forget that the world's silence is more than just a message to Syria. There's another Muslim country with nuclear facilities:

We can understand if Iran is starting to feel a bit isolated, despite Russian President Vladimir Putin's visit to Tehran and his spoken support for the mullah-run regime's nuclear program. If the world is going to look the other way while Israel destroys possible nuclear targets in Syria, it will surely do the same should Israel — or any other principled nation — strike Iran's nuclear facilities.

Considering the number of 'principled nations' in the area--that leaves Israel.

Technorati Tag: Israel and Syria and Iran.

THE IRANIAN THREAT--TO THE ARABS. From The Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs:

Iran's Renewed Threats to Take Over the Arab Gulf States

Lt. Col. (res.) Jonathan Dahoah-Halevi

* Recent Iranian implied threats to "liberate" some of the Gulf states, and an Iranian editorial calling Bahrain a district of Iran, have caused great consternation in the Gulf states. In Bahrain there have been demonstrations at the Iranian embassy, and an official protest was submitted to Tehran. An additional Iranian article by the same author again disparaged the Gulf states and made further territorial threats.

* Iran has territorial ambitions in the Persian Gulf and does not hide them. In its view, every region of the Gulf is essentially Persian and not Arab; moreover, a large Shiite population lives in the Gulf.

* The tireless Iranian endeavor to build a large, powerful military and develop a civilian and military nuclear capability is a central part of a strategy aimed at transforming Iran from a regional power to a global one that can contend with the United States and the West. The closer Iran gets to nuclearization, the bolder it is likely to be toward the West and its neighbors.

* Iran's prophetic vision is already being translated into practice in the propagation of the Shiite faith in many Muslim countries including Pakistan, India (Kashmir), Turkey, Egypt, Algeria, Lebanon, Jordan, and others. Senior Sunni theorists keep warning of the Shiite "missionary" campaign that is spreading in the Arab world.

* The Sunni world has tended to support Iran in its confrontation with the United States over the issue of nuclear development. Now that the situation is getting critical, there is a basis for strategic cooperation between the United States and the Sunni world aimed at stopping Iran.

* In the eyes of the Arab states, the threat to wipe the Sunni world from the map is graver than the Iranian promise to annihilate Israel. Paradoxically, Israel and the Arab world are in the same boat, with similar interests; moreover, it is in fact Israel that can save the day for the Arabs.

Read the whole thing.

Technorati Tag: Iran.

THE BEGINNING OF A NEW ERA? Krauthamer sees the Palestinian civil war in the context of Iranian influence:

This is the beginning of the Palestinian civil war. Round one happened this week, and it's over. Hamas has won in Gaza, it will take it over. And it is the worst elements.

As one high administration official said the other day, these are the extreme elements of the extremists. And this is essentially the first Palestinian independent territory — Israel is out of Gaza — and it will now become a terrorist state.

And it will also be, this is extremely important, a client of Iran. Hamas is supplied and financed by Iran. Iran has now a constellation of allies and clients in that region, the way the Soviets had around the world. It's got Hamas now in Gaza, it's got Hezbollah in Lebanon, it's got Sadr in Iraq. And it has a country, Syria, as its only Arab ally in that region. . . .

[I]t's an Iranian client crescent, and it is the beginning of a general Iranian, Islamist revolutionary infiltration of the Arabs. Which is why Egypt is afraid, because Gaza has a border with Egypt, and why it's the beginning of a great struggle between Persian, non-Arab, Shiite and radical Iran with all of these Arabs.

So it's the beginning of a new era in the Middle East.

Technorati Tag: Iran and Israel and Palestinian Civil War and Charles Krauthammer.

Look Who's Persecuting Their Arab Minority!

Persecution of an Arab minority.
Confiscation of Arab land.
Ethnic cleansing.

It's just another day in...Iran.

From The Times Online:

“NEVER AGAIN” is, I fear, a phrase that we may hear again all too soon — but too late to warn people, let alone save lives. Under the cover of secrecy the fundamentalist regime in Tehran is waging a sustained, bloody campaign of intimidation and persecution against its Arab minority. These Arabs believe that they are victims of “ethnic cleansing” by Iran’s Persian majority.

Sixteen Arab rights activists have been sentenced to death, according to reports in the Iranian media. They were found guilty of insurgency in secret trials before revolutionary courts. But most of the defendants were convicted solely on the basis of confessions extracted under torture. Ten are expected to be hanged in a couple of weeks, after the end of Ramadan. Amnesty International says that two of those sentenced to die, Abdolreza Nawaseri and Nazem Bureihi, were in prison when they were alleged to have been involved in bomb attacks. Three others — Hamza Sawa- eri, Jafar Sawari and Reisan Sawari — say that they were nowhere near the Zergan oilfield the day it was bombed.

The death sentences seem designed to silence protests by Iran’s persecuted ethnic Arabs. They comprise 70 per cent of the population of the south-west province of Khuzestan, known locally as Ahwaz. Many Ahwazis believe that the 16 were framed and that their real “crime” was campaigning against Tehran’s repression and exploitation of their oil-rich homeland.

Further show trials are planned — 50 Ahwazi Arab activists have been charged with insurgency since last year. They are accused of being mohareb or enemies of God, which is a capital crime. Other allegations include sabotage and possession of home-made bombs. No material evidence has been offered to support the charges. All face possible execution.

...Tehran’s latest tactic is to hold Ahwazi children as hostages. According to Amnesty International, children as young as 2 have been jailed with their mothers to force their fugitive, political-activist fathers to surrender to the police. Protests against these abuses are brutally suppressed. Ahwazi political parties, trade unions and student groups are illegal. In the past year, 25,000 Ahwazis have been arrested, 131 executed and 150 have disappeared, reports AHRO. The bodies of many of those executed have been dumped in a place that the Government calls lanat abad, the place of the damned. They are buried in shallow graves; dogs dig up and eat the bodies.

Nearly 250,000 Arabs have been displaced from their villages after the Iranian Government’s confiscation of more than 200,000 hectares of farmland for a huge sugar-cane project. Dozens more towns and villages will be erased, making a possible further 400,000 Ahwazis homeless, by the creation of a military-industrial security zone, covering more than 3,000 sq km, along the Shatt al-Arab waterway, which borders Iraq.

And guess who is playing into this persecution of Arabs--

Ironically, the Hezbollah in Lebanon — the supposed embodiment of Arab resistance in the Middle East — is complicit in the displacement of Ahwazi Arabs. On confiscated Arab land Tehran has set up training camps for Hezbollah and for the Badr Brigades, the Iraqi fundamentalist militia. Badr death squads in Iraq are murdering Sunnis, unveiled women, gay people, men wearing shorts, barbers, sellers of alcohol and people listening to Western music.

Then there is the ethic cleansing part.

Tehran has a grand plan to make the Ahwazi a minority in their own land through “ethnic restructuring”. Financial incentives, such as zero- interest loans, are given to ethnic Persians to settle in Ahwaz. New townships are planned, which will house 500,000 non-Arabs. Meanwhile, tens of thousands of displaced Ahwazis eke out a subsistence existence in shanty towns on the outskirts of Ahwaz city. Others have been forcibly relocated to poverty-stricken, far-flung northern regions of Iran.

The rest:

Ahwaz produces 90 per cent of Iran’s oil and Tehran expropriates all the revenues. An attempt by Ahwaz MPs to secure the repatriation of 1.5 per cent of these earnings back to the region for welfare projects was rejected this year. Yet it is the third poorest region of Iran: 80 per cent of the children suffer from malnutrition, and the unemployment rate of Arabs is more than five times that of Persians.

Arab language newspapers and textbooks have been banned to crush Arab identity further. In Ahwaz schools, all instruction is in Farsi (Persian), resulting in a 30 per cent drop-out rate at primary level and 50 per cent at secondary level. Illiteracy rates among Arabs are at least four times those of non-Arabs.

Contrary to Tehran’s nationalist propaganda most Ahwazi Arabs just want a measure of self-government; they are not hellbent on independence or in league with the CIA or plotting for an American invasion. Quite the contrary, they fear that Western sabre-rattling will be used as a pretext by Tehran’s hardliners to crack down savagely on dissent. Which makes it all the more disturbing that one of the few bodies with diplomatic muscle — the Arab League, which professes pan-Arab solidarity — is so silent in the face of Iran’s persecution of Arabs.

No world condemnation.
No fiery Arab rhetoric.
No UN denounciation

Just another quiet day in the Middle East--move along; nothing to see here.

Any question that Israel is not the only one that need worry about Iran?

Technorati Tag: Iran and Hezbollah.

Who Is Iran's Real Nuclear Target?

We've all heard how Israel is the main target of a potenial nuclear attack--whether for its own sake or as a way to pressure the US. But what if Israel is not the main target? According to the Chicago Tribune, the Arab world may be beginning to think that they may be Iran's main target.

...In a recent opinion piece titled "For These Reasons We Fear Iran" in the pan-Arabic daily Al-Sharq Al-Awsat, the director of Al-Arabiya TV, Abd al-Rahman al-Rashed, argued that the most likely target of Iran's nuclear weapons is the Arab countries of the Persian Gulf.

"It is incomprehensible that Iran will bomb Israel, which has a shield of missiles, tremendous firepower and nuclear weapons artillery sufficient to eradicate every city in Iran," he wrote. "This means that if this destructive weapon is used, the only option for a target is the Arab Gulf."

At the Dayan Center, Bengio said she wouldn't be surprised if Arab countries at this moment are trying to persuade Washington to attack Iran's nuclear facilities. She acknowledged that an American attack would produce a sharp reaction from the so-called Arab street. But she thinks Arab regimes believe they can handle the unrest, and that they would take that chance rather than see Iran continue to build political, military and ideological influence in the Arab back yard.

In case the U.S. does not take action, Sunni Arab nations are making contingency plans. Saudi Arabia has engaged in a huge military shopping spree, spending billions on American Black Hawk helicopters and armored vehicles, and negotiating billions more in purchases from France and Britain.

Egypt recently announced its intentions to pursue nuclear energy, a decision echoing Iran's claim that its nuclear program seeks only to produce electricity.

The conflict in Lebanon was a wake-up call to many Arab countries about the danger they could face from the "Shiite Axis," according to published comments by Martin Indyk, director of the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at The Brookings Institution and a former U.S. ambassador to Israel.

In the short term, the public voice of Arab politics will continue to castigate Israel for its treatment of Palestinians. Still, as Iran continues to strut its newfound influence on the international stage, and as its militias continue to boast of their great arsenals and ideological fervor, the regional realignment will continue to take shape. A not-so-secret meeting between an Israeli prime minister and Saudi officials looks like one of the first steps toward that transformation.

Keep in mind that according to Mearsheimer and Walt, the Israel Lobby has made the US unneccesarily antagonistic to the interests of the one billion Moslems in the world in general, and to Iran in particular.

What if Saddam Hussein in Iraq, Iran left to its own interests, and Palestinians unable to govern themselves are not in the best interests of those 1 billion Moslems in general and the Arab World in particular?

Technorati Tag: Israel and Iran and Middle East.