The dispute with Iran is not nihilistic!

The Creator of all beings fashioned humanity from diverse ethnicities and tribes so that they might get to know one another and exchange mutual benefits, not so that they might fight, shed blood, destroy infrastructure, and cut off each other’s livelihoods. Accordingly, the dispute with Iran is not ethnic—i.e., between Arabs and Persians—nor is it sectarian. This is evident from the fact that even at the height of Iran’s missile strikes on Gulf states, not a single Iranian was killed in the Gulf countries, and I believe the reverse is true in Iran: the friendly Iranian people do not harbor hostility toward the Gulf states. The peoples of Iran are not from Mars, nor are the peoples of the region from Venus; rather, our peoples have coexisted peacefully for centuries without problems, unlike what occurred between Americans and the Japanese, or the British and the Germans, during their wars.

*** The worst thing that can be done at this historical stage—and what serves the objectives of hardliners in the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and advocates of war and destruction in the region—is attempting to portray the conflict as an eternal, ongoing historical struggle between Persians and Arabs, or as a sectarian conflict. Through this malicious characterization, the current situation is transformed into a nihilistic conflict and wars that must continue for decades and centuries, as happened with the sectarian wars in Europe or the ethnic wars in the Balkans, until one ethnicity or the other is annihilated, and one sect or another is wiped out, with tens and hundreds of millions following suit. If we accept the demonic premise that what we are witnessing is an existential, nihilistic war between the peoples of the Gulf coast, then we must lose hope for peace and prepare for devastated homelands where owls hoot over ruins, as they seek to promote.

*** Final points:

1. The clear, obvious truth, closer to the sun at midday and invisible neither to enlightened minds nor to living consciences, is that the dispute with Iran is purely political, no more and no less. It began 47 years ago when Iran wrongly declared its desire to export its revolution and claimed the right to interfere in the internal affairs of Gulf and Arab states, resulting in severe harm and devastation for the Iranian people and for the peoples of the countries where the Islamic Revolutionary Guard has intervened.

2. If Iran were to announce tonight that it has ceased these destructive principles, which contradict religious tenets, international law, and good neighborliness, and were to redirect its resources toward the happiness of its people after half a century of suffering, all problems would end completely before tomorrow’s sun rises. This is the truth that only the ignorant or the biased would seek to obscure.

3. In February 1980, before Saddam’s destructive war on Iran, and while witnessing Iran’s initial adoption of the project to export its destructive revolution, I wrote an article available in the archive of Al-Qabas newspaper for those who wish to read it, titled “Between the Egyptian Revolution and the Iranian Revolution.” At that early time, I warned Iran against repeating the grave mistake of the Egyptian revolution by exporting its revolution. The Egyptian revolution required a war waged against it and defeat to learn its lesson and halt its destructive project of interfering in and encroaching upon other states. I warned Iran of the same fate, which indeed befell it during the eight-year war, forcing it to swallow the bitter pill at its end. The difference, however, is that the destructive trajectory of the Egyptian revolution lasted 15 years, whereas the destructive trajectory of the Iranian revolution has lasted 47 years and continues due to theoretical justifications and false media and political marketing of what is happening. Therefore, it is imperative to counter this marketing.