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Is the UN General Assembly a place to defend war criminals?

The United Nations was finally formed in 1945 after World War II with the hope of resolving international issues and defending humane values.

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said in his speech inaugurating the General Assembly session on September 28, 2015: “In this year in which we mark the 70th anniversary of the United Nations, we must heed the call of the Charter, and hear the voices of ‘we the peoples.’ That is how we can overcome the grim realities of the present – and seize the remarkable opportunities of our era,” declared the Secretary-General.”

Mr. Ban Ki-moon was delivering his speech while the president of one of the most violent dictatorships of modern times, Hassan Rouhani of the Iranian regime, was taking part in the session. Rouhani taking the floor behind the UN tribune came just three days after the UN Secretary-General report on the wide scope of human rights violations in Iran and emphasizing on its gross nature. Of course, this report was prepared while completely abiding by appeasement policy principles.

Hassan Rouhani is the representative of a regime dubbed as the Godfather of ISIS. Rouhani is no different from the regime’s other factions in their fundamental policies concerning crackdown, obtaining nuclear weapons, meddling in the region and … His cabinet members have had the main roles in war, repression and exporting terrorism and fundamentalism.

He has a record of 2,000 executions in his report card. During Rouhani’s tenure the crackdown of political opponents and human rights advocates, labor rights activists, women, teachers, lawyers, journalists, bloggers and … have all intensified.

Political prisoners are not released even after they serve their terms. Cases of murder under torture, forcing people to suffer to death and prisoners’ literally disappearing continue to this day.

During Rouhani’s tenure the crackdown of women have also expanded. Women and young girls are targets of horrific acid attacks under the pretext of “improper veiling”.

Ethnic and religious minorities are under pressure more than ever before. Crackdown against Sunni Muslims has intensified and their house of worship in Tehran was razed to the ground just recently.

Attacks on house churches, arresting Christians, destroying Baha’i cemeteries and preventing their burials, and even preventing Baha’is from seeking higher education, are all repressive measures on the rise these days in Iran.

On September 22nd Rouhani proudly boasted of his regime’s criminal meddling in Iraq and Syria as fighting against terrorism.

“As we have supported the armies of Iraq and Syria to fight terrorism based on their government’s requests, if God forbid the terrorist start roaming in other neighboring countries, once again their only hope will be Iran’s army, Revolutionary Guards and Bassij. In this regard we have not received permission anyone, nor will we seek permission from anyone,” he said.

While the people of the Middle East have reached their boiling point about Tehran’s meddling and Iran’s support for extremist militias, as they are now seen desperately attempting to save their lives by migrating to European countries, Rouhani said in the General Assembly:

“We propose… for no government to be able to support any nation under the pretext of terrorism… as we supported the establishment of democracy Iraq and Afghanistan, we are also ready to support democracy in Syria and Yemen…”

Iran’s president, seeing their survival in Syria’s dictator remaining in power, said in an interview with CNN on September 28th:

“In Syria our first objective is to force terrorists out of the country and defeat them, and there is no solution but to strengthen the central government as the central power. Therefore, I believe that today everyone has accepted the fact that President Assad must remain in power to be able to fight terrorism.”

In response to this question on why does his regime support an individual that has “killed 250,000 of his own people, forced 10 million of his people out of the country to find a safe haven… an individual who many say is the first party responsible for the rise of ISIS”, he answered this is the perspective of the United States and the West, and by referring to Syria’s support of Iran against Iraq back in the 1980s war he said, “Syria is one of our oldest friends in the region.”

The Associated Press reported from a press conference on September 26th in New York: “Rouhani defended the government of President Bashar Assad from charges of brutality in dealing with its opponents. He denied any knowledge of the use of ‘barrel bombs’ against civilians in Syria’s civil war, but suggested that Damascus [Bashar Assad] was entitled to use whatever it has at its disposal to counter terrorists.” He noted that “world powers were wrong to try to keep Iran out of the discussions on how to deal with the threat [of ISIS]”. These are the remarks of the president of a regime that the Iranian people and regional countries have dubbed as the Godfather of ISIS.

These remarks are made by the representative of a regime that its Revolutionary Guards and associated proxies have spilled blood across the region, from Iraq to Syria, Lebanon and Yemen. This regime is also the main element behind the massacre of a few hundreds of thousand innocent people in Syria and Iraq, and displaced half of the Syrian population and millions of Iraqis.

Ali Shamkhani, head of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council said on September 29th, 2014 at a funeral held for a senior IRGC general killed in Syria: “If we don’t fight these battles in Iraq and Syria, if those like this general don’t sacrifice their blood in Samara (in Iraq), we will be forced to shed our blood in Sistan, Azerbaijan, Shiraz and Isfahan… such generals are sacrificing their blood today because before having to shed our blood in Tehran, we must first fight and shed blood in Samara.”

To safeguard the advances made by mankind, including the very identity of the United Nations, the representative of a regime that itself is the root of crises, exporter of fundamentalism, death and horror should not have been permitted into the UN and literally ridicule humane values and international laws.

Therefore, any meddling by Iran in resolving the lethal crisis in Syria and the entire Middle East will only deepen the chaos, prolong the war and spread it to new regions. The regime in Iran will never be the solution of a chaos created by its own hands. Tehran sees its survival in the survival of the Assad regime, and Khamenei has emphasized time and again that Syria is his regime’s strategic front line, and they must support Assad to the very end.

heshmat alavi:
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