Thursday , 7 November 2024

How Iran’s Palestine Policy Backfired at Home

Iranwire – The assessment of Iranians’ perspectives on Palestine, one year after the Hamas-Israel war started, indicates a shift in their opinions towards Palestine compared to the early days of the 1979 Islamic Revolution and the period after Ali Khamenei assumed the role of Iran’s Supreme Leader.

In one of Khomeini’s pre-exile speeches on June 5, 1963, considered one of the first sparks of the revolution, he addressed a crowd at the Feiziyah School in Qom

Before the revolution, Iranian authorities aimed to manage Israel’s policies by maintaining close ties with the country. Ardeshir Zahedi, Iran’s foreign minister from 1966 to 1971, revealed in his memoirs that one of the objectives of these relations, aside from offering consular assistance to Iranians residing in Israel, was to defend Palestinian territories against Israeli occupation and oppose settlement expansions.

One of the initial decisions of Ruhollah Khomeini, the founder of the Islamic Republic, after the revolution was to sever Iran’s unofficial relations with Israel. Support for Palestine and condemning Israel’s actions in violating Palestinian rights resonated with the Iranian populace.

A decade before the 1979 Islamic Revolution, a faction of fighters from the Fatah organization, the leading group of the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO), attacked an Israeli settlement along the Jordanian-Israeli border and gained control of it. 

One of the commanders of the attack was a member of an Iranian communist group that would later be known as “The Iranian People’s Fedai Guerrillas.” His Palestinian identification card bore the name Abu Abbas. However, his actual name was Ali Akbar Safaei Farahani, an Iranian guerrilla who, at the time, was fighting alongside the Palestinians against Israeli occupation. Today, supporting Palestine in such a manner may appear to be a myth.

The Middle East crisis after the revolution shifted from supporting Palestinians to opposing Israel. However, during Khomeini’s lifetime, the discourse of liberating Palestine still had support in Iran. This rhetoric, originating from Khomeini and other revolutionary politicians like Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, entered the official literature of the Islamic Republic.

In one of Khomeini’s pre-exile speeches on June 5, 1963, considered one of the first sparks of the revolution, he addressed a crowd at the Feiziyah School in Qom. He said, “Today I learned some preachers were summoned to the Organization of National Security. They were instructed to avoid discussing the Shah, Israel, and the threat to their religion. Excluding these three crucial topics, what else is there to address?”

Akram Zuaytir’s “The Story of Palestine,” translated by Hashemi Rafsanjani, was a key text for Iranian revolutionaries seeking to understand the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Published in 1963, the same year as Khomeini’s famous speech, this book served as a significant resource for understanding the Palestinian-Israeli issue among Iran’s revolutionary leadership. At the time, Akram Zuaytir was the Palestinian ambassador to Jordan.

Rafsanjani, in his preface to the translated version, described the tone as “very harsh.” He noted that colonialism was a major concern for freedom fighters, and obtaining permission for the book wasn’t particularly challenging or restrictive back then.

Earlier, Palestine and Israel were linked to themes of freedom, the fight against colonialism, and the defense of the oppressed – a key theme in Khomeini’s discourse.

The authors of the Iranian constitution, put to referendum in December 1979, expressed their desire for “the realization of the global government of the poor” and “the defeat of all oppressors in the 20th century” in the preamble. 

Article 154 of the constitution states, “The Islamic Republic of Iran considers the happiness of all human beings in the global community as its ideal and recognizes independence, freedom, and the establishment of justice as the rights of all people worldwide. Therefore, while refraining from any interference in the domestic affairs of other nations, it supports the righteous struggle of the oppressed against oppressors in any part of the world.”

Over the past 45 years, the failure to achieve the initial slogans of the revolution – independence, freedom, and the establishment of justice – has dramatically changed Iranians’ views on Palestine.

The presence of Palestinians during the Iran-Iraq war, with sporadic reports surfacing after the 1990s, left a negative impression of Palestine among some Iranians. About a decade into his leadership, Khamenei became a critic of mainstream Palestinian leaders.

During negotiations between Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat and Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin to resolve the conflict, Khamenei used harsh language against Arafat, marking a turning point in the relationship between the Islamic Republic and the Palestinian Authority.

On December 31, 1999, during Friday prayers, Khamenei said, “Even if all the commitments made by the Israelis [in the Camp David II negotiations] are fulfilled, the poor Palestinian people will receive only a little over four percent. They were given a small, fragmented, and ungovernable area in an incomplete form. What they must do in return, in addition to working with Israel’s security agencies, is take action against the Palestinian fighters within the occupied territories. Could there be a greater betrayal? Those who commit this betrayal in the name of the Palestinians are worse than any who have come before.”

In a fiery Friday sermon, Khamenei repeated his insults against Arafat and his colleagues. He said, “A Palestinian Arab writer living in the U.S. wrote that the Arafat gang couldn’t even keep the streets of Gaza clean, but in a short time, they established five security and intelligence agencies to spy on the people.” He called them shameless and added, “Is this a Palestinian state? Is this the return of the Palestinian people? Is this the realization of Palestinian rights? When this man first began negotiations with the Israelis, I said he was both a traitor and a fool. He would have been more effective if he had been a traitor but also smart.”

The distance grew so great that Khamenei refused to meet Arafat during his last visit to Iran. Years later, when Mahmoud Abbas, Arafat’s successor, visited Tehran, Abbas showed no interest in meeting Khamenei and did not go to see him.

The peak of this divide was evident in Khamenei’s speech on the 35th anniversary of his leadership and Abbas’s reaction to it. Eight months after the war between Hamas and Israel had begun, Khamenei praised Hamas’s attack during his speech on June 3, saying the October 7 attack “was exactly what the region needed.” Abbas’s office issued a statement in response to these remarks, saying, “The Palestinian people do not need wars that don’t align with their goals of freedom and independence.”

Ignoring the discontent, Khamenei continued to make similar statements, once again praising Hamas’s attack on the anniversary of the war.

Khamenei’s rejection of Arafat and his successor, Abbas, alienated other Iranian politicians who had once supported Palestine and aligned with the government. These figures, once sympathetic to Palestine and its cause, distanced themselves from Khamenei’s purely militaristic approach to the Middle East crisis and his complete rejection of a two-state solution.

This created another significant rift in the support for the Palestinian cause within Iran. Political groups known as the national-religious factions, including the Freedom Movement of Iran and its prominent figures who had a long history of supporting Palestine, now distanced themselves from the government’s policies towards Israel and Palestine.

The political and financial costs incurred by the Islamic Republic in support of Palestine, while similar needs in Iran went unaddressed by the government, generated widespread resentment. 

The establishment of numerous paramilitary groups and the provision of financial and military support for them, justified under the banner of Khamenei as the “leader of the world’s Muslims” supporting the “Islamic ummah,” received overwhelmingly negative feedback from Iranians, even from those who believe in political Islam. Many feel that for Khamenei, the Iranian people are not part of this “Islamic ummah.”

The growing public disdain for groups opposing Israel, such as Lebanon’s Hezbollah, was symbolically evident in the days leading up to the anniversary of the Hamas-Israel war.

Two years ago, during the Woman, Life, Freedom protests, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah drew criticism for insulting Iranian protesters. He blamed their actions on “foreign enemies” and made derogatory remarks about the death of Mahsa Amini.

Despite widespread public outrage, the government did not declare a national mourning period. Instead, the Attorney General warned that commenting about the incident could have legal repercussions.

Shortly after, Nasrallah was killed in an Israeli operation in Lebanon. Khamenei declared five days of mourning, but the public celebration of Nasrallah’s death on Iranian social media was a clear indicator of the growing divide between the public and the government’s policies.

The juxtaposition of posters featuring Nasrallah’s image being placed over posters memorializing the miners further reinforced the perception among Iranians that their lives held little importance compared to Nasrallah, who had previously offended them.

The Iranian government’s policy on Israel and Palestine has been highly costly for its citizens. The creation and funding of various militant groups, which has cost Iranian taxpayers billions of dollars, has led to widespread resentment towards the Islamic Republic’s narrative on the Israel-Palestine conflict. 

This sentiment was famously expressed in the slogan “Neither Gaza nor Lebanon, my life is for Iran,” which gained international attention, even drawing criticism from Tehran’s religious leaders. However, it did not result in any policy changes.

During the start of the Gaza War, some football fans in Iran chanted offensive slogans against Palestinian symbols at an official match. This incident exposed the gap between the government’s pro-Palestinian rhetoric and the Iranian public.

A more longstanding example is Quds Day, celebrated on the last Friday of Ramadan. This day, initiated by Ayatollah Khomeini with the support of Hossein Ali Montazeri, the ousted deputy leader of the Islamic Republic, was designated as a day to express solidarity with Palestinians and condemn Israeli occupation. In 2009, amidst unprecedented protests against the Islamic Republic, Quds Day became a platform for Iranians to publicly question the government’s policies on Israel and Palestine during street demonstrations.

Recently, just before the death of Nasrallah, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, whose attacks in Gaza have killed over 42,000 Palestinians, addressed Iranians in a message saying that “freedom would come much sooner than they think.” This message was well-received by many Iranians and became a hot topic of discussion.

Hatam Ghaderi, a professor of political philosophy at Tehran’s Tarbiat Modares University and the former secretary of the “Palestine Conference, an Iranian Perspective” in the 1990s, said, “Our people are being oppressed. When we are living in a state of quasi-slavery, do we have the moral authority to liberate Palestine? Why have we brought our society to a point where people are looking for someone like Bin Salman?” He suggested that Iran should focus on addressing its domestic issues before attempting to champion the cause of others.

Now, some Iranians are openly supporting Israel and even a potential Israeli attack on Iran. Pro-Palestinian rallies only happen with the invitation of government organizations, and participants are primarily officials and loyalists. 

While the potential for an Israeli military attack on Iran has sparked patriotic anti-war sentiments among some Iranians, it also reflects the collapse of the Islamic Republic’s pro-Palestinian and anti-Israeli sentiments in Iran.

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