The Iranian opposition requested permission from the government to hold a rally in solidarity with the uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt. However, the regime, of which the Supreme Leader had welcomed the uprising in Egypt and declared his support for it, refused to grant the opposition the permission to demonstrate. The regime even threatened to crackdown on the demonstrators, because it knows very well that the Iranians would also protest against Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and the entire regime. The Iranian revolution has devoured its children. I do not need to go back to 1979 and the physical liquidations that followed the establishment of the Islamic Republic. Instead, I will focus on what is taking place today. The two presidential candidates who ran against Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Mir Hussein Moussavi and Mehdi Karroubi, issued a joint statement condemning the increase in executions in Iran last month. According to UN estimates, the number of these executions was 67. If this continues at the same rate, this means that the number of executions may exceed 179 perhaps many times over, which is the number of executions in 2010. (According to another estimate by the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran, the number of executions last month was 97). Abul-Hassan Bani-Sadr, who was the first president after the 1979 revolution, wrote an article in the New York Times last month about the failure of the Iranian revolution, and about how democratic rule can be achieved and preserved. When I was young I read an old book published in the United States entitled “How to Win Friends and Influence People”. I believe that the Iranian regime can claim to be the author of the book that parodied the previous book, with the title of “How to Lose Friends and Alienate People”, since this is what the regime seems to do best, in addition to supporting terrorism, or incitement and interference in other countries' affairs, while threatening nearby and faraway nations. I supported Iran with regard to its nuclear program and still do, as long as Israel possesses an arsenal of nuclear weapons. But while Israel denies what the whole world knows it possesses, the regime in Iran boasts of what it does not possess, and issues periodic reports on missiles, tests and centrifuges. Then after that, the regime holds a meeting in Istanbul under the auspices of the Turkish government, to discuss Iran's nuclear program, before Saeed Jalili, Iran's chief negotiator, announced on the first day that the Iranian side will not discuss the nuclear program. Why did they hold the meeting then? To discuss the price of Aleppine pistachio (Sorry, Iranian pistachio)? Frankly, the Iranian nuclear program, which is the most important issue in the relationship between Iran and the outside world, does not concern me much. I had heard the war criminal Meir Dagan say, as he left his post as Mossad chief, that Iran is four or five years away from producing a nuclear bomb. I recently read about a128-page report issued by the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London, which is objective and reliable, alleging that Iran can produce one or two nuclear bombs in six months or one year if Iran pursues it. Again, I do not object to Iran's nuclear program, but note that the regime is persecuting dissenters, to the extent of threatening and detaining the dissenters' defense lawyers, and threatening nearby and faraway countries, and others that do not share any ties or interests with Iran. The readers must no doubt have heard about the captured armed shipments in Nigeria in October, for example, on its way to terrorist groups in Western Africa. The Iranian regime is a cause for concern for its neighbors across the Gulf. I know diplomatic information that has not been published before, regarding threats against this or that country. In fact, the Iranian regime had threatened Egypt, implicating Hezbollah in the process, and wasted this brave party's popularity and that of its leaders Sayed Hassan Nasrallah in Egypt, a popularity that I had seen rise over the years. Lt. General Omar Suleiman told me in a private meeting that the agents who were arrested in Sinai were monitoring tourists in the known sea resorts and the movement of ships through the Suez Canal. I told him that I had wished that Hezbollah's name was not implicated in this issue. Suleiman said that the attempted attack was sheer evil, and that if it had succeeded, Egypt would have suffered damages in the two most important pillars of its economy, i.e. tourism and the Suez Canal. Can anyone explain to me how Tehran thinks? I mean, if the Fatimids themselves failed to convert the Egyptians to Shiism in two centuries, then Ahmadinejad can do it? Today, the Iranian regime is ‘supporting' the Egyptian people through the statements of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, i.e. it is inciting Egyptians against each other, while he is preventing Iranians from protesting in solidarity with the Tunisian or Egyptian uprising. I compare this unethical stance to the support voiced by King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz to President Hosni Mubarak, not to remain in power, but for transition to a new era to take place peacefully, and in a manner that preserves the dignity of the President. This was also the stance taken by the United Arab Emirates, which sent its Foreign Minister Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed to meet President Mubarak and convey to him his country's solidarity with him and with the Egyptian people. While Saudi Arabia told the Obama administration that it would help Egypt should the U.S. suspend annual aid to it, I know that this is also the stance of the United Arab Emirates and other capable Arab countries. Then there is the Iran of Ahmadinejad and Khamenei but I do not compare, because that would be a travesty. [email protected]
