The following piece by Alex Ryvchin, the ECAJ’s Public Affairs Director, was published in The Aus­trali­an on 11^th January, 2018.

Smiling barbarians not planning for peace

Alex Ryvchin
The Aus­trali­an
January 11, 2018
The image of the invari­ably smiling Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif purring at the side of world leaders, together with the election of the so-called “reformist” president Hasan Rowhani in 2013, have cul­tiv­ated an image of the Iranian regime as modern, civilised, reas­on­able and a welcome antidote to the inhuman Islamic State and other Sunni jihadists. But a closer exam­in­a­tion of the regime’s regional designs and behaviour reveals a dangerous malevol­ence.
Under President Rowhani, state exe­cu­tions in the Islamic Republic have continued at their usual rol­lick­ing pace. Iran ranks first in the world in exe­cu­tions per capita. Human rights groups reported 239 exe­cu­tions in Iran in the first half of 2017, some involving minors, others conducted in public. In August 2016, the Iranian regime announced the execution of a group of 20 men (believed to be Sunni Kurds) on the charge of “enmity to God”.
Iranian indus­tri­al workers have been flogged for protest­ing the firing of their fellow employees. Children iden­ti­fied as LGBTI are subjected to electric shock therapy to “cure” them. Adults accused of sexual deviancy are hanged from cranes. Baha’i people are sys­tem­at­ic­ally denied basic human rights, including closure of their busi­nesses, and exclusion from employ­ment and education, and they are subjected to arbitrary arrest, often for many years.
Abroad, Iran’s hand can be seen in every theatre of war in the Middle East and in terrorist attacks against civilian targets farther afield. An Argen­tini­an gov­ern­ment invest­ig­a­tion into the bombing of a Jewish community centre in Buenos Aires in 1994 that killed 85 people and wounded 300 others, found that “the decision to carry out the attack was made, and the attack was orches­trated, by the highest officials of the Islamic Republic of Iran, and that these officials instruc­ted Hezbollah — a group that has his­tor­ic­ally been sub­or­din­ated to the economic and political interests of the Tehran regime — to carry out the attack”. In 2012, Hezbollah oper­at­ives murdered six people in a bus bombing at the Burgas airport in Bulgaria.
In Iraq, Iran’s Islamic Revolu­tion­ary Guards Corps-Quds Force, led by Qasem Soleimani, is widely believed to have killed 500 US ser­vice­men by supplying Shia extrem­ists with advanced roadside bombs, rocket-propelled explos­ives and other munitions. In 2011, the US uncovered a plot by the Quds Force to kill the Saudi ambas­sad­or to the US — on American soil.
The Iranian regime spends more than $800 million a year sup­port­ing Hezbollah, an armed Shia group based in Lebanon, four senior members of which have been accused by the Special Tribunal for Lebanon of organ­ising the assas­sin­a­tion in 2005 of Lebanese president Rafik Hariri. Iran has pumped billions into sus­tain­ing the Assad regime in Syria.
Little wonder that recent civil unrest in Iran was partly fuelled by a view that Iran cares more for estab­lish­ing regional supremacy than the needs of its people. Chants of “Not Gaza, not Lebanon, my life for Iran” were heard at protests through­out the country.
Since con­clud­ing the 2015 deal to curtail Iran’s nuclear program in exchange for sanctions relief and induce­ments, Iran’s bel­li­ger­ence and pro­voca­tions have increased. Aside from upping its involve­ment in Syria and Yemen, Iran has rapidly increased its ballistic missile activ­it­ies and har­ass­ment of the US fleet in the Persian Gulf.
The nuclear deal, rather than reforming Iran’s inter­na­tion­al conduct, is being used to pursue its long-term regional ambitions.
Iran’s immediate goal is a land corridor across the Levant, linking Iran to the Medi­ter­ranean, hence its “at-all-costs” support for Bashar al-Assad in Syria and Hezbollah in Lebanon. The ultimate purpose of this is to establish a presence in the Golan Heights, as a forward base in a direct con­front­a­tion with Israel. Iran’s strategy is therefore to prepare for war, not to establish peace, and to fracture states rather than to unite them.
Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei has spoken of Lebanon, Syria and Iraq as being Iran’s forward defence. Their pop­u­la­tions, generally hostile to Iran’s brand of jihadism for its Shia character — are seen as dis­pens­able. Assad and Hezbollah have so far managed to subdue their domestic rivals with brutal force.
Hezbollah, for its part, far from being a potential ally in the war on Sunni jihadism, as suggested by the ANU’s Clive Williams on these pages last week, remains a terrorist organ­isa­tion of rare soph­ist­ic­a­tion and ruth­less­ness.
The assertion, fre­quently advanced, that Hezbollah should be regarded not only for its terrorism but its social work, or that a dis­tinc­tion should be drawn between its inter­na­tion­al terrorism arm and its political and social oper­a­tions, is a fantasy. The ideology and object­ives of Shia suprem­acism, backed by brute force, suffuse the entire organ­isa­tion.
Hezbollah deputy secretary-general Naim Qassem, has himself made this point, saying “every member of the res­ist­ance (i.e. Hezbollah) is a politi­cian, and every politi­cian is a member of the res­ist­ance. You won’t find with us a political stance and a (separate) position of the res­ist­ance. We are all the res­ist­ance and we are all poli­cy­makers.”
In their des­per­a­tion to come to grips with Sunni jihadism — iden­ti­fied as the primary threat to inter­na­tion­al security — policy analysts and makers have become increas­ingly willing to entertain the idea of embracing Iran and its sur­rog­ates as a partner in the struggle. This is a dangerous self-delusion. Sunni extrem­ists can only be fought with Sunni moderates. One brutal fun­da­ment­al­ism may for a time fight another, but the notion that this will bring long-term peace and stability is foolish. It will only ever result in more war and bloodshed.
Alex Ryvchin is the director of public affairs at the Executive Council of Aus­trali­an Jewry. His new book is The Anti-Israel Agenda — Inside the Political War on the Jewish State (Gefen Pub­lish­ing House, 2017)