Hassan Rohani, M.E’s new lead actor

 

On the eve of a possible meeting between Sheykh Hassan Rohani, the new Iranian President and President Barak Hussein Obama on the fringe of the United Nations General Assembly in New York, an event that if it takes place, could genuinely be termed as “historic”, Iran has become the lead player on the Middle East’s scene.

That dramatic change of roles and situations is due mainly to Mr. Obama’s hesitations, tergiversations, lack of strategy and no respect of his so called “red line” in the Syrian bloody crisis, a quagmire he was saved by President Vladimir Putin’s stunning diplomatic initiatives, which were accepted and implemented immediately by Mr. Bashar Assad due to the vital role Iran plays in Syria.

The proposals were discussed by the Russian and Iranian presidents during their first meeting at the last session of the Shanghai Organisation in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan.

Overnight, from a cumbersome and unpleasant partner which could not be avoided due to its important oil and gas energies and huge nuclear arsenal, Russia, by urging Syria to accept destroying its chemical weapons, placing them under an international control and transferring them outside Syria, became an international player acclaimed by almost all the leaders of major nations, including the United States itself.

At the same time, from a State placed under international sanctions, isolated by the international community and accused of producing nuclear weapons to better assisting terrorist organizations, helping dictatorships of any kind, destroying Israel, fighting American interests everywhere and place the entire Muslim world under the control of Shi’ism, the minor branch of Islam, the Islamic Republic of Iran, after the surprise victory of Mr. Hassan Rohani in the last presidential elections, became a recognized regional actor whom leaders like French President Francois Hollande and others from major Western industrial and developing nations seeking to meet.
 
 

With one arrow, Dr. Rohani succeeded to kill three birds, namely Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Israel, three states occupying the Middle East scene until two month ago: with its unfaltering financial support amounting to more than 7 billion Dollars and military interference, by sending more than 40.000 Iranian soldiers and Lebanon’s Hezbollah fighters, the Islamic Republic, the god father of the Syrian government, helped it recovering, standing on its feet and even pushing back opposition forces helped by mainly Turkey and Saudi Arabia.

On psychological front, Tehran more or less disarmed Jerusalem when, on the occasion of the Jewish new year, both Mr. Rohani and Javad Zarif, his Foreign affairs Minister, in a dramatic change of language, congratulated the Jews worldwide on their Twitter and Face book and acknowledged the existence of Holocaust, contrary to former president, Mahmoud Ahmadi Nezhad, who, not only had wowed to erase Israel from the map of the world, but insisted that Holocaust never took place.

“Rohani is a smiling Ahmadi Nezhad, the world must not trust him. Like his predecessor, he too would push with the building of nuclear bombs”, Mr. Benyamin Netanyahu warned Mr. Obama and other world leaders, adding that Tehran needed only six months to experiment its first atomic arm.

On diplomatic level, Mr. Rohani has repeated that in order to satisfy the international community’s concern over Iran’s nuclear programs, he would offer maximum of clarity and cooperation with international nuclear inspectors, provided in return, the United States, the United Nations Security Council and the European Union would reduce economic sanctions.

This would be reiterated when, this week, Mr. Mohammad Javad Zarif, the new Foreign Affairs Minister and Head of the new Iranian nuclear negotiating team will meet Mrs. Catherine Ashton, the EU’s “super” Foreign Affairs Minister leading the 5+1 group.

In his latest  declaration on Sunday 22 September before leaving for New York to attend the UN’s General Assembly, Mr. Rohani reiterated that “the people of Iran is ready to talk to the West on condition that all the legitimate rights of the people, including the right to enrich uranium for peaceful projects, be recognized”.

If Mrs. Ashton is convinced by Iranian sincerity and agree to continue negotiations while the United Nation’s International Atomic Energy Agency’s inspectors visit any of the Iranian nuclear sites, one can say that the whole of the Middle East would be saved from a very dangerous crisis. ENDS

Safa Haeri

ASSAD'S SURVIVAL IS VITAL FOR THE ISLAMIC REPUBLIC OF IRAN

To many independent Iranian observers and political analyst, a big mistake of President Obama and leaders of some major European powers is to take as serious threats coming from the Islamic Republic that any military action in Syria would turn the whole of the Middle East into a cemetery for the United States and the extermination of Israel etc.

Whether this assessment is correct or not, but all latest developments in London and Washington have, at least on the surface, pointed to that direction, strengthening the hands and position of the Islamic Republic and boosted the moral of Bashar Assad of Syria.

First, the vote of the British Parliament killing Mr. David Cameron’s proposal to intervene in Syria alongside Washington and Paris to stop Assad’s regime to use chemical weapons against its armed opponents and civilians and then President Barak Obama’s ambiguous statement on Saturday 31 August saying in the one hand that Damascus had crossed his red line by using deadly chemical arms and on the other that he does not know when he would start military operations, “maybe tomorrow, or in one week or one month”.  

“It is true that the souvenir of British intervention in Iraq on President George Bush lies a decade ago has poisoned the British MPs, as the Prime Minister said explaining the negative vote of the Parliament, but the question is that why he did not wait the final report of the UN inspectors checking the source of chemical arms used in Syria, unless he did it purposedly to disengage Britain from another disaster”, asked a young Iranian human rights activist speaking to this blog.

“The region (of Middle East) is like a barrel of gunpowder, a spark and it would explode with unknown dimensions”, Mr. Khameneh’i warned during an audience with the new President, Mr. Hassan Rohani and members of his cabinet, adding: “Any intervention in Syria by America would become a disaster for the region and the main looser would be America itself, as they lost in Iraq and in Afghanistan, increasing the hate of the people for America”.

 

Briefing members of the Majles (Islamic Parliament) about his meeting with Mr. Jeffrey Feltman, the American deputy United Nation’s General Secretary for the Middle East during a brief visit to Tehran, Mr. Mohammad Javad Zarif, the new US educated Iranian Foreign Affairs Minister said “I told him that any foreign interference in Syria would set fire to the whole of the region, increase differences. You saw that the price of adventures in Afghanistan you paid on eleven September. The sole beneficiary of military intervention in Syria would be Israel”.

Dr. Abbas Milani, a professor of the Center for Iranian Studies at the Stanford University and author of two captivating biographies of Mr. Amir Abbas Hoveyda, the Shah’s Prime Minister for 13 years and lately of the deposed Iranian Monarch himself said Mr. Zarif’s remarks to Mr. Feltman is a “typical example of hypocrisy in which the Islamic Republic excels”.

“He (Mr. Zarif) warns the UN diplomat against any foreign interference in Syria, but he does not say what the Islamic Republic is doing there, why the Revolutionary Guard is fighting alongside Syrian troops, why the Lebanese Hezbollah, which so far has lost more than 400 fighters is doing there, why Tehran has provided more the 7 billion dollars in financial assistance to keep Assad on his feet at a time the great majority of Iranian are suffering from hunger and lack of medicines”, Mr. Milani told the Persian service of Voice of America’s program named Ofoq (Horizon) on Friday 30 August 3013.

Mr. Hassan Hashemian, a respected analyst of the Arab world rejects Syrian government’s allegations that chemical weapons have been supplied by Saudi Arabia to Assad’s opponents and ridicules state television’s images of plastic cans containing such arms.

“The chemicals which were used needs special and sophisticated equipments available to special units, not in ordinary plastic bags. This is a childish lie. At the same time, it is very important to know who gave order of using these arms, for, if the decision was taken by Assad or the commander of the armed forces, the world must intervene without hesitation, but it is also possible that it was the special chemical weapons unit that ordered the use and in this case, it is imperative to identify the person or persons who gave the order”, Mr. Hashemian told the same program, speaking from Istanbul, in Turkey.

While General Mohammad Ali Ja’fari, the Commander of the Revolutionary Guards warns that “the cost of American military intervention in Syria would be the total destruction of Israel and Syria would become America’s new Vietnam”, Field Marshal Hassan Firouzabadi, the deputy Supreme Commander of all armed forces of the Islamic Republic assures that Syria “would become America’s cemetery”.

“These are pure rhetoric, plain lies, empty of substance, intended to boost the morale of Assad, who is afraid that the new Iranian government might not stand by him as did the previous one. In case of a military action by the westerners in Syria, one can be sure that the Islamic Republic would not move one centimeter, returning immediately its forces from Syria”, assured Mr. Mansour Farhang, the Islamic Republic’s first envoy to the United Nations.

 

Confirming this point of view, Mr. Hassan Da’i, an indefatigable human rights militant and fierce opponent of the bloody theocratic State that rules Iran says the feverish activation of both Iranian lobbies and Mr. Zarif’s networks in the United States are clear proofs that the ruling mollahs are seriously afraid of the fact that the elimination of Assad’s regime in Damascus is a prelude to their own end. 

“Did not Mr. Hoseyne Taeb, a cleric close to Ali Khamenehi’s influential second son Mojtaba and the commander of the Basij force infuriated Iranians some time ago when he stated that abandoning the oil rich province of Khouzestan is less important than loosing Syria, for the lost of Damascus would meand the lost of Teheran”? Mr. Da’i told the Los Angeles-based Pars Television on 30 August 2013. ENDS

SAFA HAERI